Matriarch

by Karen Traviss

  Esganikan was totally calm. There were people who made threats, and people who made promises, but Esganikan was just telling Pirb what was going to happen. It was much more chilling. Ade felt a surge of familiar adrenaline and caught Shan’s eye. She didn’t even raise her eyebrows.

  But there was no answer from Pirb. Esganikan didn’t seem concerned and exchanged conversation with crew at another station on the bridge. Lights danced across the port bulkhead and on the chart. “Aitassi, are any ussissi still operating vessels within the Ebj region?”

  “No. After the attack on this ship they suspended commercial duties here.” Ussissi took a threat to one of them as a threat to all. Ade approved of that degree of camaraderie. “But all ussissi across the planet are stopping work.”

  Esganikan kept her eyes on those bulkhead lights. Ade was still looking down at the terrain beneath his feet when a brilliant white light and a trail of vapor streaked up to fill his field of view and exploded in a blinding sheet as if it was filling the bridge.

  Incoming—

  His instinct was to throw himself flat. He crashed into Shan, cracking his temple against her head and all he could see for seconds was a dark green disk across everything while his seared retina tried to cope with the overload of light.

  “Jesus Christ.” Shan sat up awkwardly and rubbed her head. “That’s not funny.”

  Eddie nodded, apparently calm. “It’s not, is it? I’ve seen incoming before, and it makes me nearly shit myself every time.”

  Esganikan gestured to them to get up. Ade wasn’t sure if she was amused or baffled, but none of the Eqbas looked as if they’d reacted to the attack. “You know that the defense shield will hold. The missile exploded fifty meters beneath us.”

  “Yeah, but we’re pretty basic models,” said Ade irritably. “We’ve got reflexes. We normally say missile incoming brace brace brace, just so nobody has a nasty surprise like that one.”

  “The target light was illuminated.” Esganikan indicated the bulkhead array. “Pay attention next time. There is clearly no point talking further with Pirb, so now we withdraw.”

  Only an Eqbas could make withdraw sound so ominous.

  Shan got to her feet and made a conspicuous point of standing right in the middle of the transparent section of deck. Warbling chatter passed between two of the Eqbas crew at bulkhead consoles. Streaks of light flared beneath the deck like tracer rounds and Ade watched the ground lift visibly with the chain of explosions, flame and gray clouds rising until all he could see was a billowing carpet beneath his boots.

  “You okay, Boss?” He caught Shan’s arm again.

  “Fine.” The shock just seemed to make her more aggressive and determined to force herself into a show of strength. She had to be the bloody alpha female. She had no scent at all now. “Esganikan, what did you just do?”

  “Returned fire. What would you do under the circumstances?”

  “Jesus, how big a chunk have you taken out?”

  The Eqbas commander tilted her head as if calculating. “The entire ground battery and roughly a thousand meters around it.”

  “But they can’t damage your ship.”

  “They fire upon us. We fire back. We will continue to suppress attacks.”

  “But a thousand meters covers a lot of civilians too. You’re going to trigger a surge of refugees. They’ll self-evacuate across the border, and that’s bad enough where I come from, let alone in a place this crowded. Did you think about that?”

  “Your priority as a police officer was probably to ensure that as many of them survived as possible. Mine is not. My task is to restore the ecology of this planet as far as anyone can, given that all non-food species have been driven to extinction, and that is not a task for the squeamish.”

  Esganikan gazed at Shan, unmoved. Shan stood stony-faced, fists on hips. It hadn’t crossed Ade’s mind that she might have a problem with collateral damage: she certainly had no trouble killing people. She could use her fists, too. Violence was far from her last resort, and frequently her first. He had enough of her memories now to prove it.

  “You’re right,” Shan said. “This isn’t my business. I’ll stay out of it.”

  “I meant no offense.”

  Shan held up her hands in acceptance. There was still an edge to her voice. “No problem.”

  “Do you want to observe further?”

  She shook her head and glanced down through the transparent deck. “I’ve seen what I came for. We’ll head back to Wess’ej.”

  “I’d like to stay,” said Eddie.

  “Yeah, you do that,” said Shan.

  There was an awkward silence and then the ship turned slowly, skewing the image in the deck through 90 degrees and Esganikan trooped off with Aitassi, followed by the bee cam and Eddie.

  “Good call.” Ade caught her hand and squeezed it for a second, just long enough to remind her that he was hers without embarrassing her in public. “It’s some other bastard’s watch now.”

  “I can’t afford to get in a ruck with her. If that bloody dominance pheromone kicks in and she cedes to me, I’m in trouble.”

  It was messy politics between creatures neither of them fully understood. “War’s dirty, Boss.”

  “Yeah. Don’t think I underestimate the difference between us.” She blinked rapidly, hit by either realization or embarrassment: he wasn’t sure which. “Remember I’m just a copper.”

  “When are you going to tell Eddie about Lin and Rayat?”

  “Not yet. I think Nevyan needs to know first, and that’s going to be hard enough.”

  “I think word will get around.”

  “I know. It’s hard to decide which pile of shit to tackle first, really.”

  “And we ought to call Aras and let him know we’re okay. He frets.”

  “I’ll do it.” Shan took the virin out of her pocket. She held it awkwardly. It really was like a bar of transparent soap; operating it needed finger placement on a par with guitar fretwork. “I miss my swiss. First thing I’m going to do is to get it back off Aras and have Livaor modify it for me so I can use it on the ITX. He did it for Eddie, so he can do it for me.” She seemed to be making an effort not to look at him. “I’m not good bystander material.”

  “You can’t run the universe.”

  “I know, I know…,” Shan fumbled with the virin and held it in front of her in both hands as if it was going to lunge for her throat. “But I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t responsible for putting things right.”

  “First things first, Boss. Let’s get our own house in order.”

  “That’s what I’m doing now.”

  The lights shimmered inside the virin and Shan’s hands reacted, pulsing violet light back. Ade couldn’t shake the impression that the bioluminescence was trying to communicate. Aras’s voice was projected from nowhere.

  “Are you safe?” he asked.

  “Of course we’re safe, sweetheart. Just wanted to let you know we’re on our way back. Seen enough here. The shooting’s started.”

  “I have news for you.”

  Shan seemed focused on the virin’s lights. “I’ve got a surprise for you, too. Garlic—”

  “Vijissi has been found alive.”

  Shan stared at the play of violet light in silence, expressionless. It was one of those pieces of good news that looked great on first glance and then came horribly unraveled when you thought about them carefully.

  “Oh fuck,” said Ade.

  8

  We understand the Australian position on hosting the Eqbas Vorhi delegation. It’s Australia’s sovereign right to determine who enters its territory and who doesn’t, a precedent established by the FEU when it invited the isenj delegation, and for which we thank them. Like Prime Minister Pho, we look forward to the Eqbas contribution to solving our environmental issues even if that solution lies decades in the future. We will support any and all of the Australasian States if their sovereignty comes under threat.

  IRN
IQ SATAA,

  Canadian Peoples delegate,

  United Nations Security Council

  F’nar: clan home of Mestin, former senior matriarch, mother of Nevyan

  “Where is he?” said Shan.

  “This way,” said Mestin. “I thought you would want to be notified.”

  “You bet. It’s my fault he ended up like this.”

  “I was the one who told him to stay with you.”

  “Why does everyone want to get into a guilt contest with me?” Shan followed her down the warren of passages cut into the rock. “Sorry. Trying times.”

  The flagstones were polished smooth like the foyer of an upmarket hotel, bathed in gold light from a system that gathered sunlight and channeled it deep into the tunnels cut into the caldera: another piece of desirable wess’har tech that would have made them wealthy had they wanted to sell it to Earth.

  They didn’t. Commerce wasn’t part of the way they thought.

  Shan took a deep breath at the entrance to the chamber. It was like every raid she had staged, every door she had smashed down to make arrests, every closed portal that threatened to hold nightmares behind it. But wess’har didn’t have doors, and all she had to do was steel herself to enter and see a creature in the same terrible state that she’d been in when Nevyan recovered her from space. Mestin gestured for her to go in, then walked away.

  Vijissi looked like a little dead animal that had been hit by a vehicle and left to decompose and dry out at the side of the road. There was absolutely no flesh on him; he was just minutely pleated light brown skin shrink-wrapped onto bone. A tube hung from the corner of his mouth. From time to time his eyes fluttered open and their matte black surface simply added to the impression of roadkill. C’naatat had used every scrap of tissue it could spare to maintain life in hibernation in the most hostile of environments and the result was something akin to mummification.

  Jesus, thought Shan. I looked like that once.

  She was aware of the members of Vijissi’s pack now waiting at the door of the chamber, a dozen or so adults and their young. Ussissi had a distinctive scent, like feathers. Their claws made skittering sounds on the stone as they milled about outside, and they were anxious: they wanted him home, but they feared c’naatat more.

  If he had a mate, no female had come forward. Shan had little idea of the family lives of ussissi and she wondered why she’d never asked.

  “You poor little bugger,” said Shan. Would he remember drifting in space like she did? There was no telling how a ussissi experienced c’naatat because the parasite seemed to have a new plan of improvements for every host it colonized. It was certainly imaginative. “Can you hear me, Vijissi?”

  He stirred but didn’t wake. A faint scent of powdery musk and fruit alerted her: Nevyan was coming, and Shan decided it was as good a time as any to try to repair the growing rift.

  You saved me, Nev. You didn’t give up looking for me when everyone else thought I was dead. Damn, if you’re not my friend, who is?

  Nevyan sat down beside her by the makeshift bed. Wess’har preferred to sleep in alcoves, a remnant of their warren-dwelling origins. “I insisted on returning as soon as we found you. But Serrimissani wanted to carry on looking for him anyway. She was right.”

  Shan knew guilt all too well. But it was rare for a wess’har because they dealt in outcomes, not should-have-beens. “He’s alive now. You couldn’t have known he had c’naatat.”

  “I hope he forgives me.”

  It was a remarkably human sentiment and Shan wondered if Nevyan meant it the same way.

  “Three months, six months…you’ve no real sense of time out there.” Shan hoped that was true of Vijissi. “You’re not even sure who or what you are.”

  And what had Vijissi come back to? Aras and Ade had been at her bedside when she regained consciousness—both c’naatat like her, with no fear of holding her or sleeping with her. She returned to a life that was possibly a hell of a lot better than the one she would have had on Earth. But Vijissi was the only one of his kind—just as Aras had once been. And she knew what that isolation had done to him.

  “Still,” she said, continuing her thoughts aloud, “I know what he’s going through and I’ll give him whatever support he needs to get through this.”

  “I think there’s a limit to how much support a human can give a ussissi,” said Nevyan.

  “Yeah.”

  “We fed him exactly as Ade fed you, with a tube.”

  “That’s all you can do.”

  “Are you going to tell me how things went on Umeh?”

  “How do you think they went, Nev?”

  “I can’t smell your scent. I assume they went badly.”

  “Let’s just say I found it sobering.”

  Nevyan put her hand on Shan’s sleeve and tugged gently. Shan followed her outside, wanting to say something of meaningless comfort to Vijissi’s pack; a large female, chest-high to Shan, stood in their way.

  “What will happen to him, Shan Chail?”

  “He’ll recover.” She slipped effortlessly into her Superintendent Frankland persona, adept at breaking bad news to next of kin. “You know what c’naatat is. I won’t pretend it’s easy to deal with. But I’ve managed it, and so will he. He’s alive. That’s all that matters.”

  Liar. How could she trot out platitudes so easily?

  “But he is my son. Does this mean he cannot father young? That he cannot mate?”

  The answer was out before she could stop it. “Yes. I’m afraid it does.”

  Does it? Really, does it? Yes, or else everything you’ve done is for nothing.

  Vijissi’s mother sank down on her haunches, visibly defeated. Shan hadn’t realized Vijissi was so young and it stunned her for a moment; ussissi had none of the visual clues she used to gauge a human’s age. Shit, he’s just a kid. She’d thought of him as an elder statesman of some kind, a diplomat: but he wasn’t. For some reason his lost future crushed her.

  She wanted to be optimistic and say that Shapakti might be able to do for Vijissi what he couldn’t do for Aras, and remove c’naatat from ussissi cells. But if he couldn’t, it was a cruel false hope. She swallowed hard.

  Damn, I didn’t even tell Nevyan about that. It was my own private dilemma. It’ll have to stay that way.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Nevyan waited until they reached the terrace before resuming conversation. It was hard to know where to begin. And Nevyan, just like Vijissi, was far younger than she seemed, too, dealing competently with situations for which she was hardly equipped. There was nothing like seeing an old head on young shoulders for making you feel inadequate.

  “When we found you alive, it was a cause for rejoicing,” said Nevyan. “Now we find Vijissi, and it’s a source of unhappiness.”

  “Ask Aras how well I reacted when I found I was infected.” Shan thrust her hands deep in her pockets and stared out into the pearl bowl of the city. On this cloudy late afternoon it looked more like newly polished pewter. “And I got used to it.”

  “With jurej’ve. With males who bonded with you.”

  “What are you saying? That we make Vijissi a little c’naatat friend and it’s all okay?”

  “No. That wouldn’t be the answer.”

  “Aras coped with being alone for centuries. Somehow, Vijissi will too.”

  “Let’s resume our talk about the Eqbas.”

  Shan decided now was as good a time as any to blurt it out and get it over with. “No, let’s stay on the subject of c’naatat for a few more minutes. It’s not just Vijissi. The bezeri wanted assistance so we gave them Lin and Rayat. And to make sure they survived to do the job, we gave them a dose.”

  Nevyan’s scent of agitation was suddenly as strong as if she’d sprayed grapefruit oil in the air. She stood absolutely still in that wess’har alarm reaction.

  “After all that happened to you, all that you did, you infected them willingly?”

  “Yes.”


  “We.”

  “Yes.” Shan was aware of her reflex of bracing her shoulders and dropping her arms to her sides when she was cornered. She found she was doing it now. “We did.”

  Nevyan cocked her head to one side. Shan stared back at her, waiting for all hell to break loose. Great way to mend fences. This kid’s a real friend, remember?

  “I am…surprised that you took that decision so easily and without discussion.”

  Wess’har always said what they meant and had no concept of tact or kind little lies. Shan wasn’t sure if Nevyan’s show of unwess’har diplomacy was actually shock. It didn’t matter. What was done was done.

  “But I did,” said Shan. She hated herself for defaulting to the don’t-argue-with-me Shan in an instant. “And I’ll deal with it. Esganikan’s aware of what’s happened. So you don’t need to worry about it, okay?”

  They stared at one another for a few more silent seconds.

  “I’m still disappointed,” Nevyan said at last. “And I will remain disappointed. How did Esganikan react, since you told her before you told me?”

  “She’s responsible for Bezer’ej now. She needed to know.”

  “That wasn’t a rebuke.”

  “Okay, she didn’t seem bothered.”

  “And yet you find something in common with the Eqbas.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  Nevyan fixed her with that topaz stare, pupils snapping flower-cross-flower. Shan didn’t notice wess’har pupils these days any more than she noticed Ade’s or Aras’s, but now they seemed suddenly so alien for a few seconds that she found herself wondering whose eyes she was seeing this through. It was almost like the moments of brief consciousness when she was drifting in space, waking and seeing but not knowing who or what she was.

  “Shan, do you want to see the Eqbas invade your world? Is that what you want?”

  “This is my world.”

  “Now you know why I wanted the Eqbas to leave Wess’ej. It wasn’t easy asking them to move their camp to Bezer’ej after I summoned them, but we admit when we’re wrong and seek better outcomes. Why don’t you see that the Eqbas are wrong to interfere with Earth?”