City of Pearl (14 page)

“And either they build to last or we aren't the crack shots we think we are. Whatever, we're lucky we're not a smoking heap right now.” And at least Lindsay hadn't expressed any curiosity about why the pilot was in one piece. She probably assumed he ejected. She didn't ask. Shan would have. It was another small but significant difference in the way they saw the world. “I have to see him in the morning. We're going to have talks, which probably means he's going to tell me how things are going to be, and I'll say, certainly, sir, whenever's convenient for you.”

“At least we're talking and not firing.”

“The alien—Aras—speaks English better than you or I do. He's used to humans, but it's clear we're not the sort of humans he finds acceptable. Josh has told him why we're here.”

“It's probably not the best time to ask him for some latitude on taking samples, then.”

“I'm not even going to think about it. And get me the pillock who primed the defnet.”

“With respect, ma'am, it's standard procedure in potentially hostile territory. And it was my call.”

“And I told you not to. I asked for the grid to be disabled, and you failed to follow…that—” She was going to say
order,
but stopped short. She had to stop this battle right here; it was one front too many to fight on. It was going to eat up her time. “Get me that marine.”

Lindsay turned away and mumbled something into her bioscreen. The glow from it was greenish white now, and the thought made Shan shudder. Nobody was ever going to grow one of those damn things in
her,
that was for sure. The more she saw of them the more they repelled her. She'd stay as she was made.

They waited. They said nothing and busied themselves with the contents of their pockets. A few minutes later, footsteps outside announced the arrival of Marine Jon Becken, a stocky blond kid with a scar across the bridge of his nose. Nobody had to be left with a scar these days. He probably thought it made him look hard. It did.

“What the hell were you thinking of, Becken?” Shan said quietly.

“The defnet interpreted it as a threat, ma'am.”

“I told you to stand down the automated systems. We didn't need them.”

“Ma'am, with respect, any inorganic object that close, doing that speed, and clearly alien in origin, is a threat.”

“For Chrissakes stand the frigging thing down and keep it that way until I say otherwise. And in the morning you will personally show me how to disable it so I can check it myself.”

If he was unhappy at the bollocking he showed no sign of it. He stood staring at nothing in particular, looking past her at a point on the wall, and waiting. “Okay, dismissed.” She jerked her head in the direction of the hatch and was surprised to get a snappy salute from him.

Lindsay gave her a reproachful look. “If that had been the aliens with a grudge about this place, you might have been grateful for that defnet.”

“But it wasn't the isenj. And if it had been, we would still have stood a better chance of survival if we hadn't presented a threat.”

“It buys you time.”

“It buys you
dead.
Do your sums. When are you going to stop fighting me on this?”

“Very well, ma'am.”

“And let's be clear about your orders. Unless an alien comes up, whips out a knife and says in English, ‘Hello Earthman, I want to kill you,' then you do nothing except run, okay? Absolutely nothing. Whatever the provocation. Make that clear to your people. We do
not
piss off the landlord round here under any circumstances.”

“We're a little rusty on diplomacy. I apologize. But may we be clear about the matter of orders? I command the marines. Your giving them direct orders undermines me.”

“I have seniority on this mission, and if that cuts across your navy protocol that's too bad.”
You've lost her now. But she should have known better.
“Let's exercise common sense. They're technically advanced and they know where we live. We back off.”

“Understood, ma'am.” Lindsay was attempting a deadpan expression but her anger—or something like it—was reddening her throat. “Is there anything we can do now?”

“No, let's wait. Don't tell the payload anything just yet.”

“Shall we recover the wreckage?”

“How would you react if someone shot down one of your craft and then stole the parts?”

“Perhaps we'll leave it, then.”

“It might also be a good idea if your people leave their rifles in the armory.”

“Is that wise?”

“Now that
is
an order.”

Lindsay's lips tightened into a line. “I still feel it's my duty to advise you that's foolhardy.”

Shan had never justified an order, but if she was going to save the rapidly deteriorating relationship with her second-in-command this was her last chance to rescue it. She swallowed her anger. “Thank you. Noted.”

“Ma'am, have you ever been in a volatile situation like this?”

Shan clenched her nails into her palms. She felt her scalp tighten. No, this had to stop, and now. “Have I? Let me think.” She rolled up her sleeve and showed Lindsay a puckered and scarred strip of skin from left biceps to wrist. “I have been hit by petrol bombs. I have been shot six times. They had to take a four-inch steel blade out of my leg. I didn't get any of that writing parking tickets, sweetheart.” She was close enough to Lindsay now to smell coffee on her breath, face far too close to face. “When you've faced two hundred rioting scum
this
close with just a poxy plastic shield and a baton, then you can lecture me on volatile situations. Just because I'm a copper doesn't mean I'm a fucking idiot.”

Lindsay didn't step back an inch. “Apologies, ma'am. Perhaps if I'd known more about your service record I could have avoided asking the question.”

A long pause; neither of them moved. Then Lindsay took a pace back, snapped off a salute and walked out. Shan let her shoulders sag and rested her head against the cool relief of the cabin bulkhead.
Well, I played a blinder there, I think.
It was unfamiliar territory, poorly navigated. She hadn't had to explain to anyone for a very long time that she was hard enough to kick down hell's door without a warrant. Most people seemed to spot that without having it spelled out. She felt she had lost something in having to do so.

But she would have to worry about her relationship with Lindsay Neville later. What she did and said in the next few hours would determine if any of them would get out of here alive. No, it was more than that: it would determine the future relationship with at least three civilizations. It was not something she was trained for. The kid did have a point. She'd never dealt with armies. But what were armies other than rioters with a battle plan? And was there anyone at all trained to handle aliens?

It's a case like any other
, Shan told herself.
You analyze it, break it down, and sort it piece by piece.
And the immediate problem was to stop the situation getting even worse than it already was. Well, that was a bloody laugh. She was in a disputed territory seventy-five years from the nearest support with just seven military, an unreliable ship, a payload of unwelcome scientists, unhappy human hosts, a delicate ecology and a number two who clearly hated her guts. And now they had just nearly killed an alien on whom their lives might depend. It was just a perfect balls-up.

She lay down on her bunk. The waves of colored fractal patterns that danced over her as she looked up at the deckhead were entirely the product of her own optic nerves. Beyond the deckhead porthole the night was black, pitchperfect black. With no focus to orientate her she was suddenly unsure if she was lying down or floating upright, and the brief sensation of falling summed up the whole mission.

But she'd talked to an alien tonight, a real alien who talked back, not algae or bacteria or moss. It was a miracle. The SB tapped her on the shoulder again.
The nonhumans hold some of the gene bank. You must make contact.

“I think we just did that, Madame Perault,” Shan muttered at the porthole. “Any further orders?”

As she expected, there was nothing but silence.

The next morning Shan took a scoot and went in search of the crash site, not entirely confident that the marines would leave it untouched. There were no tracks to the site suggesting it had been cleared—yet, once there, Shan found no trace of metallic debris, just piles of granular dust that dispersed when she touched them with her boot.

So that was what the alien meant when he said it would take care of itself. Fast-degradable metal. Handy for some corporation, but if they wanted it they would have to ask for the technology openly. Shan thought it might be a bad idea to let anyone else get samples of that dust. She revved up the scoot and let its air ducts scatter the material to the wind. Satisfied that there was nothing visible to attract attention except the shallow gouges in the ground, she headed back to the settlement.

One benefit of the simplicity of Constantine was that she never needed to ask where an important meeting was to be held. If it wasn't in the church, it was at Josh's home. Despite the civic importance of the Garrod house, it didn't appear to be any bigger than its neighbors. Shan rapped the knuckle of her forefinger on the satin-smooth door and waited for an invitation to come in.

There was a subtle scent in the air as she followed Josh's voice. It reminded her of sandalwood, very rich and soothing, but it was little more than a sensation at the roof of her mouth. When she walked into the central room of the house—kitchen, family room, workroom—the scent was stronger despite the competition from baked bread and garlic. Josh and Aras were sitting at the table.

“Good morning,” Josh said, and Aras simply nodded at her. It was the first time she had seen the alien in daylight, and she could hardly stop herself staring. He dwarfed Josh. His face was all angular planes, like an ancient poster of a Soviet factory hero, as if it had started life as a mythic beast's and then tried to pass itself off as human. The effect was enough to silence her. The last time she had felt like this was when she had come face-to-face with a live Bengal tiger walking on a lead, one of the very last of its kind, an army regimental mascot taken out on special occasions. There had been something almost unbelievable about the creature. The tiger had three dimensions and it was exactly like its encyclopedia picture, yet nothing like it—a life with an agenda of its own, disengaged from human reference and stunningly real.

Aras looked nothing like a tiger. Shan's human patternrecognizing brain floundered again, trying
dog, cat, bird,
and failed to find anything to latch on to. In daylight his hair was chocolate-dark, neatly tied back from that unclassifiable face and braided over the cream cowl neck of his tunic.

He had gloves on, too. Beige gloves. She couldn't take in the overall picture and settled on grasping the detail.

“Good morning, gentlemen.”

He started abruptly. “
Shan Chail,
what's your purpose here?”

Shan Chail.
Context told her it was respectful, although he could have been addressing her as
arsehole
and she would have been none the wiser.

She swallowed. “I was sent to locate the Constantine colony, locate its gene bank and oversee the research activity of a party of people representing corporations and academic bodies.” But surely he knew that; Josh had told him. “We had no idea there were any sentient races already here, let alone three.”

“Two,” Aras corrected. “We don't tolerate the isenj.”

“Well, however many—we would have made diplomatic contact before attempting to land. I apologize for any offense we've caused. And any injury, of course.”

Aras stared intently into her face. The sandalwood scent was noticeably stronger near him. She assumed it was perfume. “Do your people intend to colonize this planet further?”

“I was never aware of any plan to do so.”

“I don't believe that's true.”

He was challenging her word.
Liar.
It seemed almost conversational.

“I was definitely given orders to complete the mission and return. There's no plan to evaluate this as a habitat.”

“Not true.”

Right then it seemed very important not to break eye contact with him. He was unnaturally still. Josh, clear in her peripheral vision, was sitting calmly but he seemed a mass of fidgets compared to the frozen alien.

“Are you a telepath?” she asked.

“No, but you're a poor liar,
Chail.
”

It made her angry. She tried not to react, but his expression had changed. “Call me what you like, but those were not my orders.”

Josh interrupted. “But did you think that might be on the agenda?”

“Yes, of course it crossed my mind. Anyway, we know this planet is spoken for now.”

Aras shifted in his seat, overwhelming it. It must have been uncomfortable for a creature of his size. “And so did the isenj,” he said. And then there was silence, as if all of them suddenly shared the view that disasters only happened because people did things without thinking them through.

“So, where do we go from here?” she said briskly, and hoped whatever she had done had not sparked another misunderstanding. Josh poured tea into three opaque glasses with substantial ruby handles and slid them one at a time across the table, followed by a tray of bread rolls. Not another meal, surely. Everyone seemed to eat continuously here. Maybe it was the result of hard physical labor. Shan offered the tray to Aras, trying to be polite. He froze again, then reached out and took a roll with a deliberate move. He fixed her with that challenging gaze again. Despite his bulk and manner, there was something oddly comforting about him. It was like having a purring cat on your lap, except that this one could turn and take your head off. But there was definitely an infrasonic emanating from him that made her feel almost peaceful.

“I remind you not to take live samples outside the boundary of Constantine. You can observe what you like, of course, if escorted. I will even provide data on the local ecology.”

No, they can't take the crops here.
There was the SB again, or at least a realization that sprang from it.
Why?
It wouldn't answer.

With eight payload gagging to get on with their jobs, the prohibition filled her with foreboding. The biotech firms were footing most of the mission's bill. On the other hand, it would be at least seventy-five years before she had to deal with that issue, and by then, who would be left back home to worry about it? Who would even remember the mission? Seventy-five years was a damn long time in commercial life, long enough to see whole empires crumble, let alone companies. No, the immediate problem was offending the indigenous population, and containing eight men and women who had come here to
explore
.

And she had to start talking to this wess'har about the gene bank.

“No specimens or samples,” she agreed.

“Not outside the human habitat. Within it is a matter for Joshua.”

“We won't be taking crop samples.”
Why? No, just trust it.
“And the rest is your planet. We understand that.”

“No, it's the bezeri's world, among others,” Aras said. “And even though they don't use the land, what happens there affects them. We agreed to help them prevent the isenj taking this world, and the same applies to you. I have read enough of your history. You don't have a good record in new worlds.”

If I were you, that's just what I'd be saying
. She was growing to like the wess'har. He came straight to the point and he seemed to share her dim view of humanity. And he smelled wonderful.

“So why did you let the colony land here?”

“They had nowhere to go and they would have died.” He broke the roll into two pieces and ate a fragment. “And with them, many other people would have died.All those different races of people the ship carried in cryogenic suspension.”

“You mean the gene bank. The animals and plants.”

“Yes. That's held in safekeeping now. Make no mistake about it—without our intervention to create a local biosphere, the colony would not have been able to grow crops in the soil.”

Perault's voice nagged at her.
The gene bank. Secure it.

“You could have wiped them out and saved yourself a lot of trouble.”

“They do no harm. They plan to return to your world one day with those species they've preserved and brought with them. They've kept their word so far.”

It was the first confirmation she had heard that the colony was a controlled, enclosed environment, even if it appeared part of the landscape. It answered the question she had tried to ask that first day: How
did
they manage to grow food crops here? It took more than the right light and irrigation to create the right conditions for a plant. It took bacteria and the right balance of minerals and acidity, too.

“You terraformed an area for them? How does that fit in with not interfering with the local ecology?”

“The colony has to be contained in case one of your imports manages to get a foothold and affects the ecology here. The barrier does that. When the colony eventually leaves, we will restore the island.”

She thought of the geophys scans that Champciaux had showed her. “Am I right in thinking you've restored rather a lot of this world?” She slid her hand into her pants pocket and pulled out the smartpaper to show him. “All these cities?”

Aras tilted his head, apparently unconcerned. “Yes. All of them.”

“Isenj?”

“Yes.” He took the smartsheet in his gloved fingers and considered it, expressionless. “We can contain ecosystems. And restore them.”

She was getting very straight answers. When interviewing suspects, that meant they wanted to cough to everything. She took the gamble that it worked that way with wess'har too. “And were those cities destroyed by war?”

“If by war you mean planned destruction, yes. For you, war means army against army, yes? There was no isenj army. Only ours. We erased everything.”

Was he apologizing for his nation's record or simply stating fact? It didn't seem to bother him. “Okay,” she said. It was like interrogating a psychopath. There wasn't even a hint that he thought it was wrong. “What do you want from us?”

“I expect free access to your camp. And I take it the defenses will be deactivated.”

“Already done.” He probably had the technology to take what data he wanted anyway; he'd certainly been able to render
Thetis
dead in the water. There was no point trying to keep secrets. “I'll brief my people. You'll be welcome.”

“Thank you.”

“May I ask you a favor, Aras? Before we leave here, may I meet your people and the aquatic species?”

“The bezeri?”

“Yes. I would like to make contact. I really would.”

His eyes were still fixed on hers. It was the sort of body language that would have started a fight back home, but she couldn't imagine anyone being mad enough to take him on, not even her. He was 170 kilos if he was an ounce. “I will ask,” he said politely.

The meeting seemed to be over. She finished her tea and took her leave of them, feeling a lot more hopeful than she had the night before. She set off up the slope out of the settlement and began walking back to the base, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the smell of damp earth and grass. There was a real chance she could pull off this mission without disrupting the lives of the colonists.

Gene bank.
The SB hadn't given up reminding her about that. What did it want her to do now? From what Aras Sar Iussan had said, it was intact.
Secure it.
Why and how? Perault hadn't banked on wess'har and isenj and the whole shooting match.

There was something else, but it wasn't emerging yet. She let it go.

 

Aras carefully dusted the crumbs from the table into his hand and let them fall back onto the tray. Shan Frankland was not what he expected. For all the apologies and polite compliance, there was a directness and lack of art that he found unsettlingly…wess'har.

“I think she's honest,” he said.

Josh topped up his glass of tea. “You thought she was lying.”

“She smelled as if she was concealing something. She was, but not her orders. It was her opinion.”

“Should we trust her?”

“It's not her you need to be wary of. It's the others.”

“I hate to think that we've endangered your interests and our hosts' by leading them here.”

“You can't unmake history, Joshua. You're here, and they were coming anyway. I allowed you to stay. I will deal with the consequences.”

Aras got up and stretched. All his damaged tissue had been replaced and the
c'naatat
had finished the maintenance of its own biosphere—his body. He wondered what little improvements it had seen fit to include in its latest iteration. It might have improved the impact-absorbing qualities of his skull or his spine; it might have tinkered with his circulation again to deal with sudden blood loss. He would find out in due course.

It had frightened him at first, not knowing where it was taking him from one day to the next, but it seemed to have reached the stage of rearranging details, not grabbing so many fragments of other life-forms' DNA to add to his own. He was almost comfortable with being a world.

Then a ball of white flame rolled down the road towards him, leaving charred buildings in its wake.
Where's my fam-
ily?
He shook the thought away. It hadn't surfaced in a long time.

“I should go,” he said. “I need to talk to the bezeri. You'll make sure these scientists don't attempt a sea crossing, won't you? I'll have the security cordon strengthened. One of them is a marine biologist, and that means she'll want a vessel sooner or later.”

“I can imagine the consequences if they got hold of
c'naatat.
Leave it to me.”