“What is it, Sister? What couldn't you say inside the Queens’ wall?”
Armetrethe looked down the twisted road ahead of them. “If there is doubt that the Getesaph are still as much of a threat as ever, we must remove that doubt.” She focused ears and eyes on Senejess. “We must find out why they've changed the schedule.”
All the muscles across Senejess's chest tightened. “How?”
“One of us goes to the Hundred Isles and finds out,” said Armetrethe simply.
“That's impossible, Sister,” Senejess slapped Armetrethe's arm lightly. “Confederation or not, we could never get there in time to do anything useful.”
“Praeis could. The Humans would fly her.”
Senejess sat there for a moment, her ears straining as if trying to catch unspoken words.
“Sister, Praeis will not go.”
“Of course not.” Armetrethe rubbed her sister's back. “Think! We will write a letter to her pet Human, Lynn. Lynn will make the arrangements. You will go. I would, but,” she raised her stump, “Praeis has both arms. This much might be noticed.”
“But surely they'll check…”
“Check what?” Armetrethe tilted her ears forward. “They do not have any, what are they called? databases on us. I've heard them complain about it. To them, our names are what we say they are. They know what we tell them.”
Senejess felt the idea. It warmed her veins. She shook her head. “Praeis will call them as soon as she realizes what has happened.”
Armetrethe took her hand. “Not if we convince one of her daughters to go with you. That way, if she betrays us, she jeopardizes her own daughter. Even she is not that monstrous.”
Senejess froze. “Arme, we cannot jeopardize her children. The Ancestors would rear up out of the ground at us.”
Armetrethe's face had gone smooth and hard. “We are jeopardizing them by leaving them with her. They have come to live with us, but they have no understanding. They are as ignorant and cold as Humans. If we do not pull them out of their ignorance, they will be among the first to die.”
“But they will not go without their mother's consent…”
“They would. Resaime is most likely, I think. A little persuasion, and she will see this as an adventure.”
Senejess felt herself relax. She squeezed her sister's hand and laughed. “Then we should get home at once, Sister.”
She unlocked the engine and fired it up. They drove down the road, silent, but this time easy in their minds.
“It's good!” called Resaime. Jiau shinnied down the rain gutter, and all the cousins crowded around, gazing up at her handiwork. The concave comm transceiver sat firmly clamped to the corner of the eaves.
Theia wrapped her arm around her sister. Res was loving this. The comm station had arrived that morning, carried by Humans, in a van sent by Lynn. The cousins were all extremely reluctant to let Humans in to install the unit. They were afraid of being poisoned. So, Res had assured them that she and Theia could put the unit together.
There really wasn't much to it; yank off a whole lot of organic packaging and assure the cousins it was perfectly all right to bury the stuff. It made pretty good fertilizer. Then, they needed to clamp the transceiver somewhere it wouldn't be overshadowed by a wall or a tree. Wiring the station into the house had been trickier, but, again that was something Res was good at, and there wasn't any danger in messing around with a knife and the house's extremely old-fashioned carrier wires until darkness fell and the electricity came on.
Doing everything by hand during the day had been hard to get used to. The place had running water, but everything had to be heated using charcoal or wood, unless you wanted to wait until after dark. She and Res had been learning the intricacies of hand-washing, hand-cooking, hand-sewing, and hand-hauling of more stuff man she could easily name.
The only place they hadn't had to be constantly watched and instructed was the garden. That had been their job at home… in the colony, and Mother had never been willing to lay out for the fancy tools some of their neighbors coveted. As a result, they could turn soil, dig a row, and pull weeds with the best of them.
Everybody knew they only had two or three weeks until the relocation started, and so they seemed to be trying to keep as busy as possible.
“Wait until we get to the ships,” Res whispered on the sleeping mats at night “Then we'll really show them.”
Res had become increasingly interested in “showing them,” something, anything, and Theia still couldn't understand why. They had enough other things to worry about. Their mother was going through the Change, in the name of the Ancestors, and trying to delay it with a hormone compound they weren't sure would work. The aunts were not acting like sisters to Mother. Mother was all alone except for her daughters, but Res didn't seem able to concentrate on that. She just worried about impressing their cousins. Theia had tried to ask her why, but Res wouldn't say. So Theia could only stand near her sister and feel her own skin shiver.