Migration: Species Imperative #2

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Sorting by priority didn’t help, since almost all were marked “urgent!”

  Trust academics, even alien ones. “Some things never change,” Mac muttered out loud. By source, then. She found and pulled aside those from her group and the Sinzi. She looked at the rest rather helplessly, then forwarded them to Mudge with one sweep of her hand.

  What were friends for? she grinned to herself.

  The door whooshed open on the white corridor.

  Mac took a deep breath and closed the display. As before, the corridor was empty and featureless, like the inside of a throat. She found herself reluctant to step from the lift, started to reach for the controls to close the doors. As if she could stay here, Em, she scolded herself. Settling the bag over her shoulders, and her imagination with it, Mac started walking.

  At each of the three guard stations, she was stopped while beings of varied species examined her small bag. Mac wasn’t sure what they were looking for—or in one instance, sniffing—considering she was one of the “assets” being protected by their presence. Bored, she decided.

  Faced with the three doors again, Mac looked wistfully at the one which led to the vastness of the Atrium, then went toward Parymn’s. She hesitated, looking over her shoulder. She was still alone. No obvious surveillance. Her eyes were drawn to the door Nik and Cinder had gone through first.

  What was behind it?

  “Probably nothing,” she assured herself, again turning toward Parymn’s.

  Then again, Em, she’d never have guessed what was behind the other two.

  That did it. Mac left her bag on the floor by the door she should go through and went briskly to the one she likely shouldn’t.

  It wasn’t locked. No alarms sounded when she pushed it open. At first, Mac was disappointed. Another white corridor, this time offering only one large door before turning right and heading into a perspective-turning distance. It sloped downward at the same time, like the hallways above ground.

  “ ‘In for a penny,’ ” Mac whispered to herself, pushing against the large door.

  Instead of swinging forward, this door reacted by sliding to one side, disappearing into the wall. Sunlight, dappled and moved by water, lay across Mac’s toes. It was an invitation she took without hesitation.

  “Oh,” she breathed as she walked inside.

  The impossible table in her room was a window here, to this place. A block of ocean, for it could be nothing less, stretched three times her height and wide enough to vanish into shadows on either side. Sunlight, either brought from the surface or feigned, cut through the water in great beams. Fish of every possible color and form slipped in and out of them, alone, in schools, flashes of life wheeling above the corals, oblivious to anything but themselves. Shrimp scurried everywhere, antennae flicking in the currents, too busy to hide despite being on everything’s menu. Including the Sinzi’s.

  Mac laid her palms flat against the transparent hardness of the tank wall, stopping short of pressing her nose to it. The floor of this room wasn’t the bottom. She could make out the edge of the coral shelf, slim dark shadows below that marking where barracuda and shark loitered.

  No-space. Remembering, Mac took her hands away and swallowed uneasily. Remarkable, that she could see inside it from here. If she was. Now that she wasn’t transfixed by the marine life in front of her, she noticed the steady throbbing of the floor and paid attention to the writhing mass of machinery overhead that started halfway up the wall behind her. The hairs rose on her arm and neck. She gave the imprisoned fish a sympathetic look. Trapped forever, like insects in amber. But trapped alive.

  Was Emily?

  “Mac?” Cinder walked out of the darkness to the right of the door. “What are you doing here?” She didn’t appear pleased.

  “Got lost,” Mac said, not surprised her voice was higher-pitched than usual. Her heart was racing, too. Was there some memo she’d missed about scaring her today? “This is quite the setup,” she added.

  “The fish?” Caught in sunbeams, the Trisulian looked as agitated as she sounded, stroking her facial hair, her eyestalks shifting in jerky movements. “I suppose so.”

  Then Mac understood. “The Sinzi-ra told me about—about Trisul Primus.”

  As if she’d somehow used a weapon, Cinder folded at both waists, collapsing to the floor. Mac hurried to crouch beside her, unsure how to offer comfort. If it was even possible. “Cinder,” she said gently. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

  She hadn’t expected an answer, but the other pressed something small, round, and cold into Mac’s palm. “Take this.” Muffled.

  It was a weapon, identical to the one Nik produced at need.

  Mac wanted to drop it. Instead, she put it into the pocket of her jacket.

  “This, too.” Cinder’s hand shook as she pulled a sheathed blade from her boot.

  “I—” Mac didn’t know what to say.

  “One of them so close. In reach. I can’t think straight. Don’t trust myself. Not yet. Usish! Take it! Please.”

  Mac obeyed, putting the knife with the weapon. “Should I get someone—Nik?” she offered.

  “No!” Then, quieter but a hoarse undertone. “No, thank you, Mac. I must collect myself before I see a male. This is—I am—it’s unseemly.” Cinder’s hands clenched in her hair, round knuckles white. “You are unmated, are you not?”

  By Trisulian standards? “Yes.”

  A sigh, closer to a moan. “Yet you—you have that future. Thanks to his kind, the usishishi Dhryn—there are no mates for my generation, Mac. Can you understand? Oh, our kind will survive. There will be a new jungle. When all are satisfied it is safe to do so, those already bonded will impregnate themselves. They will give birth in its warmth, take their daughters home with them, leave their sons to grow. Sons who will be ready when those daughters are ripe. Our kind will survive,” she repeated in a dull whisper. “But I . . . I will be forever alone and incomplete.”

  There had to be options. “Forgive my ignorance, Cinder,” Mac began with care. “I only want to help. I’ve heard a female Trisulian can bond with more than one male. I’ve seen a male removed from his mate.” At close range. “So wouldn’t it be possible for your people to—redistribute—” what a crude word “—the males you have? To share?”

  “Deviance.” The word wasn’t harsh, it was chill, matter-of-fact. “You could say waste. Or murder. All fit. You see, Mac, bonding is permanent. There is a—I don’t know the word in Instella—a body part of the male which becomes part of the female’s flesh. Insertion of it is—I’m told,” Cinder corrected herself softly, wistfully, “a moment of the most exquisite rapture my kind can know. To remove a male severs him from this part. He can’t mate again. He lives on, impotent.” Eyestalks steadied as Cinder looked directly up at Mac, her rust-brown hair catching sunlight. “As must I.”

  Mac hesitated, then asked: “Must every female take a mate?”

  “No. Some choose to remain alone, for control over their lives. I might have been one of them . . . now, I have no other choice.” Cinder pressed her hands over her lower waist. “Fertility, for us, is a matter of mere minutes, its occurrence unpredictable.” Hence the value of symbiotic males, Mac couldn’t help thinking. “Three cycles in a life is exceptional. Most, only once. So it is expected that one allows pregnancy whenever possible, regardless of career or situation.” She began rising to her feet, moving as if wounded. “You must think me lacking in nimscent—grieving for myself at a time like this. I am shamed.”

  “Nonsense.” Mac offered her hand to help Cinder straighten. “We were going to have some girl talk,” she said, but not lightly.

  “Thank you.” Cinder squeezed her hand then released it. “I feel able to be around others now—just not—would you—I—”

  Mac patted her pocket. “I’ll hang on to these for a while,” she suggested.

  The Trisulian shuddered, her hair quivering from forehead to chest, but didn’t disagree. “I should return t
o my post,” she said instead.

  And would probably appreciate a little space from empathic Humans, Mac decided. “Would it be all right if I watch the fish for a while?” she asked. “A moment or two, not long. Thought I saw a sand shark.”

  One eyestalk regarded the tank at that angle suggesting anxiety. “Glad it’s in there,” Cinder said, her voice close to normal again. “Don’t stay long, Mac.” With that, she left.

  Once the door closed, Mac walked to the right, looking for—there, a mass of wiring, looping down through some kind of clamp. Standing on tiptoe, she took Cinder’s weapon and knife and pushed both as far back in the mass as her arm could reach.

  Keeping the deadly things in her pocket hadn’t been an option.

  “Trained spy, target in a box, and me holding the hardware,” Mac summed up for the fish. If the grief-stricken Trisulian doubted her self-restraint that much, what was to say she wouldn’t lose it? Then what was she, Mac, supposed to do? Fight her off? Throw herself in front of the Dhryn?

  “No winners, Em,” Mac sighed. “Like all of this.”

  Time to get back to Parymn and hunt answers. But she couldn’t help one last look at the Sinzi’s living larder.

  Odd. Mac walked along the tank, following the coral as it built up from the depths, then rose to her shoulder height and more. Anemones bent under what appeared natural wave motion, fingerlike extensions hoping for unwary swimmers.

  She leaned closer, staring at what had caught her eye.

  There. The play of light and shade over the irregular coral had disguised the damage from the doorway.

  The living coral was colorful, each hollow containing its tiny organism, like so much shrimp-beaded concrete. Mac’s fingers traced the lines where living coral had been dug out and pushed aside, or peeled back, as if someone had used the tines of a large fork to remove it.

  Her hand dropped to her side as Mac took slow, careful steps back.

  She’d seen such marks before.

  They’d scarred the moss carpeting Mudge’s mountainside. She’d followed them as if they were footprints. For all she or anyone knew, they could be, since their makers showed themselves to no one.

  Mac felt the door at her back. The occupants of the tank looked completely normal. If she didn’t know—if she hadn’t seen—

  She threw herself around, yanking open the door and running out as if chased.

  “Whoa, Mac. What’s wrong?” Nik’s voice jumped from surprised to urgent.

  “The Ro,” she gasped, pointing behind her. “In there.”

  “And I’m telling you, Mr. Trojanowski, unless you want to order a diver to commit suicide over some broken coral, there’s nothing more we can do.”

  Putting down her bottle of water, Mac glared at the speaker, an unnamed, overdressed, vaguely bovine alien. He/she/it had arrived with a small army of scan techs and their equipment. And, as far as she was concerned, a supremely unhelpful contempt for Human powers of observation. Particularly hers.

  Granted, they’d aimed their devices at the marks she’d found, and everywhere else in the tank, for over an hour. An hour during which Mac had leaned against this wall to wait and watch. An hour during which Nik, who had taken her very seriously indeed, had arranged for guards—sans armor, in case the Ro took offense, but armed nonetheless.

  One of those guards wandered over to Mac as Nik and the alien began a heated argument over monitoring equipment to leave in the room, the alien, predictably, opting for none. “Didn’t you get your stuff, Mac?” he asked, taking up some wall space of his own.

  “Hi, Sing-li.” Mac looked up at the tall man. “Yes, thank you. More than I imagined, in fact. Nice work.”

  “Good. You had me worried.”

  She lifted a brow. “I did? Why?”

  “Didn’t think you’d willingly stay dressed like that.”

  Mac stood away from the wall to stare at him. “Why—” then she grinned. “I don’t wear coveralls all the time, you know.”

  “Could have fooled us.”

  “Obviously not,” she said, shaking her head. “Let’s say this place is a little intimidating for my usual gear. Besides,” she held out her arms to show off the well-tailored jacket, “this came with the room.”

  He grinned back. “Goes with the hair.”

  Self-consciously, Mac ran her fingers through the downlike stuff where her wound had been. “Thanks. I think.” She put her back to the wall again, companionably close to Sing-li. “Nice to see a friend.”

  “Nice to see you, too, Mac. But here?” He lowered his voice. “This is pretty intense stuff. The Sinzi don’t let many Humans see it.”

  “Trust me,” Mac said fervently, “I didn’t ask for the privilege.” Unless one counted sneaking in, but she didn’t see any point going into detail.

  Battle of wills resolved, Nik approached them, leaving the alien to complain, loudly, but wisely in something other than Instella. “Jones?” he asked, giving the other man a searching look. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just checking on our Mac,” the guard said with a nod. “I’ll get back to my post.”

  “ ‘Our Mac,’ ” Nik repeated, raising an eyebrow at her.

  “He’s from Base,” she explained.

  That almost drew a smile. “You can’t just adopt my field operatives, Mac.”

  She shrugged, then wrapped her arms around herself to stop the motion from becoming a shiver. “Nik, I know what I saw.”

  Nik’s eyes grew shadowed. He looked over his shoulder at the tank, where the alien’s staff were busy setting up their devices, then back to her. “The marks look the same to me, too, given the difference in material. But scratches in coral aren’t enough—especially in there. It could be coincidence.”

  “ ‘In there’ they should be more than enough!” Trying to keep her voice down, Mac only succeeded in producing an impassioned growl. “The Ro live in no-space, Nik.”

  “And seem to move around in normal space just fine. Why hang out in a bowl of fish?”

  “It’s more than that—and you know it. The Sinzi built this thing. That means it could be new to the Ro. We’ve no idea what that might mean.”

  Nik held up his hands. It wasn’t quite surrender. “I know I’ve done all I can, Mac. You need to go. He’s awake.” One of his hands gestured a summons. “Jones?”

  “Still here.”

  “New orders. Please accompany ‘our Mac’ to her destination. Stay at the door until relieved by me personally, or she comes out.” Nik considered the other man, then added so quietly Mac could barely hear. “She’s in your care, Sing-li. Priority One.”

  “Priority One,” Jones echoed, his lips tightening. The look he sent Mac was worried. “Something I should know, Nik?”

  “Right now—only that there may be a threat. Full gear when you get the opportunity. Meanwhile, don’t take chances. Any doubt—act first and I’ll back you.” Nik reached out and fluffed her newly grown hair. “Oh, and trust Mac.”

  “Thanks,” she said dryly.

  “Don’t mention it. Are we clear, Sing-li?”

  “Crystal, Nik.”

  With her new nursemaid looming at her side, Mac headed for Parymn’s cell, Nik remaining behind to supervise. She wasn’t sure if she felt frustrated they hadn’t found incontrovertible evidence of the Ro, or relieved.

  In either case, she was glad of Sing-li’s substantial presence. The empty white corridors of the consulate were no impediment to creatures able to hide in plain sight.

  Her bag still sat beside the door. Mac picked it up, then hesitated before entering. “Do you want me to have them bring you a chair?” she asked.

  Sing-li, who’d already stationed himself to one side, shook his head. “I’m used to being on my feet,” he assured her. “Worked way station customs before this.” His finger tapped the large weapon he carried. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

  “That’s good to know,” she told him, meaning it.

  Then Mac wen
t into the room, closing the door behind her.

  To be immediately greeted by a bellowed: “Where have you been, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol?”

  Someone was definitely on the mend, she thought, hoping the door was soundproof. The floor wasn’t. The Dhryn, on his feet, arms folded, was broadcasting in the lower ranges as well. Probably something disparaging about her eating habits, Mac decided.

  There was no one else in the room, unless you counted those watching and recording. Mac preferred to ignore that aspect as much as possible. She dug into her bag, producing a handful of small rings she’d found among her belongings. They were for banding ravens and their golden shine was to help an observer spot them, but she trusted Parymn Ne Sa Las wouldn’t know the difference. “I brought you something, Erumisah,” Mac told him, opening the cell door and walking inside. “Here.”

  He took the rings in his hand, eyes cold, then turned his palm downward so they dropped and danced on the floor. “I want to be released from this place. Now.”

  Mac didn’t bother bringing out the “cosmetics” she’d found in the Sinzi washroom. “This is the only room protected from the Ro,” she snapped.

  Brymn had shrieked and tried to run at that name. There had been, Mac recalled quite vividly, a moment of alien hysterics. But Parymn was made of sterner stuff. He merely tightened his arms as if their folding was somehow a defense against his kind’s greatest fear. “You are sure, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol?”

  “Yes.”

  Magnanimously, as if granting her a favor, “Then I will stay.”

  Someone had added a boldly striped carpet in every color but yellow to the cell’s furnishings, along with a Human-suited stool. Mac made a mental note to ask for a proper chair, but perched on it anyway. Her feet didn’t quite touch the floor—of course—but there was a rung to support them. Parymn sat as well.

  Mac took a quick breath, then blew it out between pursed lips. Where to start? She hoped Nik would arrive soon. This “interrogation” business was well over her head. Emily would be better at it.