Regeneration (Czerneda) (71 page)

“Your discovery, Fy?” she asked brightly.

Fy launched herself back to a console beside the cage, leaving the two Humans to make their way through the cluster of researchers. As they did, Nik whispered urgently: “You made a promise with Anchen? Do you have any idea of the possible consequences?”

“You did it first,” she shot back.

“I—” He closed his mouth but not, she was sure, because he didn’t have more to say on the subject.

“Here, Mac. Nikolai. See?” Fy’s delicate fingers were wrapped around a grotesque serrated hook, about the size of Mac’s forearm. The dull black of its surface was scored by regular holes.
Sample cores,
she realized, even as a more primitive part of her mind gibbered at her to either throw up or run, whichever reaction came first.
Simultaneous might work.

Instead, Mac reached back until her fingers found Nik’s wrist. “What did you find?” Her voice sounded normal, given the background of alto grunts and tenor mutters, but she felt his hand cover hers.

“Remember our discussion—concerning the Hift artifacts? This—” a triumphant wave of the hook came close to landing on Mac’s nose, “—this is of the same material!”

“It’s a machine?” This quick and sharp from Nik. “Some kind of construct?”

“Machine, no.” The Nerban now with Fy spoke up. His long eyelid was opened to its maximum to admit more light in the—to his kind—dim room. The eye itself lay hidden deep within the revealed cavity. Mac didn’t know their features well enough to be sure if this was the individual from the meeting.
The silver-and-emerald bangle circling his proboscis was new.

“Construct? Most definitely. The biological portion consists of conjoined body parts, no two of which came from the same source organism. Despite this, there appears an underlying logic to the result. The sum did have life, as the IU defines it. The technology, the tools, were melded into the flesh. If only it hadn’t been so damaged, we’d know more.”

And she’d be dead.
Mac shuddered and let go of Nik. “Have you compared this one to the one found on Earth?” she asked. The man beside her stiffened in shock.
Right. Full briefing overdue.
“Buried by the earthquake,” she told him quickly. “The Ro used the landslide to cover the tracks of whatever they put into the ocean. Em’s on its trail.”
News at six,
she thought inanely.

“Yes,” the Nerban said. “The components are identical.”

She’d expected a match. That didn’t make it any more pleasant. Mac closed her eyes for an instant.
One of those things had been on Earth, on the slopes of Castle Inlet.

“Have you identified any of the components?” Nik asked. “The organisms.”

“Others are working on that. It will be difficult. The genetic material is severely distorted. Mutations, damage, manipulation at the molecular level. For now, all I can say is we’ve found no match to existing species within the IU, but—”

“There she is!”

Mac hunched her shoulders, somehow knowing that shout boded nothing good.

The shout announced the Trisulian who surged through the rest. This one was wrapped in red leather but with a belt of scanning equipment and probes instead of a weapon.
Not pregnant,
Mac noted, belatedly counting only two eyestalks. Female.
And going to stay that way.
“You,” the alien continued without pause. “You are Mr. Mac, Mr. Connor. I have a question.”

Quiet spread outward from their little group.
She hated it when that happened.
Having no other option, Mac nodded. “What is it?”

“There are inexplicable marks.” The Trisulian lifted the black limb she carried. “Here. And here.”

Somehow, Mac kept her feet from moving backward and made herself examine the limb. Easy to see what had puzzled the Trisulian. “Oh. Those are mine.” Without touching the limb, she held her left hand over the marks, spreading her fingers and thumb to show how each fit into one of the indentations. “It’s a prosthesis,” she said, wiggling the fingers in case the aliens mistook Human strength. “I was in a bit of a hurry.”

“In a—What the—” Nik switched to English for a few choice and impassioned phrases before recovering to think of their audience. “Mac? You were there? On that ship?”

“You could say that,” Mac hedged.

“Alone, Mr. Mac captured it. At great risk to herself.”

Nik’s response to this was thankfully lost as the Frow from atop the cage structure chose this moment to plunge almost to the floor. “You will treat Dr. Connor with the respect due her rank!” he shouted at Nik. Then he noticed the Trisulian and snapped his membranes threateningly. “How dare you approach Dr. Connor! How dare you be in this room! How dare you be on this ship!”

The Trisulian cowered behind her share of corpse, the Frow kept shouting—
the Nerban sweating
—while other aliens either paid rapt attention, ignored the fracas completely, or began to edge to the exit, all in their own unique ways.

Mac shook her head at Nik. “You could have waited,” she mouthed.

He said something she couldn’t hear over the din—
probably just as well
—then jerked his thumb at the door. She nodded.

“This is a closet.”

“I know.”

Mac put her back to a convenient shelf and sniffed.
Cleansers, even in space.
“Why are we in a closet?”

Nik had taken her by the hand—her real one—and marched her into the nearest corridor from the hangar, along it past several doors identical to this one, then in here.
He knew the layout of the ship remarkably well,
she decided.

“Ureif’s waiting for us,” she commented.

“I know that, too.” Nik stood in front of the now-closed closet door, close enough to touch. He’d tried to cross his arms, but had winced and left them at his sides. She guessed his wounded abdomen didn’t appreciate the pressure. Now he leaned his shoulders against the door. “You’ve been busy, Dr. Connor. Care to save me finding out in bits and pieces?”

Not accusing,
she judged.
Truly curious.
And there were things he should be told. “How do you want it? The abridged ‘things I want you to know’ or the really long ‘it’s too late to argue with me even if you could’ version?”

“How about the ‘I trust you’ version.”
Almost that dimple.

Ah.
Mac fastened her eyes on his and began at the beginning, with Emily.

Nik was more than a patient listener, he had that rare talent of drawing confidences from others.
Handy in a spy.
She’d noticed that about him before. He became absorbed, as if he processed every word. She could see it now, in how the hazel of his eyes responded, growing darker or lighter, and in the expressive lines of his mouth.

Those lines had settled into conviction by the time Mac finished.

“Emily keeps repeating ‘eleven,’ ” Nik echoed in a low voice, eyes hooded. “Could it be that simple?”

She stared at him. “It means something to you?”

“Maybe.” Nik frowned in thought. “We’ve wondered all along—why so few attacks? Why no more? It’s not the Dhryn’s choice. The Progenitors starve waiting for the Ro to ‘call’ them to feed. Why the delay?”

“Not because we’ve scared them,” she said bluntly. “Not because we can stop them.”

“The Ro do seem to hold all the cards.” Nik lifted his head. The closet light caught fire in his eyes.
If she didn’t know better, she’d swear he looked triumphant.
“Why would they let the Dhryn die now, after all they’ve done to start them in motion?”

“You expect me to explain the Ro?” Mac snorted, but Nik only raised a challenging eyebrow.
He was going someplace with this,
she realized.
Play along.
“The Dhryn are tools,” she said slowly. “You discard a tool once you finish a job. Or if you find a better one. Or if it’s defective,” she added, remembering a certain unloved power screwdriver and a cold, wet night trying to repair an autosampler.
The screwdriver had skipped perfectly over the waves.

“Or you put it down, so you can pick up something else. After all, you only have two of these.” Nik lifted his hands and wiggled the fingers at her.

“Your point being?”

“Assume the Ro aren’t finished. What if they’ve put the Dhryn aside, not because they want to, or it’s convenient, but because there simply aren’t enough Ro to be everywhere or do everything that’s necessary to control them. Not enough hands, Mac.”

He liked the idea.
Mac chewed her lip, wanting to like it, too. But she’d learned caution the hard way. “Go on,” she prompted.

“After I heard what the Progenitor had to say, about the Dhryn turning on the Ro in the Chasm, how close they’d come to defeating them—it dawned on me we could be dealing with the survivors of that battle. Emily said the Ro abandoned a planetary existence millennia ago.” Nik reached out and took her by the arms, his eyes aglow. “Mac. Those survivors could be the last of them. I think that’s what Emily discovered. What if she’s been trying to tell us how many Ro are left?”

“Eleven?” Mac’s hands tightened on his wrists. “Gods. That simple? Poor Em.”
It made a terrible sense.
Through the confused and distorted memories, the well-meant efforts to cure her obsession, she’d clung to that one bit of vital information. She’d tried to tell them.

He’d kept talking, the words staccato quick and sure. “The Ro paid no attention to us until the Progenitor began searching out the truth. When She rediscovered enough to be concerned the Ro could return, when She contacted a Human—you, Mac—that’s when they took notice.” Nik’s voice turned grim. “They tried to identify and silence Her. One ship. Remember? Maybe . . . maybe one Ro. While the rest moved on to bigger things, directing the Dhryn against entire planets. One at a time. Why? Did one of them need to be there?” He looked distinctly annoyed, that familiar crease beside his eyes. “Too many damned questions.”

She stood on tiptoe to kiss his nose. “So I’ll add mine. Why did the Ro strip the oceans from the hundreds of worlds in the Chasm?”

Nik got that look.
The one she’d learned meant something she wasn’t going to like.

“What is it?”

“Are you sure they did?”

Mac frowned. “It happened.”

“Yes, but was it intentional? Think about it, Mac. The Dhryn kill the Ro on those worlds. Without the Ro, their no-space technology fails—technology they could have located deep underwater. And then?”

“I don’t like where this is going, Nik.”

“If the Ro lived or hid in oceans before, they could be doing it again.” Nik’s eyes burned into hers; she had the feeling he didn’t see her at all, caught by nightmare.
She shared it.
Then his expression smoothed into what Mac thought of as his public face, his noncommittal, do-what-it-takes, face.
She wanted to shake him.
“What cost do you think the IU would be willing to bear,” he asked in a light, pleasant, how-are-you voice, “if it meant the Dhryn destroyed the last of the Ro before dying themselves? To end both threats? Would they vote to accept the cost of a world?”

Not their world.
“Not Earth,” Mac heard herself say. She let go of him, backing into the shelf.
Half a step—small closet.

“A backwater planet,” Nikolai Trojanowski reminded her, implacable, cool. “A transportable, adaptable intelligent species. A small price, isn’t it? If the IU can trap so much as one Ro there? Better yet, get them all? Save the transect system. Save themselves?”

Mac glared. “You aren’t serious. Nik. You can’t possibly—”

“ ‘Where on that scale,’ Dr. Connor. Remember?” His mouth twisted abruptly, his voice losing its calm. “Oh, the IU would owe humanity. Those who survived would be compensated, resettled. Our species would gain a seat on the Inner Council. A brand new world.”

“There is no other world,” Mac said, knowing it was the truth.

“There’s no other world,” Nik agreed. He opened his arms. When she stepped into them, he put his lips to her ear. “We’ll need another way.”