Regeneration (Czerneda) (12 page)

 

 

 

“
A
NCHEN LOVES THE PLAN.” Mac heard the pleading note in her own voice and winced.
Not the right approach.

Sure enough, Emily spat out a frustrated string of Quechua Mac didn’t want translated. “Of course she does,” she finished in English, throwing her gloved arms skyward in emphasis. “Don’t you see, Mac? It splits us up. Means you’ll do whatever she wants.”

“No!” Mac protested. Her friend would have to rediscover physical expression for this conversation, she sighed to herself, neck sore from following Emily’s relentless pacing. Just as well they’d met in her quarters rather than outside. “That’s not true. She—to Anchen your returning to Base would be—”
profoundly circular?
Somehow, she doubted spouting alien philosophy was going to help, even if Emily could be convinced that she, Mac, had any idea what she was spouting.
Not likely.
“She loves the plan,” Mac repeated lamely.

“While I hate the plan. I’m not going. End of discussion.”

Anchen and Mudge had been right,
Mac realized with some disgust. The way it stood, if she had a month, she couldn’t argue, cajole, or rationalize Emily into doing things her way.
That left
. . . Mac steeled herself. “You owe me, Em.”

Emily stood still. “Owe you?” A shapely dark eyebrow rose—curiosity, not offense.
Yet.

“Yes. And I’m collecting. You’re going to Base. I need to know it’s running.” Mac didn’t bother adding:
and you’re safe
.

Here came the offense, right on cue—that proud flash of Emily’s eyes, the passionate outrage. “I don’t believe it. You—it’s revenge, isn’t it? Bizarre, twisted revenge! Aie! You’re abandoning me. To—you want me to work on your damned fish for you! Well, I won’t!”

“Good. Because I want you to work on your damned Survivors!”

They faced off, both furious. Then Emily’s expression shifted to shock. “What did you say?”

“You’ll have to rebuild your Tracer. But you’ll have every resource.” Mac considered this, then hastily qualified: “Short of interfering with the field season.”

“Heavens forbid I do that.” But Emily’s slowly expanding smile took the sting out of the words. “You actually talked the Sinzi-ra into this. Supporting my research. Now that I don’t believe.”

“She owes me, too,” Mac said succinctly.

“You always were dangerous in a corner, Mackenzie Connor.” Emily shook her head, her hands spreading in a gesture of surrender. “Okay. I love the plan.”

Mac tried not to sound smug. “I knew you would. Now. We don’t have much time.”

After sending Emily to prepare her “shopping list” for the Sinzi-ra—doubtless to be long and costly, judging by the other scientist’s intense air of concentration when she’d left Mac—Mac sat behind her desk and began a list of her own.

She’d committed herself now,
she thought, studying the ’screen hovering before her eyes, drawing a finger through a lower quadrant to retrieve her field station inventory. Emily at Base; Mac in space.

She’d learned a few things about travel offworld. Mac didn’t bother deleting any items, given she had no idea what she might face and now knew better than to believe anyone who said they did. Tools, dissection kits, syringes, specimen bottles, scales—anything might be useful. And they fit her hands. She’d become all too aware of the dearth of Human-oriented technology outside this system.

On that thought, she added a distillation kit and several collapsible jugs for water to her list.

Myriam was a desert. Never an overly moist world, lacking the large oceans cradling Earth’s continents, what water remained on the Dhryn planet ran through underground rivers and lodged in aquifers. This was, in fact, another and troubling facet of the Chasm puzzle: the dust-dry ruins. What they now knew of the Dhryn feeding—Mac shuddered—did not include the removal of surface water. Oh, Dhryn didn’t care for the stuff. For some reason they’d done their best to drain their new home, Haven, and chosen colonies that were arid and desolate by Human standards. But that didn’t explain the rest of those worlds.

For a fleeting instant, Mac thought of Emily’s Survivors.
What if they did exist? What if they were aquatic? Did the Ro remove any ocean that might have sheltered them?

She shook her head.
More likely the Ro had been their thorough selves and simply finished the sterilization of each world begun by the Dhryn.

Because it was nothing short of deadly, that hope there was a species out there with the answers, more advanced than the Sinzi, ready to save everyone else out of the goodness of whatever passed for their hearts.

It had seduced Emily into believing the Ro.

Mac closed her ’screen and pushed herself to her feet, thoroughly unsettled. “The sooner we’re away from here, the better,” she told the empty room.

The
lamnas
glittered on her finger, as if in reassurance she hadn’t lost it. Mac had a regrettable history with jewelry—something along the lines of her ability to keep dress shoes intact.

Mac glanced out the window. The sun was shining, doing its best to hurry spring along. Not quite as helpfully, the wind had picked up to a howl, and she didn’t need to walk out on her terrace to know its protective membrane would be in place.
Where was the fun in that?

Sing-li had refused to show Mac how to turn it off. He’d insisted a safety feature designed to keep guests of little mass—or sense—from being blown out to sea or worse, given the rocks below, was not to be treated lightly.

She’d only wanted to feel the rain.
Okay, and maybe toss her imp with the latest meeting notes into it.

Mac tucked her imp into its pocket, and surveyed her room. Strange how putting a few personal belongings around had made this alien space hers. “Okay, more than a few,” she admitted aloud, eyeing the salmon swinging overhead and the filled shelves on every wall. She hadn’t asked for all of her belongings from Base. They’d just . . . arrived. Sing-li’s doing. “It’s going to take a while to pack all this.”

Mac heaved a sigh of resignation and went into her other room. The bed beckoned—too risky, given the struggle she’d had to leave it this morning. The jelly-chair by the door was promising, but it lacked a certain privacy.

Which was the problem,
she abruptly realized, fingers wrapping around the tiny device.

A moment later, Mac sat on the floor of her closet, its door closed, content in the knowledge that, while undignified and likely silly, she was as alone as she could manage. She leaned against a storage bag, wiggling until its contents stopped digging into her spine. From the feel, tents.

She took the ring between forefinger and thumb, lifting it—

“Mac! What on Earth are you doing in here?”

Closing her fist over the ring, Mac glared up at the man in the doorway. “I’m meditating,” she said stiffly.

“Meditating.” Lyle Kanaci gave her a doubtful look. “In your closet?”

“I thought it would be peaceful,” she grumbled, climbing to her feet. “What is it?”

“Not even you would call a meeting of this importance and not attend.” His voice rose and he waved his hands. “Weren’t you even planning to be there?”

Mac held back any number of retorts. While she’d known Lyle to be testy—and Fourteen knew he had a temper,
although the alien had deserved what he’d got, using Lyle’s depilatory cream that way
—he’d never burst into her rooms before. Not to mention she usually heard about her attendance, or lack of it, from Mudge.

“I don’t need to be there, but I was coming.”
Eventually.
“What’s wrong?” She waved him out of her closet and followed behind. “Besides, you’re better at those things than I am,” she added honestly.
And enjoyed being in charge.

Like Mudge, Lyle Kanaci was Mac’s height, but with an academic’s tendency to slouch that made him appear the shorter of the two. It also made it easy to see the red mottling the pigmentless skin of his scalp and neck.
Something’s definitely up,
Mac decided.

He whirled on her the moment they were through the door. “You could have at least warned me!”

“About what? Oh.” Mac nodded. “The move offworld. Things fell into place—” she made a helpless gesture “—fast.”

“I don’t like it.”

Déjà vu.
She felt like grabbing Lyle by the shoulders and giving him a good shake.
While she was at it,
Mac decided grimly,
she’d shake the rest of the universe with him.
“You’ve been complaining for weeks about not returning to Myriam,” she pointed out. “I’d have thought you’d be thanking me.”

“Not when it’s some trick by the Sinzi to make you cooperate.”

Was he worried about
her? Mac wondered. She scowled. “This was my idea. There’s no trick, the Sinzi-
ra
—” the emphasis on the honorific a rebuke, “—and I are in complete agreement as to the benefits to everyone, especially Emily, and what made you walk into my closet anyway?”
Oh, for doors that locked,
she thought wistfully.
Just once.

“You weren’t anywhere else.” He had the grace to look embarrassed. “Emily said you were still in your quarters.”

She scowled a moment longer, just for effect. “I’d better have privacy on Myriam.”

“You’ll have your own tent,” he promised, then half smiled. “Middle of a sandstorm, you’ll be alone for days.”

Mac rolled her eyes. “Don’t remind me.”

“Mac.” Lyle lowered his voice. “Are you sure about this? Myriam, the Chasm. It’s not what you’re used to—we’d understand—”

Ouch.
She decided to be equally blunt. “I do my best work in the field, Dr. Kanaci. As do you. A little—a great deal—” she amended, “—of sand doesn’t change that. We can’t learn what we must about the Dhryn here.”

This drew a measuring look from his pale eyes, followed by a short, quick nod. “Then let’s get going. Charles has the specs for the flight—if you’re finished meditating?”

“All done,” she assured him serenely, feeling a growing impatience herself.

Field season. Not to a river or her salmon, but the potential for discovery was there nonetheless. It quickened the heart, steadied priorities into one.
Move
.

“Let’s go,” she told Lyle.

Familiarity couldn’t breed apathy. Not here. As always, Mac slowed when she entered the Atrium, taking a good look at its remarkable space. The vast underground research facility beneath the IU consulate deserved it.

Aerial platforms filled the inverted cone that was the Atrium’s core. Most were rooms without walls, linked in various temporary configurations to better serve the needs of the researchers using that space. Some were docked against the steplike levels that formed the outer walls, if you’d call a wall what resembled more the side of a giant pyramid under excavation, studded with entrances to still more rooms and facilities. Other platforms were in motion in every direction. Mac had yet to see a pattern to the traffic, although she had to admit she hadn’t seen a collision either.
A few near misses.

The ceiling, high enough to feel like sky, was the underside of the stones forming the patio, itself in the lee of the main consulate building. Tree roots formed wisps of brown cloud, the plants seemingly unharmed by finding air rather than rock beneath. Mac suspected extra care by the gardeners.

Space, bustle, changing shapes, but what Mac noticed most each time was the din. Her ears rang with voices from varied throats, machinery, and the incessant beeping of whatever felt obliged to beep. She’d only experienced silence here once, when they’d waited together for the Dhryn.