Quiet Invasion (40 page)

“Now may not be the time to get fancy,” remarked Helen.

“Now is exactly the time to get fancy,” shot back Vee. “One picture, one thousand words, you know? How are we doing down there, Josh?”

“It’s green and go in here.” His voice was both hushed and strained. Vee could practically feel his excitement vibrating through the connection.

The aliens flapped and hovered around the new scene shining in the holotank. They came within centimeters of its quartz surface but never actually touched it. Their control was incredible. Part of Vee’s mind was already designing the movement codes, trying to work out how to show them to the rest of humanity.

The words in the alien’s bubble changed.

Are you ambassadors? Do you speak for the New People?

Vee looked quizzically at Helen.

She puffed out her cheeks. Vee could almost hear her rehearsing different answers. “I don’t think we do.” She sounded slightly disappointed. “But we know who does.”

We call ourselves human beings. No, we ourselves do not lead, but we would like a message to take to our leaders.
“Since I don’t think we can take them—” added Vee.

“You can be tactful after all,” murmured Helen. “I’m impressed, Vee. Would you do me a favor, please, and get the big question out of the way?”

“Right.” Vee knew exactly what she was talking about. She typed and the screen responded.

What are you doing here?

We serve life,
answered the aliens, no, the People.
Life helps life.

This time Vee didn’t bother to check with Helen. She just typed.

We don’t understand.

Three of the People had retreated from the screen. They perched in the contraption of sails, struts, and cables that had brought them here. It looked like a cross between a box kite and the old Wright brothers’ airplane. Smallest, Ambassador D’seun, etc., and Crimson-and-Ivory remained by the bubble, which probably meant Crimson-and-Ivory was Ambassador T’sha, etc.

The ambassadors seemed to be having a discussion. They leaned close together, muzzles almost brushing each other. As they spoke, their bodies swelled and shrank. Was that their breathing? Or a way of showing emotion? Dominance maybe? Even this far down, where the light was gray instead of clear, they sparkled. The black lines on their bodies and muzzles stood out sharply. Maybe they were tattoos. Wouldn’t that be a good one? If what humans had in common with aliens was body art?

A decision seemed to have been reached. D’seun spoke to T’sha and then the screen. Their spherical screen relayed the words.

We wish only community and cohabitation with the life of this world.

“Oh, my,” murmured Vee. She typed.

You are colonizing?

D’seun pulled his muzzle back momentarily before he spoke again.

We do not know that word.

Vee considered a moment. Definitions had never been her strong suit. She was aware of someone standing close behind her, of warm breath on her ear. She typed.

You are moving People here? You are going to live here?

Yes.

“Oh, my.” Vee’s hands went suddenly cold.

Helen touched her shoulder. “I think it’s time to bring in the U.N.”

“Yeah,” said Vee slowly. “I think you might be right.”

“I’ll go back up with Scarab Ten.” Dr. Failia straightened up. “I’ll contact Mother Earth myself. Ms. Yan should be able to call together an emergency meeting with the C.A.C.”

Vee turned to look at her. “Shouldn’t this go straight to the Secretaries-General?”

“Bureaucracy will have its way.” Helen’s smile was humorless. Vee watched her eyes. She was calculating something, planning, working the variables. “It will get to them soon enough.”

“Whatever you say,” Vee said with a shrug. That was not her field, and she didn’t particularly want it to be. “What should we do here?”

Helen was silent for a moment. She watched the People, hovering like living kites out in what Vee knew Helen thought of as her world. “Keep them talking.”

“Dr. Lum gave me permission to visit the Cusmanoses,” said Grace to the security guard outside Kevin Cusmanos’s door. She held out the screen slip with Michael’s authorization and seal on it.

“Right, Dr. Meyer,” said the very thin, very brown man. “You can head on in.” He touched the override pad.

The suite door swished open. Kevin looked up, startled, from his seat at the dining table. Derek was sitting in a strangely forlorn-looking chair in front of where the desk used to be. They’d hauled all the communications equipment out in preparation to turn Kevin’s home into a cell. It had been Ben, of all people, who had talked Michael out of keeping them locked in Venera’s minuscule brig.

“They’re going to be manhandled by the yewners soon enough,” he’d argued. “Let’s at least let them wait for it in comfort.”

“Hello, Kevin. Hello, Derek.” Grace held up the pair of brown bottles she carried. “Brought you some beer.”

“Thanks.” Kevin got up to the take the bottles from her. He’d changed over the past week. It was as if the fire had gone out inside him, leaving behind nothing but cold resignation. Grace thought she knew the cause. Whatever he thought about the Discovery and how it came to be, Kevin believed heart and soul that he deserved to be punished for what had happened to Scarab Fourteen.

Grace turned her attention to Derek, who hadn’t moved since she came in.

“Hello, Derek,” said Grace again, gently.

Derek did not respond.

Kevin eyed her uneasily, but she waved him away. “It’s all right, Kevin. I don’t blame him. He’s angry.” Grace sighed. “I’m sorry you got caught up in this, Kevin.”

Kevin’s just slumped into his chair at the dining table. “It was my fault.”

She nodded. “Among others. We were all in danger. There was so much to lose…at the time it seemed like a good idea.”
If either of you knew how long, how hard I tried to find another way, you’d understand how desperate the situation really was. I tried everything else first. It was the only way.
“I got so damn tired of being ignored.”

“Ignored?” Derek looked up. Sudden, raw hatred filled his eyes. “That’s why you talked me into this? Because you didn’t want to be ignored?”

And you just didn’t want to lose your job, you spoiled child.
She didn’t say it. “Seems pretty stupid now that we’ve got real live aliens to talk to. No one’s going to give a damn that I spotted their traces first.”

“Well that’s just too bad,” growled Derek.

“Okay, Derek,” said Kevin wearily. “You can’t blame her for what you did.”

“The hell I can’t!” Derek snapped. He stabbed a finger at Grace. “It was her idea! If she hadn’t—”

Kevin stood up slowly. His brother matched him for height, but Kevin’s shoulders were far broader. He loomed over the smaller man. “You didn’t have to do one damn thing,” Kevin told him slowly. “She didn’t have a gun to your head. You did this, and I did this. We got caught, and Bailey Heathe got killed because of us!”

“Because of you,” grated Derek. “Don’t try to bring that one down on me!”

Grace stepped between them, putting her back to Kevin before he could react. “My lawyers will get you out of this,” she told Derek firmly. “You and your brother.”

“They’d better.” Derek didn’t take his gaze off his brother, but he backed up a few paces. “Because we are not going to rot in a jail on Mother Earth alone, understand me?”

“You will not go to jail.” Grace turned a little so she could see them both. “I’d better go. Kevin, try not to worry. It’ll all be okay.”

Kevin looked from Derek to her. “I hope you’re right, Dr. Meyer.”

Neither of them said good-bye. Grace walked out. Her stomach knotted up on her as she passed the guard stationed on the door and started down the busy residential corridor.

They would not go to prison. Grace watched her own feet as she headed for the stairs. They would drink the beer she’d brought, tonight, or perhaps tomorrow. They’d drain all the bottles contained.

Then, sometime within the next week, they’d die. By then they’d have eaten over a dozen meals and their buddies from the scarab crews would have brought them at least as many beers. The traces in their guts would make it appear that they had died of severe food poisoning. Her bottles would have long since been recycled and it would be next to impossible to say where the contagion had come from. The kitchens and food processors would have a bad week while they were turned upside down, but that couldn’t be helped.

Organic chemistry was useful for so many things.

No, Derek and Kevin would not go to jail. There was so much work to be done. No one would ignore her anymore; no one would tell her that her work might reflect badly on Venera as a whole. There was one person left who might connect Grace’s name to the fraud, but that one had so much to lose that she would not risk it. Grace was certain of that.

Grace lifted her head as she started up the stairs and found she could meet the gazes of the people she passed quite easily.

There was important work to do. She had to be free to do it.

B
EN PACED HIS OFFICE
, trying to be patient. He had one of the few private spaces on the administrative level. The dampeners in the walls meant he couldn’t hear the continual buzz and bustle going on outside. Sometimes he dropped them. He liked being around people. He did not like being shut up and alone, but there were things for which he needed privacy.

Like the transmission he was waiting for.

The office did have a real window, allowing him to see the cloudscape with its continual whorls and ripples and flashes of lightning. So different from Mars or the Moon. Those were static worlds. What motion there was, humans brought. Venus though…Venus was alive in its own right. It still had a beating heart under its volcanoes, and it still shifted and shrugged its crust, even without plate tectonics.

He could have spent his life studying this place. He could have given himself up to the world the way Helen had if there hadn’t been other considerations.

He glanced back at his gently humming desk. Anyone running a systems sweep would think he was busy processing satellite data with the new criteria of observing the aliens (Holy God, those aliens!) and their artifacts. What he was actually doing was looking for a transmission signature. When his scanner found it, the transmission would be routed straight to the desk without having to go through Venera’s usual exchanges and checks.

It wasn’t something he liked to do very often. Michael and Michael’s people were very good at what they did. Trying to get around their security measures was a chancy business at best.

Venera was alive with activity, speculation, and wonder. Everybody wanted their chance to go meet the neighbors. Michael was going to have to forcibly restrain Grace before long. They tried to tell her the board’s consensus was that there should be only a limited contact team. Just for now, of course, until a good understanding had been established with the People.

Ben shook his head. They couldn’t tell her the real reason only one scarab was being kept down there. He’d guessed at that reason and had told Helen his guess in private. Her silence had been enough to tell him he’d guessed correctly.

The Venerans needed to talk to the aliens. They needed as much information as they could get. Every bit of information they controlled was an edge on the C.A.C. But if anybody made a damning mistake, they needed to be able to say to the U.N., “It was your people who did that, not ours.”

For the first time in a long time, he’d agreed absolutely with Helen’s strategy.

His desk chimed. Ben was beside it in two long strides. The screen cleared and Frezia Cheney looked out at him.

“Paul.” It had been so long since he’d used that name on a regular basis that it felt as if she were talking to some stranger. “Your word’s been spread. Much to the chagrin of the yewners, may I add.” Mischief sparkled in her eyes for a moment and then faded away.

“I hate to have to say this, but no one else is even close to ready for a succession attempt, distractions or paradigm shifts notwithstanding. They’re going to have to let the chance pass. We’re feeling the loss of Fuller here. There’s no unifying voice anymore. There’s no one person to talk to.” She paused and shook her head. “The demo at the shipyard hasn’t even managed to unite the Lunars.”

Ben grimaced. That “demo” had been a stupid idea. When he’d caught a whiff of what was being planned, he—or Paul, rather—had protested to everyone he could and had been ignored.

But apparently he was not being ignored anymore. “I think uniting us is up to you, Paul. The only way the wave is going to rise is if Venera takes the place of Bradbury and makes the break. With an example to follow, the squabblers will be able to shut up and drive, if you see what I mean.” Her mouth twisted into an ironic smile, but her eyes still gleamed. “It’s not that men make history; history makes men. If you can show us the way, we can still free the worlds.”

The message faded out Ben, moving more on reflex than any conscious thought, wiped the file and the record of receipt. Then he released a search agent into the system to see if there were any ghosts or records he’d forgotten and wipe them too.

The only way this is going to work is if Venera takes the place of Bradbury and makes the break.
Ben sat back and ran one hand across his scalp.
If you can show us the way it can still happen.

If you can show us the way.

Alone? Venera alone? Without help, without friends; at least, without friends who had declared themselves. Once they broke, they could maybe count on Bradbury and probably Giant Leap.

But then came the problem, the old, old problem. Mother Earth still controlled the shipping between planets. The tacit threat had always been that if any colony tried to become self-governing, Earth would simply stop transports to and from the colony, isolating the world. No food, no spare parts, no replacement personnel, nothing. Even Bradbury with its mixed industry had felt the pinch after a while. How much worse would it be for Venera? Venera manufactured nothing but research reports. They could not survive alone.