Survival (11 page)

“I'm sure. We roll heavy equipment along it all the time.” Mac stepped forward, trusting the anxious Dhryn would follow.

Trust was essential. To the eye, there was nothing between her feet and the white hiss of incoming surf four meters below. At least it wasn't high tide and the water almost underfoot. She did a little shuffle step, the effect as though she danced in air. “There's a bit of spring, but it's solid,” she assured the Dhryn. The walkway material was a membrane, completely permeable to visible light, radiation, even water droplets—another way of reducing the impact of human structures on the shore's inhabitants. Mac could taste the spray on her lips and wondered what Dhryn thought of salt.

There was a railing of the same substance, continuing from the rope but invisible. Brymn found it by virtue of moving his hands forward two at a time, so he never had to completely let go. First one leg and footpod gingerly tested the walkway, then the other. “This is quite—remarkable,” he said, his small mouth pursed as if in concentration.

Then he released his grips and sprang up into the air, dropping down with a bass
“Whoop!”
to meet the flex of the walkway, for all the world like her nephew on his backyard trampoline. Arms flailing for balance as the walkway pitched, Mac managed to find and grab the rail herself. “What—?”

The Dhryn's massive legs bent backward at a hitherto unseen joint, absorbing the energy from the walkway so it settled. “My apologies, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor.” His eyes blinked slightly out of sync. “We have a
symlis
—a fable—of individuals who jump on air. I couldn't resist.”

Play? Another congruence between their species? Mac filed the possibility away for later examination.
Much later.
“I take it you don't have a problem with heights.”

Three arms waved in an extravagant gesture that, in a Human, dared her to do her worst.

The walkway carried them up and over the shore as it rose from the sea, the dark wet stone beneath giving way to a confusion of pale tree bones laced with drying strings of kelp. Crabs scuttled along, seeking shadows. A

real gull, prospecting among the rocks, tilted its head to center one bright black eye on the spectacle of Human and Dhryn passing overhead, walking on air. That much interference couldn't be helped, although a low-level repeller kept flying things from collision or perch on the walkway itself.
Or web-building
, Mac mused, rather fond of the strands that glistened throughout the rest of the complex, beaded with crystal after every fog.

An artificial web faced them now, strung between the holdfasts as a token barrier. The tiggers pretending to roost in the staggered rows of forest ahead were the true guardians of the place, active night and day, programmed to accost anyone whose profile didn't appear in their data files. Given their lack of attention to Brymn, Mac concluded Tie had taken care of that detail.
Or Trojanowski.

She pressed her palm over the lock on the right-hand pillar, then keyed in this season's code, waiting for Norcoast to send confirmation. The web folded itself away, a course of lights from beneath their feet briefly illuminating the choices currently in place: a path leading along the inner arm of the inlet, one rising to the treetops ahead, and a third swinging high over the rock to the left. The first two flashed red, indicating they had been reserved for specific projects. The last shone green.

In spite of everything, Mac grinned as she clawed wisps of hair from her eyes. She wasn't sure how much privacy Brymn wanted for their conversation, but she'd take any excuse to climb the inlet's outreaching arm. It had been two seasons since this particular area had been accessible. “Follow me.”

The walkway was more rigid here, taut and formed into a series of steps. Each rise courteously drew itself in the air with a flash of green along its edge as they approached. Mac, curious, stood aside at the second step to let the alien take the lead. He didn't hesitate, lifting his ponderous foot the required amount to clear the illuminated line.
So
. The Dhryn's large eyes perceived at least that color.

Mac held tight to the railing as the walkway took them beyond the protection of the inlet's stone arm and they met the westerly wind straight off the Pacific. In the fall, those winds would shift east and intensify into storms. They were strong enough now. Her coveralls flapped against her skin and Emily's braid gave up the fight for dignity. Mac grabbed her suddenly free hair with one hand, turning to check on the Dhryn.

His eyes were no longer golden yellow and black. A membrane, perhaps an inner eyelid, now covered each. The result was as if his eyes had been plucked from their sockets and replaced with gleaming blue marbles. His silks, plastered tightly to his body by the wind, showed no signs of coming loose. Mac was mildly disappointed, having wondered what might be revealed of the alien's anatomy. Brymn waved her on.

Mac nodded, not bothering to talk over the rustling of her clothes, and led the way.

The outer side of the inlet's protective arm boasted a different shoreline, one that plunged like a knife into the ocean. Immense fingers of kelp, knuckled by shiny round bladders, stroked the waves into a dark, smooth rhythm. Salmon would be slipping through that underwater forest, drawn by the tastes of home flooding mouth and nostrils.

Mac could smell them, over the tang of cedar and fir.

The tide was on the move, too, its powerful eddies fighting the wind and each other with a roar and crash. Mac squinted, hoping to spot the sharp upright fins of orcas in the distance and seeing only the deceptive edges of waves to the horizon. She should have brought her 'scope.

They weren't here to sightsee.
“Let me go first here,” she advised Brymn, making sure the alien paid attention. He seemed as caught by the view as she'd been.

Four steps down, one after the other limned in black as the walkway compensated for the light now striking low and from the west. At the bottom, a mem-wood platform waited on pylons, complete with built-in bench and rails. From the way the wind stopped when they reached it, it must be surrounded by a curtain of the membrane that formed the walkway.

Probably Svehla's work. The joke around Base was that the talented carpenter would build everyone's retirement cottage instead of ever retiring himself. Mac explored the small area, then ran her hand along the rail on the ocean side. Regular holes marked where Preds had fastened their recorders and 'scopes.

Brymn came up beside her. She forced herself to stay still, even though his bulk intimidated this close. “Private enough?” she asked.

“Private and most spectacular. Thank you, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor.”

She gritted her teeth. His continued use of her full name was becoming supremely annoying.
At least he didn't have a discernible body odor,
she reminded herself, trying to look on the bright side. She turned away from the Pacific to stare up at her visitor, noticing that his eyes had returned to normal. “Now. Why me?”

The Dhryn pursed his small mouth. “Sit. Please.”

Mac walked over to the bench and obeyed, but hugged her knees to her chest so she could rest her arms on top. “I'm sitting.”

He faced her, then slowly settled his backside to the platform by bending his legs at their uppermost joint. His two lower hands pressed against the wood, arms stiffening to form a secure tripod. “Ah. I've wanted to do this all day.”

“You didn't have to use a chair,” Mac noted dryly.

A cavalier wave. “ ‘When visiting a species . . .' You know the rest of the expression, I'm sure. Still, it does the body good.” Before Mac could attempt to swing the conversation back to the note in her pocket, Brymn grew serious, his voice lowering in depth until she felt it through the bench. “Evolutionary units.”

Mac blinked. “Pardon?”

Brymn looked worried. “You are the Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor who has published extensively on that topic, are you not? There can't be two Humans with that same name, surely.”

“Yes. To being the one, that is.” Mac frowned. “I thought you were investigating the disappearances.”

“I am. You've read the report, I see.”

An eagle skimmed past them, the head and spine of a salmon locked in its talons. Mac suddenly empathized with the fish. “Forgive me, Brymn, if I seem confused, but I don't see any connection between my research and these missing people. Tragic as those losses are,” she added hastily.

“People?” he echoed, eye ridges rumpling. “Far more than people are missing, Mackenzie Winifred Eliz—”

Enough was enough!
“Please. Stop doing that. Humans rarely use their complete names. Never in conversation. Call me Mac.” As Brymn opened his mouth again, Mac pointed at him and shook her finger warningly. “Mac.”

“It would be highly disrespectful for me to omit any of your earned names.
Amisch a nai
.”

His distress was palpable. Mac rubbed her chin on her forearm. “A compromise to keep me sane,” she offered. “Call me Mac when it's just you and me. Like this. No one else need know.”

“If you insist.” Brymn's lips pressed tightly together for an instant, as if over a bad taste. “Mac.”

“Perfect. See how nice and quick that is?” Mac lifted her head. “So. What else was missing?”

“Everything.”

“Equipment, transports—” she hazarded.

He shook his head. “Those remained, though damaged. Everything alive. Everything that had been alive. Gone.”

Mac sat up, her feet thumping down on the platform. “Over how large an area?”

“The largest discovered so far involved almost twenty square kilometers. A valley. Scoured clean to the overburden. Even the soil was empty of life or its remains.”

“Like the worlds in the Chasm,” Mac said, her lips numb.

“Like the worlds in the Chasm,” the Dhryn repeated. He rocked back and forth, his ridged nostrils flared. “So I come to you, Macken—Mac—because those aware of these disasters have good reason to believe we are all in the gravest of dangers. And I believe your work may hold a key to our survival.”

Mac shook her head, sending hair tumbling over one shoulder. Automatically, her hands began braiding the tangled mass into order. She wished she could do the same with her thoughts.
Why hadn't the so-secret report contained this information? How could such a thing still be secret at all?
She focused on what she did know. “I work with salmon. An Earth species.”

A low hooting sound. Frustrating, not knowing if it was laughter, a sob, or alien flatulence.
She had to read more.
“Your interest is in a bigger question, is it not? One that applies to all living things. What is the minimum genetic diversity required in a population to respond to evolutionary stress? What is that evolutionary unit for a species, a community? For a world?”

“You can't simply extrapolate . . .”

Brymn rose to his feet. “Do you deny the importance, Mac, of knowing how many of us must continue to live, if our species are to survive the doom threatening us all?”

The Dhryn had a distinct flare for melodrama,
Mac decided. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Exactly what do you do, Brymn?”

“I study the remains of the past, to better understand what may be to come.”

“A—paleontologist?”

Another low hoot.
Surprise or humor
, Mac concluded. “No, no. An archaeologist. I thought you might have heard of me. Read my work? I'm quite famous in some circles.”

“I study salmon,” Mac found herself emphasizing, as if the words anchored her to something saner than this conversation. “I don't get outside my field much.”

“You study life! That's why I need your expertise.”

“Why come all the way here—to me?” she asked reasonably. “Why not work with a Dhryn biologist? Surely some of your scientists are working on the same questions.”

The Dhryn became utterly still, his large eyes regarding her with what Mac could only interpret as a wistful expression. Then he said in a voice only slightly louder than the slap of water on rock: “This is something you need to know, Mac, but I can only tell you if you agree to keep it in the strictest confidence. Not even my assigned companion, Nikolai Piotr Trojanowski, may learn this. May I tell you?”

As if she'd refuse?
Mac gave one quick nod.

“I am ashamed to admit there are no Dhryn biologists. The study of living things has been forbidden throughout our history. It remains so. I would be refused
grathnu,
Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor, should any of my lineage learn I was speaking to you about such things, or that I had read and understood any of your work.”

Mac tried to wrap her brain around an entire civilization without biology and failed. “What about medicine? Doctors?”

Brymn sat down again. “
Nie rugorath sa nie a nai.
It translates roughly as: ‘A Dhryn is robust or a Dhryn is not.' There are other such sayings. Suffice it to say there are no sick Dhryn.”

“Agriculture?”

“We consume varieties of what you would call fungi, Mac. Long ago, our leaders conveniently ruled that what is grown for this purpose is not alive. Today, these organisms are considered components of a chemical manufacturing process. Their study is part of engineering, not life science as you know it.” He paused, seemingly thoughtful. “Truly, we don't have many scientists at all. The most proper study for a Dhryn is what it means to be Dhryn. Our brightest minds are urged to become artists, historians, or perhaps analysts. Our advances in applied science and technology, like many of yours, are purchased from those who possess that cultural priority.”