by Sarah Zettel
Helen just stood there and stared. Michael reached his family just as the line began to move again. Michael picked up his bulging satchel. Jolynn wrapped an arm around his waist, almost as if she meant to pull him along if he faltered. He put his arm back around her shoulders and together they and their children walked onto the shuttle.
Helen’s balance rocked. Her knees buckled and she had to put one hand on the wall to steady herself.
“Dr. Failia?” said someone timidly. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes.” She pulled herself upright. “I’m fine.”
She turned away from the crowds that were working so hard to get away from what was coming and started down the stairs to the Throne Room.
She did not have the luxury of time to mourn Michael’s leaving right now. No matter what else happened, Venera still needed taking care of. Venera needed her. Venera could not betray her. She would not give it away as she’d been forced to give away Venus.
Venera, at least, at last, was hers.
Chapter Twenty
T’SHA NESTLED AGAINST THE central heart of her city. She felt the ticking and timing of its valves and sacs underneath her body. Above her swarmed clouds of flies so thick they blotted out the sight of the clouds, and she could barely hear the rustle of her own skin under their triumphant buzzing.
All around her Ca’aed was dying and the flies had come to celebrate. She could smell nothing anymore but the scents of the rot. There was nothing to hear except the flies, and the wordless mewlings and keenings as the pain became too great for its smaller voices.
“Stop,” Ca’aed had said, how many hours ago? T’sha didn’t remember. Maybe it was only a few minutes since. She didn’t know. “There is nothing to be done. Stop.”
They had fought the disease with knives and shears. They had fought with monocellulars and antibodies and killer viruses. Its people had fought hand, wing and heart, and it had not been enough.
Now their city, exhausted and in agony, asked to be left alone.
T’sha had sent all the engineers to the quarantine shells, but she herself had descended into the exact center of the city, where she could touch the deepest part of its ancient, ravaged body.
Let the cancers take me too. She sent the thought freely onto the wind. Don’t leave me here alone with nothing but my failure.
“I remember when we grew the first park,” said Ca’aed. Its voice shook. It sounded old.
“Tell me.” T’sha nestled closer.
“I was so excited. I had spread out far enough that it was quite a flight sometimes for the people to get out to open air. So we were going to make a place just for gathering, just for dance and beauty in my heart. I think I drove the engineers to distraction. I insisted on testing every graft myself for its strength and vivacity.” Ca’aed stopped. “I don’t remember their names. The engineers. They were so patient, and I don’t remember them.”
“That part of you was probably removed,” said T’sha. “It’s not your fault.”
“Ah. Yes.”
The city fell quiet for a moment. Under her torso, T’sha felt one of the heart sacs collapse, and it did not swell again.
“Tell me about the New People,” said Ca’aed. “I want something different to think about.”
T’sha stirred her wings. “They are very different from us,” she began hesitantly. “They do not fly naturally. They spend long stretches of time doing this thing they call sleep, where they lie down in darkness and are still. At this time, their whole consciousness is changed from one state to another. It is part of their refreshment cycle.” She paused. “I admit I do not quite understand it.”
“It sounds frightening,” said Ca’aed.
“It is natural to them,” T’sha reminded the city. “They speak of sleep as if it were another place. They say ‘We go to sleep.’ I found it a little easier to think about it that way. It made it a journey they must undergo.”
Ca’aed thought about that. “Yes, that is a little easier.” The muscles under T’sha cramped and smoothed, and one of Ca’aed’s other voices gasped. “Tell me how they live on their world,” its main voice asked.
Vee’s pictures soared through T’sha’s memory. So strange, so different, but spoken of with such pride and delight. “They live on the crust of their world where the air is the thickest. It is so cold there, they have great pools of liquids filling the valleys that they call lakes and oceans. Vee lives in a city on the edge of one of these lakes. Their cities stay in one place,” she explained, “and the New People travel to them, as ambassadors do to the High Law Meet.”
A whole world of High Law Meets, T’sha remembered thinking. How grand that must be. “She says her city is an ancient place, encompassing revered centers of science and learning. Its people are great engineers and merchants and have been so for centuries. She spoke of the lake it sits on and how it sparkles blue and silver in the sunlight, and how it has a wealth of legends that belong just to it.”
“Then they do love their cities?” asked Ca’aed.
“Yes, very much.” T’sha rubbed her muzzle back and forth against Ca’aed’s skin, as she could not dip her muzzle pressed so close to the city. “They write poems about them and tell each other stories of their greatness.” She paused again, remembering. “‘Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive, and coarse and strong and cunning.’ Vee told me that was written about her city.”
“I like that,” said Ca’aed. “And their cities love them?”
“No,” said T’sha as gently as possible. “Their cities are not such as they can return the love.”
“What a great thing it is,” murmured Ca’aed. “To be able to love even that which cannot return your love.”
T’sha had not thought of that before, but the idea felt comfortable inside her. “Yes, it is a great thing.”
“I heard Br’sei when he came.”
A cloud, thick with the smell of illness drifted across them. T’sha coughed. “I’m sorry, Ca’aed. I did not mean you to.” I thought you too distracted. I should know better than to underestimate you, even now.
“Will you abandon the New People?” asked Ca’aed.
T’sha stiffened. “I cannot be with them and with you. You are my city.”
“You cannot choose which life you serve,” whispered Ca’aed. Its heart labored unevenly as it spoke. T’sha lifted herself until her skin just brushed Ca’aed’s skin. She could no longer control her size. Her body shuddered and wavered to the uneven rhythms of Ca’aed’s last heart.
“I must choose,” she said.
Something stank, thick, rank, and choking. She could sense it in every pore. The flies landed on her wings to taste her flesh, and she lacked the strength to shake them off.
“Perhaps I am not dying,” whispered Ca’aed. “Perhaps I am going to sleep.”
“Perhaps you are.”
Ca’aed’s heart spasmed. It jerked twice. Another foul cloud rose around T’sha, and the heart lay still.
T’sha settled slowly onto the still skin that covered the heart. She could not move her wings or even her bones. Around her she heard sounds of collapsing air sacs and loosening muscles.
She heard herself moaning.
But she did not hear Ca’aed. She would never hear Ca’aed again. Her mind clutched at the last few words, drawing them deep into her soul. All the words she would ever have. There would be no more. No more, ever.
You cannot choose which life you serve.
What a great thing it is, to be able to love even that which cannot return your love.
T’sha rose from her city’s silent heart. She swelled herself, aware she was exhausted, but no longer caring. She beat her wings until her body caught the soaring wind and she shot out of the city’s body.
She saw no one. She heard nothing. She was aware only of where she must go and what she must do. There were vague voices somewhere, calling and arguing, but they meant nothing. All the mea
ning was in Ca’aed’s words. Those and her body were all T’sha could call her own now, and she could not forsake them.
Vee had thought that seeing the People through a wall screen, in the familiar surroundings of Josh’s lab, would lessen some of the impact. She was wrong. They were just as grand, just as golden, and just as awe-inspiring in their aerial dances.
Well, the camera’s working, she thought.
This was the test flight of the new drone they had dubbed “His Ambassador’s Voice.” Vee and Josh stood beside a desk in Josh’s lab, surrounded by dismantled lasers and survey drones. Josh had the specialized keypad for flying the drone in his hands, and Vee had her briefcase with its image catalog and updated software open and jacked into the drone controls. A tangle of cables held them together. It was probably symbolic of something.
The fly-by drones were already remote controlled. They used the communication satellite network that ringed Venus to send their signals back to Venera, so they were natural candidates when Vee and Josh began to think about a mobile communications device.
The problem had been, as ever, mounting a projection device that wouldn’t melt or be crushed.
Their reworked drone was a big, blocky confabulation that only stayed up because it was supported by Venus’s atmosphere. Most of the size was a consequence of the insulation and housing for the projection laser and the last sheet of Vee’s film. The drone didn’t fly so much as lurch, but that was all right. It moved. Now they had to see if it could speak.
Through the drone’s camera they watched a flock of the People’s attendant jellyfish scatter in all directions. A trio of people floated up to look into the main window, close enough that Vee could see their tattoos clearly. She spotted the interlocking circles on their wings. These were all engineers, but she couldn’t see Br’sei among them.
“Your turn,” said Josh softly.
“Right.” Vee licked her lips and pressed the Send key to execute the commands she had waiting.
A strip at the bottom of the screen lit up with the message that was, hopefully, at this moment being displayed on the film right next to the camera.
Good luck. We would like to see Ambassador T’sha or Ambassador D’seun, please.
One of the People broke away from the others and dived toward the base. The other two stared at the drone, each other, and their vanishing companion.
“Think they got the message?” asked Josh dryly.
“Looks it. Can we hover here?”
“After a fashion. Nothing like them.” Josh worked the stick and the keyboard for a moment, and the drone slowed its flight. The propulser readouts that appeared on the desk crept up from green toward yellow. Josh hit a few more keys and they faded again. The view on the camera bobbed unsteadily up and down, but it stayed where it was.
“You’ll be up for Adrian’s job next,” remarked Vee.
“You couldn’t pay me enough to do Adrian’s job.” The sourness in his voice told Vee that Josh was thinking about Kevin, and the exodus that was going on over their heads, and whatever might be coming next. She touched his arm, but he didn’t look at her.
Two People rose from the base. As they got closer, Vee was surprised to see the Engineer Who Looked Familiar beside the stranger. He carried a lumpy, mottled gray-green package clutched in his hands.
He did not stop level with the others. He kept going until he was almost on top of the drone. His muzzle and tattooed wings blocked out the rest of the view.
Vee sucked on her cheek and typed. Hello, Engineer. What is your name?
The engineer stared at the message and then looked straight at the camera lens. He raised both of his forehands, a greeting gesture, Vee remembered T’sha saying.
The lumpy package the engineer carried turned out to be a knotted ropelike thing with several objects clinging to it. Without looking down, he ran his hands over several of the objects, and Vee realized that most of the time the People couldn’t see what their hands were doing.
What must their hands be like? Are they more sensitive? Less? Do they have more senses than the five humans have?
“I think he’s about to make a few improvements,” remarked Josh.
“Oh good,” said Vee. “Always room for improvement.”
The engineer plucked something off the rope and spread it on the drone’s hull. It was silver skinned and glistened. It spread out tendrils that gripped the hull as tree roots would grip a stone.
Josh typed quickly, bringing up status readings that flashed past on the deck. Vee couldn’t understand half of them, but they all shone green. Whatever their engineer was doing out there, it wasn’t hurting their experiment.
The engineer pulled a clear disk off his rope and nestled it in the center of the tendrils. Then he took what looked like a balloon filled with pinkish jelly and settled it on the disk. The bag swelled, puffing up as if being inflated by an invisible pump, until it became a perfect sphere about the size of Josh’s head. When it stopped growing, the engineer pulled a small white box with a grainy surface that reminded Vee of unpolished coral and slid it next to the sphere. He backed away with one stroke of his wings. Words appeared inside the sphere.
Good luck. I am Engineer Br’sei. Is this hybrid harming your transport? Is your visual field blocked? This hybrid should function down to the freezing point of, wait…water. Will that be cold enough?
“Good luck? Good lord,” laughed Vee. The thing clinging to the drone looked ridiculous. It looked like a child’s clay masterpiece surmounted by a pale-pink crystal ball.
It’s probably an incredible jury-rigging, she thought
“Everything’s still green,” reported Josh. He looked at the conglomeration again. “Doesn’t block too much of the camera.”
The hybrid is not harming our transport. The temperature tolerance is more than adequate. What is its range? Vee typed out the new message.
At the moment, the hybrid is limited to vocal range, came the reply. He shifted his weight. Embarrassed? I must ask you to feel these words, Br’sei went on. Ambassador T’sha is not here. She is trying to save the life of her city. If she were here, she would surely tell you that you need to warn your families. D’seun is trying to get you all declared insane.
“What?” said Vee before she remembered that Br’sei couldn’t hear her. She typed her question.
What?
“The Law Meet has determined that your distant family is insane. We are finishing the means to separate their souls from their raw materials.
“Distant family?” said Josh.
Vee’s heart thudded once, hard. “They mean the Terrans.” The words almost choked her. She typed,
You are going to kill the Terrans? The people on Earth?
Br’sei dipped his muzzle. An affirmation. They say the Terrans are insane. The sane and the insane cannot live together.
“Josh,” croaked Vee. “I think you’d better go get the governing board.”
But Josh was already gone. Vee typed. Her hands had gone completely cold.
What are they going to do?
The words spelled themselves out in front of Vee’s eyes. A monocellular to be launched through the portal.…A chemical trigger that would turn a benign monocellular life form in the human body into a lethal strain….Deaths within hours….
“Holy God and Mother Creation.” Vee could barely control her hands anymore. She couldn’t encompass this. Earth. They were going to wipe out the human race. They were going to kill everyone.
Everyone.
No, Br’sei, the Terrans are not insane. They’re different. We disagree, that’s all.
Br’sei swelled a little as he studied the words. They did not threaten to cut you off from the resources you need to live? We misunderstood? She thought he might be hopeful.
What is misunderstood is the reason for it, Br’sei. “Come on, come on, you have to understand this!” It is an internal conflict, nothing more.
Br’sei did not respond. He pulled back, and
D’seun swept into the camera’s view followed by a Person Vee did not recognize. D’seun spoke to Br’sei, swelling his body and flapping his wings as if to shove Br’sei aside.
Br’sei spoke.
I am asked if I think I am now an ambassador, read the screen. I am asked—
D’seun dived at him, beating him away with his wings. Vee saw his skin tear open, freeing wisps of vapor. Br’sei fell back under the attack, shrinking and dropping as he did.
Stop! Stop! Vee typed frantically. But he did not stop. He drove Br’sei backward. His wings smashed against the display bubble, tearing it open. It flopped sideways, spilling out a pink fog that dispersed into the clear air.
Vee looked down at the torn bubble and up at the strange members of the People. The one who had arrived with D’seun spoke to Br’sei’s companions. One of them vanished.
Vee didn’t stand still to watch what happened. She had to tell somebody. Warn Earth. Who? How? The communications were blocked by Michael. But Michael had left. Had he thought to turn the blocks off before he went?
Vee shoved the drone controls aside and began typing so fast and hard her fingers screamed in protest.
Rosa, Rosa, Rosa, be there, be there, be there. Vee grasped the edges of the desk and leaned over the screen, gasping for breath around the panic that filled her throat. Would it work? Could she open a line? What if she couldn’t?
She glanced up at the wall screen. Br’sei’s friend had returned with a string of lumps. A tear ran down Vee’s cheek.
The desk screen cleared, and Rosa’s concerned face looked up at her. “What’s the matter, Vee?”
Vee almost laughed. There was no time. “Rosy, listen to me. I haven’t got any time to explain. There are live aliens on Venus and they have decided the Terrans are too dangerous to live. They’re launching a virus or something like it through their portal. They’re going to try to kill the Terrans, Rosa. All of them. If we can’t stop them, it’s going to be soon.” On the other screen, the Person had new tendrils spread out on the drone’s hull and had produced another pink bag. “Rosa, you have to tell the U.N. They have to figure out a plan. I’ll try to get more information through as soon as I’ve got it.”