What felt so much like a single being, an individual, was not that at all. The divisions among the cloud-dwellers were not distinct boundaries, as was the case with every other life form Katy Romanova had ever encountered.
Deliberately planted colonists from some far-off other world? Castaways, stranded in a place to which they had managed to adapt? At any rate these beings had not evolved on the planet whose atmosphere they now inhabited, and when they had come there they had been corporeal. And until humans also came there to explore and to colonize, they had been unable to leave.
“We allowed the original band of humans to remain on our planet’s surface because it seemed to us that what they did there would not affect us, and because it saddened us that so many like them were killed when we were forced to protect ourselves,” the single voice that represented all of the cloud-folk told Katy now, as she sat with Linc and Maddy in the university library in the middle of the circle formed by Narsai’s councilors and commissioners. Calling those people together for a second meeting had taken some doing, because they were almost all frightened of traveling so soon after the battle that had taken place in their star system—the first battle to be fought there, or even nearby, in centuries.
But at last they had come, most of them anyway. And now they were listening as a perfectly normal human female whom they had known all her life told them what these “Others” (as the cloud-folk now chose to designate themselves) wanted.
On those ships out there, Katy Romanova said, were not just the mysterious Others; but also humans, and displaced Morthans, and assorted people of other species. And gens—because the Others could see nothing different about gens, to the Others a human was a human was a human.
“How can they travel in ships, if they don’t have bodies?”
That intriguing question was posed by Cab Barrett. The doctor was free to attend this gathering because Rachel Kane, once safely admitted to a modern medical facility, had agreed to let her unborn children be transferred from her body to incubation fields where the three fetuses could develop just as normally as if she had been able to continue her pregnancy.
She had been unwilling to consider that before, because as long as she was property her babies were property too. But that was no longer an issue, and for her safety and theirs the transfer had been made. Now she was recovering, with Dan Archer still hovering protectively at her side as though he could not quite let himself believe no second corporate marshal would arrive and try to take her away.
“Each of them travels in concert with a humanoid, with a corporeal person,” Kerle Marin supplied, and looked at Romanova for confirmation as he spoke. He was finding this experience new and exciting, and not unsettling at all. “It’s not ‘possession’ in the way I’m afraid some of you may be inclined to think about it, though! The Others can be one being, or a billion beings; which, and how many, depends on what seems needed from moment to moment.”
“And just why would such a being bother with trying to help displaced humans, and Morthans who are cast-offs because they lack healing gifts, and gens who’ve escaped from their owners? Especially why would they take responsibility for them, in such numbers that their own planet’s resources can’t keep pace?” That was Cabanne Romanova, speaking calmly because she was too old to be afraid of anything now except harm to her mate or her daughter or her granddaughter. And clearly this fascinating new turn of events did not threaten any of them, so she was enjoying it instead of shrinking from it.
“Because they’re compassionate people and dislike seeing others suffer, is one reason. But also because although you might not think so, living in a body has its advantages.” Lincoln Casey was participating in this set of negotiations openly, instead of covertly as he had done thirteen years earlier. Then his intimacy with Katy had been newly disclosed even to her, and he had been afraid of spoiling it forever before she could discover its possibilities for shared joy; but he had no such fears now. His bond to his wife was solid and tested and secure, and although he still did not relish intrusion on its sanctity by the Others he could tolerate the encroachment without having to fight against Katy’s fear and his own resentment.
“Such as?” Cab Romanova asked. She smiled as she did so, because she liked her daughter’s husband and she no longer bothered to hide that fact.
“Such as being able to operate the controls of a ship. Such as being able to build a ship; or to reactivate ships that have been stored in caverns on Mistworld, for thousands of years since the time when the Others’ ancestors came there.” Casey answered that question, too. It was knowledge he hadn’t possessed until the words came out of his mouth, and he looked toward his wife in astonishment. Of his own volition he asked her, “Did you know that already, Katy?” It didn’t seem possible that she could have picked up something that had bypassed him, while he was serving as her conduit in communicating with the Others; but the information had come to him so matter-of-factly that he wondered if he was expected to possess it already, and had somehow missed it during the turmoil that had been a constant part of this process thirteen years earlier.
“No. I knew they came to Mistworld from somewhere else, that they were colonists too. But I didn’t know until just now why those ships are so obviously not anything a human designed.” Katy smiled. She was excited, probably even more so than Linc was.
“The humans have given us many things, just by living on our world,” Kerle Marin resumed, with a different tone in his voice that left no one in any doubt that the Others were speaking through him now. “But without help from their own kind, they cannot cope with the influx of other noncorporeals that is overwhelming both our world and the other less hospitable ones where the people you call ‘rebels’ have their origin. So we have agreed that that our charges must create a new relationship with other corporeals, such as you humans on Narsai. We had every thought this could be done peacefully—but those of our charges who said that would not be possible, have been proved correct.”
“Is it still important enough to do anyway, even if it can’t be entirely peaceful?” The old philosopher, Trabe Kourdakov, asked that question. He frowned as he did so, because he was not happy about all this in the way that his wife was.
But he was a pragmatist, not an idealist, and he accepted the answer that came to him not from Marin’s throat but from his daughter’s. “Yes, it is,” Katy Romanova announced firmly, her voice clearly expressing another intelligent creature’s thoughts. “Life has not only the right to survive, but the duty to do so. If you did not believe that, your ancestors would not have traveled here from Terra to build this rich society in which you take such justifiable pride. It was a costly business, your histories tell you that. But you would say it was worth the cost, would you not?”
Yes, they would. On that point not one person present could dissent.
It had been many hours since the alien fleet’s arrival. Although she’d had time for some sleep, Katy Romanova was nevertheless worn out when this second assembly of Narsai’s two leadership groups finally adjourned. And she sensed that beside her, Linc was exhausted too; and as for young Maddy, the girl was in Linc’s arms being carried like a three-year-old instead of a leggy young woman of thirteen.
“Do you think if we agree to help these people, these ‘Others’ and the humanoids with them, the Commonwealth will allow us to do that?” Katy’s mother was at her side as they walked out of the conference room. If she was tired, this almost centenarian woman had to be much more so. Yet Cabanne Romanova’s eyes were bright, and Katy had the distinct notion that if she had told her mother the Commonwealth would undoubtedly pound hell out of Narsai for sending its disposable resources somewhere other than the Inner Worlds that answer would not have fazed her.
What she said was, with absolute honesty, “I don’t know, Mum. I suspect they won’t be happy, but leaders like Fleet Admiral Tanaka and Defense Minister Fothingill should remember Mistworld thirteen years ago. If they remember it well enough to take all this seriously—that’s the first step toward dealing with both the Others and the Rebs in a way that won’t be a total disaster.”
And then she yawned, and crawled after Linc into an aircar that would take her little family back to its home at last.