City of Pearl (17 page)

Lindsay sat with Shan in the deserted mess hall, driven into the public areas by the sheer confinement of a cabin. The payload were out and about with their escorts. A cube of a room was no place for a meeting, not when you could look out of the front door and see a blue plain that stretched forever. It was a very large island indeed.

“Can't Rayat come and see me in person?” Shan said, and turned the swiss's screen so that Lindsay could read the memo. “If I'd known he had animals in that box of tricks of his, I'd have smacked him one. He knows the rules here. What does he need rats for anyway? Don't we have tissuevirtuality modeling?”

Lindsay sat with carefully clasped hands on the table in front of her. “I gather it's a backup. In case the virtuality is inconclusive.”

“He's a wanker.”

“Right with you there, ma'am.” The two women looked at each other for a moment, locked in a brief but elusive moment of common purpose. “I say we should let Aras smack him one, as you put it.”

“So he took the rats.”

“Yes. In a packing crate. I didn't think stopping him would be appropriate. Or possible.”

“Yeah, he's a big lad. Has it upset the other payload?”

“Parekh was a little concerned, but she said she thought Rayat had it coming anyway. I wouldn't worry.”

The brief camaraderie brought on by the unlovable Rayat stalled. Lindsay sat with hands folded and waited in silence. It was as good a time as any.

“We got off to a rotten start, I think,” said Shan, conciliatory and not meaning a word of it. “I know it must have been a hell of a shock to wake up and find me aboard. I wouldn't have taken it any better than you. I'm sorry.” It was a cheap, easy word. She couldn't understand why so many people couldn't use it.

Lindsay looked down at the tabletop as if taking her eyes from it would undo the fabric of the universe. “I didn't help matters any by getting pregnant. But you're quite a…quite a presence to adjust to.”

“I'm a complete bastard and I'm entirely comfortable with that. But I do get the job done.”

“I've never wanted to throttle anyone so much in my life.”

“Not even Rayat?”

Lindsay laughed uncomfortably. “He's quite a uniting influence. That was a nice touch, sorting him and Paretti out. I learned a lot from that.”

“But more chief petty officer than commissioned rank, eh?”
Might as well lance all the boils
, Shan thought. “Not what they taught you at the academy.”

“I think that's why the booties like you. You can be one of the lads too. I don't think I'll ever be able to.”

“Not appropriate for a naval officer. Compulsory for a copper, any rank. Saying
fuck
occasionally does help.”

Lindsay's thaw was turning into a flood. “I've got some of Eddie's home brew. Want to try some?” She got up and took a five-liter water container from under the galley sink, and Shan wondered if she should have helped her carry it given her condition. But she didn't. When Lindsay opened the cap, a yeasty sweet aroma wafted up.

She poured the liquid into shatterproofs. “He's getting better at it. This batch is almost transparent.”

Shan held it up to the light. Alcohol was a sign of weakness, but Eddie's beer seemed to have a high fiber content, so she relented and touched glasses with Lindsay in a grim toast.

“Should you be drinking this in your condition?”

Lindsay rubbed her belly fondly. “Kris says a little never hurts. And I think you could describe this stuff as self-limiting.” She gave her a sad smile. “There was a time when I thought you were just civilian ballast on this mission, but I was wrong. I apologize.”

“Don't confuse the art of damage limitation with professional competence. But thanks.”

“We're in a tight spot, aren't we?”

“Yes, but we're going home in a while. In one piece, too.”

“I believe you,” said Lindsay. She topped up the shatterproof and there was a telltale
slop
as a large and unidentified lump slipped out of the container. Shan hesitated and let it sink to the bottom, with no intention of actually drinking more than a few sips. “I think that's what I'm saying, really. We—the detachment and I—trust you. We feel we can rely on you.”

Poor Lindsay: she meant it sincerely and she clearly thought she was expressing solidarity. But it made Shan's stomach churn. It was a degree of faith she didn't want to inspire. She felt suddenly angry, and wanted to tell them all to sod off and take care of themselves instead of burdening her with their welfare. She'd never had anyone to make it all right, not her self-centered absent mother nor her daydreaming, idealistic and ultimately useless father, nor anyone except maybe her first sergeant when she was a probationer fresh out of conscription.

I'm fed up being the only adult around,
she thought.
I want to be looked after for once
. Her resentment threatened to erupt with a force magnified by a lifetime of suppression.

She swallowed it again. “I'll try not to let you down,” she said.

 

Josh wasn't at home. Shan skipped her usual courtesy call and headed for the next nearest center of authority in the colony, the school.

“I'm looking for Josh or Aras,” she said to the first adult she could find. The woman was sweeping down the banked steps of a lecture theater that were cut into the rock. “Sorry to barge in unannounced.”

The woman looked unconcerned and consulted the ancient console in front of the desk. “Second room on your left, that way,” she said, and went back to her cleaning. “Quite a popular venue today, I think.”

Shan could hear and feel Aras's voice before she reached the room, but nothing more. She was surprised to find herself face-to-face with at least fifty children. They were all gathered round a table in the center of the classroom, listening in perfect silence to Aras explaining the antics of a dozen or so rats that were zipping up and down the surface and pausing from time to time to stand on hind legs and sniff the air.

The kids were transfixed. Their community held the most complete species gene bank Earth had assembled, and yet none of them had ever seen a live creature from their homeworld other than insects. To them, a rat was as magical as a unicorn.

Aras looked up at her and beckoned her in. He cradled a beige rat in his hands and held it for a little girl to touch. The child hesitated, then placed two cautious fingers on the animal's back. It turned to sniff her hand. She giggled.

“Very cute,” said Shan. “Sorry about Rayat. Maybe we can discuss that later.”

“I've asked the children to care for some of these people and I will look after the others.”

“I'm sure ratkind will thank you for that.”

Aras seemed to see no humor in the comment. He turned to the children. “I'll be back to check you're caring for them properly,” he said, and it was clear his word carried even greater weight than any human adult. The kids nodded solemnly. “Remember, keep them safe. Don't let them out where the handhawks can get them.”

Shan walked slowly back up the corridor, arms folded. Aras caught up with her, exuding that elusive sandalwood scent.

“So, are you here to ask me to keep out of your compound?”

“No. Fine by me. I said you were welcome any time, and Rayat knew the rules.”

Aras opened his tunic a little and two whiskered faces, one black, one white, popped out and stared at her. “Aren't they wonderful? They have little human hands. Look.” He placed a gloved finger under one of the rat's paws. Shan didn't want to think about hands that weren't human: she could see that gorilla again.
Help me, help me please
. She shook it away.

Aras twitched his finger and the rat gripped his glove. “See?Almost a thumb. I've named them Black and White for the time being—I've no idea how they identify themselves.”

“You know what Rayat was going to do with them, don't you?” It might have been a test of her attitude. Josh had advised total honesty, and right then it seemed completely obvious to act as an apologist. “One of those little ironies in the word ‘humane.'”

“Yes, I know only too well. You think they're disposable. Vermin.”

“The only vermin I know has two legs.”

“Josh said you would say that.”

“Well, everyone knows my every thought. What you see is what you get.”

At earlier meetings, Aras had seemed in complete and quiet control, almost intimidating. Now he appeared to drop his guard. He was distracted. “We don't intrude on other races.”

That explained why he called them people. His English was certainly good enough for that not to have been a slip of the tongue. She found it inexplicably touching and fought down a blush of embarrassment. Black scrambled back inside Aras's tunic. “They seem to like you.”

“I like them.”

“May we talk later? Just general stuff.”

“More questions? You as well as Eddie?”

“I'd like to know more about wess'har, that's all.”

He paused, two rats folded to his chest. White was cleaning its face as if sitting in the arms of an alien was a perfectly natural place for a rodent to be. “Very well.”

“May I ask you a very personal question?” If she was about to break another taboo, she would find out the hard way. “How old are you?”

“Old.”

“Am I right if I say well over two hundred years?”

“Yes.” No hesitation—but he was suddenly frozen still again. “You're correct.”

So he was the Aras of the history books. She'd make sure those history files were off limits to the payload. “Let's keep that to ourselves, shall we? I don't like the idea of the Rayats of this world becoming interested in your longevity. You're not dealing with colonists here.” She waited a beat and risked another question, the one that had really been gnawing away at her. “And who is the alien in the construction pictures? It's not a wess'har.”

He stood very still again, a posture she was starting to interpret as being startled. The diplomatic ice was thin, and she wondered if she had really fallen through this time.

“I'll explain later,” he said.

“Okay.”
Leave it, leave it
. She needed him to take her to the gene bank and pushing him wasn't the way to build trust. “And we never had this conversation, right?”

“That's thoughtful of you. Join me in an hour. I'll show you the rest of the island if you want to learn.”

Right call, then. Aras seemed not to bear grudges. It was just as well. Shan suspected she had a festering sore of resentment developing among the researchers, and Rayat made it clear where he thought her responsibilities lay. At least the marines understood it was insane to provoke a powerful alien authority on their home ground. But she wasn't going to make the mistake of going native this time.

She had to work round to asking Aras to show her the gene bank. Then the Suppressed Briefing would tell her what she had to do next.

 

Shan stood at the highest point of the island and caught her breath as she looked down at the gray-blue moor ahead of her. It wasn't a moor, but she was too tired to think up anything better. Her brain could do all the pattern recognition it pleased.

“Time for these,” said Aras, and took a couple of pieces of what looked like gray fabric from the pack he always carried across his back. “Boots. Just hold the fabric around your calves for a few moments.”

“I've got boots.”

“Yes, and they will be in a very poor state after this excursion if you don't cover them.”

The fabric, some sort of charcoal-gray compressed fibrous material, fitted itself to her own boots at a leisurely pace. She decided she was becoming the image of wess'har pragmatism. “Rough terrain?”

“Very. And mind the roads.”

“Yes, mum,” Shan said. She stared at completely unspoilt wilderness. “All that traffic.”

“No, I mean mind the roads. Remember that they shift.”

“And I thought infrastructure back home was going to the dogs.” She thought of Bennett, mastering his fear long enough to pull Mesevy out of the bog with its carnivorous plastic-bag beast. So many animals you could see right through, and all the glass construction, too. It was a transparent world.

But Shan heeded the warning. In places, the living roads were wide enough for them to walk side by side; in others, they were so narrow that she decided to follow Aras step for step as she had Josh. She was glad of the boots, too. The roads here were dotted with a pretty silver-gray plant whose tiny leaves concealed thousands of grabbing, needle-sharp hooks that could shred flesh.

“We are slack here,” Aras observed suddenly. He was getting almost chatty. “You haven't seen the Temporary City yet, but it is not how I would have wanted it. In Baral, where I come from, we don't have any surface construction. We put our routes underground. Where we walk, we walk at random so we don't leave paths. We build our homes into the rock. The Temporary City is all very…noticeable. Conspicuous.”

So he was the architect of Constantine. “Humans care about the landscape too,” said Shan. “Some of them, anyway.”

“It's not about aesthetics, about having pretty vistas. We do it because we have no right to mark nature any more than other animals can.”

“I bet you're not impressed by the Great Wall of China, then. You can see it from space.”

Aras made an animal hiss of annoyance. It was very clear. She didn't need to speak his dialect to work out the general meaning.

“And this is Targassat, is it?” she asked.

“Among other things. You've heard of her, then?”

Her? She'd assumed a man, as humans would. “Josh mentioned the name. I'd like to know more.”

“I'll teach you.”