Crossing the Line (5 page)

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.”

“Aras is detained.”

“I know. But it's me you want. I'm the
gethes
.” Shan stepped closer. Chayyas probably didn't know how humans smelled at the best of times. Could the matriarch know she was gambling? More to the point, did
she
know herself whether she was gambling? “Well, I'm here. That solves the problem of the biohazard getting into the human population. Let Aras go.”

“We have already neutralized you by confining you to Wess'ej. Why should I make concessions?”

“Because it's the right thing to do. He did it for me. I'm the risk, not him.”

“That is the problem. He doesn't behave as a wess'har. He puts personal and individual whims above the common good.”

“Okay, let me put it another way. You have one chance to learn what it takes to deal with humankind and I'm it.” Shan reached behind her back and down her spine into her waistband the way she had a thousand times before, feeling the body-warmed composite and wrapping her fingers round it. She pulled the gun out in a practiced arc and held it two-handed to Chayyas's left temple. Chayyas didn't move. There was no reason why she should know what a gun looked like.

“You have lights in your skin,” said the matriarch.

“It's the gun you need to look at, sweetheart.”

“Will that kill me?”

“Indeed it could.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“It's the sort of thing humans do if they want to achieve an end. I want you to let Aras go.”

“Or you'll kill me.”

“Perhaps.”

“My bloodline lives on. I don't fear death.”

The safety was off. “Neither do I. But you know you need the intelligence I can provide. Leave Aras out of it and you have my full cooperation. Harm him, and you're going to have to guess your way out of this. You can't even stop me bringing a weapon into your home. How are you going to cope with an army?”

Chayyas's scent began to take on a more acidic note. “I don't bargain with
gethes
.”

“I'm the one who might spread this thing to humans. Without me, there's no threat.”

Chayyas didn't quite smell of fear. The pupils of her amber eyes were just slits, a faint black cross on a cabochon topaz. “Is that weapon less powerful than the isenj one that struck you?”

“Probably,” said Shan, listening to herself as if she were standing outside her own body.
Where the hell am I going with this?
She sat down and put the gun on the table, safety still off, within easy reach. Then she took the grenade from her jacket and turned it round so Chayyas could see it. “But
this
isn't. Once I pull this pin, you have a count of ten to get out of this room before it blows. This will fragment me. You know what that means. Not even
c'naatat
can repair me then. Problem solved.”

What the hell am I saying?

Chayyas said nothing and looked at the grenade as if it was just a fascinating toy.
She thinks I'm bluffing
. Shan flicked her thumb under the cap, suddenly struck by the completely irrelevant fact that her claws were looking almost like normal nails now.
Am I?
And bluffing was something she couldn't afford to do, not with a matriarch.

It was all happening too fast. She hadn't planned this at all well.

I have to mean it
.

She drew the pin out all the way. “Ten,” she said. “Nine.” Chayyas still stared. “Eight.” Shan shut her eyes. “Seven.” And then it seemed that Chayyas suddenly understood, because there was a rush of air and acid and a massively powerful grip closed round her hand and the grenade, pinning both to the table, and almost crushed bone. Shan opened her eyes in shock and pain.

Chayyas held on grimly. “Replace that pin,” she said.
“Now.”
The matriarch's anger seethed like boiling vinegar in the air. The pain was all-consuming but Shan held her position.

“Let Aras go.”
Jesus, I can't hold this thing much longer
. “Let him go.”

The matriarch's pupils snapped from flower to cross and back again.

Shan held on and Chayyas held on. Shan hoped her eyes wouldn't start watering from the pain. If her hand went numb and she dropped the damn thing…

Chayyas stared at the little dial on the cap of the grenade. “Reset the pin.”

“I thought you weren't afraid to die.”

“I have
children
in this house.”

Chayyas had her eyes fixed on Shan's and Shan didn't break the gaze. The matriarch's grip slackened a fraction, but it still held. And so did Shan's stare.

You look away first—you're dead
. Her old sergeant's voice spoke up, unbidden:
don't step aside, don't blink, don't apologize
. Shan had stopped bar brawls just by walking into the room in the right way. But her sergeant hadn't taught her any wisdom that dealt with aliens. She fell back on instinct.

“We could be here a long time,” said Chayyas.

“If that's what it takes,” said Shan, eyes beginning to water with the effort. Jesus, it hurt. “Punishing Aras won't serve any useful purpose.”

And then Chayyas blinked, as if distracted by the mention of Aras. She looked away. Shan felt an exultant surge of animal triumph and pulled both hand and grenade clear. For a second she could have sworn she smelled something like ripe mangoes—both heady-sweet and grassy at once—filling the space between them. It took all the effort she could muster to hold the grenade steady enough to replace the pin. The violet lights rippled, exaggerating the tremor.

“There's no purpose I can think of,” said Chayyas.

Shan stood up and pocketed the grenade, hoping that the
c'naatat
would deal quickly with any bruising. She didn't want Chayyas to know how much pain she had put her through. “I want custody of him,” she said, nursing her crushed hand in her pocket.

Chayyas, still seated, was staring alternately at the gun and at Shan. She was holding her fingers tip to tip, flexing them: they were all the same length, with three knuckles in each, giving them an arachnid look. “He's your
jurej
. Take him.”

“What's that?
Jurej
?”

“Male.”

“I'm sorry?”

Chayyas blinked flowers. Shan, in control of the universe for a few brief moments, fell back into the confused world of the visiting alien.

“Neither of you can have another,” said Chayyas. “And there are no unmated adults in wess'har society. He's your responsibility.”

“Hang on, I'm not sure I—”

Chayyas was fixed on the gun. “You wanted our asylum. You behave wess'har. Therefore you
are
wess'har.” She reached her thin many-jointed hand towards the 9mm and picked it up. “This won't kill you?”

“Steady on,” said Shan. “The safety's off.”

“Are you afraid?”

The challenge was unintended, she knew, but she couldn't back down. Something foreign and primeval was overriding her common sense. She'd seen it too often in drunks, in flashpoint fights, in murders.

“No,” she said, suddenly completely unable to say that enough was enough and that they should all go about their business.

She had no reason to fear death now. It was life—this out-of-control, alien life—that was starting to scare her.

Chayyas took the gun in her hand, and Shan wondered how she knew how to aim. The she wondered how she knew how to start squeezing the trigger. Something said
you're okay, it's only pain
, and despite all her hard-wired instinct to fling herself to the floor, Shan managed to brace herself before a point-blank shot deafened her.

She fell.

 

The isenj city of Jejeno, capital of the Ebj landmass, was all that there was.

From the time that Eddie Michallat looked out of the shuttle hatch when the vessel landed on Umeh to the time he reached the center of the city, he saw nothing—
nothing
—but buildings speckled with pinpricks of light that were winking out as the sun came up.

The complete absence of any open space disoriented him. He had grown used to unbroken horizons on Bezer'ej even in a year. It spoke to something primeval in him; he
wanted
to miss the wilderness.

He let his bee-cam capture it all. It danced close to his head as he leaned out of the open door of the ground transport, because there were no windows. Isenj didn't appear to like watching the scenery go by. Maybe it was too depressingly monotonous for them.

Still, they were enough like humans to need light when it got dark, and to make buildings, and to use a language. And that was close enough.

The isenj did indeed like Eddie. He made sure of it. Eddie listened to them politely and didn't dismiss them. He relayed what they said and felt, no more, no less. He didn't stare at them as if they were monsters, and they responded by letting him visit their world and see what they'd built, the first civilian to set foot on Umeh after the
Actaeon
advance party had landed.

They even let him file a live piece at the shuttleport to record the moment. It was the first rule of journalism: look after your contacts, and they'd look after you. He applied it with relish.

Jejeno boiled with isenj. They parted in front of the transport like shoals of fish and closed again behind it, apparently unconcerned and intent on whatever business they were about. As Eddie watched, one of them tripped and fell, and a small depression opened in the living sea for just a second; then it was filled again. He never saw the isenj get up. He never saw any other isenj take any notice either. Maybe he was mistaken.

He craned his neck as far as he could, until the imagined point in the crowd was far behind him and the ussissi interpreter, Serrimissani, tugged on his sleeve.

“It happens,” she said. “Concentrate on your task.”

Eddie wished himself into a state of belief that the fallen isenj had picked itself up and carried on walking, but something told him that was not the case.
Forget it. This isn't Earth.
He adjusted his respirator and wondered if he was wasting the bee-cam's memory on this unchanging vista. Just how much cityscape did people need to see?

But it was all there was. Viewers needed to know that. On the other hand, it might have been rush hour, or Mardi Gras, and he had no way of knowing if these crowds were a permanent event or not. All he knew was that he felt suffocated.