It isn't so much that my mouth goes dry as that it is dry, suddenly and completely, like there was never any moisture in the world.
“You get to stay here, Gabe and Elspeth stay with the contact program, Genie gets to finish out school and go to college.” She sparkles at me a little, certain of her own powers.
Bernard Xu once told me to save the world. Good Christ.
I'm a madwoman. I stop, and swallow, and I think about it for ten long, hard, aching seconds, while Riel stares at me, and I swear I can hear the world creak slightly as it spins a little slower than it usually does.
Peacock told me to save the world for him. But you know something? I did that. And I really want to see what's on the other side of all those rocks up there, and all that empty space.
“I'd be wasted anywhere but the Montreal, Madam Prime Minister,” I say, and stick out my right hand.
It's another good ten seconds before she manages to put out her own, and take it.
Nine months later
8:30 AM
28 July 2064
Clarke Orbital Platform
Leslie leaned both hands against the chill crystal of Clarke's observation deck as the Montreal's fretted golden sails bore her away, the Huang Di trailing her on a parallel line of ascent, chemical engines smearing the sky behind with light. He didn't bother to magnify the image as the two ships shrank to pinpoints, rising out of the plane of the elliptic. Leslie didn't need to see them go. He could feel their weight like an indenting finger dragged across the infinitely elastic substance of space.
Looking good, Charlie.
I'm going to miss you, Les. What if we find even weirder aliens where we're going?
Don't be daft. And I've got enough aliens to talk to right here. And it's not like we'll be out of touch.
They were both very quiet for a little while. Leslie dusted his palms on each other and turned away from the glass, past the reporters and the dignitaries and the trays of canapés. Past Prime Minister Riel and Premier Hsiung and General Valens, who were clustered with other VIPs near the screen.
Leslie kept walking. Funny sort of leave-taking, this.
Is it really? Leave-taking, I mean?
Now that you mention it— There was coffee to be had, self-heating vacuum mugs being handed out by caterers. Leslie availed himself of one and staked out an inexplicably empty chair. Well, whatever you run into out there, I hope it's as easy to get along with as the Benefactors.
Charlie laughed inside his head. Through Charlie's eyes, Leslie could see the Montreal's familiar hydroponics lab, the receding image of Earth on a wall screen, the changing angle of the sunlight through the big windows. Why should what they want be so different from what we want?
They're aliens?
Yes, but look at it this way. We're not species in competition; there's nothing a birdcage needs that competes with or conflicts with anything we need. We don't use the same resources. And there's a lot of room up here.
That doesn't explain why they came running to see what was up when we started playing with the tech they left on Mars. Or why they left it there in the first place.
Charlie rubbed the bridge of his nose. Leslie caught himself mirroring the gesture and smiled.
Charlie shrugged. Why does a kid poke anthills with a stick?
To see what the ants are going to do. To see what the inside of the nest looks like. Leslie paused. Oh, bugger it, Charlie. You want to know what I think? I think Elspeth's right. I think they wanted us to teach them how to talk to each other. I think they needed somebody to translate. And they got it. And I feel like an idiot just saying it, because that implies they've been wandering around out there for umpteen million years, unable to talk to each other except by grunts and pointing, and a bunch of chimpanzees stagger in and accomplish it in nine months. And that's just ridiculous.
Why is it ridiculous? Leslie could feel Charlie's encouragement, his agreement. We've been walking around in gravity for the last umpteen million years, and they showed us how to manipulate it in brand-new ways in a couple of months. They never had to learn to talk.
Leslie didn't have an argument for that. Or not a good one, anyway. They're critters that manipulate gravity, and we're critters that manipulate symbols.
That's what I said.
It doesn't make you nervous?
It doesn't make you nervous, and you're the Jonah who spent his time in the belly of the whale.
Because I feel like it ought to scare somebody.
The Montreal kept climbing. Charlie stood and glanced out the port; Leslie shared the view. They could just catch the red flare of the Huang Di's engines reflected against the Montreal's vanes, although they couldn't see the Chinese ship herself. You're the one who keeps talking about beginner stories, Les. You just don't like being on the beginner side of the damned things any more than anyone else does.
“Bloody hell,” Leslie said out loud. “Charlie, I hate it when you're right.”
“Leslie?”
He didn't jump as Jeremy laid a hand on his shoulder, leaning down a little. He'd felt the linguist coming up behind him. “Yes, Jer?”
“Come on,” he said, letting his hand fall away. “These guys are going to be here all night. Let's get something to eat, and flicker our flashlights at the shiptree for a couple of hours. Maybe we can teach it some nursery rhymes.”
Leslie grinned and got up. Beginner stories.
Sure.
Three years later
1746 hours
Wednesday 15 December 2066
HMCSS Montreal
LaGrange Point, near Valentine
Elspeth has stationed herself by the far wall of the room, where she can see everybody. She keeps looking back and forth between Wainwright, Charlie, Gabe, Patty, Genie, and me. It's a measuring look, as if she's trying to figure out which sand castle is likely to crumble first, so she can shove some more mud up against it. Her irises gleam like polished agate, excitement thrumming through her, giving a lie to the new gray in her hair, coarse wiry strands that go this-way and that-way, oblivious to the direction of her long coiling ringlets. You'd think it would be Gabe who would hold this mad little family together.
You'd be wrong.
She's looking at him when I wander over to her and slouch against the wall, my upper arm against her shoulder. She sighs and leans into the touch, warmth pressing my jumpsuit into my skin. She pushes a little harder, leaning in to me. Neither one of us looks down from the planet on the monitor. “Ugly fucker,” I say, while the whole bridge holds its breath in quiet awe.
The dusty brown planet spins like a flicked bottle top, the ringed, sky-killing bulk of its gray-green motherworld hanging in crescent behind it. The light of the star that warms them isn't quite right either, and from what I understand the bigger planet's orbit is so erratic that the little Earth-like world we plan in our infinite arrogance to colonize will have summers like Phoenix, Arizona, and winters like Thompson, Manitoba. What's not scorched desert is frozen desert.