Migration (35 page)

“He’s right.” Mac continued. “Last fall, a Dhryn—Brymn Las was his name—came to me at Norcoast. At that time, none of us—not even Brymn—knew the truth about his species.”

“The media covered that—the first of his kind on Earth. I couldn’t believe you’d let him interrupt your work.”

Mac smiled into her cocoa. “You know me pretty well, Oversight.” Her smile faded. “The Ministry asked me to help Brymn investigate some mysterious disappearances that seemed related.” Her hands shook and she took a moment to cover it by drinking from her mug. “They were. That’s when the trouble began.”

“The incident at Base,” Mudge frowned. “More lies, I take it.”

“Yes. It wasn’t sabotage or any ‘Earth-First’ protest. We were attacked by the Myrokynay, the Ro.” Mac shifted into lecture mode.
Easier that way.
“No one alive knew they still existed except the Dhryn, who feared them. We—experts believe the Ro invented the transects in the first place, thousands of years before the Sinzi found the remnants of their technology in the Hift System.”

“I know all that.”

“What you don’t know is that the Ro watched the Dhryn destroy the Chasm worlds. They’ve been hiding ever since, waiting for the Dhryn to stir again. To stop them.”

“So they’re the good guys.”

Mac raised her eyes to his. Whatever he read there made him add: “Or not.”

“The Ro’s methods,” Fourteen said for Mac, “are repugnant by the standards of cultures like yours and mine. They wanted Mac and her Dhryn companion to flee Earth, so they attacked the salmon research station with no regard for life. They used Mac to locate the Dhryn Progenitors, in order to attack them without warning. Even now, they use members of other species as their agents, altering their bodies with no-space technology.”

“Including Em—Emily Mamani,” Mac continued, finding her voice again. “She went with the Ro, to help them stop the Dhryn. To—to push me in the direction they wanted. She hasn’t come back. Not yet. The rest—” she reached out with her mug blindly, trying to find a place for it. Mudge took it from her hand. “—Brymn thought I was in danger from the Ro, so he took me with him to his home world. Yes,” Mac said, fully understanding the stunned look on Mudge’s face, “I abandoned my research and went offworld. Amazing what a little carnage and kidnapping can do to a person.

“As a result,” she finished, “I now speak and read Dhryn better than any Human language—and, I’m told, better than any other Human. So far as I know, I’ve spent more time with Dhryn than any other non-Dhryn being. I’ve even been semiadopted, I guess you could call it, as a Dhryn. All in time for the Dhryn, for my dear friend Brymn Las, to be revealed as the greatest threat civilization has ever faced.” She showed him the remaining fingers of her new arm. “Did I mention surviving a Dhryn attack? And helping kill my friend?”

Mudge didn’t say a word, staring at her as if she’d changed into something he couldn’t recognize anymore.

She knew the feeling
. Mac patted Oversight’s knee. “Oh, it gets better. Our walk in the Trust the other day? A chance for Emily and the Ro to slip me a message that only Fourteen here has been able to translate. That earthquake? Deliberate. Someone, and I don’t know who yet, making sure the Ro landing site wasn’t explored by you, or I, or anyone else. And this?” Mac waved at Fourteen and gestured to her own cap of dried blood and first-aid patches. “One of the side effects of a threat to members of the Interspecies Union. Which does, you see, include us.”

“You’ll come with us, now, Dr. Connor.”

Mac turned her head slowly, completely unsurprised to see the cabin porch filled with rain slicked black-visored troops, three more coming in the door, all with weapons not quite not aimed their way.

“Welcome to my world, Oversight,” she told him.

“A sight to warm the hearts,
Lamisah
. . .”

Mac nodded. She didn’t move, letting puppy-sized
oomlings
explore her lap and arms. Their white down quivered as they cooed to her, the sound itself low and soothing. Tiny hands, six from each, stroked her clothing, patted her cheeks, investigated her eyelashes. Each touch was feather soft.

“Our future . . .”

The cooing grew louder, gained an undersound that raised hairs on her skin, intensified her emotion. It came from everywhere around her, though there was nothing but precious, vulnerable
oomlings
as far as she could see, all reaching their tiny hands to her over the low walls of their pens.

“We haven’t time to waste . . .”

Shadows passed overhead. The first green drops fell at a distance. The
oomlings
beneath cried out and crowded together, but there was no escape.

No. They weren’t trying to escape. They were raising their faces, opening their rosebud mouths, calling eagerly for their share.

All but the ones in Mac’s lap. They were changing—their down falling away from pulsating transparent flesh, their shape lost, eyes vanishing. They were rising from her hands into the air . . .

She screamed as drops fell from mouths that insisted, in their sweet cooing voices: “We told you to go,
Lamisah.
We warned you. Didn’t we?”

The ground beneath shook as the Progenitor laughed . . .

“Promise to let me know the next time you feel so much as drowsy,” Oversight warned Mac in no uncertain terms. “I’ll sit with someone else.”

“There isn’t anyone else,” she pointed out.

He couldn’t argue, since they were alone in the rear compartment of a large transport lev. There had been three crowding the storm-tossed cove. Another had taken Fourteen. Mac presumed the third had been courteous enough to return Wendy Carlson to the Little Misty Lake General Store, where she’d have an interesting, if mysterious, tale to relate to Cat and Russell. A tale doubtless provided by one of their companions in black.

One day,
Mac swore to herself,
she was going to park herself on the dock, shoo away the pelican, and tell the truth to everyone who stopped or paddled by.
Her head dropped back against the seat.
Maybe she should tell the pelican, too.
She wished she’d washed her face. The dried blood was itchy.

Mudge’s movements disturbed her. “Can’t you sit still for two minutes?” Mac complained.

He finished unbuckling his safety harness and turned to face her. Without asking, he grabbed her chin and tilted her face upward, checking her eyes again. “We’ve been in this thing over an hour. You need medical help.”

Mac pushed his hand away. “I need sleep,” she muttered irritably. “You keep waking me up.”

“You keep screaming,” he countered. “What do you expect?” Mudge stood, presumably to storm the door to the pilot’s compartment where the large persons in black armor traveled—persons who’d refused to say anything more than “hurry” and “now.” Mac caught his arm.

“Don’t bother, Oversight. I’ll be fine.” He didn’t look convinced. She was touched by his concern, but tugged a little harder. “Sit. I promise to do my best to stay awake until we get there. No more screaming.”

He gave the sealed door another look, then sighed and sat down.
Probably remembering the “large” and “armored” part of their hosts
. “Get where?”

“Where?” Stealth vehicle with the latest tech or not, the lev vibrated in a way that didn’t help her head. “Last time, Oversight,” she managed to say, “I ended up in orbit.”

Rather than alarmed, Mudge looked intrigued. “Really?”

It didn’t help her stomach either
. “Really.” Mac leaned back and closed her eyes, pressing her lips together and breathing lightly through her nose.

He didn’t take the hint. “I’ve a pilot’s license, you know.”

Ye gods. Oversight doing small talk.
“Really.”

“Really.” Definite smugness to his tone. “My brother, Jeremy, designs golf courses. Travels more than a diplomat. Before I joined the Oversight Committee, I’d copilot his jumper. Racked up enough transect passages to go commercial, if I’d wanted.”

Mac cracked open one eye to stare at Mudge. “You?” Realizing how this sounded about the same instant he drew an offended breath, she opened both eyes and added: “You seem so focused on Earth.”

He seemed mollified. “I can understand why you’d get that impression, Norcoast. Certainly, the Trust has been my mission in life these past years. But I was first and foremost an explorer in my early days. Quite miss it, at times.”

“I’ve never wanted to travel.”

“Oh.”

Could she be any less tactful?
“Last time,” Mac offered, “they brought me to a way station and we—Brymn and I—took a Dhryn ship from there.”

“What was it like? Their ship?”

He was so interested, she felt guilty.
As well as nauseous
. Hopefully, Fourteen was faring better. “I didn’t see more than my quarters and one corridor. A bit of the hold, I think. Sorry. The doors and walls weren’t perpendicular. There was gravity and—” Mac paused, then finished reluctantly, “—not a drop of water.” She fell silent.
Brymn had saved her then, too.

“That was a brave thing to do.”

“What? Oh, my going with the Dhryn?” Mac would have laughed if she could. “I’m not sure how brave it was. There didn’t seem any other choice. Everything happened so quickly and he—they—” she fumbled “—the Ministry wanted me to go.”

Too late.
Over the years, Mudge had developed radar for exactly what she tried to avoid. “He? He who?”

Mac pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. It didn’t stop the ache, but provided a welcome distraction. “The Ministry’s liaison for Brymn, during his visit to Earth. He made the arrangements to get us offworld.”
Now there was a distraction,
she thought.
Was Nik on this lev? Had he been one of the anonymous figures in black?

“Doesn’t ‘he’ have a name?”

Not if he hasn’t shown himself,
Mac decided. Not with this compartment undoubtedly monitored. Aloud: “Something complicated, eastern Europe-ish. Annoying civil servant type. You’d like him.”

The lev picked that moment to swoop downward. “Someone’s in a hurry to land,” Mudge observed, refastening his harness and giving hers a test pull.

“Suits me,” Mac said.

“What can we expect, Norcoast? One call and a small cell? Or just the cell.”

He deserved to know,
she decided, hearing the feather of understandable anxiety in Mudge’s voice.
Not everything
. The IU’s invitation was still in her pocket, but Mac had no idea what her status was anymore. She concentrated on picking the right words, annoyed with how difficult it seemed. “The Ministry has unusual powers right now, Oversight. ‘Threat to the species,’ that sort of thing. Odds are good this is about information. They’ll have questions for us. Order us to keep silent or not bother. Send us home.”

“Or?”

“Or we disappear, for as long as that threat exists and we’re an added risk.” Mac studied his face as the lev leveled out again. “I guess you’re sorry you followed me.”

His expression was set and pale. There were drops of sweat on his forehead, more beading his nose and upper lip. But he shook his head emphatically. “I’m sorry you didn’t come to me with this—tell me what was happening.”

“I couldn’t tell my own father,” Mac reminded him. “Besides,” she added lightly, swaying with him as the lev did some more maneuvering, “I didn’t think you’d—”
care,
“—be interested.”

He might have heard the word she didn’t use. “I care about what affects the Wilderness Trust,” his voice was as cold and hard as she’d ever heard it. “Because of you—because of what you brought to Castle Inlet—an entire ridge has been artificially stripped. Grant you, it’s an opportunity to regenerate some of the rarer successional species—but we have sufficient natural disasters without your help. This is your fault, Norcoast. You were selfish. Thoughtless. You should have stayed away! You should never have come back!”