Matriarch (9 page)

“Yeah.”

“And you're pissed off because I'm going to second-guess you when I said I never would?”

“No.”

“Look, I know you had to make the call there and then. God knows I hate armchair critics and hindsight myself.” She unfastened her hair from the band that held it in a ponytail and raked it with her fingers before tying it back again. “I don't want to be at war with you, Ade. You, me and Aras. That's all there is. All there's ever
going
to be for a bloody long, long time. We need to make this work.”

“Is that a pardon, then?”

“One thing I've learned from the wess'har is that there's
no point fretting about the past when you could be sorting out the future. Outcomes. Not motive.”

“Meaning?”

“I'll go and find the bezeri and see what's happening. If it isn't working out the way you and Aras planned, I'll do what I have to do to remove the hazard.”

“Are you going to tell Eddie?”

“That's one complication I don't need at the moment.”

Ade knew Shan would dispose of Rayat and Lindsay without a second thought. He began working out how he could make a fragmentation device that would work under water. It was the kind of thing that Izzy and Sue were good at; it might keep them occupied for a while.

“I'll help you if you want,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“I know it's a mess, and I know motives don't matter, but I did it because I love you.”

Shan nodded. “You're right. I
did
run out on Aras, whatever my reason.”

It was as if she hadn't taken in what he'd said, or decided she would ignore it. He felt stupid. He'd inherited brief flashes of the most vivid of her memories—the awful ones with the gorilla and the riot shield and the boiling cold vacuum of space—and he knew that if he slept with her, he would eventually absorb others, and maybe even taste what she really thought of him.

What if she's just sorry for me? Or that she thinks I'm useless and she's just being kind?

He wondered if she had any sense of how extraordinary she was. All he'd picked up from her memory was that she thought she was smarter than everyone else and wished they'd stop pissing her off by being stupid. He wondered if he'd ever fallen into that category. There was no sign of it, but he'd looked.

“Sorry, Ade. I ought to be grateful.” Shan sounded genuinely regretful. “If it's any comfort, I treated Aras like shit too. I'm just not good at receiving affection.”

“We're all under a lot of stress, Boss. Even if you won't
admit it.” He caught her hand and held it, not sure if she actually understood how much he loved her. He couldn't think of a word for what he felt other than
love;
but it was one-dimensional, inadequate, a word worn thin on ordinary women. He wanted a word you could present to a goddess. He needed a word that would make her understand that he now couldn't bear to let her out of his sight and that the intensity of the emotion pressed so heavily on his chest that sometimes he couldn't even swallow. “This bloody situation is almost too much to think about sometimes. That's why I just concentrate on what's in front of me.”

“Yeah. Interplanetary war, genocide, immortality and Earth's next. When you put it like that, the pucker factor is off the scale.” Shan's gaze was fixed on his hands, clasped around hers. Then she looked up and smiled at him. The world-weary copper had disappeared for a few moments: he was looking into a trusting, open face that had never seen pain or depravity, or looked upon her own acts of almost indescribable violence. “And the food's bloody awful. That takes my mind off the rest sometimes.”

“Yes it's amazing what you can put up with if the scran's okay.” Her expression defaulted to her detective mode, that intense unblinking stare. He had to let go of her hand to fumble in his shirt pocket. “Look what I blagged off the supply officer. Fresh garlic.”

He rattled a little pouch of four heads of pink-skinned corms. Shan looked at it as if it was evidence and held out her hand. He placed it in her palm.

“We plant them the minute we get back,” she said.

“I thought I'd cook something with them.”

“When we can grow our own supply from these? I can't ask the colonists for any of theirs, not now.”

“Okay. You never were one for instant gratification.” The phrase felt unfamiliar in his mouth and he wondered if he was now absorbing her speech patterns. “But I'll keep one in reserve for cooking.”

“What did you trade for this?”

“Movie files.”

She put on her copper's face again, instantly wary and questioning. “I didn't know you had a stash of porn.”

“I don't. It's all comedy.”

“Sorry. I should have guessed.”

“I'm a good boy, Boss.”

Ade teetered on the cliff edge again. She'd said
yes
ages ago. She said she'd sleep with him. There was nobody else a man with
c'naatat
could have; the parasite spread like a dose of clap. But that step from the agreement in principle to making the first move seemed as daunting as ever.

Come on. She's seen you throw up and crap yourself in a tight spot and she's even seen you starkers, tattoos and all. You even
shot
her, for Chrissakes. And now you're worried she'll laugh at you?

“If it's any comfort, Ade, I'm scared too.”

I can make my life normal. I can do all the things regular people do. It'll rewrite my past.
“Coppers are telepaths, aren't they?”

“Trade secret. It's a combination of knowing who you're dealing with and watching the tells. You know. The body language. The little facial movements.”

She thrust her hands in her pockets. No, she wasn't good at this. No better than he was, in fact.

Shit.

He reached into his belt pouch. Everything he owned now added up to his fighting knife, his mother's wedding ring and his medals. An unromantic fuck in the miserable bowels of an offworld base surrounded by a sewage processing plant wasn't exactly how he'd planned to seduce the love of his life, but there was never going to be anywhere more glamorous. And it beat doing it back home with Aras in the next room. Maybe wess'har thought that kind of thing was normal, but Ade felt it would take a
long
time for him to see it that way.

He grabbed her hand, took the ring and slid it onto her finger. It was loose. She stared at it.

“Jesus, Ade, is that your mum's ring?”

“Yeah.”
Oh God.
That was just so wrong.
I wanted it to be meaningful.
“Sorry. It's the best I can do.”

“I'm touched.” She didn't meet his eyes. “Really. I am. I don't know what to say.”

“I know this is pretty grim.”

“So I'll do it for a pair of boots, a bit of garlic and a ring, right?”

“Boss, I never—”

“Just a joke,” she said. “Honestly. Just a joke”

She laughed. She wasn't the giggly sort and Ade knew that kind of laughter from a hundred near-misses when the firing stopped. This should have been a nice dinner in a smart restaurant and a comfortable bed: but the waste macerator started up behind him with an eloquent shudder of drives, and he almost burst out laughing too. His eyes stung with suppressed tears.

“In case you're worried, I was sterilized ages ago.”

“I'm missing a few essential parts too.” Shan blinked a few times. “Get on with it, then. I'm not going to be any better looking tomorrow.”

Oh God. How would things have turned out if I'd done this when I first had the chance, before
c'naatat
was ever an issue?

“Romance isn't dead,” said Ade. “But it's not feeling very well at the moment.”

“It's not doing too bad,” said Shan. “All things considered.”

F'nar, Wess'ej

Rats didn't live long. Shan had warned Aras about that, but he still felt sorrow at Black's decline.

He held the animal on his lap, cushioned on a pad of hemp fabric salvaged from Constantine. Black had never attempted to bite him but Aras took the precaution of wearing gloves to avoid passing on
c'naatat
if Black did decide to nip him. The rat's flanks heaved; his ribs were visible under black fur now rusty with age, and his tiny nostrils were rimmed with red stains. He had respiratory failure.

Aras had seen generations of humans die in the Constantine colony. He had outlived them just as he had outlived
every one of his wess'har kin, and he had even outlived comrades he'd infected with
c'naatat
before anyone realized exactly what it did. He was the only wess'har host who hadn't been fragmented in battle or finally taken his own life out of desperate isolation.

I outlive everyone. My first
isan,
my human friends, my wess'har neighbors. And these rats.

It never got any easier.

He glanced up at the divided cage that housed the rat colony. Several small whiskered faces were staring at him. One rat had its paw flat on the softglass side of the cage, and it looked so much like a human hand that Aras expected the animal to gesture to him.

Black would recover if I gave him a little of my blood.

But it was wrong, and unnatural, and fraught with consequences; not 'least for Black, living forever while his comrades died, deprived of mate and offspring. It was a lonely life sentence. Aras had succumbed once and taken that step to save Shan's life. Would he have done it again so that the bezeri could have their penance from Lindsay and Rayat? He came close. Ade had made the choice in the end. It was a decision you could take in a second and regret—or not—forever.

As soon as he could, he'd return to Bezer'ej and find the remnant of the bezeri. He
had
to know what was happening there. After five hundred years, the world was still part of him.

Black stirred and Aras ran his fingers over the rat's head. Eventually, Black's flanks stopped heaving and he gave a little twitch, eyes still half open. Aras could feel a fluttering heartbeat and then nothing, and for a while he pondered the line between life and death and found it harder to define than ever. When he looked up, White—Black's constant companion—had thrust his muzzle through the grid of plastic that formed the cage door.

The rat knew what had happened to his friend. Aras had no idea how to communicate with a rat, but he assumed they grieved, grieving being part of the instinct of any communal animal. All creatures responded to the death of their offspring or the comrades on whom they depended; it was a
necessary reaction, the organism's way of ensuring that essential bonds were maintained. Why humans thought it was a spiritual act peculiar to them, Aras had never understood. They had no idea about the nature of emotions and brain chemistry at all.

I miss Shan.

She had been away less than a day. But she was coming back, and he reminded himself how it had felt to think she was dead. The longing eased a little. He wondered if he was not so much missing her as regretting the loss of his exclusive relationship with her. But that was
human.
It was…jealousy.

You wanted a housebrother badly. You wanted a normal wess'har life again—
isan,
housebrothers, children. You can't have children, but you have everything else. Be grateful.

Aras took Black's corpse in his hands and laid it on the table. The he pulled on his tunic and took his
tilgir
from the hook on the wall.

The bluff outside the city was a hard climb or a long walk, and Aras opted for the walk because it was easier with tools in his belt and a dead rat in his pocket. At the top of the lava cliff, the cairn of pearl-coated rocks that Ade had built as a memorial for Shan still stood intact. Shan didn't seem to mind seeing it there, although it must have been strange to gaze upon your own headstone. Aras surveyed the winter landscape for a few minutes, noting the fine haze of low-growing foliage that had sprung up after the rain, and then made his way up the long steep incline that wound its way up to the top.

He hadn't expected to run into Nevyan at the summit.

The young matriarch knelt on her heels, hands clasped in her lap as she contemplated the view.

“I didn't know you came here,” said Aras.

Nevyan looked up at him. “I followed Ade Bennett here once. The view is soothing. Why have you come?”

“I have to bury someone.” Aras took Black's body from his pocket and cupped it in his hands. The little animal felt heavier than he had been in life. “One of the rats has died.”

“Are the others upset?”

“I think so.”

“Can you comfort them?”

“I don't know how.”

Nevyan held out her hands to take Black while Aras drew his
tilgir
to hack a shallow grave in the thin layer of soil. A
srebil
might scavenge the rat's body, alien though its biochemistry was. Few humans liked the idea of disposal by predation, but it was the wess'har way. Did
srebil've
know how to dig? Aras knew they had long, hard proboscises and single sharp claws, so they would find a way.

Do I tell Nevyan about Lindsay and Rayat?

Aras decided to stay silent. He wasn't deceiving her or even concealing the fact. It was simply irrelevant; she could do nothing, and it was no threat to her. The problem was one for Esganikan to consider and deal with.

“Shan surprises me,” said Nevyan.

“How?” Aras judged the depth of the tiny grave, even smaller than the one he had dug on Bezer'ej for Lindsay Neville's baby son. “You seem anxious.”

“I didn't expect her to share the Eqbas view of interference.”