Migration: Species Imperative #2

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Her stool. Her alien. Mac settled herself. “What truth does the Progenitor seek, Parymn Ne Sa Las?”

  “I do not wish to think of it.” The pat Dhryn phrase for a forbidden topic.

  A little soon for that. Mac frowned. “Where is the Progenitor?”

  “I do not wish to think of it.”

  Was it because she’d invoked the Ro? Or was Parymn being honest with her? In either case, Em, not helpful.

  “Erumisah, you were the one sent by the Progenitor to talk to me. You must answer my questions.”

  Parymn drew himself up, clearly offended. “I must do nothing.”

  Mac opened her mouth to argue. At that same instant, Parymn’s seventh hand slipped out from the others, striking at his upper shoulder like a snake, leaving a blue gash behind. “Aieee!” he cried, rocking back and forth, his eyes wide and staring. “No! No!”

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded, dismayed. Was he going mad?

  Another strike, another gash. Another cry of anguish.

  Mac gripped the stool. “Parymn—stop it!” She almost called for help. Almost.

  The blue-stained hand hovered before the Dhryn’s eyes, as if controlled by something else. He spoke, the words monotonous and low, like a chant. “I am become . . . I am become . . . I am become . . .”

  Become what? Mac leaned forward—afraid but fascinated. It was the way she felt whenever a grizzly came so close it crossed that line, the line beyond which she knew she had no chance to run and she had to wait on its motives, not hers, her life held by no more than skin. But to be there, to see such a creature, to be part of its world . . . “Become what?” she breathed.

  “No! I am Parymn Ne Sa Las!” A strike, a gash. “I am Parymn Ne Sa!” Another. His white silk was soaking up fluid, growing streaked with blue. “I am Parymn Ne!” Drops flew everywhere as a slash opened one cheek, staining the carpet as the Dhryn chanted more quickly, urgently. “I am Parymn! No! I am become—” A pause. The seventh arm slipped back to its resting place. His entire body seemed to adjust itself, as if relaxing into a more comfortable fit.

  Then, “I am the Vessel.”

  - 17 -

  TRANSFORMATION AND TRIAL

  MAYBE ANCHEN was right, and the Dhryn insane. Mac began calculating the distance to the cell door. “The Vessel?” she repeated.

  “Yes.” Parymn’s voice—it had changed somehow, becoming higher-pitched, smoother, familiar.

  Mac stared. “Who—who are you?”

  “I am the Vessel,” the Dhryn said again, gently. His small lips formed a smile. “Greetings, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol. You have done well.”

  It couldn’t be. But it was. “Thank you—Progenitor,” Mac acknowledged. “It is you, isn’t it?”

  A graceful, somehow feminine gesture of three hands. “In a limited sense. I gifted Parymn Ne Sa Las with a minute portion of myself. This is our way, when one Progenitor must travel to another, to exchange information, to debate or discuss. Are you troubled by this?”

  The Progenitor’s body filled a cavern—it was a world unto itself, covered with a dust made of new life, enriched by blue ponds replenished by feeder-Dhryn. Yet her face had been like Parymn’s, golden-eyed, expressive. Mac swallowed hard. “What of Parymn Ne Sa Las?”

  The lips turned downward, the great eyes winked closed, then open. “Grathnu. He will be remembered as Parymn Ne Sa Las Marsu. These names will be inscribed in the corridor of my ship.” The Dhryn clapped two hands together.

  His protests, the tearing of his own flesh. She’d watched Parymn sacrifice himself, here and now, and done nothing. Alien ways, Mac chided herself. Who was she to denounce them? Hard enough to follow without a game plan, Em.

  “It was an honor to know him,” she said, at a loss for anything more.

  The Dhryn—Mac couldn’t think of another name yet—folded his arms again in that intricate pattern. “We have little time, Lamisah. What has happened since I was sent? Have you heard from others? Has the Great Journey begun?”

  “Mac.” From behind—with her. Human and anxious. “Are you all right? What’s going on?”

  “Your pardon,” Mac told the Dhryn, then turned to look up at Nik. He was flushed, as though he’d run some distance and quickly—doubtless alerted by some watcher that the Dhryn was slicing himself, with her in range. “Not now,” she urged. “Things have become—complicated.” There was an understatement, Em.

  Tense. Sharp. “You’ve his blood on your face.”

  Mac wiped her cheek, looked down at her blue-coated fingers in surprise. “I’ll clean up later,” she assured him. “We’re fine.”

  “Fine!” Nik took her arm in a tight grip, as if preparing to pull her from the stool by force if necessary. “He’s losing it again.” Urgent and low. “You aren’t safe in here!”

  “I’m safer here than out there,” she retorted, giving her arm an impatient tug to free it. “Let go of me, Nik. I know what I’m doing.”

  “You haven’t proved that to me,” fiercely. “The Dhryn’s changed. Something’s different about him. We need the med team in here—”

  He was good, Em. To recognize the switch from Parymn to the Vessel from body language and tone? Mac was impressed.

  Not that it was saving time.

  She grimaced. “I don’t suppose if I asked you to trust me, to just leave us alone, you’d do it.”

  “I trust you to be stubborn,” he replied, eyes dark behind their lenses. “To take chances with your own safety. Not a good combination, Mac. You’re too valuable to risk.”

  She made a rude noise. “I’m valuable only when I’m doing the job you’re interfering with, Mr. Trojanowski.”

  “You know better than that.”

  Mac shrugged, her own temper keeping her from anything more gracious. “There’s no need for concern—or a med team. This—” she nodded at the wounded Dhryn, who was waiting, if not patiently, then at least quietly, “—is normal.” Not the word she’d initially planned.

  “In what possible way is cutting your own flesh normal?”

  She lifted one eyebrow, considering the question. Had the cuts been Parymn’s futile protest against the coming death of his personality, or the Vessel’s cue to emerge and take over? Or was the self-damage completely unconnected—the body’s involuntary reaction to the very odd things happening in the Dhryn’s mind? “I’ve no idea,” Mac said at last, keeping it honest. “The psychologists can work out the details later, but essentially the person who came here, who spoke to me earlier today, has been—replaced—by another personality. Nik, I watched Parymn Ne Sa Las sacrifice himself. It’s grathnu, but of the mind, not the flesh. He acquired the name ‘Marsu.’ ”

  It spoke volumes to his experience with the non-Human that Nik’s first reaction wasn’t the scorn or disbelief Mac half expected. “Then who is this?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure ‘who’ is the right way to put it,” she countered. “Because Dhryn Progenitors can’t physically visit one another, they imbue one of their erumisah, a decision-maker like Parymn, with something of themselves, their personality. I can’t begin to guess the mechanism—for all I know, erumisah grow so used to their Progenitor’s way of thinking, they somehow switch to it and abandon their own. It doesn’t matter now. This Dhryn,” Mac nodded to the silent alien, “is now such a Vessel. From what I’ve learned—which isn’t much yet—I believe he is meant to convey information from his Progenitor. He’s able to carry on a conversation that’s consistent with what I remember of his Progenitor’s nature and wishes. He’s very much Her, in a way I can’t explain, Nik.”

  “A living message,” he said, a look of awe on his face. “A biological, preprogrammed, interactive message. Remarkable.”

  “And impatient,” Mac nudged. “Can I get back to talking with him now?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” Nik studied the Dhryn, seeming distracted. It was, Mac judged, a reasonable reaction.

  Then the Dhryn hooted softly. �
�I see he should know better than to argue with you, my lamisah.”

  Feeling as if she moved in slow motion, Mac swiveled her head to meet a pair of golden eyes. “You understood what we said?” she asked in disbelief, careful to speak Dhryn. “The language of the not-Dhryn?”

  A regal nod. “Of course. A Progenitor must not rely on translation, Lamisah.”

  A rock and a hard place moment, Em, Mac told herself. Aloud, in Dhryn: “Do you trust me?”

  “You are Dhryn. Of course I trust you, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol.”

  More like a crossing the chasm on a swaying cable bridge moment, Mac thought, an old, decrepit, untrustworthy bridge.

  Nik stood so close she could feel his body heat, a possibly insane Dhryn bled at her feet, and her backside was all but paralyzed from the uncomfortable stool.

  She had to decide. Now.

  The Ro. They were here, or they were coming. Mac felt it in her bones. The situation wasn’t stable or safe. And if Anchen or the Ministry learned anyone could talk to their guest, anyone at all, Mac would be back upstairs, waiting. On the outside.

  No. Not again.

  Mac gave herself a shake. Decision made. Until she had the answers she was after, until she had Emily, this Dhryn was hers alone. No one, not the Sinzi-ra, not even Nik, was going to get in the way.

  “Vessel, give no sign that you understand anything but what I say in Dhryn. Please. They will take me away from you.”

  “I would not permit it.”

  Mac shook her head. “You wouldn’t have a choice. Trust me. And—” she added, struck by a sudden, better thought. “Trust this Human, Nikolai Piotr Trojanowski. If ever he comes to you alone and says my name, speak to him in his language. Consider him as your lamisah as well. Will you do this for me?”

  A clap. “I take the name Nikolai Piotr Trojanowski into my keeping. An honor. Of course, I will do what you say. This is, my lamisah, a strange and unsettling place.”

  “Yes,” Mac agreed. “It is.” She climbed down from the stool. “Stay if you wish, Nik,” she told him calmly, in Instella, careful not to look at him. Em always said she had the worst face for poker. “You might want to grab a chair, though. I’ve a feeling this is going to take a while.” She sat cross-legged on the carpet in front of the Dhryn, avoiding the spots of blood.

  That neutral voice. “If you’re staying, so am I.” She felt, more than saw, Nik sit beside her on the floor.

  The Dhryn towered over them both, his great yellow eyes warm and curious. Amazing how like the Progenitor’s his every expression had become, Mac thought with awe. On impulse, she held out her hand. Immediately, the Vessel put his into it. The opposing fingers, three in total, were as warm, rubbery, and muscular as Mac remembered. Brymn’s hand had been thus. The fingers gripped, very gently, then withdrew. “We have no time,” the Dhryn reminded Mac.

  She nodded, swallowing hard. “Yes. I’m sorry. Vessel. Is that what I should call you?”

  “It is what I am.”

  “You want to know what happened since you were sent. There’s no easy way to say it. Other Progenitors have destroyed inhabited worlds, taken all life from them.”

  The Dhryn frowned. “This cannot be.”

  “It is,” Mac said earnestly. “You must believe me. Millions—billions of not-Dhryn have died already.”

  He reared up, giving her a suspicious look. “Why would we do such a thing?” Then, more kindly: “I see that you are confused, Lamisah. The not-Dhryn kill one another. Dhryn do not take life.”

  Confused covered it from all sides, she thought and turned to Nik. “He doesn’t believe me, that other Dhryn have been attacking worlds. I’m trying to explain, but—”

  His eyes were guarded as he looked to the Dhryn and back to her. “How specific do you want to be?”

  “There’s no time to waste.”

  “In that case—here.” Nik pulled out his imp and activated its screen, setting a display to hover at eye level in front of the Dhryn.

  Ships appearing at a transect. A confusion of attackers and defenders. Mac could barely make out which was which, except that the Dhryn seemed intent above all on reaching the planet, squandering tactical advantage in order to drop their smaller ships—that appalling number of smaller ships—ships that produced a green rain—

  Mac wanted to close her eyes but couldn’t. The images were fragmented, nightmarish. Most were brief, as if the ships doing the observing were under assault themselves.

  “Aiieeeeee!” The Vessel’s cry bounced around the room. He surged to his feet, backing away from the images, hands out as if to block them. “Aieeeeeee!”

  Turning off his screen, Nik looked at Mac. “We can’t assume it’s shock—it could be his reaction to the Dhryn ships being destroyed.”

  She scowled back. “I know Her—him—better than that.”

  “Careful, Mac.”

  Rather than argue, Mac shrugged and switched back to the oomling tongue. “This is what has happened. It’s still happening, in other systems. That’s why we’re all here, Vessel. Why you’re here. To try and stop more loss of life.”

  “This not the Way.” With an undertone of despair. “I don’t understand.”

  She’d been afraid of that. “Neither do we,” Mac admitted. “What should be the Way?”

  “The Way?” A calmer, but puzzled look. “All that is Dhryn answers the Call. Then the Great Journey takes us Home. All that is Dhryn must move.”

  “Why?” Mac held her breath. “Why do you move now?”

  “I do not,” the Dhryn answered. Was he being literal? Mac worried. Then: “I believe—I hope—that others—do not. We must resist this Call if we are to survive.”

  “What Call?” Without thought, Mac reached for Nik’s hand and found it. He didn’t interrupt or ask why. “Whose?”

  The question sent the Dhryn rocking back and forth, arms wrapped around his middle. Blue kept flowing from the gashes, and Mac worried how much he could spare. “We do not know,” he said finally. “The oldest stories passed from Progenitor to Progenitor tell of a time when the Call came over generations of oomlings, that new Dhryn were born readied for it; able to grow stronger, larger in preparation. The urge to move would then spread through a lineage like breathing into a body. Inevitable, natural. The Great Journey would spend all but the Progenitors, who would await the future, remembering the Way home again. So the stories say.”

  “That’s not what’s happening now.”

  “No, Lamisah. I fear what is happening now is not only the deaths of others, but of all that is Dhryn.”

  “Is this why you told me to run?” Mac remembered that moment when she and Brymn had balanced on the palm of the Progenitor and heard Her horrified warning. “You said my species should run before the gates between worlds closed again.”

  “As we ran to Haven,” the Vessel said, a reverberation in the floor attesting to some emotion. “Were it not for the great buried ships that awaited us, to shelter us from the rain, to feed us, all that is Dhryn would have perished as the rest.”

  The rest? Hundreds of other species. Entire worlds, scoured to dust. Mac swallowed. Suddenly, their differences overwhelmed her, the blue skin, the bony ridged face, the arms, maimed and moving restlessly. Even the smell. If it hadn’t been for the solid, so-Human, presence at her side, she might not have dared go on: “You mean the other species in the Chasm. Did the Dhryn consume them, too?”

  “Dhryn do not consume other life. It is not the Way.”

  Around to that again. Mac frowned. It wasn’t that the Dhryn defined life as only including themselves. Brymn Las had certainly understood there were other living things, that other worlds than Haven were homes.

  In the pause, the grip on her hand tightened a fraction. “Mac.”

  She glanced sideways at him. “It’s still complicated.”

  “That was Dhryn, Mac.”

  Blushing, she took a moment to be sure what she was about to speak. “Sorry
, Nik,” in English. “It’s still complicated.”

  “I understand that. But we need something tangible, a place to start. Ask if this Dhryn, the Vessel, can help us communicate with others. Arrange negotiations.”

  Doubtful, Mac nodded. “Vessel,” she began, “we’d like to speak to the other Dhryn—”

  “How?”

  “That’s what we’d like you to tell us.”

  A lift and fall of six arms. “Within a lineage, only erumisah may speak to their Progenitor without invitation. You have not yet committed sufficient grathnu to be so elevated, my lamisah. And only a Vessel may approach another Progenitor.”

  Mac repeated this, in English, to Nik. He nodded thoughtfully. “What about the colonial Dhryn, those who lived away from Haven and the Progenitors? They were accustomed to com systems—many traded freely within the systems of other IU species.”

  She hurried to translate. The Vessel gave a soft sigh. “The great ships launched without their return. They have no Progenitors to guide them. They are lost, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol.”

  “Lost as in dead—or lost as in they’ve become a separate faction?” Nik responded when he heard this.

  “Do you want me to ask?” Mac said, rubbing her temple.

  He gave her a worried look. “English.”

  It had sounded right. “It’s getting harder to keep it all straight,” she confessed in that tongue, ashamed.

  “You’re doing fine, Mac. You aren’t trained for this.” Nik shook his head. “I’d like to give you a break, but . . .”

  “I know.” Mac stretched her arms and spine. “I’m okay. Do you want the question about factions?”

  “No. We’ll deal with that later. It’s the Progenitor ships we need to stop. Try and get a time frame. How long do we have between attacks?”

  Good question. Mac nodded. “Vessel—” she paused to be sure what language her tongue was shaping.

  “The great ships were not prepared for the Great Journey,” the Dhryn answered—too soon, Mac realized. Nik didn’t miss a thing; he wouldn’t miss this. Sure enough, he was sitting straighter, starting to frown.