Judge

  He’ll tell me if he’s got any problems. I know he would.

  Aras ate without enthusiasm, looking around at the crowd. Shan, Nevyan and Giyadas were having a loud conversation in wess’u. Ade still hadn’t learned the language well enough to follow every detail, but he got the feeling Shan was sliding into becoming a governing matriarch. She couldn’t leave stuff alone even if she wanted to. It was a compulsion, like Eddie said. She felt it was her duty to run the whole bloody universe.

  “What’s bothering you, mate?” Ade’s stomach churned. “That you could be—well, cured?”

  Aras looked like he was considering the idea for the first time, although it must have occurred to him a hundred times. “I think it is.”

  Ade wasn’t in the best state of mind to take on more problems. They’d been through all this crap before, the last time Shapakti had thought he could do it. “Oh, terrific. Go on. Everything else has gone to rat shit and the only thing we have that’s in one piece is the three of us, so why not start dismantling that too?”

  “Ade—”

  “Last time this came up, we did something stupid because you were trying to be the saint and leave so that me and Shan could have normal lives again. No. You don’t make anyone happier by leaving us. For Chrissakes, stop being a martyr.”

  Ade had rebuilt everything in his life time and time again, after every death or crumbled relationship or disappointment. All the shit from his past was erased—or at least numbed—by a daily effort to reinforce normal life; he played happy families. Anything that might destroy that was a threat. He dug in.

  “Ade,” said Aras, “did you ever think what I might really want?”

  He felt it like a slap in the face. “I always think about what’s best for you, mate, and I was ready to butt out, remember? You love Shan. She was your missus before I came on the scene.”

  “And you had feelings for each other before she became my isan. Neither fact is relevant.”

  “What, then?”

  “Possibilities are always unsettling. I need to consider what mine might be.”

  Ade wanted to tell him he was a selfish bastard, but then he realized he was reacting to the unsaid; he was assuming Aras would choose to revert to his original genome. He’d always had the choice of killing himself, but he’d never taken it, although Ade had seen him come to the brink once—and that was when Shan was presumed dead, not because he’d had enough of c’naatat.

  Aras liked staying alive. There was the chance that he’d like staying alive forever. Ade decided he’d overreacted and that…well, they could take c’naatat out of humans, and Ade was content with that as long as Shan was, and he wanted as long with her as he could get. Finding the love of your life in middle age was too late if the first half had been a wasteland.

  “Sorry, mate.” Ade reached up and tugged at Aras’s braid. “I’m not at my best at the moment.”

  “You grieve. I understand.”

  What happened to Ankara? Are the graves still there? Did they let nanites loose there too?

  Eddie trundled towards him in his mobile chair and held his glass out for a top-up. “Don’t stint on the beer, Ade.”

  He could always change the subject at just the right time, Eddie. “You still making this stuff?”

  “I can’t manage the pressure caps,” said Eddie, holding up a gnarled, arthritic hand. “Nevyan’s next-door neighbor makes it for me. They even synthesize the sugar.”

  Ade reached for the jug and refilled his glass. Eddie couldn’t hold it as steadily as he once did, and so Ade erred on the side of caution by half filling it, cupping his hand around Eddie’s until he was sure he had a firm grip.

  “So you’ve been stuck with Rayat for a neighbor for twenty years, eh? Never wanted to gut him?”

  “Hard to hate forever.” Eddie beckoned to Aras. “He did do one decent thing in his life, anyway. Look, Shan said I could come to dinner. Got room for me this evening? At my age, you never know if there’s going to be a next day.”

  Aras began clearing the plates and crumbs, and took over the social arrangements. “Of course. Come every day if you like. It was your house as well.”

  The exchange emptied fairly fast. Tomorrow, it would fill up as wess’har brought surplus crops and left them for anyone who wanted them. Somehow, everything got used, nobody took more than their fair share, and everyone was satisfied. It was survival of the most cooperative here. At every level, wess’har looked like they might have a lot in common with humans, and then Ade found every reason why they were fundamentally different.

  Shan sat down beside him and slid her arm through his.

  “No brawls, then,” she said. “Not a proper reception without a punch-up.”

  “Miss being a copper?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Fancy old Mart joining the police.”

  “He still has to call me ma’am. He’s a poxy inspector.”

  “I’m going to see if I can pick up the Eqbas ITX link,” Ade said. “Why don’t you take Eddie back to our place? I said he could come round for dinner tonight.”

  Shan nodded with that look on her face that said she knew he was saying he wanted a bit of time to himself. “If he behaves himself, I won’t cook.”

  Even after the exchange had emptied, it took Ade a few minutes to steel himself to activate the link and search for views of Earth from the Eqbas orbital sensors. He didn’t even have to hack his way in. The channel was open to anyone who wanted to access it.

  Eventually, he plucked up courage to search for the coordinates of the Ankara cemetery and took the magnification as far as he could.

  It was still an arid place with dusty pink stone chippings for soil, but dull green plants grew in the cracks. The white gravestones stood untouched—neglected, yes, because everyone who used to tend them was probably either dead or struggling for survival, but they were still there, and that was all that mattered. He tracked around the ranks of headstones until he found what he was sure was Dave’s grave.

  Ade wasn’t much interested in the rest of the planet. He’d seen almost nothing of it anyway. All he cared about was either here with him, or dead and at rest. But now he knew he could also pinpoint the town of Rabi’ah, and the graves of Qureshi and Becken, when he felt the need. He knew he would.

  Right now, though, the living mattered more. He closed the link and walked home along the terraces, rehearsing a sense of belonging.

  F’nar Plain.

  Lindsay didn’t seem nervous as she contemplated the small bronze vessel sitting dwarfed by the plain.

  Aras had expected her to be afraid. Perhaps that was one thing she’d learned to take in her stride after so much distance, grief, and shock, and the prospect of a long journey relying on technology she didn’t understand—a worrying thing for a commander used to knowing every part of her ship—was just one more hurdle, a small thing set against becoming an ever-evolving hybrid of an unknown number of species.

  Where did c’naatat originate? Aras had never worked that out.

  “Jesus,” she said. Lindsay walked around the one-man vessel, a small blond woman in beige working clothes, and stared at the ramp that extruded from the hull. “It’s so bloody tiny.”

  “So is any ship in space.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “All you need do is settle down in the bay here.” Aras walked her into the ship and made sure the bulkheads were set to opacity. He indicated the hammocklike structure in the heart of the vessel. “Are you ready? It feels like anesthesia, Ade tells me, whatever that feels like to a human. Like your own cryo systems, except for a tingling in the arms.”

  “I can handle tingling.” Lindsay sat on the edge of the cryo bay and put a wary hand on the fabric. “At least it’s nice and comfortable, not that I’ll be in any state to appreciate it.” She stood up and looked around the interior, apparently searching, and her gaze settled on the small efte box that held the remains of her son. Aras had wrapped the bones
carefully; they were so very, very fragile. “Okay.”

  “Are you ready to leave?”

  “Give me a minute.”

  Lindsay squeezed past Aras to stand outside and look around the plain. He thought she was taking a final longing look at the view, a blend of gold-bronze desert, purple and green vegetation, and the spectacular pearl caldera of F’nar that was visible only from a few narrow angles. But she seemed to be waiting.

  “She’s not going to come, is she?”

  “Shan?”

  “Yes.” Lindsay seemed disappointed. Aras thought he saw her eyes glaze with unshed tears. “Ah well.”

  “I can call her. She would come. I didn’t tell her you might leave right now.”

  “No, it’s better this way. She’d only—no, she really did give me a second chance. I know she doesn’t do second chances, so I’ll quit while I’m winning, in case she decides I’m a waste of space anyway and finishes the job.”

  “She judges herself more harshly than she judges you.”

  “Shan always thinks she has to be the grown-up in a universe of children. It’s not the best trait to face if you’re someone who didn’t get on with their mother.”

  My mother. Why do I always forget my mother? Iussan Palior Jivin. Aras stood on a shore about to be engulfed by a tidal wave of long-buried memory. “Are you glad to be going home?”

  “I think so,” said Lindsay. “And I’m glad to be normal again, I suppose. No offense. I just know more or less what happens to mortal humans, and nobody really knows how c’naatat end their days. I need a little certainty right now.”

  “Will you have another child?”

  It was a question Ade would have told him was tactless. But he had to know, and he felt that Lindsay would take it for the question it was: a burning need to know if people could recover after grief and parting, and live fully again. He never had. Getting Shan back didn’t count. She really was alive. He had no true bereavement to deal with.

  “Yes,” Lindsay said. “I will. And I’ll be grateful that I can.” She looked around again and paused. “Say goodbye to her for me, will you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Eddie too. I said goodbye a few times. It’s hard to keep doing it. Just reminds him that he’s hanging on by the minute, and I’m not.”

  “I will.”

  Lindsay squinted against the sun. “It really is beautiful here.”

  “Earth will be beautiful again, too.”

  Lindsay went back into the ship and lay down in the bay without a word. As the gel closed over her, Aras thought he saw a brief flash of panic in her eyes, and he raised his hand in a gesture partway between a wave and a plea to be calm, but in seconds she was unconscious and the bay was chilling her down to a state just a fraction short of death.

  He watched for a few moments longer than he had to, checked the controls and navigation that would take her straight into Earth orbit, revive her and link her to the Eqbas fleet to land and disembark, and then left. The hatch closed behind him. As he stood back, the ship lifted with its belt of red and blue chevrons flashing, and soon it was a small dark speck in the sky.

  Lindsay was going home. Aras thought there was no better time for him to return to Baral—his home city—and see how he felt about it after so many years.

  21

  Earth, August 1, 2426

  Approximate population: 3.82 billion

  Average daytime temperatures: 10.4 percent below datum average for 2376.

  Percentage of gene bank species restored or reintroduced: 37 percent.

  Extract from Eqbas Earth adjustment mission record

  Baral Plain, northern Wess’ej landmass.

  Aras emerged from the underground transit tunnel onto a plain of short brown grasses studded with tufts of brilliant violet flowers. It was summer on the plain, the brief respite from the winter snows, and he could see people working in patchwork fields of yellow-leaf to squeeze as much food from the land as they could before the season ended.

  Like Constantine, the city of Baral was largely underground. It was his model for the colony. But Baral had no imposing church with stained glass windows and a spire that almost thrust through the soil above like a tree—just a central Exchange of Surplus Things like F’nar’s.

  He hadn’t been here for…how long? It must have been centuries. But these had been his people, and still were.

  As he approached, they stopped work to stare at him, and then one called out: “Aras Sar Iussan, is that you?”

  It was a sparsely populated planet and cities talked to each other. Everyone knew there was still a c’naatat soldier left alive from the isenj wars, the very last of his kind, the last of those who had driven back the isenj. He was, Ade told him, a war hero. It was a long way from being the Beast of Mjat.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  It was a strange homecoming. He knew his way to the city without even thinking: he knew the route down into the heart of the tunnels and galleries, sunlit as the surface, scented with familiar cooking. People stopped in their tracks.

  “You’ve come home,” said an isan. “Why now?”

  “I need to remember who I was.” He thought of Lindsay, who hadn’t had time to forget who she was, but seemed to have nonetheless. “C’naatat can be removed. I need to know what I was before it took hold of me.”

  “Your clan will want to see you, too.”

  By the time Aras made his way through the vaulted passages to his old clan home, the entire city seemed to know he was back. Ussissi appeared out of the tunnels and watched. It felt like entering Umeh for the first time, random memories crystallizing from vague scraps of his past, and an absence of celebration.

  The carving on the walls of the passages had been worn smooth over the years by the steady brushing of passing bodies, packages and children playing. But it was undeniably home; it smelled so familiar that he was suddenly here only yesterday, wondering which isan he would be taken in by to start his adult life as a jurej—husband, father, male. There was only one word for a male wess’har, and only one for a female, because the roles were universal and inevitable; there were no single wess’har. Males sickened and died without the constant repair of their DNA by oursan.

  Aras had no role in this society. He felt like an alien. Shan and Ade—they came from a culture where the solitary and childless were routine and even the majority in some societies, but he didn’t, and he felt a gulf opening between them and him as he faced his past at close range.

  A group of children emerged from a doorway, four males and a female, the males following the isanket much as they would follow their isan in adult life. This was the natural order; even the Eqbas—juggling with their nature, adjusting the gender balance—still had a society based on dominant females with harems of males.

  “You used to be one of us,” said the isanket. For a moment Aras thought she meant wess’har, but then he realized these were his distant kin. He could see it; he could smell it. “Have you come home?”

  Yes, I used to be truly wess’har. I used to be like this.

  “I was curious,” said Aras. “I wanted to see.”

  The little female beckoned him in. Somewhere in these passages, he’d grown up. He’d had brothers, sisters and cousins, and his father had taught him how to make glass. In the heart of the complex was a rooflight. He remembered it now: a dome, a glass dome.

  Aras veered left, unerring. The isanket made an irritated hiss, but Aras knew where he was going—if the clan hadn’t remodeled the layout in the intervening years—and he felt a strange excitement building in his chest. He slipped through a doorway, pushed aside the fabric hanging that serve for a door, and—

  Home.

  The room, a round chamber, was a well of rainbow colors. He looked up at the domed rooflight before he took note of the wess’har working there, staring into the colored glass and drinking it in until his eyes stung. He was a small jurej’ket again, a little male, helping his father Sar select and cut
pieces of glass to form the design of the dome.

  It was a landscape of tundra flowers framed in abstract shapes. The colors almost made him sob. Mjat and the white fire and the agony of both isenj and wess’har, both victim and aggressor at the same time, and all the unexperienced memories that c’naatat had given him now vanished.

  These were the happiest times of my life.

  Aras felt like a traitor, in every sense of the word. How could he be happier than with his isan, with Shan Chail, and his house-brother Ade? How could he feel like this when they’d been his rescue from unending loneliness?

  And how could he turn his back on being…wess’har?

  He brought himself back to the here and now. A family—his family, however separated by time and circumstance—stared at him in surprise, cooking suspended.

  “I helped build this dome,” Aras said. “Tell your names.”

  “I am Chuyyis,” said the oldest male. “And this is your home.”

  Yes. It was.

  F’nar: upper terraces.

  “So did he say when he’d be back?” Shan asked.

  Ade enjoyed cooking dinner, and having guests was a bonus. Here was a happy family home that he’d never had before; his dad wasn’t going to show up drunk. The novelty still hadn’t worn off and he hoped it never would. It almost took his mind off Qureshi and Becken, but he hardly dared be happy at the moment because as soon as it overtook him, he remembered them, and it slapped him down to the deck as hard as a punch.

  “He said he was going to Baral.” Ade concentrated on the bread. He didn’t have Aras’s skilled wrist action but the stuff passed muster as a pancake. That was easier for Eddie to eat, anyway. Don’t think about Izzy or Jon. You’ll just look at Eddie and know he’s next. “He packed Lindsay off to Earth and just called to say he was going.”

  Shan sat with her boots up on the stool opposite her chair, doing a none too convincing job of looking unconcerned. Nevyan sat at the table, hands clasped. She was hanging around Shan whenever she could, seeming desperate to make up for lost time. “I didn’t realize Lin was just going to bugger off that fast.”