Migration: Species Imperative #2

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “Thanks.” He pulled it over his shoulders. “Your ride should be here tomorrow, probably after the weather goes through. You’re sure you’ll be okay, Mac? I could arrange for someone to stop in tonight.”

  “Worry about the aliens,” she told him. “I’ve hosted fund-raisers.”

  “There’s that,” he acknowledged solemnly, that dimple showing as he finished fastening his shirt. A truly serious look. “I hope Fourteen can do something with the message. We’ve had no luck.”

  Mac took a deep breath, that nightmare image of Emily—her voice, her face, her desperation—swelling up behind her eyes. “If he does find out what it says, what do I do about Kay?”

  Nik shook his head. “Nothing. He has as much right to the information as any of us, Mac, and the immunity to do with it as he sees fit. Representatives of the IU, including Kay and Fourteen—and now you—are outside Ministry jurisdiction. We can—and will—follow him if he leaves, monitor any transmissions, delay him with bureaucracy to a point. But that’s it. We can’t stop him sending anything he wants to his government.” A gleam of teeth that could only be described as wolfish. “Though the IU may smack his eyestalks afterward.”

  Nik’s smile faded. “Just don’t lose either of them in the bush. Or yourself. Okay? And, Mac?” He cupped one hand, then tipped it over, as if proving it was empty. “The message might not be from Emily at all. Don’t get your hopes up.”

  Mac gave a helpless shrug. “I have to hope.”

  “I know.” Nik opened his arms, very slightly, as if in invitation.

  It was good-bye. Mac didn’t move. She studied his face instead, compelled to memorize details: the patchy beard and tired lines of dust and sweat, the dark sweep of lashes and that unruly lock of hair over the forehead, the strength along jaw and throat.

  “I watched you this morning,” she confessed. “When you were chopping the root.”

  “Why do you think I was working so hard?” At her shocked look, he gave a quick, shameless grin. “Spy, remember?”

  “Oh.”

  “Makes us even. I watched you sleep.”

  “There’s that.”

  Another of those abruptly strained pauses. Mac had no idea what to do with it and concentrated on digging her toe into a crack in the stone floor.

  Nik finally gave a quick nod. “I’d better go.” He started for the door.

  How do I say good-bye, Em? Mac tried to think of something, but he slowed and stopped before she could. Maybe, she told herself, he was having the same problem.

  Which didn’t bode well for their ability to converse.

  “Mac. One last thing. In case I don’t see you for a while.”

  Promising.

  “What?” she prompted.

  “I heard you tell Fourteen that the Ministry doesn’t value your insights. I wanted to tell you. You were wrong,” he said, gazing down at her, his eyes clouded. “Everything you know, everything you’ve postulated about the Dhryn? We take it very seriously, Mac. You have unique ideas—they may be important ones. That’s why your office was monitored, your privacy violated. As much—more—as we were waiting for Emily or the Ro, we wanted to hear you.”

  It hurt, even more than him leaving. “You could have asked, the way the IU did,” Mac snapped. “We’re on the same side.”

  “Yes.” Nik’s lips pressed together in an unhappy line, then he shrugged. “But we’re not the same. Not anymore.”

  The owls appeared to lean closer. Illusion, Mac decided, just like the way there seemed no air left in the small room, despite the open door. “What do you mean?” she whispered.

  “You still dream in Dhryn.”

  Another ambush. Mac stared at him. “That’s why you were in my room last night. You were hoping I’d have a nightmare so you could—” her voice cracked. “So you could hear me.”

  “Yes. We had to know.”

  “Why?” Mac balled her hands into fists, but kept them still. Not anger; despair. “Why, Nik? Does it make me some kind of traitor to my kind? Is that it?”

  “No one questions your loyalty.” As she watched, he seemed to wrestle with some decision, then make it. “We’ve tried using the self-teach Emily made you for the Dhryn language on others—I’ve tried it myself. It doesn’t work for anyone else, Mac. Worse, we can’t make one that does, not for a Human brain. Yours doesn’t copy. Existing vocabularies for the adult language lack syntax for the infrasound component and there are none for the oomling version. That self-teach was specific to you; what it did seems unique. We can’t even predict what its full impact will be on you.”

  Damn you, Emily, Mac thought wearily. “What you’re saying is that the Ministry, anyone in authority, doesn’t trust me because they can’t translate what I say in my sleep.”

  “It’s not a matter of trust. The psych experts were clear that none of your personality, nothing of you, Mac, has been affected. It’s only—well, some view anything you say about the Dhryn as potentially tainted. That doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable, but, to be frank, my superiors aren’t confident having you as the source.”

  “Are you?”

  He hesitated an instant too long.

  Mac shook her head. “I see,” she said.

  “No, you don’t ‘see,’ ” Nik snapped, eyes flashing. “I fought to have you brought in as an analyst. I argued for weeks, went over the heads of my superiors, and came close to losing my job. Even though I knew about your nightmares, Mac; knew you were hurt and grieving, how much you wanted your life back, your fish, to get to work. I wouldn’t let any of it matter more than learning about the Dhryn. But all I could get was the authorization to arrange surveillance, to send ’Sephe to stay near you, so we wouldn’t lose anything you could tell us. Why do you think I helped the IU reach you? They can do what I couldn’t. Get you working.”

  He rubbed his face, smearing dust, and wound up with a charmingly chagrined expression. “I still can’t tell if I felt more frustrated or vindicated when I listened to you, sitting on a porch swing with a beer, make more sense than any ‘expert’ I’ve heard yet. We’re all fools.”

  “No argument from me,” Mac said. She licked her thumb and used it to repair a smear on his cheek, paying attention only to his skin and the dust. “That’s better.”

  Nik caught her hand before she pulled it away. “Don’t.” Harsh and low. “Don’t forgive me.”

  “For what?” Mac tried not to smile. “For being right? Spying on me all this time was a waste; I should have been working with you. Do you think there’s been a day I haven’t picked at the puzzle, tried to comprehend what’s happening, make sense of it? You asked me if I ever let go, Nikolai. Well, here’s the thing.” She turned her hand in his so their fingers intertwined, and gripped as hard as she could. “I really don’t. Not of Emily. Not of Brymn. Not of the questions we have to answer to find her and understand him.” Mac searched his face then nodded to herself. “Not of you.”

  His fingers tightened in response. “I thought I warned you about getting close to anyone in this business.”

  Now she did smile. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  A perilous glitter in his eyes. “I thought you told Fourteen I was too old, Mackenzie Connor.”

  “Something to discuss when I don’t have an alien in my kitchen,” Mac said primly, pulling free. “Go. You have spy stuff to do.” Keep it light, she warned herself. Make it simple.

  But in answer, Nik cupped her face in his hands before she could step out of reach. “We’re the worst fools of all,” he told her, leaning so close the warm breath of each word was like a kiss against her mouth, his eyes burning into hers. “I can’t promise not to hurt you, Mac, or those you care about. Not with what’s at stake. Not with the Dhryn out there. I’ll spend us both—use anyone I can. I must. You can’t bind me.”

  “Do you really think I would?” Mac put her hands over his and gently loosened his hold, with a reluctance every cell in her body felt. Pretending to smooth his shirt gav
e her a safer reason to touch him. “The way I look at it, Nik,” Mac explained, her voice husky but firm, “fools are the ones who wait for the universe to rearrange itself, then wonder why nothing ever happens.” She lifted her eyes to his. “The wise give it a shove.”

  “Explaining why I ended up in the ocean,” Nik recalled, then gave a crooked smile. “Okay. I’ll leave. I don’t suppose you’d promise to leave the universe alone until we see each other again.”

  She stuck out her tongue.

  “I thought not.” Nik leaned forward to touch his lips to her forehead. “Take care, Mac.” Then he spun on his heel and left.

  At the same instant, one of the sunbeams hitting the floor flickered again.

  Startled, Mac glanced up at the skylight. Then stared. Nothing.

  Suddenly afraid, she rushed to the door, but Nik was already out of sight among the trees. Damn, he moved fast.

  She froze in place to listen, hearing only the pounding of her heart at first. Gradually, the distant scolding of a squirrel overlaid the faint buzz of uncounted hungry black flies, the drone of a passing beetle. Mac turned her head sharply at a rustling, most likely a sparrow, through a drift of pine needles beside the cabin.

  Everything normal.

  She shuddered, not reassured in the least.

  - Encounter -

  THERE IS NO advance warning of a ship about to arrive through a transect. In the bizarre universe of no-space physics, only the act of arriving can create the passage along a transect itself. You arrive at B, because you left A with the intention of arriving at B. Before and after this intention, there is no passage at all. Poets are frequently more at ease with the process than the astrophysicists responsible for it; the few who combine these skills can name their price in any system of the Interspecies Union.

  There being no advance warning, management of a transect consists of controlling the approach path of all departing traffic, keeping it to the exterior of a cone of space funneling into each gate probability area—and charging the applicable tariffs and duties. Arriving traffic is granted the interior of that cone and each starship is expected to vacate that privileged space as quickly and expediently as its sublight drive permits, heading immediately, of course, to be assessed for the required arrival tax or fee.

  This is the way transects are managed by every species of the IU, as set out in the agreements put in place by the Sinzi, who’d rediscovered the transect technology and made it their quest to share it with any species peaceful or at least law-abiding enough, to maintain their end. After all, when it came to instantaneous intersystem travel, the more destinations, the merrier.

  However, the Sinzi being peaceful, practical, and fundamentally prone to cooperation—having several brains per adult body—it wasn’t surprising they hadn’t appreciated the full range of opportunities that would be presented by having doors to thousand of systems which couldn’t be shut. Or even effectively watched.

  Like the wide expanse of a river mouth which carries its assortment of vessels to ports on either side as well as out to sea, each transect gate area is large enough to accommodate vast numbers of ships at a time. Unlike boats on a river, who share the level plane of the water’s surface, starships don’t have to be aligned in any way to one another. There is only intention: coming in or going out.

  While by treaty members of the IU shared responsibility for improper use of the transects, in reality warfare among systems belonging to the same species was typically overlooked, so long as it didn’t impede the passage of other species’ shipping. Moreover, the monitoring of smugglers, tax evaders, and other scoundrels was viewed as a system responsibility. This was not only practical considering the transects themselves, but also necessary given the variety of attitudes among species. As the saying went: one Sythian’s pimp was another Frow’s grocer.

  The Imrya version was, naturally, more elegant, much longer, and constantly evolving through language forms to be trendy. But the gist remained the same. Species who wished to control certain elements within their space maintained patrols or a military fleet, or locked up their precious thirdborns. Whatever worked.

  Until now, when the Imrya inserted their entire battle fleet, from mighty cruisers to slaved clusters of solitary fighters, within the whirling spiral of normal traffic moving to enter the Naralax Transect. Several enterprising merchants abandoned their original plans to exit the system altogether, choosing to sell their luxury wares directly to the hulking ships. Others dropped bribes to hurry themselves through the application process, hoping to avoid being too closely checked by a bored deck officer.

  Every morning, a new analogy for the potential danger of this particular transect was shared. Today it was “Abyss in the Darkness.”

  Later, the poet responsible for those fateful words—a minor talent who’d had an admirer sneak three and a half dozen entries on her behalf into the command sequence—committed public suicide. It was considered a prideful gesture among Imrya, with its implication of having reached the pinnacle of success in one’s field. The debate would rage for decades whether “Abyss in the Darkness” had been powerful enough in its syntax and subtlety to cause the disastrous events of that day. Regardless, the carapace of the poet, her fateful words inscribed along one edge, would sway in the wind with the thousands of others hung for posterity along the Immortals’ Bridge. That those immortals’ words couldn’t actually be read from this honorable location was never mentioned.

  The Imrya always had more words.

  Perhaps the new analogy was more alarming than its predecessors. Perhaps the day itself was inauspicious, given the discontent throughout the Imrya fleet over missing the opening of the Play-wright’s Festival on the home world, an event that only took place every thirteen solar cycles and was claimed to usher in the next great phase of Imrya literary masterworks.

  Or, perhaps, it was the startling clang of metal against the hull of an isolated, lonely scoutship, bits of debris dumped from a passing ship that seemed, for the merest instant, to be the silver-clad tentacles of a grappling Dhryn.

  An instant is time enough for an alarm to be sent, but not for it to be rescinded. An instant is more than time enough for the wink of a ship to appear from the “Abyss in the Darkness.” And it is exactly long enough for a well-trained, terrified fleet to open fire.

  If the arrival had been a Dhryn Progenitor, with her cloud of horrific feeders, the carapaces of heroes would have hung alongside poets on the Immortals’ Bridge.

  But it was the vast Sinzi starliner, Wonder’s Progress II, filled to capacity with twenty-five thousand, three hundred and fourteen souls, a mix of tourists, actors, and drama critics, members of the founding species of the Interspecies Union plus diplomats from a hundred worlds, en route to the Imrya’s famed Festival.

  To die with no more advance warning than they gave.

  That which is Dhryn must pause the Journey.

  Feeders, replete and heavy, return to cling to their carriers. The carriers rise from the empty husk of a world to link together, then rejoin the Progenitor. The Progenitor accepts what is brought, gracious as dawn to the day it brings.

  Done with care; done with haste. Any pause is delay. Any delay is threat.

  The Journey continues, to the relief of all that is Dhryn.

  - 9 -

  BETRAYAL AND BRAVERY

  “HOW ABOUT FROM here?” Mac tilted her head back to admire the distant pile of sticks. “What do you think?”

  Kay came to where she stood and brought his recorder up to his upper left eyestalk, peering through it in the direction she recommended. “So long as you are sure it won’t fall on us, Mac,” he fussed.

  She laughed. “That nest’s been up there since I was little, and likely before that. So long as the pine lasts, it will.”

  “Remarkable.” The Trisulian took a few more images, using one hand to hold his small round device and his other arm held perpendicular to his body, as though having an eyestalk preoccupied affected
his balance slightly.

  Or maybe he thought the posture made him look artistic, Mac thought to herself, as always careful not to jump to conclusions about aliens. “Are you game to find the next?” she asked when he was satisfied.

  “Lead on, O Guide.”

  “This way.”

  Mac followed faint memory and a fainter trail deeper into the woods north of the cabin. It had been easier than she’d hoped to keep both aliens occupied. When she’d returned to the cabin, she’d found Fourteen in the common room and Kay banished to the porch, where he was watching the other alien through the window. Meanwhile, Fourteen, having pushed the furniture and carpets against the walls, had begun arranging everything small and portable he could find in patterns on the floor. Completely oblivious to her or Kay, he scurried among the items on all fours like some demented carrion beetle, pushing and pulling each into new locations. The floor was already littered with utensils, plates, food containers, and Mac’s childhood collection of porcelain frogs, all casting tiny distorted shadows in the sunlight coming through the porch.

  Kay had agreed wholeheartedly—or whatever would be the corresponding body part for his kind—to Mac’s suggestion they leave genius at work and hike out to the owls’ nests to make the recordings she wanted.

  Mac was satisfied. Fourteen was—presumably—working on Emily’s message, her father would get his nest images after all, and, as per Nik’s instructions, she was keeping the aliens out of trouble.

  So long as she didn’t get them both lost.

  A trifling worry. Worst case, the bioamplifier in her bone marrow would locate them for anyone looking. Not, Mac told herself firmly, that she would get lost. A few years weren’t going to change her forest beyond recognition.

  Mac halted when the trail, a generous word for a slot of mud last used by a moose with a healthy digestive tract, took a steep drop. Steeper than she remembered. So steep, in fact, she could hold out her hand and almost touch the tops of the trees below. She stretched out to try.