“For that long, they have known that billions of humans were living in the sky,” Einstein said. “But they didn’t make any attempt to signal.”
“More than that. They hid from us!” Ty said. “Efforts were made, you know, to find the MacQuarie mine several decades ago. These people must have made some kind of decision that they didn’t want to be found.”
“Why would they do that?”
“That’s what I am asking. Fear? Anger?”
“The old guy really hates us. ‘Cowards who ran away’ is what he considers us.”
“It’s what he called us,” Ty allowed. “And he called us that really loudly. He wasn’t really talking to us, I think.”
Einstein nodded. “I see what you mean. He was talking to the people behind him.”
“If I’m squatting in my mine shaft eating cave tofu when I know perfectly well that there are lots of humans up in geosync living in better conditions, then I need some kind of powerful incentive to stay in my cave. To conceal my presence.”
“Some kind of dukh or I dee—”
“Ideology,” Ty said with a nod. “I should have seen all this. God damn me for not seeing it a few minutes quicker.”
“Seeing what?”
“That only a mind virus, a shared hallucination, could explain the suddenness of their appearance aboveground.”
“Doc didn’t see it either,” Einstein said. He was only trying to make Ty feel better, but then he looked slightly appalled at himself for having spoken ill of his dead kinsman.
“No,” Ty said, “he sure didn’t. Now, what have we learned about how these people think?”
“They have, what do you call it, a chip on the shoulder.”
Ty nodded. “It was supremely important to the leaders that they put on a show of dominance under the gaze of their flock. Which they did. Then Doc did the thing with the Srap Tasmaner. A gesture of reconciliation but also a way of shaming them for being such complete assholes. Maybe not a bad move when dealing with people who have been acculturated to be more reasonable, to get along with each other.”
“People like us. People who have had to coexist in habitats forever.”
“But to them it was a challenge to their authority in front of their flock and so they had to make an extreme reaction. To dehumanize us.”
“We are the aliens,” Einstein said.
“Yes,” Ty said. “We are the bug-eyed monsters now.”
“And the longer Bard and Beled are out lurking in the darkness—”
“The easier it gets for them to paint us as such,” Ty said. “And that’s why they have us isolated. The leaders don’t want us talking to their flock—letting them see we’re only human.”
“But hang on a sec,” Einstein said. “That means that the leaders must know we are not really bug-eyed monsters.”
Ty had no response. Certain aspects of the situation were not really adding up. He considered it as they got the fire going and let themselves be hypnotized by the flames.
After the beginning of the Hard Rain, no fire—in the sense of open burning of solid, carbon-rich fuel—had been constructed by humans—by Spacers, anyway—for 1,735 years. It had taken that long to build a habitat large enough to grow trees, with enough atmosphere to handle the oxygen demand of a fire and to absorb the resulting smoke. Ancient digitized Boy Scout manuals had been consulted. It had worked the first time. The four pyro-pioneers responsible—all Dinans—had stood around it, staring into the flames as Ty was doing now, and probably thinking about all that had happened since the last time humans had smelled woodsmoke.
He and Einstein had not even started in on the topic of Ariane.
She was the worst nightmare of any Julian trying to live an honest life in Blue: someone ostensibly Blue who turns out to be a Red mole. How long had she been insinuating herself into intelligence, working her way up the ranks? Or had she only just decided to switch sides? In either case, she was up in the Red part of the ring now with the woman she had abducted. What must the Diggers make of that? Did they even know that there were two kinds of Spacers?
And what was Red intelligence learning from that woman? Had Ty not watched her murder Remembrance in cold blood, he’d have felt sorry for her.