Quiet Invasion (43 page)

She took his hand in hers. “Because we’re being human, and some of us aren’t very good at that.” She stroked the back of his hand with her palm, a gentle rhythm, distracting him from the swirl of his own thoughts with the touch of her warm skin. “If we give into the belief that we are somehow better than the general run of people, it’s going to chew us up and spit us out. That belief kills something vital, because as soon as you start believing you’re better, you have to start proving everybody else is inferior. It makes you crazy.”

“How would you know?” he joked tiredly.

“When I was on Earth, I went to the Baghdad ruins. Did you?”

Michael shook his head. “But you told me about them.” Through her memories he saw the rubble, the dust, the rats, and the starving dogs nosing around the dust-gray skulls. He smelled the empty smell of desert encroachment and heard her whisper, “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”

“So I came back, to the world with the edges and the boundaries and its own history and Grandma Helen to make sure we never went crazy like human beings are wont to do from time to time.” She shook her head. “Wrong again.”

Michael let his head fall back until he was staring at the ceiling. “What do I do, Jolynn?”

“Your very best, my love,” she said, enfolding him again in her arms. “Your very best.”

C
A’AED FIRST BECAME AWARE
of the wrongness as an itch. A small nerve bundle at the base of one of its lower northwest sails (half-furled now to keep the course smooth and steady) itched, not painfully but persistently. Ca’aed concentrated on the patch. The air around it tasted fine. A silent command sent a runner to the spot to ingest a few cells and compare them with the healthy patterns it held inside. Normally, Ca’aed would have just had the itch soothed by a caretaker, but times were dangerous now and caution was indicated.

Another itch, this one deep and nagging in Ca’aed’s digestive veins. A small cramp formed around the itch.

Worry stroked Ca’aed’s mind. What caretakers were in that area? Ca’aed felt and Ca’aed looked.

“Indenture T’elen,” said Ca’aed. “A review of the digestive veins near you. There is a break in flow.”

T’elen was responsive and competent. She bore her indenture well. Ca’aed tried to take care of its indentures, make their servitude easy, but some could not flow with their service. It understood, but it needed indentured and free people to live, as the people needed their city. All had to work together. Life served life.

Ca’aed watched T’elen as she located the swelling in the vein. T’elen smelled it carefully, touched it gently, checked with the interior antibodies, injected an anti-inflammatory, which eased the cramp but not the itch, and removed some cells and antibodies from the needle into a microcosm of her own design. Ca’aed knew T’elen hoped to make some promises based on the new microcosms to shorten her indenture and felt strangely pleased that its discomfort might help prove their worth.

A sharp spark of pain cut through Ca’aed’s primary thoughts. The city isolated the spot. One of the sensor roots that tasted and tested the canopy to find the best harvest points. A blister swelled painfully on the outer skin, squeezing the pores closed and pinching the delicate papillae.

Worry pressed harder against Ca’aed’s consciousness. It pulled out from several conversations with citizens and speakers and put as much of the traffic on its own behavior as it could. Ca’aed withdrew its thoughts into its own body that stretched across miles of wind and tried to understand what was happening.

Muscles contracted smoothly, hearts circulated the gases and chemicals, timed the electrical pulses, intestines filtered wastes, its own and its peoples, veins guided potentiated and unpotentiated neurochemical flows, and pores regulated diffusion. All good, all smooth, all as it should be, except there, and there and there….

Ca’aed looked out onto the body of Gaith behind its quarantine blankets, and worry blossomed into fear.

Ca’aed found its chief engineer in the refresher of his private home with D’cle, who was one of Ca’aed’s adopted citizens and the chief’s companion-wife.

Another cramp, this one along a muscle for one of the upper southwest stabilizers. The muscle contracted involuntarily and the stabilizer wavered.

“Engineer T’gen,” said Ca’aed through his headset. “Alert. I am ill. I repeat, I am…”

Pain! It lanced up the sensor roots, straight into Ca’aed’s primary cortex. Blisters, dozens of them, popping out of the skin like a burning fungus. Pain, wrongness, illness, pain…

The pain ebbed for a moment, and Ca’aed was aware that T’gen was calling all the engineers and indentures via their headsets. Ca’aed mustered its resources and tracked them down, circulating the call with its own voices. It routed images of the affected areas to the research houses and tracked the response. T’gen flew fast into the deep crevices and chambers near the center of Ca’aed’s body, where the main antibody generators lay. The required varieties were not getting released; new growth might have to be facilitated.

Below, indentureds and engineers numbed the pained roots and began treating the blisters with steroid compounds. Relief blew through Ca’aed and opened its mind up again. It was able to alert the surrounding traffic that there would be interruptions, that all should return to the home ports. It found the district speakers, let them know what was happening and that it was all being attended to, but alerted them to keep in contact with the city and each other. Ca’aed set some of its voices in reserve, just for the speakers.

Now, inventory the position and health of the sails and stabilizers.
Along with waste disposal, those were key to comfort of the Kan Ca’aed. They were near a living highland cluster, and pockets of warm air would cause unpredictable currents necessitating thousands of small adjustments, and everything had to be in health.

Ca’aed felt the first patch of gray rot blossom on its skin, and it took all the strength of centuries for the city not to scream.

Vee yawned hugely as she stepped, dried and dressed, out of the shower cubicle. A mug of opaque black tea appeared in front of her. The mug was attached to a hand, which had an arm, on the end of which was Josh.

“My hero,” she said fervently. Grasping the mug in both hands she took a huge gulp, almost scalding her tongue. “Ahhh,” she sighed blissfully. “Is she out there?”

“As always.” Josh waved toward the front window. There was the holotank and the People’s display device, which Vee had come to think of as “the holobubble.” Next to them, waiting patiently on her perches, sat T’sha.

At first, D’seun had spoken to them, along with T’sha. The ambassadors were always accompanied by at least three others who were all called “engineers” and seemed to be responsible for looking after the kite and the translators, as well as making sure their imagers were holding up.

After the third day, however, it had just been T’sha.

Where are the others?
Vee had asked the first time she’d woken up and T’sha had been out there alone.

A compromise has been reached,
T’sha said.
D’seun has left me with the translators while he returns to speak to our…wait…colleagues.
T’sha still had to pause frequently to argue with her translator on interpretation. At first, Vee thought T’sha had meant that figuratively, but now she knew better. The things controlling the holobubble were, in some way, alive.

Why did you need to compromise on that?
Vee had asked.

T’sha had inflated, just a little, a gesture Vee had come to learn meant a mild emotion, such as annoyance. A full inflation was full emotion, such as anger or happiness. Vee wondered if they played poker on Home.

It is politics,
T’sha had told her,
and I think I should not discuss that yet.

You have politics too, do you?
asked Vee.

Yes, we decidedly have politics too.

I’m sorry.

T’sha deflated, sinking, and causing her crest to flutter around her wings.
So am I.

T’sha’s engineers had rigged her what Vee understood was their version of a tent—a couple of balloons floating up near the cloud line, where T’sha was most comfortable. They were held in place by long brown tethers that appeared to have rooted themselves to the ground.

It turned out that the People didn’t sleep. Every few hours, T’sha would vanish to “refresh,” a physical activity that Vee couldn’t quite make out but seemed to combine meditation and afternoon tea. Each trip took about an hour. Except for that, T’sha was always there and ready to talk.

Mostly it was Vee who talked back. They talked about T’sha’s older brother, who seemed to be either a contracts lawyer or a court recorder, and about her little sisters, who were still in school. They talked about Vee’s five siblings, and her parents and grandparents back home, and about the costs and problems of caring for a family, especially when you were the one with the most resources. They talked about marriage as a basis for the family structure, and it turned out T’sha was expecting to have several marriages arranged for her all at once, which Vee found delightfully practical. She had a hard time explaining courtship, romance, love, and individual, serial monogamy. T’sha thought it sounded like a lot of work.

They talked about seeing the stars, which T’sha had done only once in her life. She was fascinated to hear about living in a world where you could see them every night. They talked about cities, and Vee was stunned to hear T’sha speak about hers with the same words she used to talk about her family or her future lovers, until Vee remembered and quoted some old Sandburg poems about Chicago and New York. T’sha was fascinated by the poetry, and soon Vee was reading her Keats, Angelou, Shakespeare, Dickenson, and all the haiku she could dredge up. In return, T’sha told Vee stories of the ancient Teacher-Kings and riddles that had no answers, to which Vee replied with some Lewis Carroll and then had to explain what ravens and writing desks actually were….

And on and on and on. They showed each other pictures of their worlds like proud grandparents showing off images of the latest addition to the family. Thanks to Josh putting himself through serious sleep deprivation, the humans had added two new lasers to their projector and they now had full color capabilities. T’sha asked Vee to show her things that were beautiful, and Vee did her best—great buildings, fine statues, forests, the Grand Canyon, and then she found that many times she had to explain what was beautiful about them.

T’sha showed her Ca’aed, the canopy, the clouds thick with things that might have been fish and might have been birds, and Vee did not have to be taught that these were beautiful.

For everything she learned, Vee was left with a thousand more questions. It felt like the only thing she knew for sure was that she liked this winged person who flew through a world that would kill Vee dead, and still had brothers and sisters and a home she loved, and a wicked sense of humor.

It was dizzying. It was magnificent. It was exhausting. Vee slept like the dead at the end of her shifts and was only vaguely aware of what else was going on in the scarab.

Vee snagged a piece of toast off the breakfast table, earning a dirty look from Sheila, whom she smiled at as she breezed by. She plunked herself into the copilot’s chair, toast in her mouth and tea in her hand.

Good morning, T’sha,
she typed, one-handed.

Good luck, Vee.
Vee had quickly given T’sha her nickname after they had established that the long form gave the People’s translator trouble.

T’sha seemed agitated this morning. Her body shrank and expanded as if she were breathing heavily. She shifted her weight on the perch that had been set up for her, and her wings twitched even though they were folded neatly along her back.

Is there something wrong?
typed Vee.

Politics,
replied T’sha.
We are on the verge of an important poll in the High Law Meet. Vee, I have worked on a scene I wish to show you. Something of Home. When you have seen it, I will ask you some questions and I will then take your answers back to the Law Meet. Will you watch?

Of course.
She wanted to add, “I’m all eyes,” but she wasn’t sure what T’sha would make of the metaphor.

T’sha’s words faded, leaving the bubble clear and empty for a moment. Then a blur of color filled the bubble like smoke. The blur resolved itself and Vee saw another Venus.

But this one had life.

The bubble showed her an island made up of swollen roots and leaves covered with translucent gold and silver blisters. Green tendrils that might have been vines or blades of grass waved in the wind. Light, white feathers protruded from clusters of seeds, or maybe they were little mushrooms. They all hooked together as if hanging on for dear life. A nearly spherical slug crawled along one of the ash-colored branches only to get sucked up by something that looked like a cross between a jellyfish and a kingfisher.

This is the canopy, right?
asked Vee.

Yes,
came T’sha’s answer.
The canopy is below the clear. It is a complex tangle of life which, with the living highlands, supplies all the nutrients that we need to live and thrive. The plants intermingle and grow out from each other creating, what…wait, islands of vegetation that support both fliers and runners, which live on the canopy as you do on the crust and never lift themselves from it.

Vee glanced up at T’sha, trying to find words for the sheer wonder of what she saw, but T’sha was deflated on her perch, smaller than Vee had ever seen her, so small that her sparkling gold skin hung in wrinkles and folds around her frame. She was gazing at the image in the holobubble.

This is a construction from old records,
read the text.
This was what we think it might have looked like several thousand years ago when the canopy was little more than loose islands floating on the wind. This is what it looks like now.

A solid, verdant carpet, green and gold, red and blue, and brown. Broad, bubblelike leaves reached up into the wind from a solid mat of intertwined roots. A series of six-legged, what? Reptiles? Or birds? The local equivalent of chickens, maybe? Whatever they were, they picked their way between the leaves, sticking their beaks into bubbles here and there and draining them dry. But large patches of this field, with its one kind of “bird,” were twisted black or limp brown.