Survival Page 28

  She pretended the bottle was empty, then grasped her throat and made gagging noises, sinking down and rolling her eyes.

  That seemed to get through. The Dhryn blinked, then said, very clearly, the only phrase in his language Mac actually knew: “Nie rugorath sa nie a nai.”

  With that, he walked around her and left. Mac didn’t bother to turn to watch him climb over the mattress and go out the door, locking it behind him.

  “ ‘A Dhryn is robust or a Dhryn is not,’ ” she translated to herself, clutching the bottle and feeling fear seep into every bone. “Guess that means I’ve been adopted.”

  It was easier than admitting their ignorance of Humans might have just condemned her to death.

  16

  TRANSIT AND TRIBULATION

  MAC KNEW she was stubborn. It wasn’t her most pleasant characteristic, admittedly, though it had served her well in the past. She’d break nails before cutting a perfectly good rope to free a water-tightened knot. She’d wear out boots before wasting time to shop for new ones. And she’d exhausted the entire funding review committee at Norcoast with her seventeen-hours long personal plea to get Pod Six built and running the year she wanted it, not in a decade.

  Since then, they’d been remarkably prompt with approvals.

  Now, she might be dying. But it would be on her terms, Mac told herself again. It had become a mantra of sorts. Her terms. Her way. If she died, it would because she decided to die.

  The lights had gone off again; she’d slept, fitfully this time and on the floor by the bathroom, having pulled the mattress there. The spuds had gone through her system, all right—and had continued to do so at distressingly regular intervals for much of the ship’s night.

  Moisture she couldn’t spare. Making the Dhryn’s food a source she couldn’t afford.

  To avoid the temptation to eat the moist things regardless of the consequences, Mac had thrown the last of them in the shower. She hoped she’d have the strength to do the same when the next offering arrived.

  It would be nice to have the strength to kick a Dhryn where it hurt, too, but she couldn’t guarantee that.

  When the lights came back on, Mac took her precious bottle and wove her way to the bedroom the Dhryn had given her. The dizziness wasn’t a good sign, but she was healthy. Had been healthy. She was good for hours yet.

  Then . . . there were drugs in the medical kit—enough for perhaps another day’s grace. After that? Mac rubbed her arm over the spot where Nik had implanted the bioamplifier.

  They’d find whatever was left of her—eventually.

  There was a comforting thought.

  Mac eyed the stack of mattresses and settled on the floor rather than climb up. She pulled out her imp, intending to make another recording. What she’d say she didn’t know, but it was something to do. The workscreen brightened in all its cheerful, Human colors over her knees, showing her the list of what she’d left to read.

  Emily’s personal logs.

  Wrong imp. Her brain must be addled. But instead of switching to the other, Mac watched her fingers lift and slide through the ’screen, keying the logs to open.

  Password required.

  A puzzle. Mac grew more alert. She keyed in Emily’s code from Base.

  Denied.

  She tried a variety of old passwords Emily had used for other equipment.

  All Denied.

  On a whim, she keyed in, “there’s no sex in this book.”

  Denied.

  Then, for no reason beyond hope, Mac entered her own Base code.

  Accepted.

  So Emily had expected her to get these logs, if anything happened. She’d wanted Mac to access them.

  “What’s going on, Em?” Mac whispered, fighting back the tears her body couldn’t spare. She stared at the new display forming on her ’screen, at first making no sense of it.

  These weren’t personal logs. They were sub-teach data sets.

  Labeled “Dhryn.”

  Mac surveyed her preparations, one hand on the wall for stability. Her head tended to spin if she challenged it with quick movement. She’d blocked the bedroom door of her quarters on the Pasunah as best she could, using the mattresses and some crooked metal poles that had been standing in a corner. She’d found what she needed in the medical kit: Subrecor. Its tiny blue and white capsules were familiar to students of every age, allowing access to the subconscious learning centers. Those in the kit were larger than any Mac had seen before. Perhaps spies had to learn more quickly.

  In this instance, she agreed, uneasy about making herself helpless while on the Dhryn ship. Even if it might be her only chance to be understood.

  Mac took her imp, feeling for the dimples that said it was hers, and switched the ’screen to teachmode. In that setting, the display went from two dimensions to three, hovering over the mattress like a featureless, pink egg. She’d already queued Emily’s data sets—all of them. She might not have this opportunity again.

  For more reasons than the obvious, Mac assured herself.

  One sip of water left in the bottle. One capsule. Mac swallowed both without hesitation, then lay down on the floor with her head within the “egg” of the display. She closed her eyelids, still seeing pink. The input would be delivered as EM wave fronts stimulating the optic nerves, shunted to the portions of the brain responsible for memory as well as those of language and comprehension.

  All she had to do was relax and let the drug turn off cognition and will until the data sets had been dumped into her brain.

  . . . not unconscious, but at peace . . . not paralyzed, but detached . . . Mac had never enjoyed being sub-taught, though many she knew did. Her father had told her teachers that she’d never liked taking a nap either.

  The kaleidoscope began, flashes of light and color representing the data being transmitted. Normal . . . familiar . . .

  . . . Wrong . . .

  . . . Pain! . . . Whips of fire . . .

  Mac writhed without movement; screamed without sound.

  . . . Knives of ice . . .

  Numbness spread from their tips, as though whole sections of her mind were being sliced and rebuilt.

  As Mac plunged helplessly into an inner darkness, a cry built up until it finally burst, sending her into oblivion.

  Emily!

  How perverse, to be drowning when dying of thirst. “Mac! Mac!”

  She gasped and found air through the liquid spilling over her cheeks and neck. Her eyelids were too heavy to lift; Mac rolled her head toward her name. “. . . argle . . .” she said intelligently.

  More liquid splashed against her face, filling her nose and mouth at the same time. Some landed on her eyes, making them easier to open as Mac sputtered, caught between swallowing and breathing. Water?

  A gold-rimmed darkness filled her view, easing back at her startled cry to reveal a face that cleared to familiar when she blinked her eyes. Brymn?

  “Ah, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor. You had me worried. You are such fragile beings.”

  “Brymn?” she managed to croak. Mac blinked again and focused beyond the anxious and silk-bedecked Dhryn. Same room. The door looked like it was in the wrong place.

  He noticed her attention and gave a low hoot. Amusement? “You’d blocked the entrance, so I had to push a little harder. The Pasunah is a flimsy ship.”

  “Flimsy . . . not good word . . . about our transport,” she managed to reply, starting to sit up. Four strong hands made it easier. “Thank you,” Mac said, resting her shoulders against the mattress stack. She licked her lips.

  “Do you require more?” Brymn lifted a bucket with one of his free hands, water sloshing over the top.

  Famine or feast, Mac told herself, finding herself thoroughly damp from head to toe. Sure enough, a second, empty bucket stood nearby. He must have poured it over her. The tissues of her mouth were absorbing the moisture as gratefully as cracked soil soaked up rain. Mac licked her lips. “That’s enough for the moment. Much
better. Thank you. How did you know?”

  Brymn sat, his mouth downturned. “I gave those in authority a list of Human requirements, Mac. They didn’t understand these were essential for your survival. Instead, they regarded them as mere preferences, an imposition at a time when all aboard worry that your presence attracts the Ro. There was talk of leaving you behind.”

  Mac studied his face. “You don’t mean at the way station, do you?”

  “No, Mac.”

  Somehow, she found a smile. “If it wasn’t for you, Brymn, I might have been dead soon anyway.” Mac winced.

  “Are you damaged?”

  She shook her head, once and gently, then rubbed her temples. “No. Well, a few bruises. I seem to have a whale of a headache, though.”

  “I deactivated it for you.” He held up her still dripping imp. “I trust it isn’t damaged by water.”

  “Not and survive my line of work,” she said absently, busy looking for the duplicate device. Good, it was out of sight in the luggage—one less thing to explain. Mac wondered when she’d become quite this paranoid.

  She also wondered what could have been in that capsule instead of, or with, the Subrecor. Sub-teach might be boring and restrictive; it certainly wasn’t painful. Her head felt swollen as well as sore. With all the flexibility and speed of someone five times her age, Mac rose to her feet, tugging her soaking wet clothes into some order. Her hair, as always, was hopeless. “How long until we reach the transect?”

  Brymn blinked, one two. “Tomorrow. And may I compliment you on your word use? It is unexpectedly sophisticated this soon.”

  It was Mac’s turn to blink. “It is?” She repeated the two words without sound, holding her fingers to her lips. Her mouth wasn’t moving as it should be. “I’m speaking another language—I’m speaking Dhryn?” Then, the words “this soon” penetrated and her eyes shot to him. “You knew I would be. How?”

  “You were using the subliminal teacher,” he said matter-of-factly. “For what other purpose could it be than to accept Emily Mamani Sarmiento’s gift?”

  For a moment, Mac believed she was hallucinating under the drug, that she still lay on the floor, dehydrated and dying, only dreaming Brymn had stormed through the door to her rescue with buckets of odd-tasting water marked . . . she stared at them, reading “sanitation room” with no problem at all.

  The words weren’t in Instella or English. They were in some convoluted, narrow script that made perfect sense to her.

  “Where did this water come from?” she heard someone ask.

  Brymn waved four of his arms, two more helping him sit and the seventh, as always, tucked away. “Don’t worry. No one will miss it. It is a regular product of our bodies. Most Dhryn don’t care to know how it is removed from the ship.”

  She was drinking Dhryn urine. And was covered in it.

  Somehow, that wasn’t the shock it might have been.

  “You knew Emily left me a sub-teach of the Dhryn language.” Possibly explaining the headache, Mac told herself, given her brain had been forcibly retooled to think in—whatever this was. She couldn’t tell if she was thinking in English, Instella, or blue marshmallow bits. Her temper started rising. “How did you know?”

  “I helped her build it.” Brymn paused. “It’s the oomling tongue, so you do not have to worry about your disability with sound. All who hear you speak will adjust. It will be useful everywhere you find Dhryn. We thought you’d be pleased.” He seemed a trifle offended. There was the hint of a pout to his mouth, which was almost cute in a giant seven-armed alien wearing sequined eyeliner.

  Who had probably just saved her life, Mac reminded herself, although why was a question for later.

  “You—” Mac found herself wanting to say “lied,” but failed to find a word to utter that conveyed her meaning. Closest was “delayed information.” She tried another tack. “Emily visited Dhryn colony worlds. Was she visiting you?”

  “Yes, yes. Although my research keeps me moving about.” His brow ridges lowered. “Why, Mac, do you ask what you already know?”

  “Because I didn’t. Not until now. Not about Emily. Not about you knowing her. Not about the sub-teach.”

  A silence that could only be described as stunned. Mac used her elbows to support herself against the mattresses, feeling a certain sympathy for the big alien. “You didn’t?” Brymn echoed finally.

  Mac thought back to their conversations as a three-some. She’d been the one leading the conversations with Brymn; Emily had volunteered very little. Why would Brymn have thought to mention what he supposed she knew? As for any Humanlike show of familiarity, for all Mac knew it wasn’t polite for a Dhryn to rush up and greet an old “friend” in front of others.

  Emily had only needed to keep quiet while Mac blundered on, never guessing, never suspecting.

  Lies scabbed over lies.

  She’d blamed herself for drawing Emily into danger. Had it been the other way around?

  Emily had asked for forgiveness. Why became clearer every day.

  “My humble apologies for any misunderstanding—”

  “Don’t worry, Brymn,” Mac heard a new edge to her voice. “There are many things about my friend I’m learning as I go.”

  “I’ll answer any questions, of course, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor, but if you will excuse a personal comment, you are beginning to sway from side to side in a most alarming manner.”

  He had a point. Mac steadied herself with an effort. “Pass me that piece of luggage, please.” When the Dhryn put the larger case on the mattress within her reach, Mac opened it and pulled out the medical kit.

  He crowded close, eyes dilated. “This is how you correct damage to the body?”

  Mac tried to find better language equivalents for illness and injury, but failed. “There are some—chemicals with specific effects on the body. I’m looking for a . . . here it is.” She ran her fingers over what she’d intended to use as a last recourse, then made her decision. Having Brymn here, and cooperative, was not a chance to waste by passing out. “This is what the students call Fastfix: a high concentration of nutrients and electrolytes—whatever’s necessary to bring a depleted Human body chemistry closer to normal—plus a powerful stimulant of some sort. I should feel more energetic.” As opposed to about to fall on her face. She held up the loaded syringe. “The needle is a way to deposit the chemicals under my skin, where they will do their work.”

  “Isn’t that causing more damage?”

  “Skin—Human skin—closes after the needle is removed.” It was hard enough steeling herself to shove the thing in her arm, without Brymn looming overhead, hands twitching as if he longed to dig into the medical kit for himself. Mac gritted her teeth and pressed the point into herself as hard as she could. The syringe was intended for novices, set to puncture only as deeply as required by the type of medicine loaded in its tube, and sterilizing on insertion and withdrawal, so she could use it again if necessary.

  “Ow!” Practice must help, Mac thought ruefully, rubbing her arm. Mandy’s boosters didn’t hurt like this. Of course, the syringe in a field kit need not be as patient-friendly as those in a clinic. “See? Easy as can be.” She put the syringe away, counting the number she had left. Two.

  Everyone knew Fastfix was addictive with repeated use, the body adjusting its base level requirements upward and upward until a user became essentially nonfunctional without a fresh dose. Mac assumed the kit contained a safe number, then wondered why she’d believe that.

  As she waited for the drug to work its magic, she noticed Brymn’s nostrils had constricted to slits while he continued to examine the medical kit. Well, Mac thought, she was soaked in Dhryn urine, or its equivalent. “Why don’t you take that in the other room while I change out of these clothes?” she offered.

  “May I?”

  “Sure. Just don’t sample anything. I’ve no idea what the effect on your physiology would be.” Not to mention her supplies were finite.

&n
bsp; He picked up the kit as tenderly as if lifting an infant—assuming the Dhryn had that type of parent/offspring interaction, Mac reminded herself. “Are you sure you will not require my assistance?” he asked, looking torn between his fascination and a desire to help.

  Mac smiled and touched his near arm. “I’ll be fine, my friend. Thanks to you.”

  With Brymn safely preoccupied, Mac worked as quickly as she could. Although warm, the air in the Pasunah was so dry the dampness of her clothes evaporated rapidly, chilling her skin. She stripped, keeping only the waist pouch into which she put her imp, Kammie’s note, and the Ministry envelope. She felt warmer immediately, though she couldn’t be sure how much of that was an effect of the ’fix.

  Mac tried not to think of the chemicals circulating in her blood. There was nothing she could do but hope she’d done the right thing. Abused by the spuds, dehydration, and Subrecor, her body systems were doubtless plotting their revenge. The ’fix was only postponing the inevitable crash.

  Until then, Mac reminded herself, she had things to learn and do.

  First. Despite its origin, and now perceptibly musty smell, Mac went to the bucket of mostly water and, cupping her hands, made herself drink slowly. She’d had worse from a stream, she judged, although part of her mind was already busy thinking of how best to distill any future contributions. As a precaution, she filled her water bottles and put them aside. Finally, she soaked her shirt and used it to scrub herself clean as best she could.

  Better than the ’fix, Mac decided, feeling herself becoming more alert by the moment. She didn’t bother trying to bring order to her hair, beyond wringing out the braid and tying it up again as tightly as she could. Dressing was quick, the luggage again providing a yellow shirt and pants. Mac began to wonder if the color had significance to the Dhryn.

  Or, her hands paused on a fastener, was it much simpler? To Human eyes, the color would stand out, making her easier to find.

  A concerned boom. “Are you all right, Mac?”

  “Yes. I’m almost finished.” Fearing the Dhryn’s active curiosity, Mac grabbed the other imp from the small case and crouched on the far side of the mattress stack from the now permanently open door.