Judge (36 page)

Shan stopped and looked back. “No. Why should I?”

“You seem to be ticking things off a list, as always. Locking up the premises.” It was an odd phrase for a wess'har to use, seeing as they had no locks. “I feel the need to treat you cautiously at the moment.”

“Jesus, do I look that unstable?”

“You bury yourself in activity when you're upset. I don't need to smell your scent to know it. You don't have to suppress your scent, you know. Not now.”

“Habit,” said Shan. “Just habit.”

Shan beckoned Nevyan to follow. It was a pleasant afternoon, overcast but mild, little wind, and the air was fragrant with a wet green scent almost like crushed rue—which was embedded in her memory as Constantine. Only the coordinates on her swiss told her where she was because all visible traces of the underground colony had been scoured clean by nanites, leaving the place to the reclaim of the wilderness.

The ventilation shafts and skylights hadn't been filled in; they were hidden by vegetation. She discovered one the hard way. One moment she was on solid ground and the next she was falling, stomach lurching until she hit the ground elbow first, meters below in temporary pitch-blackness. She yelped on impact.
C'naatat
didn't stop it hurting like hell. She got her breath back, cradling her arm and managing not to scream. The pain in her elbow was blinding and enough to stop her moving for a while until
c'naatat
carried out instant repairs.

Who gives a shit? Who am I trying to look hard for here?

But she didn't scream. She allowed herself a few grunts and a little effing and blinding.

“Shan?
Shan!
” Nevyan's voice was overhead. Shan's eyes adjusted to the darkness—a lot easier for someone with wess'har low-light vision and the infrared inherited from the isenj—and she saw long tangled roots and the suggestion of light at the far end of a passage. “Shan, are you injured?”

“Of course I am, Nev. But I'm healing fine.” She listened for the sounds of falling rock. Once the joists and braces that held up the tunnels had been broken down by the nanites, the excavations were unstable. A rockfall would have been a real problem even if it couldn't kill her. “Can you bring the shuttle close in, and get a line down to me? I don't know if the passages are clear enough for me to walk out. I'm not even sure I could find the route.”

“Serrimissani is on her way.”

Shan felt stupid now. The pain was ebbing and she could sit up. Every trace of human habitation had vanished except the outlines of chambers and shafts that were clearly manmade—wess'har made, in fact, because Aras had helped build this colony even before he'd started to change and look more human. He'd wanted to fit in. He hated being alone. She'd seen a picture in the colony archive of a normal wess'har, gold and seahorse-headed, from the first days of Constantine, before she'd finally understood what Aras was and how he survived.

Damn, the things that happened down here. Ade and Mart hunted me down. Bloody well shot me, too. And poor Vijissi.
If he hadn't killed himself, there'd probably be a way of removing
c'naatat
from him too, now.

Something moved to her left. She flinched, bracing for a cave-in, but reached for her weapon out of habit.

“That's not going to work,” said Lindsay Neville.

Her voice hadn't changed. When she moved into the center of the tunnel, she seemed more human than the last time Shan had seen her; less translucent, more clearly bipedal, and wearing some Eqbas working clothes that must have come from Shapakti.

“Don't tell me you're living down here,” said Shan.

“Hi, Shan. I'm fine, thanks for asking. How are you?”

Okay, she was going to play it that way. Shan got to her feet. “I'm just terrific. So you got the bezeri to revert.”

“Persuaded some…forced others. Some must still be out there. What brings you here?”

“I needed to see for myself. I've been away for a bit. Why didn't you leave?”

“I have a job to do. There's no wess'har garrison here and the bezeri need someone.”

“I don't mean to be a wet blanket,” Shan said, “but not even
c'naatat
makes you the invincible defender of the planet. Even Aras needed a bit of backup, remember.”

“Maybe so.” Lindsay was a shadow even when she got closer. There was nothing a
c'naatat
could do to another without explosives, and she didn't appear to be armed with more than a small crossbow. “But if anything comes this way that seriously threatens the bezeri, I've got the ultimate defense for them as long as I'm here, haven't I?”

It took Shan a few seconds to work out what Lindsay meant. “You'd reinfect them.”

I haven't really thought this through. Maybe it's too soon after being thawed out to make decisions. But I didn't come here for a chat about old times.

“If it's that or see them nearly wiped out again,” said Lindsay.

Shan slid one hand into the deep pocket inside her jacket, just to remind herself what kit she still had.

I can't leave you wandering around here. Can I?

“You can't detonate that,” Lindsay said wearily, knowing Shan's usual precautions: a grenade, or so she seemed to assume. “It'll take you too, and you wouldn't do that now. Not with Ade and Aras still around. They are, aren't they?”

“They are,” said Shan, and heard the shuttle settling above. The smell of hot metal filled the shaft above her and Lindsay looked up, just that second's loss of concentration that gave Shan the edge she needed. She brought her fist up square under Lindsay's jaw—nothing like a hard human jaw, not at all—and sent her reeling, then jumped on her to pin her down, struggling to get a pair of cuffs on her. Lindsay lashed out—she still wasn't a fighter, poor stupid kid, not even with the
c'naatat
cocktail of hard bastards she had inside her—and caught Shan in the face, digging her fingers deep into her cheek, but this was just
pain,
and wounds lasted seconds. Shan had to kneel on her to get one cuff on and then jerk her arm up her back so hard that she heard something crack before she could lock on the other.

“There,” Shan said, getting to her feet and wiping her face. The blood was dry and the gouges were just a vague tingling sensation. It hadn't been so long ago that Lindsay had hunted her down here, with Ade, Barencoin and Rayat, and left her no option but to space herself. She paused for a moment to be sure that this wasn't just some kind of neatly iconic revenge. “No offense, girlie, but you're going home. You did okay, but it's over.”

“Home to what?” Lindsay demanded. “You're still the same arrogant bitch you always were. You always—”

“
I
didn't nuke Ouzhari. Did I?” Shan hauled Lindsay to her feet. “Earth's no picnic yet, but they might even
need
you.”

Shan looked up into the shaft and waited for the line to fall within reach. She could have done with a winch and harness, but she could improvise. She could still tie a bowline. Ade had been impressed that she could do that.

“Nev?” Shan called. “Nev, Lin's coming up. Mind she doesn't lash out.”

It took a lot more effort than Shan thought to get Lindsay up to the surface. The line burned her hands but, as always, that didn't matter in the end. She stood in the cool air, a little breathless, with no trace left of the fight except dried blood on her shirt.

“Lin's going home,” she said. But she wasn't a monster, whatever Lin thought. “After we exhume David. That's what you want, isn't it?”

Lin, a strange insubstantial mannequin of herself, shimmering with occasional violet lights, might have been dumbfounded, but it was hard to make out an expression on her altered face.

She nodded. “I'm not going without him.”

Shan had stood over quite a few forensics officers while they unearthed bodies. It was easy when you switched off. She could do that just fine, even with the remains of a child. She'd exhume him. “Let's go, then.”

This island had been Mjat when Aras was a young soldier—a teeming isenj colony, coast to coast, and then he wiped it out as pitilessly as the Eqbas had erased most of Umeh and then large swathes of Earth. This erasure had been going on since before her ancestors were born. She no longer felt wholly responsible for everything that had gone wrong, just a recognition that she had been a part of the chain of events.

And this terrain had been her first introduction to the wess'har. Josh Garrod had pointed out the unspoiled wilderness beyond the shimmering biobarrier that enclosed the colony's fields. She'd gazed upon nothing, baffled, and she could still hear Josh's voice.

The wess'har wiped it off the face of the planet. Welcome to the frontline, Superintendent.

No, Earth wasn't special, or the first, or the last.

She steered Lindsay Neville towards the shuttle, took a spade from the tool locker in the hold, and went to do a job that was kinder to spare a bereaved mother.

 

F'nar: later that day.

 

Shan had that unhappily satisfied look that she reserved for times when people had lived up to her worst expectations and she'd caught them out. There was a grim triumph in it;
isan
liked to be right. She was still trying to be kind to Ade, treading carefully around him, but Aras could see that part of her had moved on to the next task. Ade had now made contact with Barencoin, Chahal and Webster, and was distracted for the while.

“How are you going to send Lindsay back?” Aras asked. “The Eqbas might not send another mission for years.”

Shan was checking out the cupboards. She'd brought a few small things back from Earth: tea that she didn't need, some packets of spice, and clothing, all of it utilitarian work clothes except for that black dress. In the intervening years, the food plants scavenged from Umeh Station had been productive and there was fresh avocado oil and preserved banana in jars, jobs carried out anonymously out of wess'har communal responsibility to neighbors. A modest but adequate life beckoned, a far cry from the overwhelming variety of things Aras had glimpsed in Australia.

“We can spare a shuttle,” Shan said. “A bit of Eqbas ship. She'll be back around the time
Thetis
gets home, and she doesn't even have to pilot it, does she? But we have to give her Shapakti's therapy first.”

Ade sat at the table making little headway with his meal. “You exhumed her kid.”

“More like an archaeological dig.” Shan paused for a moment. “Just bones.”

“Are you okay?”

“I've done a lot worse.” She turned to Aras. “And when did you know about Shapakti removing
c'naatat
from wess'har tissue? Why didn't you say? You knew, didn't you?”

“I don't believe he tested it on a live subject,” said Aras. “It's still speculative.”

“That's not an answer, sweetheart.”

“I thought it might distress you for no reason.”

Shan just looked at him for a few moments and then went on rearranging the cupboards. “Okay. Fair enough.”

“Has Lindsay Neville agreed to be treated?”

“I didn't give her a choice. She's getting it either way.” Ade abandoned his meal. Shan sat down beside him and watched him for a while, frowning, stroking his hair. “I didn't tell her about Izzy and Jon. I'll do it if you want me to.”

“I'll tell her,” Ade said. “Who gives her the…well, cure?”

“It's a transfusion. Nevyan can find someone competent.”

“I'll do it,” said Aras. “I know how to do that.”

He'd seen
c'naatat
take hold of his comrades and even Shan. He knew what it did, the changes and the high temperature and the ravenous appetite while it rebuilt cells to its own taste. But he had no idea what it would be like in reverse. But what would be left of Lindsay Neville? Would it change the way she thought and felt as well?

A realization crept up on him. He wanted to know for his own peace of mind, to understand fully what he might be turning down. He was almost certain that he would—most of the time.

But how can any of us justify remaining
c'naatat
now?

“Can't be that big a deal if Shapakti processed Rayat more than once,” said Shan. “Sorry, I'm not being very precise in my language. I've got no idea how to describe it.”

“I'll talk to Shapakti,” said Aras.

Shan reached across the table and squeezed his arm. “Thanks. I'll do it if you want me to, though.”

“No need,” he said. “I think your time is best spent with Ade, who has had a more unpleasant time.” It would only distress Shan and Ade if he spoke with Shapakti in front of them. “I'll visit Lindsay. I can see Eddie at the same time. We must make the most of our time with him.”

Aras walked along the terraces to Nevyan's home, enjoying the sunset that lit up the polished caldera. It was full of the sounds and smells of family life—clattering glassware, bitter spices, the cacophony of trilling voices—that were little like his own past; Iussan, on the Baral Plain, was in the cold north, underground and echoing. He'd never taken Shan there. It was time he did. Ade would probably enjoy it too, being an arctic warfare specialist from a world that had had little ice.

F'nar was full of children, or so it seemed to Aras. There were noticeably more sets of twins playing in the alleys, a sure sign of a temporary decline in the population being balanced by a brief burst in the birth rate. Wess'har physiology controlled fertility very precisely.

Another reason why we can't really understand the
gethes.
They might not be able to do this naturally like us, but they can do it artificially—and yet they still want to spread to fill the space available.