Deruym Ma Nas, surprised or not, wasn’t about to be swayed. “She does not have to see you. You are—” he paused and blinked one/two at the tall alien, as if lost for the right word, then settled for: “—unfamiliar.”
Fy looked to Mac, who could only shrug, thinking of the days she’d spent waiting for the Progenitor to be ready to meet her first Human. “I’ll ask,” she offered.
“Isn’t there a safer place to wait?” Nik didn’t need to point at the lurking feeders.
“It is all right.” The Sinzi made a graceful come-hither gesture toward the silver-sparked walls. “I would prefer to stay here. These appear the oldest engravings. I would be grateful for the opportunity to record them.”
Nik looked uneasy. “Are you sure, Sinzi-ra?”
Mac had learned to read Fy’s fear and saw it now, in the tremble of fingertip, the distracted focus of the topaz eyes. To the Sinzi’s credit, she remained steadfast. “Will it matter where any of us are if the Progenitor chooses to feed?” She faced the Dhryn and lifted her recorder. “Deruym Ma Nas, may I have your permission?”
“You need none,” he told her. “These walls are meant to be read by all who come here, throughout the generations.” For an instant, Mac thought she detected something sad and resigned in Deruym Ma Nas’ expression, before it returned to impatient. “We must go.”
The Haven Dhryn disappeared within the archway, Her Glory with him.
Nik nodded to Mac, who began to walk with him after the Dhryn. She couldn’t help glancing back at the Sinzi. The willowy alien stood in the black-walled corridor, watching them leave her. She appeared composed, but her fingers were locked around her recorder. The lower half of her gown was stiff with dried Human blood. “Fy,” Mac suggested, “you might want to ignore what I said about moving slowly around aliens.”
An almost Human smile. “I understand.”
“Mac?”
“Coming.”
Fifteen steps through the arched door itself. Mac counted each, smelling metal, feeling the chill. Then the passage. Nik and their guide—still the only normal adult Dhryn they’d seen—led the way. Her Glory and Mac followed them.
Mac lifted her face, knowing the reason for the rhythmic pulse of warm air over her skin. She sniffed, disturbed by a faint decay.
Then they were out, into that world where flesh and biology ruled.
CONTACT
HUMANS WERE FAMED for their ability to grow accustomed to any marvel, to take the strange in stride. It made them easygoing crew-mates on alien ships, although a frustrating market to satisfy.
But not even Humans could grow used to this.
“Current count?” Hollans requested, sipping his tea. None of them left the Atrium these days. He had a cot near Telematics, took his meals within sight of the screens monitoring traffic through the transect.
And what traffic . . .
Day after day, Sinzi had been pouring into Sol System through every gate. Polite, noncommittal Sinzi, following protocol to the letter, requesting only a designated orbit for their ships to stay out of the way of whatever else moved to and from Earth.
Saying nothing else.
“Two hundred and fifty-three thousand, four hundred and two personal darts, five hundred and twelve liners.” The tech consulted a smaller screen. “That accounts for the entire registered Sinzi liner fleet, sir. I don’t have a reference for darts.”
Hollans shook his head. There wasn’t a species in the IU whose delegate hadn’t hammered—or the equivalent—on his door, demanding to know what the Humans were doing. Not a species who wasn’t desperately afraid the Sinzi were leaving its system for good, the transect gates on automated settings only. Traffic had virtually stopped.
The Sinzi were abandoning them to the Dhryn.
That was the latest.
“Sinzi-ra?” Hollans asked quietly, as he had so many times. “What are your people doing?”
Anchen, as she had each time before, smiled her perfect Human smile.
“They participate in the promise.”
24
RETURN AND REACTION
THE LANDSCAPE HAD AGED. Mac stared out over a grayed blue, its surface puckered and wrinkled by furrows deep enough to hide a starship. There were no wide ponds of shining black, no frosting of new life. The few feeders lay flaccid, their arms tipped into drying puddles.
With the others, she rode that improbable hand to the incredible wall of flesh, hollowed by nostrils able to engulf a lev as well as barges. Mac’s eyes dismissed what was irrelevant, seeking the face embedded in the wall.
And found it.
“Welcome, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol.” The same quiet, so-normal voice she remembered, with its familiar kind warmth. The same gold-and-black eyes.
No sequins. Perhaps the Progenitor spared her few remaining Dhryn that service. Seemed a shame.
“My previous Vessel told me you had served in grathnu again.”
“What?” Oh. Mac held out her artificial arm. “Not quite. You know what happened to Brymn Las?”
Those eyes could become cold. “The Ro interfered with That Which Is Dhryn.” The hand underfoot shook. “They must never do so again.”
“That’s what we hope,” Nik said.
“Ah. My Vessel. Welcome. You have done well. Very well. I had no doubt.”
Nik gave a deep bow. “Thank you. But, Progenitor—forgive my haste. We must leave this system at once. I’ll explain as we travel.”
“Of course.” A soft hoot, higher-pitched than other Dhryn. “We already answer the Call, my Vessel.” Her eyes moved to Her Glory. “Tell me, what is this?”
“Answer the Call?” Before Mac could do more than exchange looks of alarm with Nik, she felt a nudge against her back. From its direction, it had to be from Her Glory’s hand. Right, Vessel. “Well,” she began helplessly, “this is—”
“What do you mean—‘answer the Call’?” Nik interrupted, stepping forward. Deruym Ma Nas drew his weapons and moved to block the Human’s way.
“Do not threaten my Vessel,” the Progenitor chided her erumisah. “And do not fear.” This in a more gentle tone to Nik. “The empty ship receives the Call and responds; my Dhryn who crew her would otherwise never disobey me. We follow by my will.”
Mac’s heart pounded. Not good, she babbled to herself. Not good.
If Nik shared that choking fear; he didn’t show it. “I urge you to reconsider, Progenitor.” Calm, reasoned. “What we’ve done to your ship—it may not be enough to protect you from the Ro. We don’t know.”
“We will know, my Vessel,” She replied, as calmly, as reasonably, “when I attack them. We will know when I scour the Ro and its contamination from whatever world it has chosen. The Call will end. If others answered? You, my Vessel, will speak for me to those Progenitors. We will protect them, too. Together, we will continue until there are no Ro left alive.”
As the Progenitor spoke, feeder-Dhryn rose from Her surface, like pastel petals caught by Her breath. Some came so close Mac could see their oblong clear bodies, their boneless arms. Their mouths . . .
She froze in place; Her Glory heaved a wistful sigh.
Those eyeless faces seemed to acknowledge their Progenitor before all of them turned, using the fins on back and sides to stroke the air. They began moving toward the walls and ceiling of the vast chamber. Thousands, Mac realized numbly. Far less than she remembered. Far too many. As they reached their destination, they disappeared through holes in the walls she hadn’t noticed in her first visit. Doors—but to what?
The Progenitor smiled. “I will destroy my enemy.”
There were certain unavoidable ramifications to standing on a giant hand. Of course, even if there’d been time, Mac told herself, tact had never been her strong suit. “You know,” she ventured, “this might not be the best plan.”
Eyes of gold and black fixed on her. “It is my will.” She sounded more surprised than upset.
“The Dhryn are not a
lone, Progenitor.” Nik came to stand by Mac. “Others oppose the Ro. Let us bring warships from other species. End the threat of the Ro together.”
“They are our enemy—”
“Don’t you understand?” Mac couldn’t stop herself. “This Call—it won’t just be Ro on that planet! There’ll be other life!”
Were they watching the catastrophe of the Chasm unfold again?
The vivid blue underlid flashed over the Progenitor’s eyes, twice. Stress. Mac tensed, but the hand supporting them might have been carved from rock. When the great creature spoke, it was still in that reasoning-with-aliens tone. “Of course. The Ro require it.”
“For what?” Nik asked, silencing Mac with a look. “Why do the Ro require other living things, Progenitor?”
The first frown. “We do not think of it.”
The first evasion. For safety’s sake, Mac only imagined stamping her foot. They were close to something vital here, something that would finally make sense.
Nik must have sensed it, too. “They interfered with That Which Is Dhryn,” he pursued relentlessly. “Made you consume the life from worlds at their command. Why would they require life on those worlds, if they planned to remove it?”
For a moment, Mac didn’t think the Progenitor would answer. Her small lips worked as she remembered Brymn’s would do when he was disturbed. The breath moving past was deeper, with more force.
Was that a tremble in the hand?
She resisted the urge to grab Nik. They’d only fall together. “Please, Progenitor,” she said gently. “We seek the truth.”
“As do I,” came the response. Mac discovered she’d been holding her breath. “Bear with me, Lamisah. The fragments I have gleaned from the past resemble oomlings, precious because they represent continuance, but these never Freshen to the wisdom of adulthood. The most whole are the gifts from my predecessor, and She from Hers.” A sigh that shook the barren landscape below and whistled past the hand. “Yet they answer no more questions. My predecessors wished That Which Is Dhryn to survive the Ro—not understand them.”
“Trust me when I say we must understand them to survive,” Nik urged. “Let us try. Tell us, tell your lamisah, everything you can about living things and the Ro. You sent Brymn Las and your Vessel to Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol for that very reason.” He put his hand on Mac’s shoulder, pressed gently as if in warning. “She’s here, now. Earth’s foremost biologist. She can help.”
Nothing like an unearned promotion, Mac winced to herself. She attempted to be positive. Maybe salmon would have relevance.
“That’s me,” she said brightly.
The Progenitor’s gold-and-black eyes regarded her. “Will we need to find and kill them all?”
A perfectly reasonable question. Mac wished it wasn’t the one going through her mind about the Dhryn. Emily’d warned her. “I’ll need to know more about their life cycle,” she evaded. “How many it takes to reproduce—to make oomlings,” this as the Progenitor looked perplexed.
“I make oomlings.” With a low hoot—presumably at bizarre alien notions—echoed by Deruym Ma Nas and Her Glory.
Obviously the topic of Dhryn sex, or possible lack thereof, wasn’t going to help. Mac picked another tack. “What do Ro make?”
“Tools.”
“Machines?” Nik suggested. “Ships. Devices?”
The Progenitor pursed Her lips for an instant. “Servants. Servants of flesh and bone. Such as attacked you, Lamisah, and poor Brymn Las. The ones who hide within shields. The ones we learned to keep away from our world.”
Nik looked disappointed; he’d doubtless hoped for something, anything, new.
But Mac felt the stirrings of curiosity. “Why do the Ro make servants?”
“How else can they reach beyond their chambers?”
“Chambers?” An expression for no-space? “What do you mean?”
The hand moved away from the face and swiveled to give them a view of the Progenitor’s vast cavern. “Chamber,” She said with a gentle hoot, returning Her hand, and guests, to their original position.
More than living quarters, Mac thought. The only place She can survive. “The Ro have to stay there,” she guessed.
“Where are their chambers?” asked Nik, his eyes almost glowing. “Within their ships? On the worlds they choose?”
“They are not like us. Their chambers have holes, doors, to many places at once, places that flow together. The stories claim a Ro must open such a door to begin a world. Once opened, That Which Is Dhryn can reach in to kill it.” Her voice held immense satisfaction.
“Explaining why that opening to no-space might stay open,” he mused, “but why for only so long? A failsafe . . .” He frowned. “I could see something set to grab an attacked Ro back inside—but why take away the oceans, too? We’re missing something.” He looked at Mac.
As if she’d know. She obligingly frowned back. “You said a Ro opens its chamber to ‘begin a world.’ ” She pounced on the odd phrase. Ominous was more like it. “What does that mean?”
The hand trembled again. “I do not think of it. We do not think of it.”
“You must, Progenitor,” Nik insisted. “Time’s running out.”
No need for a reminder. Mac shuddered. They were on their way to the next target. She was not going to think about where or what.
As if in echo, the Progenitor said, “I do not think of it.” Her lips began to quiver; Her eyes flashed blue.
Before Nik could press Her further, Deruym Ma Nas put away his weapons. “Rest,” he rumbled in Instella. “Allow me to answer your Vessel, my Progenitor.”
“My erumisah is wise.” This with a breathlessness that had nothing to do with the pulses of air through the great nostrils.
“Do you know what the Ro are doing?” Nik asked him.
“We do not know,” an emphasis, “anything beyond the evil nature of the Ro. My Progenitor has directed our search of the archives. I am,” a graceful bow, “the Senior Archivist.”
Mac spared a moment to wonder if he knew of her and Brymn’s ruthless foraging through the oldest of the Haven Dhryn’s textiles, then decided it couldn’t matter now.
Sure enough, Deruym Ma Nas gave a forlorn hoot. “A meaningless title, since no others remain.” He touched a few of the imps decorating his torso. “I keep their trust.”
Mac blinked. He could easily have over a hundred of the devices on those strings. The amount of data that implied?
But they had no time. “Could we hear your informed speculation on the Ro, Deruym Ma Nas?” she asked courteously.
Judging from Nik’s face, he’d settle for a wild guess, so long as it moved them closer.
You couldn’t rush Dhryn. She’d learned that lesson.
In response, Deruym Ma Nas folded his arms, the severed wrists outward, in case they forgot his earned rank. “We discovered forty-nine references concerning the Ro and taste.”
“Taste? What does—” Mac frowned and Nik subsided. “Taste,” he echoed. “Please continue.”
“I’m hungry,” Her Glory whispered in Mac’s ear. She patted the huge Dhryn, but kept her attention on the archivist.
“In these references to taste,” Deruym Ma Nas continued, his eyes not leaving Nik, “there is commonality. Whether embroidered within fabrics, or placed into mosaic, even within the stories remembered by my Progenitor, each refers to the foul taste of the worlds contaminated by the Ro, of how this taste was deemed unfit for the Progenitors to share.”
“Because this was your enemy,” Nik guessed.
Human bias. As she shook her head, Mac abruptly grasped the import of what Deruym Ma Nas was trying to tell them. The taste of what? “The Ro used the Dhryn to remove the original life from chosen worlds,” she thought out loud. “But when the Dhryn rebelled and attacked the Ro, those worlds still had a taste, but now so different the Progenitors couldn’t consume it.” Her voice rose with excitement. “Don’t you see? It means those worlds didn’t
stay barren. The Ro had put life on them. Their kind of life.”
“Why?”
“The oldest imperative of them all.” Did they feel the rightness of it? “Individual survival isn’t enough—your kind must continue. The Ro aren’t adapted to no-space. Maybe nothing is.” Just passing through it with the Ro had made her sick; repeated trips had damaged Emily’s mind. “We know they came from a planet. Those who left it were committed to live in no-space. We’ve seen time flows differently there—they could have lost touch with their previous existence almost at once. They might have thought they could exist like that forever, only to discover they’d become impotent, damaged, maybe even dying.
“What would they do? Give up the future?” Mac shook her head. “Not the Ro I met. They could make biological machines, but that wouldn’t be good enough. They’d want the real thing, to rebuild themselves. Time here would mean nothing to them. They had the tools. All they needed were living worlds to host their regeneration—fresh, sterile worlds, free of alien life to compete or contaminate. Then they find the Dhryn, the perfect—”
Stop right there, Mac thought, suddenly remembering where she was.
Too late.
“More Ro!” roared the Progenitor. “They used us to make more?”
Her hand spasmed, toppling them all. Nik threw his arm over Mac as they fell, holding them flat against the palm.
CONTACT
“WE HAVE INCOMING SHIPS, SIR,” the transect technician reported, smoothly, professionally.
“Finally!” her supervisor burst out. “You’d think with the Sinzi here, everything would run like clockwork. But no, traffic’s off and if we get one more complaint about missing newspackets, I’ll—”
“Sir. Sending to your station.” Only someone standing close by could have seen her hands tremble. Or someone who’d been there when the Dhryn had arrived.
“Got it.” One look at the display and her supervisor reached for the emergency com control, then thought better of it and reached for the secure line to Earth.
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