Moonseed (6 page)

“But when the Mariners got there, what they found was a big disappointment.” He shook his head. “But it needn’t have stayed that way. All those stupendous schemes to terraform Venus the fringe types cooked up. You’d have to block out the sun, and let all that carbon dioxide liquefy, strike it with comets to spin it up and bring in water—”

She laughed. “What bull.”

“But just think what you’d finish up with. A planet much more like Earth than Mars could ever be: continents called Aphrodite and Ishtar, oceans called Guinevere and Niobe; even enough geological activity to sustain a bio
sphere for billions of years.” He sighed. “It was always remote. But it was
possible.
Maybe that is why Venus was put in the Solar System in the first place.”

She eyed him. “As a place for us to colonize?”

“Why not? But now, it’s
gone.
Taken from us…”

“You sound as if you’re mourning. Mourning a planet.”

“A whole world has died here, Monica. Everything we could have learned from it, all its future possibilities lost, for all time. A
world.
What more appropriate object of mourning is there?…Maybe we ought to hold a wake. A global wake.”

She shivered, despite the warmth of the day. She was aware of Alfred watching her with barely concealed concern, but she had no time for that.

She looked around the bright sky for Venus, but it was either below the horizon or lost in the glare.

4

Henry Meacher flew British Airways direct into Edinburgh.

His ticket was for what BA called World Traveller Class, which meant, essentially, steerage. Henry found himself in a middle seat in the central bank of four, a long way away from the 747’s tiny windows. The stewardesses, expertly encased in makeup, were all anorexic-slim English girls with what he thought of as cut-glass accents; they walked as if their orifices were all sewn up. The distant communal video screen showed a BBC news round-up preceded by a tourist’s-eye view of the alleged ancient beauties of Britain; a little menu card told Henry he would be eating a roast beef dinner—American beef—and, later, a traditional English breakfast.

Henry buried his face in the
Journal of Geophysical Research
and tried to ignore all this fake Englishness. It was like a chintz spread thrown over the battered American
engineering of the aircraft. Who did they think they were kidding?

BA irritated him. The Venus scare had caused a huge curtailment in long-haul flights, so every airline was suffering—the rules about every passenger wearing a radiation exposure dosimeter badge had seen to that—but even so the length of queues BA maintained at check-in astounded him. But they pretty much seemed to have a monopoly on direct flights to Britain aside from into London, so BA it was.

The flight was late leaving Houston Intercontinental. An O-ring on one of the aging 747’s engines had to be replaced, and the engineers, worryingly, seemed to have trouble finding the right inspection hatch.

The seat next to Henry was occupied by a USAF airman who was stationed at a base in Suffolk. He was returning with his two kids from leave in Texas, and he was homesick before the Boeing left the ground. “The bathrooms in Britain are just disgusting. Even the hotels. They just never heard of sanitary seals. The Germans aren’t so bad with the bathrooms. But the French, my God, one place we stayed there was just a hole in the ground you were supposed to squat over…” Bathrooms on planes and on trains and in stations and in hotels, bathrooms in Britain and Italy and Greece and Sweden. It was, Henry realized with dismay, nothing so much as an asshole’s travelogue of Europe.

And after a couple of hours, the plane had metamorphosed, as ever, to a giant, stinking pigpen in the sky, and every toilet Henry tried had a sticky floor and an overflowing trash can.

They flew out of bright morning light, from the west, toward Edinburgh. Henry peered out a window near the stewardess’ station, and took his first look at Scotland.

He was descending into the Midland Valley, a broad belt of lowland that stretched from Glasgow to Edinburgh. This was actually what geologists called a graben: a rift, a
block of land that had dropped between two faults. He could see the roads from England, to the south, sweeping down out of the hills to the valley floor, which was settled and arable, coated with picture-book fields and towns, though he could see, in some places, the scars left by Venus: failing crops, fields left brown and bare, a portent of troubled times to come.

But what made this valley different were the extinct cores of old volcanoes that stuck out of the ground, remnants of a volcanism spasm three hundred million years gone. The cones were an uncompromising demonstration of the old geologist’s saw that the stuff that’s left sticking out of the ground is harder than whatever has been worn away.

And as he descended toward Edinburgh itself he caught a glimpse of Arthur’s Seat, a composite volcano that was the greatest of the volcanic plugs; the buildings of the old city lapped around its flanks.

He landed at 7:00
A.M.
local, having missed an entire night out of his life. A bright early spring day stretched ahead of him, and he felt like a piece of shit.

“The name’s Mike Dundas.”

The kid was waiting for Henry at the departure gate, when he finally got through queuing to have his passport checked.

Henry shook his hand. “We e-mailed. Good to meet you, Mike.”

Mike took Henry’s bag, a wheeled suitcase, and hauled it away through the terminal toward the car park. Mike was a technician in the University geology department here; he was in his early twenties, with—to Henry’s eye—brutally short-cut hair, a disconcertingly pierced nose, placid blue eyes. He wore the bright Day-Glo sunscreen popular with the young around the world, huge dabs of orange and yellow on his nose and cheeks. His accent was distinctly Scot
tish, but gentler than Henry had expected—lots of strong r’s, “ye” for “you,” “tae” for “to,” and so on. No big deal.

“The rock’s already here,” Mike said.

“The rock?”

“86047. The Moon rock. We’ve set up our sample lab. I don’t mind telling you we’re all excited about this, having the rock here.”

“It’ll be glad to know it’s a celebrity.”

Mike looked cut by the mild sarcasm, and Henry instantly regretted it.

“I’m sorry,” Mike said. “We’re glad to welcome you too, sir.”

“I know what you meant, Mike. And for Christ’s sake call me Henry; you make me feel old enough as it is.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, already.”

“I’m—” Mike laughed, and seemed to relax a little. “You’re the boss.”

Mike’s car, in the multi-level airport car park, turned out to be a small, battered Rover. Henry, unfamiliar with the Brit numberplate system, couldn’t tell its age, but he was willing to bet it hadn’t been radiation-proofed according to the new international code. There was room in the trunk—no, the
boot
—for Henry’s luggage, but Mike had to clear boxes and papers off the seats before Henry could sit down.

“Sorry,” Mike said. “I wanted to pick you up myself. But the car’s always full of shit.”

Henry shrugged as he buckled up his seat belt. “We’re geologists, remember. Geologists live in shit. It’s in the job description.”

“Here.” Mike handed Henry a cardboard carton of orange juice.

“What’s this for?”

“Jet lag. I know how it feels.”

Henry grinned, and held the carton to his mouth.

Mike queued his way out of the car park, and set off along the freeway—
motorway
—toward central Edinburgh,
eight miles away. The sky was blue, fresh, marked by a few moist-looking cumuli; but, when Mike opened a window, it was
cold.

He became aware that Mike hadn’t spoken since the airport. Mike seemed to have picked up Henry’s inner sourness; maybe the poor kid thought Henry’s mood was somehow his fault.

“So,” Henry said with an effort. “What’s the shit, specifically? The boxes in the car.”

“Oh.” Mike looked vaguely embarrassed. “They’re for my sister. I get her samples through my buddies at the University. She sells rocks.”

“She’s an academic supplier?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh. Don’t tell me. Not rocks;
crystals.
”

Mike shrugged. “She knows more about geology and mineralogy and stuff than she admits. But she has to make a living.”

“So, what about you? You have a pet rock at home?”

Mike laughed. “No. But I have a rock collection. I started when I was a kid. The first item was a piece of basalt from Arthur’s Seat. When I was a schoolkid I joined a local geology society. Field trips to the Pentland Hills, and stuff.”

“Sounds fun.”

“You know, Edinburgh is the home of geology—”

“So they tell me.”

Mike looked embarrassed, and again Henry found himself absurdly regretting his sharpness.

“Go on,” Henry said. “So you wanted to be a geologist.”

“I never got that far.”

“As far as what?”

“As taking A-levels. The exams that would have got me to University.” He shrugged. “But I learned a lot about rocks. I was always good in the field, and I turned out to be good in the lab. I got a job as a technician in the geology department here.”

“You could study. Do some kind of correspondence thing.”

Mike flashed a weak smile. “I’m happier with the rocks.”

“Especially Moon rocks, huh.”

“Oh, yes. Especially the Moon rocks.”

To Henry the British roads looked clean, wide, kind of crowded; this was indeed a small island, he thought. The exit ramp from the motorway was a baby-gentle curve, signposted miles in advance. They emerged onto a roundabout, a system of ordered chaos, with an unspoken etiquette about giving way Henry was going to have some trouble mastering. Not to mention the fact that Mike was sitting on the right, and the roundabout traffic turned clockwise, counter to the way God intended humans to travel…

Henry felt irritated by all this. He wasn’t interested in learning about the eccentricities of the British road system. The truth remained that he didn’t want to
be
here, and still wouldn’t even after he got past his jet lag. He let himself get annoyed at Edinburgh, Scotland and Britain, however unfair it was.

They entered the city itself. Henry’s immediate impression was bustle, color, lovely old sandstone buildings, hills everywhere.

Mike, following the traffic along a broad, sunlit shopping street, turned toward the train station. “Your hotel’s the Balmoral. Kind of swank. We checked you in here until you find somewhere more permanent. NASA are paying…”

Henry peered gloomily at the hotel, a sandstone pile punctured with slit windows, topped by a huge, fairy-cake clock tower. Builders were working on the roof, adding what looked like a layer of radiation-proof lead shielding. Overall, the hotel looked like a prison.

He checked his watch: 9:00
A.M
., British time.

“How far are we from work, Mike?”

He shrugged. “A few minutes. Do you want to check in
first, freshen up—”

Henry scratched the stubble on his cheeks. “Hell, no.” He grinned. “First impressions are vital. Let’s go see that Moon rock.”

Mike pulled away from the curb.

The Edinburgh University Department of Geology and Geophysics turned out to be part of a sub-campus called the King’s Buildings, a couple of miles south of the city center. Most of the science and engineering departments lived out here, Henry learned, along with a couple of government research institutes. The department itself was housed in a building called the Grant Institute of Geology, a blocky 1930s frontage with rambling modern extensions to the rear.

The suburbs of Edinburgh ran away to the north. To the south there was an open area, trees and grassland, that turned out to be a golf course.

From Mike, Henry learned that Edinburgh was in fact pretty much ringed by golf courses.

When Henry and Mike walked up to the entrance a couple of undergraduates came out, carrying notebooks. They both seemed to have pierced tongues—
my God—
and, in their lurid war-paint sunscreen, to Henry they looked about twelve years old.

There was a security check at the door. Henry signed the book, alongside where Mike had already filled in his name for him. He’d spelled it wrong: HNERY.

Oh,
Henry thought.

The entrance hall was 1930s grandiose, but its glory was faded. There were portraits of the department’s great men on the walls, and three granite slabs with lists of former professors. But the slabs weren’t up to date, and the hall was cluttered with a couple of fish tanks and a small seismology station. Mike shrugged. “We’ve been putting in stuff for the undergraduates. That’s a saltwater aquarium
over there, and this seismology station is live. Educational. But we have to scramble for the funding. And it costs a couple of hundred quid for every word you get carved on those big granite tombstones up there…”

Thus, thought Henry, times change, and not always for the worse.

Mike gave Henry a quick tour of the department.

The core of the Institute was the handsome old 1930s building, tall ceilings, oak panels, echoing; the modern extensions were cramped and rambling, with cheap ceiling tiles and linoleum floors. But, like every geology lab Henry had ever been in, the place was cluttered with samples. Even in the corridors there were big oak chests of drawers, all neatly numbered by hand-drawn labels. There were basement storage areas for the bigger samples—the foundations would have had trouble with the weight otherwise—and the rocks there were stored in open pallets or, sometimes, in cruder containers, like photocopier paper boxes. There was a cold room where ocean floor core samples were stacked up, in grimy metal tubes; Mike pointed out the department’s milk store here, ready to fuel the British need for a continual tea supply.

Rocks everywhere, all carefully labeled and tracked by a full-time curator. Grad students were encouraged to discard whatever they didn’t
absolutely
need for the future, but Henry knew that no geologist would willingly give up a single grain of sand.