Quiet Invasion (58 page)

Then nothing happened.

Su looked down from the stars. Below her balcony, she could see a familiar figure crossing the deck.

She gripped the wrought-iron railing and watched Sadiq Hourani present himself to the door of her building for identification and admittance. The swish of the door was lost under the roar of the ocean waves, but she did see him enter.

Be here any moment.

She felt strangely calm. She had a fair idea what had brought him to her door this late at night without calling ahead, but somehow she could not get herself to fear it.

Perhaps I believe I deserve whatever comes.

She walked back into her living room. The room was comfortable, even a little luxurious with its thick, Persian carpet, the carved tables, and vases of fresh flowers. The balcony’s etched glass doors glided shut behind her. As they did, the front door chimed, and its panel showed her Sadiq waiting in the hallway with his endless patience.

Su took a deep breath. “Door. Open.”

The door did as it was told, and Sadiq walked into the foyer. He looked tired, she thought, and a little sad.

Well, they had been friends for a long time, and this had to be something of a disappointment for him.

“Good evening, Su,” he said, walking forward. “I’m sorry for calling so late—”

“There’s no need for you to apologize to me.” She waved his words away. “Won’t you sit down?” Su gestured toward one of her low, faux leather sofas. “I don’t see why we should stand on ceremony after all this time. Can I send for some coffee?” It was astonishing how easily she fell into the hostess role. Then again, she’d had a great deal of practice at play acting.

“No, thank you.” Sadiq remained standing. Su smoothed the hem of her long, rose tunic under her as she sat. She looked up at him, not weighing, calculating, or judging, just waiting to see what he had to say. She always tried to avoid planning her next move until she had all the required facts in her hands. That was one of the things that had made her so good at what she did and helped keep her at her post for so long.

Sadiq sighed, and she saw actual indecision on his face. She imagined he wanted to be angry, to let righteous rage fill him up and carry him through this, but it wouldn’t come.

“Why did you do it, Su?”

She raised her eyebrows and curled up the corner of her mouth. “I have a busy schedule, Sadiq. Which ‘it’ are you talking about?” She thought she knew, but she wanted to be certain.

Sadiq bowed his head and folded his hands behind his back. He looked at the pattern of the carpet, burgundy and gold, so many knots all tied together to make their own pattern. A nice metaphor. “I’ve been having an extremely interesting chat with a feeder named Frezia Cheney, who let slip some facts about a conversation she had with your son, Quai. Quai, in turn, told me you asked him to set up a stream corporation called Biotech 24 so it could donate money to Grace Meyer, who, we now know, was the brains and funding behind the falsified Discovery on Venus.” He looked at her. She sat very still, trying to keep her face impassive. She mostly succeeded, but she felt her eyes widen slightly.

“How did you get Quai to talk to you?” she asked softly.

“I told him about your surveillance on his private mail.”

“Oh.” Su dropped her gaze. So here was the payment for that. Her heart swelled with love and sorrow until her entire chest tightened, but she couldn’t blame her son. No, she could not blame him at all.

“There is even an implication”—Sadiq moved just a little closer—“that you and some of the Venerans have known about the aliens for years.” He spread his hands, appealing to her. “Why, Su? What were you doing?”

Su smoothed the fabric of her tunic across her knees. She reached out and minutely adjusted the small jade-dragon carving on her coffee table.

“I thought,” she said, drawing her hand back but not lifting her gaze from the sinuous reptile, “that I was creating an unprecedented opportunity for the colonies to gain political capital.”

Sadiq sank onto the sofa, facing her. “Tell me,” he said.

She touched the spines on the dragon’s back, gingerly, feeling their needle sharp tips dent the skin of her fingertips.

“Grace Meyer sent me an agitated message three years ago. It seems that while searching for her UV absorber, she found a satellite photo of what looked like an alien artifact. She was telling me rather than Helen Failia, because she did not like Dr. Failia and wanted to go over her head.”

“Do you know the source of this feud?”

Su smiled thinly. “It seems Dr. Failia was unwilling to actively seek funding for Dr. Meyer’s projects. Dr. Failia was afraid that searching for life, which had failed so many times before in so many more likely places, would make Venera look silly and spoil its ability to get serious funding and serious attention. Dr. Meyer never forgave her.” Su shook her head. “And we think the in-fighting in the legislature is bad.”

“So, she gave you this photo and told you her theories—” Sadiq prompted.

“And I asked her to keep them both quiet for a while.” Su pushed at the dragon so that its focus shifted from looking directly at her to looking at the wall past her right shoulder. “At first, I didn’t believe it could possibly be what it looked like, and I also did not want public ridicule to fall on Venera.

“Grace said she would do no such thing, however. She was tired of having her work suppressed, she said. She was ready to sign off in a huff, when the idea struck me.” She rubbed her palms together.

“Suppose there were aliens on Venus. Suppose they made contact, not with the government of Earth, but with Venera base. Venera would have the chance to do what no one had ever done. It would have a first that could not be taken away from it. A colony with a contact that not even the C.A.C. could take away, no matter how hard they tried. It might even lead to a successful independence bid. One without bloodshed this time.” She looked up at him. The sadness had deepened on his face. “The C.A.C. is never going to let the colonists go. Their status as second-class citizens has become too ingrained and in some ways too convenient. I came to believe that to get full civil and human rights restored would take a revolution, but not a bloody one, not like Fuller’s.” She smiled softly. “If anyone could make it work, it would be Helen Failia, I was sure. Her people were so loyal to her.

“I added in the fact that Grace wasn’t going to keep quiet. She wanted her recognition, and she wanted it now, and I started getting ideas.

“I suggested we create what became the Discovery.” She turned her hands this way and that, examining the backs, the nails, the deeply lined palms. “It was brilliant, actually. I was very proud. It served to focus public attention on the colonies. It raised all sorts of questions about Terran rule from places other than Bradbury, and it got the scientific world to take Grace Meyer seriously. Grace found help from some of Venera’s many underfunded departments, and I found there were plenty of places between Earth and Venus to hide the money they used for the construction.” She smiled at her hands. “Actually, except for gold for the laser, it was quite an economical operation.”

“I see,” said Sadiq.

“It also got the Venerans actually looking for aliens. I felt if the news came from anybody on the base other than Grace Meyer, Helen would have an easier time of things.”

Sadiq turned away. He paced slowly over to her balcony doors and looked out onto the night.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” asked Su.

He shook his head slowly. “So many years of fighting. So many years of a single goal in mind—equal rights for the colonies. It blotted out everything else, even the stunning wonder of meeting another form of life, other minds from other worlds. Everything was just there to be used. Nothing could be left alone to just happen.” He turned around and his eyes were shining a little too brightly. “I’d hoped you were above that.”

“I’m sorry.” Su clasped her hands together. “What do we do about this?”

“I don’t think there’s anything else to do.” Sadiq turned back toward her. “The story will be breaking soon, and your attempt at a bloodless coup killed two men. I’m sure that will keep you busy enough.”

Su bowed her head. “I am sorry, Sadiq. It looked like the only way to break the C.A.C.’s hold on the colonies.”

“I’m sure it did.” He paused. “Do you know, Veronica Hatch tells me that one of the People’s ambassadors sold herself into slavery to save us all.”

“Did she?” murmured Yan Su. “What a fine thing to do for strangers.”

“Yes.” He looked down at her. “I wonder if we’ll ever be able to show such a fine thing to them.”

He left her there and walked out the door. Su sat where she was for a while. Then she rose and walked back onto the balcony to breathe the salty night air and look up at the sky. She did not know, after all, how much longer these privileges would be hers.

Daylight had dwindled to a patch of gray on the horizon. The gentle yellow streetlights had come out, lighting the deck and dimming the stars overhead.

Su turned her face to the evening star.

“Thank you,” she whispered, hoping somehow her words would touch the stranger who had saved them all. “Thank you.”

T
HE AUTHOR WOULD LIKE
to thank Timothy B. Smith for his expert technical advice, Laura Woody, who knew about the yeast, and Dr. David Grinspoon, whose
Venus Revealed
she consulted frequently during the writing of this book. She would also like to thank Betsy Mitchell and Jaime Levine, whose patient work made this a better book, and Karen Everson, who was there for the crisis.

Sarah Zettel is the critically acclaimed author of more than twenty novels, spanning the full range of genre fiction. Her debut novel,
Reclamation
, won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Her second release,
Fool’s War
, was a 1997 New York Times Notable Book, and the American Library Association named
Playing God
one of the Best Books for Young Adults of 1999. Her novel
Bitter Angels
won the Philip K. Dick Award for best science fiction paperback in 2009. Her latest novel,
Dust Girl
, was named as one of the best young adult books of the year by both
Kirkus Reviews
and the American Library Association. Zettel lives in Michigan with her husband, her rapidly growing son, and her cat, Buffy the Vermin Slayer.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2000 by Sarah Zettel

Cover design by Mimi Bark

978-1-4804-2218-6

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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