Survival

“PUT ME DOWN,” Mac croaked for at least the hundredth time. Her rescuer paid no attention. It was as if she didn’t exist.

It turned out a Dhryn couldn’t float unassisted, but it hadn’t mattered. He’d lain on his back, holding her wrapped in that almost boneless seventh arm, while the rest of his limbs churned the water in furious strokes, their sheer power driving them through the waves when anything Mac knew of anatomy said they should capsize and drown. Once she’d realized what was happening, she’d tried to convince him to turn back to Base. But to no avail. He was taking them to shore.

She’d protested and struggled until common sense took over. Whether the Dhryn was hysterical or sane didn’t matter, as long as he could keep swimming. The water was choppy and rough; the Dhryn wisely riding the swell of the waves in, but they’d been chased by the rest of the Pacific. Mac had held her breath each time she saw a crest about to catch up and douse them, gasping for air as her head broke the water again. Each splash stole body heat and she’d soon been shivering uncontrollably. Thankfully, the Dhryn’s body had insulated her back.

What was happening to Base? Mac had tried to see past the waves, but it had been impossible—the Dhryn almost submerged at best and the water too wild around them. She’d grown sick with fear. For her friends, for her colleagues, for what they’d built.

It wasn’t much better now, on land. The Dhryn had brought them to shore by virtue of crashing into the rocks with a higher wave than most. Before the water washed them out again, he’d taken hold of a skeletal log jutting overhead. Mac had seen the wood compress and splinter under his three fingers. With that one arm, he’d pulled them both clear of the waterline.

The part of her mind still capable of analysis had put a check mark beside the idea of the original Dhryn home being a heavier gravity planet.

He was still running, quite a bit later. After almost three hundred and fifty years of complete exclusion, the Wilderness Trust might as well open the inlet’s forest to the general public, Mac decided, wincing at the trail of ruined vegetation in the Dhryn’s wake. His method of locomotion had a great deal in common with a crashing skim, straight through what could be broken and rebounding from anything more solid.

Despite what had to be hysteria, he seemed aware that he was carrying someone more fragile. More or less. Mac yelped as a branch snagged some of her hair and won the tug-of-war. She blinked away tears of pain, thinking of Emily. Had she felt like this? Been imprisoned by alien hands and arms? Dragged to a destination she couldn’t know? Unable to communicate with her captor?

Mac pulled her mind back to the present—her present—assessing herself as best she could. They’d probably been running no more than a half an hour, though it felt longer. Any exposed skin was scratched. Her clothes had suffered, torn along the right leg and arm by exposed, reaching roots. She’d learned to keep her arms tight to her body after that. She’d lost a shoe. There would be bruises, perhaps a cracked rib, where his arms folded around her. But nothing worse—so far. It was almost miraculous, given the pace the Dhryn was maintaining as he raced through the rain forest.

He did slow to climb, although not as much as she would have. Two pairs of powerful arms and semiadhesive feet were distinct advantages, even if another pair of arms had to balance and protect her.

The next time he slowed, she tried again. “Put me down,” Mac pleaded, doing her best to kick. “Stop. Please. We have to go back . . . I . . .”The words buried themselves in heavy, painful sobs as her frustration and rage took over.

The forest around them swallowed the sun, disgorging dark shadows of every size and shape. You wouldn’t need invisibility to hide here, Mac thought. Sound was smothered as well: birds waiting for twilight, insects too cool to buzz, no rain pattering cheerfully through the leaves.

The Dhryn’s body was canted at its usual angle, and she was underneath, her head near his neck. From that position, it was impossible for Mac to look up when she thought she heard a familiar sound. Not the Ro; a lev, with a powerful, unusually quiet engine.

The rest was muffled by one of Brymn’s free hands. The Dhryn finally spoke, a whispered, anxious: “You don’t know who it is!”

The relief when she landed on the mossy ground was so great, Mac fought back another sob. She rolled quickly, partly to get away from Brymn before he could change his mind and partly so she could look up.

The Dhryn stared at her, hands hanging limply as if, having stopped running, he’d finally succumbed to exhaustion. His blue skin was marked with scrapes and gouges, each a darker blue as if they cut into another layer; his fine silks were in tatters. “Lamisah . . . are you sure?” he whispered.

Mac dropped back on the moss to catch her breath. If Nik hadn’t heard that, nothing short of an explosive charge would catch his attention.

He’d heard. She watched as the machine resolved itself from shadow and branch, sinking down more cautiously than she remembered. Mac climbed to her feet, wincing at bruises she hadn’t felt until now. Brymn backed away, but not to run as she first feared. He was leaving the most level patch of ground for the lev to land. Together, they waited until it touched down.

Somehow, Mac couldn’t believe until the black helmet rose and she could see his face, pale and grim. “How—is everyone all right?” she asked him, hands out as if the answer was something she could hold.

“Help’s arrived,” Nik said cryptically, climbing down. A quick assessing look at Brymn, then back to her. His voice gentled and he went on without her needing to ask. “The alarm gave everyone a fighting chance. Best thing you could have done, Mac. So was vanishing into the sea—although that did upset your friends in the gallery. I assured them you’d be all right. And you are.” Did she hear relief? “My only doubt was if I’d find you two before nightfall. The bioscanner works fine, but there’s the issue of navigating in these trees.”

“We cannot stay here!” This from Brymn. The Dhryn lifted his head and shoulders, then lowered them, rocking his body up and down the way a Human would rock from one foot to another.

She ignored him, walking toward Nik until she could put both hands against his chest and stare up into his face. “Please. Tell me.”

He hesitated, then took her shoulders in his hands. There was a darkness in his eyes that had nothing to do with twilight. “There were casualties, Mac. Not many,” he added, tightening his grip as she flinched involuntarily, “but I won’t lie to you. There may be more. I don’t know how many injuries were life threatening and—” he took a long breath and Mac held hers, afraid. “—and they’ve sent divers into Pod Six. It was totally submerged.”

His nod was almost imperceptible, as if he wanted to spare her, but knew she expected the truth. “They were after you, Mac. Once you were gone, there was no sign of them. As I said, leaving was the best thing you could have done.”

Without taking his eyes from hers, Nik replied with unexpected heat. “Where? Where will she be safe from them? Not here!” Only now did he turn his head and glare at the alien. “This is where they landed the first time! What were you thinking, Brymn? Were you saving Mac—or bringing her straight to them?”

“They were here?” Brymn shuddered. “I didn’t know. I was trying to reach the nearest spaceport.” He flailed two arms over his head at the forest. “Is there no civilization on this planet?”

“A spaceport? You wanted—you were going to take me to a Dhryn world,” Mac said faintly, understanding at last. She leaned forward until her cheek rested on the cold hardness covering Nik’s chest. She wasn’t surprised. Armor for a black knight. His arms went around her, a welcome Human comfort, despite the flash of pain it sent through her damaged rib. She fought to focus on what mattered, fought to overcome a terror greater than anything she’d faced before.

“The Dhryn protect their—their oomlings,” she reminded Nik—and herself—in a hoarse whisper. “They can protect me.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes. Now,” Brymn insisted anxiously. “Without the gift of more time to our enemies. They hunt Mac because of the importance of her work to mine. They will never stop! We must keep Mac safe!”

A hand, five-fingered and Human, stroked the back of her head. Words, hushed on warm breath, stirred her hair: “Mac. You don’t have to do this. We’ll find another way.”

“Before the Ro attack again?” she asked. “Before something worse happens to anyone in the way?” Mac pushed gently and Nik let her go. She offered him a smile. From his worried expression, it wasn’t a very good one. “Emily is always telling me to travel more. Here’s my chance.”

He understood what she wanted him to—Mac could see it in the way his gaze sharpened on her face. Emily had visited Dhryn worlds. Here was an opportunity to find out why, perhaps find a clue to why the Ro had taken her and where.

And if leaving home protected her friends, her family? Mac straightened to her full height: “Get us tickets. Or a ship. Or whatever one does to go—thaddaway.” She blithely pointed up to the canopy.