The World Before

  Shapakti beckoned them further inside and dug both hands into the ground, scooping up dark soil.

  “This was the hardest part,” he said. “We recreated terrestrial soil and some bacteria. It is far from ideal but the plants show every sign of surviving. They were grown in a fluid nutrient solution in Umeh Station.”

  “You’re a clever boy, Shapakti.” Shan took off her jacket. The air was tropically hot. “What now?”

  “The gene bank,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “You said I might have access, with your supervision of course. I would like to see what we can achieve.”

  Shapakti was quite literally harmless. She knew he would do nothing to damage or exploit the contents of that precious store. He was even planning to put extracted c’naatat organisms back on Ouzhari; he was everything she could trust.

  “Lovely,” said Ade, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply. “Bit too quiet though. Jungle’s all noise. I’ve done jungle.”

  “I shall find a single species to resurrect,” said Shapakti. Shan thought it was a strange choice of words. “And its food sources.”

  “Better make it a herbivore or something, then.” It was just a display of potted plants. It was quick familiarity when her guard was battered and falling, not a mystic sign she should go home again. “Want any help?”

  “I would like access to databases on jungle.”

  “Umeh must have downloaded databanks, and if you ask the UN nicely they might put you in touch with biologists…on Earth.” Shit, she nearly said back home. It was getting too seductive. “Eddie’s got a fair old library too, haven’t you?”

  “I have,” said Eddie. “You’re welcome to what I’ve got. And if you get through to the UN, they’ll panic and wonder exactly where you’re planning to invade if you ask too many questions about tropical environments. Try the Pacific Rim States. They think you’re the cavalry.”

  “Maybe they are,” said Shan.

  “Saddle up, then,” said Eddie, and walked out through the hatch.

  Aras rested his head on his folded arms and stared along the faint grain of the table. He thought of the bezeri and wondered how much longer he could delay giving them his decision.

  His duty was to go to them and help, but his wess’har instinct said his isan came first. What was it like to live under water, anyway? What could he give the bezeri, other than reassurance and an extra hand?

  It was unthinkable to refuse them, and unthinkable to leave Shan even if Ade would be there to care for her.

  I want my isan. I want Shan. I waited so long for this.

  The door opened and he sat up sharply. Shan and Ade walked in, dripping slush from their boots and flushed from the walk in the cold air.

  “Shapakti’s built a rain forest,” said Shan. “He’s a clever little bugger.” She paused. “What’s wrong?”

  “You startled me,” said Aras. “I was thinking.”

  Ade went to boil water for tea. “Shan’s got some news for you.” He shot her a glance and she glared back at him. “Go on. Tell him.”

  She was suddenly angry: Aras could see that from her dilated pupils. She sighed air from her nose, irritated, and Ade suddenly smelled of anxiety. She wasn’t happy about what he’d said.

  “Okay, I’ll apologize before I start,” she said, and sat down at the table without removing her jacket. “Ade says Ishould have told you a few days ago. He’s right. But I still don’t have all the facts.”

  Aras waited.

  “It’s c’naatat,” she said at last. “Shapakti thinks it can be removed from the host organism.”

  Aras stopped his thoughts racing ahead. He had heard this before, many years ago, when wess’har had found out what c’naatat was and that it did more than accelerate recovery. They thought they could stop it. And they had been wrong.

  “Has he tested this theory?”

  Shan scratched her forehead, looking down at the table’s surface for a few moments. “He’s separated it from a sample of my tissue.”

  “Ah.”

  “Go on. I know what you’re going to ask.”

  “No need. I haven’t given him a sample of my tissue. So he can’t prove the same claim for the wess’har genome.”

  “I know. Are you going to give him a specimen?”

  “Why should I?”

  “It would solve the problem of accidental contamination if removal was possible.”

  “No,” said Aras. “That’s not what you mean at all. Don’t lie to me. I told you once that you were a very poor liar, isan, and you have still learned nothing of the skill.”

  She sat looking at him and then got up and put her arms around him from behind. “It might be possible.” She laid her cheek against his. He reached up and clasped her arms, thinking he might push her away rather than embrace her. “It’s not definite, not by a long chalk. But I had to tell you.”

  “Why?”

  She hesitated. He still couldn’t smell any scent at all beyond her skin, sweet wood overlaid with female musk. “Because I want to know what you really want.”

  He could measure the time that he had wanted to be a normal wess’har again in centuries. The thought had obsessed him for years, so many years that it was impossible to explain to any other being—even Shan—just how overwhelming and intense and sustained that emotion was. He thought he wanted to be a father more than anything he could imagine.

  And then he met Shan: and he made a rash, split-second choice to save her life and the agony of not fulfilling his instinctive biological purpose had eased so much that it was merely occasional pain, and one that he could brush aside by being with her.

  Now he had a house-brother too, more or less. And they might learn to be content, and it didn’t really matter that he had no children.

  “Do you want to go home?” he asked. “Earth?”

  Still no scent. She was sparing his feelings. “For the first time in my life, I have no idea what I think.”

  “You could go home. So could Ade.”

  “And you might have children. You can never have them with me, with or without c’naatat. That’s one never we’re certain about. If I stay a carrier, there can’t be more of us. If I revert to normal, we can’t reproduce anyway.”

  Aras knew exactly what he wanted. He didn’t dare say so and influence her. He hadn’t given her a choice about c’naatat, and she hadn’t given Ade one either. They weren’t bound by any obligation at all. But he had no right to think about his own happiness when the bezeri were still waiting for him to help them.

  “I would very much want you to be happy,” he said, and tried to keep his grip on her forearms neutral, neither letting go—a sure sign he was upset at the idea—or by gripping harder, and making it clear he didn’t want her to leave.

  “As long as I’m c’naatat, I’m staying here,” she said. “I can never go home as long as I’m a biohazard, whatever countermeasures Shapakti thinks they can create.”

  She’s going to leave me.

  “You must make your own choice,” said Aras. “It’s too important for me to influence you and Ade either way.”

  She can go back to Earth as a normal woman and do what she planned to. She can have Ade and she can have her patch of land, and she can put the last few years behind her. I took that away from her once.

  “You think about it,” she said, and kissed the top of his head. “There’s plenty of time.”

  No, for once she was wrong. Time had suddenly run out.

  24

  FROM: Esganikan Gai, Eqbas Vorhi fleet

  TO: Marie-Claude Garces, Secretary General of the United Nations

  We have been made aware that the order to use persistent toxins on Bezer’ej was given by senior ministers and intelligence officers of the Federal European Union. Under your own laws, these individuals are war criminals and so we hold you to the obligation to arrest and punish them for their acts of genocide and environmental destruction. Anyone able to detain the
m must do so. If no action is taken, we willfind out who did not act, and when we reach Earth we will hold all of them responsible for failing to take the appropriate measures of a civilized society.

  The atmosphere over lunch was tense. Shan had always been one to speak her mind, but she wasn’t forthright now. She sat tapping her glass spoon against the bottom of the bowl.

  Aras watched her discreetly from his peripheral vision. Ade wouldn’t meet her eyes either. Eventually she got up and washed the bowl and spoon before pulling on her jacket.

  “I’m going for a walk,” she said, and didn’t wait for a response.

  The door closed. Ade counted visibly to ten, the time it took for her to stride out of earshot. The crunch of her boots faded.

  “Aras, I swear to God, I’m not pressuring her.”

  Aras believed him. His face was pure distress. “You don’t believe in God.”

  “Look, I’ll go. I can’t do this.”

  “You will sit quietly and listen to me.”

  Ade’s shoulders braced almost imperceptibly. He was still instinctively ready to defend himself. “What do you want, Aras?”

  “I want to see Shan content. She can’t be content if she feels pulled by conflicting duties.” He was clear now. It would be agony but it needed to be done, and the sooner the better. “I’ll tell you something now that you must not tell her.”

  “Whoa, no—”

  “She’ll find out, but I want that to be after she can no longer act on the information.”

  “You can’t lie to her.”

  “Oh, I’ve learned some useful human skills. I can lie by omission, and I can lie by false statements. I’m almost a competent human.”

  “I’m not promising anything.”

  “I’ll hunt you down if you distress her by revealing this.”

  “Mate, I’ve been threatened and beaten until I pissed my pants. You think you can do any better at scaring me than my dad did?”

  “Listen.”

  Aras got up and walked round behind Ade, grabbing him by the shoulders. It was just to make him stay sitting, to make him listen; but Ade threw off the grip and wheeled round on Aras, sending the bench flying, and slammed him against the nearest wall. He was astonishingly strong for his height. Aras stared down at him, shocked by the instant white-faced anger he was looking at.

  “Don’t ever fucking touch me like that, okay? Ever.” Ade’s face flushed. He let go of Aras’s tunic and stepped back. “Just don’t.” His voice trailed off. He righted the bench again to sit and focus on his bowl of stew.

  “I’m sorry,” said Aras. There were things he didn’t know about Ade at all and could only guess. He certainly knew about his violent father, and his shame for leaving his mother undefended as soon as he was old enough to join the marines. The old emotions seemed very near the surface. “I have to tell you this. The bezeri have asked me to live among them. I know Shan could go home as a normal human being and that you would look after her. If I choose to do what I ought for the bezeri, then she needn’t feel she has to stay for my sake.”

  Ade looked up from the bowl and his mouth really was slightly open. Aras wondered why shock did that to humans. It was as if they were trying to taste the air because they didn’t trust their hearing. “That would destroy her,” Ade said quietly. “How can you even think of doing that? She loves you.”

  “And I love her, and that’s the normal wess’har way, but Shapakti has changed that. I feared she would prefer you to me, as her own kind. Now I wish she would.”

  Ade lowered his head a little. His eyes were closed. “I’m the interloper. You can’t do this because of me. And it’s just a theory—”

  “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “You’re wrong. You’re so wrong.”

  “I plan to take Rayat and Neville to the bezeri, as they asked, so that they can deal with them. And I’ll stay. I want you to promise me that you’ll explain to her why I did this and then take proper care of her while she adjusts.”

  “The fuck I will.” Ade’s voice sounded as if he had swallowed something uncomfortably hot. “Adjust? I know she doesn’t look like the emotional type, but you’ll hurt her. It’ll rip the guts out of her.”

  “And maybe that’s what it will take.” Ade went to protest again, but Aras held up both hands. “You can’t prevent this.”

  Ade didn’t speak again. Aras began imagining how he might adjust to a life alone again, and in an environment more alien than he had ever known, but he knew he could adapt. He would cope.

  The one thing he would never be able to cope with, though, was not being able to take his leave of Shan properly, and explain himself. He would walk out of her life with every indication that he would return again, and it would be the hardest thing he had ever done.

  But he could lie now.

  Mar’an’cas had taken on a distinctly purposeful air in the last week. Lindsay walked through the camp trying not to stare through open tent flaps, but she wanted to see what was happening.

  Yes, the colonists knew they were going home. For all the privation and tragedy that they had been through in the past few months they seemed uplifted, and as much as the word nauseated her it was the only one that fitted their collective mood.

  And it was nearly Christmas.

  Christmas was one of those public holidays like Eid, Solstice, Hanukah and Diwali that had once interrupted her planning schedule because staff went on leave. That was all. Seeing it marked now by Christians who genuinely believed it was spiritually significant was both moving and frightening. And it still left her feeling like an alien.

  Inside every tent was a light of some kind: a candle, a solar lamp, anything that created fire. In the charcoal gloom of an early northern winter, it looked reassuring and magical.

  When she passed Deborah Garrod’s tent she glanced away but the woman called to her.

  “Lin,” she called. “Lin, come in and have a drink. You must be frozen.”

  Deborah was simply a kind woman. She’d helped her through David’s birth and she’d been there in the infirmary when he died. She knew what it was to lose someone she loved, too. Lindsay paused, then ducked into the tent.

  “How have you been?” asked Deborah.

  “I think you know.”

  Lindsay sipped the tea she offered. Its taste was irrelevant: it was hot, and that was wonderful. She felt like a fool because everyone knew she had tried to drown herself and that she had failed as surely as she had failed at everything else.

  At least Deborah wouldn’t ask her where she was planning to spend Christmas this year.

  “You’ve had a terrible time, Lin.”

  “So have the bezeri.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “It was a bomb. I know what bombs do. The rest was detail.”

  “I understand a little of what you’re going through. However awful it seems, there really is purpose, but you have to look at it from some distance to understand it.”

  “And God’s the distance, right?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I’ve helped kill tens of thousands of sentient beings and focused the attention of an alien war fleet on Earth. If I’ve missed anything out, let me know.”

  “The bezeri have asked for you and Rayat to be handed over to them.”

  “I—I didn’t know that. I thought they might as soon as I knew some had survived.”

  I’ll drown anyway, then, or the pathogen will get me. Unless I ask the unaskable. What have I got to lose?

  They went on drinking tea. Rachel, far more sober as a six-year-old than she had been at five, slipped into the tent with a battered handful of foliage.

  “Decorations,” she said quietly. She held them up on tiptoe, trying them against the ridge of the tent, and then dropped them in Deborah’s lap. “We’re going back to Earth, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, you are.” Lindsay held out her arms to her and the child hesitated for a moment and looked to Debor
ah for approval before scrambling on to her lap. “You’ll like it.”

  “You’re not like Shan.”

  “Absolutely.” As if she needed reminding. Shan never got in over her head or did anything without covering all the angles. Emotions never tore her apart. Lindsay struggled to put aside her fear and forced a smile. “What do you want for Christmas, then?”

  “I want Daddy to come home,” she said. “Or Aras.”

  Kids had a stunning sense of proportion. Deborah said nothing. She fidgeted on Lindsay’s lap and finally wriggled to the floor and skipped out again.

  “That’s what makes it hard,” said Deborah.

  Just being with Deborah was soothing in its way. Deborah didn’t berate her or remind her of her failings. She just sat there and drank tea with her.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “To make things a little better. Perhaps I got my punishment before I committed my crime, by losing David, but it doesn’t feel like that.”

  “If you won’t ask God what’s required of you, then you might ask the bezeri.”

  Lindsay gazed into the cup and realized she had been told something profound. Lancing this boil of misery would take more than just dying. She needed to hear what her victims thought of her. And maybe she could find a way to help the survivors.

  Be certain you don’t just want to stay alive at any cost.

  Bezeri had faces. She knew that: they had eyes, like terrestrial cephalopods. All she had to do was to somehow look into them. But that meeting was a world away.

  The wess’har would be coming for her. They would send Aras, as they always did, because the bezeri knew him and spoke to him. She would ask him, and hope that he understood that she wanted to share c’naatat not because she was afraid to die but because she was afraid for the first time that death would not be the end.

  “I’d like to pray,” said Lindsay, and could hardly believe her own words. And they were utterly sincere. “Please, Deborah, help me out here. It’s hard for a mass murderer to know where to start.”

  The snow had stopped and the novelty had worn off even for the hardiest of F’nar’s citizens. There was nobody out on the terraces tonight: lights shone from irregular, wound-like windows across the span of the caldera. It was really pretty. Ade liked it here.