Ally

  “Is there any sign that the parasite has spread to other species?” Esganikan asked.

  “None. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, and it would be a huge task to check every species. The bezeri are very tied to territory, though, and that means they’ll probably stay in this area.”

  “The evidence is that c’naatat likes large, mobile hosts.”

  “We found very few native species that meet those criteria.”

  I could simply destroy them now.

  At the moment, she had no way of removing c’naatat from bezeri. She would be killing them on the basis of what they might do: infect other life-forms, or reproduce to excess. She had no evidence that they could do either.

  And if they can, this is my best chance to prevent it happening.

  Unlike the isenj situation, the need wasn’t staring at her in the form of desperately overcrowded cities on a barren planet. And the isenj weren’t a species reduced to a few individuals.

  Her relief at finding them evaporated and gave way to concern again. “I need to brief the Skavu on this,” she said. “As long as they’re on Bezer’ej, they run the risk of encountering a bezeri. I don’t want any accidents.”

  Cilan tilted his head on one side. “I hear they’re very disturbed by c’naatat. The story of that human soldier has spread across their fleet.”

  Skavu didn’t have accurate recollection. They were as unreliable as humans when it came to memory and observation. But c’naatat was spectacular, and they were right to worry.

  As long as they confined their reaction to caution, Esganikan would tolerate it.

  “How’s the remediation progressing?” she asked.

  Cilan projected radiation levels onto the bulkhead. “We’re pleased with the results so far, but repopulating the island with appropriate species will be difficult. Aras Sar Iussan believes that most of the vegetation that grew there was unique to Ouzhari.”

  So Mohan Rayat had succeeded only in wiping out grass, small species, and nearly exterminating the bezeri. And poor Cilan: he should have been on his way home now, along with the rest of Shapakti’s party. She wondered how many of the Eqbas crew she might be able to release rather than extend their tour of duty with the Earth mission. Shapakti could continue his research back on Eqbas Vorhi, and taking Rayat with him would put the human far beyond the reach of Earth forever.

  Esganikan got to her feet in one movement. “I have to warn the Skavu about the bezeri. If they were accidentally contaminated, it would be an ugly situation.”

  It was always better to deal with Skavu in person. She had personal authority, but she was never confident that any other Eqbas commander could carry the same weight. She found Kiir, Fourth To Die, walking along the shore and looking out to Constantine.

  “This is commendably unspoiled, Commander,” he said.

  “Aras Sar Iussan says this was all isenj settlements before the wars.” Yes, Kiir would approve of Aras. “I have to warn you all to look out for bezeri that have been infected with c’naatat.”

  He took the news as she expected.

  “You want us to eradicate them? We would appreciate advice on how to—”

  “No,” said Esganikan. “These are the last of their kind. I want you to avoid them—to leave them alone. They’ve become terrestrial, so you might encounter them ashore.”

  “I understand they destroyed a number of other species, Commander. That makes them a threat to the balance here.”

  “I’m aware of that, but until I have reason to think they’re a problem, I want them left alone. My crew are monitoring them.”

  Kiir was deferential, but Esganikan had the feeling that he was beginning to think of her as…sloppy.

  “I had no idea that c’naatat was so widespread,” he said. He stood at the edge of the shore and stared out to sea. “Or that you tolerate it.”

  “It’s a soil-dwelling organism, so it’s not a matter of tolerating it,” she said. “Much of strife in this system was caused by someone attempting to destroy it on an island south of here. Nuclear devices. The attempt failed miserably, and c’naatat survives.”

  Kiir was still staring at the water as if he expected to see bezeri. “Why have you not eradicated the risk in hosts, then?”

  “Such as?”

  “The soldier. Bennett. It’s disgusting. One day, they’ll all be like the isenj on Umeh.”

  “Wess’har managed to avoid that.” Perhaps it was foolish to tell him, but he wasn’t stupid, and he had to come to terms with it if the Skavu were to remain on Bezer’ej for any time. Nevyan Tan Mestin regarded the Skavu as a threat; Ade’s observation that the Eqbas had introduced a dangerous alien superpower to the system had definitely taken root in her. “They used c’naatat hosts as troops to fight the isenj. It canceled out the isenj’s great numerical advantage, and wess’har didn’t succumb to the urge to spread it throughout their population. Without it, Bezer’ej would be another Umeh in the making.”

  “But Bennett is human, and you have Rayat—human—and Shan Frankland—human.” Kiir turned very sharply, a perfect 90 degrees, and faced her. “Even Frankland believes c’naatat is a threat if humans acquire it.”

  “Yes, but they haven’t. Deep space travel is still very difficult for them.”

  “I think you should eradicate all the hosts, and quarantine the planet.”

  “I’ve made my decision on the bezeri very clear, and the two humans and the wess’har male are not a risk.”

  “You know too little about c’naatat to assess it safely, and I think you should err on the side of caution.”

  Esganikan wasn’t accustomed to having subordinate males lecture her on environmental hazard policy. The Skavu provoked her worst prejudices based on bitter memory, but nothing Kiir said was actually unreasonable. She simply didn’t want to exterminate a almost vanished species on the possibility that they might one day become a risk.

  “Avoid them,” said Esganikan. “The bezeri, anyway. You’ll meet Shan Frankland shortly. You worry too much.”

  “If you had seen this soldier healing in seconds, you might change your mind. Seeing it strengthens my opinion. As long as c’naatat exists, it’s a threat to all natural life, which has to obey the cycle of life and death.”

  “I think I taught your people that,” said Esganikan. She began walking up the beach back to the Temporary City. “Concentrate on your Umeh tasks.”

  “Where are the bezeri?”

  “I forbid you to go after them.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that I would.”

  “The Ouzhari remediation team has located them on an island in that chain. You’re confined to this camp. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  Kiir followed behind her, a tangible brooding cloud of disbelief and disapproval. The more he found c’naatat an anathema, the more Esganikan looked to the wess’har experience of c’naatat and how they’d made it work for them.

  They didn’t even have an antidote for it, and yet they used it sparingly to survive, and had the courage and discipline to end their lives when they felt they became too unnatural.

  We can do this too. We can learn to manage c’naatat.

  Shapakti had removed it from some organisms, so it could be done. It developed resistance mechanisms, but Shapakti had cracked the basic code. In time, he—or a biologist yet to be born—would develop a reliable way of removing the contamination.

  Esganikan planned to protect c’naatat. If Kiir got in the way of that plan, she wouldn’t hesitate to remove him.

  Jejeno: Umeh Station

  “They’ve left the dome operational, Minister,” said Ralassi. “This would be an excellent place to raise plants.”

  Rit, head of state of the Northern Assembly, stood in the deserted dome, the largest single open space with a roof that she had ever seen. It gave her a glimpse of what other worlds might be like. It alarmed her because it was so very empty, far more empty even than her office chambers. Physician
s said the appeal of large chambers harked back to the ancestors of the isenj who built large airy brood chambers. This was much larger than her primitive instincts told her was airy.

  “I’m already being asked to make this into accommodation,” said Rit. “And I’m minded not to.”

  “I think the humans say start as you mean to go on.”

  “And I will.” Rit wandered around the impossibly large floor and stood looking up at the vine that covered much of the faceted dome. “This is our last chance as a species.”

  Jejeno was quiet. The streets outside were nowhere near as packed as usual, and her groundcar made its way back to the government offices without the usual delays of pedestrian gridlocks. Fighting had stopped, but to call it peace was optimistic. Isenj fell back and repaired damage and dealt with their dead. With no history of this kind of civil war, Rit had no precedence or genetic memory to draw on for what might happen next.

  “I have bioweapons,” she said. “In theory, I can wipe out most of the remaining population of Umeh. In practice, I have no delivery system, no air assets, and so no way of using them.”

  Ralassi gazed out of the window as the vehicle edged past workers clearing rubble and repairing water conduits. In a side road at a junction, a barrier caught Rit’s eye: the road had been closed, and it was packed with isenj trying to make temporary shelters out of anything they could salvage—furnishings, awnings torn from buildings, whatever came to hand. The air felt different to her, and she made a note to check how much of the climate control infrastructure had been destroyed in the fighting.

  It was hard to avoid the aftermath of damage in a city so densely populated, however far you were from the destruction, just as damage to state-run climate-control systems affected the whole planet in some way. There were no real boundaries.

  “Citizens may simply be too busy to carry on fighting,” said Ralassi. “Let’s hope they’ve simply decided to get on with life.”

  “What about Pareg, Tivskur and Sil? They don’t appear to be getting on with life.” Rit looked at the back of the driver seated in front of them, and noted that his quills were ever so slightly raised. She reached out and closed the partition. “They’re getting on with rearmament.”

  “But are you more afraid of them or the Skavu?”

  Rit had some measure of the Skavu now, and they wouldn’t be as clinical and logical as the Eqbas—or her long-standing wess’har neighbors. They would bring ruin, she knew, and the last thing the Nir system—Cavanagh’s Star, Ceret—needed was another militarily capable species resident for any period of time.

  “When I see Skavu troops patrolling Jejeno,” she said, “I’ll tell you.”

  Rit saw total disaster. If the wess’har had any sense, they would too. They wanted isolation. They wanted peace. It was only Bezer’ej that had ever been a cause of conflict between them and the isenj.

  Her husband, Ual, had seen the obvious solution right from the start, and it needed no troops from beyond the system. In fact, it excluded them by its nature.

  “I need to visit F’nar,” said Rit. “This can’t be done by link.”

  “If you leave, Minister, you may face a counter-coup.”

  “I’ll risk that.”

  It was astonishing how effective thousands of troops could be when they had unthinkably superior technology. A replicating pathogen…it was possible not to use ground troops at all. Rit hoped Earth was taking notice. Without Eddie Michallat around, she doubted they were even aware.

  “You need to make this fast, then,” Ralassi said at last. “And return before anyone realizes you’ve left.”

  “I need to talk to Nevyan Tan Mestin. To see if the wess’har have any sense.”

  “Very well.”

  Rit thought of the dalf tree, which—by luck or design, and it didn’t matter which—still stood intact. She would check on its well-being again before she left. It had become a symbol of how impossible things could happen, and in its ludicrous, fragile way, it reminded her she had children still relatively safe on Tasir Var.

  Sooner or later, the Skavu would turn their attention there. When the Eqbas left for Earth, there would be nobody to control them, and Rit put little faith in orders.

  If the dalf tree could survive the war, then so could she.

  14

  I’m reluctant to attempt removing c’naatat from a live subject, but Dr. Rayat is remarkably cooperative and has suggestions for growing cell cultures from various organs. He has a theory that when isolated from the human endocrine system, c’naatat may not be able to detect threats to itself as effectively. I agree with him that it is almost certainly not sentient, but that it acts remarkably like a planetary ecology, a complex feedback system.

  DA SHAPAKTI,

  updating Esganikan Gai on his progress

  F’nar Plain, Wess’ej: Skavu landing area

  An almost-familiar bronze cigar of a ship, a castoff of the Eqbas fleet, settled on the plain and kicked dust into the air. Ade could feel the faint vibration of its drives in his teeth and jaw as they shut down.

  “Obsolete or not,” said Nevyan, “those ships are still superior to ours.”

  “Better make sure we never have to test that,” said Shan.

  A hatch opened in the side of vessel, a ramp formed, and Shan got her first glimpse of a live Skavu.

  “He looks like a laugh a minute.”

  “That’s my chum Commander Kiir, Fourth To Die,” said Ade. “It’s okay, Boss, I won’t remind him that he’s a dead man. Best behavior.”

  “People who go in for this death-and-glory shit really bother me.” A dozen or so Skavu disembarked with Esganikan, and they all had those long flat swords strapped to their backs along with Eqbas weapons. Shan glanced over her shoulder and Ade knew she was checking. Aras had one hand on his tilgir, the harvesting knife he always carried. “You’re not going to use that, are you?”

  “I would have to have a very good reason,” he said.

  Esganikan shepherded Kiir and his troops from the ship. Ade still wasn’t sure what happy looked like on a Skavu, but he knew more or less what was going on with Esganikan, and she was an unhappy isan. He could smell her acid from here. So could Nevyan.

  “Esganikan doesn’t like this any more than we do,” said Nevyan. She inhaled with a hiss of air. “I have to wonder what I would do in her situation.”

  “Never mind,” said Shan. “Let’s give it a go.”

  Nevyan had what looked like a small distorted brass bugle on her belt. Ade remembered now. The wess’har troops who threw them out of Constantine the first time had weapons that looked like musical instruments: Christ, Nevyan was carrying. He couldn’t recall seeing her with a hand weapon before. She smelled of that faint mango scent, and Shan gave her a warning glance again and shook her head.

  “I can deal with this, Shan,” Nevyan said. “This isn’t your business.”

  “It’s going to be, I think.”

  Esganikan walked towards Shan and Nevyan with that casual, loping gait that belied her brisk and thoroughly lethal approach. Nevyan didn’t move: she waited for the commander and the Skavu contingent to come to her. The troops halted ten meters away and Kiir walked forward when Esganikan beckoned.

  “This is Nevyan Chail,” she said. She was every inch the angry mother making her kid apologize for breaking a neighbor’s window. “She wants reassurance that you won’t disturb their way of life. They’re followers of Targassat.”

  Kiir obviously knew who Targassat was. He did a little deferential nod, or at least Ade interpreted it as that. “Kiir, Fourth To Die.” His focus on Nevyan wandered briefly to Ade, and then to Shan. “We’re here to restore Umeh and ensure the isenj change their habits. They will never pose a threat to you again.” He stared into Nevyan’s face, utterly transfixed. Maybe he wanted to know why she looked so different to Esganikan. “When our task is complete, we’ll return home to Garav. You needn’t fear us.”

  “I found your behavior on Umeh unne
cessarily brutal, Commander.” Nevyan had decided it was gloves off from the start, then. Wess’har really didn’t do tact. Ade watched Shan stiffen. “I’m reluctant to have your garrison on Bezer’ej, but I won’t interfere with you as long as you respect our approach to maintaining the balance of ecology.” She indicated Shan with a long multijointed finger. “This is Shan Frankland, a respected isan of F’nar, and her males—”

  “We’ve met,” Ade interrupted.

  “–are Aras and Ade.”

  Kiir turned to focus intently on Shan. “You’re the c’naatat host who survived spacing,” he said. “I would not have allowed you to return.”

  Shan paused for a beat. “Pleased to meet you, too.”

  Fourth To Die or whatever his rank denoted was asking to be First To Be Smacked In The Mouth, and it was a toss-up between Nevyan and Shan as to who he was pissing off most. He seemed blissfully unaware of it. “C’naatat has spread to the bezeri. Did humans do this?”

  “It’s a long story, and you don’t need to know,” Shan said. “If we’re going to be neighbors for a while, I think we need to loosen up and get to understand each other.”

  “But this is unnatural,” said Kiir. Aras made a low rumble in his throat and moved to stand next to Ade, wafting citrus, ready for any aggravation. “The parasite is a threat we must control.”

  “I worked that out,” said Shan.

  But Kiir was talking past Shan, addressing Nevyan. “I mean that this human shouldn’t be here. She’s an affront to nature. This other male is infected too. What is he?”

  Shan stared at Kiir and Ade watched her shoulders pull back and brace. The Skavu didn’t have a clue about human body language, and Kiir carried on talking past her. Shit, she looked really big when she did that; scary big. She was six feet of lean muscle and a bad temper. She was back in full Superintendent Frankland mode now, and fucking furious.

  “He was cleaning up planets when you were still destroying yours. He’s got a name. Aras.” Her pupils dilated and the ice gray irises almost vanished. Set against the sudden pallor of her face, the contrast made her look the stranger she sometimes became. “Maybe it’s a good idea if we avoid each other in future. For your own good.”