Playing God(25)

The sisters stepped onto the balcony.

“We are perhaps disturbing your meditations?” Lareet leaned her elbows against the balcony railing, twitching her ears toward the wind and noise. She was the shorter and pinker of the two. Even by Getesaph standards, her skin hung loosely on her, making flaps around her neck and wrists rather than the usual folds.

A set of particularly vehement blasphemies exploded from the streets. Lareet folded her ears down. “I sometimes worry about what you tell your employers about us.”

Arron laughed. “Nothing worse than you tell your Members of Parliament about me, I'm sure.” It was no secret that the Rual family agreed to host him because the parliamentary members their family had been assigned to wanted firsthand observations of a man.

“Have you heard from your people yet?” asked Umat from the doorway. Where her sister was short, pink, and loose-skinned, Umat was tall, grey, and gaunt. Even her ears were thin. They were so sharply pointed that Lareet sometimes teased Umat that they could be used as spears against their enemies.

“No.” Arron rubbed his gloved hands together. “I'm going to the outpost today to see if there's word. My department head promised to present my staying on to Bioverse as first-rate public relations. So, we'll see.” He glanced at the two Getesaph. “You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?”

Lareet spread her hands. “There are some times when it is easier to remember that you are an alien than others.”

Arron smiled and looked deprecatingly down at himself. Years of fishing, farming, and anything else he could lend a hand to, across all the Hundred Isles, had turned him lean, tan, and corded. He'd always thought of himself as tall, but he could hide behind either of the sisters facing him. His thick work trousers and plain green T-shirt were a sharp contrast to their electric blue uniforms with green rank bands around their cuffs.

“Is there something you need?” he asked.

Umat caressed the threshold with one knobby hand. “Yes, there is. Our members have asked us to speak to you.”

Arron's forehead wrinkled. “About what?”

“Scheduling difficulties,” said Lareet with careful blandness.

“Severe ones,” added Umat.

Lareet's ears dipped. “Monumental.”

“Yes.”

Arron looked from one to the other. “What schedule are we talking about?”

There was now enough light for him to see the intensity of their expressions as they both looked straight at him. “The relocation,” said Umat.

Arron tried to see where this was leading, but couldn't. “I thought the Confederation gave Bioverse total say over the relocation coordination.” He'd been stunned when it happened, too. He suspected Bioverse had insisted on it.

“Parliament ceded permission to the Confederation by a narrow majority,” Umat reminded him. “Now that the main Bioverse team has arrived, they have sent us the relocation schedule. It states that the Getesaph will not be removed until the last segment of the procedure.”

Pride of place? Arron wondered. Lareet and Umat were both obviously waiting for him to say something. He just spread his hands and waited for them.

Lareet strangled a sigh. “The t'Theria are going to be among the first relocated. Once their daughters and carrying mothers are removed from all danger of retaliation, what will prevent them from attacking us?”

Ah. “I don't see how I can help with this,” he said carefully. “My department of the university has nothing to do with Bioverse.”

“But one of their coordinators is a friend of yours,” said Lareet.

Arron's brows jumped up. “Lynn?”

Umat considered. “Is that the same as”—she paused, probably to make sure she got the pronunciation right—“Manager Lynn Nussbaumer?”

“Yes.” Arron glanced up, as if expecting Lynn to drop from the sky. “That's her.”

Lareet nodded. “Our members would consider it a tremendous favor if you would speak with her and ask that the schedule be rearranged so that the Getesaph are evacuated first, or at least at the same time as the … t'Therians.”

She'd probably cut herself off from speaking one of the dozen or so insulting terms the Getesaph had for the t'Therians.

Arron's gloves rubbed his clean-suit-covered forearms. “If Parliament is worried about the consequences of the evacuation, you shouldn't go. There's got to be a way the plague can be cleansed with the Ded—” he cut the word off. It was fairly widely known that the word dedelphi meant opossum in an ancient Human language. It was also fairly widely known that an opossum was a poorly regarded rodent. “There has to be some way to cleanse the planet with the Family and the Others on the ground. Humans are a clever bunch.” Clever enough that they'll kill what the Confederation has started without even realizing it. Why can't they see that the Families have to shape their future without our interference? Especially our interference on such a world-shattering scale?