Quiet Invasion

by Sarah Zettel

  The implication that brushed against Br’sei was that this discussion would take place only if Br’sei agreed to the idea of a mono-seeding. The speaker did make several excellent points, and the idea of Br’sei and his own team working on the foundations of New Home was a powerful lure.

  “I think I could be convinced, Speaker,” Br’sei admitted, fanning his wings gently to keep himself close to D’seun. “Let me bring some of my engineers, and let us discuss this. Some new microcosms may need to be designed.”

  “Thank you, Engineer Br’sei,” said D’seun, and the words sank deeply into Br’sei’s skin. “Bring your people. Let us think about what we may do together.”

  In the end, with Br’sei’s help, D’seun had triumphed. As a result, Br’sei and his team, which he picked out with D’seun’s help, were given the most promising world to seed with a mono-culture of their own design.

  It had worked and here they were, with D’seun as ambassador and Br’sei as collaborator.

  Br’sei’s wings faltered slightly as that thought filtered through him.

  “I have been thinking, Engineer Br’sei.” D’seun banked into an updraft. The warm air from the highland with its delicate taste of life lifted him high. “We say ‘Life spreads life’ all the time, but we do not ever hold still long enough to think what that should really mean.”

  “Should mean?” Br’sei’s crest ruffled and spread flat, helping him keep an even path in the turbulent wind from the highlands. Pockets of heat and cold bumped against him, making him have to work to keep his position steady relative to the ambassador. If he was not careful, he would be trapped by the same eloquent arguments D’seun had used on the youngsters. “Not ‘does mean’?”

  “On Home, I would have said ‘does mean.’” The updraft spilled D’seun into the cooler air and he drifted down again until he was level with Br’sei. “But here we are dealing with new possibilities. Here we can say ‘should mean.’”

  Br’sei deflated just a little. The ambassador’s words were like a storm wind. They could sweep you along to an unknown destination before you even realized you were in a current too strong for you to fight.

  “And have you decided what ‘Life spreads life’ should mean, Ambassador?”

  “Not yet.” D’seun cupped his wings and hovered in place in a relative calm. “But I am wondering if it involves surrounding yourself with things that do not live.”

  “What?” The single word burst out of Br’sei before he could even think about what he said.

  D’seun dipped his muzzle. “Their transports, their base, they do not live. They are metal and ceramic without any living component I can find, and I have looked carefully.”

  “But that’s…” Br’sei searched for a strong enough word and found nothing. He gathered his thoughts again. “They are other. Their life is different from ours,” he said, trying to give his words weight, but all the time he was thinking, Their home does not live? How can it care for them? How can they care for it?

  D’seun glided close to him. “The question is, are they life we can live with?”

  Br’sei deflated reflexively as the last sentence touched his muzzle. “Do you think they are insane, Ambassador?” Insanity was the gravest accusation that could be made against another being, worse than greed, worse than jealousy. Insanity meant they would ravage the life around them and that they would have to be stopped before they could damage the larger balance.

  D’seun’s bones bunched tightly and he sank. “I don’t know, Engineer. I do know they frighten me.”

  “Then why—”

  D’seun’s teeth clacked but his amusement was grim. “Then why did I fight so hard for this world? Because this is the world where our life can exist, Br’sei. The only one we have ever found where it can.”

  Their home does not live. Br’sei rolled his eyes upward, as if he thought to see the New People’s base floating overhead, drawn by the thought. The New People had not been his study or concern. His time had been spent with the highlands, the clouds, and the wind seeds. Even so, someone in the team should have told him about this.

  Unless an ambassador told them not to….But that was too much even for Br’sei, and he did not struggle when his thoughts swerved back to the New People. Do they isolate themselves from life, or do they just need to isolate their kind of life? How can we know?

  “I have worked hard to keep this knowledge quiet, Engineer Br’sei,” said D’seun, as if he read Br’sei’s thoughts. “There are those who would take the facts of how the New People live and create a panic to spread across all the winds of Home. Ambassador T’sha, to begin with.”

  Br’sei shook himself. “Do you have so little faith in your colleagues, Ambassador?” he asked, being deliberately blunt.

  “No.” D’seun swelled. “I have so much experience with them. T’sha is rich. She hands out promises as if they were guesting gifts. She does not want this world for New Home because of the New People. I have managed to block her so far, but what if she were able to cry insanity?” A single beat of his wings brought him towering over Br’sei. “Would any of the People be willing to run from insanity toward insanity?” Now their muzzles touched and the ambassador’s words sank deep into Br’sei’s skin. “How long does Home have left for us, Br’sei? Twenty years? Forty? How long will it take before a new world can support us in all our billions?”

  “At least fifty years,” admitted Br’sei.

  “So, we have no time to waste in panic and argument.”

  “But—”

  “But if the New People are insane, they must be treated as such.” D’seun let himself drift away. “If they are not, they must be treated as such. Right now, we know only three things—that they have no legitimate claim on this world, that we cannot decide on their sanity until we understand them better, and that we cannot waste time looking for yet another candidate world.”

  Br’sei’s bones bunched together. He would have plummeted had not the warm plumes from the highland cradled him. “I am not so sure, Ambassador.”

  D’seun dipped his muzzle. “Of course not. These are not small thoughts. This must all be digested and studied from all angles. But tell me this: you do truly agree that action without knowledge will lead to disaster?”

  “It can,” admitted Br’sei.

  “And you do agree that we have no time to waste in the creation of New Home?”

  Br’sei dipped his muzzle. “I have seen the cities rotting too, Ambassador. I heard your tale of Gaith. I am aware our time is short.”

  “Good.” D’seun flew over him, letting his hands graze against Br’sei’s crest. “Then give me this much. Do not panic Ambassador T’sha when she comes. Do not tell her how much we know.” He turned on a wingtip. “And help me understand the New People. With knowledge, your doubts and mine will all be resolved. We will not be fumbling and flapping in our helplessness, as we must on Home, where the diseases and their progeny have flown too far ahead for us to ever understand, let alone overtake. Here, we must always know how to proceed.”

  We must always know how to proceed. Br’sei let D’seun’s words echo inside him. He wanted to believe that was possible, but sometimes he doubted it. What he did know, however, was that D’seun had convinced himself of the lightness of his words, and a mere engineer would not change Ambassador D’seun’s mind.

  Ambassador T’sha, however, might be able to, and if she couldn’t change D’seun’s mind, she might be able to sway the Law Meet, which even D’seun could not ignore.

  But Br’sei would have to steer a careful path. If D’seun did not think Br’sei was convinced, the ambassador would find a way to have him removed from the team. That was very much D’seun’s way.

  “I shall work with you, Ambassador.” Br’sei inflated himself until his size was equal with D’seun’s. “Together we will see what we can find.”

  I do not, however, promise you will like what I will do with what we find.

  It was not unti
l they had returned to the base and dispersed to their separate tasks that Br’sei realized D’seun had never answered one question about the tools near the New People.

  Chapter Five

  A FRESH UNITED NATIONS flag dominated the rear wall of the passenger clearing area. Its sky blue background made a stark contrast to the soft, shifting reds and golds that the walls had been set for. Ben was glad to see, however, that Helen had drawn the line at welcoming banners.

  Ben stood beside Helen and Michael. The assorted Veneran department heads ranged past them in a ragged line. Beyond the hatch, they could hear the soft whirs and bumps of the docking corridor extending and clamping itself to the newly arrived shuttle.

  “Here they come,” announced Tori from the control room.

  “The intercom better be off in the corridor,” muttered Helen.

  “Tori knows what she’s doing,” Michael assured her, somewhat absently.

  Ben said nothing. He was too busy dealing with his own emotions. Anger, irrational and completely out of proportion, seemed inside him. He feared that if he had to open his mouth, it would all come spilling out in an unstoppable red flood.

  God, I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn’t expect it to be this bad.

  The last time he’d seen the U.N. come into a colony, he’d been in a holding cell, watching lines of neatly dressed judges and bureaucrats arrive with their armed escorts. There seemed to be hundreds of them, all there to deal with the “criminals” who had “broken the rule of law in Bradbury.” He remembered the fear he’d felt, wondering what would happen to them all now, and the deep shame at that fear.

  None of the people standing next to him now knew about that cell or that he had ever lived on Bradbury at all. He’d managed to disconnect his records from that past and that person. But he could not disconnect his memories, even if there were times he wanted to.

  Like now.

  The hatch cranked itself open. Ben’s stomach clenched itself involuntarily. Get over it! They’re just tourists. They’re going to be rumpled and gravity dizzy and slightly stupid, like any other crowd of Earthlings.

  Edmund Waicek, the man Ben considered to be the most dangerous member of the C.A.C., had cheerfully sent Venera’s governing board a list of their invaders. Ben had to admit, Helen had worked her end quite well. It could have been a lot worse.

  The first two down the ramp Ben recognized as Robert Stykos and Terry Wray, the media faces. Their job was to create the in-stream “news” presentations on the U.N. investigation of the Discovery. Both had been restructured to look exactly average, only more beautiful. They might have been brother and sister, with their coffee-and-cream skin, big brown eyes, and shoulder-length black hair (hers pinned under a bronze scarf, his pulled back into a ponytail under a red beaded cap). But where Stykos was tall and broad, Wray was petite, almost elfin. Both wore glittering camera bands on their foreheads and command bracelets on their wrists.

  “Mr. Stykos, Ms. Wray.” Helen, in full public relations mode, stepped forward and shook their hands. “Welcome to Venera Base. I’m Dr. Helen Failia. Allow me to introduce my associate, Dr. Bennet Godwin, who is our head of personnel and chief volcanologist.”

  So it began. Stykos and Wray both looked long and hard at him, making sure their cameras got a good image of him smiling and shaking their soft hands. Lindi Manzur, the architect, beamed up at him as if she’d never met anyone more fascinating, except maybe Troy Peachman (was that a real name?), the comparative culturalist (whatever that was), at whom she kept glancing fondly as he followed her down the line, shaking everybody’s hands with a kind of firm enthusiasm that came with practice.

  What have you two been doing for the past week and a half? he wondered snidely.

  After them came Julia Lott, the archeologist, a sturdy fireplug of a woman with a square face and tired eyes. She was followed by Isaac Walters who looked so uncomfortable that Ben had to wonder if he’d ever left Mother Earth before.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ben saw Grace Meyer smile broadly and step forward from the line.

  Oh, right, this is the biologist, he thought as he passed Walters down to Michael.

  Next, a tall, pale woman in artistic black and white swept up the line. Veronica Hatch, here to look at the laser and pronounce judgment. In contrast to Walters, she seemed ready to parachute down to the ground and start digging in.

  There was a pause then, just long enough for Ben’s anger to start simmering again. There were only two people left to come.

  Angela Cleary and Philip Bowerman emerged together from the docking corridor. She had sandy skin and sandy hair, which she wore short under her white scarf. He was darker, with wavy hair and tropical skin and eyes that took in the entire room at a glance. Both of them were tall, broad in the shoulders and narrow at the waist, people whose bulk came not from body-mod, but from work. They both wore the blue tunics with white collars that were the uniform of U.N. security assessors on official duty.

  Ben’s blood ran hot, then cold. It must have showed in his face. He knew Michael was looking at him, but he couldn’t help it. He’d sat for hours in little windowless rooms with uniforms like these, being recorded and interrogated until he couldn’t think straight, couldn’t remember if he’d implicated his friends or not, couldn’t decide whether his own lies still made sense. All he could do was feel his burning eyes, raw throat, and aching bladder.

  What if they know me? What if they were there? The thought rose unbidden from the back of his brain.

  “Pleased to meet you, Dr. Godwin,” Cleary was saying. Ben focused on her, a little startled, but she just smiled politely.

  Ben stuck his hand out and shook hers. It was strong and slightly calloused. He made himself look into her amber-colored eyes. He saw no hint of recognition there, and relief, as irrational and unlocked for as his anger and his fear, almost robbed him of his balance.

  “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Cleary,” he answered in as steady a voice as he could manage. Too young, he thought to himself. Security has limits on how rejuvenated you can be, and they’re both way too young to have been at Bradbury.

  That realization allowed him to greet Bowerman with something approaching equanimity.

  Then, it was over. The yewners mingled with the department heads, making polite small talk about their voyage and the base. Helen flitted between the conversational groups, reminding everyone of the reception scheduled for that evening. Grace Meyer walked Isaac Walters a little way off from the general crowd and talked to him in low, urgent tones. Michael took charge of Cleary and Bowerman and was telling them about the provisions he’d made to get them access to base records regarding the Discovery. Stykos and Wray stood back and photographed it all.

  Then, in groups of twos and threes, the yewners and their chaperones began to make their way to the elevator bundles. The crowd thinned, and Ben found he could breathe again.

  The sound of footsteps echoing through the docking corridor turned Ben around again. Another person emerged. This one wore a tan tunic and trousers with blue ID patches, the standard uniform for crews on distance ships. It took Ben a moment to recognize him.

  “Hello, Dr. Godwin.”

  Joshua Kenyon, one of Venera’s atmospheric researchers, held out his hand. Well, no, he wasn’t exactly Venera’s. He’d never made the commitment to live on the base. He just came up every now and again to do his work on Rayleigh scattering in the upper atmosphere and then went back down to Mother Earth to analyze and publish what he’d found. Because of that, Ben found himself unable to really like the man.

  Kenyon was also not scheduled to be back for at least another six months.

  “Hello, Dr. Kenyon.” Ben shook his hand. “This is unexpected, especially in uniform.”

  Kenyon blushed a little. “I know. They weren’t even going to let me back up. Special flight for U.N. VIPs only. But I knew a couple of guys on the crew, and they kind of smuggled me in.” He gestured at his uniform. “Not to spec, I kno
w, but when I heard about the Discovery, I couldn’t help myself. I’m really hoping Dr. Failia will let me get a look at that laser.”

  Of course. Kenyon used lasers constantly in his work. Ben’s dislike for the man did not change the fact that Kenyon was probably one of the best optical engineers Venera had access to. Of course he wanted a look at the laser. He’d be just the person to pull the machine apart and see what it was made of and what it was for.

  Ben shook his head regretfully. “I’m sorry. Helen’s put a ban on any Venerans, or anyone else, going down there until the yewners…the U.N. team has finished up. Doesn’t want anybody to get in their way or to challenge whatever theories they come up with by presenting a whole bunch of facts. She says there’ll be plenty of time for that later.”

  Kenyon’s face fell one muscle at a time. “I may just ask her anyway,” he said at last. “Do you think getting on my knees and begging would help any?’

  Ben did not laugh. “She’s got her hands full, Dr. Kenyon. I think it’d be better if you just waited until the investigative team’s finished.”

  Kenyon’s eyes searched Ben’s face, and Ben saw in them the knowledge of his, Ben’s, personal dislike. That was all right; he’d never supposed it to be a secret.

  At last Kenyon blew out a sigh. “Okay, if that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is. I’ll wait.” He paused. “Or did you rent out my room while I was gone?”

  “No, your quarters are still right where you left them.” Venera kept a set of apartments for people like Kenyon who came and went on regular schedules. Ben stepped aside. “Sorry you went through all this for nothing.”

  The thought no you’re not, flickered across Kenyon’s face, but he quickly smoothed it out. “Thanks,” he said as he strode past Ben, heading for the elevators.

  Alone, Ben let his shoulders sag. The U.N. flag fluttered in the breeze from the ventilator shafts, and Ben found his hands itching to go over and rip it down.

  Pull it together. You have more important things to worry about.

  Ben focused his eyes on the corridor and marched past the flag, almost as if it wasn’t there.