Regeneration (Czerneda)

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “We entered the gate too soon,” she managed, looking only at Mudge. What had it been—radiation, the Dhryn, his wound . . . some other danger no training or technology could avoid . . . “There couldn’t have been time.”

  “Now, Norcoast, there’s no reason to—to think the worst,” he told her, as if hearing her thoughts, not her words. “The Joy didn’t rendezvous with a courier, she took one on board. It’s sitting in the ship’s hold now. The maneuver I praised was the Joy scooping up the waiting ship while launching another to stay in Sol. It will transmit our messages to Earth.”

  “While incoming messages were sent immediately to their recipients on board, Dr. Connor,” Townee explained, looking puzzled. “Don’t you have yours on your imp?”

  Mudge harrumphed for her attention before Mac had to gather her wits to reply. “Darcy, there would be some delay releasing physical items, surely. Security and safety checks?”

  “You’re expecting freight?” She sounded mildly offended, as if the Ministry’s fleet of couriers was being subverted to carry stuffed salmon.

  Mac shot Mudge a look of pure gratitude, uncaring if the officer saw it. “Something like that,” she said. “How soon—”

  “Dr. Connor.” “Dr. Connor.” Rumnor and another of the Grimnoii came up behind, moaning her name.

  Mac felt like moaning herself. Aliens had the worst timing. “Now’s really not the best—”

  “Now is when the Sinzi-ra must see you.”

  “Ureif?” Mac asked. “But—”

  “Ureif’s busy on the bridge, Dr. Connor.” Townee’s eyes narrowed. “We arrived into a situation. Com traffic’s heavy and I’m sure he can’t be—”

  “Sinzi-ra Myriam.” “Fy awaits. Hurry.”

  They might sound and look miserable, but Mac recognized determination when she saw it. Along with significantly greater mass. “I’d better go, then,” she sighed, but gave Mudge a look she hoped he could read. “Oversight?”

  He gave that brisk man-on-a-mission nod, and she felt a surge of relief.

  To think, she used to find it annoying.

  Mac resisted the urge to hug him.

  The Grimnoii took up positions to either side on the way to the Sinzi’s quarters. Given their bulk, and the variously jutting points that glinted menacingly with each ponderous step, their little procession effectively wiped the hall of other pedestrians. Mac grimaced an apology to those ducking into doorways or backing up. It would take longer to argue with the Grimnoii than to get there.

  They stopped in front of the closed door, waiting. Mac waited, too, sneaking sidelong glances at her escort. Their eyes had stopped producing the congealing yellow tears, so obvious at the consulate. Without them, and the crust they produced, the hair on their faces and chests was a clean, shiny brown. Much more appealing. She couldn’t resist. “Rumnor? Your eyes are much—” she sought a neutral term, “—drier.”

  “You noticed.” He heaved a sigh that rattled knives. “They itch, too. We ran out of drops last night.”

  “Drops?”

  The other Grimnoii lowered his voice to a confidential bass mutter, his breath vaguely floral. “We’re allergic.”

  “To—” Mac realized both were looking at her, blinking, now that she knew to pay attention, their swollen and red-rimmed eyes. “Oh. To me?”

  “Humans. Mygs. “ Deep and sad. “Everyone we’ve met.”

  Feeling a quite extraordinary guilt, Mac tried not to breathe in their direction. Nothing she could do about shed skin. “I can ask the captain,” she offered. “Maybe the medlab has something you can use.”

  “No need.” “The Sinzi-ra knows and will care for us.”

  “Speaking of the Sinzi-ra,” Mac ventured, eyeing the still-closed door. “Shouldn’t we let her know we’re here?’

  The Grimnoii looked at one another, then at Mac. “There is a difficulty,” Rumnor admitted.

  “Faras wishes to see you,” his companion whispered. “Yt is unsure.”

  “Hush!” Rumnor growled.

  A Sinzi, with disagreeing selves? Whatever else, it didn’t bode well for Fy as a Sinzi-ra. “When in doubt,” Mac decided. She knocked firmly on the door.

  The Grimnoii drew back in apparent horror.

  The door opened on darkness. A long finger appeared in the light from the corridor. It stroked the air in a beckoning gesture, its rings of silver and gold tumbling up and down, before it disappeared again.

  Mac stepped inside the room, unsurprised by either the white sand underfoot or the failure of her escort to follow.

  The door closed, and she couldn’t see a thing. From the restless tinkle of metal to metal, the Sinzi was to her left. Somewhere.

  Mac considered the situation and hadn’t a clue. When in doubt, she reminded herself again—as she had many students—ask. “Do you not want me to see you, Sinzi-ra?”

  “You have eyes, do you not?” The calm gentle voice might have allayed concerns about being locked in the dark with a crazed alien; the underlying assumption gave Mac pause.

  “Human eyes are adapted to use our sun’s peak output, Sinzi-ra. I require light between four hundred and seven hundred nanometers.”

  “So narrow a range. Remarkable. How do you manage?”

  A flashlight helps, Mac almost said, but restrained herself. She heard the Sinzi moving in the sand, her long-toed feet lifting and pressing down, the brush of her gown along the fine grains. Then she blinked in ship-normal light. “Thank you,” she said at once.

  Fy arched her neck and tilted back her head, a posture Mac had never seen Anchen perform. Her eyes glinted. She held this position for five seconds, then returned to normal, her mouth pursed as she studied Mac. As if she’d been expecting something in return, Mac decided. What?

  “My apologies, Dr. Connor. I do not know about Humans. In fact, I do not know much about any non-Sinzi life-forms. My work has not involved you. Until now.” A gesture with two fingers. “I feel woefully inadequate.”

  She felt inadequate? Mac wasn’t sure whether to run from the room or not say another word. She wasn’t qualified for this conversation. “Please, call me Mac. Anchen does,” she added, waving her hand in a vaguely Earthward direction.

  With startling speed, Fy rushed toward her. Mac held her ground and her breath, but the taller alien stopped short of contact. Instead, one finger lifted to indicate Mac’s right hand. Or rather what she wore on that hand. The lamnas.

  “These are not yours.”

  Was that a problem? Running became a serious option, but Mac kept still. “They’re from Anchen,” she agreed. “A gift.”

  “Yes. The other promise.” The Sinzi leaned over as if to study her, head swiveling to bring one set of eyes after the other to bear.

  “What other . . .” Mac’s mouth snapped shut. Of course. “What promise did Nikolai Trojanowski make to Anchen?”

  Fingers flashed to loop before her eyes and the Sinzi answered. “To find the truth about the Dhryn and bring it back to her.”

  Mac licked dry lips. “And—Anchen’s?”

  “To maintain his connection to you, regardless of distance. An interesting challenge.”

  “You were involved?”

  The Sinzi dropped her fingers from her eyes. “Of course. A promise reliant on our system affects every transect engineer. In this case, we agreed to supply Nikolai’s ship with six explorer probes, each capable of opening a temporary no-space passage to return home.”

  Handy, Mac thought numbly, aware it was far more than that. As far as she knew, no other species had been granted access to the Sinzi’s cherished probes. They were used to contact and assess potential new members of the Interspecies Union.

  When not carrying her mail.

  “Home,” she echoed. “To Earth.”

  Pursed lips. Then, “Was that an inappropriate word, Mac? I mean no disparagement to Human theological or historical beliefs but I refer to N, the system of Sinzi biological origin. From there, your lamnas and any othe
r information are transferred to waiting Human courier vessels and sent to Sol System.”

  Human ships, in the famed Sinzi home system? The Inner Council must have had polite fits. The oldest friends of the Sinzi, the systems first connected by their transects. The powerful.

  She could just imagine Hollans’ glee when he’d learned of the plan Nik had arranged.

  With more of that disconcerting speed, Fy went to sit in one of the room’s four jelly-chairs. When Mac didn’t move, the Sinzi again pursed her lips before speaking. Confusion, Mac judged it. “Don’t Humans use chairs, Mac?”

  A Sinzi with no experience with aliens, she reminded herself, missing Anchen. Mac sat in the jelly-chair nearest Fy, sinking in with an involuntary smile. “Oh, yes,” she said.

  “You must tell me at once if my behavior is offensive,” the Sinzi urged. “Ureif believes I can manage, but—” Her left fingers trailed in the sand while the right formed a tense knot on her thigh. “Yt is disconcerted.”

  She knew that feeling. Empathy warmed her voice. “And you must ask me if you find anything about Humans confusing.”

  “I have been given brochures,” confided Fy. “I plan to study them carefully when time permits.”

  Was no one safe from Fourteen? Mac shook her head. “You’ll get more reliable answers from me, Sinzi-ra. Believe me.”

  “Anchen did state this. Which is why I asked staff to bring you to me, Mac. I will soon leave for the transect station and then the planet.” The knotted fingers visibly tightened on one another. “I will be alone.”

  “I’ll have access to communications—you can call me any time,” Mac promised, bemused to be the one offering comfort and advice. “Before you go, Fy, I’ll introduce you to Charles Mudge. He’s going to Myriam as well. You can rely on him.”

  Fy’s head went back, but only for an instant, as if she’d realized the gesture meant nothing to Mac. Meanwhile, her entwined fingers loosened, but kept moving with a slow fretfulness over the fabric of her gown. “I am grateful. But, while we remain congruent, I have questions, Mac.”

  “Please.” Mac sat back and hoped for something easy. Like external genitalia.

  “Why am I here?”

  Okay, not easy. “What were you told?” she hedged.

  “I participate in both promises Anchen has made with Humans. To fulfill my duty to yours, I was told I was needed here. That you would explain why.”

  “Me?” Mac said incredulously. “Anchen said I would?”

  “Can’t you?” The knot began to re-form, joined by the left fingers.

  Mac tsked her tongue against her teeth. “You know about transect systems,” she hazarded. “Myriam has one.”

  The fingers flew apart, dancing frantically in midair, rings tinkling like so many castanets. “I’m an archaeologist, not a traffic analyst! I should be back at my work!”

  “But Fourteen said you were a transect engineer,” Mac countered, then corrected herself: “Faras, that is. And Yt is your student. Oh. Sorry.” Don’t identify the component personalities, she scolded herself. “I didn’t mean to be rude, Fy.”

  A lift of fingers that had to be surprised laughter, from what she knew of Anchen. “A transect engineer who studies the remains of alien technology discovered in the Hift System. And whose student is the inestimable Yt, a historian of promise. Our field is not one of wide interest. The Sinzi moved beyond the partial clues left by the Myrokynay long ago.” Not pride, but certainty. “However, there remain interesting questions about the originators of the technology I hope to answer one day.”

  Mac could hardly breathe.

  She’d asked Anchen to protect herself from the Ro.

  And been sent the Sinzi’s expert on Ro technology.

  “You must have attended the IU’s Gathering on Earth,” she ventured.

  Fy brought two fingers close, but not touching. “Anchen accessed potentially relevant data from all Sinzi, including mine. I study molecules of metal, Mac. I analyze dust for alien components. I interpolate design from pieces found in congruence. My work has nothing to do with the living.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Mac said, feeling suddenly old. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s my understanding the transects within the Chasm don’t use Sinzi technology, but were reactivated when the Naralax was—” What did you call it when a nonexistent worm burrowed through no-space and left a hole that wasn’t there? “—made.”

  “Through the Hift System, yes. But it would be incorrect, Mac, to say the Chasm worlds continue to rely on alien technology. The first act of the Sinzi upon discovering the Chasm was to replace all existing transect stations. The originals were destroyed, of course.”

  “Why?” Mac asked, startled.

  A look that in a Human would be astonishment. “They were less stable. We could not permit unsafe connections to our system.”

  The promise to the Imrya freighter? She wanted to ask, but thought better of it. Really didn’t want to know. “So the remains at Hift are all you have to study.”

  “Yes. Which is why I am confused to be here.” Distress. “How can I serve the promise?”

  Fy’s lamnas caught Mac’s eye. The rings were bolder than Anchen’s, their mix of metals reflecting unsteady white-and-yellow flecks that ran down the walls.

  Like water.

  “There might be more remains,” she told Fy. “We—the Origins Team—are exploring the hypothesis that the Ro—the Myrokynay—used no-space technology to somehow drain Myriam’s oceans, very quickly. If they did, there should be some physical trace of their technology. Like Hift.” She didn’t let herself think about a working version. Not yet.

  “Why would they do this?”

  “We’re looking into that as well,” Mac said grimly.

  With the swift grace of a pouncing cat, Fy lunged to her feet. She began to pace, the panels of her gown fluttering. “I must go down there. At once! I must have samples, scans.” She lifted all six fingers before her eyes, as if searching for a lamnas to set it all in motion.

  Though loath to leave its comfort, Mac extricated herself from the jelly-chair. “On that front, I have good news. Myriam’s been a very busy corpse. I daresay every centimeter’s been mapped and surveyed. Enough data for a start.”

  Fy stopped pacing to look right at Mac. “Even if your hypothesis is correct, Mac, there may be nothing to find. Much of the Hift site was left intact for us. There’s no reason to assume any other Myrokynay site will be as cooperative.”

  “Left intact for you.” She didn’t like where this was going. “You think the Ro meant you to find it?”

  “There is no proof.” The Sinzi-ra spread out her fingers, then pulled them into her body. “However, our more recent history has become of concern. Anchen has brought forth the possibility that the timing of our discovery and its implementation as the transect system suited the purposes of the Myrokynay. The findings of how we were ‘shown’ Haven and the Dhryn only underscore this.”

  “You’ve heard.” Some tension she’d carried until now released, and Mac smiled. “The Frow were so adamant about following their own chain of command.” To her.

  “Of course. We have arranged to hear everything of interest that travels the transects.”

  Mac blinked. “I don’t understand,” she said, fearing she did.

  A graceful sway left, then right. “I do not know how it is for a Human in these times, Mac, but the current lack of consensus among the IU species on this situation deeply disturbs us. We do not easily comprehend such a state as sane. Though I am arguably closer to it during this difficult phase of my life, even I cannot imagine the ability of others to function while in disagreement.” Fy ran the tip of one fingertip down the rings of another. “When disturbed, all Sinzi listen. Very carefully.”

  The Sinzi-ra in every system of the IU were eavesdropping? Mac had no problem imagining a unanimous reaction to that revelation from both sides of the Ro debate. “Please don’t talk about this to anyone else, Fy,”
she warned uneasily. “It’s important. You can ask Ureif, if you wish.”

  “I do not need to ask. I trust you, Mac. Do you require a promise?”

  “No, no,” Mac replied hurriedly. “I trust you as well. Focus on the problem—leave the politics to others.” Her own plan. Fortunately, the problem was bigger than any politics. “Before we jump to any conclusions about Ro motives,” she went on, “keep in mind their sense of time isn’t like ours. I’ve a feeling they understand biological timelines, but there’s no evidence they grasp how long it takes other species to change culturally.” Or care, she added to herself. “Including the time it took you to develop no-space technology. I believe they were surprised by the Sinzi application at the consulate. The display tanks?”

  “I will keep this in mind. Yet there is admirable congruence in their actions.”

  Mac hesitated, leery of misinterpretation. Between her assumptions and Fy’s Human-naïve enthusiasm, probably not much could be worse than the two of them talking. “How so?” she asked finally.

  “They return to you, do they not?” The pacing resumed, as if Fy were too excited to stand still. Or she thought better moving. “Demonstrably, Mac, you have come to occupy a rational nexus of attention, being of significance to both past and current Dhryn, and to the Gathering of the IU, while reestablishing your own connection to their former agent, Dr. Mamani. To be in your presence must be a powerful attraction for the Myrokynay.”

  Now there was a horrifying thought. Mac shook it off. “I appreciate the compliment,” she told the Sinzi, turning in the sand to keep watching the alien as she paced around in a circle. “But it’s a Sinzi perspective. Other species don’t necessarily think in such terms.”

  Fingers swung from side to side. “What other terms are there?” Fy demanded, moving around the room faster and faster, her long legs flying.

  Shoes full of sand, Mac began to get some idea of the effort Anchen had expended to learn to interact effortlessly with Humans. “Would you please stand still?”

  Fy might have turned to stone. Sand drifted down around her hem.