Veronica stretched out her cramped fingers and wiggled them loose. She had spent a long morning prepping all the trays of nibbles for the PanU Artists' Collective show. The thought that she might never have to do this again kept her going. 'For Shelby's sake,' Veronica said over and over as a mantra to keep motivated washing greens, scrubbing roots, and frying blocks of yeast. 'I'm doing this for Shelby and not that pack of snobs.'
She needed to have everything finished as once the Collective showed up, she'd have to supervise the lazy jerks or they would get nothing done. Veronica slashed a daikon into coins, wishing they would turn into money so she didn't have to put her sister through another gallery showing again. Or the fingers of some of those jerks, for treating her little sister as worthless.
She caught the sound of the gate creaking and checked the clock. It was too early for Mrs. Grisson to come by with the eggs and despite what she had demanded the day before, Veronica didn't expect anyone from the Collective to show up one minute earlier than Professor Vitebskin had ordered them to.
The back door opened and Veronica watched with dismay from her position at the counter as Shelby stumbled inside. She had not seen her sister look so distraught since their mother's death.
"Shelby?" she asked. "What's wrong? You're home early."
Shelby turned to her sister. Her eyes were red and her normally glowing complexion was ashy.
"I'm not that early," Shelby replied in a flat voice. "The gallery show, remember? Vitebskin let us go early so I came straight home."
"Well, that was nice of him, I suppose."
"I'm going upstairs to wash up. I'll be down to help finish setting up when the Collective arrives."
"Where are Florence and Lulu?"
"I don't know. I didn't wait for them. Do we have to talk? I'm tired and I want to wash up and get ready for the show."
Veronica gave her sister a long, long look over, noting her dried tear tracks and uneven breathing. "Sure. Maybe you should lie down for a bit too. Take your time."
Shelby turned towards the door leading to the hall, then turned back to her sister. Her jaw trembled. She leaned up against the table, letting it support her weight, then slumped into the chair.
"They found out today. Somebody, I don't know who, figured out that I'm Simon Bradwell's daughter and so are you. It was awful, Veronica. The things everyone said. Worst of all, some of the instructors? Dear old dad cheated them too. Students too. One girl," Shelby gulped back a moan.
"One girl told me that her family had been ruined."
Veronica frowned down at the knife in her hands and then very carefully laid it down on the countertop, keeping the honed edge well away from her and her sister.
"Not that ruined if she could afford to go to PanU."
"Maybe she earned a scholarship, unlike me!" Shelby screamed, startling her sister. "Maybe someone in her family put themselves into bankruptcy to pay for that hellhole!" She burst into tears.
Veronica watched her sister sob for a few moments, steeled herself against reopening her own heartache, and then sat down besides Shelby. She put her arms around her sister, stroked her hair, and made soothing noises, allowing Shelby the luxury of crying herself empty.
She cried tears of her own too; angry tears at their father for destroying their lives and so many others because he couldn't control his own appetites, heated tears at their mother who had given up when her daughters needed her, furious tears at Dean and his family who had abandoned her without a second thought, resentful tears for the vanished relatives who could have helped and refused, embarrassed tears for the casual cruelty of strangers, painful tears for being trapped in Panschin forever.
But Veronica didn't allow herself to cry for long. She had cried out most of those tears long ago, unlike Shelby whom other people were still trying to wound. Shelby's tears were fresh, new, and raw. She was still learning how to grow an armor shell. She needed her big sister to hold her and be strong for her.
'Who was there to hold me,' Veronica thought as her sister wept out grief, fury, and anguish. Then Neza came up behind both girls, sat down, and did her best to hold them both.
'Auntie Neza,' Veronica thought.
Auntie Neza had held her on many, many nights when she wept out salty lakes of tears. Veronica forced back her own rage and swallowed the last of her tears. Shelby needed reassurance more. Her sister's hurt tears were new. Her own outraged grief was old and needed to be set aside. There was still a gallery show to put on and it would be just like some sneering member of the PanU Artists' Collective to show up early, see the Bradwell's anguish, and be even more spiteful towards her little sister for not having a thicker skin, for not being able to take a joke.
Veronica let her anger fuel her, filling her with energy. She said, "Neza, can you help Shelby upstairs to wash up? Mrs. Grisson will be here soon with the eggs. We have a show to get ready for."
"That show," Shelby moaned, and cried harder.
"Shelby," Veronica snapped out, "we will never do another show for those poncy sods again. This is the last one. Pull yourself together and every time one of those, those self-righteous oafs says something, remind yourself that we will never allow any of those snobs in this house again. I will scrub terraformers off toilets in Dome Six to keep them out."
She contemplated going outside her constricting, familiar, safe little world of Dome Two into the bigger world of the rest of Panschin, feeling her stomach tie itself up in knots. Shelby wasn't the only member of the Bradwell family who had to deal with nasty gossip and meanspirited inuendo. Going to Dome Six meant the chance of running into former friends and cold relatives. Unpleasant memories swamped her, bringing back a few more tears. What would those people say, seeing her on her knees scrubbing moss off a wall like some low-caste housemaid? Bile rose and she choked it back.
Veronica wrenched herself upright, then leaned over the table bracing herself on her hands, trying to control her breathing and ignoring the sting in her eyes. She shoved old memories away, focusing on the here and now and not the past.
"But the money," Shelby gasped.
"This is the last show. We'll figure something out," Veronica said, her voice rough. Neza nodded, not trusting her own voice.
The gate shrieked its warning.
"That'll be Mrs. Grisson with the eggs," Veronica announced to the kitten calendar so she did not have to show her own anguished face to her sister or her aunt. "Shelby, you know she'll ask questions so if you don't want to answer them, go upstairs."
"Come on, Shelby," Neza said gently. "Things will get better. You'll see."
Veronica watched her sister and her aunt walk out of the room. Would things ever get better? She forced back the fresh wave of self-pity. They had a roof over their heads, food, even some friends and helpful neighbors, she reminded herself. Things would get better. They had to. Time to get back to work, so she forced herself upright, returned to the counter, washed her face clean, and started peeling more daikon.
Mrs. Grisson knocked at the back door and came on in, carrying a basket of eggs in triumph. Despite being asked, she adamantly refused to use the front door, insisting that a door so grand wasn't for the likes of her. Veronica suspected that walking around the White Elephant gave Mrs. Grisson a chance to inspect her gardening efforts as it always took far longer for Mrs. Grisson to walk around the house than it did anyone else.
"Hi, Veronica," Mrs. Grisson said cheerfully. "Lovely day for a show."
"It's always a lovely day in the spring inside a dome," Veronica replied.
"Well yes! Why without the dome, we'd be shivering in our boots if we hadn't froze to death already. Got to appreciate what you've got, you know."
"Yes, that's true. Thanks so much for the eggs. I know they'll be enjoyed."
"Maybe someone'll buy one of them dirt pictures if they eat an egg or two. Soften 'em up, make their head go squashy and then their wallets'll ease open."
Veronica laughed, her spirits revived by Mrs. Grisson's optimism. There was a woman with nerves of steel who coped with everything life threw at her. Someday, she'd find out how Mrs. Grisson managed such a feat.
"We keep hoping the same thing. Sure you don't want to drop in and take a looksee this evening? All new paintings and plenty of nibbles and plonk to make them go down easier."
"Lordy no," Mrs. Grisson said. She wrinkled her nose. "One round of what looks like a chicken's leavings was enough. Why's Shelby going to that silly school anyways? Her picture of my little granddaughter is just like she's alive there on the paper. That school will make Shelby start drawing dirt, like those other students do and that'd be a real shame."
"Yes, yes it would."
Rather than leaving, Mrs. Grisson fussed over the eggs in the basket for a moment, a sure sign she had more to say. Veronica waited patiently, knowing it never took long for Mrs. Grisson to come to the point. She was a busy woman and didn't believe in wasting time.
"One of my boarders, he's a maintenance man up to PanU, did you know that?"
"Uh, no, no I did not." Mrs. Grisson's phrasing implied that her information was important enough to require an offer of repayment, even though she, as a good neighbor, might refuse the offer, reserving the right of repayment for later on when she needed it more.
"Would you like a cup of tea? And a cookie?" Mrs. Grisson would be far more appreciative of the cookies Veronica had baked for the gallery show than the visitors would be. They would expect it as their due.
"No thanks, Veronica. I know you got plenty to do to get ready for that show. My boarder, he told me that some sod found out about your and Shelby's dad and spread it all over the school last night and this morning."
Veronica breathed out gustily and closed her eyes in pain, reopening them to see Mrs. Grisson watching her in sympathy.
"Shelby found out today. She came home in tears." That was, Veronica discovered, surprisingly hard to admit out loud.
"I don't doubt it. My boarder, he said they were saying awful things, as though our Shelby had anything to do with it. You tell Shelby that she's got real talent and everyone in the family loves the pictures she's drawn for us. We know how special she is and if she needs something, just ask."
Veronica sat down heavily. "People can be cruel. I'll tell Shelby you were asking about her and how much everyone likes her drawings."
"You do that, Veronica. And if you need something, you can ask too," Mrs. Grisson said. "My door is always open to good neighbors like you and your sister and your auntie."
"Thank you. That means a great deal to all of us."
*****
Veronica finished all the trays of nibbles, arranged as temptingly as she knew how. She arranged the eggs, now carefully deviled and cut into quarters to make them go further, front and center. She kept most of them in reserve to space their being devoured out over the event. Even if she disliked the cause of avant-garde art more than ever, she'd do the best job she could because she'd be damned rather than show one hint of pain to that pack of sods. She placed the trays in the cold room, then walked back to the kitchen to see what tasks she had left.
The gate shrieked another warning. The clock insisted it was still too early for even the most eager-beaver members of the PanU Artists' Collective to arrive. Veronica frowned at the kitten calendar picture watching her from its location on the wall. More bad news. No, that was being silly. She pasted on a smile and trotted through the house to the front door, yanking it open without bothering to peer through the pink glass inset or wait for a knock.
There were four strange men standing on her doorstep.
She stared at them, at a loss for words.
They were a mixed group in appearance, despite all wearing new, standard issue coveralls. One man, the one bringing up the rear, was bigger than the thug who had come to the door days ago, asking about subletting the house. Then she realized they were all carrying luggage.
"Uh, hello?" Veronica said.
"Is this the White Elephant?" the leader of the little group asked. He looked around as if he was unsure of why he was standing there. His accent was odd.
"Yes, yes, it is. Won't you come in?"
They were saved. Paying guests had arrived at last.
*****
It had been an easy walk from the tiny business district to the residential area that the map indicated. As Airik's group walked along, he studied the manor houses in miniature that lined the street. As each formerly grand mansion hove into view, he wondered again about the rightness of his action in escaping the Twelve Happiness Luxury Hotel.
The buildings here, unlike Dome Six, were all in some stage of decay, most of them wearing the ubiquitous carpet of terraformers. In some cases, the buildings were furry with build-up, as thick as anything he had observed in Dome Four. Although most buildings had cleaned windows, there were a few where even the windows were caked over. Or so he assumed, as Airik didn't believe that anyone would build a residence without windows. The windows of those buildings were indicated by bumps underneath the sweater of moss, outlining their frames.
The business district, not surprisingly, had been kept up far better.
Only a few of the houses they passed had been swept clean recently. The garden areas were astonishing; their low, encircling walls were a scientific display of every form of algae, moss, and lichens that grew on Mars. In many of the minute lots, the terraformers grew rampant, as they must have during the earliest days of settlement of the planet. In other gardens, there were attempts at actual gardening, ranging from straggling ornamentals to what he easily recognized as serious and dedicated food production.
'How did they water these plants?' Airik thought suddenly. He looked up at the dome looming overhead, blocking sun and wind and rain, trapping the residents of Panschin underneath. How did that immense bowl stay so clean? And on both sides? With all that sunshine, the dome should be wearing a meter-thick layer of terraformers. He would have to find out. How did Dome Six stay so clean?
Airik ignored Upton's mutterings, ascribing them to having to lug his typewriter in its case, rather than having a servant do so, along with carrying his valise. Elliot, he noticed, was staring all around him avidly when he wasn't keeping an eye on their progress on his map. He would have to question Elliot later on about what he saw. His valet had a surprisingly good eye for detail, almost as though he were taking mental notes. He was proving useful as a second set of loyal, reliable eyes. Nunzio, bringing up the rear, said nothing but he too would make a report to Airik later on about his impressions.
"Here sir," Elliot announced. He stopped at an intersection, marked in its center with a planter spilling over with marigolds, their flame orange and sunny yellow shockingly vivid against the shaggy, muted greens and browns of the terraformers coating the planter. A sign post reared out of the planter, indicating the name of the street they were crossing. "Oleander Lane. We'll turn left and the White Elephant should be about halfway down."
"Very good," Airik said. He paused to stare, disconcerted, at the corner building. The once immense mansion directly to his left was so caked in terraformers that it resembled an overgrown stump. The heavy comforter of moss showed barely a ripple as it shrouded whatever architectural features the building once had. The terraformers in this property's garden looked to be shin-deep. He thought of the Twelve Happiness Luxury Hotel. It was clean to the point of being sanitary. Nothing there was furry-plush other than carpets and towels.
As he stood there, wondering what kind of mistake he was making, Airik caught the far away sound of a bird singing, over the low hum of people going about their business under a sound-trapping dome. It was the first bird he had heard since boarding the train in Purnell. A steppes sparrow based on the staccato rise and fall of its song, unless he missed his guess. He smiled inwardly. The bird was a good omen. Bird song was immensely preferable to a cacophony of party horns.
"We'll keep going," he announced.
Besides him, Upton coughed, and then coughed again, then blew his nose loudly.
"Airik," he said. "This place looks terrible."
"Yes, it does," Airik admitted. "It's also far quieter and the air feels fresher."
"Because we're stranded in an oxygen factory," Upton muttered to himself. "What are we breathing? My lungs must be coated with spores by now."
Despite how he had come to loathe the Twelve Happiness Luxury Hotel, everything Upton had seen in Dome Two was making it look better and better by comparison. Certainly, it had far more attractive scenery in the form of its female staff than anyone he had seen on the streets since their departure. The girl-watching there was superb. He'd also managed to carve out time to chat up some of the female guests, many of whom were happy to share notes on the wonders of Panschin. He had yet to get further than the lobby with any of them, but he had hopes. Regrettably, Airik would never accept his secretary's preferences as a reason to put up with the Twelve Happiness Luxury Hotel so Dome Two it was. He groaned and shifted the typewriter and his valise, trying to ease the load and wondered if he could coax Nunzio into carrying another bag. No, Upton thought with dismay. The bodyguard already thought he was a lightweight. Why confirm his opinion?
Airik led the way and halfway down the block was rewarded by the sight of a mansion in good repair, standing proudly among its furrier neighbors. Even without checking the street address, it had to be the White Elephant. This building gleamed white in the dome's watery sunshine. Its completely useless shutters – shutters! In a dome! – shone a cool, clean gray against the white walls. They were trimmed out in pink and a darker gray to echo the roof tiles. Even the lacy wrought iron balustrade atop the roof tiles looked clean and sharp silhouetted against the dome. No terraformers coated and concealed this building. The low stone wall had its share of lichens, but it too, had been recently swept clean, revealing the rough granite chunks it had been constructed from.
He opened the wrought-iron gate and winced at the shriek of unoiled metal. It was surprising when the building was so well maintained. Once inside the gate, the gravel path sparkled white in the watery sunshine. Airik stopped again, letting Upton catch up while he looked around with an evaluating eye. This tiny garden was filled with beds of plants edged all around with stones. Oddly, they were all sunken into the gravel, rather than having the soil heaped up as would be normal. The contents of the garden beds varied wildly; lettuces and other greens, radishes, tied up tomatoes that had yet to set fruit, and a host of other vegetables at varying stages of development. Other beds were filled to bursting with terraformers running rampant. That was strange but the vegetable beds were immaculately weeded so someone did know what they were doing.
Seeing what was obviously a kitchen garden sent a pang of homesickness shooting through him for Shelleen, so far away. He shrugged it off. The needs of the demesne and what he could learn from the Conference came first.
Airik walked up the gravel path towards the grand double front door. It was quiet enough that he could hear the gravel crunching beneath their feet, another sign that this place would be far more peaceful than Dome Six. He might be able to finally focus on the immense amount of material he had to learn. The Biennial Mining Conference, despite all the aggravations of useless investment schemes and unwanted dalliances, had provided him an avalanche of information to digest and plenty more to come.
He stopped on the wide front threshold, a slab of very fine pink and gray granite speckled with black and polished to a sheen. The double doors each had an insert of pink glass, concealing the interior of the house, matching the transom and sidelights. The doorway was framed with the only ornamental plants he had seen inside the stone wall; two planters spilling over with marigolds, the same kind as were in the planter at the intersection. Oddly, there was no ornate door knocker such as he would have expected on such a fine house. There was a paint shadow on each door, showing where a pair of door knockers had once been installed. He reached out to rap his knuckles on the door when it was wrenched open by a young woman.
She stared at him for a long moment, as though she almost recognized who she was seeing and was trying to place him.
"Uh, hello?" she said.
"Is this the White Elephant?" Airik asked. 'Do not let her recognize me' he thought, suddenly worried about more harassment over worthless business propositions.
Veronica smiled at the stranger in immense relief. Guests, paying guests. Her ad in the Panschin Gazette had worked at last.
"Yes, yes, it is. Won't you come in please?" she said fervently.
'Saved, we're saved,' she thought. At least for the next few months and after that, well, she'd manage. "I'm Veronica Bradwell. Welcome to the White Elephant."
She led the way through the spacious atrium to the table waiting between the wings of the double staircase spiraling upwards to the second floor and then the rooftop terrace. The guestbook lay in the drawer, unused for months.
Veronica turned to the little group. They were looking all around them, as well they might. The contrast between the beautifully designed soaring space with its impressively complex crown molding, ornate double staircase spiraling up to the rooftop opening two floors above, polished floor, gilded balustrades, and the ugly paintings of mud and dirt was dissonance made visual.
"I'll need your names please," she said, opening the guestbook to a new, blank page. That way, the new guests wouldn't see how long it had been since she had hosted anyone and wonder what was wrong with the White Elephant.
"I am Airik Jones," the leader of the group said. "My cousins Upton, Elliot, and Nunzio."
Veronica stopped writing. Cousins? Really? He expected her to believe that? Airik and Upton bore a faint resemblance in their noses and the tinge of red in their hair, but Elliot and Nunzio didn't look like anyone there but themselves. Their coveralls were so new they were still starchy. Then she thought of the lease and the desperately needed money.
"Of course," she chirped. "Are you in town for the Biennial Mining Conference?"
Airik hesitated, then said, "yes, we are."
Veronica smiled eagerly at him. She could help him, ensuring he was happy with his choice of staying at the White Elephant.