City of Pearl (24 page)

Life went on in Constantine regardless of global politics because it had to, and Aras was glad of it.

He snatched a few moments' respite in the kitchens while he waited. The air was damp and smelled sweetly earthy. An avalanche of soybeans, fine pale beads, roared down the chute from the store and pooled in the pan at the bottom of the hopper, waiting to be transformed into tofu, one of the colony's few staple proteins. Half a dozen children scooped them up in pails and ferried them to the benches, where Ruth Djenaba and two other women poured them into opaque glass bowls the size of the ATV's wheels and covered them with water. Farther along the bench, soaked beans were ready to be ground.

It was as near to a factory process as the deliberately bucolic colony was ever likely to get. They had mechanization available to them, but they often chose to do jobs manually for the pleasure and dedication of it, and Aras understood that need.

The first time Aras had watched tofu being made, one of the craftsmen had pointed to the curdling stage and said, “This is just like making cheese.” Later, when they explained to him exactly what cheese was, it turned him off tofu for a long time. He recalled that every time he watched the curding stage. The human predilection to consume matter ejected from animals' bodies revolted him only slightly less than their tendency to eat carrion.

One of the children brought him a bowl of his customary treat—warm soft soy curds topped with grated ginger root and tamari sauce. It might have been his imagination but the boy seemed hesitant, as if he were afraid of him, and there was the same sort of slight tension that he had noticed about Josh in recent weeks. They all knew about Parekh. He understood that killing another human was a sin for them, but it disappointed him that they mourned for a child-killer. You could take this forgiveness thing too far.

And humans were so easy to kill.
He hadn't expected that. Fragile bodies, quick to break. Parekh hadn't suffered. It wasn't the wess'har way.

The ginger tingled against his tongue and the tamari was sweet and the curds melted against his tongue. It was a perfect silent moment, a spiritual haven that even the arrival of the
gethes
could not spoil. While he ate, he watched the children patiently rounding up utensils and pans and piling them in a sink to be washed in the yellow whey left over from the curding.

For Aras this was not just a diversion. It had become an affirmation of faith in his own judgment. This activity, this transformation of the unassuming soybean into the foundation of a community, reinforced his belief that the humans could be good neighbors. It harmed no being and it created no waste. Every part of soy had a use: it was a vegetable worthy of Targassat herself, and in that he saw meaning. Growing, it was a green manure; harvested, it became fuel, fertilizer, oil, soap, vegetable, beverage, flour, condiment, and meat. It seemed more a product of design than of natural circumstance, and utterly wess'har in its utility. The colonists would have said it was all part of the great plan.

If only all human activity had been like this, Aras thought.
We might have been able to live together
. He finished his bowl of curds and waited for Shan Frankland to appear.

He had learned a lot about her in recent months. When they went walking around the island, she answered his questions and volunteered much more. She worried about the fate of her houseplants left behind in her apartment when she was plucked from her own time without warning. She worried about another humanoid, a gorilla, that she felt she had failed to protect. She worried about getting old and not having made a difference to the world. But not once had she expressed any self-pity. She had, she said, got the life she deserved.

He couldn't stop liking her more and more.

But there was one thing he needed to know and that was whether she had worked out the true nature of his disease. If she had—and he was wrong about her integrity—then she was a risk.

She asked questions. She knew his great age, and she knew about the image in Constantine's library. She was a professional investigator: she would find out sooner or later. And while he felt she would not betray or misuse that information, he needed to separate fact from hope.

He checked his
tilgir
was in its sheath and leaned back in the alcove to be absorbed by the soothing rhythms of
efte
utensils and sighing water.

When Shan eventually walked into the kitchens she stood looking around as if she hadn't seen him. The colonists acknowledged her with nods and then turned back to their tasks, talking and laughing again, and for a moment he saw her do what the shyer colony children did when they couldn't join in the older ones' games. She dropped her shoulders a little and looked down at the floor, as if for a few seconds she was trying to disappear from view. It was just a moment, a lapse of control, but he saw it and he felt her isolation. When he finally stood up and came forward out of the alcove she had become the matriarch again.

He hoped they might still be friends by the end of the day.

It was a clear sunny morning with high, wispy clouds. Out on the rolling blue-gray plain beyond Constantine, they weren't likely to be followed or interrupted.

“Anything new?” she asked.

“The isenj are in very frequent contact with
Actaeon
now. I would say they are becoming allies.”

“How are your matriarchs taking it? I bet they're dusting off the best china right now.”

“I don't understand.”

“I meant that I don't think
Actaeon
will be very welcome. Do your people perceive it as a serious threat?”

“Of course we do. Hundreds of new
gethes
, all making friends with the isenj. What else would we feel?”

“If it's any comfort, it scares the shit out of me too. It's the payload I'm most concerned about. Once they know
Actaeon's
coming, I think all bets are off.”

He understood that from the context. “Concealment is hard.”

“I'm not very good at it, either.”

But she might be better than he imagined. He had to know. It was more than his growing attachment to her that was at stake: it was the weight he gave to her analyses, the political intelligence he derived from her. He had to know for certain that she had no ulterior motive in her apparent concern for him. If she could feign that, she could also be misleading him on everything else.

An
oset
circled them, and they stood staring up at it.

Shan seemed astonished. He looked at her face, all art and control gone from her, and saw someone he could care for like the child he never had.

“What is it?” she asked. She held up her hand to shield her eyes from the light and she must have seen its long jointed tail, serrated like a knife. “Is it dangerous?”

“
Oset.
Your people call it a stab-tail,” he said. “It hunts small prey, pierces it and lets it bleed to death.”

“You have such cute wildlife. A better pet than the killer plastic bags, though. Why is it following us?”

“It might be an old one, too slow to catch its usual dinner. I think it might be indulging in wishful thinking.”

A stab-tail was a rare sight even on the higher ground. He watched it making slow passes, sizing them up. If they had been
udzas
, it would have fallen on them and rammed its tail into them like a knife, hanging on with grim claws until they weakened from blood loss and lay still enough for it to eat.

“If you don't take specimens, how do you learn anything about other species?” Shan asked, her eyes never leaving the circling stab-tail.

“By observation and by occasionally finding corpses.”

“That must be pretty limiting.”

“Why? We don't need to know any more than how to avoid interfering with them.”

“Good point,” she said. “Have you ever seen an isenj? Up close, I mean. Not through a gun-sight.”

“Yes.”
More of them than you can imagine
, he thought. “And before you ask, yes, they are to be feared. For the time being we might have the edge in technology, but they have numbers. And in war, numbers count.”

“You were a soldier. Have you fought them?”

There was no reason not to tell her. She already knew he was exceptionally old. “I was one of the senior commanders when we erased them from this planet. I not only directed the operation, I took part in it. I have killed thousands—personally.” The white fire came rolling down the street again like a rebuke, trailing screams, but he ignored it. “You would call me a butcher, a war criminal perhaps. Are you appalled?”

It was as if she had expected it. “I think we're very similar, Aras. There are more than a few deaths on my record too. I don't regret any of them.”

“Then you're not like the rest of your kind. Even Josh finds this part of me uncomfortable to accept. His ancestor was kinder. He said if I repented I would be forgiven.”

“And did you?”

“No. If I had not removed them, would the isenj have repented for killing all the bezeri?”

She gave him a sad smile. “Are the isenj monsters?”

“I'm not the person to ask. I was their prisoner of war.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't realize.”

Shan made those tuneless humming noises under her breath that humans reserved for moments of awkwardness. They watched the stab-tail for a few more minutes. It was still wheeling above them, riding a thermal. Shan tried again. She was a persistent woman.

“What's your government doing right now?”

“Preparing for conflict.”

“Can we sort out the gene bank before the shooting starts?”

“I will help you select plant species but no animal life.”

“Fine by me. That's all I came for.” She walked on a little farther, still watching the stab-tail as if the conversation she was having was a casual one. It was clear from her scent that it wasn't. “And what will happen to you and the colony if there's fighting?”

“That depends if the isenj try to fight here.”

He looked up.

One moment the stab-tail was swooping over them and diving round behind them, the next he felt it thud hard against his back as if it had punched him. He looked down and a thin cone of wet bronze had appeared from his chest, draining out his blood and his energy. He was aware of Shan shouting, and the flurry of wings, and the weight on his back as he pitched forward.

It had stabbed him. It had latched onto him with its claws and thrust its armored tail deep into his back. He could see blood speckling the ground as he knelt on all fours. It would stop very soon, but it was not a display he wanted Shan to see.

“Oh, Jesus.” She was trying to mop at the wound with a piece of cloth, perhaps a folded glove. He batted her hand away to stop her getting blood on her skin. However much pain he was in, the risk of contamination was uppermost in his mind. “Aras, hold still. I'll call base. Don't worry.”

“No. It's not serious.”

“It's serious, believe me. I'll get help. Don't move.”

“I said
no
.”

The pain was receding now. He slumped back on his heels and caught his breath. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the stab-tail crumpled on the ground, trying desperately to right itself, flapping weakly. He scrambled over to it to check that it hadn't broken the skin of its tail. An open wound would have been disastrous.

“Did you hit it?” he asked.

“I pulled it off you.” Her face was white and she smelled of panic, but she was going through the motions of controlled calm. “What have I done? Have I made things worse?” She was peering at his chest, then his back. “Christ, that thing's done some damage. Don't move. Here, hold still.”

“Don't touch it.”

“Sorry. Look, put some pressure on it. You'll bleed to death.”

“No, I won't,” he said. He made a grab for the stab-tail and held it by its neck. Its tail flicked back and just missed his arm, but he managed to get both hands on it and held it still while he searched for wounds. No, the blood was his own. The stab-tail was an old, weak creature and the effort of the attack had all but killed it. It was dying of exhaustion; its flight membranes were dry and lifeless and its fangringed little mouth opened and closed pathetically. After a while it stopped struggling, and he took his hands off it and left it to die. At least that was one problem he had been spared. He couldn't afford to infect something so predatory.

He stood up, relieved. But Shan's eyes were on his chest, fixed on the bloodstains left by the wound, her expression all astonishment and suspicion.

“I've seen enough stabbings to know you should be starting to lose consciousness by now,” she said quietly. “Does it hurt?”

“Of course it hurts. Resilience is not the same as feeling no pain. Far from it.”

“Resilience? Is that what you call it?” She made as if to touch the wound again and he raised his arm in warning. “Okay. Okay. I'll back off.”

“I don't need help.”

“You're not even hemorrhaging, are you?”

“I don't. Not for long.”

“But that spike went right through you.”

“It will heal. Believe me, it will heal.”

The immediate crisis was past. He looked at the blood on his clothing: so what had the
c'naatat
decided to borrow from the stab-tail, if anything? Would he notice the changes? Experience told him he would be aware in a few days if the parasite had taken a liking to any of the predator's features. He didn't relish the prospect of wings again. The colonists had reacted to those in the most extraordinary way.

Shan sat down beside him so that her shoulder was resting against his, and said nothing for a while. She smelled agitated.

“You heal bloody fast.”