The Reaches

12

Venus

Ricimer was darkly splendid when he emerged from the men's room outside the Western Rail Station in Ishtar City. The close-coupled spacer wore a tunic and beret of black velvet, set off by a gold sash and band respectively. His trousers were gray, pocketless and closely tailored. They fit into calf-height boots of natural leather, black and highly polished.

'I don't see why you had to waste time changing,' Gregg said sourly.

Ricimer tucked a small duffel bag into the luggage on the porter's cart, then snugged the tie-down over it. 'Why?' he asked. 'We're not late, are we?'

The traffic of Ishtar City buffeted them without so much as a curse. Pedestrians; battery-powered carts like the one holding their luggage; occasionally a passenger vehicle carrying someone who chose to flaunt his wealth by riding, despite the punitive tax intended as much as a morality measure as it was for traffic control, though traffic control was necessary, especially here in the center of the Old Town. West Station served not only Betaport but the whole complex of hamlets and individual holds in Beta Regio and the plains southwest of Ishtar Terra.

The rail links were built before the Collapse, close beneath the surface. During the recovery, Ishtar City grew from the administrative capital of a colony to the heart of a resurgent, independent Venus. Housing and manufacturing expanded both downward and-much later, as ceramic techniques improved and fear of devastating war receded-into domes on the surface.

Rail communications across the planet were improved progressively rather than by a single, massive redesign. The traffic they carried continued to enter and leave the growing capital at the near-surface levels, creating conditions that were as crushingly tight as the living quarters of a starship on a long voyage.

Gregg had been raised in an outlying hold. He knew that the discomfort he felt in this crowding was making him irritable.

'No, it's not the time,' he said, stolidly breasting the crowd, though his flesh crept from the repeated jarring on other humans. He knew the way to his uncle's house, so he led; it was as simple as that. 'It's getting dressed up as if Uncle Ben was-' He started to say 'God Almighty,' but remembered his listener in time to twist the words into '-Governor Halys.'

Ricimer laughed. 'You're going to see Uncle Ben, my friend. I will meet Factor Gregg of Weyston-and no, before you say, 'Do you think you'll fool him that you're not the jumped-up sailor I know you are?'-no. But he'll recognize that I'm showing him the respect which is his due. . from such as me.'

Gregg grimaced. He was glad Ricimer couldn't see his face. 'I never said you were a jumped-up sailor, Piet,' he said.

'You both humored me and guarded our baggage while I changed, my friend,' Ricimer said. 'This is important to me. Important to God's plan for mankind, I believe, but certainly to me personally. I appreciate everything you're doing.'

Many wealthy men, the Mostert brothers among them, now lived in the domed levels of Ishtar City where the ambience was relatively open. Uncle Ben's great wealth was a result of his own trading endeavors, but he had a conservative affection for the Old Town where the rich and powerful had lived when he was growing up. His townhouse was within a half kilometer of West Station.

By the time they'd made half that distance through twisting corridors cut by the first permanent human settlements on Venus, Gregg wished he was in armor and lugging his flashgun ten times as far in the forests of Virginia. The trees didn't shove their way into and past pedestrians.

'Stephen?' Ricimer said, breaking into Gregg's grim reverie.

'Uh?' Gregg said. 'Oh, sorry.' As he spoke, he realized he was apologizing for thoughts his friend couldn't read and which weren't directed to him specifically, just at cities and those who lived in them in general.

'When Captain Schremp spoke to the Federation officials, he referred to our cargo as slaves. Do you remember?'

There was a ceramic patch at the next intersection, and the dwellings kitty-corner across it were misaligned. When Gregg was a boy of three, there'd been a landslip that vented a portion of Ishtar City to the outer atmosphere. An error by a tunneling contractor, some believed, but there was too little left at the heart of the catastrophe to be sure.

Over a thousand people had died, despite Ishtar City's compartmentalization by corridor and the emergency seals in all dwellings. Uncle Ben had been able to pick up his present townhouse cheap, from heirs who'd been out of town when the disaster occurred.

'Schremp!' Gregg said in harsh dismissal. 'The Molts aren't even human. They can't be slaves.'

He pursed his lips. 'The way the Feds treat the indigs, the Rabbits-maybe they're slaves. But that's nothing to do with us.'

'Yes, well,' Ricimer said. 'I suppose you're right, Stephen.'

Gregg looked back over his shoulder. His friend threw him a smile, but it wasn't a particularly bright one.

The facade of Uncle Ben's townhouse was glazed a dull slate-gray. The style and treatment were similar to other gray, dun, and russet buildings on the corridor, but it was unusually clean. The four red-uniformed attendants outside the doorway kept loungers and graffiti-scribblers away from the Factor's door.

The attendants straightened when they saw Gregg, suddenly conscious that he'd been on a train for twenty hours from Betaport, striding toward them. One of the men recognized the Factor's nephew and pushed the call button.

'Master Stephen Gregg!' he shouted at the intercom. He focused on Ricimer and the luggage, then added, 'And companion.'

There was no external door-switch. The valve itself was round, shaped like a section of a cone through the flats, and a meter-fifty in diameter across the inner face. If the Venerian atmosphere flooded the corridor, its pressure would wedge the door more tightly sealed until emergency crews could deal with the disaster.

Burt, a white-haired senior servant wearing street clothes of good quality, bowed to Gregg in the anteroom. Two red-suited underlings waited behind him to take the luggage from the porter.

'Sir, the Factor is expecting you and Mr. Ricimer in his office,' Hurt said. 'Will you change first?'

'I don't think that will be necessary,' Gregg said grimly. For God's sake! This was Uncle Ben, who up until a few years ago traveled aboard his intrasystem traders on the Earth-Asteroids-Venus triangle to check them out!

'Very good, sir,' Burt said with another bow.

Uncle Ben had redone the anteroom mosaics since Gregg had last been to the townhouse. These were supposed to suggest a forest glade on Earth before toxins released during the Revolt finished what fifteen millennia of human fire-setting had begun.

Gregg thought of tramping through the woodlands of Virginia. He smiled. Uncle Ben, for all his wealth and success and ability, was in some ways more parochial than the young nephew who until recently hadn't been out of the Atalanta Plains for more than a week at a time.

Another liveried servant bowed and stepped away from the open door of the Factor's office.

In Old Town, corridors and dwellings were all as close to three meters high as the excavators could cut them. Ceilings were normally lowered to provide storage space or, in poorer housing, to double the number of available compartments. Gregg of Weyston's office was full height, paneled in bleached wood with a barely perceptible grain. The material was natural, rather than something reprocessed from cellulose base.

'Good to see you, Stephen,' the Factor said. Through a tight smile he added, 'I see you've had a hard journey.'

Gregg glared at his uncle. 'I'll change here, Uncle Ben,' he said. 'For G-for pity's sake, I could have sent my dress suit by a servant to report to you, if that's what's important.'

'My brother never saw much reason to dress like a gentleman either, Stephen,' the Factor said. 'That's perfectly all right-if you're going to bury yourself in the hinterlands with no one save family retainers to see you.'