“Eddie, Eddie, Eddie,” trilled Giyadas. “Bring him back. Bring him back. I will look after him.”
Esganikan Gai had gone too far. The landing on Umeh had been opposed—and that was another gethes understatement Nevyan had learned, this time from Ade Bennett. Opposed was an odd way to describe a furious barrage of fire.
Esganikan didn’t seem perturbed by it. “Minister Ual was shot. We neutralized the resistance at Jejeno airfield and we secured an entry point at Umeh Station. They have human physicians there.”
“Ual is dead?”
“We believe so. They began firing when the hatch opened.”
Isenj were fast-breeding polluters but they were also orderly, urban, and restrained with each other. Nevyan struggled to understand that they had opened fire on one of their own. It was an indication of their fear, what Eddie called a knee-jerk.
“What do you mean by securing an entry?”
“We created a corridor.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My apologies, Nevyan Chail. I forget that you have obsolete technology. We have created an enclosed environment to isolate Umeh Station, one hundred meters by their reckoning at ground level and a thousand meters into airspace. That enables us to come and go without encountering isenj for the time being.”
Nevyan was beginning to understand just how much further the Eqbas had taken adaptive material technology. She clutched the collar of her dhren to her throat, a nervous habit, and the fabric reshaped itself. Like the tables that would emerge from walls in the communal library, the technology was the manipulation of molecular structure: but the Eqbas could now use it to make fluid, ever-reshaping spacecraft and sea-going vessels and impregnable corridors. Nevyan understood for a moment the disorientation of sudden inferiority that the gethes had faced. Wess’ej had been the pinnacle of technology in the Ceret system, and now it was not.
As long as the Eqbas were kin and allies, that was no threat.
“You shouldn’t have interfered with the isenj on their homeworld,” said Nevyan. “There is no other species at risk there. And, with the exception of Bezer’ej, they have never attacked us.”
“Ual asked us for assistance, and the isenj will not relinquish their claim on Bezer’ej. So we have choices—we teach them to live within their own boundaries, or we confine them to their planet, or we destroy them.”
“Targassat taught that the more choices you have, the more restrained you must be in making them.”
“Targassat did not accept the responsibility that comes with power, which is why your ancestors fled here to avoid it. Eqbas Vorhi accepts that if it can improve the equity and stability of worlds, then it must. It is a matter of interpretation.”
Nevyan felt she was losing the debate. Esganikan was comfortable in a warship millions of miles away, out of the influence of jask. Nevyan’s defensive instinct welled up and the room fell into silence, even Giyadas seeming to freeze and hold her breath.
Nevyan pressed on. If Shan were here, she’d know what to do. “You don’t have the military capability to take on Umeh with the forces here.”
“Of course we have, and so do you.”
“We have barely enough ships to sustain the defense of Bezer’ej.”
“You have pathogens that can selectively target both gethes and isenj.”
No. No, no, no. “Those are passive measures.”
“We should discuss this later.”
“Bring Eddie back here. We will care for him.”
“As soon as he is ready to be moved, we’ll return. We’re assessing the gethes in Umeh Station at the moment.” Esganikan’s plumed mane tilted left and right. “They are very different to the colony on Mar’an’cas. How diverse human attitudes can be.”
Nevyan could feel Giyadas’s grip tightening on her leg. The child was scared. She was reacting to Nevyan’s scent and she feared for Eddie. Eddie took foolish risks but he was, whether he acknowledged it or not, on their side. Nevyan had had to learn a whole new set of concepts to accompany her knowledge of English, because wess’har had only one side to be on.
She switched off the screen and the living room wall returned to its normal state of gold stone facings.
“Lisik, is Shan Chail back from Mar’an’cas yet?”
“No, isan. Aras expects her soon.”
“Has she activated her virin?”
Lisik checked his own device. “Yes. Shall I recall her?”
“No, I’ll talk to her.”
Giyadas suddenly let go and stood straight, pulling herself up to her full height and emitting a faint but definite scent of adult anger and jask. She was growing up fast.
“I know, isanket,” said Nevyan. “I fear for Eddie too. I fear for all of us.”
But most of all Nevyan feared what she had unleashed. And she had to face it, and deal with it: she could never return to her past, her own world before.
Eddie knew he wasn’t back in F’nar. The rest was guesswork.
At any given moment he was very clear what was happening to him, but when he tried to move from that single freeze-frame to a coherent sequence of events he wasn’t sure what had happened at all.
He was in Umeh Station. He could just as easily have been back in his cabin in the Thetis camp on Bezer’ej if it had still existed. The walls had that same watery green light and the place smelled of cleaning fluid. The flashback impression was reinforced by voices he thought he recognized.
“He’s not unconscious,” said a male voice. “He didn’t lose consciousness. The ussissi said so.”
“Eddie? Eddie?” Someone had hold of his forearm. “It’s Kris, Eddie. How are you feeling?”
“Where’s Ual?”
“Come on, Eddie, talk to me. Can you see me?” She caught his jaw in her hand and turned his head to face her. It was Kristina Hugel, the medic from the Thetis payload, and she was running a handscanner over his head. He could hear it clicking, bouncing sound waves through his skull to detect fracture and hemorrhage. “Can you see me okay, Eddie?”
“Kris?”
“Good boy. You’re okay. You were hit but you’re okay. More blood than real damage. Any pain?”
His mouth was dry and he had a dull headache. “Hit where? Where’s Ual?” He was aware his shirt was covered in blood, real red human blood, so it had to be his. “Who’s got my camera?”
“It followed you in and we didn’t know how to switch it off.”
Eddie was damned if he was going to be kept flat on his back. He struggled to sit up. “Hit where?”
“You got hit in the head by something sharp. It’s taken a slice out of your scalp but you’ll be okay in a few days.”
“You’re not answering me. Where’s Ual?”
“I don’t know. The Eqbas brought you in and they’re strutting round the place like storm troopers at the moment.”
“Get Esganikan.”
“Who’s he?”
“She. The commander. The big female with the Mohican hairdo.”
Kris smelled of old-fashioned antiseptic and stale coffee. She turned away to someone. “Vani, see if the ussissi can help, will you?” She caught Eddie by the shoulders just as he was about to put all his weight on his feet. “I wouldn’t wander around if I were you. It’s a bit chaotic here.”
“Christ, that’s par for the course. There’s a war starting out there.”
“Is it true they’ve recalled Thetis to ship us back?”
“God, I don’t know. It’ll take the best part of a year or more if they have, and it’s going to be a hairy old year to wait out.”
He listened. He couldn’t hear firing. He wasn’t sure if noise would travel through the sealed shell of the dome, but he thought he’d at least be able to feel the vibrations of explosions.
“Please, let me get up.”
Kris Hugel offered him an arm to lean on. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the hand basin. He was in the infirmary. The gash in his scalp looked horrific, an
angry stripe with the hair shaved away and the wound simply sealed with basic first-aid dermabond. He couldn’t remember that happening at all.
“I’m a mess,” he said. “How can I do a piece to camera looking like this? I need to know what happened to Ual. I’ve got to find Esganikan.”
“You’re concussed, Eddie. Just take it easy.”
No. It was his personal responsibility now. He had helped Ual arrange the snatch of Lindsay and Rayat. He was now so far across the neutral line that he knew he would never function as a journalist again, and he hadn’t actually noticed the final point at which he had abandoned all the rules. It was incremental. The thin end of the wedge was very hard to spot when you were staring at it head on.
He tottered out of the three-room complex that made up the infirmary with Kris Hugel steering him by the elbow. The dome was surprisingly quiet, but packed with humans and more ussissi than he’d ever seen assembled in one place, even when they had last evacuated Jejeno when they thought Wess’ej would launch a retaliatory attack.
“That’s not good,” he said.
Ralassi sought him out. He was carrying a couple of bags that looked like rough-woven sacks. “Are you fit to travel?”
“Why? What?”
“No ussissi will serve the isenj now. That means no shuttles between Umeh and Tasir Var, or between continents. When we ask for our separateness to be respected, we mean it. Are you leaving with us?”
“What about us, then?” said Hugel. “What happens until Thetis arrives?”
“The same as would have happened otherwise,” said Ralassi. “You survive. The Eqbas will protect the corridor until it’s time for you to leave.”
Eddie struggled for a grasp of reality. “What do you mean, protect the corridor?”
Ralassi pointed up into the canopy of the dome. The translucent filters and the tangle of vines obscured the view of the sky. “You can walk outside if you like. It’s secure.”
Adrenaline was a wonderful thing. Eddie shook off Hugel’s arm and swayed his way to one of the exits. Normally he had to put on a breather mask to cope with the atmosphere outside, sulfur-tainted and low on oxygen even by the standards he’d acclimatized to on Bezer’ej: but the air outside felt… normal. As he looked out across the service road towards the building-upon-building city that crowded up to the perimeter, he couldn’t work out what was different, and then he realized there were two notable things.
There were almost no isenj in the streets. Jejeno was usually heaving with bodies. And there was something familiar: the heat haze effect of an encircling barrier, like the one that surrounded Constantine, except he now knew this one would do more than simply filter out alien cells or trigger alarms. He followed the wall of haze above the level of the buildings, tilting his head back as far as the pain would allow, and saw the Eqbas ship holding steady in the sky right above Umeh Station.
It was how Eddie used to dispose of spiders. A glass upturned over the creature, a piece of stiff paper slipped underneath, and he could carry the spider to an open window and dump it outside. He never did believe in killing spiders. And now he was under the upturned glass, dependent on the kindness of big incomprehensible creatures who might allow him to scuttle away, or who might just as easily crush him.
Bronze droplets appeared to be falling from the ship. Three of them descended like elevators without cables. It was only when they were around 200 meters from the ground that it dawned on Eddie that they were more detached parts of the ship ferrying personnel to and from the dome.
“I hate this helpless feeling.”
Kris Hugel stood beside him and looked up too. “I know I should marvel at all this but I just want to go home. I thought I was going back the first time and they thawed us out. But this time, I am absolutely not coming back.”
Eddie’s gratitude for medical assistance had evaporated. “If you’d kept your mouth shut about Frankland’s parasite, none of this would have happened.”
“Oh, and you weren’t digging around and speculating about it. I hallucinated that, did I?”
“Okay, we all played our part in this fucking mess.”
“Is it true?”
“What?”
“That she survived being spaced.”
“Yeah. Right as rain.”
“Jesus.”
“Just walk away, Kris. Walk away, like she told you the first time.”
Beyond the upturned glass of the Eqbas shield, isenj had started to venture out into the streets again. Eddie sat down on the curb that ran around the circumference of Umeh Station, feet in the gutter, and supported his head in shaking hands.
A shadow fell across him and it wasn’t Ralassi’s. He didn’t need to look up.
“Just tell me what happened to Ual,” he said.
Esganikan didn’t sit down beside him. He expected her to, but then he realized why and reminded himself that for all her similarities with Shan, she was utterly alien and had none of Shan’s capacity for psychological subtlety.
“He died,” she said. “He was wrong. His countrymen did open fire, even if they did not intend him to die. The result is the same. And now the factions appear to be clashing—those who want to wage war on us and those who favor asking for our aid rather than the alternative.”
“You sound like you’ve played this game before.”
“We are seldom welcome. By definition, we arrive because matters have gone badly wrong.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“Wait and see what happens. There is no other species at risk here, and we can come and go as we please.”
“You had a complement of two thousand crew, tops. This planet has a population of billions. Even you can’t crack those odds.”
“I had this very conversation with Nevyan Tan Mestin. If we need a weapon, we already have one—the engineered pathogen deployed on Bezer’ej.”
Eddie’s scalp tightened and it wasn’t because of the gash in it. You promised. Shan, you promised they wouldn’t.
“No,” he said. “No, you can’t use bioweapons here, not that one—”
“I didn’t say we would.”
Esganikan wouldn’t have been playing games like a human. She was simply answering his questions in a logical, literal order. Shan, you said they’d never use it to attack Umeh. That was why he agreed to get a sample of isenj DNA, to use his access to Ual. It was the ultimate betrayal. The guy was dead, and he had helped him reach that point, and now he was the procurer of weapons, every bit as bad as all the scientists he’d despised in history for creating bombs and diseases and other tricks for the use of politicians.
“Poor bastard,” he said. He thought he meant Ual. “You poor bastard.” And he sat crying quietly in the gutter of a besieged human enclave twenty-five light-years from home.
21
Superintendent Frankland,
I’m responding to your message, which was forwarded to me. I’m afraid Granddad passed away four months ago. He hadn’t been well for some time. He used to talk about you all the time and I know it would have meant a lot to him to know you still thought about him.
Yours,
JAY MCEVOY HARRIS,
granddaughter of Chief Constable Robert McEvoy
“He’ll be okay, kid,” said Shan.
Giyadas had a firm grip on Shan’s leg and it was a measure of his isan’s discomfort that Aras couldn’t smell her scent at all. She was suppressing it again. She didn’t like being around children, not even little adults like Giyadas. Ade, taking excessive care over brewing the tea, caught his eye: they exchanged a glance, silently working out who was going to extract her from the grip.
“This was unexpected,” said Nevyan.
“You bet.”
“I am to blame for summoning them.”
“No, they’re to blame for going in mob-handed.” Shan kept glancing down at Giyadas. It was clear that she didn’t like being pinned to the spot but she seemed reluctant to push the child aside. “Ma
ybe this is none of my business, but I’m bloody uncomfortable with the idea of Eqbas having the engineered pathogens. Isenj or human.”
“Come with me. Dissuade Esganikan.”
Shan’s arms were folded tight across her chest. Aras could see the faint flicker of violet light leaking from her clenched fists, and he moved to steer Giyadas away by her shoulder. “I’ll dissuade her, all right,” said Shan. “They didn’t need to go crashing in there. Do you think they can contain the isenj without needing to use bioweapons?”
“They say they can. But further support is years away.”
“Y’know, I’m not someone who likes to talk their way out of trouble when there’s a quicker way of doing the job, but I think talking is just what’s needed now.”
“I think you should stay out of it,” said Ade.
“I’m not asking you,” said Shan.
Aras intervened more from the disappointment of a broken promise than to back up his house-brother in waiting. “You promised you would leave Esganikan to pursue her own course unless she interfered with the gene bank.”
“Let’s get one thing straight,” said Shan. “This is what I do. I sort things out. I can help Nevyan defuse this situation and I don’t even need my gun to do it, so let me just do what I do best and then we can all get on with our lives. Right now, Attila the Parrot is considering wholesale slaughter and even I feel uneasy about that.”
“Part of the ship will be back in an a few hours,” said Nevyan. “The remainder is maintaining the corridor while more transports go to evacuate the ussissi. They’re all leaving.”
“Well, that’ll give the isenj a few logistics problems to keep them busy.” Shan seemed to soften towards Giyadas, or at least to feign concern very well. There was still no scent. She squatted down to look the isanket straight in the eye. “Sweetheart, Eddie’s okay. He’s probably very upset, though, but if he comes back angry it won’t be with you.”
“I know that,” said Giyadas. “He’ll be angry with you.”
Aras didn’t think Shan cared what anyone thought of her, but he was wrong. The constricting blood vessels in her face gave her an instant pallor.
The World Before Page 31
