Survival (8 page)

There were times to linger over the sheer hedonism of hot water after living under field conditions. This wasn't one of them. Mac hit the air dry the instant her hand skimmed the last clumps of lather from her head, bending over so the jets meant to dry her skin did double duty on her hair. The locks were still damp enough to stick to her fingers when she shut off the shower and stepped out, her other hand snagging the navy blue Norcoast coveralls Emily had found for her.

They fit, in the way shapeless, untailored, thoroughly practical clothes did. Mac rolled up the cuffs at ankle and wrist, securing each by pinching the mem-fabric in their hems. She'd had everything else she needed, including dry sandals, in her backpack.

“Your turn, Em.” Mac kicked her 'pack into Emily's living room, her hands busy sorting her hair into its customary braid, twisting the result into a knot to lie at the base of her neck. “Don't dawdle.”

Emily was stretched out on the couch, one arm trailing on the floor as if she'd melted into the furniture, the other, with its cast, resting on the couch back. She lifted her head from a cushion, her expression one of complete disbelief. “What did you do? Skip the soap? I just got comfy—”

“I know. Sorry.” Mac pulled the envelope from a pocket, its dark blue veined with green like some exotic shell. Her name, in lighter mauve, looked ridiculous. “This shouldn't wait much longer. And—” Mac paused, then gave words to the unease she'd felt since first touching it, an unease she'd postponed acknowledging as long as she could. “I don't want to read this alone.”

“Of course not,” Emily agreed, rising to her feet in one smooth motion. She took a step toward the washroom, then stopped, looking at Mac. Her eyes dropped suggestively to the envelope.

“Fine,” Mac said, just as relieved. “I'll open it now.” She chose to sit cross-legged on the carpet. Emily joined her.

“Do you know how?”

Mac turned the envelope over, running a fingertip along each edge. There were no seams. It might have been a wafer of mother-of-pearl, solid to the core. “Any ideas?”

“Not I.” Emily leaned forward, studying their problem. “I won't touch it either. Not with your name on it. Maybe you should call our friend Nikolai.”

Mac remembered the searching look the bureaucrat had given her—the way he'd obviously decided not to talk to her. “He expected me to have opened it already,” she concluded out loud. “So there's nothing high tech about it.” Before she could hesitate, Mac grabbed the envelope in both hands and ripped it in half.

A tiny multifolded sheet slipped from the portion of the envelope in her right hand, landing on her leg. Mac put the halves aside and picked up the sheet, opening it slowly. Mem-paper, if a far finer, thinner version than those in Lee's books. The sheet was smooth between her fingers as she angled it to read:

“You look as though you've eaten some of Ward's scrambled eggs. It can't be that bad.”

Mac shook her head, more to postpone Emily's questions than in answer. “It doesn't say much of anything,” she puzzled. “There's more attached.” A light tap on the page and the memo was replaced by a list of reports.
This mem-sheet was definitely more sophisticated than those in Lee's novels.
“Grab your shower, Em,” she suggested, looking up to meet her friend's eyes. “This is going to take a while to read.”

The other woman didn't budge. “Not until you tell me if we're all going to die before the weekend. If so, I've got plans to make first.”

“I think your weekend is safe.”

“Not good enough.”

Mac's lips quirked. “Fine. It's from the Ministry of Extra-Sol Human Affairs—”

“Whoa.” Emily's eyebrows rose. “That's weird. Earthgov, I expected. The Consulate, I could see. Any alien entering our air has to go through them. But the Ministry? To state the obvious, they don't deal with Earth at all.”

She was right, of course. Mac knew that much history. Humanity's spread throughout its own solar system had produced another layer of governance, to speak for the differing needs of those living without gravity or biosphere. The Ministry, as most now called it, had served as the conduit for both complaint and accommodation. As the populations living off the planet had increased, so had the Ministry.

In a way, that exponential growth had prepared humanity for its next great leap outward. A mere 150 years after the first Human birth on Mars, Humans gained the technology to expand to the stars. Oh, it wasn't theirs.
Very little,
Mac thought ruefully,
from imp to broadcast power, was.
When the first non-Human probe arrived, with its standard invitation from the Interspecies Union to build and maintain transects to bypass normal space, and thus participate in its economic community of other intelligences, humanity hadn't hesitated an instant. The Ministry, for its part, moved outward with every Human starship and colonist, a familiar safety net—and occasionally useful bureaucratic aggravation—for those brave souls venturing into the true unknown. Mind you, it turned out that much of the galaxy in Earth's vicinity was very well known and populated, so over the last century, the Ministry had quietly evolved into a convenient way of keeping Earth's far-flung offspring in touch with home.

Meanwhile, the Interspecies Union, or IU, hadn't left that home alone. It had requested, and been granted, property on Earth to build a Consulate. In New Zealand, in fact, due to the variety of climates readily available. There, visitors of any biological background could be welcomed, briefed on local customs, checked for transmissibles, and sent off to conduct whatever business they deemed worth doing on the Human home world. Little about Earth wasn't of interest to someone or something, although Saturn's moons boasted more alien traffic on an annual basis.

In return, Humans continued to feast on the combined technology of thousands of other races, many more advanced in one field or another, the whole benefiting from the cross-pollination of ideas. The IU wasn't composed of fools. Not entirely, anyway. There were always stories—

Not that Mac paid attention to stories about aliens or their business, content to use the latest tools and stay within her field and species.
Until now
.

“You'll see why it comes from the Ministry, Em,” Mac said soberly, then read the rest of the message out loud. When done, she added thoughtfully: “I'm not downplaying the threat, but this part about Brymn coming to me? Does it sound like a plea for some diplomatic nuisance-sitting to you?”

“Oh, as if diplomacy is your strong suit,” Emily quipped, but looked only faintly reassured. “You read the rest while I clean up. Then I want to know everything else that's in there. Deal?”

Mac hesitated. A little late, her conscience was bothering her. “The message said confidential.”

Emily flashed a grin. “So don't tell Tie. You know he spreads gossip faster than the com system—”

“Be serious, Em.”

A sudden, very sober look from those dark brown eyes. “I'm nothing but serious, Mac. A possible ‘Category Zeta' threat? We can't let word of this spread in any way. You probably shouldn't have told even me—but now that I'm in it, I'm damned if I'll sit by and wonder what's going on overhead.”

Mac acknowledged the truth of that with a single nod. “We need to talk to Brymn. Go shower. I'll start going through this.”

“On my way, boss.” Emily shed clothing as she went, apparently determined to challenge Mac's speed.

Once the door closed, Mac stretched out on her stomach, laying the mem-sheet on the floor in front of her. Unconfirmed rumor or crackpot notion, Em was right—this scale of threat had to be taken seriously until proven otherwise. Obviously, she and Em weren't the only ones to think so.

She was, however, the only one to poke the scientist she was supposed to help in the midriff, shoo him from her field station, then attempt to drown the man sent by the Secretary General to assist them both.

Resisting a quite remarkable level of guilt, Mac began to read.

Mac tapped the com. “Dr. Connor to Pod Three, please.” While she waited, she frowned at Emily, who'd settled on her outfit of choice with unusual alacrity and was now resplendent in a black evening jumpsuit that oozed sophistication and personal style. She'd given up on the sling and wrapped the cast in matching fabric. At the moment, the other biologist was holding out a similar garment in red, a gleam in her eye.
Over my dead body,
Mac mouthed at her.

“Pod Three.”

No mistaking that voice.
“Tie? What are you doing on coms?”

“Oh, it's you. Hi, Mac. Yeah. Everyone else has headed for the gallery to get a good seat—I pulled short straw, having met our guest. Should be quite the affair. Why aren't you down there yourself?”

Emily shook the red jumpsuit suggestively; Mac stuck out her tongue. So much for her hope to arrange a private meeting with—and apology to—both Brymn and Mr. Trojanowski before supper. “We'll be there shortly,” she said. “I wanted to check that everything was on schedule.” Emily rolled her eyes.

“On schedule?” Tie's laugh was a bark worthy of a sea lion. “No problem. It's been the Pied Piper and his rats around here. Last I saw, that Dhryn was walking through Admin, collecting people as he went. Cooks will have to hustle to be ready, that's my guess.”

Disrupting everyone else's research,
Mac thought, changing her mind about the apology as she closed the connection. “Let's go.”

“Dressed like—that. You can't be serious. Now that we know it's for supper—”

“Supper?” Mac raised both eyebrows. “Em, it's Pizza Tuesday.”

Emily appeared to struggle with the concept, then spat out something frustrated in Quechan. “You're meeting with a scientist of another species and a representative of the Ministry of Extra-Sol Human Affairs! What kind of impression will you make in those?”

Mac brushed nonexistent dust from her borrowed coveralls. “No worse than I've made already. You impress them. I want to get this over with so we can get back to work.”

The rejected jumpsuit sailed across the room to drape itself over the couch. “So you've made up your mind about this so-called threat to humanity.” Emily's voice was studiously neutral. She'd read the reports after Mac and had had nothing—yet—to say.

Not knowing what to do with the pieces of the secret envelope, Mac had slipped them over the refolded mem-sheet, intending to save all three. To her astonishment, the two halves had immediately mended themselves into an unblemished whole, once more winking with her name. The envelope now seemed to burn a hole in Mac's hip pocket. “What threat?” she asked. Mac walked over to the window wall and stood peering out through the droplets, then refocused on them. With a finger, she traced imaginary patterns between drops picked at random, touching each as she recited the list from memory. “A group of climbers disappears from a mountain on Thitus Prime. A cruise barge on Regellus drifts ashore, empty. Balloonists never land on N'not'k. An eco-patrol vanishes from a forest in Ascendis. A harvesting crew isn't seen again on Ven Twenty-Nine—”