Crossing the Line (6 page)

He pulled back from the open door and turned to Serrimissani, who looked for all the world like a malevolent Riki-Tiki-Tavi.

“Crowded,” said Eddie. It was a gross understatement. “Where do they grow their food?”

“Everywhere they can,” said the ussissi. Her voice was muffled by the mask she was wearing over her snout. It looked like a piece of clear plastic and reminded Eddie rather too much of the various transparent carnivores of Bezer'ej, sheets of clear film that would fall on you from the sky, or drag you down into water, and digest you. “In buildings. Revolting.”

“Vegetables?”

“Growths. Fungus.”

She might have meant truffles, Eddie thought, trying to put the visit in the brightest context. He had a feeling she didn't. He settled for nutritional yeast.

The buildings pressing in on him gradually changed from low-rises to tower blocks, a fact he took as an indication that he was getting closer to the center of the city. It was a dangerous assumption to make in an alien culture, but building high meant some sort of priority: it certainly wasn't a matter of getting a prettier view of the landscape.

The tight-packed crowds moved past him at a more sedate pace, slow enough for isenj to stop and stare in at him, and he waved and then wondered if the gesture had another meaning here. Their piranha-spider faces betrayed nothing. Looking past them, he could recognize nothing in the built environment that suggested shops or offices. There were just façades intricately decorated with symbols and patterns, carved and painted.

In front of one of the buildings there was an island in the river of streaming isenj: some appeared to be standing still, pressed together and waiting by a doorway. It was closed. He turned to the interpreter.

“Queuing for food,” said Serrimissani, without waiting for his question. “There's sufficient, but the logistics of distribution are unwieldy.”

“What do the isenj make of humans?”

Serrimissani fixed him with a predator's expressionless black eyes. He could almost see her digging for scorpions and crunching them up between those needle teeth. “They can see kinship with you. They enjoy complex organizations.”

“What do
you
think of them?”

“They honor their debts.”

“How much do you get paid for interpreting? Sorry. Is that a rude question?”

“They do not employ me. I have food and somewhere to rest, just as I have on Wess'ej.”

“You work both sides of the line? And the isenj trust you to be here?”

“What could I do that they would not trust? This is not a conflict of knowledge, so I cannot spy. Nor is it a war where the wess'har take the conflict into their enemies' territory. So I do my job and threaten no one. How do you get paid?”

It was a good question. Eddie hadn't had a raise in seventy-six years, and it still irritated him that the BBChan personnel department had decided that he wasn't entitled to service increments because he'd been in cryosuspension for most of that time. Hell, he'd worked with people who seemed to spend their whole career in comas and they still got raises.

But then he hadn't been around to spend his pay, and it had earned plenty of interest. He was surprised how little it suddenly meant to him. Perhaps that was how rich people felt all the time. His stomach felt oddly displaced. “I get tokens that I can exchange for food and other things that I need.”

“Want.”

“Sorry?”

“Humans want many things but they need much less than they think,” said the ussissi. “I accept the philosophy of Targassat, having lived among the wess'har. Beware acquisitiveness, Mr. Michallat. It will take you hostage.”

Eddie savored the moment of being lectured in asceticism by a mongoose. It almost dispelled the aching bewilderment at realizing he was rich and none the better for it. The transport came to a halt.

Serrimissani turned her head very slowly. There was no wet gloss to her eyes; they looked matte as velvet, sinister, utterly void. “Are you ready?”

Eddie caught the bee-cam and pocketed it. “I've interviewed Minister Ual before. I'm ready.”

The ministry—and Eddie had no other word for it—was conspicuous in the unbroken wall of buildings by the fact that it was very, very plain. There were no extravagant designs, either painted or carved. As he walked through the door and into the reception hall, the first thing that struck him was that it was
empty
. It was also vast. It was at least twelve meters high and lined with smooth aquamarine stone, a stark and cool contrast to the hot rusts and ambers and purples outside.

There seemed to be nobody around. Then he heard movement, and Serrimissani tugged at his sleeve and bobbed her head in the direction of one of the archways off to one side. An isenj appeared. There was an exchange of high-pitched sounds.

Eddie occupied himself by letting the bee-cam wander around the hall. So status bought you space, did it? Yes, isenj were a lot like humans.

“Ual is ready to see you and asks if you would like refreshment,” Serrimissani said.

“Not the fungus.”

“Water flavored with something that the
Actaeon
provided.”

“God, I hope it's coffee.”

There were moments when Eddie knew he had touched common ground with the isenj. It was easy to expect them to be utterly alien because they looked unlike anything he'd ever imagined. But their attitudes seemed much less alien than those of the wess'har.

He sat and waited. A thought struck him.
What about snakes?
What about jellyfish? Here he was mentally arguing the finer points of difference with himself: but he was talking, yes
talking
, with aliens who had communal lives and built cities and had wars over concepts he understood. The only reason he could even begin to misunderstand them was that they were so very similar to him and that they could exist in an environment so like his own in universal terms as to be identical. So he had no chance of even starting to grasp the nature of other forms of alien life. And he was suddenly gripped with sadness at his own limitations.

Serrimissani nudged him irritably. “You are distracted,” she said. “Ual is waiting.”

Eddie struggled to regain excitement.
Chin up. You're talking to your third species of alien interviewee. Be glad.

“Sorry,” he said. “A tear for all the things that are beyond me.” And he ached to recall who said that. It defined humanity.

An isenj aide showed them into another polished water-colored chamber, and Minister Ual was seated on a dais in the center of it, as if to emphasize the luxurious, privileged distance around him. Eddie was ushered to a box covered with layers of something soft and yielding; as near, he thought, as they could get to a chair. He smiled at Ual.

Isenj were as appealing as only spiders with piranha faces could be. But they were sociable and polite and generous. Minister Ual was enjoying a cup of something fluid, lapping it from a shallow vessel with the ease of a Mandarin potentate. His ovoid bulk glittered with hundreds of smooth, transparent green beads strung on quill-like projections from his body, and he rattled like a chandelier when he moved. Eddie hoped the noise wouldn't play hell with the mike.

Ual had one other characteristic that Eddie could not ignore. He had a vague scent of the woods, like a forest floor after rain. It was not unpleasant, but neither was it a fragrance that Eddie associated with government ministers.

Serrimissani wasn't needed. Ual had made speaking English his priority, despite the effort it took to control his breathing enough to force out recognizable English words. The ussissi stayed in the room nonetheless, watching the bee-cam wander round the interviewee, and Eddie tried to crush the fear that she might pounce on it and crunch it up. She reminded him too much of snakes and Kipling. He looked back at Ual. There were no eyes that he could see to make contact with.

“The enclosed environment outside Jejeno is small, but I believe it will be more comfortable for your fellows than living on board
Actaeon
indefinitely,” Ual said. There was a rhythmic gulping between every word, like someone learning to speak again after a crude laryngectomy. Eddie struggled silently for him with every syllable. “Once it is established, the environment will be cooler, more moist and more breathable. It will be soothing for you, and we will learn a great deal about biospheres into the bargain.”

“Is that how you see the human-isenj relationship developing?”

“Mutual aid is a good basis for any bargain. You will benefit from improved communications. We're open to ideas for improved food production and we want to learn about terraforming. You've now seen our most pressing problem for yourself, in every street.”

Eddie hesitated before asking the next question, but it had to be asked. The bee-cam responded to his discreet hand signal for a close-up of Ual's face. “Is population control not an option?”

“It's more complex than that. No two states can agree upon a common policy for fear of being overrun by their neighbor. There's a psychological element to this, you see, as well as a biological one. The more overcrowded we became, the higher the death rate. The higher the death rate, the more fertile we become and the more reluctant people are to limit their families, in case their line should die out.”

“Improved food production won't solve that.”

“Not long-term. But resettlement will. It will reduce the collective anxiety.”

“You colonized your moon—Tasir Ve?”

“Tasir Var.”

“Did that work?”

“Evidently not. We hope you'll help us restore its ecology too.”

“So what was behind the drive to settle on Bezer'ej?”

“I think we've learned a great deal since we overexploited Tasir Var. The next world will be more carefully planned, more managed.”

“You've got deep-space capability. Why not look further afield than this system and avoid conflict with the wess'har?”

“We
had
deep-space capability, but it's a resource-intensive project to maintain. We're fortunate that you may soon be in a position to help us maintain our more remote instant communications relays because we can no longer reach them ourselves. Food and environmental cleansing are our priorities now. It's another area where we might find mutual advantage in cooperation.”

“Joint missions?”

“You have a similar drive to expand. Why else would you all be here? And you think you're eternal. It's hard to imagine your whole species and history being trapped on a world that will eventually be destroyed by its own sun. No, Mr. Michallat, I do believe humans and isenj will be partners, and both will benefit.” Ual tapped a limb on the glassy surface of the low table between them, indicating the cup and the bowl. A little fragment of quill fell to his lap and he reached down to sweep it aside. Eddie wondered what happened when a bead-bearing quill broke off.

Serrimissani stared at Ual, and Eddie saw the concept of disdain expressed as perfectly as any adept Indian
kathkali
dancer could ever mime. After an eloquent delay, she trotted forward to fill both vessels from their respective jugs. She did not look amused. He could see her little teeth glittering between slightly parted lips.

“Let us drink up, Mr. Michallat. Will you be transmitting this interview soon?”

Eddie nodded and drained his coffee, which was tepid by now. And it wasn't wardroom quality. “As soon as I edit it.”

“You'll cut out parts? It was very short.”

“Actually, I probably won't omit any detail. I just have to package it with some attractive shots. Would you mind if I traveled a little further and recorded some different images?”

“If you can find any,” Ual said.

Eddie loved him instantly and totally for his candor. He would swap Ual for a human politician any day. On the way back to the shuttle, he replayed the footage on the smartpaper the
Actaeon
had given him and marked appropriate sequences. Ual was right. It all looked much the same to him. No wonder they called those shots wallpaper.

“Ah well,” he said. He could only report what he saw.

Serrimissani watched his fingers moving across the smart-paper. “Are you going to make a habit of this?”

“I have to. It's called a series.”

“I think you have already recorded all you need to know.”

“I do believe you're right,” said Eddie. That was what worried him. “Look at it this way: I don't see it as my job to interpret the isenj to Earth audiences, but there aren't any other hacks around to tell a different side of the story, so that means I have to be doubly careful that I don't just tell mine. I'll be a window, nothing more, as far as I can be.”

The ussissi gave him a look that might have been sympathy or pity: he only knew that it made him feel like a scorpion, a snack-size one.

“A window should ask more open questions,” she said.

 

Shan's world was silent except for the numb ringing in her own ears.

Faces—wess'har and ussissi—that were clustered in a circle above her jerked back and parted.

For a few moments all she could see was their mouths opening and closing erratically. Her eardrums felt as if someone had shoved a rod through them. A few moments later the sound suddenly rushed back in.

“Li sevadke!”
said a reedy child-animal voice with its own echo.
“Ur, jes'ha ur!”

Shan struggled to sit up. She could see properly now: Vijissi, Chayyas, and a wess'har male she didn't know, and they were giving her plenty of space. Chayyas was shaking her head occasionally, as if trying to dislodge something: the close-quarters discharge must have hurt her ears too.

Shan tried to put her hands back behind her to prop herself up but fell back on one elbow. The back of her head hurt like hell. She reached around, expecting to feel an exit wound, sticky blood, gritty bone: but it was all in place.