Migration: Species Imperative #2 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  - Encounter -

  - 1 - - RECOVERY AND RESUMPTION

  - 2 - - SECRETS AND STEALTH

  - Encounter -

  - 3 - - TOUR AND TROUBLE

  - 4 - - CALAMITY AND CONSEQUENCE

  - Encounter -

  - 5 - - REST AND RECRIMINATION

  - 6 - - CANOES AND CONVICTIONS

  - Encounter -

  - 7 - - PRODIGAL AND PROBLEMS

  - 8 - - MEANINGS AND MISGIVINGS

  - Encounter -

  - 9 - - BETRAYAL AND BRAVERY

  - 10 - - FLIGHT AND FRIENDSHIP

  - 11 - - ARRIVAL AND ADJUSTMENT

  - Encounter -

  - 12 - - WONDERS AND WOUNDS

  - 13 - - ACCUSATION AND ANSWER

  - Encounter -

  - 14 - - ACQUAINTANCE AND ANGUISH

  - 15 - - DISCLOSURES AND DILEMMA

  - Encounter -

  - 16 - - CONUNDRUM AND CHANGE

  - 17 - - TRANSFORMATION AND TRIAL

  - Encounter -

  - 18 - - MEETING AND MAYHEM

  - 19 - - HYPOTHESES AND HORRORS

  - Encounter -

  - 20 - - DANGER AND DISMAY

  - Encounter -

  - 21 - - STRAINS AND STRESS

  - Encounter -

  - 22 - - AGONY AND AFTERMATH

  - 23 - - READING AND REUNION

  Read on for an excerpt from

  CONTACT

  Raves for Julie E. Czerneda’s Species Imperative Series:

  Praise for Migration:

  “Czerneda always tells a good story.”

  —Chronicle

  “Czerneda’s characterizations, both human and alien, are as intricate and entertaining as the twisty plot. Fans of SF adventure and intrigue—and of C. J. Cherryh’s masterfully drawn alien cultures in particular—are in for a treat.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “. . . fascinating, action-packed . . . believable sentient beings. . . . Mac is a terrific heroine . . . the heroic thread that brings a fabulous science fiction thriller together.”

  —The Midwest Book Review

  “Fascinating characters, including some delightfully wacky aliens, mixed with thrilling action make this an exciting read.”

  —Locus

  Praise for Survival:

  “Brilliant world building, action-packed creative space opera . . . imperative for fans to read . . . the beginning of a delightful new series.”

  —The Midwest Book Review

  “A rare blend of hard science fiction and exceptional characterization. Biologist author Julie Czerneda creates unusually believable aliens . . . building entire races and moving scenarios.”

  —Library Bookwatch

  “Fascinating . . . intriguing new series.”

  —Locus

  MIGRATION

  Novels by

  JULIE E. CZERNEDA

  available from DAW Books:

  IN THE COMPANY OF OTHERS

  Species Imperative

  SURVIVAL

  MIGRATION

  REGENERATION

  Web Shifters

  BEHOLDER’S EYE

  CHANGING VISION

  HIDDEN IN SIGHT

  Trade Pact Universe

  A THOUSAND WORDS FOR STRANGER

  TIES OF POWER

  TO TRADE THE STARS

  Copyright © 2005 by Julie E. Czerneda.

  All rights reserved.

  DAW Books Collectors No. 1327.

  DAW Books are distributed by the Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  First Paperback Printing, April 2006

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  S.A.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-04382-0

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Roger . . .

  Once more, because.

  Acknowledgments

  Hardcover part deux! If I’d known the rush I’d get from signing these beauties, I’d have been too excited to finish writing the first one. My sincere thanks to all who took home copies of Survival, including the way you’ve brightened my days since with calls for “more Mac!” Here you go.

  The gorgeous look and hopefully sensible contents of this book owe themselves to my always insightful editor, Sheila Gilbert, and the talented folks at DAW Books. A special thanks to Colleen Clarke, of Penguin Canada, for her enthusiastic support. I’d also like to thank these intrepid souls who read first draft: Jihane Billacois, Jana Paniccia, Ruth Stuart, Kristen Britain, and Janny Wurts. Your comments were more than helpful. As I wrote, I was reassured by the wonderful comments of C.J. Cherryh (fan-girl moment), James Alan Gardner, Robert J. Sawyer, Catherine Asaro, Doranna Durgin, and Jack McDevitt on Survival. Thank you all. And I’d be remiss not to mention the superb launch hosted by Bakka Books, where salmon was indeed served.

  My first-ever visit to the west coast took place while writing this book. I’d like to thank my gracious hosts: in Seattle, Leslie Howle, Greg and Astrid Bear, and the SF Museum, Nathan Azinger, and Duane of University Bookstore; in Prince George, Rob Budde (UNBC), Lynda Williams, David Lott, Derryl Murphy, and Mosquito Books; while in Vancouver, Dan Archambault and Donald Derrick (Green College, UBC), Walter and Jill of White Dwarf (wow), Margaret McKinnon-Cash, Hazel and Fred Peschl, and Douglas Starink. Hugs to you all! Ahem. About this cover art. You know I wish only the best for Vancouver, but isn’t it glorious how Luis Royo destroyed it for me?

  As for Migration, I’ve done my best to reflect what is known now, from geoducks to landscapes. My thanks to these folks for lending me their expertise: Kim McLean (geology and earthquakes), Nathan Azinger (food), Erin Kenny (language), Kevin Maclean (New Zealand), Isaac Szpindel (yet more optics), and Dr. Sally Leys (glass sponges). I was privileged to meet with Dr. Scott Hinch at UBC (a man who knows his salmon). Any factual errors in this book are mine. (If I’ve neglected anyone whose brain I picked for this, please accept my heartfelt apology and/or smack me with a salmon.)

  There are real people whose names appear in this story. Gentlemen John Ward and Lee Fyock are back. From charitable auctions come: Frank Wu, who designed and commands his own starship, with teacup; Cathy Palmer-Lister, who named and runs a store in the north woods, and Wendy Carlson, a fine character. A newsgroup contest enlisted Lara Herrera and her son Rob to create a name for me, as did Bobbie Barber and Carol Gaupp, while David Brokman was his noble self. As always, any resemblance to an actual person is unintentional, except for the good bits.

  A special note of affection and respect to my dear friends, the Heiers: Linda, Arthur, Mary, and, for always, Eddie. You’ve been with me from the start and I’ve appreciated it more than I can say.

  As for my family? Yes! A hardcover book with my photo in it!

  You believed, so I did, too.

  By what measure

  should we

  condemn ourselves?

  Survival is

  a moral choice.

  (Recent corridor inscription,

 
Progenitor’s Hold, Ship.)

  - Encounter -

  THE GREAT JOURNEY has been renewed. That which is Dhryn has remembered. All that is Dhryn must move.

  That which is Dhryn . . . hungers.

  That which is Dhryn remembers this place, knows its Taste.

  All that is Dhryn must move.

  It is the way of the journey, that all follow the Taste.

  It is survival.

  The language of the Eelings didn’t lend itself to emotion. There was no need; the bioluminescent beings were able to flash patterns of excitement, joy, or strife.

  Or fear.

  “We have incoming ships,” the transect technician reported. His voice didn’t change, but his lithe body was suddenly ablaze. “Sir.”

  There should have been no reason for such a display. There were always incoming ships. The Naralax Transect was like an artery to Ascendis, the Eeling home world, anchored between the orbits of her two moons, constantly pumping trade goods to and from the lush planet, bringing ships to her famed refit stations on the nether moon, sending them away again faster and more powerful. And in debt.

  “Multiple collisions. Sir.”

  “On my station.” Sometimes a freighter strayed from its assigned path; dealing with aliens and their differing perceptions made that inevitable. The supervisor, as suited One Responsible, covered his feelings beneath an opaque cloak. Despite that caution, as he took in what his own screen now showed, alarm ringed each wrist with light and spilled past his collar, catching fire on the spikes of chin and frill.

  The screen showed mayhem. Over fifteen ships were reporting hull impacts, several careening into other ships in turn. But there was no time to think about those lives, lost or at risk. For the legal traffic had virtually disappeared among a cloud of new arrivals. This was no confused freighter captain. It wasn’t a convoy of audacious iily poachers, orbiting Ascendis herself while their servo scoops netted blossoms, relying on surprise and speed to evade the rangers who protected the rich forests of the north.

  This was . . .

  The supervisor drew himself up. “Send a planet-wide alarm. Do it now.”

  The cloud wasn’t assuming orbit; it was heading for the upper atmosphere. It expanded at the same time, sensors translating the splitting of each new arrival into multiple targets, those into more, then more, all on the same trajectory. To the surface.

  So many ships were breaking through the atmosphere at once, they set off weather control alarms as they shattered programmed winds and burned through clouds. Thousands, perhaps millions.

  “What should I say? What are they?” The technician glowed so frantically the supervisor wondered he could see his own screen past that light.

  Not that any of them needed to. Not now.

  Now was too late.

  The supervisor pulled his cloak closed, dousing the flickering light of his despair.

  “The Dhryn.”

  - 1 -

  RECOVERY AND RESUMPTION

  “YOU ASK HER.” “You.”

  “Not me. Don’t you know who she is?”

  “Doc Connor.”

  “The Dr. Connor, Mackenzie Connor. The one who lost her arm in that terrible accident last fall. You know. When the moorings collapsed under the pods and dozens of students were killed—”

  “Five, not dozens.”

  “Whatever. Well, I heard it wasn’t completely an accident.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sabotage. I’m not joking. And when Dr. Connor tried to stop it, the ones responsible took her best friend, a scientist on contract here. They’ve never found the body.” A meaningful pause. “What kind of person could come back and run this place after something like that?”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. ‘Oh!’ ”

  “Weellll . . . Someone has to ask her. He can’t stay out there all day. Go on. You do it.”

  “Not me . . .”

  Mac, who could hear the whispered argument quite well through the half-open door to her office, ran her fingers through her hair and gave those short curls an impatient tug. A reputation for solid science and fair, if tough, marking was one thing, she thought. But these ridiculous rumors spreading through Base were becoming a royal pain—not that she had any hope of setting that record straight. The Ministry of Extra-Sol Human Affairs had been succinct, if highly unhelpful. Mac’s role was over. The rest of humanity had been informed. Measures were being taken by the Interspecies Union. There was, with perverse predictability, no hysteria and barely any press.

  After all, any threat was out there, to others.

  If anything, humanity’s reaction had been rather smug, as if reassured to learn that, like themselves, another species had its share of troublemakers. Somehow, Mac thought with a sour taste in her mouth, her kind seemed to view the entire business as over, now that the “unpleasant neighbors” had been found out and—oh so conveniently—left “town.”

  Meanwhile, there was the small, inconvenient issue of what had happened here, on Earth. Now that friend was foe, and foe possibly friend, the politics were, to put it mildly, mud.

  So Mac was to say nothing, accept whatever lies they’d planted in her absence, and get on with her life as if nothing had happened.

  Some days, she almost could.

  Others?

  “I’m not deaf!” she snapped.

  The ensuing silence could only be described as terrified.

  Eyeing the door to the hall, Mac poked her forefinger into the workscreen hovering over her desk, the gesture sending the files she’d been updating back into the Norcoast main system. Those waiting for them would doubtless notice she hadn’t finished and complain vigorously over lunch. She stretched and gave a rueful smile. At least some things never changed. The salmon would migrate, come what may. And those at Norcoast Salmon Research Facility would be ready, watching, learning, and . . .

  Two heads appeared in the door opening, one above the other. “Dr. Connor?” hazarded the topmost.

  Mac crooked the same finger, blue-tinged through its pseudoskin glove.

  The students sidled into her office, each doing his or her utmost to stay behind the other without trying to be obvious. Ah. Lee Fyock’s newest arrivals, shortly to be sent up the coast to sample intertidal zones. Interesting pair. The young woman so worried about disturbing her, Uthami Dhaniram, was already published, having spent three years studying sea grass dynamics in the Gulf of Mannar for Bharathiyar University. She’d arrived eager for her first winter, an ambition that would have to wait a few months.

  In every way a contrast, tall, fair, and freckled Cassidy T. Wilson would likely consider Norcoast’s mild, damp winters a joke, given he came from a family-run North Sea trawler. No academic credentials on his application, but experience enough to have drawn fine creases around his washed blue eyes and leave permanent ruddy patches on his cheeks. A deep-water fisher. Mac looked forward to his insights.

  If Lee could keep him. Case, as the young man preferred to be called, had originally applied to work with the Harvs, the research teams investigating the Human lines of the salmon equation. A logical choice.

  Until Dr. Kammie Noyo, Mac’s coadministrator of the facility, decided otherwise. As Mac had been an unfathomable number of light-years distant at the time—on a world without oceans, let alone salmon cruising their depths—she could hardly protest after the fact.

  Not that she would. Kammie’s instincts were often on target. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d deliberately cross-fertilized a lagging area of research by dumping an unwitting and typically unwilling student into the mix. If the student lasted and had talent, the results could be spectacular.

  Of course, since Lee’s research moved young Mr. Wilson into the so-called “Wet” half of Norcoast’s projects—an arbitrary division based on the likelihood of wet socks at any given time—and Kammie administrated only the “Dry” now that she was no longer in sole charge, making sure this student lasted became, naturally,
another of Mac’s responsibilities.

  “Sorry to bother you, Dr. Connor,” Case began, ducking behind the hint of an awkward bow. His voice, higher-pitched than one would expect from his frame, tended to squeak. There were beads of sweat, not rain, on his forehead.

  Mac raised one eyebrow in challenge. “ ‘Mac,’ ” she corrected. Uthami’s dark eyes widened into shocked circles. Before she could argue, Mac continued, lifting a finger for each point: “We’re doing the same work. We live in the same place. And I can guarantee you, we’ll smell the same in a very short time.”

  A broad grin slowly spread over Case’s face. “Mac, it is.” He looked suddenly younger.

  What was it like, to be so young, to know so little yet be so sure?

  Mac shrugged off the feeling. “Now. Who can’t stay out—and where’s out—all day? And why?” The hammering of rain on the curved ceiling underscored every word, but the weather was hardly noteworthy. Castle Inlet, where the pods, walkways, and docks of Norcoast’s Base nestled, was surrounded by coastal rain forest for good reason.

  “There’s a man who came with some Preds this morning, Dr.—Mac,” Uthami explained, gamely stumbling past the name. “Security won’t let him in because he doesn’t have a pass, but he won’t leave. He’s been waiting outside the pod since before our last class, a couple of hours at least. Tie—Mr. McCauley—said just leave him there, but we—we thought—you should be told.” Uthami stopped and looked to Case, patently out of her depth.