Old Venus Read online

  The shock was momentary. He was looking as if into a full-length, freestanding mirror, but it was a mirror that didn’t reflect the room he was in. The naked figure was a hologram. A stranger, a Lizard Man (though he couldn’t see a tail) stood by the holo, dressed in black and white. Sekool, her back to Forrest, spoke rapidly in a language that crackled and fizzed like fireworks: but reached him as English (mostly)—

  “No. He’s an original, not any kind of flishatatonaton. But he’s carrying an implant, attached to his stomach wall. I haven’t touched it, and I don’t know what it’s for—”

  Good to know I’m still a walking interplanetary probe, thought Forrest. Lizard Man’s contribution, over the videolink, was incomprehensible.

  “Deniable is good, but how long could it stand up? This is better. Far better than a … a kinsnipping, Esbwe! We want to avoid reprisals, don’t we?”

  Her tail, he thought, should be lashing. He’d have liked to see that. He retreated, replaced the headset where he’d found it, and lay down again: his thoughts racing.

  Feigning sleep, he must have dozed. He woke when he heard something crawling.

  The globes were still dim, the screens had been dismantled. Sekool sat by the firebowl, tail around her feet. Nothing moved, but the sound of crawling was closer. Puzzled, Forrest turned on his side, as if in sleep, and saw something come through the wall of the room.

  It crossed the floor. A male human figure, slender and juvenile, naked and very battered, hauling himself along on one hand and one knee, back, ribs, and shoulders marked with livid weals. Bruises blotted out his eyes. No sign of a tail, which made Forrest think he was asleep and dreaming of a human boy except that the whole thing was too complete, too coherent. The kid’s hair was dark, his greenish skin unnaturally pale—until he reached the firelight. Then he was more than pale: he was translucent, transparent.

  A mangled corpse, but moving, the apparition crept into Sekool’s arms.

  Another hologram? Not the way Sekool responded. Not the way she held the kid, rocked him and murmured to him, stroking his shadow-hair from his swollen, battered shadow-brow, then somehow Forrest made a sound.

  She looked up: instantly, the ghost was gone.

  “What was that?” he breathed.

  Enormous eyes unblinking, she calmly left the fire and picked up the “translation device.”

  “My son, Gemin. He comes to me when it’s quiet. Usually I’m alone; you’ve never woken before. He died under torture. Don’t die under torture, Johnforrest. It’s not a good way to go.”

  She removed the headset and turned away; the subject was closed. Forrest got up and joined her by the firebowl, collecting the headset on the way. He held her gaze, deliberately settling the flexible web around his skull.

  “Tell me, Sekool.”

  She looked into the flames, drawing her tail more closely around her.

  “There’s not much to tell. He was caught up in the secret war and taken hostage; we failed to negotiate his release. He was mistreated, our protests achieved nothing; we learned that he’d died. There’s nothing to be done. I only comfort him, and quiet him as best I can … Death is not the end, Johnforrest, as we all know, because our dead return. They speak to us and know us, in dream and in the waking world. But when they depart at last, we don’t know what happens next. We don’t know if the unquiet ones, trapped in the way they died, escape from suffering at last. It’s cruel.”

  “I know you’re a shaman,” he said. “There must be something you can do.”

  Her long fingers closed on the bag of bones.

  “No. Let’s say no more about it. I can’t help my boy. He’ll fade, that’s all, and he’ll be gone, and I won’t know where.”

  2. OUT OF THE FRYING PAN, INTO THE FIRE

  ON THEIR WAY OUT, SEKOOL HAD TO PLACATE THE DEMONS again. Forrest kept his distance and didn’t stir until she’d made her circuit. She seemed self-conscious, something he’d never seen in her before, and he liked it. He had no doubt that, if he’d asked, she’d tell him that of course she’d planned to disarm the venom-spitting fence, if she’d been leaving him behind (to await those kinsnippers!). He said nothing. He just followed her, as before, grinning to himself: no longer helpless baggage. In charge of his own destiny again, and it felt good.

  But surely, subtly, everything had changed? Had the trees actually moved? Surely the spaces between the ranks were different, the uncertain ground had new contours—

  “Happens all the time,” said Sekool, catching his bewildered glances. “The sek is a single organism: it shifts about as it pleases. That’s why there are no trails. The indigenes have their own ways to get around. We use our beacons, and come in on foot. It’s simpler.”

  “What a world. It’s like a circle in Dante’s hell.”

  “Indeed. All death in life is here, eating its own tail. Yet somehow I love it.”

  —–—

  There was a wind blowing outside the wood, they could hear it. Sekool gave Forrest a robe like her own: he wrapped himself, the folds settling firmly round his head and face, and they emerged from tepid stillness into a dust storm. Well protected but half-blind, he felt a hard surface under the skidding grit and glimpsed big squared and domed shapes. Fighting the wind to look behind him, he saw the sek: rising like a grey-green mirage, on the edge of a desert-devoured town. She headed for an intact building and used a touch pad to open massive double doors. In a covered courtyard, a welcome silence, she bared her face—

  “I have a call to make. It won’t take long.”

  The room they entered made Forrest think of a chapel: a podium for the minister, benches for the congregation. Images of lizard-people, animal, and vegetable flourishes, in colored metals or enamel, covered the walls. She approached the podium, Forrest took a seat. His legs were too long. Sekool was tall, but like a Japanese woman, her height was in her pliant body … Expecting a videolink, he saw, to his astonishment, powdery matter begin to whirl inside a clear cylinder: building something from the platter upward. The cylinder withdrew, and there stood a solid, masculine-seeming human figure, Venusian style: a Lizard Man. Not the guy Forrest had seen in the mirror-screen: someone new. He had scanty head hair, he wore some kind of dress uniform; he seemed authoritative but old; or maybe sick.

  Sekool spoke, Lizard Man mainly listened. At one point, he looked over her shoulder, and Forrest, disconcerted, felt eyes on him: a presence in the instant simulacrum. Finally, Sekool bowed, the old guy did the same. The body crumbled and vanished.

  She walked past Forrest, resuming her headset as she headed for the doors.

  “Who was that?”

  “My husband. Excuse him if he seemed rude, you’ll meet him properly up above. Do you have wives, Johnforrest?”

  “I’ve had two. Then I gave up.”

  “Wise man … I did what was expected of me. I gave a powerful old man my baby’s name, his futurity for our security. A fair trade on both sides: we didn’t expect it would be forever. I have no complaints, none at all. But oh, he’s a long time dying!”

  She flashed him that eerie smile. “Now we need to hurry. The wind usually eases at nightfall, but I want to be far from here by then.”

  In the covered yard, Sekool left him, and swiftly reappeared, leading an extraordinary animal: a low-slung, big-haunched, tan-hided, wrinkly camel, with bulbous cat’s-eyes, a sinuous neck and tail, a muzzle thick with stiff, drooping whiskers—

  “Johnforrest, meet Mihanhouk. I don’t take him into the sek, but we need him now. You’ll have to ride behind me, I’m afraid. I wasn’t expecting to bring home a guest.”

  Who had harnessed Mihanhouk? He listened. Not a footstep, not a voice.

  “Are we alone? Where is everybody?”

  “Only the indigenes live permanently on the surface, and around here they don’t leave the haunted woods. Let’s go, it’s a long ride to the Sea Mount Station.”

  If anybody asks, he thought, the ground staff never saw me—

>   The cat-camel’s paces were challenging. He loped like a hare, pushing off from his big haunches, landing with an insouciant bounce on his forepaws. So far, so uncomfortable, then he put on speed. At every leap, Forrest (with muttered curses) nearly lost his seat; at every touchdown, his tailbone tried to send his cervical vertebrae through the top of his head. Sekool rode with her tail tucked up, stirrups high as a jockey’s. She glanced around, green eyes vivid between folds of grey and the whipping dust, registering his discomfort. She faced ahead again, and he felt a curious, thrilling, muscular movement.

  She was wrapping her tail around him.

  “Is that better?”

  “Yes,” he breathed. “That’s … fine.”

  Gradually, the howling died and the dust cleared. Mihanhouk seemed to feel he’d done enough. He ambled along a rudimentary trail, uphill, between eroded boulders that blocked the view, to a bluff like a wave crest. Sekool tapped his shoulder with the knotted end of her reins: the beast knelt, and they dismounted.

  They climbed the last few meters to a viewpoint and suddenly faced a staggering gulf. Red-gold cliffs plunged, way deeper than the Grand Canyon, into the haze of a basin that stretched forever. To their left, far below the bluff, Forrest saw the trail continuing to another complex of buildings, and skeletal bridgework that reached out, over the abyss, to a rocky, conical pillar. Narrowing his eyes, he saw the sequence repeated: a string of rocky cones, rising from unseen depths, and the bridgework linking them, becoming tiny and vanishing.

  Directly ahead, but far off, brilliant whiteness reflected the pale clouds.

  “Is that the ocean out there?”

  “Once upon a time,” said Sekool. “It’s mostly a big salt pan now. We live in the clouds and in the skies, Johnforrest, where everything is fine. Only fanatics think it matters that we can’t live on the surface anymore if we wanted to. Which is just as well. The situation down here is beyond repair, anyway.”

  “So what’s the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile.”

  “Indeed. I’d like to learn your language. From what I can tell, it has a fine turn of phrase, many interesting concepts. Thou shalt not kill. There’s another of them!”

  Forrest nodded, his thoughts very far away. Out of the frying pan, into the fire … Our beautiful neighbor planet before she ran into trouble? Your calculations are slightly out, PoTolo!

  “What caused the devastation? Do your scientists have an explanation?”

  She thought about it, measuring her words. “Long ago, we lived in a dangerous world and didn’t know it. Everything was kind, plenty was all around. One day, we stepped on a hidden switch, we pulled the wrong lever, we unknowingly tipped a balance, and destruction was set in motion, click, clack, like a child’s toy: sly and comical and relentless. Or so I understand it. But we took that wrong step a very long time ago, Johnforrest. The damage was done before we moved to the clouds, let alone the skies. It’s nonsense to apportion blame.”

  The stillness after the wind, the somber majesty of the scene held them in silence.

  “I didn’t bring you up here to accuse you of anything, Mr. From-the-Sky. There’s something I wanted you to see, a trick of this landscape. Look to the east.”

  He felt the chill before he saw the cause. Far away and very distinct, like a bold line on a child’s drawing, a dark ellipse appeared, stretching from horizon to horizon. It grew, like the shadow of the moon across the sun in a solar eclipse, contained, yet seeming liquid as ink. No flashes of radiance, no sunset colors heralded the change. The transition from light to shadow was perfectly abrupt, pure as a note of music.

  It was the dark.

  Forrest thought of a world without a visible sun. No moon, no stars. A horror ran through him; he wanted to run. At his shoulder, the Venusian sighed in delight, as perfect night, velvet night, rose to the zenith and hurried down to engulf them.

  “There,” she murmured, when blackness lapped their vantage point.

  “Thank you,” whispered Forrest.

  They rode to the Sea Mount Station as if descending under miles of dark water. She’d fastened lights to Mihanhouk’s bridle, although he didn’t seem to need them: he was sure-footed and at ease. The Station was lit, and as deserted as the town by the sek. Their cable car, swinging from frictionless chains, black sides hung with rosy lights, reminded Forrest of an Egyptian ship of the dead, on a temple frieze. It rode silently down to their platform; they embarked.

  Mihanhouk had a compartment to himself. Sekool made him comfortable, then joined Forrest in the stateroom, where a buffet offered store-cupboard foods: pickles, spreads, and tough breads, savory cakes of pressed beans (or insect larvae?), crystallized fruit. A fine change from sappy gruel. They moved on, having eaten, to an observation car, taking along a carafe of spirits. The couches were soft and wide: they settled side by side.

  “Here’s another sight not to be missed, Johnforrest. We’re passing over the Trench.”

  In fathomless blackness, way down under them, he saw a vivid, active red line.

  “What’s that?”

  “A rent in the world’s hide, close to the old coastline, where the fires of renewal pour out, and worn-out flesh is devoured. It’s shrinking … My city takes pictures. All the healthy wounds, as our scientists call them, are healing. It’s not a good sign.”

  “I’ve heard about that.”

  “When the fire stops flowing, when the wounds are gone … then even the clouds and the skies may fail us. But that’s a long way off. Neither you nor I need worry!”

  Forrest filled two tiny cups, she emptied hers and held it out for more. Like-for-like translation, he thought, turned them into a medieval knight and his lady, speaking of eldritch secret dooms known only to the wise. She tossed her cup aside, and took his hand. Four-fingered, both outer digits opposable: she gripped like a chameleon.

  “This is a great favor you’re doing for me.”

  “A trip to the clouds?” Forrest smiled to himself. “It’s my great pleasure!”

  “Still, I feel I owe you. Let me give you some return.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “Myself?”

  “Well, now. That would be an unexpected bonus.”

  “An interlude, I mean nothing more.”

  “Of course not!”

  Romantic overtures would have been in poor taste, but his lust was honest, and however she squared it, her offer seemed honest too. Seeing no reason to refuse, he reached around and took the splendid root of her tail in a forthright, determined grip.

  The tongue that met his when they kissed was slender, strong, active, and probing. The gulf behind her smile could have swallowed him whole. They shucked out of their clothes and embraced, her tail lashed itself around him, and he probed in turn, deeper and longer than he’d have thought possible. Blissfully spent, he fell asleep, and woke still held in her grip, a silky, powerful frottage undulating up and down his thighs, his buttocks—

  He wondered if he would survive this dark journey or die happy?

  Unmeasured riches followed, an engrossing, fabulous interlude, only interrupted by the briefest of briefings for Forrest, about her city. They hardly ate or drank, they slept coupled and entwined. But once, when he woke, he was alone.

  Sekool was on the opposite couch, limned in faint light, head bent over the oracle bones: the way he’d first seen her. He went over. She looked up, accepting, and drew back to let him see. Just four items—no bones. The “slab” he remembered was a paper-thin tablet, lit from within, marked in a grid of four by four. Plenty for a tribal shaman, still living at the dawn of time. Not much of an apparatus to model the fate of a complex, high-tech society.

  But four by four is a powerful number.

  The tokens are relics from your own life, he said. You’ve invested them with meaning, for telling the fortunes of your people: that I understand. Will you explain how it works?

  A fragment of patterned textile, wrapped around three small flat sticks: w
hat was.

  A shiny feather or fish scale, set in silver wire: what might have been. Or, better: the conditional, the always possible.

  A shriveled coil of brown, veiny material, probably a root fragment: what is.

  A black stone, glossy as obsidian, was The Truth.

  The headset was nowhere in this exchange. He asked and she answered in gesture, the timeless, universal language of this other trade of hers—

  Does what you read come true?

  If you know so much, you know that’s a fool’s question.

  Then she smiled. The black stone in one fist, she laid her free hand on his breast, where his heart was beating. But when I know I’m right, however unbelievable, I’m right …

  Forrest felt suddenly very confused.

  Sekool returned her tokens to the pouch and slipped the cord over her head. She was soon deeply asleep, but he lay awake. Sekool Sekool, Woodsong the Sorceress. Had he really understood her? It didn’t seem possible.

  Their arrival at Tessera Station was as dramatic as darkfall, in its way. Her city, a sky raft the size of Manhattan Island, had come to meet them. Moored by mighty hawsers, it stood at the sheer edge of the Tessera Plateau, beside the cable-car buildings. Forrest watched the underbelly as they came in: a mass of swollen, membranous dirigibles, layered and roped together in a gargantuan netted frame.

  “Unlike the upper-atmosphere habitats,” Sekool remarked, “our cities were developed from life. The original bladder-raft colonies, which provide our germ material, still flourish: small as tables, big as mountaintops. We harvest and data mine them for improvements.”

  “Fascinating,” said Forrest, making her laugh.

  “About Gemin. You will be discreet?”