Matriarch

  Nevyan was ignoring the problem as long as it wasn’t in F’nar’s backyard. Shan couldn’t stop herself. “Whoa there, you wanted the human threat contained. You wanted balance for the destruction on Bezer’ej. That’s interference.”

  “But proportionate. The balancing of those responsible.”

  “Those responsible will all be dead or senile by the time we get there. Working by your rules of guilt, the stupid bastards who equipped Actaeon with cobalt and neutron ordnance aren’t even responsible. That leaves Rayat, Lin and one spook minder back at base who authorized Rayat to deploy nukes, and anyone who fails to use their authority to bring the guilty to justice. So you go twenty-five light-years to sort out fewer than perhaps twenty people?”

  Nevyan’s pupils were a perfect black poppy on a gold field. She was utterly still. “We?”

  “Figure of speech.” Yes, it was. Wasn’t it? Ussissi trotted past them on the terrace, making their way back to the settlement just outside F’nar. Shan waited for them to be out of earshot; it wouldn’t do for them to see her arguing with the senior matriarch of F’nar.

  “Generalization. Wess’har. That’s what I mean by we. Here’s what I see. We fucked a chunk of Bezer’ej and the bezeri with it. C’naatat is something humans will always want, no matter how hard it is to get at, and if we got here once, we’ll get here twice sooner or later. Add the fact that we’ve screwed our own planet, and that some people back home want radical intervention, then I think the Eqbas have made the right call.”

  “You’re wess’har. You live Targassat’s philosophy.”

  “Eqbas are wess’har too.”

  “If they don’t act as we do, then regardless of their genes, they are not us.”

  It was ironic that the wess’har view of identity seemed so liberal—that you were what you did, nothing more—and yet was so beset by orthodoxy. Shan reminded herself that she had to choose which mindset to think in at any given moment, wess’har or human, because the two didn’t mix. They never would.

  “Nev, let’s just say that they have a view of right and wrong, and they live it,” she said. “What’s the point of believing something if you don’t act on it? You do.”

  “Intervention for the sake of it is not justified.”

  “You summoned them.”

  “And the isenj needed only to be confined.”

  “Ual invited them in just like you did. What are you doing, imposing your definition of appropriate response? What did your ancestors do when they realized the bezeri were asking for help to kick out the isenj? You responded. With force. You defended Bezer’ej for five centuries—with force. You’re not native to this system, so how does walking into someone else’s system with a new rule book fit Targassat’s teaching? Where’s the line?”

  “I see a line, though, and I draw it.”

  “Just tell me where your line is, then.”

  “Intervening in a world where there are no people being exploited.” When wess’har said people, they meant any species, all species; there was no distinction for them between man and animal, intelligent or otherwise. Shan had never been sure what the opposite might be of intelligent life. “The isenj only cause themselves problems—except when they stray off their world.”

  Shan felt a but forming. “I don’t imagine the aquatic life that’s still alive on Umeh would agree with you.”

  “I agree that the line’s often hard to see.”

  “Here’s my problem with it. There was diversity on Umeh once. They wiped it out. So, according to this logic, all you have to do is knock off anything alive that’s likely to call for help, and the Targassat statute of limitations kicks in—bang, you’re only hurting your own kind now, so we leave you to it.”

  “I never said this was easy or absolute. Only that I feel uncomfortable with the way the Eqbas do things, and that I wouldn’t do them.”

  “You still haven’t said what you don’t want me to do if we’re to remain friends.”

  “This isn’t an ultimatum.”

  “Just tell me. I’ve never known a wess’har afraid to speak their mind.”

  “I fear for the erosion of this society’s founding principles, and that this will escalate. I don’t want to see a friend become an instrument of that.”

  Nevyan had a point about culture shock. The wess’har life here was quite specifically agrarian, and in a contrived way: it was a blend of high technology—still way beyond humankind’s for all its antiquity—and deliberate simplicity. They could have used machines to plant, tend and harvest crops, and they could have had elaborate cities and roads and factories, but they opted for manual labor, minimal facilities and sinking everything they could below ground level. It wasn’t real. She’d once thought it was like Marie Antoinette’s shepherdess act, but that the wess’har really did rely on their agriculture to survive. Shan had never seen any automation beyond the nanite-maintained fighter craft and the underground transport system. If she hadn’t seen that and the ITX comms links, she’d have thought this was a pre-industrial civilization. She hadn’t even seen a doctor or a hospital or a street-cleaning team.

  “I’m not leaving,” Shan said. “So I’m not going to be invading anyone and getting them to clean up their act the hard way. Does that reassure you?”

  Nevyan smelled perilously close to the edge of confrontation but she stopped short. Shan detected the faintest hint of ripe mango, the jask pheromone of dominance, but it didn’t develop further, and she wondered what it would be like to face the full strength of it and be triggered into subservience. Am I wess’har enough to experience it? She was certainly wess’har enough to out-jask the matriarch Chayyas by accident, and that was why Nevyan was in this spot now.

  It’s my fault. I screwed the pecking order of the matriarchs by throwing my hormonal weight around. Accident or not, this is my doing.

  “I need your support, Shan, not your hostility.” Nevyan stepped back a few paces and her head-tilting indicated she was more bewildered than angry. “You know you have misgivings.”

  “Yeah, and I’m going to do what Targassat suggested and keep my bloody nose out of it.” What did she know about Targassat? Not a lot. Isolationist, minimum-impact lifestyle, big on personal responsibility. It was the definition of the last bit that gave her all the problems. “I just observed. Jesus Christ, what do you expect me to do? Talk Esganikan out of it? Out of what, exactly? Tell her to leave Umeh alone? Forget about Earth?”

  “As long as the isenj are confined to Umeh, they are no threat.”

  “As long as they have population pressures, they’ll want to colonize.” Shan turned to walk away, crushed to be losing something that she never thought she even needed—a friend. Where was the matriarchal consensus now? “And what about Earth? I was tasked with bringing the gene bank home. Forget that I was set up, forget that they never planned on me actually doing it—I did what I was tasked to do. Now I want Earth put back right. That’s one thing I can trust the Eqbas to do that my own species can’t.”

  “You could take control of this.”

  “I don’t want control.”

  “We made her cede before.”

  “Oh no, not that. No jask.”

  “Combined, neither of us has to take her position. It’s just persuasion.”

  “No. Sorry, Nev, but no. Look, I’ve got to get back home. We’ll talk later.”

  Shan walked away, not actually sure that she should go home yet. She was a seething mass of conflict. Rayat and Lindsay were loose on Bezer’ej, Vijissi had just come back from hell, Nevyan was locked in an all-too-human ideological struggle with the Eqbas, and all Shan wanted to do right then was lock the door and curl up with Aras and Ade. It was needy. She couldn’t go home needy. She had responsibilities. She had to get a grip before she opened that door.

  Shapakti might be able to sort Vijissi. I’ll ask him. I’ll take a tissue sample. He can have a go at removing c’naatat, and then the poor little sod can—

  A distant howl
of pain stopped her and raised the hairs on her nape. F’nar was a natural amphitheater honeycombed with passages; sound was carried and magnified. The sound was pure animal, a wailing, inarticulate scream of distress.

  Vijissi had regained consciousness.

  She turned on her heel and broke into a fast walk, the standoff with Nevyan forgotten. The two of them pushed through the ussissi at the doorway. Under stress, ussissi turned into one single chittering, anxious animal, mirroring each other’s movements, teeth bared, and Shan found herself instantly wary of them. But they kept well back from Vijissi. The warning about infection had been heeded.

  Why did every bastard have the sense to avoid c’naatat except humans?

  Vijissi’s eyes were open and a thin trail of foam emerged from the corner of his mouth. Shan leaned over him, ready to pull back. Shit, I bit Ade’s hand when I was coming around, didn’t I? The terrified howl had been replaced by rapid, panicky breathing punctuated by little whimpers.

  “It’s me,” she whispered. “Vijissi, it’s Shan. Can you hear me?”

  He creaked. She could describe it no other way. He turned his head towards her and the dry ak-ak-ak sound from his mouth was like cane bending and breaking. He was shaking with the effort.

  Jesus, I looked like that. Less than a corpse.

  He was in this state because he wouldn’t abandon her, and she remembered—as she remembered most days—that she hadn’t helped a gorilla desperately in need of her aid. She had no excuse now that she didn’t understand what was required. Vijissi needed her, and there was no walking away from this.

  Put it right.

  Shan fought down her revulsion and did something she had rarely done to anyone in her entire life. She folded Vijissi in her arms and cuddled him like a frightened child. Nobody else here dared: and nobody else in creation had experienced what he had. Only her.

  “We’ll get you through this,” she said. His finely pleated skin looked like short fur and felt like corduroy stretched over a frame so frail that she almost lifted him without meaning to. “I’ll get you through it.”

  Stupid little sod: he should have let her go, should have let her step out that airlock alone, should have—

  But he hadn’t, and she would deal with it, because it was the right thing to do.

  Umeh: Northern Assembly airspace

  “What you watch?”

  Hayin wasn’t quite the linguist his commander was, and Eddie wondered if he could trade language lessons for future favors. A ship’s comms officer was a handy pal to have for a man who always needed an ITX link to Earth.

  Eddie gestured at the transparent section in the bulkhead where it joined the deck. A haze of smoke was visible in the distance across the Maritime Fringe’s border. “Funny how all wars look the same.”

  “Why funny?”

  “Another word for odd. Not amusing.” No bloody laughs here, that was for sure: he had the same sense of predatory voyeurism as when he’d watched wars from hotels across borders on Earth. There was something disorienting about sipping a beer while artillery flashed and boomed a few miles away. The only thing missing was the beer and the genuine danger. “What’s happening?”

  “Isenj fight overnight. Many die on both sides. You want see better?” Hayin tapped the bulkhead with his spidery fingertips as if he was drumming idly on a table. The bulkhead thinned to transparency level with Eddie’s eyes. “See? This creates visible field.”

  It was a very good view of the horizon. The sky, amber with smog, faded into gold as Nir set. Tall buildings, packed like pine forests, created a silhouette of spikes and domes and asymmetric roofs. Hayin tapped again and the image magnified times ten.

  “Amazing,” said Eddie, meaning the optics.

  “They become mad,” said Hayin. “Calm to cope with crowding, but any trouble—then they tip.” He made a gesture with his fingers, splaying them like an opening flower. Eddie took it as a mime of an explosion: it was the equivalent of human finger-snapping. “They are unused to fight, too.”

  And you are too, mate. The Eqbas hadn’t taken a casualty yet and Eddie got the impression they never would. Vast superiority of that kind cushioned you against the reality of destruction. Asymmetric force didn’t even come close.

  “How do you feel when you see death on that scale?” How-do-you-feel questions were professional anathema, but there was no other way to phrase it for Hayin that wouldn’t be a leading question. Eddie wanted to understand him, not get a good quote out of him. “What do you think when you see isenj dying?”

  Hayin did the rapid head-tilting of a wess’har contemplating a fascinating object. “I regret they get like this. I regret they not stop breeding sooner. Sad, but life is sad. All worlds, all die.”

  “Sorry?” Jesus, did they wipe out populations? Try plain English. “You mean you kill everyone?”

  “No. Life ends. Life ends for all, one day.” His almost-flat brown face—not at all like the long-muzzled local wess’har—seemed to relax into a humanly satisfied expression. “Even c’naatat. They end too, yes?”

  He was a laugh a minute, this one, just like Shan. “They can be killed. But it’s not easy.”

  “Useful,” said Hayin. “There new ones now. Maybe too many.”

  “Shan’s no risk, mate, believe me. You must know that by now. Nor Ade.”

  “Not Ade.” Hayin froze and looked baffled for a moment. Maybe the syntax was too complex for him. But when they froze, something had caught them off guard. Eddie waited for him to carry on, but he simply went back to his station without another word.

  Ah well. You must sound bloody strange to him too.

  Eddie wandered down the length of the ship, trying to orient himself the same way as he had on board Actaeon. It was hard. The bulkheads were filled with displays he couldn’t read, shifting panels of colored light that sometimes seemed set in the material of the hull and sometimes floated above the surface. The lack of solidity disoriented him. Warships were supposed to be gray and functional and full of straight lines, not a cross between a hall of mirrors and a nightclub.

  That was how it felt. He had the analogy nailed down now. A fluid, shifting illusion, and he was probably missing a lot of the detail because his eyes were just the regular human trichromat kind.

  Eddie took his bearings as best he could; there was no guarantee that the features he memorized would still be there on the way back. The Eqbas ability to manipulate matter and energy was beyond his comprehension. Any ship that could melt and reform into separate vessels was the product of a wholly different mind.

  He could now hear Aitassi so he followed the sound. She spoke eqbas’u complete with the overtone that he’d tried to reproduce for so long: higher pitched than the Eqbas around her, but an equally complex descant to her own voice. Was there a separate ussissi language? He’d only heard them speak the language of the species they worked alongside, and they seemed to absorb that effortlessly. His original view of them as smart, co-evolved companion animals like dogs had vanished.

  He wasn’t sure what an animal was any longer. If push came to shove, he wasn’t even sure that he could define a plant, either.

  Esganikan knelt on the deck of her cabin surrounded by translucent hand-sized slabs of material, and Aitassi was peering at one of them as if mesmerized by the display of green lights. When Eddie leaned into the open hatchway a little—it still surprised him when he felt the hard, solid, warm material of the frame—he could see that some of the slabs actually held images of maps and charts. He assumed they were of Umeh.

  “Commander,” said Eddie. “I was wondering if you could spare some time to talk to me.”

  Esganikan bobbed her plume. “Now?”

  Aitassi’s matte black stare tracked him. The charming image of the almost-meerkat gave way to the reality of an aggressive pack animal with disconcertingly dead eyes. Somehow the eyes bothered him more now than the array of close-packed teeth.

  “Whenever’s convenient for you.”


  “Now.”

  She didn’t seem to be one for making appointments. Everything was now for her.

  Threat is now.

  That was one of their phrases; it made more sense the more time he spent with them. Suddenly it struck him that he knew more about aliens than any human alive except Shan and maybe Ade, and that was quite something for a man with a degree in anthropology. It would have been a wonderful thing to ram down Graham Wiley’s throat, but the snobbish bastard was almost certainly dead now. He felt like digging him up to make the point.

  See, you tosser, I did it. It was worth the one-way ticket after all. Shove that up your syndicated arse.

  “Okay,” said Eddie. He just wanted to talk, not record. He made a point of taking out the bee cam and placing it back in his pocket but Esganikan seemed never to care whether she was being recorded or not. “Is your approach to dealing with the Maritime Fringe indicative of your strategy for Earth?”

  “Not in all respects,” said Esganikan.

  Phew. “So how does it differ?”

  “Earth still has a mixed ecology. It also has humans who actively work to maintain environmental balance. We will be much more selective if we need to obtain cooperation.”

  “What do you mean by selective? Bioweapons?”

  “Not necessarily. The Northern Assembly wants us to give them bioweapons to target their enemies. If we use a pathogen that specific, it will not take account of an individual isenj’s state of mind. But I see no isenj that are militant greens, as you call them.”

  Eddie should have been used to this by now. But old taboos died hard. “We have long-standing bans on the use of biological weapons on Earth for moral reasons.”

  Esganikan looked fascinated; Eddie could tell by the slow sideways tilt of her head. It was always a bad idea to use the word moral in any cross-cultural conversation, let alone one with a real alien, and he’d been brought up short by ussissi and wess’har about moral relativity too many times. Just when humans thought they had adopted moral absolutes, the bloody wess’har pulled the rug out from under them. Eddie could already feel it moving now.