Michael gave a short laugh. “So they do.”
“I’d recommend two other things.” Bowerman tapped the table gently with his spoon. “First you let the ask my boss, Sadiq Hourani, to order an audit of Venera’s books. If we go over it all, when we find nothing, no one will be able to accuse you of hiding anything. Also, if Angela and I do it, well…” He smiled again. “We can be obnoxious. We don’t live here and nobody likes us anyway.”
“Good idea,” admitted Michael. “What’s the other thing?”
“Let me get Angela checking around the team down there. See if anything suspicious is going on, let her talk to Hatch, and so on. See what the position is on the ground.”
“Also good,” Michael paused. “I don’t suppose you can let me have what you’ve got on Dr. Hatch, can you?”
Bowerman’s stirred his soup, considering. I might be able to leave a file unsecured here and there.”
“Thanks.” Michael’s phone spot rang the two-tone reminder chime. Michael tapped it in acknowledgment, gratefully. “I’ve got to go. I’m meeting my wife.”
“Go.” Bowerman waved the spoon. “I’ll stop by tomorrow. Let you know what the preliminary view is.”
“Thanks,” said Michael again. “I appreciate it.”
Bowerman smiled his acknowledgment and returned his attention to his cooling soup.
Michael didn’t hang around. He headed for the nearest stairwell and climbed back up toward the educational level. Jolynn was headmaster for grades one through six and they were going to have lunch in her office. She was having it brought in.
He tried not to think. He tried to blank the conversation he’d just had out of his mind and concentrate on the outside world—the voices, the faces, the sights that he knew as well as any man from Mother Earth knew the rooms of his house or the streets of his city. He’d grown up here with tilt drills, suit drills, and evacuation drills. He’d always known that inside was safe, and outside was poison.
But he’d never believed that the outside could touch him, not really.
He’d been on Earth when his father died. For the first time, he was walking under a sky that rained water, not acid. He was breathing air that didn’t come from a processing plant and seeing the stars at night He was infatuated with Mother Earth.
His mother’s v-mail came. Dad had had one of those accidents they warned you about. Venus had used one of her thousand tricks to kill him or take down his scarab. Same thing. There was nothing to bury, nothing to burn. Just a lifetime of memories ringing around his head and Mom asking him to come home.
He went. But he swore not to stay. He went so he could attend the memorial service and help sort out the will and all the other red tape death generates. All his remaining energies he bent toward trying to convince Mom to come back to Earth. She’d been born there, after all, and she was getting old, despite the med trips. Since long-life was not something she wanted for herself, what was keeping her there, in a world that would kill her?
Come down, come back, come home. This home. Our real home, where Michael was going back to and fully intended to stay.
“You do what you have to, Michael,” she said. “And grant me the right to do the same.”
“This is no place for a human being to live, Mom. Trapped in a bubble like this.”
She’d sighed, with that annoying infinite patience she was capable of. “Some trap. The door’s open Michael. Go or stay, it’s all up to you.” She’d taken his hands then. “I love you, Son. If you want to live on Earth, then that’s what you should do.” She’d meant it too, every word.
So Michael had gone. He’d finished his degree, he’d found work, and within a year, he’d come back to Venus, found work again, met Jolynn, and gotten married.
He’d never questioned what he’d done, but he’d never really understood it either. He’d never been able to point to any one thing and say, “That was it; that was why I left Earth.” He’d been lonely, it was true, and the vast global village of Earth with its snarl of republics could be confusing to someone who’d grown up with one set of people his entire life. But neither of those things was entirely the answer.
On days like today, he still wondered. He did not regret, no, never that. His life was too sweet, too rich, for regret, but all the same, he did wonder.
Jolynn’s office was at the end of a hall that the older kids called “grass row,” presumably because your ass was grass if you got sent there. The door was open just a little, and Michael stepped into the ordered chaos—shelves and racks of screen rolls, text pads, an insulated lunch box, two deactivated animatron cats, and a worse-for-wear rubber ducky left over from a disciplinary action involving some overimaginative first graders. In the middle of it all sat Jolynn with her rich brown-black hair and beautiful amber eyes, smiling her smile that always held her own special brand of terse amusement, and just waiting for him to bend down and kiss her.