Survival

THERE WERE clouds forming on the horizon. Mac hugged herself tightly and watched them blur the line where wave met sky in a spectrum of heaving gray and black. Where she stood, outside Pod Six, the mid-afternoon sun scoured to a hard-edged gleam every section of mem-wood walkway, every rail, every ripple of ocean surrounding them all.

“They worried they’d have to stop looking at dusk,” Trojanowski announced. “Then someone volunteered to rig lights.” He’d removed his coat and cravat sometime in the last hour, pressing the mem-fabric of his shirt sleeves to hold them above his elbows. Mac hadn’t seen him put his hands into the water, but they dripped on the walkway as he approached her.

As “they” referred to a cobbled-together team of enthused students and supervisors using skims and whatever diving gear was at hand to search the water within and around the pod, Mac was less than impressed. “You told me yourself there’s no point,” she protested, pressing her lips together. Finally: “I should stop this.”

“And how will you explain why?” he asked mildly, shaking droplets from his fingertips and squinting at the line of skims. “Too many heard something fall in the water. A stubborn bunch you have here.”

Enough was enough. Mac took a deep breath, then said: “I won’t bother with explanations. They can be as stubborn as they want at home, where I don’t have to worry about them. I’m going to order Base evacuated.”

“What? An act of treason against my species?” He might be taller by a head, but Mac had no trouble glaring at him. “I have no problem being bait for our intruder, Mr. Trojanowski, if that’s what it takes. I draw the line at risking the people of this facility in any way.”

Just then, a skim swooped to a stop above the water in front of them, disgorging a pair of soaking wet and begoggled students who waved happily as they jumped onto the walkway. Between them they carried a seaweed-coated length of pipe, with links of chain dangling from each end, that they dropped at Mac’s feet. “Look what we found, Mac!” one exclaimed with glee. “Part of the old goal post!” Without waiting for an answer, they dove back in their skim and headed for the others.

Mac nudged the pipe with the toe of her shoe. “Well, you’ve been missing a while,” she scolded, to keep her voice free of either laughter or sob. Then, to the silent man beside her: “These people have no idea what we’re up against. Even if they did, they’d still try to help. We can’t protect them here. You know that as well as I do.”

Without another word, Trojanowski led Mac to the very end of the walkway, away from searchers and spectators, to where the mem-wood slats broadened into a platform that ramped down on either side to meet the now-empty slips of Norcoast’s small skim and t-lev fleet. He stood with the sun and the end rail at his back. To hide his expression or illuminate her own?

“Well, this should be private enough,” Mac commented, raising her voice to be heard above the slap of water and the raucous chatter of gulls roosting on the slips. She adjusted out of habit to the sway of the walkway as it rode the incoming swells, then tapped her foot smartly on the mem-wood. “Or is it? We’ve no way to know, do we?”

“No way to know,” he agreed, but didn’t seem unduly concerned by this or the shifting surface underfoot. He rubbed his hands together as if to finish drying them, then spread them wide apart. “But this isn’t the first time. It’s been like chasing a ghost, Mac. No images on record. A few traces of slime that contain no genetic information or cells. No clues, beyond the type of encounter we’ve just had. We call them ‘Nulls,’ for want of anything better.”

“So there have been other—encounters,” Mac said, finding his word choice unsettling. What would they call murder? A meeting? “Where? Was anyone else taken? Harmed? What—”

“Nothing as tangible as this, until now,” he answered, cutting her list short. “Nothing as bold. The Nulls themselves were only a name until you heard one. We’ve been able to spot their ship landings, some anyway—damaged vegetation and disturbed earth. If we’re lucky, there’s slime.”

Trojanowski went on: “Neither the Ministry nor the IU is ready to make a direct connection between these beings and what’s been happening along the Naralax Transect—the disappearances—”

His shoulders lifted and fell. “Anyone who goes to this much trouble to hide themselves has a reason. And there have been landing sites in systems along the Naralax, on worlds where and when such events have taken place.”

“ ‘Events.’ ” Mac shook her head in disgust. “ ‘Missing person reports.’ ‘Disappearances.’ Why don’t you say what really happened? The eradication of all life, of every living molecule, as if it had never existed—just like the worlds in the Chasm. A minor detail I had to learn from an alien! Why wasn’t it in the report?”

“Yes, but it was more than that.” He shook his head. “The decision to keep a lid on this was made in order to prevent panic. We didn’t want to alarm you or anyone else, unnecessarily.”

The wind, previously soft and steady from the west, chose that moment to send a spray-laden gust over the end of the walkway. Mac had already tucked the portion of her braid escaping its knot into her collar, but sufficient drops landed on her face and head to steal the sun’s warmth. She licked salty lips. “I’ll tell you what’s alarming me, Mr. Trojanowski, the idea of my people being stalked by these creatures. I think that’s more than enough reason to close this facility immediately and send everyone home.”

A sliver of steel entered his voice. “And I say that would be premature. They’ve only shown interest in you, Dr. Mamani, and possibly Brymn. There’s every indication they’ve attempted to prevent inadvertent contact with anyone else. The power failures, the late night intrusions. If we change the routine at this facility, we might spook them into disappearing for good—or into more direct action.”

“They are after you,” he repeated, as if she hadn’t spoken. “The obvious conclusion is that, despite all our security, somehow they’ve found out you and Brymn are looking into the—eradications. But why Emily? You know something, don’t you?” His voice softened. “I’ve seen it in your eyes, Mac. You’re blaming yourself. Why?”

Mac walked around Trojanowski so he had to turn to the sun in order to keep her in view. As if sensing what she wanted, he took off his glasses, put them in a pocket, and waited, a patient, if determined, compassion on his face. Each time they had stood like this, face-to-face, Mac realized with a small shock, something fundamental between them had changed. Was it only the circumstances? Was it him?

This time, it felt natural to say to him what she could hardly bear to think. “Emily was trying to tell me something, the last—the last time I saw her. She wasn’t angry at me. I know it sounded like it, when we were together on the stairs, but she wasn’t. She said I needed to understand that we—she meant Humans—weren’t the only people investigating the disappearances. She said we had our parts to play, but they were small and we’d be back to normal soon. She said all this as if to reassure me.” Mac paused to firm up her voice. “But I think it was to reassure herself.” Tears spilled over her eyelids; she let them fall. “She was afraid, Nik. I didn’t see it until too late.”

Nikolai Trojanowski put his hands on either side of her face, then brushed his thumbs over her cheeks, once, ever so lightly, to wipe away her tears. “Did you promise?” he asked gently.

“Emily was his lamisah, too.” Mac turned and gripped the rail in both hands, staring out at the simplicity of the inlet’s life, and then told Nikolai Trojanowski everything she knew, from sharing the Ministry’s message with Emily, to Brymn’s desire to speak to her privately and what he’d said, ending with the meeting between the three of them in her office. The only time she sensed a reaction from the silent form beside her was his stiffening when she mentioned the figure watching the three of them from the terrace.

Mac’s hands tightened on the rail until she felt twinges of pain up both wrists. “You should have been here protecting us! Protecting Emily!” The fury of her own sudden outburst shocked her. She put one hand over her mouth, then drew it down slowly. “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known. I’m sorry. . . .”

“Don’t be. You aren’t wrong, Mac.” His tone brought her eyes around to look at him. A muscle jumped along his jaw and his mouth was a thin, stark line. “I wish I’d been here,” he said grimly. “I wish I hadn’t completely underestimated Brymn and the situation I placed you in. I thought he was a joke. I thought having to come here with him was a waste of my time and my superiors were fools to let him convince them otherwise. Oh, I did all the right prep—made all the right motions. Backgrounds on you and your people. Checked, what I could, on the Dhryn.” Twin spots of color appeared on his cheeks and his voice lowered. “Getting that call to watch for a Null ship felt like a reprieve—until I found out what had happened while I was gone. It’s I who owe you an apology, Mackenzie Connor. As if words matter now.”

Emily assessed people in an instant and was rarely wrong, an ability Mac now envied. Her own way was to avoid such judgments, to wait and watch while time spent working together revealed the quality of a person, or its lack. A luxury she no longer had. There was only the seeming sincerity of this man’s voice and expression, his actions over the past two and a half days, and a supposedly counterfeit-proof message, carefully transferred to her pant pocket because nowhere in her home was safe.

Like rolling a kayak, Mac decided. You had to believe your first drive of the paddle would bring you up again. Without that confidence, the timing never worked and you stayed head down and flailing underwater. Embarrassing at best. Deadly at worst.

“Words matter, Nik,” she disagreed. “I’ve one for you. Lamisah. Allies.” Mac poked him in the chest with two fingers. He feigned a grab for the railing and she almost smiled. Almost. “Taking your advice, lamisah, I won’t shut down Base unless there is another incident. But if there’s so much as a hint of a Null around, I’ll empty this place and raise the pods so fast your head will spin.”

Nik considered her for an instant; perhaps, Mac thought, forced into his own quick judgment. Then he nodded. “We.” His hazel eyes picked up some of the ocean’s chill blue. “We start searching for your invisible intruder,” he told her. “But first, I think it’s time we woke our sleeping beauty.”

“What are—what do you think I’ll see that you haven’t?” she asked Nik, who was moving carefully through the remains of Emily’s glass table toward her desk. Focusing on him, a person who didn’t belong with her memories of this room, was better than remembering how it used to look. How it should look.

Emily defined her space, Mac thought, picking her way among pieces of brilliant fabric her eye refused to recognize as a wardrobe. The delay Emily had coaxed from her on arriving? In part so she could, as every year, disappear into her new assigned quarters to “scent mark the place” as she’d call it. One or more of her travel cases would contain oddments from home: a new ceramic sculpture, a rug, a watercolor, a colorful woven throw. Once it had been a set of stuffed llamas, in striking white and black, adorned with magenta sunglasses. The only commonalities from year to year were the confusion of cosmetics in the bathroom and satin sheets on the bed. The end result, regardless of scheme, was a space that had nothing in common with those of the other scientists in the pod, something that suited Emily Mamani very well.

Mac didn’t look up again. She didn’t dare. Looking at the floor was bad enough, littered with treasures become debris, glistening with hardened slime. Her first involuntary glance around the room had been trapped by the marks on one wall, a combination of deep gouges and a single, blood-red handprint. The marks had been linked within an irregular black outline, as if a child had thought to frame them.

There were other signs of the forensics team at work: labels and code numbers stuck seemingly at random around the room, vidbots hovering in every corner to record any evidence tampering, accidental or deliberate.

“How can you be—” Mac stopped what she was going to say and gave a nod. “I’ll do my best,” she said, wondering where or when he’d had occasion to prove that for himself. She probably didn’t want to know, Mac told herself, raising her eyes at last.

It helped that the marks were behind her now. She pushed the emotions crowding her behind as well. Time later to worry about Emily, to be angry at the defilement of her things, to be afraid.

Fear was the hardest to dismiss. Slowly, insidiously, it sucked the moisture from her mouth and disrupted the rhythm of her heart. There could be another of the creatures clinging to the ceiling above her head, or in the shower stall. The walls could be crowded with Nulls, silent and waiting.

Nothing in the living room drew her attention. Mac made herself walk into Emily’s bedroom. She felt Nik’s presence at her back, as if he offered support but wouldn’t interfere. Scant comfort, she thought. He couldn’t shoot what he couldn’t find.

Even prepared by the state of the outer room, Mac gasped. The bedroom, half the size of the living room, had been the site of battle. Streaks of slime crisscrossed others of rust-red. Numb, Mac bent and picked up a fragment of blue and yellow, all she could see that looked familiar. It was from a lamp Emily had “borrowed” from her office. A lamp that had been shattered against a wall—or a body.

Mac ignored the words as she ignored any attempt by her mind to reconstruct what had happened here. She edged around the mattress, sliced as had been the one in her quarters, hurrying her inspection over every surface. Almost done . . .

“What are you doing here?” she muttered in surprise, tugging at a piece of brown plastic that peeked from beneath a fragment of chair leg. The piece tore free and she brought it to her nose. The soufflé had smelled much better two days ago.

She dropped to her knees, digging after more pieces. “Leftovers,” Mac clarified as she searched. “Brymn brought this bag of soufflé to my office that night. He didn’t know I’d eaten . . . said he picked this to bring me because others praised it. I don’t think he eats what we do.”

Impatiently, Mac pushed her hair behind one ear. She had a small pile of bag pieces now, several attached to dried clots of egg, chocolate, and cream. “It matters because the soufflé wasn’t edible anymore. Em must have taken the bag to recycle it for me. I’ve had some—well, sometimes old food hangs around in my office.” She coughed. “That’s not important. Nik, what if whoever was spying on us through the window stayed nearby and saw her take the bag from my office. Maybe he—it—assumed it held something important, something secret. That could be why Emily . . .” She didn’t finish the statement. The room around them did it for her.

“Not an unreasonable assumption,” Nik replied approvingly, then made a clucking sound. “It doesn’t explain why Dr. Mamani would bring a bag of dead soufflé all the way back to her quarters. I saw recycle chutes in every hallway.”

“I don’t know.” Mac rocked back on her heels. “We were both tired. We’d said things, argued. I didn’t even notice her taking it. She must have gathered it up with her sweater.” Mac started to look around for the garment, but stopped herself with a shudder.

Nik produced a clear sheet from a pocket, unfolded it, then laid it over a fairly clean section of carpet. “Put all the pieces here,” he ordered. “I’ll have the forensics team reconstruct what they can.”

Nik lifted the end of a drawer and exclaimed with satisfaction as he found another, larger mass of bag bits stuck to one another and to the floor. Rather than try to remove it, he drew out a knife and began cutting the carpet around the mass. “Speculating is part of good detective work, Mac,” he informed her as he worked. “As a scientist, you should know that.”

She knew she didn’t like where this particular speculation was leading. Mac put her fingers on Nik’s arm. “Wait.” When he looked at her quizzically, she bit her lip, then went on: “What aren’t you telling me about Emily, Nik? What’s going on? Tell me what you know—what you think you know. Please.”

The knife blade drove deep into the carpet to stand between them. “I know she’s your colleague and closest friend, Mac,” he said evenly, meeting her eyes. His were troubled. “But that’s not all she is. I can’t explain here-—” a deliberate glance at the hovering vidbot, “—but I believe she might have taken the bag from your office because she suspected Brymn of trying to pass you a secret message—”

“Whoa! Stop right there, Mr. Trojanowski.” Mac snatched her fingers back as though his skin burned them. “Why would Emily want to intercept a message from Brymn? She didn’t even know he existed until you brought him to the field station! I involved her in all this. She knows nothing about his species, or—” His stillness penetrated her fury. He was waiting for her, for something from her. What?

He bent his head, lifting only his eyes to hers. The regret in them made her pulse hammer in her throat, an ominous drumbeat underlying his next words. “Because Emily Mamani has lied to you, Mac. By omission if not more. She visited at least two Dhryn colonies in the past year; three the year before. I’m quite sure she knows more about Brymn and his species than either of us.”

“Thanks, Tie.” Mac curbed her impatience. After Nik had passed the wrapped bundle of dried soufflé and bag bits to the officer who’d been waiting outside Emily’s door, they’d come straight here, to her quarters. No time to process what Nik had told her. No time to do anything more than shove all thoughts of Emily Mamani out of her mind. “We’ll watch him for a while, Tie. I’ll let you know when we need to be spelled.”

While she talked with Tie, Nik was heads-together with the police officer who’d been guarding Brymn. If that’s what she was, Mac wondered abruptly. She’d never asked for any identification. She was reasonably certain Kammie wouldn’t have bothered either. You had an emergency, you called for help, real police came. Who doubted that?

His rough, round face puckered in distress. Tie was at his best with engines, not people, but he’d done an admirable job keeping cool and focused through this crisis. An unconscious alien on the floor of her quarters was about the only thing he couldn’t handle. Mac knew how he felt all too well. “I’m saying, Mac, we should’ve moved our ‘guest’ yesterday. This isn’t right, you not having your own quarters.”

“Don’t worry about me, Tie.” Mac put her arm around his shoulders and gave him an affectionate squeeze before letting go. “The last place I want to stay right now is in here. It’s going to take weeks to clean this up—let alone put everything together again.” She didn’t bother adding that her office was worse. He knew. “Did you get all our gear packed up?”

“Done by noon.” He found a smile for her. “Only problem I had was convincing McGregor and Beiz to stop sunbathing so we could get back to Base. If it wasn’t for the situation—” Here his voice finally faltered.

“It’s okay, Tie,” Mac said softly. From the corner of her eye, she saw that Nik and the “officer” were finished with their private chat. “I’m heading to the mainland this evening anyway. They’re putting me up in a fancy hotel, with room service. What do you think of that?”

This didn’t sit well at all. She could see it in the unhappy look in his eyes. But Tie wouldn’t argue, not with Outside Authority in the form of the bureaucrat and police officer now moving their way. He ducked his head to her in mute agreement, then started to leave, only to turn back. “Mac. I’m sorry. I don’t know where my head’s been. Your dad called again.”

Mac blinked, then remembered. She’d promised to call him back—what was it now, last night? Something so normal and sane as talking to her father seemed improbable. She’d have to do it, though. “Thanks, Tie. You didn’t say anything about what’s been going on, did you?”

Mac hid a wince. Now she’d really have to call, and soon. Resting? Her Dad wouldn’t believe that even without the bonus of an alien guest during her field season. She’d be lucky if he didn’t show up on the next t-lev out of Vancouver. “Perfect,” she told Tie, forcing a smile.

The officer, a stocky woman whose dark eyes, coppered skin, and straight black hair spoke of a heritage along this coast almost as old as the salmon themselves, gave Mac a look that likely memorized everything from braid to shoe size before saying to Nik: “If that’s all, sir, I’d like to check on Simeon’s progress.”

The Dhryn wasn’t moaning anymore. Mac hoped that was an improvement. Otherwise, he lay exactly as she and Nik had left him, his arms curled over his torso, his thick legs bent back at their main joint and splayed. The sheet over him had soaked through with dark blue exudate in several spots. More liquid of that color puddled down Brymn’s left side, the one closest to where they stood, flowing off the mattress onto the floor. It hadn’t dried or congealed, suggesting it continued to flow. On the other hand, there wasn’t enough of it to suggest the alien had lost a significant amount of a vital fluid.

Unlike Emily’s quarters, some effort had been made to push the remains of furniture and torn bedding aside. Mac assumed this had been to accommodate the various doctors and other Human experts trying to puzzle out the Dhryn’s comatose state. There was only one vidbot, aimed at Brymn.

“Human. Career thief. Several recent names. Born Otto Rkeia. He didn’t come in with the media crush, but I imagine all the unfamiliar faces let him move around pretty much as he pleased. Probably swam in under cover of darkness.”

“If he did,” Mac said confidently, “we’ll have a recording. We may not have much in the way of security from intruders, but we pay a great deal of attention to what moves in the water under the pods.”

“You can’t ask—” Mac stopped at his thumbs-down gesture. “Oh. Where did they find the body?” she asked, momentarily aghast at the calmness of her own voice. Maybe she was learning to deal with repeated shocks. Maybe this is how the police—how Nikolai himself—dealt with such things as violence.

Nik snorted. “Not unless you can accidentally glue yourself to a support strut, thirty meters down. They’re estimating time of death now.” He shot a look upward, to where the remains of the adhesive netting still starred the ceiling. “Not too much of a stretch to believe our invisible friends were responsible.”

As comfort, it was as cold and dark as thirty meters below the pod, but Mac made herself accept it. “Jirair—Dr. Grebbian—can help you determine when the body went in the water, if that helps.” At Nik’s interrogative look, she added: “He studies zooplankton, particularly those with a sessile component to their life cycle. Mr. Rkeia’s body will have been colonized by several species. Jirair can tell how long each has been growing.”

“That could be useful.” Nik went to the com on the wall and passed a message to the forensics team to contact Grebbian. “Done,” he said, coming back a moment later. “Thanks, Mac.” He gave her a searching look. “How are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” she replied slowly, but obediently walked around the alien on her floor. The first thing Mac noticed was a modest, regular expansion and contraction of his upper torso. Great, she mocked. I can tell he’s breathing. There was a monitor on the floor connected to a sensor affixed to what corresponded to a chest. Its display was a confusion of peaks and valleys that bore no resemblance to any electrical rhythms Mac had ever seen in a vertebrate.

As she walked around a second time, she undid the knot of braid on her neck, then the braid itself. The third time, she started braiding her hair again, then stopped, fingers paused in mid-twist. “Play Jabulani’s recording,” she suggested.

Before Nik could play the sound again, Mac raised her hand. “That’s it!” she exclaimed. “The missing part. I knew there was something between the ‘spit’ and the ‘pop.’ It wasn’t something our ears could detect—but his should. It might make the difference.” She hurried to the com. “Dr. Connor. Put me through to the Pred lab.”

“I need you to play a single pulse, ten Hz, through the com for me. Fifty dB will do.” She waved her companion over to the com. He understood, holding up his imp to catch the sound.

“Just a minute.” A muttering of voices, some incredulous, then something bounced along the floor. Likely a basketball—the Pred lab wasn’t the most formal. Mac shrugged at Nik’s look. After “just a minute” stretched into three, Mac was about to signal again when Seung said: “Ready. Pulse in three, two, one . . .” The following silence made Nik look at her in question. She nodded confidently as the com came alive again. “There you go, Mac. Glad to help. Any word on Em?”

“I’m convinced Brymn’s speech includes infrasound—sounds below the frequency detected by the Human ear. If he utters it, he should be able to hear it. When Jabulani was trying to recreate the ‘spit/pop’ sound I’d heard, that’s what was missing.”

Mac stroked the hairs on her forearm. “If you’re close enough to the source of infrasound, you feel it,” she said, remembering. She pulled out her imp. “Send me your ’screen,” she ordered, walking closer to Brymn. “I’ll key the sounds through mine.”

“I’m sure you do,” Nik countered, “but our devices aren’t compatible. Tell me what you want and I’ll do it.” He approached, the ’screen from his imp disconcertingly afloat to the left of his face.

It looked like an ordinary enough imp to her, and he’d used it with Denise’s equipment, but Mac didn’t waste time arguing—although she did think dark thoughts about spies and their toys. “Play just the ‘spit’ of sound number three followed by Seung’s pulse. We’ll add the ‘pop’ later if necessary.”

They might not hear a difference, but the Dhryn certainly did. As Nik played the sounds, the body on the floor convulsed upward, arching from neck to foot. Mac stepped back as the wire to the monitor ripped clear. Brymn’s six arms stretched out as if grabbing for holds. His seventh arm shot straight up through the sheet, ripping it as if it were paper. An instant later, he went limp.

Mac walked over to the Dhryn and pulled the remains of her sheet from his body and arm, avoiding contact with any of the blue stains. “Insufficient. Didn’t wake him,” she said, shaking her head. “Add the final component of the sound.”

Brymn let out a roar and surged to his feet. Nik leaped back, having come close to underestimating the reach of the Dhryn’s wildly moving upper arms. For a moment, all Mac could tell was that the alien was alive and awake; she wasn’t convinced he was sane or safe.

Then, like the branches of a great tree swaying in a storm, the six paired arms began to move in unison, from side to side, lower and lower, gradually coming to a rest at Brymn’s sides. The seventh, always moving in opposition to the rest, tucked itself under an upper armpit. Then, finally, his eyes snapped open—along with his mouth.

As if her voice had been a switch, Brymn stopped keening. His eyes came to rest on her. “Mac—?” Then he folded at the knee joints, dropping into his tripod sit with a suddenness that probably hurt.

That worthy turned off his ’screen and gave a quick bow. “Honorable Delegate. Is there anything you need?” Mac had no trouble interpreting the look he sent her: let’s be sure he’s stable first.

Brymn’s eyes followed hers. Mac felt the floor vibrate. He must have made one of his low frequency sounds. “What has happened to your room . . . ?” his voice rumbled into silence as he looked up at the ceiling and saw the remnants of the adhesive webbing overhead. “Aieeee!” His shriek rattled everything loose in the room. “The Ro are here! We must run for our lives!” Even as he attempted to stand, he lapsed from English to what sounded to Mac like more of the Dhryn’s own language, only so rapid that none of the words were remotely familiar.

They were going to get some answers at last. Satisfied, Mac leaned against the wall that had once held a set of shelves, the shelves in turn once holding a shell collection now shattered at her feet, and waited with some interest to see how Nikolai Trojanowski handled a bear-sized case of alien hysterics.