Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits (Dominant Species Series)

by David Coy

  Then she heard a groan of pleasure that wasn’t hers.

  She heard it very clearly, and she knew for certain that there were others with her—others who felt the pleasure all around, too.

  The pleasure shifted from one part of her anatomy to another and back again and, sometimes, when it really got going, it was everywhere at once, like a warm water, bathing her all over. Her nipples sent pulses of pleasure gushing through her chest, her abdomen and down her legs.

  Often she was conscious of movement deep in her throat and between her legs at the same time. And, from time to time, she would swallow, with relish, something thick in a warm gush that kept coming and coming. There were peels of delight and deep animal grunts of pure, wicked pleasure that went on and on and on.

  More . . . more . . . more . . .

  From time to time, she was aware that hours had gone by in great blocks. The pleasure all around her continued as the hours grew into more hours and those hours into days.

  More!

  But as time went by, the warm, buttery tickling between her legs and in her mouth and up her spine turned slowly to dullness, then finally to grinding annoyance. But the others were persistent and squirmed deeper inside like ardent snakes. Up and up they pushed, demanding more. Now she wanted desperately to see her partners. She wanted to tell them to stop now. Enough was enough. She should get up and get cleaned up and get dressed. It was time to go, lovers.

  The grinding continued, the rubbing inside and outside would not stop. She thought for a desperate moment that the others couldn’t stop, even if they wanted to. They would continue to press and pinch and lick and suck from the inside. But there were no more grunts of pleasure or wicked laughter. There was only straining and pushing without feeling. There were no more sweet exchanges, no more pleasure all around, only empty struggling.

  Now she wanted to wake up. This was getting not so nice. She wanted it to stop. She wanted to wake up.

  Stop, goddamnit! Don’t do that!

  There was pain suddenly and the floating feeling turned to falling.

  Please stop . . .

  She felt a growing panic that welled up and with it a clarity of mind suddenly flushed of the drug-like pleasure and its wicked sensations.

  She remembered.

  They had put her here. The scientists had put her here. She had agreed to it because they promised her pleasure—great pleasure. But this was not what they promised. This was not what they . . .

  Please stop it!

  There had been a shallow pit in the bowels of the monolith. They took her there and showed her. They were friendly, yet not really friendly; and she had been afraid of them. The bottom of the shallow pit had been covered with strange plants with red centers. They had harvested some of the flowers, they had said, and put them in tanks filled with water just for her. They had said it wouldn’t hurt, and that others were there in another chamber lying nested together with the flowers attached to them—to their backs and lower bellies and heads. She thought it was funny at first and giggled nervously. They looked like they were asleep. The scientists told her to lie down with them and to let the tentacles wrap around her wherever they would. She wasn’t so sure so they gave her a shot that made her want to do it really bad. It felt so good to let the plants wrap tight around her legs and neck. Something pierced her head.

  Now she remembered. The others hadn’t been asleep; they only looked asleep. They were not right somehow, as if they had no brains. That’s why they didn’t say anything. They didn’t say anything because they couldn’t talk—they could only laugh like idiots and grunt without minds.

  And they wouldn’t stop because they didn’t know how.

  Help! Get out of me!

  Now the incessant probing and rubbing began to hurt. It felt like they were eating her with their touching and sucking. Where her nipples had gushed pleasure, they now burned as if rubbed raw. She hurt and burned deep between her legs.

  God! Please stop!

  She forced one arm to move and felt flesh, real flesh, just next to her. Her hand moved up a sweaty flank and found rows of smooth tendrils. Frantic, she groped behind her and felt more smooth flesh that seemed to writhe. Her hand reached up to her own head and felt it wrapped in tendrils, then down to her legs where she found more, wrapped tight like smooth ropes in neat rows.

  She was bound tight.

  She struggled and pushed with her hips, and her free hand slipped against slick flesh. She tried to pull her head loose, but it didn't move at all. Her panic flared.

  They were all inside her, stretching inside her, filling her up to exploding. They grunted and groaned and squirmed, and she felt the hateful touch and burned.

  Uhhhhnnnn . . .

  They wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop. She felt the pain of their violation as it reached an unbearable peak, and her body stiffened against it. Deep, deep in her mind she felt herself shrink from the trespass.

  Finally, she felt relief.

  Her mind shrank to a tiny point of dull light, and the pain shriveled with it.

  In time, her mind vanished completely.

  She laughed and grunted like the others. The sounds had no meaning.

  Other sounds came to her that rang familiar to her tiny, hidden mind. She knew they were something but didn’t know what. They were important—they had to be. She let the sounds tap on her. They were nothing and something—important, yet meaningless. She squirmed against the bonds and grunted, while a sound slowly formed in her head.

  Wor . . . words . . .

  * * *

  “This isn’t working,” Kropp said. “Look at this mess. They’re dead, or nearly so. Whose idea was this, anyway?”

  “Mine, sir,” Lin Fong said. “I wanted to know if the plants could support them in a state of unified and sustained ecstasy. The hypothesis was that a sufficient number of Brunigea connections, mated to a sufficient number of specimens, would succeed where plasticizing recombination has failed.”

  “But look at the brain patterns, for Christ’s sake,” Kropp said. “The subjects are practically vegetables themselves.”

  Lin Fong sighed. “That’s true, but look at the endorphin levels—the phenylethylamine especially, it’s very high. Higher than can be achieved via surrogate drugs. It’s true it spikes then diminishes, but look at the first part—it’s amazingly high. I see that as very hopeful.” His finger traced a jagged line on a graph.

  “But it’s flat at this juncture,” Kropp said. “Your design has failed to support your hypothesis.”

  “It’s true it’s not high now,” Lin Fong continued. “But the results overall are far better than plasticizing because of the synoptic links in the hypothalamus facilitated by the Brunigea stamen. There . . . there doesn’t seem to be a limit to the number of connections that can be made without killing the subjects.” Lin Fong felt himself rambling to cover his failure. Kropp would see right through it. Lin Fong , plunged forward, hoping for the best. “In this configuration, we get multiple limbic to limbic links that compound the euphoria and the . . .”

  “You’ve turned them to useless putty,” Kropp said, curtly. “Is the damage permanent?”

  Lin Fong turned with his hands on his hips and looked down at the squirming mass of bodies and Brunigea tendrils.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “I’d have to extricate one and see. That can be tricky. These are undomesticated Brunigea.”

  Lin Fong knew Kropp was right. Now two days of work had been wasted. He should have stopped yesterday when the endorphin levels dropped to zero. His lab coat suddenly felt like lead.

  “Undomesticated Brunigea are very aggressive,” Kropp added knowingly.

  “Yes.”

  “They are parasites, you know?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, stop your tests. This is a dead end. Jacob wants results. Get one of the subjects out and see if you can revive it. Erhlich needs more in the plasticizing lab. He’s still prototyping. He needs them more than yo
u do. We don’t have an inexhaustible supply.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get on it right now.”

  * * *

  Betty was aware of being moved and thought one of the dulling lovers had pushed her away. There was more rough movement and she felt real hands on her weak arms and legs. There was a buzzing sound, and she felt rain on her back and down her neck. Slowly, the despicable touching faded, and she felt rid of it at last. She felt herself being moved roughly; and this time when she opened her eyes, she could see lights above that made her squint. She saw movement in big flashes of white. She felt a pinch in her arm and saw a bright line of green tracing up to a round thing next to a bright light. The light felt good. There was pressure in her nose and then something went in it and down her throat. She tasted plastic and wanted to gag.

  As her eyes drifted closed, the lights changed to bright lines of jagged radiance, then faded to nothing.

  She slept.

  “Betty? Betty can you hear me?” a voice said.

  She tried to swallow, but it was too difficult. Something was blocking her throat. Her hand wanted to rise and remove the thing, but her hand couldn’t move. She was strapped down. She felt anger.

  “Can you hear me?”

  She nodded her head just slightly.

  “Let’s get this tube out of here, shall we?” the man said. She felt the tube slide out of her throat and smelled the clean scent of the man’s hands. She finally swallowed.

  “What . . . ?” she asked.

  “A question? That’s good.”

  “What . . . did you do to me?”

  “Wasn’t it fun?”

  “No.”

  “I’m glad you can speak and see and all that. That’s good,” the man said.

  “Is it?”

  “Oh, yes. It means I still have a job.”

  “You hurt me. You said you wouldn’t . . .”

  “Well, it was supposed to be fun,” Lin Fong said.

  “It wasn't.”

  “Well, maybe next time,” he said to her, then to someone else, “Syringe.”

  “What are you doing?” she asked weakly.

  “My job,” Lin Fong said.

  She felt a pinch then a warm glow, then the world drifted into darkness.

  When she awoke the next time, all was confusion, and she the center of it. There was no right or left to the world and no up or down. She felt a sensation of weight that shifted from place to place like a roller going over her body. When she turned what she thought was her head, she saw flesh where no flesh should be. The out-of-place flesh was welded to her by a purple seam. Above her and below her were arms and legs that felt like hers but didn’t look like hers. She heard noises—gurgling and wheezing and somewhere someone was trying to speak. When she opened her mouth to respond, she felt one hand open as if connected to it. She felt her fingers moving in rhythm with her tongue. No words came out. She heard voices, but the sounds had no meaning. She tried to move but the limbs would not obey.

  Much later, the world began to move. She recognized the smooth walls of the monolith’s interior and watched them glide past. Then she saw freshly scraped ground. Soon her confused senses picked up the unmistakable scent of rotting flesh.

  12

  They had been leaning on the railing in full view, watching. After Lavachek got caught watching them dump body things yesterday with no repercussions, they figured it didn’t matter.

  They watched the men swing the thing out and drop it in the pit. Then one of them fired two shots down into it. On the way back, one of the men waved to Habershaw and Lavachek like a friendly neighbor.

  “There’s another one,” Lavachek said. “That’s the second one today.”

  “Looks like they’ve slowed down a little, though,” Habershaw replied, half listening.

  “Yeah, hi, you sonofabitch,” Habershaw said to the figure below in a voice that couldn’t possibly be heard. “Your days are numbered, asshole.”

  Habershaw was worried about Joan. He hadn’t heard from her since yesterday. That was a bad sign. He took the phone out of his pocket and tried her numbers, first her office. Nothing. Then he tried her personal number. The same error message appeared on the phone’s display.

  “Unit disabled. What does that mean?” he harshly questioned Lavachek, as though Lavachek bore some personal responsibility.

  “Is it working?” Lavachek asked, taken aback, and not knowing what else to say.

  “Mine’s working! Hers is the one that’s not working! She should have called by now!”

  “Sorry . . .” Lavachek said.

  Habershaw put the phone away. Christ.

  “Something’s up. Something’s gone wrong,” he said. “We gotta get back to the settlement.”

  “How? Patel told us to wait right here. If we take off and Patel finds out . . .”

  “Hey, Patel can suck my dick,” Habershaw said. “I say we take a truck and drive back tonight. We can be back by dawn.”

  “That’s a four-hundred kilometer round trip. I don’t know. If we get caught disobeying orders, Patel could really screw us over.”

  Habershaw felt the fear in Lavachek’s voice like a tangible thing. Watching the strange goings-on below could spook anybody, even someone as tough as Lavachek.

  “Then stay here. You can cover for me.”

  “How?”

  “Are you worried about catching hell ‘cuz I’m gone?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Forget it. Just . . . just stay here.”

  * * *

  That night, dressed in a net suit, Habershaw made his way down off the rig and across the open space he’d scraped out of the jungle with the heavy machine. His target was a row of utility trucks on the northern side of the monolith. The law about being out after dark was especially true so close to the ocean. The insect life released from branches, bark and leaves at nightfall here was unusually thick and virulent, even for Verde. The air seemed filled with them like enormous ash or snowflakes blown at random in the twin moons’ light. By the time he got to the first truck, his suit was covered with flying and crawling bugs. He brushed off as many as he could before getting in the cab. Some of them stuck, snagged by sharp feet in the mesh. He kept batting at them, his gloved hands tearing them to pieces.

  In the process, he accidentally unzipped his net suit partially open at a seam.

  The beetle was rare and quite small by Verdian standards, measuring only half the length of his index finger. It circled him once or twice, drawn by the sweet cloud of carbon dioxide that surrounded his head. Once, it landed on his shoulder and turned in a tight knot, seeking flesh it knew was there somewhere. But finding nothing worthwhile, it unfolded its stiff wing coverings and clattered into the air with a light clicking sound.

  It circled again and landed once more, this time at the seam of net suit and cotton fiber. Smelling sweat, it scrabbled into the space between the two fabrics. It would have ducked and clawed its way under the cotton and against his skin if Habershaw hadn’t zipped the space closed. As it was, he sealed the bug between his net suit and inner clothing with a single, long pull on the net suit’s zipper.

  He turned the truck on and crept backwards out of the space. He turned toward the road and continued to creep silently until he was well onto it. He checked his watch. Eleven hours till dawn. He’d calculated it out already. He’d have to average forty kilometers per hour to make it back before daylight. That would leave him about three hours to find Joan. Forty kilometers per hour would be pushing it on this road. It wasn’t real smooth.

  He drove by moonlight until he was a few kilometers out then he hit the trucks lights. The insects seemed to materialize out of thin air in front of the truck. Spinning, whirling specters of red and green and black and brown, they flew at the truck and banged off the windows or zipped past in streaks of uninterrupted motion. The truck wasn’t going that fast, but sometimes the ones that hit left spatters of juice smashed out by their fat weight an
d inertia alone. Occasionally, he’d see an especially huge something race across the road, or scramble ahead of the truck for a distance; its shiny surface reflecting brilliant accents from the truck’s lights.

  He settled in for a long night’s drive. Wherever he could, he upped his speed to forty-five or fifty, just to be on the safe side.

  The bug crawled along a folded tube of cotton until it emerged at his side, antennae waving. From there it headed downward, scrabbling over the folds at his hip and pushed under the tight fit of net and cotton in his lap. It made good time going down the relatively smooth stretch along his leg. It headed south again at the knee and when it reached the zipper at his ankle, it took advantage of what moisture and mildew had started months ago—it crawled through a tear where the zipper met cotton. It now hung sideways on the inside of his pants leg, just a centimeter from skin, antennae twitching with an insect’s particular form of delight.

  It reached out with those antennae and touched flesh. Then it twisted and snagged sparse hair with its forelegs. Getting a good grip, it twisted farther and thrashed for a grip with its remaining legs. Habershaw felt the crawling sensation of stiff little legs.

  “I’ll be goddamned,” he said, reaching down and mashing at the spot with his fingertips. He felt the hard little carapace crush under his hand and felt wetness on the last punch or two. Then he pinched a fold of pants leg and net suit, pulled the elastic band away from his leg and shook it all, leg included, hoping the now dead little invader would fall out.

  He and Lavachek had done a good job of scraping the road from the settlement to the monolith. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t supposed to be perfect. It was supposed to be a passable dirt road smooth enough so that most of the vehicles that would need to use it could. They’d left many ragged tree stumps in this wide, passable road. They were inevitable and of little consequence really. All one had to do was drive around them.