Judge (30 page)

Shan squatted down to inspect it. She didn't look comfortable in a dress, and kept tugging the hem down. “Actually, that cheers me up a little, too. And reminds me that the next thing I need to do is get Laktiriu pally with Deborah and Mo Ammad. A few people who get things moving, more people stick to the snowball…beats the Umeh experience.”

“Better raw material,” Aras said.

“I could have liked the isenj if I'd spent more time there. Maybe more than the bezeri.”

Aras hadn't yet found out what the state of play was on Bezer'ej. He'd never flown a deep-space mission before, and was now realizing how disoriented he was by the apparent time he'd lost. Bezer'ej was only last week, the week before, a blink of an eye in these chaotic and awful days on Earth. But in the quarter of a century that had actually elapsed, what had happened to Lindsay Neville? Had the bezeri population exploded, or were they waging wars, or had some other major change taken place?

“How long do you think we'll stay?” Aras asked. Ade walked ahead, wandering into the lobby, in a world of his own.

“I think it might be longer than we want,” said Shan. “Maybe six months, maybe even a year. Enough to get Laktiriu on her feet.”

“But a second-in-command should be able to step in at a moment's notice, or forfeit the role.”

“Okay, I'm getting soft in my old age.” She stood up and tugged at her hemline again. “Aren't you going to ask me how I feel about the dirty work I've still got to do?”

She means Esganikan.

“I know. I've done it. Parekh. Josh.”
Poor Josh.
But he had a choice. “You'll feel guilt, because humans do.”

“I'll feel hypocritical.”

“
Isan,
you have never sought to spread
c'naatat.
”

“I'm such a saint,” she said. “Come on, let's keep an eye on Ade. I let him down. I lost two of our own. Don't tell me I didn't.”

The lobby still had some trappings of what had once been a lavish resort, with an aging wall-width video screen that ran from one side of the entrance to the central staircase. Ade sat on the bank of seats that curved against the facing wall, watching the image. As always, it was set to a news channel, one of the many BBChan options. The Eqbas and the ussissi treated it like an intelligence feed, a view of human thinking that they could match against what they observed worldwide from orbital remotes. Eddie would have been proud. But maybe he enjoyed his life more back on Wess'ej.

“It's ironic, isn't it?” Ade said, not taking his eyes off the display. “Poor old Eddie never got over his editor calling him a liar about
c'naatat,
and yet it's running in the Prachy story and nobody seems to give a shit about it.”

The item on screen wasn't connected to Eddie's exposure of Prachy but Ade was obviously thinking about something else while he watched.

The report was actually on a dispute over a water pipeline that crossed the Sinostates–FEU border. The Sinostates had revoked permission for the construction because it had changed its mind on cutting down hundreds of hectares of forest replanted in the last century. The Eqbas noted the shift in policy, Aras was certain. They were probably meant to.

“What do you mean?” Shan asked, with that edge in her voice that said she was on guard and current concerns were temporarily forgotten. “When did that happen to Eddie?”

“Before we left,” said Ade. You crashed into his interview with Helen Marchant, remember? His editor thought you looked too healthy for a girl who'd been spaced.” Ade chewed his thumbnail and examined it. “He decided to take the shit and not admit what
c'naatat
actually was. Really hurt Eddie, it did. Reputation and all that. Never mind. The editor's long gone, and Eddie ran the story in the end.”

“Is that a rebuke?”

Ade frowned. “No, Boss. Just feeling sad about wasted lives. Look, I don't even know if Eddie even feels that staying was a waste. He probably doesn't—”

“Are you telling me he exiled himself like some fucking martyr because he made a noble gesture to save me? So it's all my fault?”

“Hey, I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm just saying he made a choice.”

Shan checked herself visibly. They were both closer to the edge at the moment than they'd admit. Aras prepared to step in and stop an argument. But Shan relented immediately.

“Sorry. I'm a stroppy old cow lately.” She leaned over and gave Ade an uncharacteristically noisy kiss. “Look what you married. A monster.”

Ade managed a grin, but Aras could tell he was a little hurt. “Mrs. Bennett, the harpy from hell.”

The three of them sat watching the news for a while. A furious round of activity had followed Bari's stark warning at the UN, with Canada announcing draconian population controls, and the African Assembly banning the last cattle farming left on the continent. If the Eqbas could keep up with the demands on them for support, Aras thought, they might simply end up supervising a peaceful surrender. The small bands of individuals grouping in all parts of the world to stage a resistance didn't seem to understand that a war wouldn't be fought the way they expected. Most humans seemed to, though. For once, their embedded cultural myths about alien visitors seemed to be having a beneficial effect: resistance really was useless in the end. Nobody had ever fought the Eqbas and won.

But Aras was already feeling frustrated by the isolation here. He missed being able to work out what was happening in his world simply by walking around, as he had for so many centuries on Bezer'ej. Since Earth had become a large part of his daily life back on Wess'ej, linked by the fragile umbilical cord of ITX, reality had been filtered increasingly through cams and remotes, and even through unreliable humans, and now he worried that he was doomed to sit watching a screen and touching nothing for the rest of his life.

The rest of my life.
It suddenly seemed a sentence and he'd never felt that before.

Ade jerked his head around, eyes darting across the glass frontage. “What's that?” There was a lot of activity outside, noisy boots and bright lights from small transports. “Oh, it's the fucking iguana boys…”

Four Skavu troops in the soft biohaz suits the Eqbas used, their hoods thrown back, strode across the lobby to the staircase behind Kiir. They plodded upstairs. Ade, always uncomfortable around Skavu, watched them move out of sight and turned back to the news, brow puckered. A minute or two later Aras heard the distant sound of slamming doors, and then the Skavu came back downstairs as if they were searching for something. They vanished through the doors into the maintenance area.

“I don't trust those bastards,” Ade said. He looked around as if to check for his nonexistent rifle, then he ran for the doors.

Even Shan was caught by surprise. She pulled her handgun from her belt and went after him. It was the first time Aras had realized she'd carried it even during the wedding. By the time they followed the clattering boots and shouting to its source—Skavu voices, Eqbas protests—it was all too clear what was happening.

Nobody in a military base stopped an armed soldier, and unlike Shan, the Eqbas didn't eat, drink and sleep with their hand weapons close at all times. A few ussisi and Eqbas were now appearing from nowhere to see what was going on, clearly confused.

“Abomination!” Kiir was shouting. The door to the storage rooms was open, scuffed by boots, and the place was in chaos, shelving tipped over. Esganikan was pinned against the wall by two Skavu, now hooded. Kiir had hold of her bare arm, brandishing a blade. “Let's see! Let's see what you
really
are!”

He brought the blade down across her skin and blood—very dark, not human at all—welled from a long, deep wound. Then it stopped. Then, as Aras expected, the wound began to close and heal in seconds.

Then all hell broke loose.

Reception Center storeroom.

 

Shan now ran on old instinct:
armed assailant, hostage, bystanders, confined space.
She held the 9mm two-handed, suddenly back in another life where this sort of thing happened a few times each year.

Another instinct said
c'naatat, forget the knife, the Skavu's the one who'll end up dead,
but then she noticed the small explosive devices she knew too well. A grenade was the great leveler for
c'naatat
hosts. The parasite wasn't magic or true immortality. It could handle pretty well anything, but not fragmentation of its host.

“Kiir, back off and leave this to me,” she said.

He had Esganikan by the collar now. She was scared. She was just like any other creature in fear of its life.

“Let me go, Kiir,” Esganikan said. “I
order
you.”

Shan watched him waver for a moment, but this was practically a domestic, and she knew how they usually turned out.

“You're not doing anything useful by killing her,” Shan said, putting on her let's-all-calm-down voice. “And you'll blow your head off. Nobody
wants
to die. Do they?”

Yes, a domestic dispute was a good parallel. Kiir was
emotional,
not impersonally vengeful. He glanced at Shan for a moment, “She betrayed us. She's
worse
than you. Her army invaded our world, but we finally saw the sense of Eqbas ways, even though they had
killed
us. We were
loyal
to her.
To her.
We changed our entire world, our whole culture, out of a new belief in the natural cycle of life.”

“Okay, I know you revere her.” Shan was trying to work out how the grenade operated. She'd seen too many different devices lately—human, Skavu, wess'har, isenj—and she didn't have Ade's training. “But just put the fucking grenade down and let me deal with her.”

Aras stood to one side of her, seeming totally detached. If the bloody thing detonated it might even take them all. Shan played for time and calm. But that was for humans.

“I'm angry with her too, Kiir,” said Shan. “She'll be dealt with.”

“Stay out of this,
gethes
.”

All Shan could think of then was extracting Esganikan in one piece because it wasn't the right time to put Laktiriu in her place. The other Skavu who'd pinned the commander stepped out of the storeroom and paused for a moment, caught between Aras and Ade. He was on the threshold of the door as she backed out, eyes clearly on the grenade in Kiir's fist, and she knew him well enough to see what he was thinking. And he had his fighting knife in one hand. It wouldn't do a lot of good, but the Skavu didn't seem to be drawing weapons. Then she was aware of the Eqbas troops in position along the corridor with rifles trained.

I thought the Skavu were suicide troops. Nobody seems to want to die. Or maybe they think all the Eqbas are infected now.

“Back off, Ade,” she said. “Kiir, let me tell you the usual shit. I can blow your head off before you detonate that thing.” She doubted it, but she knew she
looked
like she could, “I'll step away, and you follow me. No games. I won't kill you if you don't kill her.” Kiir looked from Shan to Ade to Esganikan. There was the sound of running.
More tourists to frag. Great.
“Aras, somebody stop them coming in here.
Now
.”

She was so focused on Kiir's face with its hard-to-spot eyes that Aras and Ade were a smear in her peripheral vision. She took another step backwards. Kiir didn't move for a few seconds, but then he edged closer to the door, still with a fierce grip on Esganikan.

“There,” Shan said. “We'll all be nice and calm again in a few minutes, and we can talk this out. Come on…few more steps…that's it…”

Ade must have seen something she didn't. He lunged forward but Aras knocked him to the floor, and Kiir threw Esganikan back into the open storeroom. The next thing Shan was aware of was a high-pitched tone filling her head and something that felt like grit raining down on her face. She struggled to sit up and saw Ade and Aras in a fog of dust, yelling soundlessly at each other, Ade trying to pull away from Aras's grip on his arm.

“Shit,” she said. Her hearing started returning to normal. Some Eqbas tried to help her to her feet but she pushed them away.
In a fucking dress. I'm still in my fucking wedding dress.
She leaned inside the doorway of the storeroom and it was every bit as bad as she expected. Esganikan wasn't a problem any longer. She was spread around the room. “Fuck. Oh fuck it, it wasn't supposed to be like that.” She grabbed an Eqbas. “Someone cordon off this room. Treat it as contaminated. Where's Kiir?”

Ade pulled free of Aras. As he passed one of the Skavu, he grabbed the saber from the man's back and ran down the corridor towards the lobby.

Kiir
. He'd promised him he'd kill him. He'd been upset at the way the Skavu slaughtered unarmed isenj. The isenj were going to die anyway, just like Esganikan had been, but Ade had rules of engagement ingrained in him and there were just some things you didn't do.

“Jesus, Aras, fat lot of use you bloody are,” she said, not waiting for his answer. “Why didn't you stop him?” By the time she crashed through assorted Eqbas, the debris and the last doors onto the lobby, she had a freeze-frame view she wouldn't forget in a hurry. Ade got to Kiir just a few meters in front of an astonished Laktiriu and raised the saber two-handed.

Shan had a clear shot. She took it, double tap. Kiir went down.

Even with her vastly altered physiology, she still had that human tendency of disjointed memory. A few seconds later, she couldn't recall the exact sequence. All she knew was that Ade was standing over Kiir's body, taking big sobbing breaths, and the Eqbas crew in the lobby were still frozen in alarm reactions.

Ade looked around at her, then walked out through the front entrance still carrying the saber. Laktiriu literally stepped over the dead Skavu, totally in control, and looked into Shan's face with her head tilted in that doglike curiosity.

“You thought Kiir would kill me?” she said.

Shan wasn't sure she would have done the same thing again. Ade needed closure for the botched handover of Prachy. She'd robbed him in a way. But she didn't want Ade to cut Kiir apart and have to live with the memory.

“I'm trained to drop any threat,” Shan said. “I wasn't taking chances after he killed Esganikan. Now, I'm going to call the perimeter security and tell them not to worry about all the bangs they've heard, or we'll just start another list of problems.”

Outcomes, only outcomes. Motive—maybe even the person responsible—didn't matter. Esganikan was gone, as Giyadas had ordered.

Laktiriu was in command now, ready or not.

 

Surang, Eqbas Vorhi: Place of Discovery of Life

 

Shapakti's equipment was surprisingly compact. Rayat recalled how hard it was to get his equipment down to the weight limit for the
Thetis
mission, and felt a pang of envy at how neatly it all packed away.

“Are you sure you want to come to Bezer'ej?” Shapakti asked.

“I'm sure. I haven't seen Lin for a long time.”

Shapakti's family were going with him on the mission. The kids were all adults now, so his
isan
and all the house-brothers were looking forward to an adventure, a minimum ten-year round trip to Bezer'ej. Shapakti no longer did deep-space missions, and the days of his family being put in cryo to match time zones with him were over.

“I think we should leave your
c'naatat
in situ, then,” he said. “Or else you have to wear a biohazard suit all the time.”

“Good point.” Rayat hoped he wouldn't have the urge to join the aquatic bezeri again. It had been fascinating and he now had insights into biology that no other scientist could imagine, but the novelty had worn thin.
I'm a man. I'd rather stay that way and sacrifice a few years than live forever like that. Lin's made of much sterner stuff than I thought.
“I have a request. Ask the matriarchs of F'nar if I can return there? Please?”

“Why?”

“Leave me on Wess'ej when this is over, and remove the
c'naatat
then. I can't go back home again, but I'd like to live out my days among humans. There are still people in F'nar.”

Shapakti smelled upset. “I liked F'nar.”

There
was
something wrong with him today. Wess'har never bothered to hide what they felt because they broadcast their emotions by scent, but Shapakti had been around humans a long time now. He'd learned to pull his punches a little with Rayat over the years, but not well enough to make him a poker player.

“Spit it out,” said Rayat. “You've got a problem.”

It was like a dam bursting. “You did it, didn't you? You finally got a message to Kiir.”

“Oh. That.” It had worked, then. Someone had found the note in the update. “Someone had to warn the mission.”

“Kiir killed Esganikan. He attacked her. She's
dead.
”

Rayat's success rate was better than he'd hoped. It was terrible that it had upset Shapakti so much, but that was one problem solved.

“I'm sorry,” Rayat said. “I had to do it. You know better than anyone what the stakes are.”

“Mohan, you had no need. I'd already got word to Shan, through Giyadas.”

Oh, that was evolution in action. Shapakti had learned real deceit, a new trait for wess'har. “Well, thanks a lot.”

“I warned you. Shan was better able to manage the matter. Now…now there is uncertainty, because Laktiriu has had to take command, and there is doubt that she can sustain discipline among the Skavu.”

When a mission went awry back home, Rayat always had the option of calling for backup to manage the fallout. But the nearest help for Laktiriu was five years away.

“Well, what's Shan going to do now?”

“I didn't ask. I have other issues to worry about. Esganikan appeared to have plans for sharing
c'naatat
with the crew.”

“Well, that alone should convince the matriarchs here that it's a bad idea.”

“On the contrary,” said Shapakti, crestfallen. “Varguti Sho says that the wess'har managed it safely under similar conditions, and so may we.”

“That's insane. This is how the thing gets out of hand.”

“I disapprove, yes.”

“This isn't how wess'har do things. You have to stop this.”

“I think you say the
thin end of the wedge
. I feel I have a duty…”

“You've lost me now.”

“I don't think we should have this organism at all. I'm going to erase my research from the system, and take all the samples back to Giyadas. F'nar could handle the temptation to exploit
c'naatat.
They knew when to stop, when the threat had passed. We, like you, seem not to know when we start sliding. We begin with such good intentions. This is what you call the road to Hell, I think.”

Rayat almost thought he'd misheard.

“Shap, do you know what you're saying?”

Shapakti shivered, a strange little gesture that Rayat thought might be bristling defiance. “I think removing research material it's a more acceptable form of asset denial than destroying an island.”

Shapakti's scent of agitation filled the laboratory. He went on packing his equipment, head down, maybe from shame or maybe because he was thinking. Rayat racked his brains for another solution, but the more he thought about it, the more he came full circle to the same conclusion.

Shapakti went on packing in silence. Rayat wasn't sure the Eqbas could go through with this subterfuge, and had already started thinking of how he might sabotage the research and do the job himself—a terrible thing to do to an old friend—when Shapakti stopped work and knelt down for a breather.

“Help me?”

“Of course. This is exactly what I'm trained for. This is my job. But what'll happen to you when the matriarchs find out?”

“My immediate family will be in Wess'ej by then.”

“You're running? You're going to ask for asylum?”

“I am.”

Rayat was stunned. This was so out of character for any wess'har—communal, cooperative, embarrassingly unguarded—that he defaulted to type and began to wonder if this was a ruse, and someone was setting him up.

No, that was even crazier. If wess'har like Aras's ancestors had decided they disagreed with the fundamental tenets of their society and moved to another planet simply to follow a different ideology, then they were clearly capable of sudden dissidence. It sat oddly with their consensus politics and communal nature, but Wess'ej was living proof that they could—and did—kick over the traces.

He felt a lot better now. This was something he was familiar with. He helped Shapakti clear his laboratory.

“It's just like old times, Shap,” he said, transferring data onto his
virin
. “I was a very competent spook. I was good at helping people vanish when they needed to.”

“
Shan Chail
said you were a
slimy bastard
…”

“And slimy bastards have their uses. We do the dirty work nobody else will.”

Shapakti didn't comment on whether he thought this was dirty work or not. “I'll carry on looking for a removal solution for bezeri and wess'har, but today we clear out all information and samples, and let Nevyan and Giyadas know that it's theirs to guard. We leave tonight.”

Stripping the database was simple. Eqbas security measures were geared towards accidental loss, not theft. There was nothing to stop Shapakti taking all his research, most of which he'd ended up doing on his own over the years, or removing all the stored tissue samples, because Eqbas didn't steal; and Shapakti was going on a field trip. Nobody would notice. Rayat wondered if they would even care.