Survival Page 29

  Just as she was about to record what had happened, Mac closed her mouth and stared at the ’screen. She presumed she was thinking in English, because she could conceptualize terms for which there were no Dhryn equivalents. But, unlike her experience in switching from English to Instella, for all she knew, she was speaking English as well. Only the novel movements of her lips and tongue proved Dhryn, not English, was coming from her mouth.

  How didn’t matter—though the question was fascinating—what mattered was the consequence. What would Nik—or any Human—think of her voice suddenly switching to fluent Dhryn? Mac swallowed, feeling her pulse race. Could they even understand her? She had to believe so. The Dhryn had been members of the Interspecies Union long enough for actual translators to exist, although given how it had rewired her language center, Mac didn’t recommend Dhryn for sub-teaching.

  Brymn had told her they’d enter the Naralax Transect tomorrow. Mac checked the chronometer. Ship’s night was only two hours away. Was tomorrow at midnight? How long did she have?

  Mac started recording:

  “This is Mackenzie Connor. I’ve been taught—” how was that for skirting the issue? “—to speak Dhryn, specifically what I’m told is the ‘oomling’ language. I—can’t speak anything else at the moment.

  “We’ll enter the transect tomorrow. I don’t have an exact time. I’ve met Brymn at last. He brought me water, possibly saving my life.”

  Mac paused, then described, in clinical detail, her experiment with the cylinder food. She couldn’t call it spuds, not in Dhryn.

  “In case I am unable to add to this recording before it is sent,” she went on, keeping her voice calm and even, “please tell my father I’m all right. Please tell Nik, if he—” lives stuck in Mac’s throat, “—if he is available, that he was right. It wasn’t just one.” She hoped he’d understand she meant lies. And Emily.

  Voices, low and angry, erupted from the other room. Mac ended the recording and secured the imp in her waist pouch under her clothes, on the principle that while the aliens would be unlikely to note a new lump around her middle, they could very well separate her from her luggage, or confiscate it altogether. She glanced longingly at the handle with the beacon, but had no way to remove it.

  Mac walked into a dispute. “What’s going on?” she asked, eyeing three new Dhryn, dressed in the woven blue she’d come to associate with crew of the Pasunah, and Brymn, resplendent in his red and gold silks. They were gathered around the table, on which Brymn had placed her medical kit. Two of Brymn’s right arms were protectively covering the flat box, his left set gesticulating wildly.

  “There you are, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor,” her ally/lamisah exclaimed. “Tell these Ones of No Useful Function they have no right to search your quarters!”

  The “Ones of No Useful Function” didn’t look at all pleased by this announcement. They were armed, as the Dhryn on the way station had been. One was missing a lower hand and he—she really did need to check on the appropriate pronoun—was the one who spoke. “Our apologies, Esteemed Passenger, but Dyn Rymn Nasai Ne has ordered that we confirm before transect to Dhryn space that you have brought nothing forbidden on board.”

  Mac guessed they’d already tried to check her belongings, only to find her luggage locked. “What is forbidden?” she asked.

  He looked pointedly at her medical kit. Before Mac could even form a protest, Brymn hooted loudly and said: “Have you no education? These are Human cosmetics.”

  “Cosmetics,” the other Dhryn repeated, eyes on Mac.

  Cosmetics? Mac tried to keep a straight face. True, all the Dhryn were wearing some sort of artificial coloring on their faces, although compared to Brymn’s bold use of adhesive sequins and chartreuse to outline his ridges, the crew’s subtle mauves were next to invisible. Mac, on the other hand, was wearing healing scratches, a bruise or two, and that lovely pink of healing skin.

  Still, this was the group who hadn’t grasped that another species might have differing dietary requirements. “Don’t all civilized beings take care of their appearance?” Mac demanded, swooping up the kit and closing the lid. She tucked it under one arm, gearing herself to defend it.

  “Our mistake, Esteemed Passenger.”

  Something in Brymn’s posture suggested the other was somehow insulting her. By not using her name? “What is your name?” Mac asked, making her voice as low and stern as she could.

  “Tisle Ne is all of my name.”

  “Adequate,” she sniffed. “I take the name Tisle Ne into my keeping. You have, I believe, mine? Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor is all my name.” Mac couldn’t help emphasizing the all.

  A rising bow, tall and seemingly sincere, from all three. “A prodigious name. I am most honored,” said Tisle Ne. “I take the name Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor into my keeping.”

  “Would you care to examine the rest of my belongings, Tisle Ne?” Mac asked, waving expansively at her bedroom. “Please. Be my guest.”

  Their noses constricted and the other two crew Dhryn wrapped their arms around their torsos. A better-than-Human olfactory sense, Mac decided, grinning inwardly. The mattress on the bedroom floor had soaked up most of the first bucket.

  “If you would vouch that there is no forbidden technology in your luggage, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor, these Ones of No Useful Function can trouble someone else.”

  Mac had a feeling Brymn was pushing his luck with Tisle Ne, and hoped “her” Dhryn knew what he was doing. It seemed he did. “That would suffice,” Tisle Ne said, his tiny lips pressed together after the words.

  “You are most kind,” Mac told him, doing her best to imitate their bow without tipping over backward. Then she considered the possibility of months with these beings and took what seemed the safest possible course. “Remind me what is forbidden, please. Then I can truthfully vouch I don’t have such things.”

  “That which is not Dhryn.” Flatly, and in every way a challenge.

  Brymn bristled, arms rising and hands opening and closing. He put himself slightly in front of Mac, torso lowered so she could see right over his head. Physical threat, she judged it, clear and simple. An unlikely knight. “Then there can be nothing forbidden here,” Brymn rumbled, “for the Progenitors have declared Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor welcome.”

  Tisle Ne’s body tipped forward to the same angle. “You overstep yourself, Academic.”

  The crystals of a lamp tinkled. Infrasound, Mac realized, feeling the rumble through the floor as well. Presumably they were growling at each other. It seemed she was to be inflicted with territorial posturing even here.

  However, in this instance, Mac felt no desire to interfere. Instead, she took a discrete step back, then another, wishing her huge protector luck.

  Chime!

  Mac took a discreet step back, then another, wishing—She stopped dead, bewildered. She’d done this before.

  What had just happened?

  The Dhryn knew. Tisle Ne straightened. “It is too late for arguments now, Academic. We are home.” With that, he turned and left the room, the other two Dhryn following behind.

  Brymn clapped his hands together joyfully. “We are safe from the Ro, Mac!”

  “That was—was—” Mac tried again. “The transect?”

  “Yes, yes. From Human space, to no-space, to Dhryn space. It always amazes me. Does it not you?”

  “You can get used to anything.” He didn’t need to know it was her first time. Mac headed for the viewport. “Which Dhryn space is this?” she threw over her shoulder. Nik had implied she was being taken to a world of only Dhryn. Her guidebook to the Naralax Transect had listed the Dhryn as having one home system, unnamed and closed to aliens. That might be it. But there was also a relatively modest colonization of forty-eight others whose exits were open to traffic from members of the Union. Some of those might also be only Dhryn. None had been identified in the guide as the Dhryn birth-place; Seu
ng’s text had emphasized that not every species shared such information willingly.

  She couldn’t tell from here. The view was disappointing. If Mac hadn’t experienced that odd déjà vu, she would have assumed that fingernail-sized spot of yellow was the sun she’d always known.

  Just as well. A different view might have taken what her mind knew and transferred it to a gut certainty. Light from that sun wouldn’t reach Earth for millions of years—an impossible, unfathomable distance. There was only one way home—the Naralax Transect.

  Of course, if the transects ever failed, her problem would be trivial on the grand scale. That failure would end the Interspecies Union. Every species would be separated by an impassable gulf; each isolated and alone, as they’d been before the Sinzi had made their discovery and shared it.

  Mac had no doubt Earth would continue, as it had before the transects. She was equally sure every species would work to rebuild the system and eventually succeed—but would reach out to their own lost colonies first.

  So, if the transects failed, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor would be trapped on the wrong side of this one until the end of her days, an alien curiosity for the Dhryn. Their token Human.

  When she died, would they have her stuffed for a museum?

  Mac’s stomach, though empty, expressed sincere interest in emptying further.

  Brymn came up beside her. “This system is called—” A vibration.

  “A little deaf,” she reminded him.

  “Ah. My apologies.” He paused, then his eyes brightened. “You may call the system: Haven. Any Dhryn would agree.”

  Haven? Mac shifted the medical kit from under her arm to in front of her chest and wrapped both arms around it. When she noticed, she shook her head at her own defensive reaction. It was only a name, like “Earth.”

  “What’s it like, Haven?”

  “There is one world—our destination. You may call it Haven as well.”

  She might not find her way around a star chart the way she could a salmon scale, but Mac knew enough to feel a shiver. “No other planets? Asteroids? Moons?”

  “There were, but they were unsuitable for Dhryn,” Brymn told her, his tone implying surprise at her question. “Such are hiding places for the Ro. The Progenitors do not tolerate them in our home system. We must protect our oomlings.”

  The home system. Well, now she knew where she was, Mac told herself. Not in the guidebook. But . . . one sun, one world. Feeling somewhat faint, a not surprising reaction to technology capable of sweeping an entire system clear of unwanted rock—and a species that would use it—Mac put the kit on the table and sank into a chair. “The Progenitors. Tell me about them.”

  Brymn sat as well, after checking the floor for debris. She really should tidy the place. “They are the future,” he said.

  Cryptic. Or was it? How much of what the Dhryn said should she take literally? “The Progenitors produce new generations of Dhryn?” Mac hazarded, too curious to worry about offense. “Oomlings?”

  Brymn clapped his hands and smiled at her. “You see, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor? This is why I value your insights into living things. You understand us already.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” she said under her breath. Louder: “Are they your leaders as well?”

  “Of course. The Progenitors are the future. Who else could guide us there?”

  There had been an entire unit on alien reproduction in the xeno text, sure to titillate the most jaded students. All Mac recalled was having the familiar reaction that nature found the most ridiculous ways to propagate. Adding intelligence and culture to biology seemed only to compound the issue, not simplify it. “I don’t know anything about Dhryn biology,” Mac reminded him. Before he could be too helpful, she continued: “And now isn’t the time, Brymn. It’s Human biology—mine—that concerns me at this moment. I need a constant supply of water. Here, on the Pasunah, and on . . . Haven. Can you provide it?”

  A debonair wave of three hands. “Water I can guarantee.”

  “Wonderful. How about distillation equipment?” At his puzzled frown, Mac shrugged. Archaeologists. “I’ll manage that myself. Let me talk to a chemist. But food’s another matter.” She went to the table and picked up one of the remaining spuds. “Is this all you have available?”

  Brymn took it from her. Bringing the cylinder almost to his lips, he deftly plucked the contents from the cylinder by the hairs, then sucked them into his mouth before they could ooze free with a slurp that could only be described as gleeful. “Ah. They listened to me about this one thing. I remembered your delight in the soufflé and thought you’d enjoy another sweet.”

  Dessert? Mac didn’t know whether to laugh or pull her hair. “So there are other types of—wait.” That damned soufflé. She had to know. “Did you put a message—anything—in the bag with the soufflé? Something for me?” Mac hesitated, then went on: “Or for Emily?”

  Brymn startled her by tilting his head on its side; combined with his golden eyes, it gave him a striking resemblance to a perplexed owl, albeit a giant blue one. She had no idea that thick neck was so flexible. “Was I supposed to?” he asked.

  “No. No, you weren’t.” She couldn’t help a sigh of relief. So much for Nik’s suspicion. Mac wasn’t sure how real investigators went about their business, but her own research typically involved eliminating the obvious before the truth began to appear. As now.

  More and more, she was coming to believe the truth was that Brymn had been used, by the Ministry, by Nik, and by Emily. He’d traveled far from his kind, alone, in search of answers—and been betrayed by those who were supposed to help him.

  For two aliens, they had a remarkable amount in common.

  “Are you sure, Mac?”

  “Forget the soufflé. It isn’t important. Brymn,” she said, choosing her words with care, despite an urgency to know that had her hands clenched into fists. “What were you told happened on the way station?”

  “Only that you were found without difficulty and brought to the Pasunah ahead of schedule.” He pursed his lips and looked troubled. “Was there a problem? I admit to having felt some concern. There was unusual urgency about our departure and I wasn’t to visit you until permission came from the Progenitors.”

  “Before I could leave with your people, the Ro found me,” Mac told him. “I—” She stopped to let the big alien compose himself. The word “Ro” had started his limbs shaking.

  “I—I—” Mucus trembled at the corners of Brymn’s nostrils. “We wanted to keep you safe from them, Mac, as we would our oomlings. Were you—damaged?”

  “No,” Mac assured him. “I ran. Your people found me and brought me to safety. But . . .” She hesitated a heartbeat, unable to control her own trembling. Great pair of brave adventurers they were. Mac struggled to remain calm and detached. “Emily was there, Brymn.”

  “What? You saved her? You found her? Is she here?” He looked around wildly, as though Mac might have tucked Emily into a corner.

  “Em didn’t need saving. She wasn’t a captive. On the way station, the Ro chased me to her. She asked me to come with her, with them. Nik—Nikolai Trojanowski, he was there. He tried to stop me. Then she—then Emily—shot him.”

  Her voice failed her. Vision went next, blurred behind tears. Mac waved her hands helplessly.

  Then she was almost smothered in a six-armed hug. His uppermost shoulder was almost nonexistent, his skin was the wrong temperature and felt like rubber, and his ear ridge dug painfully into her head. None of this mattered.

  She wasn’t alone.

  Mac let go and sobbed until she would have sunk to the floor without those arms for support.

  - Portent -

  THE DROP WIGGLED and slipped its way down the shaft, leaving a faint green stain behind, its reflection in the gleaming metal leading the way. New, the shaft, as was all the equipment collected here.

  Another drop. Another. They drummed and chimed against every s
urface, mirrored as they struck and stuck.

  As they wiggled and slipped downward.

  Until there was no surface without its trails of green.

  The drops met each other in antenna couplings and on access covers, at joints and along ductwork. They grew together in pools and spread until they tumbled over new edges. Wiggling and slipping downward again.

  Seals began to bubble and ooze.

  More drops fell, tracing the paths of the first.

  A hatch cracked. The drops poured through, a hungry flood.

  Giving those inside no time to scream.

  17

  APPROACH AND ANTICIPATION

  “WHAT ARE YOU doing, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor?” boomed the voice from the doorway.

  Mac, her nose touching her left knee, thought this should be obvious even to a Dhryn, but as she uncurled, she wheezed: “Exercising.”

  Brymn walked around her as she continued to lift her head and shoulders from the floor and lower them again. He leaned up and down with her, as if keeping her face in focus, arms carefully folded. “Is this pleasant?”

  Surprised into a laugh, Mac gave up. She tucked her chest to her bent knees and wrapped her arms tightly around her legs, feeling the stretch in her lower back as she squeezed. “It’s better than the alternative,” she informed the alien. “Don’t your muscles atrophy without regular use?”

  “Muscles?”

  Ah. “Don’t you feel stiff if you remain still for prolonged amounts of time?”

  A one/two blink. “Stiff? No. Bored, yes.”

  This was a hint, Mac knew. Now that Brymn was allowed to visit her on the Pasunah, he preferred to stay with her. She’d had to insist on privacy while she slept-—or rather crashed—yesterday, a blissful oblivion that lasted about three and a half hours before he’d walked in to find out how much sleep a Human required and was she finished?