Matriarch

by Karen Traviss

  “Ouch.”

  “And I know your preoccupations. I have your memories.” Aras took her hand gingerly in his as they walked. “You need to clear your decks, as Ade would say.”

  His hand was cool and the skin like fine suede. Something wess’har in her felt solidly happy inhaling his sandalwood scent. “I hate unfinished business hanging around. We have three c’naatat now outside our control.”

  “Is that how you think of Vijissi, isan? Something to be controlled?”

  “Okay, so I’m a callous bitch, but why did you quarantine Bezer’ej for centuries if you didn’t see it the same way?”

  “I didn’t say I disagreed with you. And I know Vijissi’s survival is both joy and despair for you.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I have no sense of guilt about his condition as you have.”

  “Just answer the bloody question.”

  “I think he’s a complication, and I believe he will be very unhappy.”

  Shan inhaled the sweet sandalwood musk that surrounded Aras and felt inexplicably good when she should have been distracted by worry. She squeezed his arm, wondering if this was actually biochemical bonding and not love. Sleeping with Ade had placated her, too. Maybe it didn’t matter: the love and bonding were the same thing in the end. Aras had struck a chord in her long before he’d infected her.

  Infected. It’s a funny word to use to describe someone saving your life.

  Shan couldn’t pretend to understand the biochemistry of oursan. But she’d seen Nevyan take on an entire family of males and their offspring out of duty when their isan died, and become utterly devoted to them in a matter of days. Oursan—and Shan still thought of it as sex, even if it wasn’t reproductive—really did bond wess’har, males to females and so males to their housebrothers. They had no concept of infidelity and the urge never crossed their minds, and without the constant genetic repair of oursan, males sickened and died.

  C’naatat put her odd little clan beyond that. But the instinct remained.

  “Hey, I’m sorry about Black,” she said. “But he was very old for a rat. He had a good life.”

  “Did he? What’s a good life for a rat? It was an unnatural one as far as I understand, not at all how rats live in the wild.”

  “Well, we’d know all about unnatural, wouldn’t we? And so will Vijissi. So let’s see what Shapakti can do.”

  Shan hung on to her weird life even though she knew how to end it. I tried once. But here she was, living with c’naatat when there was no absolute need to because she knew how to end it. They all did. If Shapatki couldn’t remove c’naatat, there was always one way left.

  You’re used to it, you stupid cow. And now you enjoy it, don’t you? Hey, look! I was serious, I tried to once, I failed. Can I live now? Please?

  Aras urrred again. If she was distracted from the growing c’naatat roll call, then he was no longer devastated by the near extinction of the bezeri or killing Josh Garrod. Life went on, the life you liked and would hang on to grimly until you couldn’t hang on any longer.

  But I’m not like that. I stepped out the airlock. I’m above all that—aren’t I?

  “Ussissi are not gethes,” said Aras. “They have no wish to misuse c’naatat.”

  “That still leaves Vijissi. What if he changes a lot, like you did? What if he expresses human genes, or wess’har ones? Everything that was in me?”

  “He’ll live with it, as I did.”

  There was a point at the top of the terraces, at the highest point the stairways reached, where she could look down and enjoy F’nar laid out beneath her like an iridescent bowl. Whatever the weather, whatever the light, it was always absorbing. Shan stopped now and took in the view. Bezer’ej, Wess’ej’s twin, was visible as a huge but faint crescent moon.

  “Jesus, it’s a steep climb, isn’t it? No wonder my arse is my best feature.” Aras didn’t laugh. She often expected him to be more human than he was. “I hope I never take this view for granted.”

  But her eyes were fixed on Bezer’ej. And she wasn’t thinking of the exquisitely alien skyscape, or even recalling a year spent there: she found she was now thinking of bloody Lindsay Neville, the stupid destructive selfish little cow, and that bastard Rayat.

  I can’t rest until I see for myself. I can’t forget them and get on with my life until I know they’re never going to be a risk.

  Aras sighed. He could read her like a map. But he didn’t scold her.

  “I’m pleased that you walked away from Umeh,” he said. “You’ve accepted that some things are not yours to resolve.”

  But some still are. Just one or two, or even three, when they happen on my watch.

  “The problem is that I don’t know what resolved means anymore, sweetheart.” She turned her back on Bezer’ej and longed for the days when an arrest, a charge that stuck, and a good stiff sentence meant the case was closed and she could move on.

  “We mustn’t forget to tell Ade about the avocados,” Aras said. “Food delights him.”

  Ade had that solid sense of proportion common to all sergeants. So did Aras. But Shan found it much harder to lower her sights to the here and now. She thought of Bezer’ej, and knew that sooner or later, the need to settle matters would overwhelm her.

  Northern Assembly border with the Maritime Fringe, Umeh: Eqbas Vorhi ship 886-001-005-6

  Isenj were harder to fathom than Esganikan had thought.

  Beneath her, palls of smoke drifted south from a clearly defined corridor of burned-out towers and buildings. There was no artillery activity: nobody opened fire on them. It was like the aftermath of a battle, not the start of a war.

  Esganikan nodded at Hayin to open the communications link with Eit. It was convenient to use a neutral language like English and Aitassi no longer appeared offended by being bypassed as interpreter. She simply observed. “What is happening, Minister?”

  “We appear to have a local difficulty.”

  “Define difficulty.”

  “The local population is cooperating with Fringe troops.”

  Eddie had been sitting quietly in an alcove, fiddling with his bee cam, his small mobile recording device. Esganikan was suddenly curious about bees. “Shit,” Eddie said.

  Esganikan took that as surprise. “Minister, are your troops repelling the Maritime Fringe invasion?”

  “They are not responding to our orders to do so.”

  “So your army is in revolt, and your citizens are aiding your enemy.”

  I thought a nonviolent method might be preferable. I was wrong. And I have no need to commit ground troops.

  “My priority is to keep order inside our own borders with those troops who remain loyal.”

  “I thought that isenj were cooperative,” said Esganikan. “I believed that your crowded conditions encouraged order and consensus. That means they should do as their government has asked.”

  Eit didn’t answer. The image of him displayed on the bulkhead was of no use to her, because she couldn’t deduce anything from his expression—if he had one. His scent would have told her nothing anyway. She glanced at Aitassi, rocking her head in silent irritation.

  In her peripheral vision, Esganikan saw Eddie stand up and walk slowly towards her. His bee cam hovered at his shoulder.

  “I fear a coup,” said Eit. “Our invitation to you created huge rifts within the administration at every level, national and local. When Minister Ual first suggested it, there was uproar and violence that cost him his life. I admit I was among those who saw it as an act of treason.”

  “But you changed your mind.”

  There was no clear objective for Esganikan here. She’d responded to the isenj appeal for intervention, exactly as her duty required; but when it came to their internal disputes, all her guidelines deserted her. There were no other land species to consider, and the remnant of aquatic life would probably be better off if the isenj were eradicated completely. There was no target for her act of balance; and no group s
he could single out and hold responsible for Umeh’s current condition. It was outside her experience.

  She regretted agreeing to intervene. Even bioweapons wouldn’t solve the Assembly’s internal dissent. But complete annihilation seemed wrong.

  “I must consider this, Minister,” she said. “Be aware that genomes tend not to stop at borders. If we agree to give you a pathogen, you might have many casualties among your own citizens. As Eddie Michallat would say, that would play badly to the electorate.”

  Eit’s quills were definitely raised a little. “Then I await your decision—as long as this government survives.”

  Hayin closed the link and the bulkhead screen flipped to transparency. The comms team resumed listening to the audio chatter of the isenj networks—neighbor calling neighbor, city calling city—and appeared fascinated. The ussissi crew interpreted: the information was largely irrelevant gossip and panic, but this was a new species for the Eqbas, and they were curious.

  “You’re wess’har,” said Eddie. “The average isenj doesn’t give a damn what their government tells them to do, because you’re the ancient enemy embedded in their genetic memory, and you’ve invaded as far as they’re concerned.”

  “And yet the Assembly cabinet can stomach our presence. Eit can, anyway. Some of the others seem indecisive.”

  “Well, there weren’t many who thought like Par Paral Ual either,” said Eddie. The human probably understood isenj better than any wess’har: the two species thought in similar ways and seemed to enjoy each other’s company. “Maybe it’s only Eit that’s holding it together. And although isenj aren’t as blatantly dishonest as we are, they’re fast learners.”

  “As are we,” said Esganikan. And we need to learn to lie, Hayin. Foolish slip. “If they want a sustainable environment that does not require increasing climate management each year, then they must cut their population by three-quarters. Until they accept that, I cannot restore this planet. The fact that Shomen Eit appears to be dragging his cabinet colleagues into a power grab—that is the phrase, yes?—does not alter that.”

  Eddie licked his lips, agitated. He had a talent for taking over discussions. Esganikan would normally have silenced a presumptuous male with a cuff around the ear, but he was a useful source of insight.

  “And now you’ve started, you have to finish, don’t you?”

  “No,” said Esganikan. “We can withdraw completely, although we rarely do. This is a wholly artificial environment. I remain concerned about whatever marine life remains, but the isenj are now only harming themselves. Earth is my priority.”

  “You’d walk out now, after the war’s started?”

  “They choose to fight.”

  “Are you going to give them the bioweapons?”

  That depended on the definition of give. “We are not omnipotent. This is just one ship, and pathogens require far fewer resources than bombarding the planet.”

  “What a bloody mess.” Eddie didn’t seem to grasp her point.

  Esganikan turned to Aitassi. She was aware of the whole crew watching her. “Do we have ussissi in Umeh Station at the moment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Offer them evacuation. In fact, offer all ussissi evacuation from Umeh if they are unhappy with the situation.”

  “What about Umeh Station?” asked Eddie.

  “We are not your defense force. You chose to build a base there.” Where did he expect her to find room for evacuees with specific alien food requirements? Ussissi could go to Wess’ej. But she couldn’t unload more than three hundred gethes on F’nar without asking, and she knew that Mar’an’cas couldn’t provide food for them anyway: and no wess’har city could, either. Human biochemistry was unequipped to handle wess’har food. “There is nowhere that can accommodate them all.”

  Eddie looked at his bee cam and then reached out to retrieve it. She couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind: perhaps he felt he had been denied dramatic pictures that he needed. He might have feared for his fellow humans in Umeh Station. He was certainly agitated.

  “It’s interesting to see that you get in over your heads sometimes,” he said, and began walking away. “You might want to read some Earth history about what happens when you start a war between two factions and then leave them to slug it out.”

  “There are many deaths,” said Esganikan. “I know.”

  “And that’s part of your population reduction policy?”

  Esganikan understood the tone of human rebukes now. She felt a tingle of irritation, and the crew inhaled discreetly and watched, waiting.

  “Every army of occupation has to withdraw sooner or later, Eddie. There is never an ideal time, and as long as one person with old grievances remains, there will be an aftermath.”

  “Hence your scorched earth policy.”

  “The isenj have choices. This is simple causality.” He has to learn. He isn’t stupid. But gethes simply don’t see the obvious. “They can choose to live differently, and they can also choose not to fight. All of us can make choices. You cannot want one thing but do another, and still expect the situation to resolve.”

  Eddie looked thoughtful, in slight defocus. Then he shook his head as if disagreeing with himself and left the bridge.

  Aitassi watched him go and the bridge crew emitted a communal hiss.

  “Earth is going to be fascinating,” said Hayin. “Humans don’t connect their actions with what befalls them. Don’t they perceive time as linear?”

  “They do,” said Aitassi. “They just don’t see why they should do anything individually to change their future to the one they want. All eight billion of them.”

  Hayin and a few of the bridge crew looked utterly bewildered.

  The isenj were much simpler to understand in most respects. They knew what they wanted: they simply didn’t have room to carry on doing it without escaping their planet and its moon. Something had to give, and that, Esganikan reminded herself, was the reason for being here: to ensure they never became a threat to Wess’ej and Bezer’ej as they had in the past.

  She almost wished they would launch that threatened attack. The solution would have been very much simpler then. Even Eqbas Vorhi had rules of engagement, although Eddie seemed not to notice. They were not his rules, and so they didn’t count.

  “Set a course for Tivskur,” she said. “I’d like a closer look.”

  “The reconnaissance remotes are detecting seagoing vessels in harbor with drives operating,” said Hayin. “Tivskur appears to be preparing its navy.”

  Umeh’s nearest continental neighbor also had plans, then. Maybe it would go to the aid of the Maritime Fringe: Esganikan was still uncertain of the politics of the four landmasses that made up the surface of the planet, but if they were readying ships then an Eqbas vessel wasn’t their target. Did Jejeno know what was happening? Did she have a duty to tell Eit?

  Would it change anything?

  She was supposed to be able to operate independently, guided by the broad and unchanging principles of balance. But she wanted to excel. She wanted to be able to finish her term of service and go home with honor and self-respect intact. She wanted jurej’ve and children at last. If she didn’t do her duty and maintain balance and order, she had no right to contentment.

  And she would have failed her crew. They had endured a long separation from home too, a few of the males even leaving families behind in suspension, medicated to maintain their health, a rare and desperate thing. She was the commander and that made her their acting matriarch, with all the expectation of competence that went with it.

  The ship climbed and pushed through cloud. From this height, Umeh could have been any planet covered largely by ocean. It was only from orbit or beneath the cloud layer that the dying seas and land almost entirely obliterated by building were visible as patterns of pink and gray and rust. The surveillance remotes penetrated the layer from orbit and relayed images of a continent that could just as easily have been Ebj, the continent dominated by the
Northern Assembly.

  There was no natural landscape in Tivskur to indicate how far north they had flown. It was simply a different coastline. Its capital, according to the F’nar archive, was Tivsk; and the outskirts of the city—how did they know where one settlement ended and the next began?—had been hit by debris from the gethes’ warship Actaeon, destroyed in orbit on the orders of that nervous little matriarch who looked to Shan Frankland for direction.

  Nevyan. Nevyan Tan Mestin. She had no idea how lucky she was to opt out of the duty of balance and never leave home. She even had a clan of four males, all with children, and she was barely an adult. Esganikan envied her anew.

  I’m failing. Nevyan asked us to remove our camp from Wess’ej. Umeh is collapsing into war. So I have to get Earth right. I can’t go home and have a family until I do my duty.

  The ship dropped back through the clouds and Esganikan stared through the transparent deck at the long finger of harbor that cut deep into the eastern coast. She pondered Targassat’s words about the futility of selecting the point of equilibrium for any planet. It was a good argument. But taken to its logical conclusion—like the timing of troop withdrawal—it meant sitting back and doing nothing while species died and never had a chance. There was a single point in time at which to act, or not act: and inaction had its consequences too.

  Esganikan had discovered a human called Charles Darwin in the gethes’ archives that were duplicated in F’nar, and a view based on his findings that had become a revered ideology among scientists. Darwinism said that only the best-fitted survived. Yes, that was bound to be a popular philosophy for a species that claimed it couldn’t help the disgraceful things that it did; humans felt that their nature was wonderful, bold, soaring, and free, and that their rapacious side was just a price to be paid—although not by them, generally. Gethes took refuge in the apparently inevitable nature of their superiority. They couldn’t help but be on top. Somehow, though, they managed to ignore the fact that being the dominant species on Earth meant that absolutely nothing about their position was inevitable or beyond their control.