by Sarah Zettel
Z’eth herself was easy to spot. She drifted from cluster to cluster. She’d listen to a conversation for a moment and then move on to the next. D’seun could not feel any words from her. She just listened.
Good. Perhaps she’ll just listen to me.
Perhaps the city spoke to Z’eth, or perhaps she was just waiting for him, because as he flew through the portal, Z’eth lifted her muzzle and rose above the conversation where she hovered. D’seun flew quickly to her, deflating just enough to make sure his eyes were below hers.
“Good luck, Ambassador Z’eth,” he said as they touched hands. “Thank you for agreeing to see me. Please accept a guesting gift, which I found on my journeys.” As he spoke the formal words, he held out a palm-sized eyepiece. It lifted from his palm and hovered between himself and Z’eth. Inside, a delicate, biped drawn in shades of red raised her hand in greeting.
“Lovely!” exclaimed Z’eth. “One of your New People, is it not?”
“It is, Ambassador.” He did not even attempt to pronounce the name they called themselves by. “They are what I have come to speak with you about.”
Z’eth lifted herself and closed her right forehand around the eyepiece. “The members of the High Law Meet speak of nothing else. Their cogent method of contact with Ambassador T’sha has convinced many that they are a whole, sane people and should be treated as such.”
“I wish to urge you, Ambassador Z’eth, to believe no reports from Ambassador T’sha and her followers.” D’seun spoke earnestly, but softly. The touch of his words was for Z’edi only. “I see the tapestries they weave to show the New People as whole beings, complete in intellect and soul who live intricate lives and wish to exist with us in community.” He swelled as far as he dared. “This is not true. They do not know even the first principles of life. Community with them is impossible.”
Z’eth’s crest ruffled and spread. She touched her muzzle to his, and D’seun felt all her gentle mockery. “You are so certain, Ambassador, you must have been paying close attention to them.”
“Very close, Ambassador.” What did it matter what she knew? Either he would succeed, in which case she would be with him, or he would fail. If he failed, nothing else mattered. New Home and Home would both be lost.
“Your attention has been closer, I think, than your commission allowed, and for much longer,” Z’eth went on.
“Yes,” agreed D’seun. He had been supposed to supervise the seeding of the world and leave. He had left, but when he had returned for a monitoring stint, he had left behind some special tools. Each monitoring stint after that had brought him new data. He had all but mortgaged his future for the analysis of it.
“And you have shared none of this illicit information with the Law Meet?” Z’eth inquired. “How discreet of you. Why have you kept this to yourself?”
“At first, I feared T’sha and those like her would fear the New People.” He aimed his words right at Z’eth, not wanting her to miss a single one. “So I kept what I knew a secret until I knew how the New People could be controlled or eliminated.” Preferably eliminated. New Home had to be kept pure for life the People created and understood. “But, instead, she has fallen in love with them and their dead things.”
“Are you so sure they need to be controlled?” For the first time, the mockery left Z’eth’s voice. “Why not let them flourish beside us?”
Revulsion crawled across D’seun’s skin. “You do not know, Ambassador. They surround themselves with death. They bring nothing living with them. Their homes are dead, their shells are dead, even their tools are dead. They are ghouls, Ambassador, billions of ghouls who live in ignorance of even the basic ideas of spreading life. Can we permit ghouls to wander the winds of New Home with our children?”
Z’eth pulled her muzzle back in thoughtful silence. D’seun held himself still, trying to muster the patience to wait out her thoughts. He could not rush her. She had influence that went beyond wealth. If he could turn her from her patronage of T’sha, T’sha would be toppled. Everything depended on this.
“Ambassador, I seek a promise from you.”
“I assumed.” Her crest spread out even further, as if it reached toward every conversation and promise being exchanged in her dying city. “And what would you pay for this promise?”
“My children, when they are born, will belong to your city on New Home,” said D’seun. “They will serve your city until they are adults.”
It hurt to say it. It hurt to know that it had to be this way. He had been indentured in his tenth year of life, when K’taith succumbed to one of the first of the new rots. He had always sworn to the souls of his unborn children that they would grow to adulthood free.
But he had to break that oath. He had nothing left to promise but those children, whoever they were and whenever they would come to be. He could not permit the New People to spread their death further across New Home.
“A rich promise, and a risky one,” Z’eth mused. “You may not find a wife willing to go along with it.”
“I will find a wife who will,” said D’seun, firmly. He had to.
“You sound most determined.” Z’eth dipped her muzzle. “What promise do you want?”
“You will be elected to the Law Meet of New Home.” D’seun drifted as close to her as he could without touching her. “There is no question of this. I have heard the proposed rosters in the Meet. Your name is on every one. You will be the most senior of the ambassadors, the leader there as you are the leader here. I ask that you promise to follow my lead when we must determine the final disposition of the New People.”
Z’eth swelled, just a little. What are you thinking, Ambassador? What future do you taste?
Her gaze drifted from him and passed over the shifting crowds that filled this beautiful chamber in the center of her slowly dying city.
“Thank you for your promise, Ambassador,” she said. “It is rich and would bring my city benefit.”
Hope swelled D’seun’s skin; then he read the tilt of her head and the spread of her wings and knew what was coming next.
“But even if I accepted,” she pushed herself closer to him, “I could make no guarantees of your success. T’sha is not the only one in love with the New People. There are many in the High Law Meet who are enchanted by their words. My influence is great, but I am not certain it is that great.”
“But, Ambassador.” He thrust his muzzle forward, touching her skin, breathing out his urgency with his words. She must understand, she must. “We cannot predict them; we cannot understand or control them. There must be nothing on New Home that we cannot control; otherwise life will rebel against us and bring death and imbalance, as it has to Home.”
Z’eth backwinged sharply. “Ambassador, I think you have been too long away from the temples to speak so. We serve life, and in return life serves us. That is the way of it. Life does not attack us, nor do we attack it.”
Abandoning all caution, D’seun swelled to his fullest extent. “We serve the life we know. We do not know the New People, or their life.”
“You will calm yourself, Ambassador,” murmured Z’eth. D’seun shrank down instantly. Z’eth remained silent for a while, and D’seun had to concentrate on each small motion of his wings to keep himself in place.
“If I took your offer,” she said softly, her words brushing so lightly against his skin he had to strain every pore to feel them, “I could promise only that I will vote with you regarding the disposal of the New People on New Home. It could be no more than that.”
Cautious, controlled, very Z’eth. It would be an expensive promise. But Z’eth would not go into any such vote alone. Even if she exacted no promises from the other members of the New Home Law Meet, her vote would sway others yet un-promised.
And he might be able to swing a few votes himself, especially if he could find a way to silence T’sha.
Was it enough to break his vow to his unborn children?
The New People will corrupt us. They
will take our world from us, as the rots have taken this world from us.
New Home must be for the People alone, or they would all die. He hovered alone, surrounded by death and life, and he was the only one who understood what it really meant.
His understanding had come to him the day his village, K’taith, had died. He’d huddled under his mother’s belly upwind of the village and listened to the speaker and the ambassador telling them that the village could no longer care for them. Its bones were too brittle; its skin and ligaments could no longer heal themselves. Their presence was hurting the village. It had asked for death, to be disassembled and its few healthy parts put to use elsewhere. The vote would be taken to see if the citizens would honor that wish, of course, but, said the speaker and the ambassador, they could not believe that anyone who loved the village would insist it continue in pain and helplessness it could not bear.
The vote was taken, and all free adults voted to let their village’s suffering end. D’seun had just watched the discolored walls and the limp, tattered sails. He felt the wind against his own skin.
The wind that fed him had killed the city and taken his freedom. He knew that instinctively. Everyone knew what happened when their village died.
He had seen it then. There was no balance. The life that killed his home, his future, did not in any way serve him. The People were not strong, they were weak. Life did not serve them; it hated them. It planned against them in its wildness. It left no niche for the People to fill. Life on Home was closed utterly to them.
Oh, he’d mimicked the proper words and ways of thought. He had no wish to be declared insane, but he had known it all to be a lie.
Then he had spread his wings in the pristine winds of New Home and he saw how it could be. Life built by the People, life that truly did serve them because they laid down every cell and commanded how it should be.
If they permitted death to flourish there, they would never create this new balance. Life would once again cease to obey them and the death the New People lived in would take them all.
He saw the truth. He tasted it. He touched it every day, but T’sha remained numb and had convinced the others, even his hand-picked team who had promised to him so freely.
And there was nothing he could do.
Was there?
If Ca’aed were ill, if a quick rot took hold there, T’sha would have to see the truth. T’sha was not so far gone that she did not love her city. She spoke of it with fondness and concern, despite her tricks with Village Gaith.
Or if she would not see, at least she would no longer be able to interfere. She was not Z’edi. Without the wealth of her city, her ability to make promises would be gone, and with it her influence in the High Law Meet.
No. D’seun huddled in on himself, glancing furtively around the hiring fair as if his very thoughts could have touched those flying past him. This is insane. To take life, to give nothing back, to treat life as raw materials (that did not happen, it did not. The New Person was dead. Dead).
But if what I do ultimately serves life, our life? If T’sha’s resistance and lies are broken, the truth can be heard. The danger the New People represent can be fully understood then. Yes. Yes. That is the way it is, the way it will be.
There were so many ways a city might sicken, even a wise and ancient city like Ca’aed. Especially when passing by a living highland when the winds were so thick with life. Even the most careful of welcomers and sail skins could miss something, say a few spores transferred from a quarantine that was no longer life-tight? Such things happened every day and could be made to happen again.
It serves life, for it allows the People themselves to live. Yes. Yes.
Z’eth was waiting for his answer. Waiting for him to decide whether her promise was worth the expense. It was. Oh, yes, it was. Life would grow from death, and in that way life would serve life.
“Call us an archiver,” he said to Z’eth, his words steady and weighty. “I will accept this promise. My children will serve your city if you follow my vote on the disposition of the New People on New Home.”
The smell hit Michael first—the sour acidic reek that he could taste in the back of his mouth. Then came the sight of Kevin and Derek, side by side on the white beds with soiled sheets, surrounded by a battery of monitors and tubes trailing limply into various injectors and samplers, all of which sat in an eerie silence.
“Sorry to haul you out tonight, Michael.” Antonio Dedues, Venera’s chief physician, stuffed his hands into the pockets of his traditional white coat and didn’t look at Michael. Antonio’s gaze was on the corpses in their beds with the useless, attendant machinery. “But you’ve got to witness the death certificates.”
Michael swallowed hard against the smell and found his voice. “What happened?”
“It looks like food poisoning.” Antonio came back to the present, jerked his chin toward the doctor’s station, and walked Michael away from the sight. “Hey, can we get those two taken care of please?” he called to Jimmy Coombs, one of the nurse practitioners, who was passing by with a pile of screen rolls in his hands. Jimmy nodded and Antonio continued gently herding Michael away from the unpleasantness, something doctors got a lot of practice at, Michael was sure.
“Looks like?” said Michael, keeping his voice pitched low. He had no idea who was in the infirmary right now.
“They both came in about three o’clock complaining of fever and stomach cramps.”
“I was notified.”
Antonio nodded. “Symptoms got treated, and they got worse. Workup got done and by then we had a massive systemic infection.” Antonio motioned him into the monitoring station. The place had so many different monitors and command boards, it looked like mission control for a major spaceport, and all the numbers and plots made about as much sense to Michael.
“The infection all but ate the broad-spectrum stabilizer we gave them while we were trying to isolate the bacteria and tailor an antibiotic to hit it,” said Antonio. “There’s only so much we can keep on ice around here.” He frowned at the cabinets across the hall as if he wanted to blame them for what happened. “We did find the bug and get the antibiotics into them, but it was too late.”
“But it wasn’t food poisoning?” pressed Michael. He was still reeling. They were dead. Dead of a simple bug, something that should have been treatable in five minutes but wasn’t. They had been good men, they had been idiots, they had been friends, they had been criminals.
They were dead.
“If it was food poisoning, where are the other patients?” Antonio swept his hand out. “We’ve shut down the galley level, of course, and we’re going through and doing a sanitary inspection. You got the call on that too?”
Michael nodded.
“But nothing’s turning up. We haven’t got the autopsy yet, so I can’t say for sure what they’ve been eating, but from what your people say, it wouldn’t be anything that another couple hundred people hadn’t swallowed.” Antonio looked up at him. “Do you want me to say it?”
No, and I don’t want to say it either. “You think they were poisoned.”
Now Antonio nodded. His pockets bunched and wrinkled as he clenched his fists. “By someone who was very smart and very stupid.”
Michael waited. Poisoned? Murdered? Who…but he knew who. It was the other person who had helped create the Discovery. They didn’t want to be implicated, so they’d killed the men. God! This was not something that could happen. Not on Venera, not now. This was something out of the twentieth century.
“Smart because they were able to successfully cultivate a strain of bacteria we couldn’t neutralize immediately. Stupid because in conditions like Venera’s, where the food comes from limited production sources, there’s never just two victims of a poisoning outbreak.”
“How hard would it be to cook up this…bug?”
Antonio shrugged. “With access to a lab and a decent chemistry and medical database and a strong stomach, not very.”
Antonio’s smile was watery. “Even the unprepared food the galley sells has been sterilized eight ways to Sunday. The easiest place to get bacteria from around here would be your own waste products.”
Michael hung his head, torn between disgust and black humor. “I should have thought.”
“No you shouldn’t,” Antonio assured him. “Holy God knows I didn’t want to.”
“Yeah.” Michael lifted his gaze again. “Look, I’ll need the autopsy as soon as you can get it to me, okay?”
“Okay.” Antonio glanced around at his monitors. “All this and we still haven’t got the immortality programs up and running. Grandma Helen know yet?”
“Not yet.” She knew about the galley quarantine, of course, but not about the deaths. Mother Creation, she was already walking on the edge with the C.A.C. meeting coming up. What was this going to do to her? “I’ll tell her.” I don’t want to, but I will.
“Okay,” said Antonio gratefully. “Thanks.”
Michael left to the soft sound of Antonio’s voice readying his autopsy team to find out what exactly killed Derek and Kevin. He walked down the corridors without really seeing them. The main lights were dimming toward twilight. The base was on a twenty-four-hour Greenwich time cycle, and now it was late in the summer evening.
Someone had deliberately committed a murder. This was not a fight, not a horrified and angry somebody who didn’t mean to do it, “I swear I didn’t….” No. This somebody meant to do it. They had decided and planned and executed.
Now he had to tell Philip and Angela, and he had to tell Helen. He had to tell the whole world, all the worlds, that Venera was spinning out of control, that the arrival of aliens had made the place crazy, but not in any of the ways people had feared since the possibility had been raised all those hundreds of years ago. There were no riots, no religious revivals, no barbaric, tribal displays of aggression.
