Ally

  Or maybe a failsafe had tripped in her mind to protect her from the full impact of the deaths of millions.

  Could I have averted that? Should I have died myself?

  Shan rapped on Nevyan’s door. She didn’t like giving anyone a surprise either, or getting one when she walked in unannounced. The air outside was growing thick with tem flies, who were shitting away happily on every smooth warm surface and making fairy-tale magic from their crap, if only all of life progressed in that direction, and didn’t move from beauty to shit.

  The door opened and she shot inside to avoid letting the flies get a pearly foothold in the house.

  Livaor, Nevyan’s most technically adept husband, ushered her down the passage into the main room. “Do you want food? Good.” He didn’t wait for her answer. “Netun jay. Go in, Chail. They’re waiting.”

  And there she was. Perched on a large cushion with Ralassi at her side, talking to Nevyan in a strange mix of occasional English gasped out through air holes and that nail-scraping isenj language, was Minister Rit.

  Giyadas knelt beside her mother, watching, absorbing every lesson. She was going to be formidable when she grew up, and Shan felt inappropriately and maternally proud of her.

  Nevyan looked up. “I believe we have an agreement.”

  “That was fast.” Why do you need me, then? “Talk me through it.”

  Ralassi—rather too like poor dead Vijissi for her comfort—motioned her to sit. “Minister Rit is asking for a permanent agreement with Wess’ej that isenj will give up all claims to Bezer’ej, and agree peace with wess’har in exchange for calling off the Skavu deployment and helping restore Umeh.”

  Shan had an immediate response and it ended in off, but this wasn’t her decision. She filtered her comments through a fine sieve. “That sounds like a heavy commitment from Wess’ej in exchange for…nothing. Because Bezer’ej is already beyond isenj reach.”

  “I won’t have the Skavu remaining in this system, Shan,” said Nevyan. “Our long-term interests are about stability everywhere.”

  “I still don’t see a fully mutual benefit here.”

  “Esganikan’s universal pathogen.”

  “F’nar developed that anyway.”

  “And Esganikan turned it into a much better weapon.”

  Shan felt bad about raining on Nevyan’s peace parade, but there had to be more than this. She’d invited Shan here, so that meant she’d invited her opinion and involvement too. “Okay, Ralassi, ask Rit what happens with no troops on Umeh, because Wess’ej sure as hell can’t conjure up the ground forces needed to do that. The Northern Assembly will be overrun when the other continental states get their fleet and air arm built again.”

  Rit and Ralassi chittered. “She says she has the targeted pathogens.”

  “In know, but she’s got no bloody air force. She’s reliant on Eqbas or Skavu to deliver the pathogen. So Esganikan still has control of it in the end.”

  “I’m prepared to commit wess’har pilots,” said Nevyan.

  “You said no military action.”

  “Pre-emptive.”

  “Jesus, Nev, you’re going to do a bit of freelance genocide to shore up a coup? Because that’s what it is.”

  “The problem of isenj expansion will always be there.” Nevyan gave her a look that said Shan didn’t understand the stakes. “And one day we may not be able to deal with it, and we don’t want to have to call in Eqbas Vorhi again. I want the Skavu gone, and I want the Eqbas gone.”

  Shan perched her backside on the edge of the table. Livaor, utterly unimpressed by the ladies gossiping over mass slaughter and long-term foreign policy, placed exquisite lavender glass plates of syrup-filled cakes by her. Shan had to step outside herself for a moment: this wasn’t her little funny alien pal. This was Nevyan Tan Mestin, a warlord, drafted leader of a city-state that might have been bucolic and primitive to the city-slicker Eqbas, but that was still enough to reduce human armies to a greasy smear. She wasn’t human. Her logic wasn’t human. She wasn’t even wrong. She was doing what made perfect sense in the context of the survival of her species and many others; she was being responsible and…humane.

  And it was Shan Frankland who was the funny alien pal whose morality—and she’d rewritten that book a few times—was the novelty here.

  Accept that this isn’t your manor. It’s Nevyan’s.

  “Okay,” said Shan. And if she thought it was wrong, could she stop it? It was another event she’d agonize over. “Okay, so Umeh is drastically depopulated. That’s a lovely phrase for it. What, three, four billion dead? Then it’s a case of tally ho, nanites away, clear the land, replant. Or whatever. And the isenj still standing after all that change into some kind of Jain or Buddhist stay-at-homes, and everyone lives happily ever after, or else Wess’ej presses the button and gets rid of every last one of them.”

  And then we terraform the place.

  Shan had no idea whatsoever where that last thought came from, and she slapped it away.

  “Succinct,” said Ralassi. “What is tally ho?”

  “Never mind.” Shan looked for some reaction from Nevyan, but she seemed satisfied. She had that happy, scent of powdery contentment, but there was just the edge of jask on it. Shan was still curious to find out what she’d feel if a matriarch unleashed a full blast of the pheromone at her, but it would have to stay academic curiosity for now. “I’m not advocating this, but if you want the Skavu gone, you could skip the targeted pathogen stage and go straight to Armageddon.”

  Ralassi chittered. Rit did her impression of a gaudy chandelier in an earthquake. They seemed to understand the inference. “They would stay, though, to start a new ecosystem.”

  “There’s one other consideration,” said Nevyan. “I have no interest in wiping out the isenj species. It’s wrong. We never interfered with them in their own territory—which doesn’t include Bezer’ej, of course.”

  Shan decided she must have been getting slow. “You want me to influence Esganikan with you, don’t you? Lean on her with a bit of jask.”

  “Yes.”

  It was Nevyan’s world. She was bred to lead, groomed for it, and it wasn’t the job of a human copper to decide what was best for F’nar and for Wess’ej in general. If the other city states were content to let F’nar handle off-world relations, then it had to be good enough for her.

  “I’ll do it,” she said.

  “We have an agreement, then,” said Nevyan. “Now Shan and I have to see Esganikan, and I will contact you when it’s settled.”

  Of course she needed Shan: she needed more jask. Ralassi and Rit left, and Shan was left with the certain knowledge that she was back to being the hired muscle, a role she hadn’t played for many years. She was happier with that than she could ever imagine.

  “So, we put the deal to Esganikan and give her a burst of the old mango persuader if she looks balky,” said Shan. She took one of the cakes and bit into it: the fragrant syrupy filling squirted against the roof of her mouth. “Okay. Let’s set something up. Gives me a reason to be on Bezer’ej when Aras is.”

  Nevyan beckoned Giyadas to her lap and wrapped her arms around the kid. “I didn’t know if you would support me in this, my friend.”

  “You should know me by now.”

  “I’ve never doubted your wisdom.”

  “It’s not about wisdom. It’s about pragmatism.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “I think so.” Shan needed a plan B. Throwing your weight around with a bit of jask was fine, but it wasn’t a science like ballistics: she couldn’t calculate how much it would take to get the result. “What if we get it wrong and one of us ends up dominating the game?”

  “This isn’t a confrontation between two matriarchs like the time you deposed Chayyas.”

  “Reminding me of that makes me a lot more confident.” Shit, she’d lost her temper with Chayyas and challenged her—wess’har never bluffed—by pulling the pin from a grenade. No bastard was going t
o punish Aras for infecting her, not God almighty and certainly not Chayyas. She had no idea it would trigger her to cede power. “Thanks a bunch.”

  “Esganikan will cede. There is a collective will.”

  “What if we’ve read her wrong? We’ve never tested her limits.”

  Shan had no idea what being crushed by jask felt like. She knew it made her irritable and punchy when she smelled it, and it took a conscious effort not to succumb to the instinct to challenge. It scared her: wess’har might believe that if you acted wess’har then you were wess’har regardless of origins, but she knew she was a substantially human template with wess’har and other alien modifications, and that meant the competitive ape within her was still there.

  Nevyan fidgeted with the collar of her dhren. “You fear ousting her rather than being subdued yourself, don’t you?”

  “I don’t want her job.”

  “What would you do if it happened?”

  “Do what I did when I out-scented Chayyas,” she said. “Hand the command over to someone else. I’m not leading some armada with no idea what to do with it. I’m just a copper. It’s all I’ve ever been.”

  Shan pulled out her swiss and let it dangle on its lanyard as if she could hypnotize herself with it. No, she wasn’t hypnotist’s material. Then she thumbed the keys and scrolled for Esganikan’s ITX terminal. She got the Temporary City operations center.

  “This is Shan Frankland,” she said. “Tell Esganikan that Nevyan and I are coming to see her.”

  Giyadas watched them both intently, gaze going from one to the other. “What happens to Bezer’ej?” she asked. “Will the Skavu leave there too?”

  It was a good question: there was nothing to make them, except Esganikan’s command. They didn’t like the idea of infected bezeri, but they didn’t seem likely to have the means to do anything about it beyond destruction, and that wasn’t easy with the elusive bezeri. C’naatat was a mystery to them, beyond their technology.

  “Let’s add it to the shopping list,” said Shan.

  15

  “Parcere subjectos et debellare superbos.”

  Spare the conquered, and war down the proud.

  VIRGIL

  Bezer’ej: Nazel, also known as Chad Island

  Lindsay didn’t see the boat come ashore: none of them did. But Keet spotted the intruder walking along the boundary of the marshes, and came thudding into the settlement to raise the alarm.

  “The one I spoke to is here,” said Keet. “The one who used to protect Bezer’ej. He comes.”

  It took Lindsay a few moments to work out that he meant Aras. She looked up at the woven nests strung in the trees, and the mud plaster drying on the newly built huts, and decided there was no point pretending their location could have remained a secret much longer. But Aras had no greater powers now than they did—unless he had a grenade launcher. There was no reason for one c’naatat to fear another.

  “Well, then,” said Lindsay. “Let’s be hospitable and show him what we’ve achieved.”

  She laid the shell trowel across the top of the tightly woven container of mud daub and almost went to tidy herself, but Aras wasn’t human, and she barely qualified now. What did appearance matter, for either of them? When he’d arrived with armed wess’har troops to expel the Thetis crew from Constantine, she’d feared and resented him; she’d feared his technology and weapons, and resented the fact that Shan Frankland’s life was deemed worthy of saving with c’naatat while her baby’s wasn’t.

  No, Shan made the decision. Aras saved who he loved, just like I would.

  She found it hard to resent him, and his technology was only relevant as something to acquire.

  “How does he know where we are?” asked Keet.

  Bezeri still had a lot to learn about life above water. “There are devices up there.” She pointed skyward. “In space. They watch this planet to keep it safe. There are many ways of finding things from a long way away.”

  “He would never have found us in the sea.”

  “The Eqbas found you, by testing water samples. It’s hard to hide anywhere.” She prodded Keet’s mantle; he was warm and firm, like a beach ball left in the sun. “But it might be a good idea to stay clear of him. Just in case.”

  Saib lumbered across the clearing and stood amid the gathering group, reminding everyone that he was still the patriarch. “He would never harm us.”

  “He is angry,” said Keet. “He thinks we did wrong.”

  “We have done nothing, and he knows that.”

  Lindsay wondered how far Aras might go. He’d executed Surendra Parekh, and he was no stranger to genocide himself. She tried to understand wess’har ethics and failed, seeing only the intersecting lines that cut across her own.

  Hang on. I did this too. I didn’t intend to, but I killed bezeri. And I saved them too, like he saved Shan. We’re as bad as each other. Or the same.

  “Don’t take anything for granted with Aras,” she warned. “Be careful. Just shut up and let me deal with him.”

  Half of the bezeri had gathered around her. The others had gone to explore Clare island again. They waited silently, with no exchange of lights or sound, just the occasional crack of vegetation as they shifted position. A few lounged in their treetop vantage points, tentacles dangling like tails.

  “He is coming,” one of them called.

  Aras covered the ground fast. He strode into the clearing, almost human if it hadn’t been for that strikingly angular half-animal face, and looked up. If it was possible to gauge astonishment in an alien whose expressions she didn’t understand, then he hadn’t expected to see bezeri in trees.

  “Aras,” said Lindsay. “I’d say welcome, but I’m not sure why you’re here.”

  He froze and stared at her, which wasn’t surprising under the circumstances. She’d been a normal woman when he last saw her. Now she was only vaguely humanoid in shape, and not the flesh and blood either wess’har or human recognized. After a few long seconds, he turned his head and his gaze tracked across the gathering of cephalopods transformed into land animals.

  “I came to see if you’re the threat to the Bezer’ej ecology that the Skavu dread,” he said.

  “Usually, hello works best.” Lindsay couldn’t hate him. She had no reason, although she’d never had a close relationship with him and some of their interaction had been tense and hostile. “Who are the Skavu?”

  “Allies of the Eqbas. More fanatical, you might say, than we are. Shan calls them eco-jihadim.” He’d said the dreaded name and summoned the Devil from the pit; Lindsay genuinely expected to see Shan emerge from the bushes with a grenade to settle the score once and for all. She glanced around as discreetly as she could, but Aras knew her preoccupation. “No, Shan didn’t come. So, are you a risk? Should the Skavu balance you?”

  “It’s the Skavu calling the shots, then, not you.”

  “Perhaps, but I still want to assess the situation.”

  “There’s just forty-four of them left, Aras. That’s all.” They’d put paid to the sheven on Chad, though. They complained that they found none when they plunged into the depths of the bogs and marshes. She decided not to tell him. “They’re not the isenj.”

  “I know how many there are.” Aras ambled around the clearing, gazing at the huts and the tree nests. “Rayat told us.”

  Oh God. What the hell is that slimeball up to now? “Ah, so you got him. I bet Shan—”

  “He’s alive and well.”

  And scheming. “I’m surprised. He must have some use to you, then, or he wouldn’t be.”

  Aras simply stared back at her. She noted his sidearm, a wess’har device about thirty centimeters long, and the knife he always carried, like a machete with a notched tip. “Have you infected any other creature, to your knowledge?”

  It was impossible to know, but the bezeri hadn’t infected anything they hunted. Nothing escaped alive.

  “As far as I can tell, no,” she said.

  “I want to lo
ok around?”

  “Why?”

  “To find a reason to tell Esganikan Gai that this colony isn’t a threat, won’t spread across the planet like the isenj nearly did, and won’t repeat the actions of its forebears.” Aras stopped as he caught sight of Keet, and—astonishingly—he seemed to recognize him. “You said you weren’t sorry last time I met you. Remember?”

  “I remember,” said Keet. “And I am still not sorry.”

  “I don’t need your repentance. That was my human element getting the better of me.” Aras walked on a little further, hands clasped behind his back. “I need to know if you have learned and changed.”

  Lindsay thought of the sheven. No: the bezeri mentality hadn’t changed at all, and she still didn’t know how she might handle that. But if their physiology could change, so might their mentality.

  Saib edged forward from the group of bezeri watching Aras. He swung forward and reared up into a sitting position, settling a good deal taller than Aras and—knowing Saib—showing him who was boss. Aras, never visibly intimidated, simply looked up at him as if admiring a building.

  “We have returned to what we were,” Saib said. “In a different place, in a different shape, but the people we once were—that is what we are again.”

  Shut up, Saib. He could never resist having his say. Lindsay tried to judge the right time to cut in.

  “What do you eat?” Aras asked.

  Saib rumbled with exhaled air. “Everything.”

  Aras turned around and continued his stroll through the camp, apparently unconcerned. Lindsay went after him, trying to think what might look like incriminating evidence to a wess’har, and remembered that if Aras had known the bezeri for five centuries, then—even if their history came as a shock—he knew how they fed. He walked over to a hut and peered inside. Then he turned in the direction of the open wetlands.

  “I can’t smell sea creatures,” he said. “You always smelled of the sea. Now I smell something else.”

  Lindsay had forgotten a lot about wess’har, including their sensitivity to smell. They also had no patience with lies, and now, willing Saib and Keet to keep quiet, she debated whether to tell Aras the truth. What could he do? What could these Skavu do, come to that, or Esganikan, or any of them? All the bezeri had to do was vanish into the sea again and wait, but that wasn’t the plan, that wasn’t what she wanted for them. She wanted them to be able to repel invaders.