With the sat-net finally in place, she could start getting her office linked to the necessary databases. She felt isolated with just her implants and a portable. Worse, she felt delayed. Trace and R.J. in their shared space out front were already hard at work, reeling out threads for access to progress reports and problem sessions. At the same time, they were tying the incoming threads to their databases and schedules. The rest of the staff was laying out microschedules, arranging transports, working on plans for a real network of roads to be laid down by the engineers, coordinating with the grievance committees, and trying to beg, borrow, or steal badly needed supplies.
Two new city-ships—the Beijing and the Rome —were in place over All-Cradle's Lagrange point. Another, the Athens, was on its way from Sol. Each had a hundred converted midrange shuttles to work with. She had calls in to the port centers in t'Smeras, Avar Fil, and Usoph. They had room to evacuate, sorry, relocate, the first three million t'Therians, as soon as the ports were ready for them. The selected preparatory personnel would go first and take a week to make sure everything would be comfortable for the main body of citizens. The mass relocation would follow.
“Lynn?” R.J.’s voice came across the intercom. “Lynn, we've got a crisis.”
Lynn straightened up. “Already? What is it?”
“I'm sending you in a thread. Veep Brador wants you to follow it to the knot.”
Uh-oh. Lynn dropped into the chair in front of her comm station. Who's said what out there?
“Why didn't he send it straight to me?” she asked with a feeling of foreboding.
“He's furious, Lynn. This is what he does when he's furious.”
“Ah.” Lynn nodded. “Thanks.”
The screen lit up to show the rambling code that made up the thread's spec. “Claude,” Lynn said to activate the room voice, “reel out the loaded thread.”
“Completing request.”
The thread spun out into the web. Addresses, keys, and graphics scrolled up on the screen too fast for her to follow. Then, the screen went black except for a line of sedate blue text in shining cursive lettering.
A Comparison of the Hreshi Degradation and the Bioverse Efforts on Dedelph.
Lynn swallowed. The listed architect for the knot was Arron Hagopian of Prandth Island, one of the Hundred Isles of Home on the planet Dedelph.
Arron? What are you doing? “Claude, untie the knot.”
The text vanished. In its place appeared a group of delicate, gold-furred bipeds wearing beige coveralls. They gazed over a valley that had been ripped up and overturned until there was nothing left but uneven dirt and broken roots.
Oh, no.
The voice-over started. “Avitrol scouts discovered the Hresh in the four hundred fiftieth year of the third millennium, according to their major calendar.” Arron had, Lynn noted with some approval, resisted the temptation to make himself sound more sonorous or musical than he really was. This was the same voice that she knew from college. “Seventy-five years later, Avitrol had laid waste to major segments of the Hreshi planet, aided the dispersion of dozens of new infectious diseases.” The scene blended into a crowd of Hreshi crouched outside a square building Lynn assumed was a hospital. Their heads and hands were swollen to grotesque proportions. “And created economic instabilities that caused four major wars which killed millions of Hreshi.” Another valley, this one trampled and torn, with Hreshi bodies left embedded in mud, blood, and offal. Lynn winced.
Now, the view shifted to a scene Lynn was becoming very familiar with. It was the crowded stage of the Dedelphi Confederation treaty signing with the big screen behind it and the Bioverse execs smiling benignly down.
“Trillions of miles away, the Dedelphi, an embattled, ecologically threatened race, signed a treaty with the Bioverse Corp in the hopes that Bioverse would be able to reverse the ecological damage on their planet and stop the horrible engineered plagues that had been unleashed during a recent war.”
The scene split, displaying the sad, static Hreshi on one side and the ceremonious Dedelphi on the other.
“It will be argued that there are no similarities between these two cultures and their circumstances. The Hreshi were discovered by chance. The Dedelphi are old allies of the Human race and invited Bioverse in. Avitrol had no mission except profit. Bioverse has a clear-cut contract of benefit to the Dedelphi. But there is a binding similarity between both corps and both worlds.”
The screen showed a single scene: a much-speeded-up look at translucent beads binding together in the double-helix pattern of DNA.
“Both corps were in search of new life.”
Oh, come on, Arron. You're not going to say we've got the same mission as Avitrol?