“The technology required to filter drinking water has been available for centuries. It is not expensive. It is not difficult to maintain. It will not be a problem,” she said, and smiled a slight bewitching smile. She had red lips, like rose petals. It occurred to me that they had been colored, a custom long discontinued on Earth and most other worlds in the settled Universe. Here the custom seemed to have made a comeback. The look was exotic, and stimulating…
“Then there’s flooding. Wetlands serve as reservoirs for excess precipitation. The ground simply soaks up the water. Drain that ground, harden it and the water must go elsewhere. Did you mention that the likely collection point for millions of liters of newly released water per year will be in the foundation levels of Northern Settlement Arcology and the agro-hectares surrounding the township? Again, there’s no record of it in council minutes.”
“And again, technology to deal with such problems is simple, inexpensive, and readily available. Council will not be called upon to pay for a thing. Extra water flowing into agricultural areas may result in different crop choices being made by farmers over the next few years. But they will make them spontaneously without an act of council. Rice is as good a crop as maize. And if basement dwellings need to be mopped or bailed more often than is customary now—well, it is not a serious concern. The effect of water on polystone foundations in a climate without seasonal temperature variation is nil. No structural damage will result. The victims you think we are creating will be unlikely to even notice they were being victimized. Life will go on, as stultifying as it always has for them.”
She spoke without a trace of concern. She’d known the points I was going to raise before I did—clearly she had been reading Otis’s reports straight out of his computer.
“And the physical structure of the dome itself?” I asked. It was a calculated risk. Otis had not yet written anything on the impact of Sharawaggi’s project on the structural integrity of the dome, yet it was clear to me from his atmospheric analysis that there would be an increase in stress on its skin.
“What do you mean?” She asked coolly.
She was good. I had caught her offguard, and she wasn’t letting it show. There was no apprehension in her voice, but she failed for the first time to immediately offer a rebuttal.
“Air,” I said, “expands when it’s heated. The dome must therefore be able to expand too. E-Indi rises, air warms, dome expands, E-Indi sets, and the dome contracts again as the air inside cools and occupies less volume. This expansion and contraction must be closely monitored since over time material fatigue can create microfissures in the dome’s skin, which may widen into a catastrophic rupture.
“Water serves as a heat reservoir during the night. E-Indi sets, and water slowly radiates away the heat it absorbed during the day. The reason the Habitat’s designers insisted so much interior surface area be covered by water was to exploit this moderating effect in reducing wear and tear on the dome itself. Keep interior temperature reasonably constant, you reduce the need for surface maintenance and chance of accident. But you’re draining the Soyinka wetlands. The volume of water under the dome will remain the same, but its surface area will be reduced—and so will its effectiveness as a temperature moderator “You’ll create more extreme temperature differentials between day and night. Not enough to impact on inhabitants’ comfort, perhaps. But enough to increase stress on the skin of the dome. The cost of that could be enormous.”
“And how long do you think it will take before that cost needs to be considered?” She asked. Her face remained impassive, but her eyes held me in a very close scrutiny. I didn’t know if she suspected yet that I had no data. Not that my basic facts weren’t correct, I just didn’t have any quantitative analyses of the degree to which tinkering with the dome’s water supply would alter the structural dynamic rhythm of its skin. Here was where I had to be careful.
“About twenty Earth standard years,” I lied. “Statistical probability of a major structural failure begins to increase rapidly after that.”
And I noticed an immediate change in her.
As I had been talking, she had been—not visibly tense, she was too good at controlling her body language for that—but she had been immobile. The moment I said twenty years, the bells on her ankle jingled. She had relaxed again.
“Then I don’t see a problem,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“I was born here, Mr. Sansouci—or may I call you Shade?”
“Stick to Mr. Sansouci until you know me better. But I don’t see what this has to do with the problem you’re in the process of creating. Surely, if you’re a native-born Marjolin, you’ve got enough attachment to your home to not want it destroyed?”
“Oh, now, we are not really talking about destruction, are we? Just increased maintenance costs. Costs which everyone who lives here expects to pay anyway. We don’t walk around with calendars in our heads, though, marked for when the next payment will come due. Twenty years is a long time in a place like this where nothing ever really happens. When the cost you speak of finally does come due, it will be seen as just one more of many associated with living here. We’re all used to that by now.”
“You don’t speak as though you care much for life here.”
“What is there to care about? It is the only life I know. It has its good points, but I don’t get to hop from star to star the way you do. The dome is pretty. Outsiders like to come and admire it. But there is not much here, just entertainment for transients. That is why we developed our sybaritic lifestyle. You’ve heard of it, have you not? It is a response to boredom.”
She rose gracefully from the couch and stepped over to where I sat. With one delicate feminine finger she drew a soft line along the bridge of my nose. I felt it right down to my groin.
“You should be warned, Mr. Sansouci, that we dome sybarites shift quickly from one subject to the next. And we don’t have many interesting men around here.”
I responded to her touch by drawing her towards me. I know back on Earth they would have I said I let her take control of the meeting, but I was no longer interested in the fate of the anopheles mosquito. We kissed, a long lingering kiss filled with promises, and adjourned to the bedroom where her sari and my pajama-like attire wound up intertwined on the floor. In lovemaking she combined both lust and elegance, and I was conscious of little but the pale silkiness of skin, her hot breath on my cheek, and the jingling of the little bells about her ankle.
Eventually she touched her rose-petal lips to my ear and whispered: “May I call you Shade now?”
I woke the next morning to see E-Indi’s light pouring through the windows, bright as sunlight on Earth would have been expected to be. Cheri Millefiori, still unclothed, stood looking out.
“Somehow, the phrase ‘transit of Venus’ has just popped into my mind,” I said.
She turned, presenting a tantalizing silhouette. I still could not see her face, she was so strongly backlit, but I could hear the smile in her voice.
“How sweet of you to use astronomical metaphors in describing me to me. How would you describe yourself to yourself?”
“Not astronomically, that’s for damn sure. You know that in about an hour, I’ll have to be in our field office thinking up ways to make your life miserable?”
She laughed and walked slowly towards me, the delicate jingling of her anklet’s bells marking each step.
“And I suppose you will tell them all about tonight and try to derive some special advantage from it?” she said.
“I doubt there d be much point in that, would there? It strikes me you’re unlikely to be embarrassed by anything which happened tonight even if it does give new meaning to the phrase going to bed with the opposition.”