But they have electronics, their own communication system, weather forecasting, science, art, and wildly sophisticated politics, which one would expect from a clan-based society.
Their interpersonal relationships are immensely complicated by their proliferation of genders, from post-male/female (once they are no longer fertile and breeding, Venerians essentially lose their sexual identity and plumbing), to active male and female and the prepubescent versions of both, though Venerian puberty seems quite protracted, likely another result of the long life spans.
The only advantage Terrestrians truly seem to possess is space travel, and even here superiority is suspect: the antipodal clans dominating the southern hemisphere’s Twi-Lands have smaller seas and a clear history of aviation and other technological development. It is rumored that these clans had developed space travel … many thousands of years in the past … and have even traveled to Earth! (This rumor led to dozens of wild speculations about shared Terrestrian-Venerian evolution … Jor always assumed the Venerians are a branch of the main Terrestrian trunk, but in truth it could just as easily have been the other way around.)
But they had abandoned the whole business, so the story goes. Abdera claimed that while it might be, she didn’t know. “Our clans don’t share.”
Given that until shortly before they met those clans had been actively at war, Jor believes her.
And these are just the Venerians Jor knows, the clans of the Bright Sea.
Before he leaves for what he hopes will be a completely distracting several hours, Jor makes one final pass through his in-box, where he finds a plain note saying, “Northern Jungle today.” It is just the sort of anonymous message he receives daily, some from his team or underlings, but just as frequently from Tuttle’s inner circle.
During his first years on the second planet, he had largely worked with crews hoping to tame the Northern Jungle, to use another Terrestrian name that was wildly inadequate.
The Terrestrian Authority, in its master plan, had hoped to create a land route to the Highlands, the rounded, mineral-rich mountains to the north, unreachable by sea skiff. (Air transport was possible but uneconomical, given the size and number of cargo planes that would have to be built after their materials had been sent across interplanetary space; D’Yquem had once shown Jor the figures and the projected profit point was five hundred years in the future.) This meant a brute force assault on … trees with wood so rugged it broke saws.
The Northern Jungle did not want to be conquered. And it wasn’t.
Then the Lens was approved and the TA happily attacked in a new direction. “No wonder the Venerians sat back and smiled as we hacked up their jungle,” D’Yquem said.
Jor waits for his visiphone to warm up, feeling appreciative toward D’Yquem, who had lobbied hard with the TA staff and even with parties back on Earth to acquire six of the devices, planning to link them to his computational device.
Four of the machines had been scooped up by the TA, where, as far as Jor knew, they were being used as paperweights or dust collectors. D’Yquem had the fifth.
The material available on the visiphone is limited, primarily financial documents such as ledgers and budgets, but D’Yquem had equipped it with the ability to display images, too.
Jor searches for the Northern Jungle Road, finding half a dozen images that date back to his time as a tree-topper and ’dozer driver. But then a new one appears, showing a location much like those of a dozen years past.
He wishes for the ability to place two images side by side; lacking that, his eyes are good enough to tell him.
Every trace of the road has vanished. All the heaping mounds of chopped and rotted wood, leaves, and vines are gone. If not for the label on the image stating that it was Authority Roadway #1, and the fact that he recognizes a particular trio of peaks in the distance, Jor could believe that he is viewing some other part of the Northern Jungle—or the southern one.
A minor question … who took this picture? He looked at the logging data at the bottom of the screen: D’Yquem himself!
Jor realizes that if the Venerians are that serious about returning a remote location like Authority Roadway #1 to its original state … they must be serious about their Sunset of Time.
The final image shows him something even more surprising: Abdera.
Jor walks to the landing very slowly, though with the Terrestrian traffic light and the reloquere work largely complete, there is no reason.
Other than fatigue. Shock. Betrayal.
He reminds himself that seeing D’Yquem and Abdera together means nothing, even if the location is remote. Even if D’Yquem made it clear that he barely knew the Venerian female.
Jor’s “girlfriend.”
The landing was where Jor had first seen Abdera, and where they had spent most of their public time. It was a port to rival New Orleans or San Francisco, those being the two earthly equivalents best known to Jor, with skiffs of many shapes and differing sizes arriving to be unloaded with an elegance that suggested a ballet.
Surrounded by the aromas of sweet, then spicy, then unknowable cooking from small ancient shops lining the uneven quay, kelp and weed and sea beasts were swiftly transferred from skiff to warehouse to shop to land-bound transport with few words and optimum action from the teams of mature male and female Venerians.
It was always a setting that soothed Jor’s mind, calmed his jittery nature. If only Earth had been like this—
This day, however, is different. Not only is he troubled by his suspicions about Abdera and D’Yquem, but the landing seems subdued, empty. The number of skiffs is perhaps a third what it should be. The buzz of activity—never high—seems nonexistent.
There are fewer Venerians.
“I long to go back to the skiffs.” Abdera’s voice, behind him. She has performed her usual trick of appearing by magic.
“I never knew you were on them,” Jor says. “In them.”
She links arms. “All of us work the skiffs at a certain stage in our lives. No matter our differences, we always have the Bright Sea.”
“Sounds lovely.”
“It is actually insanely difficult work that kills more of my clan than anything else.” She turns to him. “But it binds us.”
Jor cannot raise the subject of D’Yquem. He doesn’t want to hear the answer. “Why did your clansmen try to destroy the Lens?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“You must have some information or insight.”
“Jordan, you and I have more in common than I do with a Venerian male.” It takes Jor a moment to realize that Abdera is talking about emotional commonality, not physical or biological.
“Don’t you even know them?”
“Yes, they were members of my clan. Yes, I knew their names. Yes, I have farmed with them. But I had no interaction with them, no exchanges of words or gestures—we have not shared a skiff. I don’t know what motivated them. And why does it matter? They’re dead now.”
“I had nothing to do with that—”
She puts her arms around him. “I know you better than that. I know you would be fierce in protecting the Lens, but you are not a killer.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“There is no need. Greater powers will balance the scale.” Suddenly she is staring out to sea. A human woman would shade her eyes, Jor thinks. Of course, Abdera is Venerian—and there is no sun to require shading. “And I could have warned you.”
“You knew about the attack?”
“Not the specifics. But you can’t keep secrets within the clan; I knew there would be an action at the Lens.
“Among the other secrets that can’t be kept within the clan is my relationship with you …” She turns back to him. “The seniors locked me up.”
“How did you get out? Oh.” The torn sari.