Ally (42 page)

“Problems, Commander?”

“Call Sarmatakian Ve's office for me.” Hayin looked anxious: he didn't care much for Skavu support either. “We no longer need the Skavu.”

“What happened?”

“Nevyan Tan Mestin has agreed to a treaty with Minister Rit to drop all claims on Bezer'ej in exchange for help with restoration. If they break the terms, she releases the universal pathogen. That's how badly they want the Skavu to leave.”

“You're satisfied they can handle this?”

“I am, but I'd still prefer to transfer some more current technology to them.” For a moment the ferocity and beauty of the storm reproduced in front of her was hypnotic. “Where's Joluti? Let's detach a large enough section of ship for F'nar to use as a template craft. They still have nanoconstruction systems. They could copy whatever we give them.”

“Those systems are ten thousand years old.”

“They're not incapable of working from a template craft. In time, as they create more vessels, they can use the coalescent function and see how they adapt to it.”

“Surang can give them instructions.”

Esganikan's last uneasiness was soothed. She'd give the matriarchs of F'nar what they needed to make the treaty stick. They could cope with updated technology.

“Hayin, send a message to Sarmatakian that I'm withdrawing the Skavu. She can explain that to the Garav authorities. And tell her I'd like to speak to her about what assets she can now release for the Earth mission.”

The hurricane in front of Esganikan ripped a building to pieces and sent its roof crashing into the houses behind it. For all its violence, there was a majesty to it that she found compelling.

“Their storms are spectacular,” said one of the crew. “And they have so many of them.”

Esganikan was happy to focus on Earth and its problems again. She hadn't felt comfortable with the Skavu either.

Now she could concentrate on the matter in hand.

Constantine island: former home of the human colony

From the sea, the island looked as it always had since it has recovered from the isenj occupation; a rocky coastline, a smoky haze of blue, gray and pale mauve grass, and a fringe of orange-topped trees where an inlet cut deep into the island and formed a natural harbor.

Aras knew every inch of it. He took the boat at half speed, cutting close to the shore, expecting to see bezeri even though he was sure they hadn't reached this far north. He thought of the years he'd spent there. His infinite future had stretched ahead of him and he'd wondered how he would stand the isolation, but it was still better than going back to Wess'ej and living there unable to share the basic elements of wess'har life: an
isan
, housebrothers and children to raise.

Besides, the isenj might have come back. Bezer'ej had needed a guardian.

Now it needed to be protected from its own inhabitants.

Aras circled the island slowly, trying to make sense of bezeri that had now decimated the
sheven
population on at least one island. They'd been
c'naatat
for how long, weeks? Yes, just weeks, no more. Already they were fulfilling his worst nightmares. He ran the images through his mind over and over again.

Climbing trees.

Walking. Talking.

Could Lindsay Neville contain them? He had his doubts.

There were only forty-four of them, hardly an isenj plague of billions. But that was now, and he had to think in the longest possible term. He'd still be around when the worst happened.

Something was still nagging at him. Something specific was bothering him and demanding an answer, as if he'd been given one of Shan's Suppressed Briefings and with it the frustrating knowledge that there was something he had to remember.

I started this. I started it five centuries ago, when I first gave
c'naatat
to my comrades. I should have learned, but
I did it again with Shan, and now look where the chain of consequence has led me.

Aras wondered how he'd tell Shan about the
sheven
. Ade would be mortified; he'd blame himself. It was up to Aras to solve the problem for good.

Wess'har didn't lie, but he'd learned not to tell everything that he knew. The Skavu didn't have to be told about the
sheven
, and neither did Esganikan.

He saw the undergrowth of Chad Island in his minds eye.

Eggs.

The thought hit him and for a moment he wasn't sure where it came from, and then he realized what had been simmering away in his memory.

Among the bushes circling the huts, he'd seen something he thought was fruit. Now he knew where he'd seen something similar, and he knew what the fruits were, and they weren't from plants at all.

They were eggs.
Bezeri eggs.

The few he'd seen underwater were a lighter color, anchored to the stalks of weed. The ones he'd seen clustered around the stem of a bush on Chad were darker, and slightly ribbed, but they were…
eggs.

The bezeri were breeding again. In another time, under other circumstances, it would have been welcome news. Now it was the beginning of a disaster.

He knew what he had to do. And it seemed more terrible to him than the bombardment of Mjat and the other isenj cities, in which he was responsible for the deaths of millions. He searched his own conscience to make sure he wasn't punishing the bezeri for daring to have offspring, something he could never have.

But he knew what Shan would say. She had already taken an identical decision.

Bezer'ej: landing area, outside the Temporary City

Shan sat cross-legged in the grass, eyes closed, enjoying something she couldn't recall savoring in years. It was the simple warmth of sun on her face and a relative absence of thought.

I don't have to be the boss all the time. It's Nevyan's turf. Restoring Umeh isn't my part of ship.

She'd be Nevyan's bagman, the reliable sidekick, like Rob McEvoy had once been to her in EnHaz. She thought of the young inspector occasionally and wished she'd thought of him a lot more, but time and space had put him beyond reach. At least she now knew his police career had been a successful one. There was something of a parental pride in the feeling, a knowledge that she'd contributed something to the man, even if it was only giving him a few steers to help him get his next promotion. You had to leave something behind you or you hadn't lived.

Rob had left grandchildren with happy memories of him, and a Wessex Regional Constabulary with much better collation and accounting systems than he'd inherited. It wasn't bad for one life.

I really ought to get my paperwork sorted. Still haven't resigned formally or closed off my pension.

She'd find a deserving recipient for her Earth-locked funds. The marines, maybe. They had their own nest eggs that had grown bigger than they realized, but it never hurt to have more.
Poor bastards.

“Aras is taking his time,” said Nevyan. “You should have gone to Chad with him.”

Shan opened her eyes, the reverie shattered. “He wanted to do it alone. He's had five centuries' experience of bezeri, and I need to respect that.” She took out her swiss and paged Ade, her mind still finding loose ends to tie up. “I never had any warning that my uterus had regenerated, you know. No bleeding or anything.”

“You bleed?”

“Well, if you're not medicated to suppress it, yes. Women bleed once a month if they're not pregnant. Normally, anyway.”

Nevyan's head cocked on one side. “Bleed? How?”

Shan realized how much Nevyan still didn't know about humans, and that she didn't need to. “I'll explain it when we get back.” Ade didn't answer his link; she'd try later. She needed to hear his voice, not leave terse messages for him. “Must be nice to have control of your reproduction without involving doctors.”

“If humans had that, I doubt they would use it wisely.”

“But you choose if you conceive or not.”

“And how many embryos we produce.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Shit, I've been living here what seems like forever and I've never seen a multiple birth.”

“When the population requires adjustment, you'll see many twins. Even triplets.”

“But you don't choose gender.”

“No.”

“The Eqbas must have got around that.”

“This is what I mean. Some things are fundamental to our culture.” Nevyan rose a little from her kneeling posi
tion to look around, and then settled back again. “I have to take another husband when I choose to have my own child.”

That was one of the downsides of taking on an instant family. All Nevyan's males, widowed and taken into her household, had already fathered children. They couldn't breed again.

“Where's Giyadas?” Shan asked.

“Serrimissani is showing her how to navigate.”

“She's a terrific kid.”

“Does this pain you, this talk of children?”

“Not if I don't let it.”

Nevyan dropped the subject. Shan preferred wess'har when they were brutally outspoken: Nevyan was learning tact a little too thoroughly and Shan missed the time when she could blister paint with her directness. She went back to soaking up the sun, unafraid of skin damage, until a dark dot in the heat haze of the plain resolved into a shimmering outline that became Aras.

Shan nudged Nevyan, then licked her forefinger and held it up in the breeze—yes, it really did work—to confirm they were downwind. She expected to pick up his scent of anxiety any time soon.

“I knew it wouldn't go well,” she said, inhaling.

Aras walked in the way of a man who knew he was being stared at expectantly but couldn't bring himself to break into a run; head down, a little embarrassed. It took him a few minutes to cover the ground. Shan stood up to offer him a kiss, but he didn't seem to be expecting one and dipped his head awkwardly.

“Okay, spit it out,” Shan said.

“I found them. I inspected their camp.”

“They have a
camp
?”

“They're competent builders,
isan,
and now they've started to recreate their civilization ashore. They walk, they climb and they can even glide.”

“Jesus H. Christ, those things weigh a ton. How can the hell can they glide?”

“They're considerably lighter than that.”

Nevyan cut in, impatient. “Their aerodynamics aren't what's made you distressed, Aras.”

“No.”

Shan decided to say the name. “Lin, then? What's the daft cow done this time?”

“Not her.” This was definitely not like Aras. He was struggling with something painful. “There are things I have to keep from the Skavu. From Esganikan, too, if we're to be left in peace here.”

Wess'har didn't have much of an idea about secrecy. It explained a lot. Failing to share important information had consequences, and this was the first time Aras had been faced with this dilemma in a long time, maybe ever.

“Tell me, then.”

“It's begun already. The bezeri have hunted the
sheven
population of Chad to extinction, and…they're breeding. I found eggs.”

Nevyan let out a low hiss. Shan plunged into an all-too-human sequence, thinking that there were just forty-four of them, and that it was just one island and one population of
sheven,
and how bad could it be—

She knew how bad. She could think in worst scenarios, and the combination of a careless predator and a limitless life had an inevitable outcome. Changing the path of that was the imponderable, and the years it would take for the disaster to develop didn't matter. All she could see was the point at which it could be averted relatively easily.

There would be no more Umehs, no more Mjats, not if she had anything to do with it. It had to be controlled.

“Do they understand the consequences?” Nevyan asked. Giyadas and Serrimissani, drawn by the scents and sounds of anxiety, came running towards them. “Are they able to limit their lives as you do, and contain the risk?”

“They've laid eggs,” Shan said sharply. “Obviously not. And they're back to their old ways. Can you locate the eggs? How many? We need to deal with that first.”

Her reaction appalled her in the very next breath.
Would I be thinking of destroying them if the word had been
children,
not eggs?
Surendra Parekh had killed a bezeri infant by care
less arrogance, and she'd paid for it with her life. Shan had made sure of that, because that was the law here. The bezeri, like the wess'har, wanted balance, a life for a life.

And here she was overriding the law of the native species, and treating them the way most humans treated animals.

There was no such division for the wess'har between people and animals. There should have been no such division for her now, either, just a list of who could enforce their will on those beneath them in the power league.

But I took that choice.

I aborted my own child. Different reasons, and more about the life she would have lived than the risk she posed, but I did it. Motives don't matter.

“First thing is to destroy the eggs,” Shan said.

Nevyan jiggled her head in annoyance and Shan wondered if she was going to forbid her, and try to enforce it with
jask.
But she simply went quiet for a moment.

“If we tell the Skavu, they'll destroy the bezeri.”

“If they can,” said Shan. “And they haven't a clue how to deal with
c'naatat.
Besides, all the bezeri have to do to escape them is go back into the sea. Esganikan wasn't too fussed about the risk, but once she knows they've started wiping out other species and breeding, she might well assess that differently. Either way, we'll have a mess on our hands and the two armies hanging around here far longer than they need to. So we sort it ourselves. That's what you wanted, Aras, isn't it?”

He looked wretched. Shan wondered how much of it was the realization that five centuries of careful, sometimes agonizing guardianship had gone for a proverbial ball of chalk in a matter of a few weeks.

“I feel we have few options left,” he said.

“I reckon we should consider finishing them now, then,” Shan said. “If we don't do it while they're easily located, we might never get the chance again.”

“It would take seconds to lose one, and one is all it takes to spread the parasite.”

“I think we should seek an agreement with them,” said Nevyan.

“I fear they're not in a negotiating mood.” Aras looked to Serrimissani, and Shan wasn't sure if he'd paused because he thought better of discussing the problem in front of her, given the speed of the ussissi grapevine, or if he wanted her opinion. “Would you be, after being almost totally wiped out?”

And this was the mire of wess'har ethics, human morality, and the pragmatism of protecting the environment. What the bezeri had suffered became irrelevant in one, and paramount in another.

“The eggs have to go, whatever happens,” said Shan.

“The bezeri might just disappear and lay more.”

“If they can.”

Nevyan cut in again. “Instead of guessing their reaction, I'll go and talk to them.”

She had a talent for common-sense rebukes. Shan, not sure if she should have been ashamed of her own knee-jerk reaction or not, squirmed at having such a discussion in front of Giyadas. Serrimissani compressed her lips in an expression that said she wasn't impressed, but it was hard to tell if it was imminent destruction or the hesitation to do it that earned her disapproval.

“I suggest we take the shuttle,” she said. “Better we deal with this as soon as we can.”

Nevyan walked off, hands clasped in front of her; if wess'har shook their heads in disbelief, she would have been doing that right then. Shan reached for Aras's hand and squeezed it to her chest.

“I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I'll deal with the eggs. Let me do it.”

“The bezeri are my responsibility.”

“I thought we said no more macho-duty shit.”

“I'll do it. The whole situation began with me, many years ago.” He looked at her hands locked tight around his as if he'd seen them for the first time. The lights were putting on a great display right now, as if they were trying desperately to say something and were frustrated at not being heard. “When you make exceptions, the fabric of the world unravels.”

“You made an exception for me. You regret that, don't you? Things would have been very different if you'd let me die when my number was up.”

Aras looked into her face. “I don't regret it at all, and not only because I love you. You were never the risk. I was.”

Fifty meters away, three Skavu walked past the cluster of ship bubbles that made up the accommodation for crews, and stared. Shan let go of Aras and stood hands on hips, staring back. They knew exactly what they'd get if they started any shit with her now. She waited until they looked away again, and when she was satisfied that they'd got the message, she turned and made for the shuttle. Aras was way ahead of her.

He sat with his head in his hands as Serrimissani lifted the craft clear of the ground and the blue grasses dwindled beneath in a faint haze of heat and swirling debris. The most she could do was put her arm around him.

What have I come to?

Why can I take mass murder in my stride now? What happened to the Shan Frankland who'd have cheerfully gone to war over one genocide, let alone repeated ones?

She had no idea. She was back in the maze, looking for a line that told her where it was okay to be
c'naatat
, still breathing, and where it was a threat to life across the system and beyond. Being willing to die once didn't relieve her of the obligation to keep asking the question: it made it more pressing.

Her only answer was that she was now more steeped in wess'har thinking than human, and that was the line she had crossed.

F'nar: the Frankland clan home, upper terraces

“You don't have to knock, Eddie.”

Eddie stuck his head around the door just to be on the safe side. “I didn't know if you'd be swinging from the chandeliers or whatever it is you get up to together.”

Ade showed him two contemptuous fingers, grinned, and
beckoned him in. He was indulging in the unmarinelike activity of making something out of dough. “Shan and Aras are on Bezer'ej.”

“And you're baking cakes.”

“Bread. After a fashion.” Ade paused mid-knead, forearms displaying formidable muscle. “You're not yourself, mate. What's wrong?”

“Still in the shit with News Desk.”

“Shan feels bad about that, mate. She knows she shouldn't have barged in and let them know she wasn't dead.”

“Doesn't matter in the global scheme of things, one journo versus a few million dead isenj.” Eddie decided to stop there. He wanted to confide in Ade but that was too close to looking for sympathy for his noble sacrifice, and that was wrong. “I came to tell you that your pet brigadier has been on the UN portal asking after you.”

“Shit.” Ade punched down the dough and tore it into three parts, slapping each down in turn and kneading two at a time, one with each hand. It was quite impressive. “I never got back to her on Rayat.”