Return to Eden (13 page)

That thought abruptly
produced a happy one—she bet she’d lost
pounds
!

Of course her scales probably weren’t
there anymore to tell her that—because her apartment probably
wasn’t or her clothes ….

When she’d finished
eating, she settled back to try to translate the full story from
Aidan—who couldn’t speak as well as the AI bitch but knew the story
a lot better. Of course the computer
was
able to set forth the plans the
Grinderians had come up with as restitution for their
mistake.

By the time she had the entire story
she was feeling a lot more hopeful. Assuming, naturally, that the
Grinderians were sincere—and she didn’t see any reason to believe
they weren’t. After all, they hadn’t been compelled by anything
more than their own integrity to offer restitution!

They were offering to
replace everything they’d ‘inadvertently’ destroyed, though, and
not only did that mean fixing things back the way they were, it
meant
better
than
before because it would all be new! Beyond that, they’d confessed
that they’d terraformed both Mars and Venus with the terraformers,
which meant
both
of them would be habitable soon if they weren’t already! All
they wanted was a treaty that would allow them to put colonies of
their own on the three planets ….

Well people might be hard to convince
about allowing a colony of Grinderians to move in on their
territory/backyard, but, really, it was a hell of a trade off! So
they’d lose a little real estate. They’d be gaining a hell of a lot
more.

Convincing people to accept the terms
of the treaty, Anya was sure, wasn’t going to be easy.

Who was she kidding?
The
people
weren’t going to get a say in it at all! The government would
make all the decisions for them—probably in favor of the treaty for
economic reasons and also because they would have to know that not
only would it beat war, but humans probably would lose any war they
started with the Grinderians.

To her thinking, though, it could turn
out to be the best thing that had happened to humans in a very long
time if they could just be convinced to see it that way.

“
Flyers!”

Aidan looked at her blankly and then
consulted his computer and then looked at her blankly again.
“Flywers?”

“
Not flowers
….”

He frowned. “No say fl-ow-rs. Say …
ting you say.”

Anya thought about it. “Actually that
isn’t that bad an idea. I mean women, at least, would probably be
won over by that kind of gesture, but I don’t see how y’all could
manage that. The flyers, though—a simple message of peace and
promise and then when the robots started rebuilding everything and
they saw your people really meant it …. I think the Grinderians
would be forgiven and that’s important—whatever the government
decides.”

She wasn’t sure that Aidan had
understood a word of what she said. He looked thoughtful, but that
could mean anything. Abruptly, he grinned, grabbed her and kissed
her soundly on the mouth.

Startled, Anya barely had time to start
appreciating the affectionate gesture when he pulled away. “Dis
good ting, Ah-na! People hurt. Make tings good wid dem most
important. Den govment listen.”

Anya shifted uncomfortably. “Well,
government, you know …. Can’t promise that, but I will tell you
honestly that if you don’t win people over it isn’t going to matter
what the government promises. There won’t really be peace. There’ll
be resentment. A lot of people lost a lot of stuff that was
important to them—to their comfort and survival. They may even have
lost loved ones because of those things. They aren’t going to be
easily won over. Sorry just isn’t going to cut it.”

Sobered, Aidan nodded grimly. “I know
dis. Bad ting. Berry bad ting. I try to stop.”

Anya studied his expression and saw no
reason to doubt him. “I believe you. I trust you. I’ll try to help
you convince everybody else to trust.”

She hoped it wasn’t something she would
live to regret!

* * * *

Aidan’s first order of business seemed
to be to clear the rubble from the ship. Anya’s was to find
something recognizable to eat.

Not that the food Aidan had fed her
wasn’t good—when she was starving—but at the same time there was
just enough difference in the taste to make it obvious the
ingredients were beyond foreign and it didn’t exactly sit right on
her stomach. She did her best to convince herself it was all in her
mind, but her stomach didn’t agree.

Campfire cooking wasn’t exactly her
forte, though, so she was glad when she managed to find a can of
peaches—either one of the ‘bombs’ she’d used the day before to
discourage the beast from making a meal out of her or another can
entirely. The AI helped her get into the can and, once she’d found
something to fish the slices out of the can with, she settled at a
short distance from Aidan to watch him work and wrestle with her
conscience.

Thankfully the battle wasn’t a long or
particularly complicated one. She did manage to give herself a
tension headache trying to figure out ‘hidden’ agendas the aliens
might have, but, from a logical standpoint, she managed to reassure
herself that it wasn’t actually reasonable to think they might have
evil in mind.

They’d sent terraformers from across
the galaxy if not another galaxy entirely. That technological
wonder was enough to convince her the Grinderians had no need to
use subterfuge to hide evil designs. They could’ve been completely
straightforward and there wouldn’t have been a hell of a lot the
survivors on Earth could do about it.

So she could accept, she thought, with
a clear conscience that she wasn’t helping ‘the enemy’. At least
they didn’t seem to be enemies at this point.

The tricky thing would be
to convince everybody else that they weren’t enemies so that they
didn’t
become
enemies.

She wasn’t completely comfortable with
the idea of tackling world peace even after she’d convinced herself
she wouldn’t be a traitor to her own kind by actively helping the
aliens, mostly because she was nobody really and felt overwhelmed
by the sheer magnitude of the task.

Having finished her peaches, she set
the can aside, tucked her eating utensil into a pocket of the suit
she’d ‘borrowed’ from the stores aboard ship, and went to help
Aidan with his task. Her mind wasn’t really on that job, though.
She followed Aidan’s efforts mechanically while she composed and
discarded various messages for the people.

Simple would be better, she decided
after a while. It would, hopefully, be harder to misunderstand
something short and straightforward plus that had the added benefit
that people might actually read it. The longer it was the more
likely people would be to skim it and misinterpret the entire
thing.

She finally settled on:

People of Earth:

This is NOT an invasion.
The people of Grinderia apologize for their error and want to
assure you that they seek peace NOT war. They deeply regret their
mistake and will do everything in their power to repair the damage
they have inadvertently done.

It was still a little longer than she
would’ve liked and, at the same time, didn’t seem to cover the
ground that needed to be covered, but she decided a series of short
messages might work better in the long run.

Aidan studied the message with frowning
intensity for some moments, consulted his computer and then turned
to study her and finally smiled. “Tank you, Ah-na.”

Anya was warmed both by the smile and
his appreciation. She, Aidan, and the AI worked on a delivery
system. More of the power grid was down than up and there were only
spotty—very sketchy—portions of the internet left, but they agreed
that every possible means of communications needed to be used in
order to reach as many people as possible.

Fortunately, they had managed to get a
campaign to inform the public launched and well underway by the
time the first supply ships arrived from Grinderia. It was still
touch and go for a while. Distrust was rampant. Anger was high.
Most people had been reduced by circumstances to little more than
rocks as self-defense, but they lobed everything they could lay
hand to at the drones that buzzed the ground distributing
propaganda/information and supplies.

Thankfully, the governments decided to
settle for a ‘show of force’ rather than attacking. Anya thought
they displayed far more wisdom than she would’ve previously given
them credit for, because the show of force was a lot more
effective, she was sure, than showing the Grinderians that Earth
had no real defense against them. Soldiers and war machines were
everywhere, aimed at the alien crafts or circling them like a swarm
of angry bees, but there were no ‘incidents’ that she heard
of—making it clear that, however angry and/or frightened everyone
probably was, they were displaying a rare caution/wisdom in dealing
with their visitors that was more likely to have a happy outcome
than trying to attack them and drive them off.

She would’ve far preferred to keep her
part in trying to make peace a deep, dark secret, but,
unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be in the cards. Aidan’s people
had saddled him with the task of making peace and convincing the
governments of Earth to negotiate a treaty with the Grinderian
government and Aidan seemed convinced that she was completely
agreeable to being dragged through the arduous process with
him.

They made the news!

Surprise, surprise!

Anya actually appreciated the coverage.
She hated it, but it at least gave her a chance to tell her side of
the story—why was she with Aidan and did she really believe they
meant no harm when they’d destroyed fully half of Earth’s
civilization in less than a day?

It was actually more like three
quarters—minimum—but who was counting?

She pointed out that that made her
case. If they were capable of that and had not only stopped their
machines, they’d offered to repair the damage—and in fact had
already dropped construction bots to do just that—wasn’t that all
the proof anybody needed to convince them that the Grinderians
wanted to be friends not enemies?

It should have been enough to convince
everybody, but Anya wasn’t really surprised that it
didn’t.

Everything that was destroyed was
replaced with new—NEW—and some of the buildings that had been
destroyed looked as if they should have been demolished anyway.
Ditto the cars that were replaced with new, etc., etc. And to top
all of that off, the technology was better than what anybody on
Earth had had before. And top that off with the terraformed planets
humans got as part of the bargain, because the Grinderians had
terraformed both Mars and Venus and although neither were complete,
they were going to be open to colonization within a decade or so.
All the Grinderians were asking for was a piece of the action and
peace. They wanted to put a colony on Earth and more on Mars and
Venus once they were habitable.

Nothing, of course, could replace the
people lost in the initial disastrous mix-up, but as valuable as
each of those individuals were to those who loved them, there were
actually very few casualties.

By the time Aidan deposited her on her
doorstep, Anya was totally exhausted and thoroughly disgusted with
the entire mess. There was not going to be an easy truce between
them. This was something, she was sure, that was destined to be a
long, drawn out process. Maybe, in time, humans would begin to
actually make friends with their new neighbors, but trust was going
to take time to earn.

Despite her weariness and her gladness
to be home, though, Anya discovered she wasn’t happy at all to see
Aidan go. They’d spent weeks together, surviving, and then
campaigning for peace between his people and hers. She’d just
gotten used to being around him, she told herself.

And he still had much to do before he
was officially off the hook for ignoring his people’s laws and
heading to Earth to prove his theory that there were other
intelligent species ‘out there’.

It was an awkward goodbye. They’d been
monitored since the night they’d spent together in intimacy. Anya
comforted herself with the thought that that was why there hadn’t
been further intimacy—the complete lack of privacy on top of the
frenzied work necessary to avert further disaster. If the situation
had been different ….

Well, they wouldn’t have gotten
together at all.

She liked to think it had been more
than just animal need that had thrown them together, more than the
need for comfort and release from tension.

She might be lying to
herself.

She was absolutely miserable, though,
when he left.

Chapter Eight

There was no picking up her old life,
Anya discovered. Nobody knew she’d been intimate with an alien, but
they didn’t have to know. Pictures of the two of them together had
been plastered all over every form of media known to man. The news
people arrived on her doorstep as soon as they discovered Aidan had
returned her to her home and they camped there, showing no signs of
growing tired of hassling her every time she stuck her nose out the
door for any reason.