“Everything is ready.”
So much for calm. “Then make up a bloody crisis!” Her shout echoed down the corridor and back again, drawing attention from those within the hangar. “I don’t care!”
“It’s okay, Mac,” Emily said smoothly. “I invited Charlie along. Didn’t think you’d mind.”
Mac looked from one to the other and back again. Mudge’s expression was an interesting blend of not-my-fault and uncertainty. He didn’t know why, she judged. Emily’s was pure mischief, her gleaming eyes and wide smile daring Mac to challenge her on this. She might have bought it, but Emily’s gloved fingers were locked on her arms, as if to hide their trembling.
The look, like the dress, was designed to misdirect, to make everyone around Emily believe bringing Mudge was some playful whim.
To where the Ro had destroyed part of the Wilderness Trust?
This was no whim.
Mac gave a nod, more to herself than anyone else, but Mudge visibly relaxed—and Emily? Maybe no one else would notice the slight release of tension in the shoulders, the softening of the smile.
It wasn’t, Mac knew, a favor she’d granted.
Meanwhile, someone else had watched this Human byplay with great impatience. “Idiots,” Fourteen declared. “Charlie has no reason for going. While I-I-I’ve—there could be a threat. A risk! Yes. I’m sure of it! There’s danger. You need me.”
She might ignore Fourteen’s protests—and the smell of distraught Myg now filling the corridor—but Sing-li felt otherwise. Mac sighed as the agent loomed over the smaller alien. Who, truth be told, didn’t look the least intimidated.
Might be the shirt, Mac judged. “Sing-li,” she said. “Sing-li!” sharper when he failed to acknowledge her. “He’s making it up.”
His voice was threatening despite the shirt. “If there’s a potential problem, I need to know what it is.”
Mac and Emily traded looks. “Stay here then,” Mac suggested.
Sing-li’s shocked “Mac!” gave her a twinge of guilt, but only a small one. She was almost dancing with impatience to be gone. By the glow in Emily’s eyes, she felt it too.
Home.
If only for a day.
CONTACT
“WE SHOULDN’T BE HERE.” Inric didn’t let his attention stray from the scanner readout. “No one will know.”
His partner, an as yet unblooded Ehztif and thus certified for space travel with other life-forms, continued to pace. She’d taken the usename Bob for its supposed calming effect on Humans, obligate predators being uncomfortable company. Not that Bob was such a predator—not until that first ritual hunt, years in her future, when her digestive system would switch into its mature phase. For now, she drank packaged secretions like everyone else, and expressed a fondness for salted crackers.
Inric pursed his lips and tried to ignore the unsettling click of Bob’s talons on the floor plate. It had seemed a good idea at the time to choose an Ehztif partner. No Human-centric games. Enough daring for any escapade but reliably steady.
He would have to find the one Ehztif with an imagination. “Relax,” Inric said, leaning back to demonstrate. “Get the data. Get paid. There’s nothing here.”
Bob stalked—there was no other word for it—to the platform’s edge and stared out over the waves. “Nothing. You don’t know what that means, do you, Human. But I—I can taste it on the wind.” The Ehztif released her prehensile tongue, flipping it through the air before she brought it back into her mouth. She appeared to chew for a few seconds, then sharply expanded her cheek pouches in disgust. “Nothing lives here.”
As that was exactly what the Sencor Consortium hoped to confirm, Inric gave a tight smile. “If the scanners are as accurate as your taste buds, Bob, our clients will be pleased.”
“Scavengers.”
“An essential part of life,” the Human replied.
The Ehztif sniffed. Her species shared their home system with the much-despised Sethilak, definitely closer to the scavenger scheme of things. That the two had managed to coexist after encountering one another in space was one of the marvels of the Interspecies Union.
Didn’t mean they wouldn’t eat one another when the occasion offered.
Inric sat up and leaned over the readout again. The platform’s underside bristled with the latest in remote analysis gear, including two prototypes he’d obtained in return for initial field tests and favors to come. And that wasn’t all they used to search this world. “Check the imagers again, will you, Bob? They should be close to finishing the latest flyover.”
“They’re coming,” Bob answered, gazing at the horizon. Better vision was only one of the adaptations that made Ehztif useful companions. “Wait. What’s that following them? Ssshhhhssahhsss!” the Instella dissolved into an impassioned hiss.
Inric lunged to his feet and ran to the rail. “What’s wrong?” He stared where Bob pointed, expecting the worst—an IU inspector, come to push them offworld. They had clearances. Just not real ones.
The worlds scoured by the Dhryn were restricted, even ones like this, where there hadn’t been a sentient species to leave its accomplishments behind. In the present state of near panic, Inric doubted they’d be fined and sent on their way. Lately, there’d been rumors of entrepreneurs simply disappearing. “Can’t be an inspection,” he concluded as quickly. The ship they’d left in orbit was to send warning of any approach, as well as being nimble enough to elude almost anything transect-capable given that warning was received in time to retrieve her absent crew of two.
“It’s gone. But for an instant, I could see—” Bob appeared to hesitate, cheeks puffing in and out. “Below the incoming ’bots,” she said finally. “In the water. There was sshssah.”
“Meaning?”
“The heat of life.”
An Ehztif’s ability to detect and react to infrared was the source of a thriving Sethilak industry in camouflage gear, but in this case? The Human exhaled his relief in a low whistle. “Impossible. We’ve been scanning this world for weeks. The Dhryn weren’t interrupted here—they took every scrap of living matter.” But Inric’s eyes didn’t leave the patch of unremarkable ocean.
The water was the only thing that moved on Riden IV. Water, he corrected, wind, and themselves.
“The Dhryn.” Bob’s head shrank into her shoulders. Her anxious shudders rattled the gleaming armor plates growing across her juvenile skin. When those met and fused, she’d be less flexible and thoroughly deadly to anything her instincts viewed as edible, basically that which generated body heat and wasn’t Ehztif. It gave her species a unique perspective on the Dhryn, whose appetite seemed without limit.
They were terrified by a predator higher up the chain.
“We are not safe here,” Bob continued, backing away from the rail.
Inric could see the incoming ’bots for himself now. There were a dozen; nothing fancy here, just the same off-the-alien-shelf design Earth had adopted for visual surveillance. They’d recorded mind-numbing images of rock, sand, and water. High ground on Riden IV consisted of chains of weathered islands, few of cloud height, their lee sides dressed in curls of unappealing brown sand. The poles had never, according to IU records, supported life.
The oceans had swarmed with it, fluorescing at the surface by starlight, submerging by day. The slow whorling currents of the tropics had spawned immense mats of jelly, themselves supporting landscapes of towering growth to rival the forests of the equatorial islands. It was said once you heard Riden’s singing flowers, released to drift from mat to mat, you could never again enjoy the music of your own species, so intensely beautiful and complex was the sound of their petals on the wind.
The wind only howled now, when it didn’t rattle their shelter or skitter . . . scurry like invisible mice around the consoles. Inric gave his companion a sour look and went back to his scanner. The consortium wanted assurance the world was lifeless before releasing development funds. Their surveys had cataloged sufficient mineral weal
th to justify investment long ago, but Sencor had decided against proceeding. Ore was common; singing flowers, unique. Tourism was the new option.
The Dhryn had forever changed the equation, and the Trisulian hunger for expansion had made it economical for their competitors to take certain liberties with due process.
In other words, if Sencor delayed exercising its mining rights on Riden IV, it might find Trisulian colonists pretending to farm the barren islands and fish the empty seas.
Bringing them to the present situation, and his twitchy partner. “The Dhryn are gone, Bob,” Inric stated. “They died in Sol System. Human space, my friend. Human space.”
Scurry . . .
“Humans did nothing but cower in their ships. Everyone knows,” the Ehztif countered. “And who said all the Dhryn were there? I heard it was only a fraction.”
Before Inric could answer, there was a sudden crack, as if a whip had snapped across the cloudless sky. Human and Ehztif looked up in time to see the closest ’bot drop into the sea well short of the platform. The rest kept approaching.
“What the hell—”
CRACK!
Moments later, eleven ’bots arrived at their coordinates.
Obedient to their programming, they bobbed in the air precisely where the platform should have been.
Above where the empty sea boiled.
7
REUNIONS AND REVELATIONS
MAC HAD BROUGHT WORK, too excited to sleep a wink during the trip to Base. She was thus startled, some unmeasured time later, to have something warm grasp her wrist and give her a little shake. “Whaassa?” she asked intelligently.
“Landing in ten, Norcoast,” Mudge informed her, moving back to his seat.
Shifting upright, Mac fumbled for her imp, its workscreen having turned itself off after her brain had apparently done the same, taking her closed eyes as its signal. Beside her, Emily’s neck was bent at an unlikely angle, the pillows that had earlier propped her head and shoulders now scattered on the lev floor. Her friend snored contentedly, her body catlike in its ability to relax and pour into any shape necessary for rest.
Sunlight was streaming in through the overhead portal. A Human-built machine, but with alien tech and spy mentality. Mac hadn’t been pleased to learn she wouldn’t be able to gawk out the window like a tourist, nor hunt familiar landmarks as they neared their destination.
She shrugged and tucked her imp into a pocket. Hadn’t missed a thing, she admitted, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She elbowed Emily. “We’re here.”
Instead of blinking sleepily at her, Emily sprang half to her feet, her eyes flashing open. “No!” she shouted, arms stretched to their fullest, fingers spread wide.
Mac pulled her back down. “Sorry, Em,” she said hastily. She should know better than to startle her friend. “It’s okay. We’re about to land.”
Sing-li had half-risen from his seat across from theirs. She shook her head at him. “We’re fine.”
“Fine? Caramba, Mac. Next time pour ice water down my neck.” Emily fussed with her clothing, using the movements to cover how her hands shook. “It’d be less of a shock.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“You do.”
Mac wanted to see outside; she didn’t need to. She put her head back and closed her eyes. Morning. Late August. Approaching Castle Inlet from the southwest. That meant coming up through Hecate Strait with its whales and long blue swells, closing on the coast where, on a clear day, the snowcapped peaks beyond stole the eye and played tricks of scale, until the forests between tumbling cliffs seemed nothing more than the thin verge along the base of some giant’s fence.
When that same eye could make out the surf pounding at the exposed teeth of mountains, could slide up the rocky shore to where the rain forest began, catch a glimpse of a white-headed eagle that threw the trees into perspective . . . then it all became greater than one mind could hold.
A nip over treetops, a plunge down a slope, and the intense blue of Castle Inlet itself would be waiting, tied to the coastal mountains by ribboned rivers, edged in boulders that gleamed like so many pebbles in the hand. Rich with salmon.
Mac’s lips turned up at the corners. And there would be Base, swarming with activity, skims and levs being loaded, students and staff trotting the walkways, half with breakfast muffins in their hands. Possibly green ones.
“Dreaming about our Nik?” Emily asked, nudging her shoulder.
Mac kept her eyes closed. “Get your own spy.”
“Love to.”
The ensuing pause was too much for Mac. She opened her eyes to see, as expected, Sing-li squirming beside Mudge, doing his best to ignore the beatific look Emily was bestowing upon him. Mudge, needless to say, wasn’t helping, too busy interacting with whatever was displayed by the screen floating in front of his face.
“The man’s working, Em,” Mac said, getting up to stretch. “Save it.”
Emily leaned to look past her. “Nice shirt, by the way.”
“She made me,” grumbled Sing-li.
“Camouflage,” Mac explained, glancing at Mudge as she sat back down.
He didn’t look happy. While she could imagine several reasons, starting with Emily’s invitation and ending with proximity to Sing-li’s shirt, something about his current focus made her gesture to the agent to switch places.
Dropping into the seat beside Mudge, Mac peered at his display. “Something wrong?” she asked, unable to make heads or tails of a tilted three-dimensional flowchart, with inset counters blinking red.
Especially when Mudge stuck his finger in the midst to close it.
“Oversight?”
“It’s been a while,” he said obtusely. “Sims aren’t like the real thing anyway. Everyone knows that.”
Ah. He’d been working on his piloting. Mac poked him gently in the shoulder. “Planning to take over the lev?” she joked, regretting it as the man flushed mottled red and harrumphed fiercely at her.
“I’ll have you know the last time I left Sol System I was at the controls.”
Twenty-some years ago. “Always good to refresh skills,” she said, careful to keep it neutral.
The lev made a swooping turn felt by all aboard. Mac locked eyes with Emily. They were about to land.
Just enough time left to doubt everything she’d planned.
“Hang on, Mac. I go first.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Mac told Sing-li, trying without success to push by him. Somehow the wacky shirt hadn’t diminished the large man’s ability to become an immovable object. Frustrated, she tried glaring instead.
With perfect equanimity, he smiled down at her. “It’s my job.”
“C’mon, Mac,” Emily said from behind. “Let him test that camouflage.”
Mac threw up her hands. “Fine. But this is the last time while we’re at Base you get in my way. Is that clear, Agent Jones?”
Sing-li’s smile faded and he gave her the tiniest of nods. The nod that meant, in Mac’s experience, that he promised to be discreet. Not that he promised to disappear.
Discreet she could live with. So long as they went through the door.
“You can get in my way anytime,” Emily offered from behind.
“Em,” Mac muttered in exasperation. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” Emily tugged her hair. “It’s not my fault you like your men unavailable.”
Sing-li wisely chose that moment to open the lev door and step out.
The first thing Mac noticed was the smell rushing in. The consulate had been on a seacoast. This was her seacoast. She drew a deep breath of cedar, salt, and salmon through her nostrils, feeling as though she drew the air and its peace into her soul.
The second thing she noticed were voices. Many voices.
Too many voices.
Mac moved to the opening and cautiously looked outside.
Sing-li stood to one side of the ramp to the walkway, a big grin on his face. “Welcome home!”
/> Mac’s fingers found and gripped the lev doorframe. She’d studied schematics and images of the pods in their new locale; they looked as she expected. Perhaps a little tidier than before, but then they’d had to take off anything loose, including the impromptu roofing, in order to tow the pods here. Some had been replaced; no guarantees they would last the first winter. There was laundry snapping in the breeze. That breeze could become a gale force wind with little notice here, in the more open portion of the inlet. She hoped someone had warned new staff. The surrounding water, tinted with sediment from the nearby Tannu River, was reflecting the sunbeams coming over the mountains. It was going to be a warm, bright morning.
All this she took in automatically, her attention caught by what, or rather who, was waiting on the walkways.
“What’s going on, Mac? Hurry up!” Emily urged impatiently.
Because she couldn’t see.
Sing-li reached for her hand. “It’s okay, Dr. Connor.”
It wasn’t, she thought, staring at the sea of faces. There was a banner draped over the terrace of Pod Three. She couldn’t make out the words. The voices—the shouts—died away as everyone gazed back at her. Some were smiling. Others were wiping their eyes.
Her father started walking forward. Her father? And—gods, her brothers?
Mac launched herself from the lev and ran for them, somehow noticing a knot of people nearby who suddenly cried out in what had to be Quechua and hurried past her.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to try to hug them all at once. She reached her father, buried her face in his shoulder, and felt her brothers’ arms go around them both. She sobbed for no reason but joy.
Mac didn’t need to ask how or why. All those on Earth she cared about here, now? This was Anchen’s parting gift.
Regeneration (Czerneda) Page 14