Survival (23 page)

For a moment, they stood face-to-face, his fingers wrapped securely around her elbows, his forearms like warm, sturdy rails under hers, supporting a considerable amount of her weight. His breath stung the burn on her cheek as his eyes searched hers.
For what?
Mac wondered, suddenly more perplexed than angry.

Then, as if impelled by something he saw, the man she'd once thought nothing more than a messenger said in a low and urgent voice: “Mac, listen to me. Listen carefully. The best thing you can do right now is be yourself. Be the reclusive scientist. Be the private, careful person who doesn't let anyone close. Anyone.” His fingers tightened with the word. “The only reason you're here and you're safe is because you weren't in your quarters last night. Do you understand me? They found poor Brymn-—but I believe they came for you.”

“For me? Why?” Involuntarily, Mac's hands closed on his arms, not for comfort, but to hold him there, to demand more answers. “What about the intruder in my office?”

“I wish I knew.” Trojanowski hesitated, then went on: “My guess is that one of them was to search your office and he, she, it was to run if discovered. You were lucky.”

“Emily wasn't.” Mac stared at him, aghast. “Brymn wasn't. I must go and see him—”

“He's being monitored. Meanwhile, you,” the spy said sternly, “will stay here.” Before Mac could protest, he used his grip on her arms to heft her up on the bed and sit her there. “Get some rest. I don't want that rugby player you call a nurse chasing me down the hall.”

As the room was elongating on two axes, Mac didn't even attempt to nod. “You'll call me when your audio expert arrives, Mr. Trojanowski,” she told him firmly.

He looked back at her, his hand on the doorplate. “It is my real name,” he said, without smiling. “But I prefer Nik.”

Then he was gone.

Mac lay back, legs dangling over the side of the bed, her head spinning far too much for safe passage anywhere but horizontal.
He'd been briefed on more than Emily's Tracer
. She'd rarely heard a more precise summary of her life.

Her fingertips followed the lingering heat from his skin along the underside of her arms.
Nik, was it?
Did “Nik” think she'd missed his implications? Of course not. Mac doubted a single word came out of that man he didn't fully intend to say. So there was something she didn't know and he did about where Emily had been, something connected to invisible aliens and Brymn's being here, something that meant she, Mac, wasn't to become close to anyone. She was to keep up her guard.

Good advice, regardless of its source
. “Against you, too, Mr. Nik,” she muttered, sitting up more cautiously this time. The local representative of the Ministry of Extra-Sol Human Affairs might have access to a dossier of her work, life, and likely even a psych profile.
He didn't know her.

Not if he thought he could put her aside.

Mac achieved vertical with no more than a momentary wobble. “Must thank our Mandy for whatever he pumped into me,” she told the room. Not that there'd been anything wrong with her body a few calories and some sleep hadn't cured.

As for her mind and heart, well, her dossier should have warned Trojanowski that Dr. Mackenzie Connor was a person of action, not mood. Worrying about Emily meant finding Emily. Finding Emily meant getting to her feet and back into the game.

- Portent -

I
SHT
HAD hidden.

It was
isht
's only duty, to scramble into the smallest, darkest place
isht
could find. Quickly. Without hesitation. Without thought.

That place should have been the one of soft warmth, the one filled with the rhythmic rush of sound, moist with the sweet satisfying taste of
aisht
or perhaps the bitter tang that meant
isht
had mistakenly climbed into
oeisht
. Any
oeisht
would have forgiven
isht,
would have willingly provided shelter.

Isht
shivered in
isht
's hiding place, hearing nothing, tasting dust.

Time passed, unmarked by light.
Isht
vibrated
isht
's distress, unfelt by
aisht
or
oeisht
.

Isht'
s thoughts couldn't form abstracts such as hope or despair. There was only the duty to hide, the need to breathe and seek nourishment, the urgency of survival. Slowly but inevitably, survival warred with duty.

Isht
couldn't stay here and live.

The moment came when, trembling,
isht
climbed upward, one clawhold at a time.
Isht
reached the slit through which
isht
had first passed into the place and stopped to listen. Nothing.

The slit led sharply downward, a twist
isht'
s narrow form negotiated with ease. Then,
isht
was outside the place, clinging with all its might, looking for help.

Isht
was accustomed to climbing from
aisht
to find
ishtself
in a new and amazing world. This was different.

Isht
vibrated with fear.

The world wasn't new; it was gone.
Isht
clung, its grip the only safety.

What had been
isht'
s home was now a skeleton of metal and glass.

What had been a farm was now an ocean reaching in every direction
isht
could see. It filled
isht
's home, lapping at the column of
isht
's hiding place like a tongue seeking
isht
's taste.

A shadow sent
isht
scrambling into the smallest, darkest place
isht
could find.

Isht
heard the mouths begin to drink.

9

 

 

 

M
AC GRASPED the terrace rail and leaned back, turning her face to the sun as if she were a flower. It prickled the mem-skin covering her burned cheek and seared bright dots beneath her closed eyelids. She hadn't expected a gift like this, one of those unabashedly perfect days, where the sky was saturated with blue and the breezes, full of cedar and salt, slipped over skin and hair like a warm caress.

It would do them all good.
Mac pulled herself upright to look down at the walkways filled with students and their gear. Several teams were loading their skims; others were loafing on towels, waiting their turn. Business as usual in the latter half of the research season.

Or not.
On her way to meet with Kammie, having delayed only to exchange the obnoxious nightie for clothing that was actually hers for a change, Mac had quietly asked Tie to head up to Field Station Six with a couple of volunteers to dismantle her and Emily's equipment. It would be brought back and stored for use next year.

She couldn't bear to think otherwise
.

Now, Mac headed left along the terrace, the long way around, since the section outside her office was still off limits.

Dr. Kammie Noyo's office and lab was on the opposite side of the pod from hers, affording a stunning view past the tip of the inlet to the open ocean. Not that you could see it from inside. Rumor in the student pods was that the venerable chemist had opaqued her window wall because she was afraid of water.

Mac knocked perfunctorily on the door, propped open to the sunshine with an earthenware pot containing a surprised cactus, and walked inside.

Rumor, as usual, was untrustworthy.
Afraid of water?
Mac shook her head at the notion. Kammie Noyo was a deepwater sailor and had picked this very office for its view. Unfortunately, all that was left of the view was through her open door. She'd covered her walls with shelves to hold her growing collection of soil samples, adamantly refusing to move so much as a single precious vial out of her sight. “You never knew when you'd need one to compare,” she'd say in her cheerful voice, hands shoved into her brilliant white lab coat. The window wall? Permanently opaqued simply to protect the samples from daylight.

Mac let her eyes adjust to the interior lighting, then followed voices through the empty office to the lab to find Kammie, hands in her lab coat, holding court with her latest crop of postdocs. They were a matched set: three gangly youngsters who had faith the pale fuzz on their chins would be worthy beards by the end of the research season and their theses would change the world. Months working with Kammie, whose head barely topped Mac's ear, had given them a distinctly stooped posture. Kammie professed herself pleased with their individuality and brilliance. Mac still couldn't tell them apart, but she trusted Kammie's judgment.

She needed it more than ever now
.

Quite sure Kammie had seen her—the woman's peripheral vision was legendary—Mac waved to show she could wait, then went back into the office. She punched her codes into Kammie's desk interface to bring up her own main workscreen, directly linked to Norcoast's, then found a chair with fewer periodicals than usual, and sat carefully on top. Everyone at Base, starting with the cleaning staff, knew better than to mess with Dr. Noyo's furniture-based filing system.

Mac leveled her bottom with a careful wiggle, grumbling automatically over the chemist's continued fondness for paper, then tapped the air where her workscreen had decided to float. She brought out her imp and initialized its personal 'screen—smaller, self-contained, and able to reference only data carried within the imp itself. Layering one over the other, Mac got to work.

Kammie bustled in half an hour later. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mac,” she apologized cheerily in her soft, high-pitched voice. “The boys had an interesting problem.” She stretched to tuck a small aluminum vial box back into its place on a shelf behind her desk, then, as if struck by a thought, she stayed there, tracing the labels of its neighbors with her fingers.

“You okay?” Mac asked, glancing up through her 'screens. Unlike yesterday, when she'd been so distraught in the hall of Pod Three, the other woman appeared back to normal, hair smoothly coiffed, round face wearing the patented half smile that Kammie joked she'd inherited from a wise grandfather.

“I'm supposed to be asking you that, aren't I?” Smile fading, Kammie turned and sank into her chair. Whatever she'd left on it raised her to just the right height for her desk. Her almond-shaped eyes were troubled as she called up her own 'screen in preparation for their briefing. “I'm worried about my students. Is it wrong to send them back to work so soon?”

“Look at us.” Mac poked a finger through her 'screen. “I'd say it's the only productive thing we can do, Kammie. And Em—you know she'd be the first person to take our heads off for moping around.”

The chemist looked wistful. “No argument there. So. What can I do for you, Mac?”

“This.” With a slide of her hand through the air, Mac sent her Admin codes, schedules, everything she had pending on Base to Kammie's 'screen. “I want you to take over for me, Kammie. Indefinitely.”

“You're kidding. I'm in the middle of—”

“I'm very serious, Kammie. I need you to look after all the admin, not just your half.”

Kammie Noyo leaned back in her chair, studying Mac over her steepled fingers. “No offense, dear lady, but didn't you just say work was the only productive thing we can do? I don't see you, of any of us, taking a break right now.” Kammie's delicate eyebrows met. “Which means you're up to something. What?”

Mac almost smiled. She'd never joined Kammie's sea-faring adventures or visited her extensive family; she was well aware that Kammie, for her part, considered Mac an eccentric workaholic who must be reminded at regular intervals that others had real lives. But when it came to what mattered, each knew the other very well indeed. “I was a witness.”