My stomach clenched as I stood there and watched Venusians cluster around to stare at us.
“We’re visitors!” Shepard shouted at them. “Visitors from another world! Don’t you understand? You should be giving us a parade!”
“Shep,” Eric said quietly, and looked at me. “I think Charles is right. They’ve never seen outside the clouds. They might not know about other planets, stars. They probably think we’re just strange-looking Venusians.”
“But we came in a rocket ship!” Shepard protested.
“Is that anything like an airship?” Eric asked, and pointed over our heads.
We looked up. A massive lighter-than-air machine glided in over the ocean toward the city, slowly beginning to drop out of the air toward a large field.
“The Venusians that captured us might not even know much about such things,” Eric said. “They didn’t know how to make guns, and live in the hills. They sold us for the guns. They might not have even explained to these guys how we showed up.”
He was right. And I was right.
And I knew how right I was when it began. It might have been in an alien tongue, but I knew the patter for what it was.
An auction.
I began to weep silently to myself, suddenly alone and cold in the humid tropical air of Venus, rescue millions of miles away.
Heston snapped at me. “Get ahold of yourself, Charles. We’re going to figure a way out of this.”
“Really?” I stared at him. “It took hundreds of years back home for people to figure a way out. And even then, they still live as secondclass citizens. Even if we do communicate with them, judging by all this, we may end up being little more than scientific curiosities.”
The crew stared at me like I’d grown a second head.
But we didn’t have much time to debate further. We were ripped apart, the auction done. Heston and I were taken to a mansion with a vast cobblestoned courtyard on the edge of the city’s walls. Men in silks and headdresses covered with snakelike patterns of gold led the way, while short, scruffy Venusians poked and prodded us along.
Then they swarmed us, grabbing us by legs and arms and holding us down to the wet stones as we struggled and fought the sudden immobilization.
One of the silk-wearing Venusians kneeled next to us. He held a tiny slug in the grip of some tongs.
“What are you doing?” Heston shouted. “I demand …”
The Venusian shoved the slug into Heston’s nose. For a moment, both slug and man lay still, somewhat stunned.
Then it began wriggling. All the way up into his nose.
Heston screamed.
The Venusian was handed another set of tongs, and turned for me. And I screamed and struggled to no avail.
It slithered into my nose, a slimy wetness moving upward. Mucus dripped down my lip, and my nasal cavity screamed as it was filled with a pushing, tearing sensation. I tasted blood as it dripped down the back of my throat and I gagged.
The Venusians closed great stone doors at the entrance. Some bored guards with rifles patrolled an elevated walkway and looked down at us. But we were left alone on the courtyard’s stones to stare up at the clouds as our foreheads ached.
Dark, gray clouds. Always.
I’d never see a blue sky again, I realized, before I slipped into fever dreams. We vomited bile, bled through our noses, and curled into balls on the stones. Occasionally Venusians would come and yell at us. “Get up! Do you understand us yet?”
It wasn’t until later in the day that I realized something. “Heston! Heston, I think I understand them!”
Heston groaned. “I thought it was you yelling insults at me, but I don’t think you’d call me a Kafftig, whatever that is.”
I could imagine Eric’s telling us that our nasal cavities were the closest entrance in the body to our brains, and this slug would have crawled up there to …
I staggered up. “I can stand,” I said. “Can you understand me?”
“Get up!” a Venusian demanded. “If you can understand me, get up!”
Heston held on to my shoulder. He was excited. “We’re visitors! We’re from another world.” He pointed up at the dark, gray clouds that stretched from horizon to horizon. “We’re from beyond the clouds.”
The Venusians around us laughed. A yipping, barking sound. “There is nowhere else but the surface, and there is nothing beyond the clouds but more clouds and emptiness.”
Heston wouldn’t let it go. He kept arguing. And eventually his shouts led to warnings, then the Venusians clubbed him until he shut up. They forced me to carry him, dazed, across the courtyard and into a small, cramped common house.
It was dark, and damp, and the floor covered in straw. We huddled in the corner away from other Venusians who growled at us as the door was locked shut for the night.
The next morning we were all led out to the landing fields of the city, where the airships slowly eased in over the ocean and came to a rest. Under the eye of two armed Venusians, we unloaded the airship’s wares. Packages of foods, jars filled with oils and spices. The sort of cargo that empires sent to far-flung cities at the periphery.
“I don’t understand,” Heston said. “They have technology. We’re unloading airships. They have laser rifles. Why forced labor? This makes no sense. Maybe they don’t have capitalism or democracy here. Maybe we’ll have to bring it to them! Because I tell you what, a few good, red-blooded, American longshoremen would get this ship unloaded faster than any of these other poor creatures.”
I must have snorted because Heston stared at me. “Capitalism and democracy included slavery until late last century, Commander. That was the American way until the Civil War. As far as I can tell, visiting the cotton fields, it is still the natural friend of slavery. You have family in West Virginia digging coal, right? Any of them in debt for life to the company store, being charged company rent for their home and company credit for their groceries? If you can force someone to work for free, isn’t that the most profit ever? If all that matters to you is profit, then it’s a natural endpoint.”
Heston stopped working and glared at me. “Are you a communist?”
I had a retort, but one of the overseers waded in with a club. Heston stood up and shouted back at him but earned several smacks to the head.
By now I was surprised he could even think.
“Work!” we were ordered. “This is not the time for talking. Keep talking and we’ll sear your skin off.”
We got back to lugging stuff off the ship to the waiting carts with their six-legged beasts patiently holding steady in their harnesses.
“If we can just talk to the right people,” Heston whispered, as we walked back. “We need to find a politician or a scientist. We need to talk to their leaders, not workers and overseers. Talk to just the right person in power, it will be okay.”
The commander believed that. He believed that because for him it had always been true. His life had ups and downs, but for true injustices, he’d always been able to find the right person and set things right.
There was order and justice. He truly believed in those things. The world worked a certain way for him.
“If we get this over, and see if we can petition a judge, or someone, we might be able to talk to the right people.”
Heston worked faster and faster, his mind set on the goal of getting the airship unloaded. I struggled to keep up with his newfound energy. The commander had a destination in mind, and now he had set himself to it.
“Commander,” I whispered. “Slow down.”
He blinked. “Why?”
“The other Venusians aren’t working as fast. Think about it. They’re slaves. There’s no reason to kill themselves working harder, they’re not getting paid. The only way for them to make this bearable is to work just fast enough to not be abused, see?”
“Their laziness isn’t my problem,” Heston growled.
That night the entire common house of Venusians beat us with balled fists. Heston gave as good as he could for the first ten minutes, but there were just too many of them.