Nemesis (16 page)

The Dome had its disadvantages. Few people remained long. There were shifts, since almost all those who came there considered themselves in exile and wished, more or less constantly, to return to Rotor. And most found the pinkish light of Nemesis either threatening or gloomy, even though the light inside the Dome was every bit as bright and homelike as that on Rotor.

It had its advantages, too. Genarr was removed from the hurly-burly of Rotorian politics, which seemed more ingrown and meaningless each year. Even more important, he was removed from Janus Pitt, whose views he generally—and uselessly—opposed.

Pitt had been strenuously opposed to any settlement on Erythro from the start—even to Rotor orbiting around Erythro. Here, at least, Pitt had been defeated by overwhelming public opinion, but he saw to it that the Dome was generally starved for funds and that its growth was slowed. If Genarr had not successfully developed the Dome as a source of water for Rotor—far cheaper than it
could be obtained from the asteroids—Pitt might have crushed it.

In general, though, Pitt’s principle of ignoring the Dome’s existence as far as possible meant that he rarely attempted to interfere with Genarr’s administrative procedures—which suited Genarr right down to Erythro’s damp soil.

It came as a surprise to him, then, that Pitt should have bothered to inform him personally of the arrival of a pair of newcomers, instead of allowing the information to show up in the routine paperwork. Pitt had, indeed, discussed the matter in detail, in his usual clipped and arbitrary manner that invited no discussion, or even comment, and the conversation had been shielded, too.

It came as an even greater surprise that one of the people coming to Erythro was Eugenia Insigna.

Once, years before the Leaving, they had been friends, but then, after their happy college days (Genarr remembered them wistfully as rather romantic), Eugenia had gone to Earth for her graduate studies and had returned to Rotor with an Earthman. Genarr had scarcely seen her—except once or twice, at a distance—since she had married Crile Fisher. And when she and Fisher had separated, just before the Leaving, Genarr had had work of his own and so had she—and it never occurred to either to renew old ties.

Genarr had, perhaps, thought of it occasionally, but Eugenia was quite apparently sunk in sorrow, with an infant daughter to raise, and he was reluctant to intrude. Then he was sent to Erythro and that ended even the possiblility of renewal. He had periodic vacation time on Rotor, but he was never at ease there any longer. Some old Rotorian friendships remained, but only in lukewarm fashion.

Now Eugenia was coming with her daughter. Genarr, at the moment, didn’t remember the girl’s name—if he had ever known it. Certainly, he had never seen her. The daughter should be fifteen by now, and he wondered, with a queer little interior tremble, if she was beginning to look anything like the young Eugenia had.

Genarr looked out his office window with an almost surreptitious air. He had grown so used to Erythro Dome that he no longer saw it with a critical eye. It was the
home of working people of both sexes—adults, no children. Shift workers, signed up for a period of weeks or possibly months, sometimes returning eventually for another shift, sometimes not. Except for himself and four others who, for one reason or another, had learned to prefer the Dome, there were no permanents.

There was no one to take pride in it as an ordinary abode. It was kept clean and orderly as a matter of necessity, but there was also an air of artificiality about it. It was too much a matter of lines and arcs, planes and circles. It lacked irregularity, lacked the chaos of permanent life, where a room, or even just a desk, had adjusted itself to the hollows and waverings of a particular personality.

There was himself, of course. His desk and his room reflected his own angular and planar person. That, perhaps, might be another reason he was at home in the Erythro Dome. The shape of his inner spirit matched its spare geometry.

But what would Eugenia Insigna think of it? (He was rather pleased she had resumed her maiden name.) If she were as he remembered her, she would revel in irregularity, in the unexpected touch of frippery, for all she was an astronomer.

Or had she changed? Did people ever change, essentially? Had Crile Fisher’s desertion embittered her, twisted her—

Genarr scratched the hair at his temple where it had gone distinctly gray and thought that these speculations were useless and time-wasting. He would see Eugenia soon enough, for he had left word that she was to be brought to him as soon as she had arrived.

Or should he have gone to greet her in person?

No! He had argued that with himself half a dozen times already. He couldn’t look too anxious; it wouldn’t suit the dignity of his position.

But then Genarr thought that that wasn’t the reason at all. He didn’t want to make her uneasy; he didn’t want her to think he was still the same uncomfortable and incompetent admirer who had retreated in so shambling a manner before the tall and brooding good looks of the Earthman. And Eugenia had never looked at him again after she had seen Crile—never seriously looked at him.

Genarr’s eyes scanned the message from Janus Pitt—dry,
condensed, as his messages always were, and with that indefinable feel of authority behind it, as though the possibility of disagreement were not merely unheard of—but actually unthought of.

And he now noted that Pitt spoke more forcefully of the young daughter than of the mother. There was especially Pitt’s statement that the daughter had expressed a deep interest in Erythro, and if she wished to explore its surface, she was to be allowed to.

Now why was that?

And there she was. Fourteen years older than at the time of the Leaving. Twenty years older than she was in her pre-Crile youth, the day they had gone into Farming Area C and climbed the levels into low gravity, and she had laughed when he tried a slow somersault and had turned too far and had come down on his belly. (Actually, he could easily have hurt himself, for though the sensation of weight decreased, mass and inertia did not, and damage could follow. Fortunately, he had not suffered
that
humiliation.

Eugenia
looked
older, too, but she had not thickened very much, and her hair—shorter now, and straight—was more matter-of-fact somehow, but was still a lively dark brown.

And when she advanced toward him, smiling, he could feel his traitor heart speed a bit. She held out both hands and he took them.

“Siever,” she said, “I have betrayed you, and I’m so ashamed.”

“Betrayed me, Eugenia? What are you talking about?” What
was
she talking about? Surely not her marriage to Crile.

She said, “I should have thought of you every day. I should have sent you messages, given you the news, insisted on coming to visit you.”

“Instead, you never thought of me at all!”

“Oh, I’m not
that
bad. I thought of you every once in a while. I never really
forgot
you. Don’t think that for a moment. It’s just that my thoughts never really prompted me to do anything.”

Genarr nodded. What was there to say? He said, “I know you’ve been busy. And I’ve been here—out of sight and, therefore, out of mind.”

“Not out of mind. You’ve scarcely changed at all, Siever.”

“That’s the advantage of looking old and craggy when you’re twenty. After that, you never change, Eugenia. Time passes and you just look a trifle older and a trifle craggier. Not enough to matter.”

“Come now, you make a profession of being cruel to yourself so that soft-hearted women will leap to your defense. That hasn’t changed at all.”

“Where’s your daughter, Eugenia? I was told she would be coming with you.”

“She came. You can be sure of that. Erythro is her idea of Paradise, for no reason I can possibly think of. She went to our quarters to straighten them out and unpack for the two of us. She’s that kind of young woman. Serious. Responsible. Practical. Dutiful. She possesses what someone once described to me as all the unlovable virtues.”

Genarr laughed. “I’m quite at home with them. If you only knew how hard I’ve tried, in my time, to cultivate at least one charming vice. I’ve always failed.”

“Oh well, as one grows older, I suspect one needs more unlovable virtues and fewer charming vices. But why did you retreat permanently to Erythro, Siever? I understand that Erythro Dome has to be administered, but surely you’re not the only one on Rotor who can do the job.”

Genarr said, “Actually, I like to think I am. In a way, though, I enjoy it here and I do get to Rotor on occasion for a short vacation.”

“And never come to see me?”

“Just because I have a vacation doesn’t mean you do. I suspect you’re far busier than I am, and have been ever since you discovered Nemesis. But I’m disappointed. I wanted to meet your daughter.”

“You will. Her name’s Marlene. Actually, it’s Molly in my heart, but she won’t allow that. At the age of fifteen, she has become remarkably intolerant and insists on being called Marlene. But you’ll meet her, never fear. Actually,
I didn’t want her here the first time. How could we reminisce freely with her present?”

“Do you want to reminisce, Eugenia?”

“About some things.”

Genarr hesitated. “I’m sorry Crile didn’t join the Leaving.”

Insigna’s smile became fixed. “About
some
things, Siever.” She turned away and walked to the window, staring out. “This is an elaborate place you have here, by the way. Just the little I’ve seen of it is impressive. Bright lights. Actual streets. Sizable buildings. And yet the Dome is hardly ever spoken of or referred to back on Rotor. How many people live and work here?”

“It varies. We have our slow and busy times. We’ve had as many as nearly nine hundred people here. At the moment, the number is five hundred and sixteen. We know every individual present. It’s not easy. Each day sees some come, some go.”

“Except you.”

“And a few others.”

“But why the Dome, Siever? After all, Erythro’s atmosphere is breathable.”

Genarr pushed out his lower lip and, for the first time, he did not meet her eyes. “Breathable, but not really comfortable. The light level is wrong. When you get outside the Dome, you’re bathed in a pinkish light, tending to orange when Nemesis is high in the sky. It’s bright enough. You can read. Still, it doesn’t seem natural. Then, too, Nemesis itself doesn’t look natural. It looks too large, and most people think it looks threatening and that its reddish light makes it seem angry—and they get depressed. Nemesis is dangerous in actual fact, too, at least in a way. Because it isn’t blindingly bright, there is a tendency to gaze at it and watch for sunspots. The infrared can easily harm the retina. People who must go out in the open wear a special helmet for that reason—among other things.”

“Then the Dome is more of a device to keep normal light in, so to speak, rather than to keep anything out.”

“We don’t even keep air out. The air and water that circulates in the Dome is drawn from Erythro’s planetary supply. Naturally, though, we’re careful to keep something
out,” said Genarr. “We keep out the prokaryotes. You know, the little blue-green cells.”

Insigna nodded thoughtfully. That had turned out to be the explanation for the oxygen content in the air. There
was
life on Erythro, even all-pervasive life, but it was microscopic in nature, only equivalent to the simplest forms of cellular life in the Solar System.

She said, “Are they really prokaryotes? I know that’s what they’re called, but that’s what our bacteria are also called. Are they bacteria?”

“If they’re equivalent to anything in the history of Solar System life, it is to the cyanobacteria, those that photosynthesize. You’re right to ask the question, though. No, they’re not
our
cyanobacteria. They possess nucleoprotein, but with a structure fundamentally different from that which prevails in our form of life. They also have a kind of chlorophyll that lacks magnesium and works on infrared so that the cells tend to be colorless rather than green. Different enzymes, trace minerals in different proportions. Still, they resemble Earth cells sufficiently in outer appearance to be called prokaryotes. I understand that biologists are pushing for the word ‘erythryotes’ but for nonbiologists like ourselves, prokaryotes is good enough.”

“And they’re efficient enough in their workings to account for the oxygen in Erythro’s atmosphere?”

“Absolutely. Nothing else could possibly explain its existence there. By the way, Eugenia, you’re the astronomer, so what’s the latest thinking on how old Nemesis might be?”

Insigna shrugged. “Red dwarfs are next to being immortal. Nemesis can be as old as the Universe and still go on for another hundred billion years or so without visible change. The best we can do is judge by the contents of the minor elements making up its structure. Supposing that it’s a first-generation star and didn’t begin with anything beyond hydrogen and helium, it is a bit over ten billion years old—a little more than twice the age of the Sun of the Solar System.”

“Then Erythro is ten billion years old, too.”

“Absolutely. A stellar system is formed all at once and not piecemeal. Why are you asking?”

“It just strikes me as odd that in ten billion years, life hasn’t got past the prokaryote stage.”

“I don’t think that’s surprising, Siever. On Earth, for somewhere between two and three billion years after life first appeared, it remained strictly prokaryote, and here on Erythro the energy concentration in sunlight is far less than it is on Earth. It takes energy to form more complicated life-forms. This sort of thing has been pretty well discussed among the Rotorians.”

“I’m sure of it,” said Genarr, “but it doesn’t seem to reach us here at the Dome. Our minds are too fixed, I suppose, on our local duties and problems—though you’d think anything to do with the prokaryotes would come under that heading.”

“For that matter,” said Insigna, “we don’t hear much about the Dome on Rotor.”

“Yes, things tend to compartmentalize. But then, of course, there’s nothing glamorous about the Dome, Eugenia. It’s just a workshop, so I’m not surprised it gets lost in the press of events on Rotor. It’s the new Settlements that are being built that get all the attention. Are you going to move to one of them?”