Regeneration (Czerneda) (77 page)

The tiles, colored and bright, hadn’t changed. The soft green carpet, the woven silk panels in rainbow shades, the floor rising in great steps were familiar. But nothing bounced on the carpet, or slept within the paneled pens, or cooed sleepily. The tiles surrounded a crèche emptied of life.

Mac stepped back from the lookout with a sigh. The Dhryn with her seemed less affected.
Perhaps because these hadn’t been her
oomlings.

More likely,
she reminded herself,
this sacrifice was part of being Dhryn, too
.

“This way,” Nik said, pointing down the right-hand tunnel.

These tunnels had their own ghosts.
“Did you see any Wasted while you were here?” Mac asked as she rejoined Nik.
Not that they could feed the one they had.

He shook his head.

Fy trailed their small line, her attention repeatedly caught by this or that about the walls or exposed controls, holding up one of the recorders she’d attached to a belt before they’d left the dart. Mac supposed the Sinzi was happy, in the way a researcher could find joy with her subject.

“Almost there,” Nik told her. His fingers laced with hers. “No sign of trouble yet.”

“As if that’s a good thing to say,” she complained, only half joking.

They watched for Ro, even here, where the shroud material of the Dhryn should provide protection.

As for Dhryn . . .
“Could the entire ship be this empty?”

Nik shrugged. “We couldn’t estimate the minimum crew requirement to keep things running. A lot’s automated, as you’d expect.” A pause. “When I was on board, She was working Her way through one section at a time.”

Spy School 101: Euphemisms for All Occasions,
Mac said to herself, not fooled by his tone. “I’m sorry,” she offered. “If it helps, I felt Her grief through the
lamnas
. She consumed Her own children first.”

Another shrug, this sharp and tense. “Feeders don’t discriminate. We’ll need to be careful.”

“The Mouths of the Progenitor do not think,” Her Glory agreed, her voice full of warmth and longing. “They only provide.”

Of course she’d want to find feeders.
Nik’s fingers tightened around hers.
Not the only one worried.
“Can they provide for you?” he asked the Dhryn, as casually as if he inquired after her favorite color.

“Among the many things I don’t know, Vessel. This state—” a quiet hoot, “—is new to me as well.” Her Glory paused. “I’m reassured Haven remains after all. Even in this form. Something of my old life.”

“Have you reached accommodation with your other self?” This from Fy.
Understandable curiosity from someone having a little trouble in that department.

“Accommodation?” The Dhryn appeared to consider the question as they walked, the taller Sinzi leaning over to listen. “Those memories have no taste, no power. I simply know what happened. We arrived at Haven to find it destroyed. We waited for nothing, hiding ourselves from the Ro, from all that were not-Dhryn. The time came when some chose to die. I know I chose to survive, despite having no purpose or value. For that, I await the judgment of the Progenitor.”

As if on cue, a figure appeared ahead. Standing, Mac noticed with relief. Nik’s other hand eased back to his side.
He’d been ready to fire.

“You were told to stay in your ship, not-Dhryn. Why are you here?” A Dhryn voice, male, older, his Instella flawless. He stepped forward into the light.
Two hands missing—someone of importance.
As if in emphasis, his eye and ear ridges were traced in vivid turquoise, more of that color on his lips and in the silk banding his torso.

The effect would have been better,
Mac decided,
if he hadn’t needed strings to hold the bands around what was close to a match for a Wasted’s body
. The strings had a second function, being beaded with the Dhryn version of imps.
Odd decoration,
she puzzled.

“Deruym Ma Nas,” Nik greeted. “I’ve returned, as promised.”

The Dhryn leaned forward, slight threat. His remaining hands, Mac noted, held weapons, though not pointed at them.
Yet.
“Which not-Dhryn are you?”

Something about the attitude of what was obviously a cloistered Haven Dhryn, albeit an educated linguist, stiffened Mac’s spine. “You know perfectly well he’s Her Vessel,” she stated in Dhryn. “We come on urgent business for That Which Is Dhryn and the Progenitor expects us. I am Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol.”

His stumps and hands came together in a startled clap of respect. “I didn’t see you. Or—” Words in either language failed him as Deruym Ma Nas finally caught sight of Her Glory.

She was worth a look,
Mac thought with poignant pride, easily half again the size of the Haven Dhryn, her body robust and full. The dulled lighting only emphasized the golden luminescence banding her torso. Her Glory needed no silks—
or were the brilliant silks of modern Dhryn an echo of what they’d lost?
she wondered abruptly.

“Deruym Ma Nas,” Her Glory said in that warm, loving voice. “A most admirable name. I take it into my keeping, though I’ve none of my own to exchange.” She held out her single hand. “Know me by this,
erumisah
.”

The other Dhryn rose in a bow, then brought his mouth close to her palm, lips working at the air above the skin. His eyelids lowered and he began to sway in what seemed ecstasy.
Or a seizure,
Mac cautioned herself.

An old rule, but a good one.

With Deruym Ma Nas as escort, their group moved quickly to the wide, downsloping ramp that led to the Progenitor’s Chamber, more precisely as quickly as his frequent backward looks at Her Glory permitted. Mac glared at the Dhryn as he did it again, almost stumbling.

The lush carpet quieted their footfalls. There were more spirals of silver than she remembered along the black shroud lining the walls.
More names added.
She wished for time to try and read them. But time they didn’t have.

It wasn’t only fear, though Mac didn’t understand her eagerness to reach their destination until they stopped in front of the vaultlike door to the Progenitor’s Chamber.

It felt like coming home.

Mac shook her head, hard.
The Progenitor was as endangered as the rest of them.
She followed Nik through the door, seeing Deruym Ma Nas glance up at the last minute. Curious, she did the same.

Before, the holes around the great door had been empty, inexplicable. Now, a pale feeder Dhryn squatted in those above, as if waiting for strays.

Mac dropped her gaze, her nerve endings remembering what her mind refused.

“This one will remain here.” Deruym Ma Nas pointed at Fy.

The Sinzi’s fingers clenched in shock. “But I must see the Progenitor!”

No surprise,
Mac thought.
To a Sinzi, a physical meeting was paramount.

Deruym Ma Nas, surprised or not, wasn’t about to be swayed. “She does not have to see you. You are—” he paused and blinked one/two at the tall alien, as if lost for the right word, then settled for: “—unfamiliar.”

Fy looked to Mac, who could only shrug, thinking of the days she’d spent waiting for the Progenitor to be ready to meet her first Human. “I’ll ask,” she offered.

“Isn’t there a safer place to wait?” Nik didn’t need to point at the lurking feeders.

“It is all right.” The Sinzi made a graceful come-hither gesture toward the silver-sparked walls. “I would prefer to stay here. These appear the oldest engravings. I would be grateful for the opportunity to record them.”

Nik looked uneasy. “Are you sure, Sinzi-ra?”

Mac had learned to read Fy’s fear and saw it now, in the tremble of fingertip, the distracted focus of the topaz eyes. To the Sinzi’s credit, she remained steadfast. “Will it matter where any of us are if the Progenitor chooses to feed?” She faced the Dhryn and lifted her recorder. “Deruym Ma Nas, may I have your permission?”

“You need none,” he told her. “These walls are meant to be read by all who come here, throughout the generations.” For an instant, Mac thought she detected something sad and resigned in Deruym Ma Nas’ expression, before it returned to impatient. “We must go.”

The Haven Dhryn disappeared within the archway, Her Glory with him.

Nik nodded to Mac, who began to walk with him after the Dhryn. She couldn’t help glancing back at the Sinzi. The willowy alien stood in the black-walled corridor, watching them leave her. She appeared composed, but her fingers were locked around her recorder. The lower half of her gown was stiff with dried Human blood. “Fy,” Mac suggested, “you might want to ignore what I said about moving slowly around aliens.”

An almost Human smile. “I understand.”

“Mac?”

“Coming.”

Fifteen steps through the arched door itself. Mac counted each, smelling metal, feeling the chill. Then the passage. Nik and their guide—still the only normal adult Dhryn they’d seen—led the way. Her Glory and Mac followed them.

Mac lifted her face, knowing the reason for the rhythmic pulse of warm air over her skin. She sniffed, disturbed by a faint decay.

Then they were out, into that world where flesh and biology ruled.

H
UMANS WERE FAMED for their ability to grow accustomed to any marvel, to take the strange in stride. It made them easygoing crew-mates on alien ships, although a frustrating market to satisfy.

But not even Humans could grow used to this.

“Current count?” Hollans requested, sipping his tea. None of them left the Atrium these days. He had a cot near Telematics, took his meals within sight of the screens monitoring traffic through the transect.

And what traffic . . .

Day after day, Sinzi had been pouring into Sol System through every gate. Polite, noncommittal Sinzi, following protocol to the letter, requesting only a designated orbit for their ships to stay out of the way of whatever else moved to and from Earth.

“Two hundred and fifty-three thousand, four hundred and two personal darts, five hundred and twelve liners.” The tech consulted a smaller screen. “That accounts for the entire registered Sinzi liner fleet, sir. I don’t have a reference for darts.”

Hollans shook his head. There wasn’t a species in the IU whose delegate hadn’t hammered—or the equivalent—on his door, demanding to know what the Humans were doing. Not a species who wasn’t desperately afraid the Sinzi were leaving its system for good, the transect gates on automated settings only. Traffic had virtually stopped.

The Sinzi were abandoning them to the Dhryn.

“Sinzi-ra?” Hollans asked quietly, as he had so many times. “What are your people doing?”

Anchen, as she had each time before, smiled her perfect Human smile.

“They participate in the promise.”