“I didn’t. Not instead. Because.”
Trust Emily to dangle the right bait. Worried or not, Mac couldn’t help herself. “ ‘Because?’ ”
“I haven’t lost it.” Emily’s laugh was too hollow to be reassuring. “Believe me, Mac, there’s been good, legitimate science behind the search for a lost civilization from the Chasm, unlike your chanting friends. But . . . I felt it prudent to have a day job, to keep my private research exactly that. To this day, my sponsor—even my sources—don’t know the full extent of my efforts. Just to be discreet around you.”
Sponsor? Sources? Mac floundered after what confounded her most. “Around me? Who?”
“Who did you think I was with on Saturday nights?”
Anyone willing? Mac thought of the innumerable partners Emily had drawn from dance floors and bars during their times together. Was information for sale the common denominator she’d missed amid the loud shirts, lack of shirts, tattoos, suits, and the “only a mother could love” still-breathing? “There were quite a few,” she concluded, feeling every bit the fool Emily’d named her.
A real laugh this time. “They weren’t all sources, Mac.”
Mac blushed in the dark. “Oh. Of course.” She was not going back through her mental list. “I assume you had to pay them—the sources, I mean,” she added quickly.
“Hence the sponsor. How do you think I knew about Kanaci’s little group?”
She hadn’t, Mac realized. Given it thought, that is. She’d gladly left the details of that grisly day to others, her attention divided between Emily’s recovery and her research group. Interspersed with daydreams about a certain absent and altogether yummy spy.
Mac coughed. “Okay. How did you know?”
“Sencor Research funds us both. I had access to Kanaci’s data, such as it was.” Emily’s voice grew amused. “Which reminds me. Bureaucrats have this lovely inertia—want to bet they’ve kept crediting my account?” The amusement faded. “Before you start on me, Mac, don’t. The Ministry of Extra-Sol Human Affairs has everything I’ve done to date for Sencor—I gave your formidable Dr. Stewart my codes and contacts weeks ago. Surprised she didn’t demand an impression of my teeth at the same time.”
Mac refused to be distracted by Emily’s opinion of ’Sephe, stuck on the improbably normal. “You had a sponsor,” she echoed. “A real sponsor. To chase a—a myth!”
“Yes, Mac.” Em’s tone was the impatient but fond one she used fairly often during their discussions. Usually when Mac was being willfully obtuse about some offworld topic. “The Group very quietly supports a number of research projects into the Chasm. Their interest in the Survivors matched my own. They’ve funded my work for over fifteen years.”
Mac snorted. The snort turned into a giggle. A giggle that multiplied until Emily interrupted, sounding rather offended: “I don’t see what’s so funny—”
“I know you’re persuasive, Em, but how on Earth did you manage to talk these people into supporting you for years, pay for clandestine sources, send you offworld—” Mac stopped, considering what wasn’t funny to her after all. “That’s a great deal of funding.” Enough to finance every project at Base for a year, if not more.
With trademark Mamani arrogance: “The goal was worth it. And so was I.”
The goal had almost killed them both. Mac eased her bottom on the stone, stretching out her legs. It still might. “I don’t get it,” she said bluntly. “To start with, you’re a fish biologist, like me.”
“Haven’t seen you studying salmon lately.”
Not her idea. Aloud, and letting her exasperation through: “Putting aside the whole issue of searching for a species no one has ever proved existed in the first place, supposedly in hiding where no one can find them for the last three thousand years, why would Sencor sponsor you, of all people, to look for them? What could you possibly have had to offer? And, please, no innuendo.”
“Spoilsport.” Mac could hear the grin in Emily’s voice.
The tone, the banter, was Emily at her most relaxed. Mac didn’t buy it. Her friend hadn’t moved since they’d arrived. She stood looking out over the river, a slip of darkness. The moonlight barely caught the fringes of her shawl, tugged by the light breeze. It didn’t reveal her face.
The Emily Mac knew was restless and prone to pacing, said pacing typically accompanied by dramatic gestures liable to threaten both lab equipment and incautious vases. Her entire body could become an exclamation point. This new ability to remain still—it wasn’t right. Mac curled up to hug both knees. They should have stayed in the bar despite Rumnor and his pack. “Well?” she prompted reluctantly.
“Weeellll,” repeated Emily, stretching the word. “Tonight’s supposed to be fun, Mac.” That coaxing voice. Emily the troublemaker voice. More than anything, Mac wanted to be relieved by the sound of it. “C’mon, Mac. Take a guess.”
Or maybe not. “Guess?” Mac repeated blankly.
“Guess. Don’t worry. I’ll give you a clue. Dr. Mackenzie Connor has left her salmon to follow aliens migrating across the stars, si? Dr. Emily Mamani did the opposite.”
Gods. It struck too close to what hurt between them: that Emily came to work at Base, befriended Mac, only to lay the Ro’s trap for Brymn.
Old, old news. Mac shook her head, impatient with herself and easily frustrated—as usual—by Emily’s penchant for games. It was that. Nothing more. Forgive me, Emily’d asked.
She’d forgiven her.
What more did she want?
“You, Emily Mamani,” Mac said through tight lips, “can be the most incredibly annoying—”
“Lazy, are you? Think! You haven’t had that much beer.”
Pity. “Fine,” Mac surrendered for the second time. “That’s the clue? You did the opposite to me, in terms of choice in research fields? I suppose that means you started with this obsession about Survivors and only later switched to fish biology, eventually developing technology to follow trophic movement in benthic-feeding fish species in the Sargasso Sea by identifying and tracing individuals. Promising topic,” she added wistfully. “I don’t suppose your sponsor was interested in that.”
“Oh, yes, they were. Because I was interested. Think, Mac,” Emily urged again, the hoarse emphasis in her voice abruptly making this anything but a game. “I need you to understand me.”
Understand? Mac felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck, on her real forearm. Her stomach twisted to remind her it currently held an unfamiliar blend of sausage in thick pastry, plus three “Mac” beers. She could almost feel Seung’s hands on her shoulders . . . hear Denise complaining about the com system . . . see Norrey’s . . .
Understand that level of betrayal?
When Mac didn’t—couldn’t—speak, Emily pushed: “Why do you think I developed the Tracer device, Mac?”
Shivering free of ghosts, Mac found her voice, lips numb. “To record genetic information for individual fish in a moving group.” To find and track Mac’s own DNA through the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the surface of Haven, to the Progenitor’s Chamber, so the Ro could target their prey.
Why? Mac puzzled, gladly distracted by the familiar problem. To set the great Dhryn ships in motion? They’d hardly needed to strike a specific portion of the planet for that. There had to be another purpose, some reason one Progenitor had been the target.
A question high on Nik’s list to ask, for it was this same Progenitor he’d left to find. Mac looked up at what stars showed between the sheets of moon-grayed cloud. Not that she’d the faintest idea where he was. As few as possible knew where he’d gone and why. His mission with the Dhryn was a secret even from Emily. Though, given she’d already found out more about Nik than Mac had intended, it seemed only a matter of time till she learned the rest.
“Mac.”
Emily’s impatient voice dragged Mac’s attention back, reluctantly, to the here-and-now. She scowled. “If you’ve something to tell me, Emily, I wish you’d do it. I hate games.”
“I know. But this time, it’s important to me. Por favor? I need you to feel something of what I felt, when I first recognized the potential of my approach. I want you to—”
“—understand,” Mac snapped. “I heard.”
“Is that so hard, my friend?”
“Yes!” The word was hard and sharp, like a weapon launched in the dark. Mac shuddered and hunched her shoulders. “Em—Emily, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” Forgive and forget. Why wasn’t Emily cooperating?
“Of course you did.” Pure triumph. “About time, too.”
“ ‘About time,’ ” Mac repeated. Something was wrong here. “What are you talking about?”
“Poor Mac. You’ve held on to me, to our friendship, with that incomparable will of yours. It saved me; I love you for it. But it isn’t real—”
“How can you say that?” Mac whispered, feeling the burn of tears. “Emily—”
“It’s not—not if you can’t bring yourself to admit the Emily you thought you knew was someone different. Mac, if you can’t understand me, and still call me friend, you might as well give in to that anger you’re holding just as tight.”
“I’m not angry—”
“And I’m a cod. Honestly, Mac, you’re the only one who doesn’t see it. You’re furious with me. You’ve every right to be! Look what I’ve done!”
“No,” Mac exclaimed. “I know it wasn’t your fault—”
Emily’s voice turned cold: “No, Mac, you don’t. You’re hoping it wasn’t my fault. You’re doing your utmost to avoid any evidence that might prove you wrong. Damn poor science, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you,” Mac lashed out.
“Which is why we’re here,” Emily responded with equal passion. “I can’t stand to have you like this, Mac. Clinging like grim death to an Emily you fear never existed. Refusing to find out if this Emily—” a low thud as Emily thumped her chest with a fist, “—is the friend you thought you had. Gods, Mac. Anyone else would have demanded answers the instant I was conscious. I waited. I wondered if it was that place—being among aliens, strangers. But even here, by water . . . ?” Emily stopped, then went on in a husky voice: “Must you always do things the hard way?”
Mac licked her lips, tasting salt. “I lost you once.”
A heavy sigh from the dark. “You haven’t found me yet.”
The words were half accusation, half challenge. Mac rubbed her eyes with her real hand, feeling abruptly weary. Hadn’t found her? Nonsense. Her friend was standing right there.
Or—was she? Wasn’t that the root of Mac’s reluctance to know more about Emily and her past?
That she didn’t know this woman at all?
“Give me a minute,” she pleaded. “I need to think.”
“That would be a nice change.”
“Shut up, Em,” Mac muttered distractedly. She focused on one thing at a time, did her best to keep her thoughts free of emotion.
A brilliant, ambitious mind . . . a seemingly intractable puzzle. Emily and the mystery of the Chasm. A good fit, attracting the support of Sencor.
Perhaps good enough to attract the Ro as well. There was irony for you.
Mac flinched, circled back to Emily’s obsession. Why switch to fish biology? Why that particular field . . . unless . . . She crowed: “You believed the Survivors were aquatic! You built the Tracer to find them!”
“Must you shout?” Emily complained.
“The sheep won’t care,” Mac observed dryly. “I thought you wanted me to react.”
“React. Just no shouting.” From her tone, Emily was making a face. “Humor me. It’s not easy giving up my ace, even to you.”
Ace? Mac shifted restlessly. More old news. The real Survivors had been found. “It’s not easy sitting on this rock.”
“I’m trying to unburden my soul here.”
Wasn’t her idea. Mac made her own face, but settled again. “What made you so sure the Survivors existed in the first place?”
“There was evidence from the Chasm itself, if you knew where to look. I did. You have to realize, Mac, at that time research was devoted to planets with ruins or potential for mining. Interest was sporadic at best; support, the same. It’s not as if the IU lacks living worlds to explore, thanks to the Sinzi. And the Chasm—it’s not a comfortable place.”
Neither was a rock. “What evidence did you find?” Mac prodded, thinking wistfully of the warm, crowded pub. Not to mention barstools. Easier to stop that hint of rain in the air than Emily on a roll. Especially when that roll was for Mac’s enlightenment.
“The anomaly,” Emily said with relish. “The only system connected with the rest of no interest to archaeologists or miners. Chasm System 232. Oh, it had a world capable of supporting life. Once. It became so much orbiting rubble—by my dating, three thousand years ago, give or take a decade.” She paused as if this was significant.
“One of us,” Mac hinted, “didn’t take astrophysics.”
“Think about it, Mac. We know the Chasm worlds were destroyed by the Dhryn three thousand years ago; by your Brymn’s estimate, that’s the Moment, when the Ro locked his kind in the Haven System.” Emily’s voice held unusual patience. “Here we have a planet destroyed at the same time, in a completely different way.”
“And no else one noticed?” Mac pursued. “C’mon, Emily.”
“The team who originally mapped Chasm 232 pegged it as a natural disaster. There was no reason to look at it more closely—not with all those planets with ruins waiting to be explored. But we both know the Dhryn aren’t Their only weapon.”
Oh, they knew. The Ro had toppled a mountainside to cover their tracks. Sing-li Jones, chief among the Ministry personnel still assigned to her, admitted they didn’t know how the aliens had done it. Mac shifted to another rock. She was no more at ease talking out loud about their invisible enemy than Emily was.
She always listened. The wind ruffling the grass. The scurry of something small and careful. The cheerful babble of water over stone. Nothing unusual.
Nothing unusual now. Mac didn’t quite shiver.
What she didn’t understand was where Emily was going with this. “Say I accept your dating,” Mac suggested. “I don’t follow what this has to do with aquatic aliens.”
“Not so fast, Mac. This one world wasn’t destroyed by the Dhryn. Think what that means.”
“You think the inhabitants of Chasm 232 had some way to protect themselves. There’s an easier explanation, Em,” she frowned. “That world could have been home to—to Them—and discarded when they were finished with it.”
“They abandoned orbiting rock before humanity stood up.” As if uneasy, Emily moved at last, to pull her shawl tighter as the breeze lifted its edge. “It couldn’t have been Theirs. But it was a world that somehow evaded the Chasm catastrophe. So I studied long-range scans of the rubble, looking for anything to set this place apart from the others. Insufficient. I had Sencor divert a salvage ship to collect samples for their experts to analyze. You should have been there when the first results came in, confirming my remote dating, showing refined materials. It was quite a thrill.”
Given her intense lack of interest toward anything off-Earth in those days, Mac sincerely doubted that, but made a noncommittal noise to be polite.
Emily continued. “We found abundant evidence the world in Chasm 232 had supported a technologically advanced civilization during the same time span as the others. Perhaps they’d died with their world. But what if they hadn’t? There was legend, other hints. So if these were the Survivors, the question became: how could they have escaped? They controlled the transects; the Dhryn attacked through the gates.” Her hand lifted skyward. “Leaving sub-light. Maybe they had ships from a time of exploration before the transects; maybe they were warned to build them. What matters, Mac, is where they could have gone. Chasm 232 doesn’t have many neighbors. At one-tenth light, we’re talking almost a thousand years to the nearest world suited to you or me. Mul
tigeneration ship—or stasis.”
A raindrop hit her nose. Mac looked up in reflex and another hit her in the eye. She pulled her sweater over her head, feeling nostalgic.
“Long trip,” she commented.
“If you need our kind of planet. But there’s something closer. Much closer. Within a couple of centuries. A system with a similar star, a planet of the right mass. But with no signs of civilization or technology. On land, that is. But it has oceans. Lovely, deep, wide oceans.”
“You don’t have to be aquatic to live underwater,” Mac observed. “We do it.”
“For three thousand years?”
“There’s that.” As hypotheses went, Mac had heard flimsier ones. Not much flimsier.
Meanwhile, she discovered she could tuck a remarkable amount of herself inside her sweater. Human Becomes Sheep—had to be in some brochure. “I take it your buddies at Sencor checked it out?”
“Mac, were you not listening to a—”
“Using a scan from their ship in the Chasm,” Mac interrupted. “What did you think I meant?” she asked innocently. “That they’d closed their eyes and clicked their heels? ‘Poof’ go the light-years?”
“Nothing,” Emily said with exasperation, “from you would surprise me.”
The familiar complaint was oddly comforting. Mac grinned to herself. “I presume your next step is to ask Anchen for a transect-initiating probe.”
“Aie! Mackenzie Connor. Okay, that surprised me. When did you start caring about transect technology?”
The night you disappeared from Base, Mac almost said. She settled for: “When I started using it.”
“You’re right. We need to send a probe. Assuming there’s a civilization there, and it’s still space-capable, they can use the probe’s instructions to build a transect gate on their end. When they do, we’ll be connected. They’ll know what happened. Just think of the possibilities.” The satisfied warmth in Emily’s voice only made what Mac had to say harder.
Regeneration (Czerneda) Page 3