The World Before Read online

  “But you won’t forget her.”

  “No, never. But I come here to think about her.”

  “And the pieces of metal?”

  “They’re—they’re my medals.” Ade was too embarrassed to explain what medals were and how he had won his. “It’s an old human habit. We leave valuable things for the dead.”

  He’d said it aloud now, the word dead. It had its own finality. He felt he’d betrayed Shan by letting it slip out. Nevyan stood looking down at the cairn, thin multijointed fingers meshed in front of her like an ornate basket, and her iridescent white matriarch’s robe was as bright as the shit-covered pebbles.

  “I miss her too,” she said at last. “May I come here to think of her?”

  No, thought Bennett. This is private. This is for me. This is just for me to get my head round this, if I ever can. It’s for me and the Boss and nobody else, maybe not even Aras.

  “Of course you can, ma’am,” he said, fighting reluctance, and felt robbed.

  But Nevyan had been Shan’s friend, and this was her planet and her city.

  “We will recover her body, I promise you, and you shall have your grave.” She gestured towards F’nar. “Now walk with me. Let us discuss what will happen to your comrades.”

  Ade obeyed, which was not unreasonable given that Nevyan was now the leader of F’nar and he was technically her prisoner. But it reminded him how easily he followed orders and how he had done what Commander Neville had ordered. He had said yes, ma’am when she asked him to land nuclear weapons on Bezer’ej and he’d said yes, ma’am when she asked him to capture Shan Frankland.

  He should have said sod off, ma’am. Maybe both Shan and the poor bloody bezeri would all be alive now if he had. He had no idea how he was going to live with himself in the very long future ahead of him or what it would take to atone. He walked beside Nevyan, but whatever she was saying to him he couldn’t hear it. He could only see Shan through the shuttle hatch, choosing a cold hard death rather than surrender c’naatat to anyone. The image intruded more frequently every day.

  If it mattered that much to the Boss to safeguard the damn thing, then it would matter to him.

  “You know that we don’t take prisoners,” said Nevyan. “What am I to do with your comrades?”

  Yes, he knew that. Wess’har killed, period. They were strict vegans and respected all life, but once you were at war with them it was to the death. “You mean Izzy and Chaz? The two marines still with the colonists?”

  “I mean all of them.”

  “The other three are still on Umeh.”

  “We shall be asking the isenj to return them, along with Commander Neville and Dr. Rayat.”

  Ade managed to keep up with her stride. “Sorry?”

  “Your government has abandoned you.”

  “I didn’t think they’d be sending a limo to pick us up.”

  “I mean that they have dismissed you and turned you over to us.”

  Ade wondered for a moment if Nevyan had misunderstood, but her English was fluent to the point of being peppered with slang that he recognized—painfully—as Shan’s. “Ma’am, what exactly did they say?”

  She cocked her head, not slowing. “Dismissed the service.”

  The fragile world that Ade had begun to think of rebuilding had collapsed before him again. His gut churned. He knew they’d face an enquiry but he hadn’t expected to be kicked out and dumped in the enemy camp. The FEU didn’t know why he surrendered or that he was far safer among wess’har than his own kind; as far as they were concerned, they were shitting on him from a great height. Lindsay Neville had asked for it, but not the detachment.

  You’re the bloody sergeant. You should have stood up to her.

  He could hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. Nevyan stopped and stared at him, head tilted, pupils opening and closing. Aras said wess’har could actually smell what state of mind you were in by the scents you gave off. She looked like she could smell him clearly enough.

  “Sergeant—”

  “I’m not a sergeant any more, am I?”

  It hurt. Ade had been in the Corps since he was sixteen. It was his refuge. It had given him self-respect and the nearest thing he had to a family, and now it had been torn away from him by some file-shuffler in Brussels who’d never been closer to war than his news screen. He wondered what the hell he still had left, stranded 150 trillion miles from Earth and never, ever going home again.

  Sod it. He was whatever the Corps had made him. He’d bloody well find something.

  He peeled the sergeant’s stripes off the sleeves of his pullover. He’d leave them at the cairn tomorrow.

  “It’s Ade, ma’am,” he said. “Just Ade.”

  Nevyan slowed her pace and they walked an unmarked path that took them south of F’nar and led into the city like a processional route into an arena. From most positions you couldn’t even see F’nar until you were right on top of it, and now Ade was looking straight into its heart. The caldera was almost a complete ring, with homes and terraces cut into the rock. With the icing of pearl laid by the tem flies, it looked like a wedding cake turned inside out.

  He found himself thinking that it would be a good location to defend but a hard one to escape.

  “I won’t harm your comrades,” said Nevyan. “If they want refuge here, we will accept them. My argument is with Neville and Rayat.”

  “That’s very generous of you, ma’am. Don’t you hold us all responsible?”

  “Did you or your detachment activate the bombs?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then the act itself was not your responsibility.”

  If Ade needed another reminder that wess’har didn’t think like humans, this was one. He struggled with the concept. “That’s… generous.”

  “I think your government are a bunch of tossers, yes?”

  It was just what Shan would have said. Delivered in that voice-upon-voice, it sounded utterly surreal.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Ade. “Tossers.”

  Jejeno, Umeh: August 2376 in the calendar of the humans.

  The city of Jejeno was not a smoking ruin when Minister Par Paral Ual’s vehicle made its way through the packed streets between his office and the human habitat.

  Ual had expected it to be. He had expected war. But it had not yet come.

  Where Umeh Station stood, there was no pall of smoke or dying fire. It was still there, its translucent faceted dome glittering in the forest of tall buildings east of his office. The wess’har hadn’t aimed their missiles at it in retaliation for the humans’ nuclear attack on Bezer’ej. Perhaps the destruction of Actaeon, the Earth ship, had satisfied their need for balance.

  He doubted it. It wasn’t like them at all.

  Ralassi—his ussissi aide—sat beside him, silent behind his breather mask.

  “We shall end up like Mjat,” said Ual’s driver. He showed no impatience as isenj pedestrians parted ahead of the ground car, moving according to strict unspoken traffic rules in the densely packed city. The whole planet of Umeh was crammed with cities, and all cities were like Jejeno. “They wiped us out on Asht.”

  “Bezer’ej,” said Ual. The wess’har had renamed it. This is not your world, and never will be. This is the world of the bezeri. “The wess’har call it Bezer’ej, and the humans Cavanagh’s Star Two.”

  All isenj remembered the fate of Mjat, their colony on Asht. Mjat was now a synonym for holocaust. The event was five hundred years ago as humans calculated, and it was not the only massive loss of life in the wars with the wess’har: but it had a special place in the isenj consciousness because it had resulted in the death of millions, mostly civilians.

  And the Destroyer of Mjat still lived, centuries after he should have been dead. The driver was fascinated.

  “So he’s real, then, sir? Not a myth?”

  “He is.” It seemed impossible. “And living on Wess’ej.”

  “The humans caused the death of his female. Do they know
what he did to Mjat?”

  “Yes.”

  “And are they afraid?”

  “I’m not sure if they have the sense to be. And I’m not sure that I fully understand the wess’har logic of culpability.” Ual knew what the ussissi told him, and what his genetic memory recalled, and what the archives recorded. But he had never met a wess’har. “And that ignorance is something I must remedy very soon.”

  The ground car pulled up at one of the airlocked entrances to Umeh Station. “You mind yourself, sir,” said the driver. Ralassi trotted out in front of Ual. “Humans are said to be aggressive when crowded.”

  Inside the dome, Umeh Station was in chaos. Ual wandered unacknowledged into the humans’ fragile bubble of a settlement and decided that they might benefit from a lesson in how to create order among large numbers.

  The dome was strewn with the detritus of a project still under construction. Nearly three hundred humans were now crammed into a space built for two hundred, the numbers swelled by evacuated crew from the unlucky Actaeon.

  Ual was looking for one of Actaeon’s company in particular. He found Commander Lindsay Neville in the site office, arguing with a civilian over arrangements to feed the dome’s population. Humans, it seemed, would not wait patiently for meals like isenj. Neither the commander nor the civilian looked like healthy and well-rested specimens of their kind.

  Ual clicked impatiently and waited. He didn’t have two highly visible eyes, and humans needed something called eye contact to get attention. Ual supposed he looked like any of the many isenj workers to them—multilimbed, spiny-coated and anonymously alien. Ralassi slipped between the humans, all teeth and anger, and interrupted.

  “Minister Ual is visiting you in person,” he snapped. “You will do him the courtesy of postponing your argument.”

  Both humans fell silent. So this was the one that Eddie called Lin.

  “I note you did not go down with your ship, Commander Neville,” said Ual.

  The civilian male picked up a paper from the desk and walked out. Lindsay, standing stiffly as if used to deferring to superiors, was wearing something they called a uniform. Ual thought it odd that humans fought so much among themselves that they needed markings to divide allies from enemies. Similarity should have united them.

  “Actaeon wasn’t my ship, sir,” she said, seeming to miss the point. “We don’t appear to have an ITX comms link to Earth any longer. I really need to talk to Fleet. Might you be able to help with that?”

  The entangled photon link was the technology that held the humans in the alliance: it was isenj technology, not theirs, and it was not shared, merely lent. “These are nervous times, Commander,” said Ual. “I thought it might be safer for everyone if we restricted communications between this base and your government. It is not secure, as you call it, and I fear the wess’har could overhear something that might provoke them further.”

  Neither of them had said the obvious. You attacked a wess’har protectorate. Ual wanted to see how she would broach the topic. She didn’t know it yet, but her masters had abandoned her and her soldiers to the mercy of Wess’ej; he’d seen the Federal European Union’s message, and it was time to tell her.

  “I didn’t know the devices were salted with cobalt,” she said. “I was duped. I truly regret that.”

  “A fine distinction that I fear will carry little weight with the wess’har. Have you heard of Mjat, Commander?”

  “Your colony on Bezer’ej. Well, your former colony.”

  “It was erased. Completely, and without trace. And that was for accidentally polluting the bezeri’s marine environment. Wess’har are not a forgiving people, and Aras Sar Iussan is even less forgiving than most.”

  “Okay, and I helped his precious Shan space herself. I get the picture.”

  Ual doubted it. He doubted that Lindsay understood at all: she would not have risked violating Bezer’ej if she had. It seemed an appropriate time to break bad news.

  “Your foreign minister sent a message condemning your actions and used an interesting phrase—you and your troops are dismissed the service.” Ual searched for his most colloquial English. “She has washed her hands of you and told the wess’har that they may deal with you within their law.”

  Lindsay said nothing but she was blinking rapidly, something Eddie Michallat did when an interview became strained.

  “That’s just great. Great.” Ual wasn’t sure if she was upset or angry. “It’s not fair on the marines, though. They weren’t party to this. The bastard you want is Mohan Rayat.”

  “Ah, they did mention him. Apparently he is now the FEU’s chosen representative here.”

  Lindsay’s mouth opened slightly as if she was gulping in air. “He’s their spook. An intelligence agent. A spy. You know what that is?”

  “I do now,” said Ual.

  He had never had to deal with spies before. Neither wess’har nor ussissi had any concept of deliberate state secrecy; it was alien to isenj as well. But they were now all learning fast. It troubled Ual to discover just how much of the human brain was devoted to deception. He wondered if his own mind would be altered by trying to think as they did, and was grateful that he had already fathered offspring and so would not pass on those memories to corrupt them.

  “The wess’har will ask us to hand you over.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “I have my own people’s welfare to consider.”

  “I’ll answer for my own actions,” she said. “But only if Rayat answers for his.”

  “I know you didn’t act alone, but you’re in no position to make bargains.”

  “And I’m not carrying the can for this on my own. What’s happened to the rest of my marine detachment? Three are still prisoners. I’d like them released.”

  “This isn’t the time to make such a request of the wess’har.”

  Lindsay Neville adjusted the gold braid tabs on the shoulders of her uniform shirt. Then she unfastened them and slid them off.

  “Seeing as they’ve bypassed the court martial, I’ll dispense with these, then.” She seemed more resigned than afraid of the prospect of wess’har retribution. Perhaps she knew that they killed fast and clean. “But if you can arrange a direct conversation between me and FEU Command, I would consider that a great personal favor. If I go, I won’t go quietly.”

  Lindsay Neville walked out into the melee of soft, larva-smooth humans. Ual didn’t like hosting this unstable nest of aliens in his city but he had to concentrate on the more immediate threats. Of those, he was not sure which was the greater: the political clamoring of his colleagues of the Northern Assembly, who wanted answers on the human question, or the wrath of the wess’har.

  “Ralassi, ask your comrades what they know,” he said. Ussissi were conduits of information. They worked for everyone and served no one; they crewed both wess’har and isenj ships but they did as they pleased and cherished their neutrality. “I need facts. Humans aren’t very good at supplying those.”

  Ralassi disappeared into the crowds outside the site office, weaving between humans and isenj workers. Some ussissi had returned after evacuating when retribution seemed imminent. They would know what the wess’har intended. This was not what the humans called spying, because the wess’har would neither conceal their intentions nor broadcast them. They simply acted—arrogant, aloof, alien—without notice or consultation.

  Ual wandered around the dome, noting that there were vines creeping across the supports that held the roof panels and a fountain was playing in the central plaza. The base held the promise of being pleasant accommodation when it was finished, with a cool, moist atmosphere. He savored the rare treat of walking unrecognized as a minister of state, eavesdropping on conversations among creatures that had no idea he could understand them.

  Perhaps that was what being a spook was like. It seemed amusing.

  He heard words like stranded and never going home and we’re not getting out of this. He heard a few words he didn�
�t understand: fucked, sitting ducks, shanghaied. They were the sort of words that Eddie Michallat would have explained to him. He wondered if he might tempt Eddie back to Umeh.

  And still the humans ignored him. He was just another alien to them, no longer a miracle of creation but an invisible part of the backdrop to their own self-preoccupation. You remind us of spiders. Eddie had always been brutally frank. Ual found that if he made quick darting movements like the terrestrial creature he could get humans to flinch instinctively and look at him. That was amusing too.

  It was a brief respite. The days and months ahead would be anything but amusing.

  Back in his vehicle, he waited for Ralassi. Ussissi were another species the humans classified by similarity to creatures from their own world: meerkats. Eddie said it was their sharp faces and small teeth and the way they all sat up at once when something grabbed their attention. So Ralassi was a meerkat, and he was a spider, and that was how humans coped with those who were different, by classifying them as lower species.

  Ralassi scrambled back into the ground car, his beaded belts rattling. “I hear interesting reports,” he said. “The wess’har have sought help from the World Before, from Eqbas Vorhi. They’re coming to their aid—a most extraordinary thing.”

  Eqbas Vorhi. He had heard the name, or an ancestor had. They changed worlds. “Should we fear their intervention?” Ual asked.

  “Oh yes,” said Ralassi. “They are more numerous than the wess’har of Wess’ej and have greater military resources. And they are far less restrained. Wess’ej and Umeh may have shied away from fighting on each other’s homeworlds, but the Eqbas have a different history.”

  “So it’s true, then. They shape worlds to their wishes.”

  “Indeed. We know them. We evolved with them.”

  The original wess’har homeworld—the ussissi’s home planet, too—had never intruded in isenj life. The wess’har in the Nir system—what the humans called Cavanagh’s Star, totally ignoring true names again—had arrived thousands of years ago. They had cut off contact with the rest of their people even though Eqbas was only five light-years away by human reference, and that was all he knew.