Yatima took Inoshiro's place at the acoustic focus. 'It's true that I brought in the nanoware, but I would only have used it if asked. The nearest portal is a thousand kilometers away; we only wanted to offer you the choice of migration without the risks of that long journey.'
There was no coherent response, just more shouting. Yatima looked around at the hundreds of angry fleshers, and struggled to understand their hostility; they couldn't all be as paranoid as the guards. Lacerta itself was a crushing blow, a promise of decades of hardship, at best… but maybe talk of 'the choice of migration' was worse. Lacerta could only drive them into the polises if it could hammer them into the ground; maybe the prospect of following the Introdus seemed less like a welcome escape hatch, a means of cheating death, than a humiliating means of allowing the fleshers to witness their own annihilation.
Yatima raised vis voice to ensure that the translators could hear ver. 'We were wrong to bring in the nanoware—but we're strangers, and we acted out of ignorance, not malice. We respect your courage and tenacity, we admire your skills—and all we ask is to be allowed to stand beside you and help you fight to go on living the way you've chosen to live: in the flesh.'
This seemed to split the audience; some responded with jeers of derision, some with renewed calm and even enthusiasm. Yatima felt like ve was playing a game ve barely understood, for stakes ve hardly dared contemplate. They had never been fit for this task, either of them. In Konishi, the grossest acts of foolishness could barely wound a fellow citizen's pride; here and now, a few poorly judged words could cost thousands of lives.
One bridger called out words that were translated as, 'Do you swear that you have no more Introdus nanoware—and will make no more?'
This question silenced the hall. Trust the bridgers in their diversity to have someone who knew the workings of a gleisner body. The guards glared up at Yatima, as if ve'd misled them merely by failing to confess the existence of these possibilities.
'I have no more, and I will make no more.' Ve spread his arms, as if to show them the innocent phantom protruding from the stump, incapable of touching their world.
The convocation stretched on through the night. People came and went, some splitting off into groups to coordinate preparations for the burst, some returning with new questions. In the early hours of the morning, the three guards called on the meeting to expel Yatima and Inoshiro from Atlanta immediately; upon losing the vote they walked out.
By dawn, most of the bridgers and the representatives of many of the enclaves seemed to have been won over, if only to the point where they accepted that the balance of probabilities made it well worth the risk of wasting effort on unnecessary precautions. At seven o'clock, Francesca told the second shift of translators to get some sleep; the hall wasn't quite empty, but the few people remaining were absorbed in their own urgent discussions, and the wallscreens were blank.
One of the bridgers had suggested that they find a way to get the TERAGO data onto the fleshers' communications network. Francesca took them to Atlanta's communications hub—a large room in the same building—and they worked with the engineer on duty to establish a link to the Coalition via the drones. Translating the gestalt tags into suitable audiovisual equivalents looked like it would be the hardest part, but there turned out to be a centuries-old tool in the library for doing just that.
When everything was working the engineer summoned a plot of the Lacerta gravity waves and an annotated image of the neutron stars' orbit onto two large screens above her console: stripped-down versions of the rich polis scapes playing as flat, framed pictures. Compared to the historical baseline, the waves had doubled in frequency and their power had risen more than tenfold. G-1a and G-1b were still a little more than 300,000 kilometers apart, but the higher-derivative trends continued to imply a sudden, sharp fall around 20:00 UT—two p.m. local tune—and any flesher on the planet with minimal computing resources could now take the raw data and confirm that. Of course, the data itself could have been fabricated, but Yatima suspected it would still be more convincing than vis word, or Inoshiro's, alone.
'I'm going to need a few hours' rest.' Francesca had developed a fixed gaze and monotone speech; her skepticism about the burst had clearly faded long ago, but she'd shown no sign of emotion, and she'd kept the convocation running to the end. Yatima wished ve could offer her some kind of comfort, but the only thing within vis gift was poisonous, unmentionable 'I don't know what your plans are now.'
Neither did Yatima, but Inoshiro said, 'Can you take us to Liana and Orlando's house?'
Outside, people were constructing covered walkways between buildings, wheeling sacks and barrels of food into repositories, digging trenches and laying pipes, spreading tarpaulins to make new corridors of shade. Yatima hoped the message had got through that even reflected UV would soon have the power to burn or blind; some of the bridgers working in the heat had bare limbs or torsos, and every square centimeter of skin seemed to radiate vulnerability. The sky was darker than ever, but even the heaviest clouds would make a weak and inconstant shield. The crops in the fields were as good as dead; medium-term survival would come down to the ability to design, create, plant, and harvest viable new species before existing food supplies ran out. There was also the question of energy; Atlanta was largely powered by photovoltaic plants tailored to the atmosphere's current spectral windows. Carter-Zimmerman's botanists had already offered some tentative suggestions; Inoshiro had sketched the details at the convocation, and now they were available in full, on-line. No doubt the fleshers would regard them as the work of model-bound dilettante theoreticians, but as starting points for experimentation they had to be better than nothing.
They reached the house. Orlando looked tired and distracted, but he greeted them warmly. Francesca left, and the three of them sat in the front room.
Orlando said, 'Liana's sleeping. It's a kidney infection, a viral thing.' He stared at the space between them. 'RNA never sleeps. She's going to be all right, though. I told her you'd returned. She was pleased.'
'Maybe Liana will design your new skin and corneas,' Yatima suggested. Orlando made a polite sound of agreement.
Inoshiro said, 'You should both come with us.'
'Sorry?' Orlando rubbed his bloodshot eyes.
'Back into Konishi.' Yatima turned to ver, appalled; ve'd told ver about the surviving nanoware, but after the reactions they'd had so far, this was madness.
Inoshiro continued calmly, 'You don't have to go through any of this. The fear, the uncertainty. What if things go badly, and Liana's still sick? What if you can't travel to the portal? You owe it to her to think about that now.' Orlando didn't look at ver, and didn't reply. After a moment, Yatima noticed tears running into his beard, barely visible against the sheen of sweat. He cradled his head in his hands, then said, 'We'll manage.'
Inoshiro stood. 'I think you should ask Liana.'
Orlando raised his head slowly; he looked more astonished than angry. 'She's asleep!'
'Don't you think this is important enough to wake her? Don't you think she has a right to choose?'
'She's sick, and she's asleep, and I'm not going to put her through that. All right? Can you understand that?' Orlando searched Inoshiro's face; Inoshiro gazed back at him steadily. Yatima suddenly felt more disoriented than at any time since they'd woken in the jungle.
Orlando said, 'And she doesn't fucking know yet.' His voice changed sharply on the last word. He bunched his fists and said angrily, 'What do you want? Why are you doing this?'
He stared at Inoshiro's bland gray features, then suddenly burst out laughing. He sat there grimacing and laughing angrily, wiping his eyes on the back of his hand, trying to compose himself. Inoshiro said nothing.
Orlando rose from the chair. 'Okay. Come on up. We'll ask Liana, we'll give her the choice.' He started up the stairs. 'Are you coining?'
Inoshiro followed him. Yatima stayed where ve was. Ve could make out three voices, but no words.
There was no shouting, but there were several long silences. After fifteen minutes, Inoshiro came down the stairs and walked straight out onto the street. Yatima waited for Orlando to appear. Ve said, 'I'm sorry.' Orlando raised his hands, let them drop, dismissing it all. He looked steadier, more resolved than before.
'I should go and find Inoshiro.'
'Yeah.' Orlando stepped forward suddenly, and Yatima recoiled, expecting violence. When had ve learned to
