“The sun is getting hotter,” Blowhard bellowed. A few others nodded, offering support to the claim.
Mike lifted an eyebrow. ::That’s a joke, right?::
“Again, no, Senator,” said Robertson, ice creeping into his calm. “Information inside the folder also documents the temperature stability of your star. We’ve noted less activity from your sun, while still seeing warming temperatures and destructive episodes. There’s no need to trust us blindly, ladies and gentlemen. The data is here, in your own hands and on your own computers.”
“For God’s sake, Bob,” someone shouted from across the room, “sit down and shut up. Climate change is a fact.”
Blowhard wasn’t ready to give up. “The polar ice is rebounding!”
“No, it’s not,” offered Robertson, heading once more into the fray. “Droughts, floods, melted ice caps, fires raging across your fields, out of control winter storms, temperature heights broken on a daily basis, flora and fauna struggling to evolve and failing… This is your new norm. Your world will not be able to evolve fast enough and its life will die.”
“No,” shouted one of Blowhard’s supporters. “This is normal and natural. This is our Eden and—”
“It’s not normal!”
Now it was Robertson who shouted. He also slammed his open palm onto the table in front of him.
“It’s manufactured,” he spat the word, “with the sole intention to end your reign on this planet.”
Blowhard was opening his mouth for another volley when President Morgan once more cut in. “Enough. If you refuse to be a part of the resolution, Senator, then there’s no need for you to be here. There’s the door.”
Blowhard’s mouth dropped open. He gaped and sputtered.
“You can’t…”
“Yes, I can,” said President Morgan. “Wake up and drink the coffee. The time for political games is over.”
He turned away from Blowhard to face Robertson and visibly collected his composure.
“You said the climate change was manufactured. How so?”
Mike watched Blowhard sulk in his seat. The human looked ready to break apart. Mike wondered how much damage that would do. The Envoy caught Mike’s attention in the corner of his eye.
“Naturally,” the Envoy resumed, careful to use his calming tone, and shifted slightly in his seat, getting comfortable, “we haven’t intruded onto your planet to make an investigation without alerting you to our presence…”
Mike bit the inside of his cheek so stop himself from rolling his eyes. Of course they had. How else could they have been certain?
Robertson and his diplomacy, though, and these people ate it up.
Their heads were bobbing like five-skulled llarbos in a windstorm.
“However, our experience with the invasive species you face gives us a reasonable hypothesis. How invasion has happened in the past is…is…”
::Wake up, :: snapped the Envoy.
Spurred from his idle thoughts by the mental kick to his ass, Mike stepped closer and placed a palm-sized holographic unit on the table. He pushed the control button on the bottom. The unit lit up with a rainbow-colored funnel.
Images streaked from the base and bloomed into the room.
Oversized pictures of hurricanes and tsunamis, thunderstorms, flood devastation, and angry oceans painted the space above the Envoy’s head.
“They will use atmospheric disturbances like these to conceal the seedlings they drop into your atmosphere. Small, so small as to be unseen by your radars, these transparent seedlings will inhabit your oceans, work to increase instability, and breed more to accelerate the process.”
“That’s your intention, isn’t it?” Blowhard screeched as he half-rose from his seat.
Others grabbed his shoulders and yanked him back down.
“It is not,” said Robertson, still maddeningly calm. “Our species requires the male and the female to reproduce. Our cabals—you would call them battalions—are filled only by the expendable, yet physically strong, aggressive males. While we hope to stay on your planet in order to offset the damages we see, and to assist the defense of your world from this hostile species, we have no way to breed. Thus, you are safe from a soft invasion.”
“Our women—”
This time, his own people shouted Blowhard to silence.
The Envoy was nodding. “I understand your concerns. However, while we do look similar, our two species are not reproductively compatible.”
“So you say,” Blowhard huffed.
“As time will prove, Senator. May I continue?”
President Morgan frowned and offered a glower fierce enough to rival a sunspot for its intensity. “One more interruption, Senator, and I’ll have you escorted out.”
The Envoy continued, “These seedlings adjust chemical make-up in the water’s depths to force environmental changes. You are seeing the fruition of their work with recent arrivals to the upper waters of goblin sharks, long-thought extinct fish, and the beaching of differing species of cetaceans.”
A mutter cut through the hall.
“Like your amphibians on shore, your fish are your first warning sign when discussing water-based concerns,” said Robertson. “Your already documented dead zones and the recent aquatic behavior are huge indications of climate trauma.”
More muttering filled the hall. People exchanged glances.
Some looked guilty; some looked outraged. Mike speculated this topic had been an ongoing battle between Blowhard’s ilk and the more environmentally conscious.
“The key, however, is in your rain.” The pronouncement stilled the hall. “The toxic waste of the seedlings pollutes the water to create the dead zones. The chemical compound is pulled up into your skies via the rain. It is then deposited elsewhere, returns to the oceans, and the cycle repeats.
“The goal is what you see. The global warming and climate change. Unchecked, the waters will rise, and your world will become environmentally suited for only one species. Theirs.”
“Impossible!”
There was that word again.
“But no,” said Robertson. “Your island nations have already suffered oceanic trespass. I call to your minds Kiribati, the Maldives, Fiji, Palau, Micronesia, and Cape Verde.”
With that, silence fell. No one said anything for a long while.
Unhappy dignitaries shuffled through the documents inside the folders earlier set upon each chair’s seat. Mike could see the sorrowful realization sliding home into resistant minds. Expressive faces told an unhappy tale.
President Morgan was the first to
