Migration by Julie E. Czerneda

with numb hands even as the world stopped trying to shrug them loose.
    Then she roused herself to follow the procedures she’d practiced with the rest. The gates would have opened to release anything captive in Pod Six. What remained was to make sure everyone was safe and inside, ready for what would follow.
    For the mere heave of earth and stone wasn’t what threatened Base.
    It was water.

    Imagine lying in a bathtub, legs out before you. Imagine lifting and dropping your legs, not too high but very quickly, to make your own small quake. Watch the water as it hurries to fill the void, then is pushed aside again as your legs settle. The quake is over.
    Now watch how the water surges to crash over your knees and threatens to spill over the sides of the tub.
    The bathtubs used by the designers of Norcoast Salmon Research Facility were larger, and featured immense paddles instead of legs, but the principle was the same. They knew there would be earthquakes. And when there were earthquakes near water, that water would move. Tsunami. The giant waves that raced away from the disturbance faster than a skim, traveling entire oceans as a line of shadow, a mere ruffling of the surface, until cresting to a hideous destructive height against any shoreline, a threat to all who lived in sight of the sea.
    Enclosed areas, like bathtubs, like Castle Inlet, faced their own maelstrom. Here, confined by cliffs, the water shoved aside would surge back, racing from side to side, tumbling up slopes and down again, over and over until it built into huge tortured piles that would slam against anything in their way with inescapable force.
    The designers knew this and planned for it, as much as technology could plan for nature. If an earthquake of sufficient force was detected by the pod anchors, they would loosen their grip and become tethers. Walkways would disconnect. Shielding meant for ice and storm would wrap around the walls of the pods and doors to the ocean would close. The pods would rise and fall with the water. A bumpy ride at best, but survivable. Hopefully.
    While inside . . .
    “I’m just saying—I hate this part.”
    Mac leaned shoulder to shoulder with Kammie Noyo, and couldn’t disagree.
    Leaned wasn’t exactly the word. Like everyone else in this pod and all the others, she was pinned where she’d last stood in the corridor by the protective foam hardening around them. It had erupted from orifices throughout the interior of the structure the moment the pod’s sensors had detected the terraces were clear of people and the storm shields were in place, filling labs and rooms, holding objects in place as well as people.
    “And I don’t see why it has to be the color of bile.”
    Mac had remembered to keep her arms up as the foam rose up their legs and bodies, stopping chest high on her. During a test of the system, years ago, she’d left them down and spent three hours unable to deal with a maddening itch on the side of her nose. The foam was harmless, if you didn’t mind the paralysis aspect. You could lie down on the floor and be completely covered. Not her first choice. The foam arched overhead as well, following the wall and ceiling material to effectively seal anything that might otherwise shake loose and fall on their heads. Its join was, presumably, also waterproof. Even if the pods were flipped right over, they should be safe.
    The Ro had known. They’d known to disable the pods’ protections before sabotaging their anchors. They’d been told how by Emily Mamani, their spy. Emily, who had come to Base to find out why Mackenzie Connor and her obscure work so interested a Dhryn. Emily, who had come to use that interest to hunt the Dhryn’s weakness, their Progenitors. Emily, who with the Ro had used Mac to befriend a Dhryn and betray his kind, for the good of all others.
    “Forgive me.”
    “Mac? How can you sleep through this?”
    “Thinking, not sleeping.” Mac looked down at Kammie. The other woman’s