Regeneration (Czerneda) (4 page)

Emily had been debriefed by seemingly everyone else on the planet—and quite a few off. Mac had avoided those sessions. She’d chosen to accept Emily back without questions, give her what peace she could.
Forgive and forget.
She trusted the Sinzi, or the Ministry, would tell her any facts she’d need for their work.

For Emily’s peace?
Mac wondered with unexpected guilt.
Or her own?

“You’re back,” she protested, knowing it was in vain. “That’s all I care about.”

“Don’t be afraid, Mac,” Emily replied ever so gently. “The truth—it’s not going to change things. You won’t lose me again.”

Emily had asked for Mac’s forgiveness.
She’d already given it.
Mac shook her head again. “I don’t need to know.”

“I need you to. Please, Mac. Don’t be difficult.”

She’d love to be difficult.
Instead, Mac pulled one knee to her chest and rested her chin on it, staring into the dark. “Suit yourself.”

 

 

 

“
I
T BEGAN WITH FEAR,” Emily told her. “I was only a child when I first heard about the Chasm, a place where all life had been mysteriously wiped from its planets. Only a child, but I understood too well. I had nightmares of everything around me disappearing. Over and over. Finally my mother gave me books about the Chasm. She insisted I read them; told me the only way to stop fear was to learn its cause. My fear turned to obsession.” Her voice became rueful. “I grew up planning to save the rest of the universe.”

Somehow, Mac wasn’t surprised. Of course, she herself had grown up ignoring the universe, blithely confident it would return the favor.
Look where both attitudes had landed them,
she thought grimly.

“I continued to study everything I could find,” Emily went on. “Until, one day, I stumbled on the key, Mac. Some believed a sentient species from the Chasm had escaped its destruction. Such a species would have my answers. All I had to do was find them.”

“The Survivor Legend,” Mac acknowledged. Brymn had told her Emily had been researching it when they’d met.
A scrap of truth within the lies.

Emily’s secret quest had succeeded. She’d found the Ro—or they’d found her. As far as Mac was concerned, the difference was academic.

Not a healthy topic of conversation.
Not away from trained help, with Emily’s mind fragile enough. There could be worse things than compulsive finger counting. “Good thing you went into fish biology instead,” Mac offered, her voice strained to her own ears. “How did that happen?”

“I didn’t. Not instead. Because.”

Trust Emily to dangle the right bait.
Worried or not, Mac couldn’t help herself. “ ‘Because?’ ”

“I haven’t lost it.” Emily’s laugh was too hollow to be reassuring. “Believe me, Mac, there’s been good, legitimate science behind the search for a lost civilization from the Chasm, unlike your chanting friends. But . . . I felt it prudent to have a day job, to keep my private research exactly that. To this day, my sponsor—even my sources—don’t know the full extent of my efforts. Just to be discreet around you.”

Sponsor? Sources?
Mac floundered after what confounded her most. “Around me? Who?”

“Who did you think I was with on Saturday nights?”

Anyone willing?
Mac thought of the innumerable partners Emily had drawn from dance floors and bars during their times together. Was information for sale the common denominator she’d missed amid the loud shirts, lack of shirts, tattoos, suits, and the “only a mother could love” still-breathing? “There were quite a few,” she concluded, feeling every bit the fool Emily’d named her.

A real laugh this time. “They weren’t all sources, Mac.”

Mac blushed in the dark. “Oh. Of course.”
She was
not
going back through her mental list.
“I assume you had to pay them—the sources, I mean,” she added quickly.

“Hence the sponsor. How do you think I knew about Kanaci’s little group?”

She hadn’t,
Mac realized.
Given it thought, that is.
She’d gladly left the details of that grisly day to others, her attention divided between Emily’s recovery and her research group.
Interspersed with daydreams about a certain absent and altogether yummy spy.

Mac coughed. “Okay. How did you know?”

“Sencor Research funds us both. I had access to Kanaci’s data, such as it was.” Emily’s voice grew amused. “Which reminds me. Bureaucrats have this lovely inertia—want to bet they’ve kept crediting my account?” The amusement faded. “Before you start on me, Mac, don’t. The Ministry of Extra-Sol Human Affairs has everything I’ve done to date for Sencor—I gave your formidable Dr. Stewart my codes and contacts weeks ago. Surprised she didn’t demand an impression of my teeth at the same time.”

Mac refused to be distracted by Emily’s opinion of ’Sephe, stuck on the improbably normal. “You had a sponsor,” she echoed. “A real sponsor. To chase a—a myth!”

“Yes, Mac.” Em’s tone was the impatient but fond one she used fairly often during their discussions.
Usually when Mac was being willfully obtuse about some offworld topic.
“The Group very quietly supports a number of research projects into the Chasm. Their interest in the Survivors matched my own. They’ve funded my work for over fifteen years.”

Mac snorted. The snort turned into a giggle. A giggle that multiplied until Emily interrupted, sounding rather offended: “I don’t see what’s so funny—”

“I know you’re persuasive, Em, but how on Earth did you manage to talk these people into supporting you for years, pay for clandestine sources, send you offworld—” Mac stopped, considering what wasn’t funny to her after all. “That’s a great deal of funding.”
Enough to finance every project at Base for a year, if not more.

With trademark Mamani arrogance: “The goal was worth it. And so was I.”

The goal had almost killed them both.
Mac eased her bottom on the stone, stretching out her legs.
It still might.
“I don’t get it,” she said bluntly. “To start with, you’re a fish biologist, like me.”

“Haven’t seen you studying salmon lately.”

Not her idea.
Aloud, and letting her exasperation through: “Putting aside the whole issue of searching for a species no one has ever proved existed in the first place, supposedly in hiding where no one can find them for the last three thousand years, why would Sencor sponsor you, of all people, to look for them? What could you possibly have had to offer? And, please, no innuendo.”

“Spoilsport.” Mac could hear the grin in Emily’s voice.

The tone, the banter, was Emily at her most relaxed. Mac didn’t buy it. Her friend hadn’t moved since they’d arrived. She stood looking out over the river, a slip of darkness. The moonlight barely caught the fringes of her shawl, tugged by the light breeze. It didn’t reveal her face.

The Emily Mac knew was restless and prone to pacing, said pacing typically accompanied by dramatic gestures liable to threaten both lab equipment and incautious vases. Her entire body could become an exclamation point. This new ability to remain still—it wasn’t right. Mac curled up to hug both knees.
They should have stayed in the bar despite Rumnor and his pack.
“Well?” she prompted reluctantly.

“Weeellll,” repeated Emily, stretching the word. “Tonight’s supposed to be fun, Mac.” That coaxing voice.
Emily the troublemaker voice.
More than anything, Mac wanted to be relieved by the sound of it. “C’mon, Mac. Take a guess.”

Or maybe not.
“Guess?” Mac repeated blankly.

“Guess. Don’t worry. I’ll give you a clue. Dr. Mackenzie Connor has left her salmon to follow aliens migrating across the stars,
si
? Dr. Emily Mamani did the opposite.”

Gods.
It struck too close to what hurt between them: that Emily came to work at Base, befriended Mac, only to lay the Ro’s trap for Brymn.

Old, old news.
Mac shook her head, impatient with herself and easily frustrated—as usual—by Emily’s penchant for games.
It was that. Nothing more. Forgive me, Emily’d asked.

What
more
did she want?

“You, Emily Mamani,” Mac said through tight lips, “can be the most incredibly annoying—”

“Lazy, are you? Think! You haven’t had that much beer.”

Pity.
“Fine,” Mac surrendered for the second time. “That’s the clue? You did the opposite to me, in terms of choice in research fields? I suppose that means you started with this obsession about Survivors and only later switched to fish biology, eventually developing technology to follow trophic movement in benthic-feeding fish species in the Sargasso Sea by identifying and tracing individuals. Promising topic,” she added wistfully. “I don’t suppose your sponsor was interested in that.”

“Oh, yes, they were. Because I was interested. Think, Mac,” Emily urged again, the hoarse emphasis in her voice abruptly making this anything but a game. “I need you to understand me.”

Understand?
Mac felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck, on her real forearm. Her stomach twisted to remind her it currently held an unfamiliar blend of sausage in thick pastry, plus three “Mac” beers.
She could almost feel Seung’s hands on her shoulders . . . hear Denise complaining about the com system . . . see Norrey’s . . .

Understand
that level of betrayal
?

When Mac didn’t—couldn’t—speak, Emily pushed: “Why do you think I developed the Tracer device, Mac?”

Shivering free of ghosts, Mac found her voice, lips numb. “To record genetic information for individual fish in a moving group.”
To find and track Mac’s own DNA through the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the surface of Haven, to the Progenitor’s Chamber, so the Ro could target their prey.

Why?
Mac puzzled, gladly distracted by the familiar problem. To set the great Dhryn ships in motion? They’d hardly needed to strike a specific portion of the planet for that. There had to be another purpose, some reason one Progenitor had been the target.

A question high on Nik’s list to ask, for it was this same Progenitor he’d left to find. Mac looked up at what stars showed between the sheets of moon-grayed cloud.
Not that she’d the faintest idea where he was.
As few as possible knew where he’d gone and why. His mission with the Dhryn was a secret even from Emily. Though, given she’d already found out more about Nik than Mac had intended, it seemed only a matter of time till she learned the rest.

“Mac.”

Emily’s impatient voice dragged Mac’s attention back, reluctantly, to the here-and-now. She scowled. “If you’ve something to tell me, Emily, I wish you’d do it. I hate games.”

“I know. But this time, it’s important to me.
Por favor?
I need you to feel something of what I felt, when I first recognized the potential of my approach. I want you to—”

“—understand,” Mac snapped. “I heard.”

“Is that so hard, my friend?”

“Yes!” The word was hard and sharp, like a weapon launched in the dark. Mac shuddered and hunched her shoulders. “Em—Emily, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”
Forgive and
forget.
Why wasn’t Emily cooperating?

“Of course you did.” Pure triumph. “About time, too.”

“ ‘About time,’ ” Mac repeated.
Something was wrong here.
“What are you talking about?”

“Poor Mac. You’ve held on to me, to our friendship, with that incomparable will of yours. It saved me; I love you for it. But it isn’t real—”

“How can you say that?” Mac whispered, feeling the burn of tears. “Emily—”

“It’s not—not if you can’t bring yourself to admit the Emily you thought you knew was someone different. Mac, if you can’t understand me, and still call me friend, you might as well give in to that anger you’re holding just as tight.”

“I’m not angry—”

“And I’m a cod. Honestly, Mac, you’re the only one who doesn’t see it. You’re furious with me. You’ve every right to be! Look what I’ve done!”

“No,” Mac exclaimed. “I know it wasn’t your fault—”

Emily’s voice turned cold: “No, Mac, you don’t. You’re hoping it wasn’t my fault. You’re doing your utmost to avoid any evidence that might prove you wrong. Damn poor science, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Mac lashed out.

“Which is why we’re here,” Emily responded with equal passion. “I can’t stand to have you like this, Mac. Clinging like grim death to an Emily you fear never existed. Refusing to find out if this Emily—” a low thud as Emily thumped her chest with a fist, “—is the friend you thought you had. Gods, Mac. Anyone else would have demanded answers the instant I was conscious. I waited. I wondered if it was that place—being among aliens, strangers. But even here, by water . . . ?” Emily stopped, then went on in a husky voice: “Must you always do things the hard way?”