The World Before Read online

  “Where are the others?” asked Aras. He felt the rats burrow into the layers of his tunic and settle, little hearts pounding. They had a clean dry scent very much like a ussissi.

  “We had to leave them. We set them free.”

  “But they have no food. They can’t digest native Bezer’ej plants. How could you do such a thing?”

  “They’re rats. You killed my dad, and now you’re worried about a few rats?”

  Even now they didn’t understand. Aras wondered how he could ever have thought gethes could learn that their lives were no more special than that of any other species. It was their single defining belief; the colonists even said all gethes were modeled on their god. It was staggering conceit. And a god like a gethes sounded monstrous.

  Aras looked down at Rachel. Once she had rushed to greet him and show him the drawings she had made on hemp paper. Now she pressed into her mother’s skirt, hiding her face.

  Deborah gestured to James to go back inside the tent. “Aras, I’m praying that I can eventually forgive you,” she said. “And I’m truly sorry for your loss.”

  “Do you understand why I did it?”

  “No, Aras, I don’t. And I never will.”

  He thought for a moment that she was going to use the words punishment and sin. She didn’t, but he knew she would be thinking that he had at least paid the same price that he had exacted from her.

  “Come on,” said Ade. “Enough.”

  They retraced their steps. Aras wondered if the thin soil on Mar’an’cas could support so many and recalled how long it had taken to get the soil of Constantine to the correct composition to support terrestrial crops. It could be done, though. He’d grown the colony’s alien vegetables in F’nar for Shan, to make her feel at home. He could do the same here.

  At the perimeter of the camp, a hail of small stones landed in front of them. The marines ducked and turned; some of the colony youths were aiming at Aras.

  “Little bleeders,” Ade muttered. “So much for our model community.”

  Another stone fell short. The youngsters closed the gap. Ade stepped in front of Aras as if to block the missiles and a fist-sized chunk hit him in the face. He staggered a few paces and then recovered his balance.

  “Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck you.” Blood was running down his cheek. He picked up a large stone and threw it back hard, catching one of the fleeing youths squarely in the back. One of the adults grabbed the boy and cuffed him sharply across the head.

  “Sorry,” the man called, fist still clutching the boy’s collar. “That wasn’t meant for you.”

  “You okay, Ade?” said Qureshi. She rummaged in her belt pouch and unwrapped a dressing. “Let’s have a look at that.”

  Ade took the wad from her and moistened it from his water bottle. He wiped the cut carefully. “No need, Izzy. I’ll be fine.”

  “I heard it go crack,” she said. “That’s broken bone.”

  Qureshi took a step forward and he took one back. She stared at him for a few seconds and then her expression changed; Aras knew what she had seen. Ade’s wound was already fading.

  “Oh shit,” she said. “Ade, what happened to you?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “You’ve caught it, haven’t you? That’s why you surrendered.”

  “It was an accident. Shan head-butted me when I was trying to restrain her. It’s spread by body fluids.”

  “Who else knows you’ve got it?”

  “Lindsay Neville.”

  “Rayat?”

  “By now, who knows?”

  “Shit.” Qureshi went as if to reach out to him and then dropped her arms awkwardly as if afraid of contact. “You poor sod.”

  Aras wasn’t sure whether Qureshi was more worried about the consequences of discovery or Ade’s prospect of permanent exile. She seemed genuinely upset, reeking of agitation. Chahal just shook his head.

  “Are you going to come back to F’nar?” Ade asked.

  “How can we?” Qureshi shrugged. “They need us here to get sanitation and power running. At least we’ll be doing something we’re trained for.”

  “And after that?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. What about you?”

  Ade glanced at Aras. “I’m staying.”

  The chances of any of them getting back to Earth looked so remote as to make the comment superfluous. Aras felt Black and White shifting position inside his tunic.

  “When you want to leave this place, notify me,” saidAras.

  If there were surplus crops after Eddie and the rats were fed, then he would send them to the marines. He wondered if they might not all be better off on Umeh.

  Ade was silent on the boat back to the mainland. At one point he took the bloodstained wad of fabric out of his pocket and stared at it as if the real nature of his condition was starting to dawn on him.

  “If your comrades had returned with you, what would you have done?” Aras asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Ade. “The last thing you want in F’nar is a bunch of bored Booties hanging about. Maybe it’s just as well they’re occupied elsewhere.”

  “I realize how distressing this is for you.”

  “I’m not the one they were aiming the stones at.”

  “I’m not that offended.”

  “You looked after that colony from day one. That’s got to hurt.”

  “I have greater pain to keep me occupied. And disappointment. What is the one thing none of them asked?”

  “Dunno.”

  “They didn’t ask about the gene bank. They brought it to this system for safekeeping. It was important enough for Shan to be sent here to locate it. And now it is forgotten.”

  “But not by you.”

  “No. Not by me.”

  If Ade was seeking a new purpose in life, then so was Aras. This seemed a fine one. When he had settled his scores with Lindsay Neville and Mohan Rayat, then he would be trapped with destructively bitter memories unless he moved forward. Restoring Earth’s endangered and extinct species was something Shan would have wanted: she had cared enough to leave her life behind to retrieve the gene bank for her government.

  It was a very different gethes government now. The wess’har held the gene bank. It was safely out of human hands.

  Aras wondered what an Earth without gethes might be like.

  Ual’s forebears lived in his mind. He searched the memory embedded in his genes and looked for wisdom from his fathers and mothers before him, but there was nothing to prepare him for the situation he faced now. He gripped hard on the data cube that Ralassi had found for him, still disturbed by its images, and sought courage.

  When he walked into the Northern Assembly debating chamber the roar of angry sound hit him like a shock wave.

  The scene before him was more like a street in Jejeno when something had gone badly wrong—when someone had fallen or another unplanned event had disrupted the flow of pedestrian traffic and thrown up chaotic eddies and turbulence. The delegates were milling, arguing, cursing. A choppy sea of glittering black shapes threatened to engulf him; he felt he might drown if he slipped from the podium.

  Of course they were in disarray. War had never actually come close to Umeh itself before. They could all remember that and be certain of the accuracy of the memory. Ual wondered at what point he might need to play the data in his belt to his audience. Ralassi had collated archive material on Eqbas Vorhi for him, a little history lesson for the Assembly.

  “Minister Par Paral Ual has been summoned to explain the current situation,” said the Arbiter wearily. “Let him be heard, will you?”

  The chamber grew quieter. Ual could see ministerial colleagues from other departments huddled in a group, shimmering with resentment. Alien Affairs had always been regarded as a junior post, a do-nothing backwater keeping an eye on the wess’har in case they let their defenses down on Asht, a department autonomous through insignificance. But now the rest of the regional administration had noticed him.
Ual feared that they might ally to reshape the cabinet.

  For a moment he longed for the human solution of a single executive leader. But Eddie had told him that didn’t do a thing to stop infighting and alliances; it just created more people to stab you in the back, a situation that Eddie assured him seldom involved actual weapons.

  “We find ourselves in a difficult position, colleagues,” said Ual. And to his utter embarrassment, the words came out in the human’s English, shaped by sucked air.

  The chamber really was silent now.

  He gathered his composure and repeated himself in his own language. “These are challenging times. The wess’har have summoned aid from Eqbas Vorhi to deal with the humans, and if we’re not prudent they’ll deal with us too. We’ve never faced anything like this. We need to consider radically different solutions.”

  “Is it true that the wess’har planted a pathogen on Asht to stop us returning?” The question came from a location delegate he didn’t recognize. Full assembly sessions mixed the representatives of neighborhoods with regional overseers and ministries, and they all had a vote. “What are you going to do about that?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” said Ual. “It’s not an immediate problem.”

  “And why did they do it now? They’ve had generations to do it.”

  “Perhaps they couldn’t, until now,” said another delegate. “Perhaps the humans helped them. And what about Thetis? What will happen to our colleagues on board?”

  Ual had a sudden nagging thought and dismissed it. Why now, indeed? He pressed on. “The humans are also subject to biological countermeasures on Bezer’ej.” He paused and corrected himself. Preserve me, I actually called it Bezer’ej. “My apologies. Asht. It’s fully quarantined.”

  “It didn’t save the bezeri. At least any damage we caused in the past wasn’t deliberate.”

  “Order!” shouted the Arbiter. “If you don’t comply with the rules of this chamber I’ll close the session. Let the minister speak.”

  There was a disgruntled scraping of limbs across polished stone but the delegates shut up. Ual pondered the wess’har reputation for bioengineering skills. The ussissi said they came from a world of naturally changing genomes: they knew a great deal about the fabric of life as well as the manipulation of molecules. He would worry about that later.

  He made another attempt. “Unfortunately our human allies have placed us in an impossible situation, and I’m led to question what benefit they are to us.”

  “Hand over the individuals responsible for the attack on Asht.”

  “The wess’har haven’t asked for them yet. Do you want me to deliver them?”

  “If need be, yes. That is how their minds work. They decide who’s responsible and take only them.”

  “And how would you define responsible? And what constitutes responsible to an Eqbas wess’har? Do you understand their framework of ethical logic? They don’t invade. They will, however, intervene when asked, and they intervene robustly and then they never stop intervening and they create yet another enclave of their own culture.”

  Eit, the supplies minister, cut in. “We’ve asked for wess’har troops to face our justice for the destruction of Mjat for generations. Aras Sar Iussan lives in F’nar and as long as he does I say we should not give them the two prisoners they will demand.”

  “I sympathize,” said Ual. “But if we don’t comply, we give the wess’har a reason to take action against us, something they will find a great deal easier with the assistance of Eqbas Vorhi.” Now he took the biggest risk of his political career. He felt for the data cube and readied himself to place it in the slot to project images for his colleagues’ education. “If we surrender to our past then we lose a greater opportunity for the future. Rather than pursue a symbolic feud with the wess’har, I think we might be better off negotiating with them to secure their help—the help we once thought we might get from humans.”

  “And we invited the humans here,” said a surly voice to Ual’s left. “The rest of Umeh won’t forgive us for that. It’s made us a potential battlefield. Throw them all out—now.”

  Eit interrupted. “If you’re suggesting a course of action, you’re not making it clear.” He lobbed a small polished stone in the direction of the voice. There was a loud ping. “Expand, Minister Ual.”

  Ual felt he was sliding into a pit, a deep one dug for him by Eit. But he felt strongly and—as always—that overrode his suspicion that Eit was luring him into making a rash statement. He almost certainly was: but it still had to be said.

  “Observe,” said Ual.

  The images that appeared around the walls for the delegates to watch were old, very old. They were navigation aids that the ussissi pilots once used, pictures of approaches to landing areas and locations of ussissi settlements where they could find accommodation. Some showed fine, wide rivers, others mountains, others plains and icy tundra, exotic images for the city-bound isenj. The worlds looked largely wild and unspoiled.

  And in each picture, discreet and almost unnoticeable unless you searched for it, was a building or two in a curious sinuous style like a fungal growth, almost blended into the landscape.

  “There are nearly twenty separate images here,” said Ual. “And each is of a different world that was once heavily populated. All have been visited and subdued by forces from Eqbas Vorhi over the millennia. If you want to study the various reasons why they intervened in each place, I have more history archives. But perhaps all you need to know now is this. They arrive, they remake the world into what they see as its natural ideal, and they stay. They create outposts. They police, to use the human word. And they adapt to each environment.”

  The chamber was silent. Ual felt he had made his point. The same silence had descended on him when he viewed the images alone in his offices.

  “Are you saying they might do that to Umeh?” asked Eit.

  “I am.”

  “And the humans?”

  “I think it inevitable, judging by this, that they won’t escape correction either.”

  Ual let the delegates chew over the implications. The unexpected images were a stroke of theater that Eddie had taught him without realizing. Sometimes you had to make your point any way you could.

  “Humans are no longer a beneficial ally,” said Ual.

  “But they still want the instant communications systems.”

  “Yes, but they have nothing to give us, except the return of our diplomatic delegation from Thetis. Perhaps we should seek different alliances and re-examine all those things we thought were fundamental to our culture. What matters is that we resolve our population and environmental problems on this planet and Tasir Var. Everything else is negotiable.”

  It was so quiet he could have heard a bead drop from a quill. He waited for one lobbed in protest to hit him. He waited for someone to demand that they fight the Eqbas if they tried to rehabilitate Umeh to their own taste.

  But he knew what they were thinking. He decided to say it for them.

  “We have never defeated the wess’har and I’m certain the Eqbas will ensure we have no chance of ever doing so.” He paused, seeing Eit’s quills beginning to lift. “Perhaps they might be the allies we need. Better that we negotiate a lasting settlement than live in fear. You’ve seen evidence that the wess’har can save Umeh.”

  But at what price? Nobody asked. It was silent.

  Then the chamber erupted. Ual never got the chance to say which part of the wess’har civilization he suggested they approach first. The fact that squabbling had broken out—a rare breach of self-control for a race used to tolerating each other in crowded conditions—suggested some of the delegates agreed with him.

  He stepped down from the podium and didn’t wait for the vote. As he left, a hail of small stone beads, some red, some blue, some green, bounced off him with angry pings as some delegates showed their disapproval.

  It would mean a very different way of life, a terrifying prospect for a species that knew
its past intimately and lived with generations of memories every second. But Umeh needed an environmental solution. And the prospect of expansion off-world now seemed impossible.

  Whether the vote went with him or not, he was going to talk with the wess’har. He would surrender himself to chance as an act of good faith. Umeh had been mired too long in fretting over the Destroyer of Mjat and other historical wounds. Ual felt the beads under his footpads, sharp and treacherous.

  Beads.

  He didn’t want to, but he thought of a red corundum bead he had given a curious Eddie Michallat, one still attached to a shed quill. It wasn’t the only access the human might have had to isenj tissue. But Eddie was the only human he knew with direct contact with the wess’har.

  Exactly what I might have done in his position. But he was still shocked by how deeply betrayed he felt by a creature he thought of as a friend. Did I misjudge humans that badly?

  Betrayer or not, though, Eddie Michallat had saved him from being forced into a course of action that could end only in another lost war on Bezer’ej.

  Ual swallowed his discomfort and thought of Umeh’s future.

  4

  Well, we’ve still got incoming broadcast—only five channels, but one of them is sports so we can follow the footie. You’d be amazed how sane that keeps you. Our food situation isn’t much better than yours, mate, but at least I haven’t got people singing hymns next door at six in the morning. Is Ade okay? Next time Eddie comes to Umeh, I hope he brings him. I want to see Lindsay Neville’s face when he walks in.

  Message from Mne Mart Barencoin to Mne Ismat Qureshi

  “You haven’t lost your touch for stirring up shit,” said Mick, the duty news editor, not looking up from his sandwich. Then he glanced up at the cam, and he simply said, “Oh…”

  Eddie was making use of one of the comms screens in the Exchange of Surplus Things. Every conversation was effectively a live outside broadcast surrounded by curious wess’har, and he forgot that Mick hadn’t seen the wall-sized image of Surang before.