Dear God, and this is just time separation. This isn’t even c’naatat. What’s it like after five centuries when you’ve seen people age past you over and over again?
Shan looked around for something to sit on and pulled up a storage box of laminated efte.
“How are you doing, Eddie?” He was a painfully old man, not quite as frail as she’d expected, but it was a job to spot the bloke she’d known until she concentrated on his eyes. Eddie was still in there. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
“You got fired,” he said. “But that’s good, because I couldn’t have waited for you much longer.”
“I didn’t belong there. I don’t think I ever did.” She took his hand carefully. “Now I’m going to kick your bloody arse for trying to be a hero.”
“What?”
“You know what. You could have told BBChan that you had proof about me. C’naatat. Nothing would have happened in the end.”
“Jesus, that was a long time ago.”
“You didn’t have to protect me. And you certainly didn’t have to impose this exile on yourself.”
Maybe it wasn’t the thing to say to a man who probably missed Earth and now regretted a pointless gesture that time had covered in the silt of events. “Don’t kid yourself that I fell on my sword to cover your arse, doll,” he said. “It was more than that, a lot more. Now…have you ever stood up and said what you really did to protect Green Rage? Even now?”
It was the question he first asked her more than fifty years ago, when she was freshly marooned here and he worked out who she was and why Perault might have shanghaied her. “Oh yeah, a copper telling the world she went native and helped eco-terrorism when she should have been crushing it is really something I want to boast about.”
“Maybe you had to be there.” Eddie took a rasping breath. “Look, it was more than my being too humiliated to go home. Why should I give a fuck what a news editor thinks of me? Something in me just switched off that day. I wanted to tell a different kind of story.”
Shan checked her mental calendar. Twenty-five years. “When did you last do a program for BBChan?”
“Oh…maybe twenty years ago. It’s gone now. You know that, don’t you? BBChan’s gone.” He squeezed her hand. “You know I helped the isenj set up a broadcast network on Umeh? It’s linked to Wess’ej too. Really something. I’m the bloody Lord Reith of outer space.”
Eddie began laughing with the caution of someone whose chest hurt. Shan had no idea where to take the conversation next, because the things she wanted to know most were the most awkward, and there was too much water under the bridge to know where to start on the harmless stuff. It was a bad time to discover tact.
“So…about you, Eddie. Give me the bullet points.”
“Erica’s been gone ten years. Barry—I sent him off to Eqbas Vorhi with Olivier’s lad when he was twenty, so he could get back to Earth with the next ship. There was no future for him here, not as the last of the species. Bloody shame that so many people went back. A few more humans here, and maybe we could have had a viable colony that could learn to behave like civilized sentients and fit in with the wess’har. Maybe even do something responsible with that second gene bank.”
It took Shan a few seconds to do the maths, but that meant he’d heard almost nothing from Barry since. She didn’t want to think about the big picture then, not gene banks or the sanctity of creation or the shape Earth was in. “So they’re still sending support to the Earth mission.”
“I think,” Eddie said slowly, “that it’s by way of checking up what’s left and deciding whether to keep the garrison there, or decide that the humans can run the shop on their own, and pull out.”
“Nothing I can do there now, but plenty I can do here.”
“Predictably, the adjustment hasn’t been completely seamless.”
“Unless it really matters to you to tell me, I don’t want to know all the detail…yet.”
“You haven’t had any news or messages since you left Earth?”
“No, I thought that catching up with my friends was the priority. Plenty of time to watch the bloody news.”
“I’ll give you my records. I spent a good fifteen years advising the Eqbas on policy stuff, so you can read a complete record of what went on each year.” Eddie looked into her face and studied it, gaze flickering, eyes glazed with age. A slow smile spread across his face. “So, are you happy you’ve completed your mission now?”
“I don’t know if I feel it’s job done, but the case is as closed as it’ll ever be.”
“Good. Time to move on.”
“I hope we can see a bit more of each other now. It’s not like either of us have pressing duties.”
“You’ve got Ade and Aras.”
“They’ll want to see you too.”
“You know,” he said, “I always fancied Ismat Qureshi. Pretty, pretty girl. Did she realize, I wonder? I never told her. Bloody shame.”
Shan had been at Qureshi’s funeral a week ago, in terms of her own timescale; late twenties or early thirties, a bloody good marine, and dead far too young. She wished now that the full twenty-five years’ separation from Earth was something she had lived through, so that time could have taken the edge off her grief. But interstellar travel didn’t work that way. Shan was effectively freshly bereaved, and still raw.
“I think Izzy knew,” Shan said at last.
Eddie nodded a few times, then squinted into the shafts of bright sun piercing the window. “I know everyone says it, but nobody really takes it seriously enough. Tell people the good stuff when you can. You can’t always catch up later. The shit and the arguments can wait.”
Shan had always had good human radar. Something tapped her on the shoulder and whispered that unalloyed happy reunions were only for the movies, because she’d come back from the dead and knew how brief the breathless, grateful joy could be. She could see the limit of her time left to be Eddie’s friend.
“I’ll see you later,” she said, and stroked the thin wisps of hair on Eddie’s scalp. It looked like an infant wess’har’s, all papery fragility. “Got to unpack. Did you leave the place nice and tidy, or will I find bottles and frilly panties down the back of the sofa?”
“You know the wess’har. Someone will have made the place ready for you. They always do.” He clasped her hand again. “Be patient with Ade, won’t you? And when you come back, I want to hear what you did on Earth. Just the fun stuff.”
“You heard the rest, then.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. But…I’d have done the same. Too many what-ifs, leaving anything c’naatat there. It was never meant to leave this system. I’ll tell you now—Rayat and Shapakti cleared every sample and piece of data from the Eqbas labs, brought the stuff back here, and Giyadas had it destroyed. No more c’naatat going spare. Just the countermeasures. And what lives on Bezer’ej.”
Shan resented the fact that Rayat’s name still produced a reaction in her. He shouldn’t have still been able to jerk her chain like that.
Eddie could read her pretty well. “You might as well know. Shap got asylum here, but he brought Rayat back with him.”
“Still here?” Her gut flipped. “Bastard.”
“Minus c’naatat now.”
“I’m glad they removed it.”
“Oh, he wanted it gone.”
“Now you’re going to tell me he found God.” No, it wasn’t the time to vent. It wasn’t fair on Eddie. “It’s good to be back again, mate. First thing we do is have dinner. I’m not putting it off, not one more day.”
He chuckled. “I’ll try to stay alive, but you better not make any fancy desserts. I might be dead by the main course.”
Shan wanted to tell him that she loved him like the brother she never had. She knew she didn’t have a lot of time to do that. Tomorrow was running out for him.
But she had plenty left. She’d concentrate on his for a while.
F’nar: upper terraces.
Home: the pl
ace was still home after so many years, and it smelled fresh and clean.
“Got to call Chaz,” Ade said, bounding over to the ITX. Time had simply closed up for him. “I promised. I said, I’d call the lads.”
He dropped his bergen in the corner and sat down at the console. Aras watched him as he made tea, the first thing Shan would ask for when she got in, and wondered how long Ade would have to wait to find his friends after twenty-five years.
There was also a message from Shapakti propped against a bowl on the table, a real letter on hemp paper scavenged from the colonists. Aras opened it: he expected to see something about Lindsay or the bezeri, but it wasn’t.
My friends.
Ten years ago, I succeeded in removing c’naatat from bezeri and wess’har tissue, and so we need not fear it again. If contamination happens, we have choices. I think those choices should be very restrained, in case we’re tempted to use this as a convenience instead of treating it with reverence and caution. I await your homecoming.
Aras closed his eyes.
Shan now had a choice, whether he wanted it or not.
It wasn’t the first time he’d had to consider it, and when it had seemed possible a few years ago, he’d taken stupid decisions that ended in Lindsay and Rayat’s infection with c’naatat. But the bad memories didn’t stop all his conflicting longings overwhelming him again; his need and love for Shan, for a house-brother like Ade, for children he couldn’t have with them, for children he might now have with someone else, for the life he had never fully lived—and for the life that he thought he would have to live, and want to live, forever.
How do I even begin to discuss this with Shan and Ade?
How do I tell them I might want to leave them?
Who will I be when c’naatat is removed? Will I even recall my time with them? Just because it worked that way for a human is no guarantee for me.
He hadn’t even had chance to prepare himself for it. He stood staring at the pot of tea for a long time until he became aware of Ade not talking, but making an occasional ah sound. Aras turned to look, and Ade had his hand to one side of his face, eyes closed, listening carefully.
“Oh…I’d like that,” he said softly. “I’m sorry that I bothered you. It’s not like you can post it. But thanks. I’ll try that number too.”
Ade closed the link and sat back, then took a breath and stared at a fixed point on the wall. “Chahal teaches at Army College.” He stood up and sniffed loudly. “That was his missus I was talking to. I’ll get the other numbers when I’m feeling a bit more up to it. Sue’s retired and Mart’s a bloody police inspector. Christ, Shan’s going to laugh her arse off at that. Inspector Barencoin of the Yard. Fuck me.”
Aras couldn’t even think of mentioning his own news. It was too selfish and potentially cruel; Ade had comforting news to help him buffer the aftermath of the short disastrous time on Earth. It could wait. He finished making the tea, and waited for the sound of Shan’s boots on the terrace outside.
It was no time to start making decisions.
First, they had to work out what kind of home they had come back to. Not even stable, studiously traditional Wess’ej was immune to change. And then—
Shan swung open the door and stood there for a moment, looking around. “God, you’d never think Eddie lived a whole married life in here, would you? And guess what. Rayat’s back.”
19
Reforested areas in what was central Germany will be able to support reintroduction of previously extinct fauna within two years, according to ecologists. A joint team of Eqbas and Canadian biologists say they’re confident the ecosystem will reach a sustainable state by 2435. Meanwhile, Indian authorities say the nation is on target for a planned reduction in population of at least 100 million in the coming year, thereby guaranteeing its access to water supplies under Eqbas Protectorate agreements.
(The World Today—morning bulletin, Channel 5000.)
F’nar: upper terraces.
Shan didn’t look half as surprised as Rayat expected when she opened the door.
“Dr. Rayat,” she said, with just an edge of ice, “how are you?”
She actually stood back to let him in. Rayat felt the temperature drop even further as he walked into the central living area, chilled by a blank stare from Ade. Aras never looked welcoming anyway, but Rayat assumed that he was still persona non grata with all three of them. He reminded himself that they’d missed living out the years that might have dulled the animosity.
No, they still loathed and mistrusted him, and he had neither the years left to him to work on that nor the desire to justify himself.
Shan went back to the table, where she’d spread out a selection of Eddie’s meticulous records of the Eqbas occupation, and appeared to be working through them.
“So, what can I do for you?” She didn’t look up.
“I’m sorry about Qureshi and Becken. I really am.”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t see any point sliding around trying to avoid you. F’nar’s a small place.” Rayat saw Ade turn his back to switch on the ITX, audio set low. Aras simply sat watching Shan. “So, you know Shap and I cleaned out c’naatat from the Eqbas.”
“I heard. I’m glad. Been back to Bezer’ej?”
“Once or twice. You heard that Shap worked out how to get the thing out of other species, too?”
Rayat knew Shapakti had left a note for them, but the barely noticeable wobble in Shan’s eyeline, just the hint of a double blink, told him that it was either a very sore topic or she didn’t know for some reason.
“That’s a lot of immortal squid to round up and treat.”
“Well, I just wanted to break the ice so I didn’t have to cross the whole bloody caldera to avoid you,” said Rayat. “And, to be honest, I wanted to know if you were planning to remove your own c’naatat and Lindsay’s so that we can get back to baseline here in terms of potential risk. You’re the last left.”
“Oh, yeah. Nice job stoking Kiir into fragging Esganikan, by the way.” Shan closed the screen on the folder she was reading. “That’s got to be the record for long-distance spook manipulation.”
“Well, are you?”
“I’m damned if I’m going to be answerable to you.”
“I did it.” Rayat selected his best verbal knife. “You see, Lindsay has this very vivid memory of you stepping out of the airlock, and telling her she’d always hate herself for lacking the courage of conviction that you had. I just wondered how you might now justify not removing the thing from all three of you.”
Ade turned slowly and got up, hands on hips, with that expression that turned him from an engagingly self-effacing man into someone who rang all Rayat’s alarm bells.
“It’s okay, Ade,” Shan said. “It’s how he gets his stiffy, seeing how far he can go before I kick the shit out of him again.” She cleared the table and stacked the files on top of a cupboard. “Rayat, I’m a bit too preoccupied with Eddie, and recent losses, and trying to make sense of what I missed in the last twenty-five years to give you any entertainment. Let’s have fun catching up some other time, shall we?”
She wouldn’t look at him, but as she turned to open the door she couldn’t avoid it; and in her usual unblinking stare, there was the slight frown of someone who had been forced to think about something they didn’t want to.
Rayat pondered his own reaction as he walked back down the terraces to his home. Yes, he’d wanted to knock that saintly certainty off her face by reminding her that the only possible reason why she and her two lovers were still walking around as c’naatat carriers was that she was too swayed by self-interest to be consistent in her stance on it.
I stopped short of reminding her about the abortion. Maybe I’m going soft.
She was inconsistent about it. She’d veered from spacing herself and aborting her child to turning a blind eye to Ade and Aras. She had limits to her ruthless principles.
Rayat thought about his own reasons for wanting
to be returned to normal, and tried to separate his own weariness with an exceptionally solitary life from the belief—so easy to cling to in doing his job—that c’naatat was too disruptive, destabilizing and open to abuse to be allowed to exist.
He didn’t know. He also didn’t know if he would take this to its logical conclusion and finish off the remaining c’naatat carriers himself.
All he knew was that he’d surrendered it, and she hadn’t, and motive didn’t matter. After a few decades, the wess’har way of thinking began to make sense.
Nazel, Bezer’ej
The islands didn’t look any different from the way they’d been the last time Shan had visited, still as wild and unspoiled as the day she had landed in one of Thetis ’s shuttles. Shan kicked along the shingle with Nevyan, scattering pebbles. Thetis was still twenty-five years out from Earth. She thought about the humans on board at times like this.
They’re going to get a shock when they get home
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, Nev.” She remembered her way to the bezeri settlement, which she felt she’d visited so recently. “But I have to see.”
“I didn’t think this would be a priority on your return,” said Nevyan.
“Closure. That’s all.”
“Have you spoken to Shapakti yet?”
“Haven’t had the chance. Still working through my list and trying to walk around the terraces without old neighbors going, ‘Shan G’san!’ all the time.”
“Then there are things I have to show you.”
Shan thought she’d managed to get lost after all, but when she walked into an overgrown clearing she could see that this was the right place. The wattle-and-daub tree houses had crumbled, leaving fragments like eggshells, but the stone structures still stood largely intact. The bezeri had gone. She wandered around, peering inside. There were no artifacts, just the ruins of homes. The illusion of having been here recently was shattered. She’d last seen the place fifty years ago.
“Is this it?” Shan asked. “Is this what you had to show me?”