The Lens tower looms even taller in the near distance. Jor is drawn to it, following the pathway toward it that takes him between the two residence towers.
Then he hears his name. “Jordan!”
Abdera steps forward. She has clearly been waiting some time; even her waterproof Venerian garb couldn’t stand up to that storm. She is soaked, her hair plastered to her skull … making her look definitively alien.
Yet, the voice is the same.
“What do you want?” he asks. “To apologize?”
“No.”
“To explain, then.” He can’t keep the sarcasm from his voice.
“Impossible.”
“Then why are you standing in the rain?”
“To honor what we had,” she says.
“I can’t do that.” He wants to recall their times together, but it’s as if D’Yquem’s shadow hides them.
“One day you will.”
And, as if this is all she wanted to say, she turns. Now Jor grabs for her. “Is that it? You stood in the rain to tell me nothing?”
“No, to see you one more time.”
“You’re leaving.”
“It’s Sunset.”
“You could have warned me.”
And now she laughs. “I have warned you. All of us have warned you. Since the day Terrestrians arrived, we have been engaged in the reloquere! Yet you continued to build.”
“Is that why you cheated with D’Yquem?” he says, struggling to find a motive. “Because I built the Lens?”
She gives him the Venerian stare. “I wanted you to build your Lens,” she says. “And you should go to it.”
Then she leaves, turning abruptly and without breaking into a run, moving so quickly that Jor couldn’t possibly catch her.
She is headed for the landing, where skiffs still bob on the tide.
Jor watches her. He feels as he did when Njeri told him she must return to Africa—times ten. And yet, how foolish to think they had a future. Venerian and Terrestrian. This moment was inevitable; only the details remained to be determined.
He can’t go back to his residence yet. So he will grasp for the last moment of his relationship with Abdera … will take her advice.
And go to his Lens.
By the time he has reached the top, he has worked himself into a proper Lennox-style rage. First, he finds that the security team is not on duty—called off by Tuttle? Or simply having deserted their posts due to a storm?
Jor would have returned to the towers to find them, but not before assuring himself that the Lens is secure.
And it is, controls caged and ready. Giant dish strong and steady, glistening from its recent bath.
Jor looks to the east, toward the Bright Sea. D’Yquem told the truth: not only is the Sun visible, it is notably lower in the sky.
The shallow water of the Venus Port delta is receding, too, carrying with it the last of the Venerian skiffs, Abdera’s clan, and Abdera.
As it goes, so does Jor’s spirit. He is enough of an engineer to know what this means … soon there will be a wall of water, how tall? It really won’t matter. Even though he is hundreds of feet high, the violence of the crashing wave is likely to destroy the Lens tower.
And all of the Terrestrian quarter of Venus Port.
The evening is clear; he can see the four towers, their windows lit. Do those fools know what’s happening? D’Yquem was right; no one believed. No one prepared. They would only head for the three ships at the spaceport if their towers fell on them.
Suddenly Jor has an idea.
He enters the control station and powers it up.
The Lens controls that are designed to focus transmission beams work just as well on the visible spectrum … and now, with the sun making its first appearance in the Venerian sky, Jor moves the Lens.
It takes precious minutes, but eventually he has it in the right position, taking the light from the new sun and focusing it on the four Terrestrian towers.
Then he narrows the beam, increasing the light and, more to the point, the heat.
He knows the materials used in the construction of the towers, how truly fragile they are. (TA’s famed cheapness. Having the surface be waterproof was sufficient.)
The tops of two residence towers ignite, meaning that Jor’s residence in one will soon be ablaze … and so will D’Yquem’s in the other. Then the third tower, the oldest one, Tuttle’s TA headquarters.
Finally the fourth, site of 13-Plus. Jor regrets that, but only for a moment.
The air must be changing, because he believes he can hear not only sizzling and crackling as the top floors begin to burn, but alarms.
He hopes for alarms.
He knows there is a chance he is injuring or killing Terrestrians, not motivating them to save themselves. At this moment, frankly, it doesn’t really matter.
The water continues to recede, exposing a muddy sea bottom identical to the muddy plains Jor has crossed so many times on Venus. He tries to see, but clouds are forming to the east … soon they will boil high enough to cover the setting sun.
He looks up at the Lens, tweaks his aim. Then looks to the towers. There is a swirling layer of fog rolling in not from the sea, but from the west, obscuring Jor’s view of the base of the towers. But shifting light and shadows there suggest that people are gathered … that they are in motion.
And now the wind kicks up from the west—quite strongly. A sudden gust rattles the platform so violently that Jor is knocked down.
He rises to reaim the Lens, thinking of the disappointment on Earth at the loss of the Terrestrian base … at the thousands or tens of thousands with high EQs who will not be shipped off-planet.
He is wondering why he has no sympathy for their plight when he sees the beginnings of a giant wave forming in the Bright Sea … and is struck by a piece of the Lens structure as it comes apart in the wind.
When he regains consciousness, he is in orbit, at Equilateral, strapped to the floor of a cabin whose four bunks are already filled with the injured. He feels cold, as if pulled from the ocean—and possibly he was. His head hurts. He is hungry.
“Welcome back,” D’Yquem says from the open hatch. He, too, is injured, both hands bandaged. In spite of their last encounters, Jor is happy to see his friend.
Happy to see anyone, in fact.
“Some of us made it,” he says.
“Most Terrestrians did reach the spaceport ahead of the wave,” D’Yquem says. “Which was fortunately on higher ground than Venus Port. Everyone jammed in and took off so close to the waves that we generated a considerable amount of steam.
“But the tricky part was reaching Equilateral here. The station wasn’t in position for rendezvous, so all the ships had to linger in orbit for two days until calculations could be made.” And here he smiles his smug D’Yquem smile. “If they had one of my devices, they could have solved the problem in half an hour.”
“How was I rescued? I was nowhere near the ships.”
“We had to go back for you three days later. One ship was able to find dry land again and set down. Fortunately the Lens still stands. You were quite a mess, unconscious when you weren’t delirious. But even Tuttle insisted that you had to be found.”
“So the Lens—”
“Minimal damage, frankly. With a bit of work, it would be ready for transmissions from Earth on schedule.” D’Yquem smiles. “Of course, it is now located in the middle of an inland sea that will soon, Rostov predicts, become an ice field in the new Nightside of Venus.”
Jor thinks of Abdera, adrift in the fleet of skiffs. “What about the Venerians?”
“They were able to ride out the wave, as apparently they have done many times in the past.”
Jor absorbs this news. “One more thing,” D’Yquem says. “I regret not telling you before, but I wasn’t sure until I had time to talk with Rostov again, and to examine the past—”