“Venereology?” D’Yquem says brightly. He cannot stop himself, no matter the circumstances.
“We have taken core samples. We have done our surveys. We have mapped Venus from Equilateral—and created a radar map, too.
“The Venerians claim that there have been many sunsets in their recorded history. For that to be true, their recorded history would have to span 500 million years. Our fossil and geological record goes cold beyond that.”
“Well, they are unusually long-lived,” D’Yquem chirps. Rostov ignores him.
“So this is just another myth,” Jor says. Like the Christianity of the Lennoxes.
“So it would seem. Though it is a powerful one that is uniform across all the clans and controls their actions.” Like the Christianity of the Lennoxes!
Jor had begun to feel reassured. Now he’s wavering. “What are you saying?”
“I am not an orthodox man,” Rostov says, shrugging. “As you know from my EQ.”
“Unorthodox enough to suggest that we should be worried?”
Now Rostov smiles, revealing jagged, steel teeth that make him look savage rather than sagelike. “Why worry about things you can’t change? If the sunset happens, if the planet somehow magically begins to rotate … the damage would be indescribable. Earthquakes, tsunamis, eruptions. The only safe place would be Equilateral.” He points to the ceiling.
“This is idiocy,” D’Yquem says.
Rostov acts as though D’Yquem is addressing his remarks to someone else.
But Jor cannot resist. “Which part? His willingness to consider the possibility, or—”
“His description of the event is ludicrous. This worldwide catastrophe. He makes it sound biblical.”
“Please, friend D’Yquem,” Rostov says, engaging the computationist for the first time. “Share your vision of this hypothetical event.”
D’Yquem glances at Jor, as if to say, this is all your fault. Jor notices that D’Yquem’s hands are no longer shaking … and that he is ignoring his empty glass. “Stipulate that the Venerian myth is true, that every few thousand years their world moves. I’ve actually seen a paper—suppressed now, of course—that suggests that Venus isn’t tide-locked, but that it merely has a very slow and irregular period—”
“—Which is nonsense,” Rostov says. “Not the concept … the idea that the paper was suppressed.”
“Perhaps not in your circles,” D’Yquem says.
“I don’t care about that,” Jor says, growing angrier.
“Stipulating,” D’Yquem says, “we must then accept the idea that the Sunset is not a world-wrecking catastrophe but far less damaging. After all,” he says, “if it had the ability to rearrange the surface of the planet, to wipe out all life … why are the Venerians still here?”
At that moment everyone in 13-Plus feels the tower shudder. Jor fears that it’s another attack on the Lens but soon realizes that it’s the rain. A sudden squall has blown in from the Bright Sea, so strong it rattles the windows of the bar.
Conversation ceases. Even Petros pauses in his work, glancing, like Jor, toward the big window, where the view of Venus Port from on high has vanished, replaced by sheets of water and roiling black clouds.
Jor wants to leave. It isn’t fear; he’s not afraid that 13-Plus will be damaged. It’s just the situation … the storm, the crowd, the growing sense of a sour smell all around him, which he blames on Rostov. He hates speculations, preferring facts. His emotions are confused, too. And all of this is likely due to last night’s events, the lack of sleep, and the stress of the situation with Abdera and D’Yquem.
He thanks Rostov and abruptly heads for the door. He realizes that what is really driving him is a desire to be out of D’Yquem’s presence. In fact, for the first time in fifteen years, he no longer wants to be a Terrestrian on Venus at all.
D’Yquem catches him before he reaches the elevator. “Where are you going?”
“My flat.”
“Retreating is so unlike you.” It is usually D’Yquem, veteran of ten thousand drunken evenings, who calls a halt to the festivities. Jor will sit there until staggering.
“I’m tired.”
“Actually, you’re angry. Not quite the same.”
“Rostov—”
“Is a bore. Which I told you. Worse yet, he’s a fairly stupid one. At least he could know his science.”
“It doesn’t seem that anyone actually knows the science.”
“Of Sunset? There is no science, that’s the problem.”
Jor feels dizzy and nauseous. “What do you think?”
“Haven’t I made that clear? I’m quite open to the idea.”
“Your open-mindedness doesn’t extend to, I don’t know, making emergency plans.”
“Jor, there can’t be any plans, only evacuation. And then only at gunpoint. The flight here was so monstrous for most of us that getting back into those ships”—he points toward the spaceport, where three squat, shell-shaped vehicles wait—“is like being pushed off the top of a tower. Risking death only to escape certain death.”
“So we can’t do anything?”
D’Yquem grins. “Oh, we can resume drinking.”
For the first time in their friendship, drowning in this tidal wave of betrayal, smugness, intransigence, Jor wants to punch D’Yquem. He grabs his shoulder, about to turn him. But D’Yquem sees what’s coming and raises an arm to block it. “You’re being tiresome.”
“Then I’ve always been tiresome.”
“No. You used to be interesting in a perfectly American manner, treating your forced exile here as some kind of fresh start.” D’Yquem is pointing at him now, accusing him like a prosecutor. “Given your background, that was not surprising—and part of the fun of knowing you has been watching to see if you might be correct. You’ve almost finished the Lens, and that will surely expand the Terrestrian presence—
“Or, well, it would have, except for the pesky Venerians and their superior knowledge of their own world … and their remarkable long-range planning, of which we suspect little and truly know nothing.”
“You suspected, obviously.”
“Only out of habit. Given my own family and its history, I would have had to be much stupider to fail to be suspicious of everything I see or to expect that everyone is keeping secrets.”
“Or betraying a friend.”
“Ah, well, yes. I can understand why you might see it that way.”
“I realize it’s too much to expect an apology,” Jor says. “But can’t you even acknowledge your mistake?”
D’Yquem takes an unusual amount of time to respond. When he speaks, his voice is harsh. “What makes you think I had any choice in the matter? Or that any Terrestrian has any control over his destiny on Venus? That we can take any action that will have any effect?” He laughs bitterly. “We are just being swept along like … like weed on the Bright Sea, my friend. Not just me: you, too.”
He turns and staggers. Jor realizes that his former friend is drunker than he’s ever seen him. Given the number of times they have shared brue, and the amounts, this is shocking.
Could he be telling the truth?
“Oh, by the way,” D’Yquem said. “After you left, that idiot Russian confirmed it. The Sun is not only visible now, it’s lower in the sky.”
And then he enters the elevator. Jor lets the doors close. He doesn’t want to go with him.
By the time Jor reaches the ground floor and prepares to leave, the storm has passed. The rain has returned to its expected state of hot drizzle. Emerging from the 13-Plus tower and heading toward his residence, he feels unusually alone.
And no wonder. There is no Terrestrian traffic at all—the immigrants from Earth are all tucked into their towers. And the Venerian presence is nonexistent, too, with shops largely gone or certainly abandoned … streets empty and, in fact, no longer streets but merely tracked areas between larger untracked ones.