Venus of Dreams (35 page)

The screen flickered. Iris leaned against the counter behind the console, tapping her fingers impatiently. At last a door in the wall opened. A young man stepped out to the counter.

"I've got to get on the suborb to San Antonio," she said before the man could speak. "It's very important."

He raised one sandy brow. "The next flight is full. We haven't had any cancellations. If you wait, there might be a place on the one after that."

"That'll be too late. Please, I have to get aboard this one." She swallowed. "You see, there's only one shuttle flight going from San Antonio to L-5 tomorrow—I mean today—and I have to be there before it leaves."

"If that's what you want, you ought to be in the shuttle flight annex. You might find a spot on one of the—"

"I don't want to get to L-5!" She lowered her voice. "I want to get to San Antonio. Couldn't you find out if someone else could let me have their place?"

He shrugged. "I'm not paid to do that."

You'd do it if I were important enough, she thought. She rumbled in her bag and took out a bill. "I'll pay you," she muttered. "Here's some credit. Just punch my request into the system, and give it priority, and then ask the passengers who've already checked in if one of them will—"

"You're wasting your time, Citizen. People on suborbs are usually in a hurry. If they weren't, they'd be on airships, wouldn't they?" He leaned against the counter. She took out another bill and passed it to him. "What's your name?"

"Iris Angharads." She held out her wristband.

He scanned it quickly; his fingers danced over the keys of his own console. "There you are. You'll be the first aboard if anyone doesn't show up." A panel in front of him slid open as he stepped out. "I'll ask around," he went on. "You can always wait until the suborb's ready to leave, and maybe someone will cancel by then. Next time, you'd be wise to make your plans in advance."

She took a seat near the wall. Chen should have spoken to her directly instead of leaving a message. He should have had the screen signal to her instead of leaving the message for her to see only after she had finished her evening's work. Surely he must have known that she would want to see him before he left.

She adjusted her bag on her lap. He had sounded strange over the screen. Eric's death had clearly affected him; it had been a shock to her as well, but Chen had been in Lincoln when it happened. It must have been even worse for him.

Her eyes stung as she thought of Eric. He would never leave Lincoln now; she supposed that was what he would have wanted. Now, Chen was being taken from her.

She rubbed at her face with one hand. It was ridiculous to think of Chen's departure in that way; she would hardly have had much time to see him even if he had stayed on Earth. She barely had time to think of him as it was, or to send him messages. She blinked as she recalled how she had behaved when Chen had come to the Institute. She had to reach him to make up for that.

The clerk was wandering back to the counter; he glanced at her as he shook his head. She tried not to feel too disappointed. Her request was in the system; if she waited, she might still get aboard.

Chen did not want to see her. That had to be why he had only left a message. She must have hurt him during their last visit more than she knew. He might be relieved at not seeing her, at being able to go to the Islands alone. Why was he going back so suddenly? Had he requested it? Had he wanted to get away now? Had he deliberately planned it so that he wouldn't have time to visit her? This was her last chance to see him, to speak to him of when they would be together again, to hold him instead of only speaking words for him into a screen.

She waited until all the suborb passengers had arrived. It was not until they were lining up in front of the gate that she saw how futile her hopes had been. She tried to tell herself that the flight would have cost too much credit, that she would have missed a couple of important seminars, that she had promised to show a group of visitors around the Institute that afternoon. The visitors, who had recently arrived from the Islands, were likely to be interesting people, and it would be a shame to miss a chance to hear what they might have to say. If Chen did not want to see her, she would look like a fool if she went to him now. Her bond with him would have to wait; there would be time enough to decide about it later.

She stood up and walked down the lighted hall.

Eighteen

Benzi twisted on Iris's lap; he seemed restless. She stroked his dark hair. "I'm glad you liked your present," Iris said. "Two years old already. You're growing up fast." She hugged him again. "Do you want to hear another song? A friend of mine here named Tim taught it to me."

"Grandma song," the little boy said as he shook his head. "Grandma song," he said again, and Iris understood that Benzi wanted Angharad to sing to him now.

Iris bit her lip. "Then I'll say good-bye for now. I'll see you again on Saturday, all right? After you've had your nap. Don't forget."

"Good-bye," Benzi said.

"Good-bye." Iris reached for the band on her head, removed it, and gazed at her screen. Benzi was on Angharad's lap; his grandmother was removing his band. Benzi rubbed his eyes.

"I wish you could have come home for his birthday," Angharad said. "Oh, well. Better this than nothing. I still don't know if—" The older woman shook her head. "Strange things they come up with nowadays, taking a mother away from her child and then doing this sort of thing with bands. I suppose it's better than nothing, and he does seem to know you now."

Iris smiled. "He's always good." Of course he was, she thought. She was never hooked up long enough for him to get too bored, and it was easy for her to be patient; she could disconnect if he got too irritable.

"I'd love to gab a while," Angharad went on, "but I promised myself I'd listen to the accounts tonight. You don't need any extra credit, do you?"

Iris shook her head.

"Well, if you do, just let me know. Had a message from Laiza lately?"

"No."

"I imagine she's busy with that daughter of hers. Goodbye, dear. Don't work too hard."

The screen went blank. Iris gazed at it as she thought of her son, and wondered if Benzi actually looked forward to their times together. Perhaps he sensed that he was only an intermittent obligation, one she could put aside without too many pangs.

She sighed. She had a model to study, one that showed the cycle of photochemical and thermochemical reactions that changed Venus's sulfuric gases into cloud particles. The cycle was complex, and a recent increase in volcanic activity on the Venusian surface meant that more sulfur, emitted by volcanic eruptions, would be entering the atmosphere. She would have to estimate how long the eruptions were likely to continue, how much sulfur dioxide would be emitted, and whether this increase in volcanic activity would require more seeding of the atmosphere with algae or if the level of sulfuric dioxide would decline to previous levels without increased seeding. She would have to hope that her model took all possible factors into account, and that her answer came close to what the specialists on the Islands might be concluding.

She sat back and sipped her tea, hardly noticing that it was already cold, as she prepared to study her screen.

January 541

From: Iris Angharads 

To: Julia Gwens

I was glad to get your message and hear all about your Christmas. You asked me what I was studying now, and I'll try to answer your question without being too confusing.

At the moment, a lot of my work involves the study of planetary evolution, with Earth and Venus being our prime examples. From what we know, Earth seems, if I can put it this way, an exception to the rule, and we have to understand what made Earth the way it is in great detail in order to terraform a world like Venus. At the same time, the process of terraforming also gives us even more knowledge about planetary evolution.

I have to understand the role of a particular factor—rain patterns, wind patterns, vegetation patterns, geological and biological events on a planet's surface, the presence of various elements in the atmosphere, and a great many other things—and then see how it affects the whole biosphere. This must seem either vague or confusing to you, and I am simplifying, but it takes a fair amount of study just to understand the role of one particular factor, and then even more to see it in relation to others.

Maybe it'll be clearer to you if I put it this way. If you've got a large carton sitting outside the house, and you want to turn it over or move it, you can get a lever and use only a tiny amount of force against it. Just a small push is all you need, and that big carton will move. The same thing's true of a planet; just a tiny change in one factor can change a lot of other things in time. Centuries ago, industries here on Earth began to release more carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. This made it harder for heat to escape, and Earth began to grow warmer. The ice caps at the poles shrank a bit because some of the ice melted, less sunlight was reflected back into space from the ice as a result, and you ended up five hundred years later working on the eastern sea walls instead of visiting a city that might otherwise have been covered with snow for much of the year. This is a very general way of putting it, but you can see what I mean, and I'm not even discussing other factors here—deforestation, the growth of deserts, solar activity and its effects on Earth, and so forth.

My specialty is climatology, and we do a lot of work with mathematical models. Much of what we do wouldn't be possible without cyberminds, or without understanding the concept of fractals. Now you're probably asking yourself what a fractal is, so I guess I'd better try to explain that. Fractals are mathematical curves that can define some order in what otherwise might seem chaotic or disordered. They give us a mathematical framework to describe something that might otherwise appear to be random. With formulas using fractals, a cybermind can create an entire landscape down to the last detail and can alter it so that it mimics natural phenomena. A cybermind could do the same thing with an image of an actual landscape, but it would have to deal with billions of pieces of information; with fractals, it can create a landscape that never existed. This is one of the reasons you can take a mind-tour of Africa and see it the way it was millions of years ago, or why you can see a completely realistic image on a screen of something that's never been taped or photographed. By describing so many things with fractals—say, patterns of vegetation—and then simulating them, we're also able to make predictions about how they might behave.

We can create models that are almost as complex as a world, and we can even map the points at which a system might begin to break down, but we can't predict everything. We can't set up a mathematical model that will predict all possible results with absolute certainty, though we can come very close. A planetary environment is too complex for that; change is a constant. I could set up a model of Earth now, taking everything we know into account, and tell you what Earth's average surface temperature would be a hundred years from now, but if the people in Lincoln and other towns then decided to plant a lot of trees on most of the fields and raise less wheat for a while, I'd probably come up with a different figure in my next model. And that's just one factor—there'd be others to consider.

What it comes down to is that there's still a lot we can't find out until the actual experiment is done, although we know a lot more than people used to. We didn't understand certain processes in Earth's biosphere until, unfortunately, a lot of the damage to Earth was done. We know more now, and the Mukhtars and Linkers have probably prevented some real catastrophes, but the effects of what was done in the past are still with us. Earth is growing warmer; more of the land is desert. There's a joke here that, by the time the settlers on Venus leave their domes, Earthfolk will be building domes for themselves.

Am I making any sense to you, Julia? I'm trying to show you why the Venus Project is so important. When we've had the experience of terraforming that world, we can repair the damage to Earth, and we'll have real knowledge to work with. Making deserts here green again is not going to seem such a problematic undertaking if we can make Venus bloom. We'll be able to try new techniques of climate and weather control there, without risking a disastrous effect in the future by trying them here on Earth. I know some people there say it's a waste to spend so much on the Project, but we're trying to alter in centuries what was created over a period of billions of years. Earth will benefit in the end, and not just because there's a new world to go to, but because of what we'll learn.

What it comes down to is that we either have to gain some mastery of planetary engineering, or eventually we may have no choice except to leave Earth and live as the Habbers do.

Did I answer your question, Grandmother? You used to ask me about what I was learning when I was little, and you usually listened, but I could never tell if I was boring you or not. I want to tell you these things because I want you to understand why I'm here and what I'm doing. I wouldn't be here without your help; I wouldn't have had a chance to be given more lessons by Celia Evanstown. I know I don't send as many messages as I should, but I haven't forgotten what you did for me with your encouragement. Maybe if you told some of what I've told you here to Angharad, she'd understand too. I know she worries about the future of the farm. Maybe, in some small way, what I do in my work will be useful to the Plains someday.

Thank you for sending me the image of Benzi. I keep the cube on my desk, where it reminds me of what else I'm working for.

Iris leaned back after finishing the message to her grandmother. She wondered if Julia would understand what she had really been trying to say, that she was finally content with her choice. Julia remained the one person in Iris's old household to whom she could speak without guilt; she often thought of what her grandmother might have done if she had been given a chance.