Judge by Karen Traviss Page B

the room. “Promise me you won’t rant about what an inane bunch of wankers young reporters are today. Just accept you feel left out.”
    â€œNo, I’ll rant…it’s a reflex when I see morons.”
    The insets at the side of the screen were far more interesting than the main image. There was a studio discussion between political commentators, a feed from a green rally, and another aerial mapsat shot of the FEU carrier group patrolling along the edge of Australian waters. Eddie focused on the rally and opted for the image, making it fill the screen; it had that excited sense of people waiting to see a movie premiere, not cowering masses on the brink of apocalypse. He wondered if they had any idea that even the massive environmental efforts they’d made in recent years might not buy them time with the Eqbas. And if the Eqbas didn’t start a shooting match, the FEU looked like it would.
    Nothing like an excuse to start up old feuds. The Eqbas are coming to cull the herd, and all we can do is squabble over who gets to be first in the queue.
    Eddie had played the game of working out just what level of human population the Eqbas would think was viable to give other species a place at the table. Two billion? One? It sure as shit wasn’t going to be the current seven billion.
    â€œI still think Shan was mad to go back,” he said. “I guarantee they won’t be able to resist having a crack at grabbing her.”
    â€œWhich they ?”
    â€œAll of them. FEU, Sinostates, even the Aussies.” Eddie had said too much at the wrong time about c’naatat, but he hadn’t been believed by his news editor in the end. The FEU wasn’t quite so quick to dismiss it; they wouldn’t have sent Rayat to check it out in the first place. “They just need a sample. Nothing more. But that’s Shan for you—she can’t delegate.”
    As he concentrated on the green rally, he watched a reporter doing a vox pop in the crowd. Whatever a reporter was these days, he had no idea: some wannabe twat gagging to do the job for free or even pay for the privilege, just to get some reassurance that they existed by seeing themselves permanently recorded in some news archive, so they’d be somebody. Next week, they’d be back to serving donuts. When did reporting get to be about the reporter? In his day, it had still been about the story, outward-looking, inquiring; now it was a karaoke night. Maybe he was better off out here after all.
    At times like this, Eddie missed Shan. She understood the therapeutic value of a good effing and blinding session. “Too many citizen journalists,” he said. “Bloody amateurs. Shame the development of the human brain didn’t keep pace with the expansion of self-publishing technology.”
    â€œYou’re right, it is a reflex, isn’t it?” Erica leaned over his chair and kissed him on the top of the head. “I’m going to be back by lunchtime. Olivier found a cave system and wants me to put an optic line down there to chart it.”
    â€œBut you’re not going in, right?”
    â€œNo, that’s what an optic line’s for, poppet. Remember? White man’s magic? The cam?” She paused at the door. “Why not go down to the exchange and see if Giyadas wants to watch this too?”
    â€œYeah. Maybe I will.”
    â€œAnd don’t forget you’ve got to pack for Jejeno. You’ve a lot to do.”
    The door closed behind her as easily as she seemed to leave Earth’s woes behind. This was a house full of memories today, because this had been Aras’s home, the setting for so many painful, shocking and even wonderful times that Eddie had partly forgotten until now. The distance of years now lent a vivid relief to it all. Maybe the reality had been different, but he had—he absolutely had —seen Shan brought back like a mummified corpse from space, from the dead