Everyone else might want a visit from the Ro. Never again, vowed Mac, with a restrained shudder.
Did her staff and friends consider her obsessed by her midnight visitor? Maybe. For Mac’s part, she was appalled by how completely everyone else had accepted the Ministry’s version of events: that she and Emily had surprised vandals planning to sabotage the pods; that Emily had seen too much, and been taken to keep her silent, that Otto Rkeia, career thief and presumed ring-leader, had met his death by misadventure during that sabotage.
As if “death by misadventure” could somehow encompass being glued to an anchor of Pod Six, thirty meters below the surface of the Pacific.
Not only had everyone at Base let Emily Mamani slip from their lives, they actually believed they themselves were safe. That anything was safe.
What was she thinking, Mac chastised herself, bringing Mudge here, hinting she’d reveal secrets others had died, were likely dying, to protect? “A threat to the species . . . where on that scale . . .” She refused to remember the rest of that voice.
Heedless of her inner turmoil, her unwelcome visitor stopped to point at a shoulder-high folding screen of black lacquered wood, presently perch to three gray socks, a large lumpy brown sweater, and a pair of faded blue coveralls twin to those Mac wore. “Don’t they give you living quarters?”
Mac waved at the lab end of her office. “I like to stay with my work.” He gave the worktables loaded ceiling-high with boxes and storage bags a doubtful look. “Incoming postdocs,” she lied, unwilling to admit she’d had no students apply to work with her this season. Why would they? She’d abandoned Base last year, produced no results, attended no conferences, ignored messages, missed interviews. Unreliable. Unproductive. Unworthy. Mac was counting on the coming season and its results to set things right.
The boxes and bags were Emily’s. Her belongings kept being sent here, without warning, from wherever they were found. Thoroughly searched and documented before Mac saw them, with no explanation or advice on what to do with them; she let them pile up. Archaeologist’s tools and flamboyant jewelry from the dead home world of the Dhryn. Slashed silk and broken furniture from guest quarters on Base. Sleeping bag and tent from Field Station Six. A collection of erotic novels and exotic kitchen gear from the Sargasso Sea. Mail-order llama statues.
Flotsam from a woman’s life. How far could you drift before being lost? Mac wondered.
The Ro had taken part of Emily’s flesh and somehow traded it for no-space, so she could travel with them, talk to them. How long could a body endure that connection? How long could a mind?
Well aware of that connection, the IU and the Ministry desperately wanted to find Emily Mamani and any like her, to reestablish communication with the Ro. The real reason for their attention to Base. To Mac. Emily’s things?
More bait.
Forgive me, Emily had asked, the night she’d left.
She was a hero now, of sorts. To those who knew. A Human who’d given up everything to try and stop the Dhryn. She’d known the truth; tried in vain to tell Mac.
Forgive me, Mac thought, then tensed as Mudge laid his hand on a nearby crate, one of several forming a lopsided pyramid in the center of the large room. The stack, Emily’s equipment from Field Station Six, looked regrettably like a shrine. No guarantees any of it still worked. The Ministry had left it in pieces. Mac had reassembled the console as best she could, but Emily would have to rebuild the tracers, test everything first.
It had been Mac’s decision to keep Emily’s field equipment at hand and ready, a decision those who’d been here last year acknowledged with silent, dismayed looks whenever entering her office. Especially Lee, once hopelessly smitten with Emily’s lush looks and boldness, who’d found the love of his life in quiet, shy Lara Robertson-Herrera from biochem a mere month after Emily’s disappearance. When he saw the crates, he’d actually flinch.
Did they think she didn’t notice? She was stubborn, not blind.
The waterproofed gear she’d use this field season was stacked outside on the terrace, ready for pickup by t-lev. Mac was simply ready for Emily’s return.
Whenever that might be.
Mudge tapped one crate with a stubby forefinger, as if he’d guessed its contents from her reaction. “Haven’t you found a replacement for Dr. Mamani yet? Surely she had collaborators.”
Oh, yes. Invisible aliens, able to sidestep space, utterly ruthless and bent on genocide. Mac shook her head. “No. No one available, that is,” she qualified. His skeptical look made her fumble for an explanation. “The tracer technology we were using was imported.” The present euphemism for anything alien, although eager innovation rapidly blurred whatever was in Human hands for more than a week. Patent law was a booming business. “Em—Dr. Mamani was working with it on her own.”
As far as Mac knew. From scuttlebutt through academic channels, she’d heard how “officials” had swept through the Sargasso Sea Research Outpost, Emily’s other home, with such fierce thoroughness that lawsuits had been filed and lost, five doctoral students had attempted to transfer elsewhere, an effort that resulted only in attracting further scrutiny (Mac had heard the phrase “scoured to their toenails” used and didn’t doubt it), and the reputation of the scientists left rocked by Emily Mamani’s wake best described as “tenuous.”
The “officials” had claimed to be hunting clues to Emily’s disappearance. Mac wondered how long anyone would continue to buy either the excuse—or its truth. Emily’s younger sister, Maria, wouldn’t take Mac’s calls anymore. Not that she had news to give her.
Mac’s troubled thoughts must have shown on her face. Mudge came back and sat in one of the two chairs in front of her desk, eyes fixed on her. “This place is what I expected, Norcoast. Not you.” His eyebrows drew together. “You’ve changed.”
Somehow, Mac knew he didn’t mean her new haistyle or lack of The Suit. “People do,” she said noncommittally.
“It’s more than that.” His frown deepened, acquiring puckers beside his eyes. “But I didn’t come here to pity you.”
Ouch. Mac almost smiled. “You came to revoke my license,” she reminded him.
His eyes gleamed. “I would if I could, believe me.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’ve taken the Trust away. Surely you knew?”
Mac was grateful her desk was close enough she could put her hip to it for support. “There was,” she ventured, “some talk of emergency measures during the—incident—last year.”
“Some talk?” Mudge slammed his palm against the arm of the chair. “The government—don’t ask me what branch, because I get a different set of names every week—took control then and kept it. I get no reports. Your Dr. Noyo’s applications went over my head . . . approved without my so much as seeing them. I spent months waiting for the one person I could expect to tell me the truth about the Trust, only to find I wasn’t permitted to talk to her. In all but name, Norcoast, there is no more Trust.”
Her heart fluttered in her chest, as if looking for a way out. If this was some favor from Nik, it was no favor at all. “I didn’t know,” Mac said. “I—I’d assumed Kammie was a better negotiator than I’d been. Or that, under the circumstances, you’d been unusually—” she changed kind to “—amenable to this year’s projects.”
“Convenient, your being away.”
Provoked, Mac lunged to her feet. “I was looking for my friend—”
Mudge waved his hand placatingly. “Sit down, Norcoast. You might be pigheaded and narrow-minded, but I never believed you were a willing part of this.”
Sorting a compliment from that could cause a headache. Mac settled for a testy: “Thanks. Given you can’t revoke my license, for which I won’t deny I’m grateful, why did you come?”
“I want to see for myself.”
“See what?” Mac asked, dreading the answer. Sure enough, Mudge thrust a thick finger in the direction of shore. “No. Absolutely not. I can’t possibly—”
“Why? If there’s nothing wrong, what will it hurt?”
“With you,” Mac pointed out, “there’s always something wrong.”
He leaned back in the chair and didn’t quite smile, although Mac sensed Mudge felt close to victory. “I’m willing to overlook your people’s usual transgressions,” he said generously. “The footprints, the broken limbs, the misplaced sample vials. Picnics.”
How about the massive scar from a Ro landing site—the tracks from teams of investigators—the doubtless intact passage left by a panic-stricken Dhryn carrying her up the slope? Aliens where they didn’t belong. Not part of Mudge’s worldview.
Or, until recently, her own.
Mac swore under her breath.
“Pardon?”
“I said it’s not possible.” As his face clouded, she temporized, “Yet. The webbing lines to the shore haven’t been set up. No way to get there. You’ll have to come back in—” Mac gauged the limit of Mudge’s patience and doubled it for negotiating room, “—say, two weeks.”
He pursed his lips, then shook his head. “Too long. The undergrowth will be up, obscuring details. You have skims, levs. I’d settle for a kayak.”
Feigning shock, Mac widened her eyes. “I can’t believe you said that, Oversight. After all the precautions, the truly extraordinary care Norcoast insists on using to protect the Trust lands—”
“Where were you?” With a quickness as surprising as his change in tactic, Mudge lunged forward to try and capture her left hand. Her new hand. “How did that happen?”
Mac stepped back, putting her fingers out of reach. “A skim accident.”
“You don’t lie well, Norcoast. Not to me.”
“I’ve never lied to you,” Mac protested.
“Until today.”
Was this some bizarre test of her obedience? Had Oversight been part of what happened last year? Was his arrival within the same hour as one of the few of the Ministry’s agents she knew on sight, ’Sephe, a coincidence or by plan?
Her head hurt. Spies and lies. If it weren’t for the stakes involved, she’d gladly forget both. “You’ve missed the last transport, Oversight,” Mac informed him. “I’ll have someone set you up with quarters for the night.”
Mudge stood, looking as dignified as possible considering he was still dripping wet despite his rainsuit and patently frustrated. And angry. Possibly even betrayed. Oh, she knew that mix. “We’ll find you dry clothes,” Mac offered. With an inward shudder at the thought of Mudge in conversation with anyone else at Base, she continued: “But I’ll have to ask you to stay in your room. Supper will be sent up. There’ll be a t-lev at dawn to take you back to Vancouver.”
“Don’t bother. I’m not leaving.”
Mac blinked at him. This was her tactic, not his. Salmon tipped and touched overhead, music on the damp sea breeze coming through the partially open door. “There’s a time to be stubborn, Oversight,” she began, “and a time—”
“Would you?”
She didn’t dare hesitate. “Yes. In your place, I’d go home.”
“Lying. I told you that you aren’t good at it, Norcoast.”
They glared at one another. Mudge’s usually florid face was pale and set. His thick fingers fussed at the fasteners of the raincoat he’d kept on, as if confident they’d be leaving at any minute now to head out in the rain. That she’d give in.
The worst of it? Mudge only asked for what was right and due. Mac thought of the interminable arguments they’d had through the years. Those she’d lost had been exactly like this one, where the moral high ground hadn’t been under her feet, but his.
She steeled herself. The landscape had changed. The stakes weren’t research proposals or summer funding. She owed loyalty to more than a single stretch of glorious wilderness.
“Go home, Oversight,” Mac said very gently.
These days, Mac’s office boasted a couch that could reassemble itself into a bed. A handy place to dump her coat in the daytime; convenient at night, for the long hours she’d been keeping in order to catch up with her work. Comfortable enough, given sleep had become a duty she’d rather avoid. It went without saying that the security team applauded her decision to stay in one location, instead of reopening her separate living quarters upstairs. Equally obviously, her friends and colleagues trusted this wasn’t a lifestyle choice she planned to foist on them, too. As far as Mac could tell, they’d at last abandoned hope she’d return to normal herself.
Tonight, as usual, Mac didn’t bother changing the couch to a bed. She shrugged off her coveralls and left them on the floor. Turning off the interior lighting, she padded barefoot to the door to the terrace. She pushed it wide open with one hand, stepping around the half-drawn curtains, and stood gazing out.
No stars in sight, but the rain had taken a rest, leaving drops to line the undersides of every surface. The drops sparkled, refracting light from the dimmed glows marking step and rail, catching on spiderwebs. The ocean was dimmed as well, its ceaseless movement damped to a complex murmur rather than a roar. That would change with the tides and the wind.
Mac absorbed the calm of the world, breathed in its peace.
It was only the chill dampness that raised gooseflesh on her arms, belly, and legs. It was only her supper, sitting uneasily on a day that put Charles Mudge III in guest quarters and a Ministry spy on her staff, that made her flinch at a splash in the distance.
Mac refused to admit otherwise, for the same reason she came outside every night, to stand in the dark until it was clearly her choice to go inside and turn on lights.
She would not be changed by them.
The near shore of Castle Inlet was out of sight from here, even in daylight. “I should talk to Kammie,” she whispered aloud. And say what? That this year, approval for Norcoast’s research would have been granted for anything? That this year, they wouldn’t have to confess their missteps to Charles Mudge III? “And I’m sorry about it?” Mac asked the empty sky.
Maybe that was why she was still awake, well past midnight.
Patter patter patter. Thud.
Heart pounding, Mac rushed to the railing and peered downward, trying to find the source of the sounds. There! A hunched silhouette passed in front of the lights on the walkway below, then ducked under the railing.
A splash—followed by the rhythmic sound of someone beginning to swim, badly.
“I don’t believe it,” Mac muttered, wheeling to run into her office. Give the security team some real work? After all, Mudge was hardly an athlete; he could drown. “Solving a few problems,” she spat, but ignored her imp, instead grabbing her coveralls from the floor. She didn’t bother trying to find shoes.
A moment later, Mac was in the lift tapping the clearance code for the lowermost level of Pod Three. She paced back and forth during the seconds it took to reach her destination, then squeezed shoulder first through the opening doors.
The smell of the ocean was intensified here, seasoned with the tang of protective oils and machinery. Like the others, this pod was open to the ocean underneath. Unlike the others, a third of that access was at wave height, through a gate wide enough to accommodate their largest t-lev, though with some admitted risk to paint and toes. Pod One held the fabrication and maintenance shops for the equipment and submersibles. This area was reserved for the repair and storage of Base’s well-used surface fleet—Tie McCauley’s domain, his meticulous nature clear in the gleaming order of tools and parts lining the curved wall. Woe betide the student—or staff—who disturbed a single item without permission. It was astonishing how unlikely timely repairs could become.
Tie had been elsewhere during the partial sinking of the pod. How guilt had stained that joy, to have an old friend safe when so many others . . .
An assortment of craft bobbed at anchor or hung from cabling. Mac headed for the gate itself, running along the dock that floated down the center of the expanse. Without a wasted move, she keyed open the inset access port within t
he gate, then dropped into the antique but always-ready skim Tie kept berthed next to it. The combination of grad students, fickle ocean, and Saturday parties made a quick retrieval craft an essential resource.
Mac ducked as she sent the skim beneath the half raised port, swinging it in a tight turn toward shore the instant she cleared the pod wall. Her hair somehow found its way into her eyes, despite its shorter length, and she shook her head impatiently. The skim, true to its name, paralleled the water’s surface once in motion. She kept it low, needing to slip under the walkways between the pods to find Mudge. It meant a teeth-jarring ride as the repellers—at this intimate distance—faithfully copied every tiny rise, shudder, and fall of the waves beneath.
He would pick the middle of the damned night, Mac growled to herself. There was barely enough glow from the walkways to pick out the pods on either side. That wasn’t a problem; Mac could have piloted through any part of Base with her eyes closed. But she wouldn’t find Mudge that way. Fortunately, Tie had rigged this skim with searchlights. Mac aimed two over the bow as she slowed, sparing an instant to hope everyone else was in bed sleeping.
The fool should be right there.
And he was. Mac let out the breath she’d unconsciously held as the light passed over the sweep of an arm against the black water. She brought the skim down in front of the swimming figure and leaned over the side, steadying herself as the craft rocked from end to end with each swell. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded as quietly as she could given her mood and the water.
Goggled eyes aimed up at her. Mudge had come prepared; she gave him that, noting the wet suit and hand flippers. One of those flippers waved at her. “Get—out of my—way.” Gasping, but not out of breath. Mac was impressed. Not always behind a desk, then.
It didn’t change anything. She glanced over her shoulder, checking for any sign they’d been noticed. All quiet, but Mac knew it couldn’t last. “Get in the skim, Oversight.”
Migration: Species Imperative #2 Page 4