Regeneration (Czerneda) (46 page)

 

 

 

M
AC AWOKE, SURPRISED to find herself whole. She opened her eyes, not surprised to find herself in the medlab.

For a series of deep slow breaths, she considered Cayhill. Specifically, she considered the most practical way to dismember his body before feeding the bits to young salmon.
Who were,
she thought with satisfaction,
always hungry.

Aware she’d never inflict such a fate on any fish, Mac regretfully abandoned her fantasy and sat up.

“Norcoast!”

“Morning, Mac.” This from Doug Court, who gave a series of gauges by the cot a professional look before taking her wrist to check her pulse for himself. “How do you feel?”

Mudge hovered at the orderly’s shoulder, his face paler than she’d ever seen it. “Rested,” she said for his sake, looking around to see who else might be here. She relaxed when she saw the three of them were alone.

“Dr. Cayhill wants to be called when you wake up,” Doug said carefully.

Meaning he hadn’t made the call yet.
Her hands found the sensors attached to her forehead and neck. She yanked them off. “Be my guest,” she said, swinging her legs around and sliding from the cot in one more-or-less easy motion. The easy part was the swing; standing without obviously tilting was harder. Mac focused on Mudge. “I’m done here.”

Without a word, he held out his arm.

“Your clothes.” Doug went to a cupboard and brought out her things. Mac glanced down, only now realizing she wore one of the ill-fitting blue gowns Human medical practitioners felt obliged to inflict on the sick.

“Ah, Norcoast?”

Mac looked at Mudge, whose face looked more pained than she felt. Immediately she eased the tight grip her artificial hand had fastened on his wrist. “Sorry about that.” The
lamnas
were still on her other hand, she noticed with relief.

“What happened in the simulator?”

Cayhill kept recorders running in this room.
She’d learned that lesson long ago. Mac arranged her face in its closest approximation to dazed confusion,
not hard,
and pretended to give Mudge’s question some thought. “Not a clue,” she said finally. “All I remember is falling asleep. Quite peaceful, really. Guess it didn’t work.”

Choke on that,
she wished her listeners.

“There you are!” Fourteen came close to knocking Mac down when she arrived back at the Origin Team’s section of the ship. He settled for bouncing up and down on his toes, shirttails flapping. “The idiots wouldn’t let me stay while you were without clothes. I suppose one has to have external genitalia. Sexism. I left Charlie to enjoy the view.”

Mac saw the moisture along his eyelids, and the way the Myg couldn’t stand still. Beneath the foolery lay sincere concern. She was touched.

Mudge was insulted. “I did no such thing.”

“Enjoy or view? That makes no sense. Idiot!”

Mac slipped her arms through both their elbows—Fourteen’s being thicker and lower than Mudge’s—and steered them away from their interested escort. She’d lost enough time. The corridors had brightened to daylight shortly after they’d left the medlab, meaning she’d been out of commission for over fourteen hours. Time she should have spent working, eating a couple of meals, followed by a night in her own new bed.

“What’s been going on?” she asked her companions, loath to let go. She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, how good it felt to hold them, how much she needed to know she still had arms and it had been nothing but a simulation.

No nightmare had been as real.
Strike two.

If she was kind to Cayhill—
unlikely
—she’d try to believe he couldn’t have known how much memory she could bring to his little role-play, how accurate her sensory awareness of death by digestion would be. No physician would willingly put a patient through that, for whatever reason.
Would they?

If she was paranoid—
getting there
—she’d believe he’d done it under orders to reinforce her fear of the Dhryn, to further taint her memories of Brymn so she’d view his kind as the prime threat instead of the Ro.

Unaware of her dark turn of thought, Fourteen rambled on, giving a typically personal answer to her question. “—I ate with the gorgeous Unensela, discovering that the most tasteless pap is exquisite if she is near me.” He gave a huge smile. “After that, I returned to the task of encoding innumerable boring messages. You Humans spend too much time reciting your irrelevant daily routines to one another.”

“And you don’t?” Mudge snapped. He’d pressed the elbow wrapped by her fingers gently to his ribs, as if promising that support as long as she needed it. “Are you psychologically incapable of giving a simple status report?”

“Idiot!” Fourteen stuck out his tongue at Mudge, its forked tips flailing the air in front of Mac’s nose. “Nothing. How’s that? Everyone spent last night worrying about our Mac. There was no work done at all.”

“Norcoast!” This as Mac tugged free her arms and started walking more quickly. The other two hurried to catch up.

“Find space and assemble everyone concerned—ten minutes,” she said over one shoulder. “Including the captain.”

It took forty-five minutes: sufficient time for a furious biologist to shower and change, albeit into an amber-and-blue silk suit the consulate staff must have deemed travel wear; abundant time for the vagueness of “everyone” when said to a certain Myg and a zealous memo-happy administrator to sink in.

So Mac was not completely surprised by the sea of faces that greeted her when she followed Lyle Kanaci into what must be one of the larger meeting rooms on the
Joy.

New rule,
she vowed,
be specific.

However, their arrangement stopped her in her tracks.

The Sinzi had set up court.

It looked like nothing else. Grimnoii stood at slouching attention to one side. The Frow, desperately straight and balanced, stood to the other. Humans and other aliens formed an interested mass in front. While the two Sinzi, Ureif and Fy, were slender white pillars to either side of—

She was
not
sitting in that chair.

“Macmacmacburblemacmac!!!”

Any potential dignity afforded by the now-appropriate silk suit vanished under the onslaught of anxious offspring, who clambered up her as if she’d been a tree. She winced as fabric tore.

Mac carefully shifted the one nuzzling her neck to her shoulder. Again able to breathe, she gave a small, resigned sigh and took the few strides needed to bring her closer to the Sinzi, but not the chair.
At least there wasn’t a table,
she told herself. “Hi, everyone.”

“What’s this all about, Dr. Connor?” Captain Gillis’ face was set in neutral. She decided that wasn’t because he didn’t have a strong opinion about being hauled from his bridge to this—
whatever it was
—but rather was waiting for her to give him the opening to express it.

“Hello, Captain,” Mac said, setting her voice to confident. “Just a final strategy session. To—” There being no discreet way to stop an offspring from burrowing into an armpit, her smile became somewhat fixed. “To be sure we’re all clear on what’s going to happen post-transect. We are going through the gate this afternoon, are we not?”

“Eleven hundred hours shiptime.” Executive Officer Townee’s opinion was easy to read, her thinned lips and scowl cues to all Humans in the room. Mac appreciated that clarity.
There was something to be said about dealing with your own species.

But Humans, in so many ways, weren’t the issue. “We find congruence in Dr. Connor’s desire to meet at this time,” Ureif said, dipping his long head in Mac’s direction. “This is a critical juncture, Captain. To all here, our thanks for coming.”

Mac brightened.
Maybe the crowd in this room wasn’t completely her fault.

“Dr. Connor,” Rumnor came forward and indicated The Chair.

She was being punished anyway.
Seeing no way to avoid it, not without offending the Sinzi, Mac sat. With the offspring, who promptly started rearranging their holds on her clothing to better see what was happening.

Ureif leaned over and, without moving his lips, made a
chipchirrup
sound. The offspring swung their faces toward him and echoed it, eyes wider than usual. A second, more emphatic
chirrup
from the Sinzi, and the offspring climbed off Mac and scampered into the assembly, presumably seeking Unensela.

Despite being relieved her clothes would now stay intact, Mac found she missed their warm little bodies.
Probably because now she faced “everyone” without support.
She checked her posture and swallowed, hard.

There was a soft tinkling of ring to ring as each Sinzi rested the tip of one long finger on Mac’s shoulder. Startled, she glanced up at them, but both were looking toward the captain.

Whatever its meaning, the gesture didn’t go unnoticed. To’o’s wheezing inhalations—the Cey being congested since morning—were the loudest sound in the room.

“We wish to hear your suggestions as to the deployment of personnel and resources, Captain Gillis,” Ureif said, his voice soft and mellow. “I will, with your consent, establish a consulate within your vessel to service those involved with the Dhryn ships. I anticipate ongoing negotiations. I trust you can accommodate any who need to stay on board? Three staff—” a finger lifted to indicate the Grimnoii, who shuffled proudly, “—will be available to liaise with your crew.”

“Two will travel with me.” Fy’s paired eyes caught the light as she nodded graciously to the remaining Grimnoii. “My dart will be insufficient. I trust you can provide additional small craft to convey us and our equipment to the transect station as well as to the planet surface.”

Fingertips pressed gently into Mac’s shoulders.
Her turn.
She coughed and gave the plainly astounded captain a sympathetic look. “The Origins Team will be divided during the investigation of the derelicts. I trust—” she deliberately echoed the Sinzi phrasing, “—you can provide those who remain on board full and independent communications with those on Myriam.”

When someone opens the spillway,
she thought smugly,
you swim.

She saw the captain’s hesitation, his quick glance to Townee and back to her, but couldn’t guess which way he’d go. Her experience with Human government and bureaucracy had tended to be of the “maybe, if you shout long enough” variety—
no offense to Mudge
. Her experience with the military mind-set? Based on Emily’s old thriller vids.
Likely unrealistic.
Her recent stint with the Ministry had been—
confusing
. Something of a blend of anxious bookkeepers and overprotective relatives.

The captain had the ability to stop the Sinzi from playing a role at Myriam.
He could
, Mac realized, dry-mouthed,
turn his ship around and take them back to Earth.
Or he could cooperate on every level. She didn’t see any middle ground. Either he honored the intent of his orders, to assist the IU as it sought an end to whatever combination of Dhryn and Ro threatened life, or he retreated behind the doubtless innumerable regulations designed to keep a Human ship on Human business and under Human control.

Been there,
Mac reminded herself.
“Where on that scale . . .”
The grim reality applied to individual species, as much as to individuals.
None of them were safe.

As if he knew she understood, Gillis’ eyes burned into hers. She dared a slight nod.