Old Venus Read online

  The other diners were openly staring at them, and not, for once, because they were the only two women in the room. Katya wore the shirt and cargo pants in which she’d been released; her mother wore a severely cut white suit that emphasized her slim figure, and her trademark, red-framed glasses.

  “You weren’t wrong, dear,” she said. “The men had been infected by something that drove them mad.”

  “But it wasn’t a bug or a parasite. And it didn’t have anything to do with the pigs. And we have only circumstantial evidence that it had anything to do with the fish.”

  It had taken several weeks of tests in the naval hospital to determine that the miners had been infected by a kind of prion: an infectious agent that closely resembled a misfolded version of a protein found in neurons in the amygdala, the small subcortical structure in the brain that regulated both fear and pleasure responses. The prion catalyzed the misfolding of those proteins, creating an imbalance of neurotransmitters and triggering an exaggerated version of the fight-or-flight reaction and release of massive amounts of adrenaline and other hormones. The psychotic breaks and hallucinations suffered by the miners had been attempts to rationalize uncontrollable emotional thunderstorms.

  Katya wanted very much to prove that the prion had been present in the blood of the fish which had beached themselves. As for the pigs, they had been infected by a parasitic threadworm, but it had only affected their respiratory systems and did not seem to be transmissible to humans. She had been right in thinking that the miners’ madness was due to an infection, but had gotten every detail wrong because she had based her ideas on terrestrial examples. She had made the mistake of arguing from analogy, of trying to map stories from Earth on the actuality of Venus, and the fit had been imperfect.

  “I saw two different things,” she told her mother, “and tried to make them part of the same story. Captain Chernov was right about that, at least.”

  “He was wrong about everything else. And you are too hard on yourself,” her mother said fondly.

  “I wonder where I got that from?”

  “Can the poor men you rescued be cured?”

  “They’re under heavy sedation and undergoing cognitive therapy. They’re no longer scared to death, but purging the prions from their brains won’t be easy.”

  “It sounds as if you have found a new project.”

  “I’m wondering if it’s a general problem,” Katya said. “This particular prion caused a gross behavioral change, but there may be others that have more subtle effects. We think that we are separate from the biosphere of Venus, yet it is clear that we are not. All of us, Russians, Americans, British, we have more in common with each other than with the people from our homelands. We came from Earth, but we are all Venusians now. Venus is in our blood, and our minds.”

  “So you have a new research topic, and a new way of getting into trouble,” her mother said. “What about this new man of yours?”

  “We’re taking it slowly. He forgave me, at least, for giving him a bad concussion and injuring his pride.”

  Although Arkadi had said, the first time they had met in quarantine, that if he had been piloting the drone, he would have had no problem returning the favor.

  “A man who puts love before pride,” her mother said. “Now there’s a lovely example of a new way of thinking.”

  MATTHEW HUGHES

  Matthew Hughes was born in Liverpool, England, but spent most of his adult life in Canada. He’s worked as a journalist, as a staff speechwriter for the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia before settling down to write fiction full-time. Clearly strongly influenced by Jack Vance, as an author Hughes has made his reputation detailing the adventures of rogues like Henghis Hapthorn, Guth Bandar, and Luff Imbry, who live in the era just before that of The Dying Earth, in a series of popular stories and novels that include Fools Errant, Fool Me Twice, Black Brillion, Majestrum, Hespira, The Spiral Labyrinth, Template, Quartet and Triptych, The Yellow Cabochon, The Other, and The Commons, with his stories being collected in The Gist Hunter and Other Stories. His most recent books are the novels in his Urban Fantasy Hell and Back trilogy, The Damned Busters and Costume Not Included, and Hell to Pay. He also writes crime fiction as Matt Hughes and media tie-in novels as Hugh Matthews.

  In the deliciously sly tale that follows, he takes us to Venus, the Planet of Love, to show us that while Love might be an irresistible force, sometimes it’s a good idea to give resisting it your very best shot.

  Greeves and the Evening Star

  MATTHEW HUGHES

  I THREW BACK THE COVERS AND SAT UP. “GREEVES,” I SAID, “I had the most bally awful dream.”

  “I am sorry to hear it, sir.”

  He handed me the morning cup and saucer and I took the sip without which the Gloster day cannot begin. The ordinary day, that is, in the common run of things, not the kind of day that follows a night of revelry and riot at the Inertia Club, when one awakes with the sense that death is not only imminent but cannot arrive soon enough.

  “I dreamt that Baldie Spotts-Binkle had lured me onto Slithy Tove-Whippley’s homemade rocket ship, battened down the hatch, if battened’s the word I want …”

  “It is, sir.”

  “Right ho … and then we’d blasted off for Venus—not the statue, mind, but the evening star itself—and that we’d slept like that Winkle chap for months on end before pitching up at Baldie’s estate in the middle of the most dismal swamp imaginable.”

  Greeves inclined his head in a manner I recognized as conveying sympathy. I plowed on, the dream as real to me as the vital oolong of which I now took a second, fortifying draught. “It was a place steeped in gloom where the sun never shows its face, all stagnant pools and sluggish streams, with only the occasional dab of what we might call solid earth.”

  “Oh, dear, sir.”

  “Ah well,” I said, motioning with my unencumbered hand to indicate that the unpleasant figments were fast dwindling in life’s rearview mirror. “Draw the curtains, will you, Greeves, and admit the smiles of rosy-fingered—”

  “Sir, you must prepare yourself for a disagreeable prospect,” he said.

  “Rain?” I hazarded a guess. “Stiff winds?”

  “Not the winds,” he said, throwing aside the heavy cloths to reveal panes streaked with rivulets whose flows were perpetually interrupted by the impact of freshly arrived droplets the size of marbles.

  I rose from the bed and went to the window. It can justly be said that while Bartholomew Gloster may occasionally be surprised, and now and then, when circumstances so conspire, even awestruck, it is rare that he is actually staggered.

  Yet I was staggered by the view from the window. The cup and saucer fell unnoticed from a nerveless hand, though not unnoticed by the ever-vigilant Greeves, who deftly caught them without the spilling of a drop.

  “I say, Greeves,” I said, “I mean to say.” Though what I meant to say, I did not know. It was scarcely a moment for the mot juste.

  “Indeed, sir.”

  As far as the eye could stretch, whatever wasn’t gray was green, and whatever wasn’t green was gray. Even so, every green was well tinged by the gray. And all was being relentlessly battered from above by unending bucketloads of rain.

  “This,” I declared, “will not do.”

  Greeves agreed. “Most disturbing, sir.”

  There sprang into my mind, like Athena springing from the brow of Zeus, only the other way round, a plan. First, a bath; then breakfast; then a brisk and businesslike dialogue with Baldie, leading to the earliest possible embarkation on Slithy’s contraption; and so to home.

  I gathered myself and issued instructions. Greeves moved out of view, and, an instant later, I heard water running in the bathroom. “Right,” I said, shedding the pajamas like a snake with a pressing agenda while figuratively girding myself for strife. “And off we go.”

  —–—

 
“Baldie,” I said, over the remains of a remarkably large kipper and an even larger than remarkable egg, “we must speak.”

  “Agreed, Bartie,” he said. “It’s why I had Slithy bring you.”

  I should pause briefly to furnish a sketch of Archibald Spotts-Binkle, the better to focus the reader’s inner eye on the proceedings. Imagine a fish in a fairy-godmother tale, magically transformed into a man afflicted with horn-rimmed specs, except that the f-g in question has skimped on the incantation, so that the transmogrification was only nine parts out of ten. Bulbous eyes, protruding lips that are ever moist, glabrous skin with just a hint of scaliness. Now add a voice that sounds like the product of a child’s first involuntary sawings at the violin, and you have Baldie taped and targeted. Thus it would come as no surprise to discover that the sole abiding passion of his existence has been a fascination with newts.

  This was the pallid apparition that blinked dully at me across the breakfast table as I unburdened myself of a few trenchant observations on the damage done to a lifelong friendship by a “ruddy shanghaiing off to a sodden planet one wouldn’t wish on one’s direst foe.”

  When in distress, it was Baldie’s habit to draw his neck into his meager shoulders to a depth greater than ought to have been anatomically possible. The effect was rather like that of a fish trying on an impression of a turtle. He performed this maneuver now, and I formed the view that once I ceased beleaguering him, he would advance a suitably penitent apology, allowing me to be magnanimous in victory, as befits my nature.

  I therefore softened my tone and relinquished the floor, although as we were sitting I’m not sure exactly what I was relinquishing. But, instead of tendering his regrets, my old chum thrust his narrow neck back out of concealment, and said, “Oh, fie, Bartie!”

  “Fie?” I said. I am often taken aback when confronted by raw injustice.

  “Yes, fie!” he returned. “And double fie at that!”

  “Steady on, Baldie,” I said. “Bear in mind that some fies, once launched, can ne’er be recalled.”

  He elevated his negligible chin. “I don’t care, Bartie,” he told me. “It’s all meaningless, else.”

  “Else what?”

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  The bulging eyes blinked several times. “Stop repeating what I say!” he snapped. “This is no time for childish games!”

  “Childish games?” I said. “Well, I must say, that’s a bit over the top, coming from a fellow who would have a dashed hard time demonstrating that he’s reached man’s estate!”

  His pale skin grew even paler and flecks of spittle appeared on his lower lip. I experienced a sudden memory of the only time Baldie Spotts-Binkle, in our long-ago school days, had lost his rag while being bullied by Roderick Bass-Humptingdon, a thug in an Eton collar who reigned over the junior form in much the same way Tiglath-Pileser, if that’s the bloke I want, had lorded it over the Ten Lost Tribes. I remembered piercing shrieks and a flailing of stick-thin limbs, like a stringed puppet whose master is overcome by a fit of apoplexy. All ending, of course, in tears, Bass-Humptingdon’s schoolyard sobriquet of Basher being well earned.

  But, here in Baldie’s breakfast room, the anticipated frenzy did not occur. Instead, he burst into tears, then buried his snuffles in his cold, long-fingered hands. It was a good thing I had already breakfasted since here was a sight to quell the appetite of a Cyclops.

  “Steady on, Baldie,” I said for the second time in mere moments, but my tone was now softer. Bartie Gloster might be able to summon the stern eye and the censorious word as warranted, but when an old pal breaks down and blubs across the breakfast table, the better angels sit up and seize the reins. Admittedly, I waffled a bit as to whether I should bluffly encourage the stiff upper lip or offer the consoling pat on the shoulder. In the latter department, Spotts-Binkle’s specimens were not such as to invite contact, being more in the line of the Carpathian Mountains—sharp, hard, and like to bruise the tender flesh.

  But a decision was soon reached, and I extended a hand to pat the upthrust bony protrusion, adding the traditional, “Now, now,” “there there,” and “what’s all this?” as indicated.

  The result was a fresh gusher, leading me to believe that I’d taken a wrong turn. I reviewed my stock of consoling phrases and realized that I had already emptied the store. I was considering a tactical shift toward the stiff u l when the door opened and Slithy Tove-Whippley entered the breakfast room with only slightly less swagger than your average pirate exhibits when boarding a prize.

  “What ho, Bartie!” he said, sashaying over to the sideboard to survey the goods.

  I welcomed the change of focus. For it was he who, while purporting to show me the rocket ship he’d assembled on the lawn, had led me into its cramped saloon and asked for my views on a new cocktail he’d devised. An “atom-smasher” he’d called it. I took a first sip, and said, “I say, Slithy,” as the brew’s potency made itself felt. But no further words passed the numbed Gloster lips. Instead, the lights went out and I was plunged down a rabbit hole from which I did not emerge until I awoke in the depths of space.

  “Don’t you ‘what ho’ me,” I said, rising and casting aside a furious napkin. The phrases “unmitigated gall,” “dastardly trick,” and “absolute stinker” were jostling one another in my brain to see which would be first out of the gate. I was also considering “sharper than a serpent’s bosom,” though I wasn’t quite sure it scanned well.

  But Slithy showed me the backs of his fingers, moving in a way suggestive of crumbs that were swept aside. “Come on, Bartie,” he said, helping himself to scrambled eggs and a rasher of bacon I had thought looked a bit dodgy, it being an odd shade of green, “can’t you take a joke?”

  “A joke? Well, that takes the biscuit!” I had now marshaled gall, trick, and rotter into a single devastating phalanx and was about to send it crashing into Tove-Whippley’s line. But just then, Baldie gave forth with another freshet of woe, and it seemed somehow not the done thing to be offering battle when there were wounded in need of comforting.

  Comfort, though, was not Slithy’s style. “Buck up, there, Baldie!” he said, in a parade-ground tone, before sitting down and addressing himself to his plate in a manner that put one in mind of a wolf that had mastered the rudiments of wielding cutlery. I recalled that, at school meals, the other boys had always left a clear space around Tove-Whippley; hands other than his that penetrated the pale risked sudden and not inconsiderable injury.

  While I was thus briefly immersed in reminiscence, Baldie Spotts-Binkle rose from the table and, dashing tears from his eyes, fled the room. Slithy detroughed himself long enough to grunt an ambiguous comment—or he might just have been loosening some morsel lodged in his throat—then returned to the clashing of silver on porcelain.

  Concern for Baldie drove my anger to the rear. I said, “I say, Slithy, what has cast Spotts-Binkle into the slough of despond?”

  He looked up at me, and, around a mouthful of egg, said, “Newts.”

  Well, of course, it would be newts. I should have seen that right away. Since his formative years, Archibald Spotts-Binkle had been entranced by the slimy little wrigglers. At school, in his study, he kept a covey of them in a glass tank, and would spend hours considering their ways, often dangling flies on strings before their muzzles.

  The rest of us boys, busy with our own interests, gave scant thought to Baldie’s odd fascination. If we had, I suppose it would only have been to give thanks that he hadn’t settled on some even less wholesome pursuit. And there lay our error. For as our boyhood interests gradually blossomed, if that’s the word I want, into more manly fields, Baldie’s traipsed off in the other direction.

  He grew ever more engrossed in his study of newts, to the point where it became his life’s work. If he had ever mastered spelling, I am sure he would have written a book about the little blisters. As it was, he launched learned papers at some jou
rnal that concerned itself with newtdom; its editor, one Hudibras Gillattely, FRS, routinely sent back these epistles with stinging comments, igniting a long-simmering feud that may well have enlivened whatever gatherings drew newt fanciers together.

  Through all this, Baldie stuck to his ancestral pile in the country, where he was mostly content, as the estate contained a pond that fairly seethed with newts. And there he would have remained had he not, while on a newt-seeking ramble along bosky bucolic lanes, happened upon one Marilyn Buffet, with whom he fell precipitously in love.

  Theirs was a stormy courtship, on one moment, off the next, into which I was unwillingly drafted as a patcher and restorer. At one time, a left-handed twist of fate had seen me engaged to Marilyn myself, a situation that chilled the Gloster blood until it lay inert in the veins. In the end, thanks to a brilliant stroke by Greeves, who is rather deft in such matters, Baldie and Marilyn were delivered safely to the altar to become as one flesh.

  The thought of the large-eyed yet somewhat droopy former Miss Buffet now raised a question in the penetrating Gloster mind. It was not like her to be hanging back in the shadows. She was a girl who liked to make her presence felt—not the sort to dominate a room but certainly able to pervade it. So it struck me as curious that the room in which I stood, and the bedroom in which I had awakened, betrayed no trace of the Marilyn Spotts-Binkle oeuvre: their respective wallpapers were not cloyed with flowers, the tablecloth was not embroidered with flocks of cheerful bluebirds, nor did every available surface bear a cluster of porcelain rabbits and mice colorfully attired in the habits of rustic folk of a bygone age.

  For all the depth of my cogitations, no more than a moment had passed since Tove-Whippley had voiced his one-worded explanation as to what was wrong with Baldie. I now advanced a new and possibly more pertinent question. “Where’s Marilyn?”

  He raised his eyebrows in a meaningful way. “Earth.”