Ally (6 page)

“You have to learn to speak,” Lindsay said aloud. She found she had to make a conscious effort to suck in air; speech was a habit you could lose when your body had changed so radically. Her bioluminescence mirrored her
words. “Sound's more efficient than light on land. I know you can do it. You made the sound
leenz
under water.”

Saib was as stubborn as they came. He really was a grumpy old man, but she took heart in his willingness to be infected with
c'naatat.
Bezeri were creatures of extreme habit. It was their unshakeable fixation with their spawning grounds and territories round Ouzhari that put most of them in the fallout zone when the bombs were detonated.

It was also what had led them to total war with the birzula over hunting territories. Bezer'ej was a big world with big oceans; but the bezeri wouldn't move. Their azin shell maps were their history. Their mindset was all about place.

And Saib was as hard to shift as any of his kind.

“Come on, you cantankerous old sod,” she said. “Try.”

His bulk shook like an angry jelly. The sound that emerged was more of a belch than a word, but it was clear enough: “Leenz-
eeeee
.”

“There you go,” she said, and didn't translate into lights this time.

She walked on, trying not to think about how she remained upright and rigid when she could see only opaque structures like cartilage in her forearms and legs. If the bezeri came ashore, though, what would they do? They had no history of technology of the kind that relied on wheels and heat and metal. They made stone implements. They bred organic vessels from plants. They wrote in sand pictures or etched symbols in stone and shell.

They were Paleolithic. They needed to undergo a whole industrial revolution—or grab the trappings of another civilization and make it their own.

And they'd found no other survivors.

Saib didn't like to be seen to give in too easily. He muttered again, sparkling orange light.
We can hide in the sea.

“The sea didn't save you from me, old man.”

“Leeeenz-
eeeeeee
.”

“Clever. Keep it up.”

He shuffled, scattering pebbles. Any other huge sea creature would have struggled to move and found its organs fail
ing without the supporting buoyancy of water, but
c'naatat
seemed to be taking care of that.

Lindsay was as adrift as he was now. She had nothing except her belt and a few tools: no data, no knowledge, and no skills beyond the basic survival techniques she learned as a navy pilot. She was newly reduced to a primitive, just like the bezeri.

Perhaps the Eqbas would help. But as soon as the bezeri asked for knowledge of land-based technology, it would be clear to them what had happened. And Lindsay had no way of knowing how they'd react to the news that
c'naatat
had spread into new hosts.

Nobody knew, not even Rayat. If he'd walked ashore, he'd have headed for the Eqbas as his best chance of escape. Would he guess that she would infect the bezeri? He did all he could to avoid it himself. Maybe he hadn't been lying. Maybe he really
did
think the parasite was a disaster waiting to happen if it ever got off the planet. In the end, he was just like Shan: they were both cold, obsessive, soulless bastards. Lindsay was better off without him.

“Home,” Saib said aloud. The sound was rasping, like a human's vocal fry. “Home.”

“You want to go home?” Well,
c'naatat
was getting into gear with something, then: language. “Or are you asking if this is home?”

Whatever Saib meant, the answer defeated him. He shook visibly. Gold and scarlet light burst from his mantle in neon-bright outrage and frustration, and he lumbered into the shallows, thrashing tentacles in the water. She knew all the nuances now. She waded after him and slid into the sea. Her lungs didn't protest any longer. Her gills parted, open gashes of red mouths, and the sea felt like soothing relief as it engulfed her.

You've got time,
she signaled.
Time is one problem you don't have now. Take it easy.

Back in his preferred element, Saib shot into deeper water and picked up speed, pumping water behind him. If he didn't make the transition as the dominant elder, none of the others would.

You can train us to be an army, then.

Ah, so he
was
thinking it through. He just didn't want to lose face.

I believe I can,
Lindsay said.

The Dry Above is a better place to fight, is it?

Yes.
She had his interest now.
Because your biggest threats will be land animals like humans.

Lindsay saw a future Bezer'ej that wasn't a disputed territory for wess'har, isenj and humans to fight over. She wondered if she was going insane. Who needed most to be on dry land—them, or her? But she had a vision now, and she was going to use that to put things right.

All she'd done was bring two native Bezer'ej life-forms together,
c'naatat
and bezeri. It wasn't the same as infecting a human never meant to be here. And Shan Frankland wasn't so rigorous about eradicating
c'naatat
from the human population when it came to her precious Ade, either: she let him live. The knowledge that the bitch had some areas in her life that weren't governed by her inflexible brand of justice gave Lindsay some sour comfort.

Saib persisted, pausing to drift with the current, tentacles trailing.
But why can't we just go deep? Who would find us? Who could kill us?

You still have to eat,
said Lindsay.
The isenj killed their own oceans. If they get a foothold on this planet again, they'll kill yours too. They almost did before, remember?

She knew that Saib remembered, all right. Or at least he recalled the azin shell maps with their exquisite designs of colored sand that recounted the time the isenj had claimed Bezer'ej and caught
c'naatat.
They bred. They bred in their millions, and they didn't die until Aras and his troops destroyed them: male, female, young, old, soldier, civilian, no quarter given. Shan had fallen for a war criminal. Lindsay wasn't sure if that was ironic or inevitable.

Millions of us died,
said Saib.
Filthy isenj. Filthy polluters. We called the wess'har to drive them away.

For a moment, Lindsay had an uncharitable thought that the bezeri might have been in decline anyway because of their ruthless hunting. Perhaps the isenj only accelerated the
process. It was odd how her picture shifted simply from discovering their history.

Did the wess'har know what the isenj had done? She assumed they didn't.

Daylight faded into soft green light above her and the sounds of the ocean and its relentless weight enveloped her again.

Dominate the land, Saib.
Lindsay thought of all she could teach them: every scrap of her naval training required hardware and technology of the kind the bezeri couldn't make. And there was none on Bezer'ej to plunder now, not even the human colonists' mothballed ship. The wess'har restoration process had reduced nearly every artifact to its component elements.
That's the only way you'll get control of your future. Hold the Dry Above.

You dream,
said Saib.

Lindsay's spirits sank further with each meter she moved away from the sunlight above. Her own ability to cope with the last few weeks under water stunned her and she tried not to think about it too closely in case reality crowded in on her again and it all came unraveled in screaming, water-choked hysteria. As long as she didn't think her resolve had come from Shan's borrowed genes, she was fine: that was her ultimate fear. She didn't want those memories and attitudes smuggled in with
c'naatat
through Ade Bennett's blood. She needed her courage to be her own. It was all she had left.

Shan must have struggled for sanity like this when she was floating in space.

Lindsay seized that. If Shan could take it, then so could she.

Get your people together, Saib,
Lindsay said.
Tell them that they have to get used to the Dry Above.

The Temporary City, Bezer'ej: biohazard lab

“This is too fucking weird for me.”

Shan hovered at Shapakti's elbow, and for a moment Ade saw the detective she must have been in her police days:
harrying the lab for forensics, grimly impatient, working something through in her mind that showed in the twitch of muscle in her jaw.

He had to say it. It was a boil to be lanced:
you infected Lindsay and Rayat, and now look what's happened.
Just when he thought Shan had forgiven him, he was back in the shit again. “So…what if it
is
an altered bezeri, Boss?”

“No idea,” she said wearily. “How do you track a creature that can go anywhere? And what do we do when we find them—shoot them? And what if it's a
sheven
instead? Jesus H. Christ. What a fucking mess.”

Ade glanced at Aras, who stood quietly in the corner of the laboratory watching Shapakti with his head slightly to one side like he was lost in thought. Aras raised his eyes from the bench Shapakti was working at and met Ade's stare. He shrugged—just a micro-movement of the muscles, nothing more. Then he lowered his head a fraction.
I don't know and I wish I did.
Ade understood right away; they were so well attuned now that he didn't have to ask.

“Aras, I need an answer,” said Shan.

“To what question?”

“If the bezeri are infected, what options do we have?”

“If you're asking if infected bezeri represent a risk that I would feel justified in removing, I don't know.”

Ade thought about the bezeri's recently revealed history—overfishing and genocide, very human sins that he understood pretty well—and knew what was going through Shan's mind. It was going through his too.
They'll do it again.

“They don't have a history of being environmentally responsible,” Shan said quietly. Shapakti peered down at the glass tray, head cocking left and right. Shan wasn't giving him a lot of room. “Not a good start, is it?”

“A few weeks ago,” said Aras, “you wanted to save them.”

“A few weeks ago, they weren't bloody
c'naatat.
” She was starting to get that shutdown look, turning back into a Superintendent Frankland about to break bad news, talking to necessary strangers. “And I didn't know they had form for
being environmental vandals.”

Her next request would be for a grenade that could frag a four-meter heap of gel. Ade knew it.

“Look,” said Shapakti. He could switch to English with more ease than Ade could manage wess'u. “Observe the cells.”

When the biologist tilted the tray a little, Ade could see that it was actually an image like a microscope display. It looked like tiny radial hairbrushes scattered between a mass of tangled wires and misshapen lumps.

“Shit,” said Shan. “
Shit.
”

“What is it, Boss? Is that
c'naatat
?”

“It is, isn't it?” Shan was staring at the display, not at Shapakti. “That's what you showed me on Ouzhari.”

Ade allowed himself a moment of distraction. He'd expected to be underwhelmed when he finally saw
c'naatat,
but he wasn't. It astounded him. As Shapakti increased the magnification, it unwound into brushes within brushes like a fractal. It was infinite. It was like looking at a galaxy and seeing it break up into stars and worlds.

“But what's the host?” asked Aras. He didn't seem amazed. Maybe he'd seen it before. “Is it bezeri or
sheven
?”

Shan stepped back from leaning over Shapakti, shaking her head, mouth set in that position that showed she'd thrust her lower jaw forward. It usually preceded clenched fists, a sudden turn on her heel and a fast march towards the nearest door. Ade edged slowly towards the exit to head her off as casually as he could.

“I don't know which is worse, immortal predators or bezeri,” she said. “That explains the lights. You think Lindsay came ashore and a
sheven
grabbed her?”

“It's bezeri,” said Shapakti. He tilted the transparent tray and the image enlarged several times. Icons that Ade couldn't begin to identify appeared in a row on the right-hand side and Shapakti tapped at them with long spider fingers, summoning up more cell-like images. Ade hadn't even seen him insert any samples. It was incomprehensible technology. “There are distinctly bezeri features as well as
c'naatat,
isenj and human.”

“No
sheven
?” said Shan, as if that would make matters worse than they already were. She was right, though: it would. Those bloody things were everywhere already, and giving them extra superpowers was bound to end in tears. “You sure? Because the last thing we need is them chomping on wildlife here and spreading it further.”

“It's a native organism,” said Aras. “But it hasn't spread here. It hasn't infected native carnivores, and if it could do that easily then I'd have seen evidence of it by now among flying species like the stabtails.”

“Bezeri are carnivores. Omnivores, anyway.”

“But they only caught it through a human vector in the marine environment. I rarely guess,
Shan Chail,
but if I didn't infect them by accident in five hundred years, then this may well be the result of a deliberate act, the same way that Rayat and Lindsay acquired bezeri characteristics.”

It was just the thing to make Shan blow a gasket. But she settled for going white and angry instead. “If I find she's pissed around with the ecosystems here, I might lose my legendary patience.”