by Sarah Zettel
If D’seun were found insane, then Br’sei owed him nothing. But if insanity could not be proved and it was Br’sei who made the accusation, then D’seun could take him into court, denounce him for malice, and seek his indenture.
Br’sei had been indentured before. He wore the marks of it. He’d sworn it would not happen again. Not even for something as important as this.
I am a coward. Br’sei shrank in on himself, but he did not tell the kite to change direction.
At last, the kite slowed its flight. “This is as far as I may go,” it said, furling its wings and banking away.
Br’sei looked to the southwest. Warning beacons floated in a tidy net in front of the kite, each barely a thousand yards from the other. They seemed to be guarding nothing but the busy, healthy canopy, though. He heard no sounds except for the wind. He tasted the currents, and they seemed clear. On the horizon sat a single gray smudge, which he supposed must be Ca’aed.
A warning net this far out? No one was taking any chances. The situation must be very bad.
Br’sei lifted himself off the perches. The kite quivered and breezed away before he had even cleared its tendons. Br’sei rattled his wings, uncertain whether to be amused or worried. Regardless, he flew toward the warning net and felt his skin begin to prickle from the currents it sent out.
“Attention,” said his headset automatically. “You are approaching a quarantined area. Please select an alternate path.”
“Quiet,” ordered Br’sei. “Find the Ambassador T’sha. Tell her I am waiting at the quarantine boundary.”
Silence stretched out around him, except for the distant noise of the wind through the canopy. No one came, no one went. He was used to solitude and emptiness but not in a world where he could taste life. It was eerie.
He strained the wind through his teeth. His engineer’s palate had lost some of its sensitivity but not too much. He cataloged the flavors and sensations in his mind.
His headset remained silent Br’sei searched tastes and scents for the rank sweetness of disease and found none. Good, perhaps this was an overreaction. There had been so much illness that it was better to be safe, especially if some vectors remained unidentified.
Eventually, the headset spoke. “Good luck, Engineer Br’sei. This is speaker Pa’and. Ambassador T’sha cannot answer you now. I offer my help.”
Br’sei beat his wings impatiently, but kept the emotion from his voice. “I have come from New Home. There is an emergency. I must see Ambassador T’sha.”
Silence for a moment and then, “There is an emergency here too, Engineer.”
“I know.” Br’sei dipped his muzzle, although there was no one to see except the warning beacons. “I am an engineer. Perhaps I can help.”
Silence again. “I thank you for your offer, Engineer Br’sei, but if you enter the quarantine, I cannot promise you will be allowed to leave it.”
Br’sei hesitated, fanning his wings uneasily. Well, he would find his way back when the time came. Without T’sha, D’seun would have no opposing voice on New Home. It would become his world.
“I will come in. I may be able to help.”
“I would thank you for your help,” answered Speaker Pa’and. “I have sent the entry command to the quarantine net.”
While Br’sei watched, four of the beacons faded from green to brown. He darted through the gap. On the other side, he took his bearings on the gray smudge on the horizon and beat his wings until he found a soaring wind to carry him forward on its back.
Br’sei had been to Ca’aed many times. As an apprentice, he had been required to study in each of the twenty-four ancients, where life had grown layer upon layer for more centuries than anyone could accurately count. While he explored the depth and breadth of its body, he had talked to the city. He’d found a kind of openness in Ca’aed that was sometimes lacking in the other truly old cities. There had been contentment there, beyond duty and pride, and kindness. He’d briefly considered asking for adoption, but his own birth city needed free citizens so badly that he never had.
The horizon distortion began to clear, and Ca’aed came into focus. Something was wrong, though, and Br’sei couldn’t quite make it out. He strained his eyes. He saw the gold shadows of the citizens flying about their business. He saw the wake villages, but why did they look like they were being towed by their people?
What am I seeing? Br’sei angled his wings to find more speed in the wind.
Voices touched him. The faint voices of people called to each other through the air. Between them came the strong voices of the city, directing, arguing, reassuring. Under it all, Br’sei heard pain. Pain restrained with great strength, but it was there.
At last, his eyes resolved portions of the panorama in front of him, but for a long, agonizing moment, his soul refused to believe his eyes.
He saw a gleaming white bone, as broad as his own torso, laid bare to the wind and a cluster of people layering it over with something pink and translucent.
He saw six people rise from the city with a quarantine net held between them. Inside the net hung something misshapen and patched with gray.
He saw that what surrounded Ca’aed were not its wake villages. Those hung in the distance, like children afraid to come too close. These were great segments of coral wall, tangles of muscle, tendon and ligament, sections of skin and flesh gone colorless with fungal tumors, air sacs, intestines, veins, even a heart. One of the city’s huge, precious hearts hung, blackened and distorted, in a quarantine blanket with a flock of tools inside the blanket, and a flock of engineers outside.
They’re cutting the city. Life and breath, they’re cutting the city. Horror drew his bones together.
The delicate perfume of disease touched him, and it was all Br’sei could do to keep going.
As he drew near the very edges of the furious activity, a female flew toward him. For a moment, Br’sei thought it was Ambassador T’sha. But as she reached him, he saw she was older than the ambassador, although they shared a coloring of crest and skin. She and T’sha were birth family though, that much was clear.
“Good luck, Engineer Br’sei.” She raised her hands in greeting.
“Good luck, Speaker Pa’and,” replied Br’sei, reading her tattoos.
They touched hands, but Br’sei could not keep his gaze focused on her. It kept skittering over her back to the surgery, the desperate butchery, of Ca’aed.
“I didn’t know,” he murmured, shrinking in around his apology.
The speaker just dipped her muzzle. “How could you, Engineer? But perhaps you see now why the ambassador cannot speak with you.”
Br’sei lifted his muzzle. Sounds and scents filled him—strained voices, blood, rot, pain, the sounds of knives in flesh and saws in bone. He could not escape it or turn away.
I should leave, or I should help. Ca’aed was one of the first cities, an ancient life, a good soul with irreplaceable memories and knowledge locked inside it. He should not be scheming to take away its ambassador at the time she was most needed.
Even knowing that, he spoke. “Let me see the ambassador, Speaker Pa’and. I swear to you, this is not a small thing. It affects the entire future of New Home and it needs her voice. Our future, our hope, Ca’aed’s hope, needs her voice.”
Speaker Pa’and pulled back. She fanned her wings to rise a little above him. Br’sei worked to hold his bones still.
She will refuse. She will not believe me. Tension sang through Br’sei’s soul. I will have to go back alone.
“She is consulting with some of the other speakers and the archivers,” said Pa’and. “I will take you to her.”
“Thank you,” replied Br’sei fervently.
Pa’and gave him no answer. She just turned on her wingtip and led him along a curving path around and over the edge of the ruined city. People dived in and out of its body, calling to one another. Br’sei saw engineers, harvesters, and conservators, and dozens of others whose tattoos he could not make ou
t, all borne up by hard purpose and fear as much as by the wind underneath them.
They do feel the death. They will not say the word to themselves, but they feel it. Br’sei kept his muzzle closed and followed the speaker.
Around a bulbous outcropping in Ca’aed’s wall, Br’sei finally saw T’sha. She hung swollen between the city and three males, as if she sought to protect Ca’aed from their approach.
“We cannot promise them any of our people until all the vectors for this cancer have been analyzed,” T’sha was saying. “We can promise them full and free use of any knowledge their people discover, and surely there are some futures they’d be interested in.”
One of the males deflated. Br’sei thought he might be a brother, for he shared his colors with both T’sha and Pa’and. “We’ve spread the offer of knowledge too thin, Ambassador. It’s losing its value. We are going to have to offer people or, at the very least, skills.”
Frustration ruffled T’sha’s crest. She turned toward the male speaker. “What volunteers have we…” The sentence died away as she saw Pa’and and she saw Br’sei.
“Your pardon,” said T’sha to her advisers. She rose above them and flew to meet the new arrivals. “Engineer Br’sei, what are you doing here?”
No words came. What was he doing here? What had driven him to the heart of this disaster? For a moment he honestly couldn’t remember.
“A moment please, Speaker?” said T’sha to Pa’and. Pa’and dipped her muzzle and soared away to the cluster of waiting males.
She was exhausted, Br’sei could see that at a glance. The color had run from her skin, leaving her pale and gaunt as if she could not inflate herself fully anymore. Her words felt brittle against his muzzle as she spoke.
“Tell me what has happened, Engineer.”
Br’sei deflated. “Ambassador D’seun is trying to convince the New Home Law Meet that the New People should be turned to raw materials.”
He expected an explosion, but it did not come. She just settled lower in the air as if she had lost all strength and only the wind kept her from falling. “Openly now? What changed?” She looked up at him, sorry and tired, and too full of these things to be afraid.
He let himself drop until his eyes were level with hers, and he told her how the New People came to the base as the ambassadors arrived and how they spoke with each other and all seemed well, until D’seun…until D’seun…
“Until D’seun and his words overrode whatever the New People actually said.” T’sha brushed her wing past her eyes. “Life of my mother, Br’sei. He’d have them kill a whole world full of people?”
Br’sei dipped his muzzle.
“And they’re listening?” A spark rose in her, burned, and swelled her skin with its heat. “No one has called this what it is?”
But Br’sei noticed even she did not say the word insanity. “There are promises involved,” he told her. “I haven’t tracked them all yet.”
“Ambassador Z’eth.” T’sha turned her face to her ruined city. Its miasma of scents and voices washed over her.
She stretched her wings to their limits. “Why?” she whispered to the wind and the pain and the ruin. “Is it my greed? Did I destroy the balance of our lives?”
“No.” Br’sei pressed closer, making his words strong and heavy so she could not mistake them. “Not yours, D’seun’s. You have to go back. You have to tell them what’s happening. They’ll listen to you. You’re—”
“I’m what?” she whirled to face him, and he felt a dare in her words. “I’m nothing, Br’sei.”
“You’re an ambassador,” he said evenly. “One of their own.”
She dipped her muzzle. “An ambassador who tried to do everything at once, who tried to compass worlds, and now her own city is dying because of it.”
Br’sei shrank under her words. He couldn’t help it. “This disease is not your fault.”
“Perhaps not.” She fanned backwards. She was shrinking again as the spark within her faded away. “But it is my responsibility.”
Br’sei felt his bones go absolutely still. “You will not come back? You will let the New People die?”
“Are they children?” she asked bitterly, dismissively. “Have they no ambassadors to speak for them?”
“Yes, they are children.” He swooped closer. She could not do this. She could not turn away and leave him, leave them, he corrected himself, alone to face the insane and the greedy. “They do not understand what their words mean to us. I am sure of it.”
T’sha drew closer, until her muzzle touched his. “What changed your mind, Br’sei? You were not so sure of them when you and I went to view their city?”
Br’sei held size and place. “I had not met them then. I had not seen them for myself.” He pressed his muzzle even more tightly against hers. “You were an engineer once, Ambassador. You understand how deep the roots of our instincts sink. You know what it is to feel the balance, the wonder of new life that is sane and whole. You’ve brought such life into the world with your own work. There have been moments when you just knew that this was good and it would work.” Now he pulled away and spread his wings. “I looked at them when they came fearlessly to meet us, and I just knew.”
For a moment, he had her. He could tell by the shine in her eyes and the angle of her wings and the taste of the air near her skin. But in the next moment she had swollen, and risen, and turned away.
“I will not leave my city.”
All the air left Br’sei at a rush. He had lost. They had lost. He had tried to bring protection for himself and the New People, and that had failed.
Now what? he asked himself, but he already knew the answer, and it frightened him.
“There is nothing I can say then.” He spoke his words to her wings and crest. “But, you must forgive me, I am going back. I am going to warn them. Maybe they can defend themselves, maybe not. But life helps life, and I must do what I can.”
He banked around and flew away. There were still the quarantine checks with their brother and worry to get through, but he would deal with that. He had to. He was all the New People had now, all New Home had. Himself, alone and afraid.
In some small part of his soul, he hoped to feel the touch of T’sha’s voice against his back, but it did not come.
Chapter Eighteen
“SCARAB TEN APPROACHING THE runway. Welcome home, Scarab Ten.”
Tori’s words reverberated through the P.A. From the internal speakers, Michael heard a tinny reproduction of the cheers filling the corridors.
At the sound, his fists clenched until his knuckles turned white.
Michael remembered being selected for the governing board. He remembered reading the notice on his briefcase screen, leaping up, yelling like a fool, and dancing Jolynn, who was then six months pregnant, around the apartment.
Gregory Schoma had retired and moved back to Mother Earth. Helen and Ben between them had decided that his replacement should be someone born on the station. They had noticed the prestige schism growing between research and nonresearch personnel. That was a problem all outposts had dealt with since the first permanent settlement in Antarctica. They had also noticed, however, that a growing number of the nonresearch personnel were native Venerans.
That did not suit either of their visions for the base. So they looked for a Veneran who would be acceptable to the various funding groups and found Michael Lum. Veneran-born, Earth-educated, a talented administrator, trained by Schoma himself, and married, with a baby on the way.
“I know,” he’d told Jolynn, when they’d collapsed breathless on the sofa. “It’s partly a face appointment, but that’s okay. Just think what I can do from up there. Think about it! I’ll be doing the security and infrastructure maintenance, but I’ll be constantly meeting with Bennet Godwin. Access to Dr. Personnel himself.”
From the beginning, Ben had shown concern for the issues Michael raised. Ben had listened. Ben had worked with him to improve the base’s on-site educat
ion facilities, had worked to get Terran equivalencies and Terran accreditations for Venera’s schools. He’d worked quietly to see that the details of tech and maintenancer jobs were publicized to those children so that they could be someone important to the well-being of their world, rather than just a janitor.
And Grandma Helen had smiled on them all, and it had been good.
And now? Michael’s knuckles ached. Now he had opened the files he swore he was never, ever going to use. He had his people looking at Grace Meyer as a murderer and Ben Godwin as a traitor, and he didn’t know what to do.
He heard the faint rumble of the hangar airlock cycling for the scarab.
“Airlock open, you’re clear for the hangar, Scarab Ten,” announced Tori.
Michael had seen Tori take her post at flight control this morning. He’d done high school equivalencies with her. She was a cynic. She took nothing at face value. But at that moment, she had looked like she had seen a miracle, or at least a really fine illusion.
She wasn’t the only one. The whole base had turned out to welcome Helen home. Somehow, her trip down to talk to the aliens had traveled through the rumor mill and become a Historic Meeting of Peoples to Reach a Great Accord. Everyone had heard about Secretary Kent’s conversation with Helen, along with one version or another of its unveiled threats.
A copy of the transmission had even shown up in the base’s public stream. Michael suspected Ben was responsible for that. Ben was responsible for so many things.
You wait, he thought toward the man standing tall, and strangely serene, at his side. What will you do when she finds out you are the traitor?
Michael and Ben stood in the passenger clearing area, watching on the wall screen as the hangar doors parted and the scarab, its cermet hide scarred and pitted from use, rolled in between the silent rows of machinery—shuttles on the left side, the other scarabs on the right. It slotted itself neatly into the empty bay.
“Extending ramp,” said Tori as a walkway stretched itself toward the scarab’s airlock. It wasn’t all that hot out there, and the pressure was almost exactly one atmosphere, but the combination of CO2 and hydrogen sulfides was not healthy to breathe for very long.
