John Varley In The Bowl

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there or turn around.
After I pointed out our verbal contract, she reluctantly got up. She didn't
like it, but honored her word.
Hunting blast jewels proved to be a big anticlimax. I'd had visions of
scouring the countryside for days. Then the exciting moment of finding one.
Eureka! I'd have howled. The reality was nothing like that. Here's how you
hunt blast jewels: you stomp down hard on the ground, wait a few seconds, then
move on and stomp again. When you see and hear an explosion, you simply walk
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to where it occurred and pick them up. They're scattered all over, lit up in
the infrared bands from the heat of the explosion. They might as well have had
neon arrows flashing over them. Big adventure.
When we found one, we'd pick it up and pop it into a cooler mounted on our
tagalongs. They are formed by the pressure of the explosion, but certain parts
of them are volatile at Venus temperatures. These elements will boil out and
leave you with a grayish powder in about three hours if you don't cool them
down. I don't know why they lasted as long as they did. They were considerably
hotter than the air when we picked them up. So I thought they should have
melted right off.
Ember said it was the impaction of the crystalline lattice that gave the
jewels the temporary strength to outlast the temperature. Things behave
differently in the temperature and pressure extremes of Venus. As they cooled
off, the lattice was weakened and a progressive decay set in.
That's why it was important to get them as soon as possible after the
explosion to get unflawed gems.
We spent the whole day at that. Eventually we collected about ten kilos of
gems, ranging from pea size to a few the size of an apple.
I sat beside the campfire and examined them that night: Night by my watch,
anyway. Another thing I
was beginning to miss was the twenty-five-hour cycle of night and day. And
while I was at it, moons. It would have cheered me up considerably to spot
Diemos or Phobos that night. But the sun just squatted up there in the
horizon, moving slowly to the north in preparation for its transition to the
morning sky.
The jewels were beautiful, I'll say that much for them. They were a wine-red
color, tinged with brown. But when the light caught them right, there was no
predicting what I might see. Most of the raw gems were coated with a dull
substance that hid their full glory. I experimented with chipping some of
them. What was left behind when I flaked off the patina was a slippery surface
that sparkled even in candlelight. Ember showed me how to suspend them from a
string and strike them.
Then they would ring like tiny bells, and every once in a while one would shed
all its imperfections and emerge as a perfect eight-sided equilateral.
I was cooking for myself that day. Ember had cooked from the first, but she no
longer Teemed interested in buttering me up.
"I hired on as a guide," she pointed out, with considerable venom. "Webster's
defines guide as-"
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"I know what a guide is."
"-and it says nothing about cooking. Will you marry me?"
"No." I wasn't even surprised.
"Same reasons?"
"Yes. I won't enter into an agreement like that lightly. Besides, you're too
young."
"Legal age is twelve. I'll be twelve in one week."
"That's too young. On Mars you must be fourteen."
"What a dogmatist. You're not kidding, are you? Is it really fourteen?"
That's typical of her lack of knowledge of the place she was trying so hard to
get to. I don't know where she got her ideas about Mars. I finally concluded
that she made them up whole in her daydreams.
We ate the meal I prepared in silence, toying with our collection of jewels. I
estimate that I had about a thousand Marks worth of uncut stones. And I was
getting tired of the Venusian bush. I
figured on spending another day collecting, then heading back for the cycle.
It would probably be a relief for both of us. Ember could start laying traps
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for the next stupid tourist to reach town, or even head for Venusburg and try
in earnest.
When I thought of that, I wondered why she was still out here. If she had the
money to pay the tremendous bribe she had offered me, why wasn't she in town
where the tourists were as thick as flies? I was going to ask her that. But
she came up to me and sat down very close.
"Would you like to make love?" she asked.
I'd had about enough inducements. I snorted, got up, and walked through the
wall of the tent. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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