Survival (22 page)

“I wanted—how long until he wakes up? Until he can answer questions?”

The last thread fell away. “No idea. Is there any clean bedding? A blanket?”

Mac pointed to a cupboard. Trojanowski rummaged inside and returned with a sheet, which he laid over Brymn with care.

Then, he looked at her. “I'm sorry about your friend, Dr. Mamani.” His eyes were presently more hazel than green, lending them an unexpected softness. Mac doubted she could look away of her own volition. She also doubted she could so much as flex her fingers without throwing up.

She managed to force words through her tight lips. “What are you doing to find her?”

Mac had the impression he was taken aback by the question. “The police will do all they can,” he said after that almost imagined hesitation.

“You brought
him
here,” she managed to say. “That—thing—followed. This is your fault. You have to find Emily.” Tears welled up in her eyes.
She hated tears
. “You should have been protecting us—not—not—”

“Dr. Connor, you should be lying down. Wait.” Trojanowski shut up and dropped to his knees beside the Dhryn. “Listen,” he urged, waving her closer with one hand.

Mac copied his position, finding it all too easy to answer to gravity.
He was right
. The moaning had changed. She leaned forward, wary of her body's wobble.

The alien was muttering one word, over and over again.

“
Nai . . . Nai . . . Nai . . . Nai . . .
”

“Nothing . . . Nothing . . .” Trojanowski translated under his breath.

Oddly enough, that was the last thing Mac heard before Brymn's midsection rose from the mattress to smack her in the face.

“I don't bloody well care who you are, mate. You can't come in here like—”

From the thickening of his Aussie accent, the nurse, Dan Mandeville, was ready to do battle. Considering he stood slightly over two meters and was built, in Em's terms, like an antique forklift, that couldn't be a good thing. Mac's eyelids felt glued shut, but she found her voice somehow. “It's okay, Mandy. I'm awake.”

“Then only for a moment. The woman needs rest!” A door closed with sufficient force to vibrate through the floor.

Her arm felt strangely heavy. Somehow, Mac brought her hand to her face, and scrubbed her eyelids until they cracked open. “What happened?” she asked, less than surprised to find herself flat on her back in what passed for a hospital room on Base.

Trojanowski pulled over a stool and sat beside her bed. “You passed out on me. They brought you here.”

Wonderful.
Mac tried to rise to her elbows, but the room tilted in the oddest way so she dropped back down. “Emily?” she demanded.

He shook his head.

“How long?”

“They've finished serving breakfast—not that anyone here seems to have much appetite.”

She'd returned midday of what was now yesterday.
Nothing she could do about time already wasted.
Mac assessed herself, finding a musty taste at the back of her mouth. She remembered it from some minor surgery a couple of years ago. Mandy must have given her a sedative.
Hopefully, it was wearing off by now
.

Mac rolled on her side and swung her legs over the bed, using the momentum to pull herself upright. She hung on to the mattress with both hands, waiting patiently for the universe to finish sloshing back and forth. It helped to focus on her visitor.

There were dark smudges under Trojanowski's eyes and a grim set to his mouth. The plain black T-shirt and jeans he wore glistened in streaks. Slime from the rooms.
So he hadn't slept yet.
“Brymn?” she asked, resisting a certain amount of remorse. “Is he all right?”

“I don't know.” Trojanowski gave a half shrug, clearly frustrated. “The experts at the Consulate were no help. Said to leave him alone until he recovered. They did offer to pick up his body, if he dies.”

“ ‘A Dhryn is robust, or a Dhryn is not,' ” Mac quoted. At his questioning look, she shrugged. “Something Brymn told me.”

“This Dhryn better survive.” He studied her. “What about you? You look awful.”

“I'll do,” Mac answered curtly.

“Good. Because I have some questions.”

“About last night?”

“No. Dr. Mamani.”

Even behind the glasses, there was something in his eyes that made her swallow, a distancing, as if he felt the need to somehow protect himself—or was it her?

Mac shifted on the bed, then realized part of her discomfort was an IV wrap around her upper arm. She ripped it free, in case the device was delivering more sedative.

Mac stared down at herself. Bad enough her legs and feet, swinging freely above the floor, were bare, too, her toes and ankles decorated with lovely red blotches from her boots.
But this?

Someone had dressed her in an orange, knee-length flannel nightgown, trimmed with purple lace and covered in vivid yellow spots. Spots with eyeballs and tiny, pointy teeth.

“This is not mine,” Mac assured Trojanowski, determined to straighten at least that much out. She knew better than to check her hair.

The corner of his mouth deepened, producing a dimple in one cheek.
Emily would probably notice something like that
. Mac's eyes started to fill and she blinked fiercely. “Ask your questions.”

“Could Dr. Mamani have followed you that night?” he asked, his voice carefully neutral. “Become lost?”

Mac felt a thrill of hope.
Em lost in the woods would be an irritable, grumpy, miserable Em, but a living one.
Then she thought it through, and shook her head. “It was pitch-black around the pods. Even if she'd somehow seen me heading for shore, the gate wasn't working. Anyway, Em—Dr. Mamani—is a techhead. She'd have gone straight to the main power node to see what was wrong before looking for me.”

He pressed his lips together, then nodded as if she'd confirmed his own conclusions. “A slim chance, at best. I had the police run scans for her genetic markers on the bridge and up the slope a considerable distance. Nothing.”

Mac ignored the implications of the police doing what he asked, too dumbfounded by the concept of teams of non-Base personnel romping at will through the Wilderness Trust. “The Oversight Committee—” she began.

Trojanowski's face had a way of becoming still that sent a small shiver down her spine. “The Committee has no objections to any investigation we choose to conduct,” he finished in a voice that left no doubt at all in Mac's mind about objections made and summarily squashed. She felt mildly envious. “In fact, this entire inlet—land, sea, air, and orbit—is now under the direct jurisdiction of the Ministry of Extra-Sol Human Affairs, although we'd prefer not to share that with the media. You can understand.”

“I don't need to understand, as long as it means you are hunting for Emily.”

“Oh, we're doing that.”

His statement should have been reassuring. Mac wasn't sure why she abruptly didn't feel reassured at all. She narrowed her eyes. “What—who was in my office, Mr. Trojanowski? Who took Emily?” Despite her effort to remain calm, her voice failed her after: “Why—?”

A glint from his glasses. “Why did they take her and not you?”

It was the right question
. The one she'd been asking herself over and over again since learning Emily was gone. Mac loosened her clenched hands and made her fingers toy with the purple lace crossing her thighs. “If you're asking me an opinion,” she answered slowly, “I have none. I threw a sandal at it.”

Trojanowski's eyebrows lifted. “Hardly a deterrent.”

“It worked,” she pointed out the obvious. “The thing ran out the door. It ran from me all the way to its ship.”

“Dr. Connor—”

Shivering at the memory, Mac drew one leg up under the other and pulled the blanket around her shoulders. “I prefer Mac.”

“Mac.” Trojanowski didn't smile. He took off his glasses—which Mac doubted served any useful function beyond camouflage—and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I don't know what you've been told about the condition of her quarters, but Dr. Mamani—Emily—must have put up a significant struggle. We found her blood—” Mac had no idea what suddenly showed on her face, but Trojanowski shifted in mid-sentence. “Trust me. If they'd been after you, you'd be missing, too.”

Mac stared at her feet. Red and sore, but no real blisters. There were the inevitable pine bits between her toes. Socks seemed irrelevant. With her luck, whoever had undressed her would forget to pull both socks and liners from her boots.
They'd take days to dry.

“We can do this later.” A reluctant compassion.

She raised her eyes to his. “No need. I'm worried about my friend and I'm angry. Neither affect my ability to participate in whatever will help find her—and those who took her. Please continue, Mr. Trojanowski.”

“As you wish.” He straightened, replaced his glasses on his nose, and took out a disappointingly ordinary imp which he made a point of consulting.

“I'm okay,” Mac insisted.

He peered at her over his glasses, a curl of brown hair sliding down over one eyebrow. An artfully harmless look Mac didn't believe for an instant. “What do you know of Emily's life outside her work?”

Startled, Mac began to frown. “I don't see the relevance—”

“Please just answer the question.” He passed her a bottle of water from the side table.

Emily's life outside of work?
Mac opened the bottle and took a long drink, then another. “If you mean her life on Base,” she answered warily, “the usual. During the research season, we're either at a field camp or here. Emily—”
Might as well be honest,
she told herself bitterly,
he probably has it all in some damned dossier . . . Emily's wealth of lovers, her own solitary years.
“Emily tends to be more social than I—” Her blush made the burn along her cheek throb and Mac ended with a lame: “You'd have to ask around.”

He didn't seem to notice her embarrassment.
That didn't mean he hadn't,
Mac thought. “What about off-season, when she's not here with you?”

“She makes time for her—family.” Mac knew if she said “sister,” she'd hear Maria's voice again, those horrid flat tones reciting a number for the office, another for her friend, a litany of ways Mac could reach her at any time with news.
Would call her, as if the numbers were like magic, drawing answers from the air.
Mac coughed to clear her throat. “Em heads out to the Sargasso Sea for a month or two to work on her Tracer. It's a remote biosensor—do you want details?”

“I've been briefed. It's impressive technology, but not the concern at the moment.”

“What is?”

His eyes were hooded. “Just keep going, please, Mac. What else does Emily do? Does she take vacations? Travel?”

Mac didn't bother arguing that hopping between the north Pacific to the south Atlantic twice a year was traveling, since he apparently didn't think so. “She mentioned shopping in Paris. A visit to Pietermaritzberg. That's near the southern tip of—”

“I know where it is. Did Emily tell you about going anywhere else? Even a hint? Think, Mac. This could be important.”

“Nowhere else.” Mac's left foot was asleep under her right thigh, and she was feeling a somewhat inconvenient desire to visit the washroom. Nonetheless, she narrowed her eyes at her questioner. “You were asking her about traveling. You know something,” she accused. “What aren't you telling me?”

“Thank you for your time, Dr. Connor.” Trojanowski stood, a fluid motion that belied the weariness on his face.
He doesn't move like that in public,
Mac thought, wondering what else the man was trained to hide. “I'm expecting the audio reconstructionist shortly after lunch. We'll resume our conversation then.” As if they were finished, he headed for the door.

Not again,
Mac vowed to herself. “This isn't the top of a mountain,” she snapped. “I'll decide when we're done, Mr. Trojanowski—if that's even your real name.” Mac jumped off the bed with every intention of following him out that door if he dared open it, obnoxious orange nightie or not.

Well, that's what she'd planned to do, but to Mac's chagrin, her legs crumpled beneath her. As if he had eyes in the back of his head, Trojanowski spun around with disturbing grace, reaching out to steady her before she could fall.