“May I ask you a very personal question?” If she was about to break another taboo, she would find out the hard way. “How old are you?”
“Old.”
“Am I right if I say well over two hundred years?”
“Yes.” No hesitation—but he was suddenly frozen still again. “You’re correct.”
So he was the Aras of the history books. She’d make sure those history files were off limits to the payload. “Let’s keep that to ourselves, shall we? I don’t like the idea of the Rayats of this world becoming interested in your longevity. You’re not dealing with colonists here.” She waited a beat and risked another question, the one that had really been gnawing away at her. “And who is the alien in the construction pictures? It’s not a wess’har.”
He stood very still again, a posture she was starting to interpret as being startled. The diplomatic ice was thin, and she wondered if she had really fallen through this time.
“I’ll explain later,” he said.
“Okay.” Leave it, leave it. She needed him to take her to the gene bank and pushing him wasn’t the way to build trust. “And we never had this conversation, right?”
“That’s thoughtful of you. Join me in an hour. I’ll show you the rest of the island if you want to learn.”
Right call, then. Aras seemed not to bear grudges. It was just as well. Shan suspected she had a festering sore of resentment developing among the researchers, and Rayat made it clear where he thought her responsibilities lay. At least the marines understood it was insane to provoke a powerful alien authority on their home ground. But she wasn’t going to make the mistake of going native this time.
She had to work round to asking Aras to show her the gene bank. Then the Suppressed Briefing would tell her what she had to do next.
Shan stood at the highest point of the island and caught her breath as she looked down at the gray-blue moor ahead of her. It wasn’t a moor, but she was too tired to think up anything better. Her brain could do all the pattern recognition it pleased.
“Time for these,” said Aras, and took a couple of pieces of what looked like gray fabric from the pack he always carried across his back. “Boots. Just hold the fabric around your calves for a few moments.”
“I’ve got boots.”
“Yes, and they will be in a very poor state after this excursion if you don’t cover them.”
The fabric, some sort of charcoal-gray compressed fibrous material, fitted itself to her own boots at a leisurely pace. She decided she was becoming the image of wess’har pragmatism. “Rough terrain?”
“Very. And mind the roads.”
“Yes, mum,” Shan said. She stared at completely unspoilt wilderness. “All that traffic.”
“No, I mean mind the roads. Remember that they shift.”
“And I thought infrastructure back home was going to the dogs.” She thought of Bennett, mastering his fear long enough to pull Mesevy out of the bog with its carnivorous plastic-bag beast. So many animals you could see right through, and all the glass construction, too. It was a transparent world.
But Shan heeded the warning. In places, the living roads were wide enough for them to walk side by side; in others, they were so narrow that she decided to follow Aras step for step as she had Josh. She was glad of the boots, too. The roads here were dotted with a pretty silver-gray plant whose tiny leaves concealed thousands of grabbing, needle-sharp hooks that could shred flesh.
“We are slack here,” Aras observed suddenly. He was getting almost chatty. “You haven’t seen the Temporary City yet, but it is not how I would have wanted it. In Baral, where I come from, we don’t have any surface construction. We put our routes underground. Where we walk, we walk at random so we don’t leave paths. We build our homes into the rock. The Temporary City is all very…noticeable. Conspicuous.”
So he was the architect of Constantine. “Humans care about the landscape too,” said Shan. “Some of them, anyway.”
“It’s not about aesthetics, about having pretty vistas. We do it because we have no right to mark nature any more than other animals can.”
“I bet you’re not impressed by the Great Wall of China, then. You can see it from space.”
Aras made an animal hiss of annoyance. It was very clear. She didn’t need to speak his dialect to work out the general meaning.
“And this is Targassat, is it?” she asked.
“Among other things. You’ve heard of her, then?”
Her? She’d assumed a man, as humans would. “Josh mentioned the name. I’d like to know more.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“I’d like that. Thanks.”
“Your bag,” he said. “Targassat.”
“Sorry?”
“A fundamental. Own no more than you can carry.”
“Oh. Well, I travel a lot. Or at least I used to. I just got used to traveling light. Few possessions. It makes sense.”
“It does,” he said. “Empty your bag.”
“Here?” She looked around and stepped onto a broad mat of vegetation, imbued with a new confidence that she could tell the solid road from the shifting bog. Aras caught her arm just before she plunged into bottomless, living mud. Her gut somersaulted and she found herself flat up against his chest, held fast, and his grip hurt. He loosened it instantly.
“Here would be better,” Aras said.
Shaken, Shan tried to enter into the spirit of the lesson. She sat back on her heels and took the contents of her bag out, one item at a time, arranged them and began naming them. “Change of clothes in a waterproof bag, three days’ concentrated rations, hygiene kit, fifteen meters of microfiber line, and four clips of ammunition—”
“You always carry arms?”
“Habit. You know what a police officer is, don’t you? Well, that’s why.” She indicated the knife in his belt, a lovely shapely blade with a notched curved tip. “Is that just ceremonial? A warrior thing?”
Aras looked blank. “Tilgir. It’s a harvesting tool. I use it to get fruit without touching thorns.”
“Oh.”
“And what’s this?”
“A swiss. Oh, you’ll just love that.” She thought she might recover the situation by demonstrating how to open its screen. “See how many things it does.” She watched as he accidentally ejected its blades and flashlight. “That panel on the back is the comms unit and you insert data beads in that slot. That bit there houses the stylus and the keyboard. One hundred and two separate functions.”
“It’s important to you.”
“Never been without it since I left college.” At least she had bought it herself: there were no painful memories invested in that part of it. “Very old technology, but it still works, and I’m glad it does because there’s no way I’d have implants or one of those bioscreens. It’s nearly as old as you, maybe as old.” As soon as she said it, she regretted it. “Sorry. Won’t mention that again.”
Aras paused, examined the imaging device and fixed her with that animal stare. “Why do you want to protect me?”
“It’s a lot more complex than that. I’m EnHaz. And this is probably not how I was intended to operate, but I see a potential environmental and economic disaster. If there’s anything in your physiology that would help humans to live longer, my planet is in trouble. Many of us live too long as it is. If we can turn whatever gives you longevity into a drug or a therapy for humans, the whole balance of the population will shift. I can show you the maths. And I don’t think my colleagues would be too fussed how they got it from you, Aras, because life-extension pharmaceuticals is serious money, and always has been, ever since the days of the alchemists. You might look like a biped but you’re still an animal to them. So we keep it to ourselves. Okay?”
A glop behind her made her glance round. A sheven had broken the surface of the bog and its not-quite-there shape reared a meter above it, a fragile iceberg. She had no doubt it would be unimpressed by her egalitarian attitude towards non-human species
if it were looking for lunch. And here she was, squatting on a precarious mat of living material in a marsh full of creatures that she couldn’t begin to imagine.
Aras started to put the items back in her bag. She hoped he had understood the lecture.
“I think you grasp the basics of Targassat very well,” he said. “The rest, as your Hillel points out, is commentary.”
And that was Aras. One moment a complete alien, driven by rigid ethics about plants and how to build and not build, the next almost a man, with a better knowledge of Earth’s philosophers and religions than most humans. And still untroubled by the destruction of cities.
“I didn’t realize you were a teacher,” Shan said, trying to start up conversation again. “I thought you were a soldier.”
“I do many things. All wess’har do. But it isn’t what I am. Do you see a police officer before you see yourself?”
“You think I ask you too many questions. I’m sorry.”
“No, you confuse me. You’re too many things and you don’t know it.”
What the hell did that mean? She wanted to tell him things, offer him honesty, but all he seemed to do was to prompt her to ask more questions. He was right. It was all she was, a series of pursuits punctuated by anger. She had always prided herself on her discipline, her tenacity, her complete independence from other people: but it was all about journey, never arrival. She had never once sat down and felt whole, nor lost the urge to get up again and find something else to fill her time.
She tried again. “I’m not interrogating you, Aras. I’m trying to understand you.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want to see the gene bank.” No point pissing about any longer. “And I want to be friends with you, because I am very, very alone out here. And so are you.”
He walked on with his head down and she had trouble keeping up with him. For a moment she thought she would fall so far behind that she would lose sight of him in the dwindling light and slip off the living road into the cling-film embrace of the sheven. Maybe that was what he wanted. She had hit a nerve. Then he slowed down and she caught up. The rest of the journey was in silence.
The swiss chirped about half a kilometer out from Constantine and she flipped the screen open. Eddie was still after her.
“Is something wrong?” Aras asked.
She hadn’t realized how attuned he was to human reactions. “Not really. Eddie wants to talk to me about something I did that was wrong.”
“How wrong?”
“Depends who’s telling the story,” said Shan, trying to work out if she was relieved or just itching to tell Aras what an unsung martyr she had been. I’m a good human, really I am. I’m not a gethes. “I’ll tell you one day.”
No reaction.
“I appreciate your patience. Thanks for showing me round.”
Aras still looked unmoved. She had indeed lost his trust.
“By the way, you should get your people to rig you an underwater suit,” he said suddenly. “The bezeri will meet you. Good night.”
And then again, maybe she hadn’t. She wondered if she would ever get used to his habit of suddenly changing subjects—and dropping bombshells—without warning. You had to have your wits about you when talking to Aras. She walked down the narrow beam of her swiss’s flashlight towards the camp, ready to face Eddie, and so preoccupied with her thoughts that she didn’t notice Bennett until he actually touched her arm.
She jumped and found herself ready to take a swing at him. “Sorry, Ade.” She screwed her eyes hard shut in a second of embarrassment. “You startled me. I don’t react well to sudden movement. Old habit.”
“We were getting worried, ma’am. Out on that bog, in the dark.”
“Yeah, I know you’d be happier if I was wired up.” His bioscreen reflected green light against the leg of his pants as his arms hung at his side. How much embarrassing detail would it really blab to the rest of his detachment? “But I was perfectly safe with Aras.”
Bennett walked alongside her. Ahead of them, the lights of the compound formed a misshapen constellation against the skyline. “Have you eaten, ma’am? There’s probably some of Qureshi’s bean korma hanging around.”
“You know, I could even eat that.”
“Right you are, ma’am.”
“Shan, please. You make me feel like Queen Victoria.” Being aloof from people on Earth had been a defense, a bunker. Out here, so far from everything she had ever taken for granted, it was a handicap. She really did need a friend.
The mess hall was deserted. To her tired eyes the strip lighting seemed harsh and jaundice-yellow. The green tint, originally so soothing, had begun to look institutional. Ben nett slopped two portions of the curry into bowls and heated them up while she made tea, and they sat on opposite sides of the table and ate. Shan forked over the volatile mix with a rueful smile.
“I’m going to regret this later,” she said, thinking of her digestion.
“Ah, but I’ll still respect you in the morning,”
Bennett laughed. Shan felt her throat flush hot, and it wasn’t the curry. It had been a long time since she had known what it was to feel bashful.
“You sure that screen of yours records everything?”
“Pulse, BP, location, temperature, you name it.”
“Interesting.”
The conversation slowed and stopped. She busied herself in the remaining curry, conscious of the sounds of her own jaw and heart, grinding and pulsing unnaturally loudly in her head. She knew she had to walk away from this.
“I’d better get my head down,” she said, and got up to rinse the bowl. She patted Bennett’s shoulder. It felt warm and very hard under her hand. “Good night, Ade.”
He paused. “G’night, Shan.”
Discipline. She said the mantra a few times under her breath as she wandered down the deserted passage that joined the cabins to the mess. Discipline. It was a fine thing to live by, but sometimes it wasn’t much comfort.
Sod technology, she thought, and closed the cabin door.
17
They are not brethren: they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners in the splendor and travail of the earth.
HENRY BESTON, on animals, from The Outermost House
“Look what I found!” Surendra Parekh carried a small dish into the mess hall and laid it carefully on the table, although several of the team were eating lunch. They looked, and groaned.
“I hate calamari,” said Paretti.
Eddie took notice immediately. The scientists huddled over the contents of the dish, which proved to be a small jelly creature, oohing and aahing as Parekh carefully lifted flaps and tentacles with a spatula to show off her find. Mesevy didn’t join in.
“Which part of the phrase don’t take samples didn’t you understand?” Eddie asked. It broke the congratulatory murmurs. “Where did you get it?”
“Hey, it’s already dead,” said Parekh.
“But how did you get it back here?”
“Didn’t you ever shoplift as a kid, Eddie?”
“No, I damn well did not.”
“Well, you’d be amazed how little time it takes to pick up something small when someone looks away for a few moments. Marine Webster doesn’t have eyes in her backside.”
Eddie tossed a mental coin between being the popular kid in the class and doing the sensible thing. Heads said the latter. He stood up. “Jesus Christ, you think this is some sort of game with Frankland, do you?”
“It’s dead. What’s the problem?”
“What are you planning to do with it?”
“Well, I was thinking of serving it with a nice beurre manié sauce—look, what do you think marine biologists do with specimens? We dissect ’em.”
“You put it right back where you found it.”
“Oh, come on.”
“We’re going to be in serious shit over this.”
Parekh
gave him a pitying look, the sort reserved for the hard of understanding. “It was beached.” She went back to lifting tentacles cautiously with the spatula: the poor dead thing had none of the marvelous luminescence that they had seen from the cliffs, so maybe it wasn’t a bezeri, with any luck. It was too small, anyway. He put his hand out and stopped Parekh’s arm.
“Wait until Shan gets here. Leave it.”
She shook him off, eyes all fury. “You don’t touch me. Okay?”
There were a couple of muttered comments from the group that he chose not to hear. “Do we have to get permission to piss now?” Galvin said, and the outburst was unusual for her. “It’s bad enough having to run every report past her without her supervising our work too.”
“Okay, that’s it.” He opened up his database and started paging both Shan and Lindsay, just in case. “I can’t sit here and let you do this.”
“No.” Parekh squared up to him. “This has gone far enough. I didn’t give up everything I ever cared about on Earth just to come here and take pictures.”
If it been Rayat or any of the men, he could have—would have—hit him. Everything Eddie had been brought up to accept without question stopped him doing what he should have done, and that was to physically restrain Parekh. But you just didn’t hurt girls.
Parekh picked up the crate and made a move towards the hatchway that connected the mess with the corridor leading to the makeshift labs. Eddie stepped into her path and Parekh paused for a pace and then shoved past, no doubt reading those primeval signals that said Eddie wouldn’t really hit a woman. She hurried down the passage into the cold room and slammed the hatch behind her.
The biohazard seal hissed and the hatch was locked. Eddie hammered on it and swore a few times, but he had lost the battle. He should have tackled her physically in the mess. But he had no idea then that scientists could be so assertive—nor that he would cave in so easily. The bastards didn’t follow rules and regs like marines. He paged Lindsay and Shan again, and waited.
It took way too long. It was ten minutes.
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