Survival

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “You do, you know.” Brymn hooted.

  Mac narrowed her eyes. “I’ll bite. What aren’t you telling me?”

  He seemed overcome with laughter, rocking back and forth, hooting softly to himself all the while.

  She pretended to throw something at him. “What’s going on?”

  “Ah. I see there remains a gap in your excellent knowledge of Dhryn.” Another hoot. “Come with me, Lamisah.”

  Brymn wouldn’t explain until they stood in her place of greetings, nothing more than an almost square room forming the entrance to her apartment. It was marked by a door to the large common hallway that faced an inner wall decorated with a painting; the remaining walls opened into arches that led into her place of work and her kitchen. Mac waited, more or less patiently, for the big alien to get to the point.

  “This is your problem.” Brymn lifted his three left arms to the display in her hall, a rendering of a selection of fungal food items.

  “It’s a painting,” Mac said dubiously. “I found the display controls yesterday.” She didn’t bother mentioning that she’d gone through about fifty choices before finally settling on what looked recognizable and hopefully harmless.

  “Of course it’s a painting. It is also an invitation. By exhibiting food in your entry, you elicit the reaction of hunger and the expectation of a social gathering. There is a pronounced subtext of professional discourse which doubtless excited the Esteemed Academics beyond restraint. Let us hope your dispute with them over the analysis did not leave a bad taste.” He hooted at his own joke.

  Mac looked at the painting, then at Brymn, then back at the painting. “You’re saying that this is why I have strange Dhryn roaming through my apartment? Because I changed the display?”

  He smiled. “Insightful as always, my lamisah.”

  “Then why didn’t any walk in before today?”

  “Ah.” Brymn tapped the wall below the painting and a tiny door opened to reveal a now-familiar control. “This is the catalog that controls your greeting display,” he explained, holding up the silver oval to activate a shimmering screen on the wall, similar to that displayed on a Dhryn reading tablet. “There. This is what I left when I was here.” Now a plain green cube slowly rotated in the air before the wall. As it spun, one side flashed blue.

  Mac made a face. “I know. That’s why I changed it.”

  “Leading to your visitors. This is a request for privacy. No Dhryn would enter. The Human equivalent—” Brymn gave it thought, then looked smug. “An agenda posted on a door. Home system Dhryn expect you to display a meaningful work of art.”

  “Then you’d better leave me an all-purpose ‘ignorant Human’ piece,” Mac said. “I don’t know anything about art beyond my own reaction to it. And that goes for Human as well as Dhryn.”

  A quieter but no less amused hoot. “Neither do most Dhryn. Don’t worry, Mac. The catalog is organized by conversational topic. Once I show you how to search it, you will have no trouble conveying your meaning to potential visitors.” Brymn paused, then made another selection. “However, knowing you are deaf, I’m switching off the audio art option just in case.”

  Brymn had brought his company—and put an end to the invasion of Mac’s apartment—but no real news. The situation remained unchanged. The Progenitors had granted Mac sanctuary; they had yet to decide if they’d grant her access to anything outside of it. The Dhryn delivered this with a wary look, as if Mac was likely to explode. Another day, she might have. Today, she simply nodded and questioned her lamisah on protocol and manners, in case any more home system Dhryn came to visit.

  Whether her earlier mood had been caused by coming off the Fastfix, the change in food, or real homesickness-—or all three—Mac found herself finally jolted back into the mind-set that kept her happily busy at the most inhospitable field stations. The work. She made Brymn promise to bring more information the next day.

  Not that she needed to wait, Mac thought triumphantly. Had the Dhryn realized what a tool they’d left her?

  She almost pushed Brymn out the door. The moment he was gone, she dragged a chair into the place of greetings and pulled out her imp. The one that would transmit her data.

  Focus, Mac, she told herself. The choice of art was determined by the topic about to be discussed between host and visitor, or visitors. Brymn claimed it inspired and focused the conversation, something Mac thought could be very useful at Norcoast before funding meetings. Here, Mac deemed it a stratagem to cope with a very dense population. Brymn had told her that his kind liked being close together. “A Dhryn is with other Dhryn or he is not,” had been the phrase of the moment. But even if they enjoyed close proximity, Mac thought, it must help to have a mutually understood protocol.

  Brymn had shown her how to use the catalog. Many pieces were abstract, listed by mood as well as topic. Perfect. She didn’t have to know what a Dhryn thought of what he saw for her purpose.

  Mac began flipping through the cataloged pieces at random, recording her emotional response to each on her imp. After a while, the place of greetings filled with semiconscious whistling as she became more and more absorbed. The chair was abandoned for the floor, then the floor for the chair.

  Biological necessity interrupted, so while Mac was in the kitchen she grabbed a packet and water bottle. Back to work. Supper was a blue stick that reminded Mac of chalk, washed down with tepid water. The Dhryn didn’t refrigerate.

  Globes, bubbles, spheres of all sorts. Lines and shadow plays. Harsh geometrics. Mac gave each equal consideration, sometimes wincing at the colors, sometimes struck by beauty that perhaps crossed species lines. Or her pleasure misunderstood the artist.

  That was the point.

  She stopped when her eyes could no longer focus. After rinsing her head with water, Mac returned. This time, she recorded the expected Dhryn response to each abstract as claimed by the catalog. The entries were filled with florid and extravagant language—what was it about describing the impact of art?—so Mac was careful to only use those that referred specifically to reactions. There were colors listed by the catalog for which her mind had no English equivalents, implying the Dhryn saw into the ultraviolet end of the spectrum. Mac avoided those works of art as well.

  Mac carried her results to her workplace, noting absently that it was night. Leaning her elbows on the desk, she watched the flickering display as her imp took her responses and compared them to the Dhryn’s.

  Ah. Reasonable congruence over which shapes, colors, and tones induced feelings of peace, contentment, or harmony in both Dhryn and herself.

  Mac’s fingers drew through the display, bringing up a troubling divergence when the emotions involved alarm, discomfort, or rage.

  Turquoise, for instance, was the dominant shade in images the catalog listed as eliciting anxiety and anger. Black was not an option before civil conversation, sure to incite violence. And yellow?

  “Well, well.” Mac tilted her chair back, shaking her head in disbelief. Apparently, the brighter hues were guaranteed to set one’s limbs trembling with fear. The catalog recommended its use only for hazardous material storage.

  So naturally, her entire wardrobe was yellow.

  No wonder the poor Dhryn tended to be agitated around her. Mac couldn’t begin to guess what Pasunah’s captain and crew must have thought.

  “Another great first impression, Em.” Mac’s chuckle came out tired, but real. “Drenching myself and my quarters in their urine couldn’t have helped.”

  A fine way to introduce humanity to the home system.

  Mac took the time to make a recording for the folks back home, viewing this as the least she could do for Haven’s future Human visitors.

  Mind you, she’d love to see the faces of those who’d done her shopping.

  The next day, Mac enlisted the aid of the Esteemed Academics to make her wardrobe more suitable, envisioned panicked crowds should she walk about clad in yellow. They’d accepted the challenge with alacrity, fascinated by
the various fabrics of her clothes.

  She then spent two long and anxious days wrapped in a tablecloth, reading reports and hoping for the best. Eventually, Mac found herself nursing the increasingly faint hope the Dhryn had understood she expected her clothing back.

  She needn’t have feared. The Dhryn managed the improbable. Even her raincoat, a thoughtful inclusion in her luggage, was returned a different, more Dhryn-friendly color.

  Colors.

  Mac had put on the quietest of her improved wardrobe and been unsure whether to laugh or tear at her hair. Bold stripes of purple, red, blue, white, and lime-green had raced around her middle, lined both arms, and plunged to her feet. She’d just needed a pair of oversized shoes and a red nose.

  “Lamisah. You look wonderful.” Brymn had applauded her new look, but Mac held dire suspicions that her Dhryn’s taste didn’t match that of anyone else on this world. She tried not to believe the Esteemed Academics had done their best to turn her into either a laughingstock or a target.

  Clothing issues aside, over the following week, Mac discovered that Brymn hadn’t exaggerated the importance of her greeting hall. Her lamisah might be exceedingly casual in his approach to such matters, as Dhryn went, but home system individuals were only truly comfortable with her after the ritual exchange of names. Better still were greetings that included a lengthy admiration of whatever art was on display—a decided inconvenience, since Mac hardly knew what to admire. Fortunately the same works were available to all Dhryn, so her visitors came equipped with compliments no matter what she’d picked.

  Mac wasn’t at all surprised when her increasing grasp of things Dhryn was matched by a decrease in the number of her visitors. The novelty factor she provided by simply existing must have worn off. Even the Esteemed Academics had realized she had no startling Human insights into their subject. Food, tablets, and other supplies were delivered without requiring a formal greeting. Of course, Mac, not realizing this for the first while, had done her utmost to prove she knew the protocol and insisted on bringing the delivery beings into her place of greetings to admire art. As a result, those bringing deliveries now left them outside her door, preferring to knock, then run.

  Brymn found it amusing, though he still didn’t bother with any ceremony with her. As the days passed, however, her constant companion had become less so. Soon, he was coming only once each morning to deliver more reading material. Not even offers to discuss his own research would tempt the Dhryn into delay. He claimed to be busy “making arrangements” and “consulting with colleagues.” Mac, in response, busied herself as well. She was here, after all, to learn about the Dhryn.

  Who knew she’d miss the company of a big blue alien?

  19

  ADVENTURE AND ANXIETY

  MAC CHECKED the time display on her desk. He should be here in a few minutes. She’d breakfasted and dressed in record time, anticipating a welcome change in routine. Brymn had promised her a tour of the city today. Maybe, Mac thought, the rain would actually let up a bit.

  Eleven days. She was ready for a break. To be honest, she was ready for anything that took her out of this apartment. Already her desk was cluttered with the digital tablets the Dhryn used in place of mem-paper. More lay on chairs around the room. The Progenitors had allowed a Human on their world—they hadn’t, until today, been ready to let her walk around on it. It was being deliberated, Brymn had promised day after day, asking her for patience.

  In return, Mac had asked for information.

  Her collection had grown rapidly: Brymn’s work, abstracts from other fields, the Dhryn version of local news reports, and even samples of fiction, though these were presented in verse and difficult to follow, since the rhyming conventions were based on tones below her hearing. It didn’t help that fiction presupposed the reader was at least familiar with the author’s culture.

  Mac was doing her best to learn the Dhryn’s. She’d reached the point of being able to tell which public announcements were from the Progenitors, on topics ranging from finance to the proper education of oomlings. There was a distinctive formality, almost an aloofness—as though they considered themselves removed from the rest of Dhryn society, yet at its core.

  Although she dutifully and unsuccessfully hunted references to the Ro, Mac found the Dhryn themselves becoming something of an obsession. The air of respect and mystery surrounding the Progenitors tantalized her. There were no images in any of the materials she’d assembled with Brymn’s help. He’d expressed belief such didn’t exist. So Mac had asked to meet one.

  Apparently that request was being deliberated as well.

  Their persecution by the Ro was another reason she’d begun to focus more of her attention on the Dhryn themselves. Apparently no adult Dhryn had ever been harmed by the Ro. The invisible beings stole or abused oomlings whenever they could; the heinous crimes stretching back almost two hundred standard years.

  No wonder Brymn trembled at the name.

  No wonder the Progenitors guarded the home system. Under the circumstances, Mac was amazed any Dhryn dared leave that protection, let alone continuing the practice of sending almost mature oomlings to the colonies. It was a stiff price to pay for interstellar travel, since the transects were obviously how the Ro were able to come and go. But the Dhryn had come to a sort of peace, having developed technology to keep the Ro at bay, at least here, and chose to exist that way, always on guard.

  The average Dhryn didn’t think about it.

  They appeared to lack interest in other things as well. Selective ignorance was a blindness Mac was beginning to deplore in herself, let alone in an entire species. She ran into it again when trying to determine if the Dhryn had evolved here or elsewhere. There were no living clues left, no animals strutting about with bilateral symmetry and three pairs of arms. A fossil record would have been helpful, but Brymn had confessed such a thing would not have been valued or saved, if found. The study of life, he reminded her regularly, was forbidden. If she was to live here, she would have to be careful no one suspected her of such interests.

  Mac shuddered. Over time, a place like this, ideas like this, would kill her. She knew it. Brymn was keeping her sane as well as safe, a combination of amusingly eccentric uncle, friend, and comrade-in-arms, bundled in a package surely unusual even for Dhryn.

  And rarely on time, Mac thought fondly, gazing at the clock. She pulled on her raincoat, but left it open. The Dhryn had turned down the heat in her apartment after numerous requests, although Mac still found it too warm. In their way, they were good hosts. Not xenophobic in any way she could detect—though there was that issue of her being deaf, as Brymn called it. Careful that she not be bored or neglected. Curious, where her interests crossed theirs.

  Speaking their language had proved essential, as well as safer. Brymn had checked and found that only a few official translators on Haven spoke Instella. That skill was reserved for the colonies, where one might reasonably expect to need it.

  Not on Haven, where Mac was the only alien—other than attacking Ro—to ever set foot.

  Some mornings, that was inspiring. In a “just don’t look down” kind of way.

  Where was he?

  Mac went to her place of greeting and began flipping through the art catalog to keep herself occupied.

  Where was he? Before Mac could do more than form the question again, a knock on the door answered it. Finally.

  Brymn didn’t wait for her to open the door, bursting through with a cheerful: “Ah, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor! Good morning!”

  Mac stepped out of the way. As she closed the door, he paused in front of her art display, which her random shuffling had left at an abstract of silver reflections of globes within globes, gave an inexplicable hoot hoot!, then kept marching into her workroom. “I have good news!”

  She hurried after him. “What?”

  Brymn held out a tablet with his middle left arm, his small mouth stretched into the largest smile she’d seen him produce
. “Those of No Useful Function at the communications center finally admitted I was entitled to receive non-Dhryn news reports. I have collected all those from the past two weeks for you. Here.”

  Mac took the tablet, her hands shaking. These would be summaries, of course. There was far too much interstellar information for every system to receive news from every other. Interests were more focused. But there could be something from the Interspecies Union. There could be . . . she fumbled at the display control.

  “I haven’t read them myself,” Brymn told her. “I came straight to you. What’s wrong? Isn’t it working?”

  “I—” Dumbfounded, Mac could only stare at the tablet. “I can’t read it.” The symbols were twisted and completely unfamiliar. “What language is this?”

  “Instella.” Brymn took the tablet and raised it to his eyes. “The display is clear enough, Mac,” he said. “Are your eyes damaged?”

  No, Mac realized with horror, but her mind might be. The sub-teach Emily had made for her—the pain she’d felt using it. Had the input crippled her ability to communicate in other languages?

  If so, had it been accidental, or deliberate?

  Mac forced herself to calm down. “Read it out loud to me, please. Instella, not Dhryn.”

  The floor vibrated once, as if Brymn muttered some comment about this, but he obeyed her request. “ ‘Bulletins from the Interspecies Union are intended for the widest possible audience. Failure to disseminate such bulletins in every applicable language will result in fines, censure, and potential restriction of transect access . . .’ ”

  “That’s enough.” Mac heaved a sigh of relief. “I understood you. How about English? A few phrases.”

  Brymn nodded. “ ‘Humans consider it impolite to disgorge or otherwise release body fluids in public places. When eating in a Human restaurant, please notify your waiter if you will require a private room.’ ”

  “That was English?” It sounded the same in Mac’s ears as the Instella—and the Dhryn, for that matter.