Matriarch

  It almost stopped him in his tracks, or it would have done if isenj hadn’t started crushing into the back of his legs. Shit. He tried to step clear and get to the cleared space in the road, but he lost his balance. Hands grabbed his jacket and he was jerked off his feet and into the car so hard that his shins scraped along the running board and he swore loudly.

  “Daft sod,” said Ade, and hauled him into a sitting position. “What are you doing off-camp without an escort?”

  Eddie rubbed his leg ruefully. Shan and a masked Serrimissani stared down at him, somehow with matched expressions of disapproval despite the huge species gulf. It was the narrowed eyes that did it: two stroppy women.

  “I can handle it, Ade.”

  “Not on my watch.”

  “I’ve been an embed before. I know the drill.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve scraped people into body bags before.” Ade’s expression was more intense than angry. Eddie noted that he was wearing gloves. “I don’t want anything happening to you, mate. I haven’t got a clue who regards us as targets and who doesn’t, and neither have you.”

  Yes, they were mates; Eddie, Ade and Aras. They’d shared a house after Shan’s apparent death. They were his friends, the last left alive in the universe. And he hadn’t worried much about catching c’naatat. Funny, that. Every time he shaved with a simple razor told him he was still mortal.

  “Sorry.” Eddie felt stupid. “You didn’t come out just to find me, did you?”

  “We’re seeing the ministers, remember?” said Shan. “Esganikan’s making her own way there.”

  Eddie felt suitably chastened and turned to Serrimissani. An isenj ground car wasn’t designed for humans, although the ussissi seemed happy with their saddle-like seats. “And what’s your interest in this, doll?”

  “To report back to Nevyan.” Serrimissani never showed signs of a thaw but he counted her as a friend too. The females tended to be aloof. “To decide if F’nar should be involved in restoring Umeh, as it affects the security of a wess’har protectorate.”

  Eddie wondered if F’nar had minded bearing the burden of looking after Bezer’ej. He hadn’t yet worked out how one city took on interplanetary responsibilities. There was plenty about the mutual aid and communality of wess’har society that was still invisible to him.

  But parts of Jejeno were familiar country.

  The ground car stopped outside the ministerial building where he had first had coffee—for want of a better word—with Ual. Inside, the pale aquamarine stone walls and echoing floors were both familiar and sad.

  Ping.

  A quill with its decorative corundum bead had fallen to the floor.

  Ping.

  He heard it as if it were happening now. Ual had handed it to him, thinking he wanted the sapphire bead, but it was the isenj quill that was the prize—the source of DNA to help the wess’har create an isenj-targeted pathogen to stop them from ever settling on Bezer’ej again.

  You slimeball, Michallat.

  Ual had known and still forgave him. The minister said it saved him from being forced to make a dangerous decision, but Eddie didn’t feel any better about it.

  Rit appeared in the doorway of the adjoining chamber with Ralassi at her side, far too like her dead husband for Eddie’s comfort.

  “The cabinet is waiting,” said Ralassi, and for once it didn’t sound as if he was interpreting for Rit.

  There were eight isenj in the adjoining chamber, some with beaded quills and some without. They’d settled on the floor rather than on the dais-like seats Eddie had expected to see, and Esganikan sat looking a little uncomfortable on a slab of black stone. Like all wess’har, Eqbas preferred kneeling and sitting back on their heels.

  “You may record the meeting,” said Ralassi.

  Eddie sat cross-legged on the floor against the nearest wall, feeling like a kid in a school gymnasium. Shan and Ade sat down without hesitation, arms clasped around knees. It made them look oddly innocent.

  “I am Par Shomen Eit,” said the isenj in the center of the group. He spoke English. In fact, he spoke English just as Ual had done, sucking air through a gap and somehow articulating sound like a laryngectomy patient. It was painful to listen to, but the words were intelligible. “My responsibility is infrastructure and supplies. Par Nir Bedoi governs home affairs, and Par Paral Rit deals with off-worlders.”

  Only in a crowded, resource-limited world like Umeh would a utilities minister have the whip hand. The Northern Assembly had no head of state, just a cabinet committee dominated by Eit.

  “The Maritime Fringe has breached our airspace to fire upon you,” said Eit. “And now that you have retaliated by attacking Buyg, they hold us responsible for harboring you and so have formally declared war on us.”

  Esganikan studied him, head cocked like a baffled dog. “And what is your response?”

  “We moved troops down to our southern border and attacked their defense installations overnight.”

  Whoa, thought Eddie. I hope that’s bloody audible on the bee cam. Isenj had no news media. How the hell was he expected to find out about these things? It was like covering the battle of Trafalgar by standing at Greenwich and waiting for someone to row ashore weeks later with a dispatch.

  “This will not affect our timetable,” said Esganikan. “But it might hasten the process of population reduction.”

  Shit.

  Ralassi listened intently to Rit. “The minister asks whether that is ours or theirs.”

  “In the end, it makes no difference.” Diplomacy wasn’t exactly Esganikan’s strong suit. She said exactly what she thought, like all wess’har. “But we would prefer this planet to be populated by the responsible and the environmentally frugal. So those isenj who cooperate will receive our help.”

  Eddie found he was clenching his hands tightly into white-knuckled fists, utterly embarrassed. Shan didn’t show any reaction.

  “Minister Rit asks if that extends to helping us defend the border. Land has always been an issue between the Northern Assembly and the Maritime Fringe, and they seek every opportunity to encroach, although never by violent means before now.”

  “Defense is very resource-intensive,” said Esganikan.

  “We need your help.” Ralassi had that disembodied tone of all interpreters. There was no “we” about it for her. “What are your plans?”

  “It seems clear that our original plan to limit the population by mass contraceptive measures has been overtaken by events.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Eit.

  “You have a war. We cannot restore your planet while fighting. So you must bring the war to an end.” She took something from the folds of her green and gray tunic, a hand-sized block that looked like a bar of transparent soap. Lights flickered within it. “There are no species other than isenj living in their territory, am I correct?”

  “None, except the food crops they grow.”

  “Do you feel your forces could subdue the Maritime Fringe?”

  “If we did, we would have done so already. We require military support from you.”

  Esganikan paused and did the head-tilting ritual that could have been anything from curiosity to suspicion. She was studying Eit. “I will not commit ground troops here. Aerial bombardment, perhaps.”

  “I was thinking of weapons that are unique to the wess’har. Targeted bioweapons.”

  Sometimes Eddie had the sense of being present at pivotal moments; sometimes he thought that he might look back on them and identify them as such, not knowing them for what they were at the time. It was a journalist’s privilege. And sometimes he saw them anyway, and was unsettled by them. He glanced at Shan, but she was watching the exchange with only the occasional blink, as if concentrating on every syllable. She wasn’t used to hearing isenj articulating sound like that: he was. But Ade looked as if he had no trouble understanding, because his jaw muscles twitched. He knew what was coming. On the level playing field of the unknown, Ade’s intelligence was sud
denly visible.

  “Drastic,” said Esganikan mildly.

  “No more drastic than targeted contraception. And you can do this, can you not? If you can tailor something to a specific genome for those purposes, then the same must apply to bioweapons.”

  “The pathogen would need containment within your borders, or it would drift into the Maritime Fringe’s legitimate territory.”

  “I did not mean it as a deterrent.” Eit had definitely shifted from “we” to “I” even if the Northern Assembly had no individual head of state. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue in an unfamiliar language. “I mean as a weapon. To be used across their border.”

  “You plan to annihilate your enemies in their homes, yes?”

  “Before they annihilate us.”

  “Annihilation will take some time if they continue to fight street by street.”

  Esganikan waited, silent. Rit said nothing in response to Ralassi’s interpretation.

  “The Maritime Fringe believes the Jejeno government is risking isenj sovereignty and has given in to wess’har aggression,” Eit said at last. “It has pledged to attack Wess’ej, reclaim Asht, and end wess’har dominance once and for all.”

  “Is a nation capable of that if it struggles to deal with its own neighbor?”

  “Our own citizens are divided over your presence here. If this government fell, and a less sympathetic one took our place, then they would probably ally with the Fringe and the rest of the nations and make a more concerted attempt at reclaiming Asht than they did nearly two years ago. And we cannot defend Umeh Station.”

  So, save us, or the wicked enemy will attack you next. Eddie was unpleasantly impressed by Eit’s maneuvering, but he couldn’t see any wess’har responding to blackmail or scare tactics. Eit seemed to think that Esganikan cared what happened to the humans here: the legendary isenj memory had let him down badly, then. Esganikan wasn’t wired to respond to manipulation and she was immune to pleading. Eddie watched the exchange and had to keep reminding himself that he was watching a cabinet minister openly bidding for a genocidal weapon without the slightest hint of embarrassment.

  Esganikan obliged and lived up to Eddie’s wess’har stereotype.

  “If any isenj attack us, we will retaliate. And they will all die.” That fluting tone always sounded reasonable, and this time it was a great sound-bite. “If isenj manage to land on Bezer’ej, they will certainly die, because of the pathogen seeded across the planet for that specific deterrent purpose. They are no threat to us.”

  Eddie tried to reconcile the reluctance to fight on the ground with the confidence he’d just heard. But Eit didn’t look like he was giving up yet.

  “We asked you to help us. We invited you here.”

  “We agreed to help you restore your ecology. We did not agree to fight for your territorial ambitions, or anybody else’s. We will, however, pacify any who attack us.”

  “How do you expect any nation to voluntarily reduce its population now? The Maritime Fringe has focused other governments on your presence as the major threat facing Umeh.”

  “Then reduction can only take place by force.”

  “We invited you, and so we are your allies, but we might not win a conventional war.” Eit paused for effect. Ah. He picked that up from Ual. Eddie desperately missed the dead minister’s benign influence right then. “Would allies not make your task easier? I believe wess’har care only about outcomes, not intention or motive.”

  “If we did agree to giving you bioweapons, we would need to assess which genome variations we could exploit. And this takes time—in which you may yet be invaded. In the meantime, I would like to speak to the Maritime Fringe leadership.”

  “We still have diplomatic channels,” said Eit. “What do you plan to say to the Fringe?”

  “That if any isenj in that territory want to co-operate with the restoration of your planet, we will assist them.” Esganikan looked down at the transparent chunk in her hand as if she was receiving messages. “If they resist, they will become part of the consequences of restoration.”

  Eddie wondered how even a force the size of Esganikan’s—and a ship that could separate into different assets was a force in itself—could subdue a region. But he’d seen the whole planet’s infrastructure. It was precariously balanced wherever he looked. It was wholly managed, artificially managed, because the environment was shot to hell. Maybe a few strikes in the right places could do far more damage here than on a world with more room to maneuver and recover.

  Earth’s governments really needed to start taking notes. Eddie wasn’t even sure where to start.

  “I shall visit the Maritime Fringe,” said Esganikan. “Some things are better demonstrated that spoken.”

  Mar’an’cas island, Pajati coast, Wess’ej

  “So you came back,” said Deborah Garrod.

  She stood on the beach with the wind whipping through her hair, arms folded tight across her chest. Aras pulled the boat up onto the shingle and decided it was time he used his human influence to temper what he said.

  “I want to see if the colony can sustain itself through the winter.” Pajat was almost as far north as his birthplace, Iussan on the Baral Plain, a far less clement place than F’nar. “Perhaps you should reconsider the marines’ offer of help. They’re very capable.”

  Deborah beckoned him to follow her. The last time he’d visited, the colonists had greeted him with a hail of stones.

  “I think it might be too soon,” she said. “They’re still upset about Jonathan.”

  She didn’t mention Josh, so Aras decided not to mention a few hundred thousand dead bezeri. He regretted having to kill his lifelong friend. But he didn’t regret the execution, and that was a hard thing for a human to understand.

  The refugee camp on Mar’an’cas was a sea of tents made of patterned blue Pajati fabric. Composite crop tunnels and patches of tilled soil filled the space that wasn’t taken up by accommodation. The island was inhospitable, and even more so compared with the quality of life that the colonists had made for themselves in Constantine back on Bezer’ej.

  But I created the biobarrier and the terrestrial conditions within it that helped you grow crops. I labored with you and excavated the underground settlement where you lived. I even helped build your church. I made its stained-glass windows. You were my family.

  Deborah seemed less hostile towards him for executing her husband Josh than the rest of the colonists who had been forced to flee Constantine. Aras hoped she finally understood why he had to do it, but he suspected it had more to do with her acceptance of the thing they called God’s will. It seemed to be a self-comforting reaction to tragedy. If this god really intended the bezeri to die to cause the colonists to return to Earth with the gene bank, then Aras doubted the deity’s claim of omnipotence. Influencing humans to manage their own world properly and avoid the need for a twenty-five light-year exile seemed a more obvious course of action.

  Perhaps God—if God existed—enjoyed sadistic games.

  Ordinary wess’har didn’t grasp divinity. Aras very nearly did, but every time he thought he had the measure of forgiveness and atonement, humans would do something that set him back to square one again.

  The colonists treated him as one of them for five generations. Now he walked through the camp and none of them acknowledged him, although some stared.

  Perhaps they were staring at Deborah, widowed by him and yet walking at his side as if nothing had happened.

  She stopped in her tracks. She was a small woman, much shorter than Shan and much less strongly built. Eddie described her as “oriental”; humans came in many varied forms. She dropped her arms to her sides and turned to face a couple who were rinsing clothes in a bowl outside their tent, John and Catherine: Aras knew them well. He’d made glass pens for them.

  “If I’ve forgiven Aras,” said Deborah, “then so can you. Don’t forget what we are.” She was aware she had quite an audience: she turned around slowly, addressing
every colonist within hearing distance. There were no doors to shut out the sound in a camp of tents. “Do you hear me? Let’s put an end to this. Without Aras, none of us would be here today and we’d have lost the gene bank. We’re going home to restore Earth and that’s thanks to him.”

  Aras wasn’t embarrassed. It wasn’t a wess’har reaction. He wasn’t ashamed of what he’d done. He was simply bewildered. He had wanted to kill when he thought Shan was dead. He wanted revenge; no, he’d wanted balance. Pure revenge was a human emotion. But here was Deborah Garrod putting aside her human desire to see someone punished for her husband’s death, and looking at…outcomes. Like a wess’har.

  Deborah seemed to resent the silence. “I want you to find it in your heart to forgive him.” She looked around. “This is what our faith is about. This is where it gets hard. Going without a few comforts isn’t a test. Neither is being persecuted. Putting aside personal hatred—that’s the test.”

  Aras could smell the reaction of the colonists closest to him. Their scents of agitation and discomfort carried on the wind; what she had said had hit them hard. Aras wished he understood the complexities of faith. But he understood, at least, that Deborah Garrod had stepped without hesitation into the role that Josh had left as the colony’s leader, naturally and without effort.

  “You said you would never understand why I did it,” he said.

  “I think I understand why all these events had to happen, though,” said Deborah. “And that’s close enough for me to carry on with what I have to do.”

  Aras understood matriarchs. It was the natural order of things. Deborah seemed to think she had made her point to the colonists, and walked on. The Garrods’ tent was in the center of the camp and she was heading in that direction.

  “So some bezeri survived,” she said.

  “Fewer than sixty.”

  “We pray for them.”

  “Will my presence upset James?”

  Josh’s teenage son had been bitter and angry about his father’s execution. His little sister Rachel only seemed to understand that her father wasn’t coming back—in this life, anyway. Their faith in noncorporeal existence was somehow both literal and symbolic. It kept them happy and restrained in their actions, so Aras saw no harm in the delusion.