Perhaps it was the translation he was getting from his kit, but Kiir missed all the cues to back down. “C’naatat should be confined on Bezer’ej. No human should carry the parasite. Or any species, in fact. We need to deal with this contamination before it spreads further.”
“Oh.” Shan wore a convincing frown of concern. She smoothed her gloves over her hands like a nervous gesture and then stood with fists on hips, head slightly on one side. “Well, I’ll take that under advisement, arsehole.”
That phrase seemed to miss the transcast by a mile. Kiir was a meter or so away from her when he started to take a step forward, with the slightest twitch of muscle, and then Shan lunged. Her right fist caught him hard in the face. It was so fast that Ade didn’t even see her square up. She just punched Kiir flat; no pissing about, no preamble, no nothing. The rest of the Skavu froze for a moment and Ade raised his rifle and flicked it to automatic a full second before they raised their weapons. Aras drew his tilgir.
So what if they shoot? She can’t die and neither can we. It’ll just hurt.
C’naatat was starting to change twenty-four years of drill and experience. It was about time.
Kiir tried to get up and Shan reached behind her back, pulled her ancient 9mm pistol and held it in the commander’s face. It looked as if she’d done it so many times that she didn’t even think about it. The Skavu party didn’t lower their weapons.
“This is my turf.” The 9mm made a comforting metallic click. Ade wasn’t sure if she was going to kill him for the hell of it. “You want to fuck with me? Try it.” The commander was frozen on one knee, not quite looking at the gun as if pretending it wasn’t there might save him. His transcast probably hadn’t made much sense of the interpretation. Shan looked up at the rest of the Skavu for a moment. “And you lot—you can open up with your fucking pop-guns and that might knock me over for a second, but I’ll get up again and I’ll be fine. And then I’ll blow your fucking brains out and you will not get up again. I hope we understand each other. Do we?”
Ade moved round in front of her and stood between the Skavu party and their boss; without a translation that made any sense, the reality of opening fire on a c’naatat had been lost on them. Nevyan and Esganikan made no effort to intervene, but that seemed to be what Shan wanted, and Ade thought it might be a good instructive session in teaching the Skavu who they were dealing with.
“Disarm,” Ade said. “Go on. Drop ’em. Now. Put ’em on the floor.” He let the ESF’s auto-targeting whirr. It was usually a sobering noise for anyone staring down the barrel. “I said now.”
They just didn’t listen. Ade dipped the muzzle and put a burst of fire down at their feet, sending soil pluming. They stood their ground. Stupid bastards. If he didn’t make the point now, he’d lost: no choice. He took a breath and leveled the rifle.
“Lower your weapons,” said Esganikan. “Do it.”
There was a frozen second that could have flipped over into shooting but they fell back, letting their weapons hang in their hands. Ade had been trained to talk down trouble and avoid confrontations like that, but Skavu weren’t negotiable. He wondered why they hadn’t opened fire on him; maybe they were afraid of blood spatter. Aras’s faint rumbling sound died away and he sheathed the tilgir.
Esganikan, red plume bobbing, put Ade more in mind of an angry parrot than ever before. “I thought I might let you find out the most memorable way,” she said, and for a moment Ade thought she was talking to Shan. “You’re not to interfere with Shan Chail or her jurej’ve, Kiir. I’ll kill you if you do.”
Shan wasn’t amused or placated. “You get them out of my face right now or I’ll slot the fucking lot of them. Understand?”
Her 9mm was still held rock-steady on the commander and she looked like she wanted any excuse to pull the trigger. Esganikan considered the Skavu with a few tilts of her head.
“Has she infected me?” The commander got to his feet and put his stubby hands to his face. It was clear that nobody had ever decked him from a cold start before. “Will I be an abomination too?”
“Let me test that for you,” said Shan. “If I put one through you and you stay dead, you’re in the clear.”
“No more trouble.” Esganikan said. “I ask it of you. You’ll treat Shan Chail with due respect, and also her jurej’ve, because both of them would kill you too, and lose no sleep over it.” She turned to Shan and Nevyan, and Ade could have sworn she was apologetic. “We’ll resume this familiarization when you’re more calm.”
Nevyan cut in. “We will not,” she said. “Don’t bring them back here. I want no Skavu on my world. Wess’ej is now barred to them.”
“Your attitude to balance troubles me, Chail,” Kiir said.
Esganikan paused. Ade couldn’t tell if she was offended, surprised, or just realized she was having a bad day. “Kiir,” she said at last. “Take your troops back to the ship and wait for me.”
Shan was still visibly pumping adrenaline: chalk-white, hyperalert and pulse throbbing in her throat. She stood and watched Kiir all the way back up the ramp, and waited until the hatch closed.
“You’re improving with the anger management,” said Ade. “You only hit him once.”
She flexed her hand ruefully. “Even with c’naatat, that still hurts.”
“You okay?”
“Fine. You know, he’s only saying what I’ve said about c’naatat, but somehow it’s harder to swallow.” Shan turned to Esganikan, who was watching the conversation with apparent lack of interest as if her mind was on other things. “Is that all you came here for? To see if they could play nicely with others?”
“Partly.” The Eqbas commander ambled off in the direction of the city. Shan followed and Nevyan fell in beside her, leaving Aras and Ade to do what wess’har males usually did: to walk behind. “And partly to talk about identifying potential allies on Earth.”
Ade left enough of a gap to follow the conversation while he spoke to Aras.
“I can see why your lot left Eqbas Vorhi.”
“The Skavu’s right.”
“What?”
“The bezeri, at least. The risk is too high.”
Aras had taken the revelations about the bezeri worse than Ade had realized. “Yeah, but they still look like a bunch of psychos to me.”
“The bezeri won’t change, Ade.”
“If you think nobody changes, why are we bothering to send the gene bank home?”
Aras gave him a look that told him he’d used the word home the wrong way. “I think,” he said, “that I long for a tidier past, and can see no way back to it other than drastic measures.”
Ade had expected Aras to return from Umeh a little more at ease with his past. But he was never ashamed of it to begin with: and it took one dispassionate killer to know another. Ade wished that absence of guilt could find its way into him, and tuned back in to the conversation going on a couple of meters ahead.
“What exactly passed between you and Helen Marchant?” Shan asked Esganikan. “Did she approach you?”
“I asked the Australian Matsoukis who would be receptive to the adjustment of Earth, and he gave me a great deal of information. Marchant seemed prominent in your green community.”
“But you do know she was what we call a terrorist, don’t you? Using violence and fear to achieve political ends.”
“Yes, I did. We do similar things. And we discussed you.”
“When I helped them, I was breaking the law I took an oath to uphold. Just remember to ask her what she wants out of all this.”
“I told her what we wanted, which was the punishment of those responsible for the order to destroy Ouzhari. She said she would make every effort to achieve that.”
Ade had another unpleasant thought. He was getting a lot of those. Shan evidently had the same one. “Did she say how? Unless she specified bringing war crimes charges in the international courts, she’s probably got pals who could do the job unofficially.”
“How it’s ac
hieved is irrelevant,” said Esganikan. “With the forces Eqbas Vorhi can commit to Earth, the terrorists as you call them are another asset. The planet will be for humans who can live responsibly upon it. Do you disapprove?”
“That’d make me a hypocrite, wouldn’t it? I used them myself when the law wasn’t sufficient.”
“Do you have useful advice on those groups?”
“Nearly eighty years later? I’ve told you I haven’t. Just be aware they range from highly organized and professional to the frankly insane.”
“Do I need to distinguish between them to get the job done?”
Shan looked taken aback for a split second. Sometimes Esganikan sounded a lot like her. Ade got the feeling she looked at the Eqbas and had a sense of going there but for the grace of God.
“Probably,” said Shan. “Or you’ll get something worse than the Skavu. At least they look like they can take orders.”
“And when will the Skavu find Wess’ej wanting?” asked Nevyan. Wess’har didn’t ask rhetorical questions. She wanted an answer. “When will we be a threat to the balance?”
Esganikan jiggled her head side to side, annoyed. “They think you are now. They’re absolutists. The technique of handling Skavu is to know what orders will moderate that into pragmatism. They lose sight of outcomes.”
Ade understood perfectly. Earth was riddled with ideological wars fueled by crazed zealots, and he’d lost too many good mates in them. He walked along behind the boss women on the route back to F’nar and wondered what life would be like in Baral, where it was so bloody cold that most wess’har wouldn’t live there, just Aras’s people. Ade was an arctic survival specialist. He’d fit in fine, and Shan would be a long way from the distractions of F’nar, and Aras would be home. He liked the sound of that. A bit of peace and quiet.
Shan and Esganikan were still locked in an argument about relying on radical greens to prepare Earth for adjustment when they got into F’nar. “We’ll leave you to it, then,” said Ade.
Nevyan looked forlorn and the women headed off towards her home to continue wrangling. Shan turned around and walked backwards for a few paces. “I’ll be back for dinner, I promise,” she called. “If I’m not, come and get me.”
Ade and Aras ambled in the opposite direction. F’nar was staggeringly pretty in any weather, any light. You couldn’t go wrong with iridescence. Ade wondered if there was a variety of tem fly that laid down abalone-colored nacre, all the rich blues and greens. There were apparently lots of cities coated in pearl shit all along the migration route of the drab brown flies. It was a bloody shame F’nar didn’t encourage tourism.
“I know where the bezeri are,” said Aras.
He always had a knack of dropping bombshells. “What? Who says?”
“Shapakti sent me a message. They’re living on Chad Island.”
“On it. Ashore?”
“Yes.”
“With Lindsay?”
“Yes.”
“I know wess’har aren’t secretive, but I don’t think they’ve told Shan, then. And you haven’t, have you?”
It was obvious why: Esganikan didn’t trust Shan not to go after Lindsay Neville, and neither did Aras.
“Ade, if it was just Lindsay, I would leave Shan to do what she felt was necessary. But the problem is wider now, and not one that can be solved piecemeal.”
“I don’t get that. What are you on about?”
“It’s not her job to take responsibility for the bezeri. It’s mine. If anyone has to kill them, it should be me.”
Ade stopped dead and grabbed Aras’s arm to bring him to a halt. “Whoa, mate. That means you’re going head on with Esganikan.”
“Perhaps. I want to see for myself. I want to assess them.”
“They told you to sod off.”
“That’s irrelevant. I’ve seen Bezer’ej nearly fall to c’naatat once. Nobody else has.” Aras started walking again and Ade speeded up to match his pace. “I plan to see them.”
“Are you asking me to come?”
“No. Shan will be angry enough with me. We promised her no more half-arsed missions without telling her.”
“You tell her, or I will.”
“She’ll do it herself. She might not get it right.”
“You tell her.”
Aras lapsed into silence and walked so fast that Ade had to break into an jog from time to time to keep up. He wasn’t sure if he’d disappointed or angered Aras, but he wasn’t happy. When they reached the house, Aras started making dinner with that fixed concentration that said he was wrestling with an idea. Wess’har didn’t sulk.
“Okay,” said Ade, chopping sweet potatoes and evem into bright orange and gold cubes that looked color-coordinated. “If we all went, then Shan would be placated, and nobody has to hide it from her.”
“I’m going alone,” said Aras. “And I’ll tell her when she gets back.”
“Better get on her good side with the bananas, then.” The haul from Umeh Station yielded two ripe bananas, and the dwarf tree was sitting on the terrace awaiting transfer to the tropical habitat chamber that Shapakti had originally created for the macaws. “That’s the good thing about hardship. Puts the basic joys of life in perspective.”
The fruit took some stretching with more sweet potato and a syrup flavored with local spices. There was a blissful hour that evening when the scent of the spice and baking bananas filled the house while Ade stretched out on the sofa, arms folded over his eyes, and managed to blank out a world where the rules of morality were now incomprehensible to him most days. Aras seemed to be satisfied too, because he made his urrring noises while he cooked. Maybe it was having a plan again that cheered him up.
There was always a warning of Shan’s approach, the thud of the riggers’ boots Ade had found for her. The door eased open and she took an audible breath.
“Oh, that smells divine,” she said. “I don’t care what it is. Just slap it on a plate.”
Aras looked up from the flatbread dough he was dropping in lumps onto the hot range and peeling off in puffed skeins. Ade braced. Aras had his earnest expression on, the one that said he was prepping to blurt out something.
“They’ve found the bezeri,” he said. “I’m going to see them.”
Shan had a way of nodding once that said she wanted to shout at someone but thought better of it. “Lovely. Are you expecting the fight about this before or after dinner?”
“I have to do this.”
Shan looked at Ade for support, spread her arms, and shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “This isn’t some daft sacrificial shit like last time, is it?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay, then, go. Just tell me where they are.”
“Ashore, on one of the islands.”
“With Lin. Land-dwelling?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you plan to do?”
“Assess the risk, because I have to know for myself.”
Shan considered him with an unreadable expression and then half smiled. “Okay, but the deal is that you tell me what you find. Now feed me.”
“I’ll report back,” Aras said, not asking what she’d do by way of the deal if he didn’t.
The banana bake was strange but wonderful. Ade’s taste buds remembered they were human and for a while the intensity of the flavor was enough to distract him. They talked about crazy Skavu, and how Nevyan had taken a strong dislike to them, and how Esganikan seemed torn between force and persuasion to sort out Earth.
“Funny to talk about it that dispassionately,” said Ade. “Like we never came from there.”
“We’ll always feel the draw,” said Shan. “That’s why I can’t get too angry with you, Aras. I’d react the same.” She reached out and ruffled his hair, then tapped her glass fork against the bowl of banana mix. “This is delicious.”
There were always blessings to count, even if you weren’t Deborah Garrod. Ade counted himself lucky for having a family, and not being an isenj, or
Eddie Michallat, or Lindsay Neville.
Shan hadn’t raged about her. The placatory effect of bananas after long abstinence was stronger than he thought.
F’nar: tropical habitat, underground storage area
Shan straightened up from the tub of soil and wiped her hands on her pants before answering her swiss.
“I’ve given Minister Rit permission to land,” said Nevyan’s voice. No greeting, no identification, no preamble: she was firmly back in wess’har matriarch mode, all veneer of human compromise shed for the moment. “She’s come to ask for a treaty.”
“Bit late for that.” Shan didn’t get it at all. She laid the swiss carefully on a crate to free both hands and went on transplanting the dwarf banana. “But we’re not involved.”
“We are now.”
Wess’har weren’t good at surprises. They were good at blurting out shock news, Shan thought, but dramatic concealment was irrelevant to them. “What can she offer anyone now?”
“Nothing,” said Nevyan, “except a common goal. I need your help.”
“Advice?”
“Help. To remove the Skavu.”
That got Shan’s vote. She bedded in the tree with her heel and rinsed her hands clean under the irrigation spigot. “As long as it doesn’t involve fighting them. Hasn’t she had enough?”
“She doesn’t seem to be asking for military aid.”
“Okay, I’ll clean up and come straight over.”
It was a measure of the pace and frequency of events that Shan took this in her stride. Only months earlier, the arrival of Minister Ual was a sensation, or at least as much as wess’har could manage; the enemy had come to talk at last, to ask for aid. In the end they got destruction. Shan rinsed her face in the running water and tried hard to feel the shock she knew she ought to experience at the carnage on Umeh. It wouldn’t come. It was a grim dark weight in her chest that wouldn’t reveal itself. She needed to know that she could feel for the lives of piranha-faced spiders as much as she did for any species. It scared her that, after all these years, she was starting to show signs of anthropocentric bias.