Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy (2 page)

Visid’s eyes were immediately glued to the Screen; she waited for more, but the teacher immediately lapsed into the familiar sermon: “Where Titanian children, deprived of every happiness, unlike we on Mars, thanks to the beneficent High Leader …”

And so on, and so on.

Visid, still startled by the nugget of new information which had tickled her ears, looked quickly around to see if anyone else had noticed.

All eyes were glued to the Screen, all faces, including that of Visid’s friend Arnie, painted with rapt stupor.

Was she the only one who noticed—or cared?

She stared raptly at the Screen for a while herself, waiting for new thoughts to come from the ill-looking Martian teacher, but nothing more was forthcoming.

Before long, Culture gave way to Religion, and once again Visid’s eyes were drawn to the window, where red dust danced in a pink sky outside.

I
t was after classes had finally ended, without deliverance from the threatening dust storm, which had abated, that Visid was abruptly faced with the summons she knew would one day come.

As the students rose after the Religion teacher’s lecture ended, the Screen blanked and then brightened once more, showing a Martian monitor, head shaved, Stern.

“Visid Sneaden, remain,” the monitor said, eyes unblinking.

The Screen went blank again.

Visid looked to Arnie; their eyes briefly locked before Arnie looked away; but as her friend filed past her she gripped Visid’s hand briefly and whispered, “Be good.”

Before Visid could answer, her friend had moved on, and soon Visid was left alone in the classroom. The door slid open, revealing an attendant.

The robot, a lower, undressed model, said, “Follow.”

With no alternative, Visid trailed the silver machine out of the classroom and into unfamiliar territory.

Her usual path, with all the other students, was right hallway, down stairs, short corridor, up stairs, out into waiting transport to dormitories.

Today she was taken left hallway.

Instantly, her curiosity and interest was awakened.

Pink sandstone soon gave way, after a short stairway down and through a windowless door to steel walls. Unopened doors lined both sides. Behind one Visid heard faint moaning, which sounded machinelike.

The untalking attendant led her onward.

Another hallway left, and then the first door stood open.

The robot stood outside and indicated that Visid should enter ahead of it.

As she passed she let her hand brush against the attendant’s chromed chest; its eyes briefly widened.

Inside a steel room was a chair, a desk, a larger chair behind it.

“Sit,” the attendant said.

Visid did so; when she turned to look at the attendant, it was gone and the door had slid closed.

Another door, behind the larger chair, slid open, and the Culture teacher, gaunt and even more sickly-looking in person, entered and sat down. He bore a hand viewer, which he placed on the desk. His colors were very pale, his forehead higher than it looked on Screen and his eyes more tired and lifeless.

“You’re—” Visid began.

“I have many duties,” the teacher began. “One of them is to instruct.”

The teacher activated the hand viewer and sat studying it. When Visid opened her mouth to speak, he held up his hand for silence.

“Let me complete what I’m doing,” he said tonelessly.

Visid studied the walls, which were without ornament; the floor, which was rugless; the desk, which seemed of a piece with the rest of the room, as if it had grown like a mushroom out of steel.

“Don’t fidget,” the teacher said.

Visid tried to sit still, without success.

“You have not responded to any instruction,” the teacher said, putting the viewer down on the desk and deactivating it.

“I’m bored.”

“So it would seem. But not so bored as to show reaction at new information today.”

Visid said nothing.

“You are extremely bright,” Teacher went on, but his voice was still toneless. “You are unresponsive to indoctrination.”

Visid sat motionless, not knowing how to act. “And yet your aptitude for sciences is remarkable.”

“My father was an engineer.”

“Yes. A Venusian traitor.”

“I was nine when he was killed.”

“And you are twelve now. The point?”

Visid regarded him unblinkingly, deciding within that it was safe to hate this man.

“There is … a special project for which you are being considered. I will recommend—continue to recommend—that you be turned down. You are too much a risk. If I am overruled, so be it. If you are accepted, so be it. If you are rejected from the program, either before or after, I will have your brain cleaned.”

The teacher looked at his desk. “You may go.” The door out into the hallway slid open.

Visid sat unmoving, strange emotions churning within her.

The teacher looked up, blinking in surprise that she was still there.

“Well?” he said, his pale eyes on her.

“I hate you, too,” she said, and ran out.

T
he attendant brought her to the usual transport departure tunnel and escorted her to a transport, empty save for herself, which brought her back to the dormitories.

Outside the window, the afternoon still churned with blowing sand; the abated storm was returning with vigor. Far over the rim of Wells Crater, in the middle of the pit itself, a dust devil whipped itself mad, then ripped to nothingness. The lowering sun, pale orange and small, nothing at all like Venus’s sun, looked frightened of the coming squall. It seemed to edge faster toward the horizon.

Venus.

Visid had not thought of it in a long time; indeed, there was little to think of. She remembered much of her father and more of her mother; she was present when her mother was killed during the Mars-Venus conflict. Or, as it was known on Mars, the One-Day War. Though—after her subsequent arrival, along with hundreds of other Venusian children, on Mars—much counseling had sought to eradicate the bad memories from her mind, the single image of her mother’s body lying on the floor of her bedroom in two bisected parts was something that would never be stricken from her brain, even if the teacher had his way and had it wiped clean. Her father, she imagined, had been murdered by plasma soldiers the same way.

But she had been nine years old at the time, and little else in the way of Venusian memories remained. She did remember the sun as being larger and warmer, the sky as being pale blue instead of pink. The air on Venus smelled more like trees than Mars did, more of water than Mars. There was less dust. And she remembered the sight of a boat on a lake, and of a huge fish jumping from what looked like the sea. She thought her mother and father had taken her there but remembered nothing but these scattered images.

And yet after three years on Mars, she felt more of Venus than ever. Even if what she had in her mind was chimera, a false memory of a planet that was nothing like she imagined—indeed, the History lessons she had had on Venus showed images far more restrained and less romantic than those served up by her memory—those memories were more dear to her than vision of Mars. To her, Mars was, and would continue to remain, an alien planet.

And she felt no more than a visitor here.

T
he transport deposited her outside her dormitory building after the twenty-minute ride and immediately drove off. The dust storm was building to seriousness now. Shielding her eyes, Visid called for the dorm’s entrance to extend its dust shield to her, but there was no response.

“Shield, extend!” she shouted above the whistle of wind; when there was still no activation, the momentary thrill of fear went through her that perhaps she had been deliberately locked out.

Those pale, steady eyes of the Culture teacher.

But then there was a grinding whir and the dorm’s lobby shield, an opaque plastic, extended on its groaning hinges (the building was old) and engulfed her.

Instantly, the red dust, caught windless in the air, dropped around her, letting her breathe and see again.

“Whew!” she said.

To the tattoo of sand hitting the shield, she walked to the lobby door, which opened at her command, and entered the dorm.

T
he dorm attendant was in position in the lobby—but before it could quiz her, Visid said, in her own simulacrum of a robotic voice, “Visid Sneaden, entering.”

“Very well,” the attendant said, bowing stiffly from the waist; this one wore a tunic that hid all but its head, which shone like an ancient Earth toaster.

Hearing her own steps echo on the stone floor, she climbed the nearby stairwell to Level 2 and waited for that door to open for her.

At least there was some noise now.

She heard her own name in whispers, only magnified as she passed the first dormitory rooms on her right. Looking briefly in, she saw two students, Irma and Rainier Molton, sister and brother, staring back at her noncommittally. The dorm room’s Screen was on, showing banks of arithmetic homework.

Returning their stares, she walked on.

Arnie Cam, her roommate, was, at least, waiting for her in their room.

“Visid!” the younger girl cried, rising from her bed to fling her arms around her roommate. “We thought—”

“You thought what?” Visid said.

Arnie removed her arms, suddenly embarrassed. “Nothing …”

“Thought they had wiped my brain? They will, but not yet. There’s something happening.”

Arnie said, “There’s talk of another war. It was on the Screen—”

“I knew it!” Visid cried. “Cornelian will go after Wrath-Pei now. But so far it’s not going well.”

“How do you know these things?” Arnie looked genuinely surprised. “All they said—”

“—was what they want you to hear. You have to look between the words. The very fact that they tell us anything means it’s serious, and that they’ll want something from us.”

Arnie continued to pout. “And you shouldn’t talk about the High Leader like that.”

The older girl ignored her.

“And what did they keep you after lessons for?” Arnie asked.

“Something about a special project. Maybe it will be my ticket out of here.” She suddenly turned to her roommate. “But you’re not to tell anyone about it, all right?”

“But what shall I say when they ask?”

“Tell them … anything you want. That they took preliminary measurements to clean my brain.”

Arnie’s eyes widened. “Did they?”

“No.”

But Visid Sneaden’s thoughts were already elsewhere, connecting data into a scenario, fitting the snippets into a pattern, reading between words, cutting and pasting real fact and real culture and history and religion into a coherent picture that would give her the one thing in which she was interested, the one thing that would unlock so many puzzles about herself, this place where she was forced to be, and the place where she so desperately wanted to be—the one thing she would never stop looking for: the truth.

Chapter 2

“T
his is not acceptable!”

Pynthas Rei already knew that, but was not about to say
anything
at the moment. To say anything might mean an end to his life—and, miserable as that life was at the moment, Pynthas wished to hang on to it for as long as possible.

The High Leader, formerly Prime Cornelian, towered over Pynthas like a huge metallic insect. His two sets of forward limbs, which served as hands, were strong enough to break a man in their grasp; Pynthas had seen the High Leader perform that particular trick on a few occasions. Reared up on his hind limbs, the High Leader doubled not only his height but his fearsomeness, and those forward limbs now hovered over Pynthas’s trembling body, the sharp long fingers opening and closing like vises.

“Not acceptable!”

“Of course not, High Leader,” Pynthas squeaked. Desperately, his eyes darted around his chamber for something to give the High Leader to crush—lest it be his own head. His eyes fixed on the nearest object, which he quickly grabbed and thrust up over his head.

The High Leader’s nearest hand closed on it like a crab’s claw—and it was only at this point that Pynthas’s brain recorded the fact that he had just let the High Leader destroy one of his most precious personal objects—a ceramic figure in the shape of an Earth bear that his mother had given him when he was a boy.

A strangled whine began to form in his throat—but at the same moment he saw with relief that the High leader’s mood had suddenly calmed and that he, Pynthas, would live through this day after all.

But still, his bear.

“Perhaps,” the High Leader said, turning to pace the room, lowering the central limbs to make his gait resemble a bug with its front elevated, “there is something positive to be gained in this. It can be taken as a
good
sign. And, as always, it can be used to our advantage. You’re sure this intelligence is reliable?”

Pynthas, ever the toady, instantly nodded his head in obeisance. “Absolutely, High Leader. The agents who perished getting us this information were all top-notch people.”

“And how many of these outposts has Wrath-Pei taken?”

“Two, so far. On Oberon, Neried; there is indication that he means to attack Casto next.”

“Let him have them.”

Pynthas’s mouth dropped open; he could not help his mouth from blurting, “What?”

The High Leader turned once more to face the toady; but now there was a glint in his eye. “Yes, let Wrath-Pei have them all. If those outposts give him a heightened sense of security, he can possess them all.”

“But, High Leader, if we try to get to Titan, it will be like going through a minefield to get to it!”

Annoyance clouded the High Leader’s features, and Pynthas was instantly sorry he had spoken.

“Let me do your thinking for you, Pynthas,” the High Leader snapped. “From now on I want you to be what you are: a part of the furniture in this room.”

“Yes, High Leader!”