The Radio Magician and Other Stories by James van Pelt Page A

the multiple levels and balconies she saw on the other side. Pedestrians walked purposefully to and fro.
    “What is this, a mall?”
    “More like a business park, but you’ve got the right idea.”
    A pair of woman dressed in dark, functional leather longcoats walked past them. One laughed at something the other said. Pale clean circles surrounded their eyes in faces that were uniformly filthy.
    “Prospectors do a lot of trading here,” said Henry, as way of explanation.
    He wheeled her to a garage a level lower and helped her into a car. This one didn’t appear nearly as heavy as the truck she’d ridden in with him what seemed like a lifetime ago.
    “It’s time for you to see Venus in its glory,” said Henry.
    A half hour later he parked the car on what might have been the same hill he’d taken her to before, but now the burgundy sun rested low on the opposite horizon, and where before the landscape was marked by wind, rock and water, plants grew everywhere. Thick-stemmed vines clung to the rocks beside the road. Low bushes dotted the slope to the water’s edge. Here and there, short pine-looking trees poked from the soil, their trunks all leaning the same way and their branches pointing away from the lake. And there was color everywhere. Not only were there the gray and black rocks she remembered, but also tans and browns and yellows. Across the face of the hill to their left, a copper sheen caught the sun, and on the hill to their right, the mossy clumps growing between the rough stones were a vibrant blue.
    But no heather covered the hills. Where she imagined a world with waterfalls, there was only sharp-edged stone. Where she hoped for soft yellow light on fields of flowers, there was a red sun, bloat as a toad on the horizon. She saw a rough land.
    A figure dressed in a leather longcoat, goggles covering the eyes, walked past their car, saw Henry and tipped his leather hat as he continued on toward the lake where a small complex of buildings serviced two long docks and a dozen moored boats.
    Elizabeth tried to contain her disappointment. “This is not even close to what I worked so hard for. I wanted a world that was what Earth should have been, what it could have been if we hadn’t ruined it. Venus could have been paradise!” The outburst left her short of breath. In the car’s confines, her breathing sounded loud and harsh. “I had a brother . . .”
    “You were an only child.” Henry sounded quizzical.
    “No, I . . .” Panic rose in Elizabeth’s throat. She did have a brother, didn’t she? It took a second for her to sort it out for herself. A thousand years of dreaming could feel more convincing than a few decades of reality.
    “We have to get out of here. Take me back.”
    “Wait,” said Henry. He reclined his seat a little before folding his hands across his chest. He watched the sun setting on the lake’s other side. Elizabeth leaned back in her chair, her heart thudding hard.
    The sun slipped deeper into the hills behind the lake. Elizabeth relaxed. Could she get the money back again? She knew no one. The game was surely different now. A wind scurried across the water, rocked the boats, and then rushed up the road to toss sand against the car. Shadows lengthened. She felt so tired, so truly, truly old .
    “You know,” Harry said, “I talked to the doctors before I went to sleep the last time. It took considerable persuasion on my part, but I discovered you’d told them to work on me again. For a while, I thought the best action would be to go to your bed and kick out the plug. It was tempting.”
    Henry didn’t move while he spoke. His hands stayed still as he watched the setting sun.
    Elizabeth floundered for a moment, unsure of how to reply. When they’d started this project a month ago (“No, a thousand years ago,” she thought), he would have never spoken to her like this, and she would have had no trouble telling him what she thought, but this wasn’t the same Henry, not