Matriarch (21 page)

Shapakti opened the double airlock that sealed the terrestrial environment. Warm, humid air rolled out and Deborah inhaled audibly as she stepped through the portal. Shan knew how she felt. The oxygen-rich air and smell of Earth, of familiar things, was almost shocking.

But Deborah had never smelled the air of Earth, and she was the fourth generation of settlers habituated to lower oxygen levels on Bezer'ej. She wasn't remembering. She was
imagining.

“You grew all this from the gene bank?” she asked.

Shapakti held out his arm and the two macaws plummeted like raptors from their favored roost a few meters above him to land on it, squabbling over the best position. They were more than bright: they were
luminous.
Shan saw
them in ultraviolet, as they saw themselves, with all their vivid patches.

Deborah gasped, even though she saw only in a human's narrow spectrum.

“These birds, yes,” said Shapakti. His English was perfectly clear despite the overtone. “I get the plants from Umeh Station, already growing. I accelerate their development.”

Deborah had never struck Shan as a demonstrative woman. As a guest in the Garrods' house, Shan had catalogued her as the stoic sensible type, a frontier woman in every sense, a dispenser of tea and first aid when disaster struck. But now she burst into tears and stood staring at the macaws, one hand to her mouth. The birds shrieked at her.

Shan felt a pang of embarrassment and for a moment she envied Deborah her loss of control.
I had no idea how much emotion these people invested in the gene bank. But they think they're doing it for God, don't they? That must ring the bell for them, all right.
But where Deborah saw pearls and the fruition of dreams, Shan saw insect shit and just the beginning of a long struggle—one she wasn't going to be part of.

“What are you going to do with them?” Deborah asked.

“Take them back to Earth,” said Shapakti.

“How many species are you going to revive before you reach Earth?”

“Few. Only plants. The macaws are experimental.”

“But you think you can do it?”

“We restore ecosystems. We do this.”

“Yeah, I think Shapakti knows what he's doing.” Shan gave the macaws a wide berth in case they took a peck at her.
C'naatat
made her wary of every possible accidental contact. “Now all the Eqbas have to do is get the Earth governments to behave and let them do the restoration. That's going to be the interesting bit.”

Deborah raised her chin a fraction. “There's no point my telling you to have faith, is there?”

“I've got faith in Shapakti.”

“I shall never see Earth,” he said. “My mission ends here. I go home.”

He didn't seem disappointed. Shan knew he missed his family; he had an image of his home on the bulkhead of his ship, a little indication of homesickness that was touchingly…human.
Poor sod.
But once you'd restored one world, maybe you'd restored them all. Even miracles palled in time.

Deborah wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Josh would have been so happy to see this.”

Aras didn't react. Shan couldn't smell any agitation. He seemed to be checking out the dimensions of the tropical hothouse, no doubt sizing it up for terrestrial crops.

Deborah held her arm out and one of the macaws studied it for a moment before edging onto her hand a step at a time. Aras paused in his inspection of the raised beds of soil to watch. There was no sound either from macaw or woman. It eyed her, head cocked on one side in a disturbingly wess'har way.

“
Uk'alin'i che,
” it said, almost with an overtone.
Feed me.
It rustled vivid turquoise feathers. Deborah laughed, but the tears were still welling in her eyes.

“So what are you feeding them?” asked Shan.

“Synthesized nutrient pellets. When we relocate to Bezer'ej, I will grow fruit and seeds for them.”

“How much of the habitat are you removing?” Shan kept a careful eye on the parrot. “We could grow crops here.”

“Your marines have already planted some. Look.” Shapakti reached into the raised bed and indicated small plants each with a pair of ovate glossy leaves. “I will avoid disturbing the seedlings when I remove the foliage plants.”

Aras
urrred.
It was a sound like someone riffling through a wad of paper sheets, and he only did it when he was relaxed and happy. Shan hadn't heard him do it for a long time; it was a good sign. Having Ade around as a housebrother and the prospect of interesting new crops seemed to settle him down. Aras was, at heart, as much of a pragmatist as she was. For the first time she felt that—with effort—her life might settle down too and become like anyone else's,
except for the fact she was light-years from Earth, living with two genetic chimeras and pretty well indestructible. But it was a lot more normal than her previous existence.

As soon as she sorted the problems in hand—those two bastards on Bezer'ej, and Vijissi—she'd count her blessings as carefully as she could, and not look an inch beyond them.

“Bananas,” said Aras. “And grapes.”

“Not many grapes like tropical conditions.”

“I didn't realize you were so informed about grapes.”

“I'm a mine of information,” said Shan. Her father had wanted to swap city life for a smallholding, but the only soil he got was a conventional burial. It was the best she could do. “And most of the horticultural stuff was useless up to now.”

Deborah still stared at the macaw. “You're not going back to Earth with us either, are you?”

“No,” said Shan. “My home's here now.”

“After coming so far and giving up so much?”

“You forget one small detail.” There was no point telling her that
c'naatat
could probably be removed from humans but not from wess'har. It couldn't be removed from her mind, and that was where she had been changed most. The months she spent drifting in space, sporadically conscious, hardened further by every momentary realization that she was alone beyond imagining with only her inner animal core to rely upon, had left her a stranger to herself at times. And then there was Aras. She promised she wouldn't abandon him, and her word was
everything.
“I think it's best that
c'naatat
stays here.”

If you're not going back to Earth, then what are you going to do for Wess'ej? What's going to become of Umeh?

The macaw appeared to decide that Deborah wasn't a source of food and swaggered back along her arm to climb onto Shapakti's. Deborah let her hand drop to her side. “What happens to you at the end of time, Shan?”

Don't. Stop it.
“Who says
c'naatat
hosts live that long?”

“What if they do?”

“I'll have some interesting snapshots, then, won't I?”

Shapakti interrupted, showing extraordinary tact for an
Eqbas. “Let me show Deborah how I achieve these things. You go.”

Shan took it as a hint to leave; maybe Shapakti was as sensitive to her discomfort as Aras. The parrots took off from the scientist's arm in a flurry of bright feathers and settled on a branch again.

Shan watched them and then took note of the small tree beneath. The leaves were green and glossy, rather like giant bay leaves, and the spikes of small cream flowers reminded her of bay laurel.

“What's that plant?” Shan asked, hoping for some kind of aromatic bay. Herbs mattered. They were right up there with chili and garlic in the familiar food league.

“Dwarf avocado,” said Shapakti.

The thought of a new and exotic addition to the menu temporarily erased any nagging worries about how
c'naatat
hosts finally met their maker. “I'll
definitely
visit you on Bezer'ej, then. Can I take a cutting later?”

“I leave this tree for you.”

“Thank you.”
Vijissi. Ask him now.
“One more thing—would you mind taking a look at a tissue sample for me some time?”

“Which time?”

Be specific.
“When are you leaving for Bezer'ej?”

“Perhaps two more days.”

“I'll bring it to you.” She managed a smile and didn't expect one back. Like Aras, all wess'har struggled to mimic that distinctly simian expression. “You're a star, Shapakti. Thanks.”

He understood the meaning if not the phrase, because he
urrred
just like Aras—praised, pleased—and beckoned Deborah to follow him deeper into the forest habitat that extended thirty meters into the tunnels.

“I don't know if Ade even likes avocado, but I bloody well do.” Shan walked back up the tunnels with Aras and climbed the steps towards real daylight. “And they produce lovely green oil. Think of it. Soap. Salad dressing. Fry-ups.”

“Shapakti's tissue sample.”

“So, I was thinking of dispensing with speech completely and just relying on telepathy,” said Shan. “Am I that bloody obvious?”

“You once told me that police are very good at getting people to do things for them. You appear to have two modes of doing that—violence and exaggerated charm.”

“Ouch.”

“And I know your preoccupations. I have your memories.” Aras took her hand gingerly in his as they walked. “You need to
clear your decks,
as Ade would say.”

His hand was cool and the skin like fine suede. Something wess'har in her felt solidly happy inhaling his sandalwood scent. “I hate unfinished business hanging around. We have three
c'naatat
now outside our control.”

“Is that how you think of Vijissi,
isan
? Something to be controlled?”

“Okay, so I'm a callous bitch, but why did you quarantine Bezer'ej for centuries if you didn't see it the same way?”

“I didn't say I disagreed with you. And I know Vijissi's survival is both joy and despair for you.”

“And what about
you
?”

“I have no sense of guilt about his condition as you have.”

“Just answer the bloody question.”

“I think he's a complication, and I believe he will be very unhappy.”

Shan inhaled the sweet sandalwood musk that surrounded Aras and felt inexplicably good when she should have been distracted by worry. She squeezed his arm, wondering if this was actually biochemical bonding and not love. Sleeping with Ade had placated her, too. Maybe it didn't matter: the love and bonding were the same thing in the end. Aras had struck a chord in her long before he'd infected her.

Infected. It's a funny word to use to describe someone saving your life.

Shan couldn't pretend to understand the biochemistry of
oursan.
But she'd seen Nevyan take on an entire family of males and their offspring out of duty when their
isan
died, and become utterly devoted to them in a matter of days.
Oursan
—and Shan still thought of it as sex, even if it wasn't reproductive—really did bond wess'har, males to females and so males to their housebrothers. They had no concept of infidelity and the urge never crossed their minds, and without the constant genetic repair of
oursan,
males sickened and died.

C'naatat
put her odd little clan beyond that. But the instinct remained.

“Hey, I'm sorry about Black,” she said. “But he was very old for a rat. He had a good life.”

“Did he? What's a good life for a rat? It was an unnatural one as far as I understand, not at all how rats live in the wild.”

“Well, we'd know all about unnatural, wouldn't we? And so will Vijissi. So let's see what Shapakti can do.”

Shan hung on to her weird life even though she knew how to end it.
I tried once.
But here she was, living with
c'naatat
when there was no absolute need to because she knew how to end it. They all did. If Shapatki couldn't remove
c'naatat,
there was always one way left.

You're used to it, you stupid cow. And now you enjoy it, don't you? Hey, look! I was serious, I tried to once, I failed. Can I live now? Please?

Aras
urrred
again. If she was distracted from the growing
c'naatat
roll call, then he was no longer devastated by the near extinction of the bezeri or killing Josh Garrod. Life went on, the life you liked and would hang on to grimly until you couldn't hang on any longer.

But I'm not like that. I stepped out the airlock. I'm above all that—aren't I?

“Ussissi are not
gethes,
” said Aras. “They have no wish to misuse
c'naatat.
”

“That still leaves Vijissi. What if he changes a lot, like
you did? What if he expresses human genes, or wess'har ones? Everything that was in me?”

“He'll live with it, as I did.”

There was a point at the top of the terraces, at the highest point the stairways reached, where she could look down and enjoy F'nar laid out beneath her like an iridescent bowl. Whatever the weather, whatever the light, it was always absorbing. Shan stopped now and took in the view. Bezer'ej, Wess'ej's twin, was visible as a huge but faint crescent moon.

“Jesus, it's a steep climb, isn't it? No wonder my arse is my best feature.” Aras didn't laugh. She often expected him to be more human than he was. “I hope I never take this view for granted.”

But her eyes were fixed on Bezer'ej. And she wasn't thinking of the exquisitely alien skyscape, or even recalling a year spent there: she found she was now thinking of bloody Lindsay Neville, the stupid destructive
selfish
little cow, and that bastard Rayat.

I can't rest until I see for myself. I can't forget them and get on with my life until I know they're never going to be a risk.