Chapter 8

This time their approach to the planet was much less fraught with concerns about the unknown than before. At the end of their first voyage Meiersdottir had thoughtfully left behind an audio communicator powered by a solar cell. She'd warned the natives that it would be some time before the humans returned—"probably a year, perhaps more"—but said that, when they did, they'd make contact as soon as they were able.

Thus, several days before they were even in orbit, they were able to begin talking to the Edenite collective. Meiersdottir had insisted on primacy at the Gardener end, so it was she who initiated the first contact when they'd approached closely enough that the transmission delay would be at least tolerable.

"This is Amanda," she began her first transmission. "Is there one who hears me?"

"I hear, Amanda," came the reply after the time-delay dictated by their remaining distance from Eden. "We hear. You are as long as you say, I wait long."

"You must wait only a little longer," Meiersdottir responded. "We will come in about four days. It is like the party you sent for the copper, for now we must speak and there is a delay, and then you may speak, we are still far away." The collective had learned about such delays from experience, just as the humans were departing it had sent a separate party to find copper deposits which were beyond the range of its telepathic interactions. But included in that party was a female—a "mother"—who, because she'd not yet produced fertile eggs, was still as able to travel as males, so the collective was still able to function, albeit now as two separate collectives.

"Is this Joe?" she asked. That was the cognomen they'd given the native individual who'd first greeted them on the prior mission. In fact the Edenites didn't have true names, their telepathic linkage made them unnecessary within their collective, but they'd accepted the human nomenclature readily and even volunteered their own contributions as relations between the two species normalized.

"Yes, Joe," came the answer in due time. "It is still my reason to talk to you." In the natives' planned eugenics each individual was bred for a purpose, and Joe's had been to meet with alien species once the Edenites had recognized that such existed and might visit them.

"Joe, it's very good to hear your voice," said Meiersdottir. "I look forward to seeing you, you and all the others. This will be all right, I hope we are still welcome?"

She held her breath a little waiting for the response. When the humans had left fourteen Earth months before the two species had been on excellent terms, but much can happen in that time and, especially given the conflict with which their relationship had begun, it was a question she very much wanted answered.

"Yes, you are welcome, Amanda," at last came the reassuring reply. "We are eager to begin again. Your field waits for you to land, and your house is there to receive you. We have tried to make it better for you while you were gone. It is from there that I speak now, when you come I will be there. Is Igwanda come with you again?"

"He's here, and so is little Meier. Will Akakha and Akeelakhing be with you?" Akeelakhing was the young mother who'd held Meiersdottir's hand during Meier's birth and used a still not well understood control of her central nervous system to suppress pain; insofar as the natives were able to express individuality—or had any to express, she was still unsure which—she'd seemed to take a special interest in the baby.

"Akeelakhing cannot come, she is now true mother," Joe told her after the irritating transmission delay. "She must see you later in nest. Akakha will be with me."

Sitting beside her in the communications compartment, Igwanda squeezed her hand. He, too, hadn't missed the connotation, that they would be invited again into the Edenites' nest. Meiersdottir turned to kiss him briefly, and her face opened into a grin; they were, indeed, truly to be welcomed.