Quiet Invasion (35 page)

D’seun was so small and tight he would have sunk like a stone had he not been sitting on a perch. It was then T’sha knew. She had not been certain until that moment, but now she was. D’seun had not taken raw materials from the New People. He had taken a life.

Realization rocked T’sha back on her perch.

“I will not forget this,” D’seun said.

“You should not.” T’sha let go of her perch and flew into the corridor. She was aware of the Seventh Team strung out along the corridor like lanterns around a nightside room. She did not speak to them. Instead, she took herself straight into the refresher and ordered the door to close tightly behind her.

The air in the refresher was rich, thick, and heavy. T’sha took it in gratefully, relaxing her skin, drawing the life-giving air in through her loosened muzzle and feeling her internal poisons release from her pores. It was so hard to feel full here, in this beautiful, empty world. Back home she needed to refresh perhaps once every dodec-hour. Here, every four or five hours that passed left her drained. She relaxed skin, muscle, and bone in the room’s gentle breeze and let herself drift.

She’d done it. Oh, she had done it. She’d spent so much effort controlling her body, she’d obviously forgotten to control her mind. Did she really mean she’d call D’seun’s sanity into question?

She did. Her skin rippled with small fear. She’d do it. This was too huge. It meant too much. If D’seun would have her sacrifice the New People needlessly, if he had taken one of their lives, he might really be insane. The sane spread life, served it, nurtured it, and in return were served and spread and nurtured by life. The insane were greedy. They killed. They stunted and confined and hoarded life. The sane and the insane could not live together.

T’sha remembered when her family had met on a question of insanity. She’d only just been declared adult, able to fly with the others and add her voice to the consensus. T’thran, a second cousin to her birth family, had deliberately destroyed an entire square mile of canopy. He offered no reason, however closely questioned. He had only wanted to do this thing. It was bad, he said. It was rotted, and the rot would spread.

But there was no evidence. No one else in the entire latitude had witnessed this corruption. Not even Ca’aed could say it had existed. The family asked; they asked everyone they could reach. The wind blew them from day through night and back into day again while they turned the question over. But in the end, every voice polled had called him insane.

Insane. Nothing left to contribute to life but his own raw material. So that raw material had been taken and used to help re-create what had been destroyed.

As would D’seun’s be, if she did this and the Law Meet found she was right.

The problem was, of course, that D’seun could make his own case against her. He had already convinced the Seventh Team she was greedy and careless. What if he or some ally took that to a court or the Fitness Review Committee in the High Law Meet? There existed the very real possibility that she would be removed from her special position here, and then who would speak for the New People? D’seun would not, his bullied team would not, and back in the High Law Meet, Ambassador Z’eth most certainly would not.

T’sha floated between disasters and did not know which way to dodge. She only knew that as long as the New People were alive and sane they could not be dismissed, could not be flown over without regard to their needs and their claims. That was right. That was the first Right and the final Right and it would not change, no matter how closely D’seun argued his case and no matter what Z’eth had asked her to do.

“I cannot choose which life to serve,” she murmured, calling back the words the living highland spoke to Ca’doth.

T’sha floated, blown by the room’s gentle, random breeze, taking in its nutrition and its calm. She had made her move. All that she could do now was wait and see how D’seun would respond.

The Veneran doctors agreed Vee could sleep in her own room if she wore the monitor belt and patches under her shirt and swore to drink two liters of water before she went to bed.

So there she stood in her spacious, comfortable living room, with its autoform furniture and its walls set to a static pattern of mountains and clouds based on Japanese watercolors, and the purple rag rug on the soft-tile floor, completely at a loss about what to do. Angela, Lindi, Isaac, and the Venerans were all going to live, thanks to the intervention of the aliens. She drew a large glass of water from the tap at the sink in the kitchenette and drank some absently. What were they doing down there now? What were they doing there at all? Who were they? Why had they decided to help?

For the first time since coming to Venera, Vee felt trapped. There was a whole new world out there now, and she couldn’t reach it.

Nothing you can do about it now, unless you want to put the act back on and try to bully Failia and company to let you back down there.

Vee sat in the desk chair. No. That was not going to get her anywhere. But she couldn’t just sit here. She had to
do
something.

Almost idly, she flipped open her briefcase and accessed her drawing programs. She unclipped the stylus from her holder and opened the gallery. Maybe she could draw the scene from the accident, just to pass the time. She could begin with clips from the gallery. She had the backdrops she’d used for her simulations to show Angela, but they were strictly second rate. Might do for a base to build on. Needed color though, and a different scale.

Her mind’s eye brought the rescue scene back to the fore, and her hands started to move.

This wasn’t a real holograph; this was a computer-generated simulation. She’d have to unpack her holotank and film to make the real thing, but she could make a sketch for eventual transfer to real 3-D. She could show the dim shadows and black rock with the startling threads of lava creeping down the mountainsides. She could show the scarab, bent and crippled in a wilderness of stone.

And she could show the aliens. The gold wings that shimmered and sparkled in the dim light and thick air. The silver eyes. Those eyes, how could she render those eyes? How could she show the intelligence she had felt under the surface as this creature, no, this
person
from another world looked into her own eyes?

Vee zoomed in on the winged form and concentrated solely on it, the eyes, the lines along its skin, the curve of its torso and wings. She worked fast, trying to freeze the memory before it faded. The cameras from the suits and the scarab had surely captured the images, but how long would it be before she had access to them? This was her memory. This was her moment made real in light and code. This is what she’d show the world, all the worlds, so they would understand what had happened.

Water, promises, and time forgotten, Vee drew the first portrait of Earth’s neighbors.

Her door chimed, jerking Vee back into the present, where she became aware of a stiff back and ankles, a cramped hand, and a raging thirst.

“Door. Open,” called Vee, half-annoyed, half-grateful. She gulped half the water remaining in her glass.

Josh stood in the threshold.

“Hi,” he said. “You okay?”

“Oh yeah, fine.” She blanked her case screen. It wasn’t done yet. Not ready for anyone else to see. “Got caught up in a project. What’s going on?”

“Dr. Failia wants us all in the conference room to debrief about…what happened. I said I’d come get you.”

“Thanks.” Vee unbent her protesting back and legs. She got to her feet and drained her water glass. “You didn’t have to do this.”

Josh’s face shifted into an expression she hadn’t seen before. It was gentle, yet awkward. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. Things got rough down there, and you were looking at Angela like…” He searched for words. “Like she was the only thing holding you together.”

“Thanks,” said Vee again, and she meant it. “It was bad for a bit. No question. We owe the aliens. Whatever they are, we owe them.”

“Yes, we do.” Josh shook his head. “Ever since you told me the base was a fake, I’d been gearing up for a huge disappointment. But then…” His words trailed off. “I don’t know what to think now.”

“Me either,” she admitted. “Yet. Let’s go get debriefed.” She crossed to the door and stopped. Something else needed to be said. Something she hadn’t needed to say for a long time. She turned back toward Josh. “Thank you for taking me seriously down there. For letting me help.”

“That was the real you,” Josh said. “I was glad you were there.”

“Yeah, well,” said Vee, unable to form a better response and kicking herself for it. “Let’s see how glad the board is.”

Vee and Josh walked to Conference Room One through a Venera Base that seemed abnormally tense. Vee was sure the rumor mill had been incredibly active all day, but from the sidelong glances people were giving them, she was also sure that Dr. Failia and the governing board hadn’t yet deigned to release any official information. If it had been Vee, she’d have been going crazy.

They were the last to arrive. The board clustered together at one end of the oval table. The passengers and crew of Scarab Five ranged around the rest of it. All the U.N. team who were not in the hospital were there. Terry sat next to her partner, Robert Stykos. Julia sat between Troy and Adrian, who was next to a shell-shocked Philip Bowerman. Vee picked the free chair beside Philip. Josh sat next to her. Vee felt absurdly pleased.

Helen Failia got to her feet. She looked determined, as if she was not going to let even this situation get the best of her.

But Philip did not give her the chance to speak. “Before we say anything else here”—Philip looked haggard. No surprise. His partner was lying in the infirmary with tubes in her arms and synaptic stimulators in her ears while all five medical doctors tried to work out how many nerve grafts she was going to need—“I want to know why our outgoing communications are being blocked.”

Our what?
Vee straightened up. Now she could see why both Terry and Robert appeared particularly grim.

Helen gave a short sigh, as if this were a minor inconvenience. “Venera’s governing board has decided that, for the time being, all outgoing communication which contains references to this latest development will be held for transmission at a later time.”

“You cannot do this,” said Robert through clenched teeth. “You have no right to restrict free communication.”

“Venera Base reserves the right to refuse transmission of data which might include proprietary or unpublished information based on work that does not belong to the person requesting the transmission.” Dr. Failia said it like she’d memorized it. She probably had. It was probably part of the colony’s charter or some similar document.

Philip shook his head. “That is not an acceptable decision, Dr. Failia.”

“It is most definitely not acceptable,” said Terry. “This is the real thing. We need to get this out as soon as possible.”

“No,” said Helen flatly. “That was what was done with the Discovery. Now we know that was a fraud. Who knows what this latest phenomenon is?”

“I do,” said Troy, his voice husky with awe. Vee had heard that tone plenty of times down in the Discovery, but this was different somehow. Down there, she’d been quite sure it was all for show, a way to impress Lindi with his depth and give Terry good sound bits. Now though, she got the sudden impression they were hearing what he really felt. “They were saviors. Merciful saviors. They took gentle care of the crew of Scarab Fourteen—”

“They kept Heathe’s body,” cut in Dr. Godwin. “What’d they do that for? Merciful saviors? Maybe just morbidly curious?”

“We can’t know,” said Michael Lum. “Not yet. From what we saw we can’t even know if we can communicate with them.”

“Yes, we can.” Vee blurted out the words before she even realized she had spoken.

“What?” said Dr. Failia sharply. Everyone turned to face Vee.

“We can communicate with them,” said Vee, slowly this time, letting the ideas bubbling up inside her mind coalesce, giving herself a chance to see them clearly. “They can see.” Yes, there it was. The foundation. They could build from there. “One of them was watching me the whole time. Their eyes were made up like a human eye, or near as, which means it’s probable they can see in wavelengths we use and resolve images very close to the way we do.”

“And assuming you’re right?” said Dr. Godwin.

Vee felt herself smile. Ideas flowed through her. This could work. They could do this. “If they can see, we can communicate with them. I don’t know if they could hear a radio broadcast, but they might be able to read a letter.”

“You want to teach them their ABC’s? How?” Dr. Failia’s voice was suspicious but not dismissive. Good. Excellent

“Holographs,” Vee told them.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Dr. Godwin. “It’d take years to get a holograph setup that would work.”

Vee’s smile spread. She loved surprises. She loved the impossible, and this was the most impossible set of circumstances she’d ever been in. “It’ll take a week. The hard part’s already done.”

“What is the hard part?” asked Dr. Failia.

Vee leaned forward. “The hard part would have been getting a working laser in place, but we’ve already got one. Whoever built the Discovery took care of that for us. There is a laser down there that Josh says will work under Venusian conditions as soon as we jack it into a power source.”

“And you think you can talk to them?” Dr. Lum sounded half-afraid, half-hopeful.

“Maybe.” Her gaze turned inward while her mind lined up the things they’d need. “We build a holotank outside the Discovery where they can see it. Line it up with the laser. Wire the laser so it can be controlled from inside one of the scarabs. It’s got a double beam, so it can record and project once we get the tank in place. I’ve brought some of my rapid-replay film with me, so if we can set up some kind of cold-box for the tank to work in, we won’t have a problem there—”

“Wait a minute.” Philip got to his feet. “Figuring out the mechanics, this is good; we’ll need that, but this is not something we can do alone up here. This is not your decision. We need to contact the C.A.C. immediately and let them inform the Secretaries-General what has happened.”