Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series)

by Coy, David

“What are these?” she asked.

  “I don’t know . . .”

  She unzipped his jumpsuit and found what looked like little slits that matched up to the holes in his clothing. They were open and cleanly made, and didn’t seem to be bleeding much. She gently spread one open with her thumb and forefinger, and that caused it to bleed again. Before the little chasm filled with blood she saw something dark about the size of a peanut down in it.

  She swallowed.

  “Stay put. Don’t move.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Her pack had the required tools, and she quickly found a pair of small tongs. She dashed into the head and snatched up a large handful of tissue.

  She blotted the slit she’d just opened with a wad of tissue; and when she could see down in it well enough, she reached in with the tongs and clamped onto the thing inside it. It was firmly stuck even as she pulled and worked it back and forth.

  “Does that hurt?”

  “Not much.”

  “Good.”

  She took a firmer grip, worked it back and forth and pulled the thing out. Shaped like a peanut and hard, it was an immature approximation of the things in the arm below. Tiny red tendrils squirmed frantically from the anterior end.

  “What is that?” he asked weakly.

  “A baby what'sit. It looks like part of their life cycle, the reproductive part, is parasitic.” She got a container from the pack and dropped it in then considered the thing for a moment. “I guess there’s no big surprise there,” she snorted.

  It took her just minutes to remove the rest; they were easy to find. The shuttle’s first aid kit had a sufficient number of bandages and she cleaned each wound with a topical antiseptic and dressed them.

  In the process, she’d left him nearly naked.

  “I guess they thought you’d make a better incubator for their offspring than soup stock. That must have been the reason they didn’t dunk you in the pit. You’d be no good to them dead.”

  “I was lucky.”

  “Right. They’re probably accustomed to much less resourceful hosts, though, not ones with tongs and Band-Aids and shit like that.”

  He chuckled.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Still sick.”

  “Ummm . . .”

  He rose up and propped himself on one arm. She thought she saw his eyes go out of focus for a second.

  “Can you fly this thing?”

  “Not just yet. Maybe in a few minutes.”

  She looked out the window. It was still pouring rain, even harder than before. It hissed against the shuttle’s skin. From time to time, lightning flashed bright and silent.

  She turned and looked at him.

  “I’m glad you’re still alive.”

  “Me, too . . .”

  Thunder rumbled through, making the shuttle’s loose seams and joints buzz. She wiped the fog from the window with her palm.

  * * *

  This organism was something completely unknown; a species with physical characteristics she was sure had never been documented. Here were the creatures of her youthful imagination—the strange and truly alien. Not a mere variation on an existing species, but something completely new; a new class of organism, perhaps on its own branch of the evolutionary tree.

  These were predatory organisms, colonial like termites, and living in a symbiotic relationship with a carnivorous plant. They carried the food to the plant, the plant provided shelter and shared the pre-digested food. And she’d never seen such unorthodox mobility—sling-shooting themselves from pole to pole, vine to vine, branch to branch. It would make sense except that no known physiological mechanism allowed that kind of movement.

  This changes everything.

  It was a rule of thumb, if not a hard and fast law, that if you mixed an oxygen atmosphere with water and light within acceptable temperature and gravitational boundaries, you got life eventually. The law held true everywhere in the known universe. These were the only conditions under which life had ever been found. There were no ethereal, disembodied life forms, no crystalline life forms, no silicon-based life forms, no life made from flames or ice or stone. There were no ammonia breathers, no energy eaters, and no robotoids with brains of pure logic. There were only the endless varieties of water and carbon-based life that fell within the kingdoms' flora or fauna—with a few in between—and the classes, orders, families and species that made up their respective members. The permutations were nearly infinite; and wherever there were acceptable ecological niches of any variety, so too were there variations in physiology—but always within the taxonomy. There were no known living or fossilized artifacts on any suitable planet that couldn’t be classified within the existing system in time. The similarities existed; you just had to find them. There was great variety to be sure, but even greater similarity if you just looked.

  Until now.

  These things were different. They were carbon-based all right, but physiologically they were off the scale. If she was right, and if she could classify these creatures as a new and unique order and a Class A Bio-Hazard—the planet would belong to science. That was the law.

  If the discovery placed the organism on its own evolutionary branch, every ecological system on the planet would be studied to see how each one supported it. The planet would become the property of the government until they gave it back. End of discussion.

  There was something else. The last piece of the puzzle fell into place and a musical note sounded in her head.

  Smith knows. He knows they’re here, and these may not be the only ones—there may be other organisms on the planet just as divergent and dangerous as these—maybe more so.

  He hadn't been miserly or tight-fisted; he’d been hiding the fact of their existence. If she hadn’t stumbled on them through John Soledad, Smith would have gotten his write-offs, and with those in hand, he’d have carte blanche to begin his mining operations. It was clear to her now that he’d been stalling, waiting, figuring a way to get those certifications.

  The entire project hinged on the surveys—and on the verifiable signatures of herself and a nurse named Applegate.

  The stakes were enormous.

  Now with some of the pieces fitting together so well, a less obvious fact materialized. It formed like a crystal, clean and clear with edges sharp and deadly.

  Sonofabitch. He’s killed her. He’ll kill me, too, if I don’t bend.

  She doubled over and buried her face in her hands. She was stuck. She was cut off, without resources; stuck on a planet tens of billions of kilometers from home where every communication could be monitored and tracked.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  The communicator was easy enough to operate. She turned it on and scrolled down the list until she found Security. Her finger was in motion to connect when she stopped short.

  There was no doubt Smith had his eyes and ears everywhere, and if they came for them there, on the plant, they’d know she knew.

  She stared out past the rivulets running down the front window and into the green beyond. The rain made the jungle even greener.

  She had to think about this. She turned to John.

  “We should talk,” she said.

  20

  The clouds rolled in and cast a cooling shadow over her. It was almost time to go. It was a good thing; she couldn’t bear sitting still any longer.

  She trudged out into the plain, heading straight for the shelters on the other side.

  Walking on the spongy plant stuff started out easy enough, but grew in difficulty with each step. Months earlier, the huge defoliators, drifting hundreds of meters above the surface, had chopped everything under them into pieces. Grass, bushes, vines, even trees were whipped and flailed into chips no bigger than her finger. She’s seen pictures of them and read about them in school, but she’d never seen an actual defoliated forest before. The sound the machines made was said to be like that of a tornado only louder and the cables vibrated with such
intensity that the earth itself shook.

  The ground was already sprouting new growth, and she wondered what they’d do about that. Did they let it get just so high and whack it back down? Did they poison it at some point? She climbed up a gentle grade, and at the crest of it, looked out to see the vast and flattened strip the bulldozer had made. It was nearly level and looked at least a kilometer wide. It stretched as far to the south as she could see. It was hard to believe machines existed that could flatten so much terrain. She started across it at an angle, relieved to get onto footing that wasn’t spongy and unsure, if only for a little while. Once again she saw that the plant life was reclaiming the oldest of the scraped ground, sending up shoots green and vital in great numbers through the rich, dark soil.

  Before she knew it, she was back on the spongy surface of the plain, having traversed just a corner of the graded section.

  From time to time, she saw the rotted and dried remains of pieces of animals—tails, legs, and an odd jawbone. There were many desiccated insect parts as well; shiny wings and pieces of carapace, heads and legs as light and dry as wisps; just more ingredients in the defoliator’s destructive blending process. The number of non-insectoid parts mixed in surprised her. Having traversed many kilometers of jungle she’d seen relatively few species that weren’t insects and wondered at the stealth the forest’s creatures must have developed over the millennia to remain so hidden. She picked up a cramped and shrunken leg of a small thing, looked at it, and for the first time, really saw it.

  There one minute—pureed the next.

  The storm had missed her, but the massive clouds kept her in the shade for the rest of the afternoon. She trudged and stumbled on, thankful for the clear and vineless air in front of her face.

  By the time the hot sun peeked from behind the clouds, she could see the installation. Still distant, the buildings shimmered in the plain’s heat. She watched the speck of a shuttle descend from above and land, casting one brief and tiny glint of reddish light from its flat side.

  She was ahead of schedule. It wouldn’t bother her to camp some distance from the buildings until darkness. As long as her shelter was in view, she was whole, complete, filled with its promise of cleanliness, hot water and a bed. The thought of lying in a clean bed after a cleansing shower made her giddy.

  She stopped about two kilometers out just as the sun sank red into the jungle. The terrain was rolling in this part of the clearing and she found a depression and parked herself in it. By crawling up just a few yards, she could see the installation quite well.

  Dusk came quickly, filling the air with green light. A few small bugs whizzed past, and she tightened her torn collar as much as she could.

  The lights came on around the loading dock, creating a halo of white around it. Soon after that she saw lights coming on in the shelters, making little squares of warmth against their dark silhouettes.

  The clinic was about halfway between the dock’s bright lights and the last shelter in the cluster to the north. When the larger bugs clattered past, she got up and started walking, fairly certain the darkness was hiding her.

  When she could see her faint shadow cast by the dock’s lights, she headed north to get out of it and swung around in a wide arc. As she got closer, her heart began to pound in her ears. She wanted desperately to get inside. She was anticipating that the clinic would be empty, but not necessarily so. She didn’t know what she’d do if it weren't. She finally picked it out of the cluster and was relieved to see that its windows were still dark. Standing just a few hundred yards out, the dark sanctuary of the clinic pulled at her. Her heart was pounding so strongly that her pulse modulated her breath as if someone was thumping her back.

  The night drove people on Verde inside and kept them there until dawn. Few would venture into the darkness with its flying hordes without good reason. That was a plus. The moons wouldn’t be up for another two hours. Now was the time.

  Keeping her eyes on the bright little windows of the shelters, she moved toward the installation. From time to time, a head moved by a window with private purpose. She covered the distance in just minutes, but in her mind it was taking hours; each step taking her just a centimeter closer.

  Finally, she was at the clinic steps and moving stiffly up them, one hand gripping tight to the railing. She made a little noise like a squeak, deep in her throat with each step. She tried the latch once or twice, knowing it would be locked. With trembling fingers, she fumbled with the zipper on her upper pocket and pulled out her key. She had to use both hands to manage the precision required, then pressed it to the lock. When the latch released, she practically fell through the door. The lights came on and bathed her in clean, artificial brilliance.

  Still squeaking and whining, she closed and locked the door, then turned on the lock to prevent all but emergency entry. She walked around the clinic, sliding the shutters closed. The stiff, strong walls seemed to embrace her and the clean, antiseptic scent of the clinic bathed her olfactory senses, heightened by several days in the fecund organic milieu of the jungle.

  One foot at a time, she unlaced her boots and kicked them off. Her feet were white, filthy, prune-skinned and so wet they almost slipped on the floor. She peeled herself out of the torn and rotted cottons as she walked. By the time she got to the hallway in the attached residence, she was completely naked. She walked like a robot into the bedroom and toward the bath. When the light came on, she was standing naked in front of the full-length mirror attached to the bathroom door.

  “Oh, my God . . .”

  Her face, neck and forearms were covered with scratches, scrapes and dirt. Her entire body was peppered with leaves and debris that had worked its way down and up into her clothing. Long rivulets of grime ran down her neck and over her chest. Her knees and shins looked as if they’d been whipped and were smeared with dirt and green stains. Her hair was a mass of tangles.

  She turned on the shower and got in, hoping there was enough water in the world to wash her clean.

  Turning slowly in the spray, she watched the dirt and grime flow off, swirl around her feet and disappear down the drain. She started with a shampooing, feeling carefully through her hair and on her scalp for things stuck and tangled in it, alive or not. Then she lathered her entire body and rinsed in a fine spray that stung her and burned against the scrapes on her face and arms. She didn’t mind. She repeated the lather-rinse cycle three times.

  She blotted herself off with the most luxurious towel in the world, then took a good look at the cuts, scrapes and holes on her legs and arms. One or two looked like they might need attention, but the rest were just minor lacerations. She found a can of topical antiseptic in the medicine cabinet and sprayed it on them.

  She brushed her teeth for ten minutes.

  She walked naked back into the clinic, prepared a syringe with a broad spectrum antibiotic and injected it into her thigh. She followed it up with another one in the form of a two-thousand milligram tablet poked from a bubble pack and swallowed dry. Lastly, she searched through the drawers and cabinets until she found a partial tube of wormer. Disregarding the dosage, she squeezed the remaining paste into her mouth and swallowed with a scowl.

  The kitchen was next. She pulled one fish and one meat dinner from the freezer and cooked them both in the microwave. The scent as they cooked almost drove her mad. She wolfed them standing against the counter, then washed it all down with a liter of synthetic milk. She left the plastic trays on the counter.

  She brushed her teeth for another ten minutes.

  When she got into bed and wrapped the covers around her, the moons that had guided her home were drifting over her just as they had for the last four nights. This time, though, their job was done; their ward was safe and secure. She smiled at them and rubbed her feet rhythmically against the clean sheets. A large beetle drummed once against the impenetrable screen next to her bed.

  “You can’t come in,” she told it.

  She slept the dreamless sleep
of the dead.

  * * *

  She awoke refreshed and alert—and wary. She’d been so glad to get inside she’d forgotten until that moment she was still in danger from Smith and his minions. While she was getting dressed, she thought about what to do next. There wasn’t a lot of thought involved in the solution to her problem.

  What she needed was allies. She just didn’t know how to find them.

  An ally could operate secretly, without causing suspicion. The ally could ask questions discreetly; could feel and probe here and there without danger—provided he or she knew what not to step in.

  She’d met a good number of the project’s personnel in the process of doctoring them, but she hadn’t formed any close relationships with any of them. There hadn’t been any time for that.

  She scrolled the phone directory to see if any of the names might inspire confidence. She got no warm and fuzzy vibrations from any of them. In her hyper-vigilant state, all the moving list of names did was inspire more paranoia. Any of them could be working for Smith for all she knew. They could all be in on it.

  She was pacing over by the door when the buzzer sounded. Her first reaction was to find a place to hide, but reason calmed her. Whoever was there couldn’t know she was supposed to be dead or they wouldn’t be ringing. She crept up on the door and flicked on the viewer. A man and woman were standing outside, facing one another. The woman reached over and pressed the buzzer again.

  “This is crazy,” the man said, barely audibly. “I thought you said she was dead already.”

  “Maybe not,” the woman said in a low voice. “There’s always a chance she’s still alive.”

  Bastards.

  The urge to hide filled her from the bladder upwards.

  It was a bigger conspiracy than she thought. Here were two collaborators on her very door step. Sent, no doubt, just to make sure she was dead.

  “We have to go to security about this,” the woman said.

  “We discussed that,” the man said, not looking at her. “We don’t know who’s working for Smith.”