Venus of Shadows (30 page)

Yet Chimene also bound him to this world. He thought of Aryis, the Habber woman who had diverted him for a time on Island Two. When he had finally worked up the courage to admit his secret hopes to her, the thought of Chimene had prevented him from speaking. Even if Aryis had been willing to help him, he could not abandon his child. He would not leave Chimene to live with the disgrace of having a father who had chosen the Habbers, or the pain of losing a parent.

How the Project might handle such a defection did not concern him. Sigurd Kristens- Vitos was putting some distance between himself and the Habbers; he had even given up his Habber woman nearly a year ago. The Administrator's position would certainly be weakened if any settler managed the almost insurmountable task of fleeing to a Habitat, and Earth might again take sterner measures. Both Islanders and dome-dwellers would no longer be trusted.

Malik left the tunnel. The west dome's disk of light gave off the glow of a late afternoon. Behind fences around a few of the houses, goats were grazing; two young women were carrying rabbit cages into one house. Inside a greenhouse, he saw the shadowy forms of two neighbors tending their tiers of peanut plants and beets.

The settlers were content to labor and live their circumscribed lives in the hope that their children would inherit a world. The Mukhtars would allow them the illusion of freedom to give Earth a foothold here. The domes seemed nothing more than a vast laboratory in which to test various subjects, to discover if people would willingly become prisoners of the dream of terraforming, to find out if human beings could transform other worlds without losing their ties to the old or shedding their humanity, as it appeared the Habbers might.

Chimene tugged at him. He knelt down and let her climb onto his back. He would not see his daughter limited by the Project's demands; he would help her to reach for what she wanted. He would not let her become only another link in a chain that stretched toward an indefinite, hoped-for future; she would find her freedom in this life.

*  *  *

By suppertime Risa had still not arrived. The rest of the household began to sit down for the evening meal. They were used to having Risa get home late; someone was probably pestering her about a minor dispute.

Bettina, after ushering a patient to the door, came to the table just as Nikolai was setting down a large bowl of stew. Although Bettina was a simple physician and not a medical specialist, the amount of contact she had with patients had surprised Malik at first. During his former life, he had encountered physicians only rarely. His genes had been mapped before birth, as were everyone else's, and the potential for various genetically linked diseases eliminated. He had expected attention from physicians only if he suffered an injury, when he grew old enough to require rejuvenation treatments, or later, when age began to take its toll and intervening might be able to give him a few more healthy years. His family had disapproved of the techniques some used to postpone puberty in the hope that this might make a child better able to concentrate on his studies without the hormonal distractions of adolescence.

Bettina could have assessed her patients simply by viewing results of med-scans on her screen most of the time, yet she visited them often, and they came to her. Gradually, Malik had come to understand why. Many problems, the sort that a Council member could not handle, were brought to the physicians and paramedics here under the guise of being medical concerns. Bettina and some of her medical colleagues had taken the place of the Counselors the settlers so distrusted.

"Some blight's affecting the potatoes in the community greenhouse," Nikolai said as he helped himself to stew; he now worked in the west dome's greenhouses between his shifts in the airship bay. "We'll have to dig up a lot of the plants."

Emilia poured herself a small glass of whiskey. "That means there'll be more demand for ours. Lucky for us that you and Risa decided not to try those new plants." Nikolai's bondmate was a thin young woman with mousy brown hair and a pale, narrow face. "Our soybeans are doing well enough, but I think we ought to try for more spinach."

Malik tried to pretend he was interested. In the nearly four years since Emilia Knef had joined this household, he had rarely had a real talk with her or, for that matter, with Nikolai. The couple were not people to waste too much time in idle chatter when work was to be done; their conversations revealed two unreflective minds immersed in practicality. Nikolai and Emilia spoke of soybeans, plant blights, faulty door-opening circuitry, clogged plumbing, and ways to increase the household's credit as if these were life's greatest challenges.

He sniffed; a faint odor of fish had permeated the room. Lately, Nikolai and Paul would get up early to go to the lake whenever fishing was allowed from the small docks recently built along the shore. The Russian had quickly discovered that others would trade with him for fresh fillets. He cleaned his catch in the kitchen; now the common room often stank of Kolya's enterprise.

Paul and Grazie, at the other end of the table, were questioning their son Patrick about his lessons. "How do you know you're not interested in geology?" Grazie said.

Patrick glared at his food. "I just do." He had his father's reddish-blond hair and his mother's dark eyes; he wore the pout that was his usual expression. "Anyway, what do I need it for?"

"That isn't for you to decide," Paul responded. "Don't you want to learn enough to be able to make certain decisions about what others tell you? That's why you're in school, you and the other children. Would you rather have Linkers and specialists decide everything for you?"

Patrick shrugged. "They decide a lot of stuff, anyway."

"But we have something to say about it. You should be grateful for the chance to have lessons. Your grandmother's people weren't so fortunate — where Tina came from, only a few could go to school."

"Look at Chimene," Grazie added. "A year younger than you, and already she has to help you with some of your work. You could follow her example."

Patrick gazed sullenly at Chimene. She blushed and hunched over her food, having the grace to look embarrassed, Malik sighed. He had suggested gently to Grazie and Paul that harping at their son was not likely to produce the desired results. They were like several of the parents who interrogated him about their children. The ones without much learning wanted their young ones stuffed with knowledge; the ones with more education wondered if their children were learning the right things. Most of them wanted a rather improbable result — a child who would master the curriculum thoroughly while never raising difficult or troubling intellectual questions. What they usually got was a child who limited his ambitions to mastering a useful skill or a necessary scientific or technical specialty.

Free Cytherians, he thought bitterly. They were free to imprison themselves.

"Patrick does his tasks around here," Chen said then. "He deserves some praise for that." Patrick shot a triumphant look at Chimene; this was an area in which the girl was often negligent. Chimene, Malik thought, took after her father in that way.

Malik picked at his food. Nikolai and Grazie were the best cooks in the household, but they had been eating rabbit stew for three days now, and the food was growing tiresome. Nikolai, sensibly enough, made a lot of whatever he cooked so that he wouldn't have to bother with the same task the next day.

Malik could not find fault with the manner in which this household treated him. They were kind enough; if he still knew little of their inner thoughts and fears, he supposed they knew even less about his. They had to be aware that his feelings for Risa had cooled, but they probably ascribed that to Risa's preoccupation with the Oberg Council and the stresses of rearing a child. The other couples at the table had their own disputes; the difference was that they seemed to settle theirs.

Bettina stood up. "I've got some scans to study," the physician said, "and a couple of people to talk to." She left the common room. Nikolai and Emilia cleared the table, while Paul murmured of a promise to share a drink with a friend.

"I'll be out in the greenhouse," Grazie announced. "Patrick, I want to see you in your room and asleep by the time I get back." The children waited until the door closed behind her, then sprawled on the floor with a small screen to play a game.

Nikolai and his bondmate soon retreated to one of the rooms they had added to Bettina's wing. Malik stared after them, then knelt to wipe off the table. Even after nearly four years of being pledged, the two often found excuses to be alone. He grimaced as he stood up, remembering that he had not told Emilia about the slightly unpleasant smell in his wing's bathroom. He guessed that either the toilet's suction tube or the waste dryer-compressor was to blame, but there was no use in trying to pinpoint the problem himself. Even Risa had learned that it was easier to let someone skilled handle such problems than to nag Malik into making futile efforts at repairs.

Chen could attend to the toilet, but the old man was sitting at his table, carving a piece of wood, and Malik did not feel like disturbing him. Chen had always been tolerant of Malik's failings; he had even reproached Risa for dwelling on them, "I can do things Malik can't," Chen would say, "and he knows things I don't. There's no harm in that." It was a pity Risa could not share her father's more philosophical attitude.

She knew what I was like, he told himself; she knew from the beginning that our bond might be a mistake. He had never failed her as a bed-partner and gave her what affection he could. She had admitted to him that she had once expected little more from any bondmate, but that admission had come during their first months together, when he had found it easier to soothe her with talk of a love he occasionally felt.

Yet she had also given him Chimene. He glanced at his daughter's dark head; his love for her was unclouded by doubts.

The door opened; Risa entered the common room. Malik smiled automatically as he went to her, took her hands, and kissed her on the cheek. "Have you eaten?" he asked.

She nodded. "With Noella and Theron. That reminds me — he wants to talk to you. He was going to invite you over, but —"

"I'll call him up."

"You're stupid," Chimene said suddenly.

Patrick sat up. "I'm not."

"Yes, you are. That maze is simple."

"
You're
stupid," Patrick replied. "At least I don't go wandering off by myself in the main dome."

Chimene pushed the screen aside. "You said you wouldn't tell!"

"What is this?" Risa asked. "Who's been wandering around in the main dome?"

Patrick bit his lip, then glanced at Chimene. "I didn't mean it," he said, "but you shouldn't call me stupid."

Risa tapped her foot. "I want to know what you're talking about."

Patrick stared at the floor. "Yoshi took us to the airship bay," he muttered, "and then this ship had to land, so we went inside, and Chimene wanted to talk to the pilot some more, so she asked Yoshi, and he said it was all right."

"He did?" Risa frowned.

"Chimene said you wouldn't mind." The boy's voice was now a whisper.

"And I don't suppose you bothered to contradict her." Risa folded her arms as she gazed down at her daughter. "I've told you not to wander around without supervision, especially anywhere near those tents. You know there have been complaints about some of the newer settlers. Did you even bother to send a message here about what you were doing?"

Chimene did not reply.

"Probably not, because you know what I would have said about it. It seems I'm going to have to speak to Yoshi and tell him to disregard any excuses you give him in the future. I'll have to let him know —"

"I was going to leave a message!" Chimene looked up at Malik with a look of desperation. "And I wasn't alone, I was with the pilot, and then Malik came by, and I knew he would, so I didn't do anything wrong."

"Really," Risa said. "Then why did Patrick say you were wandering around?"

"I didn't mean it," Patrick said glumly. "I just said it because I was mad."

Chimene was still gazing at Malik. "It's all right," he said as his bondmate turned toward him. "I left my students at our greenhouses with Leilani, and they'd finished their work for the day, so I thought I'd take the time to go over to the southeast dome and speak to Helder Arneld — he wanted to ask me about a small seminar I'm planning for him and a few of his friends."

Risa's eyes narrowed. "You could have settled that over the screen."

"He invited me, and I thought it would be rude not to go — anyway, I needed the exercise, and Chen said something a few days ago about wanting to check the monument, so I decided to do that as well." So far, he was telling the truth, although his elaborate explanation made it seem like a lie. "Chimene obviously knew I'd be in the main dome when she was there, so I can't see that this matters. The pilot answered a few of her questions about the ships — in fact, she seemed quite taken by Chimene's interest in her work. I hardly think that Chimene should be punished for being curious, especially when she knew I'd be there to look out for her."

Chimene's large dark eyes widened with relief, and obvious admiration of his cleverness. He had shaded the truth a little, but surely his promise to his daughter that he would not tell Risa about the incident outweighed any demand for total honesty.

"I see." Risa pursed her lips. "And I suppose you were both going to tell me about this adventure just before Patrick spoke."

"You have so much on your mind lately," Malik said. "Chimene sometimes gets the feeling that you don't have much time to hear of her doings, and perhaps her reluctance to tell you about her day led Patrick to think she was keeping a secret."

Risa was silent; he had disarmed her, at least for now. Chimene still looked impressed. Chen lifted his head and watched Malik and Risa for a moment before turning toward the children. "Patrick," the old man said, "the next time you make a promise to someone, try to keep it, or else consider if it's a promise you should make. You shouldn't make promises you might have reason to break. And you, child." He focused on Chimene. "You shouldn't demand privileges your friends don't have until you've earned them. Perhaps you should have stayed with the other students even if Malik was nearby, instead of deciding you were free to do what you liked."