Survival (38 page)

 

 

 

S
OMEONE had flung jewels at the night, the largest sapphire Earth, with her diamond Moon. There were others, smaller yet brighter, as if handfuls of cut gem-stones had spilled over that black silk to catch sunlight and return it as fire to the eye.

Mac's fingers traced the cold metal outline of the vision. Her breath fogged the viewport and she wiped it clear. The Dhryn had given her this, a chance to watch as the
Pasunah
maneuvered from orbit into the appropriate orientation for the Naralax Transect.

She found a sharp burr on the metal and worried it with a fingernail.

They'd given her nothing more.

No comlink. No message.

Mac drew her lower lip between her teeth, involuntarily remembering his taste, her tongue exploring the tiny cut along the inside of her mouth. Here she was, off on a mission whose primary goal—to her—was apparently safe, sound, and on the wrong side, not to mention back at the way station. And the Dhryn wouldn't or couldn't tell her if Nik was alive.

Well, Mac,
she said to herself, bitterly amused,
here you are
. Same situation. Different box.

The transition from normal space into a transect might be worth watching, but they hadn't told her when it would occur. From what she'd seen through the viewport, Mac guessed the
Pasunah
was being guided into the required orientation by tugs. Once aligned with the desired transect, her engines would fire, sending the ship curving toward the Sun.

Not suicide,
Mac assured herself.
Part of the journey
. Every schoolchild learned that the transects were anchored a few million kilometers outside the orbit of Venus and why. Inward and far enough from system shipping lanes—and the teeming populations of Earth, Mars, and the moons of the gas giants—to satisfy the most paranoid; close enough to make the trip to and from any transect itself economical. That this orientation also put outgoing freight from the Human system at the top of Sol's gravity well was a factor they didn't teach in school, but travelers foolish enough to buy round-trip tickets soon became acquainted with that reality. Mac had endured Tie's diatribe on that matter quite a few times following his first, and last, outsystem vacation.

Economics couldn't change where time was consumed in an intersystem trip. Travel through the transects was outside space-time itself. Mac couldn't quite imagine it, but she did know they'd leave this system and arrive in another with no perceptible passing of subjective time. The captain would enter the desired exit into the ship's autopilot just before they entered the transect—a crucial step since, in some manner fathomable only to cosmologists and charlatans, the act of specifying a particular exit created that exit.

Mac had read a popular article on the transects that compared their initial construction to training a worm to burrow outside space itself, leaving holes through which ships could slide. By that way of thinking, the Interspecies Union wasn't so much a political entity as it was a worm trainer, the result being the greatest collaboration of technology and effort ever conceived by any, or all, of its member species.

Conceived might be too strong a word. The transects owed their beginning to a discovery made hundreds of years ago, and millions of light-years away. The details tended to blur between various species' historical records—every species having members ready to claim they'd been about to make the crucial breakthrough themselves—but no one disputed that finding a key portion of the required technology, buried in the ancient rubble of a once-inhabited moon in the Hift System, had moved that breakthrough ahead by lifetimes.

Academics would probably always argue what might have happened if any species other than the Sinzi had made the initial discovery. But the coolheaded, cooperative, and highly practical Sinzi had been the ones to shape the Interspecies Union into its present form, perhaps due to their having multiple brains per adult body. The Sinzi had set the initial criteria for any species to receive a permanent transect exit, which was still in use today: desire for contact with other species, an independently developed space-faring technology, a demonstrated absence—or, at minimum, reliable control—of aggressive tendencies which might impact other species, and the willingness to adopt a mutual language and technical standards for interspecies' interactions outside their own systems.

All so most alive today in this region of space, including Mac, could take the ability to slip from system to system for granted.

On second thought,
Mac decided,
maybe she should miss that highly unnatural portion of the trip entirely with a well-timed cough
.

Meanwhile, Mac had to endure the trip to the transect. No one had told her where the exit to the Naralax Transect was in relation to Earth but, being one of the less traveled and her luck staying its stellar self, it might be on the far side of the Sun right now. At minimum, they had about forty million kilometers to cover to reach Venus' orbit, and, to her knowledge, ships still obeyed the physics that involved staying below the speed of light. Maybe a week at sublight?

She had to read more,
Mac decided. But it was like knowing the inner workings of a skim engine. You needed the knowledge most when the damn thing broke down, leaving you stuck where you couldn't possibly gain the knowledge you needed. And you had to walk home as a result.

Face it, Mac,
she scolded herself.
You have no good idea how long you'll be in this box.

Though calling her accommodations on the
Pasunah
a “box” was a trifle unfair, Mac admitted, finally relaxed enough to explore her new quarters. Her first observation proved she wasn't on a Human-built ship, had there been any doubt. There wasn't a truly square corner in sight, the Dhryn, or their ship designers, having built everything at what appeared closer to seventy degrees. Considering how the aliens themselves stood at an angle, this seemed a reasonable consequence. The lack of perpendicular didn't bother Mac. When she wasn't in a tent, she was in her office at Base, where the pod walls curved down one side.

Where there had been casualties. Plural. Pod Six had sunk.
Who
had been trapped inside?

As if it could quiet her thoughts, Mac pressed the heels of both hands against her closed eyes. The damn Dhryn could have told her. They could have let her contact those who did know. They could have told her where they were taking her.

But no
. They'd brought her to their ship without a single word, either in answer to her frantic questions or to give her orders. They hadn't needed the latter. A Dhryn had picked her up as if she'd been a bag of whatever Dhryn carried home in bags, and only put her down here. While Mac had been sorely tempted, she'd kept her mouth closed over her objections and did her best to cling to the Dhryn, rather than struggle to be free. She'd preferred not to test her ability to splint her own limbs—or truly crack that bruised rib.

The skim ride had been fast and, from the frequent and violent changes of direction experienced by those within, probably broke every traffic regulation on the way station.
If they had such things
. Instead of stopping to argue with any authorities, the Dhryn must have flown right into their ship, because when the door of the skim had dropped open, Mac had found herself carried through a cavernous hold. The Dhryn had continued to carry her, reasonably gently yet with that ominously silent urgency, through tunnel-like ship corridors to this room.

While such treatment alone might be construed as a rescue, there was the troubling aspect of the door the Dhryn had closed behind her—a door with no control on this side that Mac had been able to find.

That door,
Mac corrected herself, slowing her breathing, consciously easing the muscles of her shoulders and neck. There were two others. She picked the door on the wall to her left, relieved to spot a palm-plate, similar to the Human version but set much lower. It was colored to match the rest of the room, a marbled beige.
Inconspicuous to a fault
.

The plate accepted her palm, the door opening inward in response. Mac looked into what was patently a space for biological necessities. She'd assumed that much physiological congruence, since Brymn had stayed in her quarters without requesting modifications. Still, she took it as a positive note that the Dhryn had made provision for her comfort.

The remaining door was on the opposite wall. Mac found herself taking a convoluted path to reach it, forced to detour around the main room's furnishings. She did a tally as she went: one table, six assorted chairs, ten lamps of varying size and color, and other, less likely items, such as a footbath and a stand made from some preserved footlike body part holding an already dying fern. Judging by the combination and haphazard arrangement, someone had shopped in a hurry. The Dhryn might as well have posted a sign outside the
Pasunah
saying: “Human passenger expected.”

Not her problem
.

It occurred to Mac that unsecured furniture meant the
Pasunah
maintained internal gravity throughout her run, not common practice on economy-class liners if she was to believe Tie's vacation story. That, or the Dhryn had a peculiar sense of humor. She tugged a chair closer to the table as she passed. While she was curious about Dhryn furniture, Mac was grateful for something suited to her anatomy. At least it looked more suited than the one in Mudge's waiting room.

The door opened into what the Dhryn must intend her to use as a bedroom, judging by the irregular pile of mattresses occupying its center. Spotting luggage on top, Mac wasted no time climbing up to see what had been provided for her.

Trying to climb up. She wedged her foot between two mattresses, but the ones above slid sideways each time she tried to pull herself up. Taking a step back, Mac frowned at the stack.

Five high, each mattress about thirty centimeters thick and soft enough to lose the proverbial princess and her pea, the sum between Mac and her luggage.

“Bring the mountain,” she muttered, then grabbed the nearest corner of the topmost, and yanked. The result owed more to pent-up frustration than power. She dodged out of the way as both mattress and luggage joined her on the floor.

The two cases bounced to a rest, a mismatched pair of the type so common on Earth that frequent travelers on transcontinental t-levs knew to pack short-range ident beacons.

Mac kicked off her slippers, flipped up the ends of her long skirt, and sat cross-legged on the mattress, pulling the smaller case toward her. Her hands lingered on its so-ordinary handle. She had to take on faith that it contained the very long-range beacon Nik had promised, believe that beacon could identify the destination the
Pasunah
chose, and trust that identification would reach only those who—

Such a dangerous, seductive word, fraught with risk even among Humans. Even between friends.

What had Nik said?
“A threat to the
species,
Dr. Connor . . . Where on the scale of that do you and I fall?”

Mac drew an imaginary line along the handle, then circled her finger in the air above it. “We're not even on it, Mr. Trojanowski.”

Oddly, the image steadied her. She may not have paid sufficient attention to astrophysics, but Mac understood the nuts and bolts of biological extinction, in all likelihood better than Nik—or most of humanity, for that matter. She was accustomed to attacking problems at the species' level, not dealing with betrayal and violent death among those close to her.

Nik had warned her not to let anyone close.
A little late
.

The luggage's lock was set to her thumbprint—easy enough to obtain from Base. Once she had it open, Mac gaped at the contents. Someone was obsessed with neatness. Each article was individually wrapped in a clear plastic zip, varying in size from the dimensions of her closed fist to the length of the luggage's interior. Picking a smaller one at random, Mac unzipped it, hearing a tiny
poof
. Almost instantly the contents expanded to several times its original size, startling her into dropping what turned out to be a yellow shirt.

Not neatness.
Saving space to give her the most they could.

Maybe she shouldn't unzip too many items until safely off the ship,
Mac decided, wondering how to get the shirt back into the case.

She took out each small packet, turning it over in her hands as she puzzled at what might be inside. Some, clothes, were easy enough. Lightweight, soft. Those Mac tossed behind her on the mattress.

A narrow hard packet claimed her attention. She unzipped it cautiously, giving it room to grow, but it stayed the same size.

“So there you are.” The imp Nik had told her about. Mac wasn't the least surprised when it accepted her supposedly private code and a small workscreen indistinguishable in format from her own appeared in the air over her lap. “Snoop.”

Well, it was his business
.

She waved up a list of most recent files—nothing newer than her last link to her desk workstation—then shut it down.

So. Emily's private logs were still hers alone
.

As if it mattered now,
Mac thought. The Ministry staff had seen Emily shoot their leader, likely had her in custody within moments. They'd use whatever drugs it would take to obtain an explanation; somehow Mac doubted 'Sephe and her colleagues required warrants or permission.