City of Pearl (15 page)

“What would
Shan Chail
make of it, do you think? Would she recoil, like you, or would she see it as a boon to mankind?”

Josh sighed. “We don't fear you, Aras. We never would. But we want to go to God in the end. You do understand that, don't you?”

“I think I do now,” Aras said. He took the last roll from the tray and pocketed it. He wanted to change the subject. It pained him to hear Josh explaining why he shouldn't mind being a respected leper. “Do you think
Shan Chail
knew what she was doing when she offered me food?”

Josh laughed, smelling of relief. “I doubt it. Are you going to tell her what it means?”

“Perhaps.”

Josh was right. She would be oblivious of the significance of the gesture, just as she probably had no idea that she could exert influence over a wess'har male simply by being strong, aggressive and female. The more time passed, the more he found himself vulnerable to the slightest promise of affection and companionship. It was the one thing the
c'naatat
had not improved.

He wondered briefly if the symbiont was deliberately making him crave contact in order to spread itself to new hosts. It was a common mechanism. The terrestrial
Toxoplasma gondii
made rodents reckless, easier prey for cats, which the parasite depended on to complete its life cycle.

Humans often carried the organism too. If his
c'naatat
had come across the parasite in its endless hunt for bargains among other species' genomes, it might have snapped it up.

Good for
c'naatat
, and no harm to him. But an enormous threat to the ecology of every planet and the balance of every civilization he could conceive of, apart from the restrained wess'har.

Aras climbed the stairs from Josh's house and made his way back up the surface. Respectful nods greeted him. Children gave him shy smiles but kept their distance. He wondered what parents told those children to prompt that degree of caution.

They had little to fear. He'd never known a human to become infected; it might have been due to their fixed genes. They had to reproduce to see any change in characteristics. But wess'har, with their easy exchange of genetic material through copulation, their malleable genome that altered in an individual's own lifetime, were far more susceptible to being colonized.
C'naatat
had gleaned bacteria, shed skin cells and viruses from humans and bolted material onto Aras's receptive wess'har genes just as it had collected fragments from every large host it had passed through.

Including the isenj.

Aras walked along the vanished perimeter of the isenj city once called Mjat and down what had been a main route flanked by houses. There was less than nothing left. But he remembered exactly where it was. He hadn't needed to see the
gethes'
clever images of the ghost of a civilization to recall those roads.

He had destroyed them: it was his command. He had strafed the cities with fire and cut down isenj, and set loose the reclamation
nanites
that devoured the deserted homes. It had been nearly five hundred years ago by the Constantine calendar, but he remembered it all.

Isenj, spreading faster and farther than ever before
thanks to
c'naatat.
Thousands of them, living indefinitely, their cities spreading by meters each hour. Pollution diffusing into the seas, killing millions of bezeri. From the air, not a single patch of the blue and amber grassland left on the chain of islands. Desolation within one planetary year. If he didn't stop it here, and now, every world within reach of the isenj would suffer the same fate.

If the isenj had heeded the warning and left Bezer'ej before they stumbled across the
c'naatat
themselves, there would have been no need to slaughter them. Once a few had been infected, it spread like mold on the humans' bread.

He shut his eyes for a moment. Was this guilt? Ben had talked about the human concept of guilt, and Aras had never quite grasped it. No, he would do the same again. He would do it without pity but without anger. It was necessary.

A ball of white flame bowling down the street, sucking air with it. The deafening shrills of dying isenj. A sense of panic and hatred. Where is my family? Hiding under a collapsed door, too terrified to come out and see the charred bodies.

He was seeing through isenj eyes now. It was not empathy. It was real. It was a memory.

There were delights the
c'naatat
had given him, but they were far outnumbered by the agonies. Endowing him with genetic memory scavenged from an isenj was one of the worst.

It was hard to live with your victim in your head.

There was one general-use laser uplink to
Thetis
and Paretti was hogging it. Rayat was making his displeasure clear.

Eddie thought that had started the slanging match in the comms room. He could hear it even in the compound. He wandered in, preparing to referee, because he wanted them both off the link as soon as possible so he could file his latest piece. Time didn't actually matter. The data sat in a buffer until
Thetis
was in line of sight to receive the datastream and—more importantly—until Shan Frankland had cleared it to go. But it didn't feel that way.

“You've been through my data, you bastard. Don't deny it.” Paretti was sitting in the chair and Rayat was leaning over him, hand braced on the table. But it was Paretti who was making the accusations. When they noticed Eddie was standing in the hatchway they paused, looked right through him and carried on.

Rayat put his other hand on the table. “What would I want your data for? Not even
close
to my areas of research.”

“And Warrenders wouldn't be interested,
of course.
”

“Hey—”

“This is a spoiler. You're giving my data to your employer—”

Eddie banged the heel of his hand on the hatch. “Lads, I hate to interrupt, but can you take this outside? Please. Don't make me fetch the Iron Lady.”

Rayat didn't seem worried by the prospect of summoning Shan. “Good idea,” he said to Paretti. “She's supposed to be clearing all the transmissions. She'll be able to show you that I haven't accessed your bloody files.” He pushed past Eddie.

Paretti, slightly chubby, middle-aged with prematurely gray curls, looked like a cherub who wasn't aging gracefully. He scowled at Eddie.

“Hey, don't take it out on me….what's he done thistime?” asked Eddie. Well, it might be a story, and it might not, and anyway he liked Paretti a lot more than he liked Rayat. “Can I ask?”

“Someone had a poke around my data and it's probably him.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he works for Warrenders and he's on a very meaty bonus scheme. He'll get five percent of any profit made from the data here. What do you think that's going to be worth when he steps on the Tarmac in seventy-five years'time?”

“But you're from different disciplines.”

“And if he's on the same deal as I am, which he probably is, he'll get a flat bonus of a million euros for anything he can get hold of that will block HSL or Carmody-Holbein-Lang from patenting anything
I
discover here. Spoiler.”

The concept of ruining someone else's exclusive was not unfamiliar to Eddie; journalists did it all the time. It was part of the grand game. But the sums involved were usually much, much smaller. “I picked the wrong subjects at school, obviously,” he said.

“That'll teach you to sneer at the nerds.”

“So, it's test tubes at fifty paces, then?”

“It's not funny, Eddie. I gave up my whole life to get here. I left behind everyone and everything for this.”

So did we all.
Perhaps scientists had hearts after all, thought Eddie. He was so caught up in the thrill of novelty that he really didn't miss anyone or anything yet. His life was one of transmission, not reception.

Whump, whump, whump.
He knew those boots by now. Shan appeared in the hatchway, winked at Eddie and sat on the edge of the table. “All right, Vani. Give me one excuse to give Rayat a serious smacking. You know I want to.”

“I think he's doing a spoiler on my data.”

“I so love working alongside Warrenders.” She gave Paretti what looked like a genuine smile. “But I've also had occasion to visit your employers at HSL. You know what I think? You're all scumbags, equal under the law.”

“You know how much Rayat is on if he screws us?”

“I'd heard. It's not illegal. It's childish, selfish, wasteful of resources and ultimately stops the public benefiting from your discoveries at a reasonable price, but it's not against the law.”

“What if I kick seven shades of shit out of him?”

Shan shrugged. “I might be too busy to notice.”

“I'm serious, Superintendent. This is industrial espionage.”

“No, it's not. Try breaking his fingers. It used to work fine for me.”

She stood up and walked back out. Paretti ran his fingers through his unkempt curls and began loading his data. “Ten minutes,” he said, without looking at Eddie. “Don't breathe down my neck.”

Out in the compound, Rayat was remonstrating with Shan. Eddie thought she was in a pretty good mood today. He stood and watched, as did Webster and Chahal. Rayat was demanding that she do something about Paretti's allegations.

“Why?” Shan asked. Lindsay emerged from the mess hall; Bennett stopped to join the audience too.

“He's impugned my professional reputation.”

“Come on, we're twenty-five light-years from anyone who gives a toss.”

“So you're not going to do anything?”

“Well, now you come to mention it, I think I will. You know what? I'm going to let you all have the same privilege as me and take a look at each other's data before it's transmitted. How's that?”

“You can't do that.”

“I can. Fair's fair.”

“My company paid for this mission.”

Shan glanced at Eddie. “Is that so, Mr. Michallat?”

Eddie checked his database and stuck it back in his pocket. “My original report quoted twenty percent of the total cost.”

Shan looked off to one side as if she were calculating and walked over to speak to Chahal. He disappeared into the passageway and came back with a laser cutter and handed it to her. “Mind your fingers, ma'am,” he called after her. She walked back into the crew quarters.

Rayat looked as puzzled as the rest of them. Eddie was half-expecting to see her emerge with a mangled uplink module, sliced apart to teach them all a lesson, but he could still hear Paretti talking to the AI on board
Thetis.
Two minutes later, Shan came back with an armful of what looked like rubbish and broken furniture and beckoned to Rayat.

“There,” she said. “One-fifth of your desk.” She dumped a tray-sized slab of composite at his feet. “A fifth of your chair.” Two chair legs followed. “And your mattress, your coffee mug and your plate.” Pieces fluttered and clattered to the ground. Rayat simply stared at her; Webster was chewing at her lower lip in a vain attempt not to laugh. “And as soon as it's practical, I'll get you the aft section of
Thetis
and you can be on your way. Now shut up and get on with it.”

Eddie badly wanted to applaud but thought better of it. Rayat was still standing and staring down at the pile of debris long after Shan had disappeared into the mess hall and Webster had fled, no doubt to guffaw in private.

Eddie followed Shan inside. “I hate to think what you're like after a few drinks,” he said.

Shan gave him a smile as she helped herself to some tea from the dispenser. He had a feeling that was exactly the effect she had intended. “One reason why I very rarely touch the stuff.”

“Is this about Mars Orbital?”

“No, it's nothing to do with Warrenders. I just hate whiny people, and Rayat never stops.” And she laughed. It was genuine amusement, totally artless. “I don't know what came over me.”

Of course she did. He didn't believe that any more than he believed that a copper with her record—decorated for valor, head of a snatch team, fast-tracked in the Serious Fraud Office—could misplace a bunch of terrorists after a massive covert operation. History was full of police cock-ups, but he hadn't believed the story then, and he certainly didn't believe it now that he had met her. For all the apparent caprice, she wasn't someone who left anything to chance.

He thought he knew why, too. Or at least partly why, and the partly bit was eating at him in the way concealed things always did.

“It would be great to do an interview with you,” he said.

“I don't think I'll be of interest to your subscribers in twenty-five years' time, Eddie.”

“Not even about Green Rage?”

She didn't even blink. “Maybe some other time. I think I've been humiliated enough over that.”

“Yeah. Right.” He turned to go. She hadn't blown him off completely, and he had every intention of returning to the topic at that
some other time.
“I happen to have a copy of your service record from the BBChan internal database. Do you mind if I share it with the rest of the mission?”

“Why?” A faint hint of acid there: perhaps she thought he was trying to lean on her.

“When they ask who the hell you are, I'd like them to know.”

“You could have done that any time.”

“I wanted to clear it with you first.”

She smiled. She could have taken it as a gesture of genuine courtesy. Or she could have thought that he was kissing arse, and that he knew he was, and that it was all a reflective game of we-both-know-what-we're-up-to.

He meant it as a courtesy. He hoped she knew that.

 

Aras had made a promise, so he kept it. The bezeri said they would prefer to look at the new ones from a safe distance first. It wasn't that they didn't trust him, they said. They were just concerned. He came to the edge of the camp and looked at the soldiers for the first time, and noted how they stood stock-still as he passed and stared at him. The encampment was a very visible thing, an insult to the landscape, but these people would not be staying long enough to warrant digging down into the rock to house them. Like the first human landing, when the bots came to the last habitat of
c'naatat,
it was just a campsite that could be swept away or moved when it was necessary.

There were males and females in utilitarian dark grays, greens and blues, and all wearing trousers. When he passed them they greeted him nervously. Shan had warned him none of them had seen an intelligent alien before, a reminder—if he needed one—that they were singularly blind to all the other nonhumans they had encountered in their lives. He returned the greetings with a polite nod.

Shan didn't talk much. She followed him in silence to the shore, laboring for breath, but she managed to keep up with him despite the length of the walk. She struggled after him up an outcrop of black rock to get a better view of the shallows.

There was enough cloud cover today for them to see the shapes and lights very clearly. Dozens of bezeri, rippling with the color patterns of the seniors, moved slowly around the shadows, trailing long tentacles.

Silence. And then it was as if she had suddenly spotted them for the first time.

“Oh my. The lights.”

“Can you see the shapes?”

“Oh yes.”

“That's what you might call the bezeri council.”

“What are they?” Shan asked. She slid down off the rock and walked slowly down the beach. “Squid?”

She was looking out to sea, hands thrust deep in her pockets while the wind whipped her black hair about. She wore it pulled back in a tail; it would have made more sense to braid it, but perhaps she didn't know how. An odd human, intense and aggressive, frequently distracted by things he couldn't see but that she seemed to. And her scents normally matched her words and expressions; when they didn't, he could tell it was a huge strain for her to lie.

She pointed out into the shallows at dark clouds of movement and the occasional ripple of light. “You've read about squid, have you? You know what I mean?”

“Not squid, of course,” he said. “But anatomically they're cephalopods, for want of a better word. That's what their environment makes them—and like many of your marine species, they communicate by light and color.”

She raised her hand tentatively and waved. “In the absence of light, I hope they understand this.”

Aras took the azin map from his pack and held it out for her to see. He thought she would appreciate it. She took it carefully in her hands, almost as if she were aware of its fragility and rarity, and examined it.

“It's an ancient bezeri map of their western continental shelf.”

“They make maps?”

“Yes. These are just the visual maps, of course, not the olfactory ones. They're updated all the time.”

“I just didn't have any idea that an aquatic species would make things.”

“They were equally surprised that intelligent technological species could live in an air void.”

Shan seemed mesmerized by the shell map. She traced the contour lines with her fingertip. For a second Aras thought she was a child he could teach.

“What does it show?”

“Home territories, depths.” Aras persisted. “Do humans now consider squid intelligent?”

“As we still eat them, I'd say not.”

“Do
you
eat them?”

“No, I don't. Never have.” She looked and smelled agitated, but she was telling the truth. He couldn't smell the flat, bitter odors of dead flesh on her skin like he could on the rest of the
gethes.
They repelled him. Rockvelvets ate body tissues too, but they had no other choice. “I don't think you should eat anything you're not prepared to kill yourself.”

“So if
gethes
don't eat what's intelligent, where do you draw the line between prey and non-prey? And how do you tell?”

“
Gethes
? What does that mean?”

“Carrion eater.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “Probably anything that hasn't got a vote.”

“Do you eat unintelligent humans?”

“No. And before you ask, yes, we do eat meat because we can, not because we need to.” The black part of her eyes was a lot larger now and he could smell that scent that was part anger, part excitement. She didn't break her gaze and look away, as the colony women did.
This
was a real matriarch. “Anyway, what sort of society do these bezeri have?”