Warships like the one Mother had died on.

A low murmur rippled through the crowd. Father pointed toward the Aerth ship, snapping Vil’ja abruptly out of her reverie.

The hatch on the Aerth ship began to slide open, and a narrow gangplank slowly extended downward past the ship’s graceful engine nacelles to the plaza floor. Moments later, a figure appeared in the open hatchway. The Aerth envoy,Vil’ja thought.

The Aerthean was a female, Vil’ja surmised, judging [378] from its overall shape and proportions. But aside from its possessing a head, torso, and limbs, the creature was like no Neyel she had ever seen. The being was short in stature compared to her Neyel escorts, and had no tail. Though clothing covered most of the alien’s form, Vil’ja could see that the Aerth woman’s skin looked incredibly fragile, her face and hands apparently as smooth and vulnerable as those of a newborn Neyel.

But the Aerthean’s crowning feature, literally, was the great shock of fine, red-hued fiber that grew from her head. The long, ruddy strands reminded Vil’ja of the fur that covered the heads and torsos of the indigies she sometimes saw on tridee, or the ones she’d seen mounted and stuffed in the Knowledge Museum. She had even once observed a few of the indigies alive, making their traditional ceramic house-wares at a tourist attraction she had visited with Mother nearly three oghencycles ago. The indigies who lived in that place had not seemed very happy.

But unlike those indigies, who’d seemed to Vil’ja like walking ghosts, the Aerth woman was smiling. At the signal of the head of the honor guard—a one-armed trooper, who’d no doubt been maimed during the conflict with the Devils—the Aerthean spread her hands, evidently preparing to address the hushed, expectant crowd. After quickly touching a device on the collar of her garment—a microphone or voicecaster,Vil’ja realized—the Aerth woman began to speak, her warm, pleasant voice audible everywhere in the plaza.

“People of the Neyel Hegemony, my name is Aidan Burgess. And I bring you greetings and good wishes from your cousins, the people of Earth, and from the United Federation of Planets of which Earth is a part.”

Earth? Vil’ja wondered as a gentle murmur passed through the crowd, then subsided. Urth? Aerth? What a strange accent she has.

[379] Burgess continued: “You may ask why I have come here, especially since the peace treaty my people have negotiated on behalf of the Hegemony and its former adversaries prohibits all future traffic across the Rift. It is certainly fair to ask why I would strand myself so far from my own people.

“But the answer is a simple one: It is because my people are really not so different from yours. I have come to tell you that Earth, the fabled world of your ancestors, is no myth. It is a real place with a real history, filled with people as real as any of you. It is the planet of my birth, just as it was for your pre-Neyel ancestors of centuries past.”

Vil’ja felt her father tense beside her as a renewed murmur moved through the crowd, like an insistent wind bending a stand of tall grass. She had always been taught that such talk of Auld Aerth was irreverent, disrespectful. Aerth was sacred, and thus best not discussed in overly concrete terms.

But today, with the Rift War finished and proof of Aerth’s tangible reality now on display for all to see—escorted by one of Gran Drech’tor Zafir’s own military honor guards, no less—the mood of the crowd seemed more tolerant. At least, that was Vil’ja’s hope. She did not want to see the people grow angry, especially now that the Rift’s closure gave them cause by precluding any chance of actually reaching Distant Aerth. She didn’t want to endure any more fighting and strife, especially not among her countrymen.

The Aerth envoy went on, as though she’d read Vil’ja’s mind: “I understand that the Neyel people are weary of war. It may encourage you to know that my people have learned, after many centuries of errors and misunderstandings, to live in harmony with many different species who now make up our peace-loving Federation. We have even dissuaded some of the less friendly peoples—such as the Tholians, a species known in your tongue as “Devils”—from further aggression. This tradition of peace is the birthright of all Neyel, a people [380] as closely linked as mine to the Earth of your forebears. Your esteemed leader, Gran Drech’tor Zafir, has expressed a desire to learn all she can of this birthright, and I have pledged the remainder of my life to giving her, and all of the Neyel, every assistance in reaching that end.

“My reason for wishing this is as simple as my reason for coming among you. And it is this: However many centuries have passed since our common ancestors diverged, and no matter how many changes may separate us, my people and yours are indissolubly linked. We are all creatures of Earth, regardless of whether or not any of us—myself included—can ever return there. As branches of the same tree, our two peoples and cultures are stronger together than apart. Thank you, my friends, for allowing me to speak to you today.”

And with that, Burgess bowed and walked down the gangplank, the one-armed honor guard leader at her side. Moving with purposeful strides, with the guards marching behind and beside them, they headed toward the Great Hall of Oghen, where Gran Drech’tor Zafir held court. The crowd, now once again silent, parted to make way for the procession.

Moments later, Vil’ja realized that she and her father were standing directly in the path of Burgess and her party. Father tugged gently on Vil’ja’s arm, trying to coax her out of the way.

But Vil’ja could only stare at the approaching Aerth woman, transfixed. She pulled away from Father, but overbalanced and found herself tumbling arms over tail into a heap on the dew-damp bricks of the plaza floor.

She looked up. The Aerth woman was standing directly over her, staring down with a worried expression while Father and the Neyel military escorts looked on, each of them scowling the same military-issue scowl.

The one-armed trooper began to shoo Vil’ja out of the Aerth envoy’s way, but Burgess held up a restraining hand. [381] The vigilant troopers withdrew slightly, moving two steps backward as the Aerthean woman crouched beside the girl.

“Looks like I’ve just made first contact,” Burgess said. “I’m sorry to have been so clumsy. Are you hurt?”

The Aerth woman reached down to help Vil’ja reach her feet. As she grasped Burgess’s soft arm with a tough-skinned hand, the Neyel girl noticed the strands of the multicolored bracelet the woman wore on her slender wrist. Small stones, shells, and charms of every description were strung like beads all around it, reminding her of an art project she’d done recently at school.

Vil’ja returned her gaze to the Aerth woman’s impossibly soft, vulnerable face. Could such supple creatures as this truly be the fruit of the same tree as the battle-hardened Neyel?

Unless she could reach Aerth herself, Vil’ja realized, she might never know. And without the Rift, that simply wouldn’t be possible.

It took an awkward few moments for Vil’ja to find her voice. “I am not hurt,” she said simply.

Suddenly Vil’ja felt emboldened, perhaps by all the suffering and terror she had absorbed during the Rift War. So she added, very quickly, “But I do have a question.”

From the corner of one hard-lidded eye, Vil’ja saw her father blanch. He obviously wanted them both to melt back into the anonymity of the crowd.

But she also saw the Aerth woman’s smile return, and it encouraged her to stand her ground. “Please. Ask,” the Aerthean said.

Vil’ja drew a deep breath. “Your people have driven the Devils away. For that I thank you.”

She shuddered inwardly when she thought of the Devils. Even though her father, her teachers, and every other adult she knew all claimed that the Rift War was now a thing of the past, Vil’ja had no closure. She still feared and hated the [382] Devils and everything they had done. The war the crystal beasts had started had taken Mother from her. In a way, it had taken Father as well.