Regeneration (Czerneda) (21 page)

The first thing Mac noticed was the smell rushing in. The consulate had been on a seacoast. This was
her
seacoast. She drew a deep breath of cedar, salt, and salmon through her nostrils, feeling as though she drew the air and its peace into her soul.

The second thing she noticed were voices. Many voices.

Mac moved to the opening and cautiously looked outside.

Sing-li stood to one side of the ramp to the walkway, a big grin on his face. “Welcome home!”

Mac’s fingers found and gripped the lev doorframe. She’d studied schematics and images of the pods in their new locale; they looked as she expected. Perhaps a little tidier than before, but then they’d had to take off anything loose, including the impromptu roofing, in order to tow the pods here. Some had been replaced; no guarantees they would last the first winter. There was laundry snapping in the breeze. That breeze could become a gale force wind with little notice here, in the more open portion of the inlet. She hoped someone had warned new staff. The surrounding water, tinted with sediment from the nearby Tannu River, was reflecting the sunbeams coming over the mountains. It was going to be a warm, bright morning.

All this she took in automatically, her attention caught by what, or rather who, was waiting on the walkways.

“What’s going on, Mac? Hurry up!” Emily urged impatiently.

Sing-li reached for her hand. “It’s okay, Dr. Connor.”

It wasn’t,
she thought, staring at the sea of faces. There was a banner draped over the terrace of Pod Three. She couldn’t make out the words. The voices—the shouts—died away as everyone gazed back at her. Some were smiling. Others were wiping their eyes.

Her father started walking forward. Her father? And—
gods, her brothers?

Mac launched herself from the lev and ran for them, somehow noticing a knot of people nearby who suddenly cried out in what had to be Quechua and hurried past her.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to try to hug them all at once. She reached her father, buried her face in his shoulder, and felt her brothers’ arms go around them both. She sobbed for no reason but joy.

Mac didn’t need to ask how or why. All those on Earth she cared about here, now? This was Anchen’s parting gift.

This, she understood.

“Emily’s sister can’t stay, but she plans to come back next month for a few days. We’ll arrange quarters for her. Meanwhile, if you don’t mind, we’re thinking of putting Em into your old quarters and office.”

Mac did her best to pay attention to Kammie’s briefing, but it wasn’t easy. Music and laughter permeated the entire pod, not to mention the aroma of grilled salmon. And pizza. Second breakfast or lunch. Her stomach was willing, given it would be early afternoon back at the consulate. Tomorrow.
Time zones weren’t such an issue traveling to other worlds.

“Mac. Does that cover it?”

“Oh. What? Yes, yes. Thanks, Kammie. I appreciate all this, more than I can say.” To her surprise, Kammie Noyo had proved more than the Sinzi-ra’s equal in grace.
If she’d been the one asked to accommodate changes in August,
Mac admitted,
she’d have dug in and resisted with all her might.
“But—”

“But?”

She couldn’t help it. “Why is everyone here? Shouldn’t someone be working? It’s only August. Surely . . .” Mac stopped, mildly offended when the tiny chemist burst into laughter, clapping her hands together.

“Oh, Mac. Dear Mac,” Kammie sputtered as she caught her breath. “If I needed any proof you were yourself again, that would be it. Honestly. People can take a day off. Even here. The world won’t end.”

Mac frowned doubtfully. “The salmon don’t.”

“There are monitors. Relax. This is your celebration. Enjoy it!”

“I am,” Mac admitted. “But this interruption—”

“Stop, already. We needed it, too,” the other told her, abruptly serious. “Seeing you. Seeing Emily. It’s beyond wonderful. And after all that terrible business with the Dhryn, the earthquake—well, it’s good to know things are back to normal. I can’t tell you how much.”

Normal?
Mac stood and paced around Kammie’s office. Hers—hers was gone. She’d peeked in, thinking to show her father and brothers the garden at least, but all that remained was the gravel bed along the floor, like the memory of a dried-up river.

This space was itself again. Piles of paper adorned every surface except for the benches in the attached lab. Even the soil samples Kammie had always insisted line her walls were back, so once more her view outside the pod had been replaced by ranks of silvered vials. Idly, Mac looked to where Kammie had first put the one she’d given her, the one from the Ro landing site.

It was there.

Mac had to know. She walked around Kammie’s desk, and the curious chemist, to reach and take down the little thing.

It looked the same. Then again, they all did. Mac turned the vial to read the fine precise script on the label. The right date. Collected by Dr. M. W. Connor. Location unknown.

The location had been the outer arm of Castle Inlet, where an invisible Ro ship had touched down, and its passenger had paused before climbing the ramp, perhaps to look at the Human cowering behind a log. A mark in the disturbed moss and mud. A trace. Physical proof the unseen existed.

“Do you need it back?” Kammie asked.

Mac’s lips were numb; she strained to hear the
scurry . . . Pop!
of a Ro walker amid the vintage rock and roll from outside.
Her brother Owen would be enjoying that.
“Yes, please,” she said, as calmly as possible. “If you don’t mind.”

Her hand, the real one, wanted to clench around the vial. She’d never meant for this to stay at Base, to be a possible lure for the Ro. She’d believed Nik or his agents here had removed it, to bring to the Gathering and get it safely away.

Mac’s eyes strayed to the shelf with Kammie’s deepwater sailing trophies. There was a new one taking pride of place. To buy time to think, she went close to puzzle out the print. The Millennium Cup. A regatta across Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf.

“You were in New Zealand,” Mac heard herself say in a strangely normal voice.

“Don’t you remember? I went for my holiday in February. Great sailing. I go as often as I can.”

Where people went when they left Base had never mattered to Mac. It was how long until they returned to work that she noticed.
She should have paid attention.
“On second thought, you might as well keep this one with the rest. I know you prefer that. Here.” She passed the vial back to Kammie. “I have your analysis.”

Whatever was in that vial now, Mac had no doubt the soil she’d originally collected was at the IU consulate, where it had doubtless been examined by the experts of the Gathering.
Before she’d gone there herself.

Kammie had wanted her to take a vacation—had known she was going to the cottage. The cottage where Fourteen and Kay, the Trisulian, had turned up almost immediately because, they’d said, the IU’s informant at Base had told them where to find Mac.

How blind had she been?
Mac asked herself. No wonder Kammie had accepted any and all changes to have Emily here with such uncharacteristic calm.
Anchen had made sure of it.

Kammie stood very still, holding the vial. “Mac,” she said slowly. “What’s wrong? You look as though you’ve bitten a lemon.”

There would be listeners. She knew it, even without a vidbot hovering quietly in a corner of the ceiling.

And what evidence did she have? Only that the vial was here, after Nik had assured her it had been removed.

Spies,
Mac reminded herself,
told such flexible truths.

Did it matter if Kammie Noyo watched Base for the IU?
She had
, Mac freely admitted,
superb and disciplined eyes.

Nik had known who that watcher was. He hadn’t told her, so she wouldn’t have to pretend.

Mac grinned easily. “Just time creeping up on me, Kammie. The lack of, that is,” she clarified. “I’d best get back to the party. My dad and brothers leave after lunch. If there’s nothing else?” she looked around almost hungrily. “You can contact me by com. I’ll leave the—”

“Go,” Kammie smiled back. “We’ve managed fine without you—it’s been tough, but I think another few weeks won’t sink the place. Although I’m still not sure why they’re insisting you go to this planet Myriam. And what kind of a name is that for an alien world?”

Mac made herself shrug. “Free trip. Chance to tie up some loose ends. Broaden my horizons.”

The look Kammie gave at this was akin to the ones Mac had already collected from her family members; she met it without blinking. A twinge of embarrassment, however, she couldn’t avoid.

“Hallo, Princess.”

Mac almost shook her head at the incongruity—not of her father and brothers sitting at a table in the gallery, since all three had visited her at Base before now—but of them sitting with Charles Mudge III.

Who looked, she thought, altogether too pleased to be surrounded by Connors.

“You haven’t been spreading stories about me to Oversight,” she warned her brothers as she sat.

Owen was eldest, the male incarnation of the mother they’d lost when Mac was a baby, complete with premature gray at his temples, a wonderful laugh, and sparkling green eyes. He’d responded to the production of his own family by somehow growing younger himself. Mac enjoyed his company when she could pry him away, which was seldom. Not that she didn’t adore her nephew William, but her visits seemed to augment his boundless energy. Her eyes would glaze over by the second day. Nairee, William’s mother, was one of those calm, utterly competent people; Mac kept trying to lure her away for a field season, but somehow Owen always caught wind of her attempts before they succeeded. “We’d never tell stories,” he said.

“Not and admit it,” corrected Blake, their middle sibling. He took after their father in his slight build, being more wire than muscle. He had yet to age or discover responsibility, having a blithe attitude toward life and his own genius that alternately exasperated and charmed the rest of the family. Mac, prone to stick at exasperation, refused to believe her father’s frequent assertion they were alike.

Though she’d never forget how Blake had stayed with her after the news came about Sam, not saying a word, not offering futile comfort, just there. As she knew they’d all be, any time she needed them.

“Oversight?”

Mudge spread his hands. “A gentleman never tells.”

Mac dropped into her seat, laughing in surrender. “As long as you didn’t mention that damn cat.”

Norman Connor chuckled. “You returned just in time,” he admitted. “Blake was working up to it.”

“Blake!”

“Cat?” inquired Mudge.

“The food smells great,” this from Owen, the peace-maker. “I can’t imagine why you’d complain about it.”

“I like cats,” Mac said quickly, to forestall any ideas. Then she nodded at the kitchen, staffed by this year’s crop of Harvs. “August. They’ve learned to cook by this point or given up.”

“Mac.” Her father lowered his voice. “How’s Emily taking all this?”

From here, Mac could see where Emily sat, or rather perched, on a table edge, presiding over a noisy group she’d been told included not only Emily’s younger sister Maria, but three aunts, a great-uncle on her father’s side, and two cousins, all from Venezuela. They were speaking Quechua, a language perfectly suited to vivid gestures and dramatic expressions. She hadn’t a clue what they were talking about.