Read Survival for Free Online Page B

from the Pacific by the lush green arms of the Queen Charlotte Islands, the Haida Gwaii. To the east, the strait tried to sneak its waters into the snow-capped Rockies, wrapping around islands and through inlets like fingers grabbing for a hold, thwarted by the growing bones of a continent. Rivers, like tears of sympathy, leaked through the mountains to join the strait.
    From an eagle’s perspective, the midst of the strait might be the center of the Pacific, especially during storm winds. The submerged mountains forming the Queen Charlottes hid their tips below the horizon; the continent was nowhere to be seen. Mariners treated the area with respect. Whales sang here.
    But approach the coast and the landscape shot skyward again, as if the ocean waves constantly pushed the rock to heaven and forest anchored cliff to cloud. On clear days, the scale changed again, as the mountain ranges laughed down at forest, cliff, and ocean. Victor and goal in one.
    As the eagle flew, the coast was a labyrinth of deep cut channels that bent, fractured, and found one another again. There were hidden coves of water so still the bird’s reflection chased it. Along every shore, the bleached remains of giant trees competed with splintered bits of mountain, a rubble reshaped every spring.
    Every spring, the Norcoast Salmon Research Facility, or Base, as its staff of scientists, techs, and students preferred to call it, came back to life.
    Base floated within the southwest curl of Castle Inlet, a peaceful intrusion of humanity consisting of a half dozen pods, various docks, and landing pads linked by walkways. The pods were domes, their mottled grays, mauves, and browns matched to the exposed rock of the shoreline in the hope they’d resemble tiny islands themselves. It might have worked, if there had been forests of cedar and fir on the flattened roofs instead of aerials, solar collectors, skylights, and the occasional deck chair. Though the practice was discouraged, students tended to hang their laundry from the balconies surrounding each pod, further dispelling the illusion of blending with nature.
    The walkways were also employed to dry both wet towels and fish specimens. On those rare occasions when the sun encouraged such effort, they formed the favored spot for people to dry out as well, making it impossible to walk from pod to pod with any speed.
    Not that speed was the point. Norcoast’s researchers worked by nature’s timetable, not their own, and endurance mattered more than haste. As the Coho, Pink, Chinook, and King salmon arrived from the Pacific, feeding on the immense schools of pilchard converging in Hecate Strait, survey crews hovered overhead in aqualevs, sleeping over their monitors, if at all. Those studying the impacts of oceanic predation slept at Base, but only at the whim of orca pod, shark, and seal. Easy to know the predator researchers. Preds were the ones running along the walkways with still-lathered hair or wearing pajamas under their rain gear, a consequence of wearing wrist alarms activated by remotes listening at the entrances to the Sound as well as the various inlets.
    A few at Base lived by Human hours, in order to process data from their compatriots with the commercial harvesters. To compensate for that luxury, Harvs wound up cooking for the rest, being more likely to be awake and functional when supplies had to be ordered and received.
    They were doubtless all awake now, Mac thought grimly. She’d tucked the envelope from Trojanowski under her clothes, where it molded with unsettling comfort against her skin. There’d been no time or privacy to read its contents. She and Emily had sealed their equipment against weather, bear, and packrat. There’d been the required clarification for the t-lev’s crew—namely that Mac had no intention of letting them dismantle and remove Field Station Six, no matter what fool had ordered it. The crew, in turn, wisely professed themselves