“Your proscription only involves your own kind. You have no ban on using biological agents against other species when they become too numerous.”
Here we go. “No. You know we don’t.”
“And you helped secure isenj tissue samples to create the pathogen now deployed on Bezer’ej.”
That was different. It was to save Bezer’ej from invasion. Eddie wanted to blurt that out, but he couldn’t. He had no idea now if it was any different: he was starting to lose all sense of what was right and wrong because he’d seen the wess’har point of view once too often.
“I know you’re only stating facts and not rebuking me,” said Eddie.
“No, that was a rebuke.” Her echo of a voice was level and unemotional. “Did I not make it clear? I think you have inconsistent standards.”
“Double standards.”
“When the task force reaches Earth, we want to talk to those with one standard.”
Yes, she really meant task force. She had all the military jargon down pat, she was a soldier. He looked into her eyes; she had the same petal-like lobes of pupils as Giyadas except the cruciform iris was more deep olive green than gold. There was something utterly focused about her that reminded him so much of Shan that it scared him. They’d both come to environmental enforcement from tough jobs; they were both ruthless and uncompromising. There seemed to be a universal type of hard-arsed female that transcended species, and for a moment Eddie thought that someone had got the phrase earth-mother horribly wrong. This wasn’t the embodiment of maternal fertility and the source of all life, but the implacable ruthlessness of nature itself, a mother who devoured her weakling young without pity.
Females scared the shit out of him. He was trapped in a universe of matriarchs at the mercy of warrior queens.
“Are you going to show the Australian PM what you’ve done here?” asked Eddie. “I’d like to see his reaction to civilian casualties.”
“You recorded it. It is no secret.”
Wess’har don’t bluff. They don’t understand it. They’re literal. But it was just the kind of saber-rattling any human government would indulge in, and journalists were a convenient vector for that message; both sides walked the line between using and being used.
“How much contact have you had with him so far?”
Esganikan rumbled faintly in her throat. “Not as much as I want.”
“Well, if you show him images of deep-fried isenj, he’s going to panic.”
“And what do humans do when they panic?”
“They overreact. They can get aggressive.” I’m trying to be helpful. “They don’t always give in.”
“You have observed what happens when isenj overreact.”
“You’re very confident about your ability to deal with Earth on a military level.”
“We know your current capabilities and unless your mindset and skills alter out of all recognition in the next thirty years, then you have neither the engineering capability, infrastructure or the political will to match our technology by then.”
Eddie maintained eye contact. Wess’ej wess’har respected that, so he assumed Eqbas did too. Like her cousins, Esganikan might simply have been speaking literally; or she might have been warning him. Either way, she had grasped English and a great deal of subtlety about human semantics in a frighteningly short time.
“Personal question, ma’am,” he said. “Are you typical for an Eqbas, or are you what we’d call a high-flier? Someone who has exceptional talent.”
She’d be immune to flattery. She’d take it as the literal question it was and give him a straight answer. He wanted to know if she was normal for an Eqbas, although he suspected he already knew the answer.
“I was selected for strategic skills,” she said. “I am suited to this work so it is my obligation to do it.”
“Ah.” Just like the F’nar matriarchs, power was thrust upon those with the skills. Ambition wasn’t one of their failings—not ambition for power, anyway. It was almost conscription. “You and Shan have a lot in common, then. She was drafted too. So, do you want my footage—my images—to show Canh Pho?”
“We recorded all our actions here. We keep records.”
Boy, that sounds familiar. “What next?”
“We decide if giving biological countermeasures to the Northern Assembly will achieve anything positive.”
Eddie wondered how he would report that. He was talking about an automatic war crimes rap.
What am I? If someone asked me what I was, who I’d defend, whose side I’m on now—what would I say?
He feared for Earth. No, he feared for Europe, and just the corner of it that was his home. The rest might as well have been another planet, like Umeh.
Maybe biological weapons would rekindle News Desk’s interest in the situation out here. Eddie thought of the rioting and conflict that followed his first revelation that an Eqbas task force was coming, and wondered if the latest development would do far worse.
He still wasn’t certain if that made it his fault. His mind went back to Hayin for some reason, and it occurred to him that it was the first time he’d seen any wess’har clam up on him.
Odd, that. Very odd.
F’nar
Ade opened his eyes and was briefly aware of smooth hair against his mouth. After a couple of moments he realized he was still curled up against Shan’s back, face buried in her hair, his knees slotted neatly into the angle of hers.
It was still wonderfully strange and new. He didn’t move, and listened half-awake for any sound of activity in the main room: there was no sign of Aras yet. Ade slipped his arm a little further round Shan’s waist and luxuriated in the fresh realization that he had a woman, a wife, an utterly reliable and loyal and unpredictably physical soul-mate.
Mine. She’s mine. Aras’s claim on her didn’t spoil the gentle filter of bliss one bit. She’s alive and she’s mine.
That was all that mattered. The world was going to rat shit again, but he was working hard on not letting it touch him.
He drew his head back slowly, far enough to look at her back. If he drew his fingers down…yes, it worked again: the bioluminescence pulsed zebra-stripes of rainbow light in waves radiating from her spine. And she smelled delicious. It was a scent of ripe tropical fruit, cedar and a pleasant musk. He wondered if the fruit component was what the matriarchs referred to as jask. It certainly made them scared of her. But it had a different effect on him, and it wasn’t fear, not at all.
Shan stirred.
“Dirty bugger,” she murmured, and pressed her backside further into his lap. “Sergeant Todger’s up early, I see.”
“Hi baby.” She didn’t sound disapproving. “You’ve got lights down your back now. Did you know that?”
“Jesus. That’s new.” She made a vague effort to look over her shoulder but settled back into the pillow with a grunt. “I can go to fancy dress parties as an airport runway.”
“It’s the same pattern as Aras’s stripes.”
“Sometimes I think c’naatat gets bored and starts messing around for a laugh.” She sighed as if she’d remembered something, and of course she had. “Oh God. Poor bloody Vijissi.”
“Yeah.”
Ade kept wondering exactly how c’naatat made its choices. It hadn’t synchronized their sleep patterns. “Does Aras always wander around all night?”
“You’ve shared this house with him for the best part of a year. Didn’t you notice before?”
“Not really.” Ade slipped his hand over hers and checked she was still wearing the ring. “I’m usually out like a light the second I hit the pillow.”
“Wess’har don’t sleep like we do. They keep taking naps. Wakes me up every time.”
“I understand their sleeping arrangements a lot better now.”
“Yeah, the bedroom furniture business wouldn’t make much money here. Look, about Vijissi—”
“How far back does this memory thing go?”
“Jesus, Ad
e, you’ve really picked up that wess’har habit of jumping from subject to subject.”
“Sorry. I’ve got your memories and some of Aras’s. Shouldn’t I be getting isenj ones? And what about the other hosts before that?”
“You want to think like an isenj?”
“Why not?” He was curious. “Do you?”
“I don’t know. When I was coming round from the coma, I had some weird flashes of memory that I couldn’t even identify by species.” She twisted her head to look at him and studied his face as if she hadn’t seen him before. “I don’t get it much now.”
“Your memories are pretty repetitive.”
“Thanks, Ade. I’m a disturbed girl.”
Ade often saw the sheet of liquid flame cascading down a riot shield right in front of his eyes; that, and the gorilla making the hand signals, and the peeling blue door she kicked open, and a persistent sense of desperately trying to do something. He didn’t know what yet. “You had a shitty job.”
“We all did.”
“I loved being in the Corps. Whatever happened, I still loved it.”
“It upset you getting kicked out.”
“’Course it did.” Being a Royal Marine had been his life, his only family and solace since he was sixteen years old. “Not fair on the detachment. I want the verdict quashed, Boss.”
“I know, sweetheart. I hope Esganikan can get some diplomatic pressure applied. It was supposed to appease the wess’har but they don’t need appeasing now. Not by the detachment, anyway.”
“Thanks.” This was one of the reasons he adored her. She knew what comradeship and honor meant in ways that a regular civvie didn’t. She’d been in uniform and taken lives and been shot, and when the past crowded in on him, she was one of the handful of people he knew who understood what that really meant and what it did to you. “Nobody will even remember who we were, but I want the history books to get it right.”
“You’re a sweet naive boy, Ade Bennett. Go and talk to Eddie about truth sometime.”
He rested his forehead against the nape of her neck and basked in the comfort for a while.
“How do you think Vijissi’s going to cope, then?”
“Dunno. It’s hard at first. Christ, I remember going off on one when I found Aras had infected me without asking.” She meshed her fingers with his and squeezed slightly. “I never asked how you coped, did I?”
“It was the least of my problems at the time.”
“You take everything in your stride, don’t you?”
“Paid to. Well, was, anyway.”
“Maybe you can help Vijissi more than I can. Or Aras. He had a lot of practice at being alone too.” She paused. “Ade, how did I get from being EnHaz and hating anything to do with gene mangling and bastard scientists to being okay with bioweapons?”
“Circumstances.”
“Means justifying ends?”
“Life’s not as clear-cut as we think, is it?”
“I always thought I had a solid sense of right and wrong.”
“You went native with eco-terrorists you should have busted. I reckon that shows an appreciation of gray areas.”
“You know I carried on using them in EnHaz, don’t you? Handy for unofficial enforcement when I couldn’t get charges to stick on a company. Come home to a nice roaring fire. That kind of stuff.”
“You were a bad girl, weren’t you?” He knew just how bad sometimes. It was disturbing to be briefly in the head of someone who was doing the punching when your own memories were about being beaten. “But don’t blame yourself about Vijissi.”
“Well, that makes six c’naatat now.”
“Shit. Clocking up the numbers, aren’t we?”
“It’s okay. I’m not going to start another fight.”
Ade bit back an apology. That just wound her up: his efforts were better spent on making sure she had nothing to worry about on Bezer’ej. He molded himself around her again and buried his face in her hair.
“So…do you mind if we have a proper Christmas?”
“You don’t need my permission.”
“But Pagans don’t observe it.”
“I’m a very lapsed Pagan and I like eating to excess as much as anyone.”
“Y’know, I always dreaded Christmas. Dad was a lot worse when he was drunk. They say suicide rates and domestic violence are worse at Christmas because families get cooped up together. Bloody true in our house. Fucking awful.”
“Then we’ll try and have a good one.”
As a boy, Ade had always planned his escape just to stay sane. When he was old enough to leave home, he’d join the Marines and get as far from his dad as he could. He’d meet a nice girl, and they’d have kids who’d never have to lie about how they got the burn marks on their hands, or spend the night sleeping in the bus station because they were too scared to go home.
He’d met the girls; but they never stayed. And he never had the kids to give the childhood he’d never had. But he’d finally found his nice girl, even if she was very different from his boyhood fantasies, and it didn’t matter one bit that there was now absolutely nothing normal about his life or hers.
He had a wife and he had a brother. And that was enough for any man.
9
Our future lies with the Eqbas. If we cooperate with them, we become the dominant force on Umeh. We don’t have the military capability to achieve that ourselves. What do we want? To slide inexorably towards the collapse of the infrastructure of the whole planet, with no guarantee that the Northern Assembly will survive the chaos that follows, or to embrace change and become the new world order?
MINISTER PAR NIR BEDOI
Bezer’ej: near Ouzhari
Sand castles. They’re sand castles.
It was Rayat’s first thought when he saw the bezeri settlement. The buildings were cones, columns and domes, clustered together like an asymmetric jelly mold. They looked as if a single wave would sweep them away. Colored stones were set into grooves and depressions in the walls.
And the settlement was deserted.
He followed the faint, pulsing green light in Saib’s mantle. There was no sound coming from the signal lamp and he took their green light to be wordless noise, as if the bezeri were humming to themselves. But it might just have been the equivalent of a heartbeat.
Rayat was starting to notice pattern in the light sequences. The intensity seemed to convey emphasis like volume in sound. Saib swam ahead of him in rhythmic, explosive bursts, propelled by a jet of water, his green light more noticeable as he slipped into shadow from filtered sunlight and back again. The bezeri appeared to be comfortable swimming at any depth, just like cephalopods on Earth, but it seemed they chose to live nearer the surface in the shallows around the landmasses.
Maybe they could have avoided the fallout from Ouzhari if they’d chosen to live deeper and further from the shoreline. But, like humans, they lived in places where it wasn’t always safe.
Lindsay swam parallel with Rayat, hair billowing just like it did in zero-g. He’d given up conversation with her for the time being. He felt feverish even in cold water. He was sure the sea around him would boil sooner or later.
I have to sleep tonight. And I have to eat.
Eating. He’d steeled himself to that. His instinct—somebody’s instinct, anyway—took over. He swam through fanlike white growths on the rocks and caught a ribbon of it between his fingers. If it was the one thing that c’naatat couldn’t handle, it was too bad. Maybe Lindsay would note that it killed him and identify it as a way of stopping the parasite from spreading if it ever did fall into the wrong hands. She wasn’t wholly incompetent: just impossibly subjective.
So whose hands are the wrong hands?
Rayat didn’t know if that was his own thought or that bitch Frankland’s. He broke off a piece of the white ribbon and chewed it. He was now an animal on the brink between survival and death, and it was wonderfully focusing in the way it shut down all his long-term planning. Can I eat t
his? It tasted metallic and salty.
His body said yes.
He snapped off more of the white growths and swam on to catch up with Saib and the other bezeri. He’d never been an animal before. There had been brief moments of pain and danger in his life when he’d glimpsed his primal self for a few seconds at a time, even minutes, but this felt indefinite and the way he might be forever if he didn’t keep his mind sharp.
They passed more molded mud villages. The groups of sandcastle buildings became a strip and then what could only be described as a city with buildings curved around rocks and slopes, some of them stacked one on top of the other. If you swam, you needed no horizontal roads. There was none of the decay in the water that he’d tasted near the map repository.
Rayat made his way towards Lindsay and gestured for the lamp. Her eyes had that flat, dead look that a barrier of water created but she showed no dissent and handed him the device.
“Saib?” He caught up with the patriarch and moved in front of him, treading water. “Saib, tell me about this place. What is it?”
A city we once lived in before the isenj came and killed us with their pollution.
“How long has it been abandoned?”
For generations. There were many millions of us once, spread across this part of the world.
Tens of thousands had died after the detonation of cobalt devices on Christopher Island. That gave Rayat a good idea of how fragile bezeri biochemistry was, and how long it took them to recover their population numbers from the last disaster. They hadn’t; they’d still been struggling back to strength after the isenj occupation when the bombs detonated. Five centuries, and that was all they could manage—a few hundred thousand. Now there were around fifty, the few of breeding age all from one family.
They were doomed to extinction. They had passed the point of recovery.
“When things are normal, how many young do you produce?” It was a brutally zoological way of putting it, and he hoped it didn’t come across as dismissive. “How fast do you breed?”