The guy who walked in—there was always someone walking in at the start of a story—did not belong. He was short and neatly dressed, with a fancy vest full of pockets; and his head was shaved, except for a few tufts of bright blue hair. It was the kind of haircut that required upkeep. Most people in Hillside didn’t bother.
He stopped at the bar and spoke to the bartender, who nodded toward Ash. The man bought a glass of wine, which was a mistake, as he would find when he tasted it, then walked over.
She had no chance of winning the current game and turned the tablet off.
“Hong Wu,” he said in introduction. “I’m an editor with National Geographic.”
“Yes?” She nodded toward the chair opposite. The man sat down, took a sip of his wine, and made a face. “You are Ash Weatherman.”
“Yes.”
“We want to do a story about the megafauna on Venus, and we want to hire you.”
“The story’s been done,” Ash said.
“We think another look at the megafauna is worth it. We did a thousand stories about wild animals in Africa, until they were gone. People could never get enough of elephants and lions. They still can’t. Look at zoos.”
She had grown up on National Geographic videos: all the lost wilderness of Earth, the charismatic megafauna of land and ocean. Most had been mammals, of course, and near relatives to humanity. Nothing on Venus was as closely related although pretty much everyone agreed that life on Venus had come from Earth, most likely via a meteorite that hit Earth a glancing blow, then landed on the inner planet, bringing Terran organisms scraped up in the first collision. Geologists thought they had found the crater on Earth and the final resting place on Venus. Both craters were eroded and filled in, not visible on the planetary surface. The great plain of Ishtar and something whacking big in Greenland.
There were people who thought it had happened twice, with the second meteorite bringing organisms from a later era; and they had found another pair of craters. But whatever had happened was long ago, and the organisms that came to Venus were single-celled. They had their own evolutionary history, which had ended in a different place, with no cute, furry mammals.
“The fauna here are certainly big enough,” she said out loud. “Though I don’t know how charismatic they are.” She tapped her tablet, and a new game of solitaire appeared. “What do you know about me?”
“You grew up in Hillside, graduated from high school here, and got a degree in the history of evolutionary theory at Venusport College. According to the police, you were involved with a student anarchist group but did nothing illegal.
“You worked in a printing plant while you were in college and after—until your photography began to sell. For the most part, you do advertising. Fashion, such as it is on Venus, furniture and real estate, and nature shots for the tourism industry. On the side, you do your own work, which is mostly images of the Venusian outback. That work is extraordinary. We have our own first-rate videographer and a thoughtful journalist, but we think it would be interesting to have a Venusian perspective.”
Interesting that they’d seen her photos. They had shown at a small gallery downtown: 3-D blowups on the walls and a machine in back to print copies with a signature: Ashley Weatherman, 2113. She’d made some money. People safe in Venusport liked to have the Venusian wilderness on their walls: cone-shaped flowers two meters tall, brilliant yellow or orange; amphibianoids that looked—more or less—like giant crocodiles; and little, rapid, bipedal reptiloids.
“You’re going to need someone to organize your safari,” Ash said. “Do you have anyone?”
“We thought we’d ask you.”
“Arkady Volkov. You’re going to want to go to Aphrodite Terra. That’s where the best megafauna are, and you won’t want to deal with any corporations. Most of Ishtar Terra is company land. Believe me, they protect it.”
Hong Wu nodded. “Rare-earth mining and time-share condos.”
“Arkady knows the territory,” Ash said. “I’ve worked with him before.”
Hong Wu nodded a second time. “We know. The police here say he’s reputable even though he comes from Petrograd.”
The last Soviet Socialist Republic, which remained here on Venus long after the collapse of the USSR, an enclave of out-of-date politics on the larger of the two Venusian continents. She liked Arkady, even though he was a Leninist. The heart hath its reasons that reason knoweth not. “Are you willing to hire him?”
“Yes,” Hong Wu said.
The rest of the conversation was details. Hong Wu left finally. Ash ordered another beer.
The bartender asked, “What was that about?”
“Work.”
“He looked like a petunia.”
“He is an employer, and we will be respectful.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The bartender grinned, showing metal teeth.
She finished the beer and walked home through winter rain, not hurrying. Her parka was waterproof, and the streets were covered with mud that had washed down from eroded hillsides. Half the streetlights were out. It would be easy to slip on the badly lit, uneven surface. She hated getting muddy. Even more, she hated looking vulnerable.
The buildings she passed were concrete and low: row houses for families and barracks for single workers. Graffiti crawled over them, most of it dark and slow moving. Here and there were tags written in more expensive spray that jittered and sparkled. “REVOLUTION NOW,” one said in glowing red letters. “F U, F U, F U,” another said in flashing yellow. The tags wouldn’t last downtown, where the ambiance cops would cover them, but here—
There were shanties and tents in the supposedly empty lots, mostly hidden by vegetation. You could see them if you knew how to look. Some folks did not like living in barracks, and some didn’t have the money to pay bed-rent.
She turned a corner next to a lot full of tall, feathery pseudograss. In daylight, it would have been deep green, edged with purple. Now it was as black as the graffiti on the nearest building. In the street ahead, a pack of piglike amphibianoids nosed around a Dumpster. Mostly not dangerous, in spite of their impressive tusks and claws. Ash paused. The matriarch of the pack eyed her for a moment, then grunted and lumbered away. The rest followed, leaving heaps of dung.
Her place was past the Dumpster: a two-floor row house. A light shone over the door, making it possible for her to see the land scorpion resting on the step. More than anything else, it looked like the ancient sea scorpions of Earth: broad, flat, segmented, and ugly. Instead of swimming paddles, it had many legs. This one was dull green and as long as her foot. Most likely it wasn’t venomous. The toxic species advertised the fact with bright colors. Nonetheless, she stepped on it firmly, hearing the crack of its exoskeleton breaking, then scraped her boot on the edge of the step.
She unlocked the door and yelled a greeting to the family on the first floor. Bangladeshi. The smell of their curries filled the house; and if she was lucky, they invited her to dinner. Tonight she was too late. Ash climbed the stairs and unlocked another door. Lights came on. Baby, her pet pterosaur, called, “Hungry.”
She pulled off her boots and put a stick of chow in Baby’s cage. The pterosaur dug in.
Of course, the animal was not a real pterosaur. Life on Earth and Venus had been evolving separately for hundreds of millions—maybe billions—of years. But it had skin wings stretched over finger bones, a big head, and a small, light body. Pale yellow fuzz covered it, except around its eyes, where its skin was bare and red. A crest of feathers adorned Baby’s head, down at present. When up, the feathers were long and narrow, looking like spines or stiff hairs; and they were bright, iridescent blue.
Some people—mostly middle-class—used the Latin names for the local life. But people on the hill called them after the Earth life they most resembled.