SEVENTY

 

 

PASCALE HAD BEEN electrically shocked before. Everything in the clouds collected a static charge. Most of the time, the shocks were small. This time her muscles ached. They’d waited for the radar pings to get closer, but they’d gone west and south. She got up and descended to the habitat. And like a weight had been lifted, she scrambled over the Causapscal-des Vents like a child with a new toy. She’d never explored a habitat like this. The lines of the Causapscal-des-Vents were strange, inorganic, something wholly made by people. She’d spent her life inside another living thing, a bioengineered Venusian trawler, a creature of wood, electrical arteries and curving lines. This was so different, lifelessly elegant and cleverly creative.

The Causapscal-des-Vents had been damaged on its way down, though. It wasn’t made for these pressures or acidities. Corrosion burns ran over its sides like rain tracks, rendering the plastic of the envelope greenhouses opaque. It had been a big job to move the radar-obscuring curtains of old trawler cabling out of the way, then to hang big acid-resistant sheets over the whole habitat before replacing the curtains. It would take weeks, months to remove the metal and retool it into the pieces they could use to cap the cave.

In wonder, Pascale came down the inner walkway in the envelope, to the airlock to the gondola. Pa, Gabriel-Antoine and Marie-Pier inspected the condition of the gondola, pulling up the wall panels to see the wiring and support ribs. They measured and inventoried and planned.

Gabriel-Antoine’s voice sounded as giddy as Pascale felt. They were going to try to see the true soul of Venus, questing like the knights of old French romances. A thousand things could go wrong. But if they succeeded, they might reach the stars.

Impulsively, Pascale patted her father’s arm, then turned it into a one-armed hug that he returned. It was an awkward gesture in survival suits, but she felt her father through the layers, solid, real, seasoned by Venus. Yet Pascale was different from him, conceived here, raised here, still seeking her roots, her true self. She was closer now. She saw in herself what was hidden from the world.

“Pi’?” Gabriel-Antoine said to her.

She felt herself grinning. Gabriel-Antoine gave an awkward hand-signal to switch channels, trying to give the coureur one. It was adorably inept.

“I’ll teach you how to signal properly,” Pascale teased, “when your hands aren’t in gloves.”

“I can think of better things to do with my hands when they’re not in gloves,” he said.

The gnawing dread—how to tell Gabriel-Antoine about the self emerging in her—was still distant enough that the euphoria of the moment could hold it away. She was happy. They were happy. She couldn’t wait for Marthe and Émile to get back here. They had all they needed to reach the stars.