Crossing the Line

  “Is that how you see the human-isenj relationship developing?”

  “Mutual aid is a good basis for any bargain. You will benefit from improved communications. We’re open to ideas for improved food production and we want to learn about terraforming. You’ve now seen our most pressing problem for yourself, in every street.”

  Eddie hesitated before asking the next question, but it had to be asked. The bee-cam responded to his discreet hand signal for a close-up of Ual’s face. “Is population control not an option?”

  “It’s more complex than that. No two states can agree upon a common policy for fear of being overrun by their neighbor. There’s a psychological element to this, you see, as well as a biological one. The more overcrowded we became, the higher the death rate. The higher the death rate, the more fertile we become and the more reluctant people are to limit their families, in case their line should die out.”

  “Improved food production won’t solve that.”

  “Not long-term. But resettlement will. It will reduce the collective anxiety.”

  “You colonized your moon—Tasir Ve?”

  “Tasir Var.”

  “Did that work?”

  “Evidently not. We hope you’ll help us restore its ecology too.”

  “So what was behind the drive to settle on Bezer’ej?”

  “I think we’ve learned a great deal since we overexploited Tasir Var. The next world will be more carefully planned, more managed.”

  “You’ve got deep-space capability. Why not look further afield than this system and avoid conflict with the wess’har?”

  “We had deep-space capability, but it’s a resource-intensive project to maintain. We’re fortunate that you may soon be in a position to help us maintain our more remote instant communications relays because we can no longer reach them ourselves. Food and environmental cleansing are our priorities now. It’s another area where we might find mutual advantage in cooperation.”

  “Joint missions?”

  “You have a similar drive to expand. Why else would you all be here? And you think you’re eternal. It’s hard to imagine your whole species and history being trapped on a world that will eventually be destroyed by its own sun. No, Mr. Michallat, I do believe humans and isenj will be partners, and both will benefit.” Ual tapped a limb on the glassy surface of the low table between them, indicating the cup and the bowl. A little fragment of quill fell to his lap and he reached down to sweep it aside. Eddie wondered what happened when a bead-bearing quill broke off.

  Serrimissani stared at Ual, and Eddie saw the concept of disdain expressed as perfectly as any adept Indian kathkali dancer could ever mime. After an eloquent delay, she trotted forward to fill both vessels from their respective jugs. She did not look amused. He could see her little teeth glittering between slightly parted lips.

  “Let us drink up, Mr. Michallat. Will you be transmitting this interview soon?”

  Eddie nodded and drained his coffee, which was tepid by now. And it wasn’t wardroom quality. “As soon as I edit it.”

  “You’ll cut out parts? It was very short.”

  “Actually, I probably won’t omit any detail. I just have to package it with some attractive shots. Would you mind if I traveled a little further and recorded some different images?”

  “If you can find any,” Ual said.

  Eddie loved him instantly and totally for his candor. He would swap Ual for a human politician any day. On the way back to the shuttle, he replayed the footage on the smartpaper the Actaeon had given him and marked appropriate sequences. Ual was right. It all looked much the same to him. No wonder they called those shots wallpaper.

  “Ah well,” he said. He could only report what he saw.

  Serrimissani watched his fingers moving across the smart-paper. “Are you going to make a habit of this?”

  “I have to. It’s called a series.”

  “I think you have already recorded all you need to know.”

  “I do believe you’re right,” said Eddie. That was what worried him. “Look at it this way: I don’t see it as my job to interpret the isenj to Earth audiences, but there aren’t any other hacks around to tell a different side of the story, so that means I have to be doubly careful that I don’t just tell mine. I’ll be a window, nothing more, as far as I can be.”

  The ussissi gave him a look that might have been sympathy or pity: he only knew that it made him feel like a scorpion, a snack-size one.

  “A window should ask more open questions,” she said.

  Shan’s world was silent except for the numb ringing in her own ears.

  Faces—wess’har and ussissi—that were clustered in a circle above her jerked back and parted.

  For a few moments all she could see was their mouths opening and closing erratically. Her eardrums felt as if someone had shoved a rod through them. A few moments later the sound suddenly rushed back in.

  “Li sevadke!” said a reedy child-animal voice with its own echo. “Ur, jes’ha ur!”

  Shan struggled to sit up. She could see properly now: Vijissi, Chayyas, and a wess’har male she didn’t know, and they were giving her plenty of space. Chayyas was shaking her head occasionally, as if trying to dislodge something: the close-quarters discharge must have hurt her ears too.

  Shan tried to put her hands back behind her to prop herself up but fell back on one elbow. The back of her head hurt like hell. She reached around, expecting to feel an exit wound, sticky blood, gritty bone: but it was all in place.

  Chayyas had put a bullet in her. Shan just couldn’t quite work out where yet. That was the problem with custom-enhanced hollow-tip rounds: terrific stopping power, the very best she could get made. She just hadn’t planned on one stopping her.

  “Can you hear us?” Vijissi asked. “You hit your head when you fell back.”

  That explained a lot. Her left shoulder hurt too. She fumbled, feeling for wounds, and realized the shot had penetrated her upper chest. It had probably clipped her lung, judging by the taste of blood: she’d seen enough bodies in postmortem to work that out.

  But c’naatat was practiced at injuries. It had played this game before, when an isenj round had penetrated her skull and Aras had bled his hand into her open wound to repair her. This was just meat, nothing as complex as a brain injury. Easy peasy. The symbiont flaunted its skill. It was patching her up before their eyes.

  “I can hear you,” Shan said at last. She tried to stand up but thought better of it. Her audience rustled further away from her. Chayyas smelled scared, but she didn’t say anything. Shan turned her head with painful difficulty.

  It was a scene she’d seen many times before as a police officer. But it had always been someone else’s blood sprayed over a wall, never hers. She stared at the spatters: the matriarch and her diplomat stared too.

  So they were afraid of her blood.

  Vijissi edged round her, bobbing his head, apparently staring at her jacket as if he didn’t quite believe what was going on beneath it.

  “So it is true,” he said, then looked away. “I mean no offense. But it’s one thing to know this can happen and another to see it with your own eyes.”

  Shan scrambled onto all fours and her sense of balance kicked in. All she had now was a headache, a stiff neck, and a strange smell of dust in her nostrils. Her gun was on the table. She reached for it and shoved it back in her waistband. And her jacket was ruined; that pissed her off. She could repair herself, but she couldn’t get a new jacket out here.

  Chayyas kept her distance, shutter pupils snapping from open petals to slits. “An astonishing thing,” she said at last, very quiet, almost distracted. “Extraordinary.”

  “Yeah, terrific. It’s my party trick.” If Chayyas was testing the efficiency of her c’naatat, it was a bloody stupid way to do it. But it had shaken her, that was clear. Shan examined the singed hole in her jacket for a few moments then gave up. She stared at her hands: there were no flickering lights. “Had your fun now? Ca
n I go?”

  “I had to see.”

  “You’ve seen.” She gestured at the wall, suddenly more concerned whether the bioluminescence had stopped for good than the events of the last few minutes. “Are you going to clean this up, or do you expect me to do it?”

  Vijissi kept looking towards Chayyas as if he were expecting some action from her. Shan had a feeling there was something else going on, something she didn’t quite understand, and Chayyas seemed subdued. Maybe she’d never seen anyone’s body parts splattered across the furnishings. It did tend to spoil your day.

  Chayyas went to the door. A brief blast of double-song at painful volume made Shan’s ears ring again. Then there was the sound of many rapid footsteps fading down the passage, and Chayyas stalked back into the chamber. She could understand get the fuck out of here in any language. She also knew she had Chayyas’s reluctant but undivided attention.

  “I hope you understand your side of the deal,” Chayyas said. “Because we’ll hold you to it. You are wess’har now. You’ll help us fight if need be. You’ll do your duty as a matriarch. We expect a great deal from you, Shan Frankland—possibly more than you are capable of giving.”

  Chayyas had suddenly become very still, not just at rest as a relaxed human might be, but utterly immobile. Shan had seen Aras do that a few times when he had been taken aback or alarmed. It was a strange thing to see. It was the small detail that made them more alien.

  I can do it, Shan thought. I can bloody well do anything right now. The relief of being in one piece was flooding her with elation and confidence, and she was ashamed of that. It was weakness. She shouldn’t have been afraid. “I’ll take Aras if I may.” Take him where? She had no idea, but it felt like time to stalk out having won the argument.

  Vijissi tugged on her sleeve. “I think the phrase is ‘quit while you are ahead,’ ” he whispered, and pulled her sleeve meaningfully in the direction of the door.

  She followed Vijissi deeper into the maze of rooms that made up Chayyas’s residence, feeling as if she were walking a heaving deck, and wondering how she would recount the events to Aras. And her jacket—shit, how was she going to get that repaired? There were suddenly a lot of wess’har about, mostly males, but also some females. They stared at her. She thought the novelty of seeing her alien face might have worn thin by now.

  Vijissi peered round doors and jerked his head back, chittering to himself, until he found a room that appeared to suit his needs and he beckoned Shan in.

  It was empty. Three connecting doors led off deeper into Chayyas’s maze, one of them covered with a vine-patterned damask-like fabric in peacock and royal blues. Vijissi sat her down on a ledge cut into the wall and made a semblance of a stop gesture with both paws.

  Hands, she reminded herself. Not paws. Shan sniffed hard, trying to get rid of the rasping smell and dappled shape of dust. Scents now felt like textures and looked like colors, and colors had flavors and texture and sound. She had noticed a growing synesthesia over the past months; it didn’t appear to be a wess’har characteristic.

  “You wait here until I find Aras,” said Vijissi. “I would not be proud that you forced Chayyas to back down.” Shan couldn’t tell from his tone if he was being spiteful or simply helping her through the uncertain territory of wess’har politics. “You have made a very dangerous move.”

  “Oh, because she’ll have my arse some day?” She was back on familiar ground for a few moments. So someone new had her on their bugger-about list. So what? “She can come and have a go if she thinks she’s hard enough.”

  “I thought you might have understood what you were doing.”

  “I did. I was bargaining for Aras.”

  “We can smell it, you know. They can all smell it.” Vijissi sniffed in a rapid staccato like a little machine gun. Shan tried too, but the rasping dusty odor seemed to have temporarily numbed her newly acquired wess’har sense of smell. “That was very foolish indeed, but maybe you are more ambitious than we thought.”

  “What, for Chrissakes?”

  “You have deposed her. Chayyas has surrendered her authority.”

  4

  Wess’har politics and governance would leave a human politician speechless. Political office isn’t sought. It’s imposed on the most dominant and able females—without votes, without campaigns, without structure, and without parties. The ruling group of matriarchs that appears to evolve in each city state has the task of ensuring that the day-to-day decisions made by households—all run by females, who are outnumbered five to one by males—are reflected in the wider domains of international relations and major infrastructure projects. There is no economy or constitution as we understand them. Consensus appears to take place by osmosis. And woe betide the leader who seriously fails in her duty: she’s likely to be killed.

  EDDIE MICHALLAT, BBChan,

  From Our Extrasolar Correspondent

  “Look, I didn’t know. I had no bloody idea. Will you listen to me, for Chrissakes?”

  Shan had a habit of pacing around that now annoyed Mestin very much. Her rooms were small and the woman took up a lot of ground: she would have to learn to be still. Shan paused in front of Nevyan, fists on hips, shaking her head occasionally, no doubt astonished at her own foolish actions. Mestin decided she would make it a priority to find alternative accommodation for her. A few months ago she might have cuffed her. But this was now neither subordinate female nor gethes. This was a dominant matriarch, whatever her external appearance.

  “How many times do we have to tell you that what you intend is of no consequence?” said Mestin. “You’ve challenged Chayyas and she has ceded dominance. That’s all there is to know.”

  “Just because I faced her down over the grenade?”

  “It’s pheromonal. She can’t help her reaction.” Mestin was aware of Nevyan beside her: she was staring at Shan, utterly mesmerized. “You said yourself that you noticed your own scent when it happened.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” said Shan. “Just because I got stroppy with her? So what are you going to do when a human army shows up and gives you a frosty look? Surrender?”

  “They are wholly human and so we have no biochemistry in common. You, however, are not.”

  The reminder seemed to silence Shan. She dropped her arms to her sides and sat down on the bench that Nevyan had piled with dhren fabric to make it comfortable for her. “I take it an apology would be out of the question?”

  “The reaction has taken place. Chayyas has lost her hormonal dominance. Intended or not, you’re now senior matriarch in F’nar.”

  Shan held up both hands, palms out. The claws were gone, Mestin noted. C’naatat was even more bizarre than she had realized. “No,” Shan said. “Abso-bloody-lutely not. I’ll have a crack at most things, but not politics. And I don’t have the right to do it, let alone the training.”

  “Then you leave us in temporary disarray, and you have no right to do that either.”

  “Then give me a solution.”

  “Where’s your grenade?”

  “Aras took it off me for safekeeping. What about you? Don’t you want the job?”

  Shan still knew far less about wess’har than Mestin had imagined. She was still ascribing human motivation to them. “Nobody seeks seniority. It is a duty, not a prize.”

  “Okay, will you do it?”

  “If necessary.”

  “What do we do, then? Slug it out?”

  “You can simply ask me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”

  “You misunderstand our ways. You would have thought I was seeking an advantage.”

  “Very well, Mestin—please will you take over in place of Chayyas? There. Is that it?”

  Mestin cocked her head in deference and felt both relief that she had stopped an unpredictable alien from shaping F’nar’s future and dread that she had taken on a task she felt barely able to handle. Nevyan would smell that at once. She wondered if Shan had enough of a command of he
r rapidly changing hybrid senses to know that too.

  “I’ll announce the decision.” Mestin stood up and trilled at the top of her voices for Aras to come and join them. He loomed in the open doorway, far too big for a male and far too alien, Vijissi behind him. He had a little blue glass bowl of netun jay in one hand and an expectant scent; that was inevitable, she accepted. Whatever form he had taken, Aras was still enough of a wess’har male to find a strong and aggressive female completely irresistible.

  His eyes never left Shan.

  Neither did Nevyan’s. Mestin was beginning to feel invisible. She was also concerned that her daughter, who was hers to educate, was settling on a gethes as a role model.

  “Thanks,” said Shan, and took the netun jay from Aras. She smiled at him, all teeth, completely distracted for a brief moment while her gaze went from his hips up to his face. Then she seemed to realize she was doing it and looked away, her expression suddenly neutral. “You okay?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  Mestin interrupted. “You’ll still need to stay on Wess’ej for your own protection. And you have utility for us. You did agree to serve this world without reservation.”

  “Yeah, I did.” Shan bit cautiously into one of the cakes and then ate the rest of it in one mouthful. She was still glancing occasionally at Aras, and it was a very different eye movement from the one she used when she looked at Mestin. It didn’t bode well. “Am I under house arrest?”

  “I have no idea what that is, but you’re free to go where you please on the planet. Where you’ll live is another matter. I have empty rooms—”

  “I have rooms too,” said Aras.

  “Make what arrangements you wish.” Mestin didn’t know quite what c’naatat could do between species, but the warning had to be given. Shan was paying Aras too much attention. “But please don’t breed. I know it’s cruel to say that, but you both know the dangers.”