Quiet Invasion (30 page)

“Haven’t exactly needed to, have you?” Helen looked at her spreadsheets. “People have been waving money in your face.”

“It’s a nice change,” admitted Grace. “For all of us.”

“And you’ve been keeping your people busy spending it.” Helen touched a key and a new set of records appeared on her desk screen. “They’ve been logging in a lot of scarab time as well.”

“Oh, yes. I’ve got Kevin Cusmanos yammering at me for being too hard on his babies and his pilots.” She saw Helen’s look and raised her free hand. “Okay, I admit it I’ve been pushing. But I’ve got no idea how long the largesse is going to last. I finally have the chance to make my case and be taken seriously. I wanted to move on it.”

Helen nodded. She understood that feeling all too well. “I’ve just got to keep on top of what’s good for Venera, Grace. Our whole colony’s on the line here.”

Grace shook her head. “You’ve been listening to Bennet too long, Helen. C.A.C.’s not going to take it away from us for a set of proto-proteins and a hole in the ground. The yewners have got better things to do.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Helen fervently. She blanked her desk. “It all looks good, Grace. Thanks for your patience.”

“Not a problem.” Grace stood up and pitched the remains of her coffee and the cup into the appropriate chutes. “I take it I’m dismissed.”

“Until the next press call.” Helen gave her a small smile, and Grace returned it. Helen touched a key to open the door for her.

Grace walked out but paused in the threshold and turned around. “By the way, Helen, it wasn’t me.”

Helen frowned. “It wasn’t you, what?”

“Who’s been talking to the yewners.” Grace’s smile was sly, like someone who knew they’d made a stellar move in a difficult game. “If I were you, I’d bring the subject up with Michael Lum.”

Then she did leave. The door shut, and Helen sat there, paralyzed.

Michael? Michael talked to the U.N. without talking to her? Ridiculous. Michael wouldn’t even think…

No, Michael would think. It was the one thing Michael could be absolutely counted on to do. It was one of the reasons she and Ben had picked him for the board when the slot opened up.

But without talking to her?

Listen to me, will you. Sitting in my throne room wondering who’s just stabbed me in the back. A little wind-up Caesar.
Helen’s head sank slowly to her hands.
Has it really come to that?

She’d seen it coming, the money crisis that lay at the root of every question she’d had to ask during the whole long, aching day. More than a year ago, she’d seen the trends and had known a storm was brewing. She’d told no one on Venera.

That was probably a mistake. But she hadn’t wanted anyone to worry. She hadn’t wanted to disturb anyone’s work.

To be honest, she hadn’t wanted anyone to leave.

Instead, during her yearly stump trip to Mother Earth, she’d made a side visit to U.N. City and went to see Yan Su.

They’d been in a windchime park. The salty ocean breeze blew through the miniature trees and rang bells representing every republic, from mellow brass Tibetan bells to weirdly tuned Monterey pipes. They sat on one of the autoform benches, ignoring the security cameras that trained themselves automatically on Su as a member of The Government.

The sun was pleasantly hot on the back of Helen’s neck as she told Su what was happening—the shrinking pure-research budgets, never huge to begin with, the waning enthusiasm for corporate charity, the inability of the hundreds of tiny republics to support major research grants for their people.

“I hate to say this.” She’d smiled tiredly at her friend. “But if nothing changes, we’re going to be asking for a government handout next year.”

The wind caught a lock of Su’s white hair and whipped it across her forehead. Su brushed it back under her scarf. Most people who went in for body-mod had themselves made artificially younger. Su, on the other hand, had herself aged. She looked about seventy-five, but Helen knew she was only a little over sixty. It had to do with respect and camouflage, Su said. A number of her influential colleagues came from backgrounds that respected age. The ones who didn’t, underestimated her. Both attitudes could be extremely useful.

“What kind of handout were you thinking of, Helen?”

Just a couple of old women sitting on a bench and discussing the future often thousand people.
Helen shrugged. “I can show you our budgets. We’re going to need between a third and a half of our operating expenses for, say, five years. By then the slump should be over and we should be able to tap into our normal sources.”

“You want a loan?”

“I want a grant, but I probably can’t have one. So, yes, I’ll take a loan.”

Su sat there for a long moment. Helen watched her face carefully. She looked tired, and, despite the fact that Helen knew most of the lines and pouches were artificial, she really did look old. Something inside Helen stirred uneasily. The last time she’d seen Su look like this was right after her husband had left. Correction, after her husband had cleaned out their bank account to have himself made back into a thirty-something and run away with a professional wife and blamed Su for it.

He’d married someone who was supposed to have a future, he said, not someone who was going to be stuck in the same dead-end bureaucratic appointment for the rest of their lives, nursemaiding miners and importers when there was important work to be done. Oh, and incidentally, I’ve decided I want to get genetic rejuvenation past the 120 years everyone’s guaranteed, so I’ve signed over my reproduction rights. The boy’s all yours.

Helen couldn’t even imagine what that had been like. Su, born and raised in U.N. City, had gone the expected route. She had a career of government service, a family of her own, and a host of people and causes to fill her life to the brim. How did she focus? How did she choose what was important? Helen knew it was how most people lived, but sometimes she wondered how anyone managed when they’d given their heart to more than one thing.

“Helen,” Su broke in on her thoughts. “I don’t think the money’s going to be there.”

Helen smiled. “I think we’ve had this conversation before.”

“We have, several times.” Su leaned her shoulder against the bench’s back. The wind blew her bronze scarf over her shoulder. “But this time its different.”

“How?”

Su turned her gaze to the chimes swinging in the breeze. Their random music filled the park but did nothing to lift the chill settling over Helen’s heart. “Call it a narrowing of horizons, Helen. Call it a selfishness born of the fact that we can now live three hundred years all on our own and we worry less about leaving something behind that will truly last.”

“Can I call it a bunch of cheapskate bureaucrats?” asked Helen lightly.

“You can, if it makes you feel better.” Su’s smile quickly faded. “But you know as well as I do that since Bradbury—”

“No.” Helen pushed herself upright. “No, you do not get to blame this on Bradbury. Bradbury was twenty years ago. Bradbury has nothing to do with the way things are now.”

“I wish that were true. For your sake, I truly do. But it’s not only generals who are always relighting the last war. Bureaucrats do it too.”

No, No. You are not saying this. I refuse to accept this.
“And do those bureaucrats really want ten thousand refugees on their doorstep?”

Su spread her hands helplessly. “The C.A.C. doesn’t see you as refugees, Helen. They see you as misfits. You all have citizenship in your parents’ republics. They have to take you, and then you’re their problem, not the U.N.’s.”

All around them wind rang the bells, sending their music out into a world that didn’t care about the work of her life or the futures of her people. “You can’t expect me to be content with this. I can’t just let Venera die.”

“I expect them to and you stone-cold dead with your fingers wrapped around a support girder,” said Su, perfectly seriously. “They’ll have to cut you out of there.”

Helen’s mouth twitched as if she didn’t quite have the energy to smile. “The money’s there someplace,” she said, because it was so much easier than even contemplating the alternative. “We just have to find it. You’re not going to just hang me out to dry, are you?”

“Never, Helen.”

Helen had been right about something, anyway. The money had been out there. All it had taken was the Discovery to prime the pump. For a moment, everything looked like it was going to be all right. But now, now…everything might be about to change again if the U.N. decided the new rumors were true, if they decided she wasn’t handling this right, if Michael said the wrong thing.

Helen stepped up to her window and stared out across the farms. Drones, humans, and ducks made their way between the lush plant life, each with their own mission of the moment. Each with something immediate to do. She was the only one standing still on the whole farming level.

She felt alone. Deeply and profoundly alone, as if she’d lost the feeling for the world around her, the world she’d built from the first dollar and the first strut. She stood in the middle of it, and yet it was somewhere else. Somewhere she wasn’t sure she knew how to get to.

Don’t be an idiot.
She shook herself and returned to her desk.
You have too much work to do to get depressive. First, you have to decide what you’re going to do about Michael.

She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to call him in right now and demand to know what he thought he was doing, find out how he could betray Venera, betray her, like this. How could he not know what this could lead to? How could he not realize what the U.N. would do with whatever he told them?

The sudden memory of Grace’s eyes stopped her. That little smile, that knowledge of possessing a winning move.

Grace had known what this news would do to her. Grace had wanted this. She had wanted to turn Helen against Michael, to send her running off after a traitor, off after some one who was just doing his job but wounding her ego….

Grace had been sure it would work, and it almost had.

Helen realized her hands were shaking.
Oh God, am I that forgone?

She got up, went into her little private lavatory, pulled a cup of water from the sink, and drank it in three swallows. Then she met her own gaze in the mirror for a long moment.

Am I that far gone?

Almost, Helen. Almost, but not quite.

It was a good face, a strong face, a well-meaning face that had worked so hard and had almost lost its way. God, had come so close….

Helen removed her scarf and pulled all the pins out of her hair. The mane tumbled down over her shoulders, a waterfall of white and gray. With long, competent fingers she twisted it into a fresh knot and one by one, slid the pins back to their places. She laid the scarf back and pinned that firmly down, too.

“Desk,” she said as she returned to her work area. “Locate Michael Lum.”

After a pause, Michael’s voice came back through the intercom. “I’m here Helen.”

“Where’s here?”

“Admin. Security. My desk, specifically. Do you want me to come up there?”

“No. I’ll come down. Do me a favor though. Find Ben and your friend Bowerman. We need to talk.”

“I’m on it, Helen.”

“Desk. Close connection.”

I will deal with this. We will all get through this, and if this isn’t the permanent solution I dreamed it would be, then I’d better find that out now, hadn’t I?

Helen strode out the door.

“Hi,” said Angela Cleary as the hatch swung back. “Can I borrow a cup of sugar?”

Vee chuckled from her seat in the kitchen nook. It was strange seeing someone emerge from the airlock without a suit on. But the two scarabs had backed up against each other in a clunky but effective docking procedure that preceded what Terry called the “gab and grill.” It happened at dinner every other day and allowed the passengers to circulate and talk about their work face-to-face. It also allowed the crews to sit with their friends and talk about the passengers, Vee was certain.

Angela was the first one over, but she was followed quickly by Lindi Manzur, who hugged her Troy happily and fell into talking with him about a theory of universal curiosity as a mainstay of sentient life that they’d been cooking up together. It might even be a good theory. Pity it wasn’t going to come to anything. Isaac and Julia made a beeline for the fridge and the mango juice, which they both seemed to live off. Josh grabbed Bailey Heathe, the copilot for Scarab Fourteen, briefly by the hand as Bailey brushed past to the pilot’s compartment to catch up with Kevin and Adrian.

Angela moved out of the way of the new arrivals and came to stand over the kitchen table. Vee saluted her with a plastic cup of tea.

“Dr. Hatch,” said Angela, her voice low and formal. “I was hoping we could talk. There’s some incidents in your background check that I wanted to go over….”

Vee pulled on an expression of surprise. “Yeah, sure.” She downed the last of her tea in one lukewarm gulp and stood up. “I think the couch compartment’s empty.”

It was. Vee touched the lock on the door. Now anyone who wanted to come in would at least have to knock.

“You don’t think anybody believed that, do you?” For the past week they had been doing most of their talking via e-mail or the occasional comments on gab-and-grill nights. But now that the investigation was in full swing upstairs as well as down here, Angela was becoming visibly less patient with sporadic communication.

“People have a tendency to believe the Blues are after them personally.” Angela shrugged. “So they’re not all that surprised to hear we’re after somebody else.” She picked her way unerringly to Vee’s couch and perched on the edge. “Show me what you’ve got?”

“Just simulations so far.” Vee snatched up a pair of used socks off her couch and stuffed them into the storage bin overhead. Then she sat down cross-legged with her case open on her lap and switched on the back screen so Angela could see what was displayed. “But they’re based on reality. I found all the drones you’re going to see in Venera’s current inventory.”

Vee had been expanding her image library every day since she’d gotten to Venera, so the simulations actually hadn’t taken all that long to put together, once she’d tracked down what she thought of as the component parts.