City of Pearl (21 page)

“Yes, ma'am.” Bennett cut in. “What do we say?”

“You don't say anything. I do. I'll explain that I carried out the sentence of the wess'har authorities and I'll even tell them why, just so they understand that we're not back home any longer.”

“So you pulled the trigger,” said Lindsay.

“I've got two spent rounds from my weapon that you can use to verify it.” She held out the gun. Aras was really a very proficient shot for a beginner, but that was between her and him, and always would be. “I'll file a full discharge report.”

“Frankly, ma'am, I don't believe you.”

“What you believe is your business. The incident log will state that I carried out the execution of Surendra Parekh under the local code of the bezeri jurisdiction for manslaughter. Is that clear, Commander?”

“Gin clear, ma'am,” said Lindsay, but she might as well have said
liar-liar-liar.
“Whatever you say.”

“How are we planning to process the body?” asked Bennett. He appeared remarkably detached. Shan imagined he had seen his share of body bags.

“Bag and freeze,” she said. “I can—”

Lindsay interrupted. “No, ma'am, you go and address the payload, and then we can put them to bed for the night. We've rostered security watches for the duration.” Lindsay gestured to Bennett. “We'll do the rest.”

Lindsay walked off. Bennett hung back.

“You do understand, don't you, Ade?” Shan said. She didn't want him to think she was a monster. She might have had her own doubts about that, but it mattered to her that he didn't. “Someone had to.”

He tried to smile but it didn't work. “I do understand duty. And I understand…um…diplomatic sensitivity, too.”

“Thanks.” So he didn't believe her account of the execution either. “I don't think most of them will.”

“
We
will, and that's what counts. Look, she broke their law and she knew she was doing it. In the end, she even broke
our
law. This isn't home. The risks are bloody enormous. I'm not a politician—hell, I'm not even clever—but even I can see what could be coming. No, don't you lose a second's sleep over it, ma'am.”

Some chance.
“You know what I've got to do now.”

“I do,” he said, and saluted.

She didn't watch him go. She walked up to the entrance to the mess hall and rapped on the hatch.

“Frankland here,” she called. “Open up.”

Shan followed Aras down the shingle of the beach with some difficulty. The environment suit that Webster had adapted for diving was cumbersome, and she found she had to swing her legs out to the side like a lizard to move properly.

“I think I'm doomed to have to make my first contact with every species an apology,” she said. “Sorry we shot you down, Aras. Sorry we vivisected your kid, Mrs. Bezeri. I really would have preferred to say something like we come in peace.”

“You could leave this to me,” Aras said. He held the bezeri's body in both hands, wrapped in a thin sheet of some blue silky material. “They would understand.”

“No, this one is definitely my shout. I was always the copper who knocked on people's doors to tell them their loved one had met a messy end. You'd be amazed how far you can detach yourself from it after a while, however they react. I can still do it.”

They stopped at the water's edge. There were already lights rising from the depths, violet and gold, and Shan pulled down her helmet and checked the air supply. She had never dived before. She couldn't even swim. All she had to do was walk into the sea, not even to any great depth. Aras stopped her as she put one boot in the water.

“As you're so insistent,” he said, “I made you this.” He took an oval shape from his tunic and held it up to her faceplate so she could see it: it was a faceted lamp. She squinted against the sudden burst of colored lights. “It clamps to your headset, so you can at least translate a few of your words as you speak. It's very basic. Keep your sentences simple.”

“As long as it can manage
sorry,
that'll be good enough.” The rasping against the side of her helmet was magnified for a moment as he fixed it in place. When she said “Thanks,” she saw a brief flicker of colors out the corner of her eye.

“In you go,” he said.

When she was in the water chest-high she started to lose her balance and slowed down. Aras caught her elbow to steady her. She turned once to look at him, and it was the most unsettling sight she had seen: he wore no special suit, of course, just a throat mike for her benefit. He could suspend his breathing. She took it as yet another handy wess'har characteristic.

The water covered her head and pressed heavy on her chest, and then the general light became a soothing aquamarine. She could pick out shapes moving towards her. When her vision resolved them properly, she was facing a dozen or so enormous squid-like shapes that suddenly erupted into almost fractal patterns of changing light and color. They were huge. She estimated three or four meters: the hand-sized bezeri that Aras carried really was just a kid. She held her arms out to him to take the small body.

One bezeri emerged from the group and drifted towards her.

She held out the child. “I'm very sorry,” she said, carefully slow. “My people made a mistake. We will never do that again.”

Slowly, the bezeri reached out three tentacles and coiled them gently round the body. Its color had changed to a consistent deep blue, the most intense blue Shan had ever seen, as blue as some lobelia blossoms and so saturated that it almost seemed to be outside her range of vision. The pattern within it repeated over and over in a pulse right across the creature's body. Then more tentacles enveloped the body, and the child was lifted from her arms. The bezeri suddenly shot away from her, sending a jet of expelled water that would have knocked her on her back had Aras not caught her.

The other bezeri closed the gap and hung there, shimmering many colors, but none of them that striking deep blue.

“They say the mother is very upset, but she doesn't blame you,” Aras interpreted. “The child was keen to see the strangers. He strayed too far.”

Oh, God
. “I wish we could meet again under happier circumstances.”
Was that too complex?
“We don't mean you any harm.”

Lights fired off, and the drifting crowd of immense sinuous shapes began moving away from her slowly, and then picked up speed. A final burst of scarlet flared like vehicle tail lights. They were suddenly gone into the depths again.

“They said
maybe,
” said Aras.

Eddie had left Shan alone for a couple of weeks after the business with Parekh. He was expecting some retaliation from the payload, but their response had been complete passivity. What they said when he wasn't around might have been different, but they appeared shocked into compliance. The atmosphere in the mess hall was silently hostile, and none of them spoke to Shan any more than they absolutely had to, but there was no noticeable recrimination.

Maybe they had the sense to be scared.

Shan strode across the compound after Lindsay's morning briefing, fatigues uncreased, boots polished. He wondered how she managed to keep her kit so neat. Galvin and Hugel glanced at her cautiously, and when she looked their way they dropped their gaze. A casual visitor might have deduced nothing more than the fact that Shan was not a popular overseer.

The marines had established their own mess in a tent in the compound. At night Eddie could hear the off-duty watch playing gin rummy under the ice-blue light of a highoutput lamp. This morning they went about their tasks—maintenance, hydroponics and cleaning duties, the rest of the shared routine that everyone faced in camp—in near silence. The colonists kept an even closer watch on the payload when they went out on field trips. Factions had formed, and the frosty distances felt worse than open warfare.

Shan kept her distance from the payload and spent her time off camp. Was she afraid of a backlash? Eddie couldn't imagine anything that would frighten this woman nor any dissent that she couldn't crush. She attended morning briefings as if nothing had changed and made no apology or excuse. Parekh had never happened. She was erased, as surely as the wess'har armies had made the isenj cities disappear.

“Shan's trying to make it easier for my lads,” said Lindsay, all loyalty. Eddie found it hard to think of petite, pretty Qureshi as a lad. “No flashpoint. No provocation.”

“You think she did the right thing?” Eddie asked.

“I don't think she had a choice.”

“Would you have done it?”

“I don't even want to think about it.” She softened a little, her voice dropping in a confidential way. “Do you think she actually fired the shot?”

Eddie shrugged. “She's done it before. Ask her what she did for a living.”

So Lindsay thought it might have been the wess'har who carried out the execution. It was an interesting act of self-sacrifice on Shan's part if that were true. On the other hand, she might have reasoned that it enhanced her reputation as a hard case if she claimed responsibility. Eddie wondered how far he might dare push Shan in claiming the promised interview. Whatever she had got up to in the Green Rage debacle was going to look like a parking ticket after the events of recent weeks.

But there were no deadlines here. How he had changed, he thought. Adrenaline junkies loved deadlines. But he didn't much care about them any longer, and it wasn't just because there was no competition around. Eddie's worldview had shifted its focus. He was no longer viewing the world, but in it.

Still, there was no point wasting any more time. Shan had said she would speak to him, and he would hold her to that. He called her on the comms net to check he was still welcome. Door-stepping reluctant interviewees was a fine sport until you met one who had a smoking gun.

“It's pretty frosty on the social front lately,” Eddie said. They sat in neutral ground, on the patch of grass at the edge of the compound where some hardy soul had erected a volleyball net. It was like having a picnic with Genghis Khan. “Does that bother you?”

“I don't subscribe to that ‘happy ship is an efficient ship' crap,” said Shan. “It's orderly. The marines do their job and the payload does theirs. They don't have to love each other to make that happen. And they don't have to love me either.”

“You realize there's genuine regret for what Parekh did.”

“I'm sure there is. Is this the interview or are you just trying to thaw me first?” She glanced at the bee cam and he wondered for a moment if her gorgon's gaze would fry the circuitry.

“You don't like journalists, do you?”

“On the contrary, Eddie. I do. You ask all the questions that hypocritical viewers would really love to ask for themselves but haven't got the guts to. They devour your output and then vilify you for intrusion. No, I reckon you and I are in much the same line of work. Us and latrine cleaners.”

“I'm touched.”

“You're welcome.”

“Did you really shoot Parekh yourself?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Only out of personal curiosity. I'm not a fool. I do understand the needs of diplomacy.”

“Then you understand why the matter's closed.”

“But you're no stranger to use of force.”

“You know perfectly well that I'm not.”

“Your name rang a bell and I remembered. Green Rage.”

“Well, that's all on the record. I faced a disciplinary hearing for screwing up Operation Green Rage. I expect you've read the file, if you're half the professional I think you are.” She pulled out a few strips of apricot rations and held one out to him. “Even I don't walk on water all the time.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“What's there to talk about?”

“Well, I work on the theory that there's no such thing as a catastrophe caused by a single event. There's always a chain of cock-ups, if the disaster is genuine.”

“It was my joint op with the regional crime squad, so maybe I made a chain of cock-ups.” Shan looked distracted. “Yes, I managed to misplace ten eco-terrorists after a seven-month covert operation that cost the taxpayers zillions and it screwed my career, and here I am relegated to the arseend of the universe to prove it. If you can polish that turd, Eddie, you're even better than I thought.”

“I was more interested in talking about who than how.”

“Why? It was my op.”

“I meant the tree huggers. You see, we'd heard a buzz at the time that one of them might have been connected to a senior government figure.”

Shan shrugged. “No idea.”

Eddie concentrated on her face. She wasn't a stunner by any standard, yet she did have a double-take quality. But it was the disturbing luminescence of obsession rather than feminine beauty. He wouldn't have sat down next to her on a bus. “It's history now. Hardly a story, but I'm taking history seriously.”

“Sorry. I really can't make the connection. I knew about six of the names.” She really looked as if she was searching her memory: no act there, unless she was a genius at it. “Nobody like that at all. And I think I would remember, because this bloody Suppressed Briefing is like a mental laxative. It's been flushing out all kinds of memories I didn't know were there.”

It surprised him she referred to it so casually. But she was probably smart enough to realize that knowledge of the SB had leaked out to the payload.

“You don't strike me as someone who would screw up, Superintendent.” Maybe vanity might loosen her up. “Maybe a lapse under pressure, inappropriate use of firearms and so on, but not incompetence. Were you protecting a more senior officer? You were busted at the disciplinary, but you bounced straight into a government-backed post at EnHaz. Was that an apology on someone's part?”

She looked away at the volleyball net as if she were genuinely wrestling with something for a moment and he thought he might have cracked her. Then she looked back at him and it was with the expression of someone who really, really wanted to talk. He knew that look.
Yes.
He was an inch away from it.

“I'll tell you this,” she said. “In my life I've done right things and wrong things. I've been a little rough with prisoners and I've shut my eyes at times. I've even managed to not apprehend terrorists who assassinated heads of biotech corporations and torched their businesses. Now, some of those things were right and some were wrong. You tell me which.”

“Do
you
know which?” He prepared for the baring of an anguished conscience.

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

There was a pause. It went on a very long time and she gazed around idly at the volleyball net and the swaying grasses. Then she simply looked at him. He forgot the primary rule of interviewing and fell into the chasm: he blinked first. It was hard to do otherwise with her.

“Okay,” he said, and repositioned the bee cam with a gesture. “But if it helps, the name I really wanted to place was Perault.”

Shan laughed. “I really don't think Eugenie Perault's dynasty was into terrorism.”

“I meant her sister, Helen Marchant. Long shot, but I thought if you knew, after all this time, you might set the record straight.”

And he looked into Shan's face again, and he saw a moment of total revelation before the veil closed. He wanted to reach out and grab it.

“Marchant doesn't ring any bells,” she said. “But I'll keep thinking and I'll tell you if I come up with anything. Like you said, it was a long time ago.”

That flicker of reaction said something. It said she had discovered something she hadn't ever known, and it had winded her. Everyone on camp now knew she had been effectively shanghaied by Perault, and if there was a cleaner, better method than deep-space exile to remove someone who had substantial dirt on you—and maybe didn't realize it—he couldn't think of one.

It didn't answer any questions about her complicity or otherwise with terrorists, though, and he had rather liked the idea of her as the wayward copper who helped the bad guys against the even badder guys. Should he have said so? No. It wasn't grown-up journalism.

“You were royally shafted, weren't you?”

She actually smiled a little. “You enjoyed that.”

“Not really. What baffles me is that everyone, just everyone, thought you had gone native and they couldn't prove it, but even though you're home and dry now you still won't confirm it. It won't even be a confession.”

“You really don't understand me, do you?”

No, he didn't. She was easy to admire and hard to love, but he had thought he had at least worked out her motivations. “Tell me, then.”

She leaned her weight on one arm and stretched her legs out to one side. Her voice was very low; it was going to be a messy sequence to edit. “You know damn well I wasn't entirely sure Green Rage was the enemy. Actually, that was the police operational name for the case, not the group's, because they never called themselves anything so bloody juvenile.”

“So you weren't actually a terrorist, but you helped them out when they were busy.”

Maybe she enjoyed the verbal sparring. It must have been months since anyone—other than that wess'har, anyway—had spent a long time talking to her. She had suddenly become animated, as if someone had thrown a switch. “One minute I was leading a covert operation to trap a group that was targeting biotech companies and the next I was questioning who the real criminals were.”

“So what did happen?”

“I started seeing things that made me sick to my gut, and I can assure you it wasn't the eco-terrorists.”

“That's not really an answer.”

“I know.”

“But they turned you, these terrorists?”

“I just remembered the gorilla.”

“What?”

“Wholly unrelated incident, except in my head I suppose. I visited a primates lab when I was at college. I know they should have stopped using experimental primates a long time ago under European legislation, but they had a few that were exempt from the ban because they were endangered species and they were carrying out what they called benign research on them. You know, cloning for conservation, language development, that sort of thing. Anyway, there was this gorilla that had been taught sign language. I was looking at it, and it looked me right in the eye and kept signing at me, but I didn't understand, and so I just accepted what the animal technician told me. You know what it was saying, over and over?
Help me please.
It didn't stop. And I found out years later what the signing meant and it just knocked the fucking guts out of me, and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about that and despise myself. There was a person in that animal asking me for help and I didn't hear. What did it think of me? How hurt and betrayed and trapped did it feel, if it thought I would be able to get it out of there? I could have done something and I didn't. So every time I look at something that isn't human, I have to ask myself who's behind the eyes, not what.”

“I think a lot of people feel that way with great apes.”

“And squid? And other things that aren't like us and don't look smart?” Shan fixed him with that cold gray I'm-asking-you-a-bloody-question look that Eddie was certain would have made him tell her everything he knew, if a cell door had been closed and he had no way past her.

“So you question that and you end up questioning a whole chain of things.”

“Indeed.”

“So what form did your dilemma take, then?”

“I didn't put on a balaclava and shin up drainpipes for the cause, if that's what you mean.”

“What then?”

Shan looked almost amused. He knew he could neither browbeat her nor cajole her into answering. If she told him, it would be because she wanted him to know, and then he'd have to work out her motive all over again.

But she did answer. “People haven't got a clue about security,” she said. “Never have had, never will. And it's not about systems and technology—it's about this ape inside us all. It's not rocket science. Nine times out of ten, if you ask someone a question they'll answer it and not wonder why you asked. If the question's innocuous, they'll forget they even told you. They never ask what other information you're going to put that together with, or whether you have a right to know. People have a need to cooperate and you seldom have to hit them to achieve it.”