Crossing the Line

  He needed her. And he didn’t need a human c’naatat soldier to worry about.

  “Sir, I thought it might be best for everyone if I went deep for a bit,” Bennett said, looking rather modest for a man who had kept his nerve under unthinkable circumstances. “And I did tell Commander Neville I took a piss-poor view of what happened to Shan, but it was probably bloody daft of me to let her know I was infected. Anyway, here I am, sir. Can you tell me if the rest of the detachment are okay?”

  Eddie interrupted. “I’ll find out,” he said. “In the meantime, take a seat. I’m sure you’ll come in very handy.”

  The pearl icing of F’nar looked perfectly wonderful in heavy rain.

  Eddie stood at the door to the terrace, watching the downpour wash in great waves down the walls of the caldera. The glass conduits were almost singing. At some points the city looked like a designer water feature, the torrent rolling across the iridescence in swirls and channels and creating an abstract animation. Eddie had sent the bee-cam in, fully weather-jacketed, to capture footage while he waited.

  It was now five days since he had become the most sought-after interviewee on four planets. It wasn’t a position a journalist ever expected to find himself in. He watched angry debates and call-ins with people demanding that he be allowed to speak, and still the call didn’t come.

  He had interviewed Bennett. It was one of the best he’d ever done, and he reckoned so himself. Bennett had an endearingly frank quality and a matter-of-fact manner that made the telling of Shan Frankland’s last grand gesture something of a show-stopper. She would have liked that.

  But Eddie couldn’t use it. The whole story hinged on c’naatat. If he ran the line on Shan’s death before he conveyed the enormity of the attack on Christopher—on Ouzhari—then nobody would hear the detail. They would be working out how feasible immortality might be for them. Once again one of Shan Frankland’s moral stands would have to remain a secret.

  She hadn’t been able to admit even to him that she had once sacrificed her career and reputation to protect a bunch of ecoterrorists with whom she sympathized. He knew anyway. Whether anyone agreed with her or not, there was something heart-stoppingly admirable about a woman who would put everything on the line—her life included—for a principle.

  Eddie was going to make sure she had prime-time if it was the last thing he ever did. He’d just wait a while.

  There was no interview with Lindsay Neville or Mohan Rayat, of course. He wanted that most of all. But he could wait for that too.

  Eddie walked back into the house and stood in front of the screen, now sliced into five different news channels. Then he hit the message key: still nothing. No incoming calls from Earth. Call me, you tossers. Eddie wondered what Ual made of the FEU’s poor handling of the row. He needed the diplomatic channels to stay open, at least until he had filed.

  Maybe it didn’t matter. By not being able to speak, Eddie had become a silent nod to growing speculation that humans had started the war. Yes, they were using the word war on every channel. The legal niceties of declaration had gone by the board, even on BBChan bulletins. If your loved ones had died, you needed to hear that it was a war. Nobody wanted to hear that they’d been killed in a diplomatic misunderstanding.

  Eddie went back to the door and watched the rain punching through ever-changing rainbows for a long time.

  “Does it piss down like this all the time?” asked Bennett. Eddie hadn’t even heard him come up behind him. “Been walking round F’nar, getting accustomed to the layout. Pretty. Very pretty.”

  “Heard from the others yet?”

  “Izzy and Chaz are on Mar’an’cas, but Izzy’s bioscreen packed up so I’m messaging Chaz. I think they quite like setting up the colonists’ camp there. Something good they can do. And Sue, Jon and Barkers are on Umeh.”

  “And Lindsay’s okay?”

  “Not interested in her,” said Bennett. “Maybe you could ask Nevyan if we could get them all over here. They wouldn’t do anything stupid, I’d see to that. When things calm down a bit, of course.”

  “As POWs?”

  “Why?”

  “You want to be deserters? Even this far from a court-martial? Otherwise we have to explain why you’ve cut loose.”

  “Come on, they’d never try to take me here.”

  “It’s not about that, really. If the c’naatat story goes fully public, then who’s going to give a shit about a few dead squid?”

  “Or Shan,” said Bennett.

  They stood and shared a homebrew beer. It hadn’t fermented long enough but it was more a symbol than an expression of the brewer’s art. Bennett was politely tactful.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  “You can’t get drunk any more anyway,” said Eddie. “So Shan said.”

  The front door opened and let in a blast of damp air. Aras had come back from the fields with a basket of muddy vegetables. He dumped them in the bowl under the spigot, rinsed them, and then went to the lavatory and locked the door.

  “That’s not good,” said Eddie. He wanted Aras to talk, at least to Bennett if not to him. He walked up to the door and tapped very gently with his knuckles.

  “How are you feeling, mate?” he asked.

  There was no answer.

  “Aras, come and have something to eat.”

  “Later,” said Aras.

  Eddie went out onto the terrace again and began working out how he might get a story off Wess’ej. He couldn’t think of any route that didn’t involve ITX and bribery. Bennett busied himself cleaning his rifle.

  Eddie was still coming up with nothing and feeling increasingly frustrated when he heard Aras moving around inside the house. There was the sound of a container easing open and then a sharp slam as something else was opened and closed.

  The sounds of rummaging became more rapid and frantic. Eventually they stopped and Aras came slowly out onto the terrace.

  “You have taken something of mine, Eddie.”

  It hadn’t been a bad premonition. There wasn’t much of anything to take from Aras, being wess’har: just the grenades.

  “It’s no good looking for them,” Eddie said. He was suddenly scared. Aras could have torn him apart with little effort, and in his current state of mind there was every chance he would. Bennett stood back, watching them carefully. “You won’t find them.”

  “Eddie, how can you do this to me?”

  “Because I care what happens to you.”

  “I can’t stand another day like this. I have lived long enough and I have nothing left now. If you had any respect for me you’d stop this stupid game, so give me the grenades.”

  Eddie had nowhere to run. He stood with his arms held away from his sides, thinking where he’d left his bag. It was stowed under the sofa. He edged between Aras and the door. His stomach was churning. Aras twitched and Eddie almost leaped back, but he stood his ground. “I’m not going to let you kill yourself.”

  Aras was still for a moment. Then he seized Eddie by his collar and thrust him so hard against the wall that it hammered the breath out of him and he thought Aras was finally going to kill him.

  “Let me go, Eddie. Let me die.”

  Eddie gasped for breath. “Fuck you, no. No. You want to do it—you do it alone.”

  “Give them to me. Sergeant Bennett, will you give them to me?”

  Bennett walked slowly forward, one careful pace at a time. “I’m not helping you, mate.”

  “Why? What’s it to either of you?”

  Eddie choked. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to do it. And you’re the last bit of her left.”

  Bennett finally came close enough to lay both hands on Aras’s arm, very slowly, very gently. “Come on,” he said. “Eddie’s right. I know what you’re going through, remember. I know better than Eddie, anyway. You help me through it and I’ll help you. Okay?”

  My fault, Eddie thought. My fault. Aras didn’t let go. He didn’t even look at Bennett.

  “I f
ailed the bezeri,” said Aras. “I killed Josh Garrod. And now I’ve lost her. How can I carry on?”

  “Because it’s not finished. It’s just starting. She’s not here to sort it. But you are.”

  Bennett’s hands tightened on Aras’s arm. “Aras, just let it go. Come on. I know it’s hard. Come on.”

  Aras was pressing so hard on his chest that Eddie thought he would black out. Then he let him go, and Eddie slid down the damp pearl wall. Aras sat down slowly beside him.

  “I need to lay her to rest,” he said.

  “You leave that to Nevyan. She’s got the ussissi searching.”

  “Is there more than this life, Eddie?”

  “No, mate. Only what we do. That’s why it’s important that you hang on.”

  “You have your focus, Eddie. You want to tell the story and shame your government, and you’ll always find one to shame. I’m not sure of my purpose beyond vengeance.”

  “Then do it for Shan. Even if it’s only revenge, the end result is the same.”

  “I shouldn’t have hurt you,” Aras said. “I apologize.”

  “It’s okay,” said Eddie. He gave Bennett a go away look. I’m fine. We need to talk. Bennett shrugged and went back in the house.

  They sat in the puddles on the terrace for a long time. Eddie didn’t want to leave him sitting there alone. After a while he looked at his exotic, man-beast face and saw something he knew couldn’t be, but was.

  There were definite tears in Aras’s eyes.

  C’naatat had relented and handed him one new adaptation that he had wanted so badly for so long. He wept for his isan.

  Eddie joined him.

  29

  I see no case against coming to the aid of Wess’ej. They have been provoked. Their allies have been invaded and slaughtered. The ussissi are calling on us to intervene to save their kin as well. It will be a long-term commitment but now we all know what is at stake, the end is inevitable. Now or later is meaningless: the gethes will invade again. And if they do not, then they still commit acts on their own world that we cannot tolerate.

  The word gethes is from our distant past. If we forget what it means, then we forget what we are at our core. It’s the antithesis of all things that are wess’har.

  SARMATAKIAN VE,

  adviser to the council of matriarchs of Eqbas Vorhi,

  commonly known as the World Before

  Minister Ual called Eddie in the early hours with the best news he had heard in recent weeks.

  Aras shook his shoulder to wake him. He stumbled to the console and tried not to think what would happen to this odd friendship if Ual found out about the quill. Eddie suspected the wily statesman would think it was fair game, nothing personal at all.

  “Pressure from one direction can be deflected,” Ual said, wheezing and sucking. “But pressure from two sides can crush. I have your link.”

  “Thank you,” said Eddie. He motioned to Aras to find BBChan 56930, the current primary news feed. He had to nudge him: Aras was fixed on Ual’s image, unblinking. “How did you manage that?”

  “I told your Foreign Office that I was most disappointed that humans were taking a dim view of a race who would help them establish instant communications across galaxies. I also said it would ease my own electorate’s fear of aliens if humans were seen to admit their failings.”

  “A stylish threat, sir.”

  “No threat,” said Ual. “You have a full hour, and I think the phrase is live to air.” He made that rattling bubble that Eddie liked to think was a giggle but could as easily have been a curse. “And I do not care for your news editor.”

  “I’ll buy you a beer one day, Minister. Thank you.”

  Eddie had a half-hour package ready to run. It opened with the patrol craft recce footage of Ouzhari burning. It ended with Ade Bennett’s eyewitness account.

  “Shall I leave you to it?” asked Aras.

  “No, you stay right here.” Eddie pulled on a fresh shirt and hoped his stubble would make him look authentically warry rather than a man who’d been dragged out of bed and caught on the hop. He set the bee-cam on the console and pulled two stools into place. “Because when this lot finishes running, you’re on. I’m interviewing you.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I’ll ask you questions and you answer them as you see fit. They might not sound like kind questions, but don’t get angry on air. You can punch me later.”

  “This sounds very negative.”

  “You know when you tore into me at dinner that time?”

  “I was very rude. I meant to be.”

  “And it would have been great TV. Just say what you think.”

  “What game is this, then?”

  “Showing them what they’re taking on. Conveniently running back-to-back with scenes of destruction caused by gungho humans.”

  “Is this a substitute for drama, Eddie, or have you become a propagandist for us?”

  “I’m treading a fine line. But all I’m doing is showing people things that they’re not here to see for themselves. How they process it is down to them.”

  Eddie keyed in his code and found that it still worked. He could begin his transmission at any time with a sixty second stand-by so the current anchor could get the bulletin out of the segment and manage a reasonable throw to a live OB from 150 trillion miles away. He could see the output from the split feed from Umeh Station.

  He didn’t even have to talk to News Desk.

  “Thirty seconds,” he said to nobody in particular, and smoothed down his shirt.

  Lindsay Neville walked through the crowded biodome of Umeh Station and found a path had cleared for her.

  It wasn’t the sort of leeway granted to Shan Frankland by dint of her commanding presence. The evacuees just didn’t look like they wanted close contact with the woman who had carried out an act of war against a militarily superior neighbor.

  And Okurt and his senior officers had died in Actaeon. She was now the ranking officer in a ship of chaos.

  She had the feeling she wasn’t going to be popular. It was hard to be loved and respected when you had stranded nearly four hundred people a long way from home without the prospect of rescue.

  “There’s Jon,” said Barencoin. He put his thumb and forefinger between his lips and whistled so loudly that Lindsay jumped. “Oi, Jon! Over here!” He grinned, but not at her. “And there’s Sue. The old firm again, eh?”

  “I want you lot to keep Rayat on a leash for the time being,” said Lindsay.

  Barencoin inhaled slowly. “He’s your problem now, ma’am,” he said. “He’s not going anywhere. None of us are ever again, I reckon. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to find a doctor to get this bloody round out of my leg before the meds wear off.”

  He limped off into the milling crowd to be reunited with his two comrades. If Lindsay thought she’d have marine backup, she was mistaken. She wandered into one of the construction huts and asked for the duty foreman. It was time to make a start on creating some order and purpose. She was going to be here a long time.

  “Well, that was fucking clever.” The young engineer sitting behind the makeshift desk just glanced up at her once. He was checking inventories. “You’re the military genius who nearly got us all fried, eh?”

  “I’m not even going to discuss that,” said Lindsay wearily. “We need some organization here.”

  “We’ve got nearly four hundred people in a half-finished habitat. It’s enough water, lavatories, and food facilities that we need. You offering?”

  There was no point pulling rank. Civilians didn’t jump for her. “Okay,” she said. “You get on with the logistics and I’ll round up my personnel. Then we can sit down and talk sensibly later.”

  “And bring a shovel,” said the engineer. He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder without looking up. “Have a look at the news. You’re on. Or at least your handiwork is.”

  Lindsay cast around and found the small screen obscured by pile
s of insulation sheeting. She was going to leave: she didn’t have time for this. But she didn’t. She watched. She watched because she heard Eddie’s familiar voice over images that she should have recognized but didn’t.

  Lindsay watched Eddie’s news special with detached horror. She had lived these events. They looked much worse on screen. Stripped of the emotion of experiencing them, she saw only what history would see: destruction, anger, panic and a huge gamble taken on what humans might have done had they got hold of an organism called c’naatat.

  Viewed cold, it seemed a very slim risk.

  What have I done?

  It gave her an unpleasant feeling in her mouth, the sensation that the sides of her palate just above her teeth were closing together like Scylla and Charybdis. She wasn’t sure if it was adrenaline or nausea.

  Eddie was now interviewing Aras.

  “Who do you see as the greater threat now—isenj or human?”

  “The isenj managed to destroy almost the entire bezeri population. Humans—gethes—finished the job, as you would say. I have no great love for either species.”

  “Do you feel the alliance between the two has increased tension here on Wess’ej?”

  “Of course it has. The isenj are native to this system, but you’re not, and you have no right to be here. As long as you have a base within striking distance of us, we will not rest easy. We have seen what a handful of you can do.”

  “And your people have a reputation for all-encompassing military solutions.”

  “If you’re referring to the cleansing of Bezer’ej, yes, we act decisively.”

  It was extraordinary. There was no mention of Shan. There was no mention of c’naatat. Eddie had skirted neatly, round it but the question hung there: why bomb the bloody place? Lindsay wondered what game he was playing. Maybe his bosses had warned him off. She was angry. It named her and it named Rayat and made them both look like war criminals.

  “It wasn’t like that at all,” she said angrily at the screen. “Eddie, you bastard. Tell them why I did it.”

  “Yeah, I’d love to know,” muttered the engineer.