“Fetch Mestin,” she said. “Tell her I want to talk to her. I’ll go to her if she prefers.”
The ussissi shot off without a word. Chayyas appeared pained, and the scent of anxiety had not diminished. If anything, it was more pungent. She turned to go. “Whatever happens, we haven’t forgotten what you did for us all, and how much we owe you.”
It was the first time in his very long life that anyone had ever thanked Aras for his military service.
“Better late than never,” he said, and was more than satisfied with Chayyas’s parting expression of incomprehension.
3
I once had difficulty accepting that Satan was as real as God, but now I see what c’naatat brings with it, I’m as sure as I can be that evil is an entity. If this parasite is not the temptation of the Devil, then I don’t know what is. It is sin in its every facet. If we knew how, we should destroy it. For the time being we should simply be thankful that the wess’har have the wisdom to control its spread, and that we have our faith to prevent our temptation by this false eternity.
BENJAMIN GARROD,
addressing Constantine Council 2232
It was nicknamed the Burma Road, for reasons nobody could now recall. The passage ran in a complete ellipse through the midsection of Actaeon, and at the end of a watch, you had two choices: to join the flow of joggers pounding round it or stay out of the way. Lindsay chose to run.
She hadn’t needed to run on Bezer’ej. Heavy mundane work and high gravity had been exercise enough to keep her bones and muscles healthy. But there was little to do on board Actaeon that put any physical stress on her. Besides, she needed the boost of endorphins to lift her mood. She concentrated on her breathing and settled into a steady pace in the knot of runners already on their fifth or sixth circuit.
Nobody acknowledged anyone else. They were all in their own separate worlds, rankless in shorts or pants of defiantly nonuniform colors. It didn’t feel like running. Lindsay felt as if she was fleeing the ship with a calm and orderly crowd. She wondered if the treadmill in one of the gyms might have been a better idea.
“Your—samples—are still—clear,” said a breathless voice right behind her.
Oh, how she hated people who tried to make conversation while they were running. And it was one of the ship’s medics, too, Sandhu or something. “What d’you mean?”
“Nothing weird,” said Sandhu, and that was it. Lindsay fumed. Then she dropped a stride and drew alongside him. She caught his arm insistently and they dropped out of the pack, leaving the other joggers to disappear around the curve of the Burma Road.
They stared at each other, catching their breath.
“Want to explain that?” Lindsay asked.
“I thought you’d like to know we haven’t found anything unusual in your samples.”
Everyone had routine tests once a month. It was normal procedure on missions. “Why should there be?”
“Well, you never knew when Frankland acquired her biological extras, did you? And you said she was iffy about physical contact, so let’s assume it’s transmissible somehow.”
“You think I might have picked up a dose, then? Couldn’t someone have told me this? Don’t I have to consent?”
“Biohaz procedure. Standard.”
“Biohaz my arse. Serious money, more like.”
“You have no idea how serious,” said Sandhu. He adjusted his shorts and jogged off up the Burma Road again, leaving her staring at his wobbling backside.
So they were going to try every avenue to isolate the biotech.
Lindsay pushed herself away from the bulkhead and broke into a jog again. Okurt should have told her they were checking her out. If they had found anything, what would they have done to her? She shuddered and tried to lose herself in physical exertion.
That was the good thing about running: it helped you think things through.
How were they going to get to Shan Frankland?
Lindsay concentrated on each stride. The solution would come to her in its own good time. She thought for a moment how odd it was to see daylight in a windowless, skyless tunnel of metal and composites. The continuous strip of daylight lamp ran above her head like a glimpse of an explosion ripping open the deck above, a detonation frozen in time.
She was one lap short of completion when she ran into the very last person she had ever expected to see again. She ran into him quite literally: he stepped out of a hatchway and she cannoned into him. He steadied himself and smiled, but it wasn’t affectionate or friendly or even welcoming.
It was Mohan Rayat.
There were definitely things going on that nobody was telling her.
Shan had never been much good at waiting.
She lay on the thin mattress of folded cloth, staring at the open doorway and straining to listen for the sounds of anyone in Fersanye’s household who might try to stop her leaving. There was no door handle to try, because there was no door.
The wess’har had taken the hint that she needed her space but they still had no concept of privacy. It was unnerving trying to wash or use the latrine when you couldn’t lock a door. The cold water that streamed from the ceiling when she yanked on a chain snatched her breath for a few seconds and then—she imagined—c’naatat kicked in and made her breathe normally again. It was still painfully icy. Dream-images of drowning in that dark room crowded in on her and she fought back panic.
There were distant sounds of clattering glass and double-voiced conversations, and she could actually hear the speech patterns clearly now. While she dressed, she pursed her lips and said “wess’har” very quietly, just to try, and was caught out by the sudden emergence of two sounds, word and overtone. Oh my God. Even her voice was changing.
Habit made her take her handgun out of her belt and check the clip. Nevyan, you’ll never make a copper. Fancy not searching me. The 9mm was very old technology, barely changed in centuries, but it worked, and it didn’t need recharging. If you maintained it religiously it never broke down. Then she reached in her grip and took out a directional-blast grenade.
Royal Marine Sergeant Adrian Bennett—shy, loyal, but lethal Ade—had shown her how to use one in an idle moment. She had no idea why he’d left her a couple of the devices when the detachment pulled out. Perhaps he knew she might need one, and he’d been proved right. There was no point pissing about now. The only thing that mattered was securing a deal for Aras.
Shan tucked the grenade inside her jacket and went in search of an exit. She passed males and children on the way, but they simply looked at her and let her pass. Perhaps they thought there was nothing a single gethes could do on her own in a strange city.
One of the males stepped into her path. “Fersanye offers food,” he said, struggling with English.
Shan took it at face value. “I’m going for a walk,” she said. “Sve l’bir. Okay?”
Outside, an alley lined with ashlars curved away in both directions. The tem flies hadn’t coated the shaded surfaces. The stone was still honey-gold, dappled in light and dark by the sun piercing a mesh of vines overhead, and therefore probably too cool to attract them.
“Ah well,” she muttered, and cast around to decide on a direction. Either way would take her to the end of the terrace, and she could then at least look up and get her bearings. Or she could follow concentrations of noise. Wess’har made plenty of that.
The first noise she latched on to was a skitter skitter skitter. She drew her weapon, a pure reflex, and a ussissi came round the curve of the wall and stared up at her, and then at the weapon.
She replaced the gun in the back of her belt, embarrassed at her excess. The ussissi’s gaze followed her hand. “I want to see Chayyas Chail,” she said, and was surprised to hear herself manage the beginnings of an overtone again. And the language, wess’u, was starting to emerge from nowhere, a word here, a phrase there. “Can you show me her house?”
“Perhaps you should go tomorrow,” said the ussissi. “Call her first.”
“Thanks, but no. Show me.”
It seemed to work: the ussissi must have been accustomed to the imperious direction of females a lot taller than him. He said nothing, turned round again and pattered ahead of her, sounding like a dog scrabbling on tiles.
The belts of scarlet beaded cloth that trailed from his shoulders slapped against the ashlars as he kept close to the walls. He didn’t turn round to see if she was keeping up with him. Framed by the light from the window at the head of a flight of stairs, the creature made her think of a white rabbit, and she stopped the analogy right there.
This wasn’t some quaint children’s fantasy. She was a long way from home and there would be no waking up from curious dreams to transport her back to familiarity. For the first time in her adult life, Shan was surrounded by beings as hard, as ruthless and as intelligent as she was, and maybe even more so. It unsettled her. All her natural advantages were gone.
And nobody deferred to her rank or uniform, either. She was going to have to do this the hard way.
“Are you coping with the facilities here?” asked the ussissi suddenly.
“If you mean the toilets, yes. I’m more agile than I look.”
He made a clicking sound and said nothing more. There were windows every few meters along the inner length of the stair wall, and Shan was aware of faces at some of them, long gold and copper wess’har faces, startling flower eyes, all staring. Some might have remembered her from her last visit to the city. All must have known who she was. There weren’t that many wess’har-human hybrids around, after all.
She could even pick out some more words. She could hear the patterns emerging, and they seemed far less incomprehensible than they had the previous day. She could hear rhythm, familiarity, and then another recognizable word leaped out, shocking and reassuring at the same time.
G’san. New weapon.
She was picking it up. “And what might that new weapon be?” she asked, smug at her growing skill.
The ussissi didn’t even glance back at her. “You,” he said.
She drew level with him at the end of a terrace and found herself on the halfway level of the curving walkways that lined the caldera. They were all neatly edged with irregular low walls that made Shan think instantly of accidents. Maybe they did fall down those slopes sometimes. No wess’har would have been looking for anyone to sue, though, even if they had lawyers, which she knew even without asking that they didn’t.
The basin was about four kilometers across, and the slope directly opposite them was draped with a faint haze. If the circumstances had been happier, it would have been a perfect summer morning, and if there had been a railing to lean upon, she would have leaned on it and taken it all in. But there was no rail. A couple of wess’har youngsters walked past at a respectful distance from the edge and glanced back at her in silent curiosity before looking away and going about their business.
The children—what little she had seen of them—unsettled her. It was that quiet appraising glance that they all had: they seemed more adult than the adults. She looked down at the ussissi, who was also gazing at the view, although he had surely seen plenty of it before.
He raised an arm. “Across there,” he said. “Do you see? Follow the line of the upper terraces and you will see a water-course. The buildings to the left are Chayyas’s rooms.”
Shan squinted into the light. The building didn’t look like any presidential palace she’d ever seen. It was just a rambling collection of wess’har holes in the rock like all the others, although it was carefully random in its form and so not like any of them.
It would take her less than an hour to stroll over for a visit. “Thanks. I think I can find that by myself.”
“Tomorrow,” the ussissi reminded her. “You should tell her you’re coming.”
“Of course,” Shan lied, and didn’t care. If wess’har didn’t knock, then neither would she.
Navigating around F’nar was relatively easy. Stand anywhere, and if the heat haze permitted you could see every part of the city. Wess’har didn’t plant screens of trees, just as they never had blinds or curtains—or doors. External doors seemed only to be a weather precaution, or a barrier to tem flies trying to get inside the house to continue their exquisitely decorative shitting.
Water tinkled around her down glass drainage pipes, their sunward side crusted with pearl. She touched the surface. She found her fingertips smeared with what looked like a shimmering cosmetic. She sniffed. It was fresh tem shit, but as shit went, it was remarkably pretty and odorless: somehow, she had almost expected an exotic fragrance. She rinsed her hand under the running water and wiped it on her pants.
The glass pipes were everywhere. Wess’har seemed obsessed with the material. They were a transparent people in every sense, transparent to each other and transparent in language. At least that was something she didn’t have to worry about here. She knew she didn’t have to brace herself for what she might find behind a locked door.
Every space between the houses and every patch of soil that wasn’t filled by a home was crammed with growing things. She almost thought green things. But they were purple and red and silver and white. As she walked, planning her confrontation with Chayyas, she saw wess’har tidying the plants and removing leaves and stalks. Ahead of her a male was carefully pressing tufts of brilliant carmine into a narrow strip of red-gold soil that ran along the front of his home.
Shan paused. He looked up at her, all glittering four-pupiled eyes, with an amazement that she could smell. He began trilling and fluting. She recognized the word gethes, and she also recognized c’naatat, but she couldn’t quite pick out the meaning. He stood up and came up so close to her that she stepped back. They didn’t seem to have an idea of personal space; he was way too close for her liking.
She tried a smile to indicate she didn’t feel threatened, and then realized he probably didn’t understand a display of teeth any better than the ussissi. The trilling followed her as she walked away.
By the time she got to the end of the terrace, marked by a particularly lovely cascade of water fringed by purple-black moss, there were more wess’har waiting for her to pass, making fluting, incomprehensible comments. Christ, she wished she could summon up more of the language. There was the faintest hint of agitation: nothing threatening, just a mild anxiety that was almost excitement.
Shan had no idea what was going on. She paused and looked around at them. Maybe they were holding her responsible for Aras’s plight. That terrace really wasn’t very wide at all. It was a long way down.
I’d only break bones, she thought. A few internal injuries. But it’ll hurt like hell.
But still nobody stopped her or searched her.
The wess’har might have been a mighty military presence in the system, capable of destroying civilizations, but they had no idea about security at home. She walked cautiously into the winding passage that led from the entrance to Chayyas’s clan home, alert for threats, completely unable even now to override her training. A couple of males—Chayyas’s cousins or husbands or sons—simply stared and parted like grain before her as if she had a right to be there.
Yes, they really needed to sharpen up if they were going to resist human incursion. They needed to learn about locks.
But then a ussissi trotted up to her. The creature was just chest tall, and she caught it by the ornate chrome-yellow fabric wrap that hung draped across one shoulder. It looked like another male, a little smaller than the females. She drew it to her and leaned down, so close they were almost nose-to-nose.
“You speak English?” she asked. The meerkat-like things all appeared to speak several languages. “You know who I am. Take me to Chayyas.”
The ussissi stared into her face. She revised her view that they were covered in amber fur. She could see that his skin was finely divided by thousands of barely visible folds, like crepe paper, like a very minutely detailed Fortuny pleated gown. The needle teeth, though, were exactly what she had
taken them for at first sight. Her face was perilously close to them. She held on.
“Chayyas,” she said. “Now.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. “This way,” he said. She followed him through three more interconnecting doorways and down a flight of shallow stairs.
“Chayyas Chail will be most upset,” the ussissi said, his voice like a child’s.
“I’m pretty pissed off myself.”
“You should ask for audience. I could arrange it. I am Vijissi, the matriarch’s…” He searched for a word. “…diplomat.”
“Well, I’m not diplomatic, and I’m not big on patience either. I’ll see her now, thanks.”
Vijissi stopped at a portal and poked his head round it. He jerked it back. Shan crouched level with the creature, knowing he wouldn’t bite a chunk out of her now. He smelled of feathers and clean wildness. “Is she in?”
“She is, Chail.”
“Thanks. Now go, please.” She didn’t want the unfortunate ussissi around if firing started. She felt for the grenade in her jacket. “This is personal.”
The ussissi hesitated for a second but scuttled away, and it was the first time she had noticed they had two pairs of legs under those robes. That explained their characteristic scrabbling footsteps. Then she walked into the chamber.
Chayyas stood gazing at moving images of a landscape that seemed to be set in the stone of the wall. The matriarch was long and gold and hippocampine, with that pretty muzzle and tufted mane that Shan was beginning to recognize as highly individual features. They didn’t all look the same to her now.
“What are you doing here?” Chayyas looked up, unconcerned. “I didn’t summon you.”
“You really ought to do something about your security, for a start,” Shan said. “I’ll tell you that for free. But I’ve come for Aras.”
Crossing the Line Page 4