Quiet Invasion(61)

One engineer, a dark-gold male with a deep-purple crest, climbed from perch to perch until he stood beside them.

“Welcome back, Ambassador D’seun,” he said, and T’sha realized his was the familiar voice she’d heard on her headset. She scanned his tattoos quickly. “Welcome, Ambassador T’sha,” he said. “I don’t suppose—”

“Actually, I do, Engineer Br’sei.” T’sha touched his forehands. “We worked together on the D’siash survey.”

Br’sei whistled agreement. “And I’m glad to be working with you again. Let me introduce you to the rest of our team….” He hesitated, his gaze sliding sideways to D’seun. “If that is acceptable, Ambassador.”

“As you see fit, Engineer.” D’seun settled onto a pair of perches, letting his wings furl and his body deflate.

But from Br’sei’s hesitation, T’sha knew that this was not always D’seun’s sentiment.

She said nothing about it. She followed in Br’sei’s wake as he introduced her to the ten other members of the Seventh Team. She greeted those she knew by name and skimmed their reports. Wind acidity, speed, current direction, how the world was layered, the location of the living mountains and how frequently they erupted. Maps of seeding plans. Diagrams for new bases, equipment lists, and promises. All the concerns of a preliminary research base, but the scale was staggering.

To spread life to a whole world. To turn this desert into a vibrant garden and watch the People take possession, raise that life, and use it to spread their own life, all their lives, even further. A myriad of ideas sang inside her, swelling her up as surely as an indrawn breath.

In that moment, floating there in the still air of the analysis chamber with all the possibilities of this empty world swirling inside her, T’sha had to fight to remember there were other issues here.

“What kind of attention are we currently paying to the New People?”

D’seun looked disappointed, as if he expected the marvel of this new world to overwhelm her strange obsession with the other people. “We have mapped and timed their satellite flyovers. We arrange not to be where they are looking.” A standard tactic. Stealth was important during a race to claim a resource. “If they’ve seen the portal, they have not made any change in routine to investigate it.”

“At the moment, they are spending most of their time on one area of the crust,” Br’sei volunteered. “They seem to have found something of great interest down there.”

T’sha cocked her muzzle toward Br’sei. “Something they can use to spread their life?”

“We don’t know…” said D’seun irritably, “yet.”

“They are beginning to spread their machines further out across the crust,” Br’sei went on, sending a disapproving ripple across D’seun’s wings. “Our speculation is they are looking for more of whatever it is they’ve found.”

T’sha gripped a perch with one of her posthands so she could keep facing Br’sei. “But have you determined whether or not they’ve started to make legitimate use of any resource?”

Br’sei’s gaze slid uneasily over her shoulder toward D’seun. She felt the tension in the air around her and heard the small rustle of skin and bone as the other engineers shrank or swelled nervously. “They aren’t mining, if that’s what you mean. Unless you’ve determined there’s another legitimate use of the crust.”

T’sha’s wings rippled. What had passed between Br’sei and D’seun? She felt a kind of urgency flowing from the engineer, but without words she could make no sense of it. “They might be planting. They might be building homes.”

“Homes?” repeated D’seun sharply. “Don’t be ridiculous. They live in the clouds.”

Slowly, T’sha turned to face him where he swelled on his perches. “My point is this,” she said deliberately as she pulled herself tight. “We don’t know what they’re doing. If it is legitimate use, we might have to change our working plan for seeding New Home.”

“You could go and ask them, I suppose,” said D’seun, his voice full of bland sarcasm.

“I wish that I could,” said T’sha smoothly. “But the High Law Meet authorized me only to observe, and I have no doubt you will be all too happy to report me should I overfly my commission.”

They eyed each other, swelling and deflating minutely in their uneasiness, very aware that they were arguing in front of subordinates in defiance of good manners and good sense. T’sha mourned for that one fleeting moment when they were joined in admiration of this new place. It had been a false promise of easier times.