“Right again, kid.”
She stood up and took the bowl of tea that Ade offered her. Aras thought he detected an attempt at placatory eye contact, but Ade was having none of it and wouldn’t look at her. They all drank in silence.
There was a knock at the door. It inched open and Shapakti peered around it. “May I speak to Shan Chail?”
“She’s a bit busy,” said Ade.
“It really is very important.”
“Not now, Shapakti,” said Shan. “I’ve got something to sort out. I’ll catch you later.”
Shapakti hesitated for a few seconds then slid back across the threshold and closed the door. Shan drained her bowl and rinsed it under the spigot.
“Okay, Nev,” she said. “Let’s go. Mango time.”
It was always a bad sign when Shan attempted humor. Aras and Ade were now alone with their doubts.
“She’s put on a bit more meat in the last day or so,” said Ade, transparently upset even though he tried to disguise the fact. “I reckon she’s nearly back to normal.”
“Don’t be alarmed by her manner. She does care about us.”
Us. Yes, it was a case of us. Once the current crisis had receded, things would settle down.
They had to.
There were an awful lot of ussissi.
They streamed down the ramp of the transport and moved across the plain in an unbroken column in the direction of the little Easter-egg domed village where Shan had nearly found out the hard way how they attacked. She watched them with Nevyan and Serrimissani.
“No customs control, then?”
“There are many more to come,” said Serrimissani, ignoring her. She had collected a couple of sacks from one of the new arrivals, and Shan noted that without inquiring about the contents. Old habits died hard. “Some have joined the search for Vijissi’s body. This is quite appalling. We have never been compromised like this before.”
“Where’s Esganikan?”
“I have no more idea than you.”
“Have you got a problem with me or are you just always fucking rude?”
“My apologies.” But she didn’t sound as if she meant it.
Nevyan waited with her hands clutched at the collar of her dhren, her classic nervous gesture. Come on, buck up, Shan thought. But Nevyan was just a kid herself, thrust into adulthood a matter of months ago under trying circumstances. Shan wondered if she’d have been as capable of statesmanlike behavior at the equivalent age.
No, she didn’t think she had. But she’d been well able to handle herself in a fight. And this wasn’t even a fight: no blows needed trading and no guns needed to be drawn. All she had to do was want her own way, and mean it. The trick was not to become so aggressive that she overwhelmed Esganikan and found herself in command of an Eqbas army for the next five years.
What’s going to happen when they reach Earth?
She put it to the back of her mind. Humans had asked for it. There was work to be done on Earth. Umeh was too far down the toilet.
They could wipe out humanity if they set their minds to it. Are you okay with that?
She found she couldn’t get that worked up about it and waited in grim silence with Nevyan while the wind whipped up her trouser legs. She bent down and tucked them into her make-do wess’har boots. It was unusually cold weather for F’nar, they said. She found it pleasantly cool.
And it struck her that she was more worried about the isenj than her own kind.
Nevyan consulted her virin. “Esganikan travels on board the next vessel,” she said.
“Okay, we don’t let her disembark. We get her in her cabin. Enclosed space.” Shan decided she could always hand control to Chayyas or Mestin if things went wrong. “Why does it work like that?”
“Work like what?”
“Jask. How come I face down Chayyas and she cedes her dominance, but we can take on Esganikan without her ceding to either of us?”
“Everyone’s jask is unique. If matriarchs ceded to communal scents nobody would ever be able to take responsibility, which is how we’re influenced by the common will. A fail-safe mechanism, I think you call it.”
“I still prefer slugging it out, I think.”
“Nobody is injured by jask.”
“Okay, then let’s make sure we don’t go over the top with this.”
“I can’t take on her role. I know my limits.”
“It won’t come to that.”
Shit, it might.
On the horizon, now deep turquoise with the failing light, three dark smooth shapes appeared and a characteristic boom shook the air. They slowed and hung almost motionless above a cluster of lava plugs. Then they came together and merged. And one ship landed.
“Jesus,” said Shan. “How can any defense force deal with that? I mean, you think the enemy’s sailing up the river in a bloody great destroyer and then you blink and they’ve got five frigates. Holy shit.”
“As long as they are on our side, as you put it, this can only be good.”
“And are they?”
Nevyan was a cloud of acid anxiety. “I believe they are fundamentally like us even if they’re less restrained. They want to create a more permanent base here.”
“Like the Temporary City?”
“Yes.”
“And what have you said?”
“You can’t ask for someone’s aid and then deny them what they need to give it. And their way of life is too different for them to settle in the city for the next few years.”
“It’ll work out.”
“I know I can rely on you.”
It almost didn’t make sense. But wess’har were full of non sequiturs.
The ship settled. Heat shimmered beneath the hull as the craft lowered itself to the ground until it was as flat and solid as a building. Shan found herself standing at the hatch as soon as it formed in the bulkhead, even before the ramp extruded from it. The Eqbas who was on the other side of it didn’t seem startled.
“Nevyan and I will be seeing Esganikan Gai in her cabin,” said Shan. “Show me where it is.”
The ship’s interior still disoriented Shan because it was all shifting light and shadow, triggering her wess’har low-light vision but also leaving her with the unsettling feeling of being in a mirrored and deceptive shopping mall, a difficult place to pursue a suspect. A bulkhead melted and Esganikan appeared in front of her.
The matriarch focused on Shan with snapping four-lobed pupils, head tilting. You really can’t gauge me without the scent, can you? Then she stared past her at Nevyan.
“You are anxious,” said Esganikan. “Ual was most unfortunate but Eddie Michallat is recovering.”
“Fine, but that’s not what we wanted to talk to you about,” said Shan.
The Thetis payload had been worried about Shan’s lack of training in alien contact; they’d be shitting themselves now. Esganikan looked as if she was planning to walk past both of them but Shan stood her ground, feeling herself on the tightrope that separated authority from overkill. Keeping a rein on her scent was like trying to control a sneeze. She was aware of the physical sensations now: she concentrated on contracting muscles in her neck.
“Are the prospects for your own planet bothering you?”
“Depends what you mean by my planet,” said Shan. “But right now we’re not happy about the use of the isenj pathogen.”
“I haven’t used it.”
“And we don’t want you to,” said Nevyan.
A few crew members wandering around the ship stopped to watch, and then stood very still in the wess’har alarm reflex.
“It might be necessary,” said Esganikan.
Shan stepped a little closer, close enough to start a fight on Earth. “Let’s get this clear. As long as they stay put on Umeh and don’t bother us, or Bezer’ej, or any other planet, then you don’t deploy bioweapons.”
“That is the way it has been here for generations,” said Nevyan. “Apart from Bezer’ej, they have never staged i
ncursions.”
“You fear for your fellow humans in Jejeno.”
“I couldn’t give a shit about Umeh Station,” said Shan. “You understand that? I don’t care. But the isenj will have to do something extreme to justify attacking them on their home ground. Mjat was their own fault. There’s nothing left of Umeh to restore so I don’t see what you stand to gain by wiping them out.”
“I didn’t plan to. But Ual consented to population control measures, ones we can take without culling.”
Shan could taste the sweet fruit scent at the back of her palate.
Nevyan was standing very close to her. “We still want your assurance that you won’t use the pathogen without our agreement.”
Esganikan stood silent, gaze flickering between Shan and Nevyan. Shan could taste the pheromones getting stronger. Then the Eqbas simply cocked her head, forced to concede. “Yes,” she said. “I agree. But we will still carry out the birth control measures.”
Shan felt a bead of sweat trickle down her spine and she resisted the urge to scratch it. “Okay.”
“Why have you stopped breathing?”
“It’s just a habit.”
“Do you wish to plead for your own planet now?”
“Where’s this going?”
“We were told you were wess’har and that you lived in balance. Are you losing your resolve and reverting to type?”
“No. Believe me, just because the UN says that it’s banned exploration it doesn’t mean anyone will honor that.”
“But even if Earth does curtail its expansion, we’re still obliged to intervene. There are many other Earth species in need of assistance.”
Yes, Esganikan was right, and it hurt: Shan was losing her nerve. But it wasn’t because she thought they were wrong. It was because she was uneasy about the potential violence that would be on her conscience. And Esganikan wasn’t taunting her: Shan had misunderstood the Eqbas’s motive because she had slipped back into thinking like a gethes.
Esganikan was simply trying to explain the situation. Like all wess’har, she was seeking a binding consensus. “When you investigated crime, did you wait for the perpetrator to call you to ask you to aid their victim?”
And Shan understood. She understood not in the intellectual way of the legislator, or of the officer called to abide by laws of evidence, but at a gut level that said coppers don’t just stand by and let it happen. Fuck the rules. She was picking up her baton again and sorting things out the old-fashioned way, because it was right.
She thought like an Eqbas and that made her uncomfortable.
But after a few seconds it didn’t feel that uncomfortable at all. Humans would have to live with the consequences of exploitation. It was simple. It was what she had always believed deep down.
“You won’t get any argument from me,” said Shan.
Nevyan, steeped in the isolationist, mind-your-own business culture of Targassat, turned and walked away briskly. Esganikan took it as the end of the conversation and disappeared in the other direction. Shan was left standing alone for a few seconds, not quite understanding what had happened. The wess’har lack of valediction always wrong-footed her.
She caught up with Nevyan outside. The young matriarch exuded that vinegary scent that went with anger. Her pupils were dilated. She rounded on Shan.
“I find this very hard,” she said. “Forgive me for my anger, but you encourage the Eqbas taste for interfering.”
“Hey, it’s my planet, and it’s fucked. We need them. And the isenj could do with not knocking out so many kids.”
“You haven’t seen what the Eqbas can do.”
“Oh, but I have. Eddie showed me the pictures of the worlds they’ve sorted out. Anyway, they’re wess’har so whatever they do, they won’t be screwing the underdog and exploiting those who can’t help themselves, which is one hundred percent of the nonhuman life on Earth and a bloody big chunk of the human population, too.”
“This intervention is why our two communities went our separate ways.”
“I know all that. But your idyll is over, Nev. The galaxy changes. My filthy species is on the loose and it was only a matter of time before Eqbas noticed us. If they leave you alone, and they don’t bother the isenj, will that make you happy? Because if you want them to be any different, then you’re exactly the same as them—imposing your values on others.”
Nevyan was walking fast towards the city, as fast as Shan could cover the ground: they were the same height, Nevyan short for a wess’har, Shan tall for a human female.
“I can’t argue with your logic,” she said. “But I feel afraid.”
“You need to talk to someone who’s faced real danger. Talk to Ade. Talk to Aras.”
Nevyan stopped and swung round. Shan’s instinct said draw your weapon and she knew it was stupid, but she felt it anyway and sidestepped instead. Nevyan didn’t appear to guess what had flashed through her mind. She was fidgeting with her dhren.
“I know I’m afraid of change,” said Nevyan. “For F’nar, I represent huge change, and to you I must seem like stagnation. But I can’t help what I feel.”
“It’s okay.” Shan wanted to comfort her. She was handling a situation that would have made seasoned politicians back home crap themselves, and the kid should have been proud of that. Instead she was scared, and Shan couldn’t even bring herself to hug her. She gripped her upper arm instead. “It’s okay. I understand. There are things that you take in your stride that scare me.”
The still silence was awkward. “Shapakti is anxious to talk to you.”
“I know. But I ought to apologize to Ade first. I was rude to him. He deserves respect.”
“Yes, make things right with your jurej’ve. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Shan let Nevyan stride ahead while she ambled and finally fell behind. F’nar was speckled with pinpricks of light, utterly magical even in the dusk. She could be sure that dinner would be on the table when she got back, and an uninvited memory of her police colleagues at Western Division sprang into her mind. She was walking into the police sports and social club bar across the road from divisional headquarters, shift complete, pleased with herself, looking forward to a single beer, because she didn’t like surrendering control to alcohol. Did I have a busy day? Oh, I just averted interplanetary genocide, nothing serious. Who’s buying me a pint?
She missed them. She thought about them less and less these days, but it was still hard to accept they were probably all dead. Rob McEvoy was dead too. She didn’t even know if she’d helped him step into the gap she’d left. She hoped so.
The world was still full of good people who deserved better. She was never sure if she was one of them.
Wess’har didn’t have mirrors but Ade didn’t need to shave now anyway. He could see very few changes that c’naatat had made to him, but he could tell that it didn’t see the point of having body hair.
He’d get used to it. He propped the polished metal sheet against the wall and brushed his teeth, staring at a distorted reflection that looked near enough the same Ade Bennett he was used to seeing.
How much longer would the toothbrush last? He examined the bristles. If the wess’har could build self-repairing warships then a duplicate brush wouldn’t be a problem. Salt and lavender oil made a good enough dentifrice, too; it was only for cosmetic purposes, because c’naatat would see off any tooth decay. He just wanted to be sure that he tasted okay if he ever got lucky with Shan.
He bent over the birdbath-shaped washbasin and rinsed, rubbing his tight-shut eyes, then stood up to bury his face in a sek towel. It smelled of cut grass.
“So that’s the tattoo that hurt,” said Shan.
Ade clutched the towel to his groin, mortified. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“My fault. I didn’t knock.” She seemed to be trying hard to look him in the eye and not succeeding. She made a visible effort to raise her eyes from his crotch. “I just wanted to apologize for telling you to mind your own bu
siness in front of everyone. Not nice. Sorry. I know you worry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t think private apologies are okay, actually, so I’ll repeat it when the others are around.”
“Really, it doesn’t matter.” Please, go away. Let me put my pants on. “I’ve got something for you.”
“You’re not kidding.”
“No, I’ve really got something for you.” He gestured towards the door with one hand, holding the towel in place with the other and knowing he looked about as stupid as he could get. “Go into the living room. Go on.”
Shit, shit, shit. He could never do this right. He wrapped the towel around his waist and padded out after her. The sack was still on the flagstones by the door: knowing how much she was still the archetypal copper, he was surprised that she hadn’t taken a look inside. If she had, she wasn’t saying.
“This is for you,” he said.
She held the sack slightly away from her body, two-handed, and opened it cautiously. “Uhhh,” she said. He’d never seen such a spontaneous expression of delight on her face before. It transformed her. She was illuminated. She reached in and lifted out the precious, hard-won pair of rigger’s boots. “Aww, Ade, I thought you’d forgotten.”
“I never forget that kind of thing.”
“These are great. Just the job.”
“Sorry about the color. I was working on getting them dyed black somehow.”
“Brown’s fine. Don’t you worry about that.” She seemed totally distracted by the boots and he wondered how much else he simply didn’t know about her. She was a straightforward, practical woman, satisfied by sensible things, with no mystery or whim or mood to fathom out. “And I snarled at you. Sorry. Not sure how I can make up for that.”
“I’ve thought of something.”
“Saucy bugger.”
“Okay, that was out of order.”
“No, it’s not out of order at all. I offered, remember?” She put the boots carefully by the door, side by side, still glowing with admiration as she gazed at them. Then Ade realized she was concentrating on them a little too hard. He wondered when she might say the word openly. “It’s not you, Ade, it’s me. I know it’s what Aras wants and I want it to be that way too, but I just have to get my head straight before…you know.”
The World Before Page 32
