Migration: Species Imperative #2

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Beyond the third checkpoint, the corridor took a sharper bend, widened into a bulb, and came to an end. They stood in front of a choice of three ordinary-looking doors. Mac was a little disappointed, having geared herself for a more spectacular destination.

  “Wait here, Mac,” Nik ordered. He gave her another of those disconcerting looks, seemed to hesitate, then went with Cinder through the first door to the right. Mac peered past them, seeing nothing but more white walls. Another corridor? They closed the door before she could be sure.

  Well, Em, this is an anticlimax. Mac put her shoulders against the nearest wall, tipping her head back to rest it on something solid. It was, to put it mildly, throbbing. Somehow she didn’t think Anchen—or would it be the physician mind, Noad?—would consider being violently slammed to the floor as proper care of a concussion. Spies.

  Mac closed her eyes. Odd. The throbbing had a second component, out of sync with her heartbeat, elevated, or breathing, steady. She concentrated, turning her head slightly. The bare part of her scalp happened to touch the wall. Through that contact, the throbbing developed a fascinating, singsong pattern. It wasn’t sound, Mac decided, not as she could hear.

  But it had meaning.

  Mac straightened, her eyes wide. Without hesitation, she went to the middle door, the one closest to her, and shoved it open.

  The smell caught her first. She covered her nose, staring at the shape huddled at the far end of the cage. For that was the only feature of the rectangular, white room: a floor-to-ceiling enclosure of vertical white bars each the width of her hand, set her shoulder-width apart. The cage filled half of the floor space, away from any wall by several meters. Within was nothing but the shape, motionless, naked, and blue.

  It was as if her blood congealed within her veins, leaving nothing but a lump of flesh incapable of movement, of feeling. Oh, not incapable of feeling, Mac realized. Emotions surged through her, battering at her senses. Blinding rage. Betrayal, deep and sour. Fear like a chorus that sang along every nerve. How had she dared lecture Lyle?

  Suddenly. Unexpectedly. A whisper of hope.

  Shaking, Mac clung to it, desperate to clear her mind, to think. No time for gut reactions, she pleaded with herself.

  She began to hear her own breathing again, deep and ragged, feel her hands, clenched into aching fists. There was sweat running down her sides.

  Hope. Opportunity. She focused on those.

  Mac reached down and took off her shoes. Barefoot, she could feel the vibrations through the floor. The hairs on her arm and neck rose. Distress.

  She walked around the cage until she was as close as possible to the shape, then sank to the floor herself, balancing on the balls of her feet, and nodded.

  Dhryn.

  Even huddled in its misery, she couldn’t mistake that rubbery blue skin, dotted with weeping pits of darker blue. No mistaking the three pairs of shoulders either, or the massive, podlike feet. There were wounds, marked by more dark blue liquid. It was smeared over much of the cage floor, as were other stains.

  Mac hugged herself.

  The oomling tongue, the Dhryn language spoken by those too young—or unable—to produce and hear the deeper infrasound—came to her with sickening ease, as if more natural than her own. “Who are you?”

  A once-powerful arm pushed against the floor, then another. One after the other, each slipped and lay flaccid.

  Conscious, then.

  Mac stood and walked around to the other side of the cage.

  She hadn’t expected to be relieved his eyes were closed behind their marblelike lids, that she’d unconsciously stiffened in anticipation. Fool, she told herself.

  “I am Mackenzie Wini—” her voice failed and Mac coughed to free it, starting again. “Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor—” after a hesitation, she finished, “—Sol is all my name.”

  His hands scrabbled at the floor, as if the Dhryn tried to rise and couldn’t.

  She understood. Manners dictated he rise and accept her name with a clap of all six hands. Three hands, Mac realized, as the last arm, middle left, moved into view. Its wrist ended in a fresh scar. Grathnu. Dhryn sought all their lives to sacrifice their hands to their Progenitor. It was a mark of Her greatest favor. Mac suspected it was also a contribution to the gene pool, allowed only the most worthy.

  But three? This was no ordinary Dhryn.

  Emily had warned her—the Ro claimed a wounded Dhryn was dangerous. Brymn had transformed only after being injured in the sandstorm, but not after giving up his hand. Does it matter how severe the damage, Em, or did the Ro lie to you? It wasn’t the first time she’d asked herself that troubling question. An answer this living Dhryn could provide. It would be the last one.

  Mac shuddered. “Don’t try to move,” she said. “Who are you?” The face shifted on the floor, shadows changing beneath the thick ridges that overhung the closed eyes, where they played over the curved rises of skin-covered bone sculpting nose and ears. The small mouth was tight and fixed. Pain. Mac felt the vibration of complaint through her feet.

  The eyes snapped open, their huge pupils black and lustrous, like figure eights on their sides. The oval iris of yellow filled the rest. She’d seen it warm. Now it was a cold, accusing gold.

  With the eyes and changing light, despite the scars and sunken appearance, Mac suddenly knew who this was. “Parymn Ne Sa,” she whispered.

  “—Las.”

  So it had been grathnu and not more violence from his keepers. Numb, Mac repeated his full name. “Parymn Ne Sa Las. Honored. I take the name Parymn Ne Sa Las into my keeping.” She clapped her hands together. His eye coverings winked blue. Acknowledgment .

  This was not a Dhryn who traveled, before his entire species had taken flight. This had been the Progenitor’s officer and gatekeeper, the same Progenitor with whom Brymn—and Mac herself, though with hair not hand—had committed grathnu. More, Brymn had called Parymn Ne Sa an erumisah, one who is able to make decisions.

  Not an ordinary Dhryn at all, Em.

  Mac knelt, not daring to touch the bars. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was sent to talk to you.”

  “Me?” She rocked back on her haunches and began shaking her head. “No. No. There are people in authority—important people. I—” study salmon.

  Parymn managed to raise his head and first shoulders to better look at her. She could see his flexible seventh limb now, curled out of the way, its scissorlike fingers tucked under an elbow. “They are not-Dhryn,” he gasped out, then sank to the floor again. “You are Dhryn,” more quietly but with as much effort. “Unlikely . . . as that appears . . . to me.”

  “Oh, dear,” Mac said in Instella.

  A touch on her shoulder. She startled from under it, rising and turning to put her back to the bars.

  Nik let his arm fall to his side. Mac searched his face, but it was like a mask, fixed and expressionless.

  And he wasn’t alone. Others walked around the cage to array themselves on either side of him, all confronting her: the Trisulian, Cinder, hands combing the mane over her face; another Human, older, male, and in a brown suit almost twin to Nik’s; a scaled humanoid Mac couldn’t identify, with a dainty beaked mouth and feathered crest; and a stout Imrya, carapace dark with age spots, her hands clutching what looked like an unusually ornate recording device. Two of the consular staff remained by the door.

  Last, but not least by any measure, the Sinzi-ra herself, regal in her white gown and long silvered fingers. “You were right, Nikolai,” Anchen said. “I see you can communicate with our visitor, Mac. Most gratifying.”

  “Visitor,” she echoed incredulously. Mac felt vibration through the soles of her feet as the Dhryn subvocalized. She couldn’t understand it. Perhaps it wasn’t words at all, Em, but a moan. “Well, you haven’t taken very good care of him.”

  Anchen lifted two fingers. One of the staff members stepped forward. “What have I done wrong, Dr. Connor? I cared satisfactorily for
the Honorable Delegate from Haven during his stay with us. This individual has proved more, forgive any impertinence, challenging a guest, but I have followed every established protocol for his species.”

  She’d forgotten Brymn had been here. Mac blinked. Finally, she managed to ask: “Do you want him to live or not?”

  Nik shifted involuntarily, but said in a noncommittal voice. “It’s preferable.”

  “To start with, they—” Mac pointed at the yellow-clad staff, “—shouldn’t wear that color near him. Why doesn’t he have furniture and clothes? He looks to be starving.”

  His wounds? That was territory she didn’t dare tread, Em.

  “Your concern is admirable but misplaced, Mac,” responded Anchen, making a calming gesture with her long fingers. “Our guest was originally provided with civilized accommodations. He tore them to shreds, along with his clothing. He refuses food.” Again, as if able to read Mac’s thoughts, or, Mac judged, with the awareness of a superb negotiator, the Sinzi went on: “The wounds you see? Self-inflicted. We’ve done our utmost to keep him healthy and comfortable. It is our in own interest as well as his. But he has rejected all of our efforts. We feared he was attempting to die.”

  The floor vibrated more intensely. “Oomling language,” Mac hissed in Dhryn.

  Sure enough. “Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol,” Parymn almost bellowed. “These are not-Dhryn! You must not interact with them!”

  “What did he say?” Nik, quietly.

  “He’s not happy,” Mac summarized, then frowned. “You said the teach-sets weren’t working, but surely you’ve servo translators.”

  “They function without adequate success, thus your cooperation is most essential,” said the beaked alien, in precise, feather-edged Instella. He/she/it lifted his/her/its elbows, the other Human moving to avoid those sharp ends. “We predict our current technology capable of reliable translation of no better than twenty percent—”

  The other Human broke in: “He hasn’t said a word to translate until now—”

  “Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol! You must desist!” Parymn’s bellow faded into a desperate whisper.

  Mac shot Nik a look and he nodded reassuringly. She turned to the Dhryn. “It’s all right, Parymn Ne Sa Las. It is—” she tried to think how to calm him, “—it is my task among Dhryn, to speak with those who come to you like this.”

  Faint. “I do not understand. How can it be so? They can talk?” It was almost plaintive.

  Save her from cloistered Dhryn, Em, Mac sighed to herself, the problem yawning like a pit before her feet. Brymn had warned her that the Haven Dhryn, those who stayed on their world, avoided contact or information about other places or other life. Why should they care about what would never matter to them? She’d seen it for herself. “That which is Dhryn” was enough.

  Not anymore. Not for Parymn, if he was to survive. No doubt the others here were anxious for the answers to a long list of questions. No doubt everyone from physiologists to weapons designers would be eager for the answers his living body could provide.

  Em, why did it have to be a Dhryn she knew?

  Mac planned to sit down and have a talk with herself, a long one, later. Likely with something stronger than beer.

  In the meantime, how to solve this? “Think of them as Dhryn,” she ventured.

  He closed his eyes. Rejection. “Only the Progenitor decides what is Dhryn.”

  There was the rub, Em. The Progenitor—any of them—wasn’t here. She hoped. Things wouldn’t be this calm if a Progenitor’s ship, with its millions of feeder Dhryn, were in Sol System, or orbiting Earth. She’d dreamed it often enough. There’d be alarms, news, panic, running for shelters, for ships . . .

  Nik had urged her to hurry.

  Mac licked her lips. “Are they here?” she asked without turning from the Dhryn, proud she sounded so matter-of-fact about nightmare.

  “Just him,” Nik answered.

  She shuddered with relief, closing her eyes for an instant.

  “Do not . . .” Parymn began weakly, ending with a handless arm flailing.

  Mac looked over her shoulder. A mistake—they were all staring at her, waiting for something worthwhile. “He’s upset,” she stated the obvious, then went back to Parymn. “You said the Progenitor sent you to talk to me. Why? What about?”

  “You must not . . . interact with the not-Dhryn. I forbid it.” Weaker. She wasn’t sure how conscious he was—or perhaps he wouldn’t tell her anything more while not-Dhryn were present.

  This particular Dhryn, his upbringing, was the problem . The Progenitor Mac had met on Haven had been fully aware of other species, curious, in fact, to meet Mac, an alien, in person. The Dhryn had accepted membership within the IU, had their gate to the Naralax Transect, although not-Dhryn traffic was forbidden to their home system and Haven. They’d maintained colonies in other systems to take overflow population, those colonies freely conducting trade with other species. Brymn himself had been fluent in Human languages as well as Instella, although he’d been, she’d freely admit, unusual for any species.

  “The Progenitor values the abilities of all Dhryn,” Mac began cautiously. Interspecies communication, Em, is carpeted quicksand. With hair-trigger wasps on top. “Is this not so?”

  The eye coverings opened again. “All that is Dhryn must serve.” Stronger, with that familiar sarcastic note. Good.

  “So the Progenitor must value my ability to talk to the not-Dhryn.” She rephrased hastily: “She sees that ability as having use to Her, to all that is Dhryn. Thus I must use my ability. For all that is Dhryn.” Stop now, she told herself.

  His tiny lips pursed, then moved in and out a few times as if hunting teeth no longer there.

  Just when Mac was about to try another tack, Parymn’s lips formed a tight smile. “Your reasoning would have more impact if you weren’t talking like an oomling.” Mac felt a thrumming in the floor as the Dhryn added what he knew she couldn’t hear. By her estimate, adults used infrasound for more than a third of their vocabulary and most of its emotional overtone.

  Even Brymn had had difficulty with the concept of their differing auditory ranges. He’d been willing to try, at least.

  Parymn Ne Sa Las, Mac knew without any doubt, would not.

  “You understand me well enough, Parymn Ne Sa Las. Do you understand them?” she gestured to the others, still silent and waiting. When he gave her a baleful look, she nodded. “I do. So you are to talk to me and the Progenitor needs me to talk to them. All that is Dhryn needs me to talk to them. Will you permit it or not?”

  A final vibration through the floor. Another unhappy look. “I somehow doubt, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol, that you require my permission.”

  She crouched lower. “I ask your cooperation, Parymn Ne Sa Las.”

  He considered so long, eyes almost closed, that Mac feared this time he was unconscious. Then: “You have it. For now.”

  “Thank you.” She stood, giving her sweater a tug to straighten it. “First order of business—to look after you, Parymn Ne Sa Las. Why did you—” Mac stopped there. On second thought, she probably didn’t want to know why Parymn had attacked the furniture. Doubtless something alien and complicated about not-Dhryn upholstery. “To serve the Progenitor,” she said instead, “you must look and behave with pride, as an erumisah. Even among the not-Dhryn.”

  “That is so.” His hands fluttered along his skin, explored patches of congealing fluids. “Bathe. I must bathe.”

  “I’ll make arrangements. What else?”

  “Clothing.” Fingers trailed along his eye ridges and his mouth turned down. Mac added cosmetics to her mental list.

  “What else? Food?”

  His eyes closed again. Rejection.

  It was a beginning, Mac decided. She turned back to her observers and made herself smile.

  Anchen’s fingers rose and fell, the silver rings making a waterfall of light down her sides. Approval? Or
aggravation at the delay. Mac wasn’t about to guess. “What was said?” the Sinzi asked her.

  “Every word?”

  The beaked alien leaned forward, her body quivering. Eagerness? Or a chill, Mac thought. “Yes, we will need every word, every nuance.” The Imrya, still silent, lifted her recorder in agreement.

  “In-depth analysis can be done later,” the other Human snapped. “We don’t have time to waste. The gist, Dr. Connor. Summarize.”

  “Summarize.” Mr. Brown Suit had something up his . . . Mac raised her eyebrow and caught Nik’s cautionary look. Fine. “To start with, this isn’t just any Dhryn. I can’t imagine how he got here, but this is Parymn Ne Sa Las. I met him on Haven. He’s a decision-maker, someone who speaks for his Progenitor. He’s the closest thing to an ambassador the Dhryn could have sent us.”

  This raised eyebrows and elbows, as well as promoted an almost frantic moment of facial grooming by the Trisulian. Only Anchen seemed unaffected by the news. And Nik, who Mac doubted would show his reaction to an explosion unintentionally.

  “How he came to be here, I can tell you, Dr. Connor,” the beaked alien offered. “Our patrol stopped a starship, no larger than one of our single-pilot vessels. It contained him alone and was operating on a preprogrammed path to our world, N’not’k. He wore no clothes, was already damaged, and would not communicate with us. He grew increasingly agitated by our attempts to do so. We brought him to the IU consulate, where our Sinzi-ra had no better luck with him, but understood the significance of the artifact within his ship, that it was a message indicating he should be brought here, to the Gathering.”

  “To Earth,” Anchen corrected gently. “I would show Mac the artifact, if you please.”

  One of the staff went over to a wall and pressed on a particular spot. A drawer opened from the wall and he reached in, pulling out a bag identical to those in Mac’s closet, but a fraction of the size.