Old Venus

Forrest was ushered into a big, shiny laboratory, full of expensive-looking equipment. A Lizard Man, in a black smock and white pants (Venusian-style professional clothing) stood peering into a clear tank, affecting to be unaware of the visitor. They were alone, and Esbwe definitely was the guy Forrest had glimpsed in the mirror-screen—

“Come and look at this, sir. Look into the visor and keep your hands to yourself.”

Forrest walked over, and obeyed. The tank seemed empty. Then tiny moving dots appeared, and took on form: became twisting strands that divided and recombined—

“What do you see?”

“Er, the living material of cell signatures?”

“Life, sir! On our world all life is doomed, that is beyond doubt. But I have calculated that the third world has a biosphere, and my great project is to infect it. As soon as I’ve perfected my delivery system, those animacula will be injected through the clouds, they will cross the airless deeps. And something of us may survive.”

“A noble dream,” said Forrest politely.

“You don’t believe me. How could one of us be an Interplanetarian? You gave the Master that orbit-tracking toy for a joke, I’m sure. You forget that the skies above our levels were often clear, before our habitats were launched. You overlook the fact that we cloud-dwellers hold a wealth of astronomical knowledge; observations many thousands of years old—”

“I find Lacertan science very impressive.”

The scientist stared unpleasantly, curling his lip in an ugly shadow of her smile.

“How generous! I’m not one of the idiots who’ve been fawning over you, Mr. From-the-Sky. To me, the sky habitats are the enemy, the Rapt are our natural allies. The sooner we can join the empire, the better I’ll be pleased, and I don’t care if you take that message home.”

“My headset is malfunctioning,” said Forrest, mugging puzzlement. “I can’t understand a word. I must try to come back another time. So sorry.”

—–—

Forrest didn’t need her to know he was a willing victim. Regrettably, he’d be safer if she didn’t. But now he felt they had to have a frank discussion. Maybe it was a fatal, irresistible temptation: be that as it may, luckily or unluckily, he knew the right venue for a meeting—in this city where she’d warned him everything he said and heard was monitored.

He placed a personal call to Esbwe and left a message confirming his second visit to the lab, naming a time after Lacertan office hours.

“Falling asleep in the daytime” was discouraged by incessant bursts of public music. A loud and melodious call to quiet relaxation was fading, as Forrest entered the shabby old building. Nobody about. He stationed himself around the corner from the lab and waited.

Sekool arrived. He was right behind her as she unlocked the doors.

“I thought that would smoke you out.”

“Excuse me? I was expecting to meet my brother.”

“I don’t think he’s going to turn up,” said Forrest, following her inside.

He’d chased his spoken message with an automated cancellation, which she wouldn’t have seen. Not that he cared if Esbwe came along. A frank exchange of views would be fine!

“Sekool, we need to talk, and I know this room is safe. I don’t think even your crazy brother would have risked the kind of open sedition I heard from him earlier, if Homeland Security were listening in. I knew this lab was firewalled, anyway,” he added, deliberately. “You made a videocall, from the great heart refuge. I saw him in here, when the two of you were planning how to use me in a hostage exchange—”

Her big green eyes got bigger, but she kept her head. No panic, no fluster. “So you know. All right … I was desperate, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I went hunting for a suitable opposition candidate, I ran into you, and the plan changed—”

“Yeah. I was to be kinsnipped, after you left … But then you had a better idea. I’m clear with all that. I just don’t know why the hell Esbwe’s involved. That arrogant idiot is going to destroy you, Sekool. Did you know he’s seriously planning to sell this city to the Rapt? How do you think the Master, how d’you think your people, would like the sound of that?”

“Esbwe talks a lot of nonsense, nobody listens. I needed his expertise.”

But suddenly it was personal. They were two people who had been intensely intimate, but not very talkative. Here they were alone again, and the silence was falling apart—

“And he has a right,” said Sekool, her big eyes shamed and defiant. “An inalienable right, to help me recover our son’s body.”

“My God … Are you saying your brother is, is your boy’s father?”

She recoiled. “I know. I know how it sounds, but Johnforrest, I couldn’t marry him. He was erratic even then. He had no reputation, he’s no leader, he was totally unsuitable. I let myself get pregnant, but I married the Master. It made sense to me. My husband would die. I could never marry Esbwe. But he’d be beside me, our son would inherit—”

You learn something new every day, thought Forrest … So, talent gets courted and rewarded, dynastic power stays with the blood royal—

“Maybe not such good sense to Esbwe.”

“Maybe not … I asked his help, I owed him that. It’s illegal, of course: a simulacrum isn’t supposed to have a life span, but the deal is acceptable, it’s been accepted. What I did to you, to get what we needed, was theft, and I’m sorry—”

“A simulacrum,” repeated Forrest, stunned. “A flishatatonaton—”

“Yes? A short-lived fleshly automaton, for a dead boy. A fair trade, I thought, and we have a good chance of getting away with it. The Rapt refuse to admit they’re holding Gemin, and they’d love to know more about the sky habitats, even what little they can learn from an ephemeral puppet, but they won’t want to admit that side of the deal, either—”

So much for my heroics, thought Forrest. And she was bold, she was crazy-reckless, his Woodsong, but maybe Forrest was the one who needed forgiving—

“Sekool, it’s not going to work. I’m not, er, what you think I am.”

“I know.”

“You know—?”

“Of course. Esbwe’s convinced you’re a sky-dweller, but he makes puppets: I’m a doctor. In my world, boy babies’ tails are excised, at birth or soon after; the nonexistent gods only know why. Yours has never been excised, it’s vestigial and internal. That’s what I first noticed, but then, your entire skeleton is different. Not deformed, different; organs too. Your cell signature is legible, and obviously functional, but I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe I took a mad risk, but I did you no harm and I thought you’d be far away, and never know.” Her long smile broke out, uncertainly. “I’m sure you have resources I can’t imagine, hidden somewhere in the sek where I found you—”

“No, I don’t,” said Forrest. “No resources, ma’am. I’m a shipwrecked sailor.”

Her hand went to the pouch at her throat, she stared at him in amazement—