Iâll stand them by.â
Esganikan closed the link and turned to Aitassi. âThe gethes find our consensus odd. If only they could see us now.â
âThey wouldnât see this as lack of consensus.â
âThis is the problem with remote working. No scent. No jask to help us agree on matters.â
âSo, youâre content to have the Skavu in this system?â
Aitassi knew as well as anyone what the Skavu were. But like all her kind, she walked the fine line of neutrality, culturally anchored to the wessâhar but somehow able to work with other races on a dozen worlds. Humans seemed completely bemused by that. Everyone, as far as they were concerned, had to take sides. The neutral couldnât be trusted. It was typical of a species that regarded information as a commodity.
Esganikanâs gaze shifted to the Bezerâej grassland beyond the hull. âThe Skavu are utterly inflexible, but theyâre efficient. I would have preferred an alternative, but time isnât on our side.â
âPerhaps theyâre just what the isenj need. However heavy-handed they are, thereâs not much more damage that they could cause. A case of two extremes meeting each other.â
âTwo extremes donât make balance.â
A patch on the deck of her cabin became transparent as she touched the bulkhead controls, giving her an aerial view south of Jejeno.
The recent fighting had left patches of reconstruction work like the stumps of decaying teeth. It was impossible to attack a section of such a crowded, complex environment without the effects being felt like shock waves all round.
Maybe she could make some inroads without needing to call in the Skavu. âItâs time I saw the isenj ministers again.â
âThey still ask for access to bioweapons.â
âI find their method of warfare confusing. They never seem to finish anything. They simply peck away at each other now and again.â
âIf you look at their history,â said Aitassi, âthey might have squabbles, but destruction is rarely their way of settling disputes. They have to be facing catastrophe before that reaction sets in.â
âThey are facing catastrophe. Perhaps itâs happening too slowly for them to notice.â
Esganikan adjusted the magnification with a flick of her fingers so that the remote brought the cityscape hundreds of meters closer. She could see movement in some of the canyonlike streets that looked like a mudslideâthe heads of thousands of isenj, dark and velvety, moving in orderly procession according to strict pedestrian traffic rules because they were so crowded. The infrastructure was finely balanced: theyâd destroyed the ecology of their planet and everything was now carefully managed and engineered.
Yes, isenj were brilliant engineers. And the trouble with brilliant engineers was that they always felt they could fix things in the end, even when the situation was beyond them.
Esganikan touched the controls and the bulkhead became opaque again. âCall Shomen Eit. I canât wait any longer for him to decide when he wants to talk about the transfer of bioweapons. Arrange a time for us to meet.â The minister spoke English now, the one positive thing the gethes had contributed to the situation: they had a common language, alien though it was. She could have called Shomen Eit herself, but it was usually Aitassiâs role to interpret, and bored ussissi troubled her. âWeâve never walked away from a request to restore a planet. The isenj can only save themselves by reducing their population. Thereâs no other option, and they know it.â
Earth was the priority. She had to keep that in mind. Earth had biodiversityâthousands, even millions, of different types of people to save, from insects to large carnivores. Gethes might not have seen their fellow Earth species as people, but that was a lesson they would have to
Starla Huchton, S. A. Huchton