“Well, that’s a dirty trick,” she said quietly. It didn’t seem to make her give in like it was supposed to. Ade braced for a fight. “How could you try that stunt on me?”
“It’s for your own good.” Nevyan seemed taken aback. “When we took you in, we said you should be certain you would do your duty as a matriarch when needed. This is your duty; F’nar requires more than another twenty or thirty more years’ service from you. Rationalize it as you will—living donor, whatever you wish—but I will not see someone I care about deny herself and her jurej some extended happiness over a principle. You represent no risk. Motive is irrelevant. Shapakti is forbidden from removing c’naatat from either of you until we have a very good reason to reverse that decision.”
Shan straightened up. Ade caught Shapakti’s eye and he said nothing.
“Are you angry with me, Nev? You think I’m ungrateful?”
“I didn’t save you so you could indulge in pointless self-sacrifice. Follow Aras’s example, and do something that you want but that harms nobody. A matriarch who has no regard for her own needs is, as you might say, not a selfless paragon but a doormat.”
Wess’har could be much, much more subtle than Ade had ever thought possible. The jask might not have worked as she’d planned, but Nevyan seemed to be playing an unusually crafty and very un-wess’har psychological game with Shan. She wasn’t telling her to indulge herself. She was telling her to stop being a martyr. That was bound to hit a nerve.
“Okay,” said Shan. The quieter she got, the madder she usually was. “If Shapakti’s following orders too, than we don’t have much choice. The matter’s closed until further notice.”
“You’re welcome,” said Nevyan. “And however much I may have offended you, you’re still my friend, and I won’t stand idle if this proves to make you more unhappy.”
Ade kept his mouth shut.
He should have felt relief or elation, but he just felt shaky. They left the house and walked a little way down the terraces in silence, not going anywhere specific, before Shan slowed to a halt and looked out over the city. The light was always changing, the view always fantastic, whatever the weather.
“Nev can really hit below the belt, can’t she?”
“What, calling you on the martyr thing? Saving you from the decision?”
“Actually, no.” Shan’s eyes welled but she didn’t crack. “Reminding me that Aras actually had c’naatat removed because he wanted to be a regular wess’har again.”
Ade tried to think like a wess’har, drawing on the components of Aras that would always be within him. “They really do need the thing on standby, though.”
“Yeah,” said Shan. “Perhaps they do. But that’s still an excuse.”
“I’m bloody glad she forced you to keep it. I haven’t had enough out of life yet. I want more. I really do.”
Shan thrust her hands in her pockets and walked a few paces in front of him. “If you’d put it to me that strongly,” she said, “I’d never have asked to have it removed.”
He’d probably pissed her off, but it wouldn’t last. He let the tension drain out of his shoulders and followed her. Now she seemed to be heading somewhere specific, and the direction became clear: she was going to Rayat’s place, to see the only resident of F’nar who lived alone.
“No kicking or gouging, Boss.”
She put her gloves on. “Don’t want to spoil these.”
When Rayat opened the door, he just stood back to let her in, but she stayed on the threshold.
“I just wanted to remind you that you can visit Eddie’s grave,” she said. “Aras and Lin have had c’naatat removed and gone home, if you didn’t know already, but Ade and I are staying as we are.” She held out her hand to shake but Rayat didn’t take it. “Okay, now live out your life, and don’t ever piss me about again.”
“So you couldn’t let it go.”
“I can’t be goaded, Rayat, and it’s none of your business. So it’s over, no more shit between us.”
“I’d expected better of you. You’re a hypocrite. You’ve cut this to fit your personal needs from day one. Who was the one tasked to keep this thing out of the wrong hands? Who did just that? Who had it removed, too? Who’s been consistent about their duty? Well, it certainly isn’t Superintendent Frankland, conscience to the world. C’naatat ’s got to be kept out of everyone’s reach, except yours and anyone you fancy fucking. Am I right?”
“Why don’t you shut it before I shut it for you?” Ade said. He was itching to land one on Rayat, but Shan blocked him.
“Don’t, Ade,” she said. “He’s just trying to forget that if I hadn’t spaced myself, he’d have taken samples back to the FEU as he was ordered like a good little spook. And we all know where we’d be now.”
She turned and walked away. Ade hung back for a second, and Rayat looked as if he was going to say something else but thought better of it. He was almost smiling, but not quite.
“You’d better do your bloody share of work on the Earth crops, too,” Ade said, prodding him in the chest. “You’re the only one who actually needs them to live on now.”
Ade caught up with Shan. There was nothing more to say, and work to be done. A few days of digging trenches for spuds, pruning fruit trees, and getting used to being part of the fabric of Wess’ej; it was the best way of moving on.
Shan stopped and leaned on the parapet of the terrace. “Am I a hypocrite, Ade? He’s right, isn’t he?”
If she was, then so was he. They were in this together. “Who got the gene bank back to Earth? You completed your mission. You did it even though you were never supposed to. I think that more than balances the books.”
Shan shrugged. “Let’s go plant something, then.”
“Job done, Boss,” he said. “It really is.”
In time, she’d come to see that. He knew she would.
Epilogue
Humans like clear definitions, like hero and villain, good and evil, black and white. There is always a personal line we draw between right and wrong, but they often forget that there is no unoccupied space between the extremes, just crowded shades of gray between which we must try to distinguish, and the color varies according to the light of the contextual day. Of all humanity’s illusions, imagined clarity may be one of the most damaging in their understanding of their own reality.
Matriarch historian SIYYAS BUR
Michallat Butte, outside F’nar: January 30, 2429.
The snow had come again, thicker this time, and stayed longer. Shan had to admit she enjoyed it.
Coming from an Earth where snow was rare, she’d always treated it as exotic. Now that she could climb with some degree of confidence, she understood what Ade meant when he said there was nothing quite like scaling a rock face alone and looking out into a white wilderness that took no notice of you, and never would.
It really was a beautiful view from up here.
“There you go, Eddie,” she said, coiling the rope around the length of her forearm and clipping it back on her belt. “Look what you made me do. Climbing a sodding mountain at my age, just to visit. They named the thing after you. You’re on the map.”
She would have given just about anything then to hear him tell her to fuck off and then laugh like a drain. She still missed him badly. She stood looking at the cairn of rocks, a miniature silver dragée mountain dusted with icing-sugar snow, and thought that if you had to have a grave, then this was the prettiest imaginable.
She had one just like it. A full grave and an empty one. Somehow it was usefully sobering to see her own cairn, if only to marvel at how devoted Ade had been when she hadn’t deserved it. She worked every waking moment to live up to that adoration now, and for the first time she could remember, she felt content most of the time. Earth was a distant alien world whose fortunes she’d played a role in. She felt more divorced from it with every passing day.
The sun—Ceret, Nir, Cavanagh’s Star, nobody minded what she called it now—was struggling
to its high position. She sat down on her backpack and took in the near silence, remembering Eddie in as painless a way as she could.
Silly sod. The first batch of beer he made had lumps in it like…well, like someone had been sick in it. God, that was funny. We needed the laughs, too.
Shan lost herself thinking about the Christmas party with the marines playing pornographic movie charades while Eddie drank the most volatile eau de vie she’d ever sniffed. Even when worlds were falling apart, there were moments to savor.
A crunching sound of rocks giving way under snow jerked her out of her thoughts. When she looked around, a wess’har male stood looking at her, well wrapped against the cold.
He shifted a bundle in his arms. “I thought at first that I’d visit you as soon as I could, but then I found that it was easier to stay away, and then it became natural and painless. I never forgot you, though, Shan.”
He looked like Nevyan; he looked like Sevaor. He looked wess’har, what he always had been at his core, because this was Aras.
Shan tasted that ozone tang of incipient tears in her sinuses, but steeled herself. He was still Aras, still the person she’d befriended and grown to love, and who filled her final thoughts when she reached the point of death.
She wondered if his memory would have gone with the c’naatat, but Rayat had assured her that he recalled everything, including emotions, and so would Aras. “You didn’t forget me, then.”
“Wess’har have perfect recall. Are you willing to talk to me?”
How could she not? His voice was the same, still with those infrasonics that made her throat itch deep inside.
“Of course I am. What have you got there?”
Aras held out the bundle. Now she could see what it was: two tiny infants, little stick insect things. Two. He was gazing at them rapt, devoted: they were his. She couldn’t bring herself to spoil this moment for him by getting maudlin or admitting that it hurt when a lover got on with a new life. She’d got on with hers. They were even.
Wess’har infants weren’t appealing, not even with her dose of wess’har genes.
“Twins,” he said. “They’re both isan’ket’ve.”
Twin females were a very rare event. If you were going to catch up on a lost life as a wess’har father, then that was the jackpot. Shan didn’t ask who his isan was. That was one step too far.
“They’re wonderful.” I loved you. I still do, or at least I love the Aras I have in my mind. She looked into his face—beautiful yellow sapphire eyes, black four-petalled flowers of pupils, a sweet intelligent face that was still him, and yet so alien she suddenly panicked about the time she’d spent in his arms and what that made her. “Ade misses you. We both do. Will you visit us some time?”
“I hope I can.” The overtone in his voice was very noticeable now, very wess’har. “I have such happy memories of you both. You saved me, Shan. You made this possible.”
He smelled calm and content, and he was urrring with pure paternal happiness. Seeing her for the first time in a couple of years—whatever he remembered of their brief time together—hadn’t distressed him at all. That was a comfort.
And he’d die. In time, he’d die.
“No, you saved me, sweetheart,” she said. “Over and over again. Like Nevyan. Ade, too. I get saved a lot. You don’t owe me a damn thing.”
Every fucker saved me. Every one.
Aras stood there in silence for a while. He seemed content just to stand and think.
“I came to pay my respects to Eddie, and to Black,” he said. “Shapakti says he still has White’s body in preservation, and that I can have it and bury it. I should have done that sooner.”
White was another rat, Black’s cage-mate. So Aras hadn’t turned his back without a second thought after all, and the rats were still people to him. He stood at the cairn for a while in silence, and then they walked back down the long slope that led back down to the plain, trying to find things to say that bridged so wide a gap. Sometimes the gap was a wound, but it was healing.
It was too cold today for most wess’har to venture out; F’nar was usually mild, and only tough clans like those raised in Baral seemed to tolerate real winter. Shan made no small talk. There was both nothing to add and too many questions to ask. She was trying to be Superintendent Shan Frankland, who didn’t give a fuck and never would. Today, she let herself fail. She was just Shan.
All Aras had ever wanted was to be a male wess’har, with an isan and children. Job done. She had no other claim on him that wasn’t purely selfish, and whatever faults she had—killing, threatening, going beyond the law—she’d learned how to make a half-decent job of loving someone.
“I’m glad you don’t regret it, Aras.”
He cocked his seahorse head, considering the question. “Life is good. Is yours?”
“Yes.” She tested that idea. Yes, she had Ade, and she was slowly learning to fit into a community rather than observe it from the outside. And apart from Eddie, her resolve hadn’t been further tested yet by seeing those she loved age and die, leaving her alone. That time would inevitably come again, though. “I think it is.”
“Do you keep up with events on Earth? Do you regret not being there to see your work vindicated?”
“No.” She thought of Eddie’s elegant apology to her when he’d wrongly accused her of carrying c’naatat as a mule for some pharmacorp. He quoted Rochefoucauld: Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of with the world looking on. “No, I don’t need vindication. I did it because it needed doing, not for a medal.” She wanted to change the topic. “What are their names?” she asked, indicating the twins. I had a daughter, once, for such a short, short time. “I bet you’re proud as punch, fathering two matriarchs. Ade’s going to be delighted.”
“They are Haviklas and Sajikis,” Aras said. “And I would like nothing more than for them to grow to be like you.”
It almost upended her. But then she realized that she could feel that bittersweet pang, and instead of her long-practiced inurement against pain kicking in and snatching the messy emotion away from her to stop the damage, it lingered.
She could feel things safely again, good and bad. They were now at the point in the road where he would turn towards the transport tunnels, and she would head for F’nar, an iced wedding cake in a wilderness. They would return to their respective lives.
Maybe Aras would miss his longevity one day, but she looked at those odd little insectlike babies, so unlike the elegant adults they’d become, and doubted it. If he ever did—she had his genes and his genetic memories, and so did Ade. Everything Aras had been was preserved in their cells, locked into their genome. They’d still be there if he ever wanted them back to become what he once was again.
“Thanks,” she said. “Just hope they grow up without the foul mouth and temper, eh?”
“Perhaps,” he said, and carried on walking away. “Tell Ade I will visit. I haven’t forgotten my brother.”
Shan watched him go, letting herself feel that sorrow of knowing Aras was now as subject to time and disease as the rest of the world, and utterly unlike her and Ade because of it. But he could always change his mind, right up to the end.
She’d still be here for him, and so would Ade. They always would be.
Wings Bird Sanctuary, Canada: January 31, 2429
“I thought that would amuse you,” said Den Bari, watching the two macaws prance up and down the branch, screeching. “They’ve never forgotten their first language.”
The Eqbas task force commander who stood watching the birds—Jenesian Lau—was the fourth that Den Bari had worked with since 2401, and probably his last. He could have run for another term; but he was staring at seventy-five next birthday, and it was as good time as any to stand down. And this bird sanctuary was a good place to pose with Jenesian for the media. Photogenic wildlife saved from extinction summed up his life in office much more tastefully than the rows with the FEU and Sinostates about the cos
t in human life.
During his time as Prime Minister of Australia, billions of humans worldwide had died from disease, starvation, war and—although nobody had ever provided hard evidence—engineered pathogens. His own country and its allies had fared very much better. And so had Earth, overall.
“Uk’ alin’i che!” one macaw said in a rasping voice. It was asking for food, in eqbas’u, as Shapakti had taught it, and then broke into English. “It’s dinnertime! Dinnertime!”
Jenesian’s crest of hair bobbed as she tilted her head this way and that in fascination. “These are the birds that Da Shapakti raised from the gene bank. How wonderful. They live a long time, don’t they?”
Bari kept an eye on the cams darting around the two of them. He hated the idea of a farewell tour, but he was a world statesman and that kind of PR junket was expected.
“The macaws will outlive me, that’s for sure,” he said.
The gaggle of journalists broke into questions, too impatient to wait for the formal news conference. “Why aren’t you planning to publish your memoirs, sir?” one of them asked. “Isn’t that the first thing politicians do when they leave office?”
“I’ll see what you pundits have to say about me first,” he said. “Then I’ll know if I’m the savior of the planet for letting the Eqbas help us out with our environmental problems, or the worst monster in history for not fighting them while billions of humans died.”
There was a ripple of nervous laughter. Bari had long since learned to lance boils first in front of the media. He knew what was said about him; he still slept okay at night, and Deborah Garrod, now a member of parliament herself, had never once told him he should worry about his eternal soul. He shook hands with Jenesian for the cams before they left for the next engagement, and smiled. She was new in post. She’d spend the coming ten years on Earth managing the ongoing restoration. It struck him as a bloody long tour of duty.