Migration: Species Imperative #2

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “He received a message while you were saying your farewells. The news wasn’t good.”

  “About the Dhryn,” Mac guessed, sitting down. The air wasn’t this close, she told herself, making herself breathe more slowly. “Tell me.”

  “You tell her,” Fourteen said, covering his eyes.

  Kay combed his facial hair with one hand. “We called them the Pouch People. They lived on a moon in the Osye System. Prespace technology, a peaceful, pleasant culture. The Osye were letting them develop with minimal cultural interference. Some trade. Farmers, for the most part.”

  “Harmless!” the Myg wailed softly.

  Mac swallowed bile. “Go on,” she said.

  “There is nothing more to say. The Dhryn had come before. The Pouch People were warned of the signs but had no defense, no ships. The Dhryn came again and consumed every molecule of organic matter. Their world is lifeless. They are gone.”

  Mac leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “And the Dhryn. Did they stay?”

  “No.”

  “Again,” she whispered, chin in hand, tapping the side of her nose with one finger, deep in thought.

  “What is it?”

  Mac’s finger stopped tapping. “After complete victory, they abandon a world suitable for their species. Why?”

  Fourteen lowered his hands, wiping his eyelids as he did so. “They were afraid of being caught by the Osye.”

  “They had what they came for,” Kay added.

  Mac pursed her lips. “Or is it that they couldn’t stop there? Not yet, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She rested her artificial fingers on one end of the nearest table, then drew a line with her other hand from that point to the far side. “What if the Dhryn are on a journey,” Mac mused slowly. “A journey with a purpose—a destination. They don’t stay, because they can’t stay. They haven’t reached their final goal.”

  “Disturbing.”

  Mac sat up and gazed at Fourteen. “Yes, it is.”

  “If we knew that goal,” Kay ventured, “we could predict where they will strike next.”

  She shook her head. “We already have evidence that the Dhryn are returning where they’ve been before, as if following a trail set by advance scouts. But from what you told me, there was only one Progenitor ship seen at Ascendis. That’s a problem.”

  “Why?”

  “Previous attacks—our only reports are of a few, scattered incidents. We don’t know which of those were Dhryn for sure. And we can’t know where else the Dhryn have been. Add to that? We don’t know how many Dhryn there are. When I was on Haven, I saw the Progenitors leaving. It looked like dozens—but the Human ships reported more, at least three hundred.”

  “Why would only one attack at a time?” this from Kay.

  Fourteen: “Where are the rest?”

  Mac nodded at each question. “That’s why we can’t predict the attacks. If they are on a journey, a migration of sorts, all Dhryn should be making it. If only some are actively feeding—” she was proud of how the word came out without cracking, “—that implies the rest don’t need to feed themselves yet, or are being supplied by others, for all we know by ships going off the main path. There’s no pattern established.”

  “Our military strategists are plotting the Dhryn’s most likely moves based on time-honored space tactics. Trisulians,” Kay said almost smugly, “were once highly respected combatants.”

  “Ruthless invaders,” Fourteen corrected. “Good thing you civilized yourselves or you’d have lost your transects.”

  Irrelevant, Mac caught herself thinking. “Nothing the Dhryn have done suggests they have some plan for conquest,” she objected. “They don’t occupy territory. They don’t communicate or negotiate. They just—are.”

  The other two were silenced by this. Mac didn’t blame them. She wasn’t too happy about the idea of a space-faring aggressive species that wasn’t behaving like one either.

  In the hush, she could hear a shovel and gravel being poured. Mac turned to look out the screen.

  Nik was back, working at the top of the path, making a great show of moving gravel from side to side. An excuse to stay in earshot, Mac decided. He was working in the full sun at the moment, his shirt tied on his head to shade his neck.

  “What about the Myrokynay, the Ro, Mac? Can they predict where the Dhryn will strike next?”

  Mac swiveled back to face her anxious companions. Almost time for beer, she thought. “I’ve seen no indication they can. They needed help to find the Dhryn Progenitors.” But not the Dhryn world, she thought suddenly. They’d known where Haven was. They’d attacked it before. The Ro were after the oomlings, Brymn had said.

  Why?

  “If only we could talk to them . . . ask what they know . . . maybe we could have protected those already lost . . .” Fourteen covered his eyes, making a quiet clicking sound Mac hadn’t heard from him before, like a cricket lost in the kitchen at night.

  She sniffed, trying not to be obvious, then held her breath as long as she could, hoping the faint breeze through the screens would help. He was definitely upset.

  Kay’s eyestalks drooped. “The Ro ignore us.”

  Mac unzipped her upper pocket and pulled out the sheet of mem-paper. “Not always,” she said very quietly, hoping her voice wouldn’t carry. She tapped Fourteen on his knee to get his attention, then spread the page out so they all could see it.

  “What is it?” Kay whispered, eyestalks bent down.

  Fourteen bounced on his chair. “It’s a message from the Ro, isn’t it, Mac?” he said, with regrettable volume. Mac winced.

  “We can’t understand it,” she whispered, doubting he’d take the hint. “Kay said you were good with numbers. Maybe it will make sense to—” Before the words left her mouth, Fourteen snatched up the mem-sheet and ran into the cabin. “—you,” Mac finished.

  Kay gave her shoulder a quick pat. “He may be annoying, but he isn’t just good with numbers. He’s one of the best cryptologists of any species. If anyone can make some sense of it, Fourteen can. If he can’t, then someone at the Gathering surely will. Thank you, Mac. Thank you.”

  “Ah, Mac?” The air might be stifling warm, but that voice through the porch screen was only a fraction above absolute zero. “May I have a word with you, please? Now.”

  She closed her eyes for a second, then somehow smiled at Kay. “Why don’t you grab us some beers, Kay, and make sure Fourteen has what he needs? I’ll just go—” see how angry Nik is, “—see what Sam needs.”

  Feet crunching through gravel, then scuffing pine needles, Nik marched around the cabin to the outhouse. He opened the door and walked inside, leaving her to follow.

  That angry, Mac told herself, and squared her shoulders. Fine. She was a member of the IU, now. Not that it seemed likely to help at this instant.

  The outhouse, despite its name and practical function in wintertime, was primarily a workshop and storeroom. Stuffed owls stared down from their shelves, surveying the irregular stone floor crowded with barrels and boxes. One wall held a rack of tools, most older than Mac. The back wall had the door to the privy, within a forest of skis, poles, ice drills, hockey sticks, and snow shovels, while the remaining wall was taken up by the requisite wood stove. The only light, at the moment, came through the skylight Mac hadn’t bothered to clean of pine needles and cobwebs. Its beams sloped down in a cascade of pale yellow dust, to cast four bright squares on the floor.

  Nik stationed himself beside the stove, stiff and straight, eyes hooded in the relative gloom. His arms were folded across his chest, like armor.

  “Before you spout ‘threat to the species’ at me, Mr. Trojanowski,” Mac told him, standing straight herself, “consider who was given that message in the first place. Me. I’m the one Emily expects to figure it out—not you, not ’Sephe, not your experts. Me. And this is how I’m going to try. With Fourteen’s help. With Kay’s help. I’m a member of the IU now.”

 
; He gave a curt nod. “Getting Fourteen on it was brilliant, Mac. Couldn’t have done better myself.”

  Brilliant? Mac, all set to defend her decision, with colorful language and a brandished hockey stick if necessary, was thrown off-balance. “Why drag me out here then?”

  “I’m leaving. Now.” Flat, neutral. “I won’t be coming back.”

  It was like that first moment of her swim, skin hitting ice cold water, the shock driving the breath from her body. Mac fought to see anything of Nik’s expression in the shadows; she couldn’t. Hiding, Mr. Spy?

  That, more than anything, convinced her.

  Her heart started hammering. “You haven’t finished the path.”

  It wasn’t what she wanted to say. Should say. Couldn’t.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Did he mean he knew what she hadn’t said, Em? Mac refused to follow that path into complete incoherence.

  “Mac, I don’t have much time.” She thought she heard a hint of regret. Or imagined it. “We have to talk before I go.”

  Go where? Why? Mac longed to demand answers, to protest . . . And how, she asked herself, could that be fair to either of them?

  “I’m listening,” she said quietly, surrounded by memories and dust.

  The words came out staccato sharp, like some battlefield briefing. There really wasn’t time, she thought, beginning to worry why. “A name you need to know. Bernd Hollans. Career Ministry. Spent the last two years seconded to Earthgov as adviser on Human-IU trade. He’s the one who persuaded the Secretary General to take the investigation into the disappearances, the Chasm, seriously. Just been appointed our voice in IU policy regarding the Dhryn and the Ro.”

  “Making him your new boss?” she guessed. Was Nik’s sudden departure this Hollans’ doing? Better that, than any of the other options she’d imagined.

  Nik took a step forward; a beam of light struck his leg. The contrast turned the rest of him darker, deepened shadows. “He knows my value,” he said just as obscurely. “I know his. He’ll make the tough decisions. You won’t like him, Mac, but don’t let that fool you. Hollans—he can be trusted.”

  Politicians. Something she usually avoided. As for trust? Mac wrapped her arms around her middle. “What else?”

  “The Trisulian rescue mission to Ascendis turned out to be something else.”

  “What?” Mac frowned. “Kay told me they’d sent more ships to retrieve Eeling refugees than any other species.”

  “Oh, they sent more ships, all right.” Sharp and edged. “Settler convoys. Ascendis may be ruined for the foreseeable future, but her moons and their very lucrative refitting stations remain intact. As do her transect connections. The Trisulian Ruling Council has petitioned for official recognition of the system as part of their holdings and it’s unlikely any will argue. Certainly not the few Eelings left alive.”

  Mac’s eyes widened with understanding. “Ravens.”

  “I don’t see what—”

  “Ravens survive winter by scavenging deer and elk carcasses, Nik. They follow predators in order to find their kills.”

  “The Trisulians as ravens to the Dhryn?” Nik was silent for an instant, then said slowly, as if thinking out loud: “I want to say it’s unlikely, but they’ve a history of snatching new territory by force. It almost cost them their transects. With the prospect of conveniently uninhabited worlds, complete with atmosphere, water, even most buildings and roads intact? All they’d need are some climate regulators to keep the first miners happy, long-term reclamation projects for agriculture. It would be tempting.”

  “If,” Mac emphasized, “they learn to predict Dhryn movements. They’d have to know, in order to arrive in time to feed on the corpse first.”

  “Remind me not to use your phrasing in the discussions of the issue.”

  She didn’t quite smile. “Is Kay involved in this? Is that why he’s here?” Really tired of betrayal, Em.

  “No reason to think so.” Nik’s voice lost some of its edge. “He’s a minor official, good record if undistinguished, presently serving his species’ contingent at the Gathering. Handles catering, runs errands, that sort of thing. I can’t see an underling being privy to the Ruling Council’s actions. He volunteered to approach you for the IU and was someone who could be spared, that’s all.”

  She could feel his doubt. “That’s not all, is it? You suspect Kay of something.”

  He hesitated, then shrugged, a shadow shifting its shape. She still couldn’t see his face clearly. “It’s my nature. Trisulians are fond of secrets. They like collecting information; knowing things—even trivia—before everyone else. Didn’t surprise me to find Kay had offered to meet you. For someone like him, chances to learn or do something first must be rare. But I was puzzled why he’d invite Fourteen. They barely knew one another before coming here. Then you, Mac, showed me the reason.”

  For some reason her mind stuck on poodle. “I did?”

  “The Ro message. If Fourteen translates it while still at the cabin—” He waited.

  “Kay could learn what it said before anyone else,” Mac finished. She began to pace, real hand rubbing at the false. “But how would he know I had such a message?” She stopped and whirled. How could she have forgotten to tell him? “Nik, the IU—”

  “Has someone working for them at Base. We know.”

  Of course they knew, Mac told herself, feeling foolish. “It’s ’Sephe, isn’t it? She knew about Emily’s message. You put her there in the first place—to help the IU reach me. Right?”

  She could see him shake his head, barely make out the gleam of reflected light that marked his eyes. “I put her there, yes. But she’s not the IU’s informant—and before you ask, you don’t want to know who it is.”

  Mac bristled. “I most certainly do.”

  “How many secrets do you want to carry around, Mac? Besides, you’ll meet this person again. Think you can act normally if you know?”

  “What’s ‘normally’?” Mac exclaimed in disbelief. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll have to suspect everyone I know.”

  He laughed. “Welcome to my world.”

  “You can keep it,” Mac growled. In the ensuing silence, she listened to a trio of white-throated sparrows outside, contesting territory with song instead of subterfuge. Lucky birds. Finally she grumbled: “Okay. Don’t tell me. If I knew, I’d probably chuck whoever it is in the ocean and be done.”

  “We’ll be watching,” Nik promised.

  “You’d better.” When had leaving an unknown informant among her friends become a lesser evil? The eyes of dead owls gazed at her. Not helping, she told them. “If it wasn’t ’Sephe, how could Kay know about Em’s message?”

  “He didn’t have to. We aren’t the only ones who’ve been waiting for Emily to contact you, Mac. You wouldn’t have had a moment’s privacy on Earth if the Ministry hadn’t stepped in and insisted you be left in peace. The Trisulians wouldn’t be the only ones to believe you’ve been receiving such messages all along, keeping them to yourself.”

  “I have not!”

  From his tone, he was amused by her protest, but all he said was: “To Kay, Mac, such secrecy would make perfect sense. And be an opportunity. Tell me. When I wasn’t here, did Kay ask about Emily?”

  In how many ways was she a fool? “Yes,” Mac said, the word bitter in her mouth. “About our friendship, how close we are—were. It didn’t make much sense at the time, but I went along. Tell me, Nik. Is there a memo about me at the consulate that says ‘totally gullible,’ or is it just obvious to any being who meets me?”

  Nik took a step closer, the light playing over his face. Regret. Something less definable. “The only thing obvious about you, Mackenzie Connor,” he informed her, “is your heart.”

  There was a conversation stopper. Mac could feel her cheeks flaming.

  He had to notice, but went on as if he didn’t. “Kay’s only worry would be his ability to understand a message from the Ro. So he finds a cryptologist
interested in a jaunt to Little Misty Lake. It’s all a gamble, but one that could pay off. Looks like it has.”

  “And I thought funding committees were cutthroat,” Mac muttered darkly.

  “Don’t take it personally, Mac.” Nik took another step, and the light finally reached his eyes, their hazel dark with emotion. “Species advantage. Kay probably doesn’t know about the Eeling System yet—but be prepared for him to approve when he does find out. And this is only the beginning. The Gathering—you’ll have to tread very carefully. I don’t have to warn you about alien motives, how easy it is to believe you understand those around you, how suddenly everything can change.”

  “I remember an earthquake,” she said tightly.

  “We’ve people going over every bit of that data, Mac. When I have an answer, I’ll make sure you get it.” Nik paused and studied her face, a frown starting to form between his brows. “This doesn’t feel right.”

  “What?”

  “Leaving.”

  It wasn’t about leaving her, Mac thought. She knew him well enough by now to understand the source of his hesitation. It wasn’t about what warmed his eyes when he really looked at her. It was about trust.

  “Am I safe alone with them or not?” she asked bluntly. “I mean, other than the ever present risk of snoring, Fourteen’s warped sense of humor, and alien bondage rituals.”

  Nik ached to say no. Mac could see it; part of her wanted to agree. For reasons, she admitted to herself, that had nothing to do with aliens. Then he pressed his lips together and gave her a reluctant nod. “Kay and Fourteen are accredited members of the IU, sent as your escorts. It’s no crime to be interested in what the Ro have to say—we all are. You seem to be enjoying each other’s company.” He waited for Mac to say something. She didn’t speak. “It still doesn’t feel right,” he finished, for the first time since they’d entered the outhouse showing a clear emotion—frustration.

  On impulse, Mac tugged the shirt from Nik’s head. Conscious of him watching her, she untied the knot turning it into a hat, then gave the garment a hard shake. Dust and a few dead flies joined the motes in the sunbeams. The beams flickered and brightened as if a cloud had gone by. “Here.” She handed it back. “You’ll want this on in the woods.”