They’d learned to shout over it. Mac raised her voice: “Pardon?”
“I should have taken Cannings’ offer.”
Mac turned and stared. “Work with manatees? Whatever for?”
A grin lit the shadow of the rain hood. “At least they copulate.”
Mac threw up her hands. “As I said. You’re impossible. Entertaining, but impossible.”
“I do my best—Look!”
Mac had seen for herself. Both women rose to their feet so quickly they had to grab one another for balance, then push off to run to the consoles attached to the stone. It was a race to pull the protective sheets, Mac winning. Of course, she had two good arms to use. Her eyes locked on the rising glow of the observation screen as it sparkled through the raindrops, the standby flicker of indicators transformed into a psychedelic polka as data roared into the collectors.
“I’m tracking 35—make that 240—make that upward of 5,000,” Emily’s voice held a hint of excitement, but only a hint. She’d already taken control of the Tracer emitters from the autos, an operation demanding intense concentration as well as quick hands. This was her technology, the latest model to be tested away from her original site in the Sargasso Sea, with its convenient lack of cliff and forest. Emily had insisted on running extra simulations at Base, making adjustments to compensate for any slowing of her left arm by the cast, working to speed up the reaction time of the equipment and herself. A perfectionist in every way.
Mac made sure the incoming feeds were all active, then tore her eyes from the resulting display to look down the river for its source.
The Harlequin was looking, too. The bird stood onshore with a trio of its kind, as if preferring the stone to the unsure safety of the river—or at the very least showing disapproval of this novelty. The Tracer couldn’t harm them, but they’d never seen anything like it before. No one had, Mac thought with triumph.
The Tracer. It was as if a translucent curtain made of rainbows and fairy dust had begun flowing upstream. It started in the air, three meters above the water surface, a distance Mac’s surveys had indicated should be above the tallest of the protruding debris and boulders in the Tannu. It stretched from side to side across the valley; where it met the river’s banks fading to a shadow that passed lightly over log, stone, and ducks. Within the roiling water, it was a wall moving ever forward.
On the screens, that wall sectioned the water column down to the gravel bottom. Invisible below the surface, this version of Emily’s device was marked above for the convenience of air breathing observers.
Like curtain rings, a line of tiny aerial ’bots formed the Tracer’s top edge, each projecting a portion of the scanning field downward into the river while obeying the directions provided by both proximity sensors and Emily. At the same time, they retrieved the data and beamed it to the equipment under Mac’s rain-damp hands.
“Em—”
“I see it.” The correction was made before the line reached the upcoming bend in the valley, the curtain swinging more rapidly at its near reach to compensate. “How’s it look?”
Mac ran her fingers over the screen, following the patterns shifting and surging across the display, feeling the cool droplets under her skin as if she stroked what they represented. “Better than sex.”
“You really need to get out more.” But the quip was automatic, Emily as captured by what was happening as Mac. For this was why Emily had picked Mac out of all the biologists eager for her expertise: to be here at this moment, to be part of life as it responded to the imperatives of its nature.
Within the curtain, behind it as far as the river showed itself, dorsal fins sliced the dark water, disappeared, rose again with a muscular heave. Rose-black bodies jostled in the shallows, then vanished before the eye could be sure what it saw. The water roared to the ocean; the first fall run of Chinook up the Tannu raced against it to their destiny.
And at Field Station Six, the leaders of that race had unknowingly activated the Tracer, an ambush undetectable by senses adapted to follow clues from water, light, air, and earth. Through this stretch of the Tannu, while the fish swam oblivious, the Tracer scanned and recorded the genetic code of every individual that passed through its curtain. The codes would be matched in the weeks to come with Mac’s survey data from the past twelve years, compared to that from other rivers and other runs, to that of the resulting generation of smolts when they migrated back to the estuaries and ocean. Together, this data would test her hypotheses about the necessity for diversity, of the significance of strayed, hapless newcomers as well as those locked on course to their natal stream.
Mac felt a visceral thrill as she watched the scroll of code schooling in the depths and fighting the current. “How many?” she whispered. “How many of you are strangers; how many kin? What mix will it take for your species to endure another ten millennia? Tell me.”
This time, they might.
Having proved her device could be activated by the leaders of the run, then follow to verify those individuals, Emily halted the Tracer at the point Mac had selected during the spring low-water survey, a deep area before the next major rapids upstream turned the water into a mass of gleaming rock and mad foam. The salmon paused there too, as if gathering their strength in its relative calm, but only for a moment, individuals exploding into the air with a powerful twist from head to tail. Dippers, short tailless birds that resembled gray balls on tiny stilts, bobbed up and down on the rocks, seemingly unperturbed by either shimmering curtain or the huge salmon leaping overhead.
Meanwhile, Emily was singing at the top of her lungs as she fine-tuned the Tracer. Something in Quechua, Mac judged, and likely bawdy as could be. She’d have to ask for a translation later, over some celebratory beer.
They were a good match. Mac smiled, grateful for every step of the process that had drawn Dr. Emily Mamani from one ocean and hemisphere to another, to come here and join her at Norcoast. There were never guarantees a scientist’s personality would be as welcome as his or her abilities. Being trapped together for a field season brought out the worst in people; Mac had endured the consequences many times before. But Em had not only fit right in, she’d single-handedly turned the facility into a place where Saturday night meant a party about to happen.
To the surprise of everyone else at Norcoast, rowdy, raucous Emily had become the perfect foil to Mac’s more reserved approach to life. Within moments of meeting, they’d recognized a kindred passion for the work; within a week, it was as if they’d always known one another. Perhaps, Mac admitted to herself, it was because they were both such complete frauds in public: herself wary of showing her intensity, Emily disguising hers with jokes and flirtation.
By now, in their third northern field season together, there was no one Mac would rather have share this moment. She hummed along, doing her best to follow the melody. The drumming of rain against hood, cape, and console was her private percussion section.
After a few moments, Mac activated her imp. The imp had a ten-year power supply of its own—and the ability to tap into local supplies, such as those maintained around most cities—but not so the consoles or Tracer. No need to verify the power feed from Norcoast’s broadcast generators; it was obviously reaching them, as it would be other researchers in the field and at sea.
What concerned Mac were their results. The ’screen now hovering over the console mirrored the one in her office at Base, winking with tallies that showed the data stream making the return trip as steady, the system flawlessly making and sending copies. She’d have it all.
Reassured, Mac let her shoulders relax and rubbed a wet hand over her face, putting the device away. “Ready to anchor it, Em?”
“Not yet. I want to make sure we don’t get some lateral drift with that wind. It’s not much up here, but there’s a funneling effect closer to the surface I have to watch—ai caramba!—like that. How’s the feed? Still okay?”
Mac gave a quick glance. “Nominal. This looks to be just the ini
tial group. I’ll heat some soup while you make sure we’re stable. There won’t be time for a break later.”
“Now this is why I keep telling you we should have brought along that helpful grad student of yours, John. Wonderful cook.”
Mac patted her console fondly before heading for the tents nestled against the cliff face. “I hadn’t noticed it was his cooking you liked,” she tossed over her shoulder. The fact that the good-looking John Ward blushed so abundantly had been a bonus, as far as Em was concerned, likely the reason he’d requested Field Station Four this year. Emily’s admiration tended to be outspoken and results-oriented.
“So I like men who are—Mac, get back here! Hurry!”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” She returned to her console as quickly as she dared on the rain-slicked stone. “The wind . . . What the hell?” Blinking rapidly, then rubbing her hand over the screen didn’t change the wrong-scale image now among the salmon. The display red-flagged its code.
Unknown.
“You get whales up here?” Em asked shakily.
“No, but we get idiots.” Mac hadn’t felt this infuriated since she’d found someone fishing a headwater lake with explosives, nets, and a truck. She left her console to go as close to the bluff’s edge as she dared, then judged the distance. Grabbing a piece of jagged rock, she threw it with all the force she possessed.
Close enough. Bubbles exploded on the surface, startling the ducks into flight. A shape appeared shortly afterward, bouncing up and down in the current. Before it could be swept downstream, a repeller activated to hold it in place, a telltale ring of vibrating water plainly visible. Offended salmon burst from the river in all directions as their lateral line sense reacted to the output from the device, dropping back to scatter into the depths.
Any chance of calling this a natural, undisturbed run was gone. Emily didn’t need to be told. Mac watched the Tracer’s curtain snap out of existence, Emily’s ’bots left hovering above the river as if lost.
Meanwhile, the begoggled head was turning from side to side as if hunting the source of the rock. Mac gritted her teeth and fought the urge to hunt for something else to throw. Something heavier—or at least pointy.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Emily came to stand beside her. The rain conveniently eased into a light drizzle so they had a clearer view, but the diver floating below still hadn’t thought to look up. “How’d that cabrón get this far without setting off an alarm?”
Mac thrust her arm downstream, as if her finger could impale what was coming toward them. “Like that.” The big skim moved above the water’s surface, though close enough that spray from the rapids splashed over its cowling. It was heading for the diver. “Best bring in the ’bots before it bumps into one.”
With a growl better suited to one of the grizzlies they’d watched yesterday, Emily went to her console. Mac watched the ’bots break formation, a couple swooping near the diver’s head so he—or she—ducked back under for a moment, then they all rose until level with the rock shelf. Like a string of beads, the tiny, and very expensive, devices came to rest at Emily’s feet. One-handed, she began tucking them inside her console’s locker without another word.
Silence, from Dr. Mamani, was not a good sign.
Feeling herself beginning to shake from head to foot wasn’t good either. Mac made herself take slow, steady breaths through her nose, fighting back both disappointment and fury, forcing her heart to calm itself. They might—might—be able to salvage something if they could get the river cleared of interlopers before the big runs started to arrive—likely by tonight. She’d have more chance of that if she wasn’t throwing more rocks, tempting as it was.
Especially at a skim bearing the insignia of her own research facility, hovering beside the diver. They’d brought him, all right. They were already lowering the harness of hooked cables that would connect to one of the high-end commercial dive rigs. Interference from those who knew better was worse than unwitting trespass.
Mac turned away, uninterested in the details of extricating her problem, refusing to speculate and have her blood pressure rise even further toward rock throwing. She spent the next few minutes locking down her console, its screen again mute and empty of code.
She was on her knees, struggling with the cover fasteners on the river side of the device, when a deep hum announced the skim had set down on the ledge. Mac ignored both the arrival and the sound of footsteps that followed, including the unfamiliar voice saying: “Dr. Connor, I presume?”
When she was good and ready, Mac rolled her head to gaze at a pair of soaking wet, though shiny, men’s shoes, better suited to an office than lichen-coated, bepuddled granite. Her eyes traveled up a pair of damp beige dress pants, were unsurprised to encounter a suit jacket of the same color and condition topped by a conservative yet fashionable—and damp—cravat, and finally stopped at a face she didn’t know.
And didn’t care to know. Even through the rain, she could smell a bureaucrat. Sure enough, he had a portable office slung under one arm, doubtless jammed with communication gear and clearances someone, somewhere, thought gave him the right to ruin her observations.
The bureaucrat offered her his hand. Mac stared at the manicured fingers until they curled up and got out of her way.
She rose to her feet, shoving her rain hood to her shoulders, and looked around for someone with answers. There. A familiar figure stood beside the skim. Tie McCauley, her stalwart chief of operations and the man who single-handedly kept all Norcoast equipment running through budget-pinching and Pacific storms. Catching her eye on him, he simply raised both arms and let them drop at his sides.
That wasn’t good.
Mac found herself forced to look to the bureaucrat after all. Up at the bureaucrat. He was taller than he’d appeared at first glance, despite what seemed a permanent slouch. An ordinary, almost pleasant face, bearing rain-spattered glasses and hair that looked to have been actually in the river, so neither eyes nor hair showed their true color. Drips were running down both sides of his face, which bore an expression that could only be described as anxious.
That expression made Mac swallow what she intended to say, replacing it with a much milder: “Do you realize you’ve seriously disrupted our work?”
“I know, Dr. Connor. It is Dr. Connor?” At her nod, he continued, “Believe me, we wouldn’t have come if it hadn’t been so important to the Honorable Delegate—”
A booming voice interrupted. “That would be me, Mackenzie Connor.”
Mac’s eyes widened as if that could somehow help her mind fit the figure now climbing from the skim into the reality of a field camp in the coastal ranges. He—she assumed it was a he—waved off Tie’s offer of assistance. Just as well, Mac thought numbly, since their visitor looked to outmass the chief several times over.
The diving suit, and distance, had helped disguise the nonhuman. Now, his head free and his body wrapped in what appeared to be bands of brightly colored silk, there was no escaping that she was standing three meters from a Dhryn.
Mac had seen the news report on the t-lev from Vancouver. Dhryn—the only oxy-breathing species within the Interspecies Union to never set foot—or more accurately, pods—on Earth, had sent a representative.
Here?
She licked rain from her lips and recaptured the hair strayed from her braid, pushing it behind one ear. “We’re honored,” she said at last, after a quick look to Emily, who could only shrug and roll her eyes. The Dhryn finished piling himself out of the skim, which rocked as if in relief, and stood before her.
Xenobiology wasn’t something Mac had cared to study—there being more than a lifetime’s worth of Earth biology to learn, in her opinion—still, she couldn’t help but be intrigued by her first, up-close look at an alien.
The Dhryn seemed a sturdy creature, capable of standing erect in Earth gravity—assuming a 45 degree angle from stern to head was erect. Mac thought it likely, given the placement of limbs, seven in number, app
eared useful in that stance. Three limbs were paired opposite each other. These were jointed similarly to human arms, although movement at those joints suggested a more free turning ball-and-socket arrangement than an elbow, and the musculature implied greater strength. A heavier gravity world, perhaps.
She really should read more.
The seventh limb, originating high and central from the chest, was—perplexing. It appeared to have several more joints, giving it an almost tentacle-like nature. Instead of the trio of grasping fingers at its tip, like the other six arms, the seventh had something more like scissors, with a hard, chitonous material lining the inner surfaces. As if her attention to this limb was impolite, the Dhryn tucked it under one of his other arms, but gave no other sign her inspection was at all unwelcome.
Legs and feet were one and the same, the being balanced on two elephant-like limbs. The limbs appeared to spread at their bases, ever so slightly. Perhaps the bottoms were adhesive.
The body might have been mammalian, what she could see of it past the gaudy bands; hairless, but with a thick, blue-toned skin that had a sheen, as if waxed. There were dark, pitlike ovals scattered over the body’s surface. Glands? Or sense organs, Mac debated with herself, unwilling to rush to conclusions.
The head sat between narrow shoulders, and bore thick bony ridges that overhung the two large eyes. Their pupils were shaped like figure eights lain on their sides, black and lustrous, embedded within an oval iris of yellow that spread over the rest of what Mac could see of the eye. The nose and ears were also shaped by curved rises of bone beneath the skin, protected and also likely augmented in their function by those shapes. The mouth was unexpectedly small and tidy, with a pair of thin lips coated with what appeared to be pink lipstick. Now that she paid attention, there were signs of colored pigment applied, quite subtly, to accentuate the shape of eyebrow and nose ridges. There were tiny rings embedded along the top of each ear.
Mac found herself disarmed by a giant bearlike being who’d applied makeup to go diving with salmon, and warned herself—again—against drawing any conclusions at all.
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