The men following it came charging into the clearing, oriented themselves to locate the escaped beast and then slowly approached. At realizing that the critter had found something of interest, they came to a stop again. "What's it doing?" one of them asked and gave Kyle a surprised look.
"Right now, not much," Kyle countered while never taking his eyes off the creature.
It seemed to be examining the ground and then suddenly extended something that looked like a long gray rubber hose. Within a split second, it had sucked up the vomit. After that, all movement ceased.
"Scavenger," Kyle muttered while watching it.
"That's ... gross," Daniel muttered and backed up a step.
"No, they're scavengers. Like vultures or hyenas. They eat whatever they come across if it suits their needs," Kyle corrected him.
"Okay, Betsy. You've had your fun. Back to the pen," one of the herders said to the beast and slapped a hand onto its armor-plated back. The moon cow jerked, then pivoted around and started moving back the way it had originally come.
"And it understands what he wants it to do," Kyle mused while watching the three men follow the creature back toward the pen.
"So?" Daniel asked, sounding a little perplexed.
"I don't know yet, Danny. But I think there's more here than meets the eye. These ... creatures aren't as stupid as the gardeners think they are. Even though they don't eat soil or plants, they seem to be attracted to ... something other than dust." Kyle scratched the back of his head. "Enzymes, maybe. Maybe it can utilize your digestive enzymes in some way," he speculated.
"So what?" Daniel asked again.
Kyle had to admit that this was where his thought train derailed. He wasn't a physicist or a scientist. He had no idea what this might mean. "I don't know. I'm grasping at straws here. I wonder if anyone had the same idea about cows to begin with."
"It's not like it knew I would toss my cookies," Daniel said. "It came charging through here before that."
"Yeah, that's right," Kyle agreed and glanced at the kid, "but it came back after you threw up. It might not have chosen that path. And it was almost across the clearing before it stopped and came back."
"What the hell was that all about?" Stella came striding toward them, her expression a mixture of confusion and suspicion.
"I don't know," Kyle admitted with a light shrug. "The moon cows obviously like vomit," he said.
She stopped short and stared at him for a moment and then glanced in the direction the creature had trotted off in. "They don't eat anything other than dust. I've never seen them eat anything else," she said, but her tone was somewhat hesitant.
"Well ... they obviously like vomit too," Kyle said and made a face at the thought. "Dogs tend to do that too, don't they?"
The older woman just stood there, her gaze locked on the path leading up to the pen, her expression a study in emotions. Then she returned her attention to him and narrowed her eyes. "It's the first time I've heard of any of them touching anything liquid. Maybe they like stomach acid," she said.
"And that could potentially make them dangerous," Kyle suggested.
"No. They don't attack people. If they had any interest in what's inside us, they would have made a move on us before," Stella countered. "They're probably just scavengers, feeding on dead things."
"Do they eat dead leaves?" Kyle asked.
Stella met his gaze. "No. Not that we know of. But, then again, there are hardly ever any wilted leaves around. A few here and there, but they always tend to disappear," she said.
That was food for thought. "And you never wondered where they disappeared to?" Kyle wanted to know.
A shrug indicated her indifference to things she could not explain. "Why should I?" she asked. "Besides, the critters are penned in. We only let them out once a month," she countered a little defensively. "They can't get out otherwise."
"You said they defy gravity when you let them out, that they roam all over the inside of the domes, right?" he asked, to which she nodded hesitantly. "Well, isn't it safe to assume then, that they can defy gravity whenever they want?" He made a sweeping gesture. "What keeps us walking on the ground? I'm assuming there are some gravity wells in every dome?"
"I guess so. It's not what interests me the most, I must admit," Stella said with a light shrug, then sent a dark look in the direction of the path. "So ... what you're saying is that they're smarter than we think and are able to get out of that pen any time they want?"
"I have no idea, Stella. I'm just speculating here," he admitted with a smile. "But how else did that one get out?" he asked and waved a hand toward the path.
"I don't know yet, but I aim to find out," she said, then focused on Daniel. "Maybe you should go lie down. You look a little pale, son," she added.
Daniel said nothing, just stood there and listened to them talking. Kyle gave him a brief glance and had to agree with Stella's assessment. "You do look a little green around the gills there, Danny."
The younger man made a halfhearted sweeping gesture in the direction the moon cow had gone. "I ate one of those things," he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. "It's like ... a bug and I ... ate it." He paled further if that was possible, then turned around and doubled over to dry-retch for a moment.
Kyle sighed and glanced at Stella. "He doesn't have the stomach for the meat, it would seem," he said.
"It's only a matter of getting used to the idea," she said while watching Daniel with her arms crossed over her chest. "I wasn't too keen on having any meat again when I found out where it came from. But it is way better than the junk you get out of the synth machines."
Daniel straightened up, a suffering look in his eyes. "And you said they can get out? That they ... suspend gravity?" He sounded almost jittery.
"They do that once a month. At all other times, they're in the pen and they have not shown any signs of wanting to break out," Stella said. "I severely doubt that one did. Someone must have forgotten to close the pen."
Kyle eyed her for a moment. "Why would anyone go in there in the first place?" he asked.
"People do what people do," she countered. "Look, it's really not that big a deal and in the twenty-five years I've been here, they have never attacked anyone. Nobody has ever gotten hurt because of them."
"But ..." Daniel tried, but she stopped him with a warning look.
"Don't make a mountain out of a molehill, kid," she said sternly. "They're not dangerous."
Helpless frustration flashed over Daniel's expression, but Kyle stopped him from adding insult to injury by grabbing his shoulder. "Stella's right," he said and tightened his grip a little when it looked like Daniel might make more of a fuss.
"Damned straight I am," Stella agreed. "I'd better go find out which idiot left the pen open. We don't want them wandering around all over the place," she added, turned and left them behind.
"I believe her, Dan," Kyle insisted. "They're not dangerous."
Daniel pressed his lips together into a thin line and nodded once almost curtly. There was nothing more to be said about this right now.
Chapter 4
'Sleep, those little slices of death'
The dream state worried him a little. The dreams he had were very vivid, very powerful, but he was never in doubt that they were dreams. As far as he could remember, he had never been in doubt about the nature of dreams. But now he was a little concerned, because it felt real.
He stood barefoot in the middle of dome 5, the dust under his feet feeling more like fine-grained sand. He wore nothing other than his prison jeans and the air was chilly. With fairly little light and very little heat, this place was like a meat locker and in part it smelled a bit like he imagined a meat locker would smell; not that he had ever had the dubious pleasure of seeing the inside of a place like that.
He scanned what he could see - his eyes had already adjusted to the gloom - and saw nothing but the wide expanse of the dome's uneven floo
r. No crab-men moving toward him, no sound, nothing.
"I'm dreaming," he muttered and curled the toes of his right foot a little, digging them into the sand. It felt so damned real, though. It was grainy, gravelly, cold; felt like a day at the beach in late September; a Northern beach, perhaps. But the air was nothing like it would have been back on Earth. The salty tang of sea water with the occasional cry of a gull floating on the breeze was one of the things he sorely missed. This place gave him the creeps. He could feel the skin over the back of his shoulders pucker, could feel the goose bumps rushing up his arms. And it wasn't just the stories he had heard either; nor was it Skinny Guy, who had crab-walked toward him and behaved like a raving lunatic while still making sense. There was something ominous in the air here, something that emanated from the opening that led into dome 6; straight into Hell itself.
He snorted, forced the corners of his lips into a cynical little smile. This had to be a dream because he had no recollection of walking over here. The last thing he remembered was turning in after realizing that Daniel didn't like bugs and was loath to eat them. He could still see the lumbering form of the oversized moon cow - in part he himself could not bear to think of it as a bug, because it did actually turn his stomach just a little - and he could still see the surprise and then the subsequent disgust on Daniel's face when he had realized that this was where the meat came from.
"Yeah, a dream," he muttered and shifted his weight a little from one foot to the other. A shudder rippled through him. This place was too consistent with what he had seen earlier to be a dream. He looked around, then down at his bare feet, then sent another long look out over the dome floor stretching out around him, before coming to the reluctant conclusion that no, this was not a dream, he was really here, standing in the middle of dome 5's emptiness with the very real threat of being turned into food for the beast if he didn't beat a hasty retreat.
Yet he didn't move, couldn't seem to convince his feet to respond to what his brain was trying to tell him. 'Danger', it said in the oddly metallic voice of the Robot from Lost in Space. 'Danger, Will Robinson'. He shook his head, dislodging that particular catchphrase. Why was there danger? There was nobody out there.
He took a deep breath and held it for a moment. The smell was disconcerting, but it could be attributed to dead bodies piling up somewhere. If the loonies - he preferred to think of them as the dwellers in dome 5 and 6 - did indeed kill those that came in here, it was very likely that there was a pile of dead bodies lying around somewhere. And that could very well produce the ghost of that smell.
His focus was drawn to the tunnel entrance of dome 6, a speck on the wall across from where he stood. What lay beyond there? Was it like the others suspected? Was there something alien hiding in there? Or just the fears of superstitious people? Was there more here than met the eye? Were his dreams prophetic rather than just an explosion of his suddenly vivid imagination? He had never really considered himself very imaginative. He loved to delve into other people's imaginations - e-books, audio books, old fashioned paper books, movies - but he had never actually been able to come up with creative scenarios himself. And why should he? There were others in the world far better suited for that than he ever would be.
"Shouldn't be here!"
A little stunned, Kyle turned abruptly toward the source of that voice and caught sight of Skinny Guy, who had managed to creep up on him. The other man's voice was still as hoarse and he was still low to the ground, crab-crawling towards him. "You scared the crap out of me," Kyle confessed.
Skinny Guy rose to his feet and narrowed his eyes at Kyle. "Get out," he said and waved a hand toward the tunnel to dome 4. "Bad place."
"So I hear," Kyle agreed. He did feel a little exposed out here in the open, but curiosity got the better of him yet again. "What's so bad about this place?" he asked and made a sweeping gesture toward the emptiness around them. "There's nothing here; apart from the chill and the lack of light, of course."
Skinny Guy edged closer. This close up Kyle got a much better look at him, and it didn't improve his impression of the guy. Skinny was the overstatement of the year. This guy was nothing but skin and bones. That he was moving at all was a miracle. "Bad place," he repeated in a conspiratorial tone of voice. His breath smelled positively foul and Kyle had to struggle with himself to not pull back; it might give Skinny Guy the wrong impression.
"So you said already," he agreed. "Why? What's bad about it?"
Skinny Guy sneered, exposing a mouth full of rotting stumps, and it sparked something in Kyle. If these guys ate people, he had to assume that they did so with tools, because no way could this guy bite into and tear off anything with those stumps. They had to hurt like hell. "Monsters. There's monsters out there," Skinny said, waving his match-stick thin arm toward the tunnel to dome 6. "That's Hell."
Kyle glanced that way and wondered why Skinny Guy was actually talking to him. Was it because nobody else bothered? Did he miss contemporary and probably marginally sane conversations? "Hell, huh?" he asked to keep the momentum going and fixed his eyes on Skinny Guy's hollow-cheeked face. There was next to no facial hair on this guy. That could be because of malnourishment, of course. He severely doubted that Skinny Guy got up and shaved each morning before heading out to his important job of crab-crawling around an empty dome. The idea made him smirk lightly. "What's in there? Aliens?" he asked and eyed the other man closely for his response. "You say monsters. I say people."
Again Skinny Guy sneered and took a few steps backward, then dropped back down into a crouch. "Monsters," he spat and took off again.
Despite visibility being fairly good once he got used to the dimness in this place, Skinny Guy disappeared from view after a bit and that made Kyle wonder if there were trapdoors scattered out around this dome. Maybe that was how they caught others?
"Monsters," he repeated quietly. Per definition, the term 'monster' was pretty vague. What exactly was a monster? In Kyle's opinion, it depended on whoever saw it. So, his monster might not be the same as Daniel's monster or Stella's monster or even Mike's monster. Monsters were the root of a person's fear. If someone was afraid of bugs, their monsters would probably look like big bugs. If someone was afraid of snakes, they would find themselves hunted by enormous versions of them. 'So, does that mean I'll get chased by a ten-foot slobbering version of my father?' he thought and couldn't help a chuckle. "Yeah, right. That would be food for nightmares."
He turned and headed back toward the tunnel to dome 4 while forcefully pushing away the urge to figure out what exactly had compelled him to wander in here without being aware of it. He hadn't eaten any more meat or taken any more of Stella's liquorish root either, so unless either left behind a residue that influenced him at inopportune moments, he had no explanation for how he had managed to get all the way into the middle of dome 5. "Maybe I'm sleepwalking," he muttered under his breath. It was as good an explanation as any and he decided not to pursue it any further. If it happened again, he might start to wonder more seriously about it, but for now he just wanted to get back to dome 3 and get some rest.
He made it all the way to the mouth of the tunnel before he felt it; the creeping sensation that someone - or in this case something - was watching him, counting his steps until it could charge him and rip him to pieces. This feeling stopped him dead in his tracks and - much more strongly than the first time - he wanted to break into a sprint and get the hell out of this place. But he feared that doing that might cause irreparable damage. You never ran from a predator; it only incited their thirst for the hunt. And Kyle felt it deep in his bones. Whatever was watching him, it was a predator; and a hungry one at that.
It took everything he had to not start running. Instead he started moving again at a leisurely pace, stepped through to the tunnel and continued along it. Despite the cold, he could feel the sweat building on his brow, could feel it prickling the edge of his hairline all around to the nape of his neck. Sweat meant he reeked of fear
and that was another thing you just couldn't afford when dealing with hungry predators. Never run and never show fear.
'I think I've watched one too many documentaries about animal predators,' he thought to himself and would have tittered nervously if he'd allowed himself to. A part of him wanted to turn and face the menace if for no other reason than to see what it was before it shredded him. But he had to admit to himself that his childhood fear of the dark would resurface if he followed that urge; regardless of what he did or didn't see. And he couldn't afford to reacquire any old fears in this place. He needed to stay strong, needed to remain on his toes and seem indifferent to others. It had served him well so far. He had no desire to change that forward momentum. And, he reminded himself, now that he had settled in, he needed to start looking around. In his humble opinion, there had to be a way off this rock and he would be damned if some monster was going to dig its fangs into him before he found that way.
The tunnel ahead seemed endlessly long but he forced himself forward, forced every step while holding himself back from running. And all the while he had the feeling that 'it' was breathing down his neck, daring him to turn around so it could kill him. He wouldn't give it that pleasure, though.
Once he crossed the barrier between dark and light, he started to feel a little better. There was that little voice in the back of his head that insisted this creature could not stand light and would not follow him across the barrier, even though he didn't know that for sure. But even if that were true, there still were the loonies. Granted, he hadn't seen any of them outside dome 5 and others claimed they feared the light too, but Kyle knew these guys were human - at least Skinny Guy was - and that made him think that they were not so much afraid of the light as not used to it. But if they wanted to, he was quite sure they would leave the darkness of dome 5 without any lasting side-effects.
Dark Side of the Moon Page 17