The World Before

  Movement caught her eye.

  She aimed her gun two-handed and strained to see. Whatever it was, it was small. She walked into the corner behind the pile of sawdust that had once been the altar and noticed a pattern of tiny footprints and a faint smell. She knew that scent. It was almost like lavender leaves. She put her gun back in her belt and squatted down, looking for rats.

  “Come on out, fellas,” she said. She made the clicking noise she’d heard Aras use with Black and White to get them to come to him. “Come on. I won’t hurt you.”

  Shapakti edged up behind her. “What is it?”

  “Rats. The colony abandoned them. Poor little buggers must be living on the bodies.” She didn’t dare risk a bite. An immortal rat was a prospect she wasn’t ready to contemplate, and she didn’t have thick enough gloves to withstand those teeth. Sticking her hand into a hole was a recipe for disaster. She drummed her fingers on the floor until a whiskered nose emerged from a crack in the stone.

  “What are they?”

  “Earth animals. The Thetis mission brought them for experiments.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Oh. Aras confiscated them from Rayat and let the kids look after them. He really likes them.” She found herself smiling. There was nothing wrong with a man who cared about animals, nothing at all, even if he wiped out cities. She drummed her fingers again and a large beige rat bounded towards her and sniffed her gloves. She withdrew her hand cautiously. “They’re tame ones.”

  She fumbled in her pockets. She always kept something on hand to eat, and this time she found a very old packet of dry rations. It did the trick. In a minute she had assembled fourteen rats of varying sizes and colors, all jostling for food.

  “I can’t just leave them here,” she said. “They’ll starve to death. Got a bag or something?”

  Shapakti offered her a tube the size of a cigar.

  “What’s that?”

  “A container.” He bent it between his fingers and it unfurled into a large open box with curved sides. “Here.”

  “I bet you were a Boy Scout.”

  “You are incomprehensible.”

  “It’s just a compliment.”

  Shapakti picked up the rats, each steadfastly refusing to be parted from its fragment of compressed soya and fruit, and placed them in the box. Shan took off her jacket and laid it across the open top; she didn’t know much about rats, but she knew they preferred the comfort and safety of the dark.

  “You’re undernourished,” said Shapakti.

  “Give me a few weeks, son,” she said, anticipating Aras’s delight at the rescue. “Then come and feel my biceps.”

  They walked a different route through the fields on the way back to the raft. The tayberry bushes were still there, brown and twisted, and it was hard to tell if they were dead or just dormant. Someone should have cut back the old canes to ground level. On a stone facing the sun, two rich black velvet place-mats patterned with concentric lighter rings lay sunning themselves. They shivered at Shan’s approach and began sliding off the rock to inch away to safety.

  “Rockvelvets,” she said. “Human eyes can’t see the rings. Did you know that?”

  “I would like to know what else c’naatat has changed in you.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it one day.”

  Ceret was setting fast. Skimming south across the sea towards Ouzhari on a sheet of glass in failing light and then in the dark was unnerving, but if you’d drifted in space for a couple of months it was suddenly a long way down the sphincter constriction scale.

  Shan was beginning to enjoy sailing. She wondered how Ade might like it. The niluy-ghur would have made a great amphibious landing craft if the camouflage could have been sorted out.

  By the time they beached, Shapakti was back in his beekeeper’s suit and the box of rats was wrapped in a protective gel film. The Eqbas craft was a gleaming bronze beacon swept sporadically by rippling blue light, looking for all the world like a sleazy nightclub situated on the edge of town because the neighbors objected to the noise.

  At the entrance, Shan submitted to decontamination in what she now thought of as a plastic bag and wondered if this was what it felt like to be trapped by a sheven just before it began digesting you. It might have been worse than spacing yourself.

  “We’ve brought some guests,” she said.

  Esganikan was kneeling on the deck with the crew, eating from plates as if they were on a picnic. Shan picked up a dark brown slab and chewed on it, not caring that it tasted like solid yeast extract.

  “I hope you didn’t mind my bringing back the rats,” said Shan. “They couldn’t survive here.”

  “I don’t object.”

  “So? Any news?”

  “The marine survey team has located a number of bezeri,” said Esganikan.

  “Dead?”

  “Alive.”

  Shan’s stomach flipped but she couldn’t distinguish between her own relief and dread. So you found someone alive in a pile of bodies, and that was good for five seconds; and then it dawned on you what they would be going through.

  “How many?”

  “Fifty-four.”

  “And what shape are they in? Did you manage to use the signaling lamp?”

  Esganikan looked for a moment the way Shan had so often felt, shoulders sagging in weary disillusion.

  “We may have to work without them to repair the ecosphere. But we will repair it.”

  It was an oddly evasive answer for a wess’har. But their logic was utterly unsentimental. The bezeri were the obvious victims to a human, but they weren’t the only species to suffer: others were woven into the ecology.

  Shan tried again. “What did they say, exactly?”

  “They will talk only to Aras Sar Iussan.”

  In their hour of need, the bezeri had turned to the one outsider in whom they had any degree of trust. Aras would be reassured by that, Shan thought.

  She also wondered what they wanted to say to him that they couldn’t say to anyone else.

  16

  This is our final request. We demand that you return both the traitor Par Paral Ual and the Destroyer of Mjat so that they may face proper justice.

  MINISTER PAR NIR BEDOI,

  Northern Assembly

  The vessel that had separated itself to visit Bezer’ej appeared over F’nar, dropping beneath the cloud cover and settling in the Eqbas camp. Aras straightened up and put his hoe aside for a few moments to watch it. The marines stopped too.

  Shan was back. He had pined every moment she was away. It had only been two days, but he never wanted to let her out of his sight again, and neither had Ade, but she insisted on going alone.

  “She’ll be wanting her dinner on the table,” said Ade, and dusted his hands on his pants. “Let’s get this finished and head home.”

  “I hope Shapakti took care of her.”

  “You can bet on it,” Ade said. “We had a little chat.”

  Ade’s little chats seemed to have a salutary effect. Aras suspected it was the unsettling effect of a polite and modest manner backed up by physical strength and the slightest suggestion that—if pushed—he might kill you. Yes, Ade had the makings of a fine house-brother: Aras would welcome his genes. And the soldier knew what it was to grapple with unpleasant memories and tolerate exile.

  “Aras, how do you feel about the Eqbas?” asked Qureshi.

  “They’re different,” he said carefully. So many of them were unmated adults. It was unnatural. “But so am I, so I cannot criticize.”

  He went to the irrigation node and rinsed his hands and face under the rushing water. The marines went on hoeing, preparing the ground within the biobarrier for beans, potatoes and something called chickpeas. The area devoted to terrestrial crops had expanded five-fold; there were eight people to feed now who couldn’t digest wess’har food and the supplies were running low. For the first time, the Constantine colony had no carefully preserved surpluses to give away. But the marines s
eemed to be enjoying their rapid instruction in horticulture and had reduced the soil to a textbook fine tilth with precise lines of drills. They were happy to be busy. They didn’t seem to care how their time was occupied as long as it was filled with activity.

  Aras reflected that it was a perfect image of the gethes concept of irony. An alien was teaching urbanized humans how to grow their own crops.

  “Painting coal white,” said Ade. He squatted down at the end of one of Becken’s drills and peered along the line in the soil as if to check for perfection.

  Aras considered the concept. “A new phrase for me.”

  “A pointless activity to keep soldiers busy.” Ade took a handful of red beans and began pressing them into the furrow at precise intervals with his thumb. “Is this the right depth?”

  “I thought you came from a rural part of Earth.”

  “Me? Nah. City boy.”

  “You fed baby foxes. Foxes are wild animals, yes?”

  “Yeah, but they’re all over the cities. Lots of animals live in urban areas.”

  Aras felt that he should have realized that. The information—and plenty of it—had been in Constantine’s archives. The urban coexistence made the gulf of respect between gethes and other species even more incomprehensible to him.

  “Yes,” said Aras. “That’s the correct depth.”

  “Join the Marines, see the galaxy, and do a bit of gardening,” said Barencoin, who had started to look satisfied with his agricultural duties. “Beats getting your arse shot off, anyway.”

  “You’d fit right in with the colonists,” said Webster.

  “I don’t think Jesus wants me for a sunbeam somehow.”

  They laughed raucously and while they worked Becken told a joke about a gethes with a tapeworm. Aras listened intently. When he had first discovered the parasitic creature while reading the colony archives, he had briefly thought of his c’naatat as a benevolent tapeworm. Becken’s story alleged that tapeworms enjoyed certain human foods.

  Becken had one arm raised with an imaginary hammer in his hand. “So the tapeworm puts his head up and says, ‘Where’s me bar of nutty, then?’ and the doctor goes—wallop.”

  The marines roared with laughter. Aras, who felt he had some measure of the gethes’ humor, pitied the tapeworm, who had no choice about the arrangement. His distaste must have shown; or at least he must have smelled agitated, because Ade straightened up from the furrow of beans and gave him a discreet jerk of the head that indicated he wanted Aras to follow him.

  “Let’s leave this lot to it,” he said. “Come on. Can’t keep the missus waiting.”

  There was a perfectly matched chorus of “Oooo-oooo-ooo!” from the marines and Aras suspected he knew what that meant. Ade’s face reddened. Aras handed his hoe to Chahal.

  They walked away briskly. “I meant your missus,” said Ade.

  “I know.”

  “I can move out.”

  “Shan made you return last time. Your leaving will not take away her sense of obligation or attraction.”

  “And what do you want?”

  It was easy for a normal wess’har to say what was on their mind. But Aras had been tinted by human hesitation. He thought for a few seconds, filtering the words. “I miss having house-brothers. I would like us to be a family. But I worry that Shan would feel obliged to choose between us because humans are monogamous.”

  Ade walked on a little way ahead. He didn’t say anything else until they passed through the two outcrops of pearl-coated granite that marked the broken edge of the caldera, as near to a pair of gates as a carefully unplanned city like F’nar would ever allow.

  “She’d never leave you. She’s not like that.”

  Aras knew that. But it didn’t mean that she would want to stay with him. Shan was a creature of duty; the thought of her enduring him if she wanted to be with Ade alone was unbearable. She might grow to resent him in time. He couldn’t face that.

  “I lost my first isan and I very nearly lost Shan. The thought of losing her again terrifies me.”

  “And you must know what I feel for her. But I’ve done enough damage. I don’t want to do any more.”

  “The decision will be hers.”

  They reached the door and there was a moment of hesitation as Aras stood back to let Ade enter first and Ade did the same. There was no natural hierarchy between them yet. Aras stepped across the threshold, flustered.

  “I’ll get the kettle on,” said Ade. “I make a good cup of tea, she says.”

  Aras had been so certain that having Shan back would make life perfect. But it wasn’t working out that way at all. She had a second chance at life, and a very long one at that. He wanted it to be happier than what had gone before.

  He would do whatever it took to ensure that.

  “And then they will do what, exactly?” demanded Esganikan Gai. She slammed her virin down on the table so Ual could see the vague ultimatum from his respected colleague Bedoi. “The isenj will use force if we don’t comply? Or is this just talk?”

  Her English was becoming excellent, and very rapidly. Ual tried hard to stop his beads shivering on his quills: he had been in F’nar a week now and was becoming agitated. In the Exchange of Surplus Things he had a permanent audience because, as Eddie told him, wess’har washed their dirty linen in public.

  “There is a great deal of rhetoric in public life that wess’har are unfamiliar with,” said Ual. “Sometimes politicians don’t think before they speak. Their concern is saying what will satisfy the electorate.”

  Eddie Michallat, who had been sitting quietly on a crate a little to Ual’s right, uncrossed his legs. “Well, that’s something our species have in common.”

  “I will tell you what’s going to happen,” said Esganikan. A small knot of wess’har was watching her: a few more were more interested in the image occupying most of one of the walls, an image of an orderly city of towering fungus-like buildings and much vegetation. “We have assessed your planet from orbit for restoration purposes. We have so few species to work from that we will introduce those from Tasir Var that appear appropriate. The alternative is that your situation deteriorates until you reach a terminal population crisis and natural disaster overtakes you. Either way, you will be confined to your two planets. Containment measures are being put in place.”

  We weren’t going anywhere anyway. Ual didn’t want war. There was nowhere on Umeh to fight one. “When will you take me back to Umeh?”

  “When we land, you will be with us.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “Would tomorrow be soon enough? I have some business to attend to with the gethes and I would like that completed before we visit your people.”

  Eddie exhaled very slowly and quietly. Ual took it as suppressed surprise.

  “While you’re on the blower to Earth,” said Eddie, “could you see if they’ll connect me to my News Desk, please?”

  Esganikan stood up and it was clear the conversation was over. She strode out with her ussissi aide scuttling behind her. Eddie watched her go and then turned to Ual.

  “If Shan and that one ever ganged up, I’d leave town,” said Eddie.

  “A formidable creature. I have not yet met Shan Frankland.” Ual felt the need to confide in Eddie. “I have made a great mistake.”

  Eddie shook his head. “What’s the alternative? The Eqbas were coming the minute the bombs went off on Bezer’ej. After that, all you can do is get the best deal for your people that you can. Damage limitation.”

  “We should have chosen our allies more carefully.”

  “I don’t think anyone planned this. We never do.”

  “Will you come with me, Eddie?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve never filmed a lynching.”

  “We do not lynch.”

  “So what’s the worst that can happen to you?”

  “Imprisonment. Disgrace.”

  “Am I going to make that much difference? I don’t think having
Earth media present is going to deter your people one bit.”

  “I would feel comforted to have a friend with me.”

  “Oh.”

  Ual had not seen his family for some weeks. Long separations were normal: his offspring were too young to live independently, and they were being educated on Tasir Var, a world he had never visited. His mate had gone to look after them. She hadn’t yet replied to his message that told her what he’d done and how afraid he was. She might have already abandoned him to find another male. He had no way of knowing.

  And now he had grown tired of the pretense with Eddie. He reached into his belt for the blue bead, with every intention of telling Eddie that he knew what he had done with the quill, and that it no longer mattered because he had voluntarily given his own sample: but he couldn’t. Eddie had saved him from a decision that might have been catastrophic. Plausible deniability. He’d even taught him the concept.

  Ual let his arm fall back. “I will attempt to talk my way out of it when we land. I believe that’s something you’re good at, yes?”

  “They do say.”

  “I might even tell an untruth. Will you help me?”

  “Eddie Michallat, the man who introduced lying to the isenj nation. What an epitaph.”

  “The truth can be very much overrated.”

  “You’re not wrong there.”

  Ual got up and made his way towards the entrance. It was a bright, clear day. Eddie followed him outside and they picked their way through the alleys and out onto the ill-defined path that led out through the fields to the wild unspoiled plain. Wess’har—Targassati wess’har, anyway—didn’t like to leave permanent marks on the landscape if they could help it. It was one of the most interesting facts he had learned.

  “Where are we going?” asked Eddie.

  “For a walk.”

  Eddie probably understood. He followed at a distance.

  It was the most extraordinary sensation to move without rules on pace and direction, without being required to keep to one side of the road or the other, to stop and start and turn as you pleased. The space he had felt…anarchic.