“It was more humiliating than painful. It was also … difficult emotionally. I was betraying my clan.”
“I wish you had. We’d have been saved a lot of pointless trouble.”
“Yet your Lens survives.”
“You disapprove? After all this time?”
“My clan welcomed you, allowed you to build. I made you a friend.”
“So you don’t disapprove. Then—”
“It’s Sunset. It approaches.” She indicates the flattened, empty waste that Venus Port is becoming. Her whole manner says: the Sunset changes everything.
“What about us?” Jor points to the four Terrestrian towers and, visible beyond that, the blunt noses of three ships at the spaceport.
Jor senses that Abdera is withdrawing. Nevertheless, he presses. “We’re still going to be here. So … what about us?”
“I think,” she says, “that our joy is ended.”
And then she turns to walk away.
Jor could follow her. But he feels paralyzed.
He does not go to 13-Plus that night. He has no wish to confront D’Yquem, not without hearing Abdera’s side of things.
And he cannot act as if he knows nothing.
Fortunately, he has a good supply of brue in his quarters in the third tower.
That night, thrashing in bed between drunken collapse and sleep—or in that darker moment after waking up, head throbbing, mouth dry, eyes aching—Jor thinks about those hours at the controls of a D-9 caterpillar, one of only three on Venus, attacking the brush and branches. Or even his time as a topper, climbing high on the giant trees armed only with a handsaw.
In spite of the crude, drunken, incompetent companions, the sizzling heat and humidity (the D-9 had a pressurized, climate-controlled cab); native Venerian animals that burrowed under the rudimentary road and undermined it when they weren’t dropping things on it; vicious bugs the size of small aircraft that never seemed to move except in swarms the size of buildings; roots that seemed to grow back within minutes of being cut, and the mud … the endless, thick, sucking madness of the Northern Jungle’s mud, the squalling rain—
Jor thinks of those days as free and happy.
He is a Lennox, Chicago-based engineers and builders for two centuries. He has many memories of his father Miller pointing from the front yard of their home on the North Shore to the city skyline, identifying seven different buildings from the Lennox shop. “There is room for more,” he said then, offering the challenge to Jor’s older brothers Liam and Karl.
As the third of three brothers, Jor’s problems at school and his utter lack of interest in the family trade made him a candidate for emigration to Venus.
Where, finally away from his family, he had no expectations to fulfill … only a simple job to do, chopping, ’dozing, and adding to the vast heaps of green trash by the side of the road.
The next morning is spent personally supervising repairs to the Lens dish on the high platform. He also recalibrates the aiming and steering controls, confirming their functionality—Sunset of Time be damned. The work is all-consuming, exhausting, and frustrating, driving all thought of Abdera from his mind.
On the plus side of the ledger, as always his hangover is vaporized by the exertion. By the end of the extended workday, Jor is spinning and sputtering as usual … and frantic to return to the 13-Plus and the inevitable confrontation with D’Yquem.
He prepares to descend from the instrument platform, where some riggers are grimly raising replacement panels while others totter precariously atop ladders and crude scaffolding trimming the jagged ends of the hole caused by the blast. Only then does he take a moment to look west, toward the endless swampy plains that lead to Nightside … at the mounds of excess material excreted (there is no better word) by the Terrestrian occupation.
They seem smaller. Squinting in the twilight, he thinks he can see humanoid figures moving near and even atop the heaps. At this distance, with his eyes, it is impossible to know whether they are Terrestrian or Venerian.
Surely not the latter, not after the attack—
“Oh no, TA’s resolve popped like a soap bubble,” D’Yquem says, twenty minutes later.
“They’re letting the Venerians take everything?”
“Why not?” He drinks, and Jor notes that D’Yquem’s hand shakes. “It’s their garbage.”
“Not all of it,” Jor says. “A good percentage includes material from Earth.”
“Who needs it? Let the Venerians have the, ah, metal shavings, torn fabric, odd bits of this and that, broken furniture, and, oh yes, food by-products, such as whatever our favorite bruemaster has left over when his alchemy is done.” D’Yquem smirks. “I think it’s also where the organic waste from the residence goes, if you’re truly concerned—”
“Be serious.”
“You are years too late in suggesting that.” He has drained his glass and is already filling another. Jor sees again how shaky he is.
“Did you start without me?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re trembling.”
“Nonsense.”
Jor knows that voice and chooses not to pursue the matter. He had arrived at 13-Plus and sat down with D’Yquem as he had for years, launching right into the latest TA stupidity.
Which must be pursued to its conclusion. Anything to postpone the painful conversation about Abdera. “Why would TA reward the Venerians for their bad behavior?”
“Perhaps to compensate for our own?” Jor thinks of the five dead premales. “Besides,” D’Yquem says, “it is unsightly and unhealthy and better for the Venerians to take it off into the wilderness and bury it. Or remake it into jewelry or clothing … I don’t care, as long as I don’t have to look at it. Or talk about it anymore.”
That is a clear message: change the subject. But, in addition to the Lennox family’s emotional distance, Jor has the mulishness, too. It is difficult to move him when he isn’t ready to be moved.
“What do you think about this whole Sunset business?”
D’Yquem smirks. “If it’s good enough for your girlfriend—”
Jor lets that pass for now. “So you admit the possibility that Venus might rotate again.”
“There’s Rostov. Let’s ask him.”
D’Yquem nods toward a burly Terrestrian in his fifties, droopy-eyed, sad-faced, drinking alone at the bar.
With an EQ totaling 12, Serge Rostov is not technically eligible for entry into 13-Plus, but Petros isn’t complaining, not with business down this day. Nor, in a departure from his normal role as EQ judge and jury, is D’Yquem.
“Rostov, my child,” D’Yquem says, as he and Jor approach.
“Fuck off.” Rostov doesn’t even look at D’Yquem. Jor has no idea what has caused this hostility—beyond D’Yquem’s noted ability to get people angry at him.
“Serge,” Jor says. “Given all that’s happened … this whole Sunset business.”
Forgetting his anger, Rostov laughs. He is an impulsive man given to emotional outbursts, quickly forgotten. “What do you want me to tell you, Mr. Rational Engineer? The expected, the predictable? ‘Our science shows no evidence that Venus ever turned. It is a world that has never seen a sunset.’ You’re a sensible man.” Even though he no longer seems overtly angry at D’Yquem, Rostov addresses his remarks only to Jor.
“I hope so,” Jor says. “But I thought the Venerians were sensible, too—”
“Some are, some are not.” And here, if Jor is not mistaken, Rostov actually leers. “Some see us as invaders and take any excuse to strike back.”
“So the attack is political. The religious business is just a cover.”
“That is the sensible conclusion.” Obviously eager to end the conversation, he turns to Petros to order another drink.
“Let me get that,” Jor says. His reward is a dissatisfied sigh from D’Yquem.
But now Rostov is obligated. “Look,” he says. “I was originally trained in astronomy. TA has encouraged me to broaden my interests and specialties to include geology or—”