43

Lila Easterlin

June 3, 2045. Sydney, Australia.

It was a meeting unlike any Lila had ever attended, starting with the location. Surely they could have come up with another place in this oversized city where fifteen humans could meet without fear of being overheard. She glanced at the opening of the pipe, a circle of light and color fifty yards away. Actually, she couldn’t think of any. Even meeting in a sewer pipe in a smallish group, the defenders might notice and send in a spy bug.

“I understand why the UN won’t tell us anything. I just don’t like it,” Sook was saying. “We’re the ones who are here; we’re the ones who are actually negotiating with these psychopaths.”

Galatea snorted. “Negotiating. I’m surprised you can keep from lacing that word with sarcasm.”

Sook smiled grimly. “It took effort.”

Wanting to hear what those outside her little group thought, Lila headed for another cluster of people chattering in low tones. She took care not to slip on the moss growing inside the enormous sewer pipe.

“—problem is, they’re so adversarial, so zero-sum in their thinking, they see any compromise in their position as weakness,” Nguyen Dung, the structural engineer from Vietnam, was saying as Lila joined the circle. A few of them nodded to Lila, acknowledging her.

“If only there were some way to negotiate where we didn’t seem to be negotiating, where on the surface we appeared to be capitulating. Like, ‘Okay, you win, we’ll—’ Whatever.” Ahmad bin Nayef, the ambassador from Saudi Arabia, tugged on his elaborately braided mustache.

“The problem is, they won’t budge off the precise demands they made at the outset,” Nguyen said. “What would they do if we offered them more than they’re asking for? Say we offered them all of Asia, Europe, and North America. I wonder if they’d reject it, because it wasn’t exactly what they demanded?” He sighed. “Not that we’re going to offer them all of that.”

“What are we going to do?” Lila asked. “If the defenders doggedly insist we meet their demands, what will the UN do?”

No one answered. No one wanted to bring up the prospect of war. It was unthinkable, to fight another war, against such a savage and well-armed foe. Foe. The defenders weren’t their foes—that was the irony.

“I can’t see the UN giving in,” Ahmad said.

“Lila? Can I speak to you?” It was Oliver. He’d missed the start of the meeting, saying there was something important he had to do.

“What’s up?” she asked as they walked toward the circle of daylight, their heads down.

“Let’s wait till we’re outside.” Lila glanced at Oliver, realized that whatever it was he wanted to tell her, he was badly shaken by it. They hopped out of the pipe and walked along the massive, bowl-shaped concrete aqueduct the sewer pipe drained into.

“Washington wants me to locate Five. Badly.”

Lila laughed humorlessly. “Sure. We can go door-to-door. ‘Pardon me, have you seen a starfish missing a limb and blind in one eye?’”

“I know.” Oliver threw his hands in the air in frustration. “I don’t even know if he’s alive. They’re telling me to do everything I can. Everything.”

“Why do they want you to speak to him so badly?” It seemed as if the Luyten were an afterthought at this point.

Oliver swallowed. “They want to know what the Luyten would do if they invaded Australia.”

Lila stopped walking. “Holy shit.”

Oliver held up a hand. “They’re not going to invade. You know Washington bureaucrats—they’re gathering information, doing their due diligence so they fully understand their options.”

A preemptive strike. It made sense, but it sent a chill through Lila. “How would they even do that, with the cloak in place?”

Oliver shrugged. “I guess they’d fly in low under the cloak. We don’t have near the number of planes and heavy weapons the defenders do, but if the world combines resources again, re-forms the Alliance, we still have a hell of a lot of weaponry. And we wouldn’t be fighting a guerrilla war—we could bomb the hell out of this continent.”

They came to a tunnel beneath an overpass, turned, and instead headed up the lip of the bowl toward street level.

“I guess I see where I rate as an ambassador in Washington’s eyes,” Lila said. “They’re doing an end run around me.”

“Don’t take it personally. They don’t trust anyone who hasn’t worked for the government for at least twenty years.”

“Especially someone who’s unstable and unpredictable. I might go all PTSD on them.” The truth was she was relieved not to be caught in the middle of all their shit. In fact, she felt sorry for Oliver. “How do you feel about them considering this?”

“Oh, I think it’s a terrible idea. A war?” He shook his head. “It shouldn’t even be on the table. We’re too weak, militarily. Last year the US military budget was seventeen percent of what it had been before the invasion.” His shoulder sagged slightly. “But I still have to locate Five, if I can.”

They were getting close to street level; Lila paused, not wanting to go there and be forced to speak in a whisper. “You know, if the Alliance had already decided to invade, they wouldn’t tell you.”

Oliver thought about it. “No, they wouldn’t.”

They still had no evidence, direct or indirect, that the Luyten were passing on the emissaries’ thoughts to the defenders. The Luyten didn’t seem to speak to the defenders at all, ever. They clearly understood, and took direction, but they never spoke. Because they couldn’t read the defenders’ minds, they’d have to speak aloud, and, as Five had demonstrated, they were capable of speaking aloud if they chose.

“If the Luyten are reporting to the defenders, just by asking you to get this information, they’re tipping their hand. And putting you in an incredibly dangerous position at the same time.” She made a sweeping gesture, encompassing everything around. “Right now, every Luyten in this city knows the UN is at least considering an invasion.”

“Evidently they’re willing to take that risk.” Oliver folded his arms across his chest. “I’m guessing this is how their logic goes: If the Luyten tip off the defenders that we’re considering an invasion, and that I’m seeking information to facilitate that invasion, the defenders will kill me. No—they’ll kill all of us. And if we’re all killed, that signals to the UN that the Luyten may be allied with or controlled by the defenders. If there’s a good chance the Luyten will fight alongside the defenders, the Alliance is not going to invade under any circumstances, because they know they can’t win.”

They continued walking. As they came over the rise and reached the street, a brisk wind hit them.

“That would be a pretty fucking ruthless plan.”

Oliver tried to smile. “I sure don’t love it. But the stakes are high enough that I think that might be the plan.”

Of course, now the Luyten knew this hypothetical plan, and if they were tipping off the defenders, the defenders knew it as well. In which case they wouldn’t kill the emissaries. Yet. Lila pinched her temples. She couldn’t believe they were back to dealing with these telepathic monsters.