Regeneration (Czerneda) (15 page)

It did promote a distinct realism . . .
Mac closed her eyes, waiting for her treacherous body to settle to more reasonable expectations.
No time for a cold shower.

The message—
what else could she call it?
—had been far more than Nik’s words and emotion. It was as if she’d heard other voices as Nik must have heard them: the Dhryn’s. The Trisulian’s, Cinder. Overlapping and confused. Recollections. As if the
lamnas
had made a copy of specific memories. She focused, trying to sort out the babble.
Yes. Two different conversations.

Not random choices. Nik must want her to understand or learn something from each. Or those conversations were important to him.

Or upsetting.

Mac chewed her lip in sympathy.
Still, nothing she didn’t already know.
The Vessel was acting as its nature. So was Cinder. Her grief over the destruction of her species’ males had been plain enough before they’d left Earth.

Chilled, Mac opened her eyes. An insight she didn’t want.
It wasn’t the only one.

There’d been fear to the point of dread mixed with his warmer feelings for her. Not fear for her sake; for his own. “Bet it was the salmon,” Mac muttered. She clambered to her feet, then tossed the cushions on the table. “Give a guy a carving, next thing you know he’s having nightmares about shared household bills and who drives the skim.”

For a long moment, she stood staring out over the tumble of dark water and white caps.

Then Mac’s lips softened into a smile.

“Cinder was right,” she told the storm. “He’s blind about one thing.”

It wasn’t a weakness.

“Where are my things?” Mac asked, doing her utmost not to sound aggravated or alarmed. Nursing a throbbing headache she blamed on the alien ring around her finger wasn’t helping. Walking in from the terrace to find her quarters stripped of anything Human was distinctly not helping. “And who said you should take them?”

Two, the only individual among the consulate staff Mac could identify with any reliability, would, when they were alone together, show some emotion.
Usually disapproval of Mac’s tendency to dig holes in the sand floor with her toes.
Now, she gave a small frown, one of several practiced Human expressions Mac suspected staff employed at will. “Your things, Dr. Connor, have been packed into a shipping container. Myriam is a restricted environment. All materials brought to the planet must be catalogued and sterilized according to IU protocols. Charles Mudge III sent a very clear memo.”

No doubt.
Mac absently scuffed one toe in the perfectly raked sand where her desk had been. She’d already looked into the closet. Its outer door had been opened—she could tell by the raindrops on the floor. The transport lev had probably docked alongside and loaded up while she’d been staring into the
lamnas
. Staff were efficient, she had to give them that.

Too efficient for their own good, this time.
“Sorry, but you’ll have to bring it all back,” Mac informed the alien. “I have to sort out what goes with Dr. Mamani.”

“Dr. Mamani earlier identified her belongings and equipment. They have been packed for shipping to Norcoast Salmon Research Facility.”

“Base,” Mac corrected automatically. There must have been a constant stream of traffic through her quarters while she was gone, every footprint carefully erased from the sand.
Emily could be too efficient as well.
She pulled out her imp and waved it in the air. “I’d made a list.” Out loud, the protest was a little more petulant than she’d planned.

“Which we accessed and followed. The few items not on your list we included for your comfort, knowing your excellent care with budget. The IU will cover all transport costs.” Two hesitated. “Was this incorrect, Dr. Connor?”

Picturing crates of wooden salmon now accompanying her to Myriam, Mac gave up.
Maybe they’d let her sort out what should be shipped back to Earth during the trip to the transect gate.
“Did you leave me any clothes?”

A hint of smug in Two’s otherwise composed face. “We are informed as to your schedule, Dr. Connor. There is a bag packed for your trip to—Base. As well, we have set aside all of the personal items you most commonly access for use during your journey.”

Efficient and thoughtful.
Mac shook her head. Although, by that criterion, Two likely packed the hockey puck she liked to roll between her hands while thinking, instead of her comb.
As for clothes?
She refused to imagine.
Aliens.
“You win, Two.”

“I wasn’t aware of a competition, Dr. Connor.”

Mac grinned. “I don’t suppose you’d consider coming to Myriam? You know what a mess I’ll make without you.”

The other being shook her head just so, an accomplished mimic. “Our duty is to the Sinzi-ra and her guests, Dr. Connor.” Two brought both hands to her throat and bowed, deep and low, to Mac. Rising, she lowered her hands and gave a short lilting whistle through her pursed lips.

This was something new.
Mac wasn’t sure whether to imitate or ignore the gesture. She compromised by ducking her head quickly and giving a self-conscious
chirp.

“You have been reasonable,” Two announced. “May your journey be a safe and successful one, Dr. Connor, so we may have the privilege of serving you once more.”

With that, she turned and walked from the room.

A compliment, Mac decided. Though if that was Two’s honest opinion of her, she assuredly did not want to meet any guests the staff considered unreasonable.

Left alone, Mac considered her options. She could slump in one of the Sinzi’s jelly-chairs. She should be able to force her eyes to read Mudge’s detailed notes.
That’s what she should do.
Her stomach reminded her she’d missed another meal.

She caught herself turning the ring around and around on her finger.
Not going there again.
Not soon. Anchen hadn’t really looked into her own
lamnas
while demonstrating its use, something Mac now thought she understood. That experience, if at all comparable to hers, was disturbing on every level.

Perhaps explaining why the rings stayed on Anchen’s long fingers?

She refused to speculate about what Anchen—or any of her disparate personalities—saw or felt.

“And I’m not sharing either,” Mac decided aloud.

Problem was, this close to leaving?
She couldn’t sit still. Especially in an empty room. Mac grabbed the small round bag Two had left for her in the washroom. Time to go. Somewhere.

She pulled Nik’s glasses from her pocket—it had become a habit, carrying them with her—and held them in front of her eyes. They’d fall off her nose if she tried to wear them properly.

Through the innocuous-seeming lenses, the walls of her sitting room revealed themselves as anything but plain and white. Lines, varying in thickness, scrolled over their surface like intricately woven threads. Among those threads, some behind, some in front, gleamed creatures small and large. Mac knew many, or their Terran equivalents. Shrimp and hydra, corals and urchins, sea cucumbers and squirts, curly-shelled oysters. Others were hauntingly strange. Floating orbs with tentacles spiraled around their girth. Eyes that glittered in their threes and sixes. Ribbons and segments, differently proportioned from any on Earth. The artist who created this had loved sea life, and known more oceans than hers.

Mac had never thought to wonder why she’d been assigned this room, of all the rooms in the guest wing, until seeing it through Nik’s glasses.

It hadn’t been for her benefit—the Sinzi-ra knew Humans couldn’t see this range of color unassisted. A recognition of her specialty, perhaps, or her interests. A visual signal to inform the staff of what might suit this particular Human best.

Regardless, her being housed here held a subtle rightness of the sort Mac was coming to believe Anchen enjoyed for its own sake, a generosity without the Human need for a recipient.
Important,
she decided,
to remember that
.

And unfair—having to leave when she was finally making some progress.

Mac tucked the glasses away and the room was white on white once more.

Since arriving, she’d kept a mental list of all the things she would do before leaving the Interspecies Consulate. With an impossibly few hours left, Mac sat under a dripping tree and tallied what she’d missed, which was most of it. “The aquatic delegates,” she sighed, taking a bite of tart apple. Not that they’d cooperated. Their portion of the consulate had been out-of-bounds to air breathers, they’d left meeting attendance to representatives who did breathe air, and, to be frank, spent much their time sightseeing in the ocean itself. She’d hoped to casually bump into one of their groups doing just that. “Seen any groupers?” she grinned to herself, imagining herself trying to communicate underwater.

She pulled the hood of her raincoat farther over her head, strangely content despite her list. The storm had abated, but the leaves held sufficient drops to be a nuisance for a while yet. Moisture polished tile and stone; there were busy new brooks alongside the paths. With the settling wind, a chill mist rising under the trees added a nice touch of drama.

She couldn’t imagine why staff had put up such a protest to her spending time out here. She grinned. In the end they’d provided both raincoat and picnic, almost shooing her into the garden.

Not that Mac had initially planned anything so restful while waiting for the lev to Base. No, she’d intended to be useful.

“No one needs me.” She tossed the core into a shrub large enough to hide it from frantic gardeners, but not, she trusted, from anything hungry. “Imagine that.”

Like old times, having Emily wave a distracted greeting from where she stood surrounded by crates and attentive staff, giving instructions in a staccato blur. Although at Base, Mac thought with amusement, those in attendance would have been worshipful students and a certain tidal researcher. The wave sent the same message.
Later, Mac. I’m busy.

Mudge and Lyle had been much the same, and the Sthlynii downright stammering in their panic. She could have hung around to watch, but the harried looks of those still packing weren’t as amusing as she’d hoped.

“You’d think they’d never expected to move from here,” Mac told the chubby pigeon, or whatever, pecking near her feet. Another miss on her to-do list for this amazing place: learn the birds.

Picnic finished, she lay back on the bench, using her bag for a pillow. Most of her fit. She didn’t mind leaving her feet on the ground. For now, at least.

The leaves overhead were tossing this way and that in the gusty wind, revealing glimpses of cloud doing the same. “That’s me,” Mac whispered, squinting upward. “Macthisaway , Macthaddaway, Macwhoknowswhichaway.” Who’d have guessed the day would come when she’d be more anxious about a quick trip to Base than an indefinite stay on an alien world?

With Mudge.
“Good old Oversight,” she murmured, catching a cold drop on her tongue. That much of home, she’d have.

She’d wanted to say good-bye to Anchen. To thank her. Maybe dare ask questions about the
lamnas
. But no staff would say where the Sinzi-ra could be found, and Mac had to trust the gracious alien would find her before she boarded the lev.

“So now I’m relaxing,” Mac reminded herself. “Everyone says I should. No one needs me right now. It’s a gift.”

She spent an eternity staring up at the leaves, determined to enjoy the peace and rustling quiet.

Then checked the time again.

“Gods. That was two minutes?”

She sat up and shrugged off her coat, tying it around her waist. The two bags, hers and the picnic remnants, she stuffed into the crook of a low branch. “Exploring this place,” she explained to the pigeon, “was on my list, too.”