Adrift

by W. Michael Gear

  18

  The dreams had been weird. Images of the bush, slipping through dappled shadows beneath aquajade, creeping over tangles of roots, and hunting. Odors and tastes he knew but had no words for. Flashes of strange but curiously familiar quetzals. Like Dek recognized these beasts he’d never laid eyes on. He kept seeing landscapes, forest images, vistas where he’d never been, but that reeked of the familiar. In some, he was hunting, camouflaged in wait as chamois or crest approached unaware.

  In another, even more fantastic, he was seated at a table in a simple earthly kitchen, reassembling an ancient broken bowl. A colorful thing with wavering and shape-shifting images on the side. He witnessed slim fingers carefully fitting pieces together, gluing them, and setting them to cure in a big sand-filled bowl. And in the background, he could smell tamales.

  What the hell had that been about?

  Dek shook his head. Had to be side effects from Dya’s drug. Or maybe hallucinations caused by the gotcha vine poison.

  Opening his eyes, he lay on his back—nothing overhead except the hospital-room ceiling. The duraplast was featureless and even more uninteresting because only one of the two light panels still worked. The second one had been removed sometime in the past, leaving only the gaping square hole in the ceiling with the wire capped off. As if they’d been ready to put in a replacement but thought better of it at the last instant.

  The rest of the room had been painted in what Dek decided to call puke-beige. That was the thing about hospitals. Whoever picked the colors for the walls must have chosen the least popular, most universally repellant, and absolutely sterile colors they could find. True, maybe charcoal black or bruised dark purple, or perhaps a morose maroon-brown combination might have been worse. Dek decided he’d best not mention the fact to the administrators, because sure as fart-sucking hell, if he ever landed back here, the walls would be painted with it.

  Not only that, the place was noisy. Seemed to be humming. Like bad electrical wiring. The equipment out on the shuttle field sounded unusually loud. The loaders might have been right outside his window.

  That and the whispers. He kept hearing bits of words, often disjointed and nonsensical. Sometimes they were clearly in his head. At other times, the partial voice was right there, next to his ear. He’d turn, looking for the speaker, only to realize the sound had been nondirectional. Real and imagined at the same time. Like an itch that couldn’t be scratched, he just knew that someone was trying to talk to him.

  “Learning.” The word popped into his thoughts as if it were an answer to an unasked question.

  He squirmed around, delighted that moving didn’t send him into paroxysms of pain. The bed they’d placed him in, to his dismay, was also a relic. Something that The Corporation must have bought for cheap because no one else wanted it. So they’d shipped it off to Donovan where, even if anyone bitched, it would be thirty light years beyond the hearing of whichever bureaucrat had made the purchase. That, or—knowing how these things worked—it had been a political deal. Someone had paid off someone else to take the Torquemada-inspired thing. He was starting to wonder what he’d offer a procurement officer just to have the contraption hauled away and dropped in a black hole.

  “It’s early stages,” Talina said from somewhere out in the hallway. “Aching behind his eyes. Rainbow vision. On the way in, he mentioned voices, blamed them on side effects from Dya’s anesthetic.”

  “Cheng just ran the blood sample,” Raya Turnienko said in return. “His TriNA predominantly has Flute’s signature, but he’s got others, too, including Rocket’s, Rork’s, and, unfortunately, Whitey’s haplotypes. Any idea on how that might have happened?”

  “No, I. . . . Aw, shit on a shoe.”

  “What is it, Talina?”

  “The guy was dying, Raya. No heartbeat. Had stopped breathing. Probably from shock. I mean, you saw his leg. No human I know should have been able to climb out of that canyon, but he did. Probably took everything he had. Add dehydration to the poison . . . I tell you, the guy was clinically dead. I gave him CPR.”

  “Tasted peppermint?” Raya asked.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I was a hell of a lot more concerned with getting his heart started again.”

  Dek bellowed. “I’m eternally grateful that you did, but would you mind stepping in here, so I can be part of the conversation?”

  To his surprise, he heard them approach from down the hall. How far away had they been? Down by Raya’s office?

  Raya entered, thundered, “How’s the leg?”

  “Hey, easy. I can hear fine, all right?”

  Raya shot Talina a knowing glance.

  Talina, in almost a whisper, told him, “You’ll learn to balance it. It’s the cells that are growing in your inner ear. What your brain hasn’t figured out yet, is how to modulate the signal it’s getting from all of those new nerve cells. It’s a bootstrapping process, takes a couple of days.”

  “Can we cut to the chase, here?” Dek asked. “I’m turning into a quetzal, that’s what you’re telling me?”

  “You been hunting chamois in your dreams?” Talina asked, coming to sit on the side of his bed. “Maybe had images of the bush? Places you’ve never been? Visions of crazy things that you know aren’t real, but feel so absolutely familiar you just know it can’t be made up?”

  “Given you know what’s going on in my head, I take it I’m not the first.”

  “You were the one who shared blood with Flute. I told you it came with consequences.”

  Dek chuckled wearily to himself as Raya used a thermometer to take his temperature. Asked, “How’s the leg?”

  “Hugely better,” he told her. “What’s the prognosis?”

  “On the leg, or the quetzal TriNA that’s working its way through your body?”

  “Leg first.”

  “Okay, Dek. You’re not going to lose it. Part of that is probably the quetzal genetic material doing its thing. It changes the organelles in your muscle cells so that they process lactic acid more efficiently and contract with greater volume. There might also be some gene that recognizes gotcha poison and processes an enzyme that oxidizes or denatures it. I’ve taken samples. If life ever slows down enough, I’ll even get around to studying them sometime in the next two or three decades.”

  Talina was giving him an eerie stare, as if she was looking right inside him. Seeing . . . what?

  “How soon am I out of here?” Dek asked. “The idea of leaving that airplane out at the claim is eating a hole in my gut.”

  Talina cocked an eyebrow. “Not that I’m particularly looking out for your welfare, but that’s too important a piece of equipment to leave at Donovan’s mercy. Step and Bateman took an aircar out to your claim this morning. Bateman is rated. He can fly it back.” A baiting pause. “Don’t know what they’re going to ask in return for the favor, but you being a Taglioni, you can bet, it will be big.”

  “Yeah, probably will.” Dek answered her mocking smile with his own. Step wouldn’t be the problem. Step liked to play poker, and Dek was really good at poker. Bateman, however, didn’t have any vices that Dek could really use against him. That might take more thought.

  “Meanwhile,” Raya told him, “you’re to stay off that leg. At least for a week. You got a place to lay low? If not”—she gestured around—“welcome to home sweet home.”

  Dek took in the drab walls, gave the missing light panel in the ceiling a scathing glance. No pus-sucking way. He said, “Shig’s got that study out in his garden. I’ve stayed there before. Even Shig’s futon might be an improvement over this torture rack of a bed.”

  “Figuring you’ll have Shig bringing your meals? Let him fetch and carry for you day in and day out? Allow yourself to become a burden?” Talina made a tsking sound with her lips. “Raya and I know you better than that. You’ll be up and hobbling around after a
day, figuring that you don’t want to put him out. And, after all, you’re a tough Taglioni.”

  “Could do some serious long-term damage to the nerve cells,” Raya told him. “I mean it when I say you have to stay off that leg. And quetzal TriNA is jacking around with your brain. It’s already started filling you with hallucinations, weird thoughts. Playing with your free will. Last time I had to deal with that, we ended up with a gunshot-blasted shipping container, and I got ignominiously strapped to that very same bed that you’re now lying in.”

  Talina’s lips crinkled in a guilt-ridden wince. “Sorry about that.”

  “Your day will come, Tal,” Raya told her darkly. Then the good doctor fixed on him again. “Seriously, Dek. When Talina went through it, but for luck, she’d have hurt someone. Thought she had.”

  “Madison and Chaco still in town?” he asked, thinking he might catch a ride out to their homestead.

  “Left this morning.” Talina told him. She slapped hands to her thighs, looked up at Raya. “I’ll take him. Put him up at my place. Makes the most sense. Even got my old set of crutches, so he can hobble to the bathroom. Besides, I’ve been through this. If Dek starts hallucinating out of control, I can take him down. Restrain him until we can get him sedated.”

  “Whoa!” Dek cried. “Listen, I’ll be fine. Come on, Tal. You don’t want to be playing nursemaid. And what if someone else gets into trouble out in the bush? Or there’s a riot or something? What are you going to do if you have to run down some criminal? Break up a fight or hunt a quetzal? You have responsibilities.”

  Talina’s alien-dark eyes seemed to bore clear through him. “I may not have done you any favors out there, Dek. After that CPR, when you came to, was your mouth filled with a taste of peppermint?”

  “I, uh . . . yeah.”

  “Know what that was?”

  Dek made a face. “Yeah, tasted that once when Flute jumped into the airtruck and stuck his tongue in my mouth. Like really bitter and really concentrated peppermint extract. But there wasn’t any quetzal this time. Just you, bent over me.”

  “Giving you mouth-to-mouth. That taste? That was you reacting to a load of Demon’s genetic material as well as the combined TriNA from the Mundo and Rork lineages. Sorry, Bucko me boy, but there’s no telling which one is going to come out on top. You just damned well better hope it’s not Demon’s, because as you’re no doubt going to find out, it will do everything in its power to destroy you and as many people around you as it can.”

  “Yesss,” the voice hissed so loudly Dek started.

  “Struck a chord?” Raya asked knowingly.

  “Didn’t you hear that?”

  Talina leaned close, her stare even more eerie. “What did it say?”

  “Yes. As if agreeing with you about Demon’s line.”

  “Sort of a hissing ‘yesss’?” Talina asked.

  “You did hear it!” Dek cried in relief.

  Talina’s expression didn’t change. “Welcome to my nightmare. That’s Demon. How he talks inside me, and it seems that he’s the first to figure out how to interface with the language centers in your brain. But then, he’s had the most practice with that.”

  “Well,” Dek said, sinking back against the pillow, “I guess that just sucks toilet water. What happens next?”

  “He’s going to work on taking over your vision centers, screw around with your hearing and sense of smell, and when you least expect it, he’s going to try and kill you.”

  “Kill me how?”

  “Best bet? He’ll use your limbic system against you. Paralyze you with fear at the wrong moment. Like when you’re being charged by an angry quetzal. Overload you with a consuming anger that makes you do something stupid. Maybe bend you double with crippling pain when you can least afford it. And I mean pain. Sort of like you just experienced with your leg but centered in your gut.”

  “He can do that?”

  Talina gave him a faint shrug of the shoulders. “Hey, Dek. You’ve got a totally pissed-off quetzal loose in your blood and brain. Your little adventure on Donovan just took a really nasty turn for the worse.”

  “How bad could it get?” he wondered.

  “Bad enough that you might end up wishing I’d let you die out there in the bush.”

  19

  Back on the beach, when Yoshimura had stepped out of the seatruck’s door, he’d turned on the cameras. He wasn’t thinking of Donovanian wildlife as much as to maintain a record of their field methodology as they took samples. That would have been critical back on Earth. All research was meticulously recorded for peer review.

  Kalico was thankful for that as she looked out at the stunned and devastated expressions in the Pod cafeteria. Bill Martin, having been married to Shinwua, had somehow managed to sleepwalk his way through the kitchen during preparation of the evening meal. The food he produced might have been cooked, but it was singularly tasteless, as if he’d forgotten any kind of seasoning. Now that people had finished eating, Martin stood, braced against the kitchen doorway, eyes fixed on eternity. His face might have been an emotionless mask.

  When Michaela Hailwood noticed the direction of Kalico’s stare, she said, “Bill and Shin had been together for years. Had Galluzzi marry them.” She reached up, rubbed her dark brows. “This is a blow. I mean, we’ve known the risks, heard the warnings, but this isn’t fair. Shin was just taking a sand sample. He wasn’t doing anything that should have gotten him killed.”

  “Welcome to Donovan,” Kalico told her. She pointed at the UUV, where it rested on a cradle next to the cafeteria wall. After they made it back to the Pod without further incident, it had been Yoshimura who stepped down and noticed the UUV in its grapples. He’d walked over, stared at the plastic casing in disbelief.

  So they’d wheeled it up here where everyone could examine it, see the etchings in the plastic where the “jellyfish” had chewed away at it.

  “Didn’t expect that, either, did you?” Kalico asked gently. “Or to have the first UUV sheered into pieces. Granted, the exterior casing is plain old plastic, not sialon or steel, but it’s still pretty tough stuff. If Shinwua hadn’t been able to electrify the hull, we wouldn’t have brought that second UUV back either. And the jellyfish were closing for another attack even as we evacuated the drone.”

  Michaela rubbed her hands together nervously. “Shin was such a part of us. I just feel stunned. Like this is all suddenly going sideways.”

  “It’s Donovan, Director. You step back, you think, and adapt to the new reality. While stupidity is an immediate death sentence, losing hope or surrendering to despair pushes the inevitable back a couple of days. You end up just as dead. So, you with me when it comes to harsher measures? Or do we close this place down and evacuate everyone to Corporate Mine?”

  “Corporate Mine? To do what?”

  “I’ve got an unstable drift that’s way behind schedule. I can put your people on third shift. They’re smart enough to run mucking machines. Drills, packing shot holes, and shooting magtex will take a bit longer to learn. And there’s always ore sorting or logging details. Reactor maintenance. Cleaning the barracks. Upkeep on the haulers and equipment. No shortage of work, even in the garden. Some of your people could farm.”

  Michaela took a deep breath. “With respect, Board Supervisor, we’ll consider that a last resort. So, what’s next in your book?”

  “Dealing with reality.” Kalico stood from her chair, braced her arms on the table, and stared out at the room. It went immediately quiet. Not that there had been a lot of chatter to start with, just whispered conversation, mostly about Shinwua, and things they remembered or had shared with him. Mixed in among the looks of disbelief and loss were the periodic tears.

  “All right, people,” she called. “We had a tough day. You’ve got more of them coming. So let’s take a look at what we’ve got.” She triggered her old Corporate implan
t, thankful it interfaced with the Pod’s system.

  On the wall, the camera footage taken from the seatruck displayed as the lights dimmed. A couple of the infants cried out, only to be hushed by their parents.

  “I’m not going to run all of the footage. You’ll be spending enough time going over it as it is. Rather, I’m fast forwarding to the jellyfish attack on the UUV.”

  Kalico stopped the image as the tunnel formed around the UUV, the jellyfish all turning red.

  “What you see here is communication through color and patterning. I’ll leave it to you to work out how they do it, but here’s what I want you to see and understand. First, the UUV is an entirely new phenomenon in their environment. Maybe it resembles some prey species of theirs, maybe it doesn’t. What’s important is that they’ve never seen a drone. What they do, however, is form a trap, capture it, and try to kill it.”

  Kalico let the vid run as the jellyfish wrapped themselves around the UUV. On the recorder, it registered Shinwua’s discharge and the attackers backing off, the flashes of colors and dots as they reacted.

  Kalico froze the image. “Okay, they got shocked. Backed away. See the spots? My call is that they’re discussing what to do. Communication, people. Dr. Yoshimura? You want to add anything?”

  Yoshimura stood, looked around at the people sitting at the tables. The man took a moment to pull his trembling expression together. As if he finally got his brain re-geared from Shinwua’s death and into the more comfortable paradigm of a scientist, he said, “This is a highly ordered, disciplined, and cooperative hunting behavior. It’s being orchestrated among what we would consider an unsophisticated phylum of invertebrate organisms. The more I watch this, the more unsettled I become. If we misjudged and underestimated something that looks simple, like a jellyfish, what else are we going to mistake?”

  Kalico said, “I’ll leave that to you all to figure out. Meanwhile, let’s get a look at the predator that got Dr. Shinwua. We didn’t get a complete image of it to begin with, but I think it’s the same creature that sonar picked up while we were still off the beach, the thing that sheered the second UUV into pieces. All I could see down through the water was a long and very colorful shape. We recorded this”—she displayed the UUV’s final video of the three slashing blades and tooth-filled mouth—“and then the drone was destroyed.”