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even with Earth’s agreement.
    He decided his time was better spent healing the raw pain within his own small, bizarre family than worrying about the fate of a distant planet that had caused so much death and destruction here on Bezer’ej. And there was a lot of pain to heal.
    Ade changed the subject and sighted up again. He froze, fixed on something, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Dead ahead.”
    Aras followed the direction of Ade’s focus. “What can you see?”
    â€œProbably a sheven. ” The estuary was a maze of mudflats and inlets. “It’s a bugger to spot transparent targets.”
    Lindsay was now as translucent as the bezeri, and amphibious with it. C’naatat tackled each host as a new project to be transformed; it never behaved quite the same way twice. They were hunting a glass ghost.
    Something sparkled in Aras’s peripheral vision and he jerked round. But there was nothing.
    Ade suddenly raised the rifle, slow and steady. He indicated with an exaggerated nod to his right and tracked his scope. Rushes, he mouthed.
    The sunlight caught something in Aras’s peripheral vision again and he wheeled round. It seemed to be bobbing up from cover and dropping back again, too big to be a sheven, but it left the same visual impression. He paused. Then he began paddling with long, slow strokes to ease the skiff clear of the bank. Ade said nothing and adjusted his aim. The rifle whirred faintly as it auto-targeted.
    A glistening translucent curve flashed and fell.
    There was no splash. Whatever it was had fallen on dry land.
    Lindsay Neville.
    Ade was on one knee, finger curled against the trigger. Aras drew the paddle through the water and then he saw it for a moment: a liquid curve above the grasses, not quite completely transparent, but still far from human. Mohan Rayat insisted that Lindsay was still in bipedal human form.
    â€œHold fire,” said Aras, just a breath of a whisper. “It’s not her.”
    Ade held his aim, froze for a second, and then swung the rifle left as if he was targeting again. Aras stared as a glimpse of a formless, gelatinous shape slipped into the water, leaving an impression of sparkling lights and opalescence.
    Ade lowered the weapon and his shoulders sagged. “What the hell was that?”
    It wasn’t anything like a streamlined humanoid. And it could produce light. Sheven didn’t have bioluminescence.
    But the bezeri did.
    â€œIt’s a whole new problem,” said Aras.
    Yes, it was.
    The Temporary City, Bezer’ej: Eqbas Vorhi base
    â€œYou shove that probe any further, sunshine, and you’re going to be using it for a suppository.”
    Shan stared at Da Shapakti with as much malevolent dignity as she could muster with her legs spread apart.
    â€œMy apologies,” said the biologist. The fact that he wasn’t human and had no preconceived ideas about women didn’t make it any easier for her. It was definitely a scene for the dingbat abduction conspiracists’ album. “Unfamiliar anatomy.”
    â€œI’ll bet.” It was years since Shan had undergone a manual examination: even her don’t-interfere-with-nature Pagan parents thought a scan was perfectly acceptable. “Haven’t you got an ultrasound probe? Jesus, even I’ve got one in my swiss, and that’s an antique.”
    â€œUltrasound, as you call it, provides no cells.” The Eqbasbiologist brushed the probe over the surface of a sheet of gel. “I want to know how your uterus regenerates.”
    â€œOkay, give me the probe. I know the layout better than you.” It looked like a glass cocktail stirrer. Eqbas technology was largely transparent and baffling, but Shan didn’t need to understand it to insert it. And at least it was warm. “I check myself every day now. No uterus. It hasn’t come back.”
    â€œI’ve made you angry,” said Shapakti. He froze in