Migration: Species Imperative #2 - By Julie E. Czerneda Page 0,2

young woman so worried about disturbing her, Uthami Dhaniram, was already published, having spent three years studying sea grass dynamics in the Gulf of Mannar for Bharathiyar University. She’d arrived eager for her first winter, an ambition that would have to wait a few months.

In every way a contrast, tall, fair, and freckled Cassidy T. Wilson would likely consider Norcoast’s mild, damp winters a joke, given he came from a family-run North Sea trawler. No academic credentials on his application, but experience enough to have drawn fine creases around his washed blue eyes and leave permanent ruddy patches on his cheeks. A deep-water fisher. Mac looked forward to his insights.

If Lee could keep him. Case, as the young man preferred to be called, had originally applied to work with the Harvs, the research teams investigating the Human lines of the salmon equation. A logical choice.

Until Dr. Kammie Noyo, Mac’s coadministrator of the facility, decided otherwise. As Mac had been an unfathomable number of light-years distant at the time—on a world without oceans, let alone salmon cruising their depths—she could hardly protest after the fact.

Not that she would. Kammie’s instincts were often on target. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d deliberately cross-fertilized a lagging area of research by dumping an unwitting and typically unwilling student into the mix. If the student lasted and had talent, the results could be spectacular.

Of course, since Lee’s research moved young Mr. Wilson into the so-called “Wet” half of Norcoast’s projects—an arbitrary division based on the likelihood of wet socks at any given time—and Kammie administrated only the “Dry” now that she was no longer in sole charge, making sure this student lasted became, naturally, another of Mac’s responsibilities.

“Sorry to bother you, Dr. Connor,” Case began, ducking behind the hint of an awkward bow. His voice, higher-pitched than one would expect from his frame, tended to squeak. There were beads of sweat, not rain, on his forehead.

Mac raised one eyebrow in challenge. “ ‘Mac,’ ” she corrected. Uthami’s dark eyes widened into shocked circles. Before she could argue, Mac continued, lifting a finger for each point: “We’re doing the same work. We live in the same place. And I can guarantee you, we’ll smell the same in a very short time.”

A broad grin slowly spread over Case’s face. “Mac, it is.” He looked suddenly younger.

What was it like, to be so young, to know so little yet be so sure?

Mac shrugged off the feeling. “Now. Who can’t stay out—and where’s out—all day? And why?” The hammering of rain on the curved ceiling underscored every word, but the weather was hardly noteworthy. Castle Inlet, where the pods, walkways, and docks of Norcoast’s Base nestled, was surrounded by coastal rain forest for good reason.

“There’s a man who came with some Preds this morning, Dr.—Mac,” Uthami explained, gamely stumbling past the name. “Security won’t let him in because he doesn’t have a pass, but he won’t leave. He’s been waiting outside the pod since before our last class, a couple of hours at least. Tie—Mr. McCauley—said just leave him there, but we—we thought—you should be told.” Uthami stopped and looked to Case, patently out of her depth.

Mac felt a little that way herself. Security. Locked doors. Things hadn’t all stayed the same; most of the new changes hadn’t been for the better. Even these youngsters could see it.

“Did you talk to him? Get his name?” she asked, venturing over the abyss of a startling hope. Could it be? Then common sense took over. Nikolai Piotr Trojanowski would hardly be stopped by the very security he’d put in place before leaving.

To go where?

Someplace she couldn’t.

“No. We just saw him, standing in the rain.”

From the fresh worry on both faces, she was scowling again. Mac forced a smile. “Then I’d better go see for myself. Thank you, both.”

Norcoast Salmon Research Facility, or Base, as those with even the slightest acquaintance with it learned to call the place, was made up of six large pods pretending to be islands, connected by a maze of mem-wood walkways from spring through fall, with equally temporary docks and landing pads for its fleet of mostly operational skims and levs. Base was staffed, again from spring through fall, by a varying number of research teams who followed their equally varied interests along the coastline and into the waters of not only this inlet, but from Hecate Strait and the Pacific to the smallest glacier-fed lake that fed a stream that completed the circuit traveled by