Survival (54 page)

As if following Mac's line of thought, the Progenitor continued: “As you can see, I have gained far more than I left, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor.”

“How long does it take to grow this big?” Mac asked, leaning her head back as she estimated the bulk of shoulders and what had been head looming over them. Brymn made a strangled noise; Mac ignored him.

“Five hundred or so of your years,” the Progenitor answered. “I am the most recent to begin producing
oomlings
. My name—no longer matters. Few endure the change; fewer still the growth.” A tinge of pride. “Those who do, are the Dhryn. What else would you like to know?”

At this, Mac looked straight into the face in front of her. “As Brymn can testify, Progenitor, I have a great many questions.”

“Once
grathnu
has been served, you may ask until I tire.”

Mac had no idea what
grathnu
involved, but she was sure she wanted it to happen to someone else no matter how curious she was about the Dhryn. But as Mac opened her mouth, the Progenitor smiled. “Yes, Brymn may serve first.”

Brymn stammered his thanks until the Progenitor frowned slightly. Then he gave a bow so deep he almost tipped over backward, which would have sent him over the palm and tumbling onto the torso far below. Mac breathed a sigh of relief when he straightened again. “My life's work has been for the Dhryn,” he announced, coming to stand before the face. “I am Dhryn.” He spread his six arms outward, fingers outstretched.

The seventh arm burst into the open, its edged fingers stretched as well. As if it had eyes, it swayed and turned, boneless as the hanging arms of the pufferfish Dhryn. Mac took a step closer, fascinated. The fingers stopped and oriented toward her.

“Not so close,” warned the Progenitor quietly. Mac backed a step. The fingers turned to Brymn.

“I return to my Progenitor that which I am.” He brought his lower left arm to his chest. Like a striking snake, the fingers of the seventh lunged forward to seize the limb at the wrist. Before Mac's horrified eyes, the sharp fingers sliced through the arm.

Brymn's left lowermost hand dropped to the palm of the Progenitor, followed by a few splashes of blue-black.
The wound must be self-sealing,
Mac realized numbly. The Dhryn's face bore an expression of rapture and his seventh arm, task complete, hung limp down his chest.

“I am Brymn Las,” he said with so much joy in his voice Mac hurriedly reassembled her face into something less horrified.

“I take the name Brymn Las into my keeping,” the Progenitor acknowledged. “And his gift of self, which shall enrich that which is Dhryn through my flesh.”

Mac flinched to one side as a pufferfish Dhryn swooped down, battling its way through the streams of air leaving the gigantic nostrils above to hover beside her. This close, it looked even less like a Dhryn. Instead of thick blue skin, it appeared made of membrane and air, its organs tantalizingly visible. Before she could study it further, the pufferfish Dhryn collected Brymn's hand in its tentacles and lifted away again.

If she hadn't known, Mac wouldn't have believed.

Brymn was looking at her expectantly.
How could he be thrilled to have been maimed?
Mac, feeling more Human than she had for days, licked her lips and said, “I take the name Brymn Las into my keeping. A fine name.”

“Now it is your turn, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor.”

Mac's pants had pockets. She rammed both hands into their protection, as if that could possibly help. “I'm not worthy,” she said weakly.

“You saved Brymn Las, you forced our ancestral enemy into flight, you left your home and risked yourself in order to protect what is Dhryn. You are Dhryn. You are more than worthy. Come,” the Progenitor insisted gently. “Serve.”

Of the predicaments Mac had ever imagined for herself, or dreamed in her worst nightmares, being trapped on the hand of a giant alien who expected her to cut off her own hand wasn't remotely one of them. It likely would be from now on.

Mac stiffened her shoulders and tried to remember Brymn's phrasing.
Ah, yes
. “My work has been for the Dhryn.” She tugged her braid from the back of her shirt, letting it fall down her chest. “I am Dhryn.” She stretched out her arms, then brought both to her chest. “I give to the Progenitor that which I am.” She'd palmed the small knife from her pocket in her right hand. Now, she grasped the braid in her left hand and sliced it off with her right.

The hair twisted as it fell to the palm of the Progenitor. What remained on Mac's head tumbled asymmetrically over her cheeks and down her neck, a lock dropping into her eyes. Without brushing it aside, Mac said firmly: “I am Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol.” It hadn't been as hard as she'd feared to find one syllable to add to her name, something she could stand to hear repeated every time a Dhryn spoke to her. The name of Earth's Sun would be a promise to herself.

“I take the name Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol into my keeping,” the Progenitor said gravely, “and her gift of self, which shall enrich that which is Dhryn through my flesh.”

The pufferfish Dhryn who arrived to pick up Mac's braid appeared slightly confused, dipping up and down several times before finally grasping its find and heading away with it.

Brymn wasn't the least confused. He swept Mac into a hug, thoughtfully not using the arm still dripping fluid. “I knew you would serve
grathnu
with us as well as your own Progenitors, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol!”

Mac's hand strayed to the jagged remains of her hair, a fair amount just past shoulder length and nodded, unable to smile. She'd broken her promise to Sam.
He wasn't coming back
.

How odd that letting him go had taken this.

The Progenitor was as good as her word, willingly answering Mac's questions. Unfortunately, despite Mac's care to avoid forbidden topics such as biology, every one of those answers was the standard Dhryn “we do not think of it,” complete with a warm smile. After a dozen such responses, having learned nothing useful about the Ro or the Dhryn, Mac decided she'd tire before the Progenitor.

Now, she sat cross-legged beside Brymn on the palm of a giant. Amazing how easily the mind could put aside considerations like incredible size and inconceivable power when it came to a war of wills. Mac eyed the face on the blue wall of flesh and knew there were real answers behind it.
Good thing,
she told herself,
she herself was stubborn to a fault
.

“What should I ask you, Progenitor, that I haven't?” she inquired innocently.

The eyes blinked, one/two, as if she'd surprised the other. “I—”

Mac took advantage of the Progenitor's slight hesitation. “You must have expected me to ask you something in particular, or you wouldn't have invited my questions.” She kept her voice set to sweetly courteous when it tried to slip into sarcasm. “I'd hate to disappoint you.”

Brymn gave her a look that, from a Human companion, would have been asking, “What the hell do you think you're doing?” Mac ignored it, on the basis that from a Dhryn, for all she knew, it meant approval.

“I admit, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol, that I have waited for you to ask why the Progenitors who preceded me chose to destroy our past, why we allow our system to remain at risk through the transects, and why I permitted you to be the first alien to meet a Dhryn Progenitor face-to-face.”

“Good questions.” So good, Mac hadn't dared ask them. “Would you answer them?”

They stared at one another, Brymn shifting unhappily as if he wished to say something but didn't dare. In this instance, Mac realized, she had an advantage over her friend. He was too used to revering the Progenitors, handicapping his ability to challenge different viewpoints.

Mac, on the other hand, was well past caring about protocol, and her only feeling about the Progenitor was a familiar awe for the way biology managed to work around civilization.

“Very well.” The Progenitor pursed her small lips. “Our past has not been destroyed, although it has been made inaccessible to most Dhryn, including curious academics such as Brymn Las. Progenitors live a very long time. The three who survived the attacks of the Ro to settle this world lived long enough to share their knowledge with the next generation of successful Progenitors. That knowledge has been passed to those of my generation. Thus, we know what has been, what is, and what may be the consequence. Other Dhryn do not need to think of it.”

“So the Ro are responsible for the destruction in the Chasm?”

“We barely escaped them,” the Progenitor acknowledged, her eyes closing. “Had we not discovered technology to defend against theirs, we would have been destroyed again.”

“Then why the transects?”

Her eyes opened in a flash of yellow-gold. “Before the Ro found us again, we had reached a point at which our
oomling
s must have new homes or suffer the consequences of overcrowding this one. We cannot change what it is to be Dhryn, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol. Our colonies are essential to our survival.”

Population pressure.
Mac had to give the Dhryn credit—from what she'd seen, they'd made thorough use of this planet before venturing outward to others. If the Progenitors were physically incapable of slowing the birth rate—and culturally unwilling to find a biological way out—new worlds were the only answer.

The last of the three
. Mac tilted her head as she asked: “Why did you permit me, a Human, to meet you?”

The Progenitor's eyes, though embedded forever in this mountain of flesh, could still sparkle. “Young Brymn Las is not the only curious Dhryn, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol. I wished to see an alien with my own eyes, not through sensors and vids. At the same time, only one who is deemed Dhryn may be allowed in this chamber. You are both.”

Mac pressed her hand against the palm supporting them. She doubted its thickened surface could feel something so small, but the Progenitor could see and hopefully understand the gesture. “I hope I haven't been a disappointment, Progenitor.”

“In no sense, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol, though I fear I must now disappoint you. One final question, if you please. I tire easily.”

One?
Mac almost panicked.
What if she asked a question that received only the stock answer? What if she missed the most important one?

For no reason, Mac thought of the envelope in the pouch around her waist. She settled herself, abruptly sure what Nik would want her to ask. “If the Ro are beginning to attack other species as they did yours in the Chasm, what can we do to protect ourselves? Will the Dhryn share their effective defense?”

Two questions, but they would be one if the only answer was the Dhryn technology. Mac chewed her lower lip as the Progenitor deliberated. At least, Mac thought, the delay meant it wasn't going to be another “we don't think of it.”

It wasn't.
The palm shifted beneath them, sending both Mac and Brymn to their feet, staggering to keep their balance. “We remember!” the Progenitor cried out in a pain-filled voice, eyes wild. Mac heard cries from below as the torso landscape shook with emotion, churning the pools, spilling
oomlings
. “There is no protection! No safety! There is only emptiness and regret!” The wall in front of them became stained with yellow as mucus boiled from the huge nostrils above. Quieter, but no less intense: “The gates between worlds will close again and the only hope is to run before they do. Tell your species to run, Human! Run while you still can!”

The hand swept them away from the grief-stricken face before Mac could open her mouth to reply.