Matriarch (37 page)

Poor Vijissi. This will be beyond you now.

There was one positive aspect about the bittersweet discovery of the ussissi's survival, though. It appeared to have taken Shan's mind off Lindsay Neville and Mohan Rayat for the time being.

Aras wondered how Lindsay would react if she knew her son's gravestone had been smashed.

I worked hard on that glass. It mattered very much to her that it was perfect, even though David couldn't see it.

Like Shan and Ade, asleep and not really knowing I'm here. Things that can't be seen still matter to someone.

Who would want to smash the headstone?

The end for the isenj has started sooner than any of us imagined, and I feel no regret.

Should I?

Aras sank into a gradual, delicious, and very human sleep.

F'nar: Mestin's home

“Vijissi went out early this morning,” said Mestin. “He thinks we haven't spotted him, but he spends the day up on the ridge overlooking the ussissi village.”

Shan stood at Mestin's door and wished that all this had happened at tidy, separate times. Vijissi was one drama too many, and she'd done exactly what she did so many times in her past: she dropped the personal ball—the one that mattered most—to get the job done. Umeh would have burned with her or without her, and Esganikan really didn't need her help at all. But Vijissi did. And she hadn't been there for him when she'd promised to be.

“I've just got back from Bezer'ej,” she said.
Feeble, pathetic excuse.
“I really should spend more time with him.”

“He doesn't care for anyone's company at the moment, not even mine.” Mestin stood back to invite her in but Shan shook her head. “Had you been here all day and every day, he still wouldn't have responded. None of us can reach him.”

“I've got to at least see him.”

“I understand. Bring him back if you can.”

The ussissi village was full of temporary refugees from Umeh and Shan could hear the noise long before she caught sight of the eggshell domes of the part-buried houses. If she stuck to the long route, she could walk up to the ridge almost unseen from the top. She was halfway up the incline when she saw Vijissi skylined at the top of the ridge. He was lying flat exactly like a dog, chin lowered on his hands, and staring out over the village. You didn't have to be a ussissi psychiatrist to work that one out.

Shan wondered about the wisdom of interrupting him. But she had to. She took exaggeratedly noisy paces towards him and saw his ears twitch; but he didn't move.

“How you doing?” she said, and lay down beside him, propped on her elbows.

“I'm recovered.”

“Anything I can do?”

“It's enough that you worry about me.”

So worried that I neglected you, yeah.
“I can guess why you come up here, but I might be wrong.”

Vijissi said nothing for several minutes. Then his head jerked as if he'd seen something and he lifted himself a couple of inches into a crouch. Shan followed his line of sight as best she could and he was looking down at a knot of ussissi, male and female, doing that strange weaving motion almost like a dance, mirroring each other's movements for no apparent reason.

“Talissari,” he said. “And her new mate.”

She'd guessed right. One of them—Shan had no idea which—was once his love and now she was someone else's. She wouldn't wait for the dead: not unreasonable, but no less painful for the reality. And she'd brought her new male home with her, another turn of a painful screw.

But it was more than his female that he missed. He was cut off from his pack. And a stranger from Pajat had taken his place.

“I'm sorry,” said Shan. “Does it give you comfort at least being able to see her and your clan?”

“No,” he said. “But I don't know what else to do, because I see them wherever I go anyway.”

Shan had burned out her rage at being infected in days, but the doubts and disorientation had taken months to settle. It was still early days for Vijissi. “Come on,” she said. “Let's go back to Nevyan's and see Giyadas. Change of scene.”

He settled down for a few moments as if he hadn't heard her and then he eased himself onto his hind legs. It was a start. They walked slowly back to F'nar and climbed the terraces to Nevyan's level in silence. If anyone should have known what small talk to make with a
c'naatat,
it was her, but silence seemed the best option. At least he was walking with her.

“Lisik's always got something ready to eat on the stove,” she said as they walked the last hundred meters. “You can always get a meal at Nev's. In fact—”

Shan saw Eddie step out of the door of Nevyan's home and he saw her. There was nothing remotely odd about that because he lodged there, but she realized she hadn't told him Vijissi was alive.
Shit.
Maybe Nevyan had. She'd been so anxious to keep the news about Rayat and Lin quiet that she'd stopped telling Eddie anything.

Eddie paused and did a double-take.

No, Nevyan hadn't told him.

To Eddie's credit, his reaction was one of delight—feigned or otherwise—but he was obviously shocked and he speeded up his pace. “Oh my God it's
you!
” he said.

Vijissi froze for a few seconds, then spun around and bolted up the terrace in a flat run like a greyhound. Shan called after him but he vanished in the warren of alleys and tunnels, and she didn't feel up to chasing him.

“Shit,” she hissed.

“What did I do?” Eddie floundered. “Christ, it
is
him, isn't it? Why didn't you tell me? He's got it too?”

“You're so used to us undead by now.” It struck her that he wasn't as appalled as he had been about Lin and Rayat: maybe Vijissi was just a friend after all.

“Hey, I didn't know, okay? How was I to know he'd shoot off like that? What's wrong, anyway?”

“Let's just say he's not taking his new
c'naatat
status terribly well.” She hoped he was heading for Mestin's home. He couldn't come to any harm now, but being out on a chilly damp day was the last demoralising thing he needed. “His pack can't have contact with him for the usual reasons, and his girl didn't wait for him, so that's pretty well pariah status for a ussissi.”

“Oh fuck.”

“A doctor writes.”

“If I can do anything—”

“It's okay. He'll come back.”

“Let me know, okay?”

Eddie hesitated as if waiting for orders, and then disappeared in the direction of the Exchange of Surplus Things, probably to drink with the marines. Nevyan came out onto the terrace to see what was happening; F'nar had superb acoustics, especially when you didn't want them. She beckoned to Shan to come in and they found a quiet corner in her library amid Eddie's editing equipment.

“I'd love a day when something goes right for a change,” said Shan. “I should have told Eddie. And I have no idea what spooked Vijissi, other than it can't be fun being a novelty freak when you're that depressed.”

“He's not making progress.”

“What has he got to make progress for? Aras is probably best placed to understand the isolation, but who wants to hear that it's the first five hundred years that are the worst, and then maybe you meet the right girl?”

“Aras wouldn't put it that way.”

“No. I know.” Shan put her head in her hands and braced her elbows on her knees for a few moments. She felt irritable and restless. “I haven't heard from Esganikan, by the way. I thought we were—”

“Shan, you seem different.”

“I'm not my usual perky optimistic self, I'll give you that.”

“No, it's more than that.” Nevyan inhaled audibly. Her pupils blossomed and she cocked her head, then
froze.

Something had not only surprised her, but
stunned
her.

“Why did you not tell me?” she said.

“Tell you what?”

Shan felt ill. She'd been asphyxiated, and frozen dry, and drowned, and smashed, and torn by high-caliber rounds, but she hadn't felt
ill
in a very, very long time. It was a general feeling of discomfort and unease. It disoriented her.
C'naatat
didn't get sick. They didn't feel
unwell.
It didn't happen.

“You've conceived,” Nevyan said.

“Don't be stupid. I had the plumbing removed a long time ago.”

“What does that mean?”

“I had my reproductive organ removed. It's a long story.”

It was impossible. She'd had a hysterectomy twenty years ago. Ade had been sterilized; and Aras had confined himself to
oursan.
Reproduction was a separate act for wess'har, a separate organ, a separate biology. “Just can't be.”

“You have the scent. I can smell it.” Nevyan sniffed again. “It's slightly different, but then you're not wholly wess'har. But you are carrying an embryo.”

Shan's mouth filled with saliva. Nevyan's voice was coming from a distance, oddly muffled. “Just one problem there. No uterus, and Ade's been sterilized too. And I don't have to draw you a picture about Aras. Wrong
sanil. Ain't possible
.”

Shan realized she was denying this rather too strenuously. The pulse pounded in her ears.

Something at the back of her mind said she'd ignored something far too obvious.
C'naatat
had kept her alive in space, and under water, and with a chunk of her skull blown away. It could do anything it pleased.

It could remodel anything it took a shine to. It could also remodel Ade.

And…it tended to respond to its host. Shan recalled her powerful maternal protectiveness towards Giyadas. It had been an almost overwhelming sensation.

“Shit,” she said. It was the worst thing she could imagine. She was as close to panic as she'd been when she stepped out the airlock into colder-than-cold airless space. “
Shit.
”

She was pregnant. And a
c'naatat
just couldn't allow that to happen.

Memorial cairn, F'nar plain

Shan sat next to her own grave and realized that Ade had picked a perfect spot for it.

The view from the top of the butte was spectacular. Spring was a few weeks away but there was already a carpet of fresh growth—gold, red, sage green—in sheltered pockets. The sun caught the polished pearl coating on the carefully constructed pyramid of rocks beside her and made it instantly magical, like giant almond dragées. She'd never liked them: they always looked more delicious than they tasted. Coated, hidden, dishonest things like that always disappointed.

Am I wrong?

She had no right to be pregnant and she had to do something about it. Nevyan had promised to say nothing while she worked out how she was going to break this to Ade and Aras.

Both of them had reasons for passing on their
c'naatat
deliberately, and she was
sure
she wouldn't have taken the same decisions. Shit, she
knew
she wouldn't. She'd spaced
herself to stop Rayat getting his hands on it. You never knew what you'd do in a tight spot until you were in it, but there was no spot tighter than that, and she'd
done
it.

But that certainty was illusory. She'd never been faced with the same choice involving someone she loved. It really was tougher than killing yourself.

Doesn't make any bloody difference. You've got to take an objective view.

If
c'naatat
was that much of a risk, then
why
hadn't she destroyed all of them? She was still alive because Aras had saved her by infecting her, and just by being alive now she had
accepted
that. That meant she only decided to kill the hosts she didn't have feelings for, plus herself of course, because that was all part of her bloody stupid look-how-noble-I-am approach.

And Ade wondered why she was so hard on herself. But it was the question that wouldn't go away.

Make your fucking mind up. Either this thing is so dangerous that you wipe it out, period, all of it, now—or it's not. Where's your principle?

And that was the thin end of the wedge. She knew the only logical answer was that they should
all
be eradicated. But she had no idea how she would bring herself to kill Ade—poor loyal Ade, whose only mistake had been to volunteer for the mission and meet her—and Aras, who had endured unimaginable isolation for centuries. They didn't deserve to die.

Outcomes, outcomes, outcomes. Motive doesn't matter. Motive doesn't change the consequences. Loving someone isn't a reason not to take the decision.

Taking a lover's life was more unimaginable than taking your own. She remembered having to arrest an elderly man who'd killed his terminally ill wife, and how she thought she was being the compassionate copper by making the charges disappear for him. She found out that he'd killed himself a few days later; she was first at the suicide scene, in fact. Tidy paperwork, and a tragedy topped and tailed.

She'd compromised over
c'naatat
already. That meant she could compromise over the child. It was hard to think of it in those terms, though. The trail of logic led her further into a monstrous flow chart that didn't appear to have an end, killing and guilt, until she finished herself off; or not killing, and a constant biohazard risk and more miserable lives—and guilt. Love made you do expedient things. She knew she mistrusted it for a reason.

And there were no moral absolutes. She just made up a few uncrossable lines to keep her sane, just as Giyadas—clever, wonderful, wise kid—said you had to.

Okay, so you don't have the balls to finish off Ade and Aras. So what if you
do
have the kid?

Shan got up and walked around the butte for a while, circling the flat section where the cairn stood. There was a smaller pile of rocks, just a handful of pearls, that marked the spot where Aras had buried Black, the rat. Shan stared at the two memorials in defocus and tried to apply the logic of species to it. Aras hadn't saved the rat, but he
had
saved her, and that made no sense in wess'har terms either, because all life was equal.

I'm a mistake, a lapse in Aras's judgment. I shouldn't be here.

She knew what was at the core of this. She was morally adrift after being so damned sure that a bracing spell in vacuum had sorted her priorities and cleared her mind, putting her beyond all pain and uncertainty because
nothing
could be worse than spacing yourself and not being able to die. She'd faced oblivion, called God a useless, incompetent fucker, and come through irrevocably changed. But she was
wrong.
She'd gone back to being a real person with the same set of dilemmas she'd always had. She was flesh and blood.

No, she
had
to be clear about motive before she acted. Motive did matter. Motive stopped you looking at the outcomes dispassionately. She needed to see clearly first.

Maybe
c'naatat
was influencing her, though. That was what Aras had said once: just like
toxoplasma gondii
affecting
its host's behavior to make the most of its own chances of reproduction. Shan hated the idea of a microorganism making her think it wasn't so bad to have a few more
c'naatat
around the place. Well, it hadn't been able to stop her stepping out that airlock. Her mind was her own, not the parasites'. She stared at her hands and the array of lights seemed no more than a party trick. The flashes didn't mean a thing;
c'naatat
scavenged the photophore genes because it
could.
It probably didn't have a plan in mind. It was no different to humans or amoebae in that respect.

So what's really pissing you off about being pregnant?

She didn't want a child at all, but Ade and Aras would have liked nothing better. She knew that. She also knew how she'd judged Lindsay's unplanned pregnancy: if you really couldn't face having a kid, then you didn't open your legs, and if you did, then you had to live with the consequences. Even Lindsay—knocked up when she was drunk, the irresponsible cow—had accepted that and turned down a termination.

Okay, so you have the kid. You don't have to do the maternal thing. Ade and Aras are just gagging to be dads.

Shan stared out across the plain and defocused again, reducing the complex landscape to a blurred gold tapestry. She tried to imagine growing up as a
c'naatat;
and now she knew why the parasite and the host were both given the same term by the wess'har, because it defined you.

The word meant
unending.

How fast did a
c'naatat
fetus develop?

How did you tell a kid that they were never going to die?

And what happened when the kid realized there were no others like them, and that they'd never have a lover or children of their own?

They could never have a normal life unless more
c'naatat
hosts were created.
Here's your little friend, sweetheart. I've made you a new one to play with.
Jesus, it would be condemning them not only to a lonely existence, but a permanent one that locked them in a continual emotional childhood, where the only people like them would be their parents.
You couldn't stand by and not be tempted to make just a few more hosts so they had the chances of happiness that you had.

And then where did it stop?

There would be generations, each facing the same dilemma:
do we stop this here and now?
Shapakti said he might be able to remove
c'naatat
from humans, but she couldn't have a face doing that, knowing she'd watch her child die of old age—and that they would watch, normal and mortal and probably resentful—while she lived on.

Shan squatted by the cairn to see if her warrant card was still wedged between the stones and then took a brisk walk back down the slope and across the plain to the patch of fields where Ade and Aras were working.

Take a run at it, just like you did at the airlock. Just tell them. Maybe they'll see it more clearly than you.

She never used to agonize over decisions like this.

Aras straightened up at her approach. “
Isan,
we have a surprise for you.” He never quite managed a human smile, but he beamed wonderfully, and it was disarming. “Ade, show her.”

Not half the surprise I've got for you.
“What is it?”

“Potatoes,” Ade said. “They grew really fast.”

He held out his hand, palm up, with a few soil-caked tubers about the size of eggs. There was something inexplicably exciting about crops.

It's your child, Ade. It can't be Aras's. This is between you and me.
“No mint,” she said. “But who needs mint with them anyway?”

“What's wrong?” asked Aras. “You've shut down your scent. You said you wouldn't do that with us.”

“Sorry.” They might as well have been telepathic after all. “Habit.”

There was always a fraction of a second that was the right time to say something difficult, and when it passed it became impossible again. Shan had always cut to the chase. Now she struggled. She floundered between sorting out her own mistakes and debating what rights Aras and Ade had in this. They both looked at her, so transparently
focused on her welfare that she hated herself with renewed vigor.

Yes, Aras too. His genes are as much a part of this thing as Ade's.

“I've had a few nasty surprises lately,” she said. “I'll sort myself out in a few days. Look, give me those spuds and I'll take them back to the house.”

“We've got enough for potato salad
and
a few chips,” said Ade. “I know new potatoes make poor chips, but…well,
chips.
”

He grinned. He was artless and sincere, and she longed for the certain, old days when everyone she met was a bastard to be nicked and not to be trusted. She'd break his heart.

“I love you,” she said. “Both of you. I don't say it enough.”

That was all she could take right then. She turned and walked at race speed back to the city, where she couldn't get behind her own door fast enough to punch the wall in the washroom over and over again until she broke bones and her knuckles were raw and bleeding. She
wanted
to bleed because
c'naatat
always stopped the flow, and she was determined to beat the fucking thing just once, just
once.

It hurt like hell and that was
fine.
She put her palms flat against the wall and let her head hang while she caught sobbing breaths. Her blood was vivid and ugly against the pale stone, far harder to clean off than she expected, but her hands were already whole again as if nothing had ever touched her.

She'd never be able to abort this fetus.
C'naatat
wouldn't let her.

It struck her that the last thing she had considered was what the child might have wanted if it could choose.

Bezer'ej: Bezeri settlement

Rayat was almost grateful for the revelation that there had once been other large aquatic species in the oceans of Bezer'ej.

It took his mind off the fact that he had no immediate way of getting off the planet.
Tough. The whole point is not to crack. This is about time. Time—you've
got
time, more than you can even count.
He'd come up with unexpected solutions in desperate situations so many times in the past that he had every confidence that he could do it again, and again, and again. He didn't have a deadline. And if his government had one, he neither knew it nor could he do anything about it. The trick of endurance was to concentrate on getting through the next moment and not look at the daunting length of the road ahead.

But the history of the bezeri wasn't just an artificial diversion to hang on to his sanity.

It mattered. For some reason, it
mattered.
If the bezeri had hunted another species to extinction, then what he'd done to them took on a whole new moral perspective. It also changed the context of what the isenj had done here. And that…
that
would put the wess'har in a very different position too. He was pretty sure he knew how they thought now.

“Hoist by your own petard,” he said.

Lindsay, still and glassy, looked up from the azin shell map. “Me?”

“Them.”

“Don't gloat. We don't know this for sure. Only that some species disappeared. Like that hasn't happened on Earth.”

“Like
we
didn't make it happen on Earth.”

“Does it make a difference?”

“Yes. It makes the bezeri far less blameless.”

“Mohan, that's like saying Auschwitz or Rwanda or Nepal were justified because we killed the last tiger.”

Nobody had called him Mohan for years. It startled him. He almost wondered who she was talking to. “I didn't say justified. Only less black and white.” He looked at the long row of maps that he'd stacked like dishes on a draining board and decided to drill down. There were at least a
thousand now. “Help me out with this, will you? I want to find the point at which these large animals disappeared. These maps run from oldest to most recent. Start sampling them at intervals from your end until you see this pictogram.” He pointed to the symbol for the large animal, a vivid blue oval striped with yellow lines. He wondered what created the blue color: lapis deposits? The ovals were on every one of the most ancient maps he'd seen so far. “I'll do the same from the earliest end. Get cracking.”

Rayat's spirits lifted. He liked tracking down information, hunting facts. Oh yes, he understood what drove Eddie Michallat. There was a blind exhilaration in it and it almost didn't matter what you found as long as you found it. Somehow the same mindset operated in him, and Eddie, and Shan Frankland. Spies, journalists, detectives; all hunters, all prone to feeding frenzies.