FORTY-FIVE

 

 

MARTHE CLOCKED IN only a few hours of hammock time. After Marie-Pier turned in, she smoked at the kitchen table. She slept fitfully and got up before anyone else. The smells of hard sulfur-laced wood, of sweating bodies and growing green things dragged her back in time.

She remembered Pa, much younger, maman and Chloé, both still alive. She remembered Émile as a teenager, working the trawlers with Pa. She almost always remembered Jean-Eudes as big, even though she was taller now. As just a little girl, she’d taught Jean-Eudes to count and read with the patience of very young children, an effortless patience she couldn’t imagine anymore.

She remembered Pa’s fights. With the government. With Émile. Sometimes with maman. Even as a teenager, Marthe had been his confidante. They’d stay up late, talking about politics, about raising the family. She might have been as happy living down here, riding the winds, helping raise Pascal, Jean-Eudes, and Alexis.

But in those late-night conversations, Pa hadn’t just taught her to roll cigarettes. He decided that she would go to the upper atmosphere to live on the Causapscal-des-Vents. She would represent the family in l’Assemblée. It had pissed off Émile. It had scared the shit out of her. But Pa was right too. They both knew she would be good in l’Assemblée, even if they were both nervous about it. There were things she was good at, things she could do that Pa couldn’t.

But she wondered if she’d left too early, before she’d learned everything she’d needed. Marthe still woke up beside walking disasters like Noëlle. For that matter, so did Émile. What had they missed? What hadn’t Pa been able to show them? Maybe they’d left home too early, or maybe something hadn’t translated from Québec to Venus.

Pa and maman had been born on Earth and they’d stayed together until Venus took maman away. George-Étienne and Jeanne-Manse had even left la colonie for the lower cloud decks to keep their little Down syndrome baby. And against all odds, they’d made a family.

Sleep eluded her not just for these thoughts, but because of time lag. The high flotilla raced on winds that circled the planet every four days. But in the deep habitats of the coureurs, not only might there be a hundred or more hours of day and an equal amount of night, but the day-night rhythms were distended. Day and night blurred.

In the depths, clouds made high noon arrive yellow and diffuse. And nighttime was always lit by spongy red light scattered all the way from the terminator. Les coureurs and les colonistes from the flotilla meant different things by the words “night” and “day.”

She found one of the ceramic plates that Pascal had sawn from the space probe. It was pockmarked and weathered. It was riddled with wiring that seemed chaotic but that Pascal said was alien circuitry. She believed him. There was wealth in knowledge, in resources, and although an antique and surreal concept to Venusians, there was value in land. She left the piece of hull on the table as she rolled another cigarette. She considered all that piece of ceramic meant to them, lines of possibility spinning out into futures she couldn’t know, futures among the stars that Alexis might grow old in, and his children in their time.

Marie-Pier and Gabriel-Antoine were not family, but they needed that kind of bond to build this bridge to the stars. If circumstances blew the D’Aquillons apart from the Hudons and the Phocas, they would all lose. They needed to make a family, but it wasn’t the kind of family Pa knew how to build. They needed to make a political family.

An hour later, people slowly woke up and began joining her at the table. Pa was gentlemanly and courteous to Marie-Pier, less so to Gabriel-Antoine, who was obviously smitten with Pascal. Gabriel-Antoine was glowing and Pascal was shy and quiet at the table, hiding a half-smile. Did they have the makings of a family? If they did, she still might not be the right one to make it. But if Pa tried to negotiate, he would blunder about, the way he might hammer the corrosion off a lock. And Pascal was too uncertain of himself to weld different political interests together. Marthe crushed out her last cigarette. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, gesturing to the piece of hull on the table.

Pa slid a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee in front of her. He took up the hull fragment, ran his scarred fingers across its pitted outer surface and smooth inner surface, and handed it to Marie-Pier.

“Ceramic minerals,” he said, “and iridium, platinum, silver, gold and other metals. We’re going to grind them up for some quick resources to help bootstrap us.”

“That’s small potatoes, though, Pa,” Marthe said. “If we do more than sell scrap—if anybody finds out we may have found traces of alien technology—Venus will become the new gold rush, fought over by the Banks. We lose it all. La colonie loses it all.”

“Are you thinking of a broker?” Marie-Pier asked. “Someone not traceable to Venus?”

Marthe shrugged. “Can you imagine anyone who would fit the bill?”

Marie-Pier pondered the heavy fragment in her hands.

“I’ve thought through all the risks I can think of,” Marthe said, “and I still want to do this. I think rolling the dice is worth it.”

Gabriel-Antoine poured himself a cup of coffee and put one foot on the bench, leaning over the table. He took the hull fragment from Marie-Pier and turned it in the light, seeing things that the others probably didn’t.

“I’m not going to lie,” he said. “I’m bored up at sixty-fifth rang. I’d love to take on a big engineering project. I’d love to figure out what this is and how it works.”

Marie-Pier was still pensive.

“Sometimes I think the D’Aquillons have been kicked around not just by the government,but by the colonistes too,” Marthe said. George-Étienne stared at his hands. Marthe rubbed his shoulder. “The D’Aquillons stick together. We don’t trust easy. We put a lot of weight on family. Not just blood. Any of us would have dived into the clouds to save Mathurin, my late brother-in-law. Jean-Eudes would have done it.”

Jean-Eudes looked sheepish and teary at once. Pascal nudged him with a shoulder and gave him an encouraging smile.

“Émile, for all his differences with Pa, would have jumped after Mathurin too,” Marthe said, “because family is family.”

She jerked her head at her little brother.

“Show us the stars, Pascal.”

Pascal came to them awkwardly and unrolled the display over the table as Gabriel-Antoine moved dishes out of the way. Alexis, unaccustomed to the seriousness of the tone, and the strangers, snuck behind the bench and draped his arms around George-Étienne’s neck, peeking from behind his grandfather’s head.

“I don’t know why we found the stars,” Marthe said, “but we can’t reach them ourselves, and we’re offering to share them with you. But do you trust us to be straight with you? And what are we really offering? A corporation? A business partnership with the sharing of dividends? Those don’t make any sense here. We can’t involve the government or the Bank. And notarized pieces of paper don’t make trust.” She paused. “The only thing I can think of to make a real partnership is marriage.”

George-Étienne’s head jerked up. Marie-Pier’s cheeks pinkened. Gabriel-Antoine, still cocky, looked back at Pascal.

“Your sister moves fast, eh?” Gabriel-Antoine said. Pascal flushed to his hairline. Gabriel-Antoine winked at him. He grinned at Marthe. “You and I don’t swing the right ways, Marthe. Who’s proposing to me?”

“I’m talking about three families, Gabriel-Antoine,” Marthe said.

“Polygamy?” he said.

“Not exactly,” Marthe said. “Marriages bind families, because they have something at stake together. A joining of the D’Aquillons with the Phocas family and the Hudon family would be a real alliance, something serious.”

“Hard to imagine,” Marie-Pier said.

“You, Pa, and Gabriel-Antoine enter into partnership, to join the three families into a single house,” Marthe said. “The three of you share the leadership of the house, or it goes through turns. Pa, then Marie-Pier, then Gabriel-Antoine. The ages happen to work out for a succession of leadership every ten to fifteen years.”

“Not you?” Gabriel-Antoine asked.

“Pa is the head of the D’Aquillon family until he doesn’t want to be,” Marthe said.

Gabriel-Antoine’s face was turning serious. Marie-Pier’s lips twisted in thought. Jean-Eudes had taken an uncertain step closer to Pascal. George-Étienne looked at her with melancholy.

“I just want to give my children something,” George-Étienne said, reaching up to give Alexis’s arm a squeeze. “Something more than they’re getting now.” Alexis didn’t understand what was going on, but he squeezed his grandfather back.

“Something for Maxime and Florian,” Marthe said to Marie-Pier. “And something for Louise and Paul-Égide,” she said to Gabriel-Antoine. “And all their children in turn.”

“Are you looking for George-Étienne and I to make children?” Marie-Pier asked.

George-Étienne reddened again.

“Don’t ask me to help!” Gabriel-Antoine laughed.

“We’ll raise our families together as a house,” Marthe said. “Work together. Pool our resources. Share.”

“Sounds like a tribe,” Marie-Pier said.

“Families come in all shapes,” Marthe said. “Gabriel-Antoine, don’t you need help to give you more time to do real engineering?”

“Oui,” he said.

“We can help raise Louise and Paul-Égide and give Alexis a brother and sister at the same time. And we can help you care for your grandparents.”

Marie-Pier was quiet.

“It’s a big step,” Marthe said to her. “I think we can trust you, and I think you think you can trust us. And you’re right. We’re risking a lot. And without you, I don’t know how we’d do this. If we go for it, it’ll be hard. We’re talking years of sending out drones to mine the asteroids of that other system, building habitats, growing food, manufacturing, industrializing, all in a place that has never seen a Bank flag. It’ll be a new start. We’ll be the first humans to leave the solar system.”

Marie-Pier looked around at them all, then back to the strange alien technology in her hands.

“Sink the Causapscal-des-Vents on purpose, eh?” she said. “And carry down four of my trawlers with it? The stresses might break one or all of them, and then your habitat really will be falling into the abyss.”

“We have engineers to make the plan,” Marthe said, giving Pascal a quick, reassuring smile.

“And if they find out? The Bank and the government?” Marie-Pier continued. “That’ll be hard to explain.”

“We’ll have to be fast,” Pascal said.

“If they find out, I join George-Étienne in the doghouse,” Marie-Pier said. “Maybe they take the Coureur des Tourbillons. Maybe I go to prison. And my children and my brother start from zero, begging for bunks in the common habitats.”

“You don’t know that they won’t be begging for bunks in ten years,” George-Étienne said. “La colonie can’t afford metals. Habitats are going to fall on their own. And if this works, your children will be some of the richest people on Venus.”

Marie-Pier took a deep breath. “I’m not used to these kinds of risks.”

“We’ll take care of you and your children,” Marthe said. “That’s what family does.”

Gabriel-Antoine nodded slowly. “I will too. My grandparents are old. I don’t know what I can give Louise and Paul-Égide other than a stake in a black-market repair racket. And they probably would like a brother.” He winked at Alexis who smiled from behind his grandfather.

Marie-Pier regarded the young engineer, one of her prospective ‘husbands,’ for a long time. But she reserved a longer look for George-Étienne. He looked back at her evenly, not challenging, not pushing. Marthe was proud of him. The future of his whole family was riding on the decision of this woman.

“What do you think, Jean-Eudes?” Marie-Pier asked. Jean-Eudes reddened and smiled shyly.

Marie-Pier extended a hand to George-Étienne and clasped it. Then she shook hands with Gabriel-Antoine. Then the two men shook.

“What do we call ourselves?” Gabriel-Antoine asked. “I don’t want to change my name.”

“We keep our family names,” Marthe said.

“But we have to call the house something,” Pascal said, taking a step closer. “To belong. We’re founding this house in the Hadesphere, but our bridge to the stars is in the Stygian layers of Venus. Maybe we should be the House of Styx.”

“Venus protect fools in the wind,” Marie-Pier said.

George-Étienne and Gabriel-Antoine smiled and repeated the curse and invocation used by mothers in the clouds for decades.