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  Brymn, on the other hand, was thrilled to his core, keeping up an unceasing commentary on their surroundings. “Do you see that . . .” indicating a partial archway that looked like all the rest. “Could we stop and measure . . .” this, concerning a raised basin, filled with dust. “This could be a good place to stop and rest . . .” at almost every new ruin they passed.

  Finally, her feet starting to hurt and far too thirsty for patience, Mac snapped at him: “Must you talk the entire way?”

  Brymn was silent for several more footfalls, then said in a small voice: “Dhryn worlds are never this quiet.”

  “Oh.” Mac ran the fingers of one hand through her hair. “I could hum.”

  He tilted his head to look down at her. “You mock me?”

  Mac kept any hint of a smile from her face. “Never. Humming makes it easier to hike.”

  “Ah. Then we shall hum together.”

  And they did.

  “Who’s out there?”

  The faceless challenge in Instella was reassuring. Mac put her hand on Brymn’s nearest arm to hold him beside her. They’d just crested the top of the hill and, as Emily’d promised, there was a collection of tents and a solar array below, all the markings of a field camp. Mac felt a certain sense of homecoming. The tents were illuminated from within—everyone settling in for the night.

  They likely hadn’t expected humming from the darkness. Discordant humming at that.

  “Drs. Mackenzie Connor and Brymn Las,” she called down. “We’re looking for shelter.”

  The subsequent rush of bodies from the tents was even more familiar. Grad students, Mac thought fondly.

  A very short while later, she and Brymn were seated in the largest tent, surrounded by curious faces. Well, she assumed the look on the faces of the four Cey was curiosity and not indigestion, and it was anyone’s guess what was under the writhing mass of tentacles that served the five Sthlynii for mouths, but the Humans, in the majority here, were unabashedly bright eyed and intrigued.

  Mac smiled at them all before taking another sip from the glass of juice they’d provided, her taste buds sparking with joy.

  “Yes. We have Ministry ships insystem, Dr. Connor, and on approach. They’re about two days from here. Yours?” Lyle Kanaci was the group’s spokesperson—a short, chubby Human with pigmentless hair and skin. Mac found this living evidence of diversity within her own species fascinating and had to remind herself not to stare.

  “My ships? Unless you were expecting visitors, they should be,” Mac said.

  “Weeee dooon’t aaaallooow viiisiiitooors.” The Sthlynii who hissed this leaned over the table, saliva dripping from its tentacles.

  Mac felt Brymn’s annoyed rumble and nudged him. “Good, good. That’s essential to our work, isn’t it, Dr. Brymn Las?”

  Either his new name or her nudge conveyed the desired message. “Essential. As is the availability of . . .” Brymn began to rattle off technical questions about the camp’s equipment, excavations, findings, and other minutiae understood only by archaeologists. Mac settled into her chair, trying to decide between cookies and soup.

  It hadn’t hurt their reputations one bit that the text of choice in the camp was Brymn’s collected works, a discovery that meant Mac didn’t have to produce her envelope, nor explain her clothing.

  Much better to be accepted as one of the group.

  Mac nibbled and watched, finding herself less comforted by the Human faces than she’d expected. Probably instinct, she told herself. Several should have had “crackpot” stenciled on their foreheads before being allowed out, just to save time. She knew the type. They probably slept with “Chasm Ghouls—They Exist and Speak to Me” and hoped desperately for an encounter with the undead.

  They should meet the Ro.

  On the way here, she and Brymn had discussed whether or not to reveal that this world had been home to the Dhryn. In the end, it was a moot point. Despite the presence of several nonscientists, the rest were doing significant work here. They’d already determined the former inhabitants had been Dhryn. In fact, they’d sent their findings to the Progenitors but had received no acknowledgment. No surprise, Mac thought. They’d been worrying about the protocols involved in releasing such information elsewhere without permission.

  Yet another reason they were overjoyed to see Brymn.

  Mac’s first opportunity to ask her own questions came when the majority of the camp researchers headed off to rearrange the sleeping quarters to accommodate the new arrivals. First things first. “Brymn,” she whispered. “Can you eat any of this?”

  “It is not permitted to eat that which is not made by Dhryn.”

  Great. “Preference or physiology?”

  “Are they not the same?”

  Mac snorted. “One you can bend; the other bites back.”

  “Ah.” He considered. “My preference, then, would be to wait until the ships arrive with your fine medical supplies, in case of bites.”

  She grinned. “Converted you, have I?”

  He looked smug. “I have always been open to new ideas, Mac.”

  “I’ll remind you of that,” she warned, then spotted Lyle deep in conversation with someone who’d just entered the tent. From the way those nearby stopped talking and turned to listen, the news was either very good or very bad. Mac stood. “Excuse me a moment.”

  Lyle saw her coming and waved her over. “Dr. Connor. This is Nicli, our meteorologist.”

  Another Human, female, in a coat buttoned against the growing chill outside. She gave the newcomer a distracted glance before turning her attention back to Lyle. “We have to lock everything down. It’s the biggest event we’ve had yet.”

  Of course it would be bad news. Mac was learning to expect it. “Dust storm?” At Lyle’s nod, she asked: “Where do you want us?”

  “Here,” Lyle told her, looking grateful. Perhaps he’d expected a list of demands; Mac, having lived through her share of storms, planned nothing of the kind. “We get pretty wild ones—kick up out of nowhere and can last days. This tent is the sturdiest. We’ll set up the kitchen here as well.”

  “We’ll stay put and out of the way,” Mac assured him.

  After the violence of the Ro assault on Haven, and the dismantling of the planet right under their feet, Mac had been confident a simple dust storm would seem an anticlimax. She’d been through pounding surf and rain, floods and landslides, lightning and hail. This was only a bit of wind and a bit of dust. She’d planned to curl up with a blanket and snooze.

  She should have known better.

  “Remind me again why I let you and Trojanowski talk me into this!” she shouted into Brymn’s ear at the top of her lungs.

  Snoozing in a blanket? After the rousing excitement of losing the tent and most of what was inside it, they were now huddled under the only remaining structure, a massive transport vehicle that rocked with every new gust of wind. The Cey on her left side had talked about some taking shelter in the excavation itself. Mac hoped so. She’d lost count of the others with her almost immediately. She thought there were six of them here, out of nineteen, but Brymn’s extra arms made it tricky to tally by feel.

  The dust made it hard to breathe, as well. Mac had wrapped her head in the filter hood they’d provided. They’d had a bag large enough for Brymn, though Mac presumed the Dhryn would close his blue inner lids to protect his eyes. The mask helped her, but she had to keep her eyes closed and continually spat dust from her mouth.

  Meanwhile, why had Mac thought this a lifeless world? Surely the dust storm argued with itself. A low roar shook the ground and a shrill voice shrieked and gibbered. Competing with both was the dust hammering into whatever it could hit.

  The noise must be worse for Brymn, Mac thought, with his sensitivity to the lower ranges. She held one of his hands. Or he held hers. She was sure he worried as much about her reaction to all this as she did his.

  Emily had warned her about the Dhryn, about Brymn himself.

&nb
sp; The Myrokynay, so advanced and powerful, had tried to extinguish the entire species.

  Did Brymn know about the storm raging inside her head?

  Mac squeezed the three thick fingers holding hers. Of course he did. This was more his nightmare than hers. Either his species was being persecuted to extinction or his species threatened all others.

  She couldn’t imagine living with that choice.

  “Dr. Connor. Dr. Connor.”

  “Mmphfle.” Mac spat out what tasted like half a dune’s worth of dust in order to answer that anxious call. “Here.”

  “Storm’s over, Dr. Connor. You can take off the filter.” Someone began helping her. Two someones, Mac decided, feeling herself being pulled bodily from a pile of dust and the filter coming unwrapped. The first thing she saw was a bottle of water. “Here. Rinse and spit. Then drink.”

  Mac took the bottle from the nameless Human and obeyed, making her mouthfuls as small as possible. There couldn’t be a limitless supply here, especially in the wake of the storm. “Everyone all right?” she managed, handing back the bottle and peering around.

  The storm had aged the camp into another ruin, broken walls and sticks jutting through smooth mounds of gray dust, an overturned table now one side of a small dune. Figures of dust moved through the setting, salvaging what they could find to add to the growing heap in the middle: a jumble of broken equipment and still intact boxes. A few more were winching the transport upright. It must have flipped sometime in the night. Mac hadn’t noticed. Then again, she wouldn’t have noticed an attack by the Ro at the height of the storm.

  Had she fallen asleep or unconscious?

  “We haven’t found Nicli,” her caretaker said, enunciating each word with the exaggerated care of someone running on nerves alone. “She went to clear the com tower. But she knows the digs. We’ll find her yet.”

  “Go.” Mac passed the bottle back to him. “I’ll get my partner and we’ll help look.”

  “Your partner?” Human faces were too transparent. Mac felt the blood draining from her own face.

  “Where?”

  The man pointed to where some rescued tent material had been used to form a makeshift shelter.

  Mac broke into a run.

  25

  CATASTROPHE AND CRISIS

  THEY FOUND Nicli, suffocated at the base of the tower she’d gone to check.

  Mac found Brymn, being cared for as best the camp medic knew how. The Dhryn’s shoulder and three left arms had been pinned under the transport when it was lifted and dropped by the storm. He was conscious and smiled at her. She took one look at the dark blue seeping through the bandages and smiled back.

  “That bad?” Brymn gave a weak hoot.

  The medic shrugged, safely out of Brymn’s line of sight. Mac nodded as imperceptibly as she could. “Nie rugorath sa nie a nai,” she reminded Brymn. “A Dhryn is robust, or a Dhryn is not.”

  “Your accent remains impeccable, Lamisah. If only we could do something about your squeaky voice.”

  Mac fussed with the blanket covering his torso. They’d put two others in here, both seriously injured from the look of the transfusion gear. Sedated and free of pain. Naturally. Both were Human. Male and female. She should ask their names.

  Brymn first. “Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

  “It will be all right, Mac. My body knows what to do.” Brymn’s eyes were unusually bright. Fever?

  Emily had known. Injury can trigger the next metamorphosis. “You’re changing,” Mac guessed uneasily. “Is it the ‘Flowering’?”

  Brymn nodded. “I can feel it, as I did when I was but an oomling, waiting to become adult. The damage I’ve sustained will be repaired. I enter the next, more worthy stage of my life.” A pause and the corners of his mouth turned down. “You must stay with me, Mac, in case something goes wrong. Promise.”

  She glanced around. There was no one within earshot—no one awake, at least. She remembered the terrible figure at the train station and said: “The ‘Wasting.’ ”

  “I—” a tremor racked his body and the blue stain spread. “It would not be a kindness to let me live through that.”

  Mac took one of Brymn’s good hands in her own, then nodded. She’d decide if and when the time came. “You’ll have to tell me how.”

  His smile was a beautiful thing, lighting his eyes. “Spoken like a biologist. I will, Lamisah, and trust me, you will know if it is necessary. But—” his smile disappeared. The Dhryn seemed to struggle for breath, then recover. “But there is something worse I fear.”

  Worse than failing to change and having his only friend on this world kill him out of mercy? Mac stared at Brymn and thought she knew. “You could change into a Progenitor, couldn’t you? Is there something I have to do then? The Dhryn ships should be in contact with the Union.”

  Brymn rolled his heavy head from side to side, leaving impressions in the bag they’d made into a pillow for him. “An honor, but so rare as to be most unlikely, Mac.”

  Finally, she understood and shook her head vehemently. “No, Brymn. No. Emily was wrong.”

  “We don’t know for sure. You said so yourself.”

  “Guesses. Assumptions. Incomplete data. The Ro can’t be trusted—”

  “Mac. What if she’s right? What if I change into something uncontrollable, something dangerous. I might hurt these people—I might hurt you. You must promise me you won’t hesitate if that happens. A Dhryn is vulnerable to a puncture or projectile here.” He threw off the blanket and stabbed his torso along the midline, just below the bulge marking where his seventh arm began. “If that fails, insert a sharp object here or here.” Throat. Eyes. “Do not bother with blunt force. A Dhryn is robust, after all.”

  “Or a Dhryn is not,” Mac finished for him, sick at heart.

  She made herself comfortable beside Brymn and began to wait. Not that she knew what she was waiting for, Mac told herself.

  Obviously, the Dhryn didn’t wrap themselves in cocoons for this act of self-reconstruction. She would see the transformation. Mac’s curiosity warred with her concern for Brymn. He was weak—surely a factor. He was away from his kind, not that they provided care. Survival of the survivors.

  And he was afraid. For himself, for his species. She could see it in how he lay, arms wrapped as if to hold himself together, eyes rarely closed. “Mac,” he said during a period of restlessness. “I have studied the Chasm. I know how much was lost—the life, the culture, the potential. I can’t believe my kind were responsible.”

  “I know.”

  “We aren’t violent—we couldn’t even hunt the Ro, despite what they did to us. We didn’t fight back. We’d rather laugh than be serious. How could we be something so terrible?”

  She understood he would accept nothing but honesty. “If it’s true,” Mac said slowly, “then there’s an answer, a way to understand how it could be. I’ll find it. I promise.”

  “If it is true, what will become of the Dhryn? Must we be destroyed, for the safety of all?”

  “I can’t—” Mac stopped, unsure if she meant she couldn’t answer the question, or she couldn’t bear the answer. “Please, Brymn. Rest. The Ministry ships will here tomorrow. That’s all you have to do. Rest until tomorrow.”

  “They’re here!”

  Mac rubbed her eyes, still half asleep, and blinked at the flapping curtain. Whoever had brought the news was already gone, but she could hear excited voices outside in the dark. From the snores closer at hand, the other two patients hadn’t noticed.

  “Go.”

  She glanced down at Brymn. “Are you—?” What she saw took the words from her lips. “How do you feel?” Mac asked instead, pleased her voice was steady.

  The lanterns hanging in the shelter were enough for her to see that the metamorphosis had begun while she’d dozed. His eyes were smaller, though no less warm; the bony ridges that had surrounded them and defined his ears were now smoothed back into the skull. The intense bl
ue of his skin seemed to have washed away, leaving it light and almost translucent. His arms lay flaccid on the blanket, thinner, so that their bandages, soaked in drying blue, had come loose and slipped around. She couldn’t be sure without moving the blanket, but she had the impression his torso was wider, flatter.

  His voice had changed, too. No longer a bass, with that hint of infrasound, it came out sounding almost Human. “Feel? Glorious, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol. I feel glorious.” A pause. “And hungry.”

  She reached out her hand but drew it back, fearing the consequences of touching a body in the midst of reforming itself so quickly. “The ships arriving will have synthesizers, Brymn Las. I know the makeup of your food. Hold on a little longer, okay.”

  “I do not know this self. What am I to be, Lamisah?” Brymn asked her, giving a one/two blink. He lifted an arm and stared at it. So did Mac, fascinated. The bone was distinctly pliable between joints that had shrunk to one third their former size. The musculature was less rounded beneath the skin, as if what had been distinct bundles were lengthening and connecting. Brymn tried to open his hand but couldn’t. The fingers were fusing together at their base, forming a hollow where there had been a palm.

  “Not one of the Wasted,” Mac assured him, for lack of a better answer. He nodded as if satisfied, then used a free hand to poke at the coverings on his shoulder. “Do you want the bandages off?”

  “Please. They—itch.”

  Mac looked around. There wasn’t much in the shelter besides the three cots, the other two still occupied by slumbering Humans, and the ration boxes she’d arranged as a seat. “I’ll have to get scissors. Will you be all right?”

  Another blink/blink, and a smile. “In your care, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol, how could I be otherwise? But you should greet the arrivals.”

  Mac brushed her fingertips over the blanket. “They’ll find us,” she assured him. “I’ll be as fast as I can.” She stood to leave.