Judge (40 page)

Like Ade had always said, Shan really did have the most striking pale gray eyes, and on the rare occasions when emotion had broken down her barriers they had a genuine beauty, an unexpected and almost alien compassion. Maybe Ade saw that when the rest of the world never did, reserved solely for him and Aras, but now she finally seemed willing to drop her guard a little for Eddie.

You know I'm dying, don't you, doll?

“Do me a favor, Shazza.” It was a nickname he once thought she hated, but she never told him as much. “Can you make sure I get a really good view?”

“What view, mate?”

“Bury me somewhere nice.”

“Eddie, you're not going yet…”

“You never lied to me, Shan, so don't start now. Go on. Please.”

The light switched off in her eyes for a moment, that instinctive jerk back to locked-down self-control.
Yes, you're upset. I can see from your reaction that I really am going now. But I know that. It feels different this time.
Eddie saw Ade slide his hand discreetly down Shan's back to steady her.

Look at that. He loves you, Shan. God, I miss Erica.

“Of course I will,” she said at last. “I know a place with a great view. I promise. You can see the whole plain from there.”

“Good.” Eddie had a list. He reminded her every time he saw her now, because he never knew which visit would be the last. “And you know where all my archives are.”

“Check.”

“My stuff to transmit to Barry when he comes out of cryo.”

“Check.”

Yes, Erica…if there's anything more beyond this, it'll be so good to see her again. If there's not…then the missing her will stop at last. Either way…there's an end in sight.

Shan reached up and laid her hand on his. She wasn't wearing gloves, and he couldn't tell if she had that gel coating on, but it didn't feel like it. She was instinctively careful about accidental contamination now. But it was much harder to infect a human with
c'naatat
than people thought. Open wounds were the likely vector. Rayat had told him.

Who'd have thought it? Rayat, self-sacrificing patriot. Lindsay, heroine. You never really know people until they're in the grinder.

“You're thinking something, Shan,” Eddie said. It really was a lovely balmy day, high white cloud and a warm, almond-fragranced breeze—not flowers, but the scent of a red-and-white striped sluglike creature that lived in the crevices of the walls.
Aumul.
That was it. “Are you wondering what dying's going to be like for you?”

“Do you really want to talk about this, Eddie?”

“Not if it upsets you.”

“This isn't about me. You can talk about anything you like, mate. I just didn't want to feel I was…”

“Okay.”

“Yes, I think I'm a bit jealous. Is it okay to say that? I have no idea when I'm going to die. I know I can. Nothing's killed me yet. That's more unsettling than counting down the clock like I used to.” Her face was still set. She'd switched off the emotion. “I used to have this constant low-level panic about running out of time. Not death so much as not getting things done.”

This was what Eddie wanted. He didn't need platitudes, attempts to pretend he had years left in him, because he
didn't.
He wanted to see the innermost soul of another person again, to hear an absolute truth; he wanted one last good interview. What better than this? Who better than Shan?

She'd been a bloody hard interview the first time.

“How did it feel to stand in that cargo bay and see the airlock doors open, Shan?”

Ade looked down at the terrace floor and changed knees, uncomfortable either emotionally or physically, but
uncomfortable.
Shan inhaled slowly through her nose and seemed to be
making
herself look directly into Eddie's face.

He could see her weighing the morality, as she always did—tell him the truth and maybe distress him, or tell him what would comfort him because a lie now didn't matter.

Eddie knew what she'd do.

“I've never felt fear like it,” she said at last. “And I split into two people, and the one who gives the orders told me to get on with it, because it had to be done. It was the worst pain I can imagine. I couldn't believe I was going through with it. And all I could think of was that I'd never told Aras that I loved him.”

Her gray stare didn't waver, but she did blink, just a couple of times.

“Thanks for being honest, doll.”

“And, yes, I broke the law over and over again to protect Helen Marchant's eco-terrorists.”

“I know…”

“But I never admitted it when you interviewed me when we first landed on Bezer'ej. I never put my hands up to it before, not to anyone, but I'm doing it on the record now. For you.”

She knew him better than he'd thought. “Thanks.”

Eddie heard Giyadas coming. He knew her walk. She bent down over him and stroked his hair just as he used to stroke hers when she was just this funny, clever little alien kid who he adored.

“It's a lovely day,” she said, suddenly very human. A wess'har would have told him he had run out of time and that he should make the most of the hours or minutes left. “Do you require anything?”

“I'm fine. Just sit where I can see you.” He reached for her hand, but it was so much more effort than it used to be. Giyadas settled on the opposite side to Shan. “I'm glad you're all here.”

“I don't know where Aras has got to, Eddie.” Shan shifted position. “Ade, can you see him?”

F'nar was a natural amphitheater. Every part of the city was visible from the upper terraces, right the way down to the pearl-coated natural pillars that marked the entrance. Ade got to his feet and looked over the edge.

Eddie almost told him to be careful, because there was no barrier and a steep drop beneath.

But Ade couldn't die from a fall.

“Yeah, he's coming along the walkway by Taorit's house,” he said. “A couple of minutes, maybe.”

Shan's expression was unreadable. She squeezed Eddie's hand harder. “I can stop this, Eddie. I can stop it right now.”

He didn't quite understand her at first. “Stop what?”

“Just say the word, Eddie. You don't have to go. I can make it all right, give you as much time as you want.”

Giyadas didn't react. Ade turned slowly and looked as if he might intervene, but he said nothing. Eddie had always wondered how he might respond. Shan was offering to contaminate him with
c'naatat.
The prospect made his stomach tighten for a moment, but it was gone as fast as it came.

“No, you don't really want to do that, doll,” he said. So this was how it felt to have choice of living forever: it didn't feel miraculous at all. “You were always my bloody hero, the woman who wouldn't give it away, not for anyone. Don't ruin my illusion. Don't give in to that impulse now.”

He held her grip as tightly as he could. She looked at him for a few moments, and her carefully composed expression threatened to crumple.

Save me now, and I still have to go some time. Temporary reprieve, and I'll still be on my own.

“It's different for you,” he said. “You've got a matching family.”

Shan nodded. “Okay, mate.”

She didn't mention it again. Aras arrived with a small bowl and held it in front of Eddie at lap level for him to admire a few spoonfuls of brilliant scarlet fruits the size of hazel nuts, studded with pinprick seeds. He could smell them; when he managed to place one in his mouth, the flavor was so intense at the back of his throat that it almost felt like inhaling acetone. He tried to eat a few more, but the effort was just that little too much for him then. He settled for basking in the warmth.

“Ade,” Shan said softly, thinking Eddie couldn't hear her, “get Nevyan.”

It might have been minutes; it could even have been an hour, or more.

The sun was a lot brighter now.

“Eddie?”

He knew that wonderful double-toned voice.
Giyadas, my little seahorse princess.

“Worst thing you can have, doll. Regrets.”

“Eddie, you have been a second father to me—”

“Eddie?” Was that—Nevyan? Shan?

“
Eddie!
”

The sun was really very bright indeed now, but it seemed a long way off.

“It's been amazing being out here,” he said. He should have looked around to try to imprint those sweet faces for his journey, but he didn't feel he had to now. “Absolutely
amazing.
”

“Eddie—”

The light was blue-white now, a narrow shaft. Ceret, they said. Not the sun he'd left behind. And that was amazing too.

Yes, it really had been…

Amazing.

F'nar Plain; memorial cairn.

 

The soil on top of the butte was almost solid rock, and Ade knew how hard it was to excavate any kind of hole because he'd dug Shan's grave here.

Now she was digging Eddie's. It was the kind of heavy-handed irony that
c'naatat
always seemed to create. Ade felt uneasy about the memorial cairn that he'd built out of pearl-coated pebbles to give him somewhere to mourn Shan when he had no body to bury. It still stood intact, looking out from the top of the butte across the plain and the city, its nacre layer slightly thicker from fifty summers of
tem
fly swarms. Shan had never felt disturbed by it, she said. She could disconnect from her own mortality with surprising ease. But Ade no longer found it a comforting place to be.

But maybe it was easier to do that when you thought you'd already died.

“I could finish that for you,” he said.

“I need to do it, sweetheart.” Shan hacked away at the hard soil. Aras had buried one of his rats here, too, one of Rayat's lab animals until Aras had taken them from him, appalled at the things
gethes
did to other
people.
“I promised Eddie a good view. That's what he's going to get.”

“Do you mind me asking something?”

“Have I ever?”

“Were you really going to infect him if he'd said yes?”

Shan straightened up and rubbed her nose. “No. I don't think so. But I'll never know now.”

“I wouldn't have blamed you, but I think you did the right thing not to.”

“Yeah.” She rubbed the back of her hand across her nose, probably because she was sweating from the effort. She'd kept any tears to herself. “I know. But it was Eddie who said no. Where's Aras?”

“Wandering around.”

“You want to tell me what's up with him?”

“He's had a lot on his plate lately.”

“He hasn't touched me since he came back from Baral.”

Ade knew that only too well. Aras had done so before when he thought Shan wasn't well enough, or when he was having a rough patch, but Ade didn't know if Shan was seeing what he suspected—that Aras was withdrawing from both of them. For the first time in his life, he really could go back to being a regular wess'har.

Maybe it
was
just a phase. It really had been a shitty few months: trauma, bereavement, reconciliation with an estranged family. Ade tried to imagine how he'd feel if his own family somehow showed up and brought all that past flooding back. It would definitely have killed any passion in him.

“He's doing that wrestling with his principles thing,” Ade said at last. “Boss, you should understand that better than anybody.”

She stood back and took a lot more time than necessary inspecting the grave. “Yeah, that's what worries me. Come on. Let's collect Eddie.”

They walked back down to the city in silence, but Ade could hear all the unspoken stuff in her head if he thought about it: guilt, abandonment, and all the fears that Aras was going to do what he'd set out to a while back—to leave so that they could be two nice normal monogamous humans together. They'd fought about it last time. He was bloody sure they'd fight about it again.

Shan and Ade carried Eddie out of the city wrapped in a
dhren
shroud on a pallet, just as wess'har did. Wess'har left their dead out on the plain for the scavengers, and retrieved the shroud material; they were all about pragmatism. But Ade hadn't been prepared to leave Shan out in the open like that. He knew it made perfect sense, but it was bloody horrible, and he owed his dead loved ones a lot more than treating them like that. Eddie wanted a nice spot. He hadn't said he wanted to be lunch for some
srebil.
Aras could argue all he liked that it was the same as flies and bacteria doing the job, but it wasn't, it just
wasn't,
and never would be.

Eddie didn't weigh much, and Ade slung a couple of straps under the body so they could lower him into the grave. It was like any battlefield burial; Eddie had fought in his own way, and he was every bit a casualty as far as Ade was concerned.

“You're burying the
dhren
too?”

“It's Eddie,” she said. “Can't bear the thought of soil in his face, I can always get another
dhren.
Never wore the thing anyway. Not my color.”

So it
was
hers. She might not have said much—did she think he didn't know she felt things keenly?—but sometimes she'd do something deeply sentimental that would stop him in his tracks.

“That's a lovely thing to do, Boss.” He held out the straps to her. She was a nonpracticing Pagan, and he wasn't sure which funeral rite she was carrying out. “Lower away, or do you want to say something first? I don't know how Pagans do stuff.”

“Eddie wasn't Pagan. Orthodox Church of Hack, I reckon.”

“Probably Christian. But we're fresh out of those.”

“Which disposal did you put down on your form, Ade?”

“Christian.”

“Well, then.”

Ade knew how to do this, and he didn't feel self-conscious in front of Shan. He laid the straps down again and stood over Eddie's body at the graveside a small shape draped in opalescent white fabric, then took the bee cam from his pocket and laid it on the shroud so that it sat in a hollow. Ade had to shut his eyes hard to stop them welling. “You were a good mate to us all, Eddie. If there's a god, he'd better treat you to the five-star suite, and if there isn't, get some rest. You earned it. We haven't got a bugler for you, so just know that you were loved and respected.”

When he opened his eyes, Shan was looking at him in that funny kind of way that said she didn't know he could do something so well. She swallowed and looked back at the body.

“Don't interview God, will you, you old bugger? He hates being misquoted.” She bent down to pick up the straps on her side and laid her hand on the body, lips moving in silence for a couple of words. Ade couldn't work out what she'd said and didn't ask. “Goodbye, Eddie.”

They lowered the entire pallet carefully into the grave and stepped back. There was nothing more to say. Shan took something from her pocket and threw it into the hole, then began shoveling soil; Ade didn't see what she'd dropped into the grave. It didn't take long to fill the shallow pit and build a cairn of stones on top.

Ade looked up at the sun.
Tem
flies loved shitting on smooth, sun-baked surfaces. “It'll be all nice and pearly in a few weeks.”

“I'll plant some of those succulents up here, too,” Shan said. They were like fat, shiny cacti without spines, just a coating of bubbles that mirrored the skylight domes that had once dotted the surface above Constantine. “Then maybe Aras can get his arse here to pay his respects, too. And Rayat.”

She was pissed off that Aras hadn't showed. It probably wouldn't have seemed rude to a wess'har, though, and Ade hoped she'd cut him some slack. Ade was relieved Rayat had done the tactful absence thing. They walked in silence, and Shan made her way to the Exchange of Surplus Things, which was empty except for a couple of male wess'har tidying crates of fabrics. They looked up when she came in, nodded, and carried on.

“Tools,” she said, holding out her hand to Ade.

He gave her his bag, unsure what she was going to do, but she was the Boss. She went over to the alcove where Ade and the rest of the Royal Marines used to play cards, took a sharp metal peg out of the bag, and began sizing up a flat slab of wall at eye height.

“Did Jon have a middle name?” she asked. “Or Izzy?”

“Michael,” he said. “Izzy never used one. It was never on her paperwork.”

“Okay.”

It was another of those unexpected things that showed him how Shan's mind really worked. She began roughing out letters with the tip of the spike and stood back after a while to assess them, selecting a chisel and a hammer.

“Before I start hammering, did I get that right?” she asked. “And I need some dates.”

MARINE ISMAT QURESHI,
37
CDO ROYAL MARINES

MARINE JONATHAN MICHAEL BECKEN,
37
CDO ROYAL MARINES

Beneath the scraped letters was a big space, presumably for the others in due course, and then:

COMRADES AND FRIENDS, GREATLY MISSED

“I know they were civvies when they died,” Shan said, “but they were Booties while they were here. Anyway, it's not a war memorial.” She looked as if she'd caught herself off guard, embarrassed by her own gesture. “Don't expect me to carve the emblem, though. I'll have enough trouble getting the letters right.”

“Globe and laurel,” Ade said, realizing again why he loved her so fiercely. “I can do that.”

“I'll do a bit at a time,” she said. “It'll take me a day or two.”

She was a bloody good woman.
See, Izzy, I told you that you didn't have to worry about her.
Funerals always made Ade scared and clingy, forcing him look around his mates and dread that they'd be next. He thought he'd never have to worry about that with Shan. They had plenty of time. It made him feel relief each time he remembered it. It was the
only
thing, and now it didn't look so certain.

He took the peg from her hand, pausing to squeeze her fingers, and then sketched the outline of the Corps' badge. It was pretty good, even if he did say so himself. Shan smiled.

“Clever,” she said. “My old man's full of hidden talents.”

Ade was happy to be her
old man.
Even in a painful time, it made him feel invulnerable in a way that even
c'naatat
couldn't.

He'd stick around as long as she would. The choice was up to her.

 

F'nar, Wess'ej: October 3, 2426.

 

I know this is right.

Aras watched two of Giyadas's grandsons playing on the rear terrace. He'd almost forgotten how different wess'har children were from humans; they were quiet and purposeful, observing and learning as much as they could. Shiporis and Citan were busy learning to pot up pepper seedlings under Ade's supervision. Ade was very good with youngsters, endlessly patient and quick to praise them.

Does he feel any yearning to have back the child he lost? Is this hard for him too?

“Okay, this is how you do it,” Ade said. He held the seedling by one leaf and gently loosened the soil around its roots with a twin-tined fork. Citan watched intently with his head tilted to one side. “See? You have to leave the roots in one piece. Doesn't matter if you damage a leaf, it's the roots that matter. Then use your thumb to make a hole big enough…like that.”

Ade held the seedling upright in the hole while Shiporis sifted soil around the roots. He showed them how to press on the surface just enough to compact the compost without crushing the fragile net beneath.

“Now we water it in. Go on, Citan. Just a steady dribble. Don't saturate it.”

Ade had been a city boy; he'd learned cultivation from Aras. In a few short years, their worlds had come full circle.

It's not just what I have to do. It's what I want, too.

Citan and Shiporis seemed sufficiently confident now to pot up the rest of the seed tray on their own. Ade stepped back and left them to it, smiling to himself.

“Child labor,” he said. “I'll get them making cheap rugs next. I'll be a millionaire by Christmas.”

“They amuse you.”

“Kids are great.” Ade looked a little regretful, but there was no pain on his face. “So what are you going to do, mate? Not that I can't see.”

It was the hardest thing Aras had ever tried to explain, but Ade knew, just as Shan did; it had been growing in him since the trip to Jejeno, the realization of what he had been and what he'd never had. The feelings were so persistent that they must have passed to Shan and Ade at some level. Visiting Baral had finally tipped the balance, and Eddie…Eddie could walk away from the offer of permanent, healthy life on his deathbed. If Eddie had ever reported a great truth, then it was this one: that there was a point at which life had to be lived to its conclusion and death faced. All wess'har knew and accepted that. Aras had forgotten how, until now.

“How can I do this to you, Ade?”

Ade shrugged. He couldn't suppress his scent like Shan could, and it was at odds with his expression. He was upset. “You have to do what you want, Aras. Don't live your life for anyone else. And nobody's responsible for making someone else happy.”

Is he saying that to be brave? Or is he finally being human at last, and wanting Shan to himself?

“Shan opted to stay
c'naatat
so I wouldn't be alone,” Aras said. “If I were to…have it removed, I know what choice she would feel she had to make too.”

“Yeah. We've talked about that.”

“You see my dilemma.”

Ade wandered over to the low wall that formed the edge of the terrace and sat down beside him. “Tell me what you want to do. I know bloody well when you're unhappy, and you're not happy now. You haven't been really happy for ages.” Ade snorted, that mock laughter that said something wasn't actually funny, but painful. “
Ages.
Listen to me. You know how long our relationship actually adds up to, all the days added together? The time we've actually been a family, the three of us?
Months
at most.”

Ade stared at the flagstones, arms folded. Aras remembered building this house stone by stone, excavating the rooms, utterly alone and simply seeking to fill lonely time until he couldn't stand being surrounded by normal wess'har with families any longer. He thought he'd never forget Askiniyas, his first
isan;
but there came a time when he could barely picture her face even with his perfect wess'har memory, and the pain of her suicide had dulled to a vague sorrow after nearly five centuries.