Quiet Invasion(173)
But she had to make this work. The New People were not insane. Vee was not insane. “My life, Ambassador Z’eth. You will have a promise such as no ambassador has had in two hundred years.”
Z’eth hesitated. “The teachers do not favor such promises.”
T’sha swelled yet again. Every tendon, every pore strained to the fullest. “My city is dead. Yours is dying. I can promise nothing to it. We have only each other.”
“No!” cried D’seun, flapping his wings as if he meant to strike T’sha. “Ambassador Z’eth, I hold your promise. You will follow my vote about the disposition of the New People.”
“The New People on this world,” Z’eth told him. “On this world only, and you have already argued they are sane.” She turned her back on him and swelled her body until her size matched T’sha’s. “If we do this, we must truly do this. I cannot turn around in a year, or two, or ten and set you free again. This will be a legal, binding promise. You will be enslaved to me, and I will use you as such.”
T’sha glanced over Z’eth’s wing and she saw Br’sei there, hunched in and shrunken. His skin was torn. Something had happened, and she could not ask him what. She had meant to repay him for all he had done to help her, but if this worked, she would never be able even to make a promise of her own again. All that she had, all that she was would be Z’eth’s until her soul flew away free, to go to sleep with Ca’aed’s perhaps.
T’sha dipped her muzzle.
“Done,” said Z’eth.
“Ambassador!” shouted D’seun.
“It is done,” said Z’eth calmly. “And it is not done.” She faced D’seun. “Do you wish to protest, Ambassador? How many promises do I hold for you, D’seun? What shall I call in first?”
T’sha swelled, even as she felt her future slide off her skin like wisps of cloud. No husbands, no wives, no children of her own.
Nothing left at all, except six billion of the New People who were free to prove what they truly were.
“It will be worth it,” she said to Br’sei, knowing they would be her last free words. “It will.”
A voice nibbled at the edge of Helen’s hearing and tugged at the comfortable blanket of darkness. She did not want to hear and she did not want to wake up. There was nothing to wake up to.
“Helen, come on, Helen, you can’t leave it like this. Helen…”
Can’t leave it like this? Can’t leave what like this? She’d have to wake up to find out. Helen strained for a moment, but, gradually, her eyelids fluttered open.
At the sight of Ben’s frantic face, memory flooded back, the New People, the threat to Earth, to them all….
“What’s—” she croaked.
“It’s okay, Helen.” Ben smoothed her hand. “You’re in the infirmary. It’s going to be okay.”
Another voice. “The New People have given in. They’re not going to kill Earth.” Veronica Hatch, that’s who that was. “They sent up a balloon to tell us so.”
Helen coughed. “Get to the shuttles. Tell Michael, tell the yewners.” She squeezed Ben’s hand as if to drain his strength into her. “Tell them we give in too. Get them back here.”
“No, Helen, it’s all right,” whispered Ben anxiously. “The New People relented. There’s no need—”
“Do it.” Her head fell back against something soft that had been placed there.
Don’t you see? she wanted to tell him. We were wrong. We were seeing only in terms of ourselves, our futures, our pasts. We didn’t see in terms of worlds, in terms of time and all the lives that are connected to ours. We thought, I thought, Venera was all there was, all I was. I was wrong, I was so wrong, and Michael was right. We have to make peace now. We have to remember how much more there is to us than just what we’ve done here.
“He’ll do it,” said Veronica firmly. “Trust me.”
I do, Helen closed her eyes. It would be all right. She’d get better. There was work to do, for Venera, for herself, and for all the human beings for whom this would now be a point of new beginning as they reached out to the People, came to understand them, taught the People about the breadth of humanity so both sides could truly understand their neighbors.
It all began now.