Migration (34 page)

“Still after our heads, Fourteen,” Mac commented after the noise subsided.
Going to need a new door at this rate
. “But why would Kay want this information for his species first?” Mac closed her eyes. “I know. Idiot. The Trisulians want to make some kind of deal with the Ro to protect themselves. Then they’ll be safe to follow the Dhryn, like salvagers who follow a plague ship until its crew is safely dead. Adding planet after planet to a new Trisulian empire.”
Kay didn’t have to be a master-mind. Just ruthless enough to seize an opportunity.
She took the bag of nearly-thawed vegetables and threw them across the room, hard enough to break open and spatter mixed greens on the wall, kernels of corn bouncing on the floor. “How dare they!”

“We forestall them, Mac, if the IU contacts the Ro first. So that is what we must do.”

You don’t know the Ro,
Mac almost said, then stopped herself in time. She didn’t either, not really. And this wasn’t the time to air her private grievances with their new allies.

T
HE FLIGHT PATH TO THE COVE would be the worst part. Mac and Fourteen both knew it, without need to discuss his weakness or hers. As for leaving the safety of the kitchen? They’d hoped for strong sunlight to blind the lurking Trisulian, but dawn had lost itself in the gathering storm, right on cue.

Beneath the trees it might as well be dusk.

Mac had spent the night torn between wishing Nik had changed his mind and would soar up on a white lev and a more rational hope he had someone following Kay. Besides, how would even Nik suspect one of the little weasels, as she’d come to think of the male Trisulian, would be roaming the woods?

This being the unanswerable question of the moment, Mac resolutely ignored it.

“You ready?” she asked Fourteen, inspecting him carefully.

They both looked like death warmed over,
she thought. Blood where it shouldn’t be—neither having energy to spare for a change of clothes—and precious little of it in their cheeks. They tended to lean until they’d tip, overcorrect, then stumble into one another. But the best part, Mac decided, would be the look on Cat’s face when they arrived at the store.

“I’m ready,” Fourteen said, making that faint click of distress as Mac checked the tightness of his repeller belt for the third time. “I don’t plan to swim to across the lake,” he protested.

Time to share her final worry
. “This isn’t going to be like your last paddle, Fourteen,” explained Mac, pushing hair from one eye. “The wind’s gusty; waves are already white-capped. We could very well tip and that water is cold enough to put you back to sleep. This—” she patted the belt, “—will be all that stops you sinking like a rock.”

“If I will be a hazard, Mac, you should leave me here.”

They’d talked about this before, too. But the dawn had made its way into the kitchen through a ruined portion of the back door. While they’d slept—or more accurately passed out—sitting at the table, the little weasel had almost made its way inside. It wouldn’t take much for it to succeed.

She wouldn’t have risked Fourteen before. Now, she couldn’t, not with the meaning of Emily’s message in his head.

“I need you for ballast,” Mac said.
Not altogether untrue
. “Let’s go.”

Pride had nothing to do with their progress from the cabin. More dizzy than not, Mac sat to skid down the steep sections, waiting for Fourteen to do the same. It had the added advantage of speed;
although,
she sighed inwardly when they reached level ground,
there’d definitely be gravel to remove
.

Even the cove had turned ugly, slapping at the beach with crisscrossing waves. The sky was the next best thing to sullen. Mac could see a dark band of rain on the other side of the lake. Spring had an edge in the north the weather regulators left alone.

“Wait here,” she shouted over the wind and splash. Fourteen leaned on his paddle in answer.

The novice canoe—where they’d left it, but not how. Mac glared at the burned-edged holes along the hull. Doubtless the “rescue me” signal device was in need of more help than they were. Kay was thorough, she gave him that.
Probably all the catering.

Her canoe rested beside it, untouched. It didn’t have the toys of the novice, but she knew and trusted it. Mac reached down and flipped it over.

The Trisulian came with it, a grimy mop of snapping claws that just missed catching hold of her face, but snagged in her shirt.

So much for getting a good look at the thing
. Eyestalk up and closed against the light, it curled like a scorpion over her chest, aiming an immense hornlike structure at her eyes. Mac couldn’t move, couldn’t raise her hands in time.

The swing of a paddle blade in front of her nose freed Mac from the paralysis. She staggered back into someone’s arms, knocking him down as well. She landed in a smelly heap of upset Myg and Human, squirming around to try and see.

Then she saw it, a pile of broken claws and hair, like so much storm wrack washed ashore. It gave a last twitch and was still.

“What was that?” a horrified woman’s voice.
How odd,
Mac thought, clinging to Fourteen,
that it wasn’t hers
.

“Rabid skunk,” a man replied in no uncertain terms. “First things first, Wendy. Help me get them up to the cabin.”

Brain damage, Emily. That’s what it is.
Mac thought this very clever.

Until Oversight, in his familiar ill-fitting yellow rainsuit, leaned down and offered her his hand. “Hurry up, Norcoast. It’s going to rain.”

“How’s that?”

“Better. Thank you.”

Mac cradled a mug of hot cocoa in her hands, her feet and legs tucked up beneath her in the big chair, and watched Charles Mudge III deftly apply a field dressing to a Myg. In her father’s cabin. On Little Misty Lake. Earth.

And in case she doubted the veracity of her senses, she had only to look in a mirror to see the Trisulian blood drying on her face, splattered there when Oversight had—

—
had saved her life.

“May I help you wash up, Mac?”

She turned her eyes to Wendy’s anxious ones and lifted her cocoa a few millimeters. “Let me get this down first.”
And have a chance of standing without falling over,
Mac promised herself.

Wendy nodded and sat in a neighboring chair. “Charlie’s amazing, isn’t he?” she said very quietly. “You should have seen him leap from the canoe, straight after that—” she hesitated.

“Skunk,” Mac supplied helpfully.
Charlie?

“Right. Skunk. I didn’t know old guys could move like that.”

By the slight stiffening of Oversight’s shoulders, he’d overheard Wendy’s comment. Mac smiled. “He’s not old,” she explained. “He just dresses that way.”

This drew an indignant look. Mac lifted her mug again, this time in salute. “Welcome to Little Misty Lake, Oversight.”

He made a noncommittal noise and went back to bandaging Fourteen’s hands.

“We’ve contacted the authorities, Mac,” Wendy went on. She’d half carried Mac up the slope, then gone back to help Oversight with Fourteen, who’d been near collapse. Quietly competent, making no comment about the state of the cabin—or its occupants—she’d sent a call for help, found her way around the kitchen to make hot drinks and sandwiches, and located the first aid gear for Oversight. The kind of person who radiated comfort and competence. Mac was mutely grateful.

Oversight, of course, was nothing of the sort. He finished with Fourteen, making sure the Myg was settled comfortably on the couch, then came over to glare down at Mac. “Authorities?” he barked. “Which ones will show up? Real police or your friends? You do realize it took every connection I had to get out of that ridiculous house arrest—”

“They aren’t my—well, maybe some are,” Mac corrected herself. “Let’s hope it’s them, Oversight. Sit.” When he didn’t, she sighed. “Please. We have to talk before they arrive. Wendy—I’m sorry to ask, but would you go out on the porch and watch for the lev? That path will be a minor river by now. Whoever comes might need help finding their way up.”

“Sure, Mac.” Wendy stood and shrugged on her coat. The wind was whipping rain against each wall of the cabin in turn from the sounds of it. The porch screens wouldn’t be much protection. There was a deep rumble of thunder as well.

Oversight scowled and bent over Mac. “Hold still.” She did, scowling back at him. He gently tilted her face toward one of the lights in the room, thumbs easing open her eyelids. Mac winced. “You know you have a concussion,” this in a tone that implied she’d probably earned it.

Diagnosis complete, he sat where Wendy had been, pulling the chair toward Mac’s until their knees almost touched. “At least we had the sense to beat the storm here. What were you thinking, trying to canoe in your condition?”

Mac took a sip of cocoa, feeling it warm her throat. “As I remember, I was thinking I was about to die.”

He harrumphed, as if she’d embarrassed him. “I admit, Norcoast, I wasn’t expecting to see a Trisulian male going for your head.”

“You know what it was?” Mac was astonished.

“Of course.” His round face creased in disapproval. “Didn’t you? I took my share of xeno at university. Jokes about those walking gonads have been a standby of frosh parties for years.”

Was she the only Human who hadn’t studied aliens?
Mac could hear Emily’s answer to that. “Yes, I knew what it was.” Then, because she hadn’t said it yet, she did. “Wendy’s right. You are fast for an old guy. Thank you, Oversight.”

That look, the one saying he was set to be stubborn. “If you want to thank me, tell me what the hell’s going on. I was flying over the Trust, cataloging earthquake damage, and see the pods being towed. I try to find out where, and lo, your staff’s dispersed. You? Gone again without a word. Why?”

“I had no reason to stay,” Mac ground out. “Norcoast’s suspended all research until the pods are reanchored at the mouth of the Tannu River and the main systems are running.”

“And you let them get away with that?”

Mac shrugged, her head instantly making her pay. “What should I have done, Oversight?” she asked wearily. “Chain myself to a pod?”

From his expression, Oversight thought this a perfectly reasonable notion, but he didn’t pursue it. “At least your father had a good idea where you were this time,” he said with considerable satisfaction.
Enjoying being a detective,
Mac judged.
There, Em, was a scary thought
. “What are you doing here, Norcoast? With him?” a nod to Fourteen. “Like this?”

“You deserve to know,” Mac agreed. She gazed at the man she’d fought with most of her professional career, over what they both loved.
Funny, how clear that could make a relationship.
“But be warned, Oversight. If I tell you—you’ll be caught in it too.”

“I am already. You’re wasting time.” He steepled his pudgy fingers and leaned back in the chair, regarding her with a placid, already-bored look Mac didn’t believe for a second. “Get to the point, Norcoast.”

Typical
. Her lips twitched. “Fine. I’ve never been to the IU consulate, Oversight. Or New Zealand, for that matter. You were right. They were lies. I didn’t make them up, but I was ordered to live with them.”

“By your friends in black.”

“Who work for the Ministry of Extra-Sol Human Affairs. The Secretary General himself enlisted me. You’ve heard of the Dhryn.”

Fingers waved dismissively, then returned to their positioning. “Implausible hysterics.”

“The Dhryn are deadly,” Fourteen interjected, his eyes staying closed. “Everything you’ve heard about them in your news is true—and more. Idiot. The Chasm will be only the beginning of the devastation, unless they are stopped.”