NINETEEN

 

 

IT WAS ON waking that Pascal felt the worst. In dreams he was never himself. In his dreams, he played the parts of men. He played the parts of women. He played the parts of things. And sometimes he was no one at all, just a cloudy façade, surrounded by firmament-bright clouds. Inevitably, he woke, and he became prickling flesh again, sweaty, hairy, and rough. Ugly.

He rose quietly, pissed without touching himself, and shaved in the dark. The only places he did touch himself were his scars. Wormy lines radiated up from the top of his left hand like a misshapen spider. Fine lines in parallel rows etched the inside of his right forearm. Scars spotted his neck where seals had failed and no beard would grow. The rippled welts inside and over his thighs were still healing.

He padded out into the main space of the Causapscal-des-Profondeurs. In his room, Pa was speaking quietly into the radio. Pascal walked to the galley and made enough noise for Pa to hear. George-Étienne’s conversation resumed, even more quietly, and Pascal shut the oven door on a scattering of blastula chips. His father joined him shortly, sitting without looking at him.

“What is it?” Pascal asked. “Who were you talking to?”

“Marthe.”

“Is everything okay?”

George-Étienne shook his head. “Fuckers,” he said after a few moments.

“Is Marthe okay?” Pascal demanded. “Is Émile?”

“Marthe is fine. Émile is probably drunk.” He finally looked at Pascal. “The fuckers are taking away the Causapscal-des-Vents.”

“What? Who?”

“The fucking government. Fucking Gaschel.”

Gaschel’s name was not spoken in their home. If she had to be referred to at all, she was called the fucking mayor, the fucking bitch, or the fucking doctor.

“Why?” Pascal said. Where would Marthe and Émile live?

George-Étienne waved his hand dismissively. “Doesn’t matter. The bitch is sticking it to us again. Surely she hates Marthe’s guts as much as mine.”

“But why?”

“Because Marthe is smarter than her and the fucking bitch couldn’t get her way in l’Assemblée, I bet you. We’ll find out soon. I asked Marthe to come down.”

“Here?” Pascal said, suddenly elated. “She’s coming here? When?”

“The Causapscal-des-Vents will be positioned to give her a good glide path in about four hours. I want to talk to her about what the hell we do with what we’ve found. The grinding is good—Jean-Eudes is good at it—but it feels small-scale. I’m trying to think about how to be more ambitious. Marthe will have ideas.”

“What do you mean, ambitious?”

“How do we barter away all those probes?” George-Étienne said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. Some of them are worth more whole, but we’ve got no access to anyone who could buy them, or bid on them.”

His mood was black and the silence throbbed with frustration.

“I stayed up last night trying to figure out more of the probe,” Pascal said. “You want to see?”

George-Étienne finally nodded. Pascal expanded the view on his pad of an engineering image he’d made.

“I’ve found its main thrusters and attitude jets,” Pascal said, pointing to the lumps at the back and those on the underside, sides and top. “They’re fed from a single tube system from...” he altered the view to show a small hollow just aft of the dorsal access port “...this tank.”

“The tubes from the tank,” he said, expanding that view of it, “run over the radioactive source. Solid reaction mass probably melts in the tank, boils and shoots through the jet valves.”

“That wouldn’t work in the atmosphere of Venus,” George-Étienne said.

“Not at all,” Pascal said. “But if this thing spent a lot of time in a vacuum, that’s another story. Among asteroids, they could harvest water ice, or dry ice, or liquid nitrogen as a reaction mass for propulsion.”

“This boosts your alien theory,” his father said.

“It is alien!”

George-Étienne smiled at him and patted his arm. “I know, Pascal. Good work. You figured out it runs on fission.”

“Not really,” Pascal said. “The propulsion system is simple, with the fissionables used only to heat the reaction mass. I don’t know what the rest of it ran on. Maybe the power plant was lost when it crashed in the cave.”

“From the other side.”

“Yes.”

“Too bad we can’t go down there,” George-Étienne said. “I’d like to get the rest of those probes and explore the eddies to see what other high-tech debris might come out.”

Pascal took a deep breath.

“We might be able to, Pa.”

“Better probes?”

Pascal shook his head and leaned close.

“Air going from high pressure to low expands and cools,” he said. “We could set up a cooling system in the caves by setting up dams at several points. If we let air through in a controlled way, it would cool. We could even generate electricity with turbines.”

George-Étienne’s brow lowered as Pascal spoke.

“It’s brilliant,” he said after a moment. “You’re talking about building a base down there. Someplace to live. A way to explore that cave system and even the other side.”

Pascal felt himself grinning to match his father’s smile. But then it faltered.

“But how?”

George-Étienne patted his arm again.

“You eat, Pascal, and keep thinking. Start making plans. Don’t worry about what it costs yet.” He opened the oven and pulled out the hot tray of blastula chips. “Eat.” He even gave Pascal a wondering laugh.

“Why are you happy, papa?” Jean-Eudes said sleepily as he emerged from their room.

George-Étienne hugged his eldest and then laughed.

“Be proud, Jean-Eudes! I think your little brother is a genius.”

Jean-Eudes grinned and Pascal’s cheeks heated.

“And Marthe is coming for a visit,” George-Étienne said.

“Marthe is coming!” Jean-Eudes exclaimed. “Pascal! Marthe is coming home!”

Then Pascal laughed, realizing that he, too, was happy.