Space Stations

The woman was to be detained, according to Colonel Sansom, because the Guardian Commanders who advised the Council of Mukhtars had abruptly decided to abort her mission. Alonza was to detain her as unobtrusively as possible and hold her until the colonel returned to the Wheel, after which he would take charge of the matter.

Her task seemed simple enough, but there were all kinds of possible complications in carrying it out. Perhaps this Sameh had friends among those traveling with her who might object to seeing her led away without a good excuse. Maybe the Habber pilots who were to take Sameh and the others from the camp to Venus would argue that, since she was technically in their custody until she arrived in Anwara, the Guardians had no right to keep her at the Wheel. Perhaps Sameh would demand a public hearing, claiming that the Guardian force at the Wheel was violating the implicit agreement that had been made with her by allowing her passage from Earth to Venus.

Nothing would prevent her superiors from doing whatever they wanted with Sameh in the end, but any of these possibilities would draw too much attention to the operative.

The Guardian officers close to the Council of Mukhtars wanted no attention drawn to their covert activities. Better for the secret service of the Mukhtars' personal guard to be no more than the subject of unverifiable rumors, to have even the existence of such a secret service doubted by most of Earth's citizens.

Alonza closed the file on Sameh Tryolla and secured it, knowing that she would not have to retrieve it again. The whole business had bothered her from the first, and even though Colonel Sansom had not betrayed any uneasiness, she suspected that he was equally puzzled by their orders. Why not find some way to get word to the woman about the change in plans instead of confining her on the Wheel? Why take the risk of calling attention to her by detaining her? For that matter, why not put her out of the way permanently, making her death look like an accident? Why hadn't she been stopped before she got to the Wheel?

Asking such questions, though, was not part of her assignment; nor was wondering what Sameh Tryolla's mission might have been. The Council of Mukhtars had many ways of monitoring the progress of the Venus Project and the loyalty of the Cytherians, as the people who lived in the surface settlements and on the domed Islands that floated in Venus' thin upper atmosphere preferred to call themselves. Alonza had always assumed that one of the Mukhtars' methods was to plant a few spies among the settlers. She hoped that this was all the Council was doing, that the spies were no more than informers alerting Earth's rulers of possible difficulties and dissatisfactions that might require their attention.

Irrationally, something inside her insisted upon hoping that Venus might become a place where people could win more for themselves than they were allowed on Earth, that the Cytherians would make something new, that the machinations of the Mukhtars would not dampen their dreams. She had picked up such sentiments from others who had come to the Wheel, the scientists and workers and others who looked forward to the work of terraforming, even knowing that they would never live to see the results of their labors and could only hope that their distant descendants might live on the green and growing world they would create. The terraforming of Venus would redeem Earth and provide a new Earthlike planet for its people. Far in the future, the technology used to transform Venus might even be used to heal humankind's wounded home world.

Not that Alonza would let such passing thoughts interfere with her duty.

She thought of her own arrival at the Wheel, when Colonel Sansom had welcomed her to her post with a dinner in the officers' mess. “I thought you might have the makings of a Guardian,” he had told her, “even back in San Antonio. You wouldn't talk, even with all the scary tales you'd surely been told about Guardian interrogations, not until we took you to your mother and she begged you to talk. First you demonstrated your loyalty, and then you showed your good sense. Adjusting well to the dorms and doing well at your assigned studies only confirmed my original judgment.”

That she had never asked the Guardians about her mother had likely been another point in her favor. She had learned to control her curiosity, to live with knowing that many of her questions would never be answered and that any answers, if she somehow found them, would only bring her trouble.

Alonza did not suppose that she would learn much, if anything, about Sameh Tryolla from the two Habber pilots. The woman was only another one of their passengers; it was unlikely that they had exchanged even a few words with her. But she had to know if they might pose an obstacle to her assignment.