Child of Venus by Pamela Sargent Page B

and your other grandfather don’t count. They’re Habbers now, not Cytherians. And those Islanders—can you really trust anybody who ran away when things got hard and then came back when things here were settled? Nobody goes to a Hab and comes back without being different. Maybe they don’t let some people ever come back.”
    The boy had probably been hearing such talk from his father. Einar Gunnarsson had suffered at the hands of traitors and might have paid for his resistance to Ishtar with imprisonment or worse if the Habbers had not intervened ten years ago, during the Revolt Einar should have been grateful to the Habitat-dwellers, yet he was still suspicious of them.
    Mahala thought of her grandfather Malik Haddad, who had fled to the Habitats with the group of Islander specialists. Why hadn’t he returned with the others? What had happened to him in the over twelve years since then? Risa had asked Benzi, who had said only that Malik was reasonably content with his life and spent much of his time in study. Mahala had never asked Benzi for more details about her biological grandfather; maybe it was time she did.
    Four new prefabricated houses with white sides, small windows, and flat roofs had gone up near the stream they were approaching. Small greenhouses next to them had been built since the last quake a couple of months ago, a quake that had been strong enough to level a few houses. No one had been seriously injured, largely because of the lightweight materials used in the construction of their residences. They did not need to construct durable houses of sturdy materials here. The climate of the settlements was always the same, with warm air that seemed slightly heavier and more humid near the larger artificial bodies of water; they did not have to build against bad weather, for no storms ever raged inside the domes. Dwellings could be enlarged or taken down easily, as necessary, but lately it seemed to Mahala that even more houses were going up. She had not felt how crowded Oberg was becoming until she had visited Dyami in the more sparsely settled domes of Turing.
    Solveig was standing on the footbridge leaning against the railing, tossing pebbles into the stream below. She looked up as Mahala and Ragnar hurried toward her.
    â€œYou took long enough,” Solveig called out. She rested her back against the railing. Solveig would soon be eleven, but already she was taller than Risa. She had let her pale hair grow long, and it hung down her back in two braids. “What did you see at the Center that kept you there so long?”
    â€œThat cliff,” Ragnar said, “the one where the diggers are mining. I’d like to carve something on that. I was looking at the patterns the diggers made and thinking about what I could do with them.” He flung his arms out. “A big face—I could carve a big face staring right into the dome!”
    Solveig smiled. “You couldn’t go out there to do it.”
    â€œSo I’d use a digger.” Ragnar frowned at his sister as she shook her head. “What good is that cliff going to be when all the ore’s gone? Might as well do something with it.”
    â€œMaybe there won’t be anything left of it,” Solveig said. “Maybe it’ll just become a hillside covered with trees.”
    â€œAs if we’re going to be around long enough to see any trees growing out there.”
    Solveig plucked at a braid. “I wish I could be around that long,” she murmured. “Everything here could have been done without us. They could have just put more cyberminds inside the domes and had them manage everything.”
    â€œThey wouldn’t have needed domes at all,” Mahala said, “just the Islands and Anwara. The cyberminds and the Islanders could have done everything from there.”
    â€œI don’t care what happens here later,” Ragnar said. “I’d just like to see some other