Something banged on the hatch. “If I may, sir?” he said, gesturing to the control console.
“Please, Greeves,” I said. “Venus has lost whatever charms it may once have held.”
He sat in a chair and moved a lever. The ship began to vibrate. Then I began to feel strangely heavy.
Sometime later, Greeves hove into view with a pot of tea and the necessary accoutrements. He undid my buckles, then informed me that he had administered a draught of the sleeping potion to Baldie, who would now lie in the arms of that Morpheus chap throughout the long journey home.
“Would you care to sleep, too, sir?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t that leave you all alone for, I don’t know, weeks?”
“Months, sir, in fact.”
“Good grief in garters, Greeves. I couldn’t let you do that all alone.”
“Very good of you, sir.”
I took a sip of the brew and thought for a moment, then said, “Greeves, I came to Venus because Slithy Tove-Whippley slipped me a mickey. But how did he trick you?”
“The gentleman did not trick me, sir. When I saw that he meant to abscond with you, I insisted that he take me, too.”
“Wide-awake, Greeves?”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Must have been a dashed boring trip, though, eh?”
“Mr. Tove-Whippley was kind enough to teach me a card game called pinochle. He learned it while working with Mr. Ford in America.”
“Good game, Greeves?”
“Quite engaging, sir. And even when played for small stakes, the winnings from several months of constant pinochle-playing can add up.”
“Won a packet, did you, Greeves?”
“I won the Lulu, sir.”
“The Lulu?”
“It is the name of this rocket ship, sir.” He took thought for a moment. “Though I may change it.”
“Good for you, Greeves,” I said. “Now, how about one more cup of tea, then we’ll cut the cards.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And Greeves?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you for …” I made a gesture that took in all of Venus and its manifold trials.
“Not at all, sir.”
GWYNETH JONES
Here’s the story of an intrepid explorer who volunteers to be the test subject for a radical new scientific experiment, and finds himself very far away from home—and up to his hips in trouble!
One of the most acclaimed British writers of her generation, Gwyneth Jones was a cowinner of the James Tiptree, Jr., Award for work exploring genre issues in science fiction, with her 1991 novel The White Queen, and has also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, with her novel Bold As Love, as well as receiving two World Fantasy Awards—for her story “The Grass Princess” and her collection Seven Tales and a Fable. Her other books include the novels North Wind, Flowerdust, Escape Plans, Divine Endurance, Phoenix Café, Castles Made of Sand, Stone Free, Midnight Lamp, Kairos, Life, Water in the Air, The Influence of Ironwood, The Exchange, Dear Hill, The Hidden Ones, and Rainbow Bridge, as well as more than sixteen Young Adult novels published under the name Ann Halam. Her too-infrequent short fiction has appeared in Interzone, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Off Limits, and in other magazines and anthologies, and has been collected in Identifying the Object: A Collection of Short Stories. She is also the author of the critical study, Deconstructing the Starships: Science, Fiction and Reality. Her most recent books are a new SF novel, Spirit: Or the Princess of Bois Dormant and two collections, The Buonarotti Quartet and The Universe of Things. She lives in Brighton, England, with her husband, her son, and a Burmese cat.
A Planet Called Desire
GWYNETH JONES
1. JOHN FORREST, ADVENTURER
THE LABORATORY WAS ON AN UPPER FLOOR. ITS WIDE WINDOWS looked out, across the landscaped grounds of the Foundation, to the Atlantic Ocean. One brilliant star, bright as a tiny full moon, shone above the horizon, glittering in the afterwash of sunset.
“My grandfather’s people called her Hawa,” said the scientist.
“Is that a Dogon term, PoTolo?” asked John Forrest: a big man, fit and tanned, past forty but in excellent shape. He wore a neatly trimmed beard and moustache; his vigorous red-brown hair brushed back and a little long; his challenging eyes were an opaque dark blue. “You’re Dogon, aren’t you?”
They were alone in the lab: alone in the building aside from a few security guards. Dr. Seven PoTolo, slight and dark, fragile and very young-looking beside the magnate, was uncomfortable with the situation, but there was nothing he could do. Mr. Forrest, the multibillionaire, celebrity entrepreneur/philanthropist, environmentalist, lover of life-threatening he-man stunts, owned the Foundation outright. His billions financed PoTolo’s work, and he was ruthless with any hint of opposition.
PoTolo shook his head. “I’m afraid my ancestry is mixed: Cameroon is a melting pot. My maternal grandfather spoke one of the vanishing languages of the Coast. But ‘hawa’ is a loan-word. I think it’s Arabic, and means desire.”
“Sensual desire, yes,” agreed Forrest. “The temptation of Eve.”
He turned to survey the untried experimental apparatus.
“What will conditions be like?”
“Conditions on the surface could be remarkably Earthlike,” said PoTolo. “The tectonic-plate system hasn’t yet broken down, the oceans haven’t boiled away, atmospheric pressure hasn’t started to skyrocket, the atmosphere is oxygenated. Rotation should be speedier too. Much longer than our twenty-four-hour cycle, but a day and a night won’t last a local year …”
Forrest studied the rig. Most of it was indecipherable, aside from the scanning gate and biomedical monitors introduced for his benefit. A black globe with an oily sheen, clutched in robotic grippers inside a clear chamber, caught his eye: reminding him somehow of the business part of a nuclear reactor.
“But no guarantees,” he remarked, dryly.
“No guarantees … Mr. Forrest, you have signed your life away. Neither your heirs, nor any other interested parties, will have any legal recourse if you fail to return. But the risks are outrageous. Won’t you reconsider?”
“Consider what?” Forrest’s muddy blue eyes blazed. “Living out my life in some protected enclave of a world I’d rather go blind than see? The trees are dying, the oceans are poisoned. We’re choking on our own emissions, in the midst of a mass extinction caused by our numbers, while sleepwalking into a Third World War! No, I will not reconsider. Don’t tell me about risk. I know about risk!”
PoTolo nodded carefully, more physically intimidated than he liked to admit by this big rich white man, disinhibited by great power and famous for his reckless temper.
“My apologies. Shall we proceed?”
“I take nothing? No helmet full of gizmos, no homing beacon?”
“Only the capsule you swallowed. If conditions are as we hope, the probe will be retrieved, bringing you along with it. There’ll be an interval, I can’t tell you exactly how long, the variables are complex. You don’t have to do anything. You can move around, admire the scenery, then suddenly, you’ll be back here.”
“Amusing, if I’m in the middle of a conversation … One more question. You’ve staked your career on this, PoTolo, as much as I’m staking my life. What’s in it for you?”