Old Venus

A fragment of patterned textile, wrapped around three small flat sticks: what was.

A shiny feather or fish scale, set in silver wire: what might have been. Or, better: the conditional, the always possible.

A shriveled coil of brown, veiny material, probably a root fragment: what is.

A black stone, glossy as obsidian, was The Truth.

The headset was nowhere in this exchange. He asked and she answered in gesture, the timeless, universal language of this other trade of hers—

Does what you read come true?

If you know so much, you know that’s a fool’s question.

Then she smiled. The black stone in one fist, she laid her free hand on his breast, where his heart was beating. But when I know I’m right, however unbelievable, I’m right …

Forrest felt suddenly very confused.

Sekool returned her tokens to the pouch and slipped the cord over her head. She was soon deeply asleep, but he lay awake. Sekool Sekool, Woodsong the Sorceress. Had he really understood her? It didn’t seem possible.

Their arrival at Tessera Station was as dramatic as darkfall, in its way. Her city, a sky raft the size of Manhattan Island, had come to meet them. Moored by mighty hawsers, it stood at the sheer edge of the Tessera Plateau, beside the cable-car buildings. Forrest watched the underbelly as they came in: a mass of swollen, membranous dirigibles, layered and roped together in a gargantuan netted frame.

“Unlike the upper-atmosphere habitats,” Sekool remarked, “our cities were developed from life. The original bladder-raft colonies, which provide our germ material, still flourish: small as tables, big as mountaintops. We harvest and data mine them for improvements.”

“Fascinating,” said Forrest, making her laugh.

“About Gemin. You will be discreet?”

“Of course.”

She had told him that her city, Lacertan, led an alliance of liberal and independent cloud-cities known as The Band. The other major bloc was an empire, run on military lines, centered on a vast sky raft called Rapton. Empire and Band were currently, technically, at peace, but the covert maneuvering was vicious: this was the situation that had cost Gemin his life. The dirty story hadn’t been released, it was too inflammatory. The official line was that he’d been killed in a caving accident, on an expedition to one of the old ocean beds; and tragically it had been impossible to recover his body.

It was a prospecting expedition, said Sekool. In disputed territory, where there are rich pickings, and they ran into trouble. He shouldn’t have been there at all, of course.

They disembarked, smiling for the welcoming committee, in their desert robes and battered wilderness clothes. The Man From-the-Sky was instantly surrounded by officials and Venusian-style media folk. He didn’t speak to Sekool again for a while.

Forrest didn’t get to watch the return of the bright: Lacertan was riding strong winds and everyone was indoors, sleeping or not. But after that, the city—which had been quiet as an Arctic night—began to bustle. Washed, brushed, and dressed in Venusian formal style; provided with fine accommodation and service, he was swept from reception to reception. He ate high-class delicacies, no better or worse than the same absurd fancywork in New York or London. He talked (in like-for-like translation) with many interesting Venusians, and had no trouble passing for a denizen of the upper atmosphere. Contact between the realms was minimal, he was their first actual visitor: a Marco Polo at the court of Kublai Khan.

Perhaps the most personally interesting fact he picked up was that Lizard Men, like the naked ghost boy, had no tails. Which explained a couple of things.

He met Sekool again at his private audience with the Master of the City.

The simulacrum he’d seen had been a flattering portrait. In life, the Master was a wraith in a medicalized cocoon, though his eyes, appraising Forrest with great interest, were still sharp. Sekool was at the bedside, in a dark blue formal gown: the first time he’d been close to her since the cable car. Raised on pillows, the Master offered greetings translated by an aide wearing a headset. Forrest had arranged for the orrery watch to be boxed and wrapped, in suitable style. He offered it with misgiving, hoping that the gift at least looked impressive, but the old man fizzed and crackled with a connoisseur’s delight.

“The Master is pleased,” reported the aide. “He says the orbits of our planet and our near neighbor present a pretty problem. He has never seen the puzzle worked in craft with such elegance and charm. He suggests you must twin your soul with my lady’s brother, our Chief Scientist, who is also fascinated by the third world.”

Then the Master was tired, and they were both dismissed.

She donned a headset as soon as they were clear of the Master’s apartments. “I think you have no engagements just now, sir. Let me show you a view over the city.”

The view from the terrace was not dazzling, they were hemmed by blank walls and the defensive redoubt that protected the Residence. But there was a glimpse of bright cloud above, and more rosy greenery than he’d seen elsewhere.

“So that’s my marriage,” she said, pacing. “He was a good leader, now he’s old, and deathly sick. But he’s not senile and he doesn’t want to let go, so that’s that. He’s just forgotten how he’s paralyzing me: paralyzing the whole city—”

Her hair, grown out, ran in natural, feathery cornrows to her nape. She wore classy makeup, there were jewels at her throat. The gown was daringly décolleté in the back, at the swell of her tail’s root. But he missed her jungle pants.

“You think I’m speaking very freely? Don’t worry, everyone knows how I feel. Including the Master. Nobody’s going to blab indiscretions in your company, Johnforrest. These things.” She tapped her headset. “Are notoriously easy to hack.”

“What does the Master think about what happened to your son?”

“That the accident was in disputed territory, and anything’s better than war. That I can marry again when he dies and have other children. Or adopt, it’s been done before. That he’ll negotiate, when he’s stronger (which will never happen, he’s dying). I can’t bear to tell him how real my son’s suffering still is to me. So I just have to wait.”

The people of Lacertan, Forrest had learned, were a godless lot of sophisticated animists, like Sekool herself. They were liberal, they were easy, but the idea of their prince lying untended, “trapped in his death,” at the bottom of some hole, gave them the horrors. And they weren’t visited by that crawling corpse.

He knew he was talking to a desperate woman and forgave her many things.

“What about my twin soul? Your brother, the Chief Scientist?”

“Esbwe? Who knows? He’s an eccentric genius, he lives in a world of his own.”

The smile he loved fought with the pain. “Enjoy the rest of your visit. You may not have been following the reckoning, we’ve come a long way since you boarded. We’ll soon pass over the spot where you and I met, then I suppose you’ll leave us.”

That’s it, thought Forrest. He’d been wondering when he was due to disappear.

So be it.

The Chief Scientist worked in a surprisingly shabby old building, in a heritage area close to the Residence. He didn’t seem overburdened with staff, either. Possibly “Chief Scientist” was a courtesy title? The Minister for Science—who had escorted Forrest, only to be left twisting her tail in an anteroom—had been reticent on the subject.