keep quiet about it, Zoe. You and the alien twins."
"You don't think what Hickory is saying is going to happen, do you?" I asked.
Dad looked directly at me, and once again I was reminded how much older he was than he appeared. "It is going to happen," he said. "The Colonial Union has laid a trap for the Conclave. We disappeared a year ago. The Conclave has been looking for us all that time, and the CU has spent all that time preparing the trap. Now it's ready, so we're being dragged back into view. When General Rybicki's ship goes back, they're going to let it leak where we are. The news will get back to the Conclave. The Conclave will send its fleet here. And the Colonial Union will destroy it. That's the plan, anyway."
"Is it going to work?" I asked.
"I don't know," Dad said.
"What happens if it doesn't?" I asked.
Dad laughed a very small and bitter laugh. "If it doesn't, then I don't think the Conclave is going to be in any mood for negotiations," he said.
"Oh, God," I said. "We have to tell people, Dad."
"I know we do," he said. "I tried keeping things from the colonists before, and it didn't work very well." He was talking about the werewolves there, and I reminded myself that when all this was done I needed to come clean to him about my own adventures with them. "But I also don't need another panic on our hands. People have been whipsawed enough in the last couple of days. I need to figure out a way to tell people what the CU has planned without putting them in fear for their lives."
"Despite the fact they should be," I said.
"That is the catch," Dad said, and gave another bitter chuckle. Then he looked at me. "It's not right, Zoe. This whole colony is built on a lie. Roanoke was never intended to be a real colony, a viable colony. It exists because our government needed a way to thumb its nose at the Conclave, to defy its colonization ban, and to buy time to build a trap. Now that it's had that time, the only reason our colony exists is to be a goat at a stake. The Colonial Union doesn't care about us for who we are, Zoe. It only cares about us for what we are. What we represent to them. What they can use us for. Who we are doesn't actually enter into it."
"I know the feeling," I said.
"I'm sorry," Dad said. "I'm getting both abstract and depressed."
"It's not abstract, Dad," I said. "You're talking to the girl whose life is a treaty point. I know what it means to be valued for what I am rather than who I am."
Dad gave me a hug. "Not here, Zoe," he said. "We love you for you. Although if you want to tell your Obin friends to get off their asses and help us, I wouldn't mind."
"Well, I did get Hickory and Dickory to swear not to kill you," I said. "So that's progress, at least."
"Yes, baby steps in the right direction," Dad said. "It'll be nice not to have to worry about being knifed by members of my household."
"There's always Mom," I said.
"Trust me, if I ever annoyed her that much, she wouldn't use something as painless as a knife," Dad said. He kissed me on the cheek. "Thanks for coming to tell me what Hickory said, Zoe," he said. "And thanks for keeping it to yourself for now."
"You're welcome," I said, and then headed for the door. I stopped before I turned the handle. "Dad? How long do you think it will take before the Conclave is here?"
"Not long, Zoe," he said. "Not long at all."
In fact, it took just about two weeks.
In that time, we prepared. Dad found a way to tell everyone the truth without having them panic: He told them that there was still a good chance the Conclave would find us and that the Colonial Union was planning on making a stand here; that there was still danger but that we had been in danger before, and that being smart and prepared was our best defense. Colonists called up plans to build bomb shelters and other protections, and used the excavation and construction machinery we'd kept packed up before. People kept to their work and stayed optimistic and prepared themselves as best they could, readying themselves for a life on the edge of a war.