Playing God

by Sarah Zettel

  But she couldn't. Something was wrong; she knew it. She tasted it on the back of her tongue like the spices from their dinner.

  “I don't understand, Sisters.” Her voice sounded thick.

  “Can't you hear? Ancestors Mine! It shouts at us from the sky!” Armetrethe gripped Praeis with all the strength of her one hand. “The Getesaph entered into an agreement with the Humans. If the Humans place us, all of our Great Family, in a vulnerable position for them, the Getesaph will pay the Humans with the life from our planet.”

  For a moment Praeis saw it. For a split second, it made perfect sense. But all her long years of living and working with Humans pulled her back.

  “Sisters”—she took their hands—“I hear you. I feel you in my blood. But what you're suggesting is not possible. No Human enclave would agree to enter into a war.”

  “You've lived with them, Sister,” said Senejess, dejection plain in her voice and the set of her ears. “We must bow to your superior knowledge.”

  “You must bow to nothing of mine, Sisters,” said Praeis softly. “But I ask you, on the strength of where I have been and whom I have known, to listen to me closely.”

  Cold, hard disappointment welled up through her fingertips, and Praeis knew they would not. Perhaps they could not.

  “I call the house!” shouted a voice from outside.

  Senejess jerked around. “Who … ?” She got up swiftly and went to the window. “It's a messenger. I'll take it.”

  She went to the front door and after a moment returned with a folded, unsealed square of paper.

  “It is for you, Praeis.”

  Puzzled, but grateful for the distraction, Praeis took the letter. It just had her name and the house name on the outside.

  She unfolded the paper. The words inside were machine printed, and the language was English.

  Ancestors Mine, she thought.It's from Lynn.

  “What is it?” asked Senejess, leaning over her shoulder. “What language is that?”

  “English,” said Praeis. “One of the major Human languages. I find it more difficult than Mandarin.”

  She read:

  Dear Praeis,

  Hey, look at this, I've put words on paper. This is so strange. I can't manage your thing with the pen. I am even more impressed with you than before.

  I was hoping to ask you a favor. David has pulled hospital duty at the Aurion-in-Uieth near you.Praeis sucked in her breath. Lynn had named one of the larger plague hospitals.

  He says they're having trouble sorting out the victims and their families for the relocation schedule. Could you visit the site and do a little cultural interp for them so we all know what's up? I'm afraid you were right when you said your home was far more alien than your colony. I appreciate whatever you can do.

  All okay with the Queens? Anything you need from us?

  GET HOOKED UP. I've got a machine reserved for you. All you have to do is find somewhere to put it. This letter thing makes a great party trick, but we need to do some serious brain dumps soon.

  Lynn Nussbaumer

  Praeis's ears waved. She could practically hear Lynn's voice reading the letter to her. She looked up and saw her sisters standing expectantly over her.

  “It is from one of the Humans with Bioverse,” she said. “I have worked with her a long time.” She translated the letter as best she could.

  Senejess touched her shoulder. “Are you going to do as she says?”

  Praeis felt her ears droop. She folded the paper back up. “My first duty is to the work my Queens assigned me, but yes, I'll try to visit David at the hospital.” She saw her sister's lowered ears and pinched nostrils. “What would you have me do?”

  “You will do as you will, Sister,” Senejess's skin rippled up and down her arms. “As you always have.”

  Praeis swallowed hard against the tears that stung her eyes. She turned away and lifted her head and ears.

  “With me, my Daughters. Let me show you the night sky of your home. It has been too long since I have seen a proper sky full of moons and stars I can name.”

  She led them out the door. The muscles in her back spasmed with tension as she hoped that none of the daughters or her sisters would come with them.

  Alone in the yard, she put her arms around her daughters’ shoulders. She looked up. Three of the major moons shone between the ragged clouds, with two of the minors between them.

  “Well, my own,” she said softly. “What do you think?”

  Theia leaned her head on Praeis's arm. “About the sky, Mother, or about our family?”

  “Ah, I am transparent to you, my own.” She tugged Theia's ear gently.

  “I like being here,” said Res. “I feel … enveloped. Connected. Closer to everyone, even Theia. Why?”

  Praeis smiled a little sadly. “We are not so careful of each other here. We know exactly who we are with, who is around us, who leads us. In the colonies we have to restrain ourselves more because we are surrounded by those who are not of our Great Family. We can only afford to let go for brief moments, as with the celebration when we heard of the Confederation treaty.” She watched the stars watch them all for a long moment.

  “What if I pull you away from this natural closeness with what I do? I have already stood against my sisters this evening, and I'm afraid it will get worse.” She paused, and her skin trembled, but she said, “I could send you back to Crater Town. We have enough near family there to shelter you.”

  “No,” said Res immediately. “We came to help you, Mother. How can we abandon you?”

  You would not be abandoning me. You would be saving yourselves.“I may truly need your help, my own. There may be questions I cannot ask and places I cannot go.”

  “We are your own,” said Theia. “We will stand with you.”

  Praeis hugged her daughters close and they stood like that for a long time and she closed her eyes so that she could stop her own tears.

  Armetrethe looked through the slit window into the dark yard. She could just barely see Praeis and her daughters standing and watching the sky. Senejess stepped up behind her and watched over her shoulder. Their daughters were busy clearing away bowls and pushing the furniture back so they could lay out the sleeping mats and blankets for the night.

  “She has not changed,” said Armetrethe. Her voice was low, but none of her anger was disguised.

  “No.” Senejess laid a hand on her warm, dry arm. “Did you think she would?”

  “I hoped.” Armetrethe's stump flailed briefly. “For a moment, I thought she would open her heart.”

  Senejess smoothed down the skin on Armetrethe's good arm. “So did I. But we must keep our eyes open to what she really is.” She bared her teeth for a moment. “She is the loyal daughter of our Majestic Sisters.”

  Armetrethe leaned heavily against Senejess. “When did I begin to see devotion to the Queens as a failing, Sister?”

  “When Praeis let them order her to sacrifice Urisk Island,” answered Senejess softly. “The same time I did.”

  Chapter IV

  Arron Hagopian stared down into the lumps of shadows that daylight would change into the chvintz Rvi, the Defenders’ quarter of the city. It was a clear morning. The late stars still shone over the balcony. Their light glinted on his helmet. Dawn was just a thin, white line on the horizon. This Earth was a little bigger than the Earth he'd come from, so its days were a little longer. Even after ten years, he still got up outrageously early.

  The voices and clatter of predawn traffic filled the warm morning breeze. Getesaph called back and forth to each other, raucous, belligerent, and sometimes mind-bogglingly rude, but peaceful in a very city sort of way.

  Should be inside. That data'll be done cooking by now. I need a transmission in the pipe. No sense giving the funding panel extra ammunition.

  He didn't move. He gripped the balcony rail with his gloved hands and leaned over it, determined to soak up as much of the early-morning noise as he could hold.

&
nbsp; One for the head mechanics. How many cases come in because they've got it bad for a noisy, smoggy, plague-ravaged, glow-in-the-dark planet? His gaze drifted up to the stars again.And what's Lynn going to say about it?

  He'd had no idea he was ever going to hear from her again. They'd dissolved into individual silences almost immediately after college. He certainly hadn't expected a hy-write from her. He'd stared at it for so long on the comm screen at the outpost, he'd practically memorized it.

  Arron:

  I wasn't sure what kind of facilities you'd have there, so you'll excuse the lack of splash on this. I'm coming in with the Bioverse team. I'm a manager, and they've got me working on the evacuation. “Relocation” is what we're supposed to call it. Either way. Some brilliance in the stratosphere decided we can't hire planetside Humans, but I could use a brain dump from someone who's been there before you take off for Whoknows.

  Hope you're willing,

  Lynn Nussbaumer

  Lynn. Lynn had become a corper, and she was on her way with the people who were destroying his life.

  “Scholar Arron?”

  Arron turned. The Dayisen Rual, Lareet and Umat, stood silhouetted in the arched doorway.

  Arron smiled. “Dayisen Lareet, Dayisen Umat.” Dayisen was a rank somewhere around the level of colonel, except that it belonged to the entire family. Lareet and Umat were the tvkesh chvaniff, the outside sisters for the family Rual. Their children were raised primarily by their sisters and their mother. Their job was to make sure the family was fed, housed, and protected. “Morning's light looks good on you.”

  The sisters stepped onto the balcony.

  “We are perhaps disturbing your meditations?” Lareet leaned her elbows against the balcony railing, twitching her ears toward the wind and noise. She was the shorter and pinker of the two. Even by Getesaph standards, her skin hung loosely on her, making flaps around her neck and wrists rather than the usual folds.

  A set of particularly vehement blasphemies exploded from the streets. Lareet folded her ears down. “I sometimes worry about what you tell your employers about us.”

  Arron laughed. “Nothing worse than you tell your Members of Parliament about me, I'm sure.” It was no secret that the Rual family agreed to host him because the parliamentary members their family had been assigned to wanted firsthand observations of a man.

  “Have you heard from your people yet?” asked Umat from the doorway. Where her sister was short, pink, and loose-skinned, Umat was tall, grey, and gaunt. Even her ears were thin. They were so sharply pointed that Lareet sometimes teased Umat that they could be used as spears against their enemies.

  “No.” Arron rubbed his gloved hands together. “I'm going to the outpost today to see if there's word. My department head promised to present my staying on to Bioverse as first-rate public relations. So, we'll see.” He glanced at the two Getesaph. “You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?”

  Lareet spread her hands. “There are some times when it is easier to remember that you are an alien than others.”

  Arron smiled and looked deprecatingly down at himself. Years of fishing, farming, and anything else he could lend a hand to, across all the Hundred Isles, had turned him lean, tan, and corded. He'd always thought of himself as tall, but he could hide behind either of the sisters facing him. His thick work trousers and plain green T-shirt were a sharp contrast to their electric blue uniforms with green rank bands around their cuffs.

  “Is there something you need?” he asked.

  Umat caressed the threshold with one knobby hand. “Yes, there is. Our members have asked us to speak to you.”

  Arron's forehead wrinkled. “About what?”

  “Scheduling difficulties,” said Lareet with careful blandness.

  “Severe ones,” added Umat.

  Lareet's ears dipped. “Monumental.”

  “Yes.”

  Arron looked from one to the other. “What schedule are we talking about?”

  There was now enough light for him to see the intensity of their expressions as they both looked straight at him. “The relocation,” said Umat.

  Arron tried to see where this was leading, but couldn't. “I thought the Confederation gave Bioverse total say over the relocation coordination.” He'd been stunned when it happened, too. He suspected Bioverse had insisted on it.

  “Parliament ceded permission to the Confederation by a narrow majority,” Umat reminded him. “Now that the main Bioverse team has arrived, they have sent us the relocation schedule. It states that the Getesaph will not be removed until the last segment of the procedure.”

  Pride of place? Arron wondered. Lareet and Umat were both obviously waiting for him to say something. He just spread his hands and waited for them.

  Lareet strangled a sigh. “The t'Theria are going to be among the first relocated. Once their daughters and carrying mothers are removed from all danger of retaliation, what will prevent them from attacking us?”

  Ah. “I don't see how I can help with this,” he said carefully. “My department of the university has nothing to do with Bioverse.”

  “But one of their coordinators is a friend of yours,” said Lareet.

  Arron's brows jumped up. “Lynn?”

  Umat considered. “Is that the same as”—she paused, probably to make sure she got the pronunciation right—“Manager Lynn Nussbaumer?”

  “Yes.” Arron glanced up, as if expecting Lynn to drop from the sky. “That's her.”

  Lareet nodded. “Our members would consider it a tremendous favor if you would speak with her and ask that the schedule be rearranged so that the Getesaph are evacuated first, or at least at the same time as the … t'Therians.”

  She'd probably cut herself off from speaking one of the dozen or so insulting terms the Getesaph had for the t'Therians.

  Arron's gloves rubbed his clean-suit-covered forearms. “If Parliament is worried about the consequences of the evacuation, you shouldn't go. There's got to be a way the plague can be cleansed with the Ded—” he cut the word off. It was fairly widely known that the word dedelphi meant opossum in an ancient Human language. It was also fairly widely known that an opossum was a poorly regarded rodent. “There has to be some way to cleanse the planet with the Family and the Others on the ground. Humans are a clever bunch.” Clever enough that they'll kill what the Confederation has started without even realizing it. Why can't they see that the Families have to shape their future without our interference? Especially our interference on such a world-shattering scale?

  Umat's pointed ears sagged a little. “Scholar Arron, I know you do not agree with this plan to house us in human ships while they cleanse the Earth and our blood for us, but that is the agreement we have reached. Our members favor this much of our Confederation agreements, and we do, too.” Arron glanced at Lareet, who dipped her ears in confirmation.

  “It is only the timing we question,” said Lareet.

  “It can be taken to the entire Confederation,” Umat went on. “But that might—”

  “Renew old tensions,” Lareet finished the sentence smoothly. “If we speak the truth about the t'Therian intentions, they will claim we are hurling insults to break the Confederation and say we need to be coerced into cooperation.”

  He might argue with the phrasing, but Arron couldn't dismiss the conclusion. The enmity between the t'Therians and the Getesaph was a watchword. As far as Arron could determine, the Confederation was the first time the two Families had ever cooperated. The plague had accomplished what centuries of lesser threats had not. No one, however, was sure it had accomplished it firmly and finally.

  “I can't guarantee I'll be able to convince Lynn of anything,” he said, more to the dawn than to the sisters waiting for his answer. “It's been a very long time since we were … close.”

  “We're only asking you to try,” said Lareet.

  Arron pushed himself away from the railing. “All right, since you're asking, I'm agreeing.”

  Umat l
et out a sigh of relief. Lareet laid a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

  Umat wrapped her arm around her sister's shoulders. “We'll find out where Manager Lynn is going to be based, so you can plan your trip. It will be somewhere in t'Aori.”

  “You want me to go from the Hundred Isles to t'Aori?” Arron shook his head. It was easier to get between competing corporate enclaves on Earth than it was to get from the Getesaph archipelago to the t'Aori Peninsula. “Any chance of your members giving me clearance and papers?”

  “I don't think so,” Umat said. “They want this request kept as quiet as possible.”

  I can understand that. “All right. You find out where I've got to go, and I'll get there.”

  “We will owe you all thanks for this, Scholar Arron.” Lareet gave his arm a final, friendly shake. “Many times over.”

  The sisters left him there. Arron turned around and faced the city again. Clouds obscured the stars now, but he stared at the sky anyway.

  Lynn. He remembered hours of debates about everything their separate concentrations held. He remembered eclectic midnight feasts, way too much alcohol, and laughing at whatever occurred to them. He wondered what had happened to her, and what had happened to him.

  Arron turned around and went back into his room. The university had paid for the double-thick filter doors and windows so he could have a place where he could take off his clean-suit without contaminating the entire house. The room had originally been a closet, so it was small by Getesaph standards. For a Human, though, it made an adequate apartment. A thick mattress lay next to the personal fountain Lareet had given him, saying she couldn't understand how anyone could concentrate without the sound of water nearby. A desk and chair had been shortened to a more Human height by having twenty-five centimeters of their legs sawed off. His flat, shiny portable lay on the desk, surrounded by the paper notes he'd learned to keep. The walls were covered with flat pictures of snowcapped volcanoes, boat-clogged harbors, and portraits of families he had worked with. The wall next to his desk was taken up by a big, full-color, hand-drawn map of the Hundred Isles of Home.