Quiet Invasion
Authors: Sarah Zettel
RECLAMATION
Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel
“An exciting new talent … Ms. Zettel’s confident treatment of her ambitious material shows just how entertaining the ‘grand tradition of Heinlein and Asimov’ can be in her sympathetic hands.” —
The New York Times Book Review
“This one has scope and sweep, intrigue and grandiose technologies, and grand adventure. Sarah Zettel is a writer to watch.” —
Analog Science Fiction & Fact
“In the grand tradition of Heinlein and Asimov … More than an exciting science fiction adventure story—it also gives us a universe, vividly imagined and thought provoking.” —Poul Anderson, author of
Harvest of Stan
FOOL’S WAR
A
New York Times
Notable Book of the Year
“Wrenchingly real.” —
The Philadelphia Inquirer
“This thought-provoking tale offers an energetic plot and a cast full of appealing characters.” —
The Plain Dealer
“An exciting, stimulating and imaginative book. Zettel handles her intriguing cast of characters, both human and AI, with style and confidence.” —SF Reviews
PLAYING GOD
“Energetic and entertaining … with many clever twists.” —
The Plain Dealer
“Absorbing and exciting … Rush right out and grab
Playing God.
” —
Analog Science Fiction & Fact
THE QUIET INVASION
“Humans, aliens and Venus itself are all skillfully portrayed here, in a pleasingly complex plot… . A drama of considerable moral force.” —
Locus
“A first-contact novel worth reading and relishing.” —
Publishers Weekly
“Zettel demonstrates her gift for creating fully realized cultures… . A riveting confrontation.” —
Booklist
Sarah Zettel
This book is dedicated, with deepest thanks, to my spiritual big sister,
Dawn Marie Sampson Beresford.
Chapter One
“T
HIS IS VENERA CONTROL,
Shuttle AX-2416. You’re clear for landing. Welcome back.”
Hello, Tori. How are you doing?
thought Helen from her seat in the passenger compartment. She liked the fact that the shuttle pilots left the intercom open so she could listen to the familiar voices running through the landing protocols. Overhearing this final flight ritual made her feel that she was really home.
I just wish I was really home with better news.
She bit her lip and settled a little further back in her crash-couch. Helen was the only Venera-bound passenger this run. She’d flown from Earth in the long-distance ship
Queen Isabella
, which now waited in orbit while the shuttles from Venera ferried down supplies and equipment that had to be imported from Earth.
Helen stared straight ahead over the rows of empty couches. The ceiling and front wall of the shuttle’s passenger cabin were one gigantic view screen. Venus’s opaque, yellowish-gray clouds churned all around the shuttle. Wind stirred the mists constantly but never cleared them away.
She strained her eyes, struggling to see the solid shadow of Venera Base through the shifting fog. Despite everything, Helen still felt as if she carried the bad news with her, that nothing could have changed aboard Venera until she got there and handed the news over.
I’m not there so it’s not real yet.
Helen smoothed down the indigo scarf she wore over her stark white hair.
Arrogance, arrogance, old woman. This last trip should have finally put you in your place.
She really did feel old. It was strange. Even in the modern era of med trips and gene-level body modification, eighty-three was not young. She had never felt so old
inside
, though. She’d never felt calcified like this, as if something in her understanding had failed, leaving her standing on the edge of events she was unable to comprehend clearly, let alone affect.
The shuttle’s descent steepened. At last, the cloud veil thinned enough that Helen really could make out the spherical shadow of Venera Base—her dream, her life’s work, her home.
And now, my poor failure.
Even with self-pity and defeat swimming around inside her head, Helen’s heart lifted at the sight of Venera. The base was a gigantic sphere buoyed by Venus’s thick CO
2
atmosphere. Distance and cloud cover made the massive girders and cables that attached the tail and stabilizers to the main body of the station look as thin as threads.
Venera rode the perpetual easterly winds that circled the planet’s equator. The shuttle matched Venera’s speed easily, and the navigation chips in the shuttle and the runway handled the rest. The shuttle glided onto the great deck that encircled the very top of Venera’s hull. It taxied straight across the runway and to the open hangar.
The shuttle jerked slightly as it rolled to a stop. A moment of silence enveloped Helen. This was no tourist shuttle. There were no attendants, human or automated, to tell her it was okay to get up now, or to make sure she claimed all her luggage, or to hope she’d enjoyed her flight and would come again soon.
Instead, the hissing, bumping noises of pressurization, corridor docking, and engine power-down surrounded her. Helen stayed where she was. As soon as she stepped out of the shuttle, it all became real. The transition would be over. Her illusions would no longer shield her. Helen found she did not want to abandon that shelter.
“Dr. Failia?”
Helen started and looked up into the broad, dark face of the shuttle’s senior pilot What was his name?
“Yes?” She pushed herself upright and began fumbling with the multiple buckles that strapped her to the couch.
Name, name, name…
“I just wanted to say, I know you’re going to get us through this. Everybody’s with you.”
Pearson!
“Thank you, Mr. Pearson,” said Helen. “We’ll find a way.”
“I know we will.” He stepped aside to give her room to stand. Helen did not miss the hand that briefly darted out to help her to her feet and then darted back again, afraid of being offensive. She pretended to ignore the awkward gesture and retrieved her satchel from the bin under her couch.
“Thank you again, Mr. Pearson.” Helen shook the pilot’s hand and met his eyes with a friendly smile.
P.R. reflexes all in working order, thank you.
Then, because there was nothing else to do, she walked down the flex-walled docking corridor.
Bennet Godwin and Michael Lum, the other two members of Venera’s governing board, were, of course, waiting for her in the passenger clearing area. One look at their faces told her that the bad news had indeed flown far ahead of her.
Her hand tightened around her satchel strap as she walked up to her colleagues.
“I take it you’ve heard,” she said flatly. “We lost Andalucent Technologies and IBM.”
There, it’s official. I said it.
The last shards of her comforting illusions fell away.
Ben Godwin was a square-built, florid man. Every emotion registered on his face as a change of color, from snow white to cherry red. Right now though, he just looked gray. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Michael, standing beside him, glanced briefly at the floor and then up at Helen’s eyes. He was a much younger, much leaner, much calmer than with clear gold skin. He wore his black hair long and pulled back into a ponytail. The gold ID badge on his white tunic proclaimed him the chief of Venera’s security. “They took the University of Washington with them.”
He spoke softly, but the words crashed hard against Helen. “What? When?”
“About an hour ago.” Ben ran his hand over his bristly scalp. “We tried to get them to wait to talk to you, but they weren’t—”
Anger hardened Helen’s face. “Well, they’ll have to talk to me anyway.” She brushed past the two men. “We can’t afford to lose their funding too.”
Helen did not look back to see if they were following her. She just strode straight ahead into the broad, curving corridor that connected the docking area to the rest of Venera. She ignored the nearest elevator bundle and started down the stairs instead. She was not waiting around anymore. She’d been waiting on people for months on Earth. Waiting for them to tell her they had no more money, no more time to wait for results, no more interest in a planet that would never be amenable to human colonization or exploitation.
Helen kept her office on the farm levels near the center of Venera’s sphere. Full spectrum lights shone down on vast soil beds growing high-yield cereals and brightly colored vegetables. Ducks and geese waded freely through troughed rice paddies that also nurtured several species of fish. The chickens, however, were penned in separate yards around the perimeter. The chickens did not get along with the more peaceable fowls. Quartz windows ringed the entire level, showing the great gray clouds. Every now and then, a pure gold flash of sheet lightning lit the world.
The farms had been meant to give Venera some measure of independence. Acquiring good, fresh food was vital to the maintenance of a permanent colony, and from the beginning, Helen had meant Venera to be a permanent colony.
Old dreams died hard. Venera might have actually had real self-sufficiency, except for the restrictions the U.N. placed on manufacturing and shipping licenses.
Old fears died hard too.
Helen’s office was an administrative cubicle on an island in the middle of one of the rice paddies. She knew people called it “the Throne Room” and didn’t really care. She loved Venus, but she missed Earth’s blues and greens. Setting up her workspace in the farms had been the perfect compromise.
Helen kept a spartan office. It was furnished with a work desk, three visitor’s chairs, and an all-purpose view screen that currently showed a star field. Her one luxury, besides her view, was a couple of shelves of potted plants—basil, oregano, lavender, and so on. Their sweet, spicy scents were the air’s only perfume.
Helen dropped herself into the chair behind the desk and tossed her satchel onto the floor. It was only then that she became aware that Michael and Ben had in fact followed her.
“Who’d you talk to?” Her touch woke the desk and lit its command board. She shuffled through the icons to bring up her list of contact codes.
“Patricia Iannone,” said Ben, sitting in one of the visitor’s chairs. “She sounded like she was just following orders.”
“We’ll see.” Helen activated Pat’s contact and checked the time delay. Four minutes today. Not great for purposes of persuasive conversation, but doable. Helen opened the com system and lifted her face to the view screen. “Hello, Pat. I’ve just gotten back to Venera, and they’re telling me that U Washington is pulling our funding. What’s the matter? You can’t tell me the volcanology department has not been getting its money’s worth out of us. If it’s a matter of being more vocal about your sponsorship or about allowing your people some more directed research time, I know we can work out the details. You just have to let me know what you and your people need.” She touched the Send key, and the com system took over, shooting the message down after the contact code, waiting for a connection, and a reply.
Helen swiveled her chair to face Ben and Michael. “All right, tell me what’s been happening since we talked last.”
So Ben told her about some of the new personnel assignments and promotions and how the volcano, Hathor Montes, was showing signs of entering an active cycle. Michael talked about a rash of petty thefts, an increase in demands on the data lines caused apparently by the volcanology group gearing up for Hathor’s active cycle, and a couple of in-stream clip-out personas trying to get themselves inserted onto Venera’s payroll.