Survival (48 page)

Brymn found it amusing, though he still didn't bother with any ceremony with her. As the days passed, however, her constant companion had become less so. Soon, he was coming only once each morning to deliver more reading material. Not even offers to discuss his own research would tempt the Dhryn into delay. He claimed to be busy “making arrangements” and “consulting with colleagues.” Mac, in response, busied herself as well. She was here, after all, to learn about the Dhryn.

19

 

 

 

M
AC CHECKED the time display on her desk.
He should be here in a few minutes
. She'd breakfasted and dressed in record time, anticipating a welcome change in routine. Brymn had promised her a tour of the city today.
Maybe,
Mac thought,
the rain would actually let up a bit.

Eleven days. She was ready for a break.
To be honest, she was ready for anything that took her out of this apartment.
Already her desk was cluttered with the digital tablets the Dhryn used in place of mem-paper. More lay on chairs around the room. The Progenitors had allowed a Human on their world—they hadn't, until today, been ready to let her walk around on it. It was being deliberated, Brymn had promised day after day, asking her for patience.

In return, Mac had asked for information.

Her collection had grown rapidly: Brymn's work, abstracts from other fields, the Dhryn version of local news reports, and even samples of fiction, though these were presented in verse and difficult to follow, since the rhyming conventions were based on tones below her hearing. It didn't help that fiction presupposed the reader was at least familiar with the author's culture.

Mac was doing her best to learn the Dhryn's. She'd reached the point of being able to tell which public announcements were from the Progenitors, on topics ranging from finance to the proper education of
oomlings
. There was a distinctive formality, almost an aloofness—as though they considered themselves removed from the rest of Dhryn society, yet at its core.

Although she dutifully and unsuccessfully hunted references to the Ro, Mac found the Dhryn themselves becoming something of an obsession. The air of respect and mystery surrounding the Progenitors tantalized her. There were no images in any of the materials she'd assembled with Brymn's help. He'd expressed belief such didn't exist. So Mac had asked to meet one.

Their persecution by the Ro was another reason she'd begun to focus more of her attention on the Dhryn themselves. Apparently no adult Dhryn had ever been harmed by the Ro. The invisible beings stole or abused
oomlings
whenever they could; the heinous crimes stretching back almost two hundred standard years.

No wonder Brymn trembled at the name.

No wonder the Progenitors guarded the home system. Under the circumstances, Mac was amazed any Dhryn dared leave that protection, let alone continuing the practice of sending almost mature
oomlings
to the colonies. It was a stiff price to pay for interstellar travel, since the transects were obviously how the Ro were able to come and go. But the Dhryn had come to a sort of peace, having developed technology to keep the Ro at bay, at least here, and chose to exist that way, always on guard.

The average Dhryn didn't think about it.

They appeared to lack interest in other things as well. Selective ignorance was a blindness Mac was beginning to deplore in herself, let alone in an entire species. She ran into it again when trying to determine if the Dhryn had evolved here or elsewhere. There were no living clues left, no animals strutting about with bilateral symmetry and three pairs of arms. A fossil record would have been helpful, but Brymn had confessed such a thing would not have been valued or saved, if found. The study of life, he reminded her regularly, was forbidden. If she was to live here, she would have to be careful no one suspected her of such interests.

Mac shuddered. Over time, a place like this, ideas like this, would kill her. She knew it. Brymn was keeping her sane as well as safe, a combination of amusingly eccentric uncle, friend, and comrade-in-arms, bundled in a package surely unusual even for Dhryn.

And rarely on time,
Mac thought fondly, gazing at the clock. She pulled on her raincoat, but left it open. The Dhryn had turned down the heat in her apartment after numerous requests, although Mac still found it too warm. In their way, they were good hosts. Not xenophobic in any way she could detect—though there was that issue of her being deaf, as Brymn called it. Careful that she not be bored or neglected. Curious, where her interests crossed theirs.

Speaking their language had proved essential, as well as safer. Brymn had checked and found that only a few official translators on Haven spoke Instella. That skill was reserved for the colonies, where one might reasonably expect to need it.

Not on Haven, where Mac was the only alien—other than attacking Ro—to ever set foot.

Some mornings, that was inspiring. In a “just don't look down” kind of way.

Where
was
he?

Mac went to her place of greeting and began flipping through the art catalog to keep herself occupied.

Where was he?
Before Mac could do more than form the question again, a knock on the door answered it.
Finally.

Brymn didn't wait for her to open the door, bursting through with a cheerful: “Ah, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor! Good morning!”

Mac stepped out of the way. As she closed the door, he paused in front of her art display, which her random shuffling had left at an abstract of silver reflections of globes within globes, gave an inexplicable
hoot hoot!,
then kept marching into her workroom. “I have good news!”

She hurried after him. “What?”

Brymn held out a tablet with his middle left arm, his small mouth stretched into the largest smile she'd seen him produce. “Those of No Useful Function at the communications center finally admitted I was entitled to receive non-Dhryn news reports. I have collected all those from the past two weeks for you. Here.”

Mac took the tablet, her hands shaking. These would be summaries, of course. There was far too much interstellar information for every system to receive news from every other. Interests were more focused. But there could be something from the Interspecies Union.
There could be
. . . she fumbled at the display control.

“I haven't read them myself,” Brymn told her. “I came straight to you. What's wrong? Isn't it working?”

“I—” Dumbfounded, Mac could only stare at the tablet. “I can't read it.” The symbols were twisted and completely unfamiliar. “What language is this?”

“Instella.” Brymn took the tablet and raised it to his eyes. “The display is clear enough, Mac,” he said. “Are your eyes damaged?”

No,
Mac realized with horror,
but her mind might be
. The sub-teach Emily had made for her—the pain she'd felt using it. Had the input crippled her ability to communicate in other languages?

Mac forced herself to calm down. “Read it out loud to me, please. Instella, not Dhryn.”

The floor vibrated once, as if Brymn muttered some comment about this, but he obeyed her request. “ ‘Bulletins from the Interspecies Union are intended for the widest possible audience. Failure to disseminate such bulletins in every applicable language will result in fines, censure, and potential restriction of transect access . . .' ”

“That's enough.” Mac heaved a sigh of relief. “I understood you. How about English? A few phrases.”

Brymn nodded. “ ‘Humans consider it impolite to disgorge or otherwise release body fluids in public places. When eating in a Human restaurant, please notify your waiter if you will require a private room.' ”

“That was English?” It sounded the same in Mac's ears as the Instella—and the Dhryn, for that matter.

“A quote from my
Guide to Earth Etiquette.
A most useful resource, Mac.”

Mac reached inside her shirt and dug into her waist pouch for her imp. Her original, with Emily's sub-teach, lay at the bottom of her largest water tank for safekeeping, wrapped in plastic. She carried the one from Nik, but hadn't used the device other than to record new entries in her personal log. Now that she thought about it, Mac couldn't recall paying attention to the 'screen, just hitting the right spots to control the function.

She cued the 'screen, in Instella first, then found herself staring into the incomprehensible mass that floated in front of her. A slide of her hand through the display changed it to English.

She sagged with relief. Some words looked odd, as if her mind was trying to reorganize the letters, but it was legible. Mac concentrated on one line, trying to read out loud in English. It sounded right to her, but Brymn, guessing what she'd been attempting, was already tilting his head from side to side in negation. “That was Dhryn.”

Mac requested an input pad and the almost transparent keys formed under her hands. She typed carefully in English. She could read the words. But when she auto-translated to Instella, they were so much gibberish floating in air.

“It appears I have some new gaps in my education,” Mac said, replacing the imp in her pouch. Her voice sounded remarkably calm under the circumstances.
Why hadn't she checked this before?

Easy
. She'd been too busy using her knowledge of Dhryn to investigate her novel surroundings, too enchanted by her new power to understand something so utterly foreign. Mac thought dourly that she'd probably never have noticed, if Brymn hadn't brought the tablet.

“In sum, I can write and read English, but not Instella. I can understand English, Instella, and Dhryn, though they sound exactly the same in my head. I speak only in Dhryn. Which also sounds the same in my head as any of the others.” She sighed. “I'll lay odds there'll be some researchers itching to take apart my head when I get back.”

Brymn blinked. “A figure of speech, I hope?”

Mac smiled faintly. “We both hope. Now, can the tablet translate to English?”

“No, Mac. And home system technology will not match yours. I can translate for you myself, but it will take some time.” He brightened. “Or I can read to you—our tour will include several hours of traveling the tubes.”

The tablet was still in his hand. Mac looked at it hungrily. If there was any message or information for her from Earth, it would be there. Whether she trusted Brymn to read it accurately or not, she had no other choice. She nodded.

“Let the tour begin.”

A world without vegetation, yet with individual works of art given their own plazas and viewing stands. A city wrapped around the equator that shot itself upward in magnificent towers and rooted itself with a labyrinth of spacious tunnels. Buildings whose design could be breathtakingly strange—the Dhryn no fonder of the perpendicular outside their rooms. An endless rain gathered into waterfalls and used to animate statues before plunging below the surface. And a people as varied in dress and manner as any gathering of Humans Mac had seen.

“It's not what I thought,” Mac confessed to Brymn as they walked toward the tube entrance along a concourse shielded from the rain. She suspected Dhryn kidneys worked hard enough to remove excess water from their bodies, so it wasn't surprising they'd avoid unnecessary exposure to more. Not slavishly. Some ventured out under umbrellas but she'd witnessed several at work in the downpour, bodies protected only by the decorative bands around their torsos. Their waxy skin was probably better protection than her raincoat.