Guilt twisted in my stomach. It was hard to relax, surrounded by telepathic pollen and harboring what suddenly felt like treasonous thoughts about the world where I’d grown up. Humanity as a whole didn’t appeal to me all that much, but Graham? Mandy? Even Lucas? Specific humans appealed to me a great deal. I didn’t want to see them hurt. “What happens when a harvest … resists?”

// it is cut down // said Second sadly. // the soil is bad, if it grows such poor seeds. so we cut the harvest, and we change the soil. //

“Meaning they sterilize the planet and leave it to develop life again in its own time,” said Jeff. He met my eyes across the table. “Once the armada comes, the question isn’t whether they die. It’s how quickly, and how.”

// we have such high hopes for this harvest // said the Swift. // the air is good. the soil is good. the seeds have sprouted strong and well. you will bring such wonders to our people, and we will travel the universe with you beside us, and you will never know want, or hunger, or need. you will only know the goodness and grace of coming home. //

// we are so glad we will not have to kill you and plant again // said Second happily.

I looked at the Swift, and then I looked at Second—my sister, grown from the same seed, in soil so alien that I couldn’t even imagine it—and I said nothing. For what felt like the first time in my life, I couldn’t think of anything to say.

3.

The tendrils set me and Jeff side by side on the rim of the pit before untangling themselves and retracting back toward the unseen bulk of the scout ship. Despite having been held inside it for some unknown length of time, I still had no idea what it looked like—or what the larger ships of the armada looked like, for that matter. We had dreamt ourselves inside them, dreamt ourselves surrounded by our own species. That didn’t mean we’d been dreaming the truth. We had no control over the pollen, or over whatever mechanism had allowed Second and the Swift to connect us to the gestalt, which seemed like a greater, more refined version of our forest. They could have shown us anything.

Deep down, though, I knew it was truer than it was false. They had no reason to lie to us, especially not now, when their ships were close enough to slingshot scouts across the void. The invasion was underway. We, their information-gathering children, had been nothing more than the advance scouts, and now that they were here, we weren’t essential anymore. They didn’t need to buy our loyalty with lies. Not when they were about to block out the stars.