Helen hadn't cared. No one had ever been below the cloud layer before.

Oh, they'd sent some probes down, but never a person. They were first, and they'd see... they'd see...

Then had come that moment when the blanket of clouds had parted and she looked down and saw what they'd been guessing at and arguing over for literally centuries. She saw the mountain lifting above the rugged tableland with lava running freely down its charcoal slope."It's alive!" she had shouted to Greg, delight making her foolish. "It's alive!"

"You can help keep this process as smooth and open as pos-sible," Su was saying. Did they give you a script to read from, Su? This doesn't sound like you. "We will need to consult closely with your people about their experiences and the data they've gathered thus far on the aliens."

"No," said Helen.

Alive. Almost no one seemed to understand what that meant. This world still had a living heart. It wasn't broken, like the Moon, or burned out, like Mars. It had fire, it had air, it had earth. There was even water, if only just a little in the heart of the clouds. It had all the ancient elements, the only world that did, aside from the home world herself. It was Earth's ne-glected twin, but because they couldn't mine it or build on it, no one cared.

"I beg your pardon?" came Secretary Kent's astonished reply.

"Your people will not be consulting with my people. Your people will not be allowed to land."

No one cared how beautiful this world was, how rich and vi-brant, how much they could learn about the origins of their own home from this mysterious and fiery place. No one at all cared what she might have to offer.

Except the people in Venera, and now, the People.

"Helen. Be very sure you understand what's going on here." Su again, sounding much more like herself. "You are not being given a choice. The Golden Willow will be leaving in two days. It has a complement of C.A.C.

diplomats and support staff, as well as a full company of peacekeepers to make sure that this transition goes smoothly and to advise in case the aliens become overtly threatening." Su paused to let that sink in. "If you try to break your charter, all flights to Venus will be halted. There will be no transport of goods or people between Venera and Earth. All satellite support will be shut down. You will not be able to speak to any of the other worlds. You will be completely cut off." She spoke the last words slowly, making sure Helen heard each and every one.Su was trying hard. She was a good friend, and she genuinely cared. A sort of colonial mother hen was Yan Su.

"It doesn't matter, Su," sighed Helen. "This little call is just for show and we both know it. The Secretaries and the committee are going to do what they are going to do, and so am I." She shut the connection.

Take good care of my world, she thought toward the vanished aliens.

You're all we have now. She got to her feet. She didn't want to have to shout at Adrian, but they needed to get back in the air. There was still Venera to consider, after all, and looked like Venera was going to be put under siege.

Chapter Seventeen.

Michael glanced at the clock on the livingroom view screen. 4:05 a.m.

Not a time anybody should have to know about. There should be a rule that everybody was allowed to sleep through four in the morning. Because when you were awake at four in the morning, you felt like the last person alive in the world. In any of the worlds.

He'd kissed the kids good night hours ago, running through the rituals of tooth care and storytelling on autopilot and hat-ing himself for it. Even Jolynn had gone to bed at last, not say-ing anything when he didn't join her. He'd just lie there, staring at the ceiling, all his thoughts running circles. They both knew it. They'd been there before, although not quite under these circumstances.

In four hours, Helen would be taking off from the surface to come back home. In less than that, every single person aboard Venera would have heard what happened between her and Secretary-General Kent. Half of them already knew before they'd gone to bed. It was the only subject being talked about in the Mall, in the labs, up and down the staircases, and along the halls.

She'd come back tomorrow, and then what?The lights would come up to full morning, and he'd still have Bowerman and Cleary trying to get into the base system and calling him a hypocrite.

He still wouldn't know who killed Derek and Kevin. He didn't even know who sent that picture that Helen had decided was a direct attack against her and Venera.

Or rather, he might know. He just didn't want to look.

What if it were Ben? Without Ben's urging, she might give up his whole revolutionary idea. Maybe she was just grasping at the straws he held out.

Without him, Michael could talk her out of this.

But he'd have to do it quickly. He'd have to have the evidence in hand when Helen got off the shuttle. He couldn't give anybody time to think.

Which meant he'd have to open Schoma's com files.

Well, maybe he'd nursed this particular secret long enough, he was expecting everybody else to take responsibility for their actions in this farce; he had to be ready to take on his.

Once he'd shown Helen what a mess they were really in, they could call Yan Su in on their side and hash out a compromise with the U.N. Then he could find out who had taken Derek and Kevin's lives, and everything could get back to the way it was supposed to be. Well, mostly. They'd still have the aliens to deal with, but at least the human order would be restored.

Right then, alone, in the silence and the darkness, the human order was all Michael cared about.

D'seun had never seen an experiment house as crowded is Tr'es had managed to make hers. Yards of encapsulated folding racks made a stiff net strung wall to wall and floor to ceiling.

The net left no room even for one person to stretch his or her wings.

Tr'es climbed clumsily from rack to rack with her recorder bobbing through the air behind her. The racks were full of specimen spheres and microcosms that held the raw materials from both the New People they had acquired. Most of them, D'seun saw, were solutions of variouscolors-red, blue, yellow, gray, even a deep greenish purple. There was a skull, recognizable mainly by its eye sockets. Tr'es's tools had separated it neatly into plates, exposing the wrinkled gray matter underneath. It was remarkably compact. Tr'es had told him it was the major nervous center.

The New People, it seemed, thought with only part of their bodies.

"Good luck, Ambassador," said Tr'es, climbing over the near-est rack, carefully not touching the spheres encasing the raw materials, D'seun noticed. "How can I help you?"

D'seun held onto the threshold with one hand to keep him-self in place.

"Good luck, Tr'es. Your work is going well?"

Pride swelled the engineer up until D'seun thought she would burst.

"There is such a wealth of material here, Ambas-sador. We lost next to nothing this time, because we had ap-propriate stasis containers and microcosms ready to hold the materials." She spread her crest out. The individual tendrils brushed the racks surrounding her. "It is a vision of an entirely different way of arranging and spreading life. But"-she went on excitedly before he could speak-"there are some shocking familiarities on the molecular level. This may be confirmation that life is patterned, not random. That the life we see is as it is because this is the working template..."

D'seun clacked his teeth at her enthusiasm. "Engineer, while I sympathize with your eagerness to reshape our notions of the nature of the universe"-she shrank in on herself, abashed- "are you aware of the nature of the debate happening in the Law Meet?"

Her crest ruffled. "I had heard, Ambassador."

D'seun dropped himself directly into her line of sight. "It is becoming increasingly likely that the distant family of the New People will be declared insane. We need to know if you have found anything in terms of a molecular solution, should we need to separate out their raw materials."

Tr'es stilled and shrank. "Insane?"

D'seun dipped his muzzle. "One family of them may be."

"A deep shame that they let this happen to themselves." Her words barely reached him. "They are so elegant, so complex.""Perhaps because of their complexity, they were unable to prevent this tragedy," suggested D'seun. The words felt good as he said them. After all, how much damage had the People themselves done because they didn't understand the true com-plexity of Home? But New Home was a simple world. They would be able to control what they did here. No more cities would die under their hands.

Tr'es's gaze drifted from specimen to specimen. "There are several possibilities," she said slowly. "Like us, they actually live in symbiosis with all manner of monocellulars. There is a particular one..." She clambered through the racks, climbing over and under them without regard to orientation.

We have to get this child more room, thought D'seun idly. Surely we are not that pressed for resources.

She stopped by a specimen microcosm full of a hazy gray solution. "I found it in some of the orifice membranes. It seemed to be doing no harm, but when I cultured it in some issue and bone samples, it seemed willing to feed on what-ever it found, very like a wild yeast. I think it maintains a balance in the New Person's body. But that balance can be tipped, by, say, increasing its concentration in the body or possibly a chemical trigger that would turn the benign strain virulent." She paused again, studying her brew. "It uses the chemicals trigger method naturally, so that might be the course to follow."

"Could you pursue that line of research?" asked D'seun, swelling slightly. "If we need it, we will need it soon." He gazed around her ordered chaos. "I will see you are granted help and more space."

"Thank you, Ambassador." There was gratitude in her words, but still she deflated where she clung. "Are they really insane, Ambassador?"

"Some of them are," he said, kindly. He could tell her more later, if that became necessary. "Only some. As are some of us."

"Then it will be a kindness to the rest if we do this." One of her forehands hovered over the specimen sphere.

D'seun was tempted to clack his teeth at her piety, but he did not. Even after all she had seen, Tr'es still believed that life truly did help life, on all levels and in all ways. It was one of the qualities that made a goodresearch engineer. If she needed to justify what she was about to help do to the New People in order to work well and quickly, he would willingly help her.

"A true kindness, because the insane family is threatening to cut the sane off from the resources they need to live." That startled her. She had not heard this part. She stared at him, horrified. D'seun dipped his muzzle. "It's true. You'd best get to work, Engineer."

"Yes, Ambassador." She started speaking in a command lan-guage so specialized, D'seun understood only one word in three. A number of tools detached themselves from the care-takers inside the crystalline racks and began creeping toward the gray-filled microcosm.

D'seun left her to her work.

New Home's world portal had no securitors, no recorders, no gates. But it had no privacy either. The entire base knew when it was in use and exactly who was going through. Br'sei had spent the past dodec-hour engineering a need for fresh monocellular templates, because there were still some mutations around Living Highland 98 that he didn't like the look of and he did not want them to work their way up the chain when there was a chain for them to work their way up, of course.

He had not asked Ambassador D'seun for permission to re-turn to Home. He had asked Ambassador K'ptai instead while she was on the way to the grand debate D'seun had called. She had quickly granted his request and vanished into the new de-bating chamber that his people had grown for them.

For now we have ambassadors again, and we must do noth-ing without their official notice, thought Br'sei as he waited in the center of the portal for its light to reach for him. Oh yes, we all have a voice, and we all have a vote, but what does it mean, unless those who overfly us all approve?

They were bleak, cynical thoughts, but he did not even try to disperse them as the portal's light enfolded him and carried him back to Home.

T'sha had been an engineer. T'sha saw the patterns of life. T'sha wouldnot let this happen without a hearing.

T'sha did not owe D'seun her future.

Br'sei rose from the light into the vast metal cage of struts and supports that held the World Portals of Home. The technicians fluttered and fussed about drain of generators and danger to delicate connections. Br'sei apologized to them all and flew out of there at the lowest possible height to show his shame at having put them through any trouble. It was quicker than trying to assert his rank, and the whole sky knew he'd had enough practice at humility lately.

Out in the open air, he returned to his proper size and flight path.

Several public-use kites were moored to the portal cluster's chitinous outer frame. Br'sei picked the closest and settled himself onto its perches.

"Take me to Ca'aed," he said in the kite's command language. "The flight is urgent."

But the kite hesitated. "Ca'aed is under strict quarantine. I cannot take you there."

Br'sei pulled his muzzle back. Of course. Ca'aed was ill. In all his turbulent worry and need, he'd almost forgotten why T'sha was no longer on New Home.

I have flown in a dead world too long. I've forgotten what it is to be part of the greater balance of life.

But nothing had changed. The debate on New Home was forging ahead, whether Ca'aed was sick or well.

"Take me as close as you can," Br'sei ordered the kite.

The kite's ligaments trembled, but it was a lawful order and the kite could not refuse. It unfurled its sails and tails and lifted itself free of the mooring clamp.

The canopy sped away under them, filling the wind and Br'sei with rich life. He felt pleasantly dizzy drinking in the living air, but he could not make himself relax. He kept watching the colors rushing away underneath him, looking for gaps in the canopy's growth, or worse, the telltale grays,browns, and blacks that indicated an untended patch of disease.

How sick was the world? He was not sure anyone really knew anymore.

Oh, they made reports and projections, and filled microcosms with guesses. But no one really knew. D'seun thought he did. But then, D'seun thought he knew the New People were insane and needed to be killed.

Br'sei might even have believed him if he hadn't seen them for himself and if he hadn't known how early D'seun had reached that conclusion.

Br'sei no longer had any doubt that it was D'seun who was insane.

Could it be proved, though? That was the question. Br'sei owed D'seun so much...

If D'seun were found insane, then Br'sei owed him nothing. But if insanity could not be proved and it was Br'sei who made the accusation, then D'seun could take him into court, de-nounce him for malice, and seek his indenture.

Br'sei had been indentured before. He wore the marks of it. He'd sworn it would not happen again. Not even for something as important as this.

I am a coward. Br'sei shrank in on himself, but he did not tell the kite to change direction.

At last, the kite slowed its flight. "This is as far as I may go," it said, furling its wings and banking away.

Br'sei looked to the southwest. Warning beacons floated in a tidy net in front of the kite, each barely a thousand yards from the other. They seemed to be guarding nothing but the busy, healthy canopy, though. He heard no sounds except for the wind. He tasted the currents, and they seemed clear. On the horizon sat a single gray smudge, which he supposed must be Ca'aed.

A warning net this far out? No one was taking any chances. The situation must be very bad.

Br'sei lifted himself off the perches. The kite quivered and breezed away before he had even cleared its tendons. Br'sei rattled his wings, uncertain whether to be amused or worried. Regardless, he flew toward the warning net and felt his skin begin to prickle from the currents it sent out."Attention," said his headset automatically. "You are ap-proaching a quarantined area. Please select an alternate path."

"Quiet," ordered Br'sei. "Find me Ambassador T'sha. Tell her I am waiting at the quarantine boundary."

Silence stretched out around him, except for the distant noise of the wind through the canopy. No one came, no one went. He was used to solitude and emptiness but not in a world where he could taste life. It was eerie.

He strained the wind through his teeth. His engineer's palate had lost some of its sensitivity but not too much. He cataloged the flavors and sensations in his mind.

His headset remained silent. Br'sei searched tastes and scents for the rank sweetness of disease and found none. Good, per-haps this was an overreaction. There had been so much illness that it was better to be safe, especially if some vectors remained unidentified.

Eventually, the headset spoke. "Good luck, Engineer Br'sei. This is speaker Pa'and. Ambassador T'sha cannot answer you now. I offer my help."

Br'sei beat his wings impatiently, but kept the emotion from his voice.

"I have come from New Home. There is an emer-gency. I must see Ambassador T'sha."

Silence for a moment and then, "There is an emergency here too, Engineer."

"I know." Br'sei dipped his muzzle, although there was no one to see except the warning beacons. "I am an engineer. Perhaps I can help."

Silence again. "I thank you for your offer, Engineer Br'sei, but if you enter the quarantine, I cannot promise you will be allowed to leave it."