Mac felt a little that way herself. Security. Locked doors. Things hadn’t all stayed the same; most of the new changes hadn’t been for the better. Even these youngsters could see it.
“Did you talk to him? Get his name?” she asked, venturing over the abyss of a startling hope. Could it be? Then common sense took over. Nikolai Piotr Trojanowski would hardly be stopped by the very security he’d put in place before leaving.
To go where?
Someplace she couldn’t.
“No. We just saw him, standing in the rain.”
From the fresh worry on both faces, she was scowling again. Mac forced a smile. “Then I’d better go see for myself. Thank you, both.”
Norcoast Salmon Research Facility, or Base, as those with even the slightest acquaintance with it learned to call the place, was made up of six large pods pretending to be islands, connected by a maze of mem-wood walkways from spring through fall, with equally temporary docks and landing pads for its fleet of mostly operational skims and levs. Base was staffed, again from spring through fall, by a varying number of research teams who followed their equally varied interests along the coastline and into the waters of not only this inlet, but from Hecate Strait and the Pacific to the smallest glacier-fed lake that fed a stream that completed the circuit traveled by salmon. For that was Base’s unifying purpose: to learn about these fish whose daily existence mattered to other life throughout this part of the world.
It was a part of the world Mac loved with a passion, from the rain-drenched forests to the wave-tossed ocean, from the wood-strewn beaches to the gravel beds high in the mountains that edged the coast. She loved Base as well, with its tidal flow of activity and eager minds. It didn’t matter if they struggled for funds, like any research institute. They were experts when it came to getting the most done with the least. There was pride here, a feeling that creative solutions were the best kind, and self-sufficiency mattered. In a sense, they worked the way their subjects lived: finding a way around any barrier, fixed on goals beyond themselves.
Goals kept you sane. Mac listened to the echo of her own footsteps, no longer muted by carpeting. Pod Three had been lucky: no major structural damage above the first floor, only one anchor pylon ruined beyond repair. A mess inside, mind you, having been tipped on its side by the Ro, but most of that cleanup had been finished before Mac’s return. The only lingering change was on the floor. It had been more economical to remove the seawater-soaked carpet than replace it. The cleaning staff were happy.
And these days, Mac preferred to hear footsteps.
Goals were better than waiting. Repairs to the rest of Base had taken all winter, and everything they’d had. Like an echo from the past, when Mac herself had been a student helping to repair storm damage to the original Base, winter staff and students had put aside their own projects to work alongside the construction crews. The months had sped by in a frenzied blur of activity, indoors when forced by wind and ice, outdoors whenever the elements cooperated, however slightly. The salmon would come again in spring—their goal was to be ready to greet them, intact.
And they were, Mac told herself proudly. Aside from minor cosmetic work that could be done over the summer, Base was back in business.
And if Mac had thrown herself into the reconstruction more than anyone else, if she’d lost more weight, gained more calluses, suffered more frostbite and cuts, no one had appeared to notice. It was just her being Mac.
And if she’d needed drugs to sleep without nightmares, if she’d dared not think beyond mem-wood rails and skim repairs, if she’d clung fast to what she could do, to escape what she couldn’t—well, that wasn’t anyone else’s business but hers.
What was happening, all those light-years away? What had already happened? When would the other shoe drop?
Pushing such thoughts away, deep into that cold, distant place she’d learned to keep them, Mac trailed the fingers of her right hand along one wall, lifting them to avoid a fresh cluster of hand-drawn posters. The corner of her mouth twitched. A little early in the season for a challenge between Preds and Harvs, but then again, the rivalry served to get the new students’ feet wet. Literally. Today’s posters were inciting an improbable combination of sponges, bats, and beer.
Pod Three—being administration and thus blessed by “official guests,” usually without notice—wasn’t supposed to have posters, particularly this type. Someone more concerned with official appearances would take these down later. Later still, they’d go back up. Mac grinned.
A pound of feet from behind. She glanced over her shoulder for the source, ready to leap out of the way if it were Preds heading for their skims. Whale song of any type tended to get them moving, in a hurry. Not Preds. Mac raised an eyebrow in surprise at the lanky man hastening toward her, his hands grabbing at the air as if to hold her in place. “John?”
“Mac! Wait!” John Ward, her postdoc student for several years, wasn’t a person to raise his voice indoors. Come to think of it, she’d never seen him run indoors either. An alarming combination.
“What’s wrong?” Hearing the edge in her voice, Mac took a deep, calming breath as John panted to a stop in front of her. They couldn’t be under attack. Things were back to normal. Earth had defenses and, as Mac had been told in no uncertain terms, there were People In Charge. What had happened here last year would never happen again.
She’d never let it.
Somehow, Mac pushed her dread aside, realizing there was a likelier scenario. “Did the new Harvs burn lunch?”
John’s scowl turned puzzled, then he shook his head and scowled again. “Maybe. Probably. But that’s not what’s wrong, Mac. You have to do something. Dr. ‘My Way or No Way’ Noyo has gone too far this time. Too far!”
This, from someone who wouldn’t criticize the weather, let alone a colleague? Mac leaned her shoulders against the wall to gaze up at the distraught man. The corridor was a bit public for a discussion of staff politics; on the other hand, it offered a choice of escape routes. Bonus. “What’s Kammie done now?” she asked, resigned. In Base, getting from A to B typically involved the entire alphabet.
“Only hired my new statistician without so much as asking me first. Honestly, Mac, one minute I’m so qualified you two make me overwinter here to help run the place—the next, I’m not consulted on what impacts my own department.”
“Your department?” Mac narrowed her eyes at him. Postdocs didn’t, in her experience, morph into administrators without notice. “And what department would that be?”
John turned pink from collar to hairline. “Oh. It’s not really a full department—not yet. You’re right, I shouldn’t call it that, but—”
“What are you talking about?” Mac interrupted.
“You know,” he insisted, then looked perplexed at the slow shake of Mac’s head. “You don’t. Oh, dear.”
“Enlighten me.”
“But . . .”
“Now would be good.”
John took a deep breath. “While you were—gone—and since I was stuck here over the winter anyway—I sent a proposal to Norcoast to offer a couple of new courses in stats, some higher level stuff, you know.” He warmed to his topic. “Filled the classes through to next fall with the first mailout. It was amazing! Which led to this little extra team of us, an office in Pod One, the need for a new theoretical statistician . . . of course someone who can add to ongoing research . . .” John’s voice trailed away as Mac continued to stare blankly at him. “It was in Kammie’s report,” he offered, then the pink drained from his cheeks so quickly he might have had chromatophores under the skin, like the octopi he loved. “I’m sorry, Mac. I didn’t mean—I know—it hasn’t been easy for you—”
Whatever showed on her face by this point stopped him in his tracks. “Sorry,” he finished lamely.
Would it ever end? Mac made the effort and shrugged off the apology. It hadn’t been possible to arrive back at Base and pretend she was the same person. There was the new hair, for o
ne thing. The new hand and wrist, for another. Not that her postdoc, her friend, was agonizing over those changes. He meant the brain damage they’d been told Mac had suffered in the supposed skim accident that had taken her hand.
That the damage was nothing of the sort, but rather the consequence of a series of high-handed and ruthless reconstructions of the language center of her brain to suit the needs of others? That when she was tired, words on a screen or page turned to gibberish and she’d resort to audio?
That when she dreamed, it was in no language spoken on Earth?
Not things she cared to admit to herself, Mac decided, let alone explain. But it wasn’t John’s fault.
She shrugged again, conscious that her silence wasn’t reassuring. “No need to apologize, John. You know what Kammie’s reports are like.”
He nodded his understanding. Kammie Noyo might be one of the foremost soil chemists on this or any planet, but her administrative reports were the driest possible combination of numbers and lists imaginable. Not to mention the woman’s compulsive use of footnotes. Even before Mac’s ‘accident,’ she’d read Kammie’s reports under bright light, with loud music and a cold ocean wind blowing through the room. And still nodded off.
After receiving Kammie’s mammoth accounting of what had happened at Base during her absence—and after one too many frustrating nights trying to puzzle through it—Mac had cut to the “Work Needed” list and filed the rest for later. Much later. If ever.
It seemed she’d been a bit hasty.
“Tell me now,” Mac scowled. “Starting with where you two found funds to expand teaching programs when a third of this place needed repairs.” The insurers had, with uncommon, if unknowing, accuracy, declared the destruction due to an act of war and refused to pay. Base might have been left crippled in the water, if it hadn’t been for Denise Pillsworthy, who, it turned out, had bequeathed everything she’d owned in life to Norcoast, including her patents.
They shouldn’t have been surprised, Mac reminded herself. Denise had only been happy when locked into her claustrophobic lab in Pod Six for days at a time, wearing thirty-year-old clothes, wrapping wire and her considerable brilliance around inventions she’d blithely toss at the world so it would leave her in peace. She’d had no family, only colleagues she alternately ignored or badgered. A couple of closer ties, perhaps, but none she’d let interfere with her work. “Don’t tell me you tapped Denise’s legacy—”
“Mac! No. I’d never use the repair funds. Kammie helped me apply for a grant. I thought—” He achieved a striking likeness to a puppy caught with a well-slobbered slipper. “I thought you’d be pleased.”
Mac remembered seeing the budget, albeit vaguely. Those hadn’t been numbers to her. They’d been faces. She’d blinked fiercely and skipped to the next section, having shed her tears for those lost in the attack last summer, when Pod Six had been sent to the bottom of the inlet by the Ro. Drowning the acoustics lab. Drowning friends and colleagues. Denise . . . Seung . . .
She stopped herself before the roll call kept going. Some nights, it ran an endless loop . . . a list of loss.
Which mustn’t tarnish the future. “Of course I’m pleased,” Mac said, her firm nod for both man and concept. “More stats up front? Just what we need around here. I’ve been hoping to find a way to boost students’ analytical skills—get them to the level we expect. My apologies for any misunderstanding, John. My fault.”
John still wore that anxious look, as if she hadn’t finished grading his latest paper. “I never meant to surprise you with this, Mac.”
Mac rolled her eyes theatrically. “I’m getting used to it. Just don’t assume I know everything, okay?” She tapped him lightly on the chest with two fingers. “So, what’s the problem with your new staff member? Not qualified?”
One of John’s virtues, both as a scientist and a person, was his transparent honesty. Mac watched the war between offended dignity and the truth play out on his face, and carefully didn’t smile. “She’s more qualified than I’d hoped,” he admitted glumly. “It’s just . . .”
“. . . you expected to be involved in such an important decision,” Mac finished for him. “Nothing wrong with that, John. Look at it this way. If the new prof doesn’t work out, you can fire her.” His look of dismay was almost comical. “Hadn’t thought of that?” she asked innocently.
“Mac—!” he sputtered.
Mac chuckled deep in her throat. “I suppose congratulations are in order. It isn’t every day I lose a postdoc and gain a department head.”
“You’re worse than Kammie.”
Her smile broadened.
“Fine,” John surrendered, hands in the air, relief brightening his expression. “You on the way to lunch or Box Hunting?” Valid question. This time of year, preparing gear for shipment to the varied field stations assumed the proportions of an emergency evacuation. Tie was already in his protective huddle over Base’s stockpile of tape, rope, bags, and crates. No matter. Students and staff were resourceful scroungers, not to mention creative. The only rule, unspoken but upheld—mostly—was packed boxes were off limits. If taped and labeled. And someone was sitting on them.
“I’ll have you know I finished my packing last week,” Mac informed her new department head serenely. The move to the field was something felt in her bones; she grew as impatient for it as her salmon for their natal streams. This year, she told herself, more than ever. To get away from everything and everyone. To lose herself in work. To escape the temptation to obsessively scan every available news release, looking for any signs of . . . “Lunch,” Mac blurted. “I’ll meet you there.” Turning to leave, she paused and smiled at him. “Don’t worry, John. The day will come when you get to trample over other people.”
“Thanks. I think.”
With a chuckle, Mac headed for the lift. She squeezed in with a group of damp, noisy Misses, short for “miscellaneous,” the catchall phrase for those researchers looking at areas other than predator/prey interactions or harvesting issues. On the way down two floors, to the surface level and walkway, she listened with half an ear to their discussions, a jargon-rich blend of technical chatter and shameless gossip. Not to mention an impassioned debate on the aerodynamics of flying monkeys.
At moments like these, if she hadn’t seen the Ro come close to destroying this pod for herself, she could forget it had ever happened. She could forget the sinking of Pod Six, the rooms ransacked by one or more of the invisible beings, Emily being abducted—or rather recruited—by them. She could believe the story planted by the Ministry of Extra-Sol Human Affairs: that a fringe group of xenophobic Humans had used violence to protest the first visit of a Dhryn to Earth.
Above all, she could forget the Dhryn.
“You coming, Mac?”
A student was holding the lift door open for her. The rest had already walked out. Mac managed a smile and nod. “Thanks.”
The main floor was jammed shoulder to shoulder with people bustling to or from lunch in the large common gallery. This early in spring, with teams waiting to head to field stations or out to sea, Base bulged with its maximum population. Late fall saw the return influx, but most went back to their respective universities or institutes for the winter, to write papers and take other courses. Mac and Kammie stayed year ’round, with those few whose work continued despite the ice, or because of it.
In normal years.
Mac made her way against the flow of foot traffic, nipping between those intent on their companions, their stomachs, or both, and managing, for once, not to sacrifice her toes. Mac wasn’t short, but it seemed each new crop of students arrived larger and more oblivious than the last. She could use warning lights and stilts at this rate.
The noisy, moving crowd thinned, then was gone by the time Mac reached the main entrance. She nodded a greeting to the two in body armor standing to either side, receiving an unusually wary look from both in return. Today’s pair was Sing-li Jones and Ballantine Selkirk. Quiet, reserved me
n who, being lousy poker players, had already “donated” most of their free time to Tie’s pod repairs. Knew why she was here, did they?
They were part of the team of four security personnel assigned by the Ministry to Norcoast, initially ordered to remain discreetly anonymous. This silly notion had immediately inspired the curious denizens of Base to a series of escapades aimed at filching underwear as well as identification.
Moreover, the notion had annoyed Mac. She expected names and personalities from everyone around her, even those whose job was to overdress, stand in one place, and loom. She got them.
Not that she’d needed them, she reminded herself. Selkirk was the tallest, Norlen shortest, Zimmerman had virtually no neck, and Jones tapped his left forefinger against his holster when thinking. Anonymous? Hardly.
Nothing against the men themselves, but on any given day, Mac’s feelings about guards of the looming variety ranged from still-annoyed to resigned. The suits of black gleaming armor made them easy to spot, if about as useful as coded door controls. At times less useful, given last week they’d let in three tourists and a census taker for the upcoming local election who’d insisted on interviewing everyone despite Mac’s repeated assurance only five people on Base qualified as residents, of whom only two ever voted.
If anything, the blinding obviousness of the guards at their post made Mac suspect other, more subtle precautions in place, not that any of the four had yet to admit it. All to protect this one pod against the return of a nonexistent group of fanatics.
Mac wouldn’t mind being guarded against the return of the real culprits, the Ro. After all, according to all experts and the Ro themselves, their previous attack had been aimed at her alone.
Not the flavor of the day, she reminded herself.
No mistake, anywhere the Ro had been, anyone they’d touched, was being watched. But the Ro—the powerful and mysterious Myrokynay—were now sought-after allies, popular with everyone. Everyone else, Mac corrected to herself. Apparently they’d been aware of the dangers of the Dhryn all along; supposedly they’d tried to communicate that peril without success; the assumption was, they’d been on guard.
Migration: Species Imperative #2 Page 2