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Dhryn’s keening hadn’t abated. In fact, Mac thought it had climbed a notch or two in volume.
    The bureaucrat hugged his bag to his chest and leaned down to say very quietly, “He doesn’t exactly listen to me, Dr. Connor.”
    Mac narrowed her eyes. “Then he’ll listen to me, Mr. Trojanowski. I guarantee it.”
    His bleated “I wouldn’t—” was left behind as Mac walked back to confront the unhappy Dhryn, but the man caught up to her. “Please, Dr. Connor. We can’t have an interspecies incident. Brymn is the first of his kind to visit Earth—”
    â€œAnd I don’t care if he’s the last.” Mac pulled out her imp and used it to poke the Dhryn in the middle of his widest band of rose-colored silk.
    Brymn’s eyes shot open and his wailing ended in an exaggerated “whhooff” of air leaving his mouth. Before anything else came out, Mac put her hands on her hips and said firmly: “Leave. Now.” She put away her imp and hoped it still worked; she went through several a year as it was. “I have work to do and you are interfering.”
    Without another word, the Dhryn turned and clambered back into the skim. Tie jumped in after him, possibly afraid the creature would take off with the team’s vehicle.
    Not surprisingly, the bureaucrat was staring at Mac, his mouth working as though unsure what expression would be safe. He did take a cautious step out of range.
    As Mac feared, the rain chose the least convenient moment to turn from drizzle to blinding sheets that made it hard to breathe. She tugged her hood over her head and waved impatiently to the sodden figure still hesitating in front of her. Emily was already splashing toward her console. “Goodbye, Mr. Trojanowski.”
    The fool was digging into his office pouch. As Mac prepared to tell him where he could file his paperwork, she saw what he was pulling out.
    It was an envelope, in the unmistakable blue and green reserved for documents pertaining to the safety and security of humanity. Such an envelope must be accepted by any person; refusing such an envelope was treason against the Human species. Its contents were both secret and vital.
    Mac had only seen them in movies featuring spies and intergalactic warfare. She’d half-believed they were nothing more than a handy plot device.
    Her hands lifted to accept the envelope, closing over what wasn’t rain-coated paper, but instead felt like thin metal, heat-stealing and sharp. Her name suddenly crawled over its surface in mauve-tinted acknowledgment.
    Did she imagine a flash of sympathy on Nikolai Trojanowski’s face before he turned to join Brymn in the skim?
    Mac watched the vehicle lift, then drop to the river’s surface, vanishing into the rain. Beneath, dorsal fins sliced the heaving darkness of the river and bodies twisted to leap through the foam. The Harlequins landed on the shore, walking in single file to plunge into the river. Left alone, life on the Tannu sought its own rhythm, heedless of Human affairs.
    Emily shook her cape as she approached, adding her spray to the deluge. “Well, that broke the boredom . . .” Her voice trailed away as she spotted the envelope. “Ai.”
    Mac’s hands wanted to drop the thing but couldn’t. “Lock us down, Dr. Mamani,” she ordered, wondering at the steadiness of her own voice. “I expect the other shoe to drop will be—Ah, yes. Base sending a pickup.”
    On cue, a shape formed itself from rain and mist: the transport lev from Norcoast, angling for a landing that wouldn’t crush either tent or console.
    â€œIt seems someone thinks we’re finished here,” Mac said, giving the t-lev a short nod that had nothing to do with agreement.
    And everything to do with challenge.

3

    ARRIVAL AND ANNOYANCE
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    O N HER OFFICE wall, Mac had a satellite image of O Hecate Strait, its intense blue kept