Migration: Species Imperative #2

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “Is this the way, Mac?” In spite of his anxiety over plummeting nests, Kay didn’t appear worried about a plummeting trail. Then again, he was a much better hiker than Mac had expected. His caftan, its variegated colors almost perfect camouflage in the shade-dappled forest, didn’t snag on branches. Certainly better on foot than paddling a canoe, she grinned to herself. A little too good at times. Although because of Mac’s height, Kay took two steps for each of hers and regularly bumped into her from behind.

  “I don’t think so,” Mac said, backing away from what would be a challenging descent with ropes, let alone with a Trisulian on her heels. “Let’s go around. That way.”

  Hiking—without getting lost—took a respectable amount of concentration. Mac had gradually relaxed, able to push the rest of the universe—from vanishing spies to Dhryn—aside, for the moment at least. Besides, the maples and birch of the upper slopes were still unfurling flowers, not leaves. Their branches let through warmth and sunlight, sufficient to trigger a blaze of early blooming lilies and other wildflowers underfoot.

  The black flies had even taken the afternoon off, much to Kay’s relief. Mac didn’t have the heart to warn him such reprieves were temporary until summer. Whenever they approached a meadow, Mac checked for bears, groggy from hibernation and likely to be with young, but the largest mammal they encountered was a porcupine, dozing in the crotch of an ancient apple tree.

  They’d found two nests so far, both high, wide, and messy platforms originally built by eagles or ravens and preempted by pairs of great gray owls. No one was home. If owls still used them, the young would have fledged by now and be perching in neighboring trees.

  The next nest wasn’t the one Mac had been looking for, not that they were lost, but she was delighted to find it. A promising cavity beckoned in a towering stump, riven by lightning years ago. The rest of the tree lay in pieces at their feet. “Ah,” she exclaimed triumphantly. “Pellets!” Sure enough, neat finger-length cylinders of compressed fur and tiny white bones lay tumbled among the logs beneath the cavity.

  “Look.” Mac picked a nice fresh one to show Kay.

  “What is it?” he asked, an eyestalk bending closer. Curiosity or a way to change focal length? she wondered.

  “A pellet. The indigestible remains of the owl’s prey,” explained Mac. “Likely from a Boreal Owl. Handy for research.” She regarded the pellet fondly. “The bird just coughs it up.” She began teasing the fur apart. “Yup. See? Vole bones.”

  “Usish!” Kay scrambled backward. “Get that away from me! Disgusting Human!”

  It took Mac a fair amount of convincing, and a couple of threats, to get the Trisulian anywhere near the tree again. Once there, he stood like a statue, eyestalks riveted on the cavity as if on guard against falling pellets.

  “C’mon,” Mac coaxed. “The owls aren’t active in the daytime. Besides, regurgitation is a normal function. You can’t tell me you’ve never needed to remove something from your douscent. Same idea.”

  “I most certainly can,” he huffed. “It’s disgusting. Scandalous! I insist we return to the cabin this instant!”

  She planted her feet. “After you’ve recorded it.”

  Kay whipped up his device, clicked it in the general direction of the tree, and started walking away as quickly as the terrain permitted. Following behind, Mac grinned and tucked the pellet into her pocket to examine later. Not so much raven, she judged, as fussy old bachelor.

  It didn’t take long for Mac to regret her glib reference to Kay’s digestive pouch. He remained offended and silent. The trip back to the cabin took on the rigor of an endurance race. It helped that they were going mainly downhill, with their return path clearly marked by footprints—especially those in moose droppings. The race aspect was purely Kay, who not only appeared to know exactly where he was going, but couldn’t get there—or perhaps it was away from her vomiting owls—fast enough.

  Mac finally let him scurry off into the distance, dropping her pace back to a more reasonable amble. It was too hot to rush and she was too annoyed with his reaction to be particularly gracious. “By the time I’m back, Emily,” she promised aloud, grabbing a sapling to help her clamber past a puddle, “I’ll be civil. But honestly. Even sea cucumbers barf.” She amused herself with visions of the dignified Trisulian attempting to deal with having dropped a knife or coffee cup into his precious douscent.

  By the time Mac reached the last stretch of trail, the sun was low on the horizon. It would be bright out on the lake for a while yet, but under the pines the lighting was already growing dim. She didn’t mind. This portion of the forest contained fond memories. There were a few more deadfalls, the closest of which she earmarked to raid for wood for a nice campfire if they stayed long enough. And if the aliens liked fires. The rest could shelter varying hares and ptarmigan. Her father’s “owl feeding stations.” The thought made her laugh.

  A laugh that died on her lips as Mac entered the clearing behind the cabin and saw the kitchen door was open.

  Not just open, but hanging at an angle from one hinge. The screen was shredded, as if by a bear’s claws.

  It wouldn’t be the first time a famished spring bear took a walk through the kitchen. It would be the first time it found aliens there.

  Mac broke into a run, feet soundless on the pine needles and soil, but making plenty of noise herself as she took the stairs two at a time. “Big Scary Human Coming!” she shouted as she rushed into the kitchen. “Fourteen! Kay!”

  The kitchen was fine.

  No mess.

  No bear.

  Mac looked back at the ruined screen and frowned. How much of a temper did Kay have? “You’re going to pay for that,” she vowed, walking into the common room. “The door wasn’t locked. Oh . . .” Mac stopped with her hands on either side of the doorframe.

  The Ro! Her first thought. But they left glistening slime with their destruction. No slime here. Not the Ro, then.

  But there was destruction, of a sort. Mac picked her way into the room, eyes surveying everything, careful to touch nothing. One of the couches—two small tables. They’d been tipped over. A struggle? The organized, if bizarre, arrangements Fourteen had been creating were gone; the items he’d used swept into piles. Mac picked up a yellow piece of porcelain. A frog’s leg. Not much broken otherwise. It was more as if the Myg’s arrangements had been tidied, but in a rush. Why?

  She searched the rest of the cabin, unsure why she stopped calling out the aliens’ names. Fourteen’s room first. The door was open. Mac peered in and snorted. No destruction; the Myg was about as tidy as a second-year Pred in June. Bedding was in a lump, there were clothes strewn all over the floor, and—Mac sniffed, then hurriedly closed the door. She’d air the room out later.

  Kay’s room was a pleasant surprise. The bed was immaculate; he might not have slept in it. Well, Mac thought reasonably, for all she knew he slept on his hairy head. No sign of clothing or baggage, not that she was sure he’d brought any personal belongings. He’d worn the same or identical garments every day.

  Quickly, Mac checked the remaining rooms, then went out on the porch. Nothing. No note, no sign of either of them. She began to feel a sick certainty they’d left her behind, but why? An emergency? She checked the sky with an involuntary shudder. It couldn’t have looked more normal, evening blue, curled wisps of high cloud harbingers of the rain scheduled to move through tomorrow.

  Or had Nik been wrong about the two aliens? Like some bad spy vid, were Fourteen and Kay somehow traitors on a cosmic scale, their credentials fake, the envelope itself a forgery capable of fooling the Ministry’s finest? Had their promise to take her to the Gathering, to work on the Dhryn, been nothing more than a ruse? Had they’d taken what they’d come to get? Emily’s message?

  Mac gave herself a shake. She could be fooled, Em, but not Nik. “Then there’s the whole poodle plot,” she told the forest, her lips twitching. “Quite the master-minds, those two.”

  Unfortunately, t
hat brought her back to some emergency that had taken the two away—without her.

  As for Nik? “Asks me to do one thing,” she muttered darkly as she went down the steps to the path, intent on checking the cove. “Watch two aliens. How hard can that be?”

  The sun was touching treetops on the far shore. Mac shaded her eyes to scan the lake. All of her canoes were either under the porch or leaning against the rocks behind her. The only movement she could see on the lake was a delirious pair of courting grebes running along the water, necks curled forward. At least someone was having a good time, Mac grumbled to herself.

  She climbed back to the cabin. Nik had found time to repair the worst spot and Mac delayed to admire his work. Then she looked uphill and sighed. “If I don’t fix that door, Em, I really will have four-footed guests for supper.”

  As for aliens? They could have been scared off by a bear. Or suddenly recalled by the IU, unable to wait for a slow Human.

  Or were laughing at how easy it had been to fool them all.

  Morose, Mac kicked at a root, missed, and sent a spray of fine grit off the path.

  Rustle, rustle.

  “Sorry,” she called to whatever wildlife she’d offended.

  One leg of the couch had snapped off. “Finally have a use for you,” Mac told the truly dreadful ornamental box her brothers had kept trying to lose outside and her father had somehow kept retrieving. She righted the couch and shoved the box where the leg had been, turning it so the sneering clowns were out of view. “Perfect.”

  Mac tossed a cushion back in place, then dusted her hands, deciding to leave the piles for tomorrow. Everything would need to be washed—what wasn’t chipped or broken. To be honest, she wasn’t in the mood to discover how much remained of her collection.

  They’d trashed her home. Left her behind.

  Interstellar incidents had begun with less motivation.

  She’d rehung the kitchen door as her first task, wiring the bottom hinge in place. It would do for now. The screen was ruined, but Mac found a board to tack over the opening for the night. No point making it easier on the black flies, who’d come out in droves once the air began to still.

  What she wanted was for a certain spy to make an appearance.

  “What I want, Em,” Mac said with a firm nod, “is a beer. And supper. But the beer first.” She went into the kitchen and pulled open the chiller. Small items were arranged on narrow shelves along the inside of the door. At first, she tsked with disappointment. “None left. Damn aliens.” Then she spotted something promising on the lowermost shelf and bent to check. “Aha,” Mac crowed. “Even cold.” She began to close the door, then stopped, leaning her head to one side.

  She’d heard something.

  There.

  A series of soft clicks, hardly louder than the snap of dragonfly wings.

  It had come from the back of the chiller, behind the stacked boxes of alien provisions Russell had brought. Which they hadn’t bothered to take with them.

  Mac switched her grip on the beer bottle to turn it into a club, noticing her fingers were numb. Cold wasn’t the word. She exhaled a plume of condensation. Odd. She hadn’t set the chiller to freezing.

  Bottle raised and ready, she peered over the boxes.

  The Myg lay on the floor in a very Human fetal curl, eyes closed, his skin patched with frost. Dropping the bottle, Mac hurried to kneel beside him. He was cold to the touch, but not frozen solid. She started to give him a gentle shake, then saw the damage to the back of his head. “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  It had been a terrible blow. The skull itself was indented knuckle-deep along two parallel lines, the surrounding wisps of hair covered in pale green blood, already congealed. She couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.

  Someone had tried very hard to make sure.

  Forcing down her grief and anger, Mac concentrated on the task at hand. First, get him out of the chiller.

  After a moment’s consideration, she took hold of Fourteen’s ankles and pulled. His body was rigid and stayed curled, but it slid along the floor. At least until the chiller door, where his hip stuck on the rim. She tried lifting him over it, but the alien was unexpectedly massive.

  Think. How had Seung moved that shark by himself? “Wait here,” Mac told the comatose—and probably dead—alien, feeling foolish. She ran to a bedroom for a blanket. It took a bit of effort to roll him over and slip the blanket underneath, but she managed. Then it was one strong pull to ease him over the rim and into the warmth of the kitchen.

  Which was far enough, Mac realized grimly. If Fourteen was dead, she’d have to move his body back into the chiller for safekeeping. Nik or someone would want an autopsy. Had there ever been an alien murdered on Earth before? The paperwork alone boggled.

  What sunlight was left sent beams along the floor of the common room, barely reaching into the kitchen. Mac turned on the lights and gathered her courage.

  “You’d think,” she told Fourteen as she examined him, “you people would learn not to visit me.” The only other injuries she could find without disturbing his clothes were to his hands. Both were bruised and bloody. She couldn’t rule out cracked bones. His left was clenched into a tight fist, as if holding something. Being as gentle as she could, Mac took his fist in her hands and turned it to see.

  An eyestalk?

  Kay.

  “So,” she said quietly, lowering Fourteen’s fist. “While I took my sweet time coming back, you were fighting for your life.” In how many ways had she been a fool? The Trisulian’s headlong rush to the cabin had had nothing to do with alien squeamishness—he’d known he could outpace her on the trail, had doubtless calculated how far they’d have to hike to give him sufficient time to return and attack Fourteen before Mac could catch up. He’d planned this. Planned it all.

  Wasn’t that what murderers did?

  “Here’s hoping he failed,” she told Fourteen softly. “But how do I know?”

  Mac licked the back of her real hand and placed it in front of Fourteen’s nose and mouth. The generous lips were slack and the tips of his white tongue protruded. She waited, but felt no moving air. “Not good.” His thick eyelids wouldn’t budge short of using pliers, so Mac pressed her ear to his chest instead. Silence.

  She rocked back on her heels. “If you were me, and I were you, I’d be dead,” she informed him, proud of her calm tone. Hearing it gave her more confidence anyway. “But you’re not. Me, that is.” Mac gave him a gentle poke. “You stopped bleeding, which isn’t necessarily a good sign. But why would Kay waste time to put your corpse—not that I’m saying you’re a corpse, Fourteen—in the chiller? I wasn’t that far behind.”

  Mac stood and opened the chiller door. Her beer bottle had smashed open on the floor, the liquid already slush at the edges. She ignored the mess, going to the climate control. Not only was it set to minimum, but a bloody green handprint smeared the wall beside it. Fourteen. But to try and turn it up, or had he turned it down?

  Hopefully, she’d be able to ask him. Mac cranked the temperature back to normal, then pulled the door closed again. Now that she looked for them, there were green smears on the kitchen floor leading from the common room. Not many. The number that might have been left by bleeding hands if Fourteen had dragged himself along.

  Rustle . . . scritch, scritch.

  A little early for a raccoon or skunk to be checking the kitchen door, but Mac didn’t bother shooing the creature away. “Good thing I fixed it,” she commented, going back to Fourteen. “Imagine what they’d think of you.”

  The flutter of dragonfly wings.

  Much too early in the season for you, Mac thought with rising hope. “Fourteen. Can you hear me?”

  Another series of those faint clicks. She wasn’t imagining it. The sounds were coming from the Myg.

  Mac wrinkled her nose and grinned with relief.

  So was that smell.

  She made Fourteen as comfortable as possible on the floor, pushing the table o
ut of the way and slipping cushions from the common room under his head and feet. Rolled blankets supported the curl of his back. Now to get help.

  Seconds later, Mac stared into the box where the cabin’s receiver/transmitter had been. Well, she thought pragmatically, it was still there, just in pieces.

  Fourteen had carried a standard-looking imp; Mac had watched him use it to send various messages yesterday. A quick search of Fourteen’s clothes—he was back in the Little Misty Lake General Store sweatshirt but still in the paisley shorts—turned up nothing that didn’t seem permanently attached.

  In the interests of being thorough, and an irrepressible curiosity, Mac did confirm his claim to no external genitalia.

  She could canoe for help. That meant leaving Fourteen helpless for several hours. The novice canoe had a distress signal she could activate, if willing to paddle out and capsize it in deep water or run it into a rock. Again, leaving Fourteen alone too long.

  The one time privacy wasn’t a bonus. “If anyone’s listening,” Mac announced in a loud, clear voice as she walked to the door to the porch and looked out in the fading light, “I’ve a seriously injured Myg on my kitchen floor. Could be dead,” she said honestly. “The Trisulian, Kay, tried to murder him. We need help. Anyone?”

  Nik might have planted one of his toys in the cabin after all. For once, Mac decided, she wouldn’t mind. “Where’s a spy when you need one, Emily?”

  Louder clicking.

  Mac hurried back to the kitchen. Fourteen was still in his distressed curl, but she could swear an arm had moved from where she’d placed it. The warmth of the room might be helping—

  Or she was imagining a dead alien was clicking and moving in her kitchen. “And the night’s young, Em,” Mac sighed.

  Optimism was more useful. Acting on her hunch, Mac tossed a handful of towels in the sink, running hot water over them until they were soaked and steaming. After cooling them from scalding to hot, she began to apply the towels to Fourteen’s shoulders and chest. She didn’t attempt to wipe the blood from his head or hands. The clots were holding the wounds together. She placed the last towel around his neck.