by Sarah Zettel
Maybe the urgency was imagined, but Vee felt it nonetheless. Part of her was aware that someone had come to stand behind her and read over her shoulder. She thought it was Josh, but she didn’t turn to make sure.
Wait, she typed. You can’t transfer an entire population from one world to another every ten years or so. On the other hand, who knew? T’sha had shown her an image of the portal they used to transfer from Home to Venus, but she couldn’t explain how it worked. Vee could give her no words to help out. This was so far up the line from the world Vee knew that there was no way to talk about it. They needed a quantum physicist or something down here.
We would not perform the transfer every ten years, T’sha’s new words said. It would be every three thousand.
Vee whistled. You think in the long term don’t you?
T’sha froze. Startled? Is there another way to think of life?
You’d be surprised. Vee licked her lips. Look, T’sha, I think you should know there are those in the government on Earth who are not going to be very happy with the fact that you’ve started colonizing one of our worlds without asking them first.
One of your worlds? T’sha grew and shrank uncertainly for a moment and then settled down, small but not sagging. Then this IS your world?
Yes, replied Vee, wondering at the emphasis.
T’sha’s muzzle opened and closed a few times as she watched the holobubble. Finally, new words appeared.
How is it yours?
Vee pulled back a minute. As she did, Josh leaned forward. She felt him before she saw him. She glanced back, looking for suggestions.
“Be careful, Vee,” he said. “I think we’re probing close to a nerve here.”
“You too, huh?” Vee shook her head. “Okay, let’s go for honesty.” She typed, I don’t understand.
T’sha swelled and rattled her wings. Impatience? How is it yours? What do you build here? Where do you live? How do you use this place? I must be able to speak of legitimate use.
Josh looked down at her and shrugged. Vee felt a chill sinking into her. Josh was right. There was a nerve under these words, and she had to find a way around it. We have our base, Venera, here.
Again, T’sha rattled her wings. Her crest ruffled and smoothed as if it were breathing. But your base does nothing. It does not expand, it does not build or grow, it does not spread life.
Vee hesitated and suddenly wished Rosa were with her. Rosa was the one who could manage a room full of hostile board members. Rosa would surely be able to give the right answers to one alien. Actually, Vee wished there was anyone in this chair right now except her.
We have always considered the planets orbiting the sun ours. They didn’t belong to anyone else.
Even the ones you do not use? They are yours? Now Vee couldn’t see T’sha move at all. The ambassador just hung there, like a holograph of herself.
The idea has always been we’d find a use for them eventually.
No answer came back. Vee licked her lips and tried again.
I’m not saying this is right, T’sha, but it’s an old habit of thought, and it’s going to be hard to break.
No answer. T’sha’s muzzle pointed toward the sky and her wings spread wide. Vee sat frozen with her hands hovering over the keys. What do I do? What do I do? What made me think I could pull this off?
All at once, T’sha froze. Vee saw her mouth move, but nothing new appeared on the translator. This had happened a couple of times before. T’sha was getting a message from her colleagues over the spidery headset she wore. Vee sat back and glanced up at Josh. His face was tight with worry. She knew exactly how he felt.
Outside, T’sha swelled as if she sought to drink in the whole world.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I must go. I…there is word my city is sick. Someone will come speak to you. I must go.
T’sha launched herself into the air, rocketing into the distance. The dirigible overhead detached itself from the tent and began to follow.
Vee lowered her hands onto the command board. “Good luck,” she murmured.
“Her city’s sick?” said Josh.
Vee nodded, watching after T’sha until she vanished over the edge of Beta Regio. “Her city’s alive. It’s…it’s like a friend.” She turned her gaze toward the sky again. The horror of the idea seeped slowly into her mind. The city was a friend and the city was sick, maybe dying. It was too enormous to be really understood all at once, and it overlaid all the previous conversation, where they scrabbled for ideas and understanding and came up empty.
Friends were dying, families were dying, and they needed someplace safe to go. That place, they had decided, was here. Their only question was whether the humans were here first.
And T’sha wasn’t so sure they were.
“Josh,” she said, watching the empty perches outside. “I think the easy part is over with.”
T’sha rose from the World Portal into the miasma of metallic odors and coughed hard, contracting spasmodically around herself.
When she was able to spread her wings again, Pe’sen was beside her. “There’s a dirigible waiting for you. Let me guide you out of here.”
T’sha brushed her wing against his in thanks, “Quickly, Pe’sen.”
Pe’sen led the way, calling ahead the securitors and the portals to clear the way. The metallic walls and struts passed by in a blur. All T’sha saw was the dirigible’s open gondola. She shot inside, barely hearing Pe’sen’s call of “Good luck!”
The dirigible already had its orders. It closed up and lit its engines before T’sha even had time to grasp its perches. She rocked badly as the dirigible shot forward, but she didn’t care. She was on her way.
“Ca’aed?” she ordered her headset to carry her voice to her city. Her stricken city. How bad? Maybe not so bad, maybe just a panic, an exaggeration. Ca’aed was strong, Ca’aed had survived so much.
“T’sha?” came Ca’aed’s voice, strong, but strained. “Good luck, Ambassador.”
T’sha’s teeth clacked involuntarily. “Good luck, my city. I’m coming to see what all the fuss is about.”
“I’m not sure I can let you near me, T’sha.”
Fear twitched T’sha’s bones. “I’m your ambassador, Ca’aed. You cannot deny me.”
“I can’t endanger you ei—” The word cut off.
“Ca’aed!” shouted T’sha. Life of my mother, life of my father, what is happening to you?
“Evacuation,” said Ca’aed. “We must call for evacuation. I am alerting the safety engineers. Do not come here, T’sha.”
T’sha did not answer. She ordered her headset to find her birth mother.
“T’sha, you are returning?” came her anxious voice. “There is trouble—”
“I know Mother Pa’and. Listen to me. You must organize the family. The safety engineers are being called. Ca’aed says you need to evacuate.”
“Life of my mother…” breathed Mother Pa’and.
“I know, I know, but we can’t let this get away from us. We are a million and we may all be ill. A quarantine shell is a priority, but even before that we must keep everyone from scattering. Spread the word. Everyone must stay together. We cannot let anyone flee. Do you understand?”
“I understand Ambassador.” Mother Pa’and’s voice was firm now. “We will do as you say.”
“Thank you. Good luck.” Hurry, hurry, hurry, she thought to the dirigible. I need to be there! But she could hear the whine of its engines and taste the ozone and electrochemicals. It was already straining to reach greater speeds, sacrificing smooth flight to plow straight ahead. She could ask nothing more of it.
She did not even ask it to open its inner eyes. She did not want to see Ca’aed growing in the distance. She did not want to see its people, her people, swarming around it like flies. She would see that soon enough. She had to concentrate, call the speakers, call the archivers. The city’s records had to be stored and saved.
A million people. A million to be quar
antined and examined and provided for, even as Ca’aed itself had to be quarantined, examined, and provided for. She alone could make promises for her city. She needed to know what her city had left to give.
If Ca’aed should become sick now, you will have nothing left. Z’eth’s words dropped into her thoughts. T’sha shoved them away. It was not that bad. She had not been that profligate. Surely not. They had caught this in time. There would be damage, yes. There would be expense, but they were a million strong and they loved their city. They were united and they had acted promptly. Their city had not let them try to keep quiet and hide this illness from the world. They would call in help from their neighbors. It would be all right.
The dirigible banked sharply and slowed. Its portal opened and T’sha shot out into the open air. She saw her city spreading before her, and her body collapsed.
Directly in front of her, heavy, fungal blotches filled the deep crevices of Ca’aed’s coral walls. She could taste them with her whole mouth. Her throat and skin tightened against the sickness. The wake villages were already being brought around to the leeward walls. The safety engineers hovered with their tools, draping the villages in the gauzelike strainers to keep out contagion, if that was possible. Shells were being lifted from Ca’aed’s body and orderly flight chains of people filed into them. As they filled, the shells were wrapped in strainers and tethered together with bloodless ligaments. The people were closed inside to wait for the doctors, to wonder if the sickness had spread from their city to themselves.
It was so orderly, it was very nearly a dance. The enormity of it dived straight to the center of T’sha’s being and left her stupefied. Her family was in there somewhere. Mother, Father, her little sisters, her brother…Oh life and bone, brother!
“Ca—” she began, but she cut herself off. She could not rob Ca’aed of any of its concentration. She instead ordered the headset to find her brother on its own. A cluster of dirigibles flew the speaker’s flags. She turned her flight toward them, beating her wings against the wind until she felt her bones would break.
“Ambassador!”
The voice came to her own ears, not her headset. T’sha saw a solid red crest spread on the wind and recognized Deputy Ambassador Ta’teth rising above the dirigibles. She put on a burst of speed and flew to meet him.
“Ambassador,” he gasped as if he’d been the one flying so fast. “I am glad you are returned. We’ve been doing our best—”
“How bad is it?” T’sha cut him off, fanning her wings against the buffeting wind. She could smell the disease from here, cloying and sweet, just like the scents that had surrounded Village Gaith. The flies would be descending soon.
“Bad. The engineers are trying to keep up, but it is spreading too fast, in too many places.”
“How did this happen?” T’sha demanded. Ta’teth dipped and shriveled before her outburst. T’sha cursed herself and dropped until she was level with her deputy. “I’m sorry, Ta’teth. I’m sorry. I do not blame you. But does anyone know what happened?”
Ta’teth recovered his size. “The best theories are from the indentures from Gaith, and they are very serious.” T’sha grit herself against her impatience. Ta’teth was also scared. Ta’teth loved Ca’aed as she did. He was doing his best. “They think it is a new kind of virus.”
“But that’s a fungus!” retorted T’sha.
“No,” said Ta’teth. “It’s cancer.”
“What?” The word was out before T’sha could stop herself. Cancer? How could that be cancer? A virus might cause a cancer, yes, but not like this.
“They think…” Anticipation of his own words made Ta’teth shudder. “They think it is a new strain of virus that has managed to take advantage of the People’s close relationship with the cities. They think it replicates in sections, part of it in the people, part of it in the segments of the city’s anatomy that are chiefly animal. The virus sections lie dormant in the hosts, mimicking, they think, familiar nutritive elements. They possibly even infect the monocellular nutritives and through them infect the hosts. The dangerous phase does not start until two or more sections of the virus are combined, possibly in the presence of an additional chemical stimulus—”
“In such a place as in the city’s bowels.”
Ta’teth dipped his muzzle. “Then it replicates furiously, devouring its host and releasing the undetected spawning segments, working too fast to be completely stopped or destroyed.”
T’sha did not deflate. She felt paralyzed by Ta’teth’s words, frozen as cold as a New Person. “It is a good theory. Is it being tested now?”
Again, Ta’teth dipped his muzzle. “They are hunting for viral DNA segments now and trying to map its life cycle.”
“And we might all be carriers?”
“Yes,” murmured Ta’teth. “Of portions of the disease, at least.” He swelled and shrank. “There might be more than one strain.”
The words sank into T’sha and she shivered, releasing old memories. What is the nature of life? went the first riddle in the story of Ca’doth. Three possible answers—a stone, a shell, the wind. A stone because life is strong and underlies the whole world. A shell because life contains and shelters what is precious. The wind because it is everywhere and cannot be stopped.
It is everywhere and cannot be stopped. “Have you told Ca’aed?”
Ta’teth collapsed in on himself. “No. I didn’t think…I…”
T’sha flew over him, brushing her fingers against his crest. “No shame, Deputy. I’ll do it now.”
T’sha flew past the chains of her people being evacuated to the isolation shells, past the engineers with their flocks of tools surrounding them, between the walls patched with this strange, sweet cancer that mimicked a fungus so well. She knew where she wanted to be. There were eyes beside the main portal. Pretty silver eyes, which watched the winds and the world. She wanted to be there when she told Ca’aed.
“My city?” T’sha hovered before the city’s eyes, each one as big as a whole person.
“Ambassador?” murmured Ca’aed.
“You are very ill, Ca’aed. They think it is a new virus.” Slowly, carefully, she repeated what Ta’teth had told her.
The eyes remained focused on her, drinking her in as if she were the only thing in the world. Sorrow swelled T’sha’s body. She wanted to wrap the city in her arms and hug it to her belly as if it were a child. She wanted to carry it away from here to somewhere safe, where the winds were wholesome and it could be fed and healed. But there was no safe place, not in any latitude. The whole world might be infected by now; they had no way of knowing.
“You must cut it out,” said Ca’aed.
“What?” blurted out T’sha.
“This theory is sound. I ran it through my minds. It holds, life of us all, it holds. They apply anticancer treatments now, and they have some effect, but they will take dodec-hours, and we do not have the time.” Ca’aed paused as if gathering its strength. “You must cut out the affected sections of my body. You must isolate them, burn them if necessary. If my body is spreading infection, it must be stopped.”
There was no room in T’sha for further horror. She would not permit Ca’aed’s words to enter her. “No, a quarantine—”
“Will allow me to stew in my own disease,” interrupted the city. “This way we may be able to save at least my consciousness and keep the worst of the infection out of the wind.” Its voice was calm, collected. But T’sha still heard the fear.
Cut? Cut my city…
In front of her, a ligament snapped, the ends flapping into the wind.
“I am the shelter. I am the shell,” said the city, giving the old words of the unity chant, the one T’sha had recited every year when the city passed over the First Mountain.
“We are the bone. We are the embryo,” responded T’sha instantly.
“I preserve you.”
“We preserve you. Life serves life.”
“Life serves life,” replied the
city. “Cut out this disease from me.”
Every bone in T’sha’s body clenched. Cut out the disease. It was barbaric but effective if the anticancer treatments weren’t working fast enough. Cut down the sails, cut out the homes, cut through the parks, the windguides, the promise trees….
Life and bone, the promise trees, and I’ve heard nothing from T’deu. Suddenly, there was no question inside T’sha about where her brother was. He was deep inside the infected city, trying to save the beauty and intricacy he had dedicated his life to nurturing. Who knew what he carried inside him by now? The safety engineers would have to keep him quarantined even from the other citizens.
Oh, my brother! And I cannot even go to find you now.
“Are you speaking to Chief Engineer T’gen of your remedy?” T’sha asked Ca’aed, her voice barely a whisper.
“I am. He resists. Do not let him.”
Memories. A thousand, a million memories of a world that grew and changed, of life, and family and ambition, worry and debate, flight and stillness. Through all that there was only one constant—Ca’aed. Her ancient city, her soul’s home. “No, I will not let him resist.”
“I am ready.”
“Stay ready.” T’sha turned from the city walls and flew toward the isolation shells. It was not engineers she needed now but harvesters with their saws and hooks and pruning sheers. She needed to lead them deep into their city to places the engineers would numb. She needed their nets, their patience, and their precision. Ca’aed might be gutted, but Ca’aed might be saved.