FIFTY-FIVE

 

 

MARIE-PIER CAME UP from the Coureur des Tourbillons and met Marthe on the roof of the Marais-des-Nuages. The day was clear, with warm high-pressure cells pushing vast valleys into the cloud-tops, all the way down to the rolling yellowed vortices of Les Rapides Plats. Marthe would have invited Marie-Pier into the Phocas habitat as would have been customary and polite, if only to offer water, but Gabriel-Antoine’s grandparents were cranky and tired. She clasped Marie-Pier’s forearm briefly and they soared on wide wings towards the Détroit d’Honguedo, a big, aging habitat fifteen kilometers north, on the outskirts of the main colonial flotilla.

They didn’t speak. Marthe found herself mildly paranoid now that she was the architect of such a clearly criminal plan. It hadn’t been announced, but it was clear to anyone paying attention that more planes and drones had been patrolling most of the equatorial zone. A lot more. It might be as innocent as remapping, but unless the government had come into new sensing equipment, that wasn’t likely. She hadn’t found out what it was all for, but her suspicions were on a hair trigger.

If Marie-Pier was feeling any of this, Marthe couldn’t tell. So Marthe did the only thing she could. She breathed deeply, traced the bright cratering of the cloudscape with her eyes, and dipped here and there, following thin downdrafts and riding updrafts. The tirelessly-moving surfaces of the upper clouds were beautiful in the way make-up and jewelry could be beautiful. Even though she’d lived up here for eight years, Marthe still felt like a transplant. That she was indelibly a coureur des vents at her core comforted her. Someday she would move back down to take care of Pa and Jean-Eudes. Perhaps even to the surface, near their Axis Mundi. Whatever troubles they had upcloud, there were ways for coureurs to hide in the depths.

The Détroit d’Honguedo revealed its shape as she crossed layers of haze. It was one of the last original habitats, the big communal ones they’d sent from Earth for the first immigrants. The loss of a couple of them, like the Matapédia and the Montée de Corté-Réal, had changed the strategy to smaller, more easily managed habitats for three families, two, or even one, like Causapscal-des-Vents. The trend had only reversed recently, with better material science and engineering experience. Big habitats like Baie-Comeau might be the future, especially if some of the frames and the envelopes could be built on Venus with indigenous materials.

The outer faces of the Détroit d’Honguedo’s envelope had clouded with age and acid, making of it a blind eye floating above the clouds. It probably still housed eighty or ninety people and carried some of the machine and electronic shops to service the flotilla. It was unsurprising that this might be one of the places where the black market flourished.

They alighted on the roof port, stowed their wing-packs and neutralized before descending through an airlock into the envelope. They cracked the seals on their helmets when the stairway opened onto the wide arcade. Little one- or two-person shops—machinists, electricians, small-electronics repairs, all government-run—ran along the arcade, framed by transparent layers of envelope filled with greenery and even suited gardeners.

“I’ve never seen this part of the flotilla,” Marthe said. “When we get authorized for repairs at all, we get assigned to the Baie-Comeau or the Escuminac.”

“I come here often. The inspectors are all bought off, unless you do something really stupid,” Marie-Pier said, leaning her head close as they walked. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Did your father shave and comb his hair after you proposed the marriage?”

A fit of giggling burst out of Marthe. “He did!”

Marie-Pier was laughing too.

“Don’t worry,” Marthe said. “It’s not that kind of marriage. He can be very correct, though.”

“It’s not bad,” Marie-Pier said. “I wouldn’t have made the same choice he made about Jean-Eudes. I don’t think I’m strong enough. But I admire someone who did.”

“He’s not an easy man in many ways, as a father—or as a husband, I imagine, although maman seemed happy enough,” Marthe said. “Sometimes I don’t want to be like him. But other times, when I know it’s something that really matters, I worry that I’m not enough like him.”

“You are,” Marie-Pier said.

At the end of the arcade was a small hardware depot. The light beside the doorway shone red over hand-painted letters that said Present Requisition Forms. Marie-Pier showed her wrist computer and the light greened. The depot was small, but the parts in here could have helped run the Causapscal-des-Vents for years. Marthe understood that hers wasn’t the only habitat, but it didn’t make the bitterness pass easily. At the back of the depot was a door leading into an old repair bay. Machinery and scraps were piled high in rude Venus-made shelves and netting, but that wasn’t the main purpose of the room.

Within that circle of scrap sprouted rows of small stills, fans, fume hoods, a miniature bioreactor, and what looked like a homemade centrifuge. A few people in survival suits and regular clothes were cooking, measuring, jarring, labelling. The drafts carried scents of yeast and fermentation and sulfur and ammonia. Marthe got a few strange looks, but people seemed to know Marie-Pier. She and an older man kissed on both cheeks.

“This is Marthe,” Marie-Pier said. “She’s okay.” She didn’t introduce the man.

Marthe and the man kissed on each cheek as well. She tried not to gawk at the operation, although she ought not to have been surprised. A lot of things the colonie officiallydidn’t have, but really did, had to come from somewhere. Homemade. And the pervasive black market fed the raw materials for illicit industrial processes.

“How’s Laurette?”

“Pregnant.”

“Grandpère!” Marie-Pier exclaimed, grinning, slapping his arm. “You’re getting old.”

“I’m not the one asking for hormones,” the man said.

“I’ve got a friend.”

“Your friend has expensive needs.”

“You can give me a fair price.”

The man considered Marie-Pier, cast a glance at Marthe and then back.

“Your brother said you figured out how to get forty percent less lignins in your trawler cables.”

“Hard to grow,” Marie-Pier said, “but I’ll have a batch ready. It’ll yield a couple hundred kilos of fiber.”

“You want an ongoing supply of the hormones?”

Marie-Pier nodded.

“Can you manage a hundred kilos of low-lignin trawler cable per month?” he asked.

Marie-Pier seemed startled. Marthe didn’t understand what was being offered or what he would do with it. Lignins, along with carbon nanotubes, made cables hard enough to support the weight of the bob and cable and the heat of the depths. Trawlers with mutations to produce less lignins would be harder to grow.

“I can probably do seventy-five kilos per month,” Marie-Pier said finally. “Nobody else has this.”

“I hear they’re cutting into some of your operation,” he said.

“Some of it,” Marie-Pier said. “What the government takes won’t affect this.”

The man rubbed graying stubble on his chin, and the rasping sounded despite the other noises in the bay.

“All right. Seventy-five,” he said.

They followed him to a fridge and he rummaged among small tied-top carbon-weave sacks, reading the handwritten labels. He finally put two into her hands. Marthe peeked into the bags with Marie-Pier. Dozens and dozens of little misshapen white pellets lay at the bottoms.

“They aren’t pretty, but they’re dosed right,” he said. “Four months’ worth. I’ll expect your shipments to start right away.”

“They will,” Marie-Pier said, kissing him on both cheeks. “Merci.”

Marthe kissed his cheeks again too and they made their way back into the small depot. As soon as the door was closed behind them and she’d assured herself that no one else was in the depot, Marthe leaned close.

“Thank you, Marie-Pier. This means a lot to me.”

“It’s expensive, but your little brother... your little sister is worth it. I was ramping up operations anyway.”

“What did you give him?”

“The lignins in trawler cabling make them useless for feeding bioreactors. Carbon nanotubes we can break down, but not lignins. I’ve engineered trawlers to produce a lot less lignin.”

“You’ll be able to grow something in the clouds that we can use to make real food?”

“I’m halfway there.”

“And you still threw in with us?” Marthe said in some astonishment. Something like this, if the government didn’t get in the way and nationalize it, could make Marie-Pier wealthy—wealthy for Venus, at least.

Marie-Pier looked shy for a moment. “The clouds are our home,” she said. “I can engineer all I want and I’ll still be part of la colonie, still living in the clouds. But I can dream of stars too.”

“I never thought I’d be able to,” Marthe said.

Marie-Pier handed her the little bags.

“No. You hold onto them,” Marthe said. “You’re going to see Pascale before me.”

Marie-Pier put the bags of pills in an inner suit pocket. Then frowned. “Is somebody waiting for you?” Beyond the door to the depot, Noëlle waved.

“I’ll have to take care of this myself,” Marthe said. Her paranoia didn’t feel so paranoid anymore.

“We’ll be in touch.”

Marthe opened the door and stepped through. Noëlle looked uncertain. Marthe grabbed her arm and led her through the arcade.

“Hey!” Noëlle said.

Marthe kept on marching her along. She’d never treated Noëlle like this. Marthe was always the one chasing, persuading, seducing. Maybe the change in behavior surprised Noëlle. It surprised Marthe. At the other end of the arcade, she found an alcove behind the stairwell into the envelope. She pushed Noëlle’s back against the wall. The air smelled of machine oil and ozone.

“Why are you following me?” Marthe said. “First the committee chamber. Now here.”

Noëlle mouthed some words, but couldn’t make anything come out.

“You’re no femme fatale, Noëlle.”

“What?”

“Who asked you to spy on me?”

“No one!”

“The présidente already had me into her office,” Marthe said. “Was it her, or didn’t you even get to see her?”

Noëlle’s dark brown eyes widened.

“What do they want to know? Who I’m seeing? Where I’m going?”

Noëlle’s expression shifted to humiliated anger. “I’m not following you. I saw you and decided to say hi.”

“Seeing as how neither you nor I have ever been herebefore, that’s kind of hard to swallow, ma chère.”

“Why are you here?” Noëlle demanded indignantly. Marthe was enjoying the role reversal, of not looking for approval, for scraps of Noëlle’s affections. There was something bigger than her, their Axis Mundi, and she was more than just some mechanic on a shitty ship. Dreams had power.

“I need a place to live, Noëlle, because they’re taking away my home.”

Noëlle pursed her beautiful lips.

“You don’t have to tell me who sent you,” Marthe said. “Just tell me if you were going to go all the way.”

“What do you mean?”

Marthe’s lips swooped in, smothering Noëlle’s with powerful need, and after a moment of surprise, Noëlle responded, her fingers reaching up to caress Marthe’s cheeks.

Between breathless kisses, Noëlle spoke. “What happened to you?”

In answer, Marthe pushed Noëlle along the wall, to where a tool closet opened easily. She shoved Noëlle in and followed, closing the door behind her. Her femme fatale was hardly dangerous at all, but she was certainly warm in the darkness.