Regeneration (Czerneda) (3 page)

A bubble fought free of the cream-tinged foam as Mac watched. She helped another burst with a fingertip.

“Well?” Em prompted.

“We aren’t exactly on speaking terms at the moment.”

“And whose fault is that, Dr. Tact?”

Mac pressed her lips together. Bernd Hollans, humanity’s representative on the IU’s council dealing with the Dhryn, was an important, capable individual of considerable influence who had, she gave credit where it was due, proved himself willing to listen and take action in a crisis. But with the immediate threat seemingly over, Hollans had reverted to the rule-following, overly cautious, pompous annoyance she’d initially judged him.

Who
hovered
over her shoulder while she worked,
she grumbled to herself.

They didn’t do well in meetings together. Not well at all. Mac winced. In fact, at the last one, she’d come close to throwing her imp at his head.

Out loud: “And I thought Oversight was bad.”

“Old Charlie’s all right,” Emily asserted, taking a drink herself as if in toast.

While Mac agreed, she made a point of keeping any fondness for her former adversary to herself. They both preferred it that way.
But still . . .
She couldn’t help herself: “He hates ‘Charlie.’ ”

Emily grinned. “I know.”

Mac’s lips twitched. “No wonder you and Fourteen get along.”

“Fish of a scale, my dear Dr.—” Emily began archly, then stopped, looking toward the door. “I see your friends have arrived.”

“Who—?” Mac turned to answer her own question, then hurriedly looked away again.
Too late.

She’d been spotted.

“Dr. Connor!”

“She’s not here,” that worthy muttered, glaring into her beer. “Not. Not. Not.”

Emily’s elbow dug into her ribs. “As if that’s ever worked.”

Stools and chairs complained as they acquired oversized passengers, the bar now filling up on either side of the two women. Kevin the bartender hesitated. Either he didn’t know who to serve first, or he’d never been faced with so much gloom at one time in his entire career. Mac gave him a sympathetic look.

She wasn’t entirely sure why the Sinzi-ra would choose Grimnoii to act as, well, she wasn’t really certain what they did for the Sinzi either, other than wander about in groups of seeming misery from dusk till dawn. Intimidating groups of seeming misery, even without the ceremonial axes, knives, and spikes they were entitled to wear on consular grounds. Massive, furred, cloaked-in-brown misery.

“Glad we found you, Dr. Connor,” said several Grimnoii at once. Completing their doleful effect—on Humans, at least—they had low, melancholy voices, capable of instilling the most cheerful greeting with funereal undertones.

Mac lifted a suitably limp hand in acknowledgment.

The Human minority sent up another series of raucous jeers as a
clink/plunk
announced a significant failure of aim. Several Grimnoii rose to head in that direction, as if determined to possess the entire building.
Or,
for all Mac knew,
their apparent fixation on pointy things extended to darts.

Mac caught Em’s eye, gave the “last call” look honed through years of practice, and picked up her beer. She poured it down her throat with one easy motion, replacing the glass on the bar with a firm thump to cover a less-than-discreet belch.
Always, when she rushed.
“Just leaving, Rumnor,” she informed the alien who’d taken the stool to her left. “Have fun.”

“No.” A thick, pawlike hand trapped her arm in its warmth as she stood. “You must stay and drink cider with us, Dr. Connor. Much cider.”

“Cider,” echoed the rest in their sad voices. “Dr. Connor.” “Cider.” “Stay with us.”

The snicker was Emily’s.

Keeping her face as straight as possible—
one never knew which being could read Human expressions
—Mac improvised. “Sorry. Gotta go and—go and give blood,” she nodded briskly. “Late for our biweekly drain.” That said, she used her free hand to remove Rumnor’s. He didn’t resist, though his pale brown eyes wept copiously.
Nothing to do with her or cider.
The tearing seemed a species’ trait, producing crusty yellow tracks down the fur of both cheeks and dribbles over the mud-brown cloth that covered a Grimnoii’s rounded chest. “You know Humans when we don’t expel our erythrocytes on time,” Mac continued glibly.

Which was #22 on the
Favorite Myths About Humanity
list published by the consulate, but she’d bet Rumnor wasn’t the brochure-reading kind.

Sure enough, he grunted something inexpressibly sad, his attention drifting to the tray of cider the bartender was carrying past. One paw wavered out to engulf a mug, endangering the rest.

“Let’s settle the—” Mac began, then realized Emily was halfway to the door.
Smart woman.
She stood to follow. “Put us on their tab, Kevin!” she called to the bartender, who raised a brow but nodded.

She caught up with Emily on the sidewalk, standing below the sign that read “Warning: Wreckers at Work” complete with an image of several large parrotlike birds in yellow construction helmets, each using a jackhammer to demolish a parked skim.
She’d forgotten to ask Kevin about that one.

Mac and Emily crossed the street in companionable silence, sandals crunching through the remnants of late-winter leaves. This part of Te Anau had wide, quiet roadways lined with tidy buildings, each with a small patch of garden out front. Trees, most with no intention of dropping leaves despite the season, overhung the pole lamps. Their soft shadows blurred the circles of light beneath. Shivering at the difference from the too-warm indoor air to the evening’s nip, Mac shrugged into the sweater she’d tied around her waist. Em had tossed her black shawl over her head as well as shoulders, the ends still brushing the backs of her ankles.

A skim passed in the distance, but otherwise the town appeared deserted. Lambing was starting, according to Kevin, an event guaranteed to keep a majority of the local population preoccupied for the next few weeks.

Emily didn’t say a word until Mac paused to squint up at the road sign, trying to decide which lengthy assortment of vowels was which. Then, quietly but with conviction: “I told you we couldn’t leave the consulate without being watched.”

Of course not,
Mac thought smugly. They had their protectors—out of sight, out of mind, until now.
Just not teddy bears on the town.
She shook her head. “You’re reading too much into it, Em. There are only two bars within walking distance from the lev station. Rumnor’s lot probably drank the other out of cider.”
Making
The Feisty Weka
the place for us,
she promised herself.
Not to mention it boasted a dance floor.

The third and hasty beer was trying to make itself felt, so Mac decided not to guess at the vowels lined up on the sign. She pulled out her imp to display directions in the air above her hands. The light from the map etched bone-thin lines back into Emily’s face. Mac turned it off quickly. “Thaddaway,” she announced, pointing.

“Wait. I see a shortcut.”

Shortcut?
Mac shook her head again, but willingly followed the taller woman as she picked a narrow lane overhung by vines, clearly not heading toward the
Weka
. She puffed as they passed through the glow from a back porch light, admiring the little cloud of condensed vapor her breath produced. Oh, yes. Winter.
Remarkable notion, winter in August.

Mac gathered her thoughts.
She hadn’t had
that
much beer, surely
. No, it had to be the deliciously familiar sensation of sneaking off making her giddy, of letting Emily lead her where she’d never—as a serious person with responsibilities she took, well, seriously—ever go on her own.

“I should have asked where you were taking me,” Mac complained some time later. She was perched on the flattest of several large tumbled stones, trying to deal with the sodden mess that had been her new sandals.
Never,
she vowed,
go out in anything but sensible boots
. She finally managed to pull and twist the now-loose straps into some kind of knot, hopefully to stay on her feet until they got home.

“You know you like it here.”

Mac grinned. “You had any doubt?” She leaned back, supported by her hands on the damp rock behind her, and admired the view.

Pasture climbed from the opposite side of the river in smooth waves of darkness that appeared to break against the distant silhouettes of trees marking the forest edge. All it would take were pale swirls of morning mist to complete the illusion of land become sea. For now, the moon, only a quarter full, picked out the rapids mere meters from their feet, split by long, fingerlike gravel bars: gray on black, the presence of driftwood and boulder suggested by faint, pale streaks of foam.

The pile of rock she was using for a seat must be the ruins of an old bridge support, a very small bridge, likely for four-footed traffic and trampers. New Zealanders, Mac had been told, loved nothing more than walking their countryside, carrying lunch. The support’s abandoned partner huddled on the opposite bank, undercut and ready to fall into the water.

Mac drew a slow breath in through her nose, dismissing the honey-note of beer, the wet richness of grass, that pungent whiff of equally wet sheep.
There.
That smell. The river itself.
Its life.

Mac doubted anyone but Emily appreciated how thoroughly she hated being stuck indoors. Then again, Lyle Kanaci could wax almost poetic about his research station on the lifeless Dhryn home world, now officially renamed Myriam after his late wife.

Amazing what Oversight could accomplish with a flood of officious memos on a topic,
Mac thought fondly.

Emily stood to the right of Mac’s stony perch, in this meager light as ephemeral as the rest of the landscape, as liable to shift or disappear as any shadow. Mac tasted the old dread. The damage left by the Ro had been extensive; the reconstruction of Emily’s body a challenge to the Sinzi’s skill. But it had worked. Emily lived.
She
was
here
.

“How did you know about this place?” Mac asked, pleased by the calm tone of her voice.
Mind you, she’d had practice there, too.
Calls to her father and brothers. Emily’s sister. Kammie Noyo back at Base. Telling them what she could, without revealing what she couldn’t:
yes, Emily’s been found . . . she’s been ill and needs time to recover . . . I’m staying with her . . . bit of vacation for both of us . . . you know me, catching up on some research, too . . . call anytime.

She’d finally learned to lie,
Mac thought with a mix of regret and grim pride.
Maybe not up to Emily or Nik’s standards, but enough to forestall inconvenient questions.

Emily gave a soft laugh. “I didn’t.” A pause. “You know me, Mac—always looking for the more interesting path.”

As that path, from the end of the laneway, had involved several unseen but deep puddles—hence the ruined sandals—followed by a scramble up a rocky slope and down again until they could no longer see the lights from the town, “interesting” seemed a bit of an understatement. Mac stretched contentedly, giving the situation deep thought. “I don’t suppose you brought beer.”

A chuckle, then: “Tell me. Our Nikolai. Were you lovers before he left?”

Vintage Emily.
Shocked sober, if she wasn’t before, Mac was grateful for the darkness that hid her flaming cheeks. “I don’t think that’s any of your—”

“No, then.” Another pause. “Trust me. It’s just as well.”

Not so vintage.
Mac tried to avoid temptation but failed: “This,” she asked, “from the woman whose motto is ‘a night alone is a night wasted’?”

“Mac. You’re such an honest fool,” kindly. “Sex is the oldest excuse. Even low-class hotels keep vidbots out of their rooms.”

Mac lost all interest in the river. She stared at the tall, slender shadow of her friend, trying not to think what she was thinking, trying not to let anything else
change
.

As usual, the universe was oblivious to the wishes of a certain salmon researcher. Emily spoke again, the words as calm and inevitable as the dew forming on the grass around them. “You alone, Mac, haven’t asked me to explain what I did. Why I did it. Don’t you think it’s time?”

Emily’s invitation, this conversation with the two of them faceless and in the dark, snapped closed around Mac like a trap. They weren’t supposed to have it. She’d gone out of her way to make sure they didn’t.
Forgive and forget.
That was the way it should be.

She shook her head. Not to deny the ambush.
Oh, if anyone knew the risks of an Emily Mamani Patented Pub Crawl Shortcut, she did.
But at herself.