The World Before Read online

  If the wess’har here could keep isenj from Bezer’ej and effectively confine them to Umeh and Tasir Var, what might the Eqbas do? Ual and his fellow ministers thought an alliance with the humans might change the balance of power.

  Now they had certainly changed the future for the isenj, but not in the way he had hoped.

  “If the wess’har killed millions of my people when the bezeri had asked for their aid, what will the Eqbas do now that the humans have wiped them out?” Ual said, but it was a rhetorical question. He could work out the sequence unaided.

  Ralassi was right: Wess’ej had never threatened Umeh, and Umeh had never attempted to attack Wess’ej. But Umeh had never been host to an enemy base before, a complication that the whole city feared.

  “We’re on our own,” said Ual. “The humans are twenty-five years away. They have limited technology and our only allies are the Federal European Union. The rest of their planet doesn’t care or actively opposes them. There will be no cavalry coming to our aid.”

  “Cavalry?” Ralassi consulted his belt full of recording devices. Interpreters liked new words. “What does that mean?”

  Ual thought of database images of humans forcing other creatures to carry them into battle, creatures dying from wounds and starvation and exhaustion. “Something else the wess’har would not like about humans.”

  Ual considered his options on the way back to his office and said nothing more to Ralassi. The vehicle slowed and then stopped. Crowds pressed on its sides as they tried to ease past it.

  “What’s the delay?”

  Delay was relative in Jejeno. The driver listened carefully to his comms link. “There is a disturbance ahead.”

  Ual and Ralassi squeezed out of the ground car and were nearly crushed by the mass of isenj. Shrill panic had gripped them, and panic was something to dread in a crowded city because it meant crush injuries and death. Ual heard the word ship repeated over and over.

  An attack.

  But there had been no alarm. There was no warning system for invasion, but there was certainly one for civil emergencies like street crushes. The fear that Umeh’s immunity from attack had evaporated had swept the city, and Ual expected to hear that alarm.

  The crowd was now so tightly packed that all movement had stopped. He could hear screams of pain. People were dying in the melee. He shouldn’t have stepped out of the car. Ralassi grabbed one of his arms and tried to push him back inside to relative safety.

  “Ship!” someone shouted.

  Ual looked up and there was a vessel dropping through the cloud, unfamiliar in shape, smooth and narrow.

  The driver leaned out of the cab section, comlink clutched to his chest, and tugged on Ual’s arm. “They say it’s just ussissi. It’s only the old human shuttle they salvaged. There’s no danger.”

  But it was too late for many to be comforted by that. The fear of wess’har retaliation was so great that even an obsolete transport vessel like this could send them into a terrified and deadly scramble for safety.

  “Inside, Minister,” Ralassi insisted. “Let this pass.”

  Ual squeezed back into the car and settled on the broad flat seat with relief. He was now pinned down in a street, unable to drive or even walk away. It didn’t bode well for the future. If the wess’har ever attacked, the results would be catastrophic without their needing to fire a single weapon. Cities were vulnerable by their very nature. A planet that was simply one vast city was a disaster preparing to unfold.

  “Connect me to my communications,” he said. “I might as well use this time productively.”

  Ual had avoided conversations with the FEU foreign minister for several days, although she had transmitted a number of formal messages of apology and reconciliation. Now he knew what the wess’har had in mind, he could have more than a token diplomatic exchange. And he would insist on speaking to her without filtering or interference from what Eddie called spin doctors.

  Then he would call Eddie.

  He had plans to speak to everyone. No, not everyone. Dare I speak to the matriarchs of F’nar?

  “How do I contact the wess’har leaders?” he asked.

  Ralassi’s little teeth were just visible, and his eyes narrowed into slits. It was a sign of disapproval. “The Assembly has not authorized direct contact.”

  Perhaps it was a rash move. Ual had no idea what he might say by way of conversation anyway: all conversations had been in the form of warning statements and counter-warnings since the last ancient war. “You’re correct.”

  The crush outside showed no sign of abating. The car shook a little, buffeted by a wave of movement that had started further away. Ual pondered. He was the foreign minister: it was his job to make decisions about the handling of relations with aliens, a previously insignificant post. Now he was the center of political activity and he wasn’t sure if he could handle it with the confidence of the senior cabinet, the ministers who managed interstate relations on Umeh itself.

  Ual looked on his previous backwater status with sudden nostalgia. Then the car lurched. “We’ll soon have you back now, sir,” said the driver. “The city safety patrol has opened a passage. You sort those humans out, sir. They’re nothing but trouble.”

  Ual pulled the covers down on the car’s windows, suddenly overwhelmed. The sight of pressed bodies outside was like a prophecy.

  When he reached his office the cool pale aquamarine stone seemed less like welcome relief from the street crowds and more like frightening isolation. His assistant, Mas Lij, indicated the communications screen.

  “There is another message for you from the FEU,” said Lij. “Birsen Ertegun is anxious to talk to you.”

  Ual settled on the slab of smooth-polished black basalt—a costly extravagance—and rested his legs. The message was two hours old and showed the human minister Ertegun—he noted her new status—in a carefully managed pose, hands folded on her desk. Despite that, she showed the signs of human agitation that the ussissi had noted among those in Umeh Station—rapid blinking and licking of their wet fleshy mouths. Ual couldn’t blame her. He shared her fear.

  The FEU foreign minister began by repeating her apology and the message that she had broadcast for the benefit of the wess’har. She asked if Ual thought they should evacuate all humans on Umeh, and reminded him that the ship Thetis was less than a year into its return journey to Earth and could be turned back.

  Ual had started to learn the intricacies of the human mind. He considered the offer.

  “We should retrieve our people,” said Ralassi. He meant ussissi, Ual knew, but he chose to interpret our in the widest sense. “We have nothing to gain from this mission.”

  “Should I tell them about Eqbas Vorhi, do you think?”

  “They might as well know the seriousness of their situation.”

  The isenj party and their ussissi interpreters were still on board Thetis even though the humans had already withdrawn their own people from the ship. The invitation to visit Earth seemed fraught with danger now, and not only for humans. For the past year the humans’ news had been full of objections to inviting aliens to Earth, although they seemed to have no problem with inviting themselves to the planets of others.

  “Turning back Thetis will solve the FEU’s political problems with the rest of Earth’s governments,” Ralassi offered.

  “And effectively end the alliance with us, too.”

  Ual could ship the humans back. Umeh wouldn’t be a potential target any more. But it would take more than one Earth year for Thetis to loop back, and Ual had no idea if Umeh had that much time left to appease the wess’har. They acted. They tended not to think.

  Ual continued to listen to Ertegun’s message.

  He wondered if the minister realized that he already knew the scientist Mohan Rayat was, as Lindsay Neville put it, a spook. Ual considered replying to say as much, but he had learned a lot from Eddie Michallat about harnessing the ebb and flow of information. He began composing his reply carefully an
d searched for the correct phrase to indicate that Dr. Rayat might care to present himself to the wess’har authorities too.

  This was the Game. He would play it.

  2

  The crisis may be twenty-five light-years away but that makes it no less urgent. We cannot tolerate a situation where the FEU, and the FEU alone, has contact with these alien governments. The FEU has no mandate to plunge the world into a state of war with nations we have never met. We now have diplomacy by newscast, and that is intolerable. We insist that use of the ITX link be made freely available to this chamber immediately or sanctions must follow.

  JIM MATSOUKIS,

  senior Pacific Rim States delegate

  to the United Nations

  Umeh Station, Jejeno,

  northern hemisphere of Umeh, August 2376.

  Lindsay Neville just stood back. She should have intervened, but she was no longer Mart Barencoin’s commanding officer. She wasn’t anyone’s commanding officer any more.

  The marine was still limping a little from the gunshot wound to his leg but his aggression was obviously fit and well. He blocked Mohan Rayat’s progress across the plaza of the crowded biodome. It was hard not to attract a crowd in this place.

  “So you’re the boss fella now, are you?” Barencoin was tall, solid and intimidating. However thoroughly he shaved, he always looked as if he’d spent the last forty-eight hours lying in a shell-scrape on observation. “Well, seeing as I’m now way outside the Forces Discipline Act, here’s a token of my appreciation as a civilian.”

  He punched Rayat hard in the face. His fist made a wet crack when it landed and Rayat went down with an unh.

  There was an aaah of surprise from the remnants of Actaeon’s company and the civilian contractors. Marine Jon Becken grabbed Barencoin’s arm and pulled him away.

  A couple of onlookers broke into spontaneous applause.

  Barencoin shook off Becken’s grip and turned to a couple of Regulating Branch ratings, Actaeon’s internal police. He massaged his hand. “Okay, I’m done. You can stick me on a charge now.”

  “Never saw a thing,” said the shorter of the two men. “It’s a bugger, this bad eyesight.”

  “Mart, for Chrissakes.” Becken had a white-knuckled grip on his arm. “Leave it, will you?”

  Lindsay wandered over and stood with her arms folded while Rayat got to his feet, a fat trickle of blood issuing from one nostril. He wiped it on his sleeve as if he was used to dusting himself down after a fight.

  “I hope that’s proved cathartic,” he said, staring at Barencoin. Maybe he was considering revisiting the argument later. “Would you like me to spell that for you?”

  “Patronizing twat.” But Becken held on to Barencoin’s arm.

  They had an audience, and that was no bad thing. Lindsay wasn’t taking the flak alone. She made a mock introductory gesture in Rayat’s direction. “Okay, in case any of you didn’t see the news, this is the man who decided to use the Beano bombs. He’s an intelligence officer. Spy, spook, respected member of the intelligence community—take your pick. Have I missed anything out?”

  She had been immersed in the confidential world of need-to-know and secure information from the day she had taken her officer’s commission as a student. She could hardly believe she had publicly denounced someone as a spy. For all that Rayat had done, the act still felt wildly dangerous. But she was damned if he was going to run this place. She wanted him frozen out.

  “Yeah. Why use any bombs at all?” The question came from a civilian engineer in an orange coverall. The woman didn’t look pleased. “What did you target?”

  Lindsay gathered her thoughts. Shan was dead. Ouzhari was scoured clean. Aras was beyond anyone’s reach and nobody knew about Ade Bennett. She decided it was time for the truth.

  “A biohazard. A biohazard some of your companies would have killed to get hold of.”

  “That’s smart,” said Rayat. He was standing quite still, looking wary of tipping them into a mob with the wrong move. But he still didn’t look as scared as she felt. In fact, he didn’t look scared at all. “Any other classified information you want to divulge?”

  “It’s that immortality thing, isn’t it?” said a construction driver.

  “Yes,” said Lindsay. “And I’ll leave you to work out just how responsibly we’d make use of that back home.”

  The ussissi interpreters who worked for the isenj were standing in a pack by the plaza’s central fountain. If the dome had been completed and the number of people housed in it had been halved, it would have been a pleasant deployment. But it wasn’t. People were angry and crowded and scared. And the ussissi gave every sign of being equally angry animals who might turn on humans at any time.

  Only the isenj—patient, unfathomable, quill-covered bulks on spider legs—seemed to be going about their business on site. Lindsay imagined that any species forced to live at such close quarters as the overcrowded isenj had developed a high level of tolerance to adversity. They watched—or Lindsay assumed they watched, as they had no discernible eyes—while the humans wrangled.

  “Who’s got primacy here, the military or the sponsors?”

  “Why have they cut our comms?”

  “We’re going to be stuck here for twenty-five years whatever happens.”

  Rad Jaros, the engineer who had taken on the task of managing the logistics of the emergency, scrambled onto the flatbed of a transport and got instant silence when he stood up. That was something Shan could do, too, but Lindsay knew she never could.

  “That guy there’s right,” said Jaros, pointing into the crowd. “If we’re lucky, we’re stuck here for the next quarter century. If we’re not, the wess’har will fry us, and there’s sod all anyone can do about that because there’s nowhere to run and nobody’s coming to rescue us. So we make the best of it and get this place running properly. We had a schedule before all this happened and now we just have to adjust the numbers. Okay?”

  “Who do you want running this place?” asked Lindsay.

  “Not you or that spy, that’s for sure,” said a voice from the crowd. “And who’s going to enforce the bugger’s authority anyway? Our companies paid for most of this project. So we’ll bloody well run this ourselves.”

  Rayat had never struck Lindsay as a fool. He was on his own out here: whatever government muscle he might have called upon back on Earth was now a lifetime away. He didn’t even have a hand-weapon. He faced the thickening crowd.

  “I think it’s important that we maintain some sense of order here,” he said carefully. His hands were relaxed, palms down, making placatory gestures of the kind that you learned would defuse trouble. “If you would rather have a civilian administration, then I’m happy to explain that to the Foreign Office when we make contact with them.”

  “Who’s the ranking naval officer here?” Lindsay asked.

  There was silence while everyone in a uniform—ratings and junior officers—looked around them. The reality of the loss of life in Actaeon was sobering. A stocky freckled woman with a lieutenant’s double gold stripe on both shoulder boards raised her hand.

  “Cargill, ma’am.”

  “Well, Cargill, you’re admiral of the fleet out here,” said Lindsay. “Make the most of it.”

  Lindsay found it harder to think more than a day ahead now. She withdrew to a quiet corner behind one of the water purifiers and sat down with her back against the gently vibrating pump housing. Through the transparent panels of the dome she could see the dense, intricate mass that was the city of Jejeno, separated from this little fragment of Earth by a moat of service roads. It was the only scrap of open space in the city.

  What now?

  When she had arrived on Bezer’ej nearly two years ago, she had focused on completing the mission and going home to a promotion. When she learned she was pregnant in an alien world, she aimed to cope with that, and no more. When David died just a few weeks old, she existed to exact revenge on Shan Frankland for not using c’na
atat to save him. And then she had seen the reason why Shan could never save David, and she had taken on the task of ensuring c’naatat never fell into the hands of either government or commerce.

  It was all about having a goal. But now she had no goal at all.

  She shut her eyes and tried to visualize herself the following day, functioning normally and looking ahead. But she couldn’t see herself beyond the moment. Perhaps basic survival would occupy her. She braced her elbows on her knees and thought about David, buried in alien soil with a glass headstone to mark his small grave, then let her head sink into her hands.

  “Welcome to the world of the leper,” said Mohan Rayat, and sat down beside her. “You learn to cope with ingratitude in this job.”

  “Sod off,” she said.

  “Eddie,” trilled Giyadas, gravely serious. “They’re coming. What will they be like?”

  The wess’har child walked briskly alongside him, a little seahorse princess just a meter tall but who could already break his arm if she wanted. Eddie Michallat was relieved that she liked him. Wess’har females were formidable, and they started young.

  “I’ve got no idea, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ve seen the same images that you have. But they’re still wess’har, same as you, whatever they look like. You’ll have lots in common. You’ve been learning their language, haven’t you?”

  “We all have.” She meant her family, the four males and their offspring who had been taken in by Nevyan when their own matriarch died. Wess’har didn’t appear to have stepchild issues. “But we still don’t know what they’re really like. Nevyan says we left Eqbas Vorhi ten thousand years ago. That sounds like a very long time.”

  “It is. We were just about discovering how to build cities then.”

  “Are you really a backward species, Eddie?”

  Cute. And tactlessly true, and healthy to be reminded of the chilling reality of not being at the top of the food chain any longer. He had to put his hands up to it. “’Fraid so, sweetheart. Unfortunately, our technology is way ahead of us.”