Regeneration (Czerneda) (25 page)

The music outside had stopped.
When would they notice?
she wondered.

Mudge stirred in his seat. ’Sephe leaned forward in hers, dark eyes now inscrutable. “Go on.”

“The Ministry wants to keep Base operating as is,” Mac elaborated. “Meaning everyone here remains ignorant while you bring in your experts to search for whatever the Ro dropped in the ocean. Base as camouflage. Everything outwardly normal.”

“That’s the gist of it. Sorry, Mac. I know you’re—”

Mac raised her hand to stop her. “We’ll cooperate—” and over Kammie’s shocked “Mac!” she continued, “—but Base will conduct the search.”

“Impossible.” ’Sephe shook her head. “We must maintain secrecy—”

Mac’s lips twisted. “Secrecy wastes time we don’t have. No one knows these waters as well. Searching this ocean is what these people do for a living. Emily can retune her Tracer. You—” a nod to Kammie “—have sufficient genetic coding to differentiate a Ro walker from anything local.” The little silver vial on the shelf seemed to wink at her. “It’s a running start. Better than anything you have, ’Sephe.”

Kammie’s eyes were glowing. “We’d have to drop everything else,” she warned. “Lose the field season.”

Where on that scale
. . . “There’ll be another,” Mac promised, aware she couldn’t.

“I’ll pass this along, Mac,” ’Sephe said unhappily. “But you know Hollans. I can’t see him approving.”

“I wasn’t asking.” Mac rose to her feet, Mudge doing the same, his eyes fixed on her. She pulled out her imp and tapped it lightly against the side of her forehead. “On the way back I dumped all relevant information into Norcoast’s main system, including a Base-wide message cued to announce itself in every way possible.” She indicated the mass of flashing lights on Kammie’s desk. “I’d say everyone’s got it by now.”

“I don’t believe it,” ’Sephe said flatly. “You’re bluffing.”

Kammie’s mouth worked, her eyes swimming with tears. She made a helpless gesture, and Mac smiled. “Go outside and see for yourself,” she told ’Sephe. “Me, I’m leaving the planet.”

’Sephe pulled out her own imp and rushed out the door to the hallway. Mac watched her go, then glanced at the ceiling, transparent to the sky and clouds, doubtless filled with embedded eyes and ears. “Thank you,” she said in Instella, putting her fingertips and thumbs together in a circle.

Anchen hadn’t just sent her here to see her family.

The terraces, steps, and walkways were crowded with students and staff. Most sat with their backs to walls. All stared into flickering ’screens, fingers manipulating no-longer-secret data as they talked in urgent hushed tones to one another. The barbeques with their loads of ribs had been turned off, the meat abandoned on the grills.

If it hadn’t been for the lurid party shirts,
and the beers in hand,
Mac might have thought them cramming for finals.

She stood on the uppermost terrace, seeing the first impact of what she’d wrought, and trembled. To hide it, she gripped the rail and stared seaward. Two levs were coming into dock. Black ones.
Did they try to be conspicuous?

“Your people are scientists,” Mudge observed. “They’ll manage.” He leaned on the rail and gave a sad little
harrumph
. “Shame about the ribs, though.”

Mac gave him a sharp look. “This isn’t funny, Oversight.”

“I know.” He hesitated, then, in his firm, no-nonsense voice, “You did the right thing, Norcoast. Protocols be damned. In this instance.”

She was touched. “You did pretty well yourself, Oversight. Oh, oh.” Mac tensed as she saw who was debarking from the first Ministry lev. No mistaking Martin Svehla, although she’d never seen him this disheveled before a party, shirt half torn from one shoulder, hair mussed, missing a shoe. He saw her and began stalking toward Pod Three, shaking off the hands of his students with a rough gesture. “This can’t be good,” she murmured.

“He won’t blame you.”

“Trust me, Oversight,” sighed Mac. “He will. It’s a gift.”

Svehla wasn’t the only one noticing her presence. Others were starting to stand and migrate in her direction. “Time to go,” she decided.

“What? No rousing speech?”

Mac froze.

“Or good-bye?
Aie.
Coward.”

The last word had bite to it. Mac turned with a sigh. Emily stood there, dark eyes smoldering with outrage. Case was with her, behind and to one side. He looked, Mac judged, equally upset.
Just less dramatic about it.

“ ‘Time to go’ was a figure of speech. I’m hardly running off, Em,” she observed. “Our ride’s not here yet.” She checked on Svehla’s progress. Luckily, he’d stopped to talk to Lee Fyock, who was now staring up at them, too.

Emily waved her pearls at him.

“Lara—from biochem?” Mac said testily. “Stop that.”

“You’re the one who’s stopped everything. This was our party, Mac. There was to be—” Emily gave her hips a frustrated twitch, sending the transparent portion of her dress swirling across territory that made Mudge blush. “Dancing!”

“Dancing?” echoed Case in disbelief. “You’re worried about dancing at a time like this? Are you nuts?”

“
Si, Senõr!
Ask our Mac.”

Given the unlikelihood of explaining to the innocent Case that dancing, preferably sweaty hours of it, was a perfectly normal stress response for Emily Mamani under the circumstances, and equally unable to clarify, in under a thousand words, the state of her friend’s sanity to herself or anyone else, Mac settled for a noncommittal grunt.

Charles Mudge III, however, had a definite opinion.
Not that she was surprised.
“You will apologize to Dr. Mamani this minute, young man,” he ordered, in his most officious tone. “She’s had a very trying day. Very trying.”

“Why thanks, Charlie,” Emily cooed, trailing her fingers up his sleeve and slipping one gloved arm around Mudge’s neck. “We’ve always been close,” she confided to Case. Mudge squirmed free with an incoherent squawk of protest. Emily laughed.

Mac shook her head at the three of them, simultaneously warning off a small group of approaching students. “Have you gone over your gear, Em? We should make sure everything’s arrived.”

She watched for the transformation. The Emily Mac had known could switch from audacious flirt to preoccupied scientist in the blink of an eye. Broke a new heart every Monday, Mac would tell her. Emily would shrug and reach for her work.

There.
Emily abandoned Mudge, to his relief, and gave her a considering look. “I planned a quick assessment and initial power relay check after the party, Mac, but under the circumstances, I can get to it now—be done before you leave.”

Mac opened her mouth to agree, then something in Case’s face made her hesitate. She paused to take a good look around.

Everyone in sight was looking back at her, those nearest with expressions of confusion and dismay. Six mismatched barbeques stood nearby, stacked with cooling bones, while beer warmed in tubs of melting ice. The breeze caught the edge of the banner draped over the railing, flipping it up so Mac could make out the colorful curves of its lettering, “Welcome Home.”

She’d really done it.
“Bother.”

Ignoring Emily’s questioning eyebrow, Mac pulled out her imp, and activated its screen. She drew her finger through the audio control, took a deep breath, then said: “Hi.”

The word boomed from every corner of Base and Mac made a face of her own.
She hated loudspeakers. Even more, her voice over loudspeakers.

“You know how much I love talking like this,” she continued, “so I’ll make it brief.”

She had their attention, no doubt about that.

“Despite what you might be thinking right now, the world hasn’t come to an end. Trust me,” she added dryly, “you’d know the difference.

“What has happened is that the Ro have made their first mistake. Hiding something here of all places . . . with you lot? What were they thinking?” Mac paused to let the concept trickle through and was gratified to see some half grins and nods. “If there’s anything alien underwater, or ever was, who better to find it? You know what belongs—from inlet to strait, from deep reefs to tidal flats. Find what doesn’t. And don’t let anyone stop you.” This last as Mac spotted ’Sephe and Sing-li stepping out on the terrace below.

“I know what I’m asking,” she continued, hearing the huskiness in her own voice as it echoed. “It will take years to recover the data you’ll lose by abandoning this season, if you even can. Some of your careers will suffer. And it might be for nothing. But, maybe, just maybe, what you do here might help save everything. All of—” she had to stop and settled for a sweeping gesture to include Base, ocean, shore, and sky.

The waves slapping the walkways was the loudest sound as Mac fought to calm herself.

“If ignorance protected you, I’ve taken that away,” she went on. “If staying uninvolved was some kind of defense, I’m asking you to risk yourselves. Not because I don’t want you safe—” The word broke. Mac clenched her hands into fists and forced herself to keep speaking. “But because I don’t believe there is safety for anyone, or any world, until we resolve this.

“I know what you can do,” she finished, “better than anyone. Will you?”

Her heart thudded in the hush. Just when Mac thought she’d have to keep talking, with nothing left to say, someone shouted from a walkway: “Can we have the ribs first?”

The irreverent demand was followed immediately by a distant warbling, “Hide them from Mac!”

As if they’d all been waiting for a signal, the chant began and grew. “No Ribs for Mac! No Ribs for Mac! Mac gets SALAD and BEER!!!”

Mac blinked away tears. An instant later, she was pulling salad out of her hair.

The Ro had waited this long,
she reminded herself.

“What, exactly, was that?” Sing-li asked, leaning against a wall. He took a slug of his beer and regarded Mac thoughtfully.

Dusk had come and gone, laying its curtain of darkness everywhere but here. Base was lit from pod to dock, the guide lights along rail and stair upped for the occasion. Mac wondered what passing fish thought of the glow above.
If any approached given the volume of music.

“Vintage Mac,” Emily said, tugging Mac’s hair. “Scary, isn’t she? I did try to warn you.”

He laughed. “Wasn’t me who needed warning. Hollans was—well, let’s say he was surprised.”

“Will he interfere?” Mac asked.

“How? To move your people out of here by force, he’d have to declare an emergency—and prove one exists. Not a good time for false alarms. He certainly can’t stop them doing what they normally do. Between us?” He tilted his head back for another slug. “Between us, Mac, I think Hollans and a few others are grateful for the help—not that they’ll ever admit it. They aren’t supposed to involve civilians, however qualified.”

Mac snorted at this, but relaxed. She found another bit of wilted greenery in her shirt and pulled it out to nibble. The party had reached the friendly standing crush of people stage on the terraces, although some dared sit on the steps. There was dancing, but in the gallery—less chance of someone twirling into the ocean. “You’ll keep an eye on the place.”

It hadn’t been a question, but he nodded. “Easier now that stealth isn’t an option. Although,” he indicated his flamboyant shirt, “there’s something to be said for camouflage.”

“Mac. You coming?” Emily was half dancing already, those around her clearing a small space and smiling. “There won’t be any room left.”

“Shame,” Mac muttered, but she nodded. A promise was a promise, however onerous.

There was, however, one thing to do first. Before she could change her mind, she stepped up to Sing-li and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

And before he could say or do anything, Mac grabbed Emily’s arm and hurried them both away.