Judge (38 page)

Eventually, he plucked up courage to search for the coordinates of the Ankara cemetery and took the magnification as far as he could.

It was still an arid place with dusty pink stone chippings for soil, but dull green plants grew in the cracks. The white gravestones stood untouched—neglected, yes, because everyone who used to tend them was probably either dead or struggling for survival, but they were still there, and that was all that mattered. He tracked around the ranks of headstones until he found what he was sure was Dave's grave.

Ade wasn't much interested in the rest of the planet. He'd seen almost nothing of it anyway. All he cared about was either here with him, or dead and at rest. But now he knew he could also pinpoint the town of Rabi'ah, and the graves of Qureshi and Becken, when he felt the need. He knew he would.

Right now, though, the living mattered more. He closed the link and walked home along the terraces, rehearsing a sense of belonging.

 

F'nar Plain.

 

Lindsay didn't seem nervous as she contemplated the small bronze vessel sitting dwarfed by the plain.

Aras had expected her to be afraid. Perhaps that was one thing she'd learned to take in her stride after so much distance, grief, and shock, and the prospect of a long journey relying on technology she didn't understand—a worrying thing for a commander used to knowing every part of her ship—was just one more hurdle, a small thing set against becoming an ever-evolving hybrid of an unknown number of species.

Where did
c'naatat
originate?
Aras had never worked that out.

“Jesus,” she said. Lindsay walked around the one-man vessel, a small blond woman in beige working clothes, and stared at the ramp that extruded from the hull. “It's so bloody tiny.”

“So is any ship in space.”

“I suppose you're right.”

“All you need do is settle down in the bay here.” Aras walked her into the ship and made sure the bulkheads were set to opacity. He indicated the hammocklike structure in the heart of the vessel. “Are you ready? It feels like anesthesia, Ade tells me, whatever that feels like to a human. Like your own cryo systems, except for a tingling in the arms.”

“I can handle tingling.” Lindsay sat on the edge of the cryo bay and put a wary hand on the fabric. “At least it's nice and comfortable, not that I'll be in any state to appreciate it.” She stood up and looked around the interior, apparently searching, and her gaze settled on the small
efte
box that held the remains of her son. Aras had wrapped the bones carefully; they were so very, very fragile. “Okay.”

“Are you ready to leave?”

“Give me a minute.”

Lindsay squeezed past Aras to stand outside and look around the plain. He thought she was taking a final longing look at the view, a blend of gold-bronze desert, purple and green vegetation, and the spectacular pearl caldera of F'nar that was visible only from a few narrow angles. But she seemed to be waiting.

“She's not going to come, is she?”

“Shan?”

“Yes.” Lindsay seemed disappointed. Aras thought he saw her eyes glaze with unshed tears. “Ah well.”

“I can call her. She would come. I didn't tell her you might leave right now.”

“No, it's better this way. She'd only—no, she really did give me a second chance. I know she doesn't do second chances, so I'll quit while I'm winning, in case she decides I'm a waste of space anyway and finishes the job.”

“She judges herself more harshly than she judges you.”

“Shan always thinks she has to be the grown-up in a universe of children. It's not the best trait to face if you're someone who didn't get on with their mother.”

My mother. Why do I always forget my mother? Iussan Palior Jivin.
Aras stood on a shore about to be engulfed by a tidal wave of long-buried memory. “Are you glad to be going home?”

“I think so,” said Lindsay. “And I'm glad to be normal again, I suppose. No offense. I just know more or less what happens to mortal humans, and nobody really knows how
c'naatat
end their days. I need a little certainty right now.”

“Will you have another child?”

It was a question Ade would have told him was
tactless.
But he had to know, and he felt that Lindsay would take it for the question it was: a burning need to know if people could recover after grief and parting, and live fully again. He never had. Getting Shan back didn't count. She really was alive. He had no true bereavement to deal with.

“Yes,” Lindsay said. “I will. And I'll be grateful that I can.” She looked around again and paused. “Say goodbye to her for me, will you?”

“Yes.”

“And Eddie too. I said goodbye a few times. It's hard to keep doing it. Just reminds him that he's hanging on by the minute, and I'm not.”

“I will.”

Lindsay squinted against the sun. “It really is beautiful here.”

“Earth will be beautiful again, too.”

Lindsay went back into the ship and lay down in the bay without a word. As the gel closed over her, Aras thought he saw a brief flash of panic in her eyes, and he raised his hand in a gesture partway between a wave and a plea to be calm, but in seconds she was unconscious and the bay was chilling her down to a state just a fraction short of death.

He watched for a few moments longer than he had to, checked the controls and navigation that would take her straight into Earth orbit, revive her and link her to the Eqbas fleet to land and disembark, and then left. The hatch closed behind him. As he stood back, the ship lifted with its belt of red and blue chevrons flashing, and soon it was a small dark speck in the sky.

Lindsay was going home. Aras thought there was no better time for him to return to Baral—his home city—and see how he felt about it after so many years.

Baral Plain, northern Wess'ej landmass.

 

Aras emerged from the underground transit tunnel onto a plain of short brown grasses studded with tufts of brilliant violet flowers. It was summer on the plain, the brief respite from the winter snows, and he could see people working in patchwork fields of yellow-leaf to squeeze as much food from the land as they could before the season ended.

Like Constantine, the city of Baral was largely underground. It was his model for the colony. But Baral had no imposing church with stained glass windows and a spire that almost thrust through the soil above like a tree—just a central Exchange of Surplus Things like F'nar's.

He hadn't been here for…how long? It must have been centuries. But these had been his people, and still were.

As he approached, they stopped work to stare at him, and then one called out: “Aras Sar Iussan, is that you?”

It was a sparsely populated planet and cities talked to each other. Everyone knew there was still a
c'naatat
soldier left alive from the isenj wars, the very last of his kind, the last of those who had driven back the isenj. He was, Ade told him, a war hero. It was a long way from being the Beast of Mjat.

“It's me,” he said.

It was a strange homecoming. He knew his way to the city without even thinking: he knew the route down into the heart of the tunnels and galleries, sunlit as the surface, scented with familiar cooking. People stopped in their tracks.

“You've come home,” said an
isan.
“Why now?”

“I need to remember who I was.” He thought of Lindsay, who hadn't had time to forget who she was, but seemed to have nonetheless. “
C'naatat
can be removed. I need to know what I was before it took hold of me.”

“Your clan will want to see you, too.”

By the time Aras made his way through the vaulted passages to his old clan home, the entire city seemed to know he was back. Ussissi appeared out of the tunnels and watched. It felt like entering Umeh for the first time, random memories crystallizing from vague scraps of his past, and an absence of celebration.

The carving on the walls of the passages had been worn smooth over the years by the steady brushing of passing bodies, packages and children playing. But it was undeniably home; it smelled so familiar that he was suddenly here only yesterday, wondering which
isan
he would be taken in by to start his adult life as a
jurej
—husband, father, male. There was only one word for a male wess'har, and only one for a female, because the roles were universal and inevitable; there were no single wess'har. Males sickened and died without the constant repair of their DNA by
oursan.

Aras had no role in this society. He felt like an alien. Shan and Ade—they came from a culture where the solitary and childless were routine and even the majority in some societies, but he didn't, and he felt a gulf opening between them and him as he faced his past at close range.

A group of children emerged from a doorway, four males and a female, the males following the
isanket
much as they would follow their
isan
in adult life. This was the natural order; even the Eqbas—juggling with their nature, adjusting the gender balance—still had a society based on dominant females with harems of males.

“You used to be one of us,” said the
isanket.
For a moment Aras thought she meant wess'har, but then he realized these were his distant kin. He could see it; he could smell it. “Have you come home?”

Yes, I used to be truly wess'har. I used to be like this.

“I was curious,” said Aras. “I wanted to see.”

The little female beckoned him in. Somewhere in these passages, he'd grown up. He'd had brothers, sisters and cousins, and his father had taught him how to make glass. In the heart of the complex was a rooflight. He remembered it now: a dome, a glass dome.

Aras veered left, unerring. The
isanket
made an irritated hiss, but Aras knew where he was going—if the clan hadn't remodeled the layout in the intervening years—and he felt a strange excitement building in his chest. He slipped through a doorway, pushed aside the fabric hanging that serve for a door, and—

Home.

The room, a round chamber, was a well of rainbow colors. He looked up at the domed rooflight before he took note of the wess'har working there, staring into the colored glass and drinking it in until his eyes stung. He was a small
jurej'ket
again, a little male, helping his father Sar select and cut pieces of glass to form the design of the dome.

It was a landscape of tundra flowers framed in abstract shapes. The colors almost made him sob. Mjat and the white fire and the agony of both isenj and wess'har, both victim and aggressor at the same time, and all the unexperienced memories that
c'naatat
had given him now vanished.

These were the happiest times of my life.

Aras felt like a traitor, in every sense of the word. How could he be happier than with his
isan,
with
Shan Chail
, and his house-brother Ade? How could he feel like this when they'd been his rescue from unending loneliness?

And how could he turn his back on being…wess'har?

He brought himself back to the here and now. A family—
his
family, however separated by time and circumstance—stared at him in surprise, cooking suspended.

“I helped build this dome,” Aras said. “Tell your names.”

“I am Chuyyis,” said the oldest male. “And this is your home.”

Yes. It
was.

 

F'nar: upper terraces.

 

“So did he say when he'd be back?” Shan asked.

Ade enjoyed cooking dinner, and having guests was a bonus. Here was a happy family home that he'd never had before; his dad wasn't going to show up drunk. The novelty still hadn't worn off and he hoped it never would. It almost took his mind off Qureshi and Becken, but he hardly dared be happy at the moment because as soon as it overtook him, he remembered them, and it slapped him down to the deck as hard as a punch.

“He said he was going to Baral.” Ade concentrated on the bread. He didn't have Aras's skilled wrist action but the stuff passed muster as a pancake. That was easier for Eddie to eat, anyway.
Don't think about Izzy or Jon. You'll just look at Eddie and know he's next.
“He packed Lindsay off to Earth and just called to say he was going.”

Shan sat with her boots up on the stool opposite her chair, doing a none too convincing job of looking unconcerned. Nevyan sat at the table, hands clasped. She was hanging around Shan whenever she could, seeming desperate to make up for lost time. “I didn't realize Lin was just going to bugger off that fast.”

“You told her to go.”

“I know. I just feel I should have said something.”

“Like goodbye.”

“Yes.”

Ade wondered what had softened Shan's attitude. Maybe she'd run out of anger. Digging up the kid's body must have put a dent in her. “You did the right thing.”

“No point de-
c'naatating
someone just to slot them.”

“And what about us?”

“What?”

“I know what you're like.” It was just a casual comment, nothing more. “I know you feel guilty keeping it now that we can remove the bloody thing.”

Shan gave him one of her long, slow looks, unblinking, possibly because it was a subject she didn't want to discuss even in front of her closest friends. “We had a way of getting rid of it before. It was just a bit more emphatic.”

“Okay, so now it's easier, and I bet that makes you think you ought to take the option.”

“Do
you
? Do you want to go back to the way you were?”

Ade thought of all the things he knew and could now do that he hadn't been able to do before; it wasn't just invulnerability. In fact, apart from a fall he'd had while rock-climbing that otherwise would have killed him, he hadn't had the parasite long enough to feel that he was pretty well immortal. It hadn't sunk in. What
had
sunk in was that he knew, absolutely
knew,
what Shan felt for him from right inside her head, and that was the most precious thing he could imagine: it was a certainty that no other man had ever had, except Aras. Ade valued it more than he could have imagined.

“No,” he said. “I don't. I really don't. It's given me more time and I
want
that time. But that isn't the only issue, is it?”

“No, it's not. I hate that bastard Rayat being right, but he asked why we weren't going for the removal option, and I admit that it's been eating at me.”

Ade went on slapping the bread on the hot plate to cook, wondering if he was selfish to hang on to this privileged life when too many of his mates were dead. Eventually there was a rapping at the door, and Eddie used his powered seat like a battering ram to push it open, followed by Giyadas.

“No Aras?” he asked.

“I think he's in Baral.” Shan moved seats to make room for him at the table. “He'll probably get back while we're eating.”

“Ah, your dinner is in the dog…”

“Lin's gone.”

“I guessed as much.” Eddie, a painful frail reminder of the mortality that Ade had dodged, gave him a sympathetic look. “I think we said our goodbyes anyway. You have to stop sobbing on each other's shoulders sooner or later.”

“Took me several attempts to take my leave of the lads,” Ade said quietly. “I understand.”

They ate with Eddie most nights now. It seemed rude to want time to themselves when they had an infinite amount of it and he didn't. He ate slowly and with difficulty, helped by Giyadas tonight. Ade and Aras both tried to make meals that could be eaten easily with a fork rather than watch him struggle with arthritic and increasingly shaky hands. Ade sliced the flat breads into chunks to make it easier to mop up the stew.

“It's okay, Ade,” Eddie said, not looking up from his plate. “I know I'm a senile old bastard. It's fine to acknowledge it.”

Shan filled his beer glass. “You could just as easily say that you did bloody well to make ninety, and your liver deserves a medal for endurance.”

Eddie chuckled. “Yes, I thought the thing wouldn't see seventy.”

“So when are they going to do a Michallat lifetime achievement show, then?”

“I think I'm past that. I'm into obituary country.”

At least he could joke about it, and that was something. Eddie had never been the self-pitying kind. Ade did what he always did, and tried to keep everyone's morale high, and that meant jokes, lurid stories and recollections delivered in that tone of fixed cheerfulness that didn't give anyone a chance to slip into reflection. Giyadas and Nevyan just listened.

Eddie was playing the game too. He never let on what he was feeling, not deliberately anyway. They finished the meal, still with no sign of Aras and no call from him, and went to sit on the terrace at the back of the house, the one that overlooked the desert. The other overlooked the city. Aras had chosen a bloody good spot when he excavated the home all those years ago; maybe he hadn't picked it for the view—it was right on the jagged, left-hand edge of the broken caldera—but it was nice anyway. On a balmy late summer evening like this it was wonderful. It was actually autumn by the F'nar calendar, but it was August by the Earth one, and it was warm, so summer it was in Ade's imagination.

At least Eddie could still enjoy his beer. That was something. Shan sat on the broad wall that edged the terrace, arms around her knees, looking out in the direction of the network of supply tunnels that shunted small underground cars from city to city carrying surplus crops and occasionally passengers. She was getting worried about Aras. Ade could tell.

“It's so good to have you back,” Eddie said, his chair close up against Ade's. “I bloody well missed you.”

Ade rested his arm on Eddie's. He wanted to hug him, half out of comradeship and half out of regret and pity, but it seemed like an admission to Eddie that Ade thought he didn't have long to go. “You kept me and Aras sane when we thought Shan was dead. You've always been a good friend.”

“I'm glad you think if me that way.”

“I always will.”

“Big word, always. Especially from someone with
c'naatat.
”

Shan joined in the storytelling, regaling Eddie with tales of recovering elephants wandering loose on the motorway, and arresting a man who was a serial stealer of women's earrings while they were wearing them, and only the left ones. It took all sorts. Eddie countered with a roundup of all the awkward places he'd caught politicians trying to avoid his persistent questioning, from hiding in a janitor's cupboard to getting their kids to tell Eddie that Daddy wasn't home.

“I really hated pressuring small kids,” said Eddie. “But I did. A job's a job. Can't let the bastards use human shields, can we?”

“I gave in to that once,” said Shan, looking out over the plain, keeping watch for Aras. “And I never will again.”

“You mustn't agonize over
c'naatat,
Shan.” Nevyan, in that typical wess'har way, changed topics instantly and showed what had really been on her mind while she was apparently listening to the stories. “Rayat made his choice. We didn't force Lindsay to make the same one, and as urgency is not an issue, you mustn't feel pressured.”

“But I do.” Shan was in gut-spilling mood tonight, which wasn't like her at all. “Targassat, remember? Those with choices must make them.”

“That applies equally to us,” said Giyadas. “And we have choices in this, too, and haven't taken them.”