Judge (34 page)

This was why they wanted his wisdom.

“We've debated what to do about
c'naatat,
Eddie, and our view is that we shouldn't keep these samples.” Giyadas sounded as if the decision had been made, but the matriarchs still liked to canvass opinion sometimes. “If we keep them, temptation may lead us to use it. And one day in the future, we may not be as powerful as we are now, and there's no way of knowing what might happen to it. The proposal is that we destroy all the samples. All of them.”

They valued his wisdom, they said, so he did his best to scrape up some of it and earn his keep. “But there's shitloads of
c'naatat
on Ouzhari. They couldn't even kill it off by nuking it.”

“Ouzhari is always going to be an issue, but Bezer'ej is already defended by bioagents, and we'll assess new threats to its quarantine as and when they arise. But these samples—think of the hosts they've passed through, and the characteristics they embody. Aras, Shan, Ade, Rayat, even Lindsay. They're ideal for creating persistent, intelligent troops. This makes the material especially desirable.”

“If anyone knew about it.”

“Eqbas Vorhi does, for one.”

“Ah. I'm with you. I get it.”

“It also denies the asset to us, of course, but on balance, we feel it should be destroyed.”

Eddie knew wess'har wouldn't destroy any living organism if they didn't have to. Their have-to thresholds bore no resemblance to those of humans, as the extermination of the isenj on Bezer'ej had shown. This was a big deal for them strategically, and maybe morally too.

“What happens to
c'naatat
when you remove it, Shapakti?” Eddie asked. “How do you actually do it?”

“It was a matter of stopping the individual organisms communicating. They then leave the body and remain inactive, permanently dormant. Or at least I haven't found a way of making them active again.”

“So they're not actually dead?”

“No. But they can't communicate with each other, and so they can't act.”

“And you can take the organism out of the host, but you can't take the host out of the organism.”

“So far, yes.”

So far.
There was no telling what some clever bastard might be able to do in the future, and possibly not a wess'har bastard at that.

The extracted
c'naatat
's fate struck Eddie as a depressing one: he had no idea if the organisms were sentient, but sentience was a very subjective thing, and the idea that this…. this
community
that lived within its host like the population of a planet was suddenly rendered blind, deaf and mute seemed desperately sad. Bacteria lived and died within every living thing each second of the day, though; there was a limit to how much even wess'har could mourn.

But Eddie knew what it was to be lonely, cut off from everything he knew. He decided he would rather be dead than totally, endlessly isolated. He had a brief glimpse of what Shan must have endured, drifting alone in space, unable to die, just like the hapless individual
c'naatat.

He hated it when life drew such stark parallels.

“I'm uneasy about biological agents in general,” he said after a long pause. “We won't ever agree on that, and I still feel bad that I tricked isenj DNA samples out of poor bloody Ual to help you make that anti-isenj pathogen. So…yes, I think you should get rid of
c'naatat.
Just be sure that you won't need to use it to survive in the future.”

And just in case the poor bloody thing knows what's happening to it.

The pause was long and silent, and then, without any discussion, Giyadas gave Shapakti a nod.

“Do it,” she said.

Eddie didn't see anything happen in the little oven, and wasn't even sure what the method of destruction might be. But Shapakti pressed the top, there was a slight sigh of air for a few moments, and then he took his hand away and nodded politely.

“It's sealed,
isan've.
Now all that remains is the countermeasure, in case we ever need it.”

“Is that it?” Eddie asked. “You killed it? How? How could you do that if Rayat couldn't even nuke the bloody thing to death?”

“You misunderstand,” said Shapakti. “This is a biohazard container. It'll be launched in a missile directed into the sun. Into Ceret. That's the most certain destruction we know.”

Eddie had never lost his sense of journalistic drama. He thought it would have made a lovely shot, Cavanagh's Star swallowing this bizarre burden. Nobody was going to land and fish out the container, that was for sure. He tried to see the funny side, but failed.

“Let's go,” said Giyadas.

And that was wess'har strategic planning. Just a few minutes; just a few what-do-you reckons and nods, and a superpower had thrown away one of its greatest trump cards.

Only wess'har could do that, he thought, although the reasoning wasn't pacifism.

“So will you carry on working on removing
c'naatat
from wess'har, Shap?” Eddie asked.

“In computer modeling only, alas,” he said. “But I was close, and I think a full range of countermeasures would be wise.”

We've been here before,
thought Eddie.
It'd be a shame to put Aras through all that dilemma again.

He wondered what Ade and Shan would decide to do in the end. The challenge never went away. As long as Aras had to stay as he was, neither of them would take advantage of the cure.

Eddie wondered if they would even want to, and followed the bobbing manes back down the soft-lit corridors and back up to the city, blindingly pearl-bright in the sun.

F'nar, Wess'ej: 2426: twenty years later.

 

Fnar hadn't changed.

Aras brought the shuttle in low over the plain as if he wanted to take in every detail of the terrain and make sure every stone, every pebble was still there.

Shan just wanted to get her boots on the ground as fast as she could. When the ship set down just outside the caldera, she didn't even grab her grip; she just ran all the way into the pearl city, scattering bewildered wess'har, and raced up the rows of terraces until her lungs made her stop for a minute before she could run again.

Her legs burned with the effort.

It's still the same. It's all here, nothing's changed, even Eddie's here
—

The city still functioned in the way it was intended. Progress for the sake of it was meaningless to wess'har here. Nothing
needed
to change.

She waited a few moments outside Nevyan's door and took in the view, getting her breath back before facing Eddie.

We'd say this is stagnation. So? Where does progress take us? Where would we go?

Progress
was like
freedom
and
democracy.
You had to define it before deciding if you wanted it, or it was just a Pavlovian trigger to get you to serve someone else's agenda. If progress was an end to disease, fear, and death, and having enough to eat, she had it all. There was nowhere else to go.

Get on with it.

She rapped on the encrusted door. The layer of nacre wasn't completely even. The varying thickness gave it undulations and ripples that added to the organic lines of a city trying hard not to stand out from the landscape. She thought of Earth—last week, last month, not a short lifetime away—and her only regret was that she couldn't show off F'nar to more people who would be amazed by it.

This time, she recalled nothing of being in chill-sleep. She took that as a measure of her relief at heading home.

The door opened. “You never have to knock,” said Nevyan. No, wess'har just barged straight in, even if you were using the toilet. “But I've waited for that sound for a long time.”

Shan couldn't imagine what it was to wait twenty-five years to see someone again. Her separation felt like weeks, not enough to really feel that gut-punch of recognition. Nevyan seized her in a fierce hug that took her by surprise, and Shan returned the embrace with appropriate caution.

“Hey,” she said. “Tell me you're just middle-aged now and that we've got lots of time left.”

“I shall not die for many years, my friend.” The warren of chambers was as full of noise and cooking smells as ever. Damn, wess'har food actually smelled
homely
to her now. “Where do I start on events you've missed?”

“Try Eddie,” said Shan.

Nevyan led her past curious youngsters—grandchildren, by the look of it—and into another chamber that looked out into the caldera. “I'll wait outside. I know you dislike others seeing your emotional moments.”

It was a nice room, the sort you'd pay a lot for in an Earth rest home; the hazy gold light reflected from the pearl terraces outside filled it, and for a moment she could defocus a little and see it as a vast halo. An Eddie she'd never seen before sat near the window, and struggled to turn his head far enough to look at her.

“You're late, doll.”

His voice still hadn't changed that much. There was a little creaking, hoarse undertone, and his breathing was labored, but he didn't sound like a man in his—

Nineties.

Knowing that in advance didn't reduce the impact of what a rotten bastard time could be.

Dear God, and this is just time separation. This isn't even
c'naatat.
What's it like after five centuries when you've seen people age past you over and over again?

Shan looked around for something to sit on and pulled up a storage box of laminated
efte.

“How are you doing, Eddie?” He was a painfully old man, not quite as frail as she'd expected, but it was a job to spot the bloke she'd known until she concentrated on his eyes. Eddie was still in there. “We've got a lot of catching up to do.”

“You got fired,” he said. “But that's good, because I couldn't have waited for you much longer.”

“I didn't belong there. I don't think I ever did.” She took his hand carefully. “Now I'm going to kick your bloody arse for trying to be a hero.”

“What?”

“You know what. You could have told BBChan that you had proof about me.
C'naatat.
Nothing would have happened in the end.”

“Jesus, that was a long time ago.”

“You didn't have to protect me. And you certainly didn't have to impose this exile on yourself.”

Maybe it wasn't the thing to say to a man who probably missed Earth and now regretted a pointless gesture that time had covered in the silt of events. “Don't kid yourself that I fell on my sword to cover your arse, doll,” he said. “It was more than that, a lot more. Now…have you
ever
stood up and said what you really did to protect Green Rage? Even now?”

It was the question he first asked her more than fifty years ago, when she was freshly marooned here and he worked out who she was and why Perault might have shanghaied her. “Oh yeah, a copper telling the world she went native and helped eco-terrorism when she should have been crushing it is
really
something I want to boast about.”

“Maybe you had to be there.” Eddie took a rasping breath. “Look, it was more than my being too humiliated to go home. Why should I give a fuck what a news editor thinks of me? Something in me just switched off that day. I wanted to tell a different kind of story.”

Shan checked her mental calendar.
Twenty-five years.
“When did you last do a program for BBChan?”

“Oh…maybe twenty years ago. It's gone now. You know that, don't you? BBChan's gone.” He squeezed her hand. “You know I helped the isenj set up a broadcast network on Umeh? It's linked to Wess'ej too. Really something. I'm the bloody Lord Reith of outer space.”

Eddie began laughing with the caution of someone whose chest hurt. Shan had no idea where to take the conversation next, because the things she wanted to know most were the most awkward, and there was too much water under the bridge to know where to start on the harmless stuff. It was a bad time to discover tact.

“So…about you, Eddie. Give me the bullet points.”

“Erica's been gone ten years. Barry—I sent him off to Eqbas Vorhi with Olivier's lad when he was twenty, so he could get back to Earth with the next ship. There was no future for him here, not as the last of the species. Bloody shame that so many people went back. A few more humans here, and maybe we could have had a viable colony that could learn to behave like civilized sentients and fit in with the wess'har. Maybe even do something responsible with that second gene bank.”

It took Shan a few seconds to do the maths, but that meant he'd heard almost nothing from Barry since. She didn't want to think about the big picture then, not gene banks or the sanctity of creation or the shape Earth was in. “So they're still sending support to the Earth mission.”

“I think,” Eddie said slowly, “that it's by way of checking up what's left and deciding whether to keep the garrison there, or decide that the humans can run the shop on their own, and pull out.”

“Nothing I can do there now, but plenty I can do here.”

“Predictably, the adjustment hasn't been completely seamless.”

“Unless it really matters to you to tell me, I don't want to know all the detail…yet.”

“You haven't had any news or messages since you left Earth?”

“No, I thought that catching up with my friends was the priority. Plenty of time to watch the bloody news.”

“I'll give you my records. I spent a good fifteen years advising the Eqbas on policy stuff, so you can read a complete record of what went on each year.” Eddie looked into her face and studied it, gaze flickering, eyes glazed with age. A slow smile spread across his face. “So, are you happy you've completed your mission now?”

“I don't know if I feel it's
job done,
but the case is as closed as it'll ever be.”

“Good. Time to move on.”

“I hope we can see a bit more of each other now. It's not like either of us have pressing duties.”

“You've got Ade and Aras.”

“They'll want to see you too.”

“You know,” he said, “I always fancied Ismat Qureshi. Pretty,
pretty
girl. Did she realize, I wonder? I never told her. Bloody shame.”

Shan had been at Qureshi's funeral a week ago, in terms of her own timescale; late twenties or early thirties, a bloody good marine, and dead far too young. She wished now that the full twenty-five years' separation from Earth was something she had lived through, so that time could have taken the edge off her grief. But interstellar travel didn't work that way. Shan was effectively freshly bereaved, and still raw.

“I think Izzy knew,” Shan said at last.

Eddie nodded a few times, then squinted into the shafts of bright sun piercing the window. “I know everyone says it, but nobody really takes it seriously enough. Tell people the good stuff when you can. You can't always catch up later. The shit and the arguments can wait.”

Shan had always had good human radar. Something tapped her on the shoulder and whispered that unalloyed happy reunions were only for the movies, because she'd come back from the dead and knew how brief the breathless, grateful joy could be. She could see the limit of her time left to be Eddie's friend.

“I'll see you later,” she said, and stroked the thin wisps of hair on Eddie's scalp. It looked like an infant wess'har's, all papery fragility. “Got to unpack. Did you leave the place nice and tidy, or will I find bottles and frilly panties down the back of the sofa?”

“You know the wess'har. Someone will have made the place ready for you. They always do.” He clasped her hand again. “Be patient with Ade, won't you? And when you come back, I want to hear what you did on Earth. Just the fun stuff.”

“You heard the rest, then.”

“Yeah. I'm sorry. But…I'd have done the same. Too many what-ifs, leaving anything
c'naatat
there. It was never meant to leave this system. I'll tell you now—Rayat and Shapakti cleared every sample and piece of data from the Eqbas labs, brought the stuff back here, and Giyadas had it destroyed. No more
c'naatat
going spare. Just the countermeasures. And what lives on Bezer'ej.”

Shan resented the fact that Rayat's name still produced a reaction in her. He shouldn't have still been able to jerk her chain like that.

Eddie could read her pretty well. “You might as well know. Shap got asylum here, but he brought Rayat back with him.”

“Still here?” Her gut flipped. “Bastard.”

“Minus
c'naatat
now.”

“I'm glad they removed it.”

“Oh, he wanted it gone.”

“Now you're going to tell me he found God.” No, it wasn't the time to vent. It wasn't fair on Eddie. “It's good to be back again, mate. First thing we do is have dinner. I'm not putting it off, not one more day.”

He chuckled. “I'll try to stay alive, but you better not make any fancy desserts. I might be dead by the main course.”

Shan wanted to tell him that she loved him like the brother she never had. She knew she didn't have a lot of time to do that. Tomorrow was running out for him.

But she had plenty left. She'd concentrate on his for a while.

 

F'nar: upper terraces.

 

Home: the place was still home after so many years, and it smelled fresh and clean.

“Got to call Chaz,” Ade said, bounding over to the ITX. Time had simply closed up for him. “I promised. I said, I'd call the lads.”

He dropped his bergen in the corner and sat down at the console. Aras watched him as he made tea, the first thing Shan would ask for when she got in, and wondered how long Ade would have to wait to find his friends after twenty-five years.

There was also a message from Shapakti propped against a bowl on the table, a real letter on hemp paper scavenged from the colonists. Aras opened it: he expected to see something about Lindsay or the bezeri, but it wasn't.

My friends.

Ten years ago, I succeeded in removing
c'naatat
from bezeri and wess'har tissue, and so we need not fear it again. If contamination happens, we have choices. I think those choices should be very restrained, in case we're tempted to use this as a convenience instead of treating it with reverence and caution. I await your homecoming.

Aras closed his eyes.

Shan now had a choice, whether he wanted it or not.

It wasn't the first time he'd had to consider it, and when it had seemed possible a few years ago, he'd taken stupid decisions that ended in Lindsay and Rayat's infection with
c'naatat.
But the bad memories didn't stop all his conflicting longings overwhelming him again; his need and love for Shan, for a house-brother like Ade, for children he couldn't have with them, for children he might now have with someone else, for the life he had never fully lived—and for the life that he thought he would have to live, and want to live, forever.

How do I even begin to discuss this with Shan and Ade?

How do I tell them I might want to leave them?

Who will I be when
c'naatat
is removed? Will I even recall my time with them? Just because it worked that way for a human is no guarantee for me.