Quiet Invasion(35)

T’sha deliberately deflated and sank, resisting the urge to fly right under him to make her point. “I am only one voice, D’seun. All the rest of the Senior Committee for New Home are your supporters. There will be very little I can do.”

D’seun dropped himself so he could look into her eyes. “Do not flutter helplessness at me, T’sha. What ‘little’ you can do, you will do.”

“Is there some promise you would give my families to have me do otherwise, D’seun?” asked T’sha bluntly. “How much will you give for me to disregard our new neighbors? Is there enough to make that right?”

D’seun did not answer.

“No, there is not,” said T’sha. “We are together in this, D’seun, until the task is over.”

“Until the task is over,” D’seun said softly. “Until then.”

D’seun rose from the world portal into the candidate world, now New Home. Its clean winds brushed the transfer’s disorientation off him. A quick turn about showed him P’tesk and T’oth waiting on the downwind side of the portal’s ring. D’seun flew quickly toward them.

“Good luck, Ambassador D’seun.” P’tesk raised his hands. “Is there news?”

D’seun touched his engineers’ hands. “Engineer P’tesk, Engineer T’oth. There is news, but not all of it is good. Let us return to the test base, and then I can tell our people all at once.”

As often as he had done it, it was strange to D’seun to fly over the naked crust without even a scrap of canopy to cover it. He could barely taste the life base they had seeded the winds with. He imagined sometimes that this was not a newly emerging world, but a prophecy as to what Home might become—lifeless stone and ash sculpted by sterile winds.

So it will be if T’sha has her way.

Their base was little more than a few shells tethered together with half a dozen infant cortex boxes to nurture the necessary functions. Not comfortable or companionable, but it served its function, as they all did.

“Team Seven,” D’seun called through his headset, “this is Ambassador D’seun. We are gathering in the analysis chamber. I have word of the latest vote from the High Law Meet.”

Like the rest of the base, the analysis chamber was strictly functional. The undecorated walls showed the shell’s natural pearl and purple colors. Separate caretaker units, all holding their specialized cortex boxes, had been grown into the shell. That and a few perches were all there was to the room.

D’seun, T’odi, and P’tesk arrived to find T’stad and Kr’ath already waiting for them. They all wished each other luck as the others filtered in. D’seun’s gaze swept the assembly—his assembly, his team who had worked so hard to prove the worth of their world. He laid claim to them all, and if that was greedy of him, so be it. After so much work and so many promises, he had earned the right to be a little greedy.

“Where is Engineer Br’sei?” D’seun asked.

The others glanced around the chamber, as if just now noticing Br’sei was gone.

“Engineer Br’sei?” he asked his headset.

After a brief pause, Engineer Br’sei’s voice came back. “I’m at Living Highland 45, Ambassador. I’ll listen in over the headset. I have to check the stability of the base seeding here. I think we may be running into some trouble from the high salt content of these lavas.”

“Then listen closely.” D’seun raised his voice to speak to the entire assembly. “The ambassadors to the High Law Meet have voted. This world, our world, is declared New Home!”

All around him, voices trilled high, fluting notes of jubilation. D’seun let them enjoy. They had all worked so hard. Thousands of dodec-hours of observation and analysis. Millions of adjustments in proportion and organization on the most basic levels. Sometimes it felt as though each molecule had been hand reared. But they had made their promise to the whole of the People, and they had kept it. Life could be made to thrive here in these alien winds.

“That is not all the news, however,” D’seun said, cutting through their celebration. He waited until the last echoes of their chaotic song died away. “Something new has happened on Home.”

All their attention was on him, and he told them about Gaith. For the first time there was no danger of interference from T’sha, and he could tell what had really happened. An entire village had died an indescribable death in such pain as life should never know. It had happened in a few hours. A life the villagers thought they knew, a life they had grown and cherished for thousands of years, had gone insane. Insane as it was, it would turn on other life until nothing was left but a mantle of death surrounding the entire world.