Ally (41 page)

Aras grabbed her arm. “Be careful. You can't have forgotten there are
sheven
on these islands.”

Pili pulled out of the bog with a loud liquid slop and shook herself, sending mud and scraps of vegetation flying. Then she spotted Lindsay. “Leenz!” she called. “Who is that?”

Oh God.
Pili was hunting. No
sheven
had been found for a while, but she wasn't giving up.

“The wess'har who looked after you all these years,” Lindsay called back.
Shut up, Pili, shut up…
“It's Aras. Go back to the camp. Saib will explain.”

“I found
nothing.
No
sheven.
They're gone.”

“It's okay. Go home.”

Pili took it as a rebuke. “I only
look
for them. I promise not to eat this time.”

However much her body had changed, Lindsay could still feel her stomach churn. Pili splashed onto more solid ground and made her way out of the bog, pausing to look at Aras before making a loud
thwap
of air and bounding kangaroo-style towards the settlement, jinking between bushes.

Aras hung his head for a moment. It was an incongruously human gesture. “So this is why you don't fear the
sheven
any longer.”

“I'm sorry, Aras.”

“The bezeri said they were gone.”

What could she say? Could you even lie to a wess'har, who seemed to see every twitch of muscle, every dilating vessel, every change of temperature?
Yeah, the bezeri reverted right back to type and wiped out the native
sheven
here. They didn't learn a damn thing, Aras. You're right to blame them.

“They found they could hunt them,” Lindsay said at last. “Bezeri are compulsive hunters.”

“I know that now. And
sheven
are the top of the food chain in the wetlands. They're predators. No natural enemies, until now.”

“I've stopped them, Aras.”

“What about the other islands? Clare, for instance?” He was getting angry now and she could see it in his human body language of tensed muscles and braced shoulders. She could also smell something that warned her at a primeval level, some scrap of wess'har in her that recognized his sharp acid scent as a warning. “You have to confine them. How many
sheven
are left? No, you would have no idea. You don't have the means to monitor them.”

Aras turned on his heel and headed back to the settlement with alarming speed, zigzagging from one patch of firm ground to the next, then almost breaking into a run when he hit hard earth. Lindsay chased after him. He was bent on retribution: she had to stop him. “Aras!” she yelled. “Aras, don't do this.”

She couldn't match his pace. He was nearly two meters tall, with a prodigious stride, and she couldn't keep up with him. He reached the settlement, but instead of going into the clearing and wreaking the havoc she feared, he carried straight on.

He was heading for the shore.

“Aras!”

He slowed and then stopped to turn around. “This is your duty now, Lindsay Neville. You created them. Do you want to resolve this yourself, or do you want to leave it to me? Or the Skavu?”

“What's to resolve? Are you asking me to kill them? I can't. I don't have the means. Even if I wanted to.”

He raised his hand and stabbed his forefinger at her in a gesture of accusation that was pure Ade Bennett. “That,” he said, “was something that you should have thought about before you infected them.”

She stood exhausted by realization. Aras disappeared into the distance, no doubt rushing back to Shan to tell her she was right—that Lindsay Neville was a useless and dangerous idiot, just as she always said.

Aras had looked like an ally. Now he'd almost certainly turned into an enemy. He had a weapon, though, and he knew exactly what it took to kill
c'naatat,
so either he had
something else in mind or the next visit would be from these Skavu.

We can retreat to the sea.

It's only because of me that the bezeri are on land anyway.

And maybe I can salvage something.

She ran into the clearing at the center of the settlement. “Keet, Saib, get the others back from Clare. Now.”

“Things did not go well,” Saib observed.

“No, and they'll go a lot worse if you don't get everyone back here now. No more hunting. No more killing
sheven,
anyway. You heard me—go.”

Saib was a patriarch, used to giving orders, not taking them. He stood his ground for several long moments and then made an imperious flick of a tentacle at Keet, sending him on his mission.

“We should have stayed in the sea.”

Lindsay wondered if he'd been right all along.

Outside the Temporary City, Bezerej: Esganikan Gai's cabin

“I thought you might want to see this,” said Eddie Michallat. “The Australian premier is taking some flak about the gene bank.”

Eddie's face had lost something of its animation. Esganikan couldn't pin it down, but the image in the bulkhead was a different Eddie, a man with some of the light gone out of him. She had no other way of describing it; there was a light in Rayat, and Shan, and even in the marines, but Eddie's had vanished. He was tired, perhaps, and he'd lost a source of stories. Earth didn't care about Umeh now the humans had been evacuated. Nobody cared how many isenj died.

“I haven't spoken to him recently,” she said.

“Here you go.” Eddie looked down, his hands working outside the frame, and a text panel appeared to one side of his image. “That's the BBChan 547 summary of what he's
been saying to the media. If it helps, I can put you in touch with the BBChan bureau in Kamberra.”

“Why?”

“He might give you a perspective that the government won't.”

“I meant why can't
you
tell me what's going on.” Eddie guarded his contacts carefully. Esganikan knew this was his sole source of motivation, the one thing that mattered to him: he was the only journalist here, and, as humans prized the control of information, that gave him status and power. “But if you insist I speak to this bureau, then I will. I thought you wanted to keep this contact to yourself.”

Eddie looked down for a second and licked his lips quickly, a barely perceptible flick of the tongue. “I'm flattered that you trust me.” His voice had changed subtly, a different tone to one he used with the marines or the voice he adopted for his reports. This was altogether more breathy, as if he was talking to himself. “I'm glad someone does.”

“I would like to know what's happening in Australia that the premier isn't telling me. Anything that would indicate that his country—or his region generally—isn't fully in support of his invitation, or might resist us.”

Eddie's eyes widened slightly and he became more alert again. “I'll assemble a digest for you.”

“Thank you.”

“Might I talk to you about your planning for the Earth mission?”

“I'm awaiting Shan and Nevyan at the moment.”

“Okay.” Eddie nodded to himself, listening to some inner voice. She could see it on his face. “Later, then.”

Esganikan shut the link. She was used to Eddie now, and knew his way of filtering and changing information. She also wanted his skills. When he went back to Earth, he'd be ordinary again, and he would want to keep what had made him special; his alien contacts. And he knew how to do something that she couldn't: he could make humans listen and shape how they thought, all with words. Shan might have been best at advising on how to deal with humans, but Eddie could make them
want
to listen.

There was no point using military resources if a man's words could do the same job. Esganikan knelt pondering the extraordinary power of a willingly shared illusion, her cabin's bulkheads set to opaque, until the hatch opened and Aitassi peered through.

“Nevyan is here, Commander. With Shan Frankland.”

Esganikan could smell the
jask
from here. They were coming to
lay down the law,
as Eddie put it. She felt annoyance and was instantly ready.

“Are the Skavu confined to their camp?”

“I ensured that they were,” said Aitassi. “The patrols back from Umeh are sufficiently tired not to want to argue environmental policy with your visitors.”

Esganikan could guess what Nevyan wanted: reassurance that the Skavu would stay clear of Wess'ej, and Shan's household. These Targassati were isolationist. They lost their nerve when the military support they begged for got its hands dirty. Esganikan turned, composed but ready, and faced them as they came into her cabin. Shan folded her arms and stood a little behind Nevyan, as if she was making sure her fists didn't let her down again. Esganikan wondered if she'd always been prone to instant retribution or if her wess'har genes had made her more liable to attack. Nevyan's daughter stood close at her mother's side. Did the child get formal instruction? Wess'ej appeared to have no education system. Everything their ancestors had known on Eqbas Vorhi seemed to have been abandoned. They'd reverted to a more primitive age.

“I realize we're now troublesome guests,” Esganikan said. “And you seem to have a problem.”

Nevyan was wearing the
dhren,
the white robe the F'nar matriarchs treated almost as a uniform. Esganikan's lasting memory of her brief time in F'nar would be the
isan've
in white robes shot with faint and shifting colors set against the pearl wall of the city.

“I have a treaty with Minister Rit that I can enforce,” said Nevyan. “It means you can remove the Skavu from Umeh.”

“I knew you might want that,” Esganikan said wearily. “What are the terms?”

“If isenj confine themselves to Umeh and Tasir Var, and drop their claim on Bezer'ej, Wess'ej will provide the delivery systems for the targeted pathogens, and if and when Minister Rit chooses to deploy them, our pilots will aid her. If you leave us with the universal pathogen, we'll use that if the treaty doesn't hold.”

“You'll end up wiping the planet clean of them. Was that all you wanted? I would have given you that anyway.”

“No,” said Nevyan. “It means there's no need for the Skavu to remain in this system. Wess'ej will provide the restoration support.”

“You don't have the technology on that scale.”

“We restored
this
planet.”

Shan said nothing. She simply stood there, watching Esganikan, and unfolded her arms to place a gloved hand on the child's head. She seemed to take no chances with her parasite, even if it took body fluids to transmit it.

“And you would put aside your principles that you would never attack the isenj on their home territory,” said Esganikan.

“To see the Skavu gone, yes.”

“All to ensure they don't turn on your
c'naatat
friends and the infected creatures here?” Esganikan had underestimated the bond between Shan and Nevyan, then. “This is a massive commitment for your world.”

“The Skavu,” said Nevyan, “regard us as lacking their rigorous standards, and I fear that it's only a matter of time before they would want to interfere with us once you were no longer here to control them.”

Shan scratched her neck thoughtfully. “Judging by the reaction to me, your supposed grip on their discipline seemed less than absolute.”

Esganikan could taste the
jask
at the back of her throat. It even seemed to be emanating in some small way from the little
isanket
. She felt less inclined to stand her ground—Wess'ej would be sorely stretched, she knew—but Nevyan seemed adamant she would resort to total destruction of the isenj if the treaty collapsed.

Shan Frankland certainly would. She might have found
warfare distasteful, an odd thing for such a violent individual, but her instant reaction to a threat was proven.
Threat is now.
Shan seemed to have taken that wess'har attitude to heart.

It seemed sensible.

Esganikan felt no further desire to argue: the outcome from this course of action was balance, so if the wess'har here could make it happen, she had no dispute with them. She felt herself relaxing and the taste of released
jask
in her mouth was oddly pleasant and reassuring.

“So I'll stand down the Skavu,” she said. “We'll arrange a handover period between my crew on Umeh and yourselves. Is that all?”

“I think so.”

Shan looked slightly baffled. Humans—even her, even this chimera, this strange
isan
—had a habit of parting their lips when surprised. Perhaps they inhaled scent to assess the situation: perhaps they were frozen on the edge of a question that they couldn't frame. And perhaps they were taken aback to see matters resolved quickly and without violence.

Gethes
seem to think we're violent just because we don't engage in ritual warfare. They like rules for their killing.

It was another thing she would have to work out before she reached Earth. It was a pity that Shan Frankland refused to accompany her.

Esganikan watched them leave, then waited for Aitassi to reappear. The ussissi would be watching for their departure. But there was no sign of her, so Esganikan tidied her cabin and took a slow walk across to the Temporary City. It was one problem removed, as long as Nevyan and the rest of the Wess'ej matriarchs didn't lose their nerve if the ultimate sanction was needed.

She walked into the command center. The duty crew were clustered around a projection that showed them a striking live view of a hurricane lashing a shore fringed with square white buildings. They glanced up when she entered, and she realized she must have had the faint trace of
jask
clinging to her.