Matriarch (43 page)

“It isn't urgent.” Esganikan seemed more preoccupied with the Earth mission. Her day cabin was spread with images and
virin've
projecting numbers onto the walls. “I need to carry out more intensive liaison with the Australians now. Are you prepared to help?”

Shan couldn't get Lindsay out of her mind. That was good, because it didn't leave room for remorse about aborting the child. It just gave her an extra insight into how a woman like Lindsay—a woman who'd lost a kid—might think. It made her a better copper. She could always make good use of personal pain.

“I love to be helpful,” she said. “And fabulously talented as I think I am, I'm not a diplomat, and I'm not a soldier. So, no. Sorry. Maybe you need Mohan Rayat, if he survives Shapakti's procedure.”

Esganikan cocked her head. She didn't seem to take the slightest notice of the word
no.
“This is what I've learned over the years, Shan. Restoring balance with the cooperation of the existing dominant species is better than having to eradicate them totally.”

“I'd never have thought of that,” said Shan. “Silly me.”

Esganikan ignored the jibe. She probably didn't understand. It didn't quite translate in eqbas'u. “Earth is a delicate operation because the ecology is still complex.”

“Fry all the humans and you take out other species with them.”

“Yes.”

“You committed your forces to this mission. You should have thought through what resources that was going to take.”

“I know my own trade, as you might say. I
know
what this takes.”

“Okay, sorry. Out of order.”

“There are many sympathetic humans in all nations. The ones you call Greens.”

“Oh yeah.”

“You can help me mobilize them.”

For a moment Shan thought that Esganikan just wanted a
list of contacts and a few suggestions.
Yeah, here's the address for Troops of Gaia. I'm a bit out of touch, but they're okay. And give Earthwatch a call while you're at it.

But the word was
mobilize.

“How, exactly?”

Esganikan was either proof that Eqbas had fundamental behavioral differences with wess'har or else she had learned a few sharp monkey-boy moves. She wafted a little agitation. Her head dropped slightly. It was a placatory gesture, a junior matriarch to an alpha, and for a moment Shan checked herself with a discreet sniff to make sure she hadn't emitted
jask
and taken the lead role.

“They regard you as an icon,” said Esganikan. “You can unite them.”

“Nobody told me about being any fucking icon.” Shan didn't like that one bit. It was the temptation and weakness she had always avoided. Once she gave in to wanting to be seen as the hero, she could no longer trust her own motives. And motives still mattered to her—her own did, anyway. “I've been gone for nigh on a century, not that many knew what I got up to even back then. Who gives a toss about me now?”

“Eddie Michallat's reports on your sacrifice and endeavors proved inspirational.”

“Remind me to punch the bastard sometime.” She liked Eddie. But sometimes he was a complication she didn't need. “I don't want a PR man. Anyway, I'm dead. He never told them I survived.”

“It isn't Eddie who has told the current generation of Greens about your actions.”

Esganikan made the bulkhead of her cabin dissolve into transparency and stared into the blue and amber haze of short grasses that covered much of Constantine island. It was just as Shan had seen it more than three years before when she was an amazed visitor who had been plucked from her daily existence at a moment's notice and sent twenty-five light-years from home. But there was no biobar
rier now, and the Bezer'ej wilderness has reclaimed the territory the humans had carved out. Except for the deep caverns still in the ground, there was little sign that the
gethes
had ever been there.

“I hate mythology,” said Shan. “And I don't trust history.”

Esganikan seemed hesitant, as if she knew whatever she said next would irritate Shan. Maybe she was scared of pushing her into unleashing
jask
too, not because she wanted to keep her status but because she knew Shan couldn't do her job. Shan knew that too. Perhaps that was the cause of the deferential gestures.

“Somebody you know has asked to speak to you,” Esganikan said slowly. She held out the
virin
and squeezed it to activate the controls. “She left this message and would like you to contact her.”

“I'm dead. Nobody knows I'm alive.”
Oh shit. Eddie, I'm going to kill you, you mouthy little bastard. You promised.
“So nobody's leaving any messages. What's this really about?”

“
I
told someone you were alive,” Esganikan said. “I didn't explain how. I just said technology made it possible. Lying is quite hard, I find. I told someone in the Australian liaison team, an
environmentalist.
Isn't it interesting that you have a separate word to describe someone who cares about balance? That means anyone who isn't an
environmentalist
is probably a despoiler, yes?”

The implications of that logic were filed instantly while Shan wrestled with a more urgent and a more personal problem.
And who the hell knows me now, anyway?
Shan ran through her short and superficial list of names at the UN, the FEU and the Australian government that might want to talk to her. She knew of them, but she'd never spoken to them. Dead women didn't.

“Okay,” she said.
Shit, when will I ever learn?
“Give it here.”

Esganikan's
virin
was slightly warm, like a living thing. Shan clasped it as Nevyan had taught her, lining up hu
man fingers that weren't designed to operate a
virin
like a wess'har's could. As she looked down at it, its transparency became an image, a face she didn't recognize at all, a woman with gray hair and a gaunt face. The message spooled.

“Shan Frankland. Good Lord, Shan, it's been a long time, hasn't it? I never expected to see you again. I can't tell you how pleased we all are that you recovered the gene bank. You're an inspiration to the movement. This is quite extraordinary.”

The voice.
Shan knew the voice. She
knew
it, and she wasn't sure how. She shut her eyes to concentrate.

“It's time you came home, Shan. You've earned it. Whatever Eugenie's motives, you never lost sight of what you had to do. You saved an ecosystem. You're saving the planet.”

Eugenie Perault.

Oh shit.

Shan knew the voice now. Her scalp tightened and her mouth filled with saliva as Bezer'ej and its vivid grassland and the day cabin simply disappeared from her vision like a superfast zoom and she was left listening to the pounding pulse in her own head.

It was Helen Marchant. And she should have been long dead by now.

But so should I.

She looked about sixty; Helen Marchant, eco-terrorist and sister of Foreign Minister Eugenie Perault, the politician who shanghaied Shan out here.

Helen bloody Marchant.
Helen, who she'd kept out of the line of fire when Op Green rage went pear-shaped; Helen, the only person who had ever really manipulated her, the woman who recruited her to the Green cause.

Even if Eugenie Perault hadn't marooned Shan to keep the scandalous family link quiet, Helen was still the individual who had set her life on an unimaginable course, and Shan wasn't sure how she felt about that.

Right now, she was too shocked to work that out.

“You fucking bitch,” Shan said aloud, even though Helen Marchant couldn't hear her. “Don't you play the messiah card with
me.
”

F'nar, Wess'ej

Aras decided the crops could do without him for one day and Ade had foregone his morning run. Neither of them wanted to let Shan out of their sight. She disappeared into the washroom with her swiss and shut the door.

“Oh shit,” said Ade. “I hate it when she does that.”

She could come to no harm. But they waited anyway, listening for worrying noises, trying to concentrate on breakfast. She emerged fastening her pants.

“What?” She looked at both of them and shoved the swiss in her pocket. “Can't I have a pee now? Look, I check my abdomen daily now with the ultrasound probe on the swiss in case parts of me start growing back again.”

“Boss, it's no big deal.”

“Bloody well is for me.” She sat down and began shoveling food mechanically. “I'm checking everything in future.”

“Let me have a chat with Shapakti. He'll think of something.”

Aras felt invisible again but it was inevitable that Shan would still be focused on Ade for a while. It was a new bond, a fascinating novelty for them. And then it had been snatched from them in the most painful way.

“I'm fine,” she said abruptly, not looking up from the plate in front of her. “I'm just pissed off. I'm not suicidal. I'm not scarred for life. I'm going to be fine. So stop hovering.”

Ade exchanged glances with Aras and rubbed Shan's spine idly with one hand while she ate. There was no point asking her what was troubling her because she had, as she put it so elegantly, a fucking big list to pick from.

But Aras knew what was uppermost in her mind, or at least the new complication that was jostling for attention: the woman from her past called Helen Marchant.

“Your sense of duty will always drive you,” said Aras.

“No, I won't be set up by Marchant's little dynasty again.” Ah, he was right, then. Shan pinched the tip of her nose, a gesture he had only seen her use when she was under extreme stress. For some reason that tiny gesture was more conspicuous than any of her cursing. “Been there, done that, bought the one-way ticket.”

“I've never known you be reluctant to make a hard decision. But I'm afraid this will wear down your resolve.”

“Bollocks. I am
not
the El-fucking-Cid of the Green movement. No bastard's going to strap my corpse to my horse and send me out front.”

Aras didn't understand that. But Ade managed a humorless laugh.

“I mean it,” she said. “All bets are off. I've had a gutful.”

She sounded as if she was talking herself out of something. Nobody could make Shan do anything she didn't want to, but the slightest hint that she might be slacking always provoked an odd blend of anger and self-doubt that catapulted her in extreme action. It bewildered him that a woman of such immense discipline and reckless courage could be manipulated by
pressing one button,
as Eddie
called it. Esganikan knew where that button was, and so did Marchant. Aras felt immediate and defensive hatred, a truly primeval urge to protect her. She was his
isan,
but she still sometimes triggered the reactions in him that a child would, and he reacted paternally.

“I think you should leave Esganikan to deal with her own mission,” said Aras. “Her influence on you has not been positive.”

“That's what Nevyan says.”

“It's true,” said Ade.

Shan stopped chewing. For a moment Aras braced for a lecture on how she could choose her own associates, but instead she looked suddenly crushed.

“How can I walk away now? I've seen what's happened to Umeh and I'm scared for Earth. But I shouldn't be. The Eqbas are supposed to be what I think Earth needs.”

“And you think Esganikan's going to listen to you? Boss, you think
you're
extreme, but the Eqbas are off the scale. Listen to Nevyan.” Since the abortion, Ade had trodden a fine line between thinly disguised hurt and a desperate need to make things right with Shan. The sudden halt to their sexual relationship only made matters worse, and it seemed to be Shan who was most upset by it. “You're a different person with the wess'har. You felt
safe
with them. Jesus, I do too. For fuck's sake walk away from them and concentrate on
us.
”

It was what Aras wanted to say but felt was too selfish and narrow in the light of events. But they'd started seeing things on too broad a canvas.

Shan had not yet simply learned to
be.
She had to
do.
She now had the chance of settling old scores, though, and turning the tables on those who thought they had exiled her on a spurious mission. She could also pay the debt she owed a long-dead gorilla whose sign language she had failed to understand, and whose plea for help she had not heard. It was a seductive package of lures that would keep her focused until they were expended, and then she would be hunting for purpose again.

“You have more than four years to think about it,” said
Aras. “And things will become clearer. You don't need to do anything now.”

“Don't, mate.” Ade's voice had an edge and he emitted a little aggressive musk to make his point. “If she doesn't tell Esganikan to shove her mission, then I will.”

It was the kind of presumption that usually drew a reaction from Shan, but she looked at Ade with sad longing.

“I'm going to do that,” she said. “Before I do anything else I regret.”

It was hard to tell which event she meant. As she'd said, it was a very long list.

“Come on, eat up.” She swung her legs over the bench and stood up. “Lots to do today. Time to get the hemp planted and then we can have plenty of oil for frying and making soap.”

She still had her pistol tucked into the back of her belt while she attacked the soil with a spade.

Superintendent Frankland had not yet retired. Esganikan could probably see that as clearly as Aras and Ade did.

Bezer'ej

Bezeri were fanatically attached to place. Lindsay should have realized it.

It should have screamed at her; they had a whole planet to spawn in but they stuck doggedly to the shallows around the Ouzhari coast. And it meant they were sitting targets for the cobalt fallout.

Their history was recorded on azin shell maps and their maps were recorded in azin shell records. They were one in the same; their maps
were
their history, indivisible in every sense. And
transparent.

And they had a planet full of hunting grounds to choose. But they embarked on a genocidal war with another species because territory was sacrosanct. For creatures that could squeeze through any gap like an octopus, they were extraordinarily inflexible.

But this small band of bezeri—the last of their kind—hadn't committed any of the crimes of their ancestors, if those were crimes at all. Lindsay was finding moral judgment hard these days. There were just forty-four left, and most were old and frail, and their population could never recover. They would be gone forever soon.

And
that
was her fault.
That
was a judgment she
could
make.

She hadn't been sure what she could do for them that would even begin to atone for genocide, whether accidental or rigorously planned. Now she wondered why it had taken her so long to see the obvious.

The sea darkened as she swam closer to land with Saib and Keet behind her in a convoy of bioluminescence, and she didn't have to look back to know that Keet was grumbling violet and gold about the unfamiliarity of it all. It was a new territory, and his ancient bezeri fixations said that he didn't like change one bit, especially change of place.

But change was necessary. She'd persuaded Saib. They had to make a truly massive change—of place, of culture, of everything—if they were to have a chance of surviving as a species.

Beaching herself was easy now. The first time she had surfaced after developing gills had been agony. It got easier after that;
c'naatat
learned fast and now when she moved from air to water and back again, it was no more to her than adjusting to bright light after a darkened room.

Lindsay was amphibious.

She touched bottom with her foot to wade up the gently sloping shore and stand on a new landmass a long way from the chain of islands that had dominated bezeri history for millennia. The land animal in her admired the rounded hills, backlit in the distance by the recent sunset. She turned around to the sea and called to Saib and Keet in lights.

Come on. You've come this far.

This is madness,
said Keet.

Leenz has proven it can be done.
Saib still thought he was the boss fella, the old fascist.
We must trust her.

She nearly wiped us out once and now she tries to complete the task.

Lindsay had never thought it would be easy to change their minds as easily as she could change their bodies.

Do it. Please, just do it.

The two bezeri floated motionless in the shallows for a few minutes. Then the dome of Saib's mantle broke the surface of the water just as the first bezeri had beached themselves to get a better look at the Dry Above. They were stepping into space, just as Shan did, but for the opposite reason. They were taking the biggest risk of all to
survive.

Come on. It's scary, I know.
Lindsay beckoned yellow.
Come on. Trust me.

Saib lashed three tentacles forward like an angler casting a line and dug the tips into the beach. He hauled himself clear of the water and began crying in green-lit pain and panic.

Bezeri could survive out of water for a brief period. But Saib and Keet had all the time in the world now.

All they had to do was accept change.
C'naatat
could do the rest. It went with the new territory.

“Leeenzzz…” Saib said, breathing air for the first time.

Clever boy,
said Lindsay, fluent in light.
Clever boy.