“Now that would be all we’d need,” muttered Helen. “Handing out extra money for a couple of computer ghosts.”
As she spoke, the desk chimed. All of them turned their attention back to the view screen. Helen’s stomach tightened. The star field cleared away to show a fashionably slim, young-looking woman with beige skin and a cloud of dark-blond hair, worn unbound under a pink scarf.
“Hello, Helen,” she said soberly. “I was expecting this. Listen, there are no complaints about the publicity, the facilities access, about anything. The problems are application, opportunity, and resource distribution. The comptrollers have decided our people are going to have to be content with St. Helens and Pelee for a while. The industrial research spillover is contracting, and there is just not enough to go around right now.” Her expression flickered from annoyed to apologetic. “There’s no more after this. Anything you send is going to my machine. I’m sorry, but there is nothing I can do.”
The stars faded back into view. For a moment, Helen met Ben’s gaze, but she looked quickly away. She didn’t want to see what he was thinking. We could have done this, he was thinking, if you’d been willing to do it small. If you hadn’t insisted from the beginning on a full-scale base where people could live and raise their children and make a lifetime commitment to the study of this world.
She pressed her fingertips against her forehead. That was what he was thinking. That Venus was, at most, four weeks away from Earth. It wouldn’t have mattered if people had to come and go. Venera could have been made small and simple and then expanded if things worked out. But, oh, no. Helen Failia had her vision, and Helen Failia had to push it through. Helen had to make sure there were children like Michael who could lose their homes if the funding ever collapsed.
“There is a way out of this,” said Michael. “There has to be.”
“What?” Helen’s hand jerked away from her face. “Michael, I’m open to suggestions. I’ve just spent four months scavenging the whole of Mother Earth for additional funding. It’s not there.”
“Well.” Michael rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and then brought them back down to meet Helen’s gaze. “Have you tried a com burst out to Yan Su on the Colonial Affairs Committee? There might be some U.N. money we can dredge up.”
Ben snorted. “Oh, come on, Michael. The U.N. pay to keep a colony running? Their business is keeping colonies scraping and begging.” As a younger man, Helen knew, Ben had been strongly sympathetic with the Bradbury Separatist movement on Mars—the same movement that had blossomed into the Bradbury Rebellion and, for five short, violent years, Bradbury Free Territory. Because of that, he still took a very dim view of the United Nations and their off-Earth colonial policies.
She had to admit he was partly right. Since the Bradbury Rebellion, the C.A.C.’s sole function had been to make sure nothing like that ever happened again. Hence, the licensing restrictions. No colony could manufacture space shuttles or long-distance ships. No colony could manufacture communications satellites, although they were graciously allowed to repair the ones they had. There was a whole host of other hardware and spare parts that either never got licensed or were taxed to the Sun and back again.
Most of the time that didn’t bother Helen. She dealt with the C.A.C. through her friend Yan Su, and so far Su had been willing to help whenever she could. Now, though, they were coming head-to-head with the old, frightened public policies.
“You think they want to deal with ten thousand refugees?” countered Michael calmly. “It’s got to be cheaper to let us stay where we’re at than to pay for processing ten thousand new resident-citizen files.”
Helen nodded absently. She found, to her shame, she was not ready to admit that that avenue had been shut off almost a year ago. Maybe she could try again. Now is not the time for pride, she reminded herself firmly. You’ve begged everybody else. Why not the government?
“Yan Su helped put us up here,” said Michael, more to Ben than to Helen. “Maybe she can help keep us up here.” Ben’s only response was to turn a little pinker and look sour.
As little as she liked to admit it, Michael was right. It was time for last resorts. Without their three major funding sources, they were not going to be able to meet their payroll. They could buy some time by laying off the nonpermanent residents and sending them back to Mother Earth, but then they wouldn’t be able to complete their research projects and they’d lose yet more money.
Helen looked at the time delay again. Venus and Earth were moving out of conjunction. If she put this off, the time delay was only going to get worse, and she didn’t want to have to conduct this conversation through the mail. “Why don’t you—”