Matriarch (24 page)

He wondered if Esganikan had decided to pull back to let things calm down but didn't want to look soft in front of him or her crew. But wess'har didn't have any concept of saving face. She was doing it for the reasons she stated: she could do nothing useful here.

“We still don't have comms links with Earth, you know,” said Hugel. “Transmissions in, but nothing out. Except through you.”

“Ah. Here we go.”

“You haven't told anyone back home that Shan survived, have you?”

“I did the back-from-the-dead story once. Then she makes a habit of it. News Desk gets bored.”

“For Chrissakes, Eddie.”

“No, it doesn't matter any more. We've all forgotten what started it. The conflicts have moved on to bigger stuff—who controls Umeh, and who controls Earth.”

“You reckon that's a bigger deal than immortality?”

“Indefinitely extended life.
C'naatat
can be killed.” He had no plans to mention how. “Yeah, I do.”

“That means it's potentially controllable.”

“You don't give up, do you?”

“If any of us had been the giving up kind, we'd never have spent seventy-five years in the freezer getting here.”

Eddie rolled the thought around in his brain. Shit, he really
had
become blasé about
c'naatat:
how could he criticize 'Desk for yawning at more alien war footage when he'd burned out on immortality? He couldn't even feel anxiety for Kris Hugel because he was back in war mode and switched off to everything except the narrow focus of elusive adrenaline.

“Kris, if the Eqbas don't like what they see when they reach Earth,
c'naatat
's going to be irrelevant.” He leaned over and patted her head emphatically. “These people redefined regime change.”

“Can you get us out of here?”

“What?”

“Me, Vani and Olivier.”

Oh yes: he'd all but forgotten them. Vani Paretti and Olivier Champciaux, two of the scientists from the original
Thetis
mission, were stranded here too. The rest of the payload, as the marines called the research team, were either dead or working on a deal with God among the colonists. Eddie imagined Nevyan's reaction if he walked back into F'nar with a microbiologist, a geologist and a way-too-curious medic.

“I can't,” he said, knowing that he probably could. “Sorry.”

“We were
crew,
Eddie. We went through a lot together.”

Eddie wasn't a crew-minded man but he thought of all the people he couldn't take back to Wess'ej, like Cargill and the civilian engineers. If he took one, he'd have to take all of them, or else spend the rest of his time battling guilt about those left behind.

“I can't take humans back to Wess'ej uninvited,” he lied, remembering doing exactly that with the Royal Marines. “You're
gethes
as far as they're concerned. Carrion eaters. And there's no carrion or much else there that you can eat.”

“Okay. Great.”

“You know Lindsay's dead, don't you? And Rayat. Wess'har don't do prisons. They do executions. Like I said, you're safer here. Keep your head down and I'll see you after Christmas.”

It was as meaningless a thing as he'd ever said, but that was how it escaped his mouth. Hugel just stared, and he walked back into the biodome just to end the conversation. But this was how he'd lived his life—a visitor to disasters and violence with a first class ticket home. He'd been stranded a few times too; jailed, bailed out by BBChan, stuck behind borders, abandoned by minders. Hugel was facing no worse then he had. Tough shit.

But I can leave.

He felt bad about it and made a conscious effort to stop what he thought of as “fixing.” When something unpleasant happened, he could feel the image boring into his memory, noting all the inconsequential things around at that very moment and marking them as a trigger for full recall of itself. The moment had a real physical sensation; he was convinced he could feel the neural pathways snapping together.
No no no.
He had a game for stopping it happening, too. He'd see or hear the utterly unconnected things—an orange coverall, a sack trolley, the sound of a fountain—and try to stop the bond forming.
No no no.

It rarely worked. Now he practiced overload instead, recalling the awful moment over and over until he was sick of it and it lost some of its ability to make his stomach pump
acid. Right then he thought of Lindsay and couldn't imagine affable Ade Bennett pushing her into the sea to die, alone and terrified.

Distraction.
There was always a coffee to be had if he asked nicely in the main refectory area. He might even get a real one and not the synthesized flavoring processed on site. He set course for it. He needed to get that image out of his mind.

“Our man on the scene, eh?” Cargill was ahead of him in the queue for the drinks dispenser. “Don't forget we don't have comms back to Earth—or anything else outgoing for that matter. We're not getting any information except what the ussissi say. Maybe you ought to file a report back to BBChan so they can transmit it back to us.”

The isenj had blocked outgoing ITX relays—not his, it seemed—when they feared loose human lips would cause the wess'har to sink isenj ships. Like any self-respecting human government, they were slow to open them again. “The spider boys are ripping chunks out of each other,” Eddie said quietly. “The Eqbas decided not to fight a ground war because they couldn't think of a good reason for it.”

“Jesus. And they're going to invade Earth?”

“'S'right.”

“About fucking time. We could do with politicians like that.”

Cargill guffawed, apparently unconcerned. Eddie wished that he fancied her. He'd work on it if Izzy Qureshi wasn't interested. She extracted two coffees—synthetic—from the dispenser and pressed one cup into his hand.

Eddie had a sudden urge to test a theory.

“Sofia, do you want to leave the station? Evacuate to Wess'ej?”

She dropped her chin slightly and looked up at him. “Where you going to put three hundred and sixty-one bodies? And feed them?”

“I meant you.”

She stopped blinking. “Thanks, but it sort of goes with the
uniform, staying with the doomed ship and all that. If you could get the civvies moved, though, that would be handy.”

“Can't do bigger numbers.” He wasn't sure he could do
any,
and he wasn't sure if he was just testing now. But one or two individuals wouldn't salve his conscience, and staying around out of some misplaced sense of solidarity was just as self-indulgent. He had a job to do: so did she. “Just asking. Just in case.”

“Am I reading you right, Eddie?”

“Forget it. I'm rambling. Someone made me feel guilty for not taking them back to Wess'ej with me.”

“If they're essential personnel, they bloody stay put.” She lowered her voice. “Nobody in uniform leaves here until all civvies are evacuated. That's the navy way.”

She looked at him as if expecting a name, but he shook his head. Yeah, Umeh Station needed all its medics. “When you put it like that, I feel a lot better.”

“Wouldn't mind seeing that pearl city before
Thetis
shows up, though,” said Cargill. “Shame to come all this way and not see the sights.”

Eddie made a mental pledge to grant her wish. He collected his bag and walked back to the staging area where the ussissi were embarking for F'nar. Cargill hadn't even been tempted. Leaving was out of the question, and he knew she'd be the last out.

He wedged the bag between his feet, clasped his hands in front of him and waited in a sea of grim-faced chest-high meerkats. When they stood still like that, all looking the same way, all perfectly still, it was impossible not to see them that way.

He almost smiled. Cargill had reset his switch. It was good to know that order and a certain nobility survived in an outpost so isolated that cannibalism wouldn't have surprised him. Kris, who he'd quite liked in a superficial way, had fallen instantly from grace simply by asking him for a way out. In his mental filing cabinet, there were people who had a certain quality—Cargill, the marine detachment,
Shan—and people who did not, and they might as well have been two different species for all the attitudes they shared.

Maybe they really
were
different. The wess'har definitely seemed to think so.

Eddie's turn came to embark. He stood watching a bubble of blue liquid composite with a dozen Umeh ussissi who appeared never to have seen metamorphosing vessels before, and wondered whether Lindsay met her fate like Shan, or like Kris.

He suspected Ade would never tell him, and nor would Aras.

Ussissi settlement, outside F'nar

The eggshell domes of the ussissi settlement just outside F'nar had lost their Fabergé look.

They were never meant to be permanent, a summer's decoration at most. Their brilliant colors and intricate designs had faded to the weather-beaten shades of ancient stucco and the hemispheres almost merged with the soil. Others had already crumbled back into fragments like pottery shards. Shan was reminded of the bubble domes of Constantine again, Aras's re-creation of discreet Wess'ej architecture on Bezer'ej. She wondered how much it hurt to see a colony you shaped over generations reduced to dust by your own hand.

She glanced down. “Are you sure you're okay?”

Vijissi tottered unsteadily at her side. Eventually he gave up walking bipedally and dropped down onto four of his six legs, bring him to below waist-height. Shan slowed down again and debated whether to simply pick him up and carry him. There still was nothing much to pick up except skin and bone.

“I have been unable to walk for many months,” he said. Ussissi had oddly childlike voices at the best of times: Vijissi's pressed all the human buttons in Shan that said
look after me.
“Walking aids my recovery.”

“Sitting down and eating plenty does that too.”

Vijissi didn't respond. He panted occasionally and sometimes slowed so much that Shan simply stood still and waited for him. The half-hour stroll from Mestin's home to the settlement had stretched into a slow hour but he was determined to walk unaided into his home village.

“I never said thanks,” said Shan.

“For what,
Shan Chail
?”

“For staying with me. Even when…it killed you. More or less.”

“You were my responsibility,” he said. “
Mestin Chail
said I was to look after you.”

“I'm sorry. I really am.”

“You're as restricted as I am. Don't be.”

A few meerkat faces appeared at the portals of the egg domes and watched them approach. They synchronized their movements and the effect in Shan's peripheral vision was like watching a wave breaking. Vijissi straightened up onto his hindlegs as if determined to put on a brave face.

Last time I came here with him, they just stared at me.

Shan waved, a brief display of the palm of her hand, and waited. “Remember, anytime you feel it's too much, I'll take you back to Mestin's place.” She glanced down at him, anxious to help: since she'd realized how young he was, she felt doubly guilty.
I never even asked. I never treated him as a person.
“A step at a time. Don't overdo it. I know how it feels.”

More ussissi came out into the central clearing of the eggshell village. When they were excited or agitated, they matched their movements perfectly and there was a very real sense of dealing with one entity; Shan never lost sight of the fact that they probably attacked that way, too. Vijissi swayed slightly as if he too was trying to mimic that movement.

A large, dominant female—all the females were larger than the males—broke from the group and trotted forward,
the tan beaded belt across one shoulder slapping against her bright yellow robe. She stopped in front of Shan and stared at Vijissi.

“If we didn't know this was possible, we would be more shocked,” she said. “Are you infectious?”

They didn't believe in a bunch of flowers and a basket of fruit for the convalescent patient, that much was clear. Shan concentrated on restraint: ussissi could detect
jask
as well as any wess'har. Vijissi craned his neck to scan the small crowd.

“Binissati, where is she? Where is Talissari?”

“She believed you were dead. She went to Pajat to find another.”

Shan knew bugger all about ussissi culture even now, but she knew a
Dear John
when she heard one. Vijissi's head drooped a little. She didn't know he had a female.

“I came to greet you all,” he said. It was almost a whisper. “But I am tired. I will come back later.” He looked up at Shan, his eyes black voids like a blind, pleading dog's. “We should return now.”

Binissati narrowed her eyes. “Are you planning to return here for good?”

“Where will I live if I do?” Vijissi leaned forward slightly, just a fraction, and Binissati drew back. Shan winced. That display of caution sealed Vijissi's status:
leper.
“I will come again when I feel stronger.”

“I want him back in bed and getting some rest.” Shan found herself almost squaring up to the ussissi matriarch.
You callous bitch.
Where was his mother? “I'll bring him back when I feel he's fit.”

It probably wasn't the best thing to do to preserve Vijissi's dignity, but she scooped him up in her arms and strode away.
I'm evacuating him. This is what coppers do. He'll understand.
She'd always seen ussissi as close and clannish, but Vijissi had hardly been welcomed home. They hadn't even asked how he was. Clannish didn't always mean inclusive. Where
was
his mother? Shan was certain now that she'd recognize her.

Shit, however scared the wess'har had been of
c'naatat,
they'd never treated her like an unwelcome freak. Theirs was physical caution, nothing more. Ussissi weren't like wess'har at all. There was a joylessness about them that she occasionally glimpsed in the females.

Takes one to know one, of course.

Vijissi made no protest as she carried him. As soon as they got close to F'nar, she set him down and kept a careful eye on him, ready to grab him if he stumbled. Sometimes the lack of a private vehicle system in F'nar was a pain in the arse. He was making a brave show of trying to walk straight, but his muscles were barely more than threads at the moment and he'd worn himself out on the walk. She knew that feeling too well.
C'naatat
had a brutal list of priorities for keeping a body alive in space without a suit: it mined fat, then muscle, then organs to keep the brain intact for as long as it could. When it began to restoration process, leg muscle preceded organ tissue and then fat was the last to reappear.

I looked like a fucking lab specimen. Mummified, Eddie said. Nothing but skin and ribcage.

“Sorry.” For a moment she wasn't even sure which language she was speaking. “They're all in shock. They'll settle down.”

“She's gone,” said Vijissi.

Shan tried to remember the female's name.
Talissari.
That was it. “When they brought me back, it wasn't exactly a bundle of laughs either.”

“But you had Ade and Aras, and they could touch you.”

“It's not that easy to transmit. Wess'har are susceptible, but—”

“Touch has many meanings.” Vijissi struggled to his feet and stretched as tall as he could on his hind legs, looking like he intended to walk back into F'nar with his dignity intact. “I meant mating. We were intended for each other when I came of age. What will become of me? How can I ever return to my pack when I have no role? When they're afraid to come near me?”

There was absolutely nothing she could do for him but
maybe Shapakti could.
Don't get his hopes up.
“Time to eat. Let's get you back to Mestin's place, shall we?” Somehow, she had to take a sample discreetly. Ussissi weren't furred, for all their illusion of having a short coat, and a buccal swab was going to be tough to explain away.

I could just give it to him straight. Tell him.

Vijissi looked in the direction of the village and lifted his muzzle to sniff audibly at the breeze. The sniff turned into staccato panting, and then he let out a long, thin wail that grew into a wild keening note. Shan didn't need to know anything about ussissi to realize that he was grief-stricken. He took a few steps and tipped forward onto all fours.

“That's it,” she said. His dignity could take a back seat. She picked him up in her arms and cradled him. “Home.”

Shan took off her jacket and bundled him in it to give him a little privacy, but there were few wess'har out and about in F'nar today to see them: it was too chilly. When she reached Mestin's home high on the terraces she pressed her backside against the pearl-coated door to force it open. But it wouldn't yield. She turned around to give it a kick with her boot—not her forced entry kick, just a push—but it swung open with more force than she expected and Sevaor, one of Mestin's husbands, stood staring.

“It was a bit too much for him,” she said. “He needs a rest.”

It was a good opportunity. Sevaor stood back to let her carry Vijissi down the passages back to his room and she laid the ussissi on the bed. It was simplicity itself to feed him the flatbread waiting on the bedside table and then wipe his mouth carefully with a piece of cloth. He even coughed obligingly. He produced plenty of spit.

I was always pretty bloody good at getting DNA outside rules of evidence.

Shan folded the cloth carefully and placed it in her breast pocket inside a fold of hemp paper. Mestin intercepted her on the way out.

“How did the clan greet him?” she asked.

“They didn't,” said Shan. “They didn't roll out the red carpet at all.”

She was halfway to Shapakti's underground rain forest before she realized that she'd kicked open a door without triggering memories of all the doors she had smashed open in her police career to find vile things inside, things that haunted the moments before she fell asleep and that never went away, and that always came to mind when she saw doors.

It was the first time that no memories had triggered. It was a small but significant victory. She fumbled for the saliva sample in her pocket and hoped—but not prayed,
never
that—for good news for Vijissi too.

Bezer'ej: Bezeri camp

Rayat knew the power of obsession and it was all that stood between him and purgatory.

He willed his hands to do something—
anything.
The lights they emitted seemed random, responding to the lamp in a chaotic flurry of color. If there was any communication taking place, it wasn't going via his conscious brain. Frustration nearly overwhelmed him. His hands suddenly burned with yellow and amber pulses.

You are angry,
said Saib.

I didn't think they could read human expressions. “How can you tell?”

Your incoherent signals.

“Like a baby screaming,” said Lindsay quietly. “If you can't talk, you vent your frustration any way you can.”

The revelation was blinding and almost joyful.
I'm having a tantrum. I'm having a tantrum with lights.
That meant the photophores were somehow connecting to his brain, to his speech centers.
I'm a baby again. Oh God.

“Lin, let me keep the lamp for a while, will you?” He hated asking her for any concessions. She had a lot more steel in her backbone than he'd given her credit for, but she still thought she was in command in some petty managerial way.
Okay, whatever it takes, sweetheart. I'll humor you.
“I'm making headway here. Once I've cracked it, then I might know how to activate it in you.”

Lindsay examined her hands. They remained steadfastly unilluminated. “Why can't I shake the feeling that you're manipulating me again?”

It was possible to plant an idea in her mind and nurture it. He'd talked her into helping him bomb Ouzhari. He'd set her thinking about acquiring
c'naatat
long before she took the decision to ask Ade Bennett to contaminate her. It required restraint and subtlety, because she wasn't stupid, but if he was patient he could persuade her, and she never seemed to learn.

All he wanted was to hang on to the signaling lamp for a few hours and see if his bioluminescence could be taught to speak. There could be bezeri memories of language in him now, and he might be able to reinforce them.

Saib coiled a tentacle around the lamp and rocked it vigorously back and forth as if he was shaking a tin of paint, creating eddies in the sea around them. Rayat wondered if he was making a protest of some kind. But the bezeri set the lamp down again.

The lamp must be moved to keep it alive,
he said.

Rayat struggled to make sense of the words. “You shake it? Why?”

So the lights continue.

“I get it.”
Clever buggers, the wess'har.
“It charges mechanically. How do you know that?”

Many talked of the visits by Aras and how he used this.

“At least we don't have to worry about power cells,” said Lindsay. She held one hand up to the filtered light as if checking something. “Why doesn't
c'naatat
have a consistent pattern?”

“I don't know. Try not talking and see if that forces it to do something.”

Lindsay turned her head slowly, hair billowing like a malevolent version of Botticelli's Venus. “Funny, aren't you?”

“I'm serious. If you can expose it to new environments
and force it to adapt you for survival, then silence might just make it express the photophores.”

She looked if she was weighing the theory and was about to spit it back at him. But she just shrugged and settled on a rock to watch the lamp.

Rayat spent the next hour holding his hand in front of the lamp while he repeated basic words—
shell, azin, sea, weed, rock.
There
had
to be simple signals for those. The bezeri drifted back and forth with shell maps, pausing occasionally to check his progress. Pili edged into a crevice as if she was settling into an armchair and watched him.

Rayat could see her eyes now. They were more opaque than the rest of the mantle, round and slightly domed. There was a great deal to be said for convergent evolution; life set about solving engineering problems and did it pretty consistently. He hoped
c'naatat
took the hint. Then he noticed the shadow of something teardrop-shaped set lower in Pili's mantle, and when he thought about terrestrial cephalopods—the best parallel he could imagine—he remembered they had lethal beaks.