Crossing the Line (12 page)

“I'm lost now.”

“Chariots. Means pig in Italian. Um…1939 to 1945 World War? Ring any bells, ma'am?”

“Bennett's the history man, not me.”

“They were like torpedoes, one-or two-man submarine transport to ferry diver commandos around. They sat astride them. Quicker than swimming to the target.” Webster was an inventive woman. “So we use a powered tow to take us the final leg from the shuttle to the point where we use the suits' systems to descend. That gives us longer on oxygen before we're drawing on the suit's supply. We can adapt one of the small cargo tugs to pull us in, maybe with extra O
₂
. We're talking a total load of maybe two to three thousand kilos. That's doable. Chaz and I have modeled it a few times.”

They all called each other by harmless kids' nicknames: Chaz, Izzy, Barkers. They weren't harmless at all. Lindsay tried to visualize speeds and distances. “Well that sounds like even more fun. And if we land, and achieve our objective, how do we get out through the defnet again?”

“It's a gamble,” said Chahal. “But I suspect it looks for incoming, not outgoing, and if these vessels were allowed to land on Bezer'ej in the first place, chances are it's tagged them as friendly anyway.”

“And if you're wrong?”

“Then we're fucked, ma'am, but at least we won't know much about it.”

This was my idea,
Lindsay thought.
I must be out of my skull.
“If you're all up for it—”

The hatch juddered against the metal bar Qureshi had jammed across it. Then there was silence.

“Who is it?” Lindsay yelled. The marines gathered up the Once-Only suit with smooth efficiency and bundled it into the nearest locker. Lindsay walked slowly up to the hatch and nodded at Qureshi to release the magnetic clamp.

The hatch swung open. It was Mohan Rayat.

There were things you thought you would say when you caught up with someone like Rayat. Lindsay hadn't rehearsed them quite as often as she had various denouements with Shan, but she thought she'd have a line. She didn't.

“Dr. Rayat,” she said. “Anything we can do for you?”

She had always wanted him to look like a weasel caught in headlights, but he didn't. He could meet her eyes, which she thought was the confidence of a man at ease with being a total shit.

“I think we can do something for each other,” he said. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Training,” she said.

The marines stood around in that I'm-relaxed-but-I-could-turn-nasty pose that Rayat seemed to provoke. Qureshi looked especially hostile. Maybe her leg was playing her up, and she still blamed Rayat for causing the skirmish where she acquired the wound. Rayat didn't look as if he was leaving of his own accord.

“If you have a point to make, then make it,” said Lindsay. “We're busy.”

Rayat stared pointedly at Qureshi. “It's a confidential matter.”

“There's nothing I keep from the detachment,” said Lindsay, and knew it was an empty gesture. “If I can hear it, so can they.”

“All right, we have a mutual objective.”

“I don't think so.”

“Based on what premise?”

“You work for a pharmaceutical corporation and we work for our country. No mutuality there, I suspect.”

Rayat shrugged. “Actually, I'm paid by the Federal European Treasury.”

“You work for Warrenders.”

“I imagine they think so too. Anyway, Warrenders ceased trading about ten years ago. Takeover by Holbein.”

Lindsay wished once again that she had Shan's quick, savage tongue. “I wouldn't believe you if you told me what time it was,” she managed. But he had been revived for a reason, and before the others: she doubted if it was for health screening. They could have done that without reviving anybody at all, she was certain. Whatever it was, Rayat needed to be conscious for it, and the rest of the party had been revived to preserve the story or…she wasn't sure what else. She almost didn't want to imagine.

“I'm sure you're capable of carrying out security checks,” Rayat said calmly. “Confirm what I've said and then get back to me. We both want to secure whatever Frankland's carrying for our own government, and I need the means of access, and you need my technical expertise.”

“Why would we need a pharmacologist, exactly?”

“That's not my only area of expertise.”

It was very easy to say absolutely nothing while Rayat turned and stepped back through the hatch. She couldn't think of a single damned word. Qureshi barred the hatch behind him again.

The
Treasury
? What the hell would the Treasury want with that biotech, let alone Rayat?

“Do you know, I wouldn't even like that bloke as pet food,” said Becken. “You believe him, ma'am?”

“I'll check,” said Lindsay.

“How did he know what we've been tasked with?” asked Qureshi.

There's no such thing as confidential.
Another fragment of Shan's rough-and-ready political analysis surfaced in Lindsay's memory. “Either Warrenders or Holbein or whoever are better informed than we think, or the Defense Ministry is talking to the Treasury.”

“Yes, but are they telling each other the truth?” said Bennett.

There were always divisions within governments, between departments, onion-skinned and Byzantine, sometimes openly hostile and sometimes waging covert cold wars with each other. If Rayat was telling the truth about his paymaster, Lindsay still couldn't assume they were all on the same side.

She went back to her cabin to barricade herself in her bunk and ponder the missing elements of her puzzle.
Treasury?
It had to be a patents thing. The biotech would be a massively profitable commodity. Governments needed revenue: there was only so much tax you could levy on an aging population and companies that could up sticks and move to a cheaper tax zone at will, leaving more unemployment in their wake.

But they could have secured ownership through the Defense Ministry. Why did they need Rayat? Why wasn't he talking directly to Okurt instead of her? It had to be another of his scams.

It was the sort of puzzle that Shan Frankland would have shaken apart in no time at all. It was a complete sod, as Becken would say, that Lindsay couldn't ask her to help her plan her own destruction.

 

The little red swiss sat on the table and Aras wondered if he dared pick it up again.

He didn't know humans at all. He was certain of that now.

Shan always carried the instrument even though it couldn't link with any of the data devices on Wess'ej. She said its blades, probes and various devices were still useful. Aras suspected she carried it much as little Rachel Garrod had clutched a frayed piece of her baby blanket until she was five, and nobody could part her from it. Given the material that was stored in the swiss, he found Shan's attachment to it disturbing. He would have wanted to throw it as far from him as possible and never look into it again.

It wasn't just the file on the men who made entertainment of suffering women, children and animals. There was more deviance and misery in Shan's files than he could take in at one sitting. There were people who tortured their own children to death, or raped them; there were those who mutilated total strangers for unfathomable reasons; and there were so many different forms of murder that he simply stopped running the files long before he got to the robberies and thefts and frauds and something called
public disorder.

Shan had done many different things in her career. She told him they moved police officers from department to department frequently, because there were some duties that could destroy you in time. Aras wondered if it was already too late for her. He laid the swiss down on the table.

He knew humans did most of those things. But crime had been historic generality in Constantine's archives. It hadn't been the personal and detailed experience of a woman he knew and cared about. He thought of Mjat, and although that had been a terrible time, it was exceptional: it was also necessary. He hadn't done it for amusement or because he had abdicated responsibility for his actions. The wess'har in him said motive didn't matter, but his human influence said it mattered very much indeed.

Eventually he picked up the swiss again and opened files at random on its fragile bubble screen. There was very little in there that told him anything personal about Shan Frankland. He found some music and a few images of what appeared to be comrades of hers in dark uniforms, laughing and shouting, brandishing glasses of yellow foaming liquid at whoever was recording the image. There was nothing that looked like family or lovers. There were a lot of lists too: lists of tasks to complete, and lists of names and numbers.

Then it struck him that it told him exactly what she was. What wasn't in there hadn't happened, or hadn't mattered to her.

Aras now knew what the flames in his dreams were.
Riots.
He was astonished that she and others had to deal with them face-to-face, with only a transparent shield and small weapons. It was war: the obvious response was to wipe out the source population completely and stop the threat for all time. But humans seemed not to want to find absolute ends to their problems.

Shan's footsteps outside grew louder, distinctive and unlike anyone else's in F'nar. He put the swiss down and waited for her to open the door. She had stormed out angry, and he expected her to return in the same state because she seemed to be perpetually irritated lately. An angry
isan
was something that still made him cower. Whatever
c'naatat
had made of him, he would always be at his core a wess'har male, a provider and a carer and a seeker of approval, nothing without an
isan
to focus upon.

The door made a slight sigh of air as it opened. Shan came up behind him, smelling of no emotion in particular—just pleasantly female—and put her hands on his shoulders and squeezed gently. He held his breath. It wasn't the sort of gesture he had come to expect from her at all.

“Sorry,” she said quietly. “I don't normally lose my rag like that.”

No anger, then. Aras had no idea whether to reach up and clasp her hands or just sit very, very still. Eventually he slid one hand up from his lap and placed it over hers. She didn't react.

“You've seen some very ugly things,” he said. “I think I understand your reaction.”

She made a small puff of contempt. “Why didn't you tell me what happened to you as a POW?” She pronounced it pee-oh-double-you, a phrase he had never heard said aloud, but he knew what it meant. “I've got your memories. They're…well…”

“I tried. You were preoccupied with
c'naatat
at the time.”

“I'm sorry. Really I am. I had no idea. I would have handled things a bit more sensitively.”

“I have your memories too. Riots. You were truly frightened of the petrol bombs.”

“Yeah.” She shifted slightly. “That's the problem with a transparent shield. You see the flames hit. However many times it happened, I never lost the feeling I was going to shit myself. I suppose the most vivid memories surface first.” Suddenly she slid her hand free of his and stepped back, as if she'd woken up to something she was doing in a dream. “I'm sorry if I've added to your problems.”

“I think we're even. Is that the right phrase?”

“Very apt. What else is bubbling up?”

“I find lot of regret and anger. And violence, much of which you
don't
regret.”

“Now you know me for what I am, then.”

“I have no difficulties with that. Do you?”

“It's what I had to do,” she said. “Come on. Cup of tea. That'll sort
anything
out.” She took her precious supply of dried tea from the shelf and put some water to boil on the range. “Kind of you to plant the tea bushes, by the way. Some bloke down in the fields showed them to me. I don't think he meant to spoil the surprise.”

“There are some things you seem to need in order to be happy. I'll obtain them for you if I can.”

“Are
you
happy, Aras?”

“I find F'nar a difficult place to be.”

Shan paused with the jug in one hand and the glass jar of broken dead leaves in the other. She looked unusually soft and sad for once. For a moment he thought he might ask the one question that had been on his mind, whether he liked it or not, for the last few weeks.
No.
It wasn't fair. She couldn't even tell what she was picking up on his scent. She mistook it for anxiety.

“How do wess'har react when you tell them what happened to you?” she asked.

“I've never told them. Not the details.”

“Why not?”

“Embarrassment. Shame.”

“Have you never told
anyone
?”

“No. There are too many things I wouldn't want them to know.”

“That's not very wess'har.”

“Neither am I.”

“Look, I'm going to live out most of it in my head anyway, aren't I? You need to get it out of your system. Tell me.”

“I did shameful things.” It wasn't that he didn't want her to know. He didn't want to hear himself say it. “Things I regret.”

“We all have. Jesus, you
know
what I've done. We can swap horror stories later. Come on. I need to hear everything.”

She said everything, and so he took her at her word. Wess'har were nothing if not literal. He glanced at her swiss, still propped on the table, and noted the time when he started. Shan seemed to be struggling to keep her eyes focused on his and from time to time she blinked rapidly. She was still holding the jar in one hand.

The isenj were not especially inventive torturers compared to humans but they made up for a lack of originality with persistence. Aras described flayings and brandings and beatings. He described broken bones and asphyxiation and freezing. It was random and angry violence rather than a strategy calculated to achieve an end, just outpourings of communal rage concentrated on one man, the destroyer of Mjat, because they couldn't get at the whole wess'har race. But she had seen it, and experienced it, and that somehow made it far easier to pour out a history he had kept secret for generations.