Phytosphere

“Why do you allow millions of your own people to die daily? We never meant this. Why do you set fire to your own house…then lock the door and stay inside? We came as your benefactors. We tried to teach you the way of things. But at last you made us force you to kneel, as we make our children kneel, even though it was the last thing we wanted. This you must understand: When the knee is on the floor, it’s time to acknowledge that the lesson is learned. And this is the lesson we have tried to teach you. Life is worth living no matter what the cost. We mean to be your friends and help you any way we can. But you are like the bluntwog, who fights for the sake of fighting. The bluntwog doesn’t understand the ways of harmony, or how the resolution of conflict should best be treated like a ceremony, something that must be performed so all sides can save face. We understand the nature of pride. But the true mark of a civilized being is humility. You show none. Instead of acknowledging our wisdom, you attack us. You force us to use the violence we abhor.”

Gerry sat back and shook his head, feeling the gulf more than ever. “Earth has offered compromise after compromise, Kafis. In case you didn’t know, compromise is a form of wisdom.”

“But you attack us. You kill us. We have suffered ten thousand casualties.”

There it was again, the unbridgeable chasm… and a certain inflexibility to the way Kafis thought about things, as if his way of thinking was too evolved, too hardwired, and too insufferably condescending. Put the phytosphere around the Earth and surely the humans will come to their senses and follow not human cultural norms, but Tarsalan cultural norms. Surely the humans will get down with humility on bended knee and acknowledge that the Tarsalans aren’t their enemies but simply their teachers, wise ones who want only to welcome them into the Commonwealth of Worlds, to disperse the human race so that it can survive when the sun’s red-giant phase at last comes. And if passive protest in the form of the phytosphere is needed as a teaching tool—a cinerthax —then surely the humans won’t lock themselves in their own house and burn it down.

Kafis looked perplexed by the whole situation.

“Let me teach you a fundamental lesson about human beings, Kafis,” said Gerry. “Push us, and we push back. No one’s going to tell us what to do.”

“Yes, but why push against reason and common sense? Do you not value your lives?”

“Of course we do. But we value freedom more.”

“And we offer freedom. Freedom to live wherever you want on any of the habitable worlds. Wouldn’t you like to see the Sungeely Falls on the planet Yravo from their two-mile summit? Wouldn’t you like to see the ringed gas giants Osa and Meta so close in the sky of Hita that you can nearly touch them? And what about the diamond caves of Farostatar, where whole cities are built out of the precious gems?

These are the wonders we offer. These are the freedoms that can be yours. Any of these planets would welcome you. And on any of these planets you would see a mix of races, species, and genera hailing from all parts of the local Milky Way. We offer you the galaxy, and in return, you fire your weapons at us so that we are forced to convert our peaceful shuttles into birds of prey, and shoot down your pilots like pesky insects. We now understand that the mothership is your next objective.” Kafis sat back and his pupils twitched open to their fullest size. “And in that regard we have something we wish you to convey to your United Nations for us. We’ve tried to convey it to them ourselves, but so far they haven’t acknowledged our overtures.”

“Kafis… we’ve been told by Earth that they’ve abandoned any and all diplomatic initiatives.” He thought

of the most recent Earth drop, and how Earth planned to board the TMS and abscond with the phytosphere control device. “They’re not even going to try with you anymore. They’re going bluntwog on you.”

Kafis continued right along, ignoring Gerry’s interjection. “Please convey to them that should they actually succeed in damaging the mothership to the point where its life-support systems no longer function, we will then unilaterally claim as places of refuge those areas marked in the most recent U.N.

counterproposal. Namely, the Kanem Region of Chad, the Arnhem Land Reserve in the Northern Territory of Australia, and the Chattahoochee National Forest in America’s state of Georgia. We will secure these areas with military force and use their hinterlands as regions of supply, regardless of the cost to human life.”

Gerry’s face sank, and Kafis must have noticed it because his pupils shrank. In one of those brainstorms Gerry sometimes had, he realized he had made a breakthrough. He no longer wondered why Neil had such an easy time communicating with Kafis, and was pissed off at Neil for not telling him of this discovery sooner. If Gerry had discovered on his own that the whole key to understanding Tarsalans lay in the movement of their pupils, it would have been one of the first things he would have shared with his brother.

“You’re on weak ground, Kafis. You obviously never expected us to respond with such overwhelming force, and now you’re on the run. You can’t go dictating.”

“Nonetheless, we will stake these claims if life support on the mothership becomes unviable.”

“Then let me give you some advice. You shouldn’t molest any of the local population when you go down. Humans hate that more than anything in an invading alien. Especially in good ole Georgia. If you’ve got to take over, just take over nicely, and try to help everybody.”

“Our survival will be our sole priority.”

“So you understand after all?”

Kafis gave him a double take. “Understand what?”

“How this is about survival.”

“Human, you exhaust me.”

“You exhaust me too, Kafis.”

Ian came to his room much later, just as he was going over the more recent views of the phytosphere, the ones with the toxin holes. Ian was like a caged animal and all he could do was pace in front of the twin beds, stopping occasionally to look at the dark lunar surface, or turning around and gazing briefly at the lamp, always with a look of bewilderment in his eyes. Gerry didn’t know if Ian was here for a reason, or if he was here simply because he had to be somewhere. Sometimes Ian just…showed up. Was he drunk? Gerry didn’t think so. He couldn’t smell any booze.

Ian finally looked at Gerry. “This whole thing is spinning out of control.”

The anxiety in his friend’s voice was like the news the doctor gave you when you had a tumor. Gerry tried to rise to the occasion. He struggled to mount some semblance of courage. But he couldn’t help remembering his wife’s words: If anybody gets too close to the house, that’s it, Gerry, I’m not asking any questions. And then there was Kafis, spinning out of control as well, his strange alien pupils twitching in fear as he considered the unviability of TMS life support. Gerry tried to show courage but, after a visit from the aliens, courage eluded him—the Tarsalans might go down to Earth; they might go to Georgia, which was right next door to North Carolina. And Glenda wasn’t asking any questions.

“I thought we were going to beat it,” said Ian, still pacing.

He didn’t have to say more because his implication was clear—maybe they weren’t going to beat it after all.

Then it was one non sequitur after another from Ian. “God, I’ve done some horrible things in my life.”

Just out of the blue, as if, with that thing knitting itself around the Earth, he had finally found it in his soul to feel remorse. It didn’t matter that Gerry had no context; he understood it well, how the alcoholic could become a beast, how he could black out for hours at a time and have no memory of the abysmal things he had done. “Remember Maggie Madsen?” A pathetic chuckle, as if Maggie Madsen had been one of the bigger lost chances in his life.

“Ian, I thought we agreed we would never talk about Maggie again.”

“Remember that night in the pool?”

“That was her idea, not mine. I had no idea she was going to come up to me that way.”

“Yes, but you didn’t do anything to stop her, buddy, even though you knew she was going out with me.”

“You see what a bad thing alcohol can be?”

“If it was just that one night…but you stole her away from me.”

“And I regret it. I told you that. That’s why we don’t talk about her.”

“What ever happened to her? I wonder how she’s making out down there in the dark.”

“Last I heard, she’d married a car dealer in Norfolk.”

“Really? She always struck me as the more adventurous type.” Then came a whole sequence of, “What am I going to do, what am I going to do?”—the same six words uttered again and again, nonstop, a bizarre refrain