Venus of Shadows (20 page)

The atmospheric pressure, even after centuries of terraforming, was still forty times as great as Earth's. She would view this landscape only from inside a dome, in images on a screen, or through the eyes of a machine.

Risa closed the channel to the robot; a signal would alert her when it needed to make its repairs and her intervention might be required. She was now gazing at a room of panels and thick pipes, looking out through the eyes of a robot inside one of the life-support installations. In this bunker, which abutted the dome wall, nitrogen needed to feed the dome's atmosphere was extracted from traces of ammonia in the misty rain collected by the installation. Nitrogen had once been a scarce element on Venus, but ammonia from Saturn was present in the compressed hydrogen sent here from that planet.

A few panels were likely to fail soon. The robot's claws, guided by Risa, carefully lifted one panel from the wall and quickly replaced it with another. She frowned. Cyberminds could have handled much of this work, but the cost to the Project would have been greater. Cheaper to use human beings wherever possible and to let the settlers return more to the Project with their labor. They had chosen to settle this world and could feel that they had a greater role in making it.

Malik Haddad had called these settlements an experiment; perhaps the work, however necessary, was also a way to test the Cytherians. She pushed that notion away. Thinking about the new immigrant was distracting; thoughts of Malik made her feel uneasy and uncertain. She forced her attention back to her work.

*  *  *

By the end of her eight-hour shift, with two short breaks and a longer one for a meal, Risa had finished replacing the panels inside the bunker and had made a minor repair on one of the diggers outside. She lifted her band from her head and set it down. Her muscles ached from the hours in her chair; the walk home and a quiet dinner with her household would refresh her. She had one day off ahead, and then eight days working in the west dome's community greenhouses, where the work would be soothing in comparison.

Alasid nodded at her. "Enjoy your day off," the young man said.

"You're sure you don't need me back tomorrow?" she asked.

He seemed surprised. "There's nothing the next team can't handle. What is it, Risa — trying to prove yourself, now that you're off-duty on the Bats?"

"I just wanted to be certain," she murmured before leaving the room. She had planned to spend the next day doing household tasks; it was likely she and Malik would be alone in the house part of the time, after he came back from the school. That prospect made her uncomfortable; she did not want to examine the reasons for her unease too closely.

The west dome's External Operations Center was much smaller than the one in the main dome, hardly larger than a good-sized house. It sat about twenty meters from a small bridge over a stream that fed the lake. Risa had crossed the bridge and was moving toward the wooded area used as a park before she recalled that she had promised to visit Andrew Dinel on her way home.

Andrew's house was just past the park, on a small hill overlooking the lake. The house seemed larger than when she had last visited; more space had been added to one wing. Andrew Dinel's household was looking a bit too prosperous lately; his house had to be one of the largest ones here.

She frowned as she came closer to the front door and saw its tiny lens; Andrew had installed a scanner. Most of the settlers had contented themselves with simple metal locks until recently; a palm-print lock was only another device to be tended and repaired. But thefts, almost unknown a few years ago, were slightly more common, and even she had given in to Chen's insistence on a palm-print lock. Yet, having a scanner, and a record of everyone who came to call, seemed too much.

She supposed this was progress of a kind — having a few more items someone might be tempted to steal and therefore a few more thefts.

She waited until the door opened. Usually someone came to the door to greet her, but perhaps Andrew's household was growing too grand for that small courtesy. This common room was somewhat larger than her own but so cluttered that it seemed smaller. Andrew's two sons and their three cousins sat on cushions around one low table, reading lessons on their screens. His bondmate, Grete Soong, sat at her sewing machine, working on a shirt. A shelf near the large screen contained two small boxes holding a microdot library — an obvious affectation, since Andrew himself could not read much more than his name and the numbers that helped him keep track of his accounts. A carving of Chen's sat next to the library; her father had captured Andrew's fine-featured face well, but had given his eyes a slightly predatory look.

"Risa!" Grete looked up from her sewing. "Andy said you'd be by today." Andrew's bondmate was a pretty, dark-haired woman with a slightly glazed expression in her brown eyes. "Say hello to Risa," she shouted to the children.

"Hello," one of the boys said tonelessly. The other boy and the three girls looked up, mumbled a greeting, then resumed staring at their screens.

"I won't be staying long," Risa said. "I want to get home for supper."

"Sorry you can't eat with us, but I can see why you'd want to dine with that new teacher instead. My nieces are so taken with him. Marta says he looks just like a hero in one of those adventures she likes to watch on the screen."

"Grete!" one of the girls wailed as the other children snickered.

"Now, you know it's true, Marta. You couldn't stop talking about him."

"Let's hope his looks give them an incentive to do well at their lessons," Risa murmured. "Where's Andrew?"

"Oh." Grete waved a hand languidly to her right. "Just go down this hall, second door to your left. Now that we've added more space, Andy has his own little room for seeing his friends or going over the accounts. So much nicer than using our bedroom or having everyone clear out of the common room."

"How convenient," Risa said, wondering how many more affectations Andrew would acquire. "I'm glad to see you're doing so well."

"No better than you, I'm sure," Grete replied politely.

Risa walked into the narrow hallway and paused in front of the door before knocking. "Andy? It's Risa."

The door slid open. Andrew Dinel sat on a cushion, staring at the small screen on his lap. A voice was reciting numbers; Risa caught a glimpse of a graph and the blue and red lines that marked the household's credit and debits before Andrew turned off the screen. He looked up.

"Come on in, Risa. Hope Paul and Grazie got my message of congratulations."

"Of course." Risa seated herself on another cushion. A second carving of Chen's, this one of Grete, sat on a small table in one corner of the tiny room. She had never known whether Andrew actually appreciated her father's carvings or had bought them only because others considered them valuable.

"I would have come over myself to wish Paul well, but this is the first free moment I've had in days, and it'll be like this until we finish that tunnel." Andrew ran a digger, and his team was now working on a tunnel that would connect the still-uninhabited south dome of Oberg with the one to the southeast. "What with that and my household work — well, you know how it is."

She studied him for a moment; he was wearing his usual affable expression. He was a tall, lanky man with thinning brown hair, but his stomach was showing signs of a paunch and his fine-boned face was developing jowls — perhaps less-welcome signs of prosperity.

"There's a problem we have to discuss," Risa said. "I spoke to Leilani a few evenings ago and promised her I'd speak to you."

"About what?" Andrew was still smiling, but his blue eyes had narrowed.

"Kosti's been drinking quite a lot."

Andrew raised a brow. "That isn't news. What he does in his own house is his business, don't you think?"

"As long as he can control himself, it is," she replied. "But now his team is complaining about his work, and Leilani says he's been threatening her when he's drunk."

"So she can't control her bondmate. If it's reached that point, it's a matter for the Council — maybe even an Island Counselor."

"We can avoid that. I'd rather not see Kosti shamed. He's all right when he's sober — it's only the drinking that affects him."

"Then tell him to stop," Andrew said. "If he can't, it's his problem."

"It's everyone's problem. Do you want him on your team, where you'd have to look out for his errors as well as doing your own work?" She took a breath. "You've been selling him the liquor."

"I sell it to anybody who has the goods or credit to pay for it. As long as I do my work for the Project, I have the right to profit from anything I do in my own time. It's Kosti's problem, not mine."

There was some justice to his objection. Andrew, with the small distillery he had designed, had found a way to make a palatable whiskey using the rapidly maturing dwarf strains of grain he grew in his private greenhouse. The liquor, which he had pretentiously labeled Dinel's Cytherian Whiskey, was the source of much of his good fortune; there were some who claimed that it rivaled the whiskeys of Earth.

"Leilani told Kosti she'd spoken to me," Risa said. "That startled him enough for him to promise her he'd try to stop. He's not a bad man, Andy — he'll be all right if others help him out now."

Andrew shrugged, apparently unmoved. "He needs a hearing — that might shake him up. If not, there's a Counselor, and, at worst, a physician could give him an implant that'd make him sick if he ever touches alcohol. It isn't my responsibility."

"Do you want Earth and the Project Council to have even more excuses to interfere with our lives? You know what Counselors are. They, can be useful in certain cases, but in the end, they represent Earth's interests. If we call on them too much, the Administrators might decide they should send a few to live in the domes permanently. That means an extra expense for the Project, which we'll ultimately pay, and our own elected Councils won't have as much authority. We've always prided ourselves on handling most of our own problems. Do you want that changed?"

"I don't know what you expect me to do," he said.

"I was hoping you'd have the sense to see it for yourself, and make the offer." Risa leaned forward. "I want you to stop selling liquor to Kosti. For that matter, you ought to consider putting limits on how much you sell to any one person. Your computer can easily keep track of the records for you, and Kosti will be grateful when he's past this. He won't relapse if he knows others are giving him support."

Andrew shook his head. "He could always get his liquor from somebody else."

"I doubt it. You're the only one selling it here so far, and he doesn't have enough credit to import any. You've got a chance to help him and to set an example for others. Kosti won't be the only one with this problem — there could be others, if there aren't already. I'd like to see something done about it now."

Andrew fidgeted. "You always were smart, but there are some things you don't understand. You think anyone here can make something of himself, but I know better. We'll get some who fail and maybe a few more who'll steal, and the more some of us have, the more others'll want it and won't care how they get it. You may not want Counselors here, but they'll come, even if we have to train our own. We get along without Guardians on the surface, but we'll have to use our own people to keep order in time. We worked hard to get what we have, and we're not going to lose it because of some idea about making a different kind of world."

Risa steadied herself. There were a few more like Andrew Dinel lately, people who displayed what they had earned in various ways; she was not immune to such urges herself. But there was a difference in acquiring a few small luxuries that weren't beyond the means of anyone willing to work and the ostentatious display of goods that only emphasized a growing distance between some people's means and those of others. Such displays created resentments, and the fools in Ishtar were ready to feed on such resentments with their talk of sharing all.

She had assumed that the Project's ideals might restrain people's greed; maybe Andrew was right in thinking that she was naive. His attitude seemed a betrayal of everything the Cytherian settlements were meant to be.

"My household worked to grow that extra grain," Andrew went on. "I spent credit to get parts for my distillery and put it together with my own hands. It took a couple of years to come up with something that tasted right, and a couple more to make a profit. You can't tell me I don't have a right to earn what I can. Are you going to tell Chen not to carve anything? Will you tell your friend Noella to stop selling that jewelry she makes?" He peered at the polished Cytherian stone that hung around Risa's neck. "People wouldn't like hearing that kind of advice."

She suppressed her irritation. "I have no wish," she replied calmly, "to take away anything from you. If you sell less whiskey to each person, you'll be making it more valuable. Seems to me that you could ask more for it then."

Andrew straightened, obviously surprised by this elementary economic point. "You'd be earning just as much," she continued, "without having to sell as much. That should appeal to you."

Andrew shook his head slowly. "It won't work. Some people may decide not to buy or trade with me after that, and a couple of households in al-Khwarizmi and Galileo are building distilleries of their own." He drew his brows together. "Look, all I did was find a way to make something people wanted and earn some credit and goods for myself. It isn't right to make me pay because a few people are weak."

Appealing to his sense of responsibility was ineffective, and there was no threat she could make. She could hardly make a complaint against Andrew that might bring about a hearing without dragging Kosti into the dispute, and a lot of Cytherians would take Andrew's side. She would have to try something else.

"Very well," Risa said. "I know you've been sending some of the whiskey to the other settlements occasionally."

"Nothing wrong with that. When pilots have room for a little extra cargo, there's no reason they can't put it aboard. I guess Evar told you."