Quiet Invasion

by Sarah Zettel

  Su nodded slowly. “The senior Waiceks were friends and supporters of Ted Fuller. They sent their son into politics to be a friendly voice for the colonies. Then the rebellion happened, and one of Fuller’s…less reliable associates feared they’d expose his embezzlements and bundled them off on an unreliable ship with one of the last loads of U.N. sympathizers.”

  Neither of them spoke for a long time. They sat there with their own thoughts, letting the world flow around them. Su couldn’t guess at Ms. Cheney’s imaginings. Her own were lost in the thought of the little tin-can ships that were Fuller’s real crime. All those ships, pulled from the repair yards when there weren’t enough sound vessels in port to exile the dissenters, or suspected dissenters. Ships with poor reactor shielding, ships with spent fuel tanks, ships with hulls already weak or pinholed, just waiting to be cut to ribbons by the random stones that flew between Earth and Mars.

  No matter what his apologists said about evil counselors, it was those ships—those dead human beings—not his wish for freedom, that doomed Ted Fuller’s cause and all that might have come of it.

  “I’m not sure that’s exactly the sort of story I’d be willing to publish,” said Ms. Cheney after a while.

  “I see.” Of course. The woman was a separatist. She would not be willing to cast any additional aspersions on the great Theodore Fuller. “Can I ask you to consider the implications that Edmund Waicek covered up his parents’ political leanings? It is one of the great media truths that it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up, that makes news.”

  Ms. Cheney pursed her mouth and nodded. “True. True. There may be something there.” Su could practically read her thoughts. For the mainstream, political cover-up. For the separatists, the loudest voice against colonial rights is the son of Fullerists. Yes, there was certainly something there.

  “Why are you telling me this, Mrs. Yan?”

  Su was ready for that one. “I deplore hypocrisy.”

  “Surely that’s not the whole reason.”

  “Surely it is.”

  Ms. Cheney leaned back and nodded, an indication that she was prepared to be content with that for the moment. “I believe I can put together something that will return Edmund Waicek’s background to public conversation.”

  “Very good.” Su stood, signaling the end of the conversation. “You’ll be contacted tomorrow about covering the blast site. Word will be left that you are—” Her phone spot’s chime cut off the rest of her words.

  “Transmission from Ben Godwin to Yan Quai,” said the voice in her ear. “Private recording and decryption process go.”

  Mother Creation, so soon? “I’m sorry,” Su forced her attention back to the reporter. “I’ve just received a message I must attend to.”

  “About the Discovery?” asked Ms. Cheney, getting smoothly to her feet. “Or about more separatist activity?”

  “I have no comment about it at this time,” said Su reflexively. “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I, Ms. Yan.” She smiled. “Thank you for your time.”

  “Thank you for yours,” returned Su.

  Su left the feeder there. She had to get away from the cameras and their attendant ears. Her room at the embassy was as private as Sadiq could make it, so she headed there.

  The room felt uncomfortably tiny to Su, but for Lunar quarters, it was quite luxurious. There was room for all the essentials—bed, desk, table, three chairs, without any of them having to be foldaways. The bathroom had a separate door and was hers alone.

  Luna made some of its money off the tourist industry, but most of it off mining and industry, and the mining and industrial concerns were not interested in taking up room with living quarters.

  When Su first had Sadiq Hourani tap Quai’s private mailboxes for her, she’d told herself it was a precaution. Quai dealt with some fringe characters and might find himself up to his neck before he knew it. He was just a boy.

  But that was a comfortable fiction and she knew it. She’d asked for the tap because she wanted to know what was happening with the separatists. She wanted to keep an eye on them all so she could try to temper their activities, steer them away from the most damaging courses.

  She wanted to control them.

  The tap was a betrayal of her son’s trust. One day he’d find out, and she would pay. Even now, when they were on the same side, he would not forgive this intrusion into his privacy.

  Even that stark realization, though, did not make her turn off the tap.

  Su had already unplugged the desk and jacked her own case into the wall socket. She sat down in the desk chair and opened the screen. After a few typed commands and three passwords of increasing length, the decrypted stolen transmission printed out for her.

  Su felt her eyes widen as she read. Her hands slipped from the command board and toppled into her lap.

  Aliens. Aliens on Venus. Not some hole in the ground this time. Not overblown speculation and chancy photographs. Not even microscopic RNA particles. No. These were living beings with minds and wills of their own, and they had saved a scarab’s crew.

  Su’s throat tightened. Implications, wondrous and terrible, poured through her mind too fast for her to take note of them all.

  And here was Ben Godwin telling it all to her son, laying out how it could be used by the separatists for their cause. As predicted. But it was one thing to predict and another to see it happening. Some part of her had believed, had hoped, this day would not come even as she had laid down all her strategies for when it did.

  One command at a time, Su wiped out the file. It would not do for anyone else to see this.

  No, it would not do at all.

  Chapter Twelve

  T’SHA FLOATED IN THE research chamber of the New Home base, murmuring her worries to her personal cortex box and wishing painfully it was Ca’aed she spoke to. She and D’seun were now in the order of debate for the High Law Meet. A few of T’sha’s friends had quietly passed the word that they found it hard to support what she had done, considering that the consensus had been quite clear about the fact that she was to observe and report on the New People, not contact them, and that the New People’s own kind were already responding by the time T’sha had reached the accident site. One of those friends was Ambassador Z’eth.

  T’sha cupped the soft box in her forehands, stroking its skin, inhaling the calm scents it gave off and murmuring in its recording language.

  “I have no pictures to show them. I could subpoena the raw materials Tr’es is examining, I suppose, but how else am I going to show how fragile the New People are? How brave they are being here? Their needs must be very great for them to come to a place that is so hazardous to them.” The box mistook her tone of bewildered wonder for distress and plumped itself up soothingly under her restless fingers, letting its gentle cooings drift across her fingertips. “Of my worst assertions, I still have no proof. I—”

  “Ambassador T’sha?” Br’sei hovered in the threshold. “You wanted to speak with me, Ambassador?”

  “Yes, I did.” She spoke the Off command to her box and tucked it back into the caretaker’s folds.

  Br’sei drifted into the room. He looked alert but calm, with his purple crest only partly raised and his bones relaxed under his skin. T’sha found herself surveying his tattoos afresh. Br’sei was not just a senior engineer, he was a master engineer. He was also a freed indenture and a survivor of D’dant village, where a yeast had turned their home’s bones to a froth that had broken in the wind.

  “How are the researches on the New People’s raw materials going?” T’sha asked.

  Br’sei shook his wings noncommittally. “Tr’es is practically flying in circles in her excitement. She swears she’s making new discoveries by the minute.”

  “Which you will confirm, I trust?” T’sha’s own crest lifted, just a little.

  “The review will be rigorous,” Br’sei said blandly. “Was there anything else?”

  T’sha glanced toward the door. S
he could hear no one in the corridor, but that could change momentarily.

  “Will you come with me, Br’sei?” she asked. “I need your help deciphering a few new sightings.”

  Br’sei hovered where he was, watching her steadily for a long moment. Then he whistled his assent.

  T’sha took her camera eye out of the caretaker. Its tentacles wrapped comfortably around her right posthand. She led Br’sei out of the chamber and into the open air beyond the base’s sails. Several of the team saw them, but that didn’t matter. They would also see the camera and assume T’sha needed some help for a survey, just as she’d said.

  “You know that Ambassador D’seun and I will be leaving soon to address the High Law Meet,” remarked T’sha as the winds carried them away from the base. She spoke a little command language to the camera. It focused its eyes to record the passage of the crust under her. Every bit of data helped.

  “I know,” said Br’sei. “There is a great deal of speculation around the base as to which of you will be coming back.”

  “Which would you prefer, Engineer Br’sei?” It was an unfair question, but she needed to know which way his priorities flew.

  Br’sei inflated himself, rising just a little higher. “Truthfully, Ambassador?”

  T’sha dipped her muzzle.

  Br’sei did not look at her. He watched the wind in front of them. They were fully on the dayside now. The wind was clear and smelled only faintly of ash and acid. “Truthfully, I wish you both would go back to your cities and leave us alone to do our work. If the New People don’t like what we’re doing, they can protest, and we can sort it all out with them.” Only then did he cock his head toward her. “But I’m not likely to find this wish returning to me, am I?”

  “No,” said T’sha, deflating. “I’m sorry.”

  “I believe that you are.” An air pocket dropped them both down. Br’sei recovered smoothly and sailed on. “I believe that you would leave this all alone if you could. I believe that you are like me. You want to do your work and go your way knowing your family is safe, now and forever.” He wheeled in front of her so that T’sha had to pull herself up short. They faced each other, hovering, eye to eye, wing to wing, exactly matching in size and height. “Am I right, Ambassador?”

  T’sha dipped her muzzle.

  Br’sei deflated, breath and energy flowing out of him together. T’sha wondered how long it had been since he refreshed, since he had been home, since he had flown with his own family. Who were they? She didn’t know, and her ignorance shamed her.

  “Tell me what I can do to help you, Ambassador,” he said.

  So many responses filled T’sha at that moment that she did not know which to choose. She was almost grateful when her camera tapped her postarm, interrupting her. She looked down and she saw only crust, wrinkled, rust red and yellow here for the most part.

  But what was that dark spot that crept forward so slowly?

  All but forgetting Br’sei, T’sha dropped down for a better look. From the taste of the air, she knew Br’sei followed her flight.

  As she descended, the speck resolved into one of the New People’s transports crouched on the crust directly below her. She was about to rise again, automatically, to avoid detection when the transport flashed a bright light.

  Startled, T’sha fanned her wings. The transport crawled a little northward, then stopped.

  “What are they doing in there?” Without waiting for an answer, T’sha dropped down a little closer, even though the pressure became uncomfortable this near to the crust.

  The transport crawled away a little further and stopped.

  T’sha stretched her wings and flew until she was almost directly over the transport again.

  It crawled out from under her, and T’sha flew after it. It kept going.

  “They want us to follow.” Br’sei’s words startled her with their light touch.

  He was right. They were trying to reach out. They wanted her to come with them, somewhere. A thrill of fear and eagerness ran through her. The New People were trying to talk to her. Was her particular person in there? The one who had stood so still, watching her during the rescue? Was this her doing?

  “Br’sei.” She turned to him, now knowing what he could do to help, although it was a long way from what she’d initially believed she would say. “I need you to go back to base. Don’t tell anyone what you’ve seen here.”

  “Why not?” he asked mildly.

  T’sha looked back over her wing at him. “Because it is possible there will be some objection to what I am going to do next, and I don’t want to be stopped.”

  Br’sei held himself still. “What are you going to do?”

  “Find out what the New People want.” T’sha did not wait to see if he moved or not. She gave her will up to the wind and let it propel her. The transport saw her movement and began creeping forward again.

  T’sha flew directly over the transport, working hard to keep herself from getting ahead of it. They moved so slowly, these New People, creeping across the folds and ripples of the crust. What was that like to feel the crust constantly under your hands? To know its composition and texture as intimately as any of the People knew the winds?

  Curiosity spurred her forward, accompanied by a childlike fear that someone would see her and stop her game.

  One of the living highlands approached, thickening the air with its scents, making T’sha’s skin quiver reflexively with the anticipation of rich life, although there was none to absorb. The transport underneath her skirted the highland carefully as if afraid to get too close. Maybe they were. Frozen as cold as they were, who knew what the heat of a highland meant to them?

  Beyond the highland, the crust was a tapestry of trenches and ragged valleys. In a small, irregular cup cut by some ancient lava pool waited another transport. The transport she’d been following pulled up beside its twin and stopped.

  T’sha stayed where she was, and so did they. Immobile. Waiting. For what?

  “Camera, descend and report,” she said in the command language.

  The camera extricated itself from her posthand and closed its umbrella. It dropped down until T’sha lost sight of it against the blacks and grays of the old lava flows. She banked in a slow circle, forcing herself to be patient.

  At long last, the camera, its umbrella open, began to rise again. Abandoning caution, T’sha dropped to meet it. She grasped it in both forehands, turning it over until its replay eye faced her.

  “Show me,” she ordered.

  In the bowed reflection of the eye, she saw the transports, standing still and patient. She saw a clear box, very like an isolation box, sitting on the crust. It was connected by tubes and wires to one of the transports. A low, perfectly straight, silver tunnel also connected it to a slight rise in the crust.

  As she looked closer, she saw that inside the box was a sphere, and inside the sphere…was a New Person, rendered in shades of red.

  It wasn’t the bulky, shelled creature she’d seen walking around, but those had been protective coverings of some kind. No, this was a New Person, stripped to their essence, or nearly so.

  It was a biped. Its torso was not so angular as the protective covering made it look. Its skin was soft, and it looked to be wearing some gentle skins or cloths. It had hands, a head, and, unmistakably, eyes. They were small, almost alarmingly so in that flat face, but those were indisputably eyes, looking out at her. It had one forehand raised up. In greeting? Perhaps. Why not?

  Underneath the New Person’s feet were more images, also all in red. Why red? Could they see no other color? T’sha ordered the camera to concentrate on the lower images. The surroundings vanished as the camera recalled what she needed.

  The first image was discreet clusters of shining balls. One, two three, five, seven. Interesting. Communication through numbers? Maybe. A good idea. How could the New People know how much she knew about them? Numbers were concrete, hard to mistake, and easy to understand. She chuckled
to herself. Oh, clever, New People!

  The second image was another sphere. Inside it glowed a star, with its surrounding planets. Despite the strangeness of it being represented in red and white, she recognized it instantly. Of course. The New People had eyes. They would see as the People did and create images they could recognize. This was the New People’s star system, with their world picked out in a red-and-white swirl, orbiting just beyond New Home.

  It was as clear as the air around her, as alive as a wind from the highlands. The New People did want to communicate. They really were reaching out. She could not refuse them.

  “Mustn’t be rude, after all.” She told her headset to send her voice on to the base and find Ambassador D’seun.

  Silence descended while D’seun was located. T’sha looked at the camera’s image again and at the New Person raising their hand. Did they name themselves? What was this one called? Was it male or female? Some other gender T’sha had no name for? Was it the one she had spent so much time staring at? What did it think when it looked at her? She wanted to know everything immediately. The necessity of waiting made her itch.

  “Ambassador T’sha, where are you?” came D’seun’s voice. If his voice was anything to go by, he was puffed up with anger again.

  She gave him her coordinates, and from the resounding silence, she knew he recognized them. She said nothing. She waited for him to ask.

  “What are you doing there?”

  “I was led here. The New People are trying to communicate.”

  Silence again. T’sha chose to interpret it as stunned disbelief.

  “This is significant,” said D’seun dryly.

  “Yes it is. I need you and yours to gather together everything you’ve got on how the New People communicate so we can find a way to answer them.”

  “What…we…” he stammered.

  T’sha swelled, although there was no one there to see. “We can delay this no longer, D’seun. I know you have been observing the New People closely for a long time now. I’ve seen your specialized constructors.” She looked down at the waiting transports and their viewing station. “The New People have tried to speak with us and are waiting for us to make some kind of reply. I will not disappoint them. You can help, or you can force me to tell the Law Meet about exactly who here has overstepped their commission.”