Ben Godwin was a square-built, florid man. Every emotion registered on his face as a change of color, from snow white to cherry red. Right now though, he just looked gray. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Michael, standing beside him, glanced briefly at the floor and then up at Helen’s eyes. He was a much younger, much leaner, much calmer than with clear gold skin. He wore his black hair long and pulled back into a ponytail. The gold ID badge on his white tunic proclaimed him the chief of Venera’s security. “They took the University of Washington with them.”
He spoke softly, but the words crashed hard against Helen. “What? When?”
“About an hour ago.” Ben ran his hand over his bristly scalp. “We tried to get them to wait to talk to you, but they weren’t—”
Anger hardened Helen’s face. “Well, they’ll have to talk to me anyway.” She brushed past the two men. “We can’t afford to lose their funding too.”
Helen did not look back to see if they were following her. She just strode straight ahead into the broad, curving corridor that connected the docking area to the rest of Venera. She ignored the nearest elevator bundle and started down the stairs instead. She was not waiting around anymore. She’d been waiting on people for months on Earth. Waiting for them to tell her they had no more money, no more time to wait for results, no more interest in a planet that would never be amenable to human colonization or exploitation.
Helen kept her office on the farm levels near the center of Venera’s sphere. Full spectrum lights shone down on vast soil beds growing high-yield cereals and brightly colored vegetables. Ducks and geese waded freely through troughed rice paddies that also nurtured several species of fish. The chickens, however, were penned in separate yards around the perimeter. The chickens did not get along with the more peaceable fowls. Quartz windows ringed the entire level, showing the great gray clouds. Every now and then, a pure gold flash of sheet lightning lit the world.
The farms had been meant to give Venera some measure of independence. Acquiring good, fresh food was vital to the maintenance of a permanent colony, and from the beginning, Helen had meant Venera to be a permanent colony.
Old dreams died hard. Venera might have actually had real self-sufficiency, except for the restrictions the U.N. placed on manufacturing and shipping licenses.
Old fears died hard too.
Helen’s office was an administrative cubicle on an island in the middle of one of the rice paddies. She knew people called it “the Throne Room” and didn’t really care. She loved Venus, but she missed Earth’s blues and greens. Setting up her workspace in the farms had been the perfect compromise.
Helen kept a spartan office. It was furnished with a work desk, three visitor’s chairs, and an all-purpose view screen that currently showed a star field. Her one luxury, besides her view, was a couple of shelves of potted plants—basil, oregano, lavender, and so on. Their sweet, spicy scents were the air’s only perfume.
Helen dropped herself into the chair behind the desk and tossed her satchel onto the floor. It was only then that she became aware that Michael and Ben had in fact followed her.
“Who’d you talk to?” Her touch woke the desk and lit its command board. She shuffled through the icons to bring up her list of contact codes.
“Patricia Iannone,” said Ben, sitting in one of the visitor’s chairs. “She sounded like she was just following orders.”
“We’ll see.” Helen activated Pat’s contact and checked the time delay. Four minutes today. Not great for purposes of persuasive conversation, but doable. Helen opened the com system and lifted her face to the view screen. “Hello, Pat. I’ve just gotten back to Venera, and they’re telling me that U Washington is pulling our funding. What’s the matter? You can’t tell me the volcanology department has not been getting its money’s worth out of us. If it’s a matter of being more vocal about your sponsorship or about allowing your people some more directed research time, I know we can work out the details. You just have to let me know what you and your people need.” She touched the Send key, and the com system took over, shooting the message down after the contact code, waiting for a connection, and a reply.
Helen swiveled her chair to face Ben and Michael. “All right, tell me what’s been happening since we talked last.”
So Ben told her about some of the new personnel assignments and promotions and how the volcano, Hathor Montes, was showing signs of entering an active cycle. Michael talked about a rash of petty thefts, an increase in demands on the data lines caused apparently by the volcanology group gearing up for Hathor’s active cycle, and a couple of in-stream clip-out personas trying to get themselves inserted onto Venera’s payroll.