“Charlie?” Mac’s lips twitched. Poor Mudge. Aloud, “I tend to feel I’m wearing my work boots around them.” They turned a corner and she waited until a couple of crew passed them before continuing. “What do you mean, everyone’s sending mail? I thought there was a ban.”
“Just while we were gatebound.” Kaili made a rude noise. “You can bet that wasn’t popular. The Joy may look like a warship, but we’re more a glorified customs inspector. Sure we’ve all simmed on combat rigs, but the tightest we’ve had to play it was that business with the Ro. At that, the most we did was orbit Myriam and wait on the scientists. I’d expect a mutiny if the captain tried to shut us up here.” She laughed. “Or my parents’ll register a complaint.”
“I’d like to call to my dad,” Mac said before she thought.
“It’s not quite talking,” explained the orderly. “One stream of newspackets goes into the gate, addressed to Earth or wherever. Another set returns. They squeal at close to light when they hit the system. The bigwigs can arrange for sequencing, which is close. If both speakers are near a gate, the time delay can be seconds. But regular folks like us make do with a two- to three-hour swing. Still, keeps you in touch. Last I heard from . . .”
Mac let Kaili’s voice drift by, nodding at the right places. Plenty of time for some judicious editing, she thought, almost appalled to feel reassured.
They didn’t use intership transit, the medlab not being that far. Kaili made Mac laugh with tales of her newly retired parents’ efforts to coax an Earth-type garden from their yard on Mars. For her part, Mac talked about her brothers, finding unexpected peace sharing Owen’s fall from dignity upon fatherhood and skirting like an abyss how much she could use Blake’s advice.
“Not taken, hmm?” Kaili’s teeth gleamed in wide smile. “You should introduce us, next pass by Earth. He sounds yummy.”
Blake? Mac considered her brother, trying to see it, and shook her head. “I’ll introduce you, but then you’re on your own. He’s the type the family likes to call ‘an individual. ’ Translates as royal pain, sometimes.”
“But not always.”
“No,” Mac said softly.
The Origins part of the ship was deserted. Gillis had merely expedited the move to Myriam. Probably like releasing a flood. Everyone, she’d been told, had willingly packed and were now busy checking the transfer of their equipment to planet-bound shuttles. Leaving her behind, she sighed to herself, then wondered how she’d become so attached to archaeologists and their work. She’d see them before departure. Doubtless the time to become maudlin.
They stopped outside the door Kaili indicated as the Wasted’s quarters, both nodding a greeting to the guard stationed beside it. “Thank you, Kaili.”
“I’ll be around. Stay out of trouble for a while, Mac. Hear me?” With that, Kaili left.
Mac steeled herself and entered the room.
For an instant, she was sure Kaili taken her to the wrong place, even though she’d been told they’d used a portion of the newly abandoned work areas.
There’d hardly be a guard at any other door.
Implying this was the right room. But there were candles burning beside the bed, albeit a bed with an unconscious Dhryn on it. And the last person on the ship she expected to find seated beside that bed looked up at her, dipping his head in acknowledgment, while Doug Court rolled his eyes at her from his station by the monitors.
“Dr. Connor,” Wilson Kudla said quietly. “Have you come to join our vigil?”
“Our?” She took a step sideways in order to see Kudla’s disciples sitting cross-legged on the floor behind their leader. Their eyes were closed and their lips moved in silent unison, their habit when forced to chant outside their tent. Small mercies, Mac thought. “Who let you in here, Kudla?” she demanded, keeping it low.
“Are we not part of this mission? Do we not have the same clearance as the rest?”
Only because you didn’t go anywhere, so no one thought to cancel it. Mac fumed, eyes flitting between the Wasted, who wasn’t dead yet, and the insufferable Human at his side. “Of course,” she gritted out between her teeth. “May I ask why you’re here?”
He swept both arms around to include the Wasted, ceiling, and a portion of the deck in the gesture. “This is one of the Lost Souls. Those who cry to me from the past.” His gaze sharpened. “I describe them most clearly in Chapter Thirteen.”
“Chapter Thirteen,” echoed the disciples in an ardent monotone.
Doug coughed in the background.
Mac forced a smile, the tightness in her jaw warning her the result was probably unpleasant. “I’ll have to look that one up again.” As if aware he was being deleted, Kudla routinely messaged fresh copies of his opus, Chasm Ghouls: They Exist and Speak to Me. “You shouldn’t neglect your writing,” she ground out. “There’s nothing you can do to help here—at the moment, anyway.”
“We’re doing no harm.” Kudla had a forgettable face that tended to park itself at vaguely preoccupied. Mac was startled to see him frown with determination. “We wish to stay.”
Ready to have the guard haul them out, her curiosity got the better of her. “Why?”
“He should not be abandoned.”
“The med staff—”
His narrow-set eyes actually flashed with outrage. “Would you wish no other companions while awaiting your destiny, Dr. Connor? I think not!”
She sent Doug a helpless glance and he mouthed, “It’s okay.”
It did keep the author and his disciples busy.
“Stay,” Mac agreed. “But you won’t touch him. Get rid of the candles. Obey every order you’re given by Doug here, or those who replace him, and do not—” she stressed the word, “—engage the Wasted in conversation if he wakes. I’m to be called. These aren’t negotiable, Kudla.”
“Lost Soul,” he corrected.
She sighed. “Call him what you want. Just don’t interfere with his care. Understand me?”
He stood and half bowed, sweeping back the voluminous brown robe he affected. It would have looked dignified except the fabric was caught under his stool and he lost his balance, the disciples scrambling up to save him from a fall.
Mac sighed again.
Humans.
“Thank you for coming.” Mac stroked through her ’screen, storing her work. For the first time in a while she was struck by the blue tinge of her fingers. He brought it out in her, she thought without resentment, watching Cayhill’s approach.
He took his time, his eyes darting around the room. She let him.
It looked liked a hospital room. Or pending morgue, Mac reminded herself. The former captain of the Uosanah lay on his side, festooned with machinery more alive than he appeared to be.
Cayhill’s eyes passed over Kudla and his disciples, now happily huddled together in one corner, touched on the orderly station, now empty, and stopped at the Wasted. “I thought it would be dead by now.”
“Nothing we’ve done,” Mac admitted, rising to her feet. There’d been no change, no breakthrough. The nearest possible help? She was looking at him.
Giving her a glare as if to imply this was all her fault—true—the Joy’s head physician wandered around the room, hands hovering over various instruments. Most appropriated from his medlab. His path wove with seeming casual-ness closer and closer to the unconscious being, until finally, he halted by the bed. “What’s wrong with him?” Almost reluctant.
“A Dhryn can undergo a second metamorphosis,” Mac explained, moving to the other side. “The change from oomling to adult form? They all do that. The second, the Flowering, changes an adult into something more specialized.”
He flinched back. “The feeders.”
“Yes. But not in this case.” She laid her hand on the blue-stained sheet. “This is the Wasting. I was told it happens when the second metamorphosis fails. Ordinary Dhryn shun such individuals, ignoring their existence even when a Wasted is driven by hunger to attack the living, or feed on the d
ead. They don’t live long, regardless.”
“I can see why.” Cayhill gazed down at the alien. “The skin is degenerating at every point of stress. The resulting fluid loss—What are you doing for his pain?”
“Nie rugorath sa nie a nai.” At his puzzled look, Mac realized she’d spoken in Dhryn. “ ‘A Dhryn is robust or a Dhryn is not.’ They have no medical databases, Dr. Cayhill. There’s nothing we can do.”
His pale eyebrows drew together. “That’s absurd,” he snapped. “At least get him off this bed and into a suspension chamber—take the pressure off skin and bone.”
“Anything else?” she asked innocently.
Cayhill’s frown deepened into suspicion. “Oh, no, you don’t. I can’t be involved in his care. I told the captain. I can’t deal with alien patients, Dr. Connor. It’s another specialty altogether. I’m not capable—”
“Not even the Dhryn are capable of dealing with this patient,” Mac pointed out. “I could dissect him—hopefully figure out the percentage of the population that ends up this way and why. My team is researching his past, the life on his planet—hopefully they’ll figure out how the Dhryn came to be as they are.” She could no longer decipher his expression, but kept going. “This Dhryn believes he no longer exists, Cayhill. What he needs is someone who won’t let him die.” She took a deep breath. “Please.”
His fingers reached out to the bed, but he continued to hold Mac’s eyes with his. “Why do you care?”
The question echoed hers of Kudla, who watched all this from his corner. She chose to take it at face value, as honest rather than more probing after her hidden motivations or unresolved guilt.
The truth, then.
“I’m not like you, Dr. Cayhill,” Mac said quietly. “My work deals with species, not individuals. I follow changes in populations over time, how they interact with others, their environments. Bear with me, please.” This as he scowled his impatience. “I want you to understand something. The drives acting on living things—that’s what I do. And right now, all around us, those drives are colliding. The result will be extinction. The only real question left is who goes first. I can imagine destroying the Dhryn.” Mac looked down at the Wasted and shrugged. “But when I stand here, all I see is someone as trapped as we are.”
Without a word, Cayhill took a scanner from the nearby table and passed it over the Dhryn. As abruptly, he stopped, closing the instrument in his fist as if the results offended him. “I won’t put up with interference,” he informed her almost fiercely. “Not even from you. I want that understood, Dr. Connor. If he’s my patient, I’m in charge.”
Mac carefully didn’t smile. “Of course. Just let us know what you’ll—”
“I have my own supplies and staff,” he interrupted. “Let me get to work. For what good it will do.”
With a nod, she went to the Wasted’s head and leaned over his ear, purposefully speaking Dhryn. “You’d better listen to him, Lamisah. He’ll make your life miserable if you die under his care.”
When she straightened, Cayhill was staring at her, patentedly dismayed. “He doesn’t speak Instella?”
“He does,” she assured him. “And he seems used to Humans. But don’t expect a typical doctor-patient conversation. Dhryn don’t discuss biology, including their own bodies. If you need me, I’ll be available. Anytime.”
He stiffened. “I won’t need you, Dr. Connor.”
“If he needs me,” she modified, very quietly.
Cayhill waited for a few seconds, as if to make sure she knew he wasn’t giving in, then nodded.
“Dr. Connor! Dr. Connor!”
“I know I’m late,” she told the Grimnoii shambling up behind her, making sure to give it room. The creatures managed to sound twice as large as they were, even inside a starship. Useful technique, Mac thought, remembering the packed corridors of Base in spring.
There’d been nothing more from Emily or Case in the mail from the courier. Nothing personal, she clarified. The detailed reports waiting in her imp had gone a long way to easing her alarm. Emily Mamani at full throttle could give Kammie lessons in data dumping. None of it came sorted or annotated or indexed, just an “Oh, right. Mac wanted updates,” tossed her way, loaded with schematics and Em-only jargon and the occasional salacious cartoon.
Annoying and utterly normal.
“Normal’s wonderful,” she said out loud.
“Pardon?”
Mac shrugged an apology. “Talking to myself. Human thing.” She glanced at the alien, recognizing the array of curved knives. Grimnoii facial features were sufficiently distinct to Human eyes to set them apart as individuals, but she found it quicker to tell them apart by their hardware. It would have helped if they had names, but Rumnor was the only Grimnoii on board who had—or would admit to—one. For all she knew, the Sinzi required their staff to go nameless and Rumnor was a rebel.
Equally likely, she reminded herself, “Rumnor” wasn’t a name at all, but a some kind of rank, like “pack leader” or “cider enabler.” About the only sign of precedence was that he tended to speak up first. But then, the others usually caroled in with their contribution pretty quickly.
Undeterred, Mac had applied her own mental labels to keep them straight. This one was Fy-Alpha, Fy-Beta’s belt sporting barbed darts. The other Sinzi had Rumnor, plus the two Mac called Ureif’s Alpha and Beta, fond of axes and spears respectively.
Not that she’d use the names to their melancholy faces. She was becoming more diplomatic. When she remembered.
“Is Fy already there?” Mac asked.
“Of course.” This followed by a sigh so heavy and prolonged it implied the universe itself had ended yesterday and they’d been left behind. Mac, taking the hint, picked up the pace. “I bring her the latest newspackets through the gate plus more data from the planet.”
More data? “Anything I should know?”
“Do you perform comparative studies on reconstructions of technological remains based on molecular analyses, Dr. Connor?”
“Every Tuesday,” she said, straight-faced.
The Grimnoii shook his head ponderously. “You are a tricky one.”
Since they met their escort to the meeting at this point, Mac was left to wonder if being “a tricky one” was a desirable reputation to have among well-armed aliens.
Their escort, a tall friendly woman named Elane, walked them to the by-now familiar tube door, coding the request to send them on their way. Another escort would await them at the other end. Dump the tourists in the river and net them downstream. Although Mac and Fy-Alpha would have fit within the same bolus, to her relief it had become practice for the weapon-festooned aliens to travel alone.
Plus crusty bits from their happily weeping eyes tended to stray.
The door closed after the Grimnoii and it was Mac’s turn. “Have a nice trip,” Elane told her as she stepped inside.
“See you later.” Mac grinned, finding her balance despite the way her feet sank in at first. Getting to be a pro at this. The walls flowed together behind her and she turned to press her back against the far wall, waiting for the bolus to move. Today’s scent was fresh cut wood, most likely a crew suggestion.
She felt her body press into the yielding surface and relaxed, ready for the odd sensation as the bolus dropped away and flipped over.
. . . scurry . . . scurry . . .
Only knowing she had to be able to hear stopped the scream in her throat.
Nothing.
The bolus merrily swooped and whirled its way toward its destination.
Nothing.
Mac took small, careful breaths, forcing herself to think instead of panic. Panic was so much easier. She ran her eyes over the rest of the inner surface, studying every pink centimeter. There were no dimples or other marks to imply something else was along for the ride. She was alone.
Except for her imagination.
“Bah.” She didn’t need false alarms.
At this rate, she’d be imagining
she and Norris had brought the Ro’s walker to the Uosanah in the first place. That they’d flown together, its telltale sounds conveniently masked by argument and accordion.
That they were on the Joy, not the derelicts.
“Stop that,” Mac told herself, aghast. The Gathering had developed ways to detect the Ro and their walkers; Dhryn fabric screens disabled them.
Screens that hadn’t worked on the Uosanah.
“New rule,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “No thinking in a bolus.”
But she couldn’t hold back one more.
Just because something was terrifying didn’t make it stupid.
“Take a seat and wait over there, Dr. Connor. Thank you.”
Mac didn’t want to sit. She wanted nothing more than to jump up on the captain’s long polished table and shout for them all to listen. Stamping her feet.
And having gained their attention, she wanted to insist this mass of civilized, responsible beings stop whatever they were arguing about—said argument having continued despite her arrival—and convince her she was wrong.
The Ro couldn’t be on board.
Mac sighed. Being a civilized and responsible being herself, she walked over to the row of chairs indicated, now lining the transparent wall overlooking the bridge, and sat beside Mudge.
She took a quick census. The large room was doing its best to hold over thirty individuals, and Humans, despite the furnishings, were in the minority. Herself, Mudge, a member of the crew by the door, and the captain, standing at the shoulder of the Sinzi-ra at the far end of the table. A waste, thought Mac, noticing the chairs suited very few of the posteriors presently planted in them. From where she sat, she could see a bench with cushions, but it was occupied by someone’s feet.
She felt sorry for Ureif, if he took his guests’ comfort as personally as Anchen had.
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