Crossing the Line (39 page)

My fault,
Eddie thought.
My fault.
Aras didn't let go. He didn't even look at Bennett.

“I failed the bezeri,” said Aras. “I killed Josh Garrod. And now I've lost her. How can I carry on?”

“Because it's not finished. It's just starting. She's not here to sort it. But you are.”

Bennett's hands tightened on Aras's arm. “Aras, just let it go. Come on. I know it's hard. Come on.”

Aras was pressing so hard on his chest that Eddie thought he would black out. Then he let him go, and Eddie slid down the damp pearl wall. Aras sat down slowly beside him.

“I need to lay her to rest,” he said.

“You leave that to Nevyan. She's got the ussissi searching.”

“Is there more than this life, Eddie?”

“No, mate. Only what we do. That's why it's important that
you
hang on.”

“You have your focus, Eddie. You want to tell the story and shame your government, and you'll always find one to shame. I'm not sure of my purpose beyond vengeance.”

“Then do it for Shan. Even if it's only revenge, the end result is the same.”

“I shouldn't have hurt you,” Aras said. “I apologize.”

“It's okay,” said Eddie. He gave Bennett a
go away
look.
I'm fine. We need to talk.
Bennett shrugged and went back in the house.

They sat in the puddles on the terrace for a long time. Eddie didn't want to leave him sitting there alone. After a while he looked at his exotic, man-beast face and saw something he knew couldn't be, but was.

There were definite tears in Aras's eyes.

C'naatat
had relented and handed him one new adaptation that he had wanted so badly for so long. He wept for his
isan.

Eddie joined him.

Minister Ual called Eddie in the early hours with the best news he had heard in recent weeks.

Aras shook his shoulder to wake him. He stumbled to the console and tried not to think what would happen to this odd friendship if Ual found out about the quill. Eddie suspected the wily statesman would think it was fair game, nothing personal at all.

“Pressure from one direction can be deflected,” Ual said, wheezing and sucking. “But pressure from two sides can crush. I have your link.”

“Thank you,” said Eddie. He motioned to Aras to find BBChan 56930, the current primary news feed. He had to nudge him: Aras was fixed on Ual's image, unblinking. “How did you manage that?”

“I told your Foreign Office that I was most disappointed that humans were taking a dim view of a race who would help them establish instant communications across galaxies. I also said it would ease my own electorate's fear of aliens if humans were seen to admit their failings.”

“A stylish threat, sir.”

“No threat,” said Ual. “You have a full hour, and I think the phrase is
live to air.
” He made that rattling bubble that Eddie liked to think was a giggle but could as easily have been a curse. “And I do
not
care for your news editor.”

“I'll buy you a beer one day, Minister. Thank you.”

Eddie had a half-hour package ready to run. It opened with the patrol craft recce footage of Ouzhari burning. It ended with Ade Bennett's eyewitness account.

“Shall I leave you to it?” asked Aras.

“No, you stay right here.” Eddie pulled on a fresh shirt and hoped his stubble would make him look authentically warry rather than a man who'd been dragged out of bed and caught on the hop. He set the bee-cam on the console and pulled two stools into place. “Because when this lot finishes running, you're on. I'm interviewing you.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I'll ask you questions and you answer them as you see fit. They might not sound like kind questions, but don't get angry on air. You can punch me later.”

“This sounds very negative.”

“You know when you tore into me at dinner that time?”

“I was very rude. I meant to be.”

“And it would have been great TV. Just say what you think.”

“What game is this, then?”

“Showing them what they're taking on. Conveniently running back-to-back with scenes of destruction caused by gungho humans.”

“Is this a substitute for drama, Eddie, or have you become a propagandist for us?”

“I'm treading a fine line. But all I'm doing is showing people things that they're not here to see for themselves. How they process it is down to them.”

Eddie keyed in his code and found that it still worked. He could begin his transmission at any time with a sixty second stand-by so the current anchor could get the bulletin out of the segment and manage a reasonable throw to a live OB from 150 trillion miles away. He could see the output from the split feed from Umeh Station.

He didn't even have to talk to News Desk.

“Thirty seconds,” he said to nobody in particular, and smoothed down his shirt.

 

Lindsay Neville walked through the crowded biodome of Umeh Station and found a path had cleared for her.

It wasn't the sort of leeway granted to Shan Frankland by dint of her commanding presence. The evacuees just didn't look like they wanted close contact with the woman who had carried out an act of war against a militarily superior neighbor.

And Okurt and his senior officers had died in
Actaeon.
She was now the ranking officer in a ship of chaos.

She had the feeling she wasn't going to be popular. It was hard to be loved and respected when you had stranded nearly four hundred people a long way from home without the prospect of rescue.

“There's Jon,” said Barencoin. He put his thumb and forefinger between his lips and whistled so loudly that Lindsay jumped. “Oi, Jon! Over here!” He grinned, but not at her. “And there's Sue. The old firm again, eh?”

“I want you lot to keep Rayat on a leash for the time being,” said Lindsay.

Barencoin inhaled slowly. “He's your problem now, ma'am,” he said. “He's not going anywhere. None of us are ever again, I reckon. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to find a doctor to get this bloody round out of my leg before the meds wear off.”

He limped off into the milling crowd to be reunited with his two comrades. If Lindsay thought she'd have marine backup, she was mistaken. She wandered into one of the construction huts and asked for the duty foreman. It was time to make a start on creating some order and purpose. She was going to be here a long time.

“Well, that was fucking clever.” The young engineer sitting behind the makeshift desk just glanced up at her once. He was checking inventories. “You're the military genius who nearly got us all fried, eh?”

“I'm not even going to discuss that,” said Lindsay wearily. “We need some organization here.”

“We've got nearly four hundred people in a half-finished habitat. It's enough water, lavatories, and food facilities that we need. You offering?”

There was no point pulling rank. Civilians didn't jump for her. “Okay,” she said. “You get on with the logistics and I'll round up my personnel. Then we can sit down and talk sensibly later.”

“And bring a shovel,” said the engineer. He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder without looking up. “Have a look at the news. You're on. Or at least your handiwork is.”

Lindsay cast around and found the small screen obscured by piles of insulation sheeting. She was going to leave: she didn't have time for this. But she didn't. She watched. She watched because she heard Eddie's familiar voice over images that she should have recognized but didn't.

Lindsay watched Eddie's news special with detached horror. She had lived these events. They looked much worse on screen. Stripped of the emotion of experiencing them, she saw only what history would see: destruction, anger, panic and a huge gamble taken on what humans might have done had they got hold of an organism called
c'naatat.

Viewed cold, it seemed a very slim risk.

What have I done?

It gave her an unpleasant feeling in her mouth, the sensation that the sides of her palate just above her teeth were closing together like Scylla and Charybdis. She wasn't sure if it was adrenaline or nausea.

Eddie was now interviewing Aras.

“Who do you see as the greater threat now—isenj or human?”

“
The isenj managed to destroy almost the entire bezeri population. Humans—
gethes
—finished the job, as you would say. I have no great love for either species.”

“Do you feel the alliance between the two has increased tension here on Wess'ej?”

“Of course it has. The isenj are native to this system, but you're not, and you have no right to be here. As long as you have a base within striking distance of us, we will not rest easy. We have seen what a handful of you can do.”

“And your people have a reputation for all-encompassing military solutions.”

“If you're referring to the cleansing of Bezer'ej, yes, we act decisively.”

It was extraordinary. There was no mention of Shan. There was no mention of
c'naatat.
Eddie had skirted neatly, round it but the question hung there: why bomb the bloody place? Lindsay wondered what game he was playing. Maybe his bosses had warned him off. She was angry. It named her and it named Rayat and made them both look like war criminals.

“It wasn't like that at all,” she said angrily at the screen. “Eddie, you bastard. Tell them why I did it.”

“Yeah,
I'd
love to know,” muttered the engineer.

Lindsay turned and walked out. She'd done the right thing, but the wrong way. She'd wiped out—no, she had
almost
wiped out—a dangerous organism that humans simply couldn't be trusted to handle. And she couldn't tell anyone right then, or maybe ever. All they saw was her crime and her stupidity.

It was just like Eddie had said about Shan and that business with Green Rage. It was Rochefoucauld's classic example of perfect courage, a massive private sacrifice that won you no worshipers.

For the first time, Lindsay knew exactly how it felt to be Shan Frankland.

 

Ceret was rising. The
tem
flies, swarming before moving south to hotter climates for the winter season, battled for position on the first sun-warmed stones.

“It's still the prettiest damn thing I've ever seen,” said Eddie. “It's not a bad place to be marooned.”

Eddie had more of a choice than he had realized. F'nar was not the only city of pearl, just one of a chain of settlements and cliffs and other convenient surfaces that stood on the
tems'
migration path. Aras said he regretted not showing all of them to Shan.

The
tem
flies were on the move now, great black clouds of smoke across the face of Ceret. If you looked at them long enough, you could pick out images that resembled animals or plants or landscapes.

Children enjoyed the game of recognition. Nevyan waited with Giyadas for an especially large cloud of flies to sweep across the setting red disk of the sun.

“Great shot,” said Eddie, like a fond uncle. The bee-cam was diligently recording it all. He'd use that the next time he got an uplink.

Giyadas, absorbing English at an alarming rate, watched him intently.

“Great shot,” she said, accentless.

Mestin had promised to send Serrimissani to fetch them when the message came through from the World Before. She was waiting by the screen, an unusual act of patience for her. There was a vague promise of help in the recognition of a common threat, but Eddie had heard that before on Earth. Had it been the matriarchs of F'nar who had said it, he would have believed it.

But not even the ussissi knew how the World Before would really react to a plea for help from a band of outcasts who had cut themselves off thousands of years ago because they didn't want to get involved.

There was always the chance they would come back and tell them to piss off.

“Have you seen pictures of them?” asked Eddie.

Nevyan jiggled her head like an Indian dancer. “No.”

“You're pretty short on curiosity for a clever species.”

“Curiosity leads to exploration, and we never planned to go back. But I
am
curious, Eddie.”

“You'll find out soon enough.”

They all would.

Bennett had persuaded Aras to come out and see the swarming. Aras was sitting with his head bowed, absorbed in the contents of a small red cylinder whose fragile screen was strung between filaments. It was Shan's swiss. He never put it down now. Bennett simply sat and watched him. They had a lot in common. If Aras was going to survive his grief, it would be Bennett who would be most help to him.

A bloody shame,
thought Eddie.
Poor sods.

Serrimissani was suddenly among them, agitated, urgent. “They are responding,” she said. “Right now. Come.”

Eddie wasn't the last inside. Aras was reluctant to watch and shook his head. Bennett waited with him.

“Call me when I can do something useful,” he said, and held the swiss in both hands as if it would break. When it did, there would be nobody left who knew how to repair it or where to find the parts.

The rest of them—Nevyan and Mestin's families and Eddie—stood and watched the image from a city that was well-proportioned and softened by planting, but very, very urban.

For once Eddie was not alone in his bewilderment and wonder.

The whole of F'nar had ground to a halt. The signal had been made available to everybody: there were no secrets among wess'har. The usual backdrop of domestic noise, of scraping glass utensils and caterwauling matriarchs, had ceased. For the first time Eddie could hear the trickling water from thousands of glass conduits around the caldera. It was as heart-stopping as a total eclipse.

They were all looking at their screens, wherever they were, because that was what he was doing too. They were looking for the first time at kin they hadn't seen in ten thousand years.

And the face in the image was almost wholly alien.

The wess'har genome was as flexible as thread, always adapting, reshaping. It was what made them such a perfect host for
c'naatat.
And in ten thousand years, both branches of the family had gone their own distinctive ways.

“That's a wess'har?” Eddie asked.

“Yes,” said Serrimissani. “A matriarch.”

The scarcely recognizable creature had a ussissi interpreter, and that much they could all identify. It was the ussissi who spoke after a stream of double-voiced but unintelligible sound emerged from the female who looked little like the
isan've
Eddie had now started to see as normal.

“Tell the
gethes
we are coming,” said the ussissi, repeating the words of his matriarch. “Tell them that we too believe in balancing, and that the bezeri will have justice, even if none are left to witness it. What threatens you threatens us.”

Nevyan had her long arms crossed over her chest in that odd nervous gesture the females seemed to have. “So it's done,” she said. And she simply turned and walked out on to the terraces again. Eddie went after her.

“Is that it?” he said. “What next?”

“We will arrange liaison now. It will take a little time. And you have much to do.”

“Yeah, I've got some stories to broadcast, when the time's right. You've seen the news. Earth's boiling. So I'm busy. What will you do?”

Nevyan pulled her
dhren
up around her neck. “I have important work to occupy me.”