Quiet Invasion

by Sarah Zettel

  Remain calm. Remain calm. You are an ambassador now and do not have the luxury of unchallenged opinion. T’sha leaned closer, seeking to draw him out. “Have you considered that contact with the New People will put an end to many questions?”

  D’seun inflated slightly. “I agree, but this is not the right time. We must establish life beyond a few building blocks. We must be able to prove to the New People that we are serious about assisting with life’s common goals.”

  Are you just trying this out on me? Why aren’t you presenting this to the debate clusters? “But do we know they are common goals? Do we know the New People see things as we do?”

  D’seun rippled his wings. “You and yours are too afraid of this thing we do. This is not greed. We need a new home, one where we can organize and arrange the life which supports us, where we can wait out what is happening on this old home of ours.”

  “I do not accuse you of greed,” said T’sha. Not yet. “But you are right. Those I support act from fear. I am as afraid of taking this action as you and yours are afraid of not taking it.” She leaned a little closer, her muzzle almost touching his. She wanted every word to sink into him. “Fear fills the air around you until you cannot feel what is truly happening to you.” She pulled back and let herself swell until she felt her bones press hard against her skin. “We are all afraid. That is why we must question everything we do. We must act on our fear, but we must not act out of fear.”

  D’seun ruffled his bright crest, raising and spreading its tendrils. “I feel your words. Do not think I am numb. But raising yet more uncertainty at this time could be disastrous. We must be sure, all of us.”

  T’sha looked down at him. He did not flinch or subside. He just returned her gaze.

  At last, she asked, “What do you want?”

  “I want to poll your city and its families. I have made a formal request to the High Law Meet. It will be sent to you within the hour.”

  T’sha’s bones trembled. I should have known this was coming. I should have read it in the way that flies are clustering. “You question my fitness as ambassador?”

  “No.” D’seun’s reply was easy, simple, and T’sha didn’t believe it for a moment. “I seek to eliminate uncertainty in this great project we are undertaking. If your doubts truly reflect the doubts of your families, then it must be widely known.”

  Anger swelled T’sha until she thought she would float away on the wind. “Then let us set the polling time. But I tell you, D’seun”—she leaned close, making sure every word touched him—“I will not be stilled.”

  “Neither will the project, T’sha.”

  Whatever else he had been about to say was cut off by the voice of T’sha’s headset vibrating through her ear. “Ambassador T’sha, this is Village Gaith. Help. You must help. I am in rot. You must help my people.”

  T’sha’s wings spread in instant response. “We will be there.”

  “What’s happening?” demanded D’seun.

  “Village Gaith. It says it’s in rot.” She barked a quick transfer command to her headset. “Engineer K’taan!” she shouted for her team leader. “We have an emergency in Village Gaith. They are in rot. Take a sighting and get everyone there as quickly as you can.”

  Under the sound of her own voice, she heard D’seun give orders to the kite. It unfurled its wings to their fullest extent and reined in its tail. The winds swept it up. Its engines added speed. T’sha made herself compact so as not to add any drag that might slow them down. The wind grew hard and full as it raced across her shoulders, pressing the kite into swift motion.

  Another rot. How many did that make since the First Mountain last saw the dayside? How many cities in how many latitudes were dead or dying, and what was the total refugee count? Two and a half million? Had it gotten up to three million yet?

  She spoke to her headset, telling it to seek details about Village Gaith. After a few moments, the set murmured back to her.

  “Gaith is a Calm Northerns village, with about a thousand individuals from four different families calling it home. Sixty percent of the individuals are children. Individuals are good engineers, have contributed several widely adapted adjustments to canopy balance in recent years, and have raised several excellent surveyors and samplers. Its ambassador is T’nain V’gan Kan Gaith. He has been notified of the emergency at the High Law Meet and is returning now. Its local speaker is T’gai Doth Kan Gaith.”

  T’gai. Oh, memory. I haven’t seen you since I was declared an adult. She remembered T’gai’s visits to her parents’ complex, his dark-gold skin, and his speaker’s tattoos branching out all around his muzzle. He always had some new point of discussion to raise, some new poll to try to start. He was all a speaker ought to be—busy, serious, forward thinking.

  How did a rot start in his own village?

  She shook herself out of her own thoughts as she realized D’seun was watching her.

  “I’m sorry. You spoke?”

  D’seun dipped his muzzle. “I was saying this is your latitude. You should warn the cities.”

  Good, good. Pay attention, T’sha. There’s work to do. “Yes. Of course.” She commanded her headset to call Ca’aed.

  “I hear you, Ambassador,” returned her city’s deep voice.

  “Ca’aed, there’s an emergency in Village Gaith. Warn the downwind cities to take quarantine precautions. I’m on my way to assess the damage. I’ll have more news soon.”

  Even as she spoke the words, a fresh finger of wind touched her. This one was not empty. It was thick with something far too cloying to be a healthy scent. She could see Gaith in the distance—a sphere bristling with sails and sensor fronds. It looked peaceful, but that smell, that too sweet taste…

  “I have their location, Ambassador….” Ca’aed paused, and worry stiffened T’sha’s bones. “I can’t raise the village. I hear no voice.”

  T’sha glanced at D’seun, but he was looking straight ahead at Gaith. It took T’sha’s eyes a moment to focus, but then she too saw what was wrong.

  Around even the smallest village, there would be a few citizens flying freely about their business, but Gaith was surrounded by a swarm of its own people. They fluttered about the shell and bones like flies without purpose.

  It was the sight of panic.

  D’seun spoke to the kite. It brought them around to Gaith’s windward side. They closed on the village, and T’sha saw that its sails and wind guides were no longer white, as they should have been. Huge patches of grayish-brown funguslike growths disfigured their surfaces.

  The smell of rotting flesh engulfed her. T’sha instantly tightened in on herself. Breath of life, bones of mine, what is happening here? I’ve never seen one this bad!

  The village cried as if hurt just by the wind of her approach. All around those diseased sails flew its citizens. Now they were close enough that T’sha could hear their voices—shouting, crying, demanding, trying to give orders. Above it all, she heard the wordless keening of the village’s pain. It was dying and it did not know how to save itself. In its fear, it called desperately for its people.

  D’seun snatched the bulky caretaker unit from out of the kite’s holder and launched himself into the air. T’sha dipped her muzzle. The caretaker might be able to speak to the village where a person could not.

  “Engineer K’taan,” T’sha bawled into her headset as she launched herself into the air. “Where are you?”

  “Approaching from leeward. We have you in sight.”

  “Get a catchskin under the village. We can’t let the rot fall into the canopy!”

  “Yes, Ambassador!”

  Flies clustered everywhere, the eternal flies that should have been clustered around the clouds. The insects scattered in angry swarms around her wings. The smell was unbearable. T’sha closed her muzzle tightly and tried not to think of what was filtering in through her skin.

  Bubbling gray fungus turned the nearest sails slick. Even as she watched, great patches melted a
nd sagged. Speckled liquid ran down what was left of the clean white skin. Something unseen whimpered.

  “Gaith! Gaith!” T’sha called through her headset. “Answer me! Are you there?”

  No answer. None at all.

  D’seun flew straight into the thickest crowd and started forming them up into an orderly flight chain. As soon as the formation was spotted, people started flocking toward it, leaving fewer to flap in panic around the dying village.

  T’sha ordered her headset onto a general-call frequency. “This is T’sha So Br’ei Taith Kan Ca’aed, ambassador for Ca’aed, to anyone who can hear me. I need Speaker T’gai Doth Kan Gaith at the center of leeward.”

  She got no answer. It was possible there was nothing healthy enough left to hear the call.

  Ten yards below the city, K’taan directed a group of four researchers to stretch out the transluscent, life-tight catchsheet. It wasn’t big enough. Two other researchers rushed in, carrying an additional sheet. They sealed the sheets together and spread them again. That was just enough if the wind did not take too much. They needed to get a quarantine blanket around the village as soon as possible. Why were those not grown generally?

  Why is this happening at all?

  “Ambassador T’sha.”

  T’sha wheeled on her wingtip. Behind her floated T’gai. His tattoos branched all the way to the roots of his crest now, but the crest was dimmed by age.

  “Speaker T’gai.” T’sha touched his forehands. “Good luck to you.”

  “Good luck to you, T’sha. Ambassador T’sha.” His crest ruffled softly.

  She tried not to feel the weakness in his words. “Why didn’t you report this?” she asked as gently as she could.

  “We thought…we thought…”

  We thought we could take care of it. T’sha dipped her muzzle to let him know she understood. No people wanted to believe they could fail their city, or even their village. No one wanted the shame of having to make promises because they were not skilled enough or rich enough to care for their own, so they struggled in their silence until it was too late.

  There were always dangers, particularly in the smaller villages such as Gaith, that drifted on their own rather than following in the wake of a larger, older city. Cortices got too closely bred and became unable to cognate as required. Builders and assessors went insane and undid the work they were supposed to enhance. Corals used too many times without enough interior variety bleached in thin winds. Cancers took hold of the village’s bones.

  But now, infections were spreading around the world. A fungus or a yeast that should have been easy for an engineer to excise would instead burn through a city, breaking down everything it touched, sometimes turning from the city and attacking the people.

  Even so, that usually took weeks. This…T’sha didn’t dare let that thought go any further.

  “We’ll talk about that later.” T’sha turned her mind to the problem. “I’m here with Ambassador D’seun and my survey team. We’ll send some of them for kites and other transports. There are several healthy cities traveling this stream. But first you need to assemble your people. We’ll need to have you checked out to make sure you are carrying nothing infectious.” We cannot let this spread. We dare not.

  T’gai withered. “We must tend our village….”

  T’sha swelled gently, trying to calm him with her authority. It felt strange. He was so much her senior in years. But now, she outranked him, and she must not shrink from that. “It has gone too far for that, Speaker. We need to quarantine Gaith. You must call in all the promises you have owing and divert them to diagnosis and prevention. Your ambassador will need all your help with that when he returns.”

  Speaker T’gai dipped his muzzle. “Yes, of course, Ambassador. You are right.”

  “Good.” She glanced around. The catchsheet was stabilized and anchored to the village’s sail struts. Someone had released a slurry of inch-long cleaners onto the sails. They slithered across the sails’ skin, ingesting the bubbling growths until the toxicity became too much and they dropped onto the catchsheet. The skin left behind was almost transparent. Even as T’sha watched, the wind tore through the skin, leaving the sail in tatters. The sail mewled and tried to draw in on itself.

  She pulled her gaze away. D’suen had a great line of people gathered in the orderly chain now. That would be where T’gai could help.

  “Find your teachers to keep gathering your people together. Bring your engineers and doctors. We must determine what’s gotten out and how far it’s gone.”

  “Yes. Yes.” The speaker swelled again to the lines and proportions she knew. “Thank you, Ambassador.”

  T’sha deflated until she was just a little smaller than T’gai. “With you, I am still just T’sha, Speaker T’gai.” She returned to her normal size. “Go. We will do what we can.”

  As she watched T’gai fly away, she tried to enumerate what needed to be done. We need a quarantine blanket. We need a team to find what cortices are still working. A way to repel these flies….

  Life gone insane. Life taking more than it needed, swinging from balance into chaos. T’sha circled until she was upwind of the stench and the sounds of pain. The canopy was lush underneath them. The wind had good weight and texture. This rot seemed to be interested in animal materials; maybe at least the plants below would be safe.

  T’sha tensed her bones. They could assume nothing. She’d have to go down and look. If the rot had gotten down there, they would probably be forced to cut it out. That made for a wasteful, inelegant cure, especially with so much of the canopy dying on its own, but they couldn’t risk this getting carried any further.

  Who knew what spores were already in the wind? Was this even really a fungus, or was she being fooled by appearances? T’sha shivered. On top of it all, here were a thousand more refugees. Some healthy cities would probably still take them in, but they would also demand hefty promissory obligations against the time Gaith, or a replacement, could be regrown. The children huddling under their parents’ bellies would be declared adults before the village was free of its debts.

  In an earlier time, some of the adults certainly would have offered to bind themselves into lifetime slavery to individuals who could help their children, but that was a practice that had been out of favor for at least two hundred years. Most teachers said accepting such a promise came very close to actual greed. Looking on this sight, T’sha was grateful.

  But what sort of promises would T’gai be able to obtain for his people? They were good engineers, but if too many of them had to be indentured away to serve other cities, they would never be able to resurrect their village. They would become permanently homeless, scrabbling for their right to stay wherever they could find space, maybe permanently deprived of their votes.

  “I’ve sent word of our situation to the High Law Meet.” D’seun dropped into T’sha’s line of sight.

  T’sha shook her wings. “There isn’t much to report yet.”

  “Not much to report!” D’seun bobbed up and down as if the sheer force of his exclamation rocked him. “Gaith is dead and decaying in front of our eyes! We have to spread the word!”

  “Until we have a cause, that will do nothing but raise a panic.” T’sha stopped. “Which is the idea, isn’t it?” she murmured. “If the Law Meet panics, they will approve your candidate world without debate, won’t they?”

  “How can you even be thinking of debate?” demanded D’seun. “Surely this shows us there is no more time. We must make New Home ours or we will all die!”

  A dozen different thoughts, realizations, and responses rippled through T’sha. But all she said was, “You and my engineers have the situation under care. I must return to Ca’aed to make sure the latitude quarantines are coordinated. May I borrow your kite?”

  It was not a request he could easily refuse. “I will ask for a promise against this.”

  “A proportionate one, I’m certain.”

  T’sha found the re
quired wind and flew back to the place where D’seun’s kite waited. She gave it orders with the most urgent modifiers. The kite unfurled its wings without hesitation. Its engines sang as the air forced through them. T’sha flattened herself against the perches, wishing the team had brought a dirigible instead. But no need had been seen, no emergency anticipated. Certainly nothing like this.

  The memories of the gray, bubbling growths coating Gaith’s sails and the black ashlike substance clinging to its walls flew round and round inside T’sha’s mind and she could not banish them.

  D’seun had been a little right. This was new and this was deadly. The High Law Meet did have to be told. But told what? Told how? That was the next question.

  The kite chattered in command language, sending the message on ahead that they were on an emergency run and traffic should clear the gates. Everything had some task to keep them busy, but not T’sha. All she could do was hang on until they reached the walls of Ca’aed.

  The kite kept to the clearest routes. T’sha saw dirigibles and other kites in the distance, but did not ask any to be hailed. Even further away she saw the sails and walls of the Ca’aed’s wake-villages. The villages saw her as well, and their voices began to pour through her headset.

  “I’ve heard the message of Gaith. My speakers are on the alert. All precautions are being taken.” This was T’aide, a young and confident village, strong in its faith of its people. “Good luck, Ambassador.”

  “Message received from Gaith. The diagnostics are roused.” P’teri, an ancient village that had spread its boundaries so far there was talk of it growing into its own city. P’teri was cautious and content, though, and had so far been unwilling to agree to the expansion. “Good luck, Ambassador.”

  Terse, protective T’zem came through next. “My people are well. I will keep them so. Look to Ca’aed, Ambassador.”

  I do. You may be sure that I do.

  Ca’aed itself shimmered in the distance now, its breadth dominating the horizon. Kites, dirigibles, and people swarmed around it like flies. No, no, not like flies. Like hunter birds, like shades, or even puffs. Ca’aed would not fall to the flies.