Old Venus

The Sunset of Time

MICHAEL CASSUTT

“DON’T WORRY, YOUR GIRLFRIEND WILL BE HERE.”

D’Yquem (Exile Quotient ^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7}) gestures with his brue, the cheap brand created by Petros (^1,3,4,6), owner of the 13-Plus Tap, which is the least of the three bars that cater to the Terrestrian population of Venus Port. It is the one Jor (^2,4,7) prefers, for its low prices, panoramic view, and especially the absence of Terrestrian Authority figures—or anyone whose EQ is under 12.

“You keep calling her my girlfriend.”

“Suggest another name then,” D’Yquem snaps. He emigrated to Venus from England, and his manner is still annoyingly upper-class, aristocratic. “We’ve already rejected ‘tart,’ and ‘sweetie’ is unbearably cloying. ‘Impedimenta’ is clearly inaccurate since she’s more independent than you.”

“Drink your brue,” Jor snaps, turning so he can watch the entrance. Having fled Chicago and a suffocating Midwestern American existence, he is an unlikely friend to D’Yquem.

Yet they do share similarities. Both are tall and thin, though Jor’s complexion is darker, and his stomach is beginning to expand, thanks to the nightly ingestions of brue. D’Yquem remains pale and almost skeletal.

Their other commonality is, according to D’Yquem, “We’re both hereditary kicks. Horse-holders. Second-raters. Never heroes.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m the snarky one at every meeting,” he says, which Jor knows to be true. “And you’re the one who trails behind the boss but does all the work.”

“But I’m a project manager!”

“But not the head of TA.” Which is Harrison Tuttle (^4,5), a dull, petty American from New York who controls every aspect of Terrestrian life, from the assignment of living quarters in the four towers to approved styles of clothing—but pays no attention to the progress of the Lens.

Unlikely friends or not, nine out of every tenday, Jor and D’Yquem can be found in 13-Plus … though normally at the bar, not at a table. In days past, they used the vantage point to evaluate newly arrived female Terrestrians.

But tonight Jor is anticipating the arrival of the Cherished Abdera, Golden Glowing of the Clan Bright Sea—“Abdera” for sanity’s sake—the female Venerian with whom he has been friendly for a considerable time. Jor has pondered the nature of their relationship since its beginning two years past. “Girlfriend” is certainly not the correct term, not in his mind, and certainly not in hers. Venerians don’t have unauthorized, prematrimonial associations among themselves … understandable given their five identified genders, bitter clannish rivalries, complicated inheritances, ridiculously long life spans, and uncertain periods of sexual activity.

Nevertheless, it is fair to state that Abdera—who, in the permanent twilight of the Twi-Land, and allowing for oddities of dress and her light green coloring, could pass for a human female of thirty—is indeed Jor’s girlfriend.

And tonight, for the first time in their relationship, Abdera has not only volunteered to enter the 13-Plus—where Venerians of any gender are rarely present—she has fixed a rendezvous.

Which she has now missed! And by a considerable amount of time. In all their time together, Abdera has never been late. “Tardiness,” as D’Yquem frequently says, “is a Venerial sin.”

(In addition to the labeling of Jor’s relationship, D’Yquem’s favorite topic is Foolish Terrestrian Terminology. His usual starting point is the Terrestrian name for natives of the second solar planet, frequently reducing it to a joke at Jor’s expense, as in, “Wouldn’t you rather have a Venusian girlfriend than a Venereal one?” Or similar.)

Jor feels that his friend is tiresome on the subject. But this is one of the topics that recurs under the influence of brue—which is vital to Terrestrian survival on Venus. “Maybe I should have gone to her.”

“And risk being run down by a rogue skiff? Picked up by TA’s curfew cops and brought before Tuttle? Sink in the mud and never be found? Don’t be an idiot.” D’Yquem grins again, tipping his half-empty glass (he is not a glass-half-full person) toward the window that looks north toward the Venus Port, and the human-built tower that looms above it. “Enjoy the view. It’s almost clear this evening, and the Lens actually glows.”

Venus Port lies in the northern third of the Twilight Lands, the broad band of habitable temperatures that circles Venus from pole to pole. Travel too far east, you broil in the Noon Lands if you don’t drown in the Bright Sea, or vanish into the many jungles and swamps.

Too far west, and you freeze in the eternal darkness of Nightside.

Humans know that the sky and stars and sun can be seen from Nightside: the low temperatures freeze any open water and eliminate the otherwise-permanent cloud cover that shrouds the rest of the planet.

But the sky above Venus Port is generally uniform, gray, like Chicago on a dreary winter afternoon, changing colors only when it rains—which is frequently. Terrestrians have no day, no night, no seasons, all of which contributed to TA’s adoption of the brutal tenday workweek, not that the controlling organization needed additional means of exploiting its workers.

Now and then, however, due to some yet-to-be-understood dynamics in the Venerian atmosphere, the gloom lifts a bit, and some stray beams of sunlight brighten the upper reaches of the Lens.

From this distance, Jor can’t see the rivets, the individual girders, the discolorations, the patchwork … just the giant glassy disc and its twin focal arms.

“Almost makes it all worthwhile,” he says. The construction has been a struggle, consuming most of his energies for the fifteen years he has lived on Venus. The same for D’Yquem, who has been here even longer. “One year of tests …”

“And then,” D’Yquem said, “everyone with the money can walk in a door on Earth and step out into this glorious Venerian landscape.” He examines the bottom of his empty glass. “I do wonder, Jor, if we aren’t working against our best interests here.”

“When haven’t we?”

D’Yquem laughs. He is capable of amusement at Jor’s attempts at cynicism. “This is a new low, even for the TA.” He belches. “We prosper here—”

“—If you call this prospering.”

“—Because it takes real effort to get to Venus.” D’Yquem’s point cannot be argued. Interplanetary spaceships are crowded and unpleasant, the tickets expensive, the voyage long. “No one wants to follow us with a warrant, then haul us back.”

Jor realizes that D’Yquem, in his fashion, has raised a legitimate point: with no exceptions worth noting, not even among the political leaders of the TA, no Terrestrian is free of an Exile Quotient … a public rating of his or her sins against the morals and behavioral standards of Earth, the headings being:

1 General maladjustment

2 Poor family relations

3 Substance abuse

4 Financial incompetence

5 Political unreliability

6 Sexual misconduct

7 Religious heresy

Each Terrestrian wears the EQ as a badge of honor—the denizens of 13-Plus glory in it; you can’t enter unless your score is thirteen or higher.

D’Yquem reaches across to Jor’s brue, takes it, drains it, a not-remotely-subtle signal to get the next round. “And by the way,” D’Yquem says, in one of his famous conversational veerings, “she will show.”

Jordan Lennox is the project manager for the Lens, a job he could not have imagined having when he first arrived at Venus Port. But politics, personalities, and the challenges of constructing an advanced technological facility on an alien world have seen the Lens run through eleven prior managers.

Now into his third year, Jor holds the record for tenure, largely—he believes—due to Charles D’Yquem.

The drunken aristo is a specialist in computing and calculating devices, tools that were banished from Earth a century past and rejected by Jor’s predecessors on Venus. (Jor feels that the EQ should have an eighth category … some Terrestrians are sent to Venus because they are just too fucking stupid.) Having listened to D’Yquem touting the devices for the best part of a decade, Jor was willing to try them once he moved into the top job.

Thanks to them, and Jor’s own relentless energy, the Lens now approaches completion.

Jor rises to head for the bar, a bit surprised by D’Yquem’s encouraging remark. His friend’s attitude toward Abdera usually starts out cold and judgmental, growing warmer only with increased alcoholic intake. Who knew D’Yquem was quite that drunk?

As he waits for a new pitcher of brue, Jor busies himself glancing from the entrance to the terrifying vista in the huge window: the blunt Terrestrian towers giving way to the more exotic—to human eyes, anyway—Venerian columns and galleries and mounds—all of them in the process of disassembly.

And, beyond both, the glittering thousand-foot diameter of the Lens shining in the perma-twilight.

He knows every foot of the Lens, of course. It feels as though he has personally lifted each I-beam, welded each structural plate, drilled each cable run, and even pulled each wire.

He has approved the design for all of these elements … while also ensuring quality control and integration. And he has seen the Lens grow from a stubby foundation formed from hardened Venerian slime to the tallest, broadest, most spectacular human structure this side of the Trans-Atlantic Tunnel.

One month away from its first tests … will it really work?

“Hey, Jordan!”

D’Yquem’s voice from across the bar.

He realizes that the pitcher has been sitting in front of him for perhaps two minutes … an eternity to a drinker like D’Yquem.

He is on his way back to the table when Abdera enters, looking sick with worry. Jor knows that while Venerian facial features are much like humans, their expressions are more extreme. A grown Venerian who is happy will glow like a human infant being tickled … one who is unhappy would have the expression of St. John regarding the Opening of the Graves.

Abdera looks like that now. “Jordan,” she says, as if she only has strength to utter his name.

“You’re late,” he says, feeling stupid.

Which only seems to make Abdera feel worse. “I was trapped.”

Jor moves her to the table, where D’Yquem helps her take a seat. Jor offers her a sip of brue, which she gulps in a single swallow. The beverage is designed to bolster human resistance to Venerian germs and other environmental factors; in small doses, it will not hurt Abdera.

But she downs Jor’s drink before being able to speak. “My clan ordered us to stay indoors for a cycle.” Cycle being the Venerian equivalent of thirty Earth hours.

“Why?”

“They never say. But this order came without warning, on a day that is usually devoted to business. There were many protests, none successful.”

“Yet here you are.”

And now she smiles. And in a less worried voice, says, “And here I am.”

Although Abdera would strike most human males as attractive, it is not her looks that continue to inflame Jor’s passion. Rather, it is her voice—throaty, articulate, versatile, capable of terrifying low anger and inspiring high laughter … a true Siren song.

Fluent in English, she has no accent, or none that Jor, a Midwestern American of the twenty-second century, can detect. (D’Yquem is merciless about Jor’s “absurd nasal honk” and “questionable pronunciation.”)

And now, D’Yquem, who occasionally exhibits a finely tuned set of social graces, excuses himself, leaving Jor and Abdera alone. The Venerian female watches him cross to the far side of 13-Plus. It’s as if she has never seen him walk before.

“What do you think of the place?” Jor says.

“It’s exactly as you described it though with fewer Terrestrians.”

“It’s a slow night.” He feels the moment is right. “Why did you want to come here? After all this time, I mean.”

There is a long pause, as if Abdera has a message, but can’t find the words. “Your Lens is almost finished,” she finally says.

“Months at most, yes.” Then Jor realizes: she thinks I am going to leave. They have never talked about a future together … their relationship is unique in the Venus Port community, subject to so much gossip and speculation that their conversation has frequently been consumed by mutual sharing of same, and subsequent amusement.

A relationship of the moment.

“Would you ever consider leaving Venus Port?” he says, trying to sound casual in spite of the improvisation.

Casual or not, the question clearly surprises her. “And go where?”

“Elsewhere on the planet. There will be a second Lens in the southern hemisphere. Maybe a third.”

She smiles faintly. “Southern clans aren’t as welcoming to outsiders as your people.” Which suggests outright hostility.

“Then how about Mars?” he says. “Lots of opportunities there.”

“For you. But the adaptation—”

“—Would be a challenge, yes.” Then he thinks, for the first time in fifteen years: “How about Earth?”

The sheer audacity of this suggestion makes Abdera laugh, and a Venerian laugh is always worth witnessing; it draws sympathetic laughter from Jor, as he imagines the look on Miller Lennox’s face when confronted with his prodigal son. “I thought you couldn’t!” she says, meaning the reverse adaptation, Venus to Earth.

“There are ways,” Jor says, knowing of one experimental method—

“Am I interrupting?” D’Yquem is returning to his chair.

“A moment of speculation,” Abdera said, her mood suddenly solemn. Jor notices that her flowing sarilike garment is torn near her left elbow.

He is beginning to form a question when the building shakes, a violent jolt that breaks glass at the bar and triggers shouts of alarm.

“What in God’s name was that?” D’Yquem says.

“The Lens!” Petros calls.

Crunching on broken glass, Jor rushes toward the bar and its big view window—

The evening is still unusually clear, and it makes the sight all the more horrific: there is a hole in the big dish of the Lens.

By the time Jor, Abdera, and D’Yquem emerge from the ground floor of the 13-Plus tower, the situation at the Lens is more troubling: the evening marine layer has rolled in, obscuring the ground view of the top of the structure—except for flashes of light, which mean additional explosions. (Any flashes of light are anomalies.) Jor cannot hear explosions, of course. The dense, rolling fog damps distant sound. Nor can he feel the ground shaking, but that could be due to the mud.

Even after years on Venus, he has never gotten used to the fact that the evening mist is hot, not cold as it would have been in an Earthly port city.

It takes far too much time to reach the Lens. TA has always skimped on rescue equipment, naturally, preferring to reserve precious cargo volume on spaceships for prefabricated construction materials, not fire or rescue trucks.

So Abdera, D’Yquem, and Jor are forced to travel in a Venerian skiff, which means letting Abdera serve as pilot. Terrestrians have never learned to operate the raftlike machines, especially since—owing to the lack of Venerian mass production—none is like another.

It makes D’Yquem unhappy. “Don’t we have more important things to worry about?” Jor says.

“We can fix the fucking Lens,” he snaps. “When you lose social status, you lose everything.” It is one of those passing remarks that makes Jor realize that D’Yquem’s pre-Venereal life must have been far different from his own.

Grumbling and petty, he climbs aboard nonetheless, and the trio commences a glide toward the smoking, flashing Lens at a speed they could easily exceed by walking.

Not that walking is possible. Venus Port is built on a delta. Instead of real streets, it has shallow rivulets and streams—more water than land.

And on most open land, and all “streets” and even on water near the shores, lay piles of newly raw material awaiting shipment via skiff.

Venus Port is being taken apart. According to Abdera, the process, known by the Venerian world as “reloquere”—has been going on for the equivalent of two hundred Earth years. The first human explorers originally thought that the open pits and half-built buildings were signs of construction.

It was quite the other way around. They were what remained of residence towers and palaces and businesses and manufacturing facilities and libraries—whatever one would find in a city.

Reloquere is the prelude, Venerians say, to the great Sunset of Time, that moment each ten thousand or hundred thousand or one million (accounts vary, depending on which Venerian clan is asked) years when the clouds fade … the Sun is clearly visible.

And it sets as Venus creaks into a partial rotation, unleashing storms, floods, quakes.

Remaking the landscape. Where once was Twi-Land would now be Noon, or Nightside.

Or so the legend has it. Most Terrestrians dismiss the idea, either for lack of scientific backing or their own theological reasons. But the Venerians seem convinced: wars between the city-states have ceased in the past few years as reloquere spread throughout the Twilight Lands.

So, even as the Terrestrian Authority raises the Lens to the heavens, the Venerians continue to disassemble their city brick by vine.

The process isn’t just a disassembly of structures … the individual elements of each structure are taken apart, too. Bricks are taken to a place to the north and east, where there is almost no dry land, and dissolved … returned to the mud whence they came.

Piping is melted down and returned to more solid ground. (TA’s long-ago offer to buy this metal was rejected so thoroughly, Jor knows, that a second request was never made.) Glass, the same—transformed back to sand and spread on the shore.

Even the wiring of the Venerians’ electronic grid has to be stripped out of structures, coiled, then melted down.

This strikes Jor as simply foolish: art and decorative items are also on the list. Venerians have statues though most are abstract rather than representational, and these are also victims of reloquere. Not long ago he happened to see the removal and disassembly of one obelisk from his Lens station over a tenday, and he was impressed with the care and even ceremony, like a state funeral.

Nevertheless, at the end of it a thirty-foot-tall piece of art had been reduced to a cooling vat of creamy goo.

He later asked Abdera how the artists felt about the death of their work, only to be told, “They are long gone.” Which, given the Venerian life span, suggested that the artists had completed their work centuries ago … or something more sinister.

The Venerians also have great gardens filled with broad-leafed ferns and purple Twi-Land flowers with blossoms as big as a human head, so richly fragrant that spending too much time too close might result in suffocation. (For a human, that is: the Venerians thrive when surrounded by Twi-Land’s blooms.)

What this means is that Jor’s skiff is forced to avoid the “streets,” since these are crowded with materials-to-be-shipped, in addition to Venerians now living in tents. There are also a few humans, stirred from their towers by the disturbance at the Lens.

It takes them an hour to cover a distance of less than five miles. Jor cannot speak to Abdera; she certainly does not turn and communicate with him or D’Yquem. Nor do Jor and D’Yquem have anything to say.

They finally reach the base of the Lens and are allowed inside the perimeter. “Someone tunneled under the fence on the Venerian side,” one of the security team, Hollander (^2,4,7) tells Jor, who does not bother to correct the man: everything outside the fence is the Venerian “side.”

“Crawled up the Lens without using the lift or the backup ladder—”

“—Which explains why no one saw this,” Jor snaps. There are observers, and even cameras, watching the gridlike tower, not for saboteurs, of course, but for damage … stray vines.

Hollander flinches, anticipating punishment. “They attached an explosive with a timer, then crawled back to the ground to watch what happened.”

Jor has other orders to give Hollander, but there is a disturbance at the base of the Lens. Security wants to arrest Abdera.

“She’s with me, you idiots,” Jor snaps. There are three security shifts; the first two would know that Abdera and Jor are involved. The late shift, apparently not.

Then there is a problem with the lift: a security team has taken it to the top and won’t let it return.

So Jor begins to climb up the girder itself. If the Venerian bombers can do it—

Physical exertion is not advised for Terrestrians, especially those soggy with brue. But Jor is determined to see what happened to his Lens.

D’Yquem and Abdera follow though more slowly.

The Lens reminds most Terrestrians of the Eiffel Tower. The two structures share a common shape though the Lens is slightly shorter (850 feet as opposed to over a thousand) and is topped by a rotating silvery disk that is itself 250 feet in diameter, and represents the greater engineering challenge. It is designed to gather, then focus, megahigh-frequency transmissions from the giant orbital Equatorial dish, opening a portal between Earth and the second planet.

Jor is aching, puffing, sweating heavily as he reaches the platform level. Pausing for breath, he takes in the view, the evening mist blanketing Venus Port as he hears Abdera and D’Yquem from below … the aural dampening effect of the fog making them seem closer than they are, as if all of them were in the cozy interior of 13-Plus, not hanging off the side of a tower.

Jor is quickly able to see that the saboteurs have blown a hole in the disk large enough to throw a skiff through.

He runs to the far end of the platform, which is still incomplete, with boards and slats instead of metal grilling. “Jor, be careful!” Abdera shouts.

He is not worried about falling. Although conflicted about the ultimate value of the Lens, Jor knows it is still his project, his life’s work; any attack on it is an attack on him.

Once he has completed his circuit and examined the gear joints of the steering mechanism, he relaxes so thoroughly that he laughs.

“How is this funny?” D’Yquem says, barely able to utter words, he is so out of breath.

“All they did was poke a hole in the disk,” Jor says. “We can fix that in a few days. If they’d really wanted to destroy the Lens, they should have put their bomb in the gears. That would not only take months to repair, it might have brought down the whole structure.”

Perhaps it is the residual effects of the brue. Or the climb. Jor shouts into the Venerian night, “Idiots! Tear your city down! Leave the Lens alone!”

He turns and sees Abdera staring at him with what can only be disgust.

Back at the base of the Lens, Jor, Abdera, and D’Yquem fall into a crowd of confused security types. D’Yquem goes off in search of information. Abdera and Jor stand by her skiff in the roiling hot mist, so thick now that Jor can barely see Abdera ten feet away.

“I’m sorry about what I said up there.” One lesson he has learned from his cruel father is, when necessary, be the first to apologize. (Because Miller Lennox never does.)

Among the many differences between Terrestrian and Venerian responses—they don’t shrug. If uncomfortable and unwilling to engage, they just stare.

And so Abdera stares. Jor cannot fail to notice that, even in the thick mist, which coats his skin and clothing, Abdera appears cool and dry. Her garments, standard for a Venerian female of her clan, are largely a series of varicolored wraps and scarves that bind her hair while not really covering her head. She wears sandals that could easily have been found on Earth.

There is no differentiation in garments by male and female, but rather by age and status: postfertile Venerians wear more structured clothing, prematable Venerians much less.

“I was angry,” Jor says. “Then I was overly elated because the Lens survived.”

Still she stares.

“What was it you wanted to talk about?” he says, changing his tone and, hopefully, the whole conversation. “Why did you want to meet me tonight?”

Finally, he engages her. She takes a step toward Jor, actually touching his arm (a rare event in mixed public). “It is a painful admission—”

“Hey!” D’Yquem shouts as he suddenly appears out of the mist. “They caught them!”

“The bombers?” Jor says.

“They were still inside the compound, still carrying climbing tools and explosives.” He shakes his head at the unlikelihood. “They didn’t even try to get away.”

He holds up an image. Jor and Abdera see five Venerians, two males and three pregendered youths.

Abdera is clearly upset, turning away. Jor reaches for her, but she runs off, disappearing into the mist.

“Now what?” he says.

“Maybe she knows them,” D’Yquem says. “They’re from her clan.”

Jor has no contact with Abdera the next day. In a way, he’s glad: he has no idea what to say to her. And too much other work.

His first eight hours are consumed by plans for repairs to the Lens, and five times the usual Venus–Earth–Venus message traffic, all of it reducible to two phrases: “Venerian damage to Lens.” “Stay on schedule and punish the criminals!” (This last related with great sternness by Tuttle.)

“Amusing sidelight,” D’Yquem says, as Jor emerges from the conference room, having applied classic team motivation to his own department heads (“Work faster, you fuckers!”).

“Please share. Amusement is hard to find today.”

“Your miscreants were up to other mischief.”

“Such as?”

D’Yquem hands him a flimsy. “They, and some team of yet-to-be-identified accomplices, staged a raid on our garbage dump.”

Jor cannot understand this; D’Yquem is amused. He nods toward the message. “They removed giant heaps of metal slag, soiled mud, vegetative matter, and took it somewhere.”

“That was all?”

“They apparently failed to disturb anything mechanical, including what was left of my Mark III device.” That had been D’Yquem’s first attempt at bringing computational science to the Lens. The device had overheated and melted down. Mark IV had an improved cooling system.

“If they left your garbage alone, why do you care?”

“I don’t, especially.” He smiles. “I just happened to be lurking by your assistant’s desk when the message arrived.” Jor’s secretary is a middle-aged Norwegian woman named Marjatta (^2,3,4), now married after a brief and unsatisfactory affair with Jor a decade past. She is capable, but easily distracted, especially by D’Yquem, who seems to spend an inordinate amount of time hovering near her desk.

“Strange—” Jor suspects a connection. The attack on the Lens is such an outrageous action by the Venerians that every aspect must have meaning. But the alcohol, stress, and short night have left him fuzzy.

“If I were you, I would ask Security to track the theft. See where the material ends up.”

“Don’t we have better things to do? I know that Security feels quite stretched at the moment.”

“If you want to know why the Venerians attacked, you’ll press this.” Then he smiled again. “Or you could just ask your girlfriend. You’re both rebels.”

Jor blushes at the memory. The #2 and #6 in his Exile Quotient—as D’Yquem knows—are the result of a romance Jor had at college with a young woman from Sub-Africa.

Any sort of relationship, even a nonromantic one, would have made Jor and Njeri notorious … the fact that Jor’s father was Miller Lennox, one of the most powerful business and religious figures in Illinois, made the couple into outright targets. And not just to the public … it was Miller Lennox who arranged for Njeri to be shipped home in disgrace—

And for Jor to join the ranks of exiled Terrestrians on Venus.

Where, if D’Yquem’s analysis is correct, he resumed his old ways … becoming involved with an inappropriate partner. In self-defense, Jor would note that he lived at Venus Port for a decade during which he was involved with three human females, including Marjatta. His liaison with Abdera only began when she became the primary contact for the Lens team and her clan, which had some ancient rights to the air above the plot of marsh where the Lens was built.

It had happened quickly—from first handshake to intimacy, no more than a day, which was unprecedented in Jor’s prior relationships. And, he later learned, in the Venerian equivalent.

One night in 13-Plus, Jor had dared to ask D’Yquem, “What do you think she sees in me?”

D’Yquem snickered. “Money and power.”

“Besides that.”

“Well, maybe it’s because you look like a fucking Venerian male.”

Jor knows that his complexion is darker than many of his fellow Terrestrians—not the handful from Africa, of course. He is taller than most, thinner, too.

But what D’Yquem almost certainly means is his face: all of the men in the Lennox family have prominent noses and close-set eyes. “We look like the business end of hatchets,” Jor’s older brother Karl once told him.

Of course, Jor also knows that physical resemblance, while key in initiating personal relationships, is not enough to sustain one. Especially a relationship that crosses social and biological and clannish lines.

“So it’s mutual rebellion,” he said, answering his own original question.

“More has been built on less.” D’Yquem tips his glass. “Say, remember the pilings?” D’Yquem says.

“They still haunt my sleep.” Sinking the pilings for the Lens almost broke the Lens project in its early going. In many places, Veneria’s mud is little better than brown water. “Soup” is what D’Yquem calls it. Pilings had to be sunk repeatedly and to depths three or four times greater than they would on a comparable terrestrial location.

“We learned something from them.”

“You mean, besides ‘don’t build a tall heavy structure on Venus’?”

“We got core samples.”

“I recall Rostov saying that the Venerians would never allow that.” Rostov (^2,3,5) had been TA’s staff geologist in those days. He had begged to be allowed to take core samples to prove or disprove Venerian legends of reloquere and the Sunset. Naturally, he’d been denied, just as human archaeologists were denied the chance to dig in Jerusalem because religious leaders feared what they might find—or not find.

“And they never did, as research. But for structural engineering …” D’Yquem grins, always a disconcerting image. (Those English teeth!)

“So Rostov found—”

“Nothing. No evidence at all that Venus had ever undergone radical, transformative geological or climactic shifts. Not in the past half a billion years, that is.” He grins again. “Your girlfriend and her people live a long time, but not that long.”

Jor has never truly really believed Abdera’s stories—no more than he believed in the strict Christianity of the Lennox family.

Nevertheless, the work of reloquere has continued at a faster pace. When work on the Lens first commenced, Sunset was said to be far in the future—the equivalent of a human century.

But as the Lens neared completion, so, it seems, has the disassembly of Venerian civilization. Based on what Jor sees now, in the streets and mudflats, it could be a matter of weeks … possibly days.

He had asked Abdera: “Where will you go when reloquere comes?”

“With my clan.”

“Where will they go?” Sometimes she is too literal. On the other hand, he realizes that she is the one speaking a different language.

“Into the Bright Sea.”

“All of you?”

“There are many skiffs, most of them stored for a long time.”

“And then?” He thinks she’s joking.

“Return to the land wherever it forms.”

“Sounds awful.”

“It is. But it’s necessary.”

The subject changed then, and for some time thereafter Jor concentrated on Abdera’s somewhat grim acceptance of reloquere.

Only now does he recall her hint that she had been through it before.

But there is no word. And he has no way of reaching her.

In the afternoon, Jor is called to TA headquarters, the oldest of the four towers in the Terrestrian compound, to see the five bombers in their holding cell.

Venerian premales are shorter, broader, brighter green than females like Abdera. Unlike her, they wear the garb of sea farmers … clothing that seems to be fashioned from scales, like a knight’s armor.

Jor begins to think of them as teenaged boys … mischievous, trying to prove themselves, not terrorists. This is silly, he realizes, and not just because he has fallen into D’Yquem’s conceptual trap.

Even if these young creatures did try to harm the Lens, their questioning has been harsh: Jor can see signs of bruising and branding. It appears that one of them has a broken arm.

“Have they said why?” he asks Hollander.

“They just sing and pray,” the security man tells him.

Jor is exhausted. He goes.

The next morning, Jor is up earlier than usual—and he always rises earlier than most, no matter how hungover—and upon arriving at his desk finds two flimsy documents, the coin of the realm in the Lens offices: first, a secret report that all five of the Venerian premales died in custody the night before.

Which is terrible news.

The relationship between TA and the Venerian council of clans is comfortably colonial—from Authority’s point of view. After all, Terrestrians possess spaceships, therefore power.

In practice, however, the balance frequently shifts. Venerians are technologically savvy, armed, and, as their own recent history shows, willing to fight.

Why have they allowed Terrestrians to establish Venus Port at all, much less build the Lens—which surely suggested an even larger footprint? The official answer was technology transfer: Terrestrians were paying for time and territory with information—hence the colonial smugness.

This was another question Jor had put to Abdera in their early days, only to receive what he could only describe as an amused shrug. “You gave us land near one of your largest cities,” he had said.

“Not very much of it. And we use very little, as you’ve seen.”

“What do you think of the Lens?” Jor had never asked her; when they met, the tower was already rising. Permissions had been obtained from the clans.

She had smiled—a humanoid gesture—and slithered up and down his body in a Venerian one, the total effect being quite … arousing. “If it will bring more attractive, rich human males, how could I dislike it?”

Jor wasn’t ready to accept this glib answer. “It will bring all kinds of humans, and while many will be richer and more powerful than me, none will be more attractive. Some of them will be cruel and greedy and dangerous.”

Now she was serious. “I know.” Then she offered the Venerian equivalent of a shrug. “It really doesn’t matter.”

She did not need to say why: Sunset.

“Don’t you think of us as invaders?”

“Some do.”

“But not you.”

And here he was rewarded with a smile of unrestrained Venerian amusement. “Only sexually.”

Which is another aspect of their relationship that binds them—at least Jor to Abdera. Their lovemaking is frequent, satisfying, innovative … and frequently (by Jor’s standards) almost public. Which adds to the excitement.

He was sexually experienced before meeting Abdera, of course, but entered that phase of their relationship as ignorant as a fundamentalist bride. He had heard nothing about Terrestrian-Venerian sexual relations beyond the usual ignorant rumors.

But, in the twilight, garments gone, the classic moves dominated. Abdera was more aggressive than women in Jor’s past … but he found that he enjoyed it.

Jor believes that this intimacy gives him greater insight into Venerian character and customs. And while it is true that he has learned several phrases and knows more about Venerian food and drink … he realizes on this grim day that he is no better informed than Tuttle or the others in TA.

And with five premale Venerians dead in TA custody, he feels overwhelmed, unsure, and outnumbered.

Only then does he find a second message—from Abdera, in her charming, flowery style: “We must meet by midday or I will perish from the shame of my actions. The landing.”

Although most Terrestrians, especially those newly arrived from Earth, argue the point, Venerians are more advanced than humans. The assumption that they are somehow equivalent to European civilizations of the late Middle Ages grows out of ignorance and xenophobia, and a mistaken belief that an advanced civilization requires a large population.

There are, Jor knew, fewer than 100 million Venerians. Naturally they have fewer, smaller cities. Their economy is largely directed toward sea farming in the Twi-Land waters, especially Bright Sea—which is why Venus Port was built where it was. (Venerian sea farming was so extensive, involving the actual herding of aquatic creatures we still did not truly understand, that the word “fishing” seemed inadequate.)

But they have electronics, their own communication system, weather forecasting, science, art, and wildly sophisticated politics, which one would expect from a clan-based society.

Their interpersonal relationships are immensely complicated by their proliferation of genders, from post-male/female (once they are no longer fertile and breeding, Venerians essentially lose their sexual identity and plumbing), to active male and female and the prepubescent versions of both, though Venerian puberty seems quite protracted, likely another result of the long life spans.

The only advantage Terrestrians truly seem to possess is space travel, and even here superiority is suspect: the antipodal clans dominating the southern hemisphere’s Twi-Lands have smaller seas and a clear history of aviation and other technological development. It is rumored that these clans had developed space travel … many thousands of years in the past … and have even traveled to Earth! (This rumor led to dozens of wild speculations about shared Terrestrian-Venerian evolution … Jor always assumed the Venerians are a branch of the main Terrestrian trunk, but in truth it could just as easily have been the other way around.)

But they had abandoned the whole business, so the story goes. Abdera claimed that while it might be, she didn’t know. “Our clans don’t share.”

Given that until shortly before they met those clans had been actively at war, Jor believes her.

And these are just the Venerians Jor knows, the clans of the Bright Sea.

Before he leaves for what he hopes will be a completely distracting several hours, Jor makes one final pass through his in-box, where he finds a plain note saying, “Northern Jungle today.” It is just the sort of anonymous message he receives daily, some from his team or underlings, but just as frequently from Tuttle’s inner circle.

During his first years on the second planet, he had largely worked with crews hoping to tame the Northern Jungle, to use another Terrestrian name that was wildly inadequate.

The Terrestrian Authority, in its master plan, had hoped to create a land route to the Highlands, the rounded, mineral-rich mountains to the north, unreachable by sea skiff. (Air transport was possible but uneconomical, given the size and number of cargo planes that would have to be built after their materials had been sent across interplanetary space; D’Yquem had once shown Jor the figures and the projected profit point was five hundred years in the future.) This meant a brute force assault on … trees with wood so rugged it broke saws.

The Northern Jungle did not want to be conquered. And it wasn’t.

Then the Lens was approved and the TA happily attacked in a new direction. “No wonder the Venerians sat back and smiled as we hacked up their jungle,” D’Yquem said.

Jor waits for his visiphone to warm up, feeling appreciative toward D’Yquem, who had lobbied hard with the TA staff and even with parties back on Earth to acquire six of the devices, planning to link them to his computational device.

Four of the machines had been scooped up by the TA, where, as far as Jor knew, they were being used as paperweights or dust collectors. D’Yquem had the fifth.

The material available on the visiphone is limited, primarily financial documents such as ledgers and budgets, but D’Yquem had equipped it with the ability to display images, too.

Jor searches for the Northern Jungle Road, finding half a dozen images that date back to his time as a tree-topper and ’dozer driver. But then a new one appears, showing a location much like those of a dozen years past.

He wishes for the ability to place two images side by side; lacking that, his eyes are good enough to tell him.

Every trace of the road has vanished. All the heaping mounds of chopped and rotted wood, leaves, and vines are gone. If not for the label on the image stating that it was Authority Roadway #1, and the fact that he recognizes a particular trio of peaks in the distance, Jor could believe that he is viewing some other part of the Northern Jungle—or the southern one.

A minor question … who took this picture? He looked at the logging data at the bottom of the screen: D’Yquem himself!

Jor realizes that if the Venerians are that serious about returning a remote location like Authority Roadway #1 to its original state … they must be serious about their Sunset of Time.

The final image shows him something even more surprising: Abdera.

Jor walks to the landing very slowly, though with the Terrestrian traffic light and the reloquere work largely complete, there is no reason.

Other than fatigue. Shock. Betrayal.

He reminds himself that seeing D’Yquem and Abdera together means nothing, even if the location is remote. Even if D’Yquem made it clear that he barely knew the Venerian female.

Jor’s “girlfriend.”

The landing was where Jor had first seen Abdera, and where they had spent most of their public time. It was a port to rival New Orleans or San Francisco, those being the two earthly equivalents best known to Jor, with skiffs of many shapes and differing sizes arriving to be unloaded with an elegance that suggested a ballet.

Surrounded by the aromas of sweet, then spicy, then unknowable cooking from small ancient shops lining the uneven quay, kelp and weed and sea beasts were swiftly transferred from skiff to warehouse to shop to land-bound transport with few words and optimum action from the teams of mature male and female Venerians.

It was always a setting that soothed Jor’s mind, calmed his jittery nature. If only Earth had been like this—

This day, however, is different. Not only is he troubled by his suspicions about Abdera and D’Yquem, but the landing seems subdued, empty. The number of skiffs is perhaps a third what it should be. The buzz of activity—never high—seems nonexistent.

There are fewer Venerians.

“I long to go back to the skiffs.” Abdera’s voice, behind him. She has performed her usual trick of appearing by magic.

“I never knew you were on them,” Jor says. “In them.”

She links arms. “All of us work the skiffs at a certain stage in our lives. No matter our differences, we always have the Bright Sea.”

“Sounds lovely.”

“It is actually insanely difficult work that kills more of my clan than anything else.” She turns to him. “But it binds us.”

Jor cannot raise the subject of D’Yquem. He doesn’t want to hear the answer. “Why did your clansmen try to destroy the Lens?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“You must have some information or insight.”

“Jordan, you and I have more in common than I do with a Venerian male.” It takes Jor a moment to realize that Abdera is talking about emotional commonality, not physical or biological.

“Don’t you even know them?”

“Yes, they were members of my clan. Yes, I knew their names. Yes, I have farmed with them. But I had no interaction with them, no exchanges of words or gestures—we have not shared a skiff. I don’t know what motivated them. And why does it matter? They’re dead now.”

“I had nothing to do with that—”

She puts her arms around him. “I know you better than that. I know you would be fierce in protecting the Lens, but you are not a killer.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“There is no need. Greater powers will balance the scale.” Suddenly she is staring out to sea. A human woman would shade her eyes, Jor thinks. Of course, Abdera is Venerian—and there is no sun to require shading. “And I could have warned you.”

“You knew about the attack?”

“Not the specifics. But you can’t keep secrets within the clan; I knew there would be an action at the Lens.

“Among the other secrets that can’t be kept within the clan is my relationship with you …” She turns back to him. “The seniors locked me up.”

“How did you get out? Oh.” The torn sari.

“It was more humiliating than painful. It was also … difficult emotionally. I was betraying my clan.”

“I wish you had. We’d have been saved a lot of pointless trouble.”

“Yet your Lens survives.”

“You disapprove? After all this time?”

“My clan welcomed you, allowed you to build. I made you a friend.”

“So you don’t disapprove. Then—”

“It’s Sunset. It approaches.” She indicates the flattened, empty waste that Venus Port is becoming. Her whole manner says: the Sunset changes everything.

“What about us?” Jor points to the four Terrestrian towers and, visible beyond that, the blunt noses of three ships at the spaceport.

Jor senses that Abdera is withdrawing. Nevertheless, he presses. “We’re still going to be here. So … what about us?”

“I think,” she says, “that our joy is ended.”

And then she turns to walk away.

Jor could follow her. But he feels paralyzed.

He does not go to 13-Plus that night. He has no wish to confront D’Yquem, not without hearing Abdera’s side of things.

And he cannot act as if he knows nothing.

Fortunately, he has a good supply of brue in his quarters in the third tower.

That night, thrashing in bed between drunken collapse and sleep—or in that darker moment after waking up, head throbbing, mouth dry, eyes aching—Jor thinks about those hours at the controls of a D-9 caterpillar, one of only three on Venus, attacking the brush and branches. Or even his time as a topper, climbing high on the giant trees armed only with a handsaw.

In spite of the crude, drunken, incompetent companions, the sizzling heat and humidity (the D-9 had a pressurized, climate-controlled cab); native Venerian animals that burrowed under the rudimentary road and undermined it when they weren’t dropping things on it; vicious bugs the size of small aircraft that never seemed to move except in swarms the size of buildings; roots that seemed to grow back within minutes of being cut, and the mud … the endless, thick, sucking madness of the Northern Jungle’s mud, the squalling rain—

Jor thinks of those days as free and happy.

He is a Lennox, Chicago-based engineers and builders for two centuries. He has many memories of his father Miller pointing from the front yard of their home on the North Shore to the city skyline, identifying seven different buildings from the Lennox shop. “There is room for more,” he said then, offering the challenge to Jor’s older brothers Liam and Karl.

As the third of three brothers, Jor’s problems at school and his utter lack of interest in the family trade made him a candidate for emigration to Venus.

Where, finally away from his family, he had no expectations to fulfill … only a simple job to do, chopping, ’dozing, and adding to the vast heaps of green trash by the side of the road.

The next morning is spent personally supervising repairs to the Lens dish on the high platform. He also recalibrates the aiming and steering controls, confirming their functionality—Sunset of Time be damned. The work is all-consuming, exhausting, and frustrating, driving all thought of Abdera from his mind.

On the plus side of the ledger, as always his hangover is vaporized by the exertion. By the end of the extended workday, Jor is spinning and sputtering as usual … and frantic to return to the 13-Plus and the inevitable confrontation with D’Yquem.

He prepares to descend from the instrument platform, where some riggers are grimly raising replacement panels while others totter precariously atop ladders and crude scaffolding trimming the jagged ends of the hole caused by the blast. Only then does he take a moment to look west, toward the endless swampy plains that lead to Nightside … at the mounds of excess material excreted (there is no better word) by the Terrestrian occupation.

They seem smaller. Squinting in the twilight, he thinks he can see humanoid figures moving near and even atop the heaps. At this distance, with his eyes, it is impossible to know whether they are Terrestrian or Venerian.

Surely not the latter, not after the attack—

“Oh no, TA’s resolve popped like a soap bubble,” D’Yquem says, twenty minutes later.

“They’re letting the Venerians take everything?”

“Why not?” He drinks, and Jor notes that D’Yquem’s hand shakes. “It’s their garbage.”

“Not all of it,” Jor says. “A good percentage includes material from Earth.”

“Who needs it? Let the Venerians have the, ah, metal shavings, torn fabric, odd bits of this and that, broken furniture, and, oh yes, food by-products, such as whatever our favorite bruemaster has left over when his alchemy is done.” D’Yquem smirks. “I think it’s also where the organic waste from the residence goes, if you’re truly concerned—”

“Be serious.”

“You are years too late in suggesting that.” He has drained his glass and is already filling another. Jor sees again how shaky he is.

“Did you start without me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re trembling.”

“Nonsense.”

Jor knows that voice and chooses not to pursue the matter. He had arrived at 13-Plus and sat down with D’Yquem as he had for years, launching right into the latest TA stupidity.

Which must be pursued to its conclusion. Anything to postpone the painful conversation about Abdera. “Why would TA reward the Venerians for their bad behavior?”

“Perhaps to compensate for our own?” Jor thinks of the five dead premales. “Besides,” D’Yquem says, “it is unsightly and unhealthy and better for the Venerians to take it off into the wilderness and bury it. Or remake it into jewelry or clothing … I don’t care, as long as I don’t have to look at it. Or talk about it anymore.”

That is a clear message: change the subject. But, in addition to the Lennox family’s emotional distance, Jor has the mulishness, too. It is difficult to move him when he isn’t ready to be moved.

“What do you think about this whole Sunset business?”

D’Yquem smirks. “If it’s good enough for your girlfriend—”

Jor lets that pass for now. “So you admit the possibility that Venus might rotate again.”

“There’s Rostov. Let’s ask him.”

D’Yquem nods toward a burly Terrestrian in his fifties, droopy-eyed, sad-faced, drinking alone at the bar.

With an EQ totaling 12, Serge Rostov is not technically eligible for entry into 13-Plus, but Petros isn’t complaining, not with business down this day. Nor, in a departure from his normal role as EQ judge and jury, is D’Yquem.

“Rostov, my child,” D’Yquem says, as he and Jor approach.

“Fuck off.” Rostov doesn’t even look at D’Yquem. Jor has no idea what has caused this hostility—beyond D’Yquem’s noted ability to get people angry at him.

“Serge,” Jor says. “Given all that’s happened … this whole Sunset business.”

Forgetting his anger, Rostov laughs. He is an impulsive man given to emotional outbursts, quickly forgotten. “What do you want me to tell you, Mr. Rational Engineer? The expected, the predictable? ‘Our science shows no evidence that Venus ever turned. It is a world that has never seen a sunset.’ You’re a sensible man.” Even though he no longer seems overtly angry at D’Yquem, Rostov addresses his remarks only to Jor.

“I hope so,” Jor says. “But I thought the Venerians were sensible, too—”

“Some are, some are not.” And here, if Jor is not mistaken, Rostov actually leers. “Some see us as invaders and take any excuse to strike back.”

“So the attack is political. The religious business is just a cover.”

“That is the sensible conclusion.” Obviously eager to end the conversation, he turns to Petros to order another drink.

“Let me get that,” Jor says. His reward is a dissatisfied sigh from D’Yquem.

But now Rostov is obligated. “Look,” he says. “I was originally trained in astronomy. TA has encouraged me to broaden my interests and specialties to include geology or—”

“Venereology?” D’Yquem says brightly. He cannot stop himself, no matter the circumstances.

“We have taken core samples. We have done our surveys. We have mapped Venus from Equilateral—and created a radar map, too.

“The Venerians claim that there have been many sunsets in their recorded history. For that to be true, their recorded history would have to span 500 million years. Our fossil and geological record goes cold beyond that.”

“Well, they are unusually long-lived,” D’Yquem chirps. Rostov ignores him.

“So this is just another myth,” Jor says. Like the Christianity of the Lennoxes.

“So it would seem. Though it is a powerful one that is uniform across all the clans and controls their actions.” Like the Christianity of the Lennoxes!

Jor had begun to feel reassured. Now he’s wavering. “What are you saying?”

“I am not an orthodox man,” Rostov says, shrugging. “As you know from my EQ.”

“Unorthodox enough to suggest that we should be worried?”

Now Rostov smiles, revealing jagged, steel teeth that make him look savage rather than sagelike. “Why worry about things you can’t change? If the sunset happens, if the planet somehow magically begins to rotate … the damage would be indescribable. Earthquakes, tsunamis, eruptions. The only safe place would be Equilateral.” He points to the ceiling.

“This is idiocy,” D’Yquem says.

Rostov acts as though D’Yquem is addressing his remarks to someone else.

But Jor cannot resist. “Which part? His willingness to consider the possibility, or—”

“His description of the event is ludicrous. This worldwide catastrophe. He makes it sound biblical.”

“Please, friend D’Yquem,” Rostov says, engaging the computationist for the first time. “Share your vision of this hypothetical event.”

D’Yquem glances at Jor, as if to say, this is all your fault. Jor notices that D’Yquem’s hands are no longer shaking … and that he is ignoring his empty glass. “Stipulate that the Venerian myth is true, that every few thousand years their world moves. I’ve actually seen a paper—suppressed now, of course—that suggests that Venus isn’t tide-locked, but that it merely has a very slow and irregular period—”

“—Which is nonsense,” Rostov says. “Not the concept … the idea that the paper was suppressed.”

“Perhaps not in your circles,” D’Yquem says.

“I don’t care about that,” Jor says, growing angrier.

“Stipulating,” D’Yquem says, “we must then accept the idea that the Sunset is not a world-wrecking catastrophe but far less damaging. After all,” he says, “if it had the ability to rearrange the surface of the planet, to wipe out all life … why are the Venerians still here?”

At that moment everyone in 13-Plus feels the tower shudder. Jor fears that it’s another attack on the Lens but soon realizes that it’s the rain. A sudden squall has blown in from the Bright Sea, so strong it rattles the windows of the bar.

Conversation ceases. Even Petros pauses in his work, glancing, like Jor, toward the big window, where the view of Venus Port from on high has vanished, replaced by sheets of water and roiling black clouds.

Jor wants to leave. It isn’t fear; he’s not afraid that 13-Plus will be damaged. It’s just the situation … the storm, the crowd, the growing sense of a sour smell all around him, which he blames on Rostov. He hates speculations, preferring facts. His emotions are confused, too. And all of this is likely due to last night’s events, the lack of sleep, and the stress of the situation with Abdera and D’Yquem.

He thanks Rostov and abruptly heads for the door. He realizes that what is really driving him is a desire to be out of D’Yquem’s presence. In fact, for the first time in fifteen years, he no longer wants to be a Terrestrian on Venus at all.

D’Yquem catches him before he reaches the elevator. “Where are you going?”

“My flat.”

“Retreating is so unlike you.” It is usually D’Yquem, veteran of ten thousand drunken evenings, who calls a halt to the festivities. Jor will sit there until staggering.

“I’m tired.”

“Actually, you’re angry. Not quite the same.”

“Rostov—”

“Is a bore. Which I told you. Worse yet, he’s a fairly stupid one. At least he could know his science.”

“It doesn’t seem that anyone actually knows the science.”

“Of Sunset? There is no science, that’s the problem.”

Jor feels dizzy and nauseous. “What do you think?”

“Haven’t I made that clear? I’m quite open to the idea.”

“Your open-mindedness doesn’t extend to, I don’t know, making emergency plans.”

“Jor, there can’t be any plans, only evacuation. And then only at gunpoint. The flight here was so monstrous for most of us that getting back into those ships”—he points toward the spaceport, where three squat, shell-shaped vehicles wait—“is like being pushed off the top of a tower. Risking death only to escape certain death.”

“So we can’t do anything?”

D’Yquem grins. “Oh, we can resume drinking.”

For the first time in their friendship, drowning in this tidal wave of betrayal, smugness, intransigence, Jor wants to punch D’Yquem. He grabs his shoulder, about to turn him. But D’Yquem sees what’s coming and raises an arm to block it. “You’re being tiresome.”

“Then I’ve always been tiresome.”

“No. You used to be interesting in a perfectly American manner, treating your forced exile here as some kind of fresh start.” D’Yquem is pointing at him now, accusing him like a prosecutor. “Given your background, that was not surprising—and part of the fun of knowing you has been watching to see if you might be correct. You’ve almost finished the Lens, and that will surely expand the Terrestrian presence—

“Or, well, it would have, except for the pesky Venerians and their superior knowledge of their own world … and their remarkable long-range planning, of which we suspect little and truly know nothing.”

“You suspected, obviously.”

“Only out of habit. Given my own family and its history, I would have had to be much stupider to fail to be suspicious of everything I see or to expect that everyone is keeping secrets.”

“Or betraying a friend.”

“Ah, well, yes. I can understand why you might see it that way.”

“I realize it’s too much to expect an apology,” Jor says. “But can’t you even acknowledge your mistake?”

D’Yquem takes an unusual amount of time to respond. When he speaks, his voice is harsh. “What makes you think I had any choice in the matter? Or that any Terrestrian has any control over his destiny on Venus? That we can take any action that will have any effect?” He laughs bitterly. “We are just being swept along like … like weed on the Bright Sea, my friend. Not just me: you, too.”

He turns and staggers. Jor realizes that his former friend is drunker than he’s ever seen him. Given the number of times they have shared brue, and the amounts, this is shocking.

Could he be telling the truth?

“Oh, by the way,” D’Yquem said. “After you left, that idiot Russian confirmed it. The Sun is not only visible now, it’s lower in the sky.”

And then he enters the elevator. Jor lets the doors close. He doesn’t want to go with him.

By the time Jor reaches the ground floor and prepares to leave, the storm has passed. The rain has returned to its expected state of hot drizzle. Emerging from the 13-Plus tower and heading toward his residence, he feels unusually alone.

And no wonder. There is no Terrestrian traffic at all—the immigrants from Earth are all tucked into their towers. And the Venerian presence is nonexistent, too, with shops largely gone or certainly abandoned … streets empty and, in fact, no longer streets but merely tracked areas between larger untracked ones.

The Lens tower looms even taller in the near distance. Jor is drawn to it, following the pathway toward it that takes him between the two residence towers.

Then he hears his name. “Jordan!”

Abdera steps forward. She has clearly been waiting some time; even her waterproof Venerian garb couldn’t stand up to that storm. She is soaked, her hair plastered to her skull … making her look definitively alien.

Yet, the voice is the same.

“What do you want?” he asks. “To apologize?”

“No.”

“To explain, then.” He can’t keep the sarcasm from his voice.

“Impossible.”

“Then why are you standing in the rain?”

“To honor what we had,” she says.

“I can’t do that.” He wants to recall their times together, but it’s as if D’Yquem’s shadow hides them.

“One day you will.”

And, as if this is all she wanted to say, she turns. Now Jor grabs for her. “Is that it? You stood in the rain to tell me nothing?”

“No, to see you one more time.”

“You’re leaving.”

“It’s Sunset.”

“You could have warned me.”

And now she laughs. “I have warned you. All of us have warned you. Since the day Terrestrians arrived, we have been engaged in the reloquere! Yet you continued to build.”

“Is that why you cheated with D’Yquem?” he says, struggling to find a motive. “Because I built the Lens?”

She gives him the Venerian stare. “I wanted you to build your Lens,” she says. “And you should go to it.”

Then she leaves, turning abruptly and without breaking into a run, moving so quickly that Jor couldn’t possibly catch her.

She is headed for the landing, where skiffs still bob on the tide.

Jor watches her. He feels as he did when Njeri told him she must return to Africa—times ten. And yet, how foolish to think they had a future. Venerian and Terrestrian. This moment was inevitable; only the details remained to be determined.

He can’t go back to his residence yet. So he will grasp for the last moment of his relationship with Abdera … will take her advice.

And go to his Lens.

By the time he has reached the top, he has worked himself into a proper Lennox-style rage. First, he finds that the security team is not on duty—called off by Tuttle? Or simply having deserted their posts due to a storm?

Jor would have returned to the towers to find them, but not before assuring himself that the Lens is secure.

And it is, controls caged and ready. Giant dish strong and steady, glistening from its recent bath.

Jor looks to the east, toward the Bright Sea. D’Yquem told the truth: not only is the Sun visible, it is notably lower in the sky.

The shallow water of the Venus Port delta is receding, too, carrying with it the last of the Venerian skiffs, Abdera’s clan, and Abdera.

As it goes, so does Jor’s spirit. He is enough of an engineer to know what this means … soon there will be a wall of water, how tall? It really won’t matter. Even though he is hundreds of feet high, the violence of the crashing wave is likely to destroy the Lens tower.

And all of the Terrestrian quarter of Venus Port.

The evening is clear; he can see the four towers, their windows lit. Do those fools know what’s happening? D’Yquem was right; no one believed. No one prepared. They would only head for the three ships at the spaceport if their towers fell on them.

Suddenly Jor has an idea.

He enters the control station and powers it up.

The Lens controls that are designed to focus transmission beams work just as well on the visible spectrum … and now, with the sun making its first appearance in the Venerian sky, Jor moves the Lens.

It takes precious minutes, but eventually he has it in the right position, taking the light from the new sun and focusing it on the four Terrestrian towers.

Then he narrows the beam, increasing the light and, more to the point, the heat.

He knows the materials used in the construction of the towers, how truly fragile they are. (TA’s famed cheapness. Having the surface be waterproof was sufficient.)

The tops of two residence towers ignite, meaning that Jor’s residence in one will soon be ablaze … and so will D’Yquem’s in the other. Then the third tower, the oldest one, Tuttle’s TA headquarters.

Finally the fourth, site of 13-Plus. Jor regrets that, but only for a moment.

The air must be changing, because he believes he can hear not only sizzling and crackling as the top floors begin to burn, but alarms.

He hopes for alarms.

He knows there is a chance he is injuring or killing Terrestrians, not motivating them to save themselves. At this moment, frankly, it doesn’t really matter.

The water continues to recede, exposing a muddy sea bottom identical to the muddy plains Jor has crossed so many times on Venus. He tries to see, but clouds are forming to the east … soon they will boil high enough to cover the setting sun.

He looks up at the Lens, tweaks his aim. Then looks to the towers. There is a swirling layer of fog rolling in not from the sea, but from the west, obscuring Jor’s view of the base of the towers. But shifting light and shadows there suggest that people are gathered … that they are in motion.

And now the wind kicks up from the west—quite strongly. A sudden gust rattles the platform so violently that Jor is knocked down.

He rises to reaim the Lens, thinking of the disappointment on Earth at the loss of the Terrestrian base … at the thousands or tens of thousands with high EQs who will not be shipped off-planet.

He is wondering why he has no sympathy for their plight when he sees the beginnings of a giant wave forming in the Bright Sea … and is struck by a piece of the Lens structure as it comes apart in the wind.

When he regains consciousness, he is in orbit, at Equilateral, strapped to the floor of a cabin whose four bunks are already filled with the injured. He feels cold, as if pulled from the ocean—and possibly he was. His head hurts. He is hungry.

“Welcome back,” D’Yquem says from the open hatch. He, too, is injured, both hands bandaged. In spite of their last encounters, Jor is happy to see his friend.

Happy to see anyone, in fact.

“Some of us made it,” he says.

“Most Terrestrians did reach the spaceport ahead of the wave,” D’Yquem says. “Which was fortunately on higher ground than Venus Port. Everyone jammed in and took off so close to the waves that we generated a considerable amount of steam.

“But the tricky part was reaching Equilateral here. The station wasn’t in position for rendezvous, so all the ships had to linger in orbit for two days until calculations could be made.” And here he smiles his smug D’Yquem smile. “If they had one of my devices, they could have solved the problem in half an hour.”

“How was I rescued? I was nowhere near the ships.”

“We had to go back for you three days later. One ship was able to find dry land again and set down. Fortunately the Lens still stands. You were quite a mess, unconscious when you weren’t delirious. But even Tuttle insisted that you had to be found.”

“So the Lens—”

“Minimal damage, frankly. With a bit of work, it would be ready for transmissions from Earth on schedule.” D’Yquem smiles. “Of course, it is now located in the middle of an inland sea that will soon, Rostov predicts, become an ice field in the new Nightside of Venus.”

Jor thinks of Abdera, adrift in the fleet of skiffs. “What about the Venerians?”

“They were able to ride out the wave, as apparently they have done many times in the past.”

Jor absorbs this news. “One more thing,” D’Yquem says. “I regret not telling you before, but I wasn’t sure until I had time to talk with Rostov again, and to examine the past—”

“Your injuries must have been severe.”

He raises his bandaged hands. “It will be months before I can lift a glass again.

“Abdera’s fling with me was deliberate. She went after me because of reloquere!” He can surely see the confusion on Jor’s face. “The Venerians not only take apart their physical world before the Sunset of Time … they also dissolve their relationships. We’ve already seen the clans and fleets realigning. We shouldn’t be surprised that it extends right down to … boyfriend and girlfriend.”

Jor is in no mood to argue. Though it is close to comforting. “She could have told me.”

“Yes,” D’Yquem says, “but remember how long-lived the Venerians are … how sophisticated they are in their choices and actions. I think she wanted you in a … a dangerous frame of mind. Angry. Driven. Eager to prove yourself.”

“Why?”

And here D’Yquem smiles with what might be genuine warmth, as if acknowledging a difficult truth.

“So you would be tempted to be a hero.”