Matriarch (25 page)

Bezeri were carnivorous. He marveled that a hunting species could also have villages, written records and vehicles. Intelligence manifested itself in remarkably uniform ways.

Hungry,
he thought.
Hungry.

It was the kind of animal-level message that any organism could express. He concentrated on it. He imagined food. His hands still seemed to be shimmering at random, trying out colors and patterns, and if they could manage to express his frustration then they could form more specific concepts. He was certain of it.

It was just a matter of time.

“I'm going to have a look around,” said Rayat, and got up. Saib, passing with maps clutched to his mantle, paused in front of him. “I said, I'm going to have a look around and see what else I can eat. I'm not trying to escape.”

You could find land, and we could not follow you far into the Dry Above,
said Saib.

It was an observation; Rayat wondered if he would have made it, because it also sounded like a suggestion. Did Saib know how
c'naatat
adapted its host? Or was he just making the assumption that if humans could survive in the ocean depths, then they could switch back to breathing air again?

Either way, the bezeri was right. But Rayat didn't want to alienate him. Swapping an existence down here for one on land might not have been a better move, because at the moment the only creatures he could learn from were down here. And he needed to know more before he could formulate a plan for getting off Bezer'ej and back to Earth.

The same thought seemed to be going through Lindsay's mind. She gave him an unblinking stare.

“Don't even think about it,” she said.

But she had no way of implementing her vague threat. There was nothing she could do to him, or he to her. All they could do was bitch at each other.

“If I find a kebab shop, I'll fetch you one,” he said. “Want hot sauce with it?”

“Sod off,” she said.

Rayat set off towards the repository. The store lay in the direction of Ouzhari. If he got his bearings from there, he could work out where Constantine was, because he'd studied the map of the chain of islands when he was on board
Actaeon
for so long that he could re-create the image in his head at will. Ouzhari—Christopher Island, the Small Mountain to the Dry Above, whatever name it wore—was the southernmost island of a chain of six named for saints; Constantine, the one that had given its name to the colony, and Catherine, Charity, Clare, Chad, and Christopher. It was somewhere between ninety and one hundred kilometers to Constantine.

Rayat swam, distracted by the sporadic lights in his hands each time he used his arms.

The colony had a mothballed ship—also called Christopher—and one more shuttle somewhere: they'd taken one to transport Shan Frankland when she was captured. The wess'har had released nanites within the colony
to break down every artifact and manufactured substance to its component minerals, but there was always the chance that the ship or something else spaceworthy had been laid up outside the warren of tunnels and had survived intact. And there were small seagoing boats, too; he and Lindsay had used one. They'd left it on the shore.

It was a slim chance. Even slim chances had to be taken.

I swear I'll get home somehow. I've come this far and I can go a lot further. I won't be beaten.

Maybe if he said it to himself often enough he'd believe it. Right then his body was going through the motions and he crammed his head full of numbers and plans and lists again to stop the little voice inside that kept telling him this was a strange, cold alien sea and he had no life here at all.

Rayat passed different weeds and growths and paused occasionally to sample them. They grew more sparse as he swam and that told him he might be getting closer to the blast zone. The seabed began to slope and he could see the feet of submerged mountain ranges.

Yes. The Mountains to the Dry Above.
It was easy to see the world through bezeri eyes now.

The sea around him became paler and brighter with the gradient. There was a bright sunny day above him, and that was where he should have been—on dry land. He was so close to Ouzhari now that the temptation to make for the shore and wade up the beach was almost overwhelming.

It's still a hot zone, you idiot. Cobalt-salted neutron devices, remember?

It wouldn't kill him. If Frankland could survive hard radiation in space, a stroll along an irradiated beach would present him with no problems. But he might take the contamination back with him when he returned to the bezeri. He had no way of measuring his exposure. And he needed them alive.

No. You don't, actually. Admit it. You just want them to survive.

He paused and decided not to go any further. He knew
where he was, and he also knew the Eqbas had embarked on a clean-up mission here.

And you've got time. That's the one thing you've got plenty of.

As long as he planned to go back and live with the bezeri, he had to steer clear of contamination. But once he made the final decision to run for it, that would't matter.

And he didn't have to walk on Ouzhari and pretend he felt no remorse. He could make his way straight to Constantine as long as he got his bearings. The bezeri were obviously good at making maps, and that meant they could show him how to interpret their charts. He'd know where to go and how long it would take him, so now he could
plan.

It's a slim chance. There might be nothing left on Constantine. But the alternative is turning into God knows what down here for…

How long? He had no idea. He had to stop thinking in those terms.

He looked up, distracted by shadows and movement. Above him he could see dark shapes silhouetted by the sunlight and they were traveling at a steady speed that suggested a powered craft. But he couldn't see the outline of a vessel. He was looking at the foreshortened view of a biped standing on what looked like a sheet of glass.

It had to be the Eqbas. He knew they were operating here; and they had extraordinary technology. The glass raft paused over him, and for a moment he thought something had been poured into the sea. A column extended from the underside of the raft almost like gin being poured into water, swirling with barely visible variations in density. He felt the change more than he saw it.

Have they detected me?

He had no idea if they knew he was here anyway. He waited, motionless, and the raft picked up speed and moved on.

Rayat took a slow meandering route back to the bezeri settlement and stopped to collect samples of vegetation, chewing fragments experimentally before shoving them inside his
shirt.
Look at me. I can do this. I haven't freaked out yet.
The intelligence services had trained him to be resilient but nothing could have prepared him for this. So he was doing fine. He would
win.

When he got back to the settlement, Lindsay was surrounded by a small group of bezeri, all clustered around the signal lamp and pulsing light. He watched too. She looked up.

“Look,” she said.

She held up her hands, palm out, and then rotated them slowly. There was a flicker of violet light.

“Welcome to the squid club,” said Rayat. “But can you control it yet?”

“Can you?”

Rayat concentrated and tried to shut everything out of his mind except his hands and his immediate thoughts. He'd been trained to visualize to control pain and to focus himself in tight spots so he fell back into the techniques he'd learned. He could still slow his breathing, even with gills.

Food.

He simply thought of food. He saw a chunk of warm bread; he could smell it and taste it.

Food.

He heard the word in his head.

He looked at his palms. For a moment he felt as if he was reciting the
salaat,
hands cupped in front of him in private prayer, but he hadn't been to the mosque since he was a kid. God hadn't played a part in his life but observing prayer times kept his grandfather happy when he visited.

It was a long time ago. His family never knew what he really did for a living, but his mother had been proud of the part she knew about.
My son, the scientist.

My son, the spy.

But Rayat now lived in an age of explicable miracles. In his palms a distinct pattern of green, red and blue dots of light swirled about a common center. Saib drew up his tentacles in a sudden whoosh of water and the signal lamp boomed.

You ask for food.

Saib understood the lights.

“Alhamdu lillah,”
said Rayat. He didn't realize he still knew the words.
All praise be to Allah.
“It's a start.”

No, it was a miracle. And it wasn't diminished by the fact that he had a good idea how it had happened, and that he would one day be able to demonstrate exactly how his neural pathways connected his speech centers to alien photophores and enabled him to talk with cephalopods.

Being a scientist and a spy didn't stop you being amazed by the universe.

Eqbas Vorhi ship 886-001-005-6, Northern Assembly airspace: hangar zone

Esganikan and the detached combat specialist Ki Joluti kept one focus on the images from the surveillance remotes and one on their calculations. The Maritime Fringe forces were on their way across the Northern Assembly border, pushing towards Jejeno.

There were fewer than she expected, but they made their way on foot and in vehicles along the narrow canyons of roads that led north towards the capital. The head of the column was already in Northern Assembly territory: the tail was back in Fringe territory. From one angle they glittered like a muddy river in torrential flood. Ahead of them by a kilometer or so, refugees made their way out of the area.

There was no sign of resistance. Some of the Northern Assembly army had fallen back to defend the capital and some had defected.

“They could launch an air attack on Jejeno again,” said Joluti. “What's your view on why they haven't?”

“They want to gather popular support from Assembly citizens as they go, not kill them. Numbers are the weapon they need.” Esganikan watched as a fighter tailored for Umeh's atmosphere extruded itself from the hangar deck and began forming into a copper and blue ovoid. Eddie had gone home too soon: he would have been very excited to record the process. “They're not a violent species.”

“I think that they don't have the resources to sustain both an attack on Jejeno and launch against Bezer'ej, so I speculate that they're saving what assets they have for us.”

Esganikan didn't understand why isenj would commit forces to battles they knew they would lose. It seemed almost a reflex: not unlike the
gethes'
great admiration for hopelessly outnumbered last stands, in fact. Losing well seemed to matter more than winning. Esganikan believed in successful outcomes, and heroism was only
motive.
She made a mental note to talk to Shan's
jurej,
the human soldier Ade, about the ritual of human warfare. He seemed very competent. They said he was a hero, and an official one at that, and so he would be best placed to explain it.

She glanced at the surveillance remotes' output again. The Maritime Fringe forces were within seventy kilometers of Jejeno and it was time to act. She opened a link to Eit with her
virin.

“Do you want me to act? Your army failed to do its job, which is to carry out your lawful orders. The Fringe forces are within hours of your offices.”

Eit made a sound like a box being shaken. The image floating in the
virin
was small but she saw his beads rattle dramatically, amber ones this time. “The elected government of the Northern Assembly is about to be removed by force by a foreign power. Yes, Commander, if you were inclined to act to defend us, now would be a very good time indeed.”

Esganikan thought she understood sarcasm when she heard it. The humans used it copiously. “There will be collateral damage.”

“So be it.”

It would probably have made little difference if she'd spelled it out, but like humans, the isenj dealt in euphemism. They said that Eqbas did too, but she hadn't noticed.

“The target is the Fringe column and the armor accompanying it. We begin immediately. Order your remaining troops to stay clear.” She turned to Joluti. “Battle stations, my friend.”

Even for Esganikan, the sight of her ship preparing for combat was still an impressive experience. The squadrons
of fighters had now formed fully on the hangar deck and pilots gathered from around the ship to slip into the cockpits. The ship's resources were diverted to reassembling the materials suspended in the massive hull and shaping them into the particular template that was needed at that moment. Metals and composites linked and built into airframes and ordnance; the rest of the ship reshaped into different vessels and separated, some becoming forward air control positions, some becoming escort vessels.

It wasn't just a ship. It was a collection of building blocks for any number of assets that could be reconfigured at will and deployed anywhere. An Eqbas warship was a fleet and an air group in itself. Even its ordnance was formed from the materials present in its liquescent, nanite-directed structure.

Some worlds that had seen the application of Eqbas technology thought the ships were organic, even sentient. But the only organic tools in Esganikan's armory were the specialized bacteria that carried out bioremediation, devouring pollutants and making toxins and metals harmless. Eqbas drew the line at harming living creatures, like all wess'har.

“
Gethes
want
c'naatat,
” said Esganikan. “And yet they overlook the technology we have which would be more useful to them?”