“I don’t know if I can, Tómas. I don’t know if I know how to!”
“Time will tell, Raven. Time heals all wounds, so they say.”
“So they say,” she echoed.
He let his arm fall away from her shoulders. Turning toward the blister’s hatch, Gomez said, “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”
Raven walked alongside him toward the hatch, thinking, I don’t deserve him. I don’t deserve him.
But as they stepped back into the long, curving passageway that led back to the habitat’s living quarters, she saw that Gomez was smiling happily.
MANEUVERING
It took more than four weeks for the Astronomical Association to put together a digging team and send it, with its equipment, to Haven.
Abbott’s team of astronomers had little to do but wait. Several of them left the habitat and returned to Earth. Abbott himself jaunted back to Earth for more than a week, then returned on the same vessel that brought the digging team.
During the weeks of waiting, Raven and Alicia worked on the idea of opening a women’s clothing shop.
“Evan is absolutely against it,” Alicia told Raven over dinner in her quarters. “He doesn’t want us to become independent.”
Sitting across her narrow kitchen table from Alicia, Raven said, “Then we’ll have to go over his head.”
Alicia blinked. “Reverend Umber?”
“Reverend Umber,” Raven confirmed.
“You’re serious!”
“He’s the only one who can trump Evan.”
“But what makes you think he’ll agree with us? What makes you think he’ll go against Evan?”
“He’s worried about Evan,” Raven answered. “Besides, who else can we turn to?”
Alicia had no answer.
“It’s good of you to see me, Reverend,” said Raven.
She had seated herself in front of Umber’s handsome desk, wearing the standard gray uniform of the habitat, feeling like a nun or a novice come to beg a favor from the head of a medieval holy order.
Umber made a small gesture with his right hand. “Not at all, Raven. Your well-being is important to me, as is the well-being of all our people.”
Trying to look penitent, Raven said, “What I’ve come to ask you is out of the ordinary, I know.”
Umber’s brows rose noticeably. “Really?”
“You know Alicia Polanyi?”
“She’s Evan’s assistant, isn’t she?”
“Part of Evan’s harem.”
She saw Umber’s head snap back as though she had slapped him. For an endless moment, the reverend said nothing. Then, tiredly, “I’ve tried to show Evan the error of his ways, but he just nods and goes right ahead doing what he wants.”
“Alicia and I want to break free of him.”
“Evan told me he fired you.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Whatever for?”
“For refusing to have sex with him.”
“Ah.”
“He used Rust on me. Got me to do things…” Raven let her voice trail off into silence.
Umber’s red, round face settled into a forbidding scowl. “I’ve tried to get him to stop that kind of behavior.”
“He won’t stop. He enjoys it.”
“Yes, I know. I’m afraid he’s damning himself, his soul.”
“And dragging others down with him,” said Raven.
With a sad shake of his head, Umber admitted, “There’s no way I can control him, bring him to God’s grace. God knows I’ve tried, but he ignores me. He laughs at me!”
“There is one thing you can do, Reverend. It’s just a little thing, but you can help free Alicia Polanyi and me from Evan’s control.”
“Free the two of you?”
Raven bit her lip, then plunged ahead. “Alicia and I want to open a women’s clothing shop.”
Umber’s eyes went wide for a moment. Then he leaned forward in his capacious desk chair and asked, in a voice heavy with skepticism, “A women’s clothing store? How in the world could that make a difference here on Haven?”
Raven took a deep breath, then began to explain.
Raven’s throat felt scratchy, sore, by the time she finished telling Reverend Umber of the hopes that she and Alicia had built.
Umber’s chunky face went from scowling disbelief to puzzled wonderment, to nodding understanding. By the time Raven finished her description he seemed to grasp what she was driving at.
But once she stopped talking, he slowly shook his head. “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea, Raven. We don’t want to set up distinctions of dress among our people. We don’t want that kind of competition among them.”
“But it’s natural!” Raven countered. “Why should everybody dress the same? Let the women express themselves. They’ll be happier for it, and so will the men.”
“It will set them in competition against one another. That’s something we should avoid.”
“Some competition is natural, Reverend,” Raven pleaded. “You think the women of this habitat don’t compete against one another?”
Umber hesitated, then replied, “I… I don’t know. I suppose I’ve never given it much thought.”
“Well, they do. It’s natural. And healthy, I think.”
A long silence. Raven thought she could see wheels turning inside Umber’s head.
“Most of the women already alter their uniforms,” she argued. “Just in small ways, perhaps, but they try to make their uniforms a little bit different, distinctive. It’s quite natural, actually.”
“But if you give them the chance to buy completely different outfits it will set up competition, rivalries, resentments among our women.”
With a shake of her head, Raven countered, “It will allow the women of the habitat a measure of self-expression that’s denied to them now. Our boutique wouldn’t offer the kind of outrageous outfits you can buy on Earth,” she insisted. “But something more stylish than these uniforms we’re forced to wear would be welcome, I think.”
“It’s true that many of the women alter their uniforms, at least a little,” Umber admitted.
“Of course they do,” Raven said. “Why should we all dress exactly alike? It’s not natural.”
“Not natural,” he muttered.
“Let us open the boutique and see how the women react to it,” Raven pleaded. “If you’re unhappy with the results, you can shut us down easily enough.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
“Then you’ll do it? You’ll let us open a shop?”
For an endless moment, Umber remained silent. At last he said, “On a temporary basis. A trial run. If it causes dissension, disharmony, I’ll have to close it down.”
Raven jumped up from her chair. Suppressing an urge to lean across the desk and kiss the reverend, she extended both her hands and grasped his. “Thank you, sir! Thank you! From both of us!”
Umber looked more embarrassed than pleased. But he managed to say, “Good luck with your endeavor.”
Raven practically ran out of his office, not willing to give the red-faced Umber a chance to change his mind.
THE MINERS
There were only four of them—three men and a heavyset, deeply tanned woman. And Professor Abbott, of course, marching alongside a fifth person, a much smaller dark-skinned man with tightly curled black hair, wearing a wrinkled jumpsuit of faded blue.
They were an undistinguished-looking group, Gomez thought as he stood in the reception area, except for Abbott, striding along as if he were leading a parade.
Abbott trooped them to where Gomez was standing.
“Tómas Gomez,” he boomed, by way of introduction, “meet Vincente Zworkyn, the best product ever of Italian-Russian collaboration.”