Survival (39 page)

Mac tucked a wisp of hair behind one ear. “Or did you elude them, Dr. Mamani?” she asked aloud.

Another question no one would answer.
Not that she was in a hurry to know,
Mac decided, given the lack of any good outcome.

She took her own imp from the waist pouch beneath her blouse and compared the two. Identical to anyone else's, at least on casual inspection. Her fingers unerringly found the dimpling along one edge of hers where she'd used a knife to pry off hardened drops of pine resin.
Fair enough.

Mac put hers safely away again, then activated the other. Nik had said any recordings she made would be transmitted whenever the
Pasunah
entered a transect. If this was true—
when had she begun to doubt everything she was told?
—she had a chance to communicate that mustn't be wasted.

Mac sat a little straighter, a few plastic-packed clothes sliding off her lap as a result, then poked the 'screen to accept dictation.

“This is Mackenzie Connor,” she began self-consciously, stifling the urge to cough. “The Dhryn have taken me on their ship, the
Pasunah,
and we're heading for the Naralax Transect. Well, I don't know it's the
Pasunah
—or the Naralax—but I'll assume so until I have evidence to the contrary.” Her voice slipped automatically into lecture mode as she went on to describe her quarters and give what details she could see.

Then, data recorded, Mac hesitated.
Who would hear this?
She had no way of knowing.

She had no choice.

“Please tell my father I'm okay. Lie about where I am if you have to, but don't let him worry. That's Norman Connor. Base—Norcoast Salmon Research Facility—will have his contact information.

“Please tell Nik—Nikolai Trojanowski—that I have my luggage.” Blindingly obvious, since she was using their imp to send this, but it was easy to say. “And tell him . . .” Having reached the hard part, Mac paused the recording.
Tell him what?

That he should have protected her from the Ro? From the Dhryn?
Mac shook her head.
He'd never said he could.

That he shouldn't have kissed her?
She frowned at the display. As kisses went, it had been spontaneous and as much her doing as his. An impulse brought on by stress or something more? Probably best forgotten.

Mac restarted the recording. “. . . tell him I wish him well.”

“Now this is a problem.”

Mac lined her water bottles—one half empty since she'd decided to drink first from a source she knew and two full—in front of her small pyramid of yellow-wrapped nutrient bars, then rested her chin on the table to check the result. She'd found the supplies in the larger luggage, along with boots, outerwear, and a daunting medical kit. Oh, there were self-help instructions on her new imp. They didn't make owning needles and sutures any less intimidating.

Mac rolled her head onto her left cheek, the better to see her predicament.

Beside her attempts at reconstructing an Egyptian tomb, the table held what Mac presumed was either supper, breakfast, or lunch. She'd lost physiological track of time hours past. It had been waiting here when Mac came out of her bedroom. She'd immediately looked for the provider, but the door to the corridor was closed and still apparently locked.

She studied the six upright, gleaming black cylinders. Brymn had said they ate cultivated fungus, but these looked like no fungus—or food, for that matter—she'd ever seen. They were arranged on a tray of polished green metal, each sitting within a small indentation—presumably so they wouldn't topple while being carried. Thin, hairlike strands erupted from the tops. At the right angle of light, the cylinders exhibited traces of iridescence, as if oil coated the outer surface. When she poked one with a cautious finger, it jiggled.

Mac squinted. It didn't make the cylinders any more appetizing.

She sat up, grabbing a nutrient bar from the top of her pyramid. Unwrapping it, she broke it into three pieces, popping one in her mouth with a grimace.
Oversweet, overfat, over everything
. Emily always carried a dozen in her pack. Mac couldn't stand the things. But they could keep you alive if you were lost in the bush.

Or worse,
she thought, with an uneasy glance at the cylinders.

She started to wash down the crumbs of the bar with a drink but stopped with the bottle at her lips.
How much worse?

Mac put the bottle down, capping it with deliberate care, and lined it up with the other two. A moment later, she stood in the Dhryn bathroom, her mouth already feeling dry. The “biological accommodation,” as the Instella term generically put it, was of the suck and incinerate variety. The sink, lower and much wider than Mac was used to, presumably to fit all seven Dhryn hands at once, had no drain or faucet. She lowered her left hand into it cautiously, feeling a vibration that warmed her skin. Sonics. The shower stall, sized for a Dhryn with a friend, looked to be the same.

Maybe this was something done on ships,
she assured herself. After all, water would take up precious cargo space, so minimizing its use might be a priority. Then Mac thought back to the dinner at Base. Brymn had toasted her with a glass of water. She hadn't seen him drink any.

Off the top of her head, she could name fifteen Earth species who obtained all the water their bodies required from their food.
What if the Dhryn were the same?

“Great,” Mac said aloud. Humans weren't. Worse, the nutrient bars were concentrated by removing water from their components. Digesting them would only add to her thirst. The three bottles from her luggage contained barely a day's worth of water.

There were mirrors on two walls, sloping toward the middle of the room. Mac licked her lips and watched her elongated reflections do the same. “Our friends will be in for an unpleasant surprise if they leave me here too long,” she informed them.

Not to mention Mac, herself.

After a quick search of her quarters to see if she'd missed a water outlet or container, studiously avoiding the hairy, black sticks, Mac spent a few minutes reminding the Dhryn they had a guest. When shouting and knocking on the door to the corridor failed to elicit a response, she chose likely objects and began pelting the door with them.

Smash!
Lamp with a ceramic base.

Crunch!
Chair.

Shatter!
Statue of three entwined bodies created by an artist with outstanding optimism concerning Human anatomy. Mac blushed as she threw it.

Clang!
Footbath. Which wasn't going to do her much good without water to fill it.

Mac stopped, having run out of disposable objects and temper. She waited, listening to her blood pounding in her ears, her breathing, a low hum that might be the ship, and hearing nothing more.

The Dhryn weren't deaf—particularly to the lower frequencies caused by objects hitting a metal door. They were ignoring her.

Or the Ro had killed or bound all the Dhryn and
they
were ignoring her.

There were times Mac really hated having a good imagination.

Without opening her eyes, Mac yawned and stretched. At the halfway point of her stretch, her rib reminded her yesterday hadn't been a nightmare and her eyes shot open.

And half closed. The lights were bright again. She'd discovered the hard way that the Dhryn ship observed a diurnal cycle, having been caught in the midst of compulsive furniture arranging when the lights went out. Not quite out. She'd remained still, letting her eyes adjust, and discovered a faint glow coming from the viewport. Moving with hands outstretched and a step at a time, Mac had managed to reach it and look out. Sunlight was reflecting from some protrusions along the hull. She'd decided to find the safety of her bed before the ship turned and the room was completely dark, given the shards of ceramic, glass, and splintered wood product now littering the floor.

Falling asleep had been as difficult as falling on the nearest mattress.

Now thoroughly awake, Mac rubbed her eyes and groped for her imp—the Ministry one, which she planned to use most. According to its display, she'd slept for eleven hours. According to the stiffness of her spine, most of that had been in one position.
Likely fetal,
she grinned to herself, even though her lips were dry enough to protest.

Amazing what a good sleep could do. Mac stretched again, with more care to the rib, then rolled to put her feet on the floor.
Deck
. She should start using ship words or Kammie would never forgive her.

Kammie.
The soil analysis!

Mac muttered to herself as she hurriedly unfastened the waist pouch—doubtless another reason her back was sore—and pulled out the crumpled sheet.
Her brain must have been turned off yesterday.
Remembering Nik, she blushed furiously.
No excuse
. . . she started to read line by line.

Ordinary composition . . . expected nutrient levels . . . high moisture content, which Mac found ironic under the circumstances . . . pollen levels reflective of last year's poor conditions . . . and unfamiliar biological material from which had been extracted strands of DNA.

Kammie had provided the nucleotide sequence without further comment, but Mac could well imagine what the soil chemist would say if she were here. For the first time, Mac was glad she was alone. She had to trust Kammie's discretion would keep her safe. “Sorry, Kammie,” she whispered as she studied the results. If the Ro had started chasing her, destroying Base in the process, simply because she might have received information from Brymn, how would they react to Kammie having some or all of their genetic footprint?

Mac didn't want to know. She did want to get this information into the right hands—ones with five fingers—as quickly as possible.

“Regular channels aren't safe,” she mused, turning the imp over in her hands. “Not that they're giving me one to use.”

After some thought, and a carefully small swallow of water she held in her mouth as long as possible, Mac resorted to a trick so old it probably dated back to stone frescos on buildings. She activated the 'screen and went through her personal image files until she found the one she'd remembered: Emily, all smiles and arms wide, wrapped in some man's oversized T-shirt, the shirt itself peppered with risqué sayings Mac didn't bother to read. She avoided looking at Emily's face as well, enlarging the image so she could concentrate on replacing the letters of the sayings with the letters of the sequence Kammie had found.

It was long, long enough that Mac didn't try to make the substitution letter-by-letter. Instead, she had the imp transfer blocks. There were breaks in several areas.
Incomplete,
Mac realized as she worked, but perhaps sufficient to be the basis of a recognizable reconstruction. She had never worked with alien DNA but was aware that some, like this, contained unique nucleotides. Those alone might suffice to identify a home world.

If they examined the T-shirt closely
. Returned to its normal size, even she could hardly tell the words had been replaced by tiny, seemingly random strings of letters. “Let's see how smart you people are,” Mac said grimly. Setting her imp to record, she spoke as clearly as her coffeeless throat allowed: “I found a picture of Emily that might help you find her. As you can see, she likes unusual clothing.”

Feeling slightly foolish, Mac tapped off the imp and tossed the device on the mattress. For all she knew, Nik had obtained the same results during his scans of the landing site. It wasn't as if they would brief her on their findings. Still, as Mac told her students every field season, better found twice than ever overlooked.