Migration (44 page)

“I’m impressed,” Mac said as Anchen delicately but efficiently used her nails to peel shell and pluck appendages, putting these in a small bowl provided by the attendant before consuming the remaining morsel of flesh in one tidy mouthful.

Mac looked at the table, where the sea life seemed completely unconcerned, and scratched her own fingernail along the top. Hard and solid. A parrot fish tried to nibble her finger before diving deeper. “Okay. I have to know how you did that.”

Anchen beckoned to the attendant. He bowed to Mac and said: “The table is both menu and larder for the Sinzi-ra, who consumes only fresh marine life.”

Mac raised an eyebrow. “Preference or physiology? If you don’t mind the question.”

The Sinzi smiled, cleaning her fingertips on a cloth the attendant had exchanged for the bowl. “Assuredly I do not. It is both, Mac. On Earth, these delicious organisms are also the most easily digested by my species. In addition, I find the movements of these beautiful creatures to be soothing as well as appetizing, so there are tables like this in several locations in the consulate. Do you enjoy them as well?”

“Very much. Soothing always. And several are very tasty.” Still perplexed, Mac studied the table. “But—the water appears deeper than it can be. And how did you catch the shrimp and pull it through the table?” This to the attendant. “Trust me, I know what it’s like trying to net something in water.”

The attendant looked to Anchen, who lifted two fingers.
Granting permission,
Mac decided. “The table is more than a convenience for the Sinzi-ra,” he explained. “It is a demonstration of a brand new technology the Sinzi is offering to qualified members of the Interspecies Union. This—” he indicated the table, “—is not a tank filled with water and living things. It is an access gate, permanently opened to another, much larger tank.” He showed Mac the slim featureless rod, collapsing it. “This device acts much the way the navigation array on a starship does when it stipulates a destination through a transect, creating a pathway. In this case, the destination is an object in the tank. The connection is instantaneous and the object, the shrimp Anchen favored, can be retrieved.”

Mac lifted her fingers from the table.

“It is an accomplishment in which we take great pride,” noted Anchen. “However, there remain serious constraints. It takes a constant input of power to maintain—we have been permitted to draw directly upon the geothermal energy beneath this building. More significantly, there is an impact on the living things within the tank. They appear normal and thriving, do they not? So far as we can determine, they come to no harm entering or existing in what is essentially a fixed bubble of no-space. Once inside, however, they cannot be removed alive.”

Emily
.

Perhaps the Sinzi interpreted Mac’s look of horror as one of awe.
Or understood all too well.
“How to survive upon exit is among the most important of the many questions we have for the Myrokynay,” she said. “We Sinzi have but built on the fragments they left thousands of years ago.” Fingers cascaded, rings flashed light. “We do our best—yet how pitiful our efforts must seem to them. From your own account and those of others, now the Myrokynay can form transects at need, live themselves within no-space, pass freely into this reality. While we achieve shrimp snacks, using as much power as this entire complex.”

Pitiful?
Mac stared at the table, with its imprisoned life. She wasn’t so sure. Many living things staked out territories, defended what they viewed as theirs; Humans could do it with a look.
What would the Ro think of the Sinzi’s shrimp, Em?
Would they have the proud attitude of parents who see their children strive to exceed them? Or might they see trespass—a challenge to their supremacy over no-space itself from those who still walked planets?

Mac shivered. “You want a great deal more than help with the Dhryn.”

“Of course,” with that lift of the head indicating surprise. “In our wildest imaginings, we never expected to find the creators of the transects still lived. To work with them? To learn from them? The Sinzi aspire only to be worthy.”

“If I were you,” Mac said dryly, “I’d aspire to find out what they’ll want in return and be sure you can afford it.”

Anchen’s head tilted to bring another set of eyes closer to Mac.
Whose attention did she have now?
“First contact is by its very nature doomed to misunderstandings, Mac.” Her voice was gentle but firm. “We can only proceed in this by stepping from known to known. The Dhryn feared the Myrokynay. For good reason, since the Myrokynay tried to destroy their Progenitors before they could launch their ships. All we know about the Dhryn is that they pose a devastating and terrifying threat to life. Surely the Myrokynay, who possess knowledge and technology far beyond any other species within the Interspecies Union, know more. We need them as allies. We will pay their price, if one is asked.”

This was the being who represented the IU on Earth.
Nothing she says, Em,
Mac told herself uneasily,
would be less than policy for all
.

Still, she couldn’t keep completely silent. “I urge caution in every dealing with the Ro, Anchen. We know even less about them than about the Dhryn.”

“An insight of value, Mac, which is why you are here.” Anchen brought out her imp and put it on the table. “Please, if you are ready, eat your meal and share any thoughts you have from your first day.” She made motions with her fingers, implying a workscreen in existence over the device, but Mac couldn’t see one—unless that shimmer when she tilted her head marked a portion.
Differing visual range? Interesting
.

If things hadn’t gone so well today—
after that appalling start,
Mac admitted—she might have been stuck with nothing to tell the Sinzi, but as it was, her food grew cold as she described the potential of her group of researchers. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” she finished, waving her fork in emphasis, “to have interesting results as early as tomorrow.”

The Sinzi had listened without comment until now. “Why do you expect this, Mac? They had nothing to contribute yesterday, beyond what was recorded about the death of their fellow scientists. Today, they have requested data on you, not on the Dhryn.”

“The information about me will restore trust. As for my expectations?” Mac tilted her head, trying to decide which of Anchen’s paired eyes were most intent on her. “They don’t know what they know,” she said at last. “It’s about context, Anchen. I’ve given them a new one. I think it will shake some things loose.”

“Ah yes. Migration. You believe the Dhryn are on such a journey. That their motive may be biological. That they act, at least in part, out of instinct rather than conscious plan. A novel approach.”

Fourteen had made a full report,
Mac smiled to herself. Aloud: “Believe? No. Not yet. I simply see value to assessing what we know about the Dhryn in those terms. That could be the prejudice of my own specialization. I admit that. But consider this, Anchen. At least since the Chasm, Dhryn Progenitors have outlawed the study of living things, including their own physiology. Why?”

“Is this an important question?”

“Any question we can’t answer about the Dhryn is an important question.”

The Sinzi lifted her fingers, touching them tip to tip to form a hollow ball before her complex eyes. “I concur, Mac. I will share your insights with the other delegates in hopes of granting them a new ‘context.’ ” She lowered her fingers and smiled. “I am personally gratified by your behavior with the Human-ra since this morning. You exceeded the expectations of some of myselves for you, and those were already high.”

Given the time of night, and a mind this side of putty, Mac wisely avoided trying to understand that, accepting the implied compliment. “The Human-ra—”
the term must be loose enough,
she decided,
to include Kanaci’s non-Human colleagues,
“—lacked the information it required about me. I’ve begun to rectify that. Call it a misunderstanding during first contact. We have a common purpose, after all.”

“We do. Ah. I am reminded.”
By what,
Mac wondered.
One of the group minds?
A deft finger stroke through empty air, away from where Mac had assumed the invisible-to-her workscreen hung.
Separate ’screens for each mind?
“There is a query for you. It comes from the team correlating our data on the Myrokynay.”

“Me? I don’t have anything new to add to my original statements,” Mac reminded the Sinzi. “And I made those when things were fresher in my mind.”

“We have your very useful information, Mac. This query concerns a more esoteric interpretation of your experience. Yes. I see it is posed in mathematical terms which, while elegant and succinct, do not translate into Instella. If you will permit me to approximate?” At Mac’s nod, she continued: “Did you observe anything about Emily Mamani implying the passage of biological time in no-space?”

“Biological time.” While several possibilities came to mind, Mac chose not to guess. “I don’t understand.”

“The state of being alive is postulated to require time that at least appears to move linearly, from what was to what is, thus permitting growth and metabolism to take place in sequenced steps. There are other modes of time which do not support this state. Within our tank,” a gesture to the glittering fish, “there is movement and thus the impression of biological time, is there not? We are divided in interpretation. Is this true biological time or its echo, since what passes for life here is, in real space, already dead?”

Mac gamely attempted to wrap her brain around the philosophical connections between linear time and death, other than the one being at the end of the line. After a moment, she gave a helpless shrug. “I’m sorry, Anchen. Salmon researcher, not physicist. What’s the point to this?”

“If we accept that the Myrokynay truly live within no-space, the answers to questions of time have significance to our hope for mutual understanding.”

“If they live in time as we do,” Mac narrowed her eyes, “they’re like us. I get that part. But as opposed to what?”

“Some other state of being.” The Sinzi brought two fingertips closer and closer together as if to touch, only to have them miss each other at the last instant. “An alarming possibility, Mac. You and your fellow Humans experience misunderstandings, as does any species within itself, despite shared biology and history. Negotiations between IU species involves more effort to sort through unintended confusion than all other deterrents to agreement combined. This, despite a shared language and technology.” Anchen shuddered, her hundreds of tiny rings tinkling. “Imagine the difficulty communicating with beings who don’t share the very experience of life itself with us.”

They’d have a better chance explaining Trisulian sex to a salmon through a straw
. Mac became acutely conscious of her heart beating, the air passing in and out of her nostrils, the way her head ached. A body plan reasonably similar to the Sinzi’s. The same ability to exchange complex ideas. “Puts my problems with the Origins Team into perspective,” she said at last. “I wouldn’t worry too much yet. After all, Emily’s managed to deal with the Ro.”

Anchen’s small mouth formed a smile. “A comforting observation to end the day.” Putting away her imp, the Sinzi rose from the jelly-chair without a wasted motion. Mac stood up as well, feeling as though she flopped in every direction possible before finding level ground. “Good night, Mac, and thank you for your insights. I will return tomorrow evening—late again, I assume.”

Mac smiled. “Good thing you sleep in shifts, Anchen.”

By early the next morning, the now officially named Origins Team was well underway. They skipped the mill and swill, as Mac called it, in the garden in favor of getting to work. Not to mention being set out as mass enticement for the Ro was the last thing she felt like doing, no matter how determined the Sinzi. Fourteen showed his approval by showing up sans wig and in those paisley shorts, clean at least. As for the others, it hadn’t hurt that she’d arranged for breakfast to be served here, then refused to let the staff clean up, knowing perfectly well they’d be grazing the leftovers before lunch.

The room itself had a completely different look from yesterday. The research consoles had been moved into five clusters, Lyle suggesting those to be included in each. The big conference table had been shoved against one wall to provide the expanse of empty floor space archaeologists apparently required. Mac didn’t ask.

Fourteen had brought in three large tables of his own, setting these up in a u-shape so he had his back to the window—Mac presumed so he could see what everyone else was doing, curiosity being one of the Myg’s traits. Each time she looked at what he himself was doing, there were more small objects scattered over the tables, each new acquisition placed with the rapt concentration of a chess master. Objects like other people’s writing implements, combs, and buttons. And a shoe.