Matriarch

  “You really did put some time into this, Ade,” said Eddie. “Nice job, mate. Thanks.” He recovered his glass and checked its absence of contents. “Cheers. Merry Christmas.”

  Aras shook the drum and it rattled invitingly. “A slow process, but this is sweet potato sliced and roasted to a crisp as you suggested.”

  The marines turned to the box of crisps with military focus. You could never overestimate the morale-boosting power of familiar food—or its close approximation—a long way from home. It even distracted Shan for a moment, but the moment didn’t last. She thought of Lindsay and Rayat again and what Eddie might let slip.

  “Bloody brilliant,” said Becken. He dug into the crisps. “I’m so impressed that I’ll do the dishes.”

  Eddie didn’t raise the subject of Lindsay again that evening. Shan concentrated on behaving as if she was having a good time, which she wasn’t, because she didn’t know how to. But it mattered to Ade that she looked as if she was, because he needed a normal family Christmas for the first time in his life and she was determined to give it to him.

  Normal.

  It wasn’t the planet or the alien neighbors or even c’naatat now that were abnormal. It was being an isan, a matriarch, and having to find a new reason for being.

  What if I’m hanging on to the policing role here and worrying about Lin and Rayat because I don’t know how to do anything else? Am I creating crises to keep myself busy?

  They drank the beer and ate far too much. Ade was right: Barencoin was very funny with a few drinks inside him and the charades degenerated into the kind of vulgar mime session that felt just like being back at the police social club, all raucous laughter and barracking. Shan wondered how the marines coped with celibacy, or if she’d missed something and there were relationships within the detachment. She’d never seen the slightest sign of that. They couldn’t still be taking suppressants. Perhaps they might have been better off back at Umeh Station after all; they might have had a better social life.

  Ade got up to take his turn at charades and Aras slipped into the spot he’d vacated beside Shan on the sofa.

  “You’re fretting,” he whispered. “You mustn’t worry. Eddie won’t betray you and Bezer’ej is beyond the reach of humans.”

  “You’re a bloody telepath,” she said.

  “You have always been transparent, and I have far better hearing than you imagine.”

  She watched the game, hoping she wouldn’t have to get up and perform. Ade gestured, acting out a book and tapped three fingers against his arm. The detachment watched in silence, utterly focused despite a full tank of beer.

  “The Mahabharat,” said Barencoin, swilling his beer around the bottom of his glass.

  “Smart-arse,” said Ade. “Three syllables. Can’t you count, you dinlo?”

  “You’ve got a lot of mouth for a bloke with a neon dick.”

  The detachment roared with laughter, even Ade. Shan felt a pang of regret that Ade’s condition put a permanent barrier between him and his comrades; she felt she’d robbed him of something precious. Bonds in uniform could be closer than family. But at least they could still enjoy that brutal humor. She cringed at the thought of what Barencoin might say about her.

  And they didn’t know Lin and Rayat were still alive, either, or that Ade had infected them. She wondered what Barencoin would make of it.

  The beer and the eau de vie were soothing everyone who could be soothed by alcohol and for a few hours, in a warm and dimly lit room, reality was confined to another place. The laughter blurred into a restful white noise. She found herself wedged between Aras and Ade on the sofa, conscious of the difference in their body temperatures and sinking in a delicious haze of sandalwood-scented wess’har male musk, while Sue Webster demonstrated an extraordinary ability to mime the titles of pornographic vids. It made Shan laugh; she was suddenly aware that she didn’t laugh much, even now.

  See, you can do this. You can relax.

  But she couldn’t take part of her mind off considering what it might take to make a fragmentation device that operated under water. The Eqbas team would have to help her locate Lin, too. This needed planning.

  She was conscious of someone staring at her. She glanced up and Eddie gave her a sad smile. He seemed to be forcing it. Maybe some of his thoughts were where hers were.

  “Merry Christmas,” she said.

  “You too, doll,” said Eddie. He raised his glass halfheartedly. “Here’s to knowing where to draw the line.”

  If he’d know how hard she found it to find that line sometimes, he’d never have believed her. Shan savored the extraordinarily reassuring sensation of being settled between her jurej’ve, certain of their loyalty if nothing else. Yeah, that’s changed. I’m starting to trust them unconditionally. Either I’m getting sane or I’m going soft.

  There was a scrabbling outside the door. Chahal looked up. “Let the bloody dog in, someone,” he said, and they all laughed.

  Qureshi hauled herself to her feet accompanied by barracking and slid the catch on the door. Serrimissani shot into the room as if she’d been booted up the backside.

  “Hi, doll,” said Eddie. “Come in and play charades.”

  “When we have dealt with the matter in hand, then you can explain what that is.” Serrimissani could chop Eddie to size with a slit-eyed glare. They seemed to enjoy the double-act of flippancy met by disapproval. “Shan Chail, the Eqbas Vorhi attacked a combined isenj air force on the ground. Most vessels were destroyed. I think we can regard them as confined to Umeh for the time being.”

  “I expected that,” said Shan. “A bit preemptive, but it was going to happen sooner or later. Has this come from Esganikan?”

  “Yes. She’s returning to Bezer’ej.”

  “So what’s she doing about the bioweapons?”

  “She’s asked for a meeting with the Northern Assembly cabinet to discuss them.”

  “Boy, she’s getting all pissy and formal, isn’t she?” Out of the corner of her eye, Shan saw Ade hang his head for a second and straighten up again. “Okay, thank you.”

  Shan didn’t know how to ask a ussissi in for a drink and Serrimissani slipped off without a word. She closed the door and turned back to a room of grim-faced marines. Eddie was rubbing his forehead.

  Barencoin folded his arms and elbowed Ade. “The first person to say, ‘It’ll all be over by Christmas, Sarge’ gets my boot up their arse.”

  A nice, normal Christmas; maybe next year, maybe never. This one would have to do for now.

  Eqbas Vorhi ship 886-001-005-6: en route for Bezer’ej

  Eit was slow off the mark to respond to Esganikan’s request for a meeting. But she could wait.

  She went to her day cabin just off the bridge and knelt down for a few moments’ rest, taking advantage of the lull to watch the link to Surang set in the bulkhead.

  Being able to see her homeworld and snatch views of it from the global network of imagers gave her a sense of peace. Surang was basking in a summer day; Jipay was in darkness, the islands of its natural harbor picked out in pinpoints of colored light.

  Earth did this, too.

  She switched to the Earth ITX node and watched the output that Eddie’s organization generated. There were many channels, but they seemed irrelevant, and the one he called the Filthy Enemy—his employer’s rival—seemed to be the most absorbing even if it was repetitive. Humans fought wars; their leaders argued and were disgraced; and their climate punished them with ever fiercer storms and floods and droughts, the symptoms of a badly managed planet.

  That wasn’t news: it was predictable. It was fairly typical of the kinds of world the Eqbas visited. The bulletins were dominated by spectacular images of a ferocious tropical storm that was whipping whole trees out of the ground and sending them tumbling. It should have been a terrible thing: but the landscape was lush, wet and green. It was alive.

  It was these images juxtaposed with the last few days’ fighting that gave Esganikan some comfo
rt. Earth was everything that Umeh wasn’t. It might have been badly damaged, but it looked diverse and full of potential.

  Earth was perfect for Eqbas intervention. The benefits to all species would be enormous, even if individual humans, with their belief of their unique worth to a universe that didn’t even know they existed, would suffer in the short term.

  Culling. They even had a word for it, and thought it humane and beneficial as long as it happened to other species and not to their own. She knew that much about them already.

  Hayin had shown her how to find the feed from the cameras that watched the coastline of Australia. She switched to see a late afternoon and a storm brewing beyond massive flood defenses. She switched to the output from the capital city, a place called Kamberra, and the image was a pleasant one of a lake with humans wandering along its margin. They were dressed in brightly colored clothing and it looked as if it was a very hot day; the heat haze shimmered visibly.

  She quite liked the appearance of Australia. Even the red arid heartland looked beautiful, clean and wild in a way that the city of Umeh beneath her was simply not. The Australians had started to build their cities underground, too.

  Humans could change. And, unlike Umeh, millions of humans wanted it to happen; knowing that would get her through the hard times ahead for Umeh.

  13

  Spacefaring societies have their limitations. We think of them as infinitely powerful, able to solve anything, masters of their destiny if only they apply enough will. The isenj are a useful lesson for us. They had spaceflight and an unimaginably sophisticated artificial ecology; they were, and still are, superb engineers and one of the pioneers of ITX. But they took on a much more advanced civilization, and rode out like the Polish cavalry facing German tanks. Because the wess’har had never attacked their world, they concentrated their military assets into easy targets. And they forgot that no amount of engineering can triumph over the formula of consumption against available resources. In the end, it’s easier to let the planet do it.

  EDDIE MICHALLAT’s Constantine Diaries

  Bezer’ej: December 26, 2376

  The podship was a far simpler vessel than Rayat had imagined.

  He eased through the hatch and found himself slipping involuntarily into a horizontal position as if he was settling into the cockpit of an old sports car, legs outstretched. It was built for bezeri so there was plenty of legroom but not much clearance above his head. And he could see through the translucent bulkheads as if he was in a plastic bag.

  Transparency began to overwhelm him. In the last two years, it had become the first thing he noticed, and he saw it everywhere; from the translucent alyats and bezeri to the wess’har use of glass for building, from the clear composite dome of Umeh Station to the almost-invisible but very real barriers both the wess’har and Eqbas could deploy, everything here was a window. He hated it. He felt exposed: he liked solidity. And he hated the hint of translucency that had spread from his hands and up his arms and threatened to alter the tissue of his whole body. It seemed to have stopped. C’naatat had almost responded to his anxiety.

  He wasn’t alone. Lindsay’s flesh had become much more insubstantial in appearance than his—and she had developed lights.

  She no longer looked human. He could see her moving outside the vessel and for a moment he wasn’t sure if he was looking at a bezeri or not because the outline was hazy and only the strong bioluminescence was visible.

  “How can they manufacture things like this?” asked Lindsay. She thrust her head through the hatch. She could still manipulate sound well enough to speak. “This has to be something they breed.”

  “That isn’t what I need to hear right now.”

  She was still bipedal, four-limbed, and far from a cephalopod, but it was as if somebody had taken a lump of gel and made a human shape out of it in an art class. He could see the liquid pulsing outlines of major organs, like staring into the sheer depths of a jellyfish. The change had been shockingly rapid. He wondered how the marines would have reacted if they could see her now.

  It didn’t matter. He’d reached a truce with her, and a tolerable but cold relationship with the bezeri. What else you could expect from the people you almost wiped out, he couldn’t imagine. It was…tolerable, no more.

  Rayat lay back and considered the deckhead above him. The hatch was to protect the occupant rather than to keep the water out, and he found something strangely disorienting about a submarine that was designed to fill with water. He raised his hand and the controls—just two gently domed areas the size of a melon on each side of him—shimmered into life. He still wasn’t sure if this was just organic technology or something alive in some way. He made an effort to put the thought out of his head; there were too many digestive connotations and for a moment he had a brief flare of panic that made him want to swim for the surface and find air. That was becoming much less frequent now.

  Rayat composed himself, concentrating on what kept him human; memories, articulated speech, a future back on dry land one day. I haven’t turned into a squid. I can turn back into a man. I can become anything I need to be to do the job. And his job was to get home with his prize intact and exclusive.

  Saib drifted alongside like a ghost, his lights visible through the ship’s membranes.

  “How do you do it?” Rayat called, mirroring his words with light signals. He had to keep talking to stay in touch with his humanity. It struck him that using light and sound simultaneously had given him a kind of overtone just like the wess’har, albeit one that was partly inaudible. “How do you make these?”

  We grow them, Saib said. They are seed cases that propel themselves great distances when exposed to light. They respond to our lights because we have bred them selectively over the years. We have bred their propulsion jets to more powerful and their size to be greater, too.

  Lindsay turned to him and lights pulsed through her in response. Very clever. Are they actually alive?

  They no longer live. The response to light is a mechanical reaction.

  Saib slid into the hatch. Like an octopus, he seemed able to squeeze through any gap that could accommodate his rigid mouth-parts. He flowed into the vessel.

  “May we go to Constantine now?” Rayat asked.

  You wish to see Leenz’s dead child’s memorial.

  “Yes, I would. And I want to see what’s become of the colony and the camp, and if there’s anything left to salvage.” Well, that much was true; he just didn’t mention a space-worthy vessel. “Is there anything you want us to do on the way? We could make contact with the Eqbas mission and see if they’ve located any more survivors.”

  Saib had been unwilling to let them venture further north than Ouzhari. Rayat made a point of coming back earlier than agreed and bringing food with him; he wanted Saib and the others to trust him. They almost did. But whatever they felt about Lindsay, they believed her sincerity. She’d thrown herself into helping them with slavelike devotion. She’d make sure he didn’t try to escape.

  He’d have to play this carefully. A recce, no more. He couldn’t show his hand in front of Lindsay, either. She was determined that he’d stay here and serve his sentence.

  They’re finished, he thought. If I really believed I could do something to help them survive, I’d do it.

  Saib withdrew from the cockpit like a cork being pulled from a bottle. Return in three cycles. Bring back whatever you see fit, but news of survivors will be preferred. Now practice.

  Lindsay slipped beside him, almost becoming one gelatinous creature with the pod. “I can do this,” she said.

  “You were a pilot once, weren’t you?”

  Not that it gives me any advantage flying this, she signaled. But I’m used to orienting myself.

  “Can we stick to audio?”

  Tiny bubbles like a stream of champagne issued from her nose. “Sorry.”

  She placed her palm against one of the light receptors and the pod lurched a few meters. Saib billowed like a sail
, caught by the rear jet, and shimmered with an irritated display of amber and lemon light. Then Lindsay seemed to get the hang of it and the pod lifted and skimmed low across the silt. In a few minutes they were out in open water and threading through the rocks to the north.

  “You really want to fit in with them,” said Rayat.

  “I think I owe them something, yes.”

  “Apart from the first few days, they didn’t need us at all, did they?”

  “I think they wanted prisoners and then they weren’t entirely sure what to do with us. We’re all so certain we know what we’ll do when we get hold of our enemies, but it’s not always so simple. Even for bezeri.”

  “They’re not geared up for punishment. Execution, maybe.”

  “What’s happening to us must seem like punishment to them.”

  “Seems like it to me, too.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Are you religious?”

  “Why do you ask?” said Lindsay.

  “Mortification of the soul.”

  “I’m not into that. I’ve prayed. Anyone who’s been under fire manages to find a prayer just in case someone’s listening. Even atheists.”

  “Just wondering.” Rayat didn’t enjoy traveling in a prone position. He’d never been a good passenger; he always wanted to steer. “I know Deborah Garrod gave you some spiritual support.”

  “How about you?”

  “Only when my granddad was looking. No virgins waiting for me in paradise. I could never work out the demographics of that.”

  “What a cute kid you must have been.”

  “I always found comfort in reality. Not teddy bears.”

  “Is that what made you such a bastard?”

  “Yes. That and the fact that someone has to do it.”

  They teetered on the edge of humor. It seemed easier for her to cloak it in abuse; she was that kind of woman. She never wanted to climb down from her outrage, as if she enjoyed the exercise of free anger so much that she was afraid she’d never be allowed to do it again. She was an inverted image of Frankland, who seemed scared that if she let her rage loose she’d never regain control of it. Lindsay wanted desperately to be like that bitch, whether she admitted it or not. It told Rayat a lot about Lindsay’s relationship with her mother.