Survival Page 8

  “It would be highly disrespectful for me to omit any of your earned names. Amisch a nai.”

  His distress was palpable. Mac rubbed her chin on her forearm. “A compromise to keep me sane,” she offered. “Call me Mac when it’s just you and me. Like this. No one else need know.”

  “If you insist.” Brymn’s lips pressed tightly together for an instant, as if over a bad taste. “Mac.”

  “Perfect. See how nice and quick that is?” Mac lifted her head. “So. What else was missing?”

  “Everything.”

  “Equipment, transports—” she hazarded.

  He shook his head. “Those remained, though damaged. Everything alive. Everything that had been alive. Gone.”

  Mac sat up, her feet thumping down on the platform. “Over how large an area?”

  “The largest discovered so far involved almost twenty square kilometers. A valley. Scoured clean to the overburden. Even the soil was empty of life or its remains.”

  “Like the worlds in the Chasm,” Mac said, her lips numb.

  “Like the worlds in the Chasm,” the Dhryn repeated. He rocked back and forth, his ridged nostrils flared. “So I come to you, Macken—Mac—because those aware of these disasters have good reason to believe we are all in the gravest of dangers. And I believe your work may hold a key to our survival.”

  Mac shook her head, sending hair tumbling over one shoulder. Automatically, her hands began braiding the tangled mass into order. She wished she could do the same with her thoughts. Why hadn’t the so-secret report contained this information? How could such a thing still be secret at all? She focused on what she did know. “I work with salmon. An Earth species.”

  A low hooting sound. Frustrating, not knowing if it was laughter, a sob, or alien flatulence. She had to read more. “Your interest is in a bigger question, is it not? One that applies to all living things. What is the minimum genetic diversity required in a population to respond to evolutionary stress? What is that evolutionary unit for a species, a community? For a world?”

  “You can’t simply extrapolate . . .”

  Brymn rose to his feet. “Do you deny the importance, Mac, of knowing how many of us must continue to live, if our species are to survive the doom threatening us all?”

  The Dhryn had a distinct flare for melodrama, Mac decided. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Exactly what do you do, Brymn?”

  “I study the remains of the past, to better understand what may be to come.”

  “A—paleontologist?”

  Another low hoot. Surprise or humor, Mac concluded. “No, no. An archaeologist. I thought you might have heard of me. Read my work? I’m quite famous in some circles.”

  “I study salmon,” Mac found herself emphasizing, as if the words anchored her to something saner than this conversation. “I don’t get outside my field much.”

  “You study life! That’s why I need your expertise.”

  “Why come all the way here—to me?” she asked reasonably. “Why not work with a Dhryn biologist? Surely some of your scientists are working on the same questions.”

  The Dhryn became utterly still, his large eyes regarding her with what Mac could only interpret as a wistful expression. Then he said in a voice only slightly louder than the slap of water on rock: “This is something you need to know, Mac, but I can only tell you if you agree to keep it in the strictest confidence. Not even my assigned companion, Nikolai Piotr Trojanowski, may learn this. May I tell you?”

  As if she’d refuse? Mac gave one quick nod.

  “I am ashamed to admit there are no Dhryn biologists. The study of living things has been forbidden throughout our history. It remains so. I would be refused grathnu, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor, should any of my lineage learn I was speaking to you about such things, or that I had read and understood any of your work.”

  Mac tried to wrap her brain around an entire civilization without biology and failed. “What about medicine? Doctors?”

  Brymn sat down again. “Nie rugorath sa nie a nai. It translates roughly as: ‘A Dhryn is robust or a Dhryn is not.’ There are other such sayings. Suffice it to say there are no sick Dhryn.”

  “Agriculture?”

  “We consume varieties of what you would call fungi, Mac. Long ago, our leaders conveniently ruled that what is grown for this purpose is not alive. Today, these organisms are considered components of a chemical manufacturing process. Their study is part of engineering, not life science as you know it.” He paused, seemingly thoughtful. “Truly, we don’t have many scientists at all. The most proper study for a Dhryn is what it means to be Dhryn. Our brightest minds are urged to become artists, historians, or perhaps analysts. Our advances in applied science and technology, like many of yours, are purchased from those who possess that cultural priority.”

  Fascinated, Mac started to reply, then abruptly signaled the Dhryn to silence.

  Anywhere else along the coast, the sound of gulls would signal the arrival of a harvester, or a run of pilchard or candlefish. They’d gather and bark in their hundreds over the bubbles of a humpback’s fishing trap.

  They wouldn’t sound like these gulls. This vocal outrage was too regular in pitch and pacing, a deliberate mismatch to nature so these calls wouldn’t distract or lure the real thing. Tiggers.

  “Is something wrong, Mac?” Brymn asked.

  “Wait here.”

  Mac ran up the steps, her hands shoving her braid under her collar. As she left the protection of the membrane, the wind gave her a too-helpful push. She grabbed at where the rail should be but missed it, the result being a drunken stagger to the next step. Of course, the Dhryn would be watching all of this grace in motion.

  She found her footing and continued to the top of the rise.

  The reason for the outrage was clear enough. A solitary figure was climbing the walkway toward her. Brown hair and a black T-shirt. The glint of glasses as the head angled up. Trojanowski. He dared wave at her, as if they’d arranged to meet.

  The bureaucrat wasn’t the target of the milling tiggers, however. They were massed over a flotilla of kayaks attempting to dock near Pod Two. Attempting, because the tiggers were programmed to prevent that as well, so they were flying directly at the faces of those paddling before dropping their tags. Mac could almost feel sorry for them.

  Almost. She scowled. “Tourists.”

  Or worse. The gleefully clashing colors of life jackets and kayaks might shout summer rental, but Mac didn’t forget Emily’s prediction that the media would be interested in her guest. Guests, she sighed to herself, glaring at the man below.

  “Guests?” Brymn boomed in her ear.

  Mac gave a yip of surprise at having her thoughts echoed in a deep bass. Either the Dhryn could tiptoe, or the wind flapping her coveralls had overwhelmed whatever noise the creature had made.

  She recovered, indicating Trojanowski, who’d turned to watch the show in the inlet. “I don’t understand how he got in—takes the gate code and confirmation. No one at Base would give it to him without asking me first.”

  Brymn “sat” beside her, putting his head on a level with hers. “Nikolai Piotr Trojanowski was assigned to me at the Consulate, upon my arrival. We have not been traveling together long enough for me to assess his technical capabilities. I think we must assume they are considerable, given the importance of my investigation.” There was a note of what would be pride in a Human voice.

  Mac came close to telling the Dhryn the assessment of his investigation expressed in the Secretary General’s note, then changed her mind. She’d defended her share of research that seemed esoteric and irrelevant to the layperson. The uncommon, unpopular questions were, in her experience, worth asking. More than once she’d seen them generate new schools of thought and previously unimagined applications.

  More than once, she’d poured time and energy into an idea that turned out to be riddled with holes, but she preferred that risk over the chance of missing something significant.
She would make her own judgment about Brymn’s investigation.

  And about something else. “Let’s not assume anything about Mr. Trojanowski, Brymn, until we know him better,” she suggested. “Keep things between the two of us for now. We can continue our discussion later—come to my office when you get a chance.”

  “Then, Mac, we are truly lamisah—allied?”

  Yesterday, Mac would have laughed at anyone who said she’d be standing here, talking to an alien—an archaeologist, yet—about an alliance that included keeping secrets from a representative of her own government. Hell, she told herself ruefully, she’d have laughed off any suggestion she wouldn’t be deep in observations at Field Station Six right now.

  She gazed at the inlet, seeing how the clouds had lifted so they draped languidly over the white shoulders of the coastal peaks, the sun intensifying the necklace of forest green below, begemmed by the gold and oranges of early turning trees. The glittering blues, blacks, and greens of the ocean, stirred by the breeze, refused to reflect that glory, as if more interested in the life surging beneath its waves. The pods, full of humanity probably now enthralled by dessert trays; the kayaks, filled with the curious . . .

  Yesterday, she would have scoffed at any threat to this place.

  “Lamisah, Brymn,” Mac agreed, wrapping her arms around herself, as if the wind had grown cold.

  5

  DINNER AND DISCORD

  “SO THEY are the damned media!” Mac lowered her voice with an effort. She hadn’t thought her life could become any more complicated, but Trojanowski’s confident nod left no doubt.

  “I recognized a couple of faces from press gatherings at the Consulate,” he told her. “Someone must have leaked the Honorable Delegate’s itinerary. First Dhryn on Earth, you know.”

  “Must be a slow news week,” Mac muttered under her breath. Louder, “I’ll call the coast police to—”

  “I don’t advise it, Dr. Connor. That would only fuel their interest. They’d be back tomorrow, in larger numbers.”

  Trojanowski had escorted her and Brymn back to Pod Three, which had meant passing the crowd of angry, miserable-looking kayakers, their bodies and heads splattered with tigger droppings, their boats trapped between Norcoast skims. The Dhryn had seemed fascinated by all the shouting, although they didn’t stay in range long.

  Mac had caught Trojanowski waving at Tie, who’d been standing in one of the skims. Tie had offered back an unusually cheerful “thumbs-up.”

  So. The bureaucrat must have delayed in following her and Brymn, presumably to give Tie instructions on how to deal with the intruders. Mac wasn’t sure if she approved of Mr. Trojanowski ordering her staff around.

  She did realize she didn’t have much say in the matter.

  Now, standing outside the closed door to her own quarters, which presently housed a large, blue alien, Mac did her best to regain some control of the situation. “If I’m not to call the police, Mr. Trojanowski, what are you suggesting? That I leave them in their kayaks to keep swearing at my staff?”

  “And what kind of reports would they make about the Honorable Delegate’s trip, Dr. Connor, or your facility?” He lifted his hands and shoulders, as if asking her to admit defeat. “I’ve made arrangements for them to stay here overnight. I’ll be setting up interviews with the Honorable Delegate in a couple of hours. Hopefully, that will satisfy them.”

  “A couple of hours?” So much for Brymn coming to her office later.

  Trojanowski’s eyes twinkled behind their lenses. “They’ll need time to shower first, don’t you think?”

  Tigger glue. It had a deliberately pungent odor. Mac’s lips twitched involuntarily at the image. “A soak in solvent’s more useful.” She conceded the inevitable with a shrug of her own. “Seems you have this well in hand, Mr. Trojanowski. But I’d better not meet one of them—or hear they’ve interfered with anyone’s work.”

  Trojanowski gave a crisp bow. “Leave it with your diplomatic liaison, Dr. Connor. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Among other reasons,” she dared add. The corridor outside her quarters was deserted. “I’ve read the message.”

  “And you have questions,” he guessed. “Let me walk you to your office, Dr. Connor. If that’s where you were heading?”

  Mac sighed. She’d hoped to go back to the gallery and hunt leftovers, but the large central hall was undoubtedly filling up with filthy media eager for a target. They’d probably spilled into the lower corridors already. “I’d better check in with the Admin staff first—smooth whatever feathers were ruffled by our visitors and see what, if anything, the Oversight Committee has to say on the subject.” Not in a hurry to find that out, Mac decided. “We can go on the terrace and take the stairs,” she suggested.

  “Excellent idea.” He held up the pouch he’d been carrying, the one that held his portable office. Mac was beginning to believe he slept with the thing. “I’ve enough for two.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Trojanowski refused to explain, leading the way to the terrace door and holding it for her.

  Mac licked a crumb from her lower lip and smiled blissfully. “That was—that was great. Thank you.” Who’d have guessed? Yet here she was, halfway down the stairs curving around Pod Three, legs outstretched, back comfortably against the wall, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Nikolai Trojanowski to share his stolen supper. Strips of savory duck, asparagus tips, salmon puffs, the list went on and on, each having appeared like magic from his pouch, each disappearing in what Mac had to admit was one of the most relaxed and companionable meals she’d had in a long time.

  The view didn’t hurt. Mac gazed contentedly out at Pods Five and Six, their curves catching the setting sun, the opposite halves deep in shadow so they looked more like natural islands than usual. The waves beyond were gilded as well. “Pod Six is the newest,” she informed him, pointing to it. Their conversation had proved as easy as the meal, on her part, anyway. Answering questions about her home was always a pleasure. Mac only hoped she wasn’t overdoing it. “Not that it’s that new—I spent a summer there doing a special project.”

  “Salmon acoustics with Professor Sithole.”

  Mac looked at Trojanowski in surprise. “We didn’t publish anything. How did you know?”

  He grinned. “The wonders of record keeping, Dr. Connor. You received a grant to work with him. Money leaves tracks, as the expression goes.”

  A satisfied stomach helped calm Mac’s initial reaction to being “tracked,” but there was still an edge to her: “Professional snoop, are you?”

  “I like to know who I’m dealing with,” he admitted, unrepentant. “So tell me. Did you enjoy listening to your salmon?”

  Mac looked back at Pod Six. Her voice grew wistful. “Of course. But I did it to work with Jabulani—Dr. Sithole—while Norcoast still had him. He could do incredible things with sound. Which is why he moved to bigger and better labs years ago.”

  Trojanowski was rooting around in his pouch. “Looks like we’re done,” he announced. “I’ll have to run this through the sonic shower.”

  “I still can’t believe you took the butter,” she commented, watching him smear the last of it on his half of a bun.

  “I wasn’t the only one,” Trojanowski said cheerfully. “Those students of yours probably stripped the table. Besides, I had time as well as opportunity. Your Dr. Mamani wasn’t in a hurry to let me get up and follow you.”

  “Em?” Mac laughed. “You’re lucky you escaped. Few men—” She stopped, remembering who she was with. Outside in familiar surroundings, the casualness of sitting on mem-wood, even his borrowed black T-shirt and pants fooled her, as if Trojanowski was just another student. Nicely snug shirt and pants, as Emily would doubtless notice. Mac blushed and pulled her knees to her chest. He wasn’t a student; she didn’t notice such things. “I meant to apologize for pushing you off the walkway,” she said, to cover the moment and because she meant it.

  His shrug brushed he
r shoulder. “No need. I’d have lost my temper, too. I regret we came at such a crucial time in your work, Dr. Connor.” A pause while they both watched an eagle circle high above the pod. When it was little more than a black speck, he went on: “I hear you left your equipment at the river. Does that mean you’ll be able to continue?”

  Mac stared out across the inlet, at the mountains beyond. The mouth of the Tannu was hidden from sight behind tree-coated islands. Her salmon would find it, no trouble at all. They could be there now, in their hundreds of thousands, in their millions.

  But what she’d learned from Brymn—what might be happening—that mattered, too. “How soon I go back depends on what you want from me, doesn’t it?”

  Trojanowski closed the pouch and stood, reaching down one hand to pull Mac to her feet. She had the impression her question troubled him. “It isn’t what I want—or the Ministry,” he began. “Brymn’s the one who asked for you, Dr. Connor. He hasn’t told us why. Did he tell you? That is why he insisted on your missing supper, wasn’t it? To talk to you without me.”

  Mac didn’t answer immediately, distracted by the way he’d kept her hand in his. Social quandaries weren’t her strength. Should she tug her hand free, in case he’d simply forgotten to let go, or leave it there, in case he wanted to hold it even longer—which led to another complicated series of possibilities she really didn’t need to consider under the circumstances. What if he thought she was holding on to him and was going through the same choices? No, definitely he was the one holding. Her hand was just lying there, innocent of any intention.

  “Dr. Connor?” Trojanowski gave her an odd look.

  What would Emily do?

  Mac eased her hand back the tiniest amount, not hard enough to say she was offended, but enough to remind him it was there. He let go, his hand staying palm up between them for an instant longer, as if surprised to be empty.