FIFTY-ONE

 

 

MARTHE AND MARIE-PIER stayed at the D’Aquillon habitat another thirty-six hours, conferring about the mechanics of stealing the Causapscal-des-Vents. Trawlers’ woody shells could withstand acid, heat, and pressure differentials, but their envelopes wouldn’t endure sharp lateral forces, like collisions. If they used four trawlers to hold up the Causapscal-des-Vents, the winds would knock them together until they cracked.

Marthe had thought that they might get around this by having trawlers connected by different lengths of cabling, but Gabriel-Antoine pointed out that as soon as the winds twisted the cables, the forces would become unbalanced and unpredictable, like trying to fly tangled kites. So Pascale and Gabriel-Antoine had designed a set of four harnesses to keep the trawlers apart.

They would probably need to build the harnesses out of cables they’d salvaged from older trawlers in their herd. They might even need to cannibalize their healthy trawlers. It wasn’t a pretty thought. If this didn’t work, the D’Aquillons would have nothing, no ability to produce oxygen and water, no ability to filter metals and minerals from the clouds. But they were all sacrificing. The whole House of Styx was. It felt strange to say it. And good. The House of Styx. A new family.

But it was fragile yet. Marthe got George-Étienne in his room in a quiet moment while the rest of them were cooking. She and Pa were both a bit hungover and he offered her a cup of water. Despite his bleary-eyed exhaustion, he was almost bouncing on the balls of his feet, animated like she hadn’t seen him in years. He was a man with hope again. Marthe took the tough little cup carved out of trawler ribbing, and sat on Pa’s hammock and sipped. She made a face. She was no longer used to how much sulfur was in everything down here.

“Émile,” she said finally.

Pa’s face soured. “What about him?”

“We need him.”

“We have enough people.”

She shook her head. “Extra hands, Pa. Even with Émile, it’s still a coin toss.”

Pa drank his water, set down the cup and looked at her very deliberately. “I would rather pull in Marie-Pier’s brother, even though I don’t know him, or his loyalties. He can’t be worse than a con who couldn’t climb out of a bottle long enough to find his ass.”

“You haven’t talked to him in five years, Pa.”

“Is he drinking?”

Marthe forced the water down.

“He won’t fuck this up. This is about family, Pa. He’s your son. And he’s my brother.”

“He turned his back on us.”

“He never turned his back on me or Pascale or Jean-Eudes,” she said. “He’s a D’Aquillon.”

“D’Aquillon is just a name to him.”

His eyes were intense, daring her, but she wasn’t a girl anymore. She couldn’t be pushed around.

“Why’d you send me up to Causapscal-des-Vents, Pa?”

“You were right for the job, and you were ready, even at sixteen.”

“Why didn’t you go up, Pa? Speak in l’Assemblée for yourself?”

He smiled, but not with humor. Grim imaginings. “I don’t think either of us think that I have the patience for all their posturing and alliances and payoffs and smiling insults. They didn’t accept my son. That’s all I need to know about them or anyone else.”

“Do you think I’m a bad person for holding my own in l’Assemblée?”

“Non!” he said waving his hands a bit like Marie-Pier, catching his emphatic negative in the space they outlined. “Use their own tricks against them! You’re better than them, and you can beat them at their game.”

“The difference between you and me is that I can let a grudge go,” she said. “Not every slight needs to be answered. Not every slight is even really a slight. Sometimes people are just idiots and they can’t help it.”

“A slight?” he said, raising his voice. He darted a glance at the curtain between them and the galley and stepped closer to Marthe and lowered his voice. His frown deepened. “‘Jean-Eudes can’t live’ is a slight?”

“Neither of us are talking about that anymore, Pa. You dealt with that in your own way. We left. We became coureurs. That’s not why you didn’t go deal with l’Assemblée yourself. You didn’t want to deal with every other friction that comes up, inevitably, between people.”

“Hypocrites, you mean,” he said.

“Sometimes people are stupid,” she said. “Sometimes people are fed up and explode. Sometimes people are tired.”

“And that’s when they show their true colors!”

“That’s when they fuck up,” she said. “That’s when they make a mistake they can’t take back.”

“Telling me to kill my son is not a mistake anyone can take back!” he whispered violently.

“I’m not talking about Jean-Eudes, ostie! He’s born! He’s here. He’s healthy and we love him. No one is coming for him. I’m talking about your other son.”

“Pascal is just fine, thank you very much,” he said sarcastically.

“Émile,” she said in a low voice. “This is what you haven’t dealt with, Pa. This is why you sent me up sunside to be in l’Assemblée. You love us, but you can’t let go of grudges.”

“What I can’t do is forgive someone who crosses a line, who hurts my family,” he said.

“Émile is family.”

“He gave that away!” Pa looked at the curtained opening. The sounds of pots knocking and Jean-Eudes’s low voice laughing sounded outside. “He gave that away.”

“Émile learned not to back down from his father,” she said. “To never give in. And one day, both of them got too angry.”

“This is my house and my roof!”

“And your son isn’t welcome?”

“He’s never even tried, so we’ll never know,” Pa said.

“He’s going to try now, because I’m going to get him to try,” she said. “I need him here. Pascale needs him here. Jean-Eudes needs him here.”

“We’re good enough together,” Pa said. “I don’t need him teaching bad habits to any of the boys.”

“We need him here because he’s a full-grown man. If this gamble with the House of Styx fails, we’ve got nothing. Not the Causapscal-des-Vents. Maybe not even the Causapscal-des-Profondeurs. We need him here to improve our odds. This is your legacy and mine. What gets left to Pascale and Alexis will be decided in the next few months. Grudges are a luxury that you and Émile have to sacrifice.”

George-Étienne gestured dismissively. “If he apologizes and stops drinking—”

“There won’t be apologies,” Marthe said flatly.

“What?”

“Neither of you are capable,” she said. “If you can’t forgive, you just have to put things behind you.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” he said hotly.

She rose from the hammock and put the cup on the table beside his. She paused at the door as his eyes followed her.

“You said family comes first, Pa,” she said. “Now we get to see what’s more important to you: the future of Pascale, Jean-Eudes and Alexis, or you wanting to keep old hurts.” The muscles of his jaw were bunching tight beneath a beard more salt than pepper. “I love you, Pa. We all do.”

She pressed past the curtain. They’d finished their cooking and Marie-Pier was packing a basket for her and Marthe to take in their plane-ride back up to the Coureur-des-Tourbillons. Jean-Eudes saw her emerge from Pa’s room and ran to hug her. He felt small. Muscled and older, yes, but needing her. Needing Pa. Needing Émile too.

“Tell my grandparents I’m good,” Gabriel-Antoine said.

“I’ll take care of them,” Marthe said, “and of your habitat. Émile will have to do more on the Causapscal-des-Vents, but we can handle two habitats.”

“I’ll stop in too,” Marie-Pier said, “when I’m up for l’Assemblée.”

“Maybe they’ll miss me in l’Assemblée?” Gabriel-Antoine mused. They would and wouldn’t. He’d never taken strong sides in any discussion, and his attendance was already spotty.

George-Étienne passed them by, suited up to go outside to crank Marie-Pier’s plane up from under the gantry. He didn’t give her a look. Not a good sign. At Pa’s appearance, Jean-Eudes got back to work in the corner, doing final checks on everyone’s survival suits.

Marthe shepherded Gabriel-Antoine to the wall on the other side of the habitat. She leaned. He leaned too, smirking, crossing his arms.

“Is this what I think it is?” Gabriel-Antoine asked.

“Don’t hurt Pascal,” Marthe said in a low voice. “And don’t pressure him. He’s young. He’s never had a boyfriend.”

“I want the opposite of hurting him,” Gabriel-Antoine said.

“You’re a grown man.”

“I’m only twenty-one.”

“And he’s sixteen. Do right by him.”

“Threatening?”

“If I thought you’d ever hurt him on purpose, yeah, you’d have to watch your back,” she said, “but I don’t think you’re that kind. Just don’t forget how young he is.”

“You guys are good family,” he said.

“We’re all family now.”

“Say step-daddy.”

“Eww!” Marthe punched his arm.

He flinched and laughed. “I’ll bring him flowers every day.”

Marthe left him there, crossed the habitat, hugged Pascale.

“We’ll talk soon, just you and me,” Marthe whispered. “I’ll get the hormones.”

Pascale nodded, forcing a smile. Marthe kissed Jean-Eudes on the top of his head before taking her suit from him. Marie-Pier was almost suited up. Her brother smiled and backed away as soon as she crossed the line to put on her suit. Alexis raced up and wanted a hug, but wouldn’t cross the line either. Marthe relented, crossed back, hugged them each once more and then suited up.

The pressure and heat hit them in the outer torus and then ratcheted up again when they cycled through to the gantry. Marie-Pier’s plane hung nose-down, wings affixed. They floated in a high-pressure system today, a bubble of calm air in the spongy orange glow of Venusian night, so the plane barely swung on its cables.

“Keep an eye out,” George-Étienne said, his tone giving no hint of the words they’d exchanged. “Word is going around that the government is acting funny. They’ve got lots of planes in the air. Drones too.”

Marthe thought she must look just as puzzled as Marie-Pier.

“Radar?” she asked.

“No. Just silent flying. No one can figure out what they’re doing. Air Traffic says they’re testing comms and mapping sensors.”

“That makes no sense,” Marthe said. “I’ll see what I can find out when I get back up.”

“You’re storm-free, all the way up to fiftieth rang,” George-Étienne said.

“Thanks, Pa,” Marthe said. “I’ll be back in a few weeks.”

“Merci, ma chère.”

“Merci, George-Étienne,” Marie-Pier said. “I’ll be back too.”

Her father made a brief, courteous bow to Marie-Pier, something Marthe had never seen him do before. She and Marie-Pier climbed down the rope ladder, opened the hatch and slid in. Marie-Pier started doing internal checks. Her father detached the cables from the wing tips. They hung from a cable loop by a single retractable hook. The propellers turned fitfully, ready to come to full power. The plane turned slowly with the breeze. This was the start of the roller-coaster. Marie-Pier pulled the hook release and they plunged into the clouds. Marie-Pier pulled up, turning their fall into forward airspeed, and started the propellers.

Marthe looked back at the gantry and the wide diameter of her family’s home. A bigger family now. And she felt a pang. She was returning to a cramped habitat that could have fit more, that could have felt more like a home, if there’d been more of Émile and less of Noëlle.