transmitter built into the highest tree on a small rise. The transmitter had been sucking energy from the tree’s biochemistry for three years. It responded by concentrating all that accumulated energy into a single blip that shot toward a transmitter stored in a winged scavenger that circled over a grassy upland.
Varosa Uman’s surveillance routine had noted the flying scavenger and stored it in a file that included several hundred items of interest. It picked up the blip as soon as the scavenger relayed it and narrowed the area in which its patrols were working their search patterns. A flyer that resembled a terrestrial owl suicide-bombed the hidden antenna half a second before the blip reached it.
The other two high speed airborne devices veered toward the northern and southern edges of the orbiter’s track. Relays emitted their once-in-a-lifetime blasts and settled into permanent quiet.
The antenna located along the northern edge of the track succumbed to a double suicide by two slightly faster updates of the owlish suicider. The third antenna picked up the orbiter as the little ball raced over a dense forest. It fulfilled its destiny twenty seconds before a prepositioned missile splashed a corrosive liquid over the electronic veneer the antenna had spread across an abandoned nest.
Revutev Mavarka went into dormancy as if he was going to his death. He said goodbye to his closest friends. He crammed his detention quarters with images of his favorite scenes and events. He even managed to arrange a special meal and consume it with deliberate pleasure before they emptied out his stomach.
The only omission was a final statement to the public. A private message from Varosa Uman had curtailed his deliberations in that area. Don’t waste your time, the Situation Overseer had said, and he had accepted her advice with the melancholy resignation of someone who knew his conscious life had to be measured in heartbeats, not centuries.
Four armed guards escorted him to his dormancy unit. A last pulse of fear broke through his self-control when he felt the injector touch his bare shoulder.
The top of the unit swung back. Varosa Uman looked down at him. Technicians were removing the attachments that connected him to the support system.
“Please forgive our haste,” Varosa Uman said. “There will be no permanent damage.”
There were no windows in the room. The only decoration was a street level cityscape that filled the wall directly in front of him. He was still lying on the medical cart that had trundled him through a maze of corridors and elevator rides but Varosa Uman’s aides had raised his upper body and maneuvered him into a bulky amber wrapper before they filed out of the room.
“You’re still managing the Visitation, Overseer?”
“The Integrators won’t budge,” Varosa Uman said. “The Principals keep putting limits on my powers but they can’t get rid of me.”
He had been dormant for one hundred and three years. He had asked her as soon as he realized he was coming out of dormancy and she had handed him the information while they were working the wrapper around the tubes and wires that connected him to the cart.
“I’ve spent much of the last ten years trying to convince the Overseers they should let me wake you,” Varosa Uman said. “I got you out of there as soon as they gave me permission.”
“Before they changed their mind?”
A table with a flagon and a plate of food disks sat beside the cart. He reached for a disk and she waited while he put it in his mouth and savored his first chew.
“You want something from me,” he said.
“The two visitors still have bases on the third moon of Widial—complete with backup copies of all their subunits. I want to contact them with an offer. We will try to guide their species through the Turbulence—try to help them find responses that will reduce the havoc. It’s an idea I had earlier. I had a study group explore it. But I fell back into the pattern we’ve all locked into our reactions.”
The men strolling through the cityscape were wearing tall hats and carrying long poles—a fashion that had no relation to anything Revutev Mavarka had encountered in any of the millennia he had lived through.
One hundred and three years.…
“There are things we can tell them,” Varosa Uman said. “We can end the cycle of attack and isolation every civilization in our section of the galaxy seems to be trapped in.”
“You’re raising an obvious question, Overseer.”
“I want you to join me when I approach the visitors. I need support from the Adventurer community.”
“And you think they’ll fall in behind me?”
“Some of them will. Some of them hate you just as much as most serenes hate you. But you’re a hero to forty percent of them. And the data indicate most of the rest should be recruitable.”
He raised his arms as if he was orating in front of an audience. Tubes dangled from his wrists.
“Serenes and Adventurers will join together in a grand alliance! And present the humans with a united species!”
“I couldn’t offer the humans a united front if every Adventurer on the planet joined us. We aren’t a united species anymore. We stopped being a united species when you sent your warning.”
“You said you still had the support of the Integrators.”
“There’s been a revolt against the Integrators. Mansita Jano refused to accept their decision to keep me in charge of the Visitation.”
“We’re at war? We’re going through another Turbulence?”
“No one has died. Yet. Hundreds of people have been forced into dormancy on both sides. Some cities are completely controlled by Mansita Jano’s supporters. We have a serious rift in our society—so serious it could throw us into another Turbulence if we don’t do something before more visitors arrive from the human system. If we make the offer and the humans accept—I think most people will fall in behind the idea.”
“But you feel you need the support of the Adventurer community?”
“Yes.”
The men in the cityscape tapped their poles when they stopped to talk. The ribbons dangling from the ends of the poles complemented the color of their facial feathers.
“That’s a risk in itself, Overseer. Why would the serenes join forces with a mob of irresponsible risk takers? Why would anyone follow me? Everything they had ended when I sent my warning.”
“You’re underestimating yourself. You’re a potent figure. I’ll lose some serenes but the projections all indicate I’ll get most of the Adventurer community in exchange. You may look like an irresponsible innovator to most serenes but most of your own people see you as an innovator who was willing to set a third of the galaxy on a new course.”
“And what do you see, Varosa Uman?”
“I see an irresponsible interloper who may have opened up a new possibility. And placed our entire species in peril.”
“And if I don’t help you pursue your great enterprise I’ll be shoved into a box.”
“I want your willing cooperation. I want you to rally your community behind the biggest adventure our species has ever undertaken—the ultimate proof that we need people with your personality structure.”
“You want to turn an irritating escapader into a prophet?”
“Yes.”
“Speech writers? Advisers? Presentation specialists?”
“You’ll get the best we have. I’ve got a communications facility in the next room. I’d like you to sit through a catch up review. Then we’ll send a simultaneous transmission to both visitors.”
“You’re moving very fast. Are you afraid someone will stop you?”
“I want to present our entire population—opponents and supporters—with an accomplished act. Just like you did.”
“They could turn on you just like they turned on me. The revolt against the Integrators could intensify. The humans may reject your offer.”
“We’ve examined the possibilities. We can sit here and let things happen or we can take the best choice in a bad list and try to make it work.”
“You’re still acting like a gambler. Are you sure they didn’t make a mistake when they classified you?”
