Regeneration (Czerneda) (67 page)

Mac’s eyes shot open.
It fit.
A body plan that would have worked for the Dhryn. Not that glut of a form, suited only to producing millions more
oomlings
than one world could sustain.

She tossed until she found a less comfortable position; she needed to think.

She felt rigid as the idea took hold. “Is that what you are?” she breathed.
They’d need to run the genetic material, see if the
Joy’s
Progenitor was a match to the current form, but with a different sequence of genes active.

“They’d have to forbid biology,” she whispered. “They’d have to create the myth of the Wasted, shun them, let them die. They’d need a diet that wouldn’t support the final metamorphosis of the original Progenitor.”

Ureif promoted this one Dhryn for all the wrong reasons. Non-Sinzi would see that.

Could there be a right one?
Could she be fertile? Could the original form of Dhryn be restored through her and those like her?

Mac fell asleep before she had answers, dreaming of limbs become hands, of hands become mouths, of mouths counting to eleven and dripping with green, while
something
laughed.

Fourteen had sent her three hundred and fifteen messages.

“Must have cut into their time for sex,” Mac commented, scrolling the list. “And me waiting for my nugget.”

“Norcoast!”

She opened one at random. “He’s groveling. But busy.”

“Good.”

Mac raised her eyebrow at Mudge. “Good he’s groveling?”

“Good he’s busy.” Mudge took a sip of tea. “Keeps him out of trouble.”

She
tsked
at him, but kept opening messages. No need to rush through brunch. Every reason to keep busy here, too.
No news.

And presleep thoughts weren’t for the light.
She needed data.

Mac opened another. “Whoops.”

Mudge paused, a cracker halfway to his lips. “ ‘Whoops?’ ”

“Wasn’t meant for me. I hope. ‘The pale forks of your writhing tongue flutter the tent of my passion?’ ” She slid her finger through the ’screen to close that one. “Hello.” This as she skimmed the next message, then reread more slowly. “I’ll be . . .” She read it again. “You wouldn’t believe what they had for supper.”

“I hope you appreciate, Norcoast, that there is very little as annoying as being a forced spectator to message reading. Particularly,” Mudge waved today’s carrot, “your message reading.”

“Sorry,” she said without looking away from the ’screen. Sorting the messages by topic didn’t seem to work.
Typical Fourteen convolutions.
“Don’t mind me.”

“You can eat while you read,” he fussed, pushing more vegetables on her plate.

“This is odd.” Mac squinted at the display hovering between them. The list of messages showed as lines of simple text—
simple for someone else
—but those three hundred and fifteen lines now formed a perfect zigzag to the right. “See this?” For emphasis, she followed the pattern through the display with her finger.

But the display changed immediately. The text list disintegrated and re-formed into an image—a vid recording. “Look! It’s Fourteen.” Mac moved the ’screen so Mudge could see as well.

And only Fourteen, his face so close no background showed. He wasn’t moving or talking. “It’s not working,” Mac said.

“If it’s a private message, Norcoast, he’ll have encoded something to activate it, a way for you to control when it plays.”

“Oh. Of course.” Mac leaned toward the ’screen.

“You know what it is?” Mudge sounded surprised.

“I’ve an idea,” she replied, giving him a wink, then said firmly, “External genitalia.”

Fourteen’s image animated into a smile. “Idiot! I have none!” Then the smile was gone. “I knew you’d find this, Mac. You’re more clever than you think. Not as clever as I am, but that’s why you need me.

“You asked me to uncover the purpose of those rushing to Myriam. A simple matter. Boring, boring, boring. The same rush when a new restaurant becomes the trend. Everyone wants to be seen there, even if they hate the food. Irrelevant. Boring scientists and those who want to be boring scientists. With boring messages and no sex. I ignore them all. So should you. Any data of substance is moving freely.”

His hands came into view, hovering near his eyes. “The Trisulians. I found additional proof of their infamy, of their plot against the Frow. Revolting species, but if we eradicated species for their looks, where would you Humans be, hmm?

“I gave this to the Sinzi. Fy asked my help in deciphering messages intercepted after the Frow were safe. The Trisulians are resentful beings. They blame the Sinzi, not themselves.”

Beads formed on his eyelids. “There have been those who answer, privately, secretly. Only I could have found them. Words of fear. What do we know beyond the systems connected by the transects? How do we know the Sinzi aren’t able to travel beyond those limits? What if we are trapped, not freed, by the transects?”

His hands flattened over his eyes. “Words of distrust. That the Myrokynay and their history are an invention, that the Sinzi are the Ro, that the unseen walkers are simply more new technology they haven’t shared; that the Dhryn are the Sinzi’s pawns and always have been.”

Fourteen’s hands moved away. His tiny eyes glistened. His mouth worked. “Words, Mac, from only a few. But now the Sinzi produce a new kind of Dhryn and permit a Progenitor ship to join us here. The Ro couldn’t have done better themselves. For many, it’s a thin line between admiration and envy. There should be no denying the
strobis
of the Sinzi. Idiots.

“We cannot survive the loss of the Sinzi. Yet we may be their destruction.

“In this dark time, I have the comfort of my life’s love, Mac, and I thank you for that. Look after Charlie.

“I fear for us all.”

The image fragmented back to the list of harmless messages.

Mac closed the ’screen, surprised her hand was steady.
Surprised her plate held green-and-yellow vegetables.

“We have to warn the Sinzi,” she told Mudge.

His head was half bent, his eyes shadowed and fixed on her. “To what purpose? They have no weapons, no fleet of warships. Their protection from the Ro was in being scattered. One, maybe two per system; a homeworld that’s little more than a stopover; the rest in perpetual transit. The Sinzi will be helpless if the IU turns on them.”

“And without them, the transects will fail.”

“There are those who might consider that the only way out—safety in isolation.” His palm turned over on the table to rest open and empty.

Mac’s lips tightened. “Until they discover the Ro are real after all.”

A miserable
harrumph.
“Norcoast . . . what if . . .”

“Don’t say it, Oversight.” She reached out with both hands to take and hold his. “Don’t think it. Trust me. I know the Ro are real. I’ve seen one—felt its voice burn inside me. Emily has, too.”

His free hand came down on hers, pressing gently. “Then we must find one to show everyone else.”

The corridor lighting was midday bright. There was a gentle breeze laced with cinnamon and no crush of impatient archaeologists to block it. The temperature, Human perfect, was doubtless set to keep the crew comfortable, regardless of activity. The
Annapolis Joy
was putting on her best inside face.

A shiver coursed down Mac’s spine, raising gooseflesh on her real arm.
Could cut the tension with a knife,
she noted as she walked toward the Sinzi’s quarters. She knew her reasons and it wasn’t hard to guess why the crew she passed failed to smile.
Battle stations, then a Progenitor ship for a neighbor might do it.

She didn’t want to know why the Grimnoii ahead were standing in a clump in the midst of the corridor, instead of standing at attention by the Sinzi’s door.

But she had to know.
“Rumnor,” she greeted, making sure to smile as she approached. “Anyone home?”

“Mac.” For once, only he replied. The other three, Fy-Alpha and -Beta, plus another of Ureif’s, continued to pace.
Pace wasn’t the right word,
Mac decided, noticing the Grimnoii weren’t picking up their feet, but rather slid each one forward in turn.
Slow-motion skating?

They were polishing a circle in the already gleaming floor, but otherwise she couldn’t see the point. She looked back at Rumnor.

“Sinzi-ra Fy is ‘home,’ ” he answered, his expression more doleful than usual. “Ureif is—” He stopped.

“Ureif is . . . ?” she prompted.

The others halted, turning as one to look at her.

They’d always been large and carried more weapons than they had hands to use, but she’d never viewed Grimnoii as menacing.
Gloomy bears with allergies who drank too much, yes.

Mac changed her mind. There was nothing but menace in their present posture and attention. Nothing but the clearest possible signal even to an alien that the wrong move or word would precipitate something she was unprepared to face.

The Sinzi’s door opened.
Monitoring the hall?
Mac thought, inclined to be grateful. “Mac,” Fy said, beckoning her within. “I am pleased to see you. Come in.”

“Gotta go,” Mac told the Grimnoii, walking confidently, if quickly, past.

When the door closed, she let out a relieved breath. “Thank you, Fy. The Grimnoii seem a little—tense—today.”

“They have withdrawn their service.” Fy touched fingers to shoulders—
mild distress
. “Now they protest.”

The polished floor . . .
they wiped the Sinzi’s scent away.
Mac sank into the nearest jelly-chair. “The Dhryn.”

Fy took another chair, her fingers restless. “How can they not appreciate the congruence, Mac? Is it not the most obvious of joys? Do you not feel it?”

At least this Sinzi asked the question. “I can understand that a Sinzi would be affected by this Dhryn,” Mac said, careful of every word and its impact on the mind behind those glittering eyes.
Minds.
“I’ve had practice. But I also understand why the Grimnoii protest. They are—concerned—that Sinzi enthusiasm here means less for the goal of protecting the IU and its species.”

“Why?”

“I’m not qualified to explain it,” she hedged.

“I have no other!” Fingers flashed, rings sliding like a river of gold and silver. “Consider me your student. Do your best.”

“We’re both in trouble,” Mac muttered, then pursed her lips in thought. Her student was an engineer and an historian who studied technology.
Perhaps if she tried something surely familiar to both.

Mac climbed from the chair to kneel in the sand before the Sinzi. She swept a patch flat with her hand, then drew a straight line in it. “The Grimnoii.” She drew a second line, parallel to the first. “Humans.” She drew three more then stopped. “The IU. What do you see?”

“I see failure,” Fy said cooperatively. “Isolation. Stagnation.”

Mac added an arrow to each of the lines, all at the same end. “And now?”

“Directionality. Purpose. But isolation and stagnation remain.” A fingertip came down, as if the drawing were irresistible, and drew a complex spiral that crossed all the lines, then met itself. Fy withdrew her finger. “There. Complex, interwoven, interdependent. Is this not better?”