Migration (45 page)

She’d better send around a memo,
Mac decided.

Mudge had taken a corner for himself, adding a desk. He’d stayed up most of the night, by the bags under his eyes, managing to send their initial supply requests through in time for the first arrivals to accompany the catering staff.

It had been a toss-up which had been more warmly received, coffee or image extrapolation wands.
Whatever they were.

Mac wandered over to Mudge, leaning on the wall behind him to survey the bustle, mug in hand.

“Do you,” he asked acerbically, “have the slightest idea what they’re doing?”

“Not a clue.” She took a sip and sighed contentedly.
Cold already
. “How about you?”

“I’ve placed requisitions for equipment I didn’t even know existed, let alone how it could possibly be used by—by archaeologists!”

Mac smiled down at him. “They aren’t all archaeologists.”

“Don’t,” he growled, “get me started.”

There was now a curtained-off section of the room, behind which the author of the ever-popular “Chasm Ghouls: They Exist and Talk to Me” and his trio of followers were apparently conducting chats with the departed. “Here I shared a sandstorm with the famous man and didn’t even know it,” Mac mused.

“I wish I didn’t.”

“We’re all talking to the dead here,” she pointed out, taking another sip. “I don’t care who gives me the answers.”

“You’ve never settled for other people’s before, Norcoast.”

Mac half smiled. “I’ve never asked these questions before.”

Mudge fussed with his workscreen. “Kirby and To’o are qualified climatologists, but according to your list, we need a xenopaleoecologist.”

“I know. Fourteen’s working on it. Says he knows one.”

“There’s another thing. Why is a cryptologist working with us? We have translators.” He consulted his workscreen. “An even dozen. There must be other groups who could use him.”

She could see the Myg from here; he’d abandoned his object arranging and was deep in conversation with Lyle. “Probably. But he’s attached himself to—”
me,
she almost said, “—us for now and no one’s objected. He may come in handy.”

Especially if Emily tried to send her another message
. Something Mac was quite sure had occurred to the Sinzi, and whomever else was in charge.

“Mac, do you have a minute?”

The question, asked in that hesitant “don’t know you yet” tone, was so familiar, Mac was smiling before she turned to answer it. “Of course.”

It was To’o, the Cey climatologist. Or Da’a, the other Cey. They dressed like twins, and Mac hadn’t seen enough of their species to pick out the physical features that distinguished individuals.
Or,
she told herself honestly,
she couldn’t get past the heavy wrinkles of their faces.
The dark brown, pebble-textured skin hung in great, limp folds, starting with small ones at the top of the head to free-swinging cascades by the elbows. It was as if each Cey wore another organism like a veil.

For all she knew, they did.
Mac shuddered, thinking of the Trisulian symbionts. She’d been very happy not to have to converse with another of that species quite yet.

The problem wasn’t that the folds were ugly—
okay,
Mac confessed,
grotesque came to mind
—but the ones on the face itself gave each Cey a perpetually miserable look, as if nauseous. It might have helped if they’d had less Human-like features between the folds.

“If you’ll come?”

Quite sure she’d been staring, Mac waved the Cey to proceed her.

Moments later, Mac seriously considered finding a wrinkle to kiss. “This is—this is splendid work, To’o, Kirby. I hadn’t expected anything so soon.”

Kirby, Human male and probably no older than most of Mac’s first-year grad students, grinned up at her from his seat at the console. “It wasn’t soon. We’d looked into longer cyclic events with respect to climate for over two Earth years. The research didn’t point us anywhere, so we moved on to another topic. Till you. I have to admit, yesterday I thought you were nuts, Mac.”

“I get that,” she replied absently, leaning over the display with one hand on the console for support. “Why were you looking at cyclic events in the first place?”

To’o replied, “My home world experiences long-term climatic shifts, though none so dramatic as this world’s. When you mentioned migration, Kirby and I began to reexamine our old data, looking specifically at the livability of the northern hemisphere relative to the south. We had some more recent data as well from the IU’s team back on Myriam.”

“ ‘Myriam?’ ”

The two exchanged guilty looks. “Sorry. Slipped out,” To’o said quickly. “We’re not supposed to call it that here.”

Mac had no idea of the protocol involved in naming planets—especially planets doubtless named by those who’d evolved there.
Still
. She shot a troubled glance at Lyle, preoccupied with his work, then looked back to the climatologists.

“You named the Dhryn home world after his wife?” she asked, keeping her voice steady but low. “She died there.”

“We all agreed.” Kirby shrugged. “Lyle’s—well, he felt she’d have liked it. And we renamed our research station after Nicli Lee. She died in the storm.”

“We keep saying their names, that way,” To’o volunteered. “It’s important to speak of those we’ve lost—not to forget them.”

She could hardly disagree. “It’s shorter than ‘Dhryn Home World’,” she commented, tacit approval. “Now, what did you want to show me?”

Kirby took over. “We’d collected data on the Dhryn System, including planetary orbits, solar intensity, and so forth. You have to keep in mind we went to—” he seemed at a loss for the name.

“Myriam,” Mac helped without thinking.
Damn. She knew better than to encourage this.

But his smile was so heartfelt and sincere Mac knew she’d committed herself for good.
Another memo,
she sighed inwardly,
so the Sinzi-ra isn’t perplexed by reports on planet ‘Myriam.’
Kirby had continued, meanwhile. “We went to Myriam to answer questions about the destruction occurring throughout the Chasm. Our initial results showed climate change wasn’t implicated, although plenty took place following. Last few months, To’o and I were pretty much left to predicting sandstorms.” He surveyed their display with possessive pride. “Wobbly little orbit, isn’t it?”

“One way to put it.” Mac traced the line without letting her finger invade the active portion of the image. “It doesn’t take much,” she murmured. “How would this affect the planet?”

“We’ll have to do more detailed models,” explained To’o, “but my preliminary estimate is that before whatever happened to cause the Chasm-effect, Myriam cycled through polar desertification every five hundred plus orbits.”

“At the same time as one pole baked dry, the opposite pole may have experienced near ice age conditions,” Kirby offered. “We’re not sure. It’s a tight orbit. Might have been enough solar radiation transmitted throughout the atmosphere to keep the entire planet above freezing. If so, it would likely have been very wet in temperate zones, ocean currents would have shifted, upper air movements be affected.” His voice conveyed awe. “Frankly, an Earth-type seasonal change would have been trivial compared to this. I don’t know how a culture would cope.”

“More to the point,” Mac said, straightening, “how would life?”

“You said migration—but can this fit the bill?” Kirby sounded doubtful suddenly. “I’m no biologist, but aren’t migrations annual? Running from winter, that sort of thing. Five hundred year cycles?” He shook his head. “I dunno, Mac.”

Mac didn’t quite smile. “Nothing is that simple. There are species on Earth, like my salmon, who only migrate when their bodies are ready to reproduce, however many years that takes. There are others whose individuals never complete a migration, having generations born, reproduce, then die as steps along that journey. Look at us,” Mac put a hand on Kirby and To’o’s shoulder, feeling the differences in the joints beneath her fingers. “If there’s anything biologists have learned, it’s that life offers a variety of ways to get the job done. Survival first.”

“We’ll get on a model for you,” To’o offered. “Should let us infer what conditions existed over evolutionary time lines.”

“I look forward to it. Good work, you two.”

Mac left the climatologists and began wandering the large room, listening to conversations and the hum of equipment. There were no looks of condemnation today. If anything, there were a few more sympathetic smiles than she liked, each of which she had to acknowledge with a polite nod.

Anchen’s doing
. During breakfast, Mac learned that last night the Sinzi had sent everyone a copy of the report the consulate had received on her experiences with the Dhryn. She’d held a faint hope not all had taken the time to read it, but, from the looks now—and given their original attitude toward her—it seemed everyone had.

Personally, while Mac had planned to give her colleagues any information that might trigger a connection or produce an idea, she hadn’t planned to share every detail of the events themselves.
Not going to guess, Em, what these people think now
.

She supposed she should relax and be grateful her team no longer believed she’d been imprisoned as a murderous traitor to her kind.

“Someone die?”

At the sound of Fourteen’s voice, Mac started, then smiled and shook her head. “Sorry. Just thinking.”

“Idiot.”

“Probably. Did you want something? I was going to talk to Lyle.”

“Talk to me first. Outside.”

He wasn’t happy about something.
Mac gave a discreet sniff, detecting nothing but mint. Without argument, she followed Fourteen from the Origins room out to the Sinzi version of a corridor, which consisted of a broad ramplike balcony that wound around a central opening, eventually reaching every floor of the building. A few pigeons perched on the edges, taking full advantage of the practice of wide-open doors every morning. Mac presumed they’d find their way out again or be fed.
Then again,
she thought, amused,
maybe they’d be fed to some of the delegates
.

“Well?” asked Mac when they were out of earshot of the room. “Quickly, please, Fourteen. I’d like to get back.”

“Your Dhryn, Brymn Las. You said he’d published work on the Chasm, correct?”

“Yes, of course.” She frowned. “What’s this about?”

“Significant work?”

“Yes,” Mac said again. “I believe some are considered definitive on the subject. Core texts. Why?”

The Myg’s answer sent her marching straight back into the research room, straight to Lyle Kanaci. He looked up as Mac approached, then stood with alarm as her expression registered.

Good,
Mac thought. Despite an overwhelming urge to shout and tear hair, not necessarily hers, she toned her voice to quiet fury. “How dare you refuse to use the work of the foremost expert on Chasm archaeology?”

Lyle’s face settled into stubborn lines. Silence spread in ripples from them.
So much for subtle, Em.
“You lost your wife,” she snapped. “Are you willing to lose everyone in this room—everyone and everything alive on this planet—the same way?”

He opened his mouth, face ashen. Mac quelled whatever he was about to say with a sharp upward gesture of her hand. “Use your grief and rage however you want,” she continued just as angrily, meaning them all to hear. “But don’t let it blind you. Don’t ever let it
think
for you.”

She took a ragged breath. “Brymn spent his life seeking the truth about what destroyed the worlds of the Chasm. I hope none of us ever feels how he must have felt, to learn it was his own kind, to have his own body betray everything he believed.” Mac’s eyes never left Lyle’s. “I will not permit his life’s work to be lost or ignored. How dare you . . .” She lost her voice somewhere in fury, then regained it. “I will supply complete sets of Brymn’s work to everyone on the Origins Team. If you or anyone is unwilling to use it, find somewhere else to be. I won’t work with you.”

Without waiting for an answer, Mac spun on her heel and left.

“No one left.”

Mac’s fingers tightened their grip on the terrace railing, but she gave no other indication she’d doubted the outcome. “Lyle?”

“Staying, Norcoast, but not happy.” Mudge leaned on his elbows beside her, shaking his head. He reached out to touch the invisible barrier protecting them both from the blustery northwest wind and the driving rain it carried. “He’ll be looking for flaws in the Dhryn’s research, questioning every piece of data, suspecting hidden motives. Could be difficult.”

She turned her head to grin at him. “Sounds familiar.”

Mudge pretended to be shocked. “If you are implying a comparison to my annual reviews, the word you want is ‘thorough.’ ”