Venus of Dreams (28 page)

She walked down the aisle. Passengers turned from the windows on either side of the cabin and watched her; she thought she heard a few whispers. There were seats for over two hundred passengers, though only half that number were present; all of them seemed to be staring at her, the new curiosity in their midst. She kept her head down and stared at the blue carpeting under her feet, grateful that she would be traveling in a room. More whispers followed her; she refused to look up.

"Stuck-up," she heard one man mutter. "Must think she knows it all already."

She passed the food and beverage dispensers and found herself in a short, windowless corridor. She pressed her hand against a door on her left; it hummed as its scanner read her bracelet, then opened.

She entered. She was inside a tiny, bare room with a small, cushioned blue chair that stood next to a small round window. "Greetings," said an impersonal female voice, speaking in Anglaic, "and welcome aboard. This will be your room during your journey, but please feel free to join your fellow passengers outside when you wish." Iris set her bags on the floor. "You will note a small door in the corner. This leads to your washroom and toilet. Next to that door, you will find a blue button. Press the button when you want to retire, and your bed will be lowered from the wall; for bed retraction, press that button again. Food and drink are available in the dispensers you passed on your way here. Please dispose of all receptacles properly in the recycler next to the dispensers. If you have understood these instructions, please respond by saying, 'Yes, I have understood.' Have a pleasant journey."

Iris sank into the seat. From the window, she could see the townsfolk wandering back to Lincoln over the snow-patched ground. Her throat tightened. She suddenly wanted to run from the floater, back to her home and the safety of her household. I'm not ready, she thought.

"Salaam," the voice said, and began to drone out a new set of instructions in Arabic.

"Yes, I have understood," Iris called out. The voice broke off in midsentence.

The ground was dropping slowly away from her; the cradle had released them. She pressed her nose against the window as the snow-covered roofs of Lincoln drifted out of her sight.

PART TWO

Sixteen

March 539

From: Iris Angharads, Cytherian Institute, 

Caracas, Nomarchy of Nueva Hispania

To: Liang Chen, Commune of Angharad Julias, 

Lincoln, Nomarchy of the Plains Communes

Private Communication

I should have sent you a message before, I know. I guess I was overwhelmed when I first arrived, so all I did was let Angharad know I'd arrived safely, and then, by the time I was ready to send you a message, she sent me one and told me you'd be back in Lincoln soon, so I decided to wait.

I'm just making excuses for myself. I didn't want to send a message to anyone because, for the first couple of months, I wasn't sure I'd be staying here. I can admit that now. I just wasn't prepared for what it would be like.

I'd better start at the beginning. By the time I got to Caracas, the floater had picked up five more students on the way. It would have been quicker to come here on a suborbital flight, and I was wondering why the Institute didn't just send me to a city where I could have caught one, but I think the Institute wanted us to have time to talk to other students, get acquainted so we wouldn't arrive not knowing anyone. We all had rooms on the floater until we got to San Antonio, and maybe that was just as well, because whenever we were in the rest of the cabin, people kept avoiding us. One of the other students with me was a Linker's son, but the others were just like me—they'd never been away from their towns, never thought they'd really be chosen.

And guess what! One of them was Alexandra Lenas. I finally met her. I told you about her, didn't I? I used to talk to her a lot over the screen, but after I was expecting Benzi, I just couldn't, because I didn't know what to say to her about that. I was surprised at how uneasy I felt around her, and I think she felt the same way at first. We'd gotten along so well over the screen that I think we were both wondering if we still would, but after a while, it was fine. I think she was a little surprised that I'd been chosen, frankly. Well, so was I!

One of the boys, Richard Matties, has a son too. He told me a little about his boy and I told him about Benzi, and that was probably a mistake, because I started feeling guilty again about leaving him. It's easier for Richard. He's only seen his son a couple of times, and he's just the father anyway. Well, you know what I mean.

Anyway, when we got to the port, we didn't know how we were going to find our way around it, let alone around the city. You have to take the tubeway train just to get from the floater cradle area to where the suborbitals land. But we'd all seen images of the port, and we'd been told where to go, so it could have been worse.

As soon as we were inside the nearest wing of the building, a couple of ragged-looking boys came up to us and asked us where we were going and offered to take us to the school for some credit, but Anthony—the Linker's son—warned us not to have anything to do with them. It seems that sometimes they'll show you the way, but other times, they'll simply lure you to some out-of-the-way place and force you to give them your codes. Then, by the time anybody traces you or you get away, they've exchanged your credit for coins or bills and have disappeared. I would have thought thieves could be easily tracked, but apparently there are too many of them, so the authorities tend to concentrate on the ones who murder their victims. Oh, that makes it sound awful, and Anthony says that Caracas is actually fairly safe. Well, you probably know all this, since you've traveled so much, but I was beginning to wish I were back in Lincoln even before leaving the port.

The port wasn't quite like the images I'd seen. The halls were the same, endless white walls with open doors and polished brown floors, but the noise was deafening. People were running to catch tubeway trains, sitting in the corridors, gathering in the rooms—I've never seen so many people in my life. I think everyone in Lincoln could have fitted into that one area of the port. We'd been advised to wait in one particular room near the entrance we came through, so we went there and met some other students. A few were from the Arctic Nomarchy, and they were looking a little uncomfortable even without their coats, and the others had arrived from Azania.

We started talking while we waited, telling the others a little about ourselves, and then I began to notice something odd. Nearly everyone, except for Anthony, came from a family or a place where students were hardly ever chosen for schools; we were all practically the first people in our towns or areas chosen as students. One of the boys from Azania said that might be because the Nomarchies had decided to give more people a chance, that they've finally realized that we're wasted in our homes.

Anthony was smiling when he heard that, as if he didn't believe a word of it. He has kind of a disdainful expression anyway, with very fine features and a thin mouth and grayish, wintry eyes, but he was almost sneering this time. I got up then to go into the hall to get a drink from a dispenser, and Anthony came with me to get some food, and then he began to mock the other boy and said he didn't know what he was talking about.

"Why
did
they pick us, then?" I asked him.

He said, "I thought you might be smarter than that. They picked you because you'd be grateful, because you'd be so happy for this chance that you'd do whatever the Nomarchies ask. That's what they need on the Islands now—people who'll give their lives to the Project but who won't forget who gave them the chance."

So I asked, "Why did they pick you, then? You're a Linker's son. You don't have to be grateful."

He didn't answer for a while. He just stared at the people passing us and wouldn't look at me until we were back at the entrance to our room. Then he said that they'd probably picked some Linkers' children for the Cytherian Institute so that we'd think it was a real school instead of just a place where the humble and underprivileged could be molded into willing servants of the Mukhtars' interests. That was exactly the way he put it.

He made me angry. That remark about being humble was bad enough. My mother's a mayor, and I'll bet her line goes back as far as his on the Plains, if not further. But what was worse is that he was making it seem as if we hadn't done anything, as if being chosen was no accomplishment at all. After all, if we had ability, they could pick us for whatever other reasons they wanted; it didn't matter. Then Anthony muttered something about giving certain people a way out so that they wouldn't be frustrated or cause trouble.

I was about to start arguing with him about it, but when we went inside, an older student was waiting to take us to the Institute. That surprised me. I thought someone working for the port, or a servo, would do that.

The student's name was Esteban. He gave each of us a pocket map. You press a button, and it shows where in Caracas you are; then, you say your destination, and it shows you the routes to it by tube or hovercar or on foot. But Esteban warned us not to wander around too much until we learned more about the city and which places to avoid; apparently those pocket maps don't show you what might be risky. There's a story that a student once walked through the district bordering the shuttle spaceport field and was lured into a tavern, where he got drunk and signed a contract with an asteroid miner and was never seen again. I don't know if it's true; you'd think the Institute could have argued that his student's contract superseded anything else he signed, but then, he wouldn't have been in much of a position to argue that point, and maybe the Institute didn't think it was worth the bother. Some of the areas around the port are supposed to be the worst, which figures. Most of the people there live on Basic.

As it turns out, I don't know why they bothered to give us pocket maps. I haven't seen Caracas at all since we arrived at the Institute. We live in a pyramid just outside the southern end of the city, near the mountains, and everything we need is here. Even if it weren't, we wouldn't have time to go into Caracas anyway, with all the work we have to do. The Institute's almost like a city anyway. There are about twenty thousand people here, including the teachers and some people who've come back from Anwara or the Islands.

I was homesick at first. I felt overwhelmed. I may know more than most of the people in Lincoln, but that doesn't help me here. I probably know less than a lot of the students. I used to cry a lot at night, thinking about you and Benzi, but I know you'd be disappointed if I gave up.

Chen, send a message when you can. Show this to Benzi, so he doesn't forget me, even if he won't understand any of it. Maybe he should just hear my voice. Say hello to everyone. I've put a privacy lock on this, but you can show some of it to the others, if you like—well, maybe not all of it. I don't want to encourage Angharad by having her think I'm homesick. I miss you.

Iris had been assigned to one of the dwellings on the eighth level of the Cytherian Institute's pyramid. The small, shell-shaped buildings overlooked green plots of grass and shrubbery, while palm trees lined the walkways bordering the level.

As Iris walked along the path toward her dwelling, a breeze whispered past, and she could almost imagine that she was moving through the street of a small town instead of along one level of a building that housed a small city. Each level, surrounded by high railings, was open to the outside; Iris shivered a bit as she felt the crisp mountain air.

All of the students who had arrived three months earlier were housed on the eighth level and the one below it, where they would live during their first two years at the Institute. Iris shared her dwelling with nine others. She recalled how awkward she had felt when she had first been shown to the dwelling. No one from the Plains had been housed with her. She had not even been sure of how to greet her housemates, who looked as though they came from every continent in the world and had more self-possession than she felt. She had worried about whether they would like her; it had been small consolation to know that she would have her own small room in the dwelling, as would each of the others, and that they could all ask to be moved later if they did not get along.

As she approached the door of her dwelling, she stiffened self-consciously and patted her hair before pressing her hand against the door lock. I don't belong here, she thought suddenly. I don't really know anybody, I have no real friends. Her longing for Lincoln was so sharp that she found herself gulping breath. She had dreamed of escaping the Plains; she had never imagined that she could miss the town so much.

She tried to steady herself. This was her home now, until she joined the Project. However much she missed Chen and her household and worried over Benzi, she would accomplish more by staying here. She was only feeling this way because she had idled away the past hour instead of concentrating on her work, and there was a lesson in that. She would have to study harder, so that the demands of the work would drive other, more disturbing thoughts from her mind.

The door opened; she entered the front room of the small residence. Edwin was sitting at one table, slouched over a reader as he ate; his blond hair drooped around his placid, wide face. At another table, Michiko and Sarah were conversing while, in one comer, Jomo and Ian were playing chess.

The familiar sight of her housemates eased Iris a little. She had come to know them better during the past three months, had been surprised and then relieved to find out how nervous some of them had been around her. Michiko had been shocked to discover that Iris already had a son, and had left him. Jomo had come to her room during their first week at the Institute; he was surprised when she turned him away, because he had somehow picked up the notion that Plainswomen slept with any man who asked. Iris herself had inadvertently offended Ian with a remark about his appearance; he was one of several students who had delayed the onset of puberty and looked like a fourteen-year-old boy instead of the eighteen he actually was. They were more used to one another now and able to joke about their former lapses.