Ally

  Rit walked in followed by Ralassi, and the collective raising of ministerial quills indicated either aggression or shock. It was probably both. Ralassi translated her address, and it felt like an oddly restrained revolution—a meeting of ministers reading each other polite statements instead of seizing members of the old regime and killing them.

  If gethes on Earth were as orderly as this, Esganikan would be grateful.

  Rit began her polite, reasoned power grab. Aitassi watched, occasionally snapping her teeth in impatience, while Ralassi interpreted.

  “Minister Rit says we have to take a path of major change. We can’t expand indefinitely. If we need any more proof after today that we can never oust the wess’har either from Bezer’ej or even Wess’ej, then it will end in our total destruction.”

  Esganikan was interested to note how all but one of the cabinet members moved position slightly to put more distance between themselves and Shomen Eit. She wondered what primeval defense mechanisms existed in isenj. All creatures still reverted to ancient archetypes in their moments of stress, just as wess’har did. How did creatures evolved from termite colonies behave when threatened? They rallied to the dominant individuals, to the core and future of the colony.

  “You’re a traitor and a collaborator, like your misguided husband,” said Shomen Eit, in English. “I’ll call on loyal troops to kill you.”

  So that was how they reacted. Like gethes and a dozen other species. Some things seemed to be universal, except among wess’har.

  “Minister Rit says you have a choice of working with the new government or being executed, because she has learned that prisoners like you are a liability.”

  “And who do you plan to call on to carry out the sentence if I don’t comply?” Again Shomen Eit replied in English, and it was clear he was doing it for Esganikan’s benefit, testing how firmly she stood behind Rit. He might have thought the coup was at her instigation.

  Rit turned to Ralassi and shrilled. Aitassi reacted with agitated little side-to-side movements as if ready to spring at a target. “She asks for a weapon, but I have no idea if she’s competent to use it.”

  “Ralassi,” said Esganikan, “tell the minister I am armed and I’ll carry out her instructions.”

  She stepped forward and drew the hand weapon that so fascinated the human marines because it bore no resemblance to a gethes pistol. She’d executed Jonathan Burgh with it, two pulses to ensure he was dead because she had never killed one of his species at close quarters before. Now she held it to Shomen Eit’s upper body. She knew enough about isenj anatomy now from the recent fighting to know that was an effective target area.

  Shomen Eit rattled slightly, beads shivering on his quills, but he stood his ground. He smelled of decaying wood. It wasn’t unpleasant.

  “I had no idea you would go this far,” he said, and he was definitely addressing Esganikan, not Rit. He seemed to think this was an Eqbas strategy, and telling him otherwise would have served no purpose. “Do you understand you’re destroying a civilization?”

  “But you called on us to kill your enemies, Minister, so why do you think I wouldn’t do the same for another isenj with authority?” It genuinely puzzled her. “My objective is to restore this planet. It requires a reduction in your population on a massive scale, and any isenj remaining must be ones who want to maintain a balanced ecology. The detail beyond that is irrelevant in planetary terms.”

  Ralassi interrupted. “Minister Rit says you must all choose.”

  “I can’t serve in an unlawful administration,” said Shomen Eit.

  “The Minister says that the law is also irrelevant if there’s no habitable planet to govern, and she won’t imprison you to provide a rallying point for dissent.”

  Shomen Eit had stopped rattling. Resigned or beyond fear—Esganikan badly missed scent cues in situations like this—he wasn’t going to surrender. She doubted any promises he made would last out the next few days anyway.

  There was a long pause between Rit’s next burst of chittering and Ralassi’s interpretation, as if he wasn’t sure he should repeat the words. But he did.

  “Please remove Minister Eit.”

  Esganikan liked to be clear. “Do you mean remove or kill?”

  Ralassi paused. “Kill.”

  It was a necessary act to clear the way for Umeh’s survival and restoration. Esganikan squeezed the handgrip of the dull blue cylinder in her hand, and a deafening crack of expanding plasma filled the stone-lined chamber. She followed up immediately with a second pulse, because she left nothing to chance. The six remaining cabinet ministers were silent for a moment and then launched into high-pitched squealing.

  “Minister Rit says she is now assuming leadership of this cabinet and will stand down the army—with the support of her colleagues.”

  It was as simple as that. Nir Bedoi, effectively the deputy leader—and having no nominal head of state didn’t mean there wasn’t one in reality—found his voice.

  “If this is good for the Northern Assembly in the long-term, then you have my support as your husband did.”

  He made a move around Shomen Eit’s body; staff had already come to the cabinet chamber doors to investigate the noise, and seemed unsure whether to wait to be called in or not. “But explain what’s happening now in the Maritime Fringe territory, and even here. Do we have an epidemic?”

  “You asked for tailored genetic bioagents,” said Esganikan. “And that’s exactly what we gave you. They were deployed a few hours ago, and we did warn you that there would be citizens here who shared the genetic markers found in nearly all the Fringe’s population.”

  “There will be a remnant in the fringe without those genes, and they’ll rise up against us in due course.”

  “In a few days, deaths will be on a scale where anyone surviving the pathogen will die either from other naturally occurring disease or from infrastructure collapse. There’ll be nobody to manage the utilities. It will be academic.”

  “But how do we clear up a disaster on that scale, with our resources so stretched?”

  It was an intelligent question, and one that gave Esganikan her own resource issues. “That’s our contribution.”

  “What if others attack us?”

  These were all the questions she’d worked through with Rit, and even Shomen Eit as recently as a few weeks earlier. “You know we have templates for other pathogens specific to your major population groups. You gave us the tissue samples, remember?”

  Ralassi was translating for everyone else’s benefit. This was a final, personal warning from the commander who’d enforced environmental restoration on a number of worlds, and had no hesitation in using whatever means she had at her disposal to do the same here.

  “And if that fails?”

  “Then I shall deploy one more deterrent,” said Esganikan. “The universal isenj pathogen already dispersed on Bezer’ej. If need be, we will erase this world and start again from a blank sheet.”

  Rit rattled. Her gold beads—transparent, tumbled smooth, like drops of sap—seemed to have a life of their own for a moment. She inhaled air noisily, forming an approximation of English.

  “Need will not be,” she said. It was a wheeze, a gasp, a breath. But it was clear. “Need will not be.”

  Jejeno, Umeh: Two days later

  It had to be done, and this was as good a time as any to do it.

  Aras leaned against the viewing plate as the shuttle approached its final descent into Umeh’s atmosphere. It was a dismal-looking planet, all grays and ochres and rusty coastlines, and his isenj memories, seldom far from the surface, filled him with strangely mixed emotions.

  His scent betrayed him. Both Nevyan and Shan reacted, and his isan took hold of his arm just as she had on Bezer’ej two years ago; it was as comforting now as it had been then.

  “You don’t have to disembark,” Shan said quietly. “We’ll get our business done, and then we can go straight back home.”

  “Shan, I do hav
e to face this. This isn’t about reconciliation. I want to know how I feel. I want to see their faces.”

  Did he mean that? Was there some isenj within driving him too? He didn’t know, and he hated not knowing. The ambiguity had never bothered him in the past, so perhaps that dissatisfaction had come from another mind—probably Shan’s.

  Nevyan watched from the bank of seating opposite, flanked by Serrimissani and Giyadas. The isanket was growing very fast now, and needed to see her mother doing a matriarch’s duties so she could understand what was almost certainly her future role too. She also wanted to see Eddie, because, as she announced gravely, he became confused when trying to reconcile human morality with wess’har ethics, and he needed guidance.

  “You can still change your mind if you wish,” Nevyan said. “We won’t think any less of you.”

  “I can manage this.”

  Shan leaned so close to him that he could feel her breath on his cheek. “I can smell you’re scared. They can’t judge you, Aras.”

  “It’s not them I fear,” he said. “It’s my ability to deal with my own reaction.”

  “If you hate them, fine. Don’t swallow all this tolerance and forgiveness shite from Deborah Garrod. She’s a nice woman, but she deals in a different reality to the likes of you and me.”

  “She forgave me. It can be done.” Could he do it for the bezeri? He’d have to destroy them anyway. Motive and self-examination were a human failing and he couldn’t resist its effects now. “I have to see if I can.”

  “I married the bishop of fucking F’nar, did I?”

  “Are we married?”

  “You’re the one who said we were bonded.”

  “Ade gave you a ring.”

  “Okay, and wess’har just slip you a length, but out here, that’s good enough.”

  “When you resort to vulgarity, I know you’re worried.”

  “Of course I’m worried. You’re pumping out anxiety like an air freshener.”

  “How would you see a war criminal? As a police officer, what does war criminal mean to you?”

  “Depends on the war. Those goalposts move a lot.” Shan seemed to think he didn’t know she was distracting him. “How much has your thinking changed over five hundred years?”

  “Explain.”

  “Well, if I’d been an officer in the eighteen-hundreds on Earth, I’d have had very different attitudes to crime. People were executed for stealing food. Society pretty well didn’t care that kids were used for prostitution. Things that even an old reactionary copper like me would find repellent today.”

  “Some things are never right.”

  “That’s what I like about wess’har. No pissing around with moral relativism.”

  “I am afraid.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know why. I don’t know which memory this fear comes from.”

  “Well, once you’ve done it, you’ll know, and ghosts will be laid.”

  Shan settled against him and he clung to her arm in case she pulled it away. It was only minutes now: it would be over this time tomorrow. That was a trick Ade had taught him, a way of handling hard moments, tackling them a second at a time and knowing they would pass, seeing himself at that future point where it would all be behind him.

  The shuttle finally dropped through cloud, and he caught a brief glimpse of a skyline that left him bewildered by the sheer impenetrable scale of it. There was no Umeh left, but he wanted to see the dalf tree. The vessel spiraled down to land within the security cordon of Umeh Station and settled smoothly. It was a moment that demanded more physical drama than a routine soft landing.

  “Okay, here we go,” said Shan. “I’m right here, remember.”

  The hatch opened and the air of Jejeno rolled in. He felt a sick familiarity.

  For five centuries he had lived with the inherited memory of a young isenj caught in an air raid on an isenj colony on Bezer’ej. The city of Mjat had been erased from the map, and the map had been Constantine island long before the first humans arrived. Aras had helped erase it.

  His stomach churned. It was all he could do to resist his freeze reflex. The air was thick with the scent of wet woodland floor and leaf mold, and the rustling, creaking sounds were those of windblown trees full of insects. It seemed the ghost of a forest that had died long before the isenj developed spaceflight, ironic and epitaphic.

  He’d never been here. But other memories in him whispered that it was home.

  “Come on, sweetheart.”

  Shan nudged him gently in the small of his back and hooked her fingers in his belt. It was exactly what he’d seen Ade do to her, a little proprietorial touch that said he was looking out for her, taking care of her. Aras enjoyed the gesture.

  “I assure you I can deal with this, isan.”

  “You let me know if it gets too much.”

  “And what will you do if it does?”

  It was a genuine question, nothing more. Shan knew that well enough by now. She rubbed his spine discreetly with her knuckles. “I don’t know, but I’m here if you think of anything.”

  The defensive shield spread like an invisible skirt from the hull of the Eqbas ship overhead and swallowed Umeh Station’s faceted translucent dome. Aras could feel the slight tingle on the backs of his hands when he got close to it: it was based on the same technology that he used to contain the biosphere of Constantine colony and the terrestrial crops back in F’nar. The distance from the point where the shuttle had settled to the dome’s entrance was about fifty meters of invisibly defined path.

  Beyond the shield, thousands of isenj waited, watching. They were like a roughly trimmed hedge of charred thorn bushes. Aras wasn’t sure what he was feeling as he prepared to walk between them. He knew it was something powerfully disorienting; but memories of other minds welled up unbidden, and picking them apart was hard.

  “Steady,” said Shan. She put her hand flat on the small of his back again. “Square up, Sital. You did what you had to do. No shame in that. Fuck ’em.”

  She knew. She always knew. This was what he’d craved for so many centuries in exile: complete understanding. Nobody knew you better than those bonded with you through c’naatat. Shan lived his memories.

  And nobody had called him Sital—Commander—in five hundred years.

  Aras strode forward and concentrated on the main doors of the dome. They opened. He saw Ade and Barencoin step out onto the service road, and focused on them as they walked towards him.

  The near silence of the isenj crowd—faint rasps and rattles of quills, the occasional high-pitched scrapes—gave way to a crescendo of chaotic chattering. Even with so much isenj within him, Aras still didn’t understand their language. C’naatat made inexplicable choices in the scavenged characteristics it expressed in its host.

  Perhaps it knows I don’t want to hear what they have to say.

  But he could guess.

  Here’s the Beast of Mjat. Here’s the murderer of mothers and children. He got what he deserved.

  He saw white flame rolling down the street after each explosion, felt the wind of firestorms and heard the low-frequency thrum of wess’har bombers dropping low over the city. He could separate the memories of his victim from his own. Blood filled his mouth as he was thrown against the controls of his damaged fighter as it clipped the top of a building and tore through soft masonry. Time compressed and leaped forward. He felt the skin rip from his back in a dark room. He drowned to the point of unconsciousness.

  He was the victim now. The eyes that had watched his bomb run were his captor’s too. It was Eddie’s editing trick of images taken from various angles to show how different reality could appear to be.

  And some of the isenj around him remembered Mjat—not from history books, not from tales handed down, but in real physical memory encoded in their ancestors’ brains five centuries ago, fresh and angry at the news they heard. This was something no normal human—or wess’har—could understand. Aras existed in a simultane
ous past and present with these isenj.

  I made my choice. I destroyed your filthy cities to save the bezeri. You captured and tortured me. And, without intending to, that’s when you infected me with the parasite. That’s when our futures changed forever.

  Aras didn’t regret ordering the attack even though he now knew the bezeri were no better than the isenj whose careless pollution nearly killed them.

  I’d do it again.

  He could hardly hear the forest sounds around him now. He could just see Ade, very upright, slowing his pace with Barencoin alongside. They were both in their chameleon DPM. fatigues, two soldiers making a visible point of walking out to greet another.

  I’m a fool. And I’m not the Beast of anywhere. I shouldn’t feel shame.

  The first colonists tried to teach him their concepts of guilt and forgiveness and redemption, but it hadn’t ever made complete sense. God, they said, could forgive if Aras repented; Aras never saw what right this God had to speak for dead victims. And how could he repent if he was prepared to do it again? Humans changed their minds. They lost control. But wess’har did what made sense. Wiping the isenj off the face of Bezer’ej hadn’t been a careless error.

  I will not run your gauntlet.

  The crowds of isenj to either side were a dark ragged blur in his peripheral vision. He was determined not to look at them, but he’d walked through the Constantine colony after executing Josh Garrod and faced the reactions, from blank stares to a hail of stones. He stopped and turned slowly, looking directly into the crowds and seeking whatever isenj instinct was buried in his memory to help him understand their mood. No visible eyes, no range of scent, no clues. Senses within him strained for the familiar.

  Just as Par Paral Ual had been on meeting him, they seemed bewildered. Aras knew what angry isenj sounded like, because the alien voices were within him. But there was nothing beyond baffled scrutiny.

  He should have been dead long ago; and he shouldn’t have looked like this. They didn’t expect the Beast to look more like a human. They had no idea how to relate what they saw walking along that path to what they found in their genetic memory. It was as if Genghis Khan had returned to the streets of Otar in the form of a centaur, with no iconography to connect history’s monster to the stranger—the genuine stranger—in front of them.