Survival (32 page)

“That'd be great. I'll get on it—” He got up. “By the way, Kammie sent this down. Probably already complaining about me.” His face wrinkled in another grin as he passed Mac a curled slip of mem-paper. “You take care and we'll try not to burn the place down while you're gone.”

“Thanks,” Mac said, sticking out her tongue. She hoped he didn't notice her hand shaking as she took the slip.

She'd forgotten about the soil assay. Kammie must have started it immediately to have finished by now. Mac burned with curiosity, but tucked the slip away in a pocket that she buttoned closed.
Later.

The weather had remained generous, bright, and warm—all of which promised heavier rains tomorrow. For now, long rays of afternoon sunlight streamed across the tables and floors, warming backs and gatherings. One ray crossed in front of Mac; she laid her hand within its cheerful glow. Through the window, she could see the light frosting the tops of waves as far as the horizon. The water might be rough for anyone skimming its surface, but the effect was breathtaking. Not a cloud in sight.

The ray of light across the back of her hand dimmed.

Another time, Mac wouldn't have noticed, but almost the first thing she'd read while waiting was the essay concerning invisibility technology. The refraction of light around an object was one technique. Not perfected, not by Humans at any rate. The student author hadn't been impressed.

But Mac now found her attention caught by anything about light that wasn't normal or easily explained. She kept her hand in the sunbeam, staring at it. The light brightened, then dimmed a second time. It dimmed slightly more. Her skin felt chilled.

Mac glanced up. The window, really a transparent wall, arched overhead to form part of the ceiling. The sky was that achingly blue color that looked ridiculous in paintings. No clouds. No haze.

Her shoulders hunched in reflex, her imagination painting a regrettably vivid image of the outer skin of Pod Three being coated by Ro. Ro about to find their way in . . .

“There you are, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor!” The bass bellow turned every head, including Mac's, to the doorway where Brymn stood resplendent in yellow and black silk. With his slanted body posture and multiple limbs, this choice cemented an uncanny resemblance to an overweight honeybee and Mac could hear several amused comments, albeit tactfully quiet ones, being shared around the room.

Hand bathed in a beam of varying light, Mac was in no mood to laugh.
Was she going crazy, or the only one to see it?
It took her less than a split second to decide that being wrong wouldn't matter—but being right? She lunged to her feet, making sure her imp was safe in another buttoned pocket, and ran for the alarm on the near wall. Ignoring the questions flying at her, she punched the control, then pressed her back against the wall, wondering what on Earth to do next.

The alarm had visual and audio components, both designed to rouse the most groggy student and penetrate every corner of Base. Yellow framed doorways and emergency exits. Strobes of red flashed across the floor. A modulated hum grated—against Human senses at least—pitched high and annoying, but changing rhythmically in volume so people could shout commands and be heard.

Not that commands were necessary. The gallery erupted in motion. Although there were false alarms every so often, usually after a bar run, the events of the last few days had left everyone on edge. No one hesitated now. The pounding of feet shook the pod floor as staff and students ran for the exits.

Not their feet,
Mac realized in horror. She could feel a throbbing in the wall behind her back and jerked away.
The pod!

The entire room was
moving
. Out the window, the horizon tilted to an impossible ten degrees and kept going . . . twenty . . . Mac wrapped her arms around a support pillar as tables, chairs, cutlery, dishes, and people began sliding toward the kitchen.

Impossible!
Pod Three was permanently anchored to the ocean floor. Even a collision wouldn't lift it like this, and they would have heard one—felt it. Mac let go of the pillar and, ignoring the shouts of protest from those at the door, ran diagonally across the sloping floor toward the far end of the window wall.
She had to see what was happening to the rest of Base.

Mac pressed her face against the transparency and cursed. Only Pod Two was visible from here, and it was . . . it was
rising!
The walkways, normally detached and stored before the pods were raised for the winter, were being pulled up as well, people clinging to railings for dear life. As she watched, unable to do more than pound her fists on the wall, the walkways twisted and split, spilling their Human contents into the Pacific. She could see heads bobbing in the water . . . water that was starting to lip at the wall in front of her.

“Mac!” It was the Dhryn beside her. “We must flee!”

She could hardly breathe, let alone move. Her hands felt glued to the window, as if she could somehow pass through it to help, if only she could press hard enough.

Then she was in the air . . .

Clutched by a giant bee . . .

A bee who
spat
at the window, then somehow charged right through it into the ocean.

Mac had barely time to take and hold a deep breath before she was plunged underwater.

She had even less time to worry if a Dhryn could float without a repeller suit.

12

 

 

 

“P
UT ME DOWN,” Mac croaked for at least the hundredth time. Her rescuer paid no attention. It was as if she didn't exist.

It turned out a Dhryn couldn't float unassisted, but it hadn't mattered. He'd lain on his back, holding her wrapped in that almost boneless seventh arm, while the rest of his limbs churned the water in furious strokes, their sheer power driving them through the waves when anything Mac knew of anatomy said they should capsize and drown. Once she'd realized what was happening, she'd tried to convince him to turn back to Base. But to no avail. He was taking them to shore.

She'd protested and struggled until common sense took over. Whether the Dhryn was hysterical or sane didn't matter, as long as he could keep swimming. The water was choppy and rough; the Dhryn wisely riding the swell of the waves in, but they'd been chased by the rest of the Pacific. Mac had held her breath each time she saw a crest about to catch up and douse them, gasping for air as her head broke the water again. Each splash stole body heat and she'd soon been shivering uncontrollably. Thankfully, the Dhryn's body had insulated her back.

What was happening to Base?
Mac had tried to see past the waves, but it had been impossible—the Dhryn almost submerged at best and the water too wild around them. She'd grown sick with fear. For her friends, for her colleagues, for what they'd built.

It wasn't much better now, on land. The Dhryn had brought them to shore by virtue of crashing into the rocks with a higher wave than most. Before the water washed them out again, he'd taken hold of a skeletal log jutting overhead. Mac had seen the wood compress and splinter under his three fingers. With that one arm, he'd pulled them both clear of the waterline.

The part of her mind still capable of analysis had put a check mark beside the idea of the original Dhryn home being a heavier gravity planet.

Without a word, he'd shifted her to two of his common arms, tucked away the seventh, and started to run.

He was still running, quite a bit later.
After almost three hundred and fifty years of complete exclusion, the Wilderness Trust might as well open the inlet's forest to the general public,
Mac decided, wincing at the trail of ruined vegetation in the Dhryn's wake. His method of locomotion had a great deal in common with a crashing skim, straight through what could be broken and rebounding from anything more solid.

Despite what had to be hysteria, he seemed aware that he was carrying someone more fragile.
More or less.
Mac yelped as a branch snagged some of her hair and won the tug-of-war. She blinked away tears of pain, thinking of Emily.
Had she felt like this? Been imprisoned by alien hands and arms? Dragged to a destination she couldn't know? Unable to communicate with her captor?

Mac pulled her mind back to the present—her present—assessing herself as best she could. They'd probably been running no more than a half an hour, though it felt longer. Any exposed skin was scratched. Her clothes had suffered, torn along the right leg and arm by exposed, reaching roots. She'd learned to keep her arms tight to her body after that. She'd lost a shoe. There would be bruises, perhaps a cracked rib, where his arms folded around her. But nothing worse—so far. It was almost miraculous, given the pace the Dhryn was maintaining as he raced through the rain forest.

He did slow to climb, although not as much as she would have. Two pairs of powerful arms and semiadhesive feet were distinct advantages, even if another pair of arms had to balance and protect her.

The next time he slowed, she tried again. “Put me down,” Mac pleaded, doing her best to kick. “Stop. Please. We have to go back . . . I . . .”The words buried themselves in heavy, painful sobs as her frustration and rage took over.

He stopped.

Mac's hiccup echoed in the sudden silence. She tried to find her voice again. “Brymn?”

With a thrill of fear, she realized he hadn't stopped for her.

The forest around them swallowed the sun, disgorging dark shadows of every size and shape.
You wouldn't need invisibility to hide here,
Mac thought. Sound was smothered as well: birds waiting for twilight, insects too cool to buzz, no rain pattering cheerfully through the leaves.

The Dhryn's body was canted at its usual angle, and she was underneath, her head near his neck. From that position, it was impossible for Mac to look up when she thought she heard a familiar sound. Not the Ro; a lev, with a powerful, unusually quiet engine.

“Nik!” she shouted. “Down here—”

The rest was muffled by one of Brymn's free hands. The Dhryn finally spoke, a whispered, anxious: “You don't know who it is!”

He lifted his hand away and Mac spat out the taste of bark and salt. “Put me down!”

The relief when she landed on the mossy ground was so great, Mac fought back another sob. She rolled quickly, partly to get away from Brymn before he could change his mind and partly so she could look up.

There!
A shadow in the canopy, moving in a reassuringly unnatural straight line.

“It is Nik! Brymn, call him. Your voice will carry. Hurry!”

The Dhryn stared at her, hands hanging limply as if, having stopped running, he'd finally succumbed to exhaustion. His blue skin was marked with scrapes and gouges, each a darker blue as if they cut into another layer; his fine silks were in tatters. “
Lamisah
. . . are you sure?” he whispered.

“Now!” She didn't wait for the Dhryn, cupping her hands and shouting: “Down here! Here we are!”

Her voice disappeared under a startling bellow: “NIKOLAI PIOTR TROJANOWSKI!”

Mac dropped back on the moss to catch her breath. If Nik hadn't heard
that,
nothing short of an explosive charge would catch his attention.

He'd heard. She watched as the machine resolved itself from shadow and branch, sinking down more cautiously than she remembered. Mac climbed to her feet, wincing at bruises she hadn't felt until now. Brymn backed away, but not to run as she first feared. He was leaving the most level patch of ground for the lev to land. Together, they waited until it touched down.

Somehow, Mac couldn't believe until the black helmet rose and she could see his face, pale and grim. “How—is everyone all right?” she asked him, hands out as if the answer was something she could hold.

“Help's arrived,” Nik said cryptically, climbing down. A quick assessing look at Brymn, then back to her. His voice gentled and he went on without her needing to ask. “The alarm gave everyone a fighting chance. Best thing you could have done, Mac. So was vanishing into the sea—although that did upset your friends in the gallery. I assured them you'd be all right. And you are.”
Did she hear relief?
“My only doubt was if I'd find you two before nightfall. The bioscanner works fine, but there's the issue of navigating in these trees.”

Mac shook her head to dismiss what was irrelevant. “Was anyone . . . hurt?”

“We cannot stay here!” This from Brymn. The Dhryn lifted his head and shoulders, then lowered them, rocking his body up and down the way a Human would rock from one foot to another.