Regeneration (Czerneda) by Julie E Czerneda

then heaved a distinctly theatrical sigh as if the entire matter was beyond him. “I’ll go and get started with the rest, including Fourteen. It’ll be easier than what you’ll be doing.”
    As Mudge walked away, Mac threw up her hands. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”
    Emily would love the plan.

4
    OBSTACLE AND OBSCURITY
     
     
     
    “ A NCHEN LOVES THE PLAN.” Mac heard the pleading note in her own voice and winced. Not the right approach.
    Sure enough, Emily spat out a frustrated string of Quechua Mac didn’t want translated. “Of course she does,” she finished in English, throwing her gloved arms skyward in emphasis. “Don’t you see, Mac? It splits us up. Means you’ll do whatever she wants.”
    “No!” Mac protested. Her friend would have to rediscover physical expression for this conversation, she sighed to herself, neck sore from following Emily’s relentless pacing. Just as well they’d met in her quarters rather than outside. “That’s not true. She—to Anchen your returning to Base would be—” profoundly circular? Somehow, she doubted spouting alien philosophy was going to help, even if Emily could be convinced that she, Mac, had any idea what she was spouting. Not likely. “She loves the plan,” Mac repeated lamely.
    “While I hate the plan. I’m not going. End of discussion.”
    Anchen and Mudge had been right, Mac realized with some disgust. The way it stood, if she had a month, she couldn’t argue, cajole, or rationalize Emily into doing things her way. That left . . . Mac steeled herself. “You owe me, Em.”
    Emily stood still. “Owe you?” A shapely dark eyebrow rose—curiosity, not offense. Yet.
    “Yes. And I’m collecting. You’re going to Base. I need to know it’s running.” Mac didn’t bother adding: and you’re safe .
    Here came the offense, right on cue—that proud flash of Emily’s eyes, the passionate outrage. “I don’t believe it. You—it’s revenge, isn’t it? Bizarre, twisted revenge! Aie! You’re abandoning me. To—you want me to work on your damned fish for you! Well, I won’t!”
    “Good. Because I want you to work on your damned Survivors!”
    They faced off, both furious. Then Emily’s expression shifted to shock. “What did you say?”
    “You’ll have to rebuild your Tracer. But you’ll have every resource.” Mac considered this, then hastily qualified: “Short of interfering with the field season.”
    “Heavens forbid I do that.” But Emily’s slowly expanding smile took the sting out of the words. “You actually talked the Sinzi-ra into this. Supporting my research. Now that I don’t believe.”
    “She owes me, too,” Mac said succinctly.
    “You always were dangerous in a corner, Mackenzie Connor.” Emily shook her head, her hands spreading in a gesture of surrender. “Okay. I love the plan.”
    Mac tried not to sound smug. “I knew you would. Now. We don’t have much time.”

    After sending Emily to prepare her “shopping list” for the Sinzi-ra—doubtless to be long and costly, judging by the other scientist’s intense air of concentration when she’d left Mac—Mac sat behind her desk and began a list of her own.
    She’d committed herself now, she thought, studying the ’screen hovering before her eyes, drawing a finger through a lower quadrant to retrieve her field station inventory. Emily at Base; Mac in space.
    There was a switch.
    She’d learned a few things about travel offworld. Mac didn’t bother deleting any items, given she had no idea what she might face and now knew better than to believe anyone who said they did. Tools, dissection kits, syringes, specimen bottles, scales—anything might be useful. And they fit her hands. She’d become all too aware of the dearth of Human-oriented technology outside this system.
    On that thought, she added a distillation kit and several collapsible jugs for water to her list.
    Myriam was a desert. Never an overly moist world, lacking the large oceans