Survival

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Or she was alone on the ship, heading toward the Sun.

  There were times Mac really hated having a good imagination.

  Without opening her eyes, Mac yawned and stretched. At the halfway point of her stretch, her rib reminded her yesterday hadn’t been a nightmare and her eyes shot open.

  And half closed. The lights were bright again. She’d discovered the hard way that the Dhryn ship observed a diurnal cycle, having been caught in the midst of compulsive furniture arranging when the lights went out. Not quite out. She’d remained still, letting her eyes adjust, and discovered a faint glow coming from the viewport. Moving with hands outstretched and a step at a time, Mac had managed to reach it and look out. Sunlight was reflecting from some protrusions along the hull. She’d decided to find the safety of her bed before the ship turned and the room was completely dark, given the shards of ceramic, glass, and splintered wood product now littering the floor.

  Falling asleep had been as difficult as falling on the nearest mattress.

  Now thoroughly awake, Mac rubbed her eyes and groped for her imp—the Ministry one, which she planned to use most. According to its display, she’d slept for eleven hours. According to the stiffness of her spine, most of that had been in one position. Likely fetal, she grinned to herself, even though her lips were dry enough to protest.

  Amazing what a good sleep could do. Mac stretched again, with more care to the rib, then rolled to put her feet on the floor. Deck. She should start using ship words or Kammie would never forgive her.

  Kammie. The soil analysis!

  Mac muttered to herself as she hurriedly unfastened the waist pouch—doubtless another reason her back was sore—and pulled out the crumpled sheet. Her brain must have been turned off yesterday. Remembering Nik, she blushed furiously. No excuse . . . she started to read line by line.

  Ordinary composition . . . expected nutrient levels . . . high moisture content, which Mac found ironic under the circumstances . . . pollen levels reflective of last year’s poor conditions . . . and unfamiliar biological material from which had been extracted strands of DNA.

  Nonterrestrial DNA.

  Kammie had provided the nucleotide sequence without further comment, but Mac could well imagine what the soil chemist would say if she were here. For the first time, Mac was glad she was alone. She had to trust Kammie’s discretion would keep her safe. “Sorry, Kammie,” she whispered as she studied the results. If the Ro had started chasing her, destroying Base in the process, simply because she might have received information from Brymn, how would they react to Kammie having some or all of their genetic footprint?

  Mac didn’t want to know. She did want to get this information into the right hands—ones with five fingers—as quickly as possible.

  “Regular channels aren’t safe,” she mused, turning the imp over in her hands. “Not that they’re giving me one to use.”

  After some thought, and a carefully small swallow of water she held in her mouth as long as possible, Mac resorted to a trick so old it probably dated back to stone frescos on buildings. She activated the ’screen and went through her personal image files until she found the one she’d remembered: Emily, all smiles and arms wide, wrapped in some man’s oversized T-shirt, the shirt itself peppered with risqué sayings Mac didn’t bother to read. She avoided looking at Emily’s face as well, enlarging the image so she could concentrate on replacing the letters of the sayings with the letters of the sequence Kammie had found.

  It was long, long enough that Mac didn’t try to make the substitution letter-by-letter. Instead, she had the imp transfer blocks. There were breaks in several areas. Incomplete, Mac realized as she worked, but perhaps sufficient to be the basis of a recognizable reconstruction. She had never worked with alien DNA but was aware that some, like this, contained unique nucleotides. Those alone might suffice to identify a home world.

  If they examined the T-shirt closely. Returned to its normal size, even she could hardly tell the words had been replaced by tiny, seemingly random strings of letters. “Let’s see how smart you people are,” Mac said grimly. Setting her imp to record, she spoke as clearly as her coffeeless throat allowed: “I found a picture of Emily that might help you find her. As you can see, she likes unusual clothing.”

  Feeling slightly foolish, Mac tapped off the imp and tossed the device on the mattress. For all she knew, Nik had obtained the same results during his scans of the landing site. It wasn’t as if they would brief her on their findings. Still, as Mac told her students every field season, better found twice than ever overlooked.

  Time to see what was new in the world of the Dhryn. Mac wriggled off the mattress, a process complicated by the fact that her skirt had done its utmost to tie itself in knots as she slept. Mac extricated herself, salvaging the precious message in the process, and unzipped clothing packets until she found a pair of pants to accompany the shirt she’d opened earlier. Both pale yellow, unless the Dhryn lighting was off spectrum from what Mac was used to, but she didn’t care about the color. The style was loose enough for comfort and snug enough to move properly. Good enough.

  Shower, then another mouthful of water. She’d gain the maximum benefit from frequent, small drinks. Until the third, and last, bottle was empty. Which would happen sometime today, Mac reminded herself unnecessarily.

  As Mac padded through the main room, new clothes under one arm, she paused by the table. She’d had visitors again. A second tray of cylinders had joined the first, identical in every way. On the principle that if she was ever to eat them, it should be the freshest, she took the older offering—the tray closest to her pyramid—with her to the bathroom to dump it. Emily would be impressed, Mac assured herself.

  Memory flooded her in darkness: the anguish of finding Emily gone, the horror of feeling Nik’s body sliding through her hands, disbelief at hearing Emily urging her to leave him and come away.

  There was never just one lie—wasn’t that what he’d said?

  Mac scowled at her reflections as she walked into the smaller room. “There has to be a sensible explanation,” she told them.

  Of course, any explanation that justified Emily shooting Nikolai Trojanowski in the back could very well condemn Nik himself, and, through him, all of those who’d put Mac on this ship. The same people she had to trust would get her home again.

  “There’s a choice for you,” Mac growled with frustration. There was that other possibility, one she cared for least of all. She shouldn’t have trusted either of them. “At this rate,” she muttered, “I’ll set a record as the worst judge of my own species.”

  A species who washed in water, whenever possible. Mac ran her tongue over chapped lips and glared at the shower.

  Then, she stared at the shower.

  Finally, she walked up to the opening and studied the shower.

  The interior of the enclosure resembled the sink, coated in a rather attractive geometric pattern of finger-sized—Human fingers—tiles in beige and orange. But the shower had additional tiles, metallic and angled as if to focus something on whoever stood within. Mac had never seen such a thing in a sonic shower.

  Crouching down, Mac shoved the tray with its jiggling, hairy cylinders along the floor into the shower and stood back to see what, if anything, would happen.

  She wasn’t disappointed.

  The metallic tiles glowed fiercely, then what appeared to be shafts of blue-tinged light bathed the tray. The tiny hairs crisped and fell away; the cylinders themselves became limp and bent over. Before their tops hit the tray, they’d melted into puddles, producing tendrils of dark smoke.

  Mac’s first thought was one of calm analysis. The Dhryn had a thick, cuticlelike skin covered in glands. A brief burst of radiant energy could well be a pleasant way to sear off old skin cells and exudate, dirt and germs being efficiently removed at the same time.

  Her second, less coherent thought involved imagining herself crisping and melting, all in the cause of cleanliness, and she couldn’t he
lp her outburst:

  “Damn aliens! Can’t you people even make a shower?”

  Hours and ten sips later, Mac leaned her head against the door to the corridor, resting her eyes. Waiting was always the hardest part. She’d taken care of herself. Fresh clothing, although she herself was becoming somewhat ripe between anxiety and an ambient temperature above what her body preferred. A nibble of nutrient bar, those careful sips of water, no unnecessary physical activity beyond rearranging the furniture once more. Aesthetics hadn’t been the issue; this time she was after clear passage between bathroom, window, and this door, along with a barrier of sorts in front of the table.

  They were still on approach to the transect; she was still being ignored.

  Mac’s luggage was packed, locked, and beside her on the mattress she’d dragged from the bedroom, positioning it across the door’s opening for her own comfort. She hoped it would also slow whomever might enter long enough for her to be heard—or for her to run out the door.

  An ambush might not be subtle, but it was a plan. Mac was much happier having one.

  The waiting? She opened her eyes, her attention reactivating the workscreen, and blinked patiently at the appendix to Seung’s xenobiology text: “Common Misconceptions About Dining with Alien Sentients.”

  The material was fascinating, something Mac hadn’t expected. In fact, under other circumstances, she would have tracked down the cited references to obtain the original sources for herself. It might be an introductory course, but Seung always challenged his students. She now knew enough about humanity’s immediate neighbors and important trading partners to have questions whirling in her head. Sentience, it seemed, was a palette biology loaded with tantalizing variety. Let alone the consequences to culture and technology.

  As for Emily’s riddle?

  “Why shouldn’t you put a Nerban and a Frow in the same taxi?” Mac whispered. “Because the former sweats alcohol and the latter sparks when upset. Ka-boom!” It would be funnier over a pitcher of beer.

  She caught herself giving serious consideration to a sabbatical at one of the prominent xenobiology institutions, like UBC, and brought herself back to the “research” at hand.

  Predictably, the Dhryn had been mentioned in passing as “a rare visitor, largely unknown in this area of space,” part of a lengthy list. The text claimed there would be over two thousand species added to the Interspecies Union before the end of the school term and recommended students sign up for Xenobiology 201 as soon as possible.

  Reading the appendix on Dining proved amusing, especially the anecdotal accounts of what shouldn’t have been offered certain alien visitors, but Mac was disappointed to find no clues to her present situation.

  The fungus.

  Putting away her imp, Mac snared the tray with her toes and dragged it closer, the cylinders jiggling gracefully as they came along for the ride. The kit at her side contained treatments for allergic reactions and food poisoning. The medical info in her imp hadn’t said anything about their effectiveness on a Human who’d eaten Dhryn food.

  Arguing with herself was pointless. Her natural desire to postpone the inevitable experiment couldn’t override the simple fact that she’d be better able to survive an adverse reaction sooner rather than later. Another day and she’d be dangerously dehydrated. As it was, her persistent thirst showed she was close. And the last bottle was down to one quarter full.

  No, Mac told herself, eyes fixed on the tray, she might as well get it done. She’d made a brief recording about the lack of water, to warn anyone else who might land in a similar situation. And so they’d know what had happened if her recordings stopped in a couple of days, Mac added with a twisted smile.

  As for the food? If this was all the Dhryn would have for her to eat, she had to know if her body could tolerate it. If not, recording a call for help might be her only chance of survival—and that recording would only be sent when they entered the transect.

  It wasn’t every day you faced the point of no return.

  Step one. After her experiment with the Dhryn shower, Mac wasn’t going to risk herself without due care. She chose the outside of her left arm as most expendable and pressed it against one of the cylinders.

  It felt cold, which didn’t mean it was chilled. Room temperature, Mac concluded. She examined the skin that had touched the food. No reddening or swelling. She brought her forearm close to her nostrils and sniffed.

  Blah! Mac wrinkled her nose. She wasn’t sure if it smelled more like hot tar or sulfur. It certainly didn’t smell edible.

  Step two. She picked up one of the cylinders, doing her best not to react to its slimy feel or rubbery consistency, and brought it to her mouth. Slowly, fighting the urge to vomit—a potentially disastrous loss of fluid— she stuck out her tongue and touched it to the side of the cylinder.

  Nothing.

  Her tongue might be too dry. Mac brought her tongue back inside her mouth, letting its tip contact what saliva she had left, then, cautiously, she moved that saliva around so it contacted all the taste buds on her tongue.

  BLAH! Mac barely succeeded in keeping her gorge in her throat. God, it was bitter. Putting down the cylinder, she crushed a bit of nutrient bar in her hand and licked up the crumbs. The sweetness helped, barely. She resisted the urge to take another sip. Thirty minutes until her next.

  Step three. Mac breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, centering herself, slowing her heart rate from frantic to tolerably terrified. Then she picked up a cylinder and took a bite.

  BITTER! Before she could spit it out, moist sweetness flooded her senses as her teeth fully closed. Startled, she poked the jellylike mass around in her mouth. A tang of bitterness remained, but the overall impression was of having bitten off a piece of . . .

  . . . overripe banana. Not that flavor, but the same consistency and texture. This taste was complex, more spicy than bland, and seemed to change as the material sat in her mouth. A good sign, Mac thought, chewing cautiously. The enzyme in her saliva was acting on what had to be carbohydrate. The moisture in the mouthful was more than welcome.

  She swallowed. When nothing worse happened than the impact of a mouthful thudding into her empty stomach, Mac examined the cylinder. Where she’d bitten it, glistening material was slowly oozing onto her hand, as if through a hole.

  Mac laughed. If the sound had a tinge of hysteria to it, she felt entitled. “I ate the damn wrapper,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  Choosing a fresh cylinder, Mac grasped the hairs coming from the top and pulled. Sure enough, they came up freely, the glistening interior remaining attached and rising too. What was left behind was a clear tube, with that oily sheen. She found she could pull the food completely from the tube, but it only held its shape for an instant before falling from the hairs.

  “When visiting Dhryn, bring bowl and spoon,” Mac told herself for the future. She experimented, finding the tidiest approach was to nibble the food from one side, while attempting not to eat right through the portion held by the hairs. The most effective was to dig in with her finger and lick it clean.

  Step four would be the final test, but she’d have to wait a few hours to see how her digestive tract reacted to the alien . . . what should she call it? Mac concentrated on the taste and failed to find any one distinguishing flavor. The overall effect was pleasant, if strange.

  A group of Harvs had tinkered with the supper menu at Base a few weeks ago. Mac hadn’t believed it possible to make mashed potatoes one couldn’t identify by taste or appearance, but the students had managed it. “You’re officially ‘spuds,’ ” she told the last three cylinders, using the silliness to control her relief at finding she could safely ingest the Dhryn food.

  “Digest—that we’ll find out.” Mac wasn’t looking forward to that part of the process.

  Despite the moisture in the Dhryn food, water remained the issue, and Mac stuck to her post, back against the door. They’d bring her more spuds eventually. She’d be waiting.<
br />
  She brought up the next in her list of reading and raised one brow at the title: “Chasm Ghouls—They Exist and Speak to Me.”

  “Oh, this should be good.”

  She’d finished “Ghouls,” unsure if it was intended as fiction or advertising for the country inn near Sebright where apparently such visitations took place, but only on summer weekends, and had started scanning through more of Brymn’s articles when the door to the corridor abruptly opened. It did so by retracting upward, a fact Mac rediscovered when the support behind her back slid away. Before she could fully catch herself, she was falling, but only as far as the Dhryn standing there.

  Mac, her shoulders grasped by the being’s lowermost hands and her forehead brushing the woven bands covering his abdomen, looked up and gave her best smile. “Hello.”

  The being shifted his tray into two right hands and contorted his head so one eye looked down at her. “Slityhni coth nai!”

  Mac’s heart sank. Not Instella. What had been the name of the captain? “Take me to Dyn Rymn Nasai Ne!” she said, as forcefully as she could from such an undignified and uncomfortable position.

  The Dhryn reacted by pushing Mac up and forward out of his way. She landed on her hands and knees, mostly on the mattress which bounced as the Dhryn stoically climbed on and over it to carry his tray of spuds to the table.

  “Wait!” She grabbed her remaining bottle of water and scrambled to her feet. “I need more of this!” Mac shook it, the water within gurgling loudly.

  Job done, he was ignoring her, walking back toward the door. Mac launched herself in his way. The much larger being stopped, staring down at her. She couldn’t read much on his face, which possessed sharper brow and ear ridges than Brymn’s. His mouth was in a thin line. Disapproval? Dislike? Impatience?

  Bad spuds? Mac thought wildly. She held up the bottle, pantomimed putting it to her lips to drink. “Water.”

  No response, although he gave a look to the door that was, “I’m leaving as soon as I can” in any language.