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  Given their entire escort carried weapons in all six hands, Mac had little doubt about the nature of such consequences. “I trust your guidance,” she said, determined to put the onus on her escort instead of Brymn. That worthy was still bouncing along, seeming oblivious to the importance of the occasion, or the armament surrounding them. Great. Mac thought. Stuck with a famished student sniffing pizza.

  Parymn sheathed the weapons in four of his six hands, using those in a gesture Mac recognized from Brymn’s fits of anxiety. “Your ability to speak is remarkable, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor, and there is no doubt you are Dhryn, but—but—you lack the physical equipment required to—” Words seemed to fail him, then: “I fear you will offend simply by being what you are.”

  At some point, the ridiculousness of the universe rendered all other things moot. Smiling, Mac shook her head and patted Parymn on one arm, as familiarly as she would Brymn. “Don’t worry. You said the Progenitors invited me—they must know what I am.”

  “Knowing isn’t the same as believing.”

  A philosopher? Mac raised a brow, impressed. “Should I wait outside, then? I have no wish to offend them.”

  “It is too late. Your presence is expected.”

  Brymn, who’d seemed oblivious, suddenly jumped into the conversation. “Gloom and doom,” he challenged. “That’s all you erumisah ever say. If I’d listened to you, I’d never have studied the past, never have traveled, never learned—” Somehow, Mac managed to transform an artful stumble into a firm kick at what would have been an ankle on a Human leg. Brymn gave her a look, then closed his mouth.

  Parymn didn’t appear to notice. “It is our role to consider the consequences, Academic, and guide the growing generations of Dhryn along the safest path. In this case—ah. We have arrived.”

  Mac’s eyes widened. The shroud-and-silver walls and ceiling continued through the entranceway ahead, but the passage itself was blocked by a mammoth vaultlike door of gleaming metal. Curiously, it was arched by gaps wide enough for Mac to squeeze through on either side and at the top. As she puzzled at the point of a door surrounded by holes, an inset within the door opened, nicely Dhryn-sized and shaped.

  “Follow me,” Parymn said, moving to the head of what now became a single file column of two Dhryn guards, Brymn, Mac herself, then two more guards. The rest of their escort took up stations on either side, apparently remaining behind. The ’bots rose to the ceiling as if ordered to wait as well.

  They walked through the door, itself fifteen of Mac’s steps deep, which opened into a passage both metal-scented and cold. She tried to see past Brymn, but could only make out a brightening ahead. Their escort moved too slowly now, as if there was some barrier ahead to be passed. Mac would remember the rhythmic movement of warm air past her face and neck, then back again, for the rest of her life.

  Between one footfall and the next, she left what she understood or imagined, to enter a place nothing could have prepared her to meet.

  Her eyes lied, frantic to make sense of what they saw. Mac was several paces into the Chamber of the Progenitors before she appreciated that what she thought was the ceiling was a shoulder, that what she thought a floor was a hand.

  Believing and knowing weren’t the same at all.

  You’ve swum with whales, Mac reminded herself, even as the hand drew them away from the door, as steady and level as any machine. At least they weren’t underwater.

  Though they might have been. She wrenched her eyes from a vista of hills and valleys cloaked in dark blue skin, mottled with ponds of shining black liquid, and stared at what else lived here.

  Her first impression was of rather silly-looking pufferfish, her mind fighting for equivalents. Her second was that the creatures looked nothing like fish at all. They were similar in size to herself, a relief after the shock of the Progenitor, but their oblong bodies were inflated, as if filled with gas. Indeed, many were drifting overhead like lumpy balloons. Fins lining the back and sides stroked at the air, guiding them in all three directions. Boneless arms hung below those drifting, as if they’d lost their function.

  Most were crowded around the ponds, their bodies flaccid and low to the “ground,” arms in the liquid. Mac couldn’t tell if they were somehow taking it up or replenishing the Progenitor’s supply. They had heads, but smoothed, so only the mouth and nostril openings remained. They varied in color, but all were pastel, like so many faded flower petals strewn about by the wind.

  Air moved through Mac’s hair, and back again. Over and over. The Progenitor’s breathing.

  These, too, were Dhryn?

  From a world of only technology, she’d been transported to a wonderland of only biology. Mac crouched to brush her fingertips over the palm of the hand supporting them. Warm, rubbery, muscular. Like Brymn’s.

  “That is not permitted!” This urgent whisper from Parymn.

  Mac looked up from her crouch. He had to be kidding. However, she stood. “My apologies, Parymn Ne Sa,” she said absently, looking around.

  Two pufferfish Dhryn intercepted them and hovered, close enough for Mac to touch, their arms—no, they were more like tentacles—groping the air toward her as if hunting for something lost. Disconcerted by the eye-less, silent beings, Mac eased back as much as she could. Parymn made a shooing motion with his upper arms and the two veered away with unexpected speed.

  “Who are they?” she whispered to Brymn.

  He blinked. “Who are who?”

  Mac pointed to the flying forms now on all sides. “Them! Who are they? Those two seemed interested in me.”

  Brymn gave a low hoot. “Not who, what. Those are the Hands and Mouths of the Progenitor. They cannot be ‘interested’ in you, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor, or in anything else. They no longer think for themselves.”

  “Then they weren’t always like this,” she said, fighting back horror.

  “It is an honor to become one of those who tends Her,” Parymn broke in, his stern look at Mac intended to quell more questions.

  Her. They were passing over what had to be the torso, as if the Progenitor brought them up and along her body. Mac moved as close to the edge of the palm as she dared, in order to see over the edge.

  The blue skin below was smudged with white, as though every ripple was frosted with sugar. Mac fought the imagery to understand what was below. Not sugar crystals. Oomlings! They were erupting through the Progenitor’s skin—thousands upon thousands upon thousands. As they appeared, they were being swept up in the arms of the pufferfish Dhryn, to be taken away into the distance. To the nurseries?

  But their own destination almost shattered Mac’s trained observer’s calm. She glanced up and saw it coming. All she could do was grip Brymn for comfort and try to breathe without screaming.

  Beneath nostrils the size of train tunnels whose breath filled this chamber, the Dhryn-who-had-been smiled at Mac with its normal mouth, blinked its normal eyes one/two below their sequined ridges, and said in its quiet, normal voice: “Welcome, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor.”

  The remnants of the face were embedded in a wall of blue flesh. The hand came to rest with its fingertips pressed against that wall, a platform as solid beneath Mac’s feet as the deck of the Pasunah, and as much a lie. She spared an instant to long for a piece of honest granite, then deliberately let go of both Brymn and her fear. “Thank you—” She glanced at Parymn for the right honorific, but it was Brymn who answered.

  “Progenitor! It is I, Brymn.”

  As Brymn was bouncing up and down, much as he’d done on the walkway to the shore, Mac waited to see the reaction. Their escort, predictably, looked highly aggrieved, bodies lowering in threat. The Progenitor, however, hooted. “Yes, I can see that. Welcome, Brymn,” she/it said in a soft voice, higher-pitched and with a slower cadence than that of other Dhryn Mac had heard. “You have done well.”

  “I—have?” Brymn turned to Mac and picked her up with three arms. The rest were busy fl
ailing about. “Did you hear that, Lamisah?” he bellowed in her face, squeezing tightly enough to threaten her ribs again. “I’ve done well!”

  Mac fought for air and considered a timely kick. Fortunately, Brymn put her down before either became an issue. “Congratulations,” she gasped, keeping an eye on the weapons all too nearby.

  “Does this mean . . .” Brymn’s voice faded into a whisper, “. . . dare I hope?” Mucus trailed from his nostrils and one hand groped blindly for Mac. Not understanding, but assuming it was an improvement over being grabbed, she took and held it. Then, in a heart-wrenching tone, he asked: “Grathnu?”

  The Progenitor’s eyes were identical to Brymn’s. As they moved to pin Mac in their gaze, she was struck by the warmth that could be conveyed by yellow and black. “Grathnu,” she agreed, then shocked them all. “To be served by Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor.”

  Brymn’s hand left hers.

  Mac coughed into the ensuing silence. “If I may, Progenitor, Brymn is much more deserving of such an honor,” she said cautiously, making every effort to focus on that disembodied face and ignore the city-sized body that supported it.

  A whine of weapons being activated. “You mustn’t argue with the Progenitor!” Parymn shouted furiously.

  “I’ll argue with anyone I please!” Mac shouted back, then closed her mouth.

  With a minor shake, the floor space doubled. Another hand rested beside this one. “Leave us, Parymn Ne Sa.”

  The older Dhryn bowed without a word, then glared at Mac as he and the remaining guards obeyed, climbing on the Progenitor’s other hand. They were whisked away, hopefully, Mac thought, to the door.

  She had to smile.

  “What amuses you, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor?”

  Something about the Progenitor’s gentle tone made Mac grin even more broadly and admit: “I was wondering if you ever clap your hands, Progenitor.”

  The laugh was only on the face—likely wise, given that otherwise it would shake the world of all those Dhryn below and startle the oomlings during their first breath of life. Mac imagined there must be a small respiratory shunt formed, to allow the mouth to form sound so the Progenitor could continue to communicate with other Dhryn. Quite the metamorphosis.

  “A habit I left behind,” the Progenitor assured her with a smile of her own.

  Along with mobility, independence, and the sky, Mac thought, feeling the weight of that choice—or was it a choice? Brymn had said they only knew the next Progenitors when those individuals Flowered into their final state.

  As if following Mac’s line of thought, the Progenitor continued: “As you can see, I have gained far more than I left, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor.”

  “How long does it take to grow this big?” Mac asked, leaning her head back as she estimated the bulk of shoulders and what had been head looming over them. Brymn made a strangled noise; Mac ignored him.

  “Five hundred or so of your years,” the Progenitor answered. “I am the most recent to begin producing oomlings. My name—no longer matters. Few endure the change; fewer still the growth.” A tinge of pride. “Those who do, are the Dhryn. What else would you like to know?”

  At this, Mac looked straight into the face in front of her. “As Brymn can testify, Progenitor, I have a great many questions.”

  “Once grathnu has been served, you may ask until I tire.”

  Mac had no idea what grathnu involved, but she was sure she wanted it to happen to someone else no matter how curious she was about the Dhryn. But as Mac opened her mouth, the Progenitor smiled. “Yes, Brymn may serve first.”

  Brymn stammered his thanks until the Progenitor frowned slightly. Then he gave a bow so deep he almost tipped over backward, which would have sent him over the palm and tumbling onto the torso far below. Mac breathed a sigh of relief when he straightened again. “My life’s work has been for the Dhryn,” he announced, coming to stand before the face. “I am Dhryn.” He spread his six arms outward, fingers outstretched.

  The seventh arm burst into the open, its edged fingers stretched as well. As if it had eyes, it swayed and turned, boneless as the hanging arms of the pufferfish Dhryn. Mac took a step closer, fascinated. The fingers stopped and oriented toward her.

  “Not so close,” warned the Progenitor quietly. Mac backed a step. The fingers turned to Brymn.

  “I return to my Progenitor that which I am.” He brought his lower left arm to his chest. Like a striking snake, the fingers of the seventh lunged forward to seize the limb at the wrist. Before Mac’s horrified eyes, the sharp fingers sliced through the arm.

  Brymn’s left lowermost hand dropped to the palm of the Progenitor, followed by a few splashes of blue-black. The wound must be self-sealing, Mac realized numbly. The Dhryn’s face bore an expression of rapture and his seventh arm, task complete, hung limp down his chest.

  “I am Brymn Las,” he said with so much joy in his voice Mac hurriedly reassembled her face into something less horrified.

  She hoped.

  “I take the name Brymn Las into my keeping,” the Progenitor acknowledged. “And his gift of self, which shall enrich that which is Dhryn through my flesh.”

  Mac flinched to one side as a pufferfish Dhryn swooped down, battling its way through the streams of air leaving the gigantic nostrils above to hover beside her. This close, it looked even less like a Dhryn. Instead of thick blue skin, it appeared made of membrane and air, its organs tantalizingly visible. Before she could study it further, the pufferfish Dhryn collected Brymn’s hand in its tentacles and lifted away again.

  If she hadn’t known, Mac wouldn’t have believed.

  Brymn was looking at her expectantly. How could he be thrilled to have been maimed? Mac, feeling more Human than she had for days, licked her lips and said, “I take the name Brymn Las into my keeping. A fine name.”

  “Now it is your turn, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor.”

  Mac’s pants had pockets. She rammed both hands into their protection, as if that could possibly help. “I’m not worthy,” she said weakly.

  “You saved Brymn Las, you forced our ancestral enemy into flight, you left your home and risked yourself in order to protect what is Dhryn. You are Dhryn. You are more than worthy. Come,” the Progenitor insisted gently. “Serve.”

  Of the predicaments Mac had ever imagined for herself, or dreamed in her worst nightmares, being trapped on the hand of a giant alien who expected her to cut off her own hand wasn’t remotely one of them. It likely would be from now on.

  They don’t know biology.

  Mac stiffened her shoulders and tried to remember Brymn’s phrasing. Ah, yes. “My work has been for the Dhryn.” She tugged her braid from the back of her shirt, letting it fall down her chest. “I am Dhryn.” She stretched out her arms, then brought both to her chest. “I give to the Progenitor that which I am.” She’d palmed the small knife from her pocket in her right hand. Now, she grasped the braid in her left hand and sliced it off with her right.

  The hair twisted as it fell to the palm of the Progenitor. What remained on Mac’s head tumbled asymmetrically over her cheeks and down her neck, a lock dropping into her eyes. Without brushing it aside, Mac said firmly: “I am Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol.” It hadn’t been as hard as she’d feared to find one syllable to add to her name, something she could stand to hear repeated every time a Dhryn spoke to her. The name of Earth’s Sun would be a promise to herself.

  She would get home.

  “I take the name Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol into my keeping,” the Progenitor said gravely, “and her gift of self, which shall enrich that which is Dhryn through my flesh.”

  The pufferfish Dhryn who arrived to pick up Mac’s braid appeared slightly confused, dipping up and down several times before finally grasping its find and heading away with it.

  Brymn wasn’t the least confused. He swept Mac into a hug, thoughtfully not using the arm s
till dripping fluid. “I knew you would serve grathnu with us as well as your own Progenitors, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol!”

  Mac’s hand strayed to the jagged remains of her hair, a fair amount just past shoulder length and nodded, unable to smile. She’d broken her promise to Sam. He wasn’t coming back.

  How odd that letting him go had taken this.

  The Progenitor was as good as her word, willingly answering Mac’s questions. Unfortunately, despite Mac’s care to avoid forbidden topics such as biology, every one of those answers was the standard Dhryn “we do not think of it,” complete with a warm smile. After a dozen such responses, having learned nothing useful about the Ro or the Dhryn, Mac decided she’d tire before the Progenitor.

  Now, she sat cross-legged beside Brymn on the palm of a giant. Amazing how easily the mind could put aside considerations like incredible size and inconceivable power when it came to a war of wills. Mac eyed the face on the blue wall of flesh and knew there were real answers behind it. Good thing, she told herself, she herself was stubborn to a fault.

  “What should I ask you, Progenitor, that I haven’t?” she inquired innocently.

  The eyes blinked, one/two, as if she’d surprised the other. “I—”

  Mac took advantage of the Progenitor’s slight hesitation. “You must have expected me to ask you something in particular, or you wouldn’t have invited my questions.” She kept her voice set to sweetly courteous when it tried to slip into sarcasm. “I’d hate to disappoint you.”

  Brymn gave her a look that, from a Human companion, would have been asking, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Mac ignored it, on the basis that from a Dhryn, for all she knew, it meant approval.

  “I admit, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol, that I have waited for you to ask why the Progenitors who preceded me chose to destroy our past, why we allow our system to remain at risk through the transects, and why I permitted you to be the first alien to meet a Dhryn Progenitor face-to-face.”

  “Good questions.” So good, Mac hadn’t dared ask them. “Would you answer them?”