Venus of Shadows (13 page)

Along with other able-bodied young people who were not needed for other tasks, Risa had volunteered for duty on one of the Bats. She had worked her two-month-long shifts ever since her sixteenth birthday. Her father had not been happy with her decision; he knew that some young people saw Bat duty partly as a rite of passage and also as a chance to be away from their families for a while. Such motives did not concern her. The Project needed workers on the Bats, and she wanted to be useful.

Risa had gone back to Oberg between shifts to train for the work she would be doing when she returned to her settlement for good. She would now become a permanent member of the team that had trained her and would work at maintaining dome installations. She would also be free to spend more time on her household's business and at work that would earn more credit for herself. Once she had looked forward to this time; now she felt a pang of regret. Decisions she had been free to postpone might soon have to be made; her adult life as one of Oberg's settlers would truly begin.

The weight holding her down dissipated. Risa waited until a light overhead signaled that the ship was safely lowered into its dock and the entrance sealed off above, then released herself from the harness. The floor under her feet was now a wall. She reached for her duffel and began to climb down the center of the ship, clinging to the handholds and securing her feet in the small indentations along the wall while trying to keep out of the way of other passengers.

She was inside the large, cylindrical dock that held the shuttle. Most of the others were already pushing through the dock's door. The pilot climbed down the shuttle's ladder, followed by a Guardian in a black uniform. Risa's nose wrinkled in distaste; she disliked the Guardians. A Guardian pilot always accompanied each shuttle, as though the travelers were simply waiting for a chance to flee to the nearest Hab; she viewed such suppositions as an insult. Seeing the Guardians who were stationed on the Platform made her grateful she lived in a domed settlement, where they had no need of such people.

She walked into a long, lighted corridor. Most of the passengers had already climbed into one of the carts that would take them to the airship bays. A couple of women in the cart beckoned to her; she was about to walk toward them when she spotted Evar IngersLens striding in her direction. The young man waved at her; she stepped back from the cart as it rolled away.

"Risa," Evar said as he took her hands. "I thought I'd catch you. It just so happens that I'll be piloting the next airship to Oberg, so you'll be traveling with me. They're still loading cargo, so it won't be leaving for a couple of hours." He smiled, obviously glad to see her; his blue eyes shone with anticipation.

Two hours, she thought, enough time to find a free cubicle in the pilots' quarters for some hasty lovemaking before departure. Then, after they arrived in Oberg, Evar would expect her to invite him to her house. In her last message, she had told him that she needed time to consider their relationship. Evar had clearly taken her words literally. He had given her the time; presumably she was now prepared to plan their future.

"I'm not quite myself today," she said as she slipped her hands from his. "I just want to stretch my legs a bit and then rest until it's time to go."

"I'll walk with you, then." He took her duffel before she could refuse and slung it over his shoulder. Her eyes fell to the black and red sash he wore with his blue pilot's coverall. More people, especially among the pilots, were wearing it lately. As they walked down the corridor, the sash reminded her again of the true reason she was unwilling to make any commitment to Evar.

The sash marked him as a member of the Ishtar cult. Risa had always prided herself on her tolerance of any system of beliefs, as long as the believers left others free to reject them. Ishtar's followers were not so tolerant; they imagined a world where everyone believed as they did. To her, this was utter folly; how could people from so many different Nomarchies and traditions get along if concessions weren't made to the beliefs of others?

Two pilots passed them, both wearing the sash of Ishtar. The cult had originated among the more ignorant Project workers. Those simple people had believed that the effort of terraforming would rouse the Spirit that now lay dormant on Venus, and that this Spirit had to be placated. The believers, dimly aware of theories that Venus might have developed into an Earth-like planet if its planetary evolution had not taken a different turn, saw terraforming as a way to restore Venus to what it should have been. But Venus, and the Spirit now called Ishtar after an ancient goddess, would resist humankind's efforts. Risa did not care to think of the rumored rituals by which Ishtar was appeased.

She hoped that Evar was sensible enough not to believe in the actual existence of such a Spirit; he could hardly see every quake as a sign of Ishtar struggling against Her transformation. Along with many others, he probably saw Ishtar only as a symbol of what the cult's followers longed to create — a future world free of barriers among the settlers, when the technology that now separated them from their world would no longer be needed.

She understood why Evar and so many of the pilots might be attracted to such a group. The pilots were the most mobile of all the groups here and were often away from their primary residences for long periods. Knowing that others sometimes did not view them as true settlers, they tended to be more fervent in their professions of loyalty to their world. They also had to endure the presence of Guardians aboard shuttle flights, a reminder to them of the pilots who had deserted Venus long ago; wearing the sash was a way of showing how the pilots felt about the Guardians and their suspicions.

Being in Ishtar, according to Evar, marked him as a true Cytherian, one yearning for a world free of both Earth and the Habbers. The problem with Ishtar's adherents was that they seemed to regard other people as less loyal to Venus.

"This was your last shift on the Bat, wasn't it?" Evar asked.

She nodded; he knew perfectly well that it was.

"You'll be back in Oberg then, tending to your household's affairs," he continued. "Time to think of a bondmate and the next generation, wouldn't you say? You're twenty-four now — you shouldn't put it off much longer."

"I couldn't think of it while I was working on the Bat."

"Well, plenty of others do. I mean, accidents don't happen all that often, but if they do, it's a consolation to a family to know that the ones they lost left children or stored seed behind. But you don't have to think of that now. There's nothing to stop you from settling down."

His conventionality suddenly irritated her. "Maybe I'll have a child without a bondmate," she said. "I might find a man who'd be willing to donate sperm and renounce any formal ties with the child. It'd certainly make things simpler."

He halted. She had expected to shock him a little; instead, he laughed. "Oh, Risa. You don't mean that. People would wonder."

"My father and his companion never had a bond,"

"That's different." Evar shook back his sandy hair. "Bettina's older — she grew up on Earth, and her people didn't have bonds, and I suppose she's a bit old-fashioned. Anyway, she and Chen live together as if they're bondmates, so it comes to the same thing. And everyone says you have a chance to be on the Oberg Council some-day, so you ought to think of your reputation. You don't want people to say you act like a Habber, without any ties."

She glared at him, wondering exactly what he meant. Was he telling her that, because her brother had abandoned the Project for a Habber's life, she had to be careful? She had never known her brother Benzi; his actions had nothing to do with her. Benzi had broken with his family; as far as she was concerned, he did not exist.

Evar's eyes widened a little; he smiled blandly. He was only giving her commonplace advice. Among diverse groups of settlers, it was wise not to be unnecessarily offensive; that usually meant conservative public conduct and keeping more questionable pursuits to oneself.

"It's funny, hearing you tell me how I should act," Risa said. "You should save your advice for some of the people in Ishtar's inner circles. They don't bother with bonds, and I've heard plenty about their rite. If anyone else acted the way your precious Guide does, people would have some choice names for her."

He peered at her earnestly, almost pityingly. She had hoped that, just this once, she could rouse him from his placidity.

"You don't understand," he responded calmly. "Their bonds are with Ishtar and among themselves, and there's no need for them to be formal. They're breaking down the barriers that divide people, living the way all Cytherians will someday, sharing themselves and all they have with each other. Yet they're wise enough to know that most of us aren't ready for that. They're examples of what we might become, and it's the obligation of our Guide to allow the Spirit of Ishtar to fill her."

Risa sniffed. "That isn't the only thing that fills her. What does she do at those rites — take on every man there?"

"Certainly not. You should come to our meetings sometime. We do allow people to find the truth in their own way, you know — belief is harder for some than for others. What's important is fellowship and knowing that we're part of something larger than ourselves."

"We're part of the Project, and we're settlers. That should be enough."

She walked on; Evar paced at her side. "I thought you were more open-minded," he said. "You usually go out of your way to be fair, but you aren't very fair to us."

"I'm fairer than you. I don't care how many people join Ishtar or rut with your Guide, as long as they don't keep harping at the rest of us about their wonderful truth."

She pressed her lips together. Evar had been her lover for two years; it had been easy to let him assume they would become bondmates. He eased her loneliness, and she did not expect to meet anyone who might fire her passion among the relatively limited number of available men. Evar was steady and reliable; because his pilot's duties would take him away for extended periods, she would be freer to run her household as she saw fit. But she could not abide the thought of suffering endless lectures on Ishtar or the likelihood that any children they had would grow up wearing the sash.

Like Evar, she dreamed of building a new world, but she had hoped that the new society would be rooted in more rational ways of thought.

"You should join us," he said. "It isn't as if you have to accept everything right away — it's making the effort that's important, and showing the willingness to become a true Cytherian. You ought to be more sensitive to that than most, after what your brother did so long ago — you'd only be showing where your true loyalties lie if you join."

She stopped and faced him. "How dare you bring that up." She lowered her voice as another cart rolled past. "You know what I think of him and what he did. Everyone knows I'm loyal." Rage brought her an odd feeling of relief. He had finally given her an opening for the arguments she had avoided. His patience and even temper always made her feel vaguely guilty for saying anything in anger, but reproaching her with her brother's deed was unforgiveable. "If you feel that way about me, maybe you'd better find someone else. I don't want a pledge from you, and I'm not even sure I want you as a lover any more."

Evar blinked; his smile did not waver. She reached for her duffel; he slid it from his shoulder and handed it to her. "I guess you are tired," he said. "Why don't you go to the mess and have a cup of tea? I'll see you in the bay when you've had time to collect yourself." He kissed her lightly on the forehead before she could pull back, then stepped out to the center of the corridor to wave down a cart. He turned to grin at her as the cart rolled away.

She bit her lip in frustration. She could never make a dent in his placid insistence. To him, her outbursts were no more than the occasional quakes that rocked Venus's surface as its tectonic plates shifted after being locked for millennia, a distraction that was often predictable and disturbed him only momentarily. He would wear away at her gently but persistently, as the acid rains falling steadily through the Cytherian mists ate away at the rock below. He would wait, secure in his assumption that she would eventually see things his way and that her loneliness and physical need would bring her back to him. Like many who dreamed of a world they would never see, he was used to waiting.

Even her resistance to his beliefs was, she supposed, a challenge. For people so convinced they possessed the truth, there would be more virtue in winning a new adherent than in seeking out those who already believed.

It would not work, she told herself, hoisting her duffel to her shoulder.

*  *  *

The airship, like most dirigibles here, had a cabin that could hold fifty people. Only ten passengers were aboard; the aisle was filled with crates of cargo that had been secured to the floor. In front of Risa, Evar sat with a female pilot. The bands around their heads linked them to the ship, and they were now concentrating on the panels before them as the airship glided out of the bay. Risa had pointedly ignored Evar's glances while finding her seat.

The screen above the pilots revealed the darkness of a world in the Parasol's eclipse. Risa had greeted the passengers she recognized; she closed her eyes now and listened to the drone of their conversation. Two young men were, it appeared, seismologists who had recently returned from the Cytherian Institute. Only a small number of the dome-dwellers won admission to the Island schools, where they were trained as specialists; an even smaller number were chosen for the Institute. Risa often found the new graduates a little hard to take, since they seemed to feel they should be grateful to Earth for their opportunity to study there.

"It was crowded," one young man said in response to a question about Earth. "I didn't think I'd ever get used to all the people, and being outside — well, you can imagine."

Risa tried to imagine it. She had lived on Island Two until she was eight, and then in Oberg; she had traveled to the Islands and the northern Bat aboard airships and shuttlecraft. She had spent all her life in enclosed spaces. What would it feel like to stand under an open sky?