Regeneration (Czerneda) (78 page)

 

 

 

T
HE LANDSCAPE HAD AGED. Mac stared out over a grayed blue, its surface puckered and wrinkled by furrows deep enough to hide a starship. There were no wide ponds of shining black, no frosting of new life. The few feeders lay flaccid, their arms tipped into drying puddles.

With the others, she rode that improbable hand to the incredible wall of flesh, hollowed by nostrils able to engulf a lev as well as barges. Mac’s eyes dismissed what was irrelevant, seeking the face embedded in the wall.

“Welcome, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol.” The same quiet, so-normal voice she remembered, with its familiar kind warmth. The same gold-and-black eyes.

No sequins.
Perhaps the Progenitor spared her few remaining Dhryn that service.
Seemed a shame.

“My previous Vessel told me you had served in
grathnu
again.”

“What?”
Oh.
Mac held out her artificial arm. “Not quite. You know what happened to Brymn Las?”

Those eyes could become cold. “The Ro interfered with That Which Is Dhryn.” The hand underfoot shook. “They must never do so again.”

“That’s what we hope,” Nik said.

“Ah. My Vessel. Welcome. You have done well. Very well. I had no doubt.”

Nik gave a deep bow. “Thank you. But, Progenitor—forgive my haste. We must leave this system at once. I’ll explain as we travel.”

“Of course.” A soft hoot, higher-pitched than other Dhryn. “We already answer the Call, my Vessel.” Her eyes moved to Her Glory. “Tell me, what is this?”

“Answer the Call?”
Before Mac could do more than exchange looks of alarm with Nik, she felt a nudge against her back. From its direction, it had to be from Her Glory’s hand.
Right, Vessel.
“Well,” she began helplessly, “this is—”

“What do you mean—‘answer the Call’?” Nik interrupted, stepping forward. Deruym Ma Nas drew his weapons and moved to block the Human’s way.

“Do not threaten my Vessel,” the Progenitor chided her
erumisah.
“And do not fear.” This in a more gentle tone to Nik. “The empty ship receives the Call and responds; my Dhryn who crew her would otherwise never disobey me. We follow by my will.”

Mac’s heart pounded.
Not good,
she babbled to herself.
Not good.

If Nik shared that choking fear; he didn’t show it. “I urge you to reconsider, Progenitor.” Calm, reasoned. “What we’ve done to your ship—it may not be enough to protect you from the Ro. We don’t know.”

“We will know, my Vessel,” She replied, as calmly, as reasonably, “when I attack them. We will know when I scour the Ro and its contamination from whatever world it has chosen. The Call will end. If others answered? You, my Vessel, will speak for me to those Progenitors. We will protect them, too. Together, we will continue until there are no Ro left alive.”

As the Progenitor spoke, feeder-Dhryn rose from Her surface, like pastel petals caught by Her breath. Some came so close Mac could see their oblong clear bodies, their boneless arms.
Their mouths . . .

She froze in place; Her Glory heaved a wistful sigh.

Those eyeless faces seemed to acknowledge their Progenitor before all of them turned, using the fins on back and sides to stroke the air. They began moving toward the walls and ceiling of the vast chamber.
Thousands,
Mac realized numbly. Far less than she remembered.
Far too many.
As they reached their destination, they disappeared through holes in the walls she hadn’t noticed in her first visit.
Doors—but to what?

The Progenitor smiled. “I will destroy my enemy.”

There were certain unavoidable ramifications to standing on a giant hand.
Of course, even if there’d been time,
Mac told herself,
tact had never been her strong suit.
“You know,” she ventured, “this might not be the best plan.”

Eyes of gold and black fixed on her. “It is my will.” She sounded more surprised than upset.

“The Dhryn are not alone, Progenitor.” Nik came to stand by Mac. “Others oppose the Ro. Let us bring warships from other species. End the threat of the Ro together.”

“They are our enemy—”

“Don’t you understand?” Mac couldn’t stop herself. “This Call—it won’t just be Ro on that planet! There’ll be other life!”

The vivid blue underlid flashed over the Progenitor’s eyes, twice.
Stress.
Mac tensed, but the hand supporting them might have been carved from rock. When the great creature spoke, it was still in that reasoning-with-aliens tone. “Of course. The Ro require it.”

“For what?” Nik asked, silencing Mac with a look. “Why do the Ro require other living things, Progenitor?”

The first frown. “We do not think of it.”

The first evasion.
For safety’s sake, Mac only imagined stamping her foot.
They were close to something vital here, something that would finally make sense.

Nik must have sensed it, too. “They interfered with That Which Is Dhryn,” he pursued relentlessly. “Made you consume the life from worlds at their command. Why would they require life on those worlds, if they planned to remove it?”

For a moment, Mac didn’t think the Progenitor would answer. Her small lips worked as she remembered Brymn’s would do when he was disturbed. The breath moving past was deeper, with more force.

She resisted the urge to grab Nik.
They’d only fall together.
“Please, Progenitor,” she said gently. “We seek the truth.”

“As do I,” came the response. Mac discovered she’d been holding her breath. “Bear with me,
Lamisah
. The fragments I have gleaned from the past resemble
oomlings,
precious because they represent continuance, but these never Freshen to the wisdom of adulthood. The most whole are the gifts from my predecessor, and She from Hers.” A sigh that shook the barren landscape below and whistled past the hand. “Yet they answer no more questions. My predecessors wished That Which Is Dhryn to survive the Ro—not understand them.”

“Trust me when I say we must understand them to survive,” Nik urged. “Let us try. Tell us, tell your
lamisah,
everything you can about living things and the Ro. You sent Brymn Las and your Vessel to Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol for that very reason.” He put his hand on Mac’s shoulder, pressed gently as if in warning. “She’s here, now. Earth’s foremost biologist. She can help.”

Nothing like an unearned promotion,
Mac winced to herself. She attempted to be positive.
Maybe salmon would have relevance.

“That’s me,” she said brightly.

The Progenitor’s gold-and-black eyes regarded her. “Will we need to find and kill them all?”

A perfectly reasonable question.
Mac wished it wasn’t the one going through her mind about the Dhryn.
Emily’d warned her.
“I’ll need to know more about their life cycle,” she evaded. “How many it takes to reproduce—to make
oomlings,
” this as the Progenitor looked perplexed.

“I make
oomlings
.” With a low hoot—
presumably at bizarre alien notions
—echoed by Deruym Ma Nas and Her Glory.

Obviously the topic of Dhryn sex, or possible lack thereof, wasn’t going to help.
Mac picked another tack. “What do Ro make?”

“Tools.”

“Machines?” Nik suggested. “Ships. Devices?”

The Progenitor pursed Her lips for an instant. “Servants. Servants of flesh and bone. Such as attacked you,
Lamisah,
and poor Brymn Las. The ones who hide within shields. The ones we learned to keep away from our world.”

Nik looked disappointed; he’d doubtless hoped for something, anything, new.

But Mac felt the stirrings of curiosity. “Why do the Ro make servants?”

“How else can they reach beyond their chambers?”

“Chambers?”
An expression for no-space?
“What do you mean?”

The hand moved away from the face and swiveled to give them a view of the Progenitor’s vast cavern. “Chamber,” She said with a gentle hoot, returning Her hand, and guests, to their original position.

More than living quarters,
Mac thought.
The only place She can survive.
“The Ro have to stay there,” she guessed.

“Where are their chambers?” asked Nik, his eyes almost glowing. “Within their ships? On the worlds they choose?”

“They are not like us. Their chambers have holes, doors, to many places at once, places that flow together. The stories claim a Ro must open such a door to begin a world. Once opened, That Which Is Dhryn can reach in to kill it.” Her voice held immense satisfaction.

“Explaining why that opening to no-space might stay open,” he mused, “but why for only so long? A failsafe . . .” He frowned. “I could see something set to grab an attacked Ro back inside—but why take away the oceans, too? We’re missing something.” He looked at Mac.

As if she’d know.
She obligingly frowned back. “You said a Ro opens its chamber to ‘begin a world.’ ” She pounced on the odd phrase.
Ominous was more like it.
“What does that mean?”

The hand trembled again. “I do not think of it. We do not think of it.”

“You must, Progenitor,” Nik insisted. “Time’s running out.”

No need for a reminder.
Mac shuddered. They were on their way to the next target.
She was not going to think about where or what.

As if in echo, the Progenitor said, “I do not think of it.” Her lips began to quiver; Her eyes flashed blue.

Before Nik could press Her further, Deruym Ma Nas put away his weapons. “Rest,” he rumbled in Instella. “Allow me to answer your Vessel, my Progenitor.”

“My
erumisah
is wise.” This with a breathlessness that had nothing to do with the pulses of air through the great nostrils.

“Do you know what the Ro are doing?” Nik asked him.

“We do not know,” an emphasis, “anything beyond the evil nature of the Ro. My Progenitor has directed our search of the archives. I am,” a graceful bow, “the Senior Archivist.”

Mac spared a moment to wonder if he knew of her and Brymn’s ruthless foraging through the oldest of the Haven Dhryn’s textiles, then decided it couldn’t matter now.

Sure enough, Deruym Ma Nas gave a forlorn hoot. “A meaningless title, since no others remain.” He touched a few of the imps decorating his torso. “I keep their trust.”

Mac blinked. He could easily have over a hundred of the devices on those strings.
The amount of data that implied?

But they had no time. “Could we hear your informed speculation on the Ro, Deruym Ma Nas?” she asked courteously.

Judging from Nik’s face, he’d settle for a wild guess, so long as it moved them closer.

You couldn’t rush Dhryn.
She’d learned that lesson.

In response, Deruym Ma Nas folded his arms, the severed wrists outward, in case they forgot his earned rank. “We discovered forty-nine references concerning the Ro and taste.”

“Taste? What does—” Mac frowned and Nik subsided. “Taste,” he echoed. “Please continue.”

“I’m hungry,” Her Glory whispered in Mac’s ear. She patted the huge Dhryn, but kept her attention on the archivist.

“In these references to taste,” Deruym Ma Nas continued, his eyes not leaving Nik, “there is commonality. Whether embroidered within fabrics, or placed into mosaic, even within the stories remembered by my Progenitor, each refers to the foul taste of the worlds contaminated by the Ro, of how this taste was deemed unfit for the Progenitors to share.”

“Because this was your enemy,” Nik guessed.

Human bias.
As she shook her head, Mac abruptly grasped the import of what Deruym Ma Nas was trying to tell them.
The taste of what?
“The Ro used the Dhryn to remove the original life from chosen worlds,” she thought out loud. “But when the Dhryn rebelled and attacked the Ro, those worlds still had a taste, but now so different the Progenitors couldn’t consume it.” Her voice rose with excitement. “Don’t you see? It means those worlds didn’t stay barren. The Ro had put life on them. Their kind of life.”

“Why?”

“The oldest imperative of them all.”
Did they feel the rightness of it?
“Individual survival isn’t enough—your kind must continue. The Ro aren’t adapted to no-space. Maybe nothing is.”
Just passing through it with the Ro had made her sick; repeated trips had damaged Emily’s mind.
“We know they came from a planet. Those who left it were committed to live in no-space. We’ve seen time flows differently there—they could have lost touch with their previous existence almost at once. They might have thought they could exist like that forever, only to discover they’d become impotent, damaged, maybe even dying.

“What would they do? Give up the future?” Mac shook her head. “Not the Ro I met. They could make biological machines, but that wouldn’t be good enough. They’d want the real thing, to rebuild themselves. Time here would mean nothing to them. They had the tools. All they needed were living worlds to host their regeneration—fresh, sterile worlds, free of alien life to compete or contaminate. Then they find the Dhryn, the perfect—”

Stop right there,
Mac thought, suddenly remembering where she was.

“More Ro!” roared the Progenitor. “They used us to make more?”

Her hand spasmed, toppling them all. Nik threw his arm over Mac as they fell, holding them flat against the palm.