Mac wrapped her fingers around the railing and coughed her voice back into existence. “Brymn’s obviously familiar with my work. Some of it, at least. But nothing he said explained how it might help investigate these terrible disappearances. I don’t see any relevance.”
“Frankly, neither do I. I’ve sent a complete set of his publications to your office. Maybe you can find a link we can’t.”
Mac gave him a dismayed look. “Brymn is an archaeologist. I study salmon.” Why did she have to keep explaining that?
“You’ll be back to your fish sooner, Dr. Connor, if you can establish that Brymn’s line of investigation is—invalid. If he even has one.”
The sun was dipping into the ocean. Where the pod wall shadowed the terrace, lights began to glow along the underside of the railing, more outlining the steps of the stairs. It reflected in his glasses, hiding his eyes.
“And you won’t have to baby-sit,” Mac said, sure she was right.
“We both have other duties being neglected, Dr. Connor. I have to consider the possibility that the Honorable Delegate is, intentionally or not, playing tourist at our expense.”
“What if Brymn is on to something significant?”
Trojanowski gave an expansive gesture, including the inlet and pods. “We are here,” he reminded her, “in hopes he is. What else did he tell you?”
The impromptu feast had brought them closer. Such moments never lasted, Mac told herself. “I can’t say,” she said firmly.
She might have thrown a switch. Trojanowski frowned, his voice sharp and officious. “Can’t—as in won’t?”
Mac nodded.
“You must know that’s not an option, Dr. Connor. The Ministry expects your full cooperation.” Trojanowski took the next step and turned to face her, his hand on the railing below hers. The move effectively blocked her path down the stairs.
It also started her temper rising. She hated being trapped.
“I told you, Mr. Trojanowski: I can’t say,” Mac pressed her lips together, then settled for: “It was nothing that would matter to you.”
“Let me be the judge of that, please. It’s my job, Dr. Connor.” No antagonism, no threat. Just an implacable purpose sheathed in courtesy.
He wasn’t a Charles Mudge she could outshout or bluff.
Honesty, then, Mac decided. “I’m sorry, Mr. Trojanowski. But Brymn asked me to promise I wouldn’t share our discussion. I did and I won’t.”
“I see.” He took his hand from the rail, and backed down another step, giving her room, not a sense that he was giving up. She hadn’t expected he would. “It’s not possible to fulfill every promise we make, Dr. Connor,” he said reasonably. “In this case, I think you must realize—”
“I keep my word, Mr. Trojanowski,” Mac interrupted stiffly. “Don’t you?”
He turned his head to look out over the inlet. The sun was almost down. Mac doubted he could see much more than the silhouettes of ocean and land against the dusk-washed clouds. Or, she wondered abruptly, was he looking at something else entirely?
“I don’t give it, Dr. Connor,” he said at last. “Not anymore.” Then he met her eyes. His own were warm behind their lenses, their hazel darker in the changing light. “That doesn’t mean you should stop. For now, I’ll rely on your judgment to know what to pass along from Brymn.”
“I didn’t do this to cause a problem,” Mac said uncomfortably. “Brymn was anxious, embarrassed. It was the only way to reassure him he could talk to me.” She frowned. “But that’s exactly what you wanted. Brymn and I, away from anyone else. Otherwise, you would have stopped us before we left the gallery.”
His lips quirked. “You’ve got me there, Dr. Connor.”
“Hmmph.” Mac shook her head. “You could have just said so.”
“We weren’t on the best of terms earlier today.” Definitely a grin—an infectious one. “I confess to fearing you’d toss me in the drink again, Dr. Connor.”
Mac snorted. Skims were unloading by Pod Five and she stepped down to stand beside him at the rail to watch. “You mentioned other duties,” she ventured, a peace offering of sorts. “What do you do when you aren’t looking after traveling aliens and delivering scary envelopes to unsuspecting biologists?”
“Oh, that’s pretty much my full-time job.” His voice was deeper when amused, feathered a bit along the edges. Mac rather liked the sound.
“There you are!”
Of all the voices Mac hadn’t wanted to hear at this moment, Emily’s cheerful call was at the top of the list. What were the odds? Trojanowski turned to give the approaching woman a pleasant smile. As turning put him closer to Mac, something Emily acknowledged with a sly look the moment she reached them, all Mac could do was hope the darkening sky would hide any blush. “Hi, Em.”
Gone was the sophisticated jumpsuit Emily had worn to supper with Brymn. Now her sandals kicked aside panels of a wild floral print skirt as she came up the stairs to join them, the fabric gathered in a knot low on one bare hip. Her top was a relatively conservative yellow shirt, with huge buttons shaped like letters spelling ‘YUM’ down the front. The same word was scrawled on her cast.
Camouflage, Mac judged it. Emily dressed as she wanted to be seen. This version was the “brain-on-hold” party animal. The question remained, was it for the media, Brymn, or the man standing beside her? Could be all three.
“And you must be what’s been keeping our Mac busy. I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced.” Em proffered her right hand to Trojanowski, eyes sliding up and down his lean frame with obvious approval. “I see you’re nice and dry.”
“Nikolai Trojanowski, at your service, Dr. Mamani.” He touched his fingertips to hers, but didn’t take her hand. Instead, he bowed his head briefly.
Emily narrowed her eyes. Assessment, Mac decided. “So formal. Emily, please.”
“My duty as liaison requires formality, Dr. Mamani.”
Mac knew that glint in those dark eyes. Trouble. To forestall it, she nodded at the stairs. “I’d better get going. I’ve some—reading—waiting for me.”
“Kitchen first,” Emily ordered brusquely. “You will help me make sure Mac gets something in her stomach, won’t you . . . Mr. . . . Trojanowski?”
“Already taken care of,” he said.
“Really?”
“I really need to get going.” Mac suited action to words, hurrying down the remaining flight of stairs. She reached the walkway at the pod base before the other two could catch up, and headed around its curve to the entrance, only to halt in dismay. The main door was open to the night air and presently filled with strangers.
Nothing for it but to reach the Admin office the back way, which meant going back upstairs. Mac spun around, only to collide forcibly with those coming behind her.
No one was hurt. In fact, Emily laughed, loudly enough to attract attention from Pod One, let alone the curious horde waiting by the door, doubtless equipped with vids and recorders. Mac hurriedly shook off the hands that had saved her from bouncing on her rump and pushed by both of them.
“Hey, Mac. Mac! Slow down. I’m sorry!”
Already on the third step, Mac glanced back. Emily was hurrying after her, but she’d expected that. Her friend was typically—and charmingly—contrite after embarrassing her. Trojanowski was there too. He pointed to the entrance. “They’ll be gone any minute, Dr. Connor. Mr. McCauley’s there—I assume to take them to their quarters. We can just wait, if you like.”
She would like to run up the stairs and avoid any chance of being interviewed. Instead, Mac sighed and sat down where she was. Mature behavior was expected from the coadministrator of a world-class research facility . It was a lovely night, now that the breeze had died away. “Good idea.”
Trojanowski sat one step below hers, leaning back against the pod wall. Emily picked the same step, but closer to the railing. The ensuing silence could only, Mac decided, be called painful.
There were reasons, she thought gri
mly, to avoid social interactions.
Trojanowski spoke first. “I understand you’re quite the traveler, Dr. Mamani.”
“I like to go places,” Emily said, imbuing the phrase with more than one meaning. No chance she’d tone down the innuendo, Mac knew. Not in this mood. She leaned back on the rail support to listen, only to sit up straight again as Emily went on: “Not like our Mac, here.”
“What?”
“C’mon, Mac. You know it’s true. Your idea of an exotic landscape is anything with traffic control. You haven’t been anywhere.”
“I just got back from Vancouver, thank you very much,” Mac retorted.
“I make my case,” Emily crowed. “Mr. Trojanowski, you work with the Interspecies Union. I’m sure you’re a very well-traveled man yourself.” Amazing—or was it appalling? Mac debated numbly—what that sultry voice could do with a phrase. “Did you know you were in the presence of a woman who’s never left her continent, let alone her planet? Nor plans to?”
That again? “I’m perfectly happy here,” Mac replied somewhat testily. Emily was forever trying to convince her to travel offworld. She should have known it wouldn’t stop because they had company. Of sorts.
Polite company, at least. “Not everyone enjoys space flight,” Trojanowski pointed out. “I take it you do, Dr. Mamani?”
A broad smile. “I’m the adventurous sort. But then again, I like knowing what’s around me. But not our Mac. Oh, no.”
“Drop it, Em,” Mac said under her breath, doing her best to glare without being obvious.
Emily ignored her, words coming more quickly as she warmed to her topic. “What if I told you, Mr. Trojanowski, that you are in the presence of a woman—a biologist!—whose willing experience with non-Human intelligence can be summed up by a handful of entertainment vids and news clips, until the arrival of our being in blue? Who can’t name the three systems closest to ours . . . who has absolutely no interest in any intelligent species but her own!” Emily stopped, the “Y” button on her shirt threatened by her deepened breathing. The light from the railing shone in her hair, but didn’t reach her face.
Mac knew what was happening, if not why. For whatever reason, Emily didn’t like Trojanowski—or was it his questions—and was tossing Mac between them as a diversion. Which would have been fine, except— Mac stopped the thought. “Are you quite finished?” she asked instead.
Emily tossed her head. “Not yet. Mr. Trojanowski is an expert—the kind we never see on Norcoast. I want to hear his opinion of such a person.”
He didn’t seem to notice Mac’s discomfort. “My opinion? There isn’t anyone alive who doesn’t have something left to learn.” He brought up one knee and rested his arm on it. “And I submit that the opposite is true. There’s no one alive without something they’d like to unlearn—to forget. Wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Mamani? Care to us give an example—something recent, perhaps?”
Check and challenge.
“We’re talking about Dr. Connor, not me. Come on. You must see the waste. The least you can do is help me yank Mac’s head out of her river—make her see there’s a universe nearby.”
“I am sitting right here,” Mac protested. “On the off chance you decide to talk to me, instead of about me.”
Whatever had Emily in such fine and difficult form, it was more than Trojanowski. Em turned and stared up at her, her eyes shockingly brilliant, as if moist with tears. “I’ve tried talking to you, Mac,” she said, her voice low and intense. “I’ve tried for three years and you haven’t heard a word I’ve said. Not a word. I might as well be shouting in a vacuum. And it’s going to be too late, Mac, by the time you wake up. Too damned late for anything.”
With that, she stood and walked away, skirt whirling around her long legs.
Mac froze, torn between following Emily and demanding an explanation, and the patent need to explain to the now silent man beside her on the stairs that this wasn’t what Emily was like.
Until this minute, anyway. What was going on?
Mac decided she didn’t want to know. “Mr. Trojanowski. Let me apologize for Emily. Dr. Mamani. She’s usually more—” tactful wasn’t really the word, “—considerate.”
The railing light caught the lenses of his glasses, the curls in his hair. Nothing more. “Was she right about you?”
Did it matter what he thought? Mac hesitated, then again decided on honesty. She wasn’t ashamed of her way of life. “I frustrate her because I made a choice long ago. You talked about having more to learn. Well, there’s more to learn, right here, about this world, than I could fit into a dozen lifetimes. So I chose to focus. That’s all. But Emily believes I’m deliberately ignoring what she considers important.”
Another quiet question. “Are you?”
“Maybe. To some extent, yes.” Mac patted the mem-wood stair by her foot. “What happens here is my business. If I believed it mattered to what I do here, I’d pay attention to other sentients. I tend to treat politics and—social situations—the same way.” Mac sighed. “Come to think of it, that gets Emily angry, too.”
“Yet you’re good friends.”
“The best!” Mac shook her head. “But stubborn. Em tries to improve me. I’m the way I am.” Nervously, she unknotted her braid and began to undo it. She had to know. “Are you sorry you brought your Honored Delegate to someone with her head stuck in a river?”
“Not when I consider that in less than a day, Dr. Connor, you’ve learned his name and gained his confidence, all while sacrificing your own work to help investigate a possible threat to our species. Dr. Mamani would be impressed by that, don’t you think?”
For an instant, Mac thought he somehow knew she’d shown Emily the message, then she realized Trojanowski was simply being kind. “Emily will be fine,” she said confidently. “Ten minutes from now you’ll never know she’d been angry.”
“What about you?”
“Me?” Mac watched a spider starting to spin her web under the railing, taking advantage of the light. Were personal questions part of his job? Probably. “I can hold a grudge a while,” Mac said lightly. Permanently was more like it.
“I’d never have guessed.”
She laughed. “You?”
Trojanowski put one hand over his heart. “They set civil servants to run on neutral—didn’t you know?”
Like a signal, the bar of light marking the door dimmed and brightened as people walked through it. Mac could see small groups heading to Pods Four and Five. “Tie’s putting them in with the students,” she observed. “I wish them luck getting any sleep.”
“I’d better grab a few for interviews now. Brymn’s eager, at any rate.”
They walked around the curve to the entrance, finally deserted. Before she opened the door, Mac stopped to look up at him. “I’ll read his publications over tonight,” she said. “Maybe I’ll find something there.”
“Here’s hoping. Good night, Dr. Connor.”
“Good night. And thank you. For the meal and your company.” Mac reached out her hand. “I enjoyed both.”
Maybe it was the growing darkness that dislocated time. Maybe it was lapping of waves and distance-muted voices that created a bubble of stillness around them. Maybe that’s what made it seem they’d known each other much longer than a day. Whatever the reason, Mac somehow wasn’t at all surprised when Trojanowski not only took her hand in his, but lifted it to his lips.
“As did I, Dr. Connor,” he said quietly, his breath warm on her fingers.
6
STUDY AND SUSPENSE
“AND...?”
“That’s all of it.”
Emily’s eyebrows disappeared under her bangs. “You’ve got to be kidding. A doom like the Chasm spreading through known space, and all Brymn told you was how ashamed he was at his kind’s lack of scientists? Nothing more?”
“I told you, Em,” Mac said, digging the knuckles of two fingers into a tight spot on her neck. “We were interrupted. Brymn shut up tighter than a
drum when Trojanowski reached us. After that—well, we took him to my quarters to temporarily protect the Honorable Delegate from the less than honorable intentions of the world media. Reasonable, I suppose.”
“Considering what it’s been like dealing with seventeen of them covered in tigger spots, three claiming we tried to drown them, and one locking himself to the nearest vidphone?” Emily grinned suddenly. “I’d want to be protected, too.”
“As if you’d need it. Brymn will come here when he can. Which may not be until tomorrow. Till then . . .” Mac dropped her imp into its slot, then put her bare feet up on her desk and leaned back her chair. She toggled off her deskside privacy mode and the workscreen formed in the air before her eyes. The ’screen adjusted its distance and brightness according to the level of eye fatigue it detected. It compensated for ambient light as well, tilting to avoid competing with any beams of sunlight coming into Mac’s office—not a problem at this hour. All well and good, Mac decided, except that the optimum distance grew slightly every year, as the ’screen tactfully compensated for the aging of human eyes. At the rate it was traveling down her legs, it would be hovering over her toes before she retired.
The Admin office had been surprisingly peaceful, under the circumstances; Mudge as well, apparently uninformed about the kayak invasion. Mac saw no reason to enlighten him, since none had approached shore. On returning to her office, Mac hadn’t been surprised to find Emily already waiting, eager to talk about Brymn. Back to her normal, cheerful self as if nothing had happened.
If there was an explanation to come, Mac wasn’t going to hold her breath waiting for it.
She began calling up data, then asked absently: “Is he unlocked yet? The reporter?”
“No one was rushing, let’s put it that way. Let me see.” As Emily was peering over her shoulder, Mac sent a duplicate ’screen to hover over the other chair in her office.
Her friend took the hint and the seat, body passing through the ’screen while her head swiveled to keep reading its display. “Dhryn physiology. Why? Planning to poison him? A little drastic over missing the salmon run.”
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