Migration (2 page)

As for my family? Yes! A hardcover book with my photo in it!

You believed, so I did, too.

By what measure
should we
condemn ourselves?
Survival is
a moral choice.

 

 

 

- Encounter -

THE GREAT JOURNEY has been renewed. That which is Dhryn has remembered. All that is Dhryn must move.

That which is Dhryn . . .
hungers
.

That which is Dhryn remembers this place, knows its
Taste
.

All that is Dhryn must move.

It is the way of the journey, that all follow the Taste.

It is survival.

The language of the Eelings didn’t lend itself to emotion. There was no need; the bioluminescent beings were able to flash patterns of excitement, joy, or strife.

Or fear.

“We have incoming ships,” the transect technician reported. His voice didn’t change, but his lithe body was suddenly ablaze. “Sir.”

There should have been no reason for such a display. There were always incoming ships. The Naralax Transect was like an artery to Ascendis, the Eeling home world, anchored between the orbits of her two moons, constantly pumping trade goods to and from the lush planet, bringing ships to her famed refit stations on the nether moon, sending them away again faster and more powerful. And in debt.

“Multiple collisions. Sir.”

“On my station.” Sometimes a freighter strayed from its assigned path; dealing with aliens and their differing perceptions made that inevitable. The supervisor, as suited One Responsible, covered his feelings beneath an opaque cloak. Despite that caution, as he took in what his own screen now showed, alarm ringed each wrist with light and spilled past his collar, catching fire on the spikes of chin and frill.

The screen showed mayhem. Over fifteen ships were reporting hull impacts, several careening into other ships in turn. But there was no time to think about those lives, lost or at risk. For the legal traffic had virtually disappeared among a cloud of new arrivals. This was no confused freighter captain. It wasn’t a convoy of audacious
iily
poachers, orbiting Ascendis herself while their servo scoops netted blossoms, relying on surprise and speed to evade the rangers who protected the rich forests of the north.

This was . . .

The supervisor drew himself up. “Send a planet-wide alarm. Do it now.”

The cloud wasn’t assuming orbit; it was heading for the upper atmosphere. It expanded at the same time, sensors translating the splitting of each new arrival into multiple targets, those into more, then more, all on the same trajectory. To the surface.

So many ships were breaking through the atmosphere at once, they set off weather control alarms as they shattered programmed winds and burned through clouds. Thousands, perhaps millions.

“What should I say? What are they?” The technician glowed so frantically the supervisor wondered he could see his own screen past that light.

Not that any of them needed to. Not now.

Now was too late.

The supervisor pulled his cloak closed, dousing the flickering light of his despair.

“The Dhryn.”

“
Y
OU ASK HER.” “You.”

“Not me. Don’t you know who she is?”

“Doc Connor.”

“
The
Dr. Connor, Mackenzie Connor. The one who lost her arm in that terrible accident last fall. You know. When the moorings collapsed under the pods and dozens of students were killed—”

“Five, not dozens.”

“Whatever. Well, I heard it wasn’t completely an accident.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sabotage. I’m not joking. And when Dr. Connor tried to stop it, the ones responsible took her best friend, a scientist on contract here. They’ve never found the body.” A meaningful pause. “What kind of person could come back and run this place after something like that?”

“Oh.”

“Yes. ‘Oh!’ ”

“Weellll . . . Someone has to ask her. He can’t stay out there all day. Go on. You do it.”

“Not me . . .”

Mac, who could hear the whispered argument quite well through the half-open door to her office, ran her fingers through her hair and gave those short curls an impatient tug.
A reputation for solid science and fair, if tough, marking was one thing,
she thought.
But these ridiculous rumors spreading through Base were becoming a royal pain
—not that she had any hope of setting that record straight. The Ministry of Extra-Sol Human Affairs had been succinct, if highly unhelpful. Mac’s role was over. The rest of humanity had been informed. Measures were being taken by the Interspecies Union. There was, with perverse predictability, no hysteria and barely any press.

After all, any threat was out there, to others.

If anything, humanity’s reaction had been rather smug, as if reassured to learn that, like themselves, another species had its share of troublemakers.
Somehow,
Mac thought with a sour taste in her mouth,
her kind seemed to view the entire business as over, now that the “unpleasant neighbors” had been found out and—oh so conveniently—left “town.”

Meanwhile, there was the small, inconvenient issue of what had happened here, on Earth. Now that friend was foe, and foe possibly friend, the politics were, to put it mildly, mud.

So Mac was to say nothing, accept whatever lies they’d planted in her absence, and get on with her life as if nothing had happened.

Some days, she almost could.

“I’m not deaf!” she snapped.

The ensuing silence could only be described as terrified.

Eyeing the door to the hall, Mac poked her forefinger into the workscreen hovering over her desk, the gesture sending the files she’d been updating back into the Norcoast main system. Those waiting for them would doubtless notice she hadn’t finished and complain vigorously over lunch. She stretched and gave a rueful smile.
At least some things never changed.
The salmon would migrate, come what may. And those at Norcoast Salmon Research Facility would be ready, watching, learning, and . . .

Two heads appeared in the door opening, one above the other. “Dr. Connor?” hazarded the topmost.

Mac crooked the same finger, blue-tinged through its pseudoskin glove.

The students sidled into her office, each doing his or her utmost to stay behind the other without trying to be obvious.
Ah
. Lee Fyock’s newest arrivals, shortly to be sent up the coast to sample intertidal zones.
Interesting pair
. The young woman so worried about disturbing her, Uthami Dhaniram, was already published, having spent three years studying sea grass dynamics in the Gulf of Mannar for Bharathiyar University. She’d arrived eager for her first winter, an ambition that would have to wait a few months.

In every way a contrast, tall, fair, and freckled Cassidy T. Wilson would likely consider Norcoast’s mild, damp winters a joke, given he came from a family-run North Sea trawler. No academic credentials on his application, but experience enough to have drawn fine creases around his washed blue eyes and leave permanent ruddy patches on his cheeks. A deep-water fisher. Mac looked forward to his insights.

If Lee could keep him. Case, as the young man preferred to be called, had originally applied to work with the Harvs, the research teams investigating the Human lines of the salmon equation. A logical choice.

Until Dr. Kammie Noyo, Mac’s coadministrator of the facility, decided otherwise. As Mac had been an unfathomable number of light-years distant at the time—on a world without oceans, let alone salmon cruising their depths—she could hardly protest after the fact.

Not that she would
. Kammie’s instincts were often on target. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d deliberately cross-fertilized a lagging area of research by dumping an unwitting and typically unwilling student into the mix. If the student lasted and had talent, the results could be spectacular.

Of course, since Lee’s research moved young Mr. Wilson into the so-called “Wet” half of Norcoast’s projects—an arbitrary division based on the likelihood of wet socks at any given time—and Kammie administrated only the “Dry” now that she was no longer in sole charge, making sure this student lasted became, naturally, another of Mac’s responsibilities.

“Sorry to bother you, Dr. Connor,” Case began, ducking behind the hint of an awkward bow. His voice, higher-pitched than one would expect from his frame, tended to squeak. There were beads of sweat, not rain, on his forehead.

Mac raised one eyebrow in challenge. “ ‘Mac,’ ” she corrected. Uthami’s dark eyes widened into shocked circles. Before she could argue, Mac continued, lifting a finger for each point: “We’re doing the same work. We live in the same place. And I can guarantee you, we’ll smell the same in a very short time.”

A broad grin slowly spread over Case’s face. “Mac, it is.” He looked suddenly younger.

Mac shrugged off the feeling. “Now. Who can’t stay out—and where’s out—all day? And why?” The hammering of rain on the curved ceiling underscored every word, but the weather was hardly noteworthy. Castle Inlet, where the pods, walkways, and docks of Norcoast’s Base nestled, was surrounded by coastal rain forest for good reason.

“There’s a man who came with some Preds this morning, Dr.—Mac,” Uthami explained, gamely stumbling past the name. “Security won’t let him in because he doesn’t have a pass, but he won’t leave. He’s been waiting outside the pod since before our last class, a couple of hours at least. Tie—Mr. McCauley—said just leave him there, but we—we thought—you should be told.” Uthami stopped and looked to Case, patently out of her depth.