Crossing the Line

by Karen Traviss

  She could see the small cluster of dots that indicated the colony. But there was another dot emerging on Christopher, the southernmost island in the chain. She wondered if it was some aberrant data from the geophys scans, a trace of one of the isenj cities that the wess’har had annihilated.

  LANDING SITE appeared on the screen behind the jigsaw section of globe.

  Well, that had to be wrong. She knew where the mission vessel had landed, because it was laid up at Constantine. She hadn’t seen it, but Josh Garrod had mentioned it and Ade Bennett was counting on it being there.

  “I can’t guess,” she said at last. “Other than the discrepancy between landing sites.”

  “Got it,” said Rayat.

  “An error?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It would have to be a very large, complex error. This telemetry is clearly about two landings in different places.” Rayat prodded the image and it melted around his finger and reformed again. “The bot ship landed—here. It should have built the habitat—here. But the Christopher ended up—over here.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s something there on the island of Christopher. They switched landing sites, or it was switched for them.”

  Lindsay thought of the ease with which the wess’har had remotely immobilized Thetis in orbit when the ship first came to the Cavanagh’s Star system. Diverting a vessel would have been simple for them.

  “And what do you think is on Christopher Island, then?”

  Rayat shrugged. “Biotech research facility. Nice and remote, away from the wess’har homeworld in case things go wrong.”

  “You’re making an assumption that they think like we do. Given their rather negative attitude to our attempt at research activities on the planet, I’d say that’s highly unlikely.”

  Rayat was so conciliatory that it alarmed her more than his usual dismissive manner. He lowered his voice and counted points on his fingers. “One, they can manipulate environments. Two, they can wipe away every trace of millions of isenj and their cities. And three—I don’t have to remind you about Frank- land’s astonishing recovery. Trust me, they’re quite capable.”

  Lindsay wasn’t convinced. “Assuming you’re right, what are we going to do about it? Walk in? This is a level of incursion we can’t back up with firepower.”

  If Rayat was losing patience with her, he was showing no sign of it. He must have needed her assistance badly. She knew damn well he despised her as a weakling, a cocktail-party officer; but she also knew that Okurt’s orders were at odds with his. They were all scrambling for a piece of the biotech action and anxious to stop the other getting it.

  “It’s a jigsaw,” Rayat said. “We know, more or less, what it does. We have a good idea of where it is, apart from being in the tissues of our two chums. So every extra piece of the picture counts.”

  “And you want some help acquiring it.”

  “Eddie’s a resourceful man.”

  Lindsay tried very hard to lock her expression. Maybe Rayat knew she had already approached Eddie, but she couldn’t imagine how. No, he was just thinking the obvious thing. There was nothing like a neutral journalist as a convenient vector for information.

  “He won’t spy,” she said.

  “He just has to do his job as normal. You know how excited reporters get about digging. They’re like a dog chasing a car—they love the pursuit, not the capture.”

  “Actually, I think Eddie’s a lot smarter than that.”

  “You’re fond of him.”

  “He’s a friend. And he’s good at what he does.”

  “Are you prepared to co-opt him?”

  Lindsay felt a small pang of guilt and then felt very, very clever. Rayat didn’t know she’d already tried.

  “He’s got the best chance of all of us of being allowed to land on Wess’ej,” she said. “What are you putting into the pot, apart from a vague location?”

  “You know what I am. Let’s just say I’m untrammeled by rules of engagement.”

  “I think I know what you mean.” No, I’ll be the one to shoot her, Lindsay thought. “Let me think about it.”

  Rayat displayed no sign of triumph. He just nodded a few times, looking at the screen. Then he picked up his carton of beans and speared the contents with staccato stabs of his fork, seeming genuinely hungry.

  “This seems an enormous amount of effort to expend on so little hard evidence,” said Lindsay, just testing the water.

  “You have no idea how much excitement this damn thing has generated,” said Rayat. “And sooner or later, it’ll be in the public domain. I—we need to get in and put it out of reach of commerce and foreign governments as early as we can. One contamination, one slip, and God only knows where it might end.”

  Lindsay met his eyes and tried to work out who was actually behind them. She hadn’t traded anything in the conversation: he had revealed plenty.

  If he was telling the truth, of course. And she didn’t have Shan Frankland’s police gut-instinct for spotting the lies among the facts. She’d have to take her chances. It meant using Eddie. It might even mean harming Eddie. It also meant colluding with a man she loathed and mistrusted.

  “Deal,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

  11

  MESSAGE TO: EDDIE MICHALLAT, CSV Actaeon

  SENDER: Duty News Editor, West European Hub

  Eddie, this is great stuff. Keep it coming. Nobody’s seen this level of public interest in the space program for decades, maybe centuries. And forget that other matter—not considered in the public interest, if you understand me. Someone upstairs got a security notice slapped on their desk.

  I’ll see what I can do about your performance-related bonus. Let me get this straight: you want it all to go to the World Forest Project?

  Mestin got a message she hadn’t been expecting. Actaeon’s senior male, the one called Okurt, had sent a request for Eddie Michallat to be allowed to visit Wess’ej. Mestin knew of Michallat. He wasn’t a soldier and he wasn’t a scientist. She had no idea what use he was to the gethes.

  The governing matriarchs gathered in the communal kitchen just off the main library, chewing lurisj. Nevyan sat with one of her newly inherited children, an isanket, on her lap: both of them were watching Shan carefully. Shan had a red glass cup in her hand and was staring down into the contents. She looked very unhappy.

  “What’s a journalist?” asked Fersanye.

  Shan still seemed to be contemplating plunging into the cup. “They find out things and tell everyone about them,” she said. “Especially when you don’t want them to.”

  Humans had a strange view of information. Mestin tried to engage Shan’s interest. “Like the ussissi.”

  “That’s one way of putting it. Facts are known as news. When new things happen, journalists tell the world about them. They gather and disseminate information, sometimes accurately, sometimes not.”

  The concept of not being able—or willing—to relay data objectively was a difficult one for wess’har. Mestin wished Shan would look up. “But should we allow Eddie Michallat to come here?”

  “Eddie’s good at his job,” said Shan. “But he can cause problems. Not always intentionally, but you don’t care about motive, do you? It was his asking questions about c’naatat that made it public knowledge.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Everyone here knows about it.”

  “Matters to me,” said Shan, in English. “You’re not the FEU’s most wanted.”

  “Yes or no?” said Nevyan.

  Shan glanced up just for a moment as if she were surprised by Nevyan’s tone. “Yes, with conditions. You let me talk to him. You don’t have any conversations with him without me present, because you can’t lie properly. And we control where he goes in F’nar. I reckon he might be useful. I have no doubt Okurt and company had the same thought, hence my caution.”

  It seemed an odd catalogue of precautions. Michallat was one unarmed gethes who needed a ussissi pilot to land him here and a
nother to transfer him to an isenj vessel to get back to his ship. His capacity for threat seemed limited.

  “We can kill him and have done with it if anything seems amiss,” said Fersanye.

  Shan was still intent on the contents of the cup, from which she was not drinking. There was something very wrong with her. From time to time she wiped her palm across her forehead. She looked red-faced and shiny. “You don’t understand how gethes use information,” she said. “We—they conceal things, so they never have a complete picture of a situation. Information is currency. But you don’t understand currency either, do you? It has value. If you have it, you have power and you can exchange it for things you want.”

  “You know how to use it,” said Nevyan.

  “I do indeed. There’s not a lot of difference between detectives and journalists. Just the warrant card, the pension, and the right to use force.”

  “What’s wrong with your beverage?” asked Mestin.

  “It’s water,” said Shan.

  “What else would you drink?”

  “A nice cup of tea, proper builders’tea that you can stand the spoon up in.” It was an incomprehensible reply, but Mestin thought the ambiguity was small price to pay for her general clarity of thought. Shan sat up and made a never mind gesture with her hand. “Eddie might be coming simply to make a program about wess’har. He might also be coming to gather military intelligence, willingly or not, because the military are as adept as police are at using journalists for their own purposes.”

  “Does Michallat know that?”

  “Of course he does. It’s all part of the game. But we can play that game too. It’s called propaganda. What do you want to achieve?”

  “For all gethes to leave this sector and to stay away,” said Mestin.

  “Then you do something called saber-rattling. You let him see your armaments and you suggest there are plenty more where they came from. The gethes already know you don’t lie and you don’t bluff.”

  “But we would be lying and bluffing,” said Nevyan.

  “I know. Good, isn’t it? Leave it to me.”

  Nevyan lowered the isanket, Giyadas, to the floor. The child walked briskly over to Shan to stand gazing into her face. It was clear that Shan had no idea what to do with the child and no interest in communicating with her.

  Giyadas just wanted to take in every detail of the alien: the isanket was responding to Nevyan’s intense reaction to her. Shan, defeated by the steady stare, just looked increasingly wretched and began fidgeting. Then those violet lights in her hands started up again, without warning, and Giyadas stood riveted. It was a very impressive show. Even Fersanye was fascinated.

  “Oh shit,” said Shan. “Not again.” She looked at her hands as if they were covered in filth and then glanced down at Giyadas. “Show’s over, kid,” she said, and got up and walked out.

  “She can’t be ill,” said Mestin. It was extraordinary: this female seemed to have no interest in children at all. “C’naatat don’t develop diseases. I’ll talk to her. Nevyan, respond to Actaeon and tell them Michallat may land here.”

  Mestin found Shan sitting outside the house beside a water conduit, one hand trailing in the cool water, staring into the distance. Mestin took care to sit down in the exact pose beside her. She had noticed Shan did the same when she was at ease with someone she was talking to, just like a ussissi. She hoped it would soothe her.

  “You look unpleasant,” Mestin said. “You seem to be very hot for no reason.”

  “That’s what c’naatat does when it’s messing you around. I’m under construction.”

  “You don’t look very different.”

  “It seems to target what troubles you most. Aras obviously had a thing about his external appearance. Seems my problems are all internal.” She flexed her hands, sparking visibly violet lights even in the strong sunshine. “I’m sorry if I was offensive.”

  “Will you be able to deal with Michallat when he arrives?”

  “Oh yeah. I can handle Eddie. And I’ve never fouled up yet—not unintentionally, anyway.”

  “They’ll be able to smell your anxiety across the caldera. What’s wrong?”

  “Just developing my relationship with Aras.”

  “Ah, he’s upset you. Now take my advice, a quick cuff—”

  “No, I’ll never raise my hand to him. He’s had enough for one lifetime. We just have some logistics problems to iron out.”

  “I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  “Good.” Shan turned to face her, suddenly very earnest, and there was a faint waft of dominance coming from her. The ussissi said there was a gethes fruit that smelled very similar, called mango. Mestin wondered whether Shan realized she could walk into any of the city-states scattered across Wess’ej and take over as dominant matriarch on the strength of that dominance signal alone: but either she didn’t know, or she didn’t care.

  “I’m not at my best right now,” said Shan. “I just have a few things to iron out. And I really don’t mean to come between you and your daughter. I know it pisses you off.” Shan dropped the word straight into the middle of the wess’u sentence. Mestin had tried to use some of her unique vocabulary herself, but Shan had said it wasn’t a good idea. “I’ll talk to her about it if you like.”

  “Nevyan admires you. Her view of the world is nearer yours than mine. She feels the World Before was not entirely wrong, and that Targassat abdicated responsibility through nonintervention.”

  “She likes to kick arse.”

  “She’s very dedicated to ideas.”

  “I’ve been reading up on the World Before. There’s not a lot of information, is there?”

  “Perhaps the ussissi have more. Ask Vijissi.”

  “Poor little sod seems terrified of me.”

  “Then ask his pack female. She won’t be.”

  “If your cousins are what you say they are, you really need to think about talking to them again.”

  “There will be a price, and that will be involvement in their policies.”

  “It might be worth paying. You’re not the only ones with something to lose from human incursion.”

  Shan eased herself to her feet as if something was hurting her, smiled unconvincingly and walked off down the terrace. Mestin watched her go, noting that oddly rigid human gait of hers. For a gethes, she was an impressive figure, all control and purpose, with a complete confidence she had not lost despite being surrounded by taller, stronger females.

  Mestin had come to like her. She accepted her responsibilities. It agitated her to see her own daughter fixing on her for a role model, but there were far worse isan’ve to emulate than Shan Frankland.

  In the end, she might be all that stood between Wess’ej and the gethes.

  It hurt like hell.

  But it was hurting less each time, and that gave Shan hope that c’naatat was getting the idea that she would keep doing the damage until it repaired her properly and permanently.

  She eased herself up on her elbow and tried to ignore the sticky warmth of blood beneath her. There wasn’t that much now, not really. It was her brand new mattress she was concerned about.

  “I hurt you again,” said Aras. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not going to kill me, is it?” She didn’t want to distress him. For a very big creature, he was doing a credible job of trying to disappear into the dhren fabric that served as a sheet. He looked as if he was expecting a slap across the face. Then he turned his back to her, and she wondered for a moment if he was crying, but wess’har didn’t have tear ducts, not even an altered wess’har like Aras.

  She studied his back. The muscles were not quite as a human’s: what would have been the lats inserted much higher in the spine. Down his backbone was a thick dark line with finer stripes radiating from it on both sides, like the markings of an okapi in negative. But it was still an impressive back.

  “Come on, buck up,” she said, and leaned on his shoulder to make him face her
again. His skin felt like sueded silk, with a slight drag against her fingertips, and a little cooler than hers. “It’s no big deal.”

  Aras gave her a look of wounded disappointment, like a parent who had caught a much-loved child stealing. “I know how painful it is.”

  “I overreact sometimes.”

  “My nervous system connects to yours. I feel what you feel. Don’t lie to me.”

  “No point faking it, then, eh?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Stupid joke.” She eased herself on to one side and squeezed his hand in hers. “Remember what Ade Bennett used to say—it’s only pain.”

  Aras looked dubious. It was exactly the same expression she had seen on Sergeant Bennett’s earnest face, under vastly different circumstances.

  “This isn’t right,” he said.

  “Hey, we’re from different species. It’s a miracle we’ve got enough matching tackle between us to get this far. It’s improving, anyway—the bugs have had to reroute a lot of plumbing.” She had no intention of giving up on this now. It was a task: it would be completed, no matter what. “Besides—if you can feel it, it means I’ve got oursan cells now, doesn’t it?”

  “The more you try to be humorous, the more serious the situation. Remember that c’naatat need no oursan. Our health doesn’t depend on it.”

  “You want to spend another five hundred years taking cold showers?” Aras had been deprived of everything that made him wess’har. Shan was determined to give something of it back to him. She was the only female who ever could, and that meant she was obliged. “I didn’t think so. And I don’t think I do either.”

  He kept his eyes fixed on hers as if he were daring her to say forget it, this is too painful, too difficult, let’s just be friends. But that was all.