Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
CONTACT
Chapter 1 - BEER AND BOTHER
Chapter 2 - CONVERSATION AND CONSEQUENCE
CONTACT
Chapter 3 - PROPOSAL AND PROMISE
Chapter 4 - OBSTACLE AND OBSCURITY
CONTACT
Chapter 5 - PLOTS AND PERMUTATIONS
Chapter 6 - FAREWELLS AND FINDINGS
CONTACT
Chapter 7 - REUNIONS AND REVELATIONS
Chapter 8 - PARTINGS AND PERTURBATIONS
CONTACT
Chapter 9 - DELAY AND DIVERSION
CONTACT
Chapter 10 - JOURNEY AND JOLT
Chapter 11 - PASSENGERS AND PROBLEMS
CONTACT
Chapter 12 - MESSAGES AND MEMORIES
Chapter 13 - POMP AND PROMISE
CONTACT
Chapter 14 - TOUCH AND TEMPTATION
CONTACT
Chapter 15 - REACTION AND RESOLVE
Chapter 16 - ENCOUNTER AND EFFECT
CONTACT
Chapter 17 - PRESENTS AND POLICY
Chapter 18 - BOTHER AND BIOLOGY
CONTACT
Chapter 19 - REBIRTH AND RESUMPTION
Chapter 20 - RISK AND REUNION
CONTACT
Chapter 21 - INVESTIGATIONS AND INVASION
CONTACT
Chapter 22 - SHOCK AND SACRIFICE
Chapter 23 - ESCAPE AND ENCOUNTER
CONTACT
Chapter 24 - RETURN AND REACTION
CONTACT
Chapter 25 - PREDICAMENT AND PERIL
CONTACT
Chapter 26 - HOME AND HORROR
CONTACT
Chapter 27 - CONSEQUENCE AND CHANGE
CONTACT
Chapter 28 - CONGRUENCE AND CONFRONTATION
CONTACT
Chapter 29 - ENEMIES AND ENDS
Chapter 30 - FRIENDS AND FINALES
Chapter 31 - RESUMPTION AND REWARD
CONTACT
Raves for Julie E. Czerneda’s Species Imperative Series:
For Regeneration:
“There are some truly memorable characters, their stories coming together in a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to this biological SF trilogy.”—Locus
“A fine conclusion to a science fiction series that has a refreshing emphasis on biology rather than technology.”
—Romantic Times
“Julie E. Czerneda is one of the best world builders writing today, creating species so intricately drawn readers find themselves believing they really exist.”
—The Midwest Book Review
For Migration:
“Czerneda always tells a good story.”—Chronicle
“Czerneda’s characterizations, both human and alien, are as intricate and entertaining as the twisty plot. Fans of SF adventure and intrigue—and of C. J. Cherryh’s masterfully drawn alien cultures in particular—are in for a treat.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Fascinating characters, including some delightfully wacky aliens, mixed with thrilling action make this an exciting read.”—Locus
For Survival:
“A rare blend of hard science fiction and exceptional characterization. Biologist author Julie Czerneda creates unusually believable aliens . . . building entire races and moving scenarios.”—Library Bookwatch
“Fascinating . . . intriguing new series.”—Locus
Novels by
JULIE E. CZERNEDA
available from DAW Books:
IN THE COMPANY OF OTHERS
Species Imperative
SURVIVAL
MIGRATION
REGENERATION
Web Shifters
BEHOLDER’S EYE
CHANGING VISION
HIDDEN IN SIGHT
Trade Pact Universe
A THOUSAND WORDS FOR STRANGER
TIES OF POWER
TO TRADE THE STARS
Stratification
REAP THE WILD WIND*
*Coming soon in hardcover from DAW Books
Copyright © 2005 by Julie E. Czerneda.
All rights reserved.
DAW Books Collectors No. 1362.
DAW Books are distributed by the Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
First Paperback Printing, March 2007
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES —MARCA REGISTRADA HECHO EN U.S.A.
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eISBN : 978-1-101-04225-0
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For Roger . . .
Always.
Acknowledgments
Wrapping up a story three books long took some help, and I’m grateful to all those who contributed to the effort. First, I must thank the folks at DAW Books, starting with my editor, Sheila Gilbert, who managed to calmly offer constructive comment regardless of venue or timeline, and those in production, who’ve borne the brunt of that timeline. I hope I never impose on you again this badly. I don’t dare promise! You were great. Luis Royo came up with another fantastic cover, true to everything I’d imagined. I’m spoiled, I admit it.
Sam Schrant, Sebastian Jones, Doug Court, Kevin Maclean, and Michael Gillis are real people who dared lend their names to this book. Gentlemen, I hope you enjoy the result. Feel free to claim the good bits; anything else I made up. Kevin also acted as my local New Zealand resource, while Lance Lones kindly provided his “stranger in a new land” perspective. I’d also like to thank Ivars Peterson of Science News for his willing patience while I finished this book.
While writing this, I was privileged to travel extensively and would like to thank some of my hosts: Stan Gardner, Ron Vick, and their Willycon committee; the concom for Eeriecon, Duckon, Toronto Trek, and Cascadiacon; while in the breathtaking Yukon: Joyce Sward and the incredibly talented students of the Writers Festival, Lori Schroeder and Claire Eamer of the Yukon Science Institute (Whitehorse), Sebastian Jones, Dan Davidson, and students/staff of Robert Service School (Dawson City); Christine Royce and the Pennsylvania Science Teachers Association. Yes, there’s more, but I can’t thank everyone I should without doubling this book. Please know I’m beyond grateful for your kindness and interest.
Jana Paniccia, Jihane Billacois, Janet Chase, and Jennifer Czerneda read this book in manuscript for me and offered comment and encouragement. Doranna Durgin checked my puppies. Those who urged me on through posts and e-mails? Thank you, too. Always helpful. And this book marks the first time, but I trust not the last, that I’ll wave happily to the “Biogeeks,” avowed fans of Mac and the biology in my books.
Last, but never least, my family. You put up with more than the usual angst from me on this one, and I appreciated your support every minute. Thank you, Jennifer, for your help with the last chapters and the ending. Poppa? Hope you’ll like it. I know it’s a little big, but—stuff happens.
CONTACT
THE PORTENTS WILL COME. And Change will follow, to take the landscape, to bring death.
Those who can flee, will.
And still that which is Dhryn must wait—too frail to risk confrontation—too slow to race others from the doom.
Only in the lull time
, when the emptied land has finished dying around them, will the Dhryn venture forth. Scouts first, to taste the land, seek routes to what the Progenitors will crave. They will find where the great forests rot, bring the feast to sustain.
That which is Dhryn shall cleanse the land, removing debris, clearing blocked rivers. All will sustain the Progenitors as they move behind the rest.
Most will not complete the Great Journey, spent by the effort, worn by toil. Lost. Left. Remembered.
All that matters is the Progenitors reach Haven, the place of safety and plenty. There They will rest, setting the Path in memory, bringing forth new generations who will not know Change in their lifetimes.
Until it begins again.
(Inscription found at southern hemisphere haven site 9903-ZA,
pre-alloy Dhryn ruin, Planet Myriam)
1
BEER AND BOTHER
“ARE YOU THINKING what I’m thinking?” Dr. Mackenzie Connor, Mac to those she intended to talk to more than once, gave her closest friend a wary look. She’d learned the hard way where such conversational gambits could lead. Especially when Dr. Emily Mamani was this bored. “That,” she ventured, “depends on what you’re thinking.”
That tilt of the elegant head, with that smile, spelled pure mischief. “Then you are!”
“Am not.” As this didn’t seem a particularly adult retort, Mac added primly, “I never think such things.”
Emily’s laugh, as rich and contagious as before, as always, warmed Mac’s heart. She wished it could erase the shadows clinging to the other woman’s cheekbones, haunting her eyes. Time might do that.
Or not.
“You’re allowed, you know,” Em continued, leaning closer. They were both sitting with their elbows propped on the dark, polished wood of the bar. The bar that stretched in a friendly manner right to the door.
The door Mac eyed wistfully. She’d left so much work . . .
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Emily protested. “You promised.”
“So now you think you’re thinking what I’m thinking?” Mac asked, dragging her attention back to her beer. “Hah!”
“Hah, yourself. We get a night away from that bunch of loons. You promised.”
“They aren’t—” Mac stopped as Emily raised a shapely, black, and highly expressive eyebrow. True, Wilson Kudla, author of Chasm Ghouls: They Exist and Speak to Me, was presently conducting the third night of what boded to be a prolonged—and already very sweaty—exorcism attempt, having, like the rest of the Origins Team, become convinced the Ro were not beings to welcome under one’s roof. Or inside one’s tent.
Not that the rest of the team had tents, Mac corrected hurriedly. Particularly tents full of perspiring Humans chanting themselves hoarse. “Not all of them are loons,” she qualified. “Archaeologists simply have their own approach to the work. You’ll get used to it.” This last hope echoed inside her half empty glass as Mac lifted it to her mouth. She took a long swallow, thought about it, then took another. A local brew. By now too warm by her standards, but with an excellent aftertaste. She squinted into the foam. Honey?
Despite its colorful name, The Takahe Nest was little more than a long room, two thirds filled with wooden tables and assorted chairs. The floor was wood as well, rough and scarred by hiking boots—from the look of the trail leading past the bar, soaking wet and muddy hiking boots. The bartender, a big friendly man who’d introduced himself as “Kevin Maclean but not the actor,” claimed it had rained every day of the first fifty years the Nest was open. The occasional sunny day since hadn’t helped much. Mac and Emily had been directed here to experience firsthand a slice of the unique Fiordland atmosphere.
It had that. Mac surveyed the eclectic and dusty mix of objects suspended from every exposed beam and wall. Perplexed-looking stags’ heads, antique hunting weapons, and odd-shaped drinking cups vied for space with what could only be bits and pieces of skims—most broken. The tip of a helicopter blade—Mac’s curiosity had made her ask what it was—easily two hundred years older than the pub itself, held place of honor behind the bar. Nor’easters ripped down the mountain valleys without warning, Kevin had explained cheerfully. The wind took its tithe from anything that dared be in the sky.
The clientele matched the bar. Well, except for themselves. Emily—in her long black shawl and yellow top, with a full red skirt swirling around her calves—stood out like some exotic flower transplanted in the wrong place. Mac herself, in dark pants, blouse, and sweater, had attracted only slightly fewer stares when entering. She eased her toes in the dressy sandals Emily had insisted she wear, missing her boots. The few folks here looked to be straight off a hiking trail or farm—people who worked with their hands and weren’t afraid of a little deluge.
Felt like home. Although she’d never had a beer as a namesake before. Mac tipped the rest of her bottle of “Mac’s” into her glass and smiled.
“How long are we going to stay here?” Emily demanded in a low voice, with a gesture including more than The Takahe Nest.
Back to that again? Mac held back a sigh. “Your guess is as good as mine, Em,” she said, truthfully enough.
The Gathering, the collaboration of every Dhryn expert the Sinzi could find within the Interspecies Union, had been—disbanded wasn’t the right word, Mac decided. Sent packing was more like it. The synergy provided by their being in the same place, namely housed at the IU Consulate for Sol System, had been irrevocably outweighed by becoming a single, convenient target. The Dhryn assault could have eradicated not only life on Earth, but the best chance of coming up with a defense for the rest of the IU—those thousands of worlds linked by the transects that permitted instantaneous travel between star systems.
“The sum,” Mac mused into her drink. “More than the parts, you know.”
“Gods, Mac. Philosophy on the second beer? Way too early.”
Mac’s lips twitched. “Sorry.” She ticked her glass against Emily’s. “Bad habit.”
“I’ll say. Kev!” In answer to Emily’s urgent summons, the bartender hurried over with two more bottles, lingering to trade smiles. Mistake. When Kevin turned away to serve other customers, Emily leaned well over the bar for a better look, lips pursed to whistle. Mac hauled her back to her seat. “Two beers are way too early for that,” she muttered under her breath, hoping no one else had noticed. Luckily, few of the tables were inhabited this early in the evening. A couple held what had to be groups of regulars, engrossed in their own conversations; the rest of the patrons stood around tables at the far end, where each solid thunk of dart into cork was followed by a roar—frequently accompanied by jeering comments about coordination and the lack thereof.
Emily settled peacefully. Then she leaned closer, her shoulder against Mac’s. “We don’t need to be here, Mac,” very quietly. “We shouldn’t be here.”
No chance she meant the pub this time either. For all of Em’s insistence on a night out for the two of them, “just like any Saturday at Base,” this was looking more and more like a night out to air grievances Emily didn’t feel like discussing with anyone else. One grievance in particular.
Mac swallowed the dregs of beer number two before taking a healthy swig of beer number three straight from the bottle. Nice and cold. “I know,” she admitted at last, pouring the rest slowly into her glass. “The Sinzi-ra—”
“The Sinzi-ra has already sent every other research team through the transects, each to a secret destination. Smart move. The right move, Mac. They know this place.”
There was only one “they” to Emily, anymore. Her by now familiar stress on the pronoun sent a chill down Mac’s spine.
In the six weeks and handful of days since Emily’s reawakening, her scars had healed, flesh had reappeared over her bones, and her skin had regained its normal golden glow. The streaks of silver in her glossy black hair were new, but she’d never been one to avoid an attractive contrast. The repairs to the damage left by the Ro—the new arms, abdominal wall, portions of her back,
one cheek, internal organs—had been made with an ability to match detail beyond current Human medicine.
Only the way Emily flinched from naming the Ro aloud showed what hadn’t been fixed. So far, she’d remembered nothing of her time with the aliens. It wasn’t her memory that had failed, Mac corrected, studying her friend. Noad, Anchen’s physician-self, believed Emily’s mind continued to struggle for some means to process those experiences, based as they were on stimuli from an environment no Human sense had evolved to understand. No-space. The chosen realm of the Myrokynay, the Ro.
Emily did recall, with devastating accuracy, everything else. How the Ro had used her to help destroy the very life she’d thought she was sacrificing herself to protect. How, through her actions, the Dhryn had been unleashed . . . to decimate worlds . . . to threaten Earth herself . . . and now, to wait like some hidden plague, ready to strike anywhere in the Interspecies Union.
They’d lied to her.
They’d discarded her.
That simmering rage deep in the eyes meeting hers, even here and now, above the cheerful smile Emily shaped with her lips? Mac knew what it meant.
Regeneration (Czerneda) Page 1