Judge (10 page)

“Aitassi,” Esganikan called. “Aitassi?”

The ussissi normally hung around the cabin, but sometimes she disappeared to be with her clan, complete with infants, subordinate females and the complex hierarchy of males. Ussissi traveled in packs, and Esganikan understood why. Only a handful of her crew had families back home, waiting for their return in synchronized suspension. When a ship landed, and the crew was revived, their kin back home were as well, so that they could have the illusion of a shared life with no time dilation. Most of the crews were therefore young, unmated, and relatively inexperienced. Those with families endured a peculiar thing that Shan referred to as
hell.

The sound of skittering claws announced Aitassi's arrival, and she appeared in the hatchway with a small infant clutched under one arm like a piece of baggage. That was how ussissi transported their offspring; it looked so casual to a wess'har that Esganikan was always worried for their safety, but the little ones seemed perfectly secure. At that age, their finely ribbed skin—Shan called it
corduroy
—made them look appealingly wrinkled.

It was impossible to get away from reminders of family and offspring. Aitassi made no introduction of the new baby.

“What do you want, Commander?”

“The climate projections. Have you looked at them?”

“I have, but I don't fully understand them.”

Esganikan, kneeling in the most comfortable resting position for a wess'har, looked at the projections and interpretations again. She was a soldier, a planner and strategist, not a scientist: she wanted to be absolutely certain she understood what she thought she was seeing in the data. The information had been prepared by the senior analyst in the biodiversity team, Balagiu Je.

“Get Balagiu for me,” she said. “I think we have a hard decision to take.”

“What would that be?” asked Aitassi. “Which humans to cull?”

“I don't think that will be difficult,” said Esganikan. “The environmentally responsible ones are easy to identify, and
Shan Chail
will help with that. No, this is a matter of what kind of Earth we help them restore, because it may not be the same world the species in the gene bank were taken from. The issue is how far to reverse the damage already done. We're not here to recreate a museum.”

Aitassi considered the dilemma and appeared to understand. The baby under her arm—her grandchild—began squealing, demanding food and attention. “I fear this will be the major point of contention between you and the host government. They clearly have their own expectations of what will be offered.”

“Shan called it a
theme park mentality
, but I suspect she wants the entire gene bank revived.”

“You should watch more of the gethes' factual programming output. That's what we've been doing today.” Aitassi hoisted the baby into a more comfortable position. “It always seems to be an outpouring of their wishes and opinions. They should at least
ask
for what they want, so we're all clear.”

“They're humans. They're oblique and manipulative.” Esganikan still hadn't had a response from the FEU to her demand that they hand over the last of those responsible for the destruction of Ouzhari. Europe was running out of time and didn't appear to realize it. “I think I shall do what Shan calls
cutting to the chase,
whatever that actually means, and make their situation clear to them as soon as possible.”

“We have the genome and disease data, anyway. It's simply a matter of completing the processing against the genetic templates.”

Esganikan couldn't avoid mentioning the restless infant any longer. “Is this Hilissi's child?”

“Yes. Gorossi. I have to feed him now. Will you excuse me?”

“May I hold him?”

It was an unusual request for an Eqbas. Aitassi paused and then held out the tiny creature to her.

“He already has teeth,” she said. “Mind out.”

Esganikan took him in both hands. She had never handled the young of any other species. There was no such thing as a
pet
in wess'har society, because non-wess'har of any kind were
people
to be left alone to pursue their own lives. Gorossi, warm and utterly alien, looked up at Esganikan with an expression of indignation, revealing an angry, demanding mouth fringed with tiny needle-like teeth.

And yet he was perfect: a creature of pure wonder.

It was shocking moment for Esganikan. It stirred memories that were very definitely not hers, of lost children and unfulfilled lives—ah, Lindsay Neville's memories, no doubt—and a craving so profound that she was distressed by it. The fact that she
knew
this was an inherited memory didn't dilute the pain one bit.

“Here,” she said, holding out the child for Aitassi to take him back. “He's very fine. I envy you the prospect of continuity.”

It didn't come out as she'd planned. As Aitassi left, Esganikan regained her composure and tried to look at the memories more dispassionately. No, she really hadn't bargained for this when she insisted on an infusion of Rayat's contaminated blood. It was far more intrusive than she had ever imagined. How did Shan or any of the others cope with this chaos in their minds? It made her feel invaded rather than guided, and that was totally outside her experience.

She shut her eyes and groped for a wess'har memory, something that she could feel more at ease with. It was Aras's—Aras, realizing what
c'naatat
actually was, and what his isenj captors had accidentally given him along with the terrible wounds that healed over and over again almost instantly during torture.

Five hundred years ago. Yet it's so vivid.

A wave of regret and dread—Aras's—almost took her breath away; thinking
c'naatat
simply healed, then realizing it was far more than that, and knowing he had made outcasts of his comrades and that none of them dare breed. Esganikan could see the sunlit courtyard wall he was staring at when the full realization hit him, could smell the cut foliage scent of the vegetable roots in his hands, and the near pain in his chest.
I can never be a father now. What have I done?

She had to physically shake her head to get the image out of her mind and reassure herself that she was still Esganikan Gai. Perhaps the memory felt so vivid because it was a preoccupation of her own—the urge to have family. It was one of a number of yearnings and regrets from so many other lives. She recognized Lindsay Neville's grief for her dead baby son, an image of a little grave with a stained glass headstone depicting flowers; then she was suddenly underwater and watching the bioluminescence flickering and fading in a small bezeri body. And she could clearly identify another creature mourning the loss of family, but not a child—parents and siblings. That was more alien; isenj, she thought. When she concentrated, it was tied to an image of white-hot flame and explosions as the colony of Mjat on Asht—yes, Bezer'ej, when the isenj overran it—was destroyed by wess'har air strikes.

By Aras.

She saw the whole world from many eyes, and it hurt more than it educated. She wanted the longing for offspring to go away. She also preferred not to see the world through the eyes of isenj under wess'har attack, although she'd never been squeamish about such things before.

Get a grip.

Esganikan thought it was Shan's fierce discipline surfacing in her, but it was that all-too similar voice, the spy Rayat; they were both so tenacious, such survivors, so
driven.

A sense of detached calm overwhelmed the other memories. She saw a small illuminated data screen with meaningless words on it, but a very clear recollection of the names and faces associated with them.

For a moment, she was Rayat, receiving orders to salt neutron bombs with cobalt, and ensure that the
c'naatat
organism dormant in the soil of Ouzhari island was totally destroyed, put beyond the reach of any of the FEU's rival states.

Michael Leard.

Jaime Callard.

Rav Mynor.

Katya Prachy.

So those were the names. She knew that three on that list had been killed by environmental activists before she'd left Bezer'ej, twenty-five years ago, when Marchant had contacted her and promised to deliver the guilty. One was a civil servant; the other was an intelligence officer, a
spook
like Rayat.

But the woman, Prachy…

The woman was guilty too, and now Esganikan had her name. That had been worth those moments drowning in alien memories.

If the woman was still alive—she could check that, with or without Shan Frankland's investigative skills.

Europe faced overwhelming restoration measures anyway, but Esganikan didn't want a
probable
death. She needed to carry out the death sentence on Prachy, and be certain of it.

It was about balance. It was about
judgment.

Australian PM's flight, en route for the Eqbas camp: next day.

 

Bari didn't care if he had to crawl over broken glass to see Esganikan Gai. His place or hers, it didn't matter; if she wanted to sit it out in the bloody desert for a few more days deciding if she liked the color of the wallpaper, that was fine.

Right now he needed to know what his visitors could do to warn off the FEU. Another carrier was heading south from the FEU's main Spanish base. The worst thing was that Bari had no idea what concession he was expected to make. The saber rattling made no sense.

“Shukry, just tell me the damn accommodation's ready,” he said, not looking up from the surface of his makeshift desk. It filled the width of the small charter aircraft. A private jet was unacceptable even for the PM, except in a national emergency, and it had to be a
very
small aircraft to avoid accusations of environmental vandalism. The desk screen showed him the split feed from the emergency response center, the military navsat array and the UN, but the latter might as well have been a bloody freeze-frame for all the action they were taking. “And the quarantine's sorted, right?”

Shukry Aziz looked at Persis Jackson, Bari's PPS. “Well, Esganikan said we're safe, and she thinks
she's
safe, so…”

“Frankly, if we catch the Black Death, it'll be worth it just to go and cough over Zammett,” Persis said. “Eh, PM?”

What the hell does Zammett want from us? He knows we can't kick the Eqbas out, and this isn't about the Antarctic territory. I'm fed up guessing.

Esganikan Gai could put her highly advanced boot up Zamett's backside. That might get him to put his cards on the table.

“I'm going to trust Eqbas tech,” Bari said. “But I didn't think we'd managed to get all the data. Still waiting on the Nairobi Disease Center, I thought.”

“She says she has it anyway,” said Persis. “So I think we can forget passwords and encryption. Everything's hackable as far as they're concerned.”

Shukry grunted in agreement. “No concept of secrecy. Like they don't understand borders.”

It was the little things that reminded Bari not to push the Eqbas too far. The plane flew over a surprisingly large crowd clustered at the perimeter fences the army had erected, and then dropped down on a scene that looked like an orderly snooker table. He could see the defense shield clearly now, a layer of shimmering air sitting over the whole camp like a flattened dome, and there were figures moving around, some almost human in size and shape, some like…large dogs. He had no other description. It was just as well he'd seen the news footage from Wess'ej over the years or the culture shock might have killed him.
Ussissi.
They were ussissi. He wasn't just dealing with one alien species; counting the Skavu, who he hadn't yet seen, there were three.

“You think they could generate a shield like that for the whole country?” Shukry asked. “It was bloody amazing how that jet bounced off it.”

“Yes, Zammett's backed down on the claim that the Eqbas opened fire. Common sense says he finally worked out that the FEU can't go on pissing off wess'har and not be turned into charcoal.”

“Bit late for that,” said Persis. “It's still top of her agenda. Esganikan wants Zammett to hand over an ex-spookmaster called Prachy for the bombing.”

“Oh, she's got a name now?” Somehow Bari had expected Esganikan to tell him first. “They do hold a grudge, don't they?”

“The FEU did a lot of damage.”

“Says a lot for their patience that they don't just fry Europe from orbit, actually.”

Shukry looked back over his seat. “They don't think like us. It sounds obvious, but everyone forgets because they speak English so fluently. They're not patient. They're
precise.
”

“This is the wisdom of Michallat again, is it?”

“He's the only definitive source on the wess'har, PM. And he says to beware trying to mix wess'har and human concepts of guilt.”

“My, the useful things you can learn from televids. Now, is that refugee center ready for them or not? It'll make all our lives easier if we can get them to move.”

“The army says it is, but they think the outer perimeter needs to be extended to take in the town. Or the residents will be driven nuts by media, apocalyptic dingbats and assorted sightseers. There are only a couple of hundred people, and it beats having the center full of asylum seekers trying to escape before they're deported. Townsfolk seem to prefer real aliens.”

“Okay, do it.”

The aircraft landed a cautious distance from the edge of the camp, and they made their way across open ground that was already searingly hot. Bari took a deep breath.
Yes, you're strolling into an alien army camp. It's no big deal.
He hesitated at the visible edge of the shield and wondered if he was going to get a massive shock from it until he noticed ussissi trotting back and forth as if it wasn't there. When he plucked up courage to walk through, the hairs on his arms stood up and he felt a mild tingling; but the most shocking aspect of it was the cool, moist air that enveloped him.

“Whatever it costs, I'll buy it,” Shukry said, basking in the blissful sensation. “Oh, this is great…”

“It's a damn shame we didn't get to meet them when we weren't on trial.”

Bari had a fleeting thought that this single piece of technology alone could transform an economy. He couldn't even begin to imagine the power source. And then there was the gene bank. And ITX. What else?

No, don't even think about profit. Concentrate on not ending up like most of Umeh. Concentrate on the environment.

Esganikan Gai ambled towards them with a slight swagger that might have been indicative of trouble brewing, had she been human. It was the first lesson about assumptions in what was likely to be a very long list. Behind her, Shan Frankland's body language was much easier to read. She looked like she was used to having people scatter in panic before her; she was six feet tall, and although her uniform had seen better days, physically intimidating. That wasn't the kind of woman Bari was used to. He wondered which of the two he'd really be dealing with.

That was disorienting, but it was nothing compared to the interior of the bubble-shaped ship that formed Esganikan's quarters. The first thing Bari did was almost slam into a translucent bulkhead that seemed to move.

Oh my God. I'm in a spaceship. A real spaceship.

“Yes, it's like a hall of mirrors in here,” Frankland said, oddly chummy, although her expression wasn't sociable at all. Bari sat down on what he hoped was a seat. “And the scenery moves, so mind how you go.”

Bari turned to Esganikan. “What do you want to discuss first, Commander? We've got accommodation ready for you to inspect, and a complete team of environment scientists waiting to start work when you're ready. You tell me.”

“I must have custody of the woman called Katya Prachy,” she said bluntly. It was very matter of fact, and yes, she really did have a double-voice like one of those Tibetan singers. It was riveting, especially as she seemed to have a faint English accent that was nothing like Frankland's, and he could
hear
who taught her the language—Michallat. “This is what you call a war crime.”

“I've called in the FEU ambassador to tell him we're starting extradition proceedings.”

“No. Inform him that he has to hand her to us as soon as he locates her, and if he fails to deliver her, then we
will
act.”

“I'm not sure what you mean by that.” Bari avoided Shukry's eye. He didn't want to hear more of the world according to Eddie Michallat. “But relations between us and the FEU aren't very good at the moment.”

“Then it makes even more sense to do things our way.”

Frankland looked weary. “It's probably a good idea to stand back and be
uninvolved,
Prime Minister,” she said. “The FEU won't like the task force being based here while it carries out its operations, but from what I've seen they're putting the frighteners on you anyway.”

“We still have concerns about their naval activity, yes.”

“We've seen the news this morning.”

“It might result in firing warning shots. I'll be frank with you—I don't know what their real intention is, because you're not about to leave, are you?”

Esganikan's plume bobbed like the crest of a Roman helmet. “Perhaps they think we might back down over Prachy if pressure is put on our hosts.”

Frankland didn't look convinced. “Have you asked them?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe we need to call the ambassador in and ask again.”

Esganikan didn't even look up. “Prime Minister, I used to have discussions with Jim Matsoukis and Canh Pho. They were aware of how we
remediate
planetary environments, and that your neighbors beyond the Pacific Rim States may be greatly upset by this. Are you prepared to experience what the isenj Northern Assembly did when Umeh was prepared for restoration?”

“What's the alternative?”

“We'll restore the planet with you or without you.”

He believed her. It was impossible to doubt now, even if Brussels seemed to think it was a bluff. Did they learn
nothing
? “We invited your intervention, so we stand by our decision. We even held a referendum on it, and the majority of the population still support it.”

“This will be beyond war. What follows will be nothing like peace. It's fundamental and permanent change, the curbing of your species, but your nation will escape the worst of it. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

Esganikan said it very quietly and it was all the more terrifying for that. Bari knew; he'd always known. But feeling it in the pit of his stomach was new and sapped his confidence.

The FEU started this, remember. They brought the trouble to the door. So make the best of a bad job.

It didn't feel like betrayal at all. It felt like survival, and Zammett would have nuked Australia for less.

All empires had their day, though, and all fell, so the FEU would have to make its own choices.

“Okay, let's give their personnel the choice of remaining here, and ship the rest home if they want to go, given the likelihood of conflict. Shukry, you can arrange that.”
At least I don't send those poor bastards home just to be fried.
Bari stopped short of asking her what she meant by
the worst of it.
“I know I should be talking about consultation with the UN, but the FEU doesn't listen to them.”

“The UN has no power to deliver results,” Esganikan said. “So I'll deal with those in power.”

“Why don't you let me talk to the FEU ambassador?” Frankland asked. “Tell him he's running out of time.”

Frankland kept looking at her watch, as if she had some other planet to invade with her alien chums. How did a copper like her ever get in that kind of position? The gloves bothered him for some reason. Nobody wore gloves in this heat, no human anyway. Esganikan wore them too. Perhaps it was some Eqbas etiquette thing.

“What do you think you can achieve?” Esganikan asked her, as if they hadn't planned any of it and were just mulling things over.

“I like to do things by the book,” Frankland said. “Whatever the state of my warrant card, I'm still a copper, and I have rules.”

The two women stared at each other for a few moments and Bari felt forgotten, not a feeling he was used to as prime minister. Then Esganikan nodded as if she was just giving Frankland permission to take a day off.

“We'd like to talk to you about the gene bank, too,” Frankland said. “That's my part of ship, so to speak. Would your government be prepared to produce seed from the non-patented food staples and distribute them at cost?”

There hadn't been unpatented seed available for at least two centuries. Bari had to think twice about it. He was too firmly stuck on the impending showdown with the FEU to concentrate on agriculture. “That's going to upset the European and Asian agricorp multinats.”

“I'd hate to do that, Prime Minister.” It was the nearest Frankland had come to a smile. “Yes, it's going to destroy their business. But that's not my problem, and I don't have shares.”

Esganikan Gai looked at her with an expression that could have been anything from disapproval to curiosity. “But this might interfere with natural population decline. If you distribute food crops that have resistance to drought and heat, then the natural reduction by famine is lost.”

Frankland didn't even blink. “But it drives out genetically engineered crops, so it contributes to the overall remediation.”

Jesus, they're debating whether letting more people starve to death is a bad thing. Aliens…okay, but a
human
saying that?

Bari knew he was still avoiding the most painful issue. It wasn't just about replanting the forests, or reducing temperatures, or finding a home for those macaws they were so worried about. It was about reducing the number of humans on the planet by
billions.

Slow or fast? He wasn't sure whether he was cooperating with genocide or staving off inevitable disaster with hard pragmatism, but either way it was going to happen, and his duty was to make sure it didn't happen to Australia. Technically, he had a duty to his Pacific Rim allies too, but he found his focus had narrowed fast.

And there was still an FEU carrier group in the neighborhood.

He'd focus on that. Maybe he'd be a hero in the end, but he also ran the risk of being a monster. It was hard to judge. All he had was the here and now, and he couldn't stop the Eqbas on his own even if he wanted to.

“I'll call in the FEU ambassador this afternoon,” he said. “Meanwhile, we'll send in our resettlement and immigration teams to get the colonists moved. Let's leave the
Actaeon
crew until we hear what the FEU has to say for itself.”