Playing God(26)
Umat's pointed ears sagged a little. “Scholar Arron, I know you do not agree with this plan to house us in human ships while they cleanse the Earth and our blood for us, but that is the agreement we have reached. Our members favor this much of our Confederation agreements, and we do, too.” Arron glanced at Lareet, who dipped her ears in confirmation.
“It is only the timing we question,” said Lareet.
“It can be taken to the entire Confederation,” Umat went on. “But that might—”
“Renew old tensions,” Lareet finished the sentence smoothly. “If we speak the truth about the t'Therian intentions, they will claim we are hurling insults to break the Confederation and say we need to be coerced into cooperation.”
He might argue with the phrasing, but Arron couldn't dismiss the conclusion. The enmity between the t'Therians and the Getesaph was a watchword. As far as Arron could determine, the Confederation was the first time the two Families had ever cooperated. The plague had accomplished what centuries of lesser threats had not. No one, however, was sure it had accomplished it firmly and finally.
“I can't guarantee I'll be able to convince Lynn of anything,” he said, more to the dawn than to the sisters waiting for his answer. “It's been a very long time since we were … close.”
“We're only asking you to try,” said Lareet.
Arron pushed himself away from the railing. “All right, since you're asking, I'm agreeing.”
Umat let out a sigh of relief. Lareet laid a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you.”
Umat wrapped her arm around her sister's shoulders. “We'll find out where Manager Lynn is going to be based, so you can plan your trip. It will be somewhere in t'Aori.”
“You want me to go from the Hundred Isles to t'Aori?” Arron shook his head. It was easier to get between competing corporate enclaves on Earth than it was to get from the Getesaph archipelago to the t'Aori Peninsula. “Any chance of your members giving me clearance and papers?”
“I don't think so,” Umat said. “They want this request kept as quiet as possible.”
I can understand that. “All right. You find out where I've got to go, and I'll get there.”
“We will owe you all thanks for this, Scholar Arron.” Lareet gave his arm a final, friendly shake. “Many times over.”
The sisters left him there. Arron turned around and faced the city again. Clouds obscured the stars now, but he stared at the sky anyway.
Lynn. He remembered hours of debates about everything their separate concentrations held. He remembered eclectic midnight feasts, way too much alcohol, and laughing at whatever occurred to them. He wondered what had happened to her, and what had happened to him.
Arron turned around and went back into his room. The university had paid for the double-thick filter doors and windows so he could have a place where he could take off his clean-suit without contaminating the entire house. The room had originally been a closet, so it was small by Getesaph standards. For a Human, though, it made an adequate apartment. A thick mattress lay next to the personal fountain Lareet had given him, saying she couldn't understand how anyone could concentrate without the sound of water nearby. A desk and chair had been shortened to a more Human height by having twenty-five centimeters of their legs sawed off. His flat, shiny portable lay on the desk, surrounded by the paper notes he'd learned to keep. The walls were covered with flat pictures of snowcapped volcanoes, boat-clogged harbors, and portraits of families he had worked with. The wall next to his desk was taken up by a big, full-color, hand-drawn map of the Hundred Isles of Home.
Arron lifted the lid on his portable. DATA CONFIGURED AND SLOTTED INTO REPORT THREAD FORMAT, read the screen. He closed it down and put it into his backpack along with three old clean-suits to take to the outpost recycler.
Most of the house was still asleep. Arron moved quietly past the second-floor sleeping rooms and down the central spiral staircase, which was closer to a Human's idea of a ladder than a Human's idea of stairs. It had taken a long time to get to the point where he could climb down it without going backwards and using his hands. The task had been made more difficult by the fact that the rungs had been spaced for longer legs than his.
Outside, morning light filtered through the layers of cloud and smog, turning the eastern sky into a furnace of orange, pink, and gold. The city was hot, crowded, smelly, and strangely three-dimensional. Rather than flattening the nearby cliffs or just building on top of them, the city builders had carved them. Natural caves had been enlarged and regularized to form compartmentalized buildings with ladders on the outside linking their terraces the way the streets linked the buildings on flatter ground. Suspension bridges ran from hill to hill, and cliff to cliff, allowing what motorized traffic there was to have a path, jostling alongside pushcarts or animal-drawn wagons, the Getesaph's wide, clunking, four-wheeled pedal cars, flocks of fowl, and cattle with their herders.