The World Before

  “If you need more,” said Ual, “you may simply ask.”

  In his mesh of fingers, the bead glinted with blue light. He would give it to Eddie. He left the Eqbas ship and prepared to send a message to his mate.

  13

  The community of Constantine colony wishes to return to Earth. We will remove them from Wess’ej by your year of2381 and transport them to a location of their choosing on your homeworld during your year 2406. We will also grant their request of aid to re-establish the species contained in the Constantine gene bank in their proper habitat.

  This will mean some rearrangement on your part. The transition will be easier if your planet’s administrations use the interim period to prepare for a radical restoration of your ecosphere. Do not attempt to hinder this operation. It is for the good of all species with a stake in your planet. It will be carried out.

  MATRIARCH CURAS TI

  to the UN Secretary General,

  on behalf of the joint administrations of Eqbas Vorhi

  “Holy shit,” said Eddie. He inhaled a chunk of dehydrated wheat sprouts and coughed until his eyes watered. “Coming, ready or not.”

  He read the transcript of the Eqbas ultimatum several times over breakfast in Nevyan’s main room. The ITX link to ’Desk had been down for ten hours. But he could still see the outgoing news feed, and it reminded him that over the years he had slipped story by story, interview by interview, into the position he was occupying now. He had always been a tool for politicians, mostly knowingly, sometimes not.

  The Eqbas statement wasn’t an ultimatum. That implied the unless factor. And there wasn’t any unless about it. Coming, ready or not…

  Lisik was trilling tunelessly while he boiled a pan of something red and slimy. Its fumes made Eddie’s nose prickle. Giyadas occupied herself in playing with Eddie’s handheld, now retrieved from Esganikan and with an ITX link to Earth built into it, courtesy of Livaor. Nevyan seemed to have inherited a stable of impressively capable males.

  Serrimissani watched them all, turning her head sharply from one to the other, as much the embodiment of a meerkat on guard duty as he had ever seen. And this was a regular day. Invasion. Breakfast with aliens. The end of my career.

  Eddie had the recurring experience of standing outside his own body and observing his extraordinary position; faced with overwhelming novelty, his brain sought a familiar pattern and settled on breakfast to buffer the experience. It was the split second when the cinematic image of war in your viewfinder suddenly became personal and aimed at you and you ran for it.

  “What did you expect?” asked Serrimissani.

  “More saber-rattling,” said Eddie. “You’d have thought I’d have learned the wess’har style by now, wouldn’t you?”

  “Two years is ample time to do so.”

  She came and went as she pleased in Nevyan’s household, disappearing most nights to return to the ussissi warren with its little half-buried mud-plaster eggshell domes. Eddie could now see that the Constantine colony on Bezer’ej had been built to a mix of two architectural styles, the discreetly buried galleries of northern Wess’ej and the domes of ussissi nests. He was fascinated by the symbiotic evolution of two burrowing species, but his fascination had to take a backseat.

  Earth was going to get a personal visit from Eqbas Vorhi.

  It would happen in thirty years’ time, but it was going to happen and nothing was going to prevent it. The Eqbas had the same literal finality as their clean-living Wess’ej cousins.

  “I can’t complain that I haven’t had the best exclusives in history,” he said. He heard his own feeble reassurance. “I mean, who else could run alien invasion stories live from the front?”

  Serrimissani did her fox yawn, the little whining noise followed by a snap of jaws. “I understand many of your colleagues have tried over the years.”

  “I mean serious journalists with genuine stories.”

  “And you haven’t transmitted any material about Frankland’s return.”

  “Okay.” He hadn’t a clue what to say about Shan, even if he intended to run the story, which he didn’t. He’d done enough damage as it was. “I’ve succumbed to self-censorship again. Let’s say I’ve grown up.”

  Giyadas sat beside him and peered into the bowl. Then she placed his handheld and screen in front of him.

  “I spoke to a gethes at the United Nations. She was alarmed.”

  Eddie’s stomach somersaulted. He had no idea the link was being answered. The kid hadn’t said a word about it. Jesus, she’d spoken to someone on Earth. “Sweetheart, did you say anything to scare her?”

  “I told her who I was and I asked which gethes nations would live like wess’har and which would not.”

  It was a reasonable question for the miniature adult that Giyadas was. But if that call had gone straight through to the UN shortly after the warning from Esganikan had been received, then it might have sounded like a very different enquiry. It might have sounded like who’s going to be on our side and who isn’t.

  “What did she say?” asked Eddie.

  “She said she would get someone senior to speak to me.”

  He prodded the handheld with a cautious finger and reopened the link. The image that appeared was an office with ornate translucent furniture as if someone had decided to do the rococo look in ice sculpture. Cherry blossoms were suspended within the back of the glass-clear empty chair that occupied the shot. In the way of all small incongruous detail, the pink petals seized his attention.

  Then the chair was suddenly occupied, and a middle-aged woman in a high-necked taupe suit gave a visible breath of relief.

  “I’m Eddie Michallat, BBChan,” said Eddie. “I was hoping to speak to my news desk. What happened to the FEU Defense Ministry portal?”

  “Transmissions are being routed through the United Nations now,” said the woman. An ID icon sat at the bottom of the frame: YULYA CORT, CRISIS LIAISON. With a job title like that, Eddie thought, she was probably a light sleeper. “May I ask who was using your link?”

  “Giyadas…” He struggled for the wess’har naming convention. “Giyadas Lisik Nevyan. I’m sorry about that. She’s a little girl. So you have control of outgoing ITX now?”

  “Access is being allocated at the moment.”

  “A queue to use the phone, eh?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Old phrase. Doesn’t matter.” He gave her a pause to talk but she didn’t take it. He wasn’t even asking her a question so he made a mental note that she might prove difficult. “Would you mind patching me through to BBChan Europe, please?”

  “This is a relay for international community use. If we open it up to the entertainment industry, it would become unmanageable.”

  No, doll. That’s not the way it’s done, believe me.

  Eddie rarely demanded what he could ask for as a favor, but he felt it was time she understood his connections. “I’m not the entertainment industry, as you call it. I’m a BBChan journalist. Now, I could always ask this kid’s mother to ask you. Would that be easier? I’m her guest, along with the Eqbas Vorhi advance fleet.”

  Cort appeared to think about it for a while; then her right arm moved out of frame.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. The screen faded out to the baby blue UN holding portal.

  “What is it?” said Giyadas.

  “Nothing,” said Eddie. He was annoyed that he hadn’t been connected, but he had Ual, Nevyan and now Esganikan to exercise a little influence for him. He’d wait. “Bloody jobsworth.”

  “She doesn’t know how important you are.” From anyone else it would have been taking the piss. From Giyadas, it was a sincere assessment. “You are one of us.”

  Serrimissani made a small ssss that probably translated exactly the way it sounded.

  Reporters weren’t supposed to be important or one of anybody. It was the final proof, if he needed it, that he’d gone too far. He went back to his bowl of wheat sprouts, reassuring himself th
at the meager supply of grain was far more nutritious in this state, and suddenly realized the only person who cared about him was an alien kid.

  It had never hit him that hard before. Next week, next month, next year, something would change and he would stop crashing through bad and half-hearted relationships. But he never had: that was why he was here, like the rest of them. He was someone with so few emotional anchors on Earth that he could wrench himself out of time to travel twenty-five light-years from home.

  Even Shan Frankland—aloof and hard as a whore’s heart—had stumbled into communal domesticity. That told him just how alone he truly was. Even Shan could get her leg over here.

  He crunched thoughtfully.

  “Will you return with the colony?” asked Serrimissani.

  He hadn’t even considered it. The news was happening here. If he did, he would want to return to the Cavanagh system because this was the most fascinating place he had ever been and—the kid had hit the nail on the head—he was important here. He couldn’t bear the idea of all this going on without being involved in it.

  And by the time he got out of the freezer, everyone he left behind here would be at least fifty years older. He didn’t fit in anywhere any more. He probably never would.

  “I might stick around.”

  “Ual is returning to Umeh.”

  “He’s a braver man than I am, Gunga Din.”

  Serrimissani didn’t ask the obvious question and continued undistracted. “He will have Eqbas to protect him.”

  “How? They’ve got a few thousand personnel, tops.”

  “Attack an Eqbas and see what retribution follows.”

  “How come everyone knows so much about them except the wess’har here?”

  “They don’t want to know.”

  “But how can they avoid knowing what they get up to?” Eddie had no concept of not wanting to know something, nor any idea of how a technically advanced species got to be that way without indiscriminate curiosity. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the drab gray isenj data-player with the cube still in it. “Have you seen this shit? Do you know what the Eqbas have done to planets who’ve got out of line over the years?”

  “Broadly speaking, yes. We too come from Eqbas Vorhi.”

  “And? Is this okay?”

  “Is it any different to what your powerful nations did to those they could subdue and press into their mold, except that Eqbas Vorhi is interplanetary in its reach?”

  “No, but wess’har are supposed to be morally superior.”

  “So if a large human attacks a small human and causes it suffering, then it is morally superior to ignore their plight? And what if the attack was unprovoked?”

  Eddie hated arguing ethics with her. He usually lost. He was being sucked into an indefensible position: damn, that was his job. “Define provocation.”

  “Do you tolerate cultural differences on Earth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even ones like stoning females to death for being raped.”

  Serrimissani had done her homework. Eddie was more convinced than ever that she was a natural journalist.

  “That’s an extreme example, doll. There are clearly things that are unacceptable, and things that—”

  “Clarity for you, perhaps,” she said, and her tone was very neutral, not at all her usual hissing contempt. “Understand that we have clear lines of acceptability too. At what point do you intervene? Where is the line between cultural difference and unacceptable behavior? I imagine your more barbaric communities feel their actions are acceptable, just as you feel yours are.”

  Eddie unpacked the sentence and decided that was exactly what it was: a sentence, but in the legal sense.

  “Okay, you win. We’re a species of verminous fucktards. I still don’t understand why the wess’har here can be so un-curious and still have science and technology.”

  “Eddie, humans seem to have difficulty accepting that others do not think as they do. Nor do they seem to want to try. That shows a singular lack of curiosity in itself.”

  No, wess’har didn’t think like humans. Eddie conceded defeat and returned to his wheat sprouts.

  “That was enjoyable,” said Giyadas. “What may we debate now?”

  On the surface, wess’har behaved very much like humans. Eddie watched Lisik drain the red slime and pack it into exquisite scarlet glass jars that looked almost liquid in themselves, just like anyone pickling produce for the winter. Cidemnet, another of the four males that Nevyan had taken in when their own isan died, walked in and checked flat trays of a white sponge sheet that appeared to be drying on the planklike range. It was a peaceful scene of domesticity.

  Cidemnet prodded the sponge sheets with a stick of brilliant amber glass and seemed satisfied. He broke some off into a bowl and held it out to Eddie. “You try?” he said. Livaor, rinsing fabric in a bowl of water, paused to watch the show.

  Eddie dabbed the sponge with a cautious finger and tasted it. It wasn’t just pepper-hot: it was sour and musty and it actually hurt.

  “Cidemnet makes very good rov’la,” said Giyadas, and took half the portion.

  “I can tell,” said Eddie hoarsely.

  Cidemnet was also pretty useful with a fighter craft. He had flown only one mission in his life and that had ended with CSV Actaeon breaking up in orbit around Umeh and its shattered hull giving Jejeno a spectacular meteor display. Eddie smiled with all the will he could muster and chewed a small chunk of searing, choking, foul rov’la.

  No, they weren’t like humans at all.

  Ade was sitting on an outcrop at the top of the bluff, collar turned up against the wind, rifle and Bergen on his back, swinging his legs idly like a heavily armed schoolboy. Rain had started to fall, making the day feel colder than it was.

  “Who told you where I was?” he said.

  “I can still follow a suspect.” Shan’s legs screamed for a rest. She sat down beside him. “Nevyan said you had a little bolt-hole up here.”

  “You shouldn’t be out in this weather.”

  “Don’t be so bloody daft.” She held her hand out to him, more of a hand-it-over gesture than a tender one. He hesitated and didn’t take it. “Get your arse back home and let’s not have any more of this crap.” She wanted to tell him that he was a kind, brave and very appealing bloke, and that she was pathetically grateful for his devotion, but it didn’t come out quite like that. “Come on, move it.”

  “I’m in the way, aren’t I?”

  “You come home right now. We’ll work it out.”

  “I bet you said things like that when you were talking someone down from a window ledge.”

  “No, I used to say, ‘Jump, you pathetic fucker, and stop holding up the traffic.’ ”

  Ade laughed. It was true but maybe he didn’t realize that; he seemed to think that she was wonderful, noble, heroic. She wasn’t. She didn’t care about the rest of the human race. She cared about him, and maybe she cared about Eddie at a pinch, but not in quite the same way.

  “So that’s it, is it?” Shan looked down at the cairn. The stones were all neatly graduated, big ones at the bottom, decreasing in size as they went up. He’d put a lot of effort into it. “Did many people turn up? Did they say nice things about me and talk about my tireless work for charity?”

  Ade sat with arms folded, chin down and eyes lowered, and didn’t answer.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I tend to forget that it’s more traumatic for the mourners than it is for the corpse.”

  Shan got up and gave him a few moments while she busied herself studying the cairn’s construction. There was something lodged deep in the stones, a piece of fabric and metal. She worked her fingers carefully into the gap to pull it out, realizing too late that it was a singularly tactless act.

  “Jesus, Ade.” She spread the medals in her palm and let the ribbons drape over the edge of her hand. Turkey, Macedonia, North Africa; and the ACG and the Military Star. She had no idea that he’d been decorated twice for
bravery, but it didn’t surprise her. It also didn’t surprise her that he’d never mentioned it. “I bet you didn’t get these free with your breakfast cereal.”

  Predictably, he blushed. It was one of those odd contrasts with his roughy-toughy marine image that she found deeply endearing. “Yeah, well…”

  “If you brought them all this way then they must mean a lot to you. It was a lovely gesture.”

  Just sometimes—and with less frequency over the years—someone could get past her defenses. Ade did it all too frequently for her peace of mind. He didn’t look up but there was a distinct citrus-tinged whiff of a wess’har male under stress. She folded the ribbons round the medals, unfastened his battledress and slipped them into the top pocket of his shirt.

  “Sod ’em, Ade. Sod them all. They can’t take it away from you.” She slid her warrant card out of the swiss. She still had a real card: she always refused implanted technology. “And we have to be more than badges.”

  She shoved the card between the stones. Superintendent Frankland was gone, and she had to get used to being Shan, the person she’d been cooped up with in open space when she couldn’t move or breathe or die.

  Ade raised his eyebrows. “Like that’s going to change you one bit.”

  And that was another thing they had in common. It was more than her healthy interest in his fit body and his charming awkwardness. They had both found something of a genuine family in their respective uniforms, and then politicians had taken that from them. There was a sense of shared betrayal.

  They took the easy way down from the bluff. It was a tense walk back home and she struggled to make conversation.

  “What was Ouzhari like when you were last there?”

  Ade shrugged. “Bloody horrific.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right…”

  Ade walked on a few more strides and then sighed. “I really thought that when you came back I’d stop feeling so bad about things, but I haven’t.”

  “For chrissakes, Ade, let it go.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “I fucked up your life with c’naatat. We’re even.”