Stella leaned back and folded her arms over her chest. "They eat people," she stressed.
Kyle grimaced. "No offense, Stella, but this guy didn't look like he'd had a decent meal in ages."
"No offense, Kyle, but you are fairly new here. I've seen it happen. I've seen people attacked, dragged off screaming and pleading for their lives, and they never return. You were very, very lucky. You met one of the saner ones. But believe me when I tell you, you do not want to go back over there. Ever! These guys ... they may have been human once, but now they're monsters. And they behave like monsters."
He considered her words, took in the fact that she seemed pretty freaked out by this, yet still he couldn't stop himself. "They behave like loonies, Stella," he said. "Now, I grant you that I've only met one and the attitude he displayed could have easily ended in an attack. I'm not arguing that. But there's a way to handle guys like that. And treating them like anyone else instead of like monsters might be the first step."
Stella's expression was hard to read, but he thought he knew what came next. "If you think you can communicate with them and get them to back off ... you're as insane as they are," she said sternly. "The loonies are bad seeds, Kyle. They have that reputation for a reason. If you could talk to them, reason with them, don't you think someone would have come up with that idea before?" She shook her head. "Someone did, actually. His name was Taylor. I saw his remains."
There was something about the suggestion that these 'people' ate others that made Kyle balk. Sure, the skinny guy had looked pretty much nuts and the way he moved proved that abundantly, but Kyle still maintained that the guy didn't look like he ate very often. "They ate him?" he asked.
"Yes, they ate him," Stella agreed angrily, then caught herself and paused for a moment. "At least I think they did. Or maybe they just settled for tearing him apart. There wasn't much left of him; only his head."
Okay, that was gruesome, but it still didn't prove anything. "Look, I know I haven't been here very long and I know I haven't seen half of what's going on here, but ... honestly? ... I have a very hard time believing that the people over there are supposed to be monsters. They're probably nuts, and who can blame them? I mean ... we're stuck here, for life, with no other way out than through an airlock, and there's nothing out there but death." He considered his own words for a moment and then sighed lightly. "Yeah, I've only met one of these so-called loonies and, yeah, he's a couple of cans short of a six-pack. But so what? That doesn't make him a monster." Leaning forward, he propped his elbows on the tabletop and eyed her. "Besides, you guys have a reputation of being man-eaters, but that's only a cover. Right?"
Stella eyed him darkly for a moment. "You believe in aliens, but not in monsters?" she asked and smiled a little coldly, ignoring his last question. "You'll learn. If you survive that is, but you will learn." That said, she rose and walked away without looking back.
Kyle watched her go, admittedly a little unsettled by her claims that the loonies were no longer human. To escape the unpleasantness her words had raised in him, he let his mind drift while trying to make sense of it all. The world he had left behind had seemed pretty senseless to him. But this place was just downright crazy.
"Hey."
He blinked and focused on Daniel, who was suddenly sitting across from him, a bottle of water on the table in front of him. He frowned lightly at the younger man, glanced off in the direction Stella had gone and then focused back on Daniel. "When did you get here?" he asked.
Daniel smirked. "Whatever that stuff was that you took, man, it must have been heavy-duty," he said. "I've been trying to get your attention for about five minutes here. I thought you'd disappeared back into that dream-funk you were in."
Kyle eyed him for a moment longer, then reached across to grab the pitcher and refilled his glass. "Yeah, I guess I should cut back on that hallucinogenic crap here. As I said before, this place is weird enough on its own," he consented and took a sip of the water. The luster had gone out of it. Now it tasted like plain old water, which only proved to him that the drugs had been to blame.
"So. Did you hear about the tunnel to dome 5?" Daniel sounded equal parts fascinated and repulsed by this.
"Stella just told me," Kyle agreed. "And ... I knew up front. I went back after everybody had turned in last night."
Daniel's interest was definitely piqued. With both hands wrapped around the bottle, he leaned forward. "What did you see?" he asked.
Kyle smirked. "A loony," he said, well aware that this was what the kid wanted to hear. "I went through to the other side. There's a big empty plain over there. And this super-skinny guy who obviously doesn't know he's not a crab came up to say hi."
The almost owlish blink that earned him was somehow endearing. "A crab?" Daniel asked. "Why would he ..." He frowned. "Oh, you mean he's nuts, so he thinks he's a crab?"
That provoked a chuckle. "No, man, he just moved like one. The light's pretty sparse over there and when I first spotted him, I thought he was a crab; a big, odd-looking crab. Once he got closer, though, I saw him for what he was. And, even though I was pretty much convinced that he was nuttier than a fruitcake, he didn't really strike me as being that nuts once he started talking. I mean, he spoke to me."
Daniel's surprise was very evident. "He spoke to you? I've never heard of anyone having a conversation with one of them."
"Well, there's got to be a first time for everything, doesn't there?" Kyle countered evenly. "Besides, I wouldn't call it a conversation as such. But he was definitely firing on all cylinders when it came to communicating. It was just his way of moving that kinda made me think he was all sorts of nuts."
"The crab-walk," Daniel muttered with a thoughtful nod. "Yeah, I can see why you would think that." He fiddled with his water bottle for a moment while glancing around the clearing. "You think ..." He paused, focused briefly on the bottle before glancing up at Kyle again. "Do you think that ... it's safe here?"
That was a bit of a loaded question in Kyle's opinion. It could mean that the kid just needed reassurance or it could mean that he had been subjected to something bad already. "Why? Are you having trouble with these guys?" he countered while eying the younger man closely.
Daniel was quick to shake his head. "No, no, not at all. I was just ... wondering."
That hesitation more than anything implied that there was more going on than Kyle knew about. "About what, Daniel?" he pushed. There was some part of him that believed that it might benefit Daniel if he admitted that he'd been through hell. It seemed to him that the kid had a habit of suppressing things.
"You know," Daniel said with a light, one-sided shrug and a grimace to match.
"No, I don't," Kyle said even though he did. He leaned forward, propped his elbows on the table top and kept eying Daniel.
The immediate response to that was a slightly feverish blush that rose in his cheeks while he paled a little. His Adams apple bopped up and down a few times while he swallowed almost convulsively.
"Daniel, I know this isn't the thing you really want to talk about, especially not with a newbie like me," Kyle said and held up a hand when Daniel opened his mouth to respond. "Hear me out," he suggested and Daniel closed his mouth again. "I've been told about what you've been through here and nobody should have to go through something like that. There's not much of a support system up here. And a shrink? Forget it, right?" He shrugged. "But ... fact is, you gotta open up about this, you gotta talk about it, or it'll eat you alive."
The pain in the younger man's eyes was palatable. "I did," he said quietly. "I talked to Garry about it." He just sat there for a moment, the bottle held in both hands, his eyes on it but not seeing it. A shudder rippled through him and then he looked up again to meet Kyle's eyes. "I don't ever want to talk about it again. I don't ever want to think about it again. I ... can't."
Kyle's conviction that Daniel just needed to talk about this petered out. "I get that," he agreed and briefly tried t
o imagine how he himself would feel. A bullet to the head or a spacewalk came to mind. The mere idea of having to endure something like that, repeatedly, sent his stomach into a convulsive roll. He grimaced lightly. "I understand that," he amended. "You're not ... gay, are you?" he asked. There was some morbid part of his subconscious that muttered somewhere deep down that if the kid was gay, it wasn't as bad. He shut that voice up immediately. That was the same as suggesting that because a woman liked men, if she got raped it was no big thing.
"No," Daniel said, his expression a little tense. "Why would you think that?"
Kyle smirked. "I'm just curious, kid. Don't put too much stock in the weirdness that comes out of my mouth sometimes. I've never learned to get a feel for a situation. With the kind of money I've been used to, others cut you a lot of slack. I could get away with saying whatever I wanted and if anyone got pissed off about it, I could pay them off."
Daniel's expression evened out a little. "Oh," he muttered and dropped his gaze to the bottle again, which he continued to pick on. If there had been a label on it, it would have made more sense, but right now all he did was scratch on the surface with one nail. The silence spreading out between them was only broken occasionally by fragments of conversation drifting to them from some of the gardeners working on their plants. "So ... do you think it's safe here?" Daniel repeated suddenly.
Safe was a relative term in this place. Even on Earth it had been relative, but it was much more so here, where any given situation could turn nasty in the blink of an eye. "I think it's a hell of a lot safer here than in dome 2, yes," Kyle agreed. "Stella alone has already shown an interest in keeping you safe and she seems to have a lot of say here."
Daniel had no response to that and it made Kyle wonder what was going through his head right now. When he didn't answer after a moment, Kyle snatched the bottle away from him and eyed it. It was a plain plastic bottle, nothing spectacular. As he expected, Daniel made no move to retrieve it, just gave him a strange look.
Pointing the bottom of the bottle at the younger man, Kyle felt the urge to make a point. "I get that you haven't been raised to be a trouble maker, Danny, but in this dump you have to stand up for yourself. If there's one person around here who can teach you how to do that, it's gotta be Mike. That guy ... he's all sorts of dangerous. I'll bet he can teach you how to kill someone with your bare hands," he said.
Daniel's frown would probably have been comical under other circumstances, but right now Kyle couldn't really see the humor in the situation and that was rare. For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Daniel suddenly lashed out and snatched the bottle back. He seemed torn between feeling victorious and concerned about Kyle's response to that. Kyle merely gave him an encouraging smile.
"You gotta take back what they took from you. You gotta show those that want something from you that they can't have it. And if they try to take it anyway, you gotta bite back and you gotta bite hard," Kyle said, stressing each word.
The kid returned to scratching idly at the bottle, his eyes locked on what he was doing rather than meeting Kyle's eyes across the table. "Is that what you did back home? You bit back hard?" he asked, curious and a little stand-offish.
"No," Kyle admitted. "It's not. I didn't have to. I could buy my way through life. I've been used to having the option of buying my way out of anything and the fact that I don't have that option anymore ... well, I gotta learn a few new tricks as well."
Daniel looked up to meet his eyes briefly, the repetitive action of scratching a hole through the bottle briefly forgotten. "Nobody's made a move against you since you got here," he speculated aloud. "Seems like you've got something other than money backing you."
"A rotten attitude?" Kyle asked, his tone sarcastic, a smile curving his lips. "I've always been of the conviction that I can handle others. I learned martial arts as a kid and some of it stuck, because I can still use it without thinking too much about it. It's a good defense against those that want to take things from you that you're not willing to give." He considered the facts behind his own words and wondered what made him such an expert. "I also like to give others a chance before I condemn them. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm best buds with everyone I meet. I just rely on my first instinctive impression of others and it always pans out. It hasn't let me down yet."
Daniel listened and lapped up every word he said, which was a bit disconcerting. Kyle had never been the mentor-type, had never felt the need to impart his experiences on others. "How do you know that others won't hurt you?" Daniel asked.
That was actually a good question, but Kyle really had no good answer for it. Instead, he shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted. "I think a lot of it is attitude unless the guy coming at you is off his rocker. In that case all bets are off. I learned a long time ago that if I'm not aggressive and don't show fear, most of those I could potentially have issues with remain docile. And I say most, because I've been in my share of fights."
Before Daniel could come up with an appropriate reply to that one, some sort of commotion distracted them both. Kyle started to rise, only to stop when he saw one of the moon cows slowly lumbering across the clearing. It swayed like a ship in high seas.
"What the hell is that?" Daniel asked, his tone a little flat. One glance at him told Kyle all he needed to know. The kid was freaked out by what he was seeing.
"A moon cow," Kyle countered and couldn't help a grin when Daniel gave him a look that made him doubt his own sanity. "Apparently, the Moon has indigenous life forms. That's one of them," he said and made a sweeping gesture toward the creature.
It lumbered into the wall of green ahead of it and disappeared from sight, leaving only a trail of sound behind while it crashed through the undergrowth.
"The Moon can't sustain life," Daniel said quietly. "It's little more than an overgrown meteor."
Kyle stepped away from the table while watching three men chasing after the critter. "Maybe not life that we can define," he said a little distractedly. "Science may have a lot of the answers, but that doesn't mean we know everything," he added and started forward.
Daniel followed him, his bottle in one hand. "Is that what we ate the other night?" he asked.
That question was extremely loaded and so was the reaction the answer to it would produce. Kyle considered if it was wise to tell the kid the truth, but figured if he didn't, someone else might. And it wouldn't be good for their relationship if he lied to the guy. "Yeah," he agreed. "Hence the name moon cow, 'cause it sure tasted like cow to me."
Obviously that bit of news didn't sit well with the kid. He paled while he watched and listened, then suddenly dashed away to the edge of the clearing and threw up. That was not exactly the response Kyle had expected. He followed Daniel and hesitated briefly before patting the kid's back a little awkwardly. "You okay?" he asked.
Daniel dry-heaved once or twice, one hand braced against the trunk of one of the growths, then he slowly straightened up while wiping the back of the other hand over his lips. "You knew?" he asked without looking at Kyle.
"Not before, no. Stella showed me after," Kyle said and let his hand drop away. "What's the big deal?"
"The big deal?" Daniel turned around to face him and he looked equally scared and angry. "Those are ... oversized bugs. They look like fucking dust mites the size of trucks. What makes anyone here think they're safe to eat?"
Kyle frowned lightly and sent a quick glance around the clearing. A few of the gardeners had taken notice of them since Daniel's tone of voice was getting louder. "What makes you think they're not?" he countered calmly.
"They're ... bugs, for Pete's sake," Daniel exploded and threw his hands up in exasperation. "Think of how this ... meat influenced you. You think that's safe? It took me two damned days to get over the effects of it. That's not normal!"
All Kyle could think of doing was to grab Daniel's shoulders and drive him back against the same trunk he had braced himself against only moments before. "Firs
t of all, calm down," he said, making sure his tone tolerated no discussion. "Secondly, these people have been eating these things for twenty-five years or more. There's no indication that it has any adverse effect other than the drowsiness. So, before you go off the deep end because you had something you didn't recognize ... just give that a moment of thought."
Daniel blinked rapidly a few times before his gaze shifted to the clearing behind Kyle. "I'm ... sorry," he finally muttered. "I just ..." His mouth tightened, the corners drawing down a bit. "I don't like bugs." He added a wrinkle to his nose. "Scratch that. I hate bugs."
"Well ... they're not bugs. I don't think bugs have meat like that," Kyle said and released the younger man again. "Look, I wasn't too thrilled when I found out where the meat came from either, but ... we're not sick and the effects wore off. And can you honestly tell me that you'd rather go back to eating that synthetic crap than have a decent meal once in a while?"
That was obviously food for thought. Daniel wiped the back of one hand over his lips again and grimaced lightly. "It was ... good. But I don't know if I can eat it again, knowing where it comes from. It's just ... there can't be life on the Moon, Kyle. It's a rock. There's nothing ... nutritious up here."
Kyle smirked. "Apparently there is. They eat lunar dust," he said. "And according to Stella that's all they eat. They don't touch soil or ..."
Before he could finish, the critter lumbered back out of the wall of green a bit further down and made its way across the clearing in a slow but determined beeline. Kyle wondered where it was going. It seemed to have some sort of purpose, but since it didn't eat soil or plants, it was hard to guess what else it could be after.
Daniel watched the moon cow with some concern and drew back a step when the critter suddenly stopped its forward motion. For a moment it just stood there in its armor-plated glory and then it slowly pivoted and aimed straight at them. It picked up speed, even though its pace could not exactly be called fast.
Kyle grabbed a hold of Daniel's arm and hauled the somewhat stunned-looking younger man out of its path. He had a vague idea of where it was heading and, true enough, it stopped dead at the puddle of vomit.
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