Ally

  Oh, she had. “I think most activists in those days fell foul of the Terrorism and Civil Disruption Act in one detail or another, Mr. Michallat, so I’d say, yes, although I’d argue with you on the nature of the breach.”

  Shit.

  And in one answer, she’d totally fucked his interview. He didn’t have any more detail to confront her with. Shan would never tell him, not even 150 trillion miles from the consequences. Eddie had blinked first; only Shan Frankland had ever managed to force him onto the back foot before. Helen Marchant smiled with genuine warmth—and that was the creepiest thing of all—and simply waited in total silence. It was the ultimate defense in an awkward interview, and he had either to come back at her with a question, change tack and look defeated, or wind it down to leave the question hanging over her, indicating that was the only aspect of her that was worth enquiry.

  “Miss Marchant, thank you very much,” said Eddie.

  One, two, three, four, five. “We’re out,” said Mick.

  The FTU icon vanished from the output screen. They were off-air. Eddie was now aware of movement in his peripheral vision, and he turned his head just as Shan walked up beside him, Ade at tactful distance, and simply ignored the setup. It was like Eddie wasn’t there.

  “Well, well, Helen,” she said, voice completely devoid of emotion. “I got your message.”

  “Shan. Good grief, you haven’t changed at all.”

  “Have you?”

  “I’m not terminally ill any longer, so I’d say, yes. How are you?”

  “Look, I’m not Eddie, and I’m not a voter, so I’ll cut to the chase. Don’t try to make me your rallying point for green militants, or whatever you want me to be, because I’m not returning with the Eqbas. And don’t try to manipulate Esganikan, because she’ll chew you up and spit you out. Okay? Now you’re on your own.”

  “Shan, I need to talk to you.”

  “You just did. Goodbye, Helen.”

  Eddie had no idea what Mick was making of this; Shan was smart enough to know the ITX link was still open and BBChan could cache it. She just walked past Eddie and headed for the stairs. Ade followed, and gave Eddie a quick roll of the eyes as he passed. Eddie had to agree: there would be hell to pay sooner or later.

  “If you ever want to continue this discussion with more facts, Eddie, please do call my office,” said Marchant, commendably calm, as if nothing much had happened. “It’s a pity Shan didn’t have more time.”

  The link closed, the screens resolved into the single locked-off image of the newsroom, and Mick looked like he would have cheerfully killed Eddie if he hadn’t been too tired.

  “She’s going to be handful if she gets elected,” said Mick. “She certainly gave you one up the bum.”

  “Okay, I should have had a list of serious shit to put to her, but Shan won’t talk. And fuck me, Mick, isn’t calling a candidate a terrorist enough? Anyone else would have reacted, and lied.”

  “Ah, the superweapon, eh? An honest politician. Well, it’s bloody original.”

  “At least all the other networks will be on her case now.”

  “She won’t get elected, so at least we broke the story.” Mick rearranged his desk and reached for a cup. “So Frankland didn’t die? All that about her stepping out the airlock was bullshit, then.”

  No. No, it bloody wasn’t. It’s true. “Hang on—”

  “I didn’t think that was your style, Eddie. Nobody really believed the parasite crap, but the airlock was real Captain Oates stuff.”

  Sometimes it was nice to have the last say with News Desk. No: it was always nice to get the last word in.

  “Mick, she did it, and she lived, like surviving the shot in the head.”

  “Right.”

  You stop right there, Eddie. It was on his lips, ready to tumble out fueled by righteous indignation, when he came to his senses and realized what he would unleash.

  “I…left out a detail.”

  “Then where’s the rest of the fucking story?”

  Eddie had told the whole impossibly heroic tale: it was hard to top Shan’s spacewalk minus a suit. Real courage and tragedy, the kind of thing that made myths look inadequate. But if he explained how it was possible, and the full range of what c’naatat could really do—

  He’d never codded up a story in his life. The accusation that he’d made it up was the worst professional insult he could imagine, even if most people thought journalists did that on a daily basis. It utterly destroyed his self-respect.

  Mick thought he was just another arsehole taking advantage of exclusive and unverifiable access to file bogus crap, and it broke his heart.

  I have the proof.

  It would have been easy. He could stand up the story. He could save his reputation by telling the world everything about Shan Frankland’s extraordinary parasite.

  The spooks know it exists anyway.

  But did they need the detail, and more incentive to go looking for bloody thing?

  No. Nobody needs to know about Shan. The only thing that gets destroyed is my reputation. And who gives a shit about that, or the truth?

  Eddie did.

  In the end, his name was all he had. But he knew what Shan would have done if she were him, because she’d done it. She traded her reputation for something she thought was more important, and she’d done it time and again. She’d even traded her life to keep c’naatat out of the wrong hands. The whole disaster here hinged on that bloody parasite.

  No contest. Suck it up, Eddie. Welcome to the world of infotainment.

  “Eddie, are you listening to me?” Mick sounded more weary than angry now. “You don’t have to over-egg this bloody cake. You’ve done some epic stuff in the last couple of years. Just don’t file any more shit like that, okay? Take a week off or something. I know it can’t be easy out there.”

  Eddie swallowed. “It’s a laugh a minute.”

  “Take it easy, mate.”

  Eddie shut the link, peeled the screen off the wall, and packed up. Marchant didn’t matter now: someone else would pick up the story and start digging. But he had to tell Shan what had happened. She wasn’t going to pin a medal on him.

  He was halfway up the stairs before he remembered the message he’d once sent her, ashamed and contrite because he hadn’t believed that she wasn’t carrying c’naatat for a pharmacorp. Perfect courage is… Yeah, Rochefoucauld, it was.

  He didn’t have to tell Shan at all. This wasn’t about his martyrdom. It was just something that had to be done, and it hurt, and he had to be alone with it to know he’d done it for its own sake.

  Wess’har said motive didn’t matter. But it did. It would have been missing the whole point.

  Umeh Station

  It’s not worth getting angry.

  Shan knew she would never call Helen Marchant and demand to know if she’d been aware of her sister’s plans. She watched a crew trying to shift a seized connector on a habitat cube and concentrated on not caring.

  So what if Perault had lied to her and stranded her out here? Shan had her revenge in succeeding in an impossible mission. Marchant—if she was complicit—hadn’t benefited from it, and when the Eqbas showed up, she’d be irrelevant. Esganikan was talking to Australia. The FEU would be a sideshow, or maybe a whole new European forest in the fullness of time.

  But it still hurt to see Marchant, for all kinds of vague reasons, but mainly about wounded pride.

  “Where’s your flowers?” asked Ade.

  “Oh shit.” She’d left them below. “I’ll go back and get them.”

  “I’ll do it. No taking it out on Eddie, okay?”

  “Christ, I blew it for him, didn’t I? He never told News Desk I’d survived again. They’ll crucify him for that.”

  “Well, it’s out now. He’ll have to explain c’naatat.”

  “Shit. But the people who want it and are most able to get it know anyway.” She couldn’t believe she’d done it to Eddie. “Helen wouldn’t have said I was alive eit
her, because I was an embarrassment.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “Anyway, she’ll probably gain as many votes as she’ll lose, because half the heads of state started their careers in terrorism. Worst thing they ever bloody did, give us ITX.”

  “Fruit of the tree of knowledge, eh?”

  “You’ve been talking to Deborah.”

  “Nah.” Ade slid his hand down the back of her belt. “Where’s your piece?”

  “Pocket.”

  He patted her hip. “I could make you a holster.”

  “I really did love the flowers, Ade.”

  “I could tell.”

  “You’re so tolerant of all my shit. Don’t think I’m not grateful.”

  “You scare me when you’re like this. Don’t start apologizing again for…y’know.”

  It just kept coming back when she least expected it.

  “You wanted that kid.”

  “Couldn’t happen. I see the reasons around me each day. I see Giyadas and think what her life would be like with c’naatat, and I know you did the most decent thing.”

  Shan was going to give him the full speech about not taking lives lightly, and how she’d promise not to be a pain in the arse about it by speculating on what their daughter would have been like at various ages. She decided to skip it. He knew her well enough. And she knew him. Ade was a refuge, always offering complete acceptance however mad she got and whatever half-arsed crusade she went off on. She’d never had unconditional love before, and she still wasn’t sure what to do with it. It was like finding a lot of hard currency in the street, and being told to keep it; she’d keep worrying that someone would turn up to claim it and show that it wasn’t rightfully hers anyway, and so she’d save it in a jar and never spend it, just in case.

  And then there was Aras, who was pretty much Ade in a different species, with his own demons that never, ever made him turn on her. You’ve got no excuses left. Just be grateful that you got so many chances at life.

  “I’ll find your flowers.”

  Ade strode off. Shan, stinging from one of the regular reminders of her capacity for destructive stupidity, began mentally listing all the things she’d do differently now that she’d embarrassed herself again. Take Aras on a trip back to Baral, where he was born; let Ade teach her to rock-climb, and not bitch about it; and see more of Nevyan and her family.

  “Here you go.” Ade presented the passionflowers to her in a cup of water. “Eddie looks like he had a punch-up with his editor. Smells very upset. He’s still sitting down there going through his rushes.”

  “Shit. Shall I—”

  “Leave him. You can’t fix Aras and you can’t fix Eddie. Big boys. They need time to think.”

  “Do you? Need time alone, that is?”

  “No. I had enough time alone when I thought you were dead. I know what alone feels like.” He poked one of the blooms with his finger as if he hadn’t seen a passionflower up close before. “Doesn’t look real, does it? Could just as easily be silk. Nature’s an amazing thing.”

  Ade had a gift for sweetly innocent understatement. Shan wondered how she’d have reacted to him if she’d met him back on Earth, where he had more choice of women, and where her job might have been a barrier for both of them.

  “I never gave Eddie his camera back,” she said. She slid it from her pocket. “I’ll hang on to it until I’ve had my little chat with Fourth To Die and his cheerful little mates. He’ll be promoted to First To Die if he ever lays a finger on you again.”

  Ade rolled up his sleeve and examined his arm. “Amazing, isn’t it? Not a scratch.”

  “They’re scared of it, aren’t they?”

  “They backed away from me like I was the undead.”

  “Is it only humans busting a gut to get c’naatat?”

  “I’m beginning to think it is.”

  Shan looked around the floor of the dome and got the impression of a busy airport. People were anxious to go: Actaeon crew queued for the next shuttle to the Eqbas ship, fidgeting and checking watches. Shan wanted to go too, right now. All the upheaval gave her a terrible sense of loss, and she dreaded what it would be like when the time came for everyone else to head back to Earth.

  “I’m really going to miss the detachment,” she said.

  “Jesus, yes…”

  “Sorry.”

  “I was thinking what it was going to feel like when people we know start dying and we don’t.”

  “Christ, we’ve turned into a morbid pair of bastards, haven’t we?”

  Ade smiled. “It’s being so cheerful as keeps us goin’?”

  “First night back, in Finar, we have a bloody big dinner and have everyone round for game of cards. Okay?”

  “I’ll wear my best frock.”

  “Silly sod…”

  “I’ll wear yours, then.”

  Skavu, bezeri, Rayat. Three things to fix before she could relax. Skavu, bezeri, Rayat. “You’ve got better legs, Ade.”

  Yeah, she was going to miss the detachment.

  13

  Australia’s Muslim majority says it’s increasingly concerned at the rapid growth of evangelist groups. The March census shows the percentage of citizens identifying themselves as Christian has risen from 2 percent this time last year to 15 percent. The resurgence of the faith has sparked a property boom, with church groups buying up meeting halls across Western Australia and the Northern Territory. The return to Earth of a unique gene bank apparently owned by a Christian sect has angered Muslim leaders who say the resource shouldn’t be in the hands of one religious group, and are asking the UN to guarantee fair global use of the bank’s store of food crops.

  BBChan 557: Pacific Rim local opt

  Chad Island, called Nazel: Bezer’ej

  They were eggs all right.

  Pili celebrated with her friends and neighbors. The father to be—who seemed to be a quiet male called Loc—sat curled at the base of a tree with the air of a man who’d had one beer too many at a barbecue. Lindsay wondered if he was always quiet, or just stunned silent by the fact that he’d been senile a few weeks ago, waiting patiently for death while his civilization died around him, and now he was nearly indestructible and getting his girlfriend pregnant.

  Okay, eggs. Still pregnant. Semantics.

  “Leeenz!” Pili called, bouncing over to her and grabbing her with a tentacle. It rasped against Lindsay’s arm. “You come over here. We sing. We sing properly.”

  Eggs were convenient; Lindsay recalled that the last thing she felt like doing when she was heavily pregnant with David was bouncing anywhere. “Okay,” she said. “How long before they hatch?”

  “Many seasons. Six.”

  Lindsay made that something like twenty months, if she understood them right. That was before c’naatat, though. She decided to keep a very close eye on the clutch. She joined the group of bezeri sitting around a pile of shellfish and the ubiquitous sheven shreds laid out on a huge flat azin shell platter. Shan would have been proud of her; the menu had made Lindsay turn vegetarian with a vengeance. Grazing on bark and leaves was just fine as far as she was concerned. Settled farming was next week’s lesson for the bezeri, and she was looking for seeds wherever she could find them.

  Right now, the bezeri were still in hunter-gatherer mode, which wasn’t bad progress for the recently aquatic. And they were enjoying it.

  They sang, and in the absence of learned music, they sang in light. In the dusk, the rhythmic patterns of lights swept across their mantles in synchronized waves, sometimes breaking into individual patterns, and sometimes forming one continuous pattern that spanned all the bezeri in a row.

  It was hypnotic. Lindsay looked down at herself and gazed into disturbing watery ghosts of organs. Sometimes her own translucency caught her by surprise. Back on land, doing the kinds of tasks that felt almost like the relief work the FEU navy was trained for, she lapsed into being someone a little closer to Commander Lindsay Neville. That was until she saw the bioluminescence withi
n her flaring into life and answering the brilliantly colored, ever-changing patterns of her new community.

  It was like hearing a tune being hummed, and finding yourself repeating it endlessly for the rest of the day. She couldn’t stop herself. And it helped her put aside the nagging imagery of a horror film, of wondering what would hatch out of those eggs, and when.

  “Leeenz! Does this mean we can all have babies?” Carf was a scout leader of a bezeri, cheerful and annoyingly positive, something Lindsay never thought she’d find to say about them. “Will the babies live forever?”

  Oh shit, yes. Yes, they probably will.

  Lindsay saw Shan’s face. It was a carefully composed lack of expression, and it said she was displeased and that Lindsay had fallen short of her personal benchmark of excellence. Lindsay saw it far too frequently. She wanted it to leave her alone.

  “Probably,” she said. If she showed panic, would the bezeri react? “Do you produce many eggs?”

  “If we did, we would also be many.”

  “How many?”

  “Four, five.”

  “Ah, okay.” Lindsay’s marine biology primer had been full of numbers like millions. “Fine.”

  She did a quick calculation based on twenty couples. Did they mate that way, or were they like wess’har, polyandrous? With four eggs each, all live births, she came up with eighty, which made 120-odd bezeri, and…yes, they said they had to be about thirty to be mature enough to lay eggs, and then they only reproduced every six or seven years. This wasn’t an instant population explosion at the worst scenario. She had years to work out a solution—as long as c’naatat wasn’t going to fast-track that. She had time to think. She did. There was no point in panicking.

  She settled for worrying instead.

  The light-song continued for a couple of hours until it was fully dark. Then Saib lit a fire. He was very good at containing it and keeping it alight. So cephalopods had discovered fire, and Lindsay was their Prometheus, and she recalled what happened to him.

  “Please, God,” she said loudly. “No.”

  She held her head in her hands, and saw for the first time the Greek myths mocking her at every step. Thetis, the ship she brought here: the Nereid mother of Achilles, the demigod she made almost immortal, with one vulnerability, so like c’naatat that Lindsay recoiled. And Actaeon, the hunter changed into a stag, who wasn’t recognized by his own hounds and was killed by them; a transformation that c’naatat could have managed with ease.