Crossing the Line (13 page)

He didn't break down until he described his attempts at hunger strikes and how they'd force-fed him.

“They made me eat flesh,” he said. His throat was closing, tightening, thinning out the overtones from his voice. He envied humans their ability to surrender totally to sobbing, but wess'har couldn't weep.

“Is that what hurt you most?” said Shan. Her voice was hoarse. “Is that your shame, Aras?”

“Yes.”

“Wess'har flesh?”

“No.”

It had been meat—animal meat. It was only a small concern to
gethes
, but not to wess'har. He raised his eyes from the swiss, where he had been focusing his concentration, and looked at Shan.

Their combined scents of agitation were too overwhelming for him to pick out any cues and all he had to go by was her facial expression. But she just looked surprised. He wondered if it was shared revulsion, but it wasn't; she simply could not see why that had gnawed at his conscience for so many years.

It wounded him. Surely she of all humans would understand why it was a terrible, disgusting thing to live with. Any wess'har would. It was why he could never tell them.

He checked the chronometer on the swiss. He had been talking without pause for nearly two hours.

“You didn't have a choice,” she said. No, there was no revulsion there at all. She might have been exceptional, but her instincts were still
gethes.
“You didn't kill to eat, and you didn't give the isenj information. There's nothing to be ashamed of.” She put down the jar and took his hands in hers. “What do you need to hear, Aras?”

“I don't understand.”

“What would you most like to have someone say to you now, and mean it, to make you feel better about yourself?”

His jaw worked uncertainly. And there was Ben Garrod in his head again, Josh's first ancestor, talking of
sin
and
repentance
and
forgiveness.
Ben said Aras needed to repent for things like Mjat, but he thought of the bezeri and couldn't find that in himself at all. But there was a vivid taste of death in his mouth, not from Mjat so much as the anonymous being whose flesh had been forced into his mouth.

“I want to be forgiven,” he said at last. “Ben Garrod said his god could do that.”

“I don't think his god's going to be able to get back to you any time soon,” she said quietly. “So I'll do it. I forgive you, Aras Sar Iussan. Now let it go.” She tidied his hair back from his face where a few strands had worked loose from his braid. “Where I come from, you'd be a hero.”

“Not being able to die isn't heroism. And I had no information to give the isenj, so there's no glory in that.” He felt a little better now. “Anyway, as you might say, the things they did to me made me stronger. They tried to drown me, and my
c'naatat
adapted me, and now I can walk under water with the bezeri.”

“Did your people try to rescue you?”

“No. The isenj liked to say that even savages like them went back for their own.”

That revelation really did appear to distress her. Her pupils grew wide and black. “God, you people have an incredibly ruthless streak. Even by my standards.”

“Perhaps now you understand why I wish you hadn't made yourself available to the matriarchs. You'll be used.”

“Hey, I've worked for politicians before. Twenty-four-carat grade A liars and megalomaniacs. You think your matriarchs can top that? Piece of piss, believe me.”

“No, it won't be.” He'd worked out that dismissal of difficulty from its context. “And I know you dislike being told you don't understand, but you really don't. Perhaps as more of my memories filter through, you'll regret volunteering for slavery.”

Shan had that pained-patience look that he had seen her adopt when Lindsay Neville had made errors. “Aras, when you start getting more of
my
memories bubbling to the surface, you'll know what fuels me and why I had no other option.” She paused, jaw muscles twitching, as if she were reluctant to let the words escape. “And it's not just because I'm attached to you, although God knows that was near the top of the list. It's responsibility. I can't walk away when I know I can do something, because I'd tear myself apart afterwards. I don't have another option.”

Yes, he'd known that early on, even before the
c'naatat
had snatched components from her blood and brain and bone and buried them in him. He knew she was angry and trying very, very hard to be perfect and put the world right for somebody. Who? He didn't know.

She smelled good. What would happen if she put the world right for him? Would she fall apart without her impossible objective, or would she become satisfied with life, undriven, alive for the moment?
No
. He needed to stop thinking that way.

“This is depressing,” he said, and stood up. “Work it off, that's what you say, isn't it? Stay busy.”

They went out to the terrace to inspect the half-finished sofa. Shan shook out the blue material,
ahhing
in delight at the color. “Wonderful peacock blue,” she said. To an unaltered human it would have looked white. “Is this the same stuff
dhrens
are made from?”

“No, it won't automatically shape or clean itself. It's just inert fabric.”

“That's the best thing about having some wess'har genes. Every shade of blue looks more amazing.” She gave him a sad smile, the sort that said she was remembering something else she regretted. “Yeah, I went completely ballistic when I found my eyesight had changed, didn't I? I'm really sorry I tore into you.”

“I should have told you that I'd infected you instead of letting you find out for yourself.”

“It doesn't matter any more. Don't even think about it.”

They worked on the sofa together. It was a very unwess'har thing, a sofa, but Shan insisted she would adopt any custom they asked except put up with their hard, unforgiving furniture. The next item on her list was a mattress. They stretched the fabric taut over the layers of
sek
wadding and pinned it to the frame, then stood back to admire it.

“Chippendale might be spinning in his grave,” she said. “But my arse will be the judge of quality.” She sank down into the cushioned seat and let her head loll back on the padded backboard, eyes shut. It was as if they had never discussed torture and their shared nightmares. “Oh. Bliss. This, and a cup of tea, and a good movie. Heaven.”

Aras wasn't sure where he could acquire a good movie. They sat side by side on the sofa and stared out across the basin of F'nar, dazzled by the pearl roofs and hazy gold walls. There was the tinkle of water from the irrigation conduits.

“Lovely,” said Shan. She slipped her arm through his.

“Lovely,” Aras echoed, and wondered what it was like to be able to eat other beings and not be scarred by it.

The cabin hatch swung open and Lindsay's smartpapers fluttered briefly against the bulkhead where she had tacked them. She was close enough to reach out and tap the privacy icon just in time to stop Natalie Cho seeing what she'd written. Detailed options for assassination weren't the sort of thing that made people comfortable about sharing cabin space with you.

“Am I interrupting?” Cho asked.

“Not at all,” said Lindsay, and decided these things might be better done in one of the engineering deck lobbies. If she took the notes down now and scurried away with them, she would look even more secretive. She forced a smile and carried on staring at the progression of scribbled ideas that marched across each sheet. They were literally for her eyes alone: the smartpaper would activate its pixels only in direct line of sight to a pair of retinas that it recognized. If Cho cared to look, she would only see a white sheet unless she was right on Lindsay's shoulder. The security setting still said
mind your own business
, of course, but not so provocatively.

“Are you okay?” Cho asked. “I'm not prying, but if you need to talk—”

She wanted to scream that she didn't need counseling or sympathy, but she thought of Shan and appropriated her resolve. She had to look all business if she was going to get access to the hardware she needed.

“I appreciate your concern,” she said. “I'll be okay.”

No, she wouldn't be. She knew that.
I haven't even got a picture of David.
There was just a task ahead to complete, because if she didn't do it she had no idea where the spiral would end. She peeled her notes off the wall with slow deliberation so as not to look defensive and went in search of sanctuary.

The heads weren't comfortable, but Lindsay could guarantee no visitors. She tacked the smartpaper sheets across three bulkheads and sat on the lid of the toilet bowl, one boot braced against the door even though it was locked. She kept running her eyes over the scrawled words and arrows, right to left, then left to right, then up and down again. It was just absorption. Something would leap out—a solution, or a gap to fill.

Shan: PLAGUE.

She said it was a disease. Lindsay remembered that very clearly. She told Hugel it was a plague.

Who else?

Diseases spread. So who else had it?

She could have been lying. No. She was telling the truth because she was so mightily confident of her authority that she couldn't even be bothered to lie. So she had a disease, and she must have caught it somewhere between Constantine, the wess'har homeworld and the wess'har garrison, the Temporary City.

Someone went into a nearby cubicle, locked the door noisily and coughed. Lindsay fixed on the smartpaper.

Plague.

No, that was a distraction. It didn't matter a damn where Shan caught it or even what it was. What mattered was finding her and destroying the asset. Everyone in
Actaeon
believed she was the source, and that was what they would pursue, so she needed access to Shan somewhere she could use a weapon of such force that it could kill her.

Where was she?

Wess'ej was out of the question. Nobody had enough data on the terrain to plan any sort of extraction operation even if
Actaeon
had the muscle to take on the matriarchs. They had a chance on Bezer'ej, though, and especially on the island where Constantine was located.

And if Shan wasn't there, she would need to get her there.

There wasn't enough data to take it any further. Lindsay took out her stylus and wrote
Background
on one of the sheets. She'd retrace her steps. She would go back to the origins of the Constantine mission and run from the first telemetry right through their mission data to whatever she could get out of the isenj. Eddie would come in handy there. They liked him; Shan liked him too.

“How long are you going to sit there?” said a voice above her.

She jumped to her feet, a pure reflex of panic. Her stylus clattered to the deck.

“You
bastard,
” she said.

Mohan Rayat peered over the gap at the top of the cubicle. It didn't look at all comical. “Two heads are better than one. Share your problem.”

Lindsay peeled the sheets quickly from the bulkheads, cheeks burning. “If you ever do that again, I swear I'll kill you. Get out.”

“Why don't you drop the sorry attempt to emulate Frankland and talk to me sensibly? You'll want to hear what I've got to say.”

“Sod off.”

“Well, listen anyway. I have something you're going to need on that little trip of yours.”

Lindsay's stomach leapt with sudden panic. “What trip?”

“Please, cut the crap. What was it our absent dominatrix used to say? ‘There's no monopoly of information.' The logistics of landing on a planet do tend to leak out.”

“My marines don't discuss operational matters with civilians.”

“
Your
marines have to remove kit from pusser's store. The Supply Branch isn't so tight-lipped, and neither are the inventory tags that track matériel around the system.”

“It's a shame you weren't standing where Galvin was when the shooting started.”

“What, so I'd take two stray rounds from your god-almighty Booties?”

Lindsay knew she wasn't well. She also knew that sleepless night after sleepless night marred your judgment. Judgment suitably suspended, she flung open her cubicle door and slammed open Rayat's. Maybe he wasn't expecting a fiftykilo woman to ram him and knock him off his vantage point on the toilet seat. He certainly didn't seem to be expecting her to press the barrel of her sidearm so hard into his temple that she could see the skin around it turn white.

“Shut it,” she hissed.

Rayat was wedged where he had slipped, one leg behind the pipework and the other at a painfully awkward angle across the toilet seat. “Whoa. It's okay.
It's okay.
”

Lindsay could feel a tremor running up her arm, but it wasn't emanating from Rayat. She could see her own hand, index finger curled against the trigger. It almost didn't belong to her. Her ears hurt from the pounding pulse.

“Do you bloody well know what this has cost me?” She jabbed the barrel harder into his skin. “Do you?”

“I'm sorry. Let's…let's just calm down and talk this through.”

Shan would have pulled the trigger. Shan wouldn't have lost her temper in the first place. But she wasn't Shan. She couldn't do it. Rayat's eyes said he wasn't sure if she would or not.

“If I put one through you, what do you think they'd do to me? What do you think I've got left to lose?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Stay out of my way.”

Rayat put his hand up to his temple, very slowly, very deliberately, and gradually eased the weapon away from his head with his index and middle fingers. Lindsay let him because she hadn't a clue how to climb down from the situation. It must have showed on her face. She still held her aim level with his head, but she needed both hands to keep it steady.

“I'll tell you,” he said. “But this isn't for Okurt, okay?”

Lindsay didn't nod. She didn't want to look cooperative. She let Rayat go on.

“Lindsay, we both have our reasons for wanting to take Frankland. I can't get to her alone.”

He'd never called her by her first name. “So why is that my problem?”

“We both need a solution that doesn't involve handing over her tissues to commercial interests.” Rayat actually looked alarmed. He might have risked deflecting her weapon, but his tone was quiet and soothing. It dawned on her that while he clearly didn't consider her a hard bastard like Shan, he definitely seemed to think she was unstable. That was fine. She could do barking mad very well. “You're not a fool. You know it's a dangerous technology in the wrong hands.”

Lindsay let the pistol dip a little. Rayat's eyes followed it. She braced her arm again and he blinked.

“And whose hands are the right hands?”

“Do you want it to become standard issue for the military?”

“Depends if I was front-line infantry or not.”
Barking mad. Play unpredictable.
Lindsay shoved the gun into her side pocket and squatted down so close to Rayat that he couldn't move from where he had fallen. “But I can't see us strolling in and lifting wess'har biotech without an argument, and if Shan's with the matriarchs, she's as good as gone.”

Rayat closed his eyes for a second and swallowed. “I don't think it's that simple.”

“I know someone will be stupid enough one day to go after her.”

“I meant that it's…look, I have reason to think there's another source.”

“Yes, a bloody enormous psycho wess'har war criminal who's going to be impossible to take.”

“No. Not him, and not there.”

Rayat stopped. Lindsay was going to take out her gun again and ask
where
, but the hatch to the heads swung open.

“Oh, excuse
me.
” One of the civilian stewards stared down at them, clearly interpreting the scene in a highly original way. “Get a room, for goodness' sake.” He turned and stalked out.

Lindsay had lost the moment. She shook her head at Rayat. “Oh, great. I think we could do without
that
rumor starting.” She stood back and let him get to his feet. “D'you know, Doctor, you really don't sound like a pharmacologist or a Treasury officer at all.”

“I think you know what I am.”

“Traditionally, my kind don't like your kind very much.”

“We both serve our state. I just don't happen to enjoy dressing up like a pox-doctor's clerk and talking like Hornblower.”

“You tell me exactly what we're dealing with, and I'll tell you if I'm willing to help you.”

Lindsay waited a few seconds. Rayat seemed to be considering the offer but said nothing. She shrugged, collected her papers from the floor of the adjacent cubicle and walked out.

Nobody in uniform ever believed they were told the whole truth. You took your orders, but with a pinch of salt; and you looked after yourself and your comrades, and then maybe your country. That was the trouble with spooks like Rayat.

They never seemed to have any comrades.

 

Mestin's most junior husband, Sevaor, held out a perfectly amethyst glass bowl as if he expected Shan to take it.

“Mestin will come to you soon,” he said. “Drink this while you wait.”

Shan took the cup and peered in. The liquid in it was speckled with small brown fragments. Whatever it was, it couldn't poison her and it made sense to accept hospitality.

“An infusion,” said Sevaor. He was enchantingly gold, glittering, wood-scented. “
Gethes
like infusions.”

“As do I,” said Shan, and instantly regretted her sarcasm. “Thank you.”

She sipped. It tasted like turpentine. Sevaor was standing way too close for her comfort, and she stepped back discreetly. He closed the gap. She stepped back again.

Wess'har had evolved from burrow-dwelling creatures, and they didn't just tolerate being crammed together—they seemed to crave it. Combined with their eye-watering candor, it made them challenging neighbors.

Shan finished her turpentine tea and stood waiting for Mestin. They weren't big on seating either. The house rang with the double-voiced noise of youngsters and adults. She put the glass bowl on the perilously uneven window ledge and admired the exquisite pools of lavender light that it cast on the floor. Like the buried colony of Constantine, the warren of rooms and alleys that made up the terraced city of F'nar were somehow illuminated by natural light. She still hadn't found out how they did it.

Mestin strolled in to the lobby with the rolling gait of an overconfident sailor. All the females seemed to walk like that. “We go down,” she said abruptly, and beckoned Shan to follow her.

And she
meant
down, too. Shan followed Mestin down a corridor that ran from the Exchange of Surplus Things deep into the ground beneath the city, on another field trip that Mestin assured her would help her fully understand what her new responsibilities were.

She tried to link the tunneling habit to a species mind-set. Once you knew that humans were monkeys, things fell into place. Perhaps she'd get a better insight into the wess'har psyche from picking the right animal parallel.

Maybe badgers,
she thought.
Blennies. Kakapo.
No, they were all endearing, appealing. Wess'har were aesthetically attractive, but they weren't any more cute than the needle-teethed ussissi.
Trapdoor spiders.
Yes, that was more like it.
Scorpions.

Mestin's Spartan helmet of hair was silhouetted against the faint light filtering up from the tunnel ahead. Shan followed her step for step. The lighting rose gently like a sudden sunrise as they walked through a modest doorway.

“Jesus,” said Shan.

Above her head, to both sides of her, and as far as her eye could see, there were racks and tunnels and recesses. A few were filled with machinery. For a brief moment she lost her up-down orientation, like standing in an Escher engraving. She felt cocooned by a felt-lined silence. There were no echoes at all when she spoke.

Some of the warehoused machines were clearly fighter craft, the kind she had seen on Bezer'ej, and some appeared industrial. Others made no sense to her at all. They were simply organic shapes of differing colors with detail worked into them that could have been controls. She could read wess'har script now, and that was no easy task for a human used to orderly lines of characters. The curved side of one machine bore the apparently random swirls and patches of text, ideograms strung out in fishbone diagrams and flowcharts. It made sense—eventually.