Survival (15 page)

The list of publications attributed to their guest filled each 'screen, then kept scrolling.

“Prolific fellow, isn't he?”

“How do you want to split it?” Mac asked.

“We have to read all that?” Emily saw Mac's expression and rolled her eyes. “We have to read all that. Fine. I'll start at the beginning. You start at the end. We should be done some time next year, given you have no social life and mine will be over.”

“I'd put students on it, but . . .”

Emily had already settled deeper into the chair and called up her own 'screen, transferring the list from Mac's doppelganger with a finger-touch in midair. “I know,” she said soberly. “End of the species. Need to know. All that, too.”

Mac remembered her reaction to Brymn's news about the disappearances, the hollow feeling in her chest even now when she considered the Chasm and its sterilized worlds. “If it's true, we can't risk panic,” she said, hearing the echo of it in her own voice.

“It won't come to that,” Emily insisted. “We aren't alone, Mac. I keep telling you that. Others are working on this—have been working on it.” She held up two fingers and pinched them together. “We Humans just have our small parts to play. After that? It will be over and you'll be back with your fish before you know it. Have some faith in your wise old friend Em.”

“We'll both be back,” Mac corrected. “If you think I'm running that device of yours on my own, Dr. ‘Wise Old Friend,' while you cavort with sex-crazed manatees . . .”

Emily didn't smile as Mac expected. “Have some faith, Mac,” she repeated. “You know I'll do whatever I can to help you.”

With the Tracer—or something else?
Mac knew from experience that cryptic statements, from Emily, were never invitations to pry further. She shook her head and leaned forward again, peering at the 'screen. “I trust you to help me read as much of this as humanly possible before I see Brymn again, Em. If you don't mind?”

The room quieted as both became absorbed in their work.

Or tried to.
Concentrating would have been easier,
Mac thought, staring at the text,
if Emily had answered her question.

Why the frustration, the outright anger, now?

It hadn't taken long before they found a problem in having Mac read the most recent articles first. Later articles referred to those before, some to the point of being completely incomprehensible—to a nonarchaeologist—on their own. Mac redivided the list so Emily was reading the dozens Brymn had published in the prestigious
Journal of Interspecies Archaeology
. She took everything else.

“Everything else” was an eclectic mix, at first appearing random. Letters to the Editor in
About Things Past
. Essays in collected works on topics ranging from statistical analysis to the emergence of interstitial recording technology, many dealing with findings from Chasm sites. Articles scattered in more than twenty different publications. Even a popular treatment, a vid script that had somehow found its way into a documentary series shown on transstellar liners, entitled:
Bringing the Past to Life.

Then Mac noticed two commonalities. Although Emily had said Brymn was a linguist, these publications were in Instella, the multispecies' language that had to be learned by any member of the Interspecies Union who wished to leave their world. It was taught as a matter of course in Human schools; the same held true for the other species in the Union, to the best of Mac's admittedly meager knowledge. It made sense: a shared language was crucial to understanding.

But Brymn had spoken to her in English.
She hadn't paid attention to that until now. Em was right to chide her for being blind to things outside her field. Mac bit her lip.
What else had she missed?

There was nothing particularly unusual in Brymn publishing in Instella. It was the language of choice for any scientist addressing a multispecies audience. What puzzled Mac was the lack of any reference to publications in Dhryn. Did this mean there were none—or merely that Dhryn didn't permit cataloging of work in their language?

The second nonrandom characteristic was quality. Brymn hadn't exaggerated when he said his work had been noticed in “some circles.” With the exception of the vid script, all the listings Mac called up were in peer-reviewed, academic journals. Their Dhryn was taken very seriously by colleagues on many worlds. Just not by the Secretary General of the Ministry of Extra-Sol Human Affairs.

Or by his own species?
Mac suddenly wondered if the Dhryn had the same prohibition on archaeology as they did on biology.

The workscreen winked out of existence, replaced by a soft green message at least two hands' width high: “Can no longer compensate for fatigue.”

Mac didn't argue. It wouldn't do any good. In a fit of self-protectiveness, she'd programmed the 'screen to ignore any requests to reinitialize for thirty minutes. It would doubtless take longer than that to find the password to change it.

She was startled to find the room dark except for the glow around the doorframes. The automatics had kicked in night illumination levels when she hadn't set the ambient to increase. There was just enough for Mac to see Emily was sound asleep in her chair, head twisted back at an angle impossible for anyone with a shorter neck, the sloppy old sweater she'd always borrowed around her shoulders. Every third breath was that soft little snore Em denied utterly when awake. Her 'screen was gone. It would have turned itself off after detecting her eyes had been closed for more than a few minutes.

So much for Brymn paying a visit. The media must have tied him up longer than she'd expected.

Keying on a low light, Mac stood and stretched, easing the kinks out of her spine.
Some,
she decided,
felt permanent
.

They probably were. Winter months, Mac lived in her office, analyzing data from past seasons, writing proposals for the next, daydreaming. It was her environment, her life, that surrounded her. She could forgive Brymn taking her quarters. They weren't as personal as this room.

She'd had the wall removed between the dry lab and her office space the first year, replacing the window side two-thirds of that barrier with what Tie affectionately referred to as the lousiest garden he'd ever seen. It had begun as a series of old barrels, cut in half, some on tables and some on the floor. Mac was in the habit of stuffing interesting local vegetation into her backpack, roots and all. Whatever survived her collecting method would be thrust into the nearest empty bit of soil in one of the barrels and more or less left to its own devices.

They were also abandoned to the local weather. The second winter, Mac had installed a microclimate around her growing collection. Far from creating a greenhouse, she linked the humidity, temperature, and daylight controls to those being experienced at any given moment along the shore of the spawning beds at Field Station One, some 700 kilometers northeast and 1100 meters higher than the pod. Even the wind conditions were replicated, making it not unusual for visitors to her office to be startled by a self-contained blizzard in the corner.

Tonight, the ceiling-high mass of young cottonwood, sedges, and orchids was peaceful save for the rustle of dying leaves. Field Station One's seasons, mirrored by those in Mac's garden, rushed ahead of those at Base. The urgency drew her closer to the living things she studied, who had to anticipate change or die.

Mac retracted the invisible barrier so she could feel the same soft breeze against her face. She closed her eyes and drew in the scent of soil and living things. A faint tinge of corruption on the back of her palate. Perhaps a lingering piece of salmon. She tossed a few corpses in each fall, challenging the air scrubbers. Or had one of the newer arrivals decided to rot instead of grow?
Fair enough
.

The patch of wilderness indoors wasn't the only unusual aspect of Mac's workspace. She'd had a load of stream-washed gravel delivered at the start of her fourth winter at Base. Instead of gaming or doing puzzles in the gallery, she'd coaxed the few other full-time staff into spending their evenings re-creating a spawning bed by gluing the stones to her floor. The result snaked through her office, its authentically irregular swath owing a fair amount to the number of beers consumed during its creation.

Needless to say, the cleaning staff wouldn't go near it.

Mac loved it. She'd meander along it barefoot, while the winter storms coated the pods with sleet, imagining the depressions she felt with her toes were redds, the holes scoured in the gravel by female salmon. The spawning bed ended at her garden, where overflow from rain spilled over the last few stones. When the garden froze, water eased drop by drop from under an icy rim, glazing each pebble.

Mac had a small warning buoy she'd salvaged to put on the icy patch, in case a visitor was careless when walking.

Almost everything else about her office was standard fare: chairs, desks, lamps, shelves, and tables. Posters, maps, and doors on two walls. The third wall and outer half of the ceiling were part of the pod exterior and could be made transparent or opaque at will. Wide doors led through the wall to the terrace that ringed the pod; fair-weather shortcut to her neighbors, impassable hazard during winter storms.

There was, however, one other feature unique to this room. Mac watched its shadows dancing over Emily's sleeping face and looked up with a smile.

The transparent portion of the ceiling was festooned with wooden salmon, hanging so that they moved with every breath of air. When she'd first come to live on the west coast, Mac had found herself drawn to the stylized carvings of the Haida, their use of large, white-rimmed eyes and realistic form. She'd bought a few pieces, then commissioned more, with different species, different sexes.

All this, so she could stand on the gravel of a spawning bed, and gaze up at the starry sky past the silhouettes of dozens of salmon as they swam through the air, while hearing a breeze stir the vegetation onshore.

A flash of brighter light played over her eyes. Squinting in protest, Mac wheeled in time to see the door to the corridor close behind the Dhryn.

Instead of speaking, he rose to stand almost upright, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Not the first time a visitor's had that reaction,
Mac smiled to herself.

She took advantage of his fascination to go to Emily and shake the other biologist awake. “Waasaa? I'm reading . . . oh.” The incoherent muttering faded as Em saw who was there. She glanced quickly at Mac's desk. Mac understood. Em was checking both 'screens were off.
Not that Brymn should object to their reading his research—but still
.

Brymn probably wouldn't have noticed if they'd strewn his publications over the floor. He kept staring as he said: “This—This is what it was like, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor. When I swam in the river.”

“You should have visited me here first, then,” Mac observed, her mouth twisted in a wry smile. “I wouldn't have had to throw a rock at your head.” She went to the wall control and raised the ambient lighting.

Brymn's torso returned to its more customary orientation. He gave a pair of low hoots. “That was you?”

“Mac isn't subtle,” Emily explained, rubbing her left arm beneath the cast as she stood. She noticed Brymn's attention. “Arm's asleep.”

“A figure of speech,” Mac clarified, distracted by what the alien would make of creatures whose body parts rested at differing times.

“Ah.” The sound was noncommittal. “I have brought this for you, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor.” Brymn held out a small bag.