Ally (33 page)

Esganikan did a quick head-jiggle of annoyance. “I'll arrange a meeting, but remember that their culture is not one of compromise and consensus. It may not achieve results.”

“Maybe not,” said Nevyan, “but I'll know more about them.”

Esganikan left. Shan now liked the fact that wess'har just got up and left a room when they were done with talking, with no attempt at valedictory bullshit. The three of them sat in silence for a few minutes.

“They're bad news,” Ade said. “Sorry that's not a very tactical assessment, but I know shit on a collision course with the fan when I see it.”

“They did restore their own ecology, though.” Nevyan stood up and smoothed her
dhren,
which never needed smoothing. It was her nervous tic when agitated. “The archive that Serrimissani found for me is impressive. As long as they don't carry out genocide, the planet they take on benefits greatly.”

Ade actually laughed. He didn't sound amused, poor sod, but nearing the end of his tether. She put her hand on his and he gripped it hard. “Genocide. It's one of those things you just have to keep an eye on.”

At least the evacuation had been a good precaution. In a week, Umeh Station would be empty. Its crew would miss its comforts on that miserable cold dog-turd of an island, Mar'an'cas, but it was better than living next door to the Skavu.

“Come on,” said Shan. “Let's see what else we can liberate from this station.”

She eased herself out of the seat using the Skavu sword as
a cane. It actually wasn't that much fun as a novelty: she had a random fleeting thought about who else it had been used on. There was no telling its age. It might even have killed one of Esganikan's comrades.

“Want me to take that, Boss?” Ade asked.

He took it out of her hand with slow care. He looked like he could handle a sword.

He also looked as if, one day, he might want to use it.

Chad Island, Bezer'ej

Saib and the other male bezeri swaggered back up the shore of Chad in the late afternoon like a rowdy rugby team, flashing light and making a strange array of sounds that weren't English but more like satisfied grumbling.

If Lindsay shut her eyes, it sounded remarkably like the hubbub of a distant crowd. They were happy and full of themselves. A day exploring and hunting had boosted their morale, and it showed. Back in the settlement, more bezeri had shown up from the sea; that made forty out of forty-four now ashore. They lounged in the wattle bubbles, tentacles trailing, or wandered around the heath snapping off foliage and tasting it. Most of them seemed to have perfected the between-two-crutches walk with one or two tentacles held out to the rear to achieve more forward momentum. Pili, who'd once struck Lindsay as a little dim, was sticking with the kangaroo effect, and now seemed to walk much more upright, front tentacles held near her body and the rear ones almost acting like a tripod.

Lindsay just knew that one day she'd find her bounding around. All the bezeri seemed to be finding slightly different ways of negotiating the land, developing different pigmentation, and showing all the shades of subtle variation that confirmed
c'naatat
was not a single template for each species.

“Where are the other four?” Lindsay asked. She counted again. “Who's missing?”

“Guurs, Essil and their young,” said Keet.

That was the only family group that hadn't gone to the spawning grounds before the ER devices had detonated.
Don't euphemize. Say it: before Rayat and I blew up Ouzhari with cobalt bombs.
This wasn't a breeding colony by any stretch of the imagination. Only the frail elderly and this one group—male, female, and two juvenile females—had been outside the contaminated area and survived. They wouldn't interbreed. It had seemed a colony without hope, and that was why Lindsay had stepped across the line she wouldn't have crossed for her own baby son in the end, and passed
c'naatat
to the bezeri.

“Are they okay?” she asked. The two daughters—“juvenile females” was too brutally zoological for the community she now lived with—concerned her. Even if
c'naatat
guaranteed survival for the group, she still wanted to see bezeri grow up. “Don't they want to carry the parasite?”

Pili headed for the beach. “They carry it. The children are frightened of the changes. They fear the Dry Above.”

Lindsay had dealt with adults up to then. She could explain to them, rationalize, and argue; but even then, Saib and Keet had whined and complained throughout the process. A kid would have a hard time being told to suffocate in air for the first time, and not to panic but to endure the pain and fear until
c'naatat
adapted its body to a life on land. That was hard.

“Come on,” said Pili. “We encourage them. We show them how good it is on land. All of us! Now!”

The males, still in their remarkable impersonation of a rugby team, muttered and stayed put until Pili and Lindsay ran at them. Then they scattered and headed for the shore with huge loping strides. Not even the bog distracted them this time, and the whole troupe of bezeri gradually migrated to the beach and gathered on the shoreline.

Out in the shallows, Lindsay could see dark shapes glittering with blue light. Guurs and his family were waiting, plucking up courage, waiting for the youngsters to calm down and make the first transition to air.

“Have the parents come ashore yet?” she asked.

“Yes. Only once.” Pili sounded disapproving, little violet
flares in her tentacles indicating her annoyance. “They set a bad example.”

“Well, we'll set a good one,” said Lindsay. Everyone was watching in a line strung out along the beach, lights playing, waiting. “Come on. Let's encourage them. Show the kids how easy it is.”

“Eas-eeeeeeeee!” bellowed Carf, and was the first to crash down into the water and dive beneath to circle the family. A jet of water plumed from the surface as if from a whale's spout hole and Carf came up like a cork. “Eas-eeeee!”

It triggered a chain reaction. All the bezeri rushed into the water in a mass of churning foam, elephantlike trumpeting and flashing light, and the shallows were pandemonium for a few minutes. They were astonishingly noisy. Lindsay rushed in after them, trying to keep an eye on the two small females. Suddenly they were borne up out of the sea, green lights blazing in terrified, agonized screams.

C'naatat
was getting good at this. It was getting faster at specific adaptations. The children were rushed up onto the beach by the adults and surrounded while they flailed and panicked. They were clearly breathing now, even though the screaming green lights carried on in silence for some time. Essil fussed over them with maternal ferocity, coiling her tentacles around them and batting Carf away with a furious wet slap that sent him flying.

Now all the bezeri were terrestrial animals, able to live on land. Lindsay chalked it up as a landmark in the rehabilitation process.

“This is good,” said Pili. “Life is good.”

“Well, that's great to hear.” Lindsay liked Pili's can-do pragmatism. She felt she might turn out to be a friend. Pili had already given her a stone hammer, beautifully made, for whacking troublesome
irsi.
Lindsay wondered what she might give her in return. “You seem very cheerful these days. Is this working? Is this what you want? Have I gone some way towards making amends for the terrible thing I did to you?”

Oh God, I need to hear this. I need to know.

“Yes!” said Pili. “I have a good life! Look!”

She bounded off, more like a kangaroo than ever, just lacking the streamlined upper body that Lindsay suspected would develop fast. She vanished into bushes by the bog.

Oh damn, not her as well. Always bloody hunting.
Lindsay resolved to teach them to knit or something productive, and wandered after her.

“Come! See!”

It wasn't Pili's fault. This was much her instinct as Lindsay's urge to be part of a tribe. She steeled herself to tolerance. “Those poor
sheven
aren't going to last much longer if you keep chasing them.”

“Come!”

Lindsay found Pili settled in a heap, tentacles coiled close to her, in the long late afternoon shadow cast by a bush. At the base of the plant there was a cluster of orange-brown shapes very like cocoa pods. The objects could have been anything

The penny dropped.

“Fruit…” Pili had found a new food plant. Bezeri liked novelty in their diet as much as anyone, and even they couldn't live by
sheven
alone. “That's very good. What do they taste like? Have you tried them?”

“Taste? This is
terrible
!”

“Sorry?”

“Not to taste, Leeenz! To
love
!”

“What are they?” asked Lindsay, who really felt she wasn't in on a joke.

“They are eggs, Leeenz! Mine! They are
children
!”

Umeh Station, Jejeno

There was nothing the isenj could do to Umeh Station now, but it still had the feeling of a fort under siege.

“Your crops are safe,” said Serrimissani. Ade watched a shuttle section of the Eqbas ship lift clear with the final consignment of the plants and food that the detachment had stripped from the station. “But I thought you were more communal creatures than this.”

“It's just a few novelty plants,” he said. He had no plans to feel guilty. This was for his mates. “Nobody's going to starve because we've liberated a few bananas.”

Ade trusted Serrimissani as much as the Marines: he could rely on her to see that the haul that the detachment had plundered made it safely back to F'nar and didn't get diverted to Mar'an'cas. Nevyan's ussissi aide had a jaw like a gin trap, and if anyone fancied their chances of getting past her, they'd have a perforated arm or worse to show for it.

“You get to keep whatever's left on Mar'an'cas anyway,” she said. “But your concern for your comrades is understandable.”

She yawned, lips stretched tight over teeth like a rip saw, suddenly foxlike. Ade always saw foxes in ussissi faces, not meerkats or mongooses like Eddie did. He couldn't forget those bloody baby foxes—three, enchanting little kitten-like
faces—since the ruck with the Skavu. If he let himself think about it hard enough, he could recreate that hollow, searing pain in his chest when he couldn't stop his dad taking them out into the yard and crushing their skulls with a house brick.

It's quick, and it's kindest, 'cos you can't raise 'em. Shut up crying, for Chrissakes, you little bastard.

Ade could cope with hearing that voice now. It was becoming more like a historical record, a reference, than a voice that haunted him. But his hate always found fresh wind at times like this.
If only I'd gone back and killed the fucker when I'd been trained how to do it right.
Walking away from him hadn't been enough, and never would be.

Good old Ade, everyone says. He's such a nice bloke.

“I want my oppos as comfortable as I can make them for the next few years until they go home,” Ade said. “I don't need bananas.”

They walked back into the dome. It was a circus leaving town. It was really stripped now, a mess of crates and flatpacks waiting to be shipped out. So they were taking the accommodation units, too. A crowd was standing around watching something in the vine-covered canopy of the dome itself, and for a moment Ade wondered if Shapakti had shown up with his macaws. But when he looked up it wasn't exotic birds making the leaves shake at the top of the geodesic roof, but Jon Becken.

“Prat,” said Ade.

“He found fruit on that vine, obviously.”

“I always said he was a chimp.”

Becken, secured on a line, was working his way through the canopy, throwing down small dark fruits to the crowd beneath. One fruit missed the cupped hands of a crewmen who was trying to catch them like a cricket fielder, following through to take the sting out of the impact. The fruit exploded on the hard floor, scattering juice and pips everywhere.

“Bloody stupid idea, having a fruiting vine here.” Ade saw the cleaning and maintenance problems of ripe, inaccessible fruit directly above a public area. He went to inspect the casualty and found it was a passion fruit; the crewman
cleaned it up and licked his fingers. “I haven't even seen any blooms all the times I've been here.”

“It wasn't supposed to fruit.” A maintenance engineer juggled fruits in his hands with quite impressive skill. “But it's flowering, and here's the proof it's self-pollinating, too.”

Blooms.
Ade had a thoroughly stupid idea and couldn't stop it. “Jon!” he called. “You see any flowers up there?”

Becken hung upside down, knees looped over a beam or something that Ade couldn't see through the foliage. The cocky little sod was out to impress the women with his athletic prowess; Ade had to admit he was the better climber, and when he pulled himself upright just with the power of his abdominal muscles one of the women crew members standing near Ade actually murmured appreciatively.

“You want me to pick you thome nithe flowerth, Tharge?” Becken lisped.

“Piss off.”
I don't care. She'll love it.
“Can you can see any?”

“Maybe.”

“Go on. Grab a few, will you?”

“Ooh, for Shan?”

Mild public humiliation didn't dent him. He had a woman and the love of his life, someone who would never hurt him or betray him. There was nothing he'd let get in the way of that. “Those of us who are actually getting some on a regular basis do like to show our appreciation sometimes.”

“Flowers? Aren't you supposed to bring her dead mice and day-old chicks?”

Ade ignored the guffaws. “You're such a fucking comedian, Jon. Just get a few flowers and I'll teach you how to be nice to women. Then you might get a shag.”

“Where is She Who Must be Obeyed, anyway?”

He knew Becken was winding him up. The detachment generally liked Shan and treated her as one of their own, even if Barencoin was still wary of her in an overprotective way. He'd never approved of Ade's choice of women and thought they were all on the make.

“Getting your bloody job and pension back, I expect,” Ade said.

“I won't need a pension.” Becken took his weight on one arm and swung dramatically to the next exposed pole that formed part of the roof. He threw down a few more fruits and narrowly missed Ade. “But it's the thought that counts.”

Becken rummaged and crashed through the woody shoots and dark green leaves, sending fragments of greenery showering below. Ade wasn't sure where Shan was, but he suspected she'd gone below to look for Aras. He was moping: but then it couldn't have been easy to come to Umeh anyway, let alone walk among the species that had demanded your extradition for generations. Ade got the feeling it proved to be an unsettling mix of anticlimax and bad memories, which was what happened when you spent five hundred years fretting about something you couldn't change. He'd be buggered if he'd waste his life doing the same. Every time he caught a negative memory floating to the surface like a turd now, he treated it like the waste it was.

“Stand from under!” Becken yelled, and the little crowd cleared. Then he rappelled a hundred meters down to the ground on his line, pure theater, but exactly what he did on the job. It always had an impact on the ladies; even a warship's company never failed to be impressed by it. Becken released the line via his belt control and it fell like a rope trick for him to coil around the length of his forearm with all the casual skill of an electrician, and secure it. “You and your bloody flowers.”

Becken fished inside his shirt and pulled out four blue and white blooms with long stamens and wildly curly tendrils attached to leafy stalks. Ade took them and stared at their astonishing complexity for a few moments before sniffing them. They had little scent. It was faintly sweet, but it had a familiarity that was all about Earth and warm soil and sun-baked garden walls.

“Thanks, mate.”

“I still think dead mice work better. Then they know you can provide for their demon spawn as well.”

“You're hilarious,” said Ade, reminded agonizingly of what might have been. Becken did a double take that told
Ade his pain had shown on his face, but the question dried on his lips and remained unasked. “Haven't you got some woman to leer at?”

“Maybe I have.”

As Ade walked off with his impromptu bouquet, one of the female crew moved in and made a fuss of Becken. It was high time. Two years here without a leg-over was enough to try any marine's patience. Maybe they'd prefer being on Mar'an'cas with the colonists after all. He looked around, and Serrimissani had vanished.

In the machinery spaces and hydroponics chambers buried beneath the dome, the artificial light was cool and anonymous. The constant murmur of air handling and water systems created a soothing backdrop. Considering that this was where all the sewage was reprocessed and recycled, it was actually a pleasant place to be and the only smells were cleaning fluids and a hint of cucumber: it was one of the main crops, fast growing and engineered to contain a lot of vitamins. Ade found Shan and Aras sitting on the edge of a storage bin, contemplating an empty hydroponics bay in total silence.

Ade proffered the passionflowers and said nothing.

Shan stared at them, making no attempt to hide her surprise. Sometimes she could look almost like a kid, a real stunned wide-eyed look, but it was rare. He loved to see it. He felt he'd caught a glimpse of her soul, before the shit of her job made her a total bastard, even though he certainly loved the bastard Shan as much the innocent one.

Shan let the blooms rest in one palm and stroked the waxy petals with the pad of her little finger. “Jesus, Ade, they're beautiful. Where'd you get them?”

“That big vine's a passionflower. It wasn't supposed to fruit, either, but Jon's been up there picking it clean.”

“You really are the best, you know that?”

Aras said nothing. Ade felt a hot blush starting, and even if Shan said she found it appealing he always felt stupid. He usually blurted out garbage at this point. “It's okay, Aras, they'd die anyway.”

Wess'har thought cut flowers were a terrible thing, a
waste in every possible way. “I know,” Aras said. “You don't have to explain to me.”

“I won't be sorry to leave this place.” Ade had no way of sharing memories with them now. It didn't matter, but he'd started to wonder if he was out of the loop on subtle and troubling stuff. “Can't wait to get back to my morning run.”

“I'm missing my own bed,” said Shan. “One night on the floor down here is fine, but the novelty wears off fast.” She ruffled Aras's hair, looking like a concerned mum whose kid was running a temperature. “And it's not doing you any good being here, either. Is it?”

Ade looked into Aras's face, not seeing anything beyond those desperately sad charcoal black eyes, just like a dog's in many ways. He knew who was looking back out at him; a soldier like himself, abandoned by his masters. The wess'har didn't go back for prisoners. It wasn't out of disregard, but motive didn't matter if you were the one sitting there waiting to be extracted.

Finding out that the bezeri weren't worthy of his sacrifice, and then stirring up memories of his isenj captivity, had crushed him. Aras needed uncrushing, fast.

“Look, mate, straighten up.” He took hold of Aras's shoulders and braced them for him. When he touched him he got a real sense of how massively powerful the wess'har was, the sheer weight of him, and he had a split-second thought of how that felt to Shan. She didn't say a word, and watched patiently. “If you remember how bitter you were about being abandoned, I understand. Motive matters sometimes. That's one part of the way wess'har do business that I hate.”

Aras jiggled his head slightly from side to side. It usually meant annoyance. He didn't smell agitated, but—shit, this man was his
brother,
literally, sharing DNA even if it was long after the fact. Ade knew he wasn't happy. It wouldn't have been natural if he was: Ade just needed to know if there was anything he could do.

“I'm just facing ghosts,” Aras said calmly. “Not for the first time. But perhaps they appear more vivid here because memories are triggered by smells, sounds…places.”

He stared back into Ade's face for a few long seconds.
For once, Ade didn't feel uncomfortable. Then Aras stood up slowly, making Ade break his grip, and simply hugged him so hard that it hurt his ribs.

“I'm not going to fall apart, Ade,” Aras said. “I can't be in a state of ecstasy all the time, much as you want to shield me from realities. But the fact that you do makes me glad to have you as a house-brother.”

Aras gave a quick
urrrr,
a burst of that weird purring that he did when he was happy, and walked past Ade. Shan reached out to stop him going after Aras.

“'S'okay, Ade.” She gripped his arm. “We were just talking. He's trying to make sense of it. Let him go for a walk. When he needs to talk, he knows where we are.”

“Poor sod.” He pulled her to him but she kept a tight grip on the passionflowers. She tasted of fruit juice. “He's not feeling guilty about Mjat, is he?”

“I don't get any sense of that, no.”

“Did I make it worse by going on about the Skavu exterminating them? Shit. I mean, I felt what
he
felt bombing them at the same time that I was trying stop that Skavu fucker shooting them. But it wasn't rational. I just couldn't live with knowing I didn't try to stop it. I don't even like isenj. I put one down myself. But this was different.”

“It's what I'd expect of you. No explanation needed.”

“I don't pick up your memories and thoughts now, remember.”

“Then I'll have to keep telling you.”

“I bloody well love you, woman.”

“Love you too.
Vaut le détour,
as they say.”

“They
might…I don't.”

“Sorry. Worth the detour. Worth making a diversion in your journey. Restaurants, usually.” She put her hand against his cheek and ran her thumb gently over his lips. “I actually like this life. I wondered why I couldn't just say fuck it and leave the isenj and bezeri to make whatever fate they want, and just sit on my terrace in F'nar and do matriarch stuff and get shagged senseless every day. Christ, how much more
is
there to want? The point is that I can't leave it alone here because this
is
home, and what affects F'nar affects
us.
”

Ade had a nagging need both to find a cup of water for the flowers, and to shove her up against the wall and just have her before anyone came to interrupt. “The isenj are sorted, one way or the other. Nothing you can do about it.”