by Sarah Zettel
Behind and above, D’seun heard the rustle of wings and skin. “Now, there,” said K’ptai, “is an answer that is neither greedy nor insane.”
“Such a difference to deal with an ambassador,” said D’seun, his voice carefully neutral. He spoke to the translator. “Then why is there no life beyond your habitat? Why have your people not expanded in the last eighty years?”
A pause. “You have been watching us for that long?”
“We have been working with New Home that long. We needed to see what your claim to this world is.”
“And because you do not recognize our claim, you will throw us off this world?”
K’pta froze. “Is that what they think? That we’re insane?”
Ambassador Z’eth swooped a little closer to the translator. “We make no claim on anything used to support and maintain your life or the lives of the other New People on this world. These things are yours and are acknowledged as such without question.”
New words appeared on the screen. “I understand you wish to make this world your home?” read the translator. “How will you do that?”
D’seun looked to Z’eth for permission to speak, but it was P’eath, Ambassador for Ba’detad in the Far Southerns, who came forward to answer, swelling her aging body as she did. “We have already established that this world is capable of supporting the life that supports us. If, and only if, no one else has a valid claim to this world, then we will attempt to establish a biosystem.” She waited while D’seun translated between her and the tools. “If the biosystem takes hold, then we will birth settlements for our people and we will live here while the changes on our home rebalance themselves and we can again live there. When we are gone, this world will be left as fallow to rebalance itself.” P’eath had proposed the original idea of New Home. She carried her pride of that accomplishment like an extra tattoo on her wings. But her vision extended no further than finding a new world. She did not see the wider implications of allowing the New People to remain here.
“What about the rest of the planets that orbit this sun?” asked the translator for Ambassador Helen.
“We do not need them,” said Z’eth without hesitation. “They will not help us spread life.”
“What about us?” The image gestured toward the clouds. “The humans here on Venera? While you are…spreading life, what will you do with us?”
“Ambassador,” murmured D’seun to Z’eth, keeping his words light as pollen. “Do not answer. Make no promises. There are consequences here….”
But if Z’eth heard him, she gave no sign. She kept her gaze fixed on the communicator.
“Community is a resource,” said Z’eth. “One which we hope you will provide for us. You have studied this world for a long time and we hope you will share your knowledge with us.”
No, no. There can be no community here. This world must be ours alone. They cannot be controlled, cannot be predicted. I hold your promise!
“In return,” said Z’eth, spreading her wings to show their scope and the canopy of her tattoos to the New People waiting in their shelters, “we hope we can help you.” No one questioned her right to speak or her words. D’seun’s gaze swept the assembled ambassadors, and he wondered how many of them owed promises to Z’eth.
The image of Ambassador Helen bobbed its face several times. “This all sounds very good, but what assurance can you give us that you will not change your position later, when there are more of you here?”
That was a tricky question. It raised implications of sanity. If the People were insane, they’d lie. But there was no way to prove sanity in advance. After a moment, Ambassador P’tkei descended to within the translator’s range and spoke. “What assurance would you accept?”
There was a long pause, even after the words had been fed to the translator. “Good question.”
D’seun fluttered, inflating and deflating rapidly, angry at this show of understanding and aware his anger was absurd. They would betray themselves soon enough. This was a thin shell. It would crack. “This world was declared New Home by the High Law Meet. Since then, miles had passed under us both and we have done nothing but debate your status and save your lives. If we were insane, as you fear, and meant to destroy you, would we not have done so already?”
Another pause. Were they debating over there? Or were they just trying to understand?
At last, the answer came. “I can accept this.”
“Then we have our understanding?” said Z’eth. “You agree this world is ours to make our new Home?”
“Yes,” said the translator. “To you, this is New Home, and together we have community. You will help us if we need it, as you helped the others in the scarab that crashed?”
“Life helps life,” said Z’eth. “We will do what we can.”
“Our situation here is not easy.” The image of the ambassador seemed to shrink a bit. “There are those with whom we disagree about our rights to this world, and consequently yours. They might attempt to cut off our supply routes from the other worlds. We may be forced to ask for a great deal of assistance in maintaining ourselves here.”
Hope and fear burned together inside D’seun. There was clear acknowledgment that this was New Home. That would relax many of the ambassadors at his back. But there were words in this delectation that would raise the questions he needed openly debated. Here was the first crack in the New People’s shell.
D’seun opened his muzzle to speak, but Z’eth spoke first. “This is our world, together. We will of course help you.”
Ambassador Helen’s image raised its hands again. “Thank you, Ambassadors all. We will talk more in the future. Hopefully our engineers can find a way to make this easier.”
“I am certain they can.” Pride swelled Z’eth. She hadn’t heard it, then. That was all right. He would make her hear.
“Good-bye, then,” said the words beneath Ambassador Helen.
“Good luck in your life.”
Z’eth a apparently resisted the urge to trumpet her triumph, but she did spread her wings to the assembled ambassadors. “We have them. We have this world. Clean and clear, it is ours.”
“But we still have a problem,” said D’seun, deflating humbly.
“Ambassador?” Z’eth shrank to something close to her normal size.
“The other New People. Their distant family on their other world.” He swelled and lifted his muzzle, making sure his words touched all the Law Meet of New Home. “Did you not hear the ambassador? They are willing to dispute the clear and legitimate claims to this world, when they have no counterclaims in place. They are insane.”
Vee watched D’seun and the other ambassadors spread their wings and rise gracefully into the sky like a dream of golden birds.
“I cannot believe you did that,” she whispered harshly to the command board. “Holy God and Mother Creation, I cannot believe you did that!”
I can’t believe I let you do that. Vee looked down at her own hands on the command board. Helen Failia once again sat in the pilot’s seat
“I didn’t do anything,” said Helen, firmly. “I just made sure we had backup in case the C.A.C. tries to force us to do things their way.”
“Didn’t do anything?” Vee stared at her in complete disbelief. “You just got an alien race involved in a pissant bid for revolution that they can’t possibly understand. You called yourself an ambassador, for God’s sake. Do you know what that means to them? It means you speak for a whole city, that you have the right to make decisions for an entire population!”
“I do speak for a whole city,” replied Helen.
“Did Michael and Ben know what you were going to say?” asked Josh from his position in the back of the cabin. They’d rigged up a monitoring station in the Discovery so that he wouldn’t have to leave the scarab to keep an eye on the equipment.
“They knew.” Helen nodded once. But she did not, Vee noticed, look at either of them.
“Did they approve?” inquired Josh.
Helen turned and gave him an icy glare. “That is none of your business.”
“The U.N. could be doing anything,” said Vee hoarsely. “They could be planning an embargo. They could be sending in soldiers!”
“Maybe.” Helen’s voice was flat and practical, just like the expression on her face. “That’s their problem.”
Vee got slowly to her feet, her hands shaking with rage. Josh scraped his chair back a little, and she saw his expression urging her to caution. She didn’t care. He didn’t get it. None of them got it.
“You idiot!” she rasped at Failia. “You stupid, bloody-minded, idiot! If we get them involved with this, they may decide the Terrans are greedy or crazy. Do you know what that means to them?”
“No.” Helen regarded her calmly. “And neither do you. Sit down, Dr. Hatch.”
“And remember who I’m talking to?” shot back Vee. She swept out her hand. “How could I forget? I’m talking to a woman who is willing to get an entire alien race involved in her stupid little pissing games!”
Helen’s face flushed a dark purple, even though her voice remained soft and calm. Her gnarled hands clenched the seat’s arms.
“Dr. Hatch, thank you for your help in facilitating communication with the People. I think, however, you had better be aboard the shuttle which will be returning your colleagues to Earth.”
Josh laid a hand on Vee’s shoulder. He opened his mouth to start to say something.
“No, Josh,” said Vee, coldly. “I think you’d better distance yourself from me.” She met Dr. Failia’s gaze without blinking. “I think I’m a very bad person to be near right now.”
But if you think I’m going to let this happen, Dr. Failia, think again. Think hard.
They held their ground, staring each other down. There was no way for her to win here, Vee knew, and her only exit options lacked dignity. But a display of petulant vulnerability now might be beneficial later on.
God Almighty, Vee you have been doing this for too long.
“They shipped all the dissenters out of Bradbury too.” She whirled around and stormed down the central corridor and into her cabin. The door swished shut behind her. She wished it would slam.
Vee dropped onto the edge of her couch and pressed her fingers against her temples. Think, think. This has to handled. You can’t let them do this to T’sha. To the world. To everything. A sad realization came over her. Nobody even asked about T’sha. We don’t know what’s happening to her.
She stayed like that until she heard the door swish open again. She unfolded herself. Josh stepped over the threshold and let the door close behind him.
“How’s life outside?” she asked lightly.
He sat on the edge of the couch facing her. “Helen’s calling up to the base to say mission accomplished. Adrian is going a little nuts checking and rechecking the soundness of the scarab.” He glanced at the door. “I think he really does not want to be here.”
Vee laughed, once. “That makes two of us.” She looked down at her fingertips. “What are you going to do?”
Josh sighed and looked around the cabin, a little bleak, a little annoyed. Vee sympathized. This was a lousy place to be having this discussion. Neither one of them could stand up straight. The crash-couches weren’t comfortable to sit up in. Her shoulders ached and she bet his did too, and who knew when Helen was going to come walking through the door to see what they were conspiring about. The whole situation stank.
“You know what’s the worst?” Josh asked suddenly, as if reading her thoughts. Vee shook her head. “That I can’t win. If I go home, I’m turning my back on what might be the most important thing that’s ever happened to humanity. On the other hand, if the Venerans start anything, you know the propaganda machine on Mother Earth’s going to paint Venera as a bunch of mindless Fullerite rebels. So, if I stay, it’ll look like I’d rather be with traitors and aliens than my friends and family.” He glanced at Vee and shook his head again. “It’ll look like I’m a traitor.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s pretty much a disaster.” She reached up and pulled her veil off, picking out the pins and dropping them into her lap. “Maybe the smart thing is to leave it to the disaster makers.”
Josh’s mouth quirked up. “You don’t mean that.”
She shrugged. “Not really.” She wound the scarf through her fingers. It was real silk, a blazing paisley pattern. Amber, her next-to-youngest sister had bought it for her, for some birthday or the other. “What’s going on here, it’s stupid. If I can stop it, I have to.”
“Because it’s stupid?” he said quizzically. “Not because it’s right, or wrong, but because it’s stupid?”
He looked incredulous, and she supposed she couldn’t blame him. It sounded hard, even to her. She searched herself for an explanation. “You know why I do my act? My Vee-the-Temperamental-Artiste act?”
“I have a few ideas.” Josh leaned back on both hands. “Most of them have to do with getting attention.”
Vee waved his words away with the end of her scarf. “When I hit college, the beauty fads had cycled back around to tall, skinny, and pale.” She spread her arms wide. “Ta-daa. Suddenly, and for the first time in my life, I was it. I was the ideal. As a result, I had people sidling up to me and saying”—Vee leaned forward and gave an imaginary person a confidential nudge—“‘My dear, wherever did you get yourself done?’ I’d say I’d never been ‘done.’ This”—she gestured at her torso—“was just me. They’d look smug or sour, and not one of them would believe me. So”—she shrugged—“I started telling this long story about this bod shaper in the Republic of Manhattan and how much physical therapy I had to go through after he added ten centimeters to my height, and how he’d died last year in a boating accident, and I was just devastated because what if I needed to get short again….” She dropped her voice back to normal. “Nobody with a brain believed me for a second, but the ones without a brain….” She tightened her hands around the scarf. “Right and wrong can be difficult, but stupidity is easy to spot, and this situation is brimming with stupidity.”
The corner of Josh’s mouth twitched. “Must be a nice view from up there.”
“Maybe.” Vee looked at the door. It remained closed. “Will you help anyway?”
Josh dropped his gaze. A dozen different kinds of indecision played across his face, one after another. Did he have family on Earth? Vee wondered. She didn’t know. She’d never asked. She’d accepted the appearance of a bachelor researcher, without ties to bind or to anchor. The realization hit Vee hard. She’d become so used to being judged by her surface appearance, she’d somewhere started doing the same with other people.
And here was the one person of unquestioned substance in this whole gigantic mess, and he might be about to slide through her fingers.
Josh sighed, interrupting her thoughts. “I will help. I think we’d better start by talking to Michael Lum. He’s the steadiest member of the governing board, and has the fewest political interests.”
Gratitude rushed through Vee. “Thank you,” she breathed.
Josh studied her, looking for what she had not said. Maybe he found it. She hoped he did. She hoped there’d be a chance to say it later. “You’re welcome.” His smile was small, but it reached his eyes. “What do we do now?”
Vee considered. Much to her relief, ideas sparked quickly to life. “You need to go out there and make obeisance. Make sure she knows you’re still on her side so you can keep working on the mobile com drone. We may need to be able to talk to the people without interference.” She gave him a wry grin. “Nobody’s got you down as a troublemaker yet. You’ll be able to work the system more easily than I can.”
“All right.” Josh uncrossed his legs. “While I’m working behind the scenes, what are you going to do?”
Vee grinned at him. “Make trouble.”
“Ambassador Helen has with her own words condemned the New People’s distant family as insane.” D’seun flew with th
e Law Meet over the New People’s transports and his words were heavy with assurance. “They would hold back the spread of life if they could. Do we permit New Home to grow in the presence of this threat? Do we refuse to do our best to help this life with which we now share our new world?” This life which cannot survive without its distant family, unless they turn to us, and then we will have the control we need. Yes, all could still be made right.
“Do we know that this is the best?” countered bloated K’ptai, overflying him without regard to rank. D’seun might be younger, but he had been an ambassador longer than she. “Our understanding is still incomplete.”
“Helen is an ambassador.” Z’eth steered her path between D’seun and K’ptai. “We must agree that her words are more accurate than any engineer’s could be.”
“Ambassadors, Ambassadors.” P’eath lifted herself up until it seemed as if she would touch the clouds. “We are not children playing about the edges of our village. These are not appropriate questions for the open air. We must return to our debate chamber, crude as it is, and make proper consideration of all matters there. Our haste is unseemly. We have not examined all the evidence.” But D’seun did not miss the way she glanced up at Z’eth as she spoke, almost as if she were seeking permission to be reasonable.
“There is one question we might think on as we return, however,” said D’seun softly, lifting himself up so they would all feel his words. “The New People require raw material from the world they call Earth to maintain themselves. We have many records of this fact. The distant family is threatening to withhold this. Do we deny our neighbors access to the raw materials they need to survive and spread their own life because an insane family stands in their way?”
Silence spread across the wind. D’seun flapped his wings, taking himself outside the quieting circle of ambassadors and saw what he expected. They all looked to Z’eui. Could they all owe Z’eth? Had she brought every vote with her? And she had promised her vote to him.
