Matriarch (38 page)

You could only truly hate others for showing you the things you recognized in yourself.

They worked in silence except for the scrape and clack of azin shell plates as they gradually moved towards each other along the line of records. He forgot time. Eventually, with his stomach growling for food, he pulled a sheet at a ten-record interval and the blue ovals were nowhere to be seen.

“Got it,” he said. Lindsay stopped. “They're gone by this period, I think.”

She moved towards him and started pulling records at shorter intervals, and then checked every one in a run of twenty. She shook her head; that much of her was still very human, Rayat thought.

“Nothing like that from this point on,” she said. “I haven't checked them all, but it doesn't look as if they reappeared. I mean, they might be—oh, extraplanetary for want of a better word, like the wess'har.”

“Either way,” said Rayat, “they were here for a very long time, and then they weren't, and their presence is linked every time to the pictogram for
hunt.
”

“Let's pin it down on the timeline, then.”

They attacked the task with renewed vigor. Eventually, Rayat pulled a record with a blue oval, and Lindsay pulled the one ahead of it, and there were no more pictograms like it.

“Here's the end of the line,” she said. “What's the date?”

Rayat was still tackling the detail of the timeline. The shell plates were marked with indentations that had probably been added afterwards at a point where the bezeri had adopted a kind of numerical dating system. But it was long before the wess'har arrived in the system, and long before the isenj colonized the planet; he took a guess at between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago.

“I'll ask Saib to check it for me,” said Rayat, and put the shell record carefully inside his shirt. “And there are some pictograms I still can't understand. Time to ask a few questions.”

Lindsay might have smiled at him. It was hard to tell with the increasing transparency of her face.

“Eddie would be proud of you,” she said. “If he even knows you're alive.”

F'nar, Wess'ej

Eddie leaned around the open door and knocked on it anyway. He always approached Shan with due caution.

“Hi,” he said. “Holy shit. Why didn't you tell me Vijissi was alive? No, you're right. Stupid question. Like you wouldn't tell me if Lin or Rayat had a dose of
c'naatat
too.”

Shan had never been a pretty woman but she usually appeared luminously fit, and her strong coloring and psychotic fixed gray gaze made her at least striking. But now she just looked ill.
No, stupid, she sucks vacuum for an encore.
Ill
doesn't happen to her.
He invited himself in and noted that she was scrubbing potatoes.

“So now you know he's alive, what are you going to do?” she asked.

She gave him a baleful look but something told him it was meant for someone else. He just happened to be in the line of fire.

“Same as I did when you survived. Say nothing. Don't you think I've learned my lesson?”

“You're forever polishing your conscience about what you should and shouldn't report, Eddie,” she said. “How do I know when you're going to get all ethical about
c'naatat
?”

“At least tell me I'm not going mad and that I was right about the other two.”

She paused. It looked as if she really wanted to concentrate on those potatoes and he was interrupting. “There was a good reason for it.”

“You'd
never
have let that happen on your watch.”

“I think you better stop right there.”

Aras? Ade? They were the only two carriers who could have doled it out. Jesus, he was glad he wasn't in their shoes. But she'd seemed pretty affectionate with them; he couldn't begin to piece this together, and he shouldn't have tried, but old instinct made him yearn to pursue it.

It was a story. Stories made him tick. He fell into trying to coax it out of her without even thinking; and that wasn't the best approach with Shan.
She
asked the questions. Her police days might have been over, but she'd never left the interrogation room.

“It's Vijissi, isn't it?” He thought about offering to help her with the potatoes, but that wouldn't have worked either. “I know how badly you felt about him. But he did the big gesture of his own free will. Not your fault.”

“You're not thick, Eddie. You know how serious the implications are of having another
c'naatat
on the books.”

“The whole bloody ussissi colony is going to be in a tight spot.”

“You always manage to make me feel better, you know that?” she said wearily. “Can you just fuck off for a while?”

“Who pissed in
your
corn flakes this morning?”

“Sorry. I decided I was getting too nice lately so I'm brushing up my bastard skills.”

“You sure you're okay?”

“I'll live. Look, Vijissi is a pack animal who can't ever be part of a pack again. His clan won't go near him. They're upset, he's upset, the whole fucking ussissi mob is upset. I promised I'd be there for him and you know what? There's nothing a human female can do to help a ussissi kid who's a leper.”

“Kid?”

“He's only just past the juvenile stage. I didn't realize that either.”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe he'll change like Aras did.”

Shan turned very slowly. It was pure menace, and not for effect. He knew her well enough to see that savage violence when it was being tightly reined in: her face was a mask and her pupils set wide. Her eyes were such a pale gray that the sudden dilation to black changed her whole face.

“I don't like where that line of logic is heading,” she said. The quieter her voice, the more scary she was. “So it stops. Now.”

Good old Shan, good old honest and courageous Shan: but she could be the Shan you'd run and hide from, and hate too. Eddie felt his adrenaline start to pump. Maybe she'd had a fight with Aras. Ade wouldn't say a word out of line to her; he thought the sun shone out of her arse. So it
had
to be Aras. But they'd kiss, make up and be all over each other again in no time.

Eddie shifted tack. “Come on, let's go and find Vijissi.”

Shan turned back to the sink and stared at the wet potatoes as if willing them to bake spontaneously. “Okay.”

Eddie gave up trying to make small talk while they walked to Mestin's home on the opposite side of the caldera. Shan always knocked: wess'har found it hilarious for some reason. Sevaor opened the door and made an exaggerated come-in gesture.

“Vijissi?” he said.

“Is he okay?”

“No.”

“Can we see him?”

“Ask him.” It wasn't as abrupt as it sounded. Sevaor's English was limited, but it was polite of him to try to speak it in front of Eddie. “He does not talk to me.”

Shan walked past Sevaor, and Eddie followed her down winding passages. Vijissi was curled up in a ball on the floor. There was no bed, just a typical alcove set in the wall: Eddie wondered how wess'har managed not to roll out of those holes when they fell asleep. Once their chambers reminded him of submarines lined with cramped bunks, but they seemed more like catacombs now.

“Hey, fella,” Shan said. She squatted down and shook his shoulder. “It's okay. Want to talk? How'd you like to stay with us for a while?”

The ussissi opened his eyes. They really
did
look like roadkill now.
“Shan Chail.”

She leaned over and did something that only another
c'naatat
could risk with impunity. She nuzzled his sharp little meerkat face and even kissed his head. “I am so, so sorry. It must be hard seeing her like that. Whatever it takes to get you through this, I'll do it.
Whatever.
”

Eddie had never seen Shan display emotion quite that openly. He'd chipped the ice on the pond a few times and seen the angry bitch beneath, but sometimes he also caught a glimpse of a truly broken woman who'd seen too much and yet still kept going. Sometimes, though, she was actually affectionate in a way he found almost embarrassing, and he wasn't sure why.

“Let me die,” said Vijissi. His voice was a whisper.

“No, mate, we're not going to let you die.” Shan straightened up. “You're like us now. Now, I know that means—”

“You should have let me die.” He was very clear. He uncoiled himself and sat back on his haunches. “Everything
dies in time. Everything
should
die in time. They should have destroyed me. It's wrong. It's
wrong.
”

“Vij, come on home with me. Nobody knows what you're going through better than Aras. He was on his own for centuries and he came through it.”

“But he has you, and Ade.”

“Yeah.”

“Ussissi can't live alone.
Ever.
And I can have no children now. You think you're helping, but you're not.” He didn't meet her eyes. “Please, leave me. We can talk later.”

If Vijissi had spat at her, Shan couldn't have looked more crushed. Eddie wondered if she'd have felt so guilt-ridden about a human. Two legs was usually bad as far as Shan was concerned. He caught her sleeve and steered her away.

Shan paused and looked back at Vijissi as she left the room. “I won't pester you, but you know where I am. Anytime, okay?”

They ambled along the terrace back to her home. She thrust her hands deep in her pockets and said nothing.

“I thought they'd be more supportive of him,” said Eddie.

“I don't understand them yet.”

“They don't tolerate difference well.”

“Funny how wess'har do.”

“Just because they evolved together doesn't make them identical.”

“Nah.”

“Are you going to be okay, doll?”

“Funny thing to ask a
c'naatat.
”

“You're not yourself.”

“Shitty week all round. I'll survive.”

She didn't ask Eddie to stay for lunch. He saw her safely inside—a weird thing, fretting over an immortal's welfare—and went back to the haven of his makeshift studio in Nevyan's tunnel-warren home.

Three more
c'naatat,
then. This was what Shan had dreaded: one, then three, then six, and where would it end?

And one of them was Mohan Rayat. That was something worth worrying about.

Bezer'ej: Bezeri settlement

Whatever mistakes the bezeri had made in their past didn't make Lindsay feel any less responsible for bringing them to the brink of extinction.

The last bezeri—forty-four now—were contemplating their slow decline and watching their species fade from the universe, a terminally ill patient forced to see the look on his doctor's face.
Should have used a bigger device and done a quick job.
She waited while Saib examined the azin shell record.

Rayat looked triumphant. She hoped it was simply that he enjoyed being a clever boy and finding things out. Somehow the idea that he thought it served the bezeri right was sickening.

“What does it mean, Saib?” he asked. His lights flashed and pulsed simultaneously with his speech like someone signing for a deaf person as they spoke. “Am I right about the dates?”

Saib's tentacles caressed the shell record, lifting it to the light and pulling it close to his eyes.
Eighteen thousand years ago. I could be more specific but I would need to consult another record to be certain.

“And what does it mean?”

Explain.

“The blue ovals are another species, aren't they?”

Birzula.

“What happened to them?”

They were all killed, every last one of them.

Lindsay respected Saib's lack of euphemism. She waited for Rayat to frame his next question. So far, he was managing not to lead.

“Who killed them?”

We did.

“Ah…so if this pictogram means
hunt,
then I take it you hunted them to extinction.” He paused and Lindsay felt it might be for effect, and the only person who could be affected by human speech tricks was her.
Bastard.
“They were your prey.”

Saib suddenly became a rippling cascade of red and violet.
They were not our prey. They encroached on our hunting grounds and we found less to eat every year. They were too big, dirty and dishonest and stupid. We hunted them down and slaughtered them all so that they would never take our food again.

Rayat actually leaned backwards a little as if he was taking a step away from the angry bezeri. Lindsay was stunned. She stepped in front of Saib, her lights pulsing.

You wiped them out deliberately,
she said.

Yes.

Do you feel regret?
She certainly did.

Never.

Is that because it was long before your time?

No. It was because they were inferior.

The answers were not what she expected. Rayat found his composure again.

“Saib, what happened to the other large animals in the ocean?” he asked. “We hunted a lot of ours. Whales, creatures like that. Did all yours become extinct?”

The food ran out.

Lindsay's image of the harmless bezeri struggling to survive against the carelessness of invading isenj and then the brutality of her own decision had taken a hell of a blow.

She needed to rethink things. Her tidy logic of cause and effect, crime and punishment, good and evil, had been shaken out of order. She needed to look at the pieces again. She swam back to the storage chamber and found herself cutting as cleanly through the water as a seal, without the slightest conscious effort. She settled down among the stacks of shell records and let the shock take her.