Диана Дуэйн - Lifeboats

Kit and Djam and Cheleb stood there for a moment looking at each other a bit strangely, all somewhat at a loss. None of them had been expecting to say goodbye quite this soon, or under circumstances so much more positive than anyone had anticipated for the end of this intervention. Finally, Kit just stuck out an arm to each of them, and had it grasped, hand-to-elbow, in the way that so many humanoids did when saying hello or goodbye. “Cousins,” Kit said. “When you’ve had a chance to recover, come to Earth and visit!”

“Have to,” Cheleb said, grinning. “Too much culture to investigate.”

“And someone’s got to keep you eating right,” Djam said. “Anyway, I never did get enough of those saltines.” He bubbled softly. “The makers are going to get some great publicity off this. The Snack That Saved A Species…”

“Not all of it,” Kit said in protest.

“Save a single being,” Cheleb said, “in the One’s eyes, supposedly like saving the world entire.” Hae shrugged. “Wouldn’t start quibbling over numbers with the One who invented them. Only one result looks possible…”

Kit grinned at him. “There’s never any arguing with you, is there?” Kit said.

“Not by any reasoning being,” Cheleb said, smirking.

“I think you need to meet my sister,” Kit said. “Djam—”

They hugged. “If she’s not interested in him,” Djam said, “ask her if she’d like to date a Wookiee’s cousin.”

“Oh God,” Kit said, imagining what kind of crush Carmela might attach to an alien with beautiful, soft, fluffy fur. “I’ll have to get back to you on that. Djam, go well!” He looked at Cheleb. “And both of you, stay in touch!”

“Have to,” Cheleb said as the two of them turned off toward their own homeward gates. “Without you, won’t have the slightest idea what to make of Attack of the Clones.”

Kit snickered, watching them go. Then, for a few moments, he just stood there and let it all sink in.

It worked, he thought. It did work…

“So,” said Nita’s voice from behind him, “you took long enough to get here.”

“Been waiting long?” Kit said as she came up beside him.

Nita shook her head and took his elbow to guide him down and over to one spread of hexes, where a very large saurian and a single Tevaralti were waiting for them. It was Mamvish, of course, and beside her, golden-feathered, Hesh the Planetary of Tevaral.

Sweat started popping out on Kit. “Am I in trouble?”

“I think exactly the opposite,” Nita said. “Come on, stop freaking.”

Hesh was standing there in typical Tevaralti dress, one of those netlike robes that let the feathers stick out through the netting. “This is he?” he said to Mamvish.

“This is he,” Mamvish said.

“Is it Christopher?”

Kit swallowed. “Kit, actually.”

Hesh erected his head-crest at Kit in what Kit knew was a gesture of congratulation. “We’ve been continuing to crunch the numbers,” he said, “and I thought it was only right to confirm to you before you left that whatever action it was you took, that action was what began the movement of those of my people who had elected to remain behind.”

“I told a sibik a story,” Kit said.

“Whatever the details were,” Hesh said, “that story spread. It spread the way data spreads from sibik to sibik. It spread through scent trails, it spread through contact, it spread through their symbiotic/empathic links. And as it spread among them, it spread along the sibiks’ links to their owners. Then it started spreading along our own links among families and clan-groups and nation-groups, making its way among those of us who until then hadn’t shared the perception that rescue wasn’t a violation of their single-mindedness. They were exposed to the concept, as if from within them, that what was happening was another way of being of one mind.”

Kit stood there shaking as he started to understand. I was a vector, he thought. An infection, a way to spread a message. Or else the sibik was… or the one who was inside the sibik was. He rubbed his face, briefly overwhelmed. Or both of us together.

“If that message had come to the uncertain ones any other way, from the outside, it wouldn’t have worked,” Hesh said. “But because it came this way, from their own pets, along our own symbiotic and empathic linkages—along a wholly trusted connection, from our oldest companions in this world and with unprecedented power—those of our people who had previously felt themselves held away from this rescue were now able to accept that it was meant for them too.” Hesh let out a long, shaking breath. “And now we can all be saved.”

“I’m,” Kit said, and had to stop for a moment; he was reeling. “I’m really glad.”

“We will, of course,” Hesh said, rather more drily, “need a writeup from you on exactly what happened, or what you think happened, on your side.”

Kit laughed. Why wasn’t I expecting that? “Sure,” he said. “Would a couple of days from now be okay?”

Hesh twitched his crest in agreement. “That’s soon enough, I would say.”

“And in the meantime… Well, we know that Life usually finds a way,” Mamvish said, and grinned at Kit with all her teeth showing—not something you saw often, and always a good sign. “But sometimes it has help.”

“That’s what wizards are for,” Hesh said. “You did that, and did us proud. Cousin, for all our people, all the Tevaralti across all our new homes: our thanks to you, now and forever. So go—and go very, very well.”

Kit went away from that conversation very much in the mode of someone who is not going to be able, for a long time, to get his mind wrapped around the concept that he has just saved fifteen million lives. But it was them too, he kept thinking. It was Djam; it was Cheleb; it was Neets, and Ronan, and Dairine. It was Tom, and Carl, and everybody who put me in the place where I needed to be to make this difference. It was all of us. And most especially, it was Ponch.

“Cut it out,” Nita said as they headed for their hexes.

He looked at her in surprise. “What?”

“I can just hear you trying to make it smaller, what you did. Stop it,” she said. “Just let it in. You did a huge thing. Maybe this was more… I don’t know: personal than some of the stuff we’ve done? Fine. And more in your face. Just leave it alone until you can cope with it.”

“You are so smart,” Kit said softly.

“Takes one to know one,” said Nita. “Come on!”

Their hexes for the Crossings were called, and they headed over for them. There was no rush this time, no crush of wizards coming through behind them in haste. A lot of people had left already. Those who were leaving now weren’t in a rush. For the moment, for at least the next thirty-plus hours, the “weather report” for Thesba was relatively calm. Many more wizards had been added to the team tasked with keeping it from disintegrating; those others who were leaving, decommissioning gates or shutting down other services, could safely take their time.

There was a multispecies sanitary facility nearby, and as they passed it Kit said, “Just two minutes…”

“You should’ve gone before you left,” Nita said and snickered.

Kit ducked into the facility, used it—because it made sense: sometimes it could be an awfully long walk to one in the Crossings—and then pulled out his phone one last time.

WE’RE DONE HERE. LOTS TO TELL YOU, BUT I’M NOT GOING TO DO IT NOW. EVERYTHING’S GREAT. ON MY WAY HOME, SEE YOU SOON. ALSO: PLEASE TELL ME THAT THERE ARE SALTINES. AND TELL MAMA SHE’S GOING TO NEED TO BUY MORE KETCHUP.

He hit “send” and hurried out to the hex rosette again. The information standard on one of the hexes was already running a countdown, and Nita was standing there, arms folded, looking a touch impatient. Kit trotted over to her and turned around inside the hex to look his last on Tevaral. Above them, through the building’s clear ceiling, Thesba burned pale in a bright noon sky as the herald-standard counted down the seconds till their gate went patent.