2312

“Well,” one of them said after Kris had described Terminator’s hope that the deal would hold. “Getting light to the outer system is our contribution to the Mondragon and to humanity. We’re in a better position to do this than you are on Mercury. We know you helped us get started, but now the Saturnians are offering to cover the costs of building solettas on all the Vulcanoids that can support them. And they really need our light out there. So we’ll take up as much of their offer as we can. It’s a bit more than we can handle right now, to tell the truth. We’re still fine-tuning the second generations. There are issues we’re still working on. We don’t have enough people to take advantage of everything they’re offering us.”

Kris was nodding. “You need our help to coordinate the whole effort. You’re down here peeling around at speed, getting cooked and getting your stations going.”

They thought that over. Their speaker said, “Maybe so. But when Terminator was out of commission, we had no problems. Now we’re thinking that Mercury should contribute to the Mondragon with things other than light, and leave us to it. You’ve got heavy metals, art history, and Terminator itself as a work of art, a tourist destination for the grand tour and for sun watchers. You’ll be fine.”

Kris shook her head. “We’re the capital of the inner system. With all due respect, you people operate power stations here. You need administration.”

“Maybe.”

Swan said, “Which Saturnians have you been talking to about this?”

They stared at her. “They speak to us as a league,” one of them replied. “But we have the same Saturnian liaison you do-their inner planets ambassador. You know him better than we do, from what we hear.”

“You mean Wahram?”

“Of course. He told us that you Mercurials knew the interplanetary situation, and would understand how important our light is to the Titan project. And to all the other outer planets as well.”

Swan did not reply.

Kris began discussing the Triton settlement and the plan there to stellarize Neptune.

“Yes,” one of the Vulcans replied, “but the Saturnians won’t do that to Saturn.”

Swan interrupted them: “Tell me more about Wahram; when did he visit you?”

“A couple years ago, I think.”

“Two years?”

“Wait,” another of them put in. “Our year is only six weeks long, so that was a joke there. It was just recently.”

“It was since Terminator burned,” the first speaker clarified, looking at her curiously.

Kris filled in the silence that followed, reminding the Vulcans that as the new Lion of Mercury, Kris was now the titular head of their order. But these particular Vulcans were not Greys, as they were quick to inform Kris; they were adherents of some schismatic sect that did not consider the Lion of Mercury to be their head. Nevertheless they were very polite, and Kris continued to try to convince them to keep the deal; but Swan had trouble following the conversation. She was getting angrier at Wahram the longer she considered what he had done, to the point where she wasn’t listening anymore. Right in the time he had said he would work with her, after they had found the ship floating in the clouds of Saturn, he had come down here instead and undermined her cause. It was a hard little sucker punch.

Lists (11)

Annie Oakley Crater, Dorothy Sayers Crater.

Also craters named for: Madame Sevigne, Shakira (a Bashkir goddess), Martha Graham, Hippolyta, Nina Efimova, Dorothea Erxleben, Lorraine Hansberry, Catherine Beevher; also the Mesopotamian fertility goddess, the Celtic river goddess, the Woyo rainbow goddess, the Pueblo Indian corn goddess, the Vedic goddess of plenty, the Roman goddess of the hunt (Diana), the Latvian goddess of fate; also Anna Comnena, Charlotte Corday, Mary Queen of Scots, Madame de Stael, Simone de Beauvoir, Josephine Baker. Also Aurelia, the mother of Julius Caesar. Tezan, the Etruscan goddess of the dawn. Alice B. Toklas. Xantippe. Empress Wuhou. Virginia Woolf. Laura Ingalls Wilder. Evangeline, Fatima, Gloria, Gaia, Helen, Heloise. Lillian Hellman, Edna Ferber, Zora Neale Hurston. Guinevere, Nell Gwyn, Martine de Beausoleil. Sophia Jex-Blake, Jerusha Jirad, Angelica Kauffman. Maria Merian, Maria Montessori, Marianne Moore. Mu Guiying. Vera Mukhina. Aleksandra Potanina. Margaret Sanger. Sappho. Zoya. Sarah Winnemucca. Seshat. Jane Seymour. Rebecca West. Marie Stopes. Alfonsina Storni. Anna Volkova. Sabina Steinbach. Mary Wollstonecraft. Anna von Schuurman. Jane Austen. Wang Zenyi. Karen Blixen. Sojourner Truth. Harriet Tubman. Hera. Emily Dickinson.

Kim Stanley Robinson

WAHRAM ON VENUS