Quiet Invasion

by Sarah Zettel

  Michael gently squeezed her fingertips. “Yeah, it feels like that. But—”

  “But nothing.” Jolynn dropped his hand down onto the desk and pushed her chair back. “You go looking where you need to look and you don’t come home until you’ve got the truth.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Michael pointed at her. “My wife is always telling me what to do, that’s what’s wrong.”

  “Divorce lawyer’s a com burst away,” she returned calmly. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

  Michael stood up, took her face in both hands, and kissed her gently. “I’ll be home for dinner.” He started gathering up the lunch litter.

  “Good.” Jolynn grabbed up the cups and dumped them both down the solids chute. “Chase has sociology homework. That’s your bailiwick.”

  “And while I am educating our youngest”—Michael used one of the spoons to send a few lettuce leaves down the organics chute and then dropped the spoon and the dishes into the solids chute—“what will you be doing?”

  “Going to a teacher conference with our oldest. Dean wants Chord in the fast track. I want to hear what Chord thinks.” Jolynn looked skeptical.

  Chord was eleven, just gearing up for adolescence and all its attendant delights. “He could do it, if he were willing to try.”

  “And with Chord that’s always the question, isn’t it?” Jolynn sighed and shook her head. “Well, what will be will be, and all that. I’ll see you tonight.” She gave him a parting kiss and sat back down. “Now, get out of here. Some of us have work to do.”

  Michael grinned at her as the door slid shut between them. Now he had it, all the reason he needed to do his job, as hard and unpleasant as it might get. He’d arrested friends before. He’d told hard truths, in public. He did it because he loved his home, his wife, his sons. This was his place and it was a good place, and he would not let anyone change that.

  Not even Grandma Helen.

  Yan Quai had planned on being early to the performance mosaic at Shake & Jake’s, but a customer had called with a last-minute order, and by the time he got out of the stream, got changed, caught the monorail, and paid his admission fee, he was an hour late and the place was jammed.

  Shake & Jake’s had been a warehouse or factory at some point. Now, it was a series of performance spaces. The cocktail and chat crowd circulated on catwalks, balconies, and platforms, looking down on the dancers and actors below. Each act had its own stage with a seating area bounded by sound-dampening screens so the music and dialogue couldn’t get out and the rumble of casual conversation couldn’t get in. The air smelled of clashing perfumes and spicy snacks.

  Quai leaned over the railing on one of the catwalks, watching a trio of French cirque-tradition performers in sparkling costumes giving an exhibition of slack-wire walking. To their left, a slender couple danced a sensuous and elaborate tango. To the right was the obligatory Shakespearean scene. He couldn’t hear, of course, but it looked like Macbeth and the witches. The audience seemed enchanted.

  Mari, you always do throw a good party.

  “Quai!”

  Quai turned toward the sound of his name. Marietta shouldered her way through the crowd.

  “Mari!” Quai hugged his friend and hostess. Marietta wore a scarlet sheath dress without any kind of head scarf at all. Her shoes were high-heeled pumps in a matching red, with ribbons that wrapped around her ankles. “What’s this? Going historical?”

  “Like it?” She twirled. Quai shook his head. Mari grimaced and smoothed the front of the dress down. “Yeah, well, actually, it’s uncomfortable as all creation. I can’t breathe and my feet are killing me. I’m not doing this again.” She returned her focus to Quai, and a cheerful expression covered her face again. “So, how’s your end of the revolution going?”

  Quai laughed. Mari’s direct approach to politics, and life in general, was legendary among her friends. “Slowly, slowly. There’s a lot of thought drifting around the stream that now is the time to be a still water and run deep and not give the yewners an excuse to come busting in.” No need to mention where that thought was coming from, of course.

  Mari leaned against the wall to take the weight off at least one of the killer shoes. “Yeah, I’ve been hearing that, but I don’t know. I’d feel a lot better if I knew what we were waiting for.”

  “Ah.” Quai held up one finger. “But we do know. We’re waiting for the yewners to be relieved that we didn’t kick up a fuss at the height of the Discovery brouhaha and for them to relax. Then it’s our turn.”

  “Mmmm.” Mari shifted her weight to the other foot. “I’m not entirely convinced, but I’ll take it under advisement. I like to know what the money I raise”—she swept her hand out to encompass the entire performance space—“is going toward.”

  “Same thing it’s always been going toward, Mari,” Quai assured her. “Finally returning full citizenship rights for the colonists.”

  All the colonies had suffered at the result of the Bradbury Rebellion. All colonists had a harder time getting seats on the U.N.-controlled shuttles that flew between Earth and the planets. They found it impossible to obtain licenses for starting manufacturing or shipping businesses. Their privacy was invaded more frequently, their taxes were higher, and not one of them had been allowed to hold an independent election in twenty years. Yes, they all suffered, except maybe the long-lifers in their resorts.

  Mari’s skeptical look did not entirely fade. She pushed herself away from the wall. “Speaking of colonists,” she said, looking away from Quai to scan the room, “there’s a feeder here who wants to talk to you.”

  “You let a feeder in here?” Quai was stunned. One of the other things Mari was famous for was her careful guest list.

  “Yes,” she answered calmly. “Frezia Cheney. Do you know her?”

  Quai thought. He subscribed to eight or nine shallow news services and hung around three or four of the deepwater ones. That made for a lot of names to forget. “I’ve heard of her,” he said finally. “A Lunar, isn’t she?”

  Mari nodded. “And she’s got a reputation for fair and ruthless reporting all across the stream. We could use a few more like her.” She touched his arm. “Just give her ten minutes, and I’ll pull you out.”

  “If she wants to talk about my relationship with my mother—” said Quai sternly.

  “She won’t, Quai, I promise.”

  Quai set his mouth in a straight line and favored Mari with one of his Grade A sour glares. Mari responded with a pitiful look that made the most of her big, brown eyes. Quai laughed and relented.

  “Okay.”

  Mari opened her mouth, but Quai pointed a finger at her. “Ten minutes, that’s it. After that, you come get me. I want to go see the cirque troupe, and I promised Eli we’d do some coordinating.”

  “I swear.” Mari held up her right hand to promise and grabbed Quai’s wrist with her left. “Come on.”

  Quai sighed inwardly and let himself be pulled along.

  He had over the years become extremely wary of stream feeders. Only a few had ever actually wanted to talk to him. Mostly they wanted to talk about his mother. If they were pro-U.N., they wanted to know why he chose to damage her life with his outspoken causes. If they were separatists, they wanted to know why he didn’t denounce her timid politics more frequently.

  This particular feeder sat in a wingback chair in a little parlorlike cluster of seats and tables. As Mari and Quai crossed the dampening field, the muted roar of the party fell away. Frezia Cheney was a fine-boned woman with pale copper skin and coffee-dark eyes. She was conservatively dressed for this party—loose gold trousers and a knee-length white tunic with gold embroidery around the collar and cuffs. A gold beaded cap covered her black hair, which had been pulled into a knot at the nape of her long neck.

  “Frezia Cheney,” said Mari as the woman stood up. “This is Yan Quai. Quai, this is Frezia Cheney.”

  “How do you do.” Quai shook Ms. Cheney’s hand. As he d
id, he noticed the clear plastic exoskeleton extending out of the woman’s tunic sleeve to cover her hand. Not only was Ms. Cheney a Lunar, she did not spend much time at all on Earth. If she did, her muscles would have been able to manage the gravity without help.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Mr. Yan.” Ms. Cheney withdrew her hand and sat back down a little hesitantly. The exoskeleton allowed her to move freely, but it could not disguise a Lunar’s mental discomfort with full gravity. “I am sorry about having to bring this to a social gathering. Would you prefer I made an appointment to meet you at your office?”

  Two points for the appearance of consideration, anyway. “No, this is fine,” Quai said, casting a significant look toward Mari. “I understand having a crowded schedule.”

  Mari patted Quai’s shoulder as she left Quai sat in the second wingback chair, which was turned so he was almost knee-to-knee with Ms. Cheney.

  “Something to drink?” asked Ms. Cheney.

  “Scotch, thanks,” replied Quai, and Ms. Cheney sent the table scooting away with orders for two.

  “Now.” Quai crossed his legs and pulled out his best businesslike voice. “What can I do for you, Ms. Cheney?”

  Ms. Cheney smiled. “Don’t worry, Mr. Yan. I have no intention of asking you about your mother.”

  Not yet, anyway, thought Quai, but he kept his expression bland. “Well, that’s refreshing.”

  Ms. Cheney gave him a knowing look. When he didn’t react, she just shook her head. “I’m much more interested in a little company called Biotech 24.”

  “Biotech 24? And they are?”

  “A little stream company that’s been giving money to various research projects out in the planets, including to a Dr. Meyer up on Venera Base so she can study what she thinks is microscopic life in the Venusian cloud banks.” The table returned, and Ms. Cheney handed Quai a short, stout glass.

  “And why would you be interested in them?” Quai sipped his drink. One of the other things Mari did really well was catering. This was the pure stuff. No rapid distilleries for Mari’s patrons, no sir.

  Ms. Cheney wrapped her fingers around her glass. Quai heard the minute hum as the servos tightened her grip for her. “Because a friend of a friend of ours wants to know if there’s separatist money behind it.”

  “A friend of a friend of ours?” Quai felt his eyebrows rise. “Is there a name involved here?”

  Ms. Cheney lifted the glass and cradled it in her augmented hands but did not drink. “Paul Mabrey.”

  Quai whistled long and low. “Now there’s a memory. I thought he’d ceased to exist.” Quai had researched the Bradbury inquisitions thoroughly. He looked on it as a necessity. So many people popped their heads back up once every five years or so that you needed to know whether they were the real thing or whether they were on the yewner’s fishing teams. His mother’s colleague Mr. Hourani was particularly good at getting old revolutionaries to turn on the new separatist movements.

  “There was a rumor he was gone.” Ms. Cheney’s face was guarded. “But he’s back, and he wants to help, or at least not do any harm.”

  “I see.” No one had ever accused Paul Mabrey of actually cooperating with the yewners, that Quai had heard. There was, however, a kind of automatic suspicion attached to anyone who got out of Bradbury without having to go to trial. He’d have to check the stream, see if there was any gravitational attraction between Mabrey’s name and Hourani’s. “Is Mabrey the friend, or the friend of the friend?”

  “He’s the friend.” Ms. Cheney still did not drink. Quai started to wonder why she’d bothered to send for a drink she didn’t want. Probably so she’d look companionable.

  “And the friend of the friend?”

  Ms. Cheney did not miss a beat. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  Quai took another swallow of his own drink. She didn’t know what she was missing here. “Then I’m not at liberty to speak.”

  They regarded each other for a long moment, weighing their private considerations and deciding how much they could give or how much they had to hold back.

  “If Biotech 24 is working with you, then there’s a potential disaster brewing,” said Ms. Cheney. “The yewners are ordering an audit of Venera’s books. They won’t miss this.”

  That caught Quai off guard. He let the silence stretch out too long before he was able to answer. “And were that to be any kind of a problem, Paul’s friend might be in a position to do something about this?”

  “Yes.”

  Which pretty much told Quai who the friend of a friend was. There was only one place where the organized separatists had been able to make any inroads on Venera. The Venerans were so ruthlessly apolitical that it wasn’t funny. Sometimes Quai wondered if it was part of the boarding oath. “We the undersigned agree not to have any opinions whatsoever.”

  Well, well, Ben Godwin has decided to move from sympathizer to player. Dicey time to try it. I wonder what changed his mind?

  I wonder what Paul Mabrey has been up to all these years? Maybe it’s time to dither.

  “Listen, Ms. Cheney,” he began. “I’m only loosely jacked in to that end of—”

  Ms. Cheney snorted and waved one hand. “If you don’t want to tell me, Mr. Yan, just say so. The only person who knows more than you about where the Terran separatist money comes from is our hostess.”

  Quai smiled, just a little. “I’ve heard that one too. If it’s true, then Heaven help the separatists, because nobody knows what’s going on.”

  Ms. Cheney studied him in silence for a minute. Then she said, “The game’s starting up again, Mr. Yan. This may be our last, best chance to break from Earth. The longer the yewners can be put off, the better for us.” She set her drink back down on the table, still untasted. “Now is not the time to be invisible. Now is the time to let them know we’re here.”

  “There I do not agree with you.” Quai shook his head.

  Ms. Cheney shrugged, a move that made her servos buzz angrily. “And there’s a lot of us on Luna who disagree with your disagreement. But that’s all right. Unless”—she turned her head so she regarded him out of one sinning eye—“that’s what’s keeping you from answering my questions?”

  Quai took another sip of scotch and rolled it around in his mouth for a moment, considering the possibilities. He had to agree that having the yewners track down the origins of Biotech 24 would not be a good idea. However, at least as far as he was concerned, and he was the one being asked here, neither Paul Mabrey nor Ben Godwin were good risks. On the other hand, Mari trusted this woman, and Mari’s judgment was sound.

  Also, it was worth a little payback to know that the Lunars were not willing to sit back and wait.

  Of course, Ms. Cheney could not be speaking for all the Lunars, any more than he and Mari worked with all the Terran groups. There were knots and bunches of people who called themselves separatists, or procolonials, or planetary-rights representatives scattered all across four worlds, and in the L5 archipelagoes to boot. Some of them held summits together. Some of them actively hated each other. They had all been born out of the Bradbury Rebellion, but their principles divided them more than they united them.

  Sometimes Quai wondered why the yewners considered them any kind of threat.

  Still, if he gave Ms. Cheney what she was looking for, she might be able to give him an inroad to the Lunar separatists if he needed it later.

  “Yes, there’s separatist money in Biotech 24,” he said at last. “No, it would not be a good thing if the yewners knew that.”

  Ms. Cheney nodded. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Ms. Cheney.” Quai set his drink down on the table and stood. “Anything else I can help you with?”

  “Not at the moment.” She stood also and held out her hand. “But I may want to talk to you in the future.”

  “And I may want to talk to you.” He shook her skeleton-encased hand, barely able to feel the flesh under the plastic cage.

  “I look f
orward to it.”

  They said good-bye and Quai walked away to find Mari. It wasn’t hard. She stood out like a scarlet exclamation point in a crowd of men and women in earth tones and gold. She spotted Quai and extricated herself from the group.

  “I see you got yourself out.”

  “Years of experience.” Quai leaned against the railing and looked down on the stages. A cirque performer was juggling now, a brilliant cascade of green glowing spheres. “Mari, did you know what that was going to be about?”

  “Of course,” she answered simply.

  Quai cocked an eye toward her. Her face was free of any suspicion or apology. “And you trust her all right?”

  Now Mari frowned. “I wouldn’t have sent you in there if I didn’t, Quai; you know that.”

  “I do.” Quai rubbed his hands together. “I just…I don’t know.”

  Mari touched his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

  He looked up at her. Her hand was warm and felt very pleasant where it was. A pretty woman, Mari, a good friend, and a savvy businessperson. They needed more people like her. “You ever wonder if we know what we’re doing? If we’re the right ones for the job?”

  She laughed and patted his back. “Constantly. But we’re all there is.”

  “I guess.”

  “Come on.” She took his arm. “You’re not having fun, and that’ll be no good when I start pressing for account deductions. Let’s go watch the cirque troupe.”

  “In a second, Mari.” Quai straightened up and gently extricated his arm from hers. “Can you get me a secure line? I’ve got to send out some mail.”

  “Sure. Hang for a minute.” Mari threaded her way expertly through the crowd, heading for the offices in the back.

  Quai hung. He watched the performers and the audiences, and the talkers and the drinkers. He wondered how many people here really believed that the colonists deserved better than they were getting and how many of them were just here because Mari knew they had deep pockets and wanted to pretend they were involved in daring underground politics.