The World Before

  Nevyan showed no shock or any emotion at all. Eddie, as he always did at times of crisis, just let the bee cam keep rolling.

  There was a loud thump of a body hitting flagstones. It was hers. Shan was still having moments of not knowing where she was in relation to her body.

  “Sod it,” she said. “Sod it, sod it, sod it.”

  She’d been so sure she could make it across the room to the toilet. She tried to kneel and was surprised how suddenly easy it was until she realized Aras had walked in and lifted her.

  He scooped her up in his arms, laid her back on the bed and wrapped her tightly in a blanket, hissing with annoyance.

  “You’re to call me when you want to get up,” he said, and put his hand on her chest. “You appear not to be breathing again.”

  No, she wasn’t. C’naatat had found some other mechanism in its box of tricks for oxygenating her blood. She made a conscious effort to inhale and exhale, seeking the primitive unthinking rhythm again. “I got out of the habit. No jokes about breathing through my ears, okay? And I want to pee.”

  “I’ll help you.” He didn’t seem to understand the joke. “You smell extremely dominant, so you must be feeling better.”

  She sniffed the back of her hand. There was a scent of mango with undertones of sawn wood. It was the wess’har pheromone that signaled matriarchal aggression, jask, powerful enough on occasions to make other females cede their authority to her. She’d changed F’nar politics once before without realizing it. This wasn’t the time to be doing it again.

  “I used to be able to control that,” she said. “I promise I won’t depose any more isan’ve by accident.”

  “You seem remarkably ebullient.”

  “I feel… okay.”

  Each time she shut her eyes and opened them again the miracle of being alive and home was fading. Aras’s wonderful, mouth-filling sandalwood scent was the last thing to pall. Hey, you’re my old man. She savored the elation of seeing again the one person who was in her thoughts as she died, but the police officer within, the one she knew had been there all her life, was telling her to calm down and get on with the job.

  Don’t be such a fucking girl. You didn’t die. You’re back. You’re fine.

  She wanted to surrender to tears and didn’t know how. “I still need the toilet.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “I can manage, thanks. I don’t suppose lavatory functions bother you, but they bother me.” She paused at an embarrassing thought. “Do they bother you?”

  “If you’re asking if we dealt with your bodily wastes during your coma, we did not. You didn’t excrete at all.”

  “It’s your bedside manner I fell for,” she said. “And who’s we?”

  “Ade and myself.”

  Ade. Oh yes indeed, she remembered Ade in detail now. She remembered, and she was waiting for him to come back into the room. “Christ, were you selling bloody tickets for the show?”

  “Ade wanted to help. He’s very distressed.”

  It was too late for that and it wasn’t her condition that was troubling her. It was the big gaps in her knowledge; she didn’t like gaps and she made a point of never having them. The absence of knowledge was more than the irritating whisper of a Suppressed Briefing. That, at least, let her know there really was some memory drug-programmed into her subconscious even if she didn’t know what it was until some event triggered it. This was genuine oblivion.

  The last thing she had done was to step out of the shuttle’s cargo bay, apparently months ago. Jesus Christ, I really did it, didn’t I? Now she was back on Wess’ej. Apart from the brief moments of awful consciousness while she drifted in the void, she didn’t know what else had happened between the two events.

  But she remembered about Lindsay Neville detonating nuclear devices on Ouzhari all right. Her recall of that was perfect.

  “Where’s Ade?”

  “You said you wanted a cup of tea. He’s gone to Nevyan’s home to get some from Eddie.”

  Ade was a good soldier and good soldiers followed orders, including orders that said get these bombs to Bezer’ej. She couldn’t blame him for that. Lying on the ground deep in Constantine, mind-numbing pain in her legs and her guts, tape over her mouth, Ade threatening Lindsay that he’d slot her if she didn’t put the grenades down. Fuck you, you shot Vijissi. Oh yes, she remembered it all right.

  He’d stopped Lindsay killing her—really killing her—with a grenade, so she owed him her life. It just didn’t feel that way. She remembered the impact of rounds sputtering into her legs, her pelvis, knocking her down, punching through bone.

  Later, girl. Take it easy. “Where’s Vijissi? Did they find him too?”

  Aras shook his head.

  “He wouldn’t leave me. Mestin told him to stick with me and he did, the poor little bastard.”

  Another friend gone, then, and she didn’t have many. In fact there was just Aras, because she hadn’t yet come to terms with Ade. Aras. She realized how precious he was to her, and how the full sweet realization of that in her final dying moment was being entombed forever behind her workaday indifference. She didn’t want to lose the feeling. She reached for it desperately; it started to slip away. She panicked, clutching at it like a key falling into deep water.

  “I know I should say something really significant.”

  “Isan, I wish you would rest.”

  “You were my final thought.” It was your last few seconds and you’d have given anything to tell him you loved him. Now you can’t even say the fucking word out loud. “I didn’t tell you how I felt.”

  It just never came out the way it should. Perhaps she really didn’t have any normal human feelings, just like Lindsay had said. She wanted Aras’s unerring gift for saying what he felt, and being able to feel in the first place.

  Aras did that canine head-tilt, and she knew exactly which part of her was the hard-arsed copper who found his openness and courage utterly disarming, and which was wess’har, altered by c’naatat and bonded to him biologically through oursan.

  “I was never offended,” he said. “I know you’re not a demonstrative person.”

  “Do you want me to say it?”

  “When you feel ready.” He ran his palm over her scalp. Her hand followed his: the stubble felt like someone had given her a buzz cut. “Your c’naatat needs feeding. See how fast it restores you.”

  “I’m starving. I could eat a scabby cat with piles.”

  “I recall that was your requested menu last time you were injured,” he said. He could approximate a human smile, but he never showed his teeth. “I have more appetizing solid food.”

  “Bathroom,” she said. She wanted to ask him why he wasn’t more excited to see her alive but perhaps it was the shock. You couldn’t just snap out of bereavement. She had to give him time. “C’naatat’s definitely working overtime.”

  She let him carry her to the toilet door and she shut herself in, still draped in the blanket because she couldn’t bear to look at her own body. The toilet bowl was handsome aquamarine glass shot with deliberate bubbles and flaws, a work of art that deserved better appreciation than the steady assault of waste. Wess’har were master glassmakers and a generous but anonymous individual had made the bowl and cistern to a design provided by Constantine colony. Shan pulled the flush. The water swirled.

  Constantine was gone too.

  She remembered preparing the colony for evacuation. Three paces outside the toilet, her legs buckled again. Aras rushed to pick her up but she waved him away, panting. She crawled on all fours, frustrated to be helpless, but she felt… better, hungry and optimistic, strength and energy building in her. Sweat stung her eyes: c’naatat was burning her up, stoking her metabolism and making up for lost time.

  It didn’t quite get her as far as the bed, though. She got to her knees but it was one effort too many and Aras had to lift her onto the mattress.

  “I’m glad we don’t have any mirrors,” she said. She could see
the pity on his face and his un-wess’har reluctance to meet her eyes. “I look like hell, don’t I? Okay, don’t answer that. Tell me what I’ve missed.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “Everything.” C’naatat didn’t believe in the blissful erasure that normally went with serious trauma. It spared her nothing. “Right up to the time I stepped out—” She stopped. “I had Lindsay Neville. I swear I put a round through the bitch but she was wearing a vest. She did detonate the bombs, didn’t she?”

  “She did.”

  “And Bezer’ej? The colony? Why Eddie and Ade are here?”

  “Perhaps you should wait until you’re feeling stronger, isan.”

  “Well, that’s guaranteed to pique my curiosity. My brain’s strong enough, thanks. Tell me.”

  Aras made that long, slow hiss of annoyance. “The devices were salted with cobalt.”

  Shan wasn’t a scientist but she’d worked in EnHaz long enough to have a good grasp of the league table of biohazards. “Shit.”

  “The area is heavily contaminated. We’ve yet to find any bezeri who aren’t dead or dying.” Aras shut his eyes. “Nevyan ordered the destruction of Actaeon. And the World Before has now sent two vessels to our aid, with others to follow.”

  Oh God. There was only so much you could take in at one sitting. “Where’s Lin now?”

  Aras didn’t answer. It wasn’t a good sign. He still had that blisteringly frank wess’har habit of saying the first thing that came into his head so anything that interrupted the unedited flow had to be serious. It meant he didn’t want to upset her: it also meant he knew she might do something extreme if she knew where Lindsay was, and that told her either the bitch was accessible or she had escaped.

  But where the hell could anyone escape out here?

  “I’ll make your meal,” he said, and left.

  She fumed. A few minutes later Ade appeared with the promised mug of tea. He spent an inordinate amount of time turning it in his hands, looking like a man trying to find the right words.

  “Come here,” she said, trying very hard to choke down anger that for once had no specific target. Ade edged towards her. Something inside her was burning to be out, to get at him, to…

  “Boss,” he said. He was standing over her, turning the mug in his hand. “Boss, I…”

  Shan gathered what strength she had and brought her right fist up hard, smashing the mug from his hands and sending it shattering on the floor. He stepped back, mouth open in the formation of some excuse that she didn’t want to hear. She’d rarely lost control, ever. Now she abandoned herself to rage.

  “You bastard,” she hissed. “You bastard, you fucking well let her get me, you fucking well—” She slumped half out of the bed, spent by the effort. Adrenaline consumed her. Then it ebbed and faded, and she was left panting, hanging off the edge of the mattress. Ade went to lift her. “Fuck off—fuck off out of my sight, you bastard—”

  Aras slammed open the door and was between them in three strides.

  “Enough! Go, Ade. Leave her. And you, isan, you will calm down, do you hear?”

  Ade’s face was stricken, devastated. He froze for a moment and then strode out, crunching over broken glass.

  Aras lifted her back onto the pillows and she accepted his hand on her forehead. He slipped into a characteristic infra-sonic rumbling, the kind wess’har fathers emitted to comfort a fretting child, and shame washed over her along with the profound and irresistible feeling of warm heaviness.

  You lost it. Where’s your discipline? You never lost it out there. Get a grip.

  In an instant, she wanted both to beg Ade’s forgiveness and to kick the shit out of him for helping useless, make-believe officer Lindsay fucking Neville transport bombs to Bezer’ej and force her to space herself.

  “I don’t think I handled that well,” she said at last.

  Aras’s comforting rumble trailed off into silence. “Did you fire first, or did Ade?”

  Perfect wess’har recall dredged up the exact sequence of events on Constantine with an unflinching accuracy that her human memory once struggled to achieve. She was looking down at Lindsay, rifle to her forehead.

  “Maybe Ade, maybe Mart.” It was almost instantaneous: she could feel the trigger yielding under her finger, the first round hitting her in the pelvis, her rifle discharging into Lindsay’s ballistic vest. “But I was putting one through Lindsay.”

  Aras ahrugged. “What would you have done if you were Ade, or Mart Barencoin?”

  Shan felt a flutter of regret in her stomach. If either of them were as hard-trained as she was, then she knew: she would have fired. It was an unthinking reflex.

  “And I fired back.” She reached out for Aras’s hand. “I just went on autopilot.”

  “Well, then,” said Aras. He never implied rebukes—he would chide her respectfully—but his reasonable tone was as good as one. “And there’s more you need to know.”

  “Is this going to piss me off even more?”

  “Perhaps.” He slid his arm round her shoulders and leaned his forehead against hers. “I hardly know how to tell you.”

  “Try me. You know you can tell me anything.”

  He took his time. She waited.

  “I killed Josh.”

  She almost asked him how it felt to kill a former friend. Then she realized she knew already, even if Lindsay had survived the attempt.

  It was all too bloody easy.

  “Well, serves the bastard right.” Josh had taken Lindsay and Rayat to Christopher Island—Ouzhari—knowing they planned to deploy ERDs. He had his own pious logic. She hoped he had his excuses ready for his god. “But I’m bloody sorry for you, sweetheart.”

  Aras straightened up. “There are other matters, too.”

  “Are we getting near the end of the list or what?”

  “Perhaps I should let Ade explain. He insisted that he should. Will you promise to hear him out this time?”

  “Okay.”

  Shan had been pretty sure she knew Ade. Reliable, decent, sensible: a solid sergeant, the sort that every army—and police force—was built upon. He did his duty, even when politicians wanted him to do stupid, dangerous things, and even when it meant shooting her. She had come perilously close to sleeping with him but—as always—discipline and the prospect of his bioscreen broadcasting the event to the rest of the marines stopped her.

  Bioscreen.

  She hadn’t noticed the green light in his palm this time. Maybe he’d deactivated it. “So he knew about the bombs.”

  “None of them knew about the cobalt except Rayat. No, Ade now finds himself in a very difficult position.”

  “He deserted?” No insignia. She could still take in every detail without thinking. Hey, I’m back. “Is that why he removed his stripes?”

  “He surrendered,” said Aras. “He had no choice. You… you infected him, isan. You injured him. Do you remember?”

  Crack. Her head smashed into the bridge ofAde’s nose as he tried to pin her down. She remembered that. But Lindsay had checked her out. She hadn’t found a break in her skin. Useless cow.

  “Don’t be hard on him,” said Aras. “He fed you when Nevyan brought you back. He read to you. He is utterly devoted to your welfare, whatever has happened.”

  Shan shut her eyes.

  “Shit,” she said. “Oh shit.”

  9

  The Respected Minister has exceeded his authority. We now have no collateral with which to bargain for the return of Aras Sar Iussan. There are those who say we invest too much concern in ancient war crimes when there are more immediate crises, but there is also the matter of national honor, and having thrown that away, Minister Ual should answer for it.

  MINISTER PAR SHOMEN EIT,

  speaking at an emergency session of the Northern Assembly

  “That,” said Rayat, “is exquisite.”

  Lindsay saw the wall of shimmering white pearl as they passed the edge of the inland cliff. She wasn’t sure wh
at she was looking at and then her perspective kicked in and resolved it into the concave bowl of a vast amphitheater.

  F’nar looked even more shockingly unreal than it did in Eddie’s reports. It seemed more bizarre, more organic, as if aliens had found a book on Antonio Gaudi’s architecture and had a stab at making it their own vernacular style. It was almost captivating enough to divert her from the realization that she had an unspecified but very short time left to live.

  “Yeah, lovely,” she muttered, and followed Mart Barencoin’s broad back. He still had that habit of looking around and then walking backwards for a few paces as if he was still on patrol. “Where are we going? I didn’t think they had prisons or police stations here.”

  “We do not, Lindsay Neville,” said a ussissi voice. “You will go to the Exchange of Surplus Things, unless a clan is willing to accommodate you. But that depends when they execute you. An overnight stay might not be necessary.”

  She glanced down. She had difficulty telling ussissi apart, distinguishing them only by their taste in bandoleer-type belts of bright fabric or beaded embroidery.

  “Are you Ralassi?” she asked.

  “Idiot,” said the ussissi. “I’m Serrimissani. I’m a female. Ralassi is male. No wonder your species is doomed.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”

  “I once worked with Ual. I now work with Nevyan.”

  Lindsay noted she used the word with, not for. “I thought we’d be dead as soon as we stepped off the ship.”

  “That would be normal procedure. But there is information required first.”

  “About what?”

  “Culpability. Technology. Whatever the Eqbas require.”

  Serrimissani certainly spoke excellent English. That didn’t comfort Lindsay one bit. She kept her head up as she walked, but this didn’t feel like being a prisoner of war. She now had no sense of being on the right side and just unfortunate to be captured: she felt like a criminal. She had always wondered why captives didn’t try to escape, why those herded into prison camps never rose and overthrew their guards, and now she knew. Docility in the face of threatening authority was an automatic response. There were very few Shan Franklands in the human species.