intercepted the Red Tree Runners’ ship. They don’t know that we’ve combined forces with you.”
“Right,” Hans said. “Some of our best brains are working with some of yours, and we’re getting along just fine. Now it’s time to make serious plans.”
The three braids moved closer together, heads almost touching. Smells of bananas and musty wine.
“I’d like our weapons crews to join with yours. I’d like the moms and snake mothers to make ships we can fly together.”
Martin felt a sudden and unexpected renewal of respect for Hans.
“We’re in this together,” Hans said, rubbing his face with his palms and wiping them on his overalls as if they were greasy. He looked at Cham and Martin, smiled, turned back to the braids. “We’re family. Am I right?”
“It is a good time for this,” Eye on Sky translated.
“We’re going to need a joint planning team,” Hans said. “Myself, Rex, Harpal, Martin, will be on it from our side. As soon as possible, we’ll need to know which braids will represent your side.”
“Agreed,” Eye on Sky said. “Makers of Agreement look sharply at we our crew, and choose, and then reassemble normal in two days your time. Stonemaker will announce to yours.”
“Perfect,” Hans said. He clasped his hands, bowed to Eye on Sky and the Makers, gathered up his party, and prepared to leave the Brothers’ territory. The largest temporary braid suddenly screeched shrilly and all turned to look at him.
“I we sees water clear, air clear,” he said, voice like a child’s recorded on a bad tape machine.
Hans nodded, waiting for more.
“This is the one,” the large temporary continued. “As you sound words, this is the one. Fine all if we we die for this.”
“Right,” Hans said.
“I we believes this one means—” Eye on Sky began.
“I understand him perfectly,” Hans said, raising his thumb. “We are in accord. Am I right?”
The humans nodded. In the corridor, once in human territory and away from any Brothers, Hans murmured, “God damn, I love the way they talk. If we could only speak their lingo-smello half so well-o!”
Martin felt unexpected tears begin in his eyes. Hans was still capable, still a leader; his decisions and ideas were strong and forward.
The moms and snake mothers took the joint weapons team into the weapons store and showed them three modified craft. Each could carry a braid and a human in separated compartments; this, they explained, in case one was injured or suffered problems that might interfere with the other.
Meeting after meeting, planning session upon session, ruminations between Brothers and humans, preparations for joint drills, yet despite their best efforts, never a sense of resolution, of full understanding. If this was what the defenders of Leviathan had hoped for, they had achieved it in spades: a deep sense of unease, far worse than when
Leviathan hung three and a half light months distant, a steady image of fifteen worlds.
In the nearly empty schoolroom, Silken Parts coiled near the star sphere and spread three grasping cords from below the tip of its trunk, each grasping a human wand. The first three pairs of claws along each cord curled around the wands with impressive dexterity. Images flew through the air for the benefit of Stone-maker and Eye on Sky, faster than Martin could intercept; the Brothers had the advantage of multiple sensory systems, each capable of absorbing and holding for braid assimilation. The Brothers’ briefing took less than a minute. Silken Parts than transferred all three wands to one cord and handed them to Hakim, Luis, and Jennifer.
“Thank you,” Silken Parts said, leaning forward to the human observers: his comrades on the joint search team, and Hans, Harpal, Rex, Cham, and Martin.
Hakim sighed in admiration. “It is frustrating to be human,” he said to Silken Parts and Stonemaker. Stonemaker made a sound like water over gravel and emitted a sickly-sweet flower scent, olfactory and auditory laughter, which Martin suspected was more politeness than true humor.
“I will present the results now for humans,” Hakim said, lifting one wand. “Slower, but with no more joy. We have spread our remotes to their farthest position, as agreed to by Hans and Stonemaker, and we have seen the Leviathan system with much greater detail.
“Civilization is apparent. It is very, very busy. There is continuous commerce between the fifteen worlds, especially in the vicinity of the fourth planet. If this is a false projection or deception, it is a masterpiece.
“Every planet is occupied. The density of activity on each planet is marvelous, even from what we can see at this distance. Commerce between the worlds flows unceasingly, and it appears to be conducted by a variety of beings. At least, that is my intuition, and it is shared by Silken Parts.” Hakim projected images of five of the planets, arrayed around his head like balls frozen in a juggling act.
“We are using numbers and Greek designators for each body,” Hakim continued. “The first planet outward from Leviathan is a rocky world. Yet as you see, it is very fuzzy. We believe the fuzz is a heavy layer of tethered stations suspended in orbit. We are seeing this planet from an angle of sixty degrees, and the fuzziness increases on this, the southern, limb of the planet, which indicates to me much activity around the equatorial plane, perhaps out to synchronous orbit. The planet is heavily modified, but must at one time have been comparable to Venus in size and composition.”
“I assume there will be more news on these tethers or whatever as our parallax changes,” Hans said.
“Yes indeed. In fact, I will have a ninety-degree shifted view within a tenday, because of our speed, because of its precession—it has a natural polar angle of thirty degrees with relation to the ecliptic—and because of parallax change.”
“Do you think they’re defenses?”
“They do not appear to be defenses. If they are tethers, they may be extended surface habitats—hanging buildings. How such a network of tethered structures could be maintained in orbit presents an awesome challenge.”
“Sounds like a bustling metropolis,” Harpal commented. “Why do you think there’s more than one intelligent species there?”
“Actually, we posit nothing of the sort—only that there are varieties of intelligent forms. For a civilization at this stage of development, the moms tell us speciation is not a useful concept. Biological forms, if any, may be entirely artificial and arbitrary.”
Hakim sipped from a bulb of water and continued. “The second planet is very different from the first. It possesses no fuzziness and perhaps few if any tethered structures, yet has a dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, high in water vapor, maintained at a steady planet-wide temperature of eighty-five degrees centigrade.”
“Why?” Hans asked, frowning.
“To provide a different habitat, perhaps,” Luis suggested.
“The planets are quite different, as if designed for some particular environment or function. To highlight the most interesting, the fourth is not a rocky world, nor a gas giant, but we do not know what it actually is. I once thought it might be a brown dwarf, but that makes no sense now. It has an enormous surface area covered by what appears to be a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide and oxygen and argon, and an actual solid surface—a lithosphere, which would have to be artificially stabilized. The lithosphere may float on a fluid core, but the surface temperature is remarkably warm, twelve degrees centigrade, which would point to internal heating.”
“All right,” Hans said. “Why do they have lots of different environments?”
Silken Parts rustled his cords before speaking. “In we our records, we we see and smell of many species developing intelligence in a local area, and creating great communities. They are not common. They exist, but.”
“It’s all deception,” Hans murmured. “Why worry about it?”
“If it is not deception…” Hakim said, lifting his hands.
Hans laughed. “We’ve faced nothing
Stonemaker rustled now, then coiled and uncoiled. A single cord disengaged from his tail and crawled out the door. Eye on Sky retrieved and bagged it; it squeaked plaintively. “I we beg pardon,” Stonemaker said. An odor of something akin to embarrassment—fresh salt air with seaweed. Minor spontaneous disengagement was not uncommon for the Brothers, but discomfiting if noticed.
