Survival by Julie E. Czerneda

Author:Julie E. Czerneda
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Canadian, General, Science Fiction, Human-Alien Encounters, Adventure, Life on Other Planets, Fiction
ISBN: 9780756402617
Publisher: DAW BOOKS
Published: 2005-05-02T17:00:00+00:00

12

DEPARTURE AND DECEIT

“PUT 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.

For herself.

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.

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