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  Mac scowled at the empty room. Emily, her co-researcher and friend, was never late for the start of their field season. The first time would have to be this one, when so much was at stake.

  The plant caught her attention and Mac transferred her scowl to its pot, willing the aloe to grow faster and shatter the damn thing. She contemplated helping it along by tossing pot and plant at the door. Satisfying, if hardly beneficial to her own cause.

  With impeccable timing, the door in question abruptly opened wide enough to let a slice of face and one pale eye peer into the room. “Dr. Connor,” said a voice with clear disapproval. “You’re still here.”

  “Yes, I am,” Mac confirmed. “You’d think I had nothing else to do but wait, wouldn’t you?”

  “The office is about to close for the day. I suggest you come back tomorrow.”

  The thin smile stretching Mac’s lips was the one which gave inadequately prepared students nightmares, but all she said was: “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  The opening remained a slit, as though the person on the other side, older and female by the voice, preferred a barrier between herself and imagined hordes in the waiting room. “I’ve been here since last fall, Dr. Connor,” complete with sniff. “You really should go—”

  Mac felt a twinge of remorse. Not at forgetting the woman—she tended to focus on Mudge, not the receptionists who appeared and vanished like shoe styles—but last fall had been the Incident. The Oversight Committee, namely Mudge, had been outraged by the report of a near-attack by a grizzly, an episode he treated, with intolerable smugness, as incited by the grad student in question. He’d claimed the student had grossly interfered with the animal’s normal movements through the forest—a serious charge, possibly enough to cancel Norcoast’s access.

  Upon hearing this, Mac had forced her way past the futile protests of a pimpled young man into Mudge’s office, there dumping a bucket of distinctly ripe salmon on his desk. The so-called incitement had been no more than a similarly fragrant sample on its way back to the lab. The bear, needless to say, had willingly followed the scent and student. The Wilderness Trust didn’t control the air.

  She’d made her point, but Mac hadn’t wished to cost someone their job. Still. Mudge seemed to have a limitless supply of new staff. She leaned back comfortably and gazed at the eyeball in the door slit. “You can go home, if you like.”

  The door closed. Mac sighed and raised an eyebrow at the vidbot’s lens. “The game’s getting old,” she told it, in case anyone was watching.

  “Norcoast.”

  “Oversight.”

  “Counting this—this change of yours, Norcoast, there are three more applications from your facility than last year.”

  No apologies, no pleasantries. Not even names, as though to Mudge their roles mattered more than their own existence. Mac couldn’t disagree.

  She ran a finger along the edge of the bare, gleaming white table separating them, gathering her patience around her.

  The man with authority to grant or refuse the land-based portion of Norcoast’s research was florid in face and manner, with a body determined to stress the midline of his clothing. How many underestimated him? Mac wondered. Their mistake, not hers. Charles Mudge III’s lineage could be traced back to the earliest wave of loggers to settle the Pacific coast and, beyond any doubt, he was obsessed with its forests. Castle Inlet’s forests in particular, since it was partly his great grand-mother’s doing that so many of its slopes had remained pristine enough to qualify for Trust status. Mudge vehemently opposed any Human presence in the Trust.

  Mac was here, as she had been each of the past fourteen years—in The Suit—to arrange just that. “I turned down twenty from my staff,” she replied calmly. “We understand the restrictions, Oversight. We follow them.”

  Mudge looked rumpled and aggrieved, not that Mac could recall seeing him otherwise. Now he scowled at her, his round face creased with wear and sun. His cheeks and chin sported the beginnings of a beard, mottled in gray, red, and black despite the brown hue of what hair struggled to cap his shiny head. “You’d better. Castle Inlet gains Class Two rating in fifty-one years, three months, and two days. If it survives your scientists. And you know what that means. No exemptions, none. I plan to be there on that day, Norcoast, to see your people ousted permanently.”

  Mac hid her dismay. The active lifespan of a Human was lengthening with each generation—on Earth, anyway—so it was entirely possible she and Mudge would continue these meetings into the next century. Sit in that waiting room another hundred times? For a moment, she seriously considered delegating the job, something she’d never done—even to Emily the charming. Then Mac looked into Mudge’s small and anxious eyes, read the determined defensiveness of his hunched shoulders and lowered head, and gave a slow, respectful nod.

  “I’ll be there,” she promised. “Norcoast will be overjoyed to see the Castle Inlet Wilderness Trust reach its four hundredth birthday unspoiled. We aren’t at odds on that, Oversight, by any measure. Now, about my application?”

  She knew better than to hope for a curt “yes” and an end to waiting. Sure enough, Mudge tugged his own imp from a chest pocket and set an enlarged workscreen between them, one that reached to the ends of the table and almost touched the ceiling. Proposals and precautions formed chains of text in the air, most glowing red and trailing comments like drops of gore. She’d been afraid of this. He’d complain about everything possible all over again, a knight defending the virtue of his forest against the pillages of field research.

  Elbows on the table, Mac propped her chin in her hands and plastered an attentive look on her face.

  Good odds the aloe plant would escape before she did.

  The hired skim deposited Mac on the deserted pier, in time to watch the second-last northbound transport lev rise and bank out over the harbor. The driver was apologetic and willing to take her somewhere else; Mac paid him and sent him away.

  She didn’t mind this kind of waiting, the kind where the city lights played firefly over the dark waters of the bay, skims darting from building to building in such silence the lapping of waves against the pylons rang in her ears. She took her time walking to the pier’s end and discovered a small series of crates there, a couple stacked atop one another. Taking off Kammie’s dress shoes with a groan of relief, Mac placed them carefully on a lower crate. She climbed the stack, sat on the topmost, and dangled her bare feet over its edge, admiring the view. She had time, all right. The final t-lev of the night would be late; its driver lingering at each stop so as not to strand anyone.

  Meanwhile, the cool sea air held pulses of city heat, scented with late summer flowers. Mac half closed her eyes to puzzle at the scents, letting the tension of her meeting with Mudge escape with every exhalation, feeling her bones melt. Castle Inlet was too far north for plants that couldn’t take a little bluster and gale with their winter. Bluster. She smiled to herself. Mudge had certainly done enough of that, but even he’d found nothing in her changed request that would impact his precious Trust. Not for want of trying. In his own way, he was as tough as the aloe.

  Mac’s hands strayed to her hair, tugging free the mem-ribbons making it behave. Loose, the stuff drifted down her back and arms until Mac swept it forward over her right shoulder and began to braid, fingers moving in the soothing, familiar pattern.

  The meeting hadn’t been a disaster. Chalk one up for diplomacy, Mac decided proudly. It sounded better than saying she’d managed to keep her temper. They’d had their share of confrontations in the past; times when she and Mudge had shouted at one another until both were hoarse. Once, he’d walked out in a fury. Only once, since Mac had proved herself willing and able to camp in his office for as long as it took. Today? He’d agreed to her request, confirmed all but one of the existing permissions, insisted on onerous but doable increases in their precautions, and been, all in all, reasonable. For Mudge.

  Now one of Kammie’s grad students would have to travel
up the coast to find a new study site. Mac could live with that, being finished with Kammie’s shoes for six months. Flexibility was worth learning, she grinned to herself. Mac always included one or more projects she knew Mudge wouldn’t allow. It let them both get some satisfaction out of the day. She’d been surprised he’d passed it in the first place.

  Leaning back on her hands, Mac smiled peacefully at the city outlining itself against the night. Not a bad meeting at all.

  The voice startled her out of an almost doze, an hour later. “I can’t believe you wore that thing again!”

  Mac turned awkwardly and too quickly, almost falling off the crate into the bay. “Emily? What the—” Smiling so broadly it hurt her cheeks, she clambered down, her bare feet landing in a puddle of cold seawater. It didn’t dim her joy one iota. “About time—”

  The glows lining the pier’s edge were sufficient to put color to the tall slim woman standing in front of her, touching a gold shimmer from a dress that was most likely the latest rage in Paris, sliding warm tan over the skin, and lifting red along the scarf supporting Emily’s left forearm. A sling?

  “What have you done to yourself?” Mac demanded, drawing back from the relieved hug she’d planned to offer.

  “This?” Emily raised her left arm. The scarf fell back to show a flash of white. “Little collision between the edge of a stage, a dance floor, and yours truly.”

  Mac took Emily’s left hand and pulled it gently into the light. “A cast?” she said worriedly, looking up. “A bit archaic, isn’t it?”

  “I had a reaction to the bone-knitting serum. Just have to heal up the old-fashioned way. Don’t worry.” The fingers in Mac’s hold wriggled themselves free. “Won’t slow me down.”

  “You’re late, you know.”

  “Glad to see you, too, Mac.”

  Mac grinned. Looking beyond Emily, she could see a trio of skims parked near the entrance to the pier, figures unloading boxes. “That your gear? Is it—is it ready?”

  “You find me your salmon run, and I’ll tell you who’s in it. Name, rank, and DNA sequence.”

  A shiver of anticipation ran down Mac’s spine. “I’ve such a good feeling about this, Em,” she said. “What we’ll accomplish—what we’ll learn—” Mac stopped, embarrassed by the passion in her voice. “Great to have you back.”

  Emily stilled—or was it merely a pause in the waves tasting the pier? Mac decided she’d imagined it, for her friend went on briskly: “Before you publish our results, Dr. Connor, mind calling in a t-lev on Norcoast’s tab? I’d rather not stand out here all night.”

  Mac pointed to the nearby crates. “Have a seat. Public transit will be arriving soon enough. While we wait, you can show me the upgrades to your DNA Tracer.”

  A laugh and a shake of Emily’s head greeted her words. “Don’t you want to know what I’ve been up to these last few weeks?”

  Mac moved Kammie’s shoes so Em could sit without climbing, joining her on the crate. “Nope. Not if it involves ridiculous prices for clothes, seedy bars, or places I’ve never heard of,” she stated firmly. “Or anything about men,” she added, to forestall Emily’s usual list of adventures. “Salmon, girl. That’s why you’re back in the Northern Hemisphere.” Mac pulled out her imp, chewing her lower lip as she activated the workscreen and hunted for the latest schematic.

  The city lights faded behind the radiance of the three-dimensional image floating in front of the pair, its network of wiring and data conduits peeled back to show the innermost workings of the device. Emily reached over and traced a series of components with one finger, turning them blue within the image.

  “Happy now?”

  “I will be when we know it works in the field,” Mac muttered, eyes devouring the modified image. “We’ll set up right away.”

  “After I settle in, you mean.”

  “Settle?” Mac sputtered. “You’re late, remember? We’re moving out at dawn. The tents and my gear are already at the field station.”

  “Kammie’s right. You’re a damned workaholic,” Emily bumped her good shoulder into Mac’s. “A day at Base to unpack. Two.” The display gleamed in her dark eyes. “Not to mention a chance to look over this year’s crop.”

  Mac bumped her back. “The students are busy. As we’ll be. The run won’t wait—” She glanced at Emily’s injured arm and sighed. “One day. We can run some sims . . .”

  “Muchas gracias,” Emily said dryly. “I trust you’ll let me eat sometime in there?”

  Grinning, Mac let the plaintive request be answered by the hum of the approaching t-lev.

  No more barriers, she thought with triumph. No more delays. Nothing but the work.

  Life didn’t get much better.

  2

  SUCCESS AND SURPRISE

  “BAH! THERE’S no sex in this one either.”

  The offending book sailed over Mac’s head, landed with a bounce, then began slithering down the massive curve of rock. She lunged for it, scraping both knees on wet granite in the process, and somehow managed to hook one finger in the carrystrap before the book sailed off the rock for the river several meters below. Sitting back, she caught her breath before glowering at Em. “At last we have the truth about Dr. Emily Mamani Sarmiento, consummate professional researcher from Venezuela, holder of more academic credentials than I knew existed. She’s nothing but a randy teenager in disguise.”

  “Nice catch.”

  Mac’s lips pressed together, then twitched into a grin. “And she’s impossible.”

  Emily tilted the brim of her rain hood enough to show Mac a raised eyebrow. “What I am is stuck on this rock, reduced to watching you, my dear Dr. Mackenzie Connor, also holder of innumerable awards which don’t pay rent, chase lousy books that have no sex in them. Remind me again why I agreed to such suffering.”

  Mac snorted, busy sorting through their pile of waterproof bags for one to protect the latest of Emily’s rejects. Lee would not be pleased to find a member of his novel collection soaked and nonfunctional. Ah. There was the one from the sandwiches, consumed hours past. She shook the bag, and book, to remove most of the raindrops, before unzipping the one to shove in the other.

  Mac made sure the bag was securely wedged in a crevice before turning her attention back to the river. She tucked her throbbing knees against her chest, and put her chin on a spot that seemed unscraped, her rain cape channeling the warm drizzle into tiny rivulets that converged on her bare feet. She wiggled her toes, playing with the water.

  “I don’t see why there has to be sex in everything you read,” Mac commented absently, her eyes sweeping the heave of dark water below with the patience of experience. She could relax now. They’d delayed at Base for two days, not one, while Emily fussed over her equipment, settled into her quarters, and charmed “her” new students. Mac’s anxious complaints hadn’t hurried her fellow scientist in the least.

  Hard now to complain about Emily’s lack of speed, after five days camped with no sign of salmon whatsoever. Em had been insufferably smug the first day; bored and smug the second; simply bored by the third. Mac was rather enjoying her discomfort.

  “And I don’t see why it has to rain here every hour of the day,” that worthy countered predictably. “This is worse than the Amazon.”

  A bright little head suddenly popped out of the river depths, patterned in bold white and rich chestnut. The Harlequin bobbed for an instant in the midst of the maelstrom, the water’s froth seeming to entertain it. Then it dove again, seeking its prey in the rapids. Mac smiled to herself. “The sun was out this morning,” she reminded Emily.

  “Oh. Was that the sun? Tell my sleeping bag. Which, for your information, barely achieved damp status before we had to haul the gear back into the tents.” A rustle of synthrubber as Emily came to sit beside her. With their hoods and capes, the two of them, Mac decided, must look like small yellow tents themselves.

  Emily was quiet for about thirty seconds. “How long before they get here?”

>   “When we see them—right there.” Mac pointed downstream, where the river wrapped itself around the base of a wall of rock and disappeared.

  Below their toes, and the generous outcrop of granite beneath them, the Tannu River was over forty meters wide, in its mid-reach already swollen, powerful, and swift as it sped down the west side of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast. Along its surface, mist competed with the unceasing rain: some tossed where the river did its utmost to dislodge boulders and tumble gravel, some curling up along the eddies where the ice-cold glacial meltwater met the warm, saturated late-August air. The river always won. It had carved the sides of its valley into downward sheets of sheer rock, anchored at their base by the lushness of riparian rain forest, itself a thin line of green stitched to the water’s edge by the pale gray of fallen tree trunks. The river’s edge was a perilous place to grow.

  Yet grow here life did, with a tenacity and determination Mac had long ago taken as personal inspiration. Cloud clung to the forests; the forest clung to any non-vertical surface, lining cliff tops as well as valley floors. Where trees couldn’t survive, lichens and mosses latched themselves to rock face and crevice, nourishing the mountain goats who danced along the perpendicular cliffs.

  The mountains’ own relentless push skyward added force to the river. The river gladly tore at the mountains. Life thrived in the midst of geologic conflict. It was, Mac firmly believed, the most wonderful place on Earth.

  And the ideal location for Field Station Six.

  “I don’t think it will be much longer, Em,” she assured her, relenting. “This afternoon, if I’m any judge.”

  What Emily muttered to that was too low to compete with the river. Its thunder overwhelmed the rustle of leaves in the trees and the beat of rain on their gear. Waterfalls merely underscored its voice, wherever the mountains split to add their outflow from the snow pack and glaciers above.