Migration (32 page)

Unfortunately, that brought her back to some emergency that had taken the two away—without her.

As for Nik?
“Asks me to do one thing,” she muttered darkly as she went down the steps to the path, intent on checking the cove. “Watch two aliens. How hard can that be?”

The sun was touching treetops on the far shore. Mac shaded her eyes to scan the lake. All of her canoes were either under the porch or leaning against the rocks behind her. The only movement she could see on the lake was a delirious pair of courting grebes running along the water, necks curled forward.
At least someone was having a good time,
Mac grumbled to herself.

She climbed back to the cabin. Nik had found time to repair the worst spot and Mac delayed to admire his work. Then she looked uphill and sighed. “If I don’t fix that door, Em, I really will have four-footed guests for supper.”

As for aliens?
They could have been scared off by a bear. Or suddenly recalled by the IU, unable to wait for a slow Human.

Morose, Mac kicked at a root, missed, and sent a spray of fine grit off the path.

“Sorry,” she called to whatever wildlife she’d offended.

One leg of the couch had snapped off. “Finally have a use for you,” Mac told the truly dreadful ornamental box her brothers had kept trying to lose outside and her father had somehow kept retrieving. She righted the couch and shoved the box where the leg had been, turning it so the sneering clowns were out of view. “Perfect.”

Mac tossed a cushion back in place, then dusted her hands, deciding to leave the piles for tomorrow. Everything would need to be washed—what wasn’t chipped or broken. To be honest, she wasn’t in the mood to discover how much remained of her collection.

They’d trashed her home. Left her behind.

Interstellar incidents had begun with less motivation
.

She’d rehung the kitchen door as her first task, wiring the bottom hinge in place. It would do for now. The screen was ruined, but Mac found a board to tack over the opening for the night. No point making it easier on the black flies, who’d come out in droves once the air began to still.

“What I want, Em,” Mac said with a firm nod, “is a beer. And supper. But the beer first.” She went into the kitchen and pulled open the chiller. Small items were arranged on narrow shelves along the inside of the door. At first, she
tsked
with disappointment. “None left. Damn aliens.” Then she spotted something promising on the lowermost shelf and bent to check. “Aha,” Mac crowed. “Even cold.” She began to close the door, then stopped, leaning her head to one side.

She’d heard something.

A series of soft clicks, hardly louder than the snap of dragonfly wings.

It had come from the back of the chiller, behind the stacked boxes of alien provisions Russell had brought.
Which they hadn’t bothered to take with them.

Mac switched her grip on the beer bottle to turn it into a club, noticing her fingers were numb.
Cold wasn’t the word.
She exhaled a plume of condensation.
Odd. She hadn’t set the chiller to freezing.

Bottle raised and ready, she peered over the boxes.

The Myg lay on the floor in a very Human fetal curl, eyes closed, his skin patched with frost. Dropping the bottle, Mac hurried to kneel beside him. He was cold to the touch, but not frozen solid. She started to give him a gentle shake, then saw the damage to the back of his head. “Oh, no,” she whispered.

It had been a terrible blow. The skull itself was indented knuckle-deep along two parallel lines, the surrounding wisps of hair covered in pale green blood, already congealed. She couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.

Forcing down her grief and anger, Mac concentrated on the task at hand. First, get him out of the chiller.

After a moment’s consideration, she took hold of Fourteen’s ankles and pulled. His body was rigid and stayed curled, but it slid along the floor. At least until the chiller door, where his hip stuck on the rim. She tried lifting him over it, but the alien was unexpectedly massive.

Think. How had Seung moved that shark by himself?
“Wait here,” Mac told the comatose—and probably dead—alien, feeling foolish. She ran to a bedroom for a blanket. It took a bit of effort to roll him over and slip the blanket underneath, but she managed. Then it was one strong pull to ease him over the rim and into the warmth of the kitchen.

Which was far enough,
Mac realized grimly. If Fourteen was dead, she’d have to move his body back into the chiller for safekeeping. Nik or someone would want an autopsy.
Had there ever been an alien murdered on Earth before?
The paperwork alone boggled.

What sunlight was left sent beams along the floor of the common room, barely reaching into the kitchen. Mac turned on the lights and gathered her courage.

“You’d think,” she told Fourteen as she examined him, “you people would learn not to visit me.” The only other injuries she could find without disturbing his clothes were to his hands. Both were bruised and bloody. She couldn’t rule out cracked bones. His left was clenched into a tight fist, as if holding something. Being as gentle as she could, Mac took his fist in her hands and turned it to see.

An eyestalk?

“So,” she said quietly, lowering Fourteen’s fist. “While I took my sweet time coming back, you were fighting for your life.”
In how many ways had she been a fool?
The Trisulian’s headlong rush to the cabin had had nothing to do with alien squeamishness—he’d known he could outpace her on the trail, had doubtless calculated how far they’d have to hike to give him sufficient time to return and attack Fourteen before Mac could catch up. He’d planned this. Planned it all.

“Here’s hoping he failed,” she told Fourteen softly. “But how do I know?”

Mac licked the back of her real hand and placed it in front of Fourteen’s nose and mouth. The generous lips were slack and the tips of his white tongue protruded. She waited, but felt no moving air. “Not good.” His thick eyelids wouldn’t budge short of using pliers, so Mac pressed her ear to his chest instead.
Silence
.

She rocked back on her heels. “If you were me, and I were you, I’d be dead,” she informed him, proud of her calm tone. Hearing it gave her more confidence anyway. “But you’re not. Me, that is.” Mac gave him a gentle poke. “You stopped bleeding, which isn’t necessarily a good sign. But why would Kay waste time to put your corpse—not that I’m saying you’re a corpse, Fourteen—in the chiller? I wasn’t that far behind.”

Mac stood and opened the chiller door. Her beer bottle had smashed open on the floor, the liquid already slush at the edges. She ignored the mess, going to the climate control. Not only was it set to minimum, but a bloody green handprint smeared the wall beside it.
Fourteen. But to try and turn it up, or had he turned it down?

Hopefully, she’d be able to ask him. Mac cranked the temperature back to normal, then pulled the door closed again. Now that she looked for them, there were green smears on the kitchen floor leading from the common room. Not many. The number that might have been left by bleeding hands if Fourteen had dragged himself along.

A little early for a raccoon or skunk to be checking the kitchen door, but Mac didn’t bother shooing the creature away. “Good thing I fixed it,” she commented, going back to Fourteen. “Imagine what they’d think of you.”

Much too early in the season for you,
Mac thought with rising hope. “Fourteen. Can you hear me?”

Another series of those faint clicks.
She wasn’t imagining it.
The sounds were coming from the Myg.

Mac wrinkled her nose and grinned with relief.

So was that smell
.

She made Fourteen as comfortable as possible on the floor, pushing the table out of the way and slipping cushions from the common room under his head and feet. Rolled blankets supported the curl of his back.
Now to get help.

Seconds later, Mac stared into the box where the cabin’s receiver/transmitter had been.
Well,
she thought pragmatically,
it was still there, just in pieces
.

Fourteen had carried a standard-looking imp; Mac had watched him use it to send various messages yesterday. A quick search of Fourteen’s clothes—he was back in the Little Misty Lake General Store sweatshirt but still in the paisley shorts—turned up nothing that didn’t seem permanently attached.

In the interests of being thorough, and an irrepressible curiosity, Mac did confirm his claim to no external genitalia.

She could canoe for help. That meant leaving Fourteen helpless for several hours. The novice canoe had a distress signal she could activate, if willing to paddle out and capsize it in deep water or run it into a rock. Again, leaving Fourteen alone too long.

The one time privacy wasn’t a bonus
. “If anyone’s listening,” Mac announced in a loud, clear voice as she walked to the door to the porch and looked out in the fading light, “I’ve a seriously injured Myg on my kitchen floor. Could be dead,” she said honestly. “The Trisulian, Kay, tried to murder him. We need help. Anyone?”

Nik might have planted one of his toys in the cabin after all.
For once,
Mac decided,
she wouldn’t mind.
“Where’s a spy when you need one, Emily?”

Louder clicking.

Mac hurried back to the kitchen. Fourteen was still in his distressed curl, but she could swear an arm had moved from where she’d placed it. The warmth of the room might be helping—

Or she was imagining a dead alien was clicking and moving in her kitchen
. “And the night’s young, Em,” Mac sighed.

Optimism was more useful. Acting on her hunch, Mac tossed a handful of towels in the sink, running hot water over them until they were soaked and steaming. After cooling them from scalding to hot, she began to apply the towels to Fourteen’s shoulders and chest. She didn’t attempt to wipe the blood from his head or hands. The clots were holding the wounds together. She placed the last towel around his neck.

Three soft clicks.

His fist eased open and the eyestalk rolled free with a clatter.

Clatter?
Mac caught the thing before it went too far, holding it gingerly. “Well, I’ll be . . .”

Up close, the eyestalk was clearly artificial, an elaborate hollow fake complete with pincerlike clamp at one end. The clamp presently contained a twisted gray lock of Trisulian hair. Fourteen must have yanked it free.

Mac touched the hair. It didn’t feel real either.

Nik had commented on Kay’s eyestalks, told her four were normal. “Now would be a good time to know why,” she mused uneasily.

She added it to her growing list of questions and focused on her patient, replacing towels before they cooled too much. In between, she went through the first-aid kit she’d brought to the table. Nothing seemed worth trying.

A few minutes later, Fourteen suddenly and unmistakably moved again, straightening out with a ragged sigh. Mac held her breath and listened for his. Sure enough, as if the sigh had been the first, the Myg began taking shallow, labored breaths. She stripped off the last of the wet towels and tucked a thick quilt over him.

“See, Em? I wasn’t wrong,” Mac said rather smugly, sitting cross-legged on the floor. She kept one hand resting lightly on the Myg’s chest, gratified to feel it continue to rise and fall, ever so slightly. “Not dead.”

She’d sat like this with Brymn. Only instead of recovering, she’d witnessed the change in his body, felt it alter beneath her fingers, seen the horror in his fading eyes mirror her own as they both realized what he’d become—

A pufferfish Dhryn, the feeder form. Green drops consuming a helpless woman, digesting her arm . . .

A tear splashed the back of her hand. Mac jerked in reaction, then gave an unsteady laugh at herself.

“Mumphfle . . .”

“Fourteen?” Mac kept her voice soft and low. He had to have an intense headache. Her eyes flicked to the ugly wound and she winced.
If any brains were left intact in his skull to feel it.
“It’s Mac. You’re . . .”
All right
seemed premature, given she’d thought him likely dead minutes ago. “. . . you’re safe. He’s gone.”

His lips moved. She leaned down to listen. “Pardon?”

“IDIOT!”

Mac fell back in surprise.

“Idiot! Idiot. Id . . .” the word weakened with each repetition. Just as Mac was sure she was dealing with serious brain damage, Fourteen’s eyes cracked open. “Not safe,” he whispered in a thick but clearer voice. “It’s still here. It will kill us both.”