Quiet Invasion(131)

Vee snagged a piece of toast off the breakfast table, earning a dirty look from Sheila, whom she smiled at as she breezed by. She plunked herself into the copilot’s chair, toast in her mouth and tea in her hand.

Good morning, T’sha, she typed, one-handed.

Good luck, Vee. Vee had quickly given T’sha her nickname after they had established that the long form gave the People’s translator trouble.

T’sha seemed agitated this morning. Her body shrank and expanded as if she were breathing heavily. She shifted her weight on the perch that had been set up for her, and her wings twitched even though they were folded neatly along her back.

Is there something wrong? typed Vee.

Politics, replied T’sha. We are on the verge of an important poll in the High Law Meet. Vee, I have worked on a scene I wish to show you. Something of Home. When you have seen it, I will ask you some questions and I will then take your answers back to the Law Meet. Will you watch?

Of course. She wanted to add, “I’m all eyes,” but she wasn’t sure what T’sha would make of the metaphor.

T’sha’s words faded, leaving the bubble clear and empty for a moment. Then a blur of color filled the bubble like smoke. The blur resolved itself and Vee saw another Venus.

But this one had life.

The bubble showed her an island made up of swollen roots and leaves covered with translucent gold and silver blisters. Green tendrils that might have been vines or blades of grass waved in the wind. Light, white feathers protruded from clusters of seeds, or maybe they were little mushrooms. They all hooked together as if hanging on for dear life. A nearly spherical slug crawled along one of the ash-colored branches only to get sucked up by something that looked like a cross between a jellyfish and a kingfisher.

This is the canopy, right? asked Vee.

Yes, came T’sha’s answer. The canopy is below the clear. It is a complex tangle of life which, with the living highlands, supplies all the nutrients that we need to live and thrive. The plants intermingle and grow out from each other creating, what…wait, islands of vegetation that support both fliers and runners, which live on the canopy as you do on the crust and never lift themselves from it.

Vee glanced up at T’sha, trying to find words for the sheer wonder of what she saw, but T’sha was deflated on her perch, smaller than Vee had ever seen her, so small that her sparkling gold skin hung in wrinkles and folds around her frame. She was gazing at the image in the holobubble.

This is a construction from old records, read the text. This was what we think it might have looked like several thousand years ago when the canopy was little more than loose islands floating on the wind. This is what it looks like now.

A solid, verdant carpet, green and gold, red and blue, and brown. Broad, bubblelike leaves reached up into the wind from a solid mat of intertwined roots. A series of six-legged, what? Reptiles? Or birds? The local equivalent of chickens, maybe? Whatever they were, they picked their way between the leaves, sticking their beaks into bubbles here and there and draining them dry. But large patches of this field, with its one kind of “bird,” were twisted black or limp brown.

I guess death and disease look the same no matter where you go, was Vee’s first thought. Her second was, Wait until Isaac gets a look at all this.

Vee saw T’sha sagging next to the image, and details from the past few days’ worth of conversations clicked into place. You don’t build things—I have that right? You grow them or breed them?

Mostly, yes. T’sha shook herself, inflating a little, like a person trying to shake off a malaise.

And if they’re alive, they have to eat, so they drain off the same stuff from the air that you do?

Yes. T’sha dipped her muzzle, an affirmative gesture.

And so you cultivated the most useful stuff in the canopy and in the clouds to thicken the soup in the clear which nourishes your living infrastructure, and you’ve overtaxed whatever the canopy eats?

Again, T’sha dipped her muzzle. That is one of the things that is happening. Another is blights. Huge portions of the canopy are dying, and we cannot stop them.

Vee nodded to herself as she typed. Monoculture. We’ve had that problem on Earth too.

T’sha inflated a little further, hesitating before she spoke. It is more than that. Some of the symbiotes and the living infrastructure made more efficient use of the…soup than the food crops. The tenders are actively killing the crops. We have lost the balance and have not yet recovered it.

Vee felt a twinge of sympathy. Imagine if the ladybugs stopped eating the aphids and turned around and ate the grain? What could anyone do?

So your world is dying?

Dying? T’sha flapped her wings as if to drive the word away. No. It is changing. The change will be violent, and the outcome is uncertain. We cannot predict what the new balance will be like or how well it will support us. The most viable solution heard was to use the World Portals our technicians were experimenting with to find another world where we could spread a controllable life base and transfer ourselves. We could wait until the pace of change on Home slowed down, and then we could return, possibly reserving the New Home and…wait…allow one world to lie fallow and stabilize while we lived on the other. T’sha turned her gaze directly toward the scarab. This is our case, you understand. This is what we wish to do here. We wish to spread life. We will take no more than we need. Do you understand?