Survival

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “Mac!” It was the Dhryn beside her. “We must flee!”

  She could hardly breathe, let alone move. Her hands felt glued to the window, as if she could somehow pass through it to help, if only she could press hard enough.

  Then she was in the air . . .

  Clutched by a giant bee . . .

  A bee who spat at the window, then somehow charged right through it into the ocean.

  Mac had barely time to take and hold a deep breath before she was plunged underwater.

  She had even less time to worry if a Dhryn could float without a repeller suit.

  12

  DEPARTURE AND DECEIT

  “PUT ME DOWN,” Mac croaked for at least the hundredth time. Her rescuer paid no attention. It was as if she didn’t exist.

  It turned out a Dhryn couldn’t float unassisted, but it hadn’t mattered. He’d lain on his back, holding her wrapped in that almost boneless seventh arm, while the rest of his limbs churned the water in furious strokes, their sheer power driving them through the waves when anything Mac knew of anatomy said they should capsize and drown. Once she’d realized what was happening, she’d tried to convince him to turn back to Base. But to no avail. He was taking them to shore.

  She’d protested and struggled until common sense took over. Whether the Dhryn was hysterical or sane didn’t matter, as long as he could keep swimming. The water was choppy and rough; the Dhryn wisely riding the swell of the waves in, but they’d been chased by the rest of the Pacific. Mac had held her breath each time she saw a crest about to catch up and douse them, gasping for air as her head broke the water again. Each splash stole body heat and she’d soon been shivering uncontrollably. Thankfully, the Dhryn’s body had insulated her back.

  What was happening to Base? Mac had tried to see past the waves, but it had been impossible—the Dhryn almost submerged at best and the water too wild around them. She’d grown sick with fear. For her friends, for her colleagues, for what they’d built.

  For herself.

  It wasn’t much better now, on land. The Dhryn had brought them to shore by virtue of crashing into the rocks with a higher wave than most. Before the water washed them out again, he’d taken hold of a skeletal log jutting overhead. Mac had seen the wood compress and splinter under his three fingers. With that one arm, he’d pulled them both clear of the waterline.

  The part of her mind still capable of analysis had put a check mark beside the idea of the original Dhryn home being a heavier gravity planet.

  Without a word, he’d shifted her to two of his common arms, tucked away the seventh, and started to run.

  He was still running, quite a bit later. After almost three hundred and fifty years of complete exclusion, the Wilderness Trust might as well open the inlet’s forest to the general public, Mac decided, wincing at the trail of ruined vegetation in the Dhryn’s wake. His method of locomotion had a great deal in common with a crashing skim, straight through what could be broken and rebounding from anything more solid.

  Despite what had to be hysteria, he seemed aware that he was carrying someone more fragile. More or less. Mac yelped as a branch snagged some of her hair and won the tug-of-war. She blinked away tears of pain, thinking of Emily. Had she felt like this? Been imprisoned by alien hands and arms? Dragged to a destination she couldn’t know? Unable to communicate with her captor?

  Mac pulled her mind back to the present—her present—assessing herself as best she could. They’d probably been running no more than a half an hour, though it felt longer. Any exposed skin was scratched. Her clothes had suffered, torn along the right leg and arm by exposed, reaching roots. She’d learned to keep her arms tight to her body after that. She’d lost a shoe. There would be bruises, perhaps a cracked rib, where his arms folded around her. But nothing worse—so far. It was almost miraculous, given the pace the Dhryn was maintaining as he raced through the rain forest.

  He did slow to climb, although not as much as she would have. Two pairs of powerful arms and semiadhesive feet were distinct advantages, even if another pair of arms had to balance and protect her.

  The next time he slowed, she tried again. “Put me down,” Mac pleaded, doing her best to kick. “Stop. Please. We have to go back . . . I . . .”The words buried themselves in heavy, painful sobs as her frustration and rage took over.

  He stopped.

  Mac’s hiccup echoed in the sudden silence. She tried to find her voice again. “Brymn?”

  With a thrill of fear, she realized he hadn’t stopped for her.

  The forest around them swallowed the sun, disgorging dark shadows of every size and shape. You wouldn’t need invisibility to hide here, Mac thought. Sound was smothered as well: birds waiting for twilight, insects too cool to buzz, no rain pattering cheerfully through the leaves.

  The Dhryn’s body was canted at its usual angle, and she was underneath, her head near his neck. From that position, it was impossible for Mac to look up when she thought she heard a familiar sound. Not the Ro; a lev, with a powerful, unusually quiet engine.

  Trojanowski!

  “Nik!” she shouted. “Down here—”

  The rest was muffled by one of Brymn’s free hands. The Dhryn finally spoke, a whispered, anxious: “You don’t know who it is!”

  He lifted his hand away and Mac spat out the taste of bark and salt. “Put me down!”

  The relief when she landed on the mossy ground was so great, Mac fought back another sob. She rolled quickly, partly to get away from Brymn before he could change his mind and partly so she could look up.

  There! A shadow in the canopy, moving in a reassuringly unnatural straight line.

  “It is Nik! Brymn, call him. Your voice will carry. Hurry!”

  The Dhryn stared at her, hands hanging limply as if, having stopped running, he’d finally succumbed to exhaustion. His blue skin was marked with scrapes and gouges, each a darker blue as if they cut into another layer; his fine silks were in tatters. “Lamisah . . . are you sure?” he whispered.

  “Now!” She didn’t wait for the Dhryn, cupping her hands and shouting: “Down here! Here we are!”

  Her voice disappeared under a startling bellow: “NIKOLAI PIOTR TROJANOWSKI!”

  Mac dropped back on the moss to catch her breath. If Nik hadn’t heard that, nothing short of an explosive charge would catch his attention.

  He’d heard. She watched as the machine resolved itself from shadow and branch, sinking down more cautiously than she remembered. Mac climbed to her feet, wincing at bruises she hadn’t felt until now. Brymn backed away, but not to run as she first feared. He was leaving the most level patch of ground for the lev to land. Together, they waited until it touched down.

  Somehow, Mac couldn’t believe until the black helmet rose and she could see his face, pale and grim. “How—is everyone all right?” she asked him, hands out as if the answer was something she could hold.

  “Help’s arrived,” Nik said cryptically, climbing down. A quick assessing look at Brymn, then back to her. His voice gentled and he went on without her needing to ask. “The alarm gave everyone a fighting chance. Best thing you could have done, Mac. So was vanishing into the sea—although that did upset your friends in the gallery. I assured them you’d be all right. And you are.” Did she hear relief? “My only doubt was if I’d find you two before nightfall. The bioscanner works fine, but there’s the issue of navigating in these trees.”

  Mac shook her head to dismiss what was irrelevant. “Was anyone . . . hurt?”

  “We cannot stay here!” This from Brymn. The Dhryn lifted his head and shoulders, then lowered them, rocking his body up and down the way a Human would rock from one foot to another.

  She ignored him, walking toward Nik until she could put both hands against his chest and stare up into his face. “Please. Tell me.”

  He hesitated, then took her shoulders in his hands. There was a darkness in his eyes that had nothing to do with twilight. “There were casualties, Mac. Not many,” he added, tigh
tening his grip as she flinched involuntarily, “but I won’t lie to you. There may be more. I don’t know how many injuries were life threatening and—” he took a long breath and Mac held hers, afraid. “—and they’ve sent divers into Pod Six. It was totally submerged.”

  “It heard us play the recording,” Mac said, lips numb. “It knew I was responsible.”

  His nod was almost imperceptible, as if he wanted to spare her, but knew she expected the truth. “They were after you, Mac. Once you were gone, there was no sign of them. As I said, leaving was the best thing you could have done.”

  Brymn burst out: “We must go!”

  Without taking his eyes from hers, Nik replied with unexpected heat. “Where? Where will she be safe from them? Not here!” Only now did he turn his head and glare at the alien. “This is where they landed the first time! What were you thinking, Brymn? Were you saving Mac—or bringing her straight to them?”

  “They were here?” Brymn shuddered. “I didn’t know. I was trying to reach the nearest spaceport.” He flailed two arms over his head at the forest. “Is there no civilization on this planet?”

  “A spaceport? You wanted—you were going to take me to a Dhryn world,” Mac said faintly, understanding at last. She leaned forward until her cheek rested on the cold hardness covering Nik’s chest. She wasn’t surprised. Armor for a black knight. His arms went around her, a welcome Human comfort, despite the flash of pain it sent through her damaged rib. She fought to focus on what mattered, fought to overcome a terror greater than anything she’d faced before.

  Leave Earth?

  “The Dhryn protect their—their oomlings,” she reminded Nik—and herself—in a hoarse whisper. “They can protect me.”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes. Now,” Brymn insisted anxiously. “Without the gift of more time to our enemies. They hunt Mac because of the importance of her work to mine. They will never stop! We must keep Mac safe!”

  “I study salmon,” Mac muttered out of habit.

  A hand, five-fingered and Human, stroked the back of her head. Words, hushed on warm breath, stirred her hair: “Mac. You don’t have to do this. We’ll find another way.”

  “Before the Ro attack again?” she asked. “Before something worse happens to anyone in the way?” Mac pushed gently and Nik let her go. She offered him a smile. From his worried expression, it wasn’t a very good one. “Emily is always telling me to travel more. Here’s my chance.”

  He understood what she wanted him to—Mac could see it in the way his gaze sharpened on her face. Emily had visited Dhryn worlds. Here was an opportunity to find out why, perhaps find a clue to why the Ro had taken her and where.

  And if leaving home protected her friends, her family? Mac straightened to her full height: “Get us tickets. Or a ship. Or whatever one does to go—thaddaway.” She blithely pointed up to the canopy.

  And beyond.

  13

  GOODBYES AND GENEROSITY

  THE ADVICE of a blue-skinned archaeologist had brought Mac to the one place on Earth she’d never planned to be. The orders of a hazel-eyed spy had locked her in a box and so prevented her from seeing any of it. The fabled Arctic Spaceport, one of fifteen on Earth, was reputed to be an impressive spectacle, blending the awe-inspiring tundra landscape with the world’s longest slingshot track, capable of heaving freight directly into orbit.

  Of course orbit was the other place Mac had never planned to be, and one she also doubted she’d get to admire through a window.

  “Are we there yet?” Mac asked after a novel series of bumps announced something different from the steady vibration of the t-lev.

  The woman, older but fit-looking, dressed in a suit twin to Nikolai Trojanowski’s usual disguise, had been reasonable company, if you liked your company silent and preoccupied with reading what appeared to be streams of mathematical data. At the question, she looked through her ’screen, blinking her dark brown eyes as if surprised Mac had a voice. “They’ll let us know, ma’am.”

  Ma’am. Mac didn’t have a name. Nik had been clear on that. She wasn’t to give information about herself to anyone. She wasn’t to bring out her imp where it could be scanned. She was, as he’d so tactfully put it, luggage on a conveyor belt.

  Filthy, damp luggage, with scratches and scrapes that itched furiously. Probably getting infected. “Will there be a place where I can clean up?” Mac asked, drawing the woman’s attention again.

  “I’m sure I don’t know, ma’am. Would you like a drink?”

  Not without a bathroom in the offing, Mac grumbled to herself. Mind you, this place might be one of the armored cubicles in a city transit station, for all there was to look at or do. The box held only two chairs with straps, bolted to the floor; a small table, also bolted; and a bag tied to the table, from which her nameless companion would produce bottles of water. And, of course, the two of them, locked in for however long the journey from Hecate Strait to Baffin Island to orbit would take.

  If he hadn’t lied about where she was going.

  Mac squirmed, the thought as uncomfortable as the chair. Like all uncomfortable thoughts—and the damned chair—it refused to be ignored, cycling back and back through her consciousness until she paid attention to it.

  The last hours had been a blur in which the world moved past her. Mac had followed Nik’s instructions, without question or argument, grateful not to think, clinging to the anchor of his calm voice. She’d waited for the two-person levs to appear in the forest, then sat behind a stranger. She’d flown between trees whose girths made her feel like an insect, then been swept out over the ocean as if in pursuit of the setting sun. They’d met a t-lev larger than any that came close to shore, towing a dozen barges laden with crates and boxes.

  There, still lacking a shoe for her right foot, she’d climbed into one of those boxes with this tall, dark stranger. The box, Nik had told her, would join a procession of identical boxes, only the others would contain refined biologicals for shipment offworld. The boxes would be lifted to orbit-—here he’d cautioned her about the sometimes rough treatment the slingshot provided cargo—then scooped up and brought to a way station. There, she’d enter the transport taking them along the Naralax Transect, bound for the supposed safety of a Dhryn world. Once safely “loaded,” Mac would be free to move around like any other passenger. Brymn would meet her there.

  What if he’d lied, Mac’s thoughts whimpered. What if this box was taking her straight to the Ro? What if it opened to vacuum? What if . . . ? She looked at her companion and gave herself a mental kick in the pants. They’d hardly bother with someone to keep her company if this was anything but what it was: the way to move her that risked the fewest lives.

  “Thank you.”

  The woman looked up, frowning slightly. “For what, ma’am?”

  Mac gestured to their surroundings. “Good to have some company in here.”

  Her companion’s sudden smile was magical, transforming her face from grim to gamin. “I know you wouldn’t catch me in one of these alone,” she confided with a wink. “Bad enough as it is.”

  “Could use a little decorating,” Mac smiled back. “A cushion or two wouldn’t hurt. Not to mention a mirror or—” she felt the tangled lump where her hair should be “—or maybe not.”

  The other woman gave another wink, then reached into her suit pocket and produced a thick-toothed comb. “If it works on my mop,” she said, giving her tight black curls a tug, “it will work on yours.”

  “If you say so . . .” Mac yanked the rest of her hair from its hiding place down the back of her shirt, holding her hand out for the comb. The other woman tsked and, leaving her chair, came to stand behind Mac.

  “Lean back and close your eyes, ma’am,” she ordered softly, her voice low and rich, spiced by some accent Mac couldn’t place. “Relax a while. Excuse a personal comment, but you look like you could use the rest.”

  Mac wriggled as deeply into the chair as she could, careful of the rib she’d decided was more likel
y bruised than cracked, and closed her eyes with a sigh. “There’s likely bark,” she warned, though hopefully none of the blue that had oozed from the Dhryn’s scratches. “Sap’s a distinct possibility. Insects.” This last a mumble.

  The comb slipped into the hair at the top of her forehead and worked back, firm yet gentle, making slow progress. “If I find something interesting, I’ll start a collection.”

  Mac felt some of the tension leaving her shoulders and neck. Whoever this woman was, fellow passenger, spy, or guard, she’d combed out tangles before, for someone she cared about. Or for a horse in from the range, Mac told herself, laughing inwardly.

  As each crackling lock came free, her “groom” carefully twisted it into a miniature braid, then laid it over Mac’s right shoulder. Lock after lock, braid after braid, until the mass rippled down Mac’s chest and lap, and wisps tickled her ear.

  Although there wasn’t much but hair in the tangles, the process took time. Mac found herself drifting in and out of sleep, too uncomfortable in the chair to truly rest, but too exhausted to be anything more than a boneless lump. When she was finished combing, the woman gathered the tiny braids by the handful and began twisting those together, humming to herself all the while.

  “You’ve lovely hair, ma’am.”

  Mac didn’t open her eyes but snorted. “Has a mind of its own. As you can tell.”

  She felt the larger braids being pulled up into one long rope. Interesting. The woman gave it a gentle tug. “Yet you haven’t cut it.”

  Because I promised. Mac remembered when. It was like yesterday.

  Behind her closed eyelids, she could see the party lights strung along the Jacksons’ dock as if she stood there again, admiring how they reflected in the tiny ripples across the lake. She could hear the band playing back at the cottage, something loud to get everyone dancing.