Deborah nodded. “If you can do it once, you can do it as many times as you have to.”
“Commander, we didn’t know what food would be safe for Eqbas,” Mo said, half turning his head from the driving seat. “Biochemistry and all that. But at least you know none of it will be animal products.”
Esganikan was exceptionally still for a moment. Something made her nervous; it might have been Mo’s driving, or it might have been the realization that she could eat anything now that she was c’naatat. “Wess’har have eaten some terrestrial crops without harm,” she said, surprisingly gracious. “I’ll regard it as an experiment.”
The town looked like a cluster of enclosed shopping malls that had settled several meters after an earthquake. Inside, it was a lot cooler and the filtered light fell on an impressively green, leafy landscape where the buildings seemed to be drowning in vegetation. The Umeh Station biodome in Jejeno was probably built with similar technology; it was sobering to see how it had developed here in what was—Shan had to pause and count—an intervening fifty years or more.
A utilitarian-looking but rather short tower was the most striking landmark. It was a minaret.
“There’s a lot more underground,” Mo said. “But we need light, being the delicate flowers that we are. Deborah says the wess’har could pipe sunlight into Constantine. That must have been quite a sight.”
I didn’t even record any images. It’s gone forever. Do I even have any pictures of Jon and Izzy? God, the first time I met him, I bollocked him for setting off the defense grid. Poor sod.
“It was,” Shan said, wishing for temporary amnesia. “It really was.”
She didn’t ask where the Christians gathered. She had no idea if a church was a contentious issue here or not. There were plenty of places on the Earth she’d left where it would have been, and enough of others where a mosque would have been unwelcome too. Wars left very deep divisions that even the shift in global power didn’t heal. But this place gave every impression of being a regular town where the inhabitants—watching carefully, inevitably curious about real live alien visitors—just had a few more headscarves than usual. It could have been any city in Europe.
“Do you need a police force here?” Shan asked, smiling as best she could and waving to some fascinated small boys leaning over a wall that was one big flowerbed. They reached out to pat Aitassi like a dog, and Shan braced for the screams, but the ussissi just accepted it. Everyone seemed to be in a tolerant mood today. “Even traffic cops?”
“Why, are you looking for work, Superintendent?”
She’d once asked Sam, her guide to Constantine, if there was crime in the colony. “Just curious. Always am.”
“Oh, we have cops, all right. Nobody’s perfect.” Mo kept looking at Esganikan, who seemed very interested in the kids. Shan could almost see her evaluating their long-term potential as reliable curators. “But we don’t have anyone holding secret barbecues, which is probably more of an indicator of our ability to live what we believe.”
“Not even grilling soy links?”
“Nah, the bloody things fall through the grid.”
Yes, Shan could do business with Mo Ammad.
In the town hall, a small group of men and women waited for them in a committee room that had a whiff of fresh paint and cinnamon. They’d laid out a good spread of what Ade called small eats that would have been serious currency for the marines on Wess’ej. Shan had to suppress a reflex to grab a bag of treats to take back for their entertainment. She’d already spotted something that Qureshi would like before reality crashed in and reminded her that Izzy was dead.
Esganikan examined slices of mango with an expression that said the scent was all too familiar, but tried it anyway. Go on, you crafty cow. You know you could eat it even if it was strychnine. Esganikan seemed to be surprised by the flavor.
“I intend your settlement to be a model for the rest of this planet,” she said suddenly. “There have to be others like you.”
Town councils everywhere were used to hearing that. It meant pilot project to them, though. That wasn’t what Esganikan had in mind. There would be no fact-finding missions to persuade other authorities what might be done. This would be enforced, one way or another, sooner or later.
One of the women councillors took out a handheld. “Are you asking if there’s a network of towns like this?” She tapped a control and then held out the screen so that Esganikan could see it. “Because there are, all over the world. Look. We stay in touch, share ideas, occasionally visit. Very different beliefs, some very diverse populations, not all vegan, but we’ve all aimed to build minimum-impact, zero-growth communities. Some have been around for a few hundred years.”
“That,” said Esganikan, “is slow progress.”
“She doesn’t do charm, folks.” Shan abandoned any pretense of tact and took a sandwich. She was briefly distracted by a wonderful flavor and sensation she’d almost forgotten—avocado, buttery and green. When she’d left F’nar, the prized dwarf avocado tree hadn’t fruited. That’d be something to look forward to when she got home. She craned her neck to look at the handheld Esganikan was scrutinizing, and saw a world map with locations picked out on it and a text list of names.
“What makes you different?” Esganikan asked, gazing into the councillor’s face.
“In what way?”
“If your community sees the need to live this way, why don’t all humans? You all have the same information about the state of the planet.”
“I don’t really know,” said the woman. “We just want to…stop doing more harm, I suppose.” She turned to Deborah as if in a plea for backup. “I can’t imagine anything worse than that planet in the documentary. The one with nothing but buildings.”
“Umeh,” Shan said.
“Yes, Umeh. If you believe in a deity, you have to respect everything he made. But you don’t have religion, do you, Commander?”
“No.” Esganikan seemed enthralled by the discovery, judging by the tilt of her head and her dilated pupils. “But motive is irrelevant to us. We care only what happens, and your aims are the same as ours. That’s all that matters.”
“So what can we do that’s useful, Commander?” Mo asked.
“Someone will have to take responsibility for the gene bank when we release it. I’ll give you ownership in due course.” Esganikan lobbed in the decision like a grenade. “I won’t give it to a government until the nature of government changes, and is not influenced by commerce.”
If Shan had ever kidded herself that she had some joint status with Esganikan, or even the basic courtesies due a sidekick, she’d been mistaken. One minute she was changing their entire policy simply by saying that she wanted an Earth where the whole gene bank could be restored, and the next she didn’t even get told about the ownership of the bloody thing.
Or that the CO gave herself a shot of c’naatat.
Shan didn’t want to crack the image of a united front, but whatever humans thought, wess’har didn’t regard disagreement as a loss of face. It was just discussion, reaching the consensus. She tried to keep her challenge conversational. “Isn’t that a lot to expect of lay people?”
“I’ll appoint experts in their fields to advise on reintroduction of species,” Esganikan said. “This is to deal with the obsession that groups have with owning the bank. It’s not theirs to own.”
“You’ve been following the row over patents on the crops, haven’t you? That’s why I asked Bari if he’d produce patent-free seeds and distribute them worldwide.”
Shan was now back on her own turf, her last job before Eugenie Perault marooned her on Bezer’ej: EnHaz, environmental hazard enforcement. She knew all about licensing seeds. There hadn’t been one legally available patent-free seed variety left for sale when she’d headed for Cavanagh’s Star. But she’d brought the gene bank home, with all those non-GM varieties that anyone could grow, save the seed, and grow again, year on year. They could breed for drought resistance, s
alinity tolerance, anything in the heritage of these vintage crops, all the things that commercial production had taken away.
How could I have forgotten? Fuck you, agricorporations. Fuck you all. This is worth the journey. If Izzy and Jon died for anything, it was things like the right of people to feed themselves. I have to hang on to that. It wasn’t in vain.
“The biotech boys will rush to court,” Mo said. “You know what they’re like.”
“Commercial law won’t count for anything now, and the staple crops aren’t their product.” It was a pity the mission hadn’t had five years’ lead time as planned; they could have arrived with a consignment of seeds and just dumped it on the market. Never mind. It would still get done. “The Eqbas don’t use lawyers to settle out of court.”
And there’d be more Eqbas ships in a few years. For all Shan knew, there might be even more after that. She was starting to see things as she used to, the little crusades and wrongs that needed putting right even if that meant a step outside the law, and that was something she’d lost sight of recently.
This was why I went to Cavanagh’s Star in the first place; it’s why I’m here now, Esganikan or not.
It was almost getting tempting to hang around and see what happened in the longer term. She resisted it.
“We’re going to live through some interesting times, then,” Mo said. “You better get some more sandwiches down you.”
It turned into an unexpectedly tolerable day, and Mo’s grandchildren had the time of their lives on a brief flight in the Eqbas shuttle. Shan wondered how they’d look back on that later in life. It was a little miracle in its own right. Esganikan was definitely fascinated by children, possibly because they seemed almost a different species to adult humans. Wess’har kids were just scaled-down versions with limited databases that they filled up as time went on, exemplified by the terrifying astute Giyadas, arguing complex ethics with Shan as a six-year-old.
And now Giyadas was pulling rank on Shan as senior matriarch, and ordering her to whack Esganikan. My, how she’d grown. Nevyan must have been proud of her.
“This isn’t Umeh, Esganikan,” Shan reminded her, trying to resist the urge to record Mo’s grandson giggling with delight that the “doggie”—Aitassi—could actually speak. “It’ll be worth the extra time it’ll take to clean up the place.”
“Time,” said Esganikan, “doesn’t worry me.”
I’ll bet it doesn’t, Shan thought. But Esganikan was still running out of it, and fast.
When they had landed at Rabi’ah, the sky was crammed with angry gunmetal clouds and the wind was whipping dust into their faces. Now a few fat spots of rain, rare precious rain, plopped onto the parched earth at their feet.
“You even brought us rain, Superintendent,” said Mo, holding his hand out to catch the drops. “You’re a regular miracle worker.”
Shan saw just rain. If there were any miracles going down, they were all Eqbas technologies that would be coming to Rabi’ah sooner rather than later—desalinated water pipelines, biobarriers, temperature-energy converters.
“See you soon,” said Deborah, waving as Shan got back in the shuttle.
She would. There were two funerals scheduled here in the next couple of days.
12
There is a fine line between exercising one’s own responsibility and assuming too much of someone else’s. Every individual has a duty to recognize their role in the fabric of life and events, and act accordingly; but when we believe that the whole cloth is somehow of our own making, even the threads woven by others, and therefore demands our attention and action, we risk crossing into the territory of seizing too much power, and then of thinking it our duty and right. As in everything, there is a balance to be sought. It should be the point of least harm to the greatest number.
TARGASSAT,
matriarch philosopher,
on the limits to intervention
En route to police headquarters, Kamberra.
“You said ten people at this meeting, tops. Why are we holding it at the police HQ?”
Shan sat in the back of the car with one eye on her borrowed handheld, watching the news headlines. She decided she would rather have faced a rioting mob than address a meeting of the key greens in the capital. But it had to be done sooner rather than later if the mission wanted more active allies out there in the human community, and she had the kind of credibility that spoke more to them than Esganikan’s imperious approach.
And I kept saying I never wanted to be the Eco-Prophet, didn’t I? But I play the card when I need to. I’m slipping.
Shukry was driving them into town. “Well, maybe a few more than ten. You know how hard it is to tell activists that they can’t come. They all want to be represented.”
It was her idea anyway. She couldn’t complain. “How many?”
“Maybe forty.” Shukry half turned in the driver’s seat, looking as if he was waiting for her to explode. “The police HQ is the easiest place to secure when we let ordinary punters in. Creates a better impression than wheeling them into some ADF camp or worse, too. You didn’t really want the greens crawling all over the reception center, did you?”
Shan thought of the Skavu. “Probably not.”
“How about you, ma’am?” Shukry asked Laktiriu. Shan had persuaded Esganikan’s deputy to come along for the meeting on the pretext that she needed to learn to work cooperatively with the greens. It sounded a whole lot better than telling her that she had to get up to speed before Shan blew her boss to Kingdom Come. “Are you okay with meeting a large group like this?”
“You’re not the first aliens I’ve worked with,” she said. “I have a method.”
Shan wasn’t sure if that was encouraging or ominous. Aras, withdrawn and silent, concentrated on the news feed as if he wanted to avoid being drawn into the conversation. The deaths of Qureshi and Becken had probably hit him harder than she thought, but she also knew him well enough to know that he felt alone among humans in a way he hadn’t on Bezer’ej.
She tried to jolly him along. “Do you want to take a day or two away from the center to see some of the wildlife havens? We could make the time.”
“I’m not in the mood,” Aras said quietly. “And you have work to do.”
He meant Laktiriu. She struck Shan as a thorough, dutiful isan with a less aggressive approach than Esganikan. Shan took nothing for granted with wess’har females, but she’d seen that they were capable of being cooperative with humans. Mestin, Nevyan’s mother, and other matriarchs before her had managed to get along with human neighbors, so it was possible.
Laktiriu always had the human-specific pathogen to wave as her big stick if all else failed, but Shan didn’t want to be here if the Eqbas decided to use that. She’d seen what it did to the handful of colonists who’d refused to leave Constantine. Maybe it was cowardice to shut her eyes and hope it didn’t happen on her watch, but she was getting used to the idea that she had far less control of the situation than she expected.
Things were happening faster than she could handle and yet there was little conflict to see so far. No aerial bombardment, no bioweapons dropped on cities, and none of the destruction seen on Umeh: everyone had been holding their breath, expecting just that, but not all invasions started with a bang and scaled down.
Apart from what Shan saw on the news feeds, the survivalists who’d taken to the mountains vowing to resist the invaders to the last man, she had no real grasp of how the landings were seen by ordinary people outside Australia. It struck her that she had now made the full transition to being an alien among her own species.
“Sooner or later, there’s going to have to be some contact between the wider public and the Eqbas, isn’t there?” Shukry steered through a security arch picked out in warning chevrons over the access road. “The PR blokes have kept the media off your backs so far, but you have to come out sooner or later. Then there’s the pressure on the PM from other governments. They want some contact too. Since his sp
eech yesterday, he’s been taking calls for hours at a stretch.”
“There’s no have to with Eqbas,” Shan said.
“What about you?”
“Not my decision,” she said. “And I’m not going to be staying. Anyway, all the time the Eqbas and their entourage stay away from the public, they’re not giving you a security problem. Because that’s what I’d be thinking of—how many officers and how much money it was going to take to keep public order indefinitely. How long do you think it’ll be before humans have seen enough of aliens to enable them to walk in the street on without causing a riot?”
“Maybe you better ask the police commissioner. You’ll be able to pop into his office on the way out.”
It was tempting to slip back into old habits and offer the local police the benefit of her experience, but it was also quicksand she planned to sidestep. If this had been the wess’har, she’d have known what to say, but the Eqbas were subtly different, a little more likely to behave like humans: they were interventionist. The Skavu—no, she didn’t even want to think about it.
Humans bombed the first populated alien planet they ever landed on. Don’t lose sight of that. This is what happens when you start a fight you can’t finish.
The security arch loomed over them like a car wash, panels flickering with hundreds of moving sensor tiles. When the detectors were level with Shan, the vehicle stopped dead and the driver swore under his breath.
“Are you carrying something, ma’am?” he asked.
“Yes, and I’m not going anywhere without it.” Shan leaned forward a little to draw the 9mm from her belt, and held it flat on her palm so the onboard safety recorder could see it. Shukry activated his head-up display and the security center sent a message to wait. “My permit was never revoked. Come to that, I might still have my authorization to decitizenize anyone I deem in need of a comeuppance.”