That, then, was why the world had yet to end in nuclear fire or due to weed killer poured into the oceans: why there had been no massive, last-ditch effort to close the toy box before we could steal all the best toys. We had people all over the planet, people like me, raised in human homes, raised to be culturally aware of the regions where we lived. We knew what the risks were. It only stood to reason that all across the world, we had been able to stand up and shut down the systems that might have destroyed us.

We had infiltrated them in the guise of their own children. We had done it not knowing what we did, following the programming given to us by horticulturists who moved among the stars like comets, carrying their gardens with them, scattering their seeds across the cosmos. This would never have been possible, not in this form, without us.

I felt a pang of regret. I felt a much stronger flood of pride. The final door was closing on my time on Earth, and I was standing on the correct side.

// people are always dying // said First implacably. // the history of this garden is an endless line of people dying. we did not put the weapons in your hands. we did not order you to use them. most of all, we sent you warning. we sent you our own precious children, to tell you we were coming, to give you the opportunity to say “no, no, turn aside.” you did not listen to them. you did not listen to us. and when we came, as we had said we would come, you cried “how dare you tell the truth” and greeted us with war. even before we raised a thorn against you, you greeted us with war. what we do now is justified by your own actions. we are the monsters you have made. //

Carefully, as precisely as possible, I relayed my mother’s words to the vice-president and her people. Vice-President Rogers’s face fell at first, before settling into a blank neutrality that spoke of greater pain held captive behind it, where no one would be required to see.

Finally, she asked, “If this is so, why did you send a negotiation team at all? Why not just stay safe in the sky and keep slaughtering us? Why risk yourself?”

// you had the raising of my daughter // said First. // I would be a poor mother if I did not thank you, in my way. //

Again, I relayed her words. The vice-president looked from First to me, and back again. At first, it seemed like she could only see our differences, plentiful as they were. Then her eyes adjusted, and she began focusing on the shades of green, the way we mirrored them between us. There was a family resemblance, just … not as Earth eyes understood it.

“How is this thanking me?” she asked.