“Iris?” Benzi was tugging at her sleeve. “You look funny. Aren’t you glad?”
She put a hand on his head. “Yes,” she said fervently. “Yes, Benzi. I’m very glad.”
At last Iris stood under the dome of Island Two. She lifted her eyes toward the soft yellow light of the dome overhead.
She had wanted to view the airship’s approach to this Island in silence, but the two engineers had occupied her in conversation, and she had caught only a glimpse of the dome’s hazy light before the airship had docked. Other passengers had made their way to the seats near her; their talk, distracting as it was, had cheered her, and yet she had the feeling that a few of them were trying to recapture their own enthusiasm for their work through her. She had wondered how many of them might be harboring hidden regrets about their choice, or about the Project itself, or who might be longing for the people they had left behind who could not share their dream.
She lowered her gaze to the slender trees and bright flowers lining the white pathway ahead. The door to the bay slid shut behind her; her traveling companions were greeting friends.
I’m here, she thought; I’ll never leave again, I’m home. A wild joy filled her; her real life would begin.
A man detached himself from one small group of people; she found herself looking into Chen’s eyes. Iris started; her face felt hot. He would be a stranger after all this time; he might see her as a stranger too.
She looked away quickly and tugged at her son’s arm. “Your father,” she said. “You should greet him.”
Chen knelt by the boy. “Benzi! Don’t you know me?’
“Chen,” Benzi said.
“You know.” Chen rubbed the boy’s head and stood up “Iris,” he whispered. His eyes did not meet hers. “I do know what to say. I had so many words to speak, and now I can’t say any of them.”
He was the man who shared her dream. However much they both might have changed, that would be enough to bind them together. She reached for him and felt his lips brush against her forehead. I’m not the girl you knew, she wanted to say. Instead she said, “I’ve missed you.”
He suddenly released her; she heard a short sob. Benzi was crying. Chen took his son’s hand. “I know,” he said. “You miss your grandmother and all the others. It’s all right. Let it out if you have to.”
Benzi pressed his lips together and wiped his face with one sleeve. “I won’t cry,” he said.
Iris picked up her bags and handed one to Chen. She would share her life with her son; in time, he would share her dream. She led Benzi onto the path; they left the garden and walked into the light.
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Part Three
Twenty-One
Fawzia Habeeb rarely stood on ceremony; she seemed unaware that some formality could be reassuring to others. This was one of her less agreeable traits, but then, as far as Pavel Gvishiani was concerned, she had few agreeable ones. Instead of alerting him through her Link, she had arrived on Island Two unannounced, and he barely had time to prepare for her visit to his room.
Fawzia sat on a cushion across from Pavel, smacking her lips daintily as she savored one of the candies he had set out for her. Fawzia’s short black hair was curled around her oval face. It was a pretty face, with peach-colored cheeks, full pink lips, and long lashes framing large black eyes, but it was not a face that appealed to Pavel, who could see the cosmetic effort that had gone into it. Instead of her Guardian uniform, Fawzia was wearing a green silk robe over white trousers. Perhaps she was being considerate of the Islanders, who were always displeased at the sight of a Guardian, though she could hardly conceal who she was. Maybe it was only that the Guardian uniform revealed too much of her short-legged and slightly dumpy figure.
She had arrived, as usual, without an escort, as though she were only a simple Guardian soldier instead of Yukio Nakasone’s second-in-command. She had brought a small package with her, but had not said what it contained. Pavel refused to look at the package, afraid that he knew what was in it. Fawzia couldn’t know, he told himself; the package was sealed, and she could not have opened it.
“Yukio hasn’t seen much of you lately,” Fawzia said as she munched on another piece of candy. “You ought to pay him a call sometime soon.”
“I sent him a message not long ago. You can give him my greetings.”
“Poor man. He feels so useless on Anwara. There’s so little for him to do. I keep telling him he ought to visit the Islands more, keep up with the Project’s progress. There’s no reason we can’t all get along, in spite of how some of the Islanders feel about us.”
“No reason at all.”
“I think he really misses Earth,” she said, “even after all these years at his post.”
“Maybe he’ll get a chance to go back. I’m sure you could handle his command.”
Fawzia lowered her lids modestly, but not before Pavel saw the glint of ambition in her eyes. Yukio had to find the woman quite a trial; she was just waiting for a chance to push her superior out of the way. Yukio might miss his old home, but the Guardian commander had too much pride to give up his command; Fawzia might dislike Yukio, but would never act against him unless she was sure she would win out. He wished the two could think more about the Project, and less about themselves.
Pavel had cultivated those assigned to Anwara. Many of them longed for a place on the Islands themselves, and Pavel had gone out of his way to make them feel that they were as much a part of the Project as were the Islanders. He had sat through countless boring meetings in the stark, cramped rooms of the space station, and had arranged for other members of his Administrative Council to greet those from Anwara who had finally won an assignment to the Islands. He had taken a proper, if distant, interest in the Cytherian Institute, though he suspected that its somewhat naive students had been exposed to too much Earth propaganda. He had impressed the visiting Project Council members with the Project’s progress. He had listened to their recommendations while making sure that, in the end, they followed most of his.
“I wouldn’t make a bad commander,” Fawzia said. “I’d cause less friction than Yukio sometimes does. He can’t just do his job and keep order, he has to keep arranging little lectures on Nomarchic history while he harps at us about our loyalties.”
“You mustn’t hold that against him,” Pavel said smoothly. “It’s good that he reminds us of our loyalty to Earth. We mustn’t lose sight of our purpose — Earth’s greater glory and accomplishment.”
Fawzia leaned forward. “Our loyalty is to the Project, Pavel.” She smiled. “Isn’t that how those of us here show our true loyalty to Earth?”
“How odd to hear a Guardian say that. You’re the arm of the Mukhtars, after all.”
“The Mukhtars want to see settlements. The sooner we have them, the happier they’ll be.” Fawzia popped another candy into her mouth. She could not look at food without devouring it; she could not gaze at anything on his shelf without handling it.
At least Fawzia and he had the same end in mind, the success of the Project. He did not deceive himself about her motivations; she would gobble up control of the Project, too, if she could.
Guardians, he thought bitterly. There would be no Guardians among the settlers if he could help it.
“The problem with Yukio,” Fawzia continued, “is that he really believes what he learned on Earth and can’t modify his views. I’ve spoken to him about this Habber business, but he simply refuses to allow them on Anwara.”
Pavel lifted a brow. She should know that Yukio would never give in on that point. Habbers could not dock any of their spaceships at the space station and then take shuttles to the Island Platform, but had to travel directly to the Platform in their own shuttles. Their spacecraft could dock at the one Habitat orbiting the sun between Venus and Earth, which the Habbers had built before their agreement with the Nomarchies limited them to Mars and the region beyond; from that Habitat, reaching Venus by shuttle was simple enough. Yuki
o had presented the Habbers with only a mild inconvenience, but he had asserted his authority, complaining that allowing Habbers on Anwara might provoke incidents and anger the torchship pilots who stopped off there between flights.
“Of course we know,” Fawzia was saying, “how necessary the Habbers are to this Project. It seems we could make a few allowances for that.”
“Yes, we need them,” Pavel said carefully, “but the Project is Earth’s vision. We mustn’t lose sight of that.”
Was Fawzia trying to show how much more useful and sympathetic she could be than Yukio was? Pavel, in spite of his dislike of the woman, would have preferred to see her in command of the Guardians on Anwara, and could find ways to bring that about. He did not, however, want to make an enemy of Yukio, as he would if he acted overtly against the commander. He did not want Yukio to go back to Earth with resentments to share with others who had doubts about the Project.
Fawzia finished the last of the candies, then rose. “I must be going,” she said. “You needn’t show me out. I’d like to take a little stroll before I leave. Anwara can get tedious, and your Island environment is so refreshing. Oh, I almost forgot. I brought that along for you.” She gestured at the package; Pavel kept his face still. “I happened to run into the pilot carrying it. She was quite insistent that she wasn’t to give it to anyone but you, that you’d said you’d come out to Anwara to get it yourself, but I convinced her it would be simpler for me to bring it to you.” Fawzia’s eves widened a bit.
“That was kind of you, Fawzia.”
“Is it so important that you have to go to all that trouble?”
“You know how shipments here can get bogged down in delays.”
“Indeed,” Fawzia’s lips curved into a smile. “But one would think that the Project’s Mukhtar could expedite matters for himself.”
“It isn’t proper to use that title with me, Fawzia.” Pavel picked up the package and pressed his thumb against the seal; the top opened.
Fawzia glanced inside, then turned toward the door. “Thank you so much for the sweets.”
“Enjoy your walk,” he replied. “Have a safe trip back, God willing.”
The door closed behind her. She had probably bribed the pilot into giving her the package. Well, perhaps he had convinced her that the package was of no importance; Pavel had, after all, opened it in front of her, showing he had nothing to hide, and she had seen no more than a couple of tools and an imprinted console panel. She might think that he had only ordered a new toy. He sighed. Whatever she lacked, Fawzia was not a complete fool. She would wonder why he would go to such trouble over a package that could easily have been shipped to the Islands with other cargo.
Pavel closed the small box. He had it all now, all the tools he needed, all the parts for the device. It had taken him four years to bring it here, years of bribes passed to a pilot who needed credit and of having her bring in the pieces bit by bit. He could now assemble the device any time, and no one would know that he had it.
He had been careful. A component from one city, a module from another; no one would miss them, or know where they had been sent. The pilot had been told whom to bribe on Earth, but even she did not know what he was planning to assemble.
He had found out about the device’s existence almost by accident. A visiting Council member had mentioned hearing a rumor in high circles. After that, Pavel had phrased his questions to the cyberminds carefully and innocuously until, without giving away his purpose, he had become convinced that the rumors were fact.
Over a decade ago, so the rumor went, the Counselors working in a couple of the North American Nomarchies had been given devices that would protect them from assassins. A beam would strike the assassin, making it seem as if he had died of natural causes. It was a clever idea doomed to failure. A couple of Counselors had used the device, but had apparently been shattered by guilt afterward — no surprise, given their training and concern for those they counseled.
Other Counselors, it seemed, had protested, and perhaps someone near the Council of Mukhtars had second thoughts about allowing Counselors to control such a weapon, because the devices were now being removed from the places where they had been installed. Pavel supposed that those who knew about their existence had been silenced by bribery or threats. He did not care to speculate about who might still find such a device convenient or useful; at any rate, such people would have to answer to the Mukhtars for their deeds, and could hardly conceal the truth from them.
But no one would know that Pavel had acquired the weapon. He had been too cautious — a stolen piece in one city, a diagram from another, a slightly damaged but still usable component from another place. Unlike many of his fellow Linkers, he knew how to work with his hands; that was a point of pride with him, a connection with the humble origins of his ancestors. He would be able to figure it out, put it together, and install it; he might even make a few modifications.
His shoulders slumped. Now that he had what he needed, he was beginning to wish that he had never heard of the device. He had brought an evil onto the Islands, something that did not belong in a place where people dreamed of a new beginning. He would put this package away with the others and pray that he would never need to assemble the parts. The Mukhtars had been right to put a stop to the use of such a weapon; one fleeting moment of rage and an instant of terror for one’s own life could be enough to condemn a man to death. The device would be a constant temptation.
It was the Mukhtars who were responsible for bringing him to this evil. Why couldn’t they see what the Project needed? It had begun as one man’s vision, and now it was bogged down in the constant bickering of committees. It needed another strong man to bring it to fruition. Here, they called Pavel a Mukhtar; he should have been given the power of one. Instead of appeasing the Project Council, he could have been ordering people to follow commands openly. Instead, he had to cajole and persuade one committee after another while keeping all of their different and sometimes conflicting aims in mind. He had to watch his fellow Island Administrators while wondering which of them might be conniving with others or with members of the Project Council on Earth to push Pavel aside.
Why couldn’t the Mukhtars and the Project Council see what the Project required now? It needed more help from the Habbers. It needed their alloys to build safer domes; it needed their more sophisticated and durable robots to construct them. Earth had swallowed its pride before, when the pyramids below had been erected on Venus’s equator; surely, it could do so again. In the centuries to come, no one would care what the Habbers had contributed; Earth’s stamp would be on the new world, and Venus would be Earth’s creation. It might be, perhaps, what Earth could have been.
Pavel rose, then picked up his package. He did not need it now; perhaps he would never need it, but if the Project’s outcome ever depended on that weapon, he would be prepared to use it. In the meantime, he would try to put it out of his mind. He gazed at the container he held and felt suddenly that it had already contaminated his soul.
Three people sat on cushions around the low table with Iris, leaning on their elbows as they studied the diagrams on their flat pocket screens. A larger screen covered part of one of the walls, revealing a murky, black sky. Lightning flashed in the sky; a spark swelled, blossomed into a bright flame, and then faded.
There had been another volcanic eruption in the region of Beta Regio. That was not surprising in itself; those massive highlands were one of the centers of Venus’s volcanic activity, which allowed heat to escape from the planet’s interior. The violence of this eruption, however, had not been expected. A probe on the surface had gathered data and images through lenses sensitive to infrared light before it had been engulfed by a lava flow.
“You could use an observer,” Iris said, breaking the silence. Aryeh ben-Samuel looked up; Nelli Kazan arched her thin, dark brows.
“Nonsense,” Marc Lissi murmured. “We’ll send a drone, have it collect some atmospheric samples. We can analy
ze them here and then let the microbiologists have our findings. It’s up to them to decide if the sulfur emitted by that eruption has affected the atmosphere enough to require additional seeding.”
Iris gazed back steadily at Marc’s handsome, olive-skinned face. “Drones are harder to control, and we’ve been losing too many. I could go out with an airship pilot and come back with your samples. In the meantime, I could make a few observations.”
“But why risk it?” Nelli said. “You’d have to drop fairly low, near the cloud layer, to collect anything we could use. With the winds, that’s too dangerous.”
“I’ve been almost as low before.” Aryeh and Nelli had only recently been added to Iris’s team; they would take their cues from Marc, the team’s head. “My observations have been of use in the past.” Iris gazed steadily at Marc.
Nelli shook her head. “This eruption might have been much larger than others, but —”
“You can use samples, and maybe an observer as well. I’m willing to go.” Iris paused. She had argued with the other members of her team before; they were all too willing to rely on drones and what she considered secondhand observations. They were cautious, like too many people here, unwilling to take any initiative that might provoke the Administrators who held authority over the Project.
Iris had come to rely on her observations and intuitions, however embarrassed she sometimes was to admit that openly. Often, she was only dimly aware of how such intuitions aided her in reaching her conclusions, but she had learned to loosen the reins on her thoughts. During her years on the Islands, away from the fear of failure that had haunted her at the Institute, she had come to see how useful she could be to the Project.
Others were more brilliant than she, but Iris had discovered her own gift. Her models were more useful than others’ in making predictions. The cyberminds, of course, created the models, the formulas, images, and descriptions that mapped a planetary system, but they could only work with the data their probes and the Project’s specialists provided. Iris could sense when some seemingly insignificant factor might have been neglected in a model; her observations aided her in intuiting what might be missing.
Venus of Dreams Page 33
