Matriarch (27 page)

Ade's shoulders were set and he exuded a delicious scent of sandalwood, just like Aras; it was the first time Shan had detected a hint of challenge between them. Nevyan's husbands did it all the time, establishing constantly shifting pecking orders. “Just teaching Shan the finer points of fighting knives.”

“Put the knives away. Shapakti wants to talk to
isan.
”

Aras didn't like knives. Shapakti's gaze darted from Shan to Ade and back again and she realized that any wess'har could smell that she was aroused. She wasn't sure if she was turned on or just ready for a fight, and maybe the two were one and the same. But she felt good at an animal level, good enough to be able to forget Bezer'ej for a moment. Ade grinned, a blush starting to color his cheeks.

But Shapakti was the bucket of cold water thrown over two amorous dogs.

“I have been busy,” he said. “I apologize for the delay.”

“It's okay.”
Busy on Esganikans's bioweapons, no doubt.
“Any luck?”

“I have attempted a number of procedures with the ussissi sample.” He clasped his hands in front of him in a gesture that looked like prayer but was just a comfortable neutral position for wess'har. “I failed to separate the parasite from the host cells.”

“Ah.”

“That doesn't mean it's impossible.”

“Just that you haven't done it yet.”

“Yes. But the only cells I've performed separation upon so far are from the first sample. Yours.”

“Why? Gender? Species?”

“I'm hesitant to express my speculation, because it sounds odd.”

“If I were Eddie, I'd be beating it out of you by now. He hates a tease.”

“I don't understand.”

“I meant that I'd rather hear it and make allowances for its being a theory.”

“I believe
c'naatat
might have
learned.
”

Shapakti looked as if he expected disbelief. Ade shrugged. “We know that. Look how fast it moves. Next time it comes across the same problem, it sorts it faster. Remember when you were first shot in the head, Boss?”

“Yeah. It patched me up a lot faster the next time.”

“Well, then.”

“All organisms adapt to survive,” said Shapakti. “But
c'naatat
may have learned how
not
to be removed. And that intrigues me. I need to carry out more research.”

“I'll see if I can get you a couple more samples.” Shan's brief diversion was over. “Aquatically adapted ones.”

It was bad news for Vijissi. It was reassuring news in an odd way for her, though. It meant that removal was a choice she might never have to make now.

Something else was nagging at her, like a Suppressed Briefing, but that box of psychopharmaceutical tricks was out of her system for good now.

She'd forgotten it, whatever it was. There were bigger things on her mind.

Bezer'ej

The diurnal cycle had become meaningless for Lindsay in a matter of days.

She wondered if it was her own determination to forget what she'd been, simply to be able to cope, or if
c'naatat
was making subtler changes to her. The lights in her hands spurred her on. And she had a clear focus now; she was determined to help the bezeri survive. She had to find others.

Saib gave the impression that he respected her zeal. He let her wander off alone to explore the surrounding area after warning her to stay clear of the hard-shelled carnivores that patrolled the nearby reef. They looked like half-meter long whelk shells occupied by creatures with jointed tails
and clawed front feet almost like terrestrial raptors. If they approached too close, loud noises were enough to scare them off; they showed no stomach for tackling anything as large as a human, especially a noisy one.

A rattle seemed like a good idea. There was plenty of raw material. Lindsay searched for flat shells, and then sat down on an outcrop of textured lemon stone—a coral, perhaps—to string them together with strips of fibrous weed. She rattled them like castanets, and the tumbling noise of a small avalanche was satisfying.

What are you making?
asked Pili.

“A rattle to scare off the things with the claws.”

Pili shot off in a jet of water. Lindsay wondered if the signal lamp had misinterpreted something. The lack of resentment among the bezeri bewildered her more than anything, because for all their appearance of wanting balance, of wanting the same harsh justice that had ended in Parekh's execution, they remained civil; mostly distant, yes, but sometimes quite friendly. And nobody who'd helped bring them to extinction deserved friendship.

Pili reappeared with something held in a tightly coiled tentacle. She unfurled the arm and deposited a glossy black T-shaped object in Lindsay's lap.

For when the noise does not work. I made this.

It was a polished stone hammer. Lindsay hefted it in her hand and ran a fingertip along the almost-invisible joint where the handle slotted into the head: a thin band of a reflective substance circled the end of the grip. Bezeri had no fire and no metals, and Lindsay had started to see them not as stone age technologists but as a cold manufacture society. They could certainly work stone and manipulate organic materials well enough to create a sophisticated array of goods.

They
had
to survive. They were too important to let slip into extinction.

“Thank you.”

Leenz, if you hit them on the back, even the most aggressive
irsi
flee.

“I'll remember that.”

Lindsay had formed an image of Pili as a slightly dotty grandmother, none too bright, but now it occurred to her that she could be anything: a sculptor, a mason, even an engineer. She enjoyed the moment of revelation. Even this odd friendship that was more of a polite cease-fire boosted her motivation.

Irsi taste bad unless you are very hungry indeed,
said Pili.

Lindsay smiled out of simian habit and realized it meant nothing to a cephalopod. If she developed bioluminescence—
when
she developed it—a bezeri smile would be near the top of her signals to learn.

She didn't want to find out how irsi tasted. It was bad enough getting used to defecating under water, but her body seemed to be adapting her for that, too. When she finally decided to discard her clothes, life would become much simpler.

Rayat was engrossed in signaling with Keet, holding up his hands so that the bezeri could see the signals. The old male appeared to be happy to teach him the language, and judging by Rayat's occasional grin they were making some progress. Why weren't the bezeri venting their rage and grief on the two individuals responsible for their misery? Lindsay knew how she'd react. She'd want vengeance. She was sure of it.

But humans often developed odd alliances; hostage and captor, prisoner and guard. Maybe that was happening here. And how much energy could you devote to actively hating someone if you had to live alongside them in desperate conditions?

“Saib, do you have any information on where your people were when it happened?”
It.
She couldn't quite say it yet. She wondered what
nuking
looked like in lights.
It.
Neutron and cobalt irradiation might have defied translation anyway. “I know most of them would have been around Ouzhari, but are there any other places some might have gone?”

The spawning weeks are important to us. Everyone goes to the small mountain, except those who are ill or too weak.

“I'd like to search for more survivors.”

Do you think we will forgive you if you succeed? There are none. We would detect them.

She was still reliant on the lamp to understand Saib. Rayat was a long way ahead of her in using bioluminescence. “I don't think I can be forgiven. But I can try to be useful.”

You said your child died.

“Yes. He was born too early.”

Did you make a memorial for him?

She almost had no words to frame her answer that wouldn't have involved a long explanation about friends who became enemies. She opted for literal simplicity. “A wess'har made one for him. On Constantine.” She struggled for a description in English. “The Largest Mountain to the Dry Above.”

So far from your home.

Did Saib mean the grave or her? David would have been two: walking, talking, exploring the world. Lindsay had managed to keep the pain under control with medication, but she didn't have any to numb her now. It wasn't so much pain as fear of letting herself speculate on what David might be like today had he lived. Somehow that hurt more than the fact that he was dead. She would be destroyed, she knew, if she let herself think too much about what he was
not.
It was the loss of a
lifetime,
not just a life, a loss of not only his potential but all of hers too.

Yes, she was pretty sure she knew what the bezeri were going through. She had no future; all that she had ever loved was dead; and she had no familiar society around her. She was living their lives. It was both punishment and education.

“Yes,” she said. “Far from our home planet. But I'm here, and my child's here, and that will have to be enough.”

Saib hung motionless in front of her for a while, flickering with faint green pinpoints of light.

Why did you come so far to be here?

“It was my job,” she said.

But that explained nothing. She remembered thinking it would enhance her career prospects no end when she finally got home, even if she'd been out of circulation for 150 years by then. It never occurred to her that she might never go home and yet still be alive.

Saib disappeared into the mud buildings, reminding her of a woman gathering up long skirts and running into the distance. The town's size emphasized how very few bezeri there were left. She joined Rayat and watched the exchange of lights between him and Keet.

“You can have the lamp back now,” she said.

“Don't need it,” said Rayat. “I make faster progress if I can't use it. It's almost as if the frustration speeds up the neuron growth.” He looked away from Keet for a moment, seeming distracted by an idea. “I wonder if
c'naatat
responds to stress hormones? Smooths things over?”

“If it did,” said Lindsay, “I'd enjoy eating raw seaweed right now. And I don't.”

She didn't feel specifically angry towards him right then. She just felt tired somewhere in the depths of her soul.

“How can you miss someone you only knew for a few weeks?” As soon as she said it, she regretted exposing her vulnerability. Rayat didn't have any compassion and he wasn't her buddy. “Forget it. Doesn't matter.”

“Who, exactly?”

“David.”

Rayat flickered a pattern of blue and red lights back at Keet. She thought he was ignoring her.

“Nearly ten months,” Rayat said suddenly. “That's how long you knew him.”

It was such a conciliatory comment that it stunned her. Sometimes Rayat exposed the man within and for a fleeting moment she saw someone who did a dirty job whose grim detail he could never discuss with anyone. It had either destroyed his capacity for trust, or he had none to start with and being a spy had been a natural career choice for him.

Either way, she could never imagine him having feelings. Like Shan, he was an efficient machine for getting the job done. And she couldn't love machines.

She wondered if this was the first glimmer of compassion, or just another of his careful, patient, Byzantine strategies to achieve something. But maybe he was just scared, lonely and racked by remorse. Perhaps
c'naatat
had changed more than his physiology.

“Nice hammer, by the way,” said Rayat. “Very pre-Columbian. Mind your fingers.”

Lindsay drifted across the silt plain and moved between rocks, blsck stone hammer in one hand and feeling oddly primeval. She paused in a submerged canyon where the sunlight hung in a perfectly vertical shaft through the water like a pastel tourmaline crystal. There was something uplifting about it, almost a reassurance that she wasn't confined here.

Possibilities were replacing inevitable misery. The Eqbas stationed here had the monitoring technology to comb the ocean for other survivors. If she made contact, the Eqbas might help her. With more survivors, she could help the species rebuild: and she could train them to defend themselves. She was an officer, dismissed or not. She could give them a defense force, which was more than they ever seemed to have had in their history.

Lindsay considered how the Eqbas might react to a stray
c'naatat
with a history of war crimes, and somehow she doubted she'd be feted like Aras. It didn't matter. For the moment she had a little bit of hope.

F'nar, Wess'ej: Mid-December

“Jesus, Ade,” said Shan. She peeled off her jacket, accompanied by a draft of cold air. “Santa's grotto or what?”

Ade thought he'd done a pretty good job of decorating the house. Shredded strips of his foil survival blanket hung
from the walls and the tub of lavender that usually stood on the terrace was now in the corner nearest the sofa festooned with tiny hemp paper chains. He looked at her expression and felt instantly, totally and irredeemably stupid.

“I just wanted…”

He had no idea how to finish the sentence.

Her surprise melted into an embarrassed grin, which was unusual in itself. “It's lovely. Really, it is. I'm just amazed that you managed to come up with all this.” Her glance fell on the table. “Is that a cake?”

“Yeah,” he said.

He'd had no idea before today how to bake and he had almost no ingredients that matched what it said in the recipe, but he was set on having a Christmas cake, a real one. Aras occupied himself feeding the rat colony and offered no comment.