As such, he supervised more data-bases than humans, analyzing rock and soil samples and looking for useful deposits. It was a job. It bought food and shelter and paid the taxes so he could breathe and drink, but it meant nothing.

He'd been in one of the public caverns. He'd just bought coffee and fry cakes for breakfast. He'd been sitting on a hard little chair, staring at the walls and thinking how much he missed the Bradbury gardens. The Lunars had covered their gray rock with vines. Morning glories and wild grapes made a living wallpaper and warred with the rambler roses and rasp-berries in providing color and scent. Pretty, but not the gar-dens.

Empty, second-rate. Cheap. Like his job. Like him.

"Dr. Godwin?"He looked up. A woman stood by his table, plainly dressed in a blue blouse and matching trousers. Her graying hair was bundled into a knot and pinned in place with wooden pins. Her eyes sparkled and her entire attitude said she knew why she was alive.

"Yes?" said Ben, wracking his brain to see if he should know her.

"I'm Helen Failia. I've been looking for you. I need a geolo-gist who knows comparative planetology and volcanology." She dropped into a spare chair without asking. "For Venera Base on Venus."

"Oh?" was all Ben could think to say. Venera was half-built, half-occupied, and some said half-baked. It was a pure-research colony, the first in decades. No one believed it could last. The science currents predicted its death year after year. But somehow, Venera never quite laid down.

"Our staff is thinning out. We need to get some fresh blood in. Someone who can dig hard into the work." Which told him why her staff was thinning out. She didn't have the money to pay them what the mining companies could. Which also ex-plained why she was willing to recruit someone who only had a few, very obscure papers to his credit. Papers he'd spent the past three or so Terran years carefully salting through the stream. Helen, he would learn, always had an eye open for a good bargain.

"I've read your credentials. Your postdoctoral work is brilliant. You've got an eye for the unusual, and you don't mind hard work. Which is perfect for Venus." She didn't just smile; she beamed. Ben couldn't help thinking of Ted Fuller. On a good day, when things were going well, Ted radi-ated the same light.

Ben drank his bitter, cooling coffee, trying to sort out his thoughts. This was definitely not what he'd been expecting to hear this morning. He'd been expecting another day of trying to convince himself he'd made the right decision, that this life really was better than the one he'd abandoned, or would be very soon.

"Venus is open territory," said Helen, leaning on her elbows. "You can't throw a stone without hitting something new. You'll have complete freedom to direct the research. Anything you want to look at, it's yours."

Risky. It had the chance to bring him to public attention, and public attention could be the end of the line for someone hid-ing behind an alias.He looked at the coffee in his cup. He looked at the vines covering the gray walls. He looked at the people around the table-miners, students, engineers, all buzzing about in their separate lives like bees and meaning about as much to him. He looked back at Helen, and in her dark eyes, he suddenly saw some hope. Hope of a real life, a better life, one with meaning and purpose to replace the purpose that had been ripped from him by the yewners and their troops.

"I'd have to hear about the base," he said slowly. "The facil-ities, the package you're offering, and so on."

"Of course." Helen picked up his coffee cup, sniffed its con-tents, and made a face. "But first you have to get some real coffee. On me. Come on."

He'd followed her without question. Into the Lunar coffee bar, down to Earth, out to Venus. He'd followed her for twenty years through funding fights, mission fights, personnel fights, and charter fights.

Ben swiveled his chair and watched the clouds outside the window.

They swirled and flowed together like his thoughts. They had predictable currents, he knew, and if you worked long enough, you could map their movements and understand how each little particle fit into the greater flow.

He'd never even tried to tell Helen about what had really happened to him all those years ago. Helen would not have understood that what they were doing on Mars was real, even more real than the research, or building Venera into a sustain-able colony that would outlive both of them. What really mat-tered was shaking off Earth's grip. What mattered was freedom. Right now, Mother Earth could tell them to do anything, any-thing, and they'd have to do it. They had no choice. Mother Earth owned them, their lives, and their homes. Helen never saw it that way.

Helen thought she called the shots. Helen thought she was in control.

She wasn't. Mother Earth was bigger, more forceful, and more determined than even Helen Failia.

Ben turned back around to face his desk again and started typing.

Helen had to be shown the truth.

* * *"Good luck, Ambassador D'seun," said K'est as D'seun glided through its windward gate. "Ambassador Z'eth is in the public park. She asks that you meet her there."

"Thank you, K'est." D'seun flew swiftly toward the park. He struggled to keep his senses open to the dying city-the bare bones, the air rich with forced nutrients, yes, but also filled with desperation. A thin veneer of life that was all that lay be-tween K'est and true death, and all the citizens knew it.

This is what I fight for, he told himself. We must prevent any more living deaths like these.

D'seun's first impression of the public park was that it was bigger than his whole birth village had ever been. Bone, shell, ligament, vine, and tapestry outlined a roughly spherical labyrinth of arches, corridors, and pass-throughs. Flight be-came a dance, here. Wind became song, and the voice of the city guided him through it all.

"What am I interrupting here?" asked D'seun as he gave him-self up to the drafts of the wind-guides and let them carry him through a corridor of story tapestries.

"Ambassador Z'eth has called a hiring fair," replied K'est.

D'seun dipped his muzzle. Such things had been rare once, but with the massive numbers of refugees and indentures that circled the world, the ones who held the promises were gathering more and more frequently to review the skills they held promise to, and to exchange those skills and the persons to better serve the cities and the free citizens.

Conversations touched D'seun at every turn, about medi-cines, about refugee projections, and the health of the canopy. Adults and children, both free and with the hatchmark of indenture between their eyes, passed him on every side. Tentacled constructors and spindly, broad-eyed clerkers trailed in their wakes.

Finally, the wind-guides opened out into a pearlescent chamber that could have easily held two or three hundred adult females. The voices of a quartet rang pleasantly off its walls. Here and there, clusters of ambassadors and speakers hovered, deep in conversation with each other.

The archivers hovered in their own clusters, off to the side, waiting untilthey were needed.

Z'eth herself was easy to spot. She drifted from cluster to cluster. She'd listen to a conversation for a moment and then move on to the next.

D'seun could not feel any words from her. She just listened.

Good. Perhaps she'll just listen to me.

Perhaps the city spoke to Z'eth, or perhaps she was just waiting for him, because as he flew through the portal, Z'eth lifted her muzzle and rose above the conversation where she hovered. D'seun flew quickly to her, deflating just enough to make sure his eyes were below hers.

"Good luck, Ambassador Z'eth," he said as they touched hands. "Thank you for agreeing to see me. Please accept a guesting gift, which I found on my journeys." As he spoke the formal words, he held out a palm-sized eyepiece. It lifted from his palm and hovered between himself and Z'eth.

Inside, a del-icate, biped drawn in shades of red raised her hand in greeting.

"Lovely!" exclaimed Z'eth. "One of your New People, is it not?"

"It is, Ambassador." He did not even attempt to pronounce the name they called themselves by. "They are what I have come to speak with you about."

Z'eth lifted herself and closed her right forehand around the eyepiece.

"The members of the High Law Meet speak of noth-ing else. Their cogent method of contact with Ambassador T'sha has convinced many that they are a whole, sane people and should be treated as such."

"I wish to urge you, Ambassador Z'eth, to believe no reports from Ambassador T'sha and her followers." D'seun spoke earnestly, but softly.

The touch of his words was for Z'eth only. "I see the tapestries they weave to show the New People as whole beings, complete in intellect and soul who live intricate lives and wish to exist with us in community." He swelled as far as he dared. "This is not true. They do not know even the first principles of life. Community with them is impossible."

Z'eth's crest ruffled and spread. She touched her muzzle to his, and D'seun felt all her gentle mockery. "You are so certain, Am-bassador, you must have been paying close attention to them.""Very close, Ambassador." What did it matter what she knew? Either he would succeed, in which case she would be with him, or he would fail. If he failed, nothing else mattered. New Home and Home would both be lost.

"Your attention has been closer, I think, than your commis-sion allowed, and for much longer," Z'eth went on.

"Yes," agreed D'seun. He had been supposed to supervise the seeding of the world and leave. He had left, but when he had returned for a monitoring stint, he had left behind some special tools. Each monitoring stint after that had brought him new data. He had all but mortgaged his future for the analysis of it.

"And you have shared none of this illicit information with the Law Meet?" Z'eth inquired. "How discreet of you. Why have you kept this to yourself?"

"At first, I feared T'sha and those like her would fear the New People."

He aimed his words right at Z'eth, not wanting her to miss a single one.

"So I kept what I knew a secret until I knew how the New People could be controlled or eliminated." Preferably eliminated. New Home had to be kept pure for life the People created and understood. "But, instead, she has fallen in love with them and their dead things."

"Are you so sure they need to be controlled?" For the first time, the mockery left Z'eth's voice. "Why not let them flourish beside us?"

Revulsion crawled across D'seun's skin. "You do not know, Ambassador.

They surround themselves with death. They bring nothing living with them. Their homes are dead, their shells are dead, even their tools are dead. They are ghouls, Ambassador, billions of ghouls who live in ignorance of even the basic ideas of spreading life. Can we permit ghouls to wander the winds of New Home with our children?"

Z'eth pulled her muzzle back in thoughtful silence. D'seun held himself still, trying to muster the patience to wait out her thoughts. He could not rush her. She had influence that went beyond wealth. If he could turn her from her patronage of T'sha, T'sha would be toppled. Everything depended on this.

"Ambassador, I seek a promise from you.""I assumed." Her crest spread out even further, as if it reached toward every conversation and promise being ex-changed in her dying city. "And what would you pay for this promise?"

"My children, when they are born, will belong to your city on New Home," said D'seun. "They will serve your city until they are adults."

It hurt to say it. It hurt to know that it had to be this way. He had been indentured in his tenth year of life, when K'taith succumbed to one of the first of the new rots. He had always sworn to the souls of his unborn children that they would grow to adulthood free.

But he had to break that oath. He had nothing left to promise but those children, whoever they were and whenever they would come to be. He could not permit the New People to spread their death further across New Home.

"A rich promise, and a risky one," Z'eth mused. "You may not find a wife willing to go along with it."

"I will find a wife who will," said D'seun, firmly. He had to.

"You sound most determined." Z'eth dipped her muzzle. "What promise do you want?"

"You will be elected to the Law Meet of New Home." D'seun drifted as close to her as he could without touching her. "There is no question of this. I have heard the proposed rosters in the Meet. Your name is on every one. You will be the most senior of the ambassadors, the leader there as you are the leader here. I ask that you promise to follow my lead when we must deter-mine the final disposition of the New People."

Z'eth swelled, just a little. What are you thinking, Ambas-sador? What future do you taste?

Her gaze drifted from him and passed over the shifting crowds that filled this beautiful chamber in the center of her slowly dying city.

"Thank you for your promise, Ambassador," she said. "It is rich and would bring my city benefit."

Hope swelled D'seun's skin; then he read the tilt of her head and thespread of her wings and knew what was coming next.

"But even if I accepted," she pushed herself closer to him, "I could make no guarantees of your success. T'sha is not the only one in love with the New People. There are many in the High Law Meet who are enchanted by their words. My influ-ence is great, but I am not certain it is that great."

"But, Ambassador." He thrust his muzzle forward, touching her skin, breathing out his urgency with his words. She must understand, she must.

"We cannot predict them; we cannot un-derstand or control them. There must be nothing on New Home that we cannot control; otherwise life will rebel against us and bring death and imbalance, as it has to Home."

Z'eth backwinged sharply. "Ambassador, I think you have been too long away from the temples to speak so. We serve life, and in return life serves us. That is the way of it. Life does not attack us, nor do we attack it."

Abandoning all caution, D'seun swelled to his fullest extent. "We serve the life we know. We do not know the New People, or their life."

"You will calm yourself, Ambassador," murmured Z'eth. D'seun shrank down instantly. Z'eth remained silent for awhile, and D'seun had to concentrate on each small motion of his wings to keep himself in place.

"If I took your offer," she said softly, her words brushing so lightly against his skin he had to strain every pore to feel them, "I could promise only that I will vote with you regarding the disposal of the New People on New Home. It could be no more than that."

Cautious, controlled, very Z'eth. It would be an expensive promise. But Z'eth would not go into any such vote alone. Even if she exacted no promises from the other members of the New Home Law Meet, her vote would sway others yet unpromised.

And he might be able to swing a few votes himself, espe-cially if he could find a way to silence T'sha.

Was it enough to break his vow to his unborn children?

The New People will corrupt us. They will take our world from us, as the rots have taken this world from us.New Home must be for the People alone, or they would all die. He hovered alone, surrounded by death and life, and he was the only one who understood what it really meant.

His understanding had come to him the day his village, K'taith, had died. He'd huddled under his mother's belly up-wind of the village and listened to the speaker and the ambas-sador telling them that the village could no longer care for them. Its bones were too brittle; its skin and ligaments could no longer heal themselves. Their presence was hurting the vil-lage. It had asked for death, to be disassembled and its few healthy parts put to use elsewhere. The vote would be taken to see if the citizens would honor that wish, of course, but, said the speaker and the ambassador, they could not believe that anyone who loved the village would insist it continue in pain and helplessness it could not bear.

The vote was taken, and all free adults voted to let their vil-lage's suffering end. D'seun had just watched the discolored walls and the limp, tattered sails. He felt the wind against his own skin.

The wind that fed him had killed the city and taken his free-dom. He knew that instinctively. Everyone knew what hap-pened when their village died.

He had seen it then. There was no balance. The life that killed his home, his future, did not in any way serve him. The People were not strong, they were weak. Life did not serve them; it hated them. It planned against them in its wildness. It left no niche for the People to fill. Life on Home was closed ut-terly to them.

Oh, he'd mimicked the proper words and ways of thought. He had no wish to be declared insane, but he had known it all to be a lie.

Then he had spread his wings in the pristine winds of New Home and he saw how it could be. Life built by the People, life that truly did serve them because they laid down every cell and commanded how it should be.

If they permitted death to flourish there, they would never create this new balance. Life would once again cease to obey them and the death the New People lived in would take them all.

He saw the truth. He tasted it. He touched it every day, but T'sha remained numb and had convinced the others, even his hand-picked teamwho had promised to him so freely.

And there was nothing he could do.

Was there?

If Ca'aed were ill, if a quick rot took hold there, T'sha would have to see the truth. T'sha was not so far gone that she did not love her city. She spoke of it with fondness and concern, de-spite her tricks with Village Gaith.

Or if she would not see, at least she would no longer be able to interfere.

She was not Z'eth. Without the wealth of her city, her ability to make promises would be gone, and with it her in-fluence in the High Law Meet.

No. D'seun huddled in on himself, glancing furtively around the hiring fair as if his very thoughts could have touched those flying past him. This is insane. To take life, to give nothing back, to treat life as raw materials (that did not happen, it did not. The New Person was dead. Dead).

But if what I do ultimately serves life, our life? If T'sha's resis-tance and lies are broken, the truth can be heard. The danger the New People represent can be fully understood then. Yes. Yes. That is the way it is, the way it will be.

There were so many ways a city might sicken, even a wise and ancient city like Ca'aed. Especially when passing by a liv-ing highland when the winds were so thick with life. Even the most careful of welcomers and sail skins could miss something, say a few spores transferred from a quarantine that was no longer life-tight? Such things happened every day and could be made to happen again.

It serves life, for it allows the People themselves to live: Yes. Yes.

Z'eth was waiting for his answer. Waiting for him to decide whether her promise was worth the expense. It was. Oh, yes, it was. Life would grow from death, and in that way life would serve life.

"Call us an archiver," he said to Z'eth, his words steady and weighty. "I will accept this promise. My children will serve your city if you follow my vote on the disposition of the New People on New Home."

* * *The smell hit Michael first-the sour acidic reek that he could taste in the back of his mouth. Then came the sight of Kevin and Derek, side by side on the white beds with soiled sheets, surrounded by a battery of monitors and tubes trailing limply into various injectors and samplers, all of which sat in an eerie silence.

"Sorry to haul you out tonight, Michael." Antonio Dedues, Venera's chief physician, stuffed his hands into the pockets of his traditional white coat and didn't look at Michael. Antonio's gaze was on the corpses in their beds with the useless, attendant ma-chinery. "But you've got to witness the death certificates."

Michael swallowed hard against the smell and found his voice. "What happened?"