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the changing patterns of electrical activity in the cells didn’t give Rit much idea of where those eyes were focused. She had met her first ussissi when she came to Jejeno as a child, and she still sought some pattern in their eyes like she did in the receptors of her own kind. She never found it. She always felt there was something unsaid when she spoke with ussissi.
    â€œI’m not here to advise,” said Ralassi carefully. “Not about direction. Execution, yes. But the direction can only come from you and your colleagues.”
    â€œShomen Eit must be displaced.”
    Rit paused and waited for a reaction. Ralassi’s head bobbed as if he didn’t quite understand what she’d said. He did, of course: it was just that no isenj minister would even suggest a coup. Isenj were largely cooperative, their ambitions held in check by shared memories and the orderly society they inherited from their colony-dwelling ancestors. Rit could recall that ancient sense of purpose for the common good, the sense of knowing where she fitted into the greater scheme and what she had to do.
    But this act was for that greater good of the colony. Defending the colony transcended the need for narrow bureaucratic order. She had to do it.
    â€œThe elections are still a year away.” Ralassi’s flat tone betrayed his reluctance to discuss the unthinkable. “Time for any number of crises before then.”
    â€œI didn’t mean that we should wait for elections.” But there was no “we” for ussissi, not on Umeh at least. “You were born and raised here, Ralassi. Do you not feel any sense of a stake in this society?”
    He blinked. It made him look like the soft, smooth humans again, whose eyes were in constant movement. “This is still not my world. And we can only involve ourselves so far in your affairs. We serve while we can remain neutral.”
    So she’d be removing Shomen Eit on her own, then. She turned her back on the dalf and made her way back to the groundcar, still uncertain of how much support she might get from her cabinet colleagues. Ralassi trotted behind her, his silence telling her that he found her machinations distasteful. Right then it seemed not the prospect of further war that was the greatest threat to her children, but her own government—her own colleagues—seeing the Eqbas intervention solely as a chance to emerge as a global power.
    A global power on a dying planet. A poor prize.
    â€œThere’s no room for old politics,” she said. The driver couldn’t hear them in the sealed cab. “My husband wanted change, and change we’ll have.”
    â€œYou’ll never get Bedoi’s support for this. You need Bedoi to carry the whole cabinet. You know you do.”
    â€œMaybe I’ll have the army’s.”
    Ralassi didn’t protest. It was, as he said, not his world. Rit had no grasp of what it meant to know no other home and yet not feel part of it. But ussissi, like humans and wess’har, had no genetic memory, and so they couldn’t possibly have a true sense of home and heritage.
    â€œYou’re not a general,” Ralassi said.
    â€œMy ancestors were conquerors.” She wondered if anyone had the skills needed to fight a civil war, a rare thing indeed among isenj. She searched her ancient memories again, seeking something to guide or inspire her. “All I need is Shomen Eit’s influence to be removed, and a weapon that another’s skills can deploy. None of us know how to use a bioweapon except the wess’har. So I have as good a chance as anyone else of using it to advantage.”
    â€œYou accept the deaths of some of your own citizens are inevitable, then.”
    Bioagents were a wess’har speciality: even the Wess’ej wess’har could do that, despite their lack of interest in pursuing technology and their talk of respecting the “natural”world. They could even