“You bet.”
In her own room, Angela laid her screen roll on the desk. She stared at it for a moment, trying to understand what was bothering her. So far, the assignment had been a walk in the park. Everybody, everything, was as they were supposed to be, with just enough little variations and surprises to assure her that she was seeing them all accurately. The underlying tension could easily exist because Venera Base was a colony, a unique colony in a unique situation to be sure, but a colony all the same; and colonists did not generally like yewners, with good reason.
From the outside, Venera looked simple, but when you got inside, you saw it was anything but. It was called a research base, so everyone saw the scientists and the engineers and seldom got beyond that. But the majority of the ten thousand people on the base were not scientists. They were maintenance staff, shopkeepers, teachers, administrators, farmers, skilled and unskilled workers, children, and what Angie called “support spouses,” people who kept the house and raised the children and did the business of living so the other spouse could take care of the other kinds of business. As on any isolated base, people were largely defined by what work they did. Your work determined who you socialized with, where you lived, how you were treated in the social hierarchy—and there was definitely a hierarchy, with the scientists at the top. She hadn’t quite defined the bottom yet. It was somewhere between the butchers and the farmers.
Not that there were bad neighborhoods here or anything like that. Grandma Helen would never have permitted it. Everything was clean, everyone was looked after one way or another. Everyone had some kind of community to keep them going—villages within the village.
All of which helped explain one of the other things Angie had found. Some people had spent their life savings and a whole lot of time trying to get here. It was far more peaceful than Mars and, unlike the Moon, was uncontrolled by corporate interests. It was also far friendlier than Earth. There were people who saw this as paradise, and Grandma Helen as Mother Creation.
All day Angela had talked to people: on the mall, on the education level, in the food-processing plants, and all day she had heard the same thing. “Grandma Helen, she’s a great woman.” “Grandma Helen, she keeps this place going.” “Grandma Helen knows what she’s doing.” It was amazing. It was a little frightening.
But still, there was something. Snippets. Near misses. Hesitations. She shook her head. She’d tell Phil about it at breakfast tomorrow. One of the things she liked about her partner and her boss was that they paid attention to unformed concerns. Maybe together Phil and she could dig out whatever her subconscious was trying to tell her.
Angela smiled. One thing was for sure. If Venera Base had secrets, it would not be keeping them for very much longer.
Chapter Six
“MY FELLOW CA’AED CONTINUES to enjoy its health?”
The sad envy in the city’s question shivered through T’sha and made her shift her weight on the kite’s perches. Disease and too many sterile winds had crippled the city of K’est. Pity surged through T’sha as her kite carried her through the city’s body. The supporting bones shone white around her, as bleached as the corals. The only colors seemed to be the painted shells, with their sayings and teachings written in beautiful calligraphy overlaying graduated shades of rose and lavender.
“Ca’aed has been fortunate,” T’sha replied to the city through her headset. “I have brought Ambassador Z’eth a new cloning of skin cells that have worked well for us.”
“Ah,” sighed K’est, “I look forward to receiving them.”
Although long illness had given K’est a slight tendency toward self-pity, the city was not yet dying. Far from it. Everywhere, T’sha passed people alive with purpose. They tended and studied. They sampled and directed. In several places, she saw clusters of constructors and their attendants grafting living tendons onto dead bones and transplanting coral buds that glowed pink and orange with vibrant life. Although the winds swirling outside the city were thin, inside its sphere they were thick with life and nutrition. It was almost as if the engineers had turned the entire city into a refresher chamber. T’sha felt her skin expand to take in the richness flowing all around her.
All of this life was the result of Ambassador Z’eth’s tireless efforts. Another ambassador would have given up long ago and indentured her people to other cities for the best terms she could get. Perhaps she would have gone so far as to try to grow a village from what little still lived of her city.
Z’eth, however, soared over her tragedies. It was known that K’est had suggested that her people disband and allow her to die, but Z’eth would not hear of it. Instead, she had bargained and bartered for her city’s needs with a zeal that left the most senior of the High Law Meet in awe. Her city, her people, were not rich and might not ever be again, but they were alive, and if they were not strong, they were still proud.