Regeneration (Czerneda) (79 page)

“
W
E HAVE INCOMING SHIPS, SIR,” the transect technician reported, smoothly, professionally.

“Finally!” her supervisor burst out. “You’d think with the Sinzi here, everything would run like clockwork. But no, traffic’s off and if we get one more complaint about missing newspackets, I’ll—”

“Sir. Sending to your station.” Only someone standing close by could have seen her hands tremble. Or someone who’d been there when the Dhryn had arrived.

“Got it.” One look at the display and her supervisor reached for the emergency com control, then thought better of it and reached for the secure line to Earth.

“This is Venus Orbital,” he announced. “We’ve unannounced warships coming through the Naralax Transect. Repeat, incoming warships. Species—?”

“Trisulian, sir. They aren’t broadcasting idents, but I’d know those profiles in my sleep. Fifty, another group of twenty, still coming.”

“Going by profile, the intruders are Trisulian,” he sent. “Venus Orbital, standing by.” He began punching in the codes to lock the facility behind blast doors, for all the good they’d do against ships capable of smashing planets to rubble.

The technician swiveled her chair to stare at him. “Standing by for what, sir?” she asked in a low, urgent voice. “What the hell’s going on?”

Her supervisor looked up at her question.

“Let’s hope it isn’t war.”

“The Trisulians are demanding the Sinzi immediately submit to their authority, disband the Inner Council of the IU, and relinquish all information on no-space technology and the transect system.”

Hollans picked up his teacup. “Anything else?”

“Did you not hear me?” The Imrya ambassador was a remarkably succinct individual for his species.
Doubtless why he’d been posted so far from home.
“You must allow me to request the immediate deployment of the Imrya fleet here.”

“And escalate what is currently rhetoric into a battle?” Hollans sipped his tea. “No, thank you, Ambassador.”

“We must stop the Trisulians! We must protect the Sinzi!”

“Our forces were already en route to the gate.”

“Forgive me, Mr. Hollans, but your forces wouldn’t give an Ar pause. We’ve had peace between systems because the Sinzi were scattered, everywhere. Now too many are here, vulnerable to attack or capture. They have made themselves too tempting a target.”

“Something I’ve told the Sinzi-ra,” Hollans replied rather testily, “several times. We all have. They persist in providing no information whatsoever.”

“Do they wish confrontation? To what end?”

Hollans put down his teacup. “I think it’s something far more dangerous than that, Ambassador. I think the Sinzi seek a congruence, here. If that’s the case, the Trisulians?” He lifted his hand and bent one finger down. “They’re merely the first to accept the invitation.”

 

 

 

A
N ETERNITY LATER, the shuddering ended, the hand stopped moving, and no one was dead. During that time, while waiting to fall, be thrown, or survive, Mac noticed the little things. The skin beneath her hands was warm, although loose and dry, no longer as elastic as she remembered. The smell? She wrinkled her nose and tried to keep her face away from the surface. The Progenitor’s circulation was failing; the hand itself likely septic.

Although Her Glory appeared content to stay prone, Deruym Ma Nas struggled to his feet almost at once. “The evil of the Ro has no limits,” he exclaimed.

Which would sound more impressive,
Mac decided, peering at him,
if he wasn’t still shaking.

She was surprised not to be. The combination earthquake-with-potential-plunge would once have had her gibbering with fear.

“Your idea about the Ro,” Nik whispered. “It fits, Mac. What we know so far; what we’ve guessed. Good work.”

“Desperation,” she whispered back.

In answer, he kissed her nose.

They rose to their feet, the hand having remained stable throughout this exchange. The process entailed what Mac considered a responsible amount of clinging to one another.

A shame to let go,
she acknowledged as her fingers left Nik’s sleeve.

“Please forgive me,” the Progenitor said quietly. “I could take such dreadful news when I was strong. I could endure.” Her eyes held inexpressible weariness. “Now, I fail. And That Which Is Dhryn fails with me.”

She had a choice,
Mac realized. Something that seemed to be happening all too often lately.

Nik simply raised an eyebrow when she sent him a pleading look.
Up to her.

Mac glowered but nodded.

“That Which Is Dhryn may not be failing,” she told the Pro-genitor, stepping aside so Her Glory was no longer hiding half behind her.

The Progenitor’s eyes glanced at Her Glory, who stood up literally ablaze with joy, then back to Mac. “What is this?”

Mac thought of the
lamnas
. The Progenitor had done Her stomach-turning utmost to convey not only her despair, but her need.
A need she understood.
“What you asked of me,” she said. “The truth.”

The Progenitor’s lips quivered and Deruym Ma Nas lowered his body in warning. Nik looked poised to—
do what? Tackle the bear-sized alien and toss them both off the hand?

Mac didn’t see much future in that.

“Explain,” the Progenitor said at last.

Mac coughed.
In for it now.
“You spoke of the Ro’s interference, Progenitor,” she said carefully. “They’ve done more to That Which Is Dhryn than you know. Without them, I believe you would be like this. A little bigger,” she added, giving Her Glory a considering look.

Or a great deal bigger,
she suddenly realized,
once the migration had ended and the Dhryn population entered a stationary rebuilding generation—a variability within the norm the Ro could have exploited.
“The Ro didn’t just take you from your home world into space,” Mac went on. “They didn’t just find ways to control your behavior. They made changes to the Flowering itself.”

“Continue,” the Progenitor said, her small mouth turned down at the corners, yellow drops forming on her nostrils. Otherwise, she appeared reassuringly calm. “Why would they do this?”

Calm for how long?
Mac swallowed. “The Ro wanted Progenitors who could produce more
oomlings
. They wanted as many feeders, Mouths, as possible. Those are their weapon. That meant Progenitors so large they could no longer move by themselves. They knew how to change the pattern of your growth and development.”
Another piece snicked into place.
“And Ro technology produced food to sustain you. These ships? They were essential. Not just to bring you where the Ro Called, but because—as they made you—you can’t live anywhere else.”

When the hand didn’t immediately tip, she relaxed very slightly and continued. “They could alter the Flowering process, too. Remember Brymn Las? He didn’t become what you predicted, a Progenitor, because the Ro—” she forced the words past the memory, “—made sure he didn’t.”

She indicated the silent Dhryn at her side. “This is what I believe you both would have become without the Ro. The original form of Dhryn Progenitor.”

“Where did she come from?” Still to Mac.
Protocol between Progenitors, or a refusal to acknowledge what stood before her?
Without knowing which, all Mac could do was press ahead. She noticed Nik taking advantage of the Progenitor’s attention to turn slightly away and lift his wrist to his mouth, likely contacting those left behind.
Warning them the ship was on the move.

“Where?” This from the Progenitor, when Mac failed to answer immediately. Gentle, but insistent. “Our home world? A colony of Dhryn who escaped the Ro?” There was a distinct and growing excitement in her voice.

“A little closer,” Mac said. “Her Glory was once captain of the Cryssin freighter,
Uosanah.
He Flowered into what you’ve been calling the Wasted.”

Deruym Ma Nas scuttled as far away from Her Glory as the hand permitted.
Almost too far.

“I do not wish to doubt you,
Lamisah
,” responded the Progenitor graciously. “But this is not possible. The lost ones fail and die. It is the Way.”

“It’s the Ro’s way,” Mac countered. “All they had to do was make it possible for your bodies to synthesize certain substances, things once obtained from what you ate on your home world. Any Dhryn without this ability would starve to death on Haven or on board your ships.”
The whole truth.
“They might survive a little longer by eating other Dhryn. That’s why the Wasted attack their own kind. To save one? All we had to do was provide this Dhryn, who was dying, with food as close as possible to what would have been available to your ancestors. Look at her.”

“I hunger,” Her Glory offered, less than helpfully.

The Progenitor’s eyes shifted to her. “As do I, little one.”

Before this could become a negotiation about who should eat whom, Mac jumped back in. “The point is, the diet you’ve been producing for yourselves on Haven—”
however clever the fungus,
“—was part of the Ro’s plan. It couldn’t meet the needs of any Dhryn born who reflected the original type. That was one way they’ve controlled your population. Any Dhryn whose body threw off their conditioning and reverted to the ancestral form would starve to death at Flowering instead of becoming a Progenitor. Wasted.”
Had some Progenitor
known
to call them that?
“You would continue to produce the kind of Dhryn that suited the Ro.”

“They came—they came and touched the
oomlings
until we found ways to keep them out.” Deruym Na Mas had risen to a more conciliatory posture and was watching Mac intently. “Is that why, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol?”

Why did everyone think she understood the damned Ro?
Mac shrugged. “I don’t know. They could have been making further modifications. They might have been monitoring something about you. Or—” She hesitated and looked to Nik. He nodded, still trusting her with this.
Great.
“Maybe the Ro were waiting for something. A sign your population was ready to migrate.”

“The Great Journey. Even that they would pervert?”

“Especially that,” Mac agreed.

“Have the Little One approach me.”

Mac turned but Her Glory was already walking forward, her movement powerful yet graceful. Fit.

Her Glory stopped when she could walk no farther. She lifted her sole hand and spread her strong, delicate fingers against the wall that was the Progenitor’s cheek, then rose on four legs so their eyes met at the same level.

Gusts of warm air moved outward, cooler air returning. Nik stopped talking into his com, watching the new and the old.
Or rather,
Mac corrected herself,
the original and the perversion.

Though to call the gracious Progenitor a perversion seemed as wrong as anything else. Especially when Her face, suspended in the wall like an image of who she really was, formed an expression of such kindness. “Can you speak so my Vessel can understand?”

The Progenitor had used Dhryn, but Her Glory didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” in Instella. “I ask your wisdom, She Who Lights the Way.” Her luminescent bands shone more brightly, as if activated by emotion. They cast shadows on the great palm and attentive face. “I wish to know how I can serve That Which Is Dhryn.”

The Progenitor squinted. “Commune with me. We shall sing the
Gnausa.
”

Deruym Ma Nas drew in his arms, leaning back in a Dhryn bow.
Just what they needed,
Mac thought.
Ro on the attack and a pause for another alien ceremony.