Matriarch

by Karen Traviss

  Now he’d have every right to do the same to her, and so would Ade. She was going to abort the child she carried; Ade’s daughter, laced with a good proportion of Aras’s genes as well. And she hadn’t told either of them.

  Okay, who went off in a rage when they found out about Lin and Rayat? You did, you hypocritical bitch. If Ade or Aras forgives you after this, you have to change.

  She made a conscious decision to stop thinking of the fetus as a daughter, there and then. She stripped it of identity to get the job done. If she didn’t do that right now, she’d end up giving it a name and then it would all be so much, much harder.

  Shan knew she split into two personas at times like this, and the one that had the upper hand was Detective Superintendent Frankland, unshockable and robotic, the kind of copper who relished using fist and baton, and who ate her sandwiches watching postmortems while other officers threw up or fainted. She was granite: nobody could even scratch her.

  The persona that the Superintendent was hauling along by its collar for a nice little chat in a soundproofed cell was a woman called Shan who dreaded the pain awaiting her, was guilt-racked by the pain she would cause two good, kind men, and wasn’t sure she could live with herself afterwards.

  The really useful thing about paying attention at postmortems was that you got to know where organs were almost as well as a surgeon. And she knew what they looked like when the deceased were flat on their back. Soft organs spread and settled. Besides, if she pressed hard enough with her fingers, she could now feel the uterus, a brand new one that c’naatat decided she was missing.

  I should have known. I should have seen it coming.

  Speed mattered. If she dithered, she’d chicken out. She found a sheltered spot; the crevice in the rock went back about three meters and was big enough to hide in. And there were pieces of rock she could make use of.

  There’ll be a bit of blood, but you have to get a move on to stop the thing healing you up too fast.

  She’d run through the sequence in her mind so many times in the last few hours that she’d reduced it to a few strokes, like being a surgeon in the old days.

  No anesthesia. Speed, speed, speed. Don’t lose your nerve. You can’t die. You can’t get it wrong and lose the patient.

  She spread a piece of felted efte on the floor of the cave and stripped off her pants. Speed. Don’t even think. See in 3-D. Top of the uterus is near the navel. Don’t think my navel, my uterus. Top of pubic bone: here.

  One, two, three.

  It was true what they said about suicides: they made a few experimental cuts before the big one. She flinched at the first and then went all out. The truly odd thing was that the pain went from off the scale, enough to stop her breathing for a second, to a distant screaming there-but-not-there near-nothing. What’s it called? Latin for anesthesia by injury. Fuck you, c’naatat, you can’t close this wound oh my God I never knew it was so hard to cut flesh and it’s a mess and it’s so so so bloody hard and I daren’t let go now—

  Screaming had always been beyond her. She could hear herself going ah-ah-ah in panting shock and her hand held something far smaller than she imagined, an organ the size of a fist. She let it drop and instinct made her curl up in a tight ball with her arms folded tight to her belly.

  “You bastard useless thing,” she sobbed. “All because I looked at Giyadas, and you thought you were doing me a favor? Don’t do it again, don’t, don’t, don’t…”

  C’naatat might have been listening. It was worth a try.

  The pain flooded back like sound when you opened a window and the moment was pure animal madness. After a while—two minutes, two hours, who gave a shit anyway—she sat up afraid to look. She’d seen enough crime scenes. Superintendent Frankland told her to get a grip and get on with it. There was surprisingly little blood around for an abdominal incision by an amateur because c’naatat was very practiced at stopping blood loss.

  I won’t even have scars. Isn’t that ironic?

  She didn’t look at the piece of meat that had once been her. She didn’t want to think what might be in there, either. She set the delay on the grenade, put it in the box with her conscience and piled slabs of loose stone on top.

  Directs the blast downwards, contains it, concentrates it. Makes certain. You’ve seen enough bomb injuries to know that you don’t always end up with a pile of hamburger.

  Shan walked out of the cave and got clear. Five, four, three, two…

  If anyone heard, that was too bad. She waited for the dust and smoke to clear and checked the aftermath; a decent blaze was devouring the stained efte and the box was shrapnel. She waited for it to burn itself out and checked again.

  Job done.

  She walked home.

  19

  You have clearance to land at the Temporary City. Da Shapakti’s survey team reports that the bezeri remnant has settled to the south of Ouzhari and will help you locate them if you need assistance. Please return the niluy-ghur on completion of your task.

  Message from ESGANIKAN GAI, Temporary City,

  to Shan Frankland

  Bezer’ej: Bezeri settlement

  “Funny how the moral high ground tends to flatten out at times like this, isn’t it?” said Rayat.

  It was increasingly hard to spot the subtleties of expression on Lindsay’s face now, but her light display seemed to be taking its place. If c’naatat was stimulated by the brain chemistry of its host to carry out its remodeling jobs, as he suspected, then Lindsay had chosen an interesting species with which to fit in.

  He refused to believe c’naatat granted wishes. His ride home hadn’t arrived, anyway.

  “Their views might be repellent, but that doesn’t make them guilty of a genocide that happened thousands of years ago,” she said.

  “But they still approve of it.”

  “They know nothing about it except what they’ve read in their records, and neither do we.” She was suffused with a fine shade of royal blue now: that meant she was sad rather than angry, despite the noises she was making. “And it still doesn’t make them responsible for what their ancestors did, and it certainly doesn’t justify what we did here. If they met a birzula now, they’d…anyway, you can educate people out of those prejudices. Racial attitudes on Earth changed over centuries, so why not here?”

  “Well, Professor, Earth history doesn’t appear to be your subject, does it? What a load of crap. Humans are as bigoted as they’ve ever been. It’s hard wired. It’s part of the tribal bonding instinct.”

  “You’re so arrogant.”

  “I’ve so been on the receiving end of bigotry. Remember my name?”

  “I think this is called passive-aggressive behavior. Perhaps even martyrdom.”

  “You’re going to really miss that mouth of yours when it evolves away completely.”

  The argument was pointless. Whatever motivated Lindsay to be here wasn’t what motivated him. All he knew now was that he wanted to go home, that he felt liberated somehow, and that he was suddenly very anxious to find Aras Sar Iussan and tell him just how his precious bezeri had become the only sentient species on Bezer’ej.

  Why?

  He felt that wess’har would change as a result of what they knew. He didn’t see denial as one of their failings. He supposed he didn’t want the bezeri to get away with it, whatever it had been.

  “Do you feel duped?” he asked.

  “Let’s say I don’t feel comfortable,” said Lindsay. “But I helped kill bezeri, so I still owe them. A whole species can’t be evil.”

  “I wish people would talk in terms of risk instead of religious concepts.”

  “There are forty-four of them left. That’s all. Their genocide doesn’t excuse ours.”

  Rayat had forgotten how well sound traveled in water. Saib and Keet appeared at the entrance to the chamber, red and green and curious. Without the translation lamp, they didn’t have a clue what the argument was about. All they knew was that Lindsay was blue and upset. Th
ere was a great deal to be said for being bilingual, Rayat decided.

  Why have you stopped collating records?

  “We’re arguing about responsibility,” said Rayat.

  It is your job.

  “Not that kind of responsibility.”

  I do not understand.

  Rayat wondered if it was the scale of the trauma he was going through, but he felt he was abandoning all his professional control. An impulsive intelligence agent tended to have a short career.

  “I’m trying to work out how you can play the victims of the isenj when you did the same thing to another species—except you did it deliberately, and recorded it as an event in your glorious past.” Something welled up out of him from nowhere. Was it his emotion or someone else’s? “I hope you rot in hell, actually. I wasted remorse on you. You’re the very last of your kind, and you deserve oblivion.”

  Rot translated, but he wasn’t sure that hell had any meaning. But survivors like these knew what wishing them decomposition meant.

  Saib hung there for a moment. Keet edged backwards. From their unlit silent reaction, Rayat guessed that his outburst was beyond their experience. It certainly would have been if the only off-worlders who spoke to them were the wess’har.

  “Did you ever tell Aras Sar Iussan about your track record in war crimes?” No, that was beyond them. He didn’t actually have a light signal for war crimes. “Did you tell him your people killed off their neighbors?”

  We never discussed our history beyond the time when the wess’har came to the system.

  “Well, we Cro-Magnons don’t usually have a public guiltfest about the Neanderthals, either,” said Lindsay. But that was for him, not for them. “And we still killed the bezeri. We owe them. I owe them.”

  None of these concepts could possibly make sense to the bezeri. But Rayat felt better for venting.

  “I’m going,” he said suddenly.

  The announcement surprised even him. His carefully planned, scrupulously rational self had taken a break. They couldn’t kill him: and he didn’t owe them anything. He was walking out of here, or at least going above water where he could stay human and sane until help came. It was astonishing how humans complied with their jailers and would stay put even when they could leave.

  We all follow each other, and if we can’t find anyone to fit in with we’ll go looking for them. Monkey, monkey, monkey.

  He pushed past Saib, and found that the bezeri patriarch was as solid and as heavy as a horse. He hadn’t actually touched one of them before.

  You will come back.

  “Of course I will.” Rayat swam slowly at first and then picked up speed.

  “You’ve got nowhere to go, you bastard,” Lindsay called after him. “Nobody’s coming for you, and the Eqbas will frag you when they catch you.”

  She didn’t chase him. Not even the bezeri attempted to stop him. There really was nowhere to go.

  Rayat wasn’t going to let that stop him.

  After a while he touched bottom and straightened up. It was a relatively short walk to Ouzhari—not a swim, a walk, because he was a human being—and he knew the Eqbas were still working in the area. All he had to do was sit on the shore until they showed up again, and give them an interesting history lesson.

  He was going to breathe air again.

  And he didn’t feel guilty any longer. It was only the absence of it now that made him realize how heavily it had weighed on him when he gave himself the time to wallow in it.

  He finally felt the offshore current and began rising up the slope that ended in white sand that he had blackened with cobalt bombs, and reached inside his shirt to check that the azin shell records were still there.

  F’nar, Wess’ej

  “I’m happy to do it for you, Boss.” Ade leaned on the doorframe, arms folded, and not entirely convinced that he hadn’t done anything wrong. “Are you really going through with this?”

  He slipped his arms around her waist and pressed his pelvis against her. He was still at the stage of the relationship where he found sex an irresistible novelty—and she’d been sleeping on the sofa for the last week.

  She rubbed the back of his hand and eased herself away from him. A week ago she couldn’t leave him alone. Something had happened. Aras thought she was taking Vijissi’s suicide badly, but Ade knew he’d failed her somehow. She was being extra kind, not angry. But she wouldn’t let either of them touch her.

  “Just tell me what’s wrong. Please?”

  Shan took out a shirt and folded it again a slightly different way. She’d packed her grip three times and didn’t seem to be aware she’d done it.

  “Nothing you’ve done, Ade. Absolutely nothing.” At last she fastened the bag and stood staring down through it, unseeing, with her fists on her hips. “Actually, sweetheart, would you come to Bezer’ej with me? Both of you. I really don’t want to be on my own at the moment.”

  He brightened immediately. He was back in favor again. “Anything. Absolutely anything. Just say the word.”

  “I’ve got to finish the job. Rayat and Lin. If I don’t…well, it makes a mockery of Vijissi. Not that it’s the main motive, but he shamed me.”

  “Aras and I can do it. You don’t have to.”

  “Oh, I do. I do.”

  “I’m not that stupid, you know.”

  Her head jerked up. C’naatat didn’t do a thing to disguise that look in her eyes, her focus on a point of nothing a few meters behind him. He’d seen that on plenty of his mates after combat. “I need to talk to you and Aras. And I know that afterwards you’re both going to question what the hell you see in me.” She nodded towards the door. “Go and call him in, and make a pot of tea. Please.”

  Ade’s mouth dried instantly and his throat, stomach and thigh muscles filled with cold water. It was different to physical danger: it was worse, because there was no way of firing back at it or running. Aras, frozen in apprehension, sat next to him on the sofa and Shan stood with her backside propped on the edge of the table, arms not so much folded across her chest as hugging herself.

  They waited.

  “Shall I blurt this out?” she said. “Okay, you’ve spotted that I haven’t been very physical with you two the last week or so. Thing is, I’ve—” She stopped and punctuated what she seemed to be thinking with little emphatic stabs of her clenched fist, gaze fixed on the wall. “I found I was pregnant but I’m not pregnant any longer. And I’m sorry, but I couldn’t see another solution.”

  It took a few seconds for Ade’s brain to process the words. What do I say? How can that have happened? Is it—was it—Aras’s?

  Aras didn’t move a muscle and he stared at Shan the way he always did.

  “Please, I know you’re going to hate me for not talking to you about it.” Her voice switched suddenly into the Shan she always used to be, briefing the payload, putting Rayat in his place, taking no shit. “Hypocrite, after what I said about you two not consulting me? Yes. Guilty as fuck, because I know both of you would be willing dads? Yes. How do we go on now? No idea. Your turn.”

  Aras found his voice first. “This child was Ade’s, yes?”

  “Can’t be yours, Aras. Wrong dick.” When she slipped into total callous cop-speak, Ade knew she was struggling to maintain control. “I should have known. Christ, if this thing can keep me alive in vacuum, then rebuilding a uterus is going to be a piece of piss for it. Or Ade’s plumbing, come to that.”

  Ade swallowed. It was far too early for him to begin to take it in emotionally so he moved on to logistics. He had a vague idea how terminations were carried out; but he couldn’t imagine how Shan had managed it. C’naatat didn’t yield to drugs.

  It didn’t yield to anesthetic, either.

  If she had cried or asked for sympathy, he would have known the motions to go through. But she didn’t. It was like dealing with a wounded oppo. He slipped into jollying her along, pretending things would be all right, just as he was praying they would be.

  “I
’m sorry, love,” he said. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”

  “Nah.” She shook her head. She sounded as casual as if she was disagreeing about a soccer game. She put her hand to her mouth for a brief moment and then jerked herself back into the unshockable copper again. “It was the only option. Really. It was. Vijissi was right.”

  Her voice was coming from a long way away now. Ade fought to stay expressionless. “It’s okay, Boss. I understand. Are you all right?” Tell me. Tell me what you did to yourself. “Oh God I wish you’d told me. Oh God.”

  “It’s done,” said Aras. “You don’t have to explain why, because I know. And I would still have loved to have a child. And I can’t hate you for that.”

  “Okay,” she said. “And we need to avoid a recurrence. So I’m going to see if Shapakti has any ideas. He’s the c’naatat biologist now. So until then, maybe it’s better that we just hold hands. Okay? Do you understand what I mean?”

  It was like listening to a wash-up after an exercise: things they did right, things they needed to do better next time, and what would definitely not be tolerated in the future. Ade preferred it that way because it enabled him to keep his professional head on, but the Ade beneath remembered longing for kids and killing the thought as soon as it formed. He felt he’d made this happen by wishing. He began wondering what was happening in his own body. C’naatat suddenly seemed like an alien.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Or Aras?”

  “Puts the burden on you. My problem.”

  “Don’t you trust us? Don’t you know me by now?” Me. No, he meant me. He wasn’t Aras. Aras could deal with his own hurt. “You shut me out. You make me feel like I ran out on you without knowing it. I’d never do that, not again.”

  She didn’t trust him. She didn’t think he was up to the decision. He wanted a kid and he’d almost had one and now he didn’t have one anymore. It was worse than accepting he never would. He hurt; Shan had hurt him. He knew it was impossible. He made a physical effort to think rationally.