Quiet Invasion (11 page)

“Really?” His face and voice brightened considerably. “Who managed it?”

“I don’t know. I thought you might.”

Quai shook his head, and Su believed him. If he had known, he would have just evaded the question. They did not agree, she and her son. He felt she did not go far enough in her politics, and she felt that by attempting to undermine the system, he was worsening the condition of those he was supposed to be fighting for. Despite that, they had a tacit agreement that each would avoid lying to the other, if at all possible.

“Well, just in case anyone in your acquaintance gets ideas—”

“Us?” Quai laid a hand on his breast. “We operate strictly within the law wherever we are, Mom; you know that.”

“I don’t for sure know any different,” responded Su blandly. “But just in case, you might pass along the word that the C.A.C. is very edgy right now and that that edginess is getting communicated up the legislature. The more unrest there is right at this moment, the bigger the potential backlash.”

They looked at each other, each of them replaying conversations from both the distant and the not-so-distant past in their heads.

“All right, Mom.” Quai nodded. “Not that anybody I deal with would arrange illegal public demos in U.N. City or anywhere else, but I’ll see if I can leak the generalities of this conversation where they’ll do some good.”

“That’s all I ask.” Su bowed her head briefly in a gesture of thanks.

A flicker of worry crossed Quai’s face. “Take care of yourself out there, Mom. Okay? I’d hate to see you lose your footing.”

Su smiled. “I will take care. I love you, my son.”

“Love you, Mom. Good-bye.”

Su said good-bye and shut down the screen. She shook her head and sighed. Quai was good people. How had that happened? Abandoned by a nervous father, left with an obsessive mother, he still managed to make his own way. He went overboard, it was true, but not as badly as some, and at least he really believed in what he did.

So do you,
she reminded herself.
At least, you’d better, or all your work’s going to fall apart and Helen’s going to be left out there on her own.

That thought stiffened Su’s shoulders. No, she would not permit that. She bent over her desk screen and laid her hands on the command board. Time to get back to work.

T
’SHA’S KITE FURLED ITS
bright-blue wings as it approached the High Law Meet. Unlike other cities, the High Law Meet’s ligaments ran all the way down to the crust, tethering the complex in place. The symbolism was plain. All the winds, all the world, met here.

“Good luck, Ambassador T’sha,” the Law Meet hailed her through her headset. “You are much anticipated.”

“Is it a pleased anticipation or otherwise?” asked T’sha wryly as the Law Meet took over her kite guidance, bringing it smoothly toward the empty mooring clamps.

“That is not for me to know or tell,” said the Meet primly. Amusement swelled through T’sha.

T’sha had always found the Meet beautiful. Its shell walls were delicately curved, and their colors blended from a pure white to rich purple. Portraits and stories had been painted all across their surfaces in both hot and cold paints. When the Law Meet was in dayside, the hot paints glowed red. On nightside, the cold paints made dark etchings against the shining walls. The coral struts were whorled and carved so that the winds sang as they blew past. More shell and dyed stiff skins tunneled and gentled the winds through the corridors between the chambers. The interior chambers themselves were bubbles of still air where anyone could move freely without being guided or prodded by the world outside.

T’sha sometimes wondered if this was a good idea.

As ever, the High Law Meet was alive with swarms of people. The air around it tasted heavy with life and constant movement. T’sha counted nine separate villages floating past the Meet with their sails furled so the citizens who flew beside their homes could keep up easily. All the noise, all the activity of daily life blew past with them.

Below, the canopy was being tended by the Meet’s own conservators. It was symbolically important, said many senior ambassadors, that the canopy around the High Law Meet remain vital, solid, and productive. But as T’sha watched, a quartet of reapers from one of the villages, identifiable by the straining nets they carried between them, as well as by the zigzagging tattoos on their wings, descended to the canopy. A conservator flew at them, sending them all winging away, back to their village with empty nets, no food, seeds, or clippings to enhance their diet, their gardens, or their engineers’ inventories.

T’sha felt her bones loosen with weariness.
It must be kept productive. Certainly. But if not for our families, then for what?

T’sha inflated, trying to let her mood roll off her skin. There was important work to be done, and she had to be tightly focused. Her kite dropped its tethers toward the Law Meet’s mooring clamps. T’sha leaned back on her posthands so she could collect her belongings: an offering for the temple, the congratulatory banner for Ambassador Pr’sef’s latest wedding, and the bulging satchel of promissory agreements which she had negotiated in return for the votes she needed. She had promised away a great deal of work from her city and her families for this vote. She had to keep telling herself that they all gave freely and that she was doing this for the entirety of the people, not just for herself. This was necessary. It was not greed.

The clamps took hold of the tethers and reeled the kite in to a resting height. T’sha launched herself into the wind, her parcels dangling from three of her hands.

A temple surmounted the High Law Meet. It was a maze of ligaments and colored skins, covered in a complex blanket of life. In the corners and catches, puffs, birds, flies, algae bubbles, smoke growers, and a hundred other plants and animals collected. Funguses and danglers grew from the walls and fed the creatures who lived there, until the winds that blew them in blew them away again.

As she let those winds carry her toward the temple’s center, T’sha tried to relax and immerse herself in the messages of life present in every plant, every insect and bird. She had only marginal success. There was too much waiting on the vote in the Meet below to allow her to give in to her meditations.

The temple’s center was ablaze with tapestries, each illustrating a history, parable, or lesson. Congregants were supposed to let the random winds blow them toward a tapestry and consider its moral. This time, however, T’sha steered herself toward a small tapestry that fluttered alone in a deep curve of the wall. It was ancient, woven entirely from colored fibers taken from the canopy. It depicted a lone male, his hands bony, his skin sagging, and his muzzle open in muttered speech. His rose and violet crest draped flat against his back as if he lacked the strength to raise it. All around him stretched the crust, naked to the sky.

As T’sha drank in the tapestry’s details, a teacher drifted to her side. “Tell me this story,” he said.

The words spread the warmth of familiarity through T’sha. Her youth had seemed dominated by those words. Her birth mother, Pa’and, had brought T’sha teacher after teacher, each more taxing than the last. Whether the lesson was maths, sciences, history, or even the geographies of the wind currents, they all seemed to start their quizzing by saying “Tell me this story.”

“Ca’doth was the first of the Teacher-Kings,” began T’sha, keeping her attention fixed on the tapestry, as was proper. “Contemplate the object and its lesson. This is the way to learn.” Which of the parade of teachers had first told her that? “He led twenty cities in the Equatorial Calms. But he wanted to harvest eight canopy islands that were also claimed by D’anai, who was Teacher-King for the Southern Roughs. A feud began. Each king made great promises to their neighbors to join their cause. Arguments and debates lasted years. Ca’doth, who was the greatest speaker ever known, persuaded the winds and the clouds and even the birds to help him.” T’sha’s imagination showed her Ca’dom, strong and healthy, spreading his wings to the listening clouds.

“What he wanted most was that the living highlands should stop feeding his enemies,” she went on, falling into the rhythm of her recitation. The teacher hovered close beside her, encouraging her with his silence. “But no matter how long he flew around the highlands, they made no response to his great speeches.” The smallest of the monocellulars originated in the living highlands, which expelled them into the air to be the seeds for all other life in the world.

“At last, he realized he would have to fly inside the highland to make it hear him. He dived straight down the throat of the living highland, beating his wings against winds of solid lava. He passed through a chamber where the walls were pale skin, a chamber of white bone, a chamber of silver plasma, and a chamber tangled with muscle and nerve. In each he heard a riddle to which he did not know the answer.” For a moment, she thought the teacher would ask her the riddles, but he did not, and she kept going. “Finally, Ca’dom came to a chamber where the air around him shimmered golden with the pure essence of life, and he knew he floated within the soul of the living highland.

“‘Why do you feed my enemies?’ he cried. ‘They steal what I need to live. I have promised away all my present that I may gain a future for my children, and yet you feed those who would destroy them. Why?’

“The soul of the highland answered him, ‘Life cannot choose who it helps. If your enemy came to me first, should I starve you instead?’

“But Ca’doth did not listen. He argued and pleaded and threatened, until the highland said ‘Very well, I will not feed your enemy.’

“Pleased, Ca’doth passed through the chambers, and there he heard the answers to all the riddles but could not tell which answer fitted which riddle. He emerged into the clear and returned to tell his family the highland would no longer feed their rivals.

“But when he reached his birth city, the city and all within were dead, starved.

“The highland would not feed the rivals, but the highland would no longer feed Ca’doth’s people either. Ca’doth turned from his rule and his other cities and drifted on the winds for the rest of his life, trying to fit the answers to the riddles.”

The teacher dipped his muzzle approvingly. “And what is the meaning of this story?”

“All life is linked,” answered T’sha promptly. “If that is forgotten, all life will die.”
Even the flies,
she sighed inwardly.
Even the fungus. Even I and D’seun.

T’sha deflated before the teacher and flew respectfully underneath him. She slipped around the side of the temple to the gifting nets and deposited her offering—a pouch of seeds and epiphytes that her own family had recently spread in the canopy. They were having great success in healing a breech in the growth. Hopefully, the temple’s conservators could make use of them as well.

As she sealed the gifting net up and turned, she found herself muzzle-to-muzzle with Z’eth, one of the most senior ambassadors to the Meet. T’sha pulled back reflexively, fanning her wings to get some distance.

“Good luck, Ambassador T’sha,” said Z’eth, laughing a little at how startled her junior colleague was. Z’eth was big and round. Even when she had contracted herself, she was a presence that filled rooms and demanded attention. She had only three tattoos on her pale skin—her family’s formal name, the rolling winds, indicating she was a student of life, and the ambassador’s flock of birds on her muzzle. Despite her sparse personal decoration, there was something extravagant about Z’eth. Perhaps that was only because there was no promise so rare or exotic she would not make it if it benefited her city. T’sha could not blame her for that. The city K’est had sickened when T’sha was still a child, and Z’eth’s whole existence had become dedicated to keeping her city alive.

“Good luck, Ambassador Z’eth,” said T’sha. “I was on my way to your offices from here.”

“No doubt to speak of things it is not appropriate to discuss in temple.” Z’eth dipped her muzzle. “Shall we leave so we may converse freely?”

“Thank you, Ambassador.”

Z’eth and T’sha let themselves be blown through the temple corridors and out into the open air.

As soon as they were a decent distance from the temple’s walls, T’sha said, “I have the promissory for you regarding the imprinting service for the cortices grown in your facilities.”

“Excellent.” Z’eth tilted her wings and deflated so she descended smoothly alongside the High Law Meet. It was a delicate path, as the winds between the walls were strong and unpredictable. T’sha followed but had to flap clumsily to keep herself from being brushed against the painted-shell wall.

“I have not envied you these past hours, Ambassador.” Z’eth whistled sympathetically. “It is hard during your first term, especially if your first term is a historic one.” One of the arched corridor mouths opened behind them, but Z’eth wheeled around, dipping under the corridor instead of entering it T’sha followed her into the shallow, irregular tunnel underneath the real corridor, a little surprised.

Z’eth drifted close, her wings spread wide. Her words brushed across T’sha’s muzzle. “You needn’t worry about the vote. Your quiet promises and the work Ca’aed has done with Gaith have been most impressive. I have spoken where I can. Between us all we have turned the flow. You’ll have your appointment.”

T’sha nearly deflated with relief. At the same time she was conscious of Z’era’s steady gaze on her. Despite the promises she had already made, she still owed the senior ambassador, and it was a debt that would need to be paid before long.

T’sha resolved not to worry about that now. “Thank you again, Ambassador Z’eth.”

“You are welcome. I will see you in the voting chamber.” Z’eth lifted herself to the corridor mouth and disappeared inside.

T’sha floated where she was for a moment, remaining in place more because she was in a calm than from actual effort.

They had towed Gaith’s corpse encased in its quarantine blanket into Ca’aed’s wake. The rotting had so deformed it that it looked less like a city than an engineer’s experiment gone hideously wrong. Its people worked on it diligently, sampling and analyzing and salvaging, but it would have taken a thicker skin than T’sha’s not to feel the despair in them. It had taken Gaith a handful of hours to die. Who knew which village, which city, might be next?