Free Quiet Invasion by Sarah Zettel

ushered them to a corner room shaped like a supposedly cosy undersea grotto. “I’ll have your waiter over three seconds ago.”
    “There’s a relativity problem there, Nikki,” said Vee as she slid into her seat.
    “What?” Nikki’s face went politely blank.
    “Science joke. Never mind.” Vee smiled sunnily. “Have to get back into practice.”
    “Of course. Good luck, Vee.” Nikki squeezed her shoulder and breezed away.
    Rosa was looking at her. “What?” asked Vee.
    Rosa picked up her napkin and made a great show of smoothing it across her lap. “It just never ceases to amaze me how fast you drop into the artiste persona.”
    “Hey.” Vee stabbed the table with one finger. “That persona has kept us both living very comfortably. I wouldn’t complain.”
    “Never,” said Rosa flatly. “Just commenting.” She called up the menu from the tabletop display and began examining it.
    The cafe was tony enough to have real humans as servers, but, fortunately, not so over-the-top as to put them in any form of swimwear. Rosa and Vee ordered coffee, white tea, rolls, and fruit cups from a young man in the ultratraditional server’s black-and-white uniform.
    When he left, Rosa jacked her briefcase into the table and unfolded the view screen.
    “How’re we doing today?” Vee asked. If Rosa heard her, she gave no sign. She just skimmed the display and shuffled the icons.
    “Your money’s good,” Rosa said at last. “The family trusts are percolating along nicely, and I think we’re going to be able to put Kitty through college without a problem.”
    “Same as yesterday.”
    “Same as yesterday,” agreed Rosa. “Want to see the latest on the Discovery?”
    Vee shrugged, trying to be casual about it. “Might as well see what I’m getting into.” Inside, her stomach began to flutter and she wondered where breakfast was. Food might help settle her down, except all of a sudden she wasn’t hungry.
    Rosa lit the back of the screen so Vee could follow along and called up her favorite news service.
    The lead stories all came under the heading of The Discovery on Venus , as they had for the past month. Today was a pretty light news day. Only three new stories had been added since Vee checked it last night. Rosa touched the title Venus Colonists Say No Help Needed and the Silent option. The main menu vanished, and the text and video story unfolded in front of them.
Sources at Venera Base, home to the incredible discovery of what may be signs of alien life on Venus [long-range, color-enhanced picture of the spherical settlement with its airfoil tail floating through billowing clouds], are saying that the governing board strongly resents the formation of the new United Nations subcommittee on Venus. The governing board insists that the Venerans already in residence have sufficient expertise to deal with this most unexpected find.
    While Dr. Helen Failia, founder of the base and head of Venera’s Board of Directors [video clip of a short, gray-haired woman with a severe face giving a lecture to a group of what looked like college students], still refuses comment, sources close to the board say that petitions have been filed to render the Discovery [dissolve to the now familiar glowing hatchway] proprietary to the funding universities and therefore outside the realm of government probes or restrictions.
    Dr. Bennet Godwin [jump cut to a split picture with a still shot of an iron-gray-haired man with permanent windburn in one half, and a hardsuited figure standing on a yellowish-red cliff in the other half], also on Venera’s board, had this comment [the man’s picture flickered to life].
    “We welcome all serious research into any aspect of the world of Venus. That’s what Venera Base is here for. What we cannot welcome, or tolerate, is interference by nonscientists in what is a scientific inquiry [the face froze].”
    Dr. Godwin later issued the following clarification of his statement [the face flickered to