TWENTY-SIX

 

 

MUCH LATER, HER father and Jean-Eudes got up. Jean-Eudes was laughingly proud of his bright red toenails. They breakfasted, and Pascal’s mood seemed to lift a bit in the morning energy of family.

“Jean-Eudes, Alexis,” Marthe said, “you couldn’t have watched all the movies yet. Why don’t you chill while we talk engineering?”

The pair didn’t need a second invitation, and scooped tortillas off the table and ran for George-Étienne’s room.

“They’re not going to get anything done today,” her father said.

“Pascal, bring your pad,” Marthe said. “I want to poke holes in your plans.”

Pascal shared a smile with his father. He brought out his pad and thumbed through his designs. Marthe put an arm over his shoulders and opened the blueprints for the Causapscal-des-Vents.

“Pa, you propose using the metal from the Causapscal-des-Vents,” she said. “You’re not stupid, so you’re not talking about asking for it.”

“Correct,” George-Étienne said.

“So, we’re talking about stealing a massive piece of kit from la colonie,” she said. “Right now, the metal is slated to offset some metal imports so that we can use real money on the cost of the asteroid.”

“That bitch can fuck herself with her asteroid,” he said. “She’s shoveled us shit all our lives.”

“La colonie has to pay for the loss,” she said, “everyone who lives up at sixty-fifth rang, and all the coureurs.”

“How many habitats have we lost just because of wear?” George-Étienne said. “This is one more, that’s all.”

Pascal looked at her. She squeezed his shoulder.

“You’re right, Pa,” she said. “But even if we sink it, we don’t get it. It’s designed to run in a tenth of an atmosphere of pressure. By fiftieth rang, it’ll start crushing. By the time it drops to twenty kilometers, it’ll be a smoking raisin.”

“Of course,” George-Étienne said. “We have to catch it.”

“With what?”

“We organize our trawlers,” he said, “tie them to the Causapscal-des-Vents as it’s sinking and use them to slow and stop its descent.”

She looked at her brother. “Would that work?”

“If we use all of them and the Causapscal-des-Profondeurs,” he said, “we could just make it.”

“With no margin for error and a big chance of damaging some or all of our herd,” Marthe said. “And our only home. Are Alexis and Jean-Eudes going to be in the Causapscal-des-Profondeurs while we try this, Pa?”

“This is the only way,” George-Étienne said. “The math can work.”

She shook her head. “Wild trawlers can’t take that kind of extra stress for long.”

“Ours are modified,” Pascal said.

“She’s not talking about you and I grafting some equipment into a wild trawler, Pascal,” George-Étienne said. “She’s talking about the big bio-engineered trawlers. Different breeders are designing bigger trawlers to be larger habitats.”

“And they’re all spoken for, or not ripe yet,” Marthe said.

“Marie-Pier Hudon has a herd of four that should be mature enough,” George-Étienne said.

“One or two of those will be confiscated by the gouvernement,” Marthe said.

“All the better. She’ll be more motivated to help us,” her father said.

“Good,” she said. “I thought you were going to propose that we steal her trawlers.”

“They can help us,” George-Étienne said.

“But why would they?” Marthe said. “Marie-Pier has her own problems.”

“She’ll have to trust us,” George-Étienne said.

“No one trusts you,” Marthe said.

Her father’s face twisted momentarily, but he didn’t seem capable of regretting what she’d said.

“And on that basis, we can’t ask the Hudons to help us commit theft,” Marthe said.

“Then you should go talk to Marie-Pier,” George-Étienne said.

“And pitch a heist to her?”

“No one can talk better than you,” he said. “You’re right. She’d turn me away at the door.”

“What’s in it for her, Pa?” she said.

“We think we’ve found a wormhole under the surface of Venus,” her father said. “It changes everything, even if we don’t yet know how. She can be a partner.”

“You’re going to take a business partner?”

“A minor partner.”

“No one will help commit a crime for second banana. Equal partners or nothing.”

“It’s ours!” he said. “We need it.”

“Something this big can help both of you. You want half the big prize or all of nothing?”

George-Étienne huffed loudly, but didn’t disagree.

“How do we know she won’t just go to the présidente?” Pascal said.

Pa looked at her for long seconds.

“Marthe will know how far to talk, and what not to say,” he said.

Marthe tried to imagine what she might say to Marie-Pier Hudon and came up with nothing. Pa wanted her to sell a hole in the world, based on trust. And they didn’t have trust. They didn’t have anything. Marthe was soon to lose any political influence when she stopped being a delegate to l’Assemblée.

“Even if Marie-Pier says yes, I don’t know if that’s enough partners,” she said.

“No more.”

Marthe gave him a doubtful look.

“Who’s going to do all that work, Pa? Do you even have the tools to take apart the Causapscal-des-Vents? You and Pascal aren’t going to be enough.”

“You,” her father said.

She gave him the look again.

“Émile,” Pascal said.

George-Étienne frowned and ignored the remark.

“If I need to try to convince Marie-Pier, this is all going to come up,” she said. “The Causapscal-des-Vents won’t float in the clouds for a year while you take it apart and try to hammer its parts into different shapes. We don’t have the equipment. And I’m not sure this can be done.”

“Damn it, Marthe, that’s why I asked you for advice! La colonie has been shitting on the D’Aquillons for twenty-seven years. Now we’ve struck gold! If we lose this chance, it’ll kill me. To give our family something would make it all worth it. Show me how.”

Pa was alone in many ways. Jeanne-Manse was dead. Chloé and Mathurin had been taken by Venus too. Émile had left because he was Émile, and because Pa was Pa. And here Pa still was, trying to keep his family alive and happy beneath the lower cloud deck, shrouded in acid mist. He wasn’t a fool. He loved them. They were here because family came first for him. Jean-Eudes was alive and happy and laughing with painted toes because family came first.

How many families would have chosen differently?

In all the history of la colonie, none. So Pa didn’t trust anyone else.

Faced with all the pressure the poor, fledgling government could muster, George-Étienne and Jeanne-Manse had still brought Jean-Eudes into the world. This wormhole, this cave in the wrinkled hide of Venus, was Marthe’s Jean-Eudes moment. The easy choice would be to say no, to go back to sixty-fifth rang and find some way to make a life. She could. She was good enough to find another job and maybe even make her way back onto l’Assemblée. She didn’t need to become a criminal. She didn’t need to put her reputation and freedom at risk.

But that wasn’t what George-Étienne would have chosen. And it wasn’t what she would choose. She was George-Étienne’s daughter, all the way to her painted toes.

“Give a girl something to drink if she’s got to plot larceny,” she said slowly.

George-Étienne grinned over an elation that burst almost visibly from his chest. He went to the dispensary. Pascal was looking at her, smiling. She squeezed him close and kissed his forehead.

“You and Pa are crazy, you know that?”