“You plan to leave,” said Nevyan.
“No, I never said that at all.”
“Eqbas has found ways and reasons for you to return to your home. And you will leave.”
Shan looked towards the door leading back into the house as if she had heard something. She jerked her head back to look at Nevyan and she was visibly angry, wafting jask, but she lowered her voice. “I don’t want to hear another word about it. I know Aras thinks I’m going to leave him as well and this sort of discussion doesn’t help calm things down.”
Nevyan knew she was outscented but that didn’t stop her asking. “Do you want to return?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“Does Ade?”
“Ask him.” Shan took the visor off Giyadas and the isanket made a disappointed lrrrr. “I’m not done here yet.”
Nevyan’s world was falling apart and she suspected that Aras’s was collapsing in the same way. It was obvious: Shan wanted to go home. If I were marooned on Earth, I would want to return to Wess’ej. It was natural. But Shan was her friend, and she needed her counsel and her jask, and Eqbas was taking her away from Wess’ej as surely as it was changing the heart and soul of the planet. She couldn’t help but resent it all.
“I won’t discuss it, as you ask,” said Nevyan. “But I need your help in more immediate matters. I want to ask Esganikan to move the settlement to Bezer’ej. I’m uncomfortable with their presence here. The whole city is. There’s too much change, too fast.”
Shan stood with fists on hips and nodded. “Okay. But we do this together, right? Because if I go down there and start a ruck with her then I’ll end up driving the bus back to Earth, and that’s one decision I don’t want anyone making for me.”
“Thank you.”
“Where’s Aras?”
“He’s getting ready to take Lindsay and Rayat back to the bezeri. I’ll be bloody glad when that’s over.”
Nevyan held her hand out to Giyadas to take her home. The isanket looked longingly at the visor.
“Can I see Earth?” she asked.
“One day, if you want to and Nevyan says you can,” said Shan, instantly uncomfortable. Her eye movement gave her away. “It’s a long time to be away from home, though.”
“Do you like Ade more than Aras?”
“That’s a very personal question.”
“Ade’s nice. Aras is nice.”
“They’re both nice.”
“Aras can’t go to Earth, can he?”
“True.” Shan made a very definite move for the door. “Go and see Shapakti and he’ll show you the macaws and get them to talk to you. They do talk, you know. Like we do.”
Shan’s finality always had the impact of a slap across the face. You didn’t question it, not even if you were senior matriarch of F’nar.
“I’ll meet you at the Eqbas camp after dinner,” she said. “I need a bit of quality time with my jurej’ve.”
She was, at least, referring to them in the plural.
It wasn’t Shan’s problem any longer.
When everyone else was running away from a bad situation, she would be the one running towards it. It was what coppers did. That was what all professionals trained to deal with trouble did—police, firefighters, soldiers. She was never sure if she had learned to do it as a young probationer or if she had worked out from an early age that she was the little adult who had to make order out of the threatening chaos of her family. But whenever it began, her instinct was now to go and confront problems and sort them before they sorted her.
She lay on the bed, arms folded under her head, and waited for Aras and Ade to come back from the Exchange of Surplus Things. Ade was convinced he could make a barbecue. He was trying in his solid, dependable, reassuringly ordinary way to get life back to normal, to settle Aras down.
It’s not even a decision. You don’t run.
The isenj and the wess’har had been enemies for centuries, and the Eqbas had been imposing their sense of order on the galaxy for far longer. Humans had just stepped into the noisy bar and found the fight already in progress.
Walk around the block.
Her first sergeant, the only man who’d ever seen her really cry, said fights burned themselves out if you let them run on a little. If you piled in you could make them a lot worse. If you couldn’t suppress the fight with numbers, then sometimes sending in a lone woman officer would do the trick and calm things down, because blokes still had that primeval reluctance to hit a woman.
Not all of them, though.
Walk around the block again. Let the fight sort itself out.
She heard the door open and sprang to her feet, not caring if she looked anxious or even smelled it when she came out of the bedroom. Aras had a bag of vegetables and Ade was carrying some metal grids and a strange assortment of cannibalized pipes.
“Okay, we’re going to have a barbie on the terrace, complete with Eddie’s shitty awful beer and a game or two of cards,” said Ade. “Proper fun.”
“I shall find this interesting,” said Aras.
He wore a permanent scent of acid now. Shan made a point of wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his chest. You’re still mine. Don’t worry. But it didn’t prompt his usual urrring and his embrace was halfhearted.
There was the occasional metallic crash and swearing from the terrace as the barbecue resisted Ade’s attempts to build it. Shan listened, expecting Aras to offer him a hand, but he ignored the noise and seemed simply to tolerate her touch.
“I could still go with you,” she said.
“I think it’s my proper role to deliver the prisoners.”
“This is a bit more protracted.” She slipped her hands inside his tunic and touched cool, suede-skinned muscle, hoping for some response. “Once this is over and done with, we’ll concentrate on ourselves. You, me, Ade.” The word Ade just slipped out. But it still didn’t feel right, as much as she wanted it to. “I’m not on duty any more and neither are you after today. We don’t run the universe. It’s some other bastard’s shift.”
“One day you’ll hate me for keeping you here.”
“Don’t be bloody daft.”
“You will. Your loyalty is your greatest weakness.”
“And there was I thinking it was my sloppy emotional personality.”
“You think you’re ruthless, but you care about some things very much.”
“Whatever you say, sweetheart.” Don’t do this. Don’t. “Are you sure you don’t want a hand with Lin? Rayat might cut up rough.”
“I can manage. I have an Eqbas with me.”
“Okay.”
“I shall get it over with, as you say.” He looked at her swiss on the table. “May I take that?”
“Of course.” She’d made him take it when he parted from her on Bezer’ej, too. It was just a silly token. She wouldn’t need it anyway. “It’s only waterproof down to two hundred meters.”
“I shall take care of it.”
“Okay, Ade might even have finished the bloody barbecue by the time you get back.” She hugged him. And now she would have to say what she had never been able to tell him. “I know I never say it, but you do know I love you, don’t you?”
“Yes. I know. And I love you. And there is nothing either of us can do about that even if we wanted to.”
It was an odd thing to say, but wess’har were full of strange comments and Aras had lost none of his wess’har idiosyncrasies. He was feeling insecure. She had to sit tight and let him calm down.
She went out to the terrace to offer Ade a hand with the barbecue, but he’d managed to get it standing on four legs.
“All we need now is fire,” she said.
“I bet you say that to all the cavemen,” said Ade, but there was something very like anguish in his eyes, and he smelled of acid. Aras’s fears were clearly getting to him.
In its way the barbecue was a perfect image of their situation, a rickety approximation of Earth trying to re-create t
he familiar but failing. Ade succeeded in grilling evem and although the beer couldn’t get them drunk it was an echo of what had been. But there was no raucous laughter or chatting, just Ade glancing occasionally at Aras and trying to crack a joke, and Aras not responding. Shan wondered if they ever argued in her absence.
She hadn’t picked up anything from Aras’s memories to tell her if they had or not. She wondered what selection process c’naatat went through in deciding which recollections were sufficiently significant to bring to the front of the file. She suspected it was only the big stuff, the hard-in-the-face stuff, the images that plagued you like flash frames during the day and were the last thing you saw and tried not to see before you fell asleep at night.
But they’d work it out. Ade and Aras were both sensible, get-on-with-it sort of blokes. They were just like her.
She sat down on the wall and put on the visor that Shapakti had given her. She had seen enough of the city of pearl for the day. She wanted to rest her eyes on green forests, on Earth.
It was home. Whatever she did, it would never stop being home.
26
TO: Esganikan Gai and Nevyan Tan Mestin
FROM: Minister Par Shomen Eit, Northern Assembly
The death of our respected colleague Par Paral Ual has been the cause of much strife and debate in Ebj and the rest of Umeh. We now recognize that we are in increasing need of outside assistance if we are to survive as a people in the long-term. If you now wish to begin talks with us about environmental recovery, we will guarantee your safety. If you can put aside your policy of occupation, then we can make efforts to change our cultural attitudes to population control. If we can achieve this, then Minister Ual’s vision and sacrifice will be vindicated.
Shapakti wasn’t happy about the change of plans, and it showed. Ade was new to this scent-signaling business, but it was now as loud and clear as a shout.
“I do not have orders to take you to Mar’an’cas,” said Shapakti, standing at the main hatch of his vessel like a bouncer blocking a nightclub door. “Or Bezer’ej. Just Aras Sar Iussan and the prisoners.”
“Think of me as the escort,” said Ade.
“We are competent to do this alone.”
“She was my commanding officer.”
“That’s irrelevant.”
“Look, mate, I’m coming whether you like it or not.” Ade wasn’t sure if Shapakti was still afraid of him. He thought the rifle might have given him a clue. “I’m making sure Aras comes back okay.”
“He can’t be harmed.”
“Neither can I. So humor me.”
Shapakti made a little sideways jiggling movement of his head. Shan said that wess’har did that when they were annoyed. “Very well. But you’re lying.”
I haven’t exactly lied. It had taken Ade a while to understand that wess’har couldn’t actually tell if humans were lying or not, only that they were upset or angry or afraid or any one of a dozen states of mind that changed your body chemistry. They were like old-fashioned polygraphs. They told each other exactly what they thought, but when it came to humans they simply used their scent skills and other senses to spot the emotion and then worked out the detail from context. They were getting very good at it, and he now had enough wess’har in him for his scent signals to be an open book to Shapakti.
“I have my concerns,” said Ade. “I want to see Aras back safely.”
And that wasn’t a lie, either. It had been almost impossible to walk away from Shan as if he was simply going for his usual daily run, without a proper goodbye. Everything had been left unsaid again: it was as if he had lost her a second time, except that he knew she was safe and well. But he was quite literally the spare prick at a wedding here. And he owed the bezeri some substantial act by way of apology.
Shan would understand. She’d done exactly the same, although in a more spectacular way. The right thing was frequently the one that hurt most.
Aras arrived at Shapakti’s ship and stared at Ade as if that would be enough to send him packing. “Go home,” he said, and tapped the tilgir in his belt. “I need no assistance. I can deal with this.”
“I know,” said Ade, thinking of the time they had hunted down an isenj patrol on Bezer’ej. Wess’har had no Hague Convention and they didn’t take prisoners. “But I’m coming anyway.”
Aras paused for five long seconds. Maybe he resented being offered help; maybe he had plans for Lindsay or Rayat that he thought Ade might resist. No, Ade was fine with whatever he wanted to do. They’d asked for it.
And so had he.
“No interfering,” said Aras. “And you’ll return to Shan and do as I asked.”
It was an awkward, silent flight to Pajat. It would be an even more challenging journey to Bezer’ej. Ade hoped Shan would understand one day.
Eddie packed his grip. Giyadas watched him for a while, subdued, playing with his editing screen and his handheld. He hoped she hadn’t been annoying the UN staff on the ITX again. He couldn’t imagine being annoyed if an alien called him for a chat; it would always be a wondrous thing for him as long as he lived. He had passed from amazement through familiarity and into a state of wonder again.
“You’re going home,” she said.
“No, I’m going to visit Jejeno with the Eqbas, if that’s not an oxymoron.” He’d explain that word to her later, if she needed it. She probably didn’t. “I thought about it, and then I knew I had to stay here.”
“You like us best.”
“Yeah, I like you a lot. But that’s not the whole reason. I’ve got to stop going home at the end of the day and pretending nothing is my fault.”
“You confuse me.”
Eddie closed the grip and tested it for weight. At least Umeh Station had real toilets with seats. He loved the wess’har but he hated their plumbing. “It’s hard to explain, doll, but in my job you say things and write things that change what happens, but when those events turn nasty you never have to face the consequences. We go home, we go down the pub, we start a new story the next day, and the people we said those things about have to clear up the mess. So for once I’m making sure that I face the consequences by not going home. I’ve got as much to lose as you have now.”
“And the Jejeno discussions will be a good story anyway.”
“I know what you are. You’re my bloody conscience.”
“Will you teach me to do what you do?”
“What I do isn’t worth doing.”
“I want to do what you do.”
“When I start doing it right, maybe.”
Giyadas unfurled the editing screen. “Look what I did,” she said.
Eddie smiled indulgently and held out his hand for the screen. She was a sweet, clever, funny little creature and he adored her. She had probably tried to edit some shots together, so he prepared himself to praise her lavishly for being a smart girl.
The smile evaporated on his face as he flattened the screen on his lap. He was looking at the locked-off camera shot of the BBChan foreign news desk, and it wasn’t a freeze-frame. It was live.
“Giyadas, what have you done?” He turned over the screen: the handheld interface was active. When he flipped it back over, Mick was scrambling into his chair and looking pissed off.
“Eddie, for Chrissakes where have you been? Come on. Can’t wait all day.”
Giyadas preened. “I told the United Nations gethes that I was the next matriarch of F’nar and that I would tell Nevyan how helpful the UN had been if she would connect me to the BBChan.”
“Eddie…” said Mick.
“Wait one.”
“Please, teach me to do what you do,” said Giyadas.
“Doll, you don’t need to learn a thing.” Tears pricked his eyes. “You’re a natural.”
“I like this reporting.”
“So do I, doll,” said Eddie, renewed. “So do I.”
27
FROM: Esganikan Gai, Wess’ej Mission
TO: Curas Ti, Matriarch, Surang
<
br /> At the request of Nevyan Tan Mestin and Shan Frankland, we are relocating our operations to Bezer’ej. Our presence is inconsistent with the life-style that Wess’ej has chosen. Out of respect for our kinship, and in the knowledge that they need no guidance in maintaining ecological balance, we have agreed to this request to withdraw. We will locate the new temporary settlement on the site of the previous wess’har base on Bezer’ej.
Lindsay Neville watched Aras walk down the path between the rows of tents. Shan wasn’t with him, but Ade was.
Aras had that slightly swaying, almost feminine stride that she had noted in all the wess’har males she’d seen. Despite his height and solid build, there was nothing brutish about him and she felt no instinctive sense of panic, even though she knew that he was coming to take her to the bezeri for execution.
“I thought Shan might come,” said Lindsay.
“This is my task,” said Aras. “The bezeri are still my responsibility.”
Ade stood beside him in silence, expression carefully neutral. A stranger would never have guessed that he had ever been under Lindsay’s command. Aras had a pack over his shoulder and that big agricultural knife, the tilgir, in his belt.
“Where can I find Dr. Rayat? There’s no point trying to evade the inevitable.”
“He’s working on the crops.”
Aras cocked his head and walked on with Ade through Mar’an’cas camp, Lindsay following them. He stopped and turned.
“You are quite extraordinarily compliant creatures sometimes,” he said. “I genuinely thought I would have to subdue you.”
“Like you said, there’s nowhere to escape.”
Aras said nothing and carried on through the camp until they came to the fields. Rayat was spreading human manure from the latrines. Lindsay was never sure if he took on the task to show how tough he could be, or if he was just doing a job that needed doing. She had never really reached the inner core of the man and she suspected she never would. Like Shan, he had a talent for making her feel inadequate.