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

eyes. They were the best part of him, the way they looked at her when he didn’t think she noticed. Sometimes she wished she could just fall in love with his eyes, but then she saw the scar, and he really was too short and so young, ten years shy of her forty, practically a child, although a brilliant and efficient one. She’d ask the surgeon on her own. Henry would hardly object to a few cosmetic changes while he slept. What else was there to do during the down time anyway except to improve? She had been considering thinning her waist a bit, toning her back muscles.
    Henry clopped back to his station, then studied figures on a screen she couldn’t see. “There are seismic irregularities, as predicted, making the final calculations more difficult, but the planet is spinning slightly faster now, just a bit. We’ve also pushed it out of its orbit a bit. The next series will bump it back. You’re one step closer to your new Earth.”
    She turned from him, irritated. “If Venus only becomes another Earth, I failed. We can make it better. A planet to be truly proud of. How are things on Earth, anyway?”
    His fingers flicked over the controls. “In the twenty-seven years we slept, your corporation in the asteroid belt has tripled in size, improving the ability to redirect asteroids above projections. We’re two years ahead of schedule there. The Kuiper Belt initiative is also ahead of schedule.” He reread a section. “We’re having trouble with the comet deflection plan. Lots of support for redirecting the Earth-crossing asteroids, but opposition to the comets. Some groups contest our aiming them all at Venus. There’s a lobby defending Halley’s Comet for its ‘historical and traditional values,’ as well as several groups who argue that ‘comets possess a lasting mythic and aesthetic relation with the people of Earth.’ The political wing of the advertising and public relations departments are working the problem, but they have requested budget increases.”
    Elizabeth snorted derisively. “Give them Halley’s Comet. It doesn’t have as much water as it used to anyway.”
    “Noted.” Henry sent the order. “Your investments and companies are sound.”
    “How is the United Nation’s terraforming project on Mars going?”
    “Badly. They’ve lost momentum.”
    “Too big of a project to run by democracies and committees. Too long.” She sighed. “If nothing needs my attention, then I suppose it’s time for bed.”
    Henry shut his monitors off, powered down the equipment. A metal curtain slid across the view window, separating them from Venus’s tortured atmosphere. “Two hundred years hardly seems like going to bed. Everyone I know will be dead when we awake.”
    Elizabeth shrugged. “They’re all twenty-seven years older than when you talked with them last. As far as they’re concerned, you’re the dead one.”
    A door opened in the center of the floor. Elizabeth looked down the ladder that connected the alcove with the rest of the habitat. The ladder rotated beneath her. She timed her step to land on the top rung, then moved down so she held the ladder, leaving her head and shoulders at floor level. The room turned slowly around her. “No second thoughts, Henry. You knew the cost going in.”
    He nodded at her. She saw in his eyes the yearning. The dream of a terraformed Venus hadn’t brought him onto the project, made him say good-bye to everyone he’d ever known, committed him to a project on a time scale never attempted.
    No, he came for her.
    The rotation turned her so she didn’t have to see his gaze. She continued down the ladder. Mostly she thought about the project and the long line of asteroids on their way to add their inertia to Venus’s spin, but below those thoughts ran a thread about Henry. She thought, as long as he remains a reliable assistant, what does it matter why he signed up? Henry Harrison isn’t the first man who worked for me because he wanted me.

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