by Devin Hanson
“And you think this is one of those times? When we must use caution?” Alana’s gaze was sharp, and a frown hovered at the corners of her mouth.
“Truthfully,” Dennison replied, “we don’t know. And that, more than anything else, is what has us on edge.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
Venus rotates very slowly on its axis. For an object fixed in placed on the surface, a full Venusian day lasts two hundred and forty-three Earth days. For one of the floating cities, falling out of the sun-lit side of the planet would mean death for all aboard as they are entirely reliant on solar power. The winds are strongest near the edges of the sunlit areas, and so the cities tend to stay close to the center of daylight.
The floating habitat cities hold their position against the constant winds through the use of dozens of propellers. There are times when storms bring winds against the habitats that the propellers can’t compete against. The accepted solution is to dump mass and raise the city above the storm. This is an expensive emergency measure, and most of the time habitats just ride out the storm and slowly migrate back to the center of daylight once the storm runs its course.
There are no natural nights on the habitat cities. Without a transition to day and night, there is no purpose in keeping a local calendar; the people living on Venus simply use the same month and date as those living on Earth, leap years and all. Because it is always daylight there are no time zones on Venus, and so everyone, regardless of where they live, keeps Greenwich Mean Time.
Jackson Harding stepped off the lift as the doors slid open and a wave of sound and smell hit him. Music thudded through the floor and pounded at his ears, a rapid junk rhythm that set his pulse ratcheting upward and picked him up on the balls of his feet. The customary smell of unwashed bodies was obliterated by a miasma of pipe smoke.
An overweight black man stepped in front of him, towering head and shoulders over Jackson. “You got an invite, sprout?” The man’s shout was barely loud enough to be heard over the music.
“Leave him, Mansard. He’s with me.”
Jackson nodded in relief as he recognized Chief Nicks pushing through the crowd. She looked out of place in her civilian clothes; she wasn’t wearing anything imported, but her clothes were a statement of wealth regardless. Most of the people Jackson lived with didn’t own anything beyond their current work jumpsuit. Millicent’s clothes looked tailored and flattered her figure.
The black bouncer frowned but relented. He stepped aside and gestured for Jackson to continue. “If you say so, Millie. You want me to add him to the logs?”
“He’s the newest extra on my crew,” she confirmed.
Mansard raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment any further.
“Come on!” Millicent grabbed Jackson’s arm and pulled him away from the lift. “I’m glad you came. It’s been hard to keep Polder from getting drunk before you arrived.”
“What is this place?” Jackson shouted. “I’ve never even heard of a place like this!”
Millicent pushed past a group of loitering men and women and paused at a railing. Below them, an enormous, donut-shaped club stretched out over two levels. A DJ worked a mixing table, pumping music through the hanging speaker clusters. The center of the donut was a bar with a dozen bartenders pouring and mixing drinks for the packed customers.
“Welcome to the Basement!” Millicent shouted in his ear. “Extras only.”
“Extras? What’s that?” Jackson leaned over the railing, staring at the gyrating bodies on the dance floor. The balcony level seemed to be a restaurant, with plastic paneling shutting out some of the pounding music. It seemed like every other table sported a multi-hosed hookah pipe, and smoke hung heavy in the air.
“That’s you, now. We work extra ordinem, beyond the normal; outside the safety of the habitat interiors. These are your people now, Jackson. We rely on each other for our lives every day. The men and women you see here are the glue that keeps Nueva Angela from sinking into the inferno below the clouds. Without us, life on Venus would revert back to pre-diaspora desperation.”
Jackson pushed away from the railing and followed Millicent as she led the way through a side passage and into the restaurant. The music was reduced to a sub-aural thudding and the smoke took on a sweeter, fresher tone.
“Ready for your table, Millie?”
“Yep. You keep Polder straight?”
“Best I could.”
“Thanks, Meg. Come on, Harding, we’ve got some serious drinking to do.”
Polder was waiting for them, his left hand bound up in a cast. He stood when they approached and waved them to the table. “Jackson! Man of the hour! I’m glad you came, lad.”
Jackson shook Polder’s offered hand and did his best to ignore the cast. Polder’s left hand had been a mass of mangled meat only a few hours ago. He expected Polder to have been bedridden. The gleam of chemical functionality behind his eyes explained the slightly drunken behavior of the senior wrench despite the waiter’s enforced sobriety.
“Hey, we didn’t meet properly out on the roof,” a narrow man extended his hand once Polder released Jackson. He had watery eyes and stringy hair that hung lank over his forehead. “Laud Rudner, systems specialist. We’re all indebted to you for saving this lunk’s life.”
Polder sat heavily and propped his elbow up on the edge of the table. “Damn straight. Now we’re all here. Meg! I’ve got a bonus to burn through! Keep the drinks coming!”
“Food first, I think,” Millicent insisted gently. “Salmon is the special?”
Meg nodded and shifted her tablet so she could write on it. “We got it in not five hours ago from New Galway. Doesn’t get any fresher.”
Jackson nodded when Millicent pointed at him, seconding the order. Polder shook his head when Meg turned to him.
“I want something special. Lost half my damn hand out there. Credits in the bank won’t do me any good if I’m dead. What poultry does your kitchen have in stock?”
“Chicken for certain, but Alfonse might have some duck tucked away for a rainy day. I’ll ask.”
“Duck sounds right nice.”
“We’ll have to check your credit before it’s cooked,” Meg cleared her throat. “Not that we think you’re not good for it!” she added hurriedly.
Millicent raised a hand, cutting off Polder before he could do more than sputter indignantly. “My treat, Andy.”
“I’m good for it,” Polder grumbled.
“Of course you are. But I’m celebrating my senior wrench coming back to me alive, too.” Millicent pointed at Laud.
“Salmon for me, thanks, Meg.”
The waiter nodded and left the table with a promise to have drinks sent shortly.
“She didn’t check your credit, Chief,” Polder pointed out.
“She scanned it when I had the table reserved,” Millicent sighed. “Relax, Polder.”
The senior wrench leaned back and produced a cigar from a vest pocket. “Right you are, Chief. Thank you kindly.”
“You bought a cigar?” Laud asked incredulously. “It’s real, isn’t it? Let me smell!”
Polder ran the cigar under his nose and sighed with pleasure. “Hands off. It’s real as your mum, Laud, old boy. Imported from Cuba, Earth.”
“Shit.” Millicent laughed and shook her head. “Did you drain your savings or something?”
“I’ve got a friend in Imports,” Polder grinned and produced a cigar cutter. With a practiced motion, he clipped the end of the cigar and lit it with a match.
Jackson watched the friendly chiding and easy back-and-forth among Millicent and her crew. He was having a little trouble coming to grips with the extravagance of smoking a cigar from Earth. It was one thing to buy something made of leather, and have it last for years and years, but a cigar could only be smoked once and then it was gone. Not to mention the flame tax that was tacked onto the price. Oxygen was too valuable to be wasted on fire.
Meg came back with drinks, and at Millicen
t’s insistence, left the decanter behind. Jackson lifted his glass and sniffed at the amber liquid inside. The fumes stung at his nasal passages.
“To Tristan,” Millicent said, and raised her glass. “Idiot though he was, he was still one of us.”
Jackson followed the motion the others made and took a swallow of the alcohol. It seared his throat and burned down into his stomach. He coughed and his eyes watered. Polder chuckled and clapped him on the back.
The rich scent of tobacco drifted about their table, rising in milky curls from the end of Polder’s cigar. Jackson’s head felt stuffy and somehow lighter than it should. He was beginning to enjoy himself. Conversation around the table drifted from topic to topic, avoiding anything that stank of work. Millicent deftly included Jackson in the conversation and soon he forgot that he had only met these people that morning.
The food dishes came, along with a paired wine and garlicky bread sticks. It had been years since Jackson had anything as rich and filling as the salmon. Polder’s duck had a heavy smell than set Jackson’s mouth to watering. He had never eaten poultry before. Even chicken was too expensive for him to have tried.
Comfortable silence replaced their conversation as they ate hungrily. Jackson tried to drink as little wine as possible. He wasn’t a stranger to beer, but wine and the stronger liquors were entirely new to him.
The salmon was a marvel of flavor. His regular diet of yeast protein bars and carbohydrate pills had only been infrequently broken by meals of tilapia and frozen greens. Certainly, he had never had asparagus or potatoes. The spears of asparagus weren’t to his liking, he found, but he ate them anyway, marveling in the crunch of the texture.
As much as he tried to slow down and experience the meal fully, it was over before he knew it. He felt sated and the alcohol was beginning to make him feel drowsy.
Motion at his elbow made him look up. A crew of men were making their way through the tables, led by a grizzled man with a full beard and streaks of white at his temples.
“Millie, good to see you. Where’s Tristan, and who’s the new guy?”
Millicent’s smile looked forced to Jackson. “Hello, Wharton. Tristan got himself killed on the roof today. This is Jackson Harding, my new wrench. He saved Polder’s life when the safety line snapped.”
Wharton scowled. “Shit. I have a big assignment tomorrow, and I was hoping your crew could fill the ranks. What happened to your hand, Polder?”
Polder blew a puff of cigar smoke at Wharton and propped his hand up on the table. “Lost two fingers to the line.”
“Damn, man. Millie, looks like I’ll have to find someone else for the job, no offense. You’re two men down, with a greenhorn on apron strings.”
“Hey, back off, Wharton,” Polder growled. “Harding saved my life out there. I’d take him over any two of your worthless crew.”
Wharton snorted a laugh and shook his head. “Forget it. I don’t need the baggage. I was only looking to repay Millie with a favor.”
“What’s the gig?” Millicent asked.
“It’s on a different habitat. Nova Aeria. They were hit by the same lightning storm we had, but they caught the brunt of it. Had a whole bank of solar panels go out and they’re overbooked, with some big event happening. Matriarchs are flying in from all over the place for it.” He spat on the floor. “Bunch of parasites.”
“Jackson,” Millicent asked, “how familiar are you with solar panels and running low-voltage cables?”
“I did low-voltage repairs in the hydroponic sector,” Jackson shrugged. “And I know how to wire solar panels.”
“Good enough,” Millicent nodded. “All right, Wharton, you got your extra men.”
Wharton sniffed and looked over his shoulder at his crew. “Fine. The dirigible leaves at two AM. Don’t be late.”
With a last nod at Millicent, Wharton moved off deeper into the restaurant with his crew in tow. Jackson watched them leave, his buzz fading away. Wharton was the kind of man Jackson would have instinctively avoided. Rude, brash, interested in his own gain only.
“What’s his problem with the matriarchs?” Jackson asked. As far as he knew, the matriarchs were a sort of benevolent nobility, living on their private habitats and leading a more or less inscrutable existence.
Polder rapped the table with his knuckles. “Bunch of high and mighty pricks, is what they are. Sucking the life out of the Venus colony.”
Millicent rolled her eyes. “What proof do you have of that? They made it possible for us to live here in the first place. Have you even seen the video archives of the pre-diaspora habitats?”
“I’m not saying they didn’t bring improvements,” Polder allowed, “but they live like queens while the rest of us grovel in the grime and toil endlessly our whole lives.”
“And smoke thousand-credit cigars,” Millicent added.
“That’s not the point,” Polder said. His brow furrowed and he scowled. “How many of us live on basic stipend? We’re packed into barracks like sardines, time sharing hammocks, while they live on decks with room to play golf.”
“Not this shit again,” Millicent sighed.
“Look, Jackson. I’ve got proof, too.” Polder fumbled out his tablet one-handed and searched around until he found what he was looking for. “Here, watch this.”
Jackson leaned forward, curious despite himself. The video showed an entire habitat ring, stripped of interior walls. A crew of workers was moving along, cutting rivets with torches and stacking the decking plates. It was pretty clear they were dismantling the ring, despite the briefness of the clip.
Polder took back his tablet when the video finished and tucked it away again. “I’ve a friend who was on that crew. They took apart half the habitat, all of it just empty space. Could have comfortably housed a thousand people there, but the matriarch who owns the habitat would rather strip away the levels than let us low-born peasants move in.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Millicent said. “I’m sure there was a good reason to dismantle the levels. And unlike Polder, I actually know which hab that was. Charing was one of the original habitats, barely a kilometer in length.”
“Nueva Angela’s central stack is a little over three kilometers long,” Jackson said. “That sounds like a really small habitat.”
“That doesn’t mean there wasn’t plenty of room,” Polder argued. “You saw the size of the ring.”
Jackson shrugged. He wasn’t usually angry at things beyond his control, and the naked resentment on Polder’s face was a side of the senior wrench he wasn’t sure he liked. But it did seem odd to him that they would be dismantling perfectly usable space. Jackson thought of the cramped barracks he slept in during his night shift. Why, only this morning he had been daydreaming about being able to afford to live in one of the little four-meter square cabins.
How many cabins could have fit onto that deck? He had only seen a small segment, but surely the available space could have held a thousand such cabins, with room to spare.
Millicent saw the look on Jackson’s face and sighed. “Not you, too. Think about it. How much water would be required to provide life support for an extra three thousand people? How much infrastructure? How many aquaponic tanks would be needed to feed the population? And what of pumps, batteries, and solar panels to run the whole thing?”
“Maybe only half as much, then,” Polder allowed. “I’m no civil engineer, I’ll admit that much, but–”
“It’s not an issue of space, Polder,” Millicent said firmly. “It’s a matter of weight. It all comes down to weight. Charing has a displacement of thirty tons; all those early habitats were less efficient and over-engineered in places. With life support and food production, that’s barely enough displacement to support a few hundred people. The matriarch who owns the habitat probably decided it was better suited for something other than living space. The extra decks would just be dead weight.”
That sounded pretty reasonable to Jackson. Besides, even if they did turn that e
xtra level into living quarters, how would he get to work? He didn’t know any trade beyond habitat maintenance. Certainly nothing that he could do at a workstation and earn a living.
A habitat with only a few hundred people living on it would require most of the local population to be involved in food production and basic living necessities. On Nueva Angela, the bulk of the food for the people living there was produced through automation, but Nueva Angela had a displacement of seven hundred tons. The weight of robots and farming machines didn’t make much difference one way or another.
Laud spoke up again, interrupting Jackson’s musings. “I don’t know, Chief, I’m with Polder on this one. All I know is the matriarchs don’t live in the same conditions we do. It’s not fair. All I’m asking for is a little consideration.”
“Yes, well. Next time I see a matriarch, I’ll let her know,” Millicent said dryly. “Can we drop it? This is supposed to be a celebration, remember?”
Polder tapped his temple with a finger. “Point taken, Chief. I’ll save my bellyaching for another time. For now,” he puffed on his cigar and blew a plume of smoke into the air, “I’ve got decadence to enjoy.”
“That’s the spirit. Save that shit for Wharton and his boys. You all can circle-jerk your conspiracy theories to your heart’s content.”
“What about you, Chief?” Jackson asked. “Aren’t there things you want to improve about your life? I gotta say, the thought of an extra level of apartments sounds real nice to me. I wouldn’t mind a space of my own.”
“You’re still living in the barracks?” Millicent waited for Jackson’s affirmative nod before shaking her head. “You’re an extra now. You’ll have the credits to get your own apartment soon enough. And some clothes that aren’t coveralls.”
Jackson looked down at his coveralls. He had forgotten what he was wearing. The new material felt crisp against his skin, clean the way only new clothes could feel. He hadn’t thought about buying more clothes. He had always just worn the same coverall until it started getting holes in it or picked up an odor he couldn’t wash out.
