More, maybe, because if I was foolish enough to get on a plane when the signal got louder and the dreams got stronger and the itching under my skin got harder to endure, I would be too removed from my roots to deserve a shot at surviving the invasion. I didn’t know what shape the slapping-down would take, any more than I knew what the ships would look like when they arrived, but I knew that the time for this sort of travel was drawing to a close. It was one of the reasons I’d insisted we go right away, rather than giving Graham time to settle in and rest after his most recent trip.

The other reasons were more selfish: I was scared. The invasion was coming, and my people were coming with it, my wonderful, terrible people, the root of everything I was, the reason I was on this planet. They had sent me here with only the most rudimentary awareness of my nature, and now, finally, they were going to be where I could ask them questions. I felt like a child being promised access to the real Santa Claus, or a religious official getting the opportunity to talk to God. Was my lack of specific knowledge a flaw in my training or a side effect of my having taken the form of a human so young, with a mind too unformed to retain fine details? Or was this all by design?

What good would it do for an invasion to begin with untrained, unprepared scouts stumbling through enemy territory, announcing themselves at every opportunity? I didn’t understand. That, more than anything else I had ever encountered, had me doing what should have been unthinkable, and questioning myself. What if I was wrong? What if I had been wrong for my entire life? What if I wasn’t an alien, just a kidnapped little girl who had been so traumatized by whatever had happened to her that she had shut it all out, refusing to let it color her daily existence?

I might not be an alien at all. Just one more human being in denial, meat for the mill that was now sailing, implacable and slow, through the vastness of space.

“No,” I said, and put my head down against his shoulder. “Leave it off, or put your headphones in if you want to watch. I don’t want to know.”

“You’re going to find out sooner or later.”

“I know. That’s why I don’t want to know here or now. I can wait until it matters, and let it happen then. Right now … it can’t change anything. The FAA hasn’t grounded the planes or demanded we turn back. There aren’t any ships in the sky. Humanity is still in charge here. For now.”