Regeneration (Czerneda) (43 page)

“Dunno if that made sense to you.” A self-conscious shrug. “But I’ve seen the faces of people who want that one big catch so badly they’ll gamble their lives—put out despite storm warnings. Emily has that look.

“Mind you,” he continued, “she could be the one to do it. I doubt she’s slept since you left and it doesn’t show. I don’t know where she gets her energy, but the rest of us catch naps when she’s not looking.

“Anyway. I’ll do what I can to help her. We’ll put to sea tomorrow,” this with transparent longing.

“You take care of yourself, Mac.”

 

 

 

M
AC’S FINGERS STROKED through her ’screen, opening and then closing the remaining messages. Most were brief. A hello from Tie. A comment on the weather from John. A promise for more with the next courier from Kammie. The longest was a text list of indefinitely postponed projects, prepared by Marty Svehla.

She didn’t bother reading it, past the venting stage herself.

Case’s message was better than she’d hoped. She’d expected him to be perceptive, but to see Emily so clearly and still stay? “I did well by you, Em,” Mac said out loud.

With a sense of dread, Mac replayed it, muting the sound and enlarging the section of image that included Emily’s fingertip on the desk. She slowed the replay and counted the rapid taps, recording each with the movement of her own finger within another field of the workscreen. When done, she closed the message, and brought up the results.

“Oh, Em,” she whispered. “No.”

Throughout her message, Emily had tapped eleven times, paused one beat, then tapped eleven times again. Over and over.

With the precision of a machine.

They’d tried—
all of them
—to find some significance to the number. Emily had been unaware. When finally shown recordings of her obsessive counting, she’d been disturbed but could offer no explanation. She’d listened with disbelief and considerable embarrassment to her own quiet complaints about the inadequate reconstruction of her fingers. Mac had stopped mentioning any occurrences. There seemed no point in upsetting her friend.

Yet the number persisted, as if from a wound that wept instead of healing.

Alluring as the idea of real privacy was, Mac didn’t plan to waste time sitting in her new quarters. She had too much to do, starting with the Sinzi.

Too much to do, but she caught herself hesitating as she made to leave. Her lips curled to one side. “Why not?” she said, and dug into her pocket for what she’d carried since that night in the Yukon.

The little carving fit along the palm of her hand, its tail flexed to give the body a line of muscular tension. The pale blue of her pseudoskin might have been the waters of a river, the salmon surging upstream.

Her first gift, and he’d returned it.
Seemed her luck with men hadn’t improved.

There was a transparent shelf over the narrow desk, the desk itself beside the bed. Mac placed the carving so she would see it even when lying down.

He’d returned it because he needed her help, and knew she’d give it.

She’d never had patience for romance.
Her fault,
she admitted. But what was the point in not speaking your mind? Not to mention she failed to find pleasure taking forever over an elegant candlelit meal when there was data waiting.

To Emily’s outspoken disgust, Mac usually found a way back to her data. Without her date.

Her eyes rested on the little carving. She pressed her lips to the rings on her finger.

Promising herself a locked door and her own bed, Mac went in search of aliens.

The first she encountered was the Cey, Da’a, dragging a roll of fabric through the door nearest the shaft. “Hello, Mac,” he greeted, both arms around the roll. She knew it was used as part of the Cey’s mode of worship, although not how. The fabric was intricately woven and faintly aromatic, with more than enough in the roll to make a full-sized tent for the two Cey who’d come with Lyle. The other pair had stayed on Myriam, joining a Cey expedition.
Had enough of Humans or not invited by the IU to the Gathering?
she wondered, then thought it just as likely they’d simply preferred to stay with their work.

“Let me help with that,” offered Mac.

As well she did, for the heavy roll was slightly longer than the room and it took both of them to finally wedge the thing inside so the door would close.

“Thank you,” Da’a said when they were done. “My
au’us
fit in the other room. I didn’t anticipate this problem.”

“Why did you move?”

Impossible to read a face made of heavy, overlapping wrinkles, but Mac had come to some conclusions regarding a Cey’s body language, when she had context. A slight hunch of the shoulders during a discussion signified agreement; the same posture while working alone, concentration. A gentle nodding while another spoke was the Cey equivalent of wild impatience; nodding while speaking himself, emphasis. And the ball of a thumb rolled just so against the other palm?

Amusement, at any time.

Although exactly what Cey found funny?
She was still working on that.

“I changed rooms, Mac, because I was sharing with Arslithissiangee Yip the Fourteenth.”

Aha.
“Gotcha,” Mac grinned widely. “I’ve heard Fourteen snore. He shook the rafters of our cottage.”

“Snore?”

She hesitated.
Confusion about the word or the act itself?
“My mistake, Da’a,” she said, which it likely was.
If anyone should know not to jump to assumptions . . .

“Perhaps, Mac.” His shoulders hunched agreeably. “Unless we both refer to our colleague’s lovelorn poetry. Another stanza about Unensela’s tongue, and I might have run shouting into the hallway like some well-nipped
sralic.
”

“Poetry.”

“So he claimed. I myself judged it painful. The object of his obsession might disagree. I urged him to go recite to her, but he insisted on inflicting his verse on me. I spoke to Charles about new quarters, and took the first available.”

Mac grinned. “You’ve made a wise choice, Da’a.” She had to ask. “How did you find climbing the ladder?”

“I had no difficulties. But I believe Charles will be sending the Frow a very long and detailed memo on the subject.”

She winced. “He tried to come up?”

Da’a hunched his shoulders. “Tried would be the operative word. He used uncharacteristic language. Loudly. It did not convince the Frow.”

Mudge was going to blame
her
for this.

“Why would I blame you, Oversight?” Mudge asked mildly.

Too mildly.
Mac waited for the rest.

The Frow had snatched her from the ladder and carried her down faster than falling, then skittered out of sight before she could so much as open her mouth to chastise them.
They probably knew full well they were in trouble.
Lyle had only shaken his head and pointed down the corridor when she asked where Mudge might be.

She’d gone straight to his quarters—or rather his sanctum. Since losing his roommate, he’d managed to create a full office, complete with an intimidating desk facing the door, and chairs for supplicants. His bed was now a pull-down attached to the back wall. There were no personal belongings in sight.
Like Emily, he armored himself with his space.

A
harrumph
as Mudge settled deeper into his chair, having greeted her at the door as if she was late for one of their ‘discussions’ about the Trust. “Just because you dragged me into this in the first place, made me spend a less-than-memorable night in a Yukon cabin, and have since failed to adequately explain even one of the events that have transpired since we left the consulate? Why would I blame you because the Frow tried to kill me?”

Mac raised a brow. “Don’t exaggerate, Oversight.”

He used his finger to describe a drop, then flattened his palm with a thud on the table. “Two levels before they deigned to stop my fall. Two! I could have died, Norcoast.”

“You know perfectly well they were just—” Mac hesitated.
Fooling around?
wasn’t quite the term for it.
Setting you beneath them?

“Even when I insisted I was to meet with you, they refused to let me climb one rung. The only good to come of it all was that Da’a was able to use the ladder without torment. I have,” he pronounced, “formally expressed my displeasure to the Frow representative.”

Who’d been one of the beings tossing Mudge around.
Mac frowned, afraid she understood too well why Mudge hadn’t been allowed up. The Frow had established their chain of command, putting her at the top. It wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine they’d given themselves a similar promotion by appointing themselves in charge of access to her.

“
Se
Lasserbee likes forms and protocols,” she said at last, planning to have a private chat with the Frow concerning
her
chain of command. “As for explanations?” Mac leaned her chair back and stared at the ceiling, going through the list herself. The promise? The Sinzi on the ship? Mudge knew more than she did. What was happening with the Vessel and Nik? He knew as much.

Hollans?

One day,
she cringed.
Maybe.

“I wish I had some, Oversight,” she said finally. “Back on Earth I could hunt my own answers. At least make the motions and feel useful. Right now? All I can do is worry about what might be happening.”

“Which is out of our control, Norcoast.” A pause. Then, quietly, “It doesn’t help. Being here, on this ship.”

Mac dropped her gaze to his too-knowing one. “It doesn’t,” she gave him, her hand,
that hand,
curled in her lap. “But we’ve enough real demons to keep us busy. What happened here . . . there was never ill will, Oversight. I was—” a rueful smile twitched her lips, “—just a fish out of water.”

He didn’t look convinced.

Time to change the subject,
she decided. “Now, Oversight, what’s so important you risked death by Frow to tell me yourself?”

Mudge sat straight, his face assuming a grimmer cast. “I believe there’s been a discovery in Castle Inlet.”

She tensed. “There was nothing in my messages.” Then she remembered, like a bad dream, how Nikolai Trojanowski and the Ministry had produced vids purportedly from her to cover her absence from Earth—vids so realistic they’d fooled her family and friends. “They wouldn’t dare,” she snapped, ready to march straight to the bridge and demand to speak to Hollans himself.

“What, fake communiqués?” Mudge shook his head. “I see no point—we’re supposed to work with Base on any data. But your people aren’t the only ones looking, Norcoast, are they?”