Roamer vessels descended like the cavalry upon Theroc. Cesca rode in the foremost ship with her father. It felt good to be doing something to help the Therons, and she hoped it might soothe the pain for them and give her something to be proud of. She had not been able to offer Reynald love during his life, but she knew that what she was doing for his people now would have been far more important to him.
As the flurry of mismatched spacecraft approached the splintered and burned forests, Cesca finally began to comprehend the extent of the damage the hydrogues and faeros had done. Tears welled in her eyes as she looked over at her father and realized how glad she was to be with him at a time like this. “I just pray that I’ve brought the right people and enough supplies, Dad.”
Denn Peroni concentrated on the complicated landing activities. “You followed your Guiding Star to do this good deed in the first place, Cesca. Have faith that you were sufficiently inspired to remember everything we’d need—if not, we’ll make do. You’ll get them back on their feet again.”
As a girl she had traveled with him on his merchant ship from one port of call to another—Hansa colonies, isolated Roamer settlements, scary and crowded Earth. On her twelfth birthday he’d brought Cesca to Rendezvous and convinced Speaker Okiah to teach her the nuances of personal and familial politics that he himself didn’t understand. Thus, when Cesca had asked her father to join this humanitarian mission to Theroc, he had not hesitated for an instant. Her heart warmed at the memory of his supportive smile. . . .
Ship after colorful ship landed in the raw cleared areas where tall worldtrees had once stood. With a lump in her throat, Cesca remembered the only other time she’d visited here: her gala betrothal celebration not so long ago. There had been green priests and treedancers, exotic foods and forest smells, insect noises and lights among the trees.
All gone now.
Cesca emerged to stand beside her father as dirt-smeared Therons came forward from temporary encampments. Among them, she spotted Reynald’s parents, looking much more haggard than she remembered, as if every drop of joy or energy had been wrung out of them. Father Idriss, whose square-cut black beard was shot through with lines of gray, regarded the new arrivals with wary disbelief.
Cesca smiled reassuringly, full of pride in her extended family of Roamers. “The clans wondered if you could use our help. Might we lend a hand?”
Mother Alexa’s smile blossomed like a bright flower.
In spite of the brief show the Eddies had made of assisting Theroc after the hydrogue attack, the military had stopped far short of finishing the job. The observation satellites they had left in orbit provided useful images of Theroc’s continents, but the Therons did not have the manpower, equipment, or resources to handle a crisis of such magnitude.
Even with the assistance of every able-bodied Theron, the Roamers had their work cut out for them.
Using prefab dwelling modules designed to create instant settlements on inhospitable worlds, clan engineers built a base camp in a clearing where all the worldtrees had been shattered by hydrogue icewaves. The Therons joined them, explained what progress they had made thus far, discussed plans, and offered suggestions as to how their green priests could best help the Roamers.
With a sense of satisfaction, Cesca watched her people working alongside the weary Therons with dedication and energy. Industrial lifters cleared away the worst debris from the ash-strewn ground by piling the enormous hulks of dead worldtrees into high funeral mounds that would stand as monuments to the worldforest. Large excavating machines designed for mining and construction on lifeless planets now went to work on a grand scale, accomplishing as much in a single day as the Therons had done in the past month.
“Our initial concern here is to prevent further erosion,” said Kotto Okiah, placing his hands on his hips as he surveyed the entire project. “If we don’t prepare for when the next heavy rains come, this will be a disaster of epic proportions.”
“This is already a disaster,” Cesca reminded him.
He scratched his curly brown hair. “Right. And the Therons would probably rather not have another.”
Knowing the eccentric engineer’s capabilities, Cesca had sent a ship to his frozen methane excavations on Jonah 12. Kotto hated to be pulled from a project that already occupied his full intellect, but Cesca had asked him as a personal favor, and the man’s resistance had melted. Now he followed her like a devoted pet.
Kotto paced through the work areas. Several times, he had expressed disappointment that he hadn’t had a chance to study the hydrogue wreckage before the Eddies hauled it away to Earth, but Cesca tried to keep the man’s genius focused on the immediate problem. Kotto turned his energy to restoring the forest world.
“We’ve cleared this whole settlement zone now, so I had our ships spray down a mesh of biodegradable polymer to hold the soil in place. A crew of Therons is already out finding fast-growing native groundcover for the first phase of the reclamation process. Then I want to build retaining walls and stair-step some of these hillsides.”
He held up a long, thin sheet of electronic plans, scrolling through image after image. “I can use this opportunity to install up-to-date plumbing and power conduits, ventilation systems, communications nodes.”
“They have their own ways, Kotto. Be careful not to do anything they don’t want.”
He blinked at her. “All right, I’ll ask first. But so far they’re fascinated with the renovation plans, and they’ve been very helpful.” He shifted to a different page of the plans. “Normally I’d use raw metals and alloys as structural materials. In this case, though, I doubt the Therons want us to strip-mine or bore holes into their rock outcroppings—”
“Don’t even consider it. That’s fine on an empty asteroid, but the ecosystem here has been damaged enough. We need to heal and repair this planet, not make matters worse.”
“Exactly my point.” Kotto tapped his finger on the plans. “I ran compositional analyses and materials tests on the wood of the dead worldtrees. It’s quite a remarkable substance, almost as sturdy as steel, yet workable. We can use that fire-hardened wood to form the basic framework for all the structures the Therons need.”
“There’s certainly plenty of it available,” Cesca said, looking at all the downed trees. “Unfortunately.”
As if unveiling a masterpiece, Kotto displayed his architectural scheme that used salvaged wood, a few necessary components of Roamer manufacture, and the original material of the fungus reef. “Look, I can shore up these parts of the old city and rebuild the rest. It’ll be better than ever before.”
His unique vision impressed Cesca. “We’ll have to get the Therons’ approval first, but I think they’ll be quite pleased.” She surprised the bemused inventor with a quick and enthusiastic hug.
Denn Peroni flew his ship next to a pair of water-hauling vessels captained by the twins Torin and Wynn Tamblyn. They had brought two of their container ships from the water mines of Plumas to use for large-scale operations. From orbit, Roamer scouts traced still-burning fires on separate continents, following plumes of smoke to the heaviest unchecked blazes. Now the Tamblyn brothers dumped water from their haulers to snuff out the flames in these remaining hot spots.
Cesca’s father sent daily progress reports to the base camp. Shipload after shipload of water scooped from fresh lakes rained down upon the last uncontrolled fires, dousing them. Even from high in the sky, Denn could almost feel a sigh of relief from the sentient trees. Every blaze extinguished was like a hot spike withdrawn from the planet’s sensitive flesh. . . .
Cesca sat and listened while several Roamer agricultural engineers spoke with Yarrod and other high-ranking green priests. “I think you’ll find that we Roamers are well versed in efficient crop-planting methods. We’ve also become adept at squeezing out high yields. In most cases we have no choice but to recycle every drop of water, every scrap of fertilizer in order to generate the greatest amount of edible biomass.”
Marla Chan Tylar—Nikko’s mother—showed images of what she had done in the sun-washed greenhouse domes in an asteroid belt. “On Theroc you have seeds and worldtree sprouts, but we need to make the growing of new trees more efficient.”
“Every treeling counts,” Yarrod agreed grimly.
“Now you’re starting to think like a Roamer,” said Marla. “We’ll have to install irrigation, stagger high and low tiers of plantings, and prepare to transplant them when necessary. We have a lot of ground to cover.”
Cesca left them to talk and plan amongst themselves. As she stood alone with the newly optimistic flurry of activity around her, she looked up at the damaged fungus-reef city and once again felt a bittersweet pang.
If things had been different, she would have been married to Reynald by now. The Roamer-Theron alliance would have strengthened both peoples, and Jess would have gone on with his life, putting behind him all thoughts of romance with her. But Reynald was dead, and Jess had been transformed into something more than human.
Still, perhaps she could salvage something of even greater importance here. She looked up at a burned tree, and her lips formed a resolute smile.