What had Nik said? “I’ll spend us both—”
If I have to, Em, Mac told herself, cold and calm, I’ll spend them all.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Mac said aloud.
“Let’s.” Sing-li pressed his lips together for a moment, then gave a curt nod. “No offense, Mac, but we’re not the kind of assets you’re used to—can’t risk being penned in here, for starters. Leave it with me.”
Gladly, Mac thought, feeling one of the knots in her spine ease. “Whatever you think best, Sing-li.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know what I think.” But he smiled. “Anything else?”
“The door may be a joke, but can you make sure we aren’t interrupted?” His anticipatory grin matched Lyle’s. “Good.”
Leaving Sing-li to contact the others—and make whatever plans such people made for treasonous activities—Mac headed into the middle of the room. She grabbed the nearest stool and climbed up on it, finding her balance.
“Good morning, everyone!” she called out.
The answering chorus was ragged, spiced with some complaints about her time sense, though less than she’d expected. The faces Mac could read looked understandably tired and puzzled. “In this room,” she told them, her voice clear and calm, “are two very important things. You. Experts on understanding the past. And your data. Everything collected to date about life on the planet that spawned the Dhryn.
“We can’t answer every question we have tonight. But we must answer one,” she said. “One I believe you’ll find worth losing a little sleep over.”
“It better be!” someone called from a back row. Sing-li, a dark presence now blocking the only door, gave the speaker a menacing look. There was a ripple of uneasiness as the rest noticed.
“You tell me,” Mac challenged. “Here’s my question. Were the Dhryn—their biology, their technology—deliberately modified into a weapon by the Myrokynay, the Ro?”
Only the patter of baby Myg feet broke the ensuing silence. Even the consular staff, who’d been preoccupied dispensing coffee to those nearest, stopped to stare at her, his hands in midair.
Mac raised her eyebrows. “We don’t have much time. Tonight, this Gathering began transmitting the Ro’s contact signal. I, for one, would like to know who we’re inviting to the party—before we throw open the door.”
“You heard the lady,” Lyle said into the stunned hush. “Let’s get to it.”
- 19 -
HYPOTHESES AND HORRORS
MAC COULD FEEL it along her nerves. She walked quietly from group to group, listening, absorbing, not saying a word. The focus was there; the drive had taken hold. If she tried to stop them now, she thought with satisfaction, they’d ignore her.
Even the meditation chamber was humming. Literally . Mac stopped beside the gray curtain, but could tell nothing about what was happening on the other side beyond some nice harmonics.
If her route tended to circle back most often to where Unensela and the climatologists pored over data, no one noticed that either.
Mac shifted two Myg offspring to her shoulders, balancing a third on one hip. Almost no one, she sighed, taking the trio with her. She went to stare out the window, seeing the patio where the Gathering met each morning. No sign of dawn, but there were glows out now, as yellow-clad staff moved over rain-wet tiles to set up tents between the trees. A little morning drizzle wasn’t going to stop the Sinzi-ra’s efforts to coax the Ro.
And beneath it all, the Atrium, where a signal was even now being sent.
Mac’s shudder made the Mygs grab where they shouldn’t and she snarled in protest. “I’m not a horse,” she muttered, heading back to their mother.
Not that she knew for a fact Unensela was the biological mother of the pack. Caretaker, at least, although absentminded.
Before Mac reached the climatologists, Lyle intercepted her. “I think we have something,” he said, jerking his head back to the circle of tables and consoles they’d dubbed “the view” for no reason anyone had explained to her.
Before joining him, Mac glanced at the door. Sing-li’s shrug was the same as his last dozen. No word from Nik. He’d sent his report about the Ro; nothing, as far as Mac could tell, had resulted. No klaxons or alarms, no rush of searchers through the room. She supposed she should be grateful not to be disturbed.
It felt more like a serious threat was being ignored.
Carrying her passengers, Mac joined Lyle, nodding a greeting to Therin and his compatriots. “What is it? Sorry, one minute.” She restrained the little Myg who’d spotted the Sthlynii’s oral tentacles, giving the nearest Human, Kirby, a pleading look. Once he’d pried the annoyed offspring from her shoulder, Mac continued: “Lyle says you have something for me.”
“You are standing on it.”
Mac backed out of the empty circle of floor. Therin gestured to another Human, who lifted a pair of image extrapolation wands. Like Mudge, she knew the name of the devices, if not how they were used.
Seemed she was about to find out.
Without warning, the floor and the space above it filled with an image of dust and ruins, so perfect Mac felt as though she could put her hands into it. The archaeologist did just that, only reaching with the wands instead of hands as Therin spoke. Each time, it modified what was being displayed. “We’ve gone through our surveys and those from the IU team still on the planet. This is the largest Dhryn building either group has found.” Dust disappeared and the building was restored before Mac’s eyes. She walked around it. Perfect on all sides. The walls had that characteristic nonperpendicular slope so dear to the Dhryn. Its walls were coated with mosaics. “Note the size.” A Human figure, a duplicate of Mac herself, walked into the image to stand beside the building.
Mac frowned at her doppelganger. “I’m too big.”
“No, Mac,” Lyle said, a note of excitement in his voice. “The building’s too small.”
Therin concurred. “We haven’t found a single structure large enough to contain one of the Progenitors. Including underground,” he added, anticipating Mac’s question.
“That’s—” As Mac walked around the image, her little echo doing the same until she glared at the operator. “Tents? Could they have lived in the open?”
“I don’t see how,” said one of the others. “The climate was harsh before the vegetation was stripped from it. And you said the Dhryn offspring were born from a Progenitor’s skin—that sounds vulnerable. You’d want protection.”
“He said there were ships waiting for them,” Mac whispered.
“Pardon? What ships? Who said?”
She blinked up at Lyle. “The Haven Dhryn,” she covered quickly. “One talked about how the great ships were buried and ready for them when they arrived. Could the Progenitors have lived on similar ships, orbiting the planet?”
“They did not have these ships. They could not make them.” Da’a, the other Cey, heaved a deep breath, sending a quiver through his hanging folds of skin. “I do not say the Dhryn are stupid. But we have no evidence from this world that they were space-faring at all. There are none of the precursors of such technology.”
“You could say the same for most of the technology in this room,” Mac pointed out. “Imports, with no history of development on Earth.”
The archaeologists smiled and exchanged looks at this. Lyle gave a grim laugh. “You can see the pattern of evolution in living things, Mac. Trust us to know what to look for in what a culture can and cannot do. The Dhryn might have wound up in space. Someone else put them there.”
“Before the Progenitors needed larger buildings.” Mac frowned. “How sure can we be that the Dhryn are from this world?”
A voice from behind. Unensela, without offspring. “Idiot. The fossil record’s solid. I’ve a progression of eight-limbed, primarily colonial animal forms stretching back to preflowering plants. DNA to match. The Dhryn started here, all right. Come and see what we have.”
“Weeee’re nooooo
t done, botanist.” The Sthlynii’s diction slipped momentarily.
Mac hid a smile and focused on Therin. “What else?”
The building image was replaced by a satellite view of the Dhryn home world. A few strokes of the wand pushed back time, until buildings sprang from ruins. Mac leaned closer and the image obligingly zoomed in. She fought vertigo as she inspected something that seemed unlikely. Then again, she didn’t want to be called a biologist, Mac grinned to herself. “Did they have powered flight?”
“You noticed.” From the triumphant look Lyle gave Therin and the others, Mac presumed there’d been a bet placed. She didn’t bother reacting.
“No roads,” she obliged.
“And no sign of flying machines either.”
“The feeder form?”
“Irrelevant,” Unensela snapped. “The prevailing winds would have blown them halfway around the continent. Only in there—” she stabbed her hand and arm into the image, distorting it and getting a protest from the operators, “—would they be able to float about without assistance.”
“In there” was a series of deep rifts, running roughly north/south. They were immense and, in this presentation, filled with lush vegetation.
“Fantastic, aren’t they?”
“They are more than that.” Unensela made a rude noise. Mac prepared herself in case a smell was to follow. “The forest growth on this world was as cyclic as the climate. Seeds for the dominant species, large and filled with nutrients, were produced underground and stayed there, safe from extremes and foragers. The surface growth, even of trees, would die to the soil in each hemisphere in turn, starting at the pole, then germinate and regrow when conditions improved again. Food would have ebbed and flowed like a tide that took centuries to pass any one place.” She disrupted the image again, jabbing at the rifts. “These—they would have been like roadways to anything following that tide. Your feeder Dhryn could use them.”
Mac noticed a heated discussion underway to one side of the group. She caught the eye of one of the participants and gestured her closer. It was the gray-haired woman, Mirabelle Sangrea. “What is it, Mirabelle?” she asked.
“We’ve been mapping the Dhryn—well, you can’t call them cities, Mac, not like you’d see on most IU worlds—we’ve started calling them havens.” She smiled at Mac’s raised eyebrow. “It seemed right. They built clusters of buildings, like beads, but, as you noted, unconnected. Therin? Could we display Sim 231 for Mac, please?”
The Sthlynii blew out his tentacles, but complied.
The view was again of the planetscape, but now dotted. Mac didn’t need the Myg’s triumphant “Hah!” to see how lines of dots, each representing a haven, paralleled a rift. Not every line of dots did so. Some were on their own. But the overall pattern? “Were these all inhabited at the same time?” she asked.
Mirabelle’s smile widened. “There’s evidence of sequential abandonment, then reuse.”
“As if the Dhryn population moved down from one pole, going from haven to haven, then back again,” Mac said.
“Yes. Well, until they stopped doing so—not long before the rest of the Chasm worlds were stripped bare of life. We’re working on that interval. It definitely overlaps the time when the Dhryn abandoned ceramics.”
Mac met Lyle’s eyes, then looked around at the rest. They’d attracted another crowd, not everyone by any means, but a solid ring had formed, stood shoulder to shoulder in order to see. All appeared equally disturbed.
Da’a spoke first. “I see a piece missing, Mac.”
“Only one?” Mac couldn’t help but murmur. She nodded for him to continue.
“If the Ro took the Dhryn and modified them, produced these gigantic Progenitors as breeding machines, why doesn’t Myriam—the Dhryn planet—show some early sign of it?”
“Because the entire planet was a trust,” Mudge said loudly, pushing his way through to stand by Mac. “Protecting the diversity of the source material.”
Mac grinned. “I knew I brought you for a reason, Oversight.” Her grin faded as she studied the strange world now slowly turning in front of them all, showing its seasons. “That had to be what the Ro did. Until they had new Dhryn, the species exactly as they wanted—modifications tested, sure to reproduce in kind—they’d want the real thing healthy and close at hand. But once they were satisfied—any living members of the original genetic stock would be a threat, a potential for reversion. They’d have to be destroyed.”
“None of this absolves the Dhryn of guilt.”
Lyle. Mac understood the pain in his face. No time, she told herself. “Right now the issue is the signal going out to those who may have modified the Dhryn into a menace. My next question, folks. Was it the Ro or not? You have,” she made a point of looking at the windows, “until they answer.”
With that, Mac turned and walked away. It was that, or scream at all of them to hurry, to forget another coffee, stop chatting with friends. Not reassuring behavior in a team leader.
Automatically, she glanced at Sing-li, only to see him heads together with Nik, here at last, both men deep in conversation. Mac changed direction to join them, but she wasn’t as quick as Mudge, whose glad shout of “Stefan!” was enough to turn several heads.
There were times, Mac growled to herself.
Fortunately for Mudge’s continued existence, Nik was more than capable of dealing with distraction. After a brief handshake and a quiet word—accompanied by the pair of them looking at her—Mudge nodded and walked away.
He did, however, pause beside Mac long enough to say: “At least Human authorities are taking us seriously, Norcoast. Stefan wants to talk to you.”
She muttered something under her breath.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing, Oversight.”
Nik smiled as she approached. A smile for others that did nothing to warm his eyes. “Is it my imagination, Dr. Connor,” he said cheerfully, “or are these the same people we spent the last months keeping away from your doorstep?”
She collected herself, reading the message. Keep it calm; keep it normal. “Pretty much,” she said as lightly. “But I don’t think you needed to try very hard. They’re better at hunting the past than the present.”
“Let’s hope so. You certainly have them working late—or is that early?”
Her ability to stay calm and act normal was, Mac realized, severely limited at this hour. “We need to talk,” she said bluntly.
Nik said: “No argument there.” Then he looked past her and that carefree smile reappeared. “Is that ? I don’t believe it—that’s Wilson Kudla, isn’t it? Author of ‘Chasm Ghouls—They Exist and Speak to Me.’ I’m such a fan.”
Mac and Sing-li were left standing dumbfounded as Mr. Spy, Nik Trojanowski, dashed to where the sweaty author and his trio of equally perspiring supplicants were emerging from their curtained-off alcove.
She didn’t, Mac decided, want to know what they’d been doing.
Or, for that matter, what Nik was doing.
Sing-li coughed once. “You’re supposed to go with him, Mac.”
“I am?”
“Trust me.”
Fuming at the waste of time, Mac stormed up beside Nik just as he was greeting the Great Man himself. The slight stammer while asking for an autograph was, Mac decided, a particularly nice touch. Kudla, despite being one of the most nondescript Humans she’d ever met, was virtually preening.
“And, may I, could I?” Nik touched the curtain with one visibly trembling hand. “I’ve never had success before—but where you’ve been meditating? It must work!”
“Of course,” the Great Man intoned. “May the Ghouls speak to you as well.” His smug look in her direction, Mac told herself, returning that look with a scowl, said more than the specters ever would.
“You’ll want to see this,” Nik promised Mac as the ghoul hunters walked off—hopefully to shower. Ignoring her protest, he took her real hand and pulled her with him through the curtain.
&nbs
p; The alcove was little more than a tent, its fabric opaque and—Mac sneezed—a bit dusty. Small lights, designed to look like candles, ringed the junction between ceiling and walls. Mac did her best not to step on anything. It wasn’t easy, given the number of small ornate gongs lined up in rows around what was, without doubt, a very well-used mattress.
Not a place she wanted to stay. Mac turned to protest “What’s—” but Nik’s mouth smothered the rest, the unexpected kiss making her completely forget whatever she’d planned to say anyway.
Before she could decide whether or not to lose herself in it, his finger replaced his lips against hers. “Shhh.” His eyes were hidden behind the reflections on his lenses.
Satisfied she understood, Nik climbed on the mattress and, shaking out the small telescoping wand he drew from a pocket, used it to sweep the space around them, poking into every corner, even along the ceiling. “Clear,” he pronounced an instant later.
Of Ro. Lo-tech. Effective.
She wanted to hug him. Instead: “Is anyone else checking?” Mac asked, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle.
“I’m told the consular staff is aware of the situation.” Low, with some frustration. “What that means, I don’t know. The Sinzi have defenses within the building but . . . no one was hurt and the Ro certainly aren’t the first aliens to trash a room here.” A shake of his head. “I came as soon as I could, Mac.”
“I know.”
He ran his fingers down her arm to the glove, giving the fingers a gentle tug. “You okay? You haven’t had any sleep, have you?”
“Better than you,” Mac asserted. “I grabbed a nap.” It wasn’t a lie.
“We can’t stay in here long,” he said, hand dropping to his side. His nose wrinkled. “Just as well. Sing-li brought me up to speed. Now, Dr. Connor.” A note of familiar exasperation. “Why aren’t you sleeping? Why aren’t all these people sleeping? Why is that Myg in the signal room instead of sleeping? And—”
Mac raised one eyebrow. “And?”
“What the hell are you doing giving orders to my people?”
Migration: Species Imperative #2 Page 43