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

by David Coy

  “Sounds perfect,” he said. “I’m listening.”

  “I can’t tell too much from the few archeological examples we have, obviously, but there are some clues in the artifacts.”

  “Go,” he said.

  “First of all, I don’t think there are many of them. I could be off about this, but I just don’t get the sense of unbridled proliferation at work when I think about them. I see them cloistered in several locations on the planet, not thousands. If I had to guess, I’d say there are maybe a thousand, possibly two thousand individuals’ total. That comes from the fact that I see no evidence of younger or immature examples in the remains in the monolith.”

  “Okay. That could be encouraging,” he said.

  “They are probably long-lived,” she went on. “Perhaps hundreds of years old at maturity.”

  “Where does that come from?”

  “I’ve examined the bone structure of a couple of the mummified examples we found in the monolith. The bones are slight, weak, but the joints are simply old. The calcification buildup and wear on the cusps suggest great age.” She stopped and thought for a second. “They think differently than we do,” she said changing direction. “Their technology suggests some kind of duality of mind. That’s the only way I can put it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they have successfully created a technology capable of interplanetary travel, which depends on what we would think of as a normal approach to discovery around physics and physical laws, yet they’ve spent half their time studying living things and turning the manipulation of organic material into a fantastic technology, and then somehow blended physics and biology together. To us, the idea of blending physics and biology into a single technological framework is unfathomable. We just assume it can’t be done.”

  “So they don’t think like we do?” Paul asked, repeating back the best he could understand of Rachel's sophisticated knowledge.

  “Just as I said,” she smiled. “They seem to be a lot smarter than we are, but they’re also very stupid in some ways. They are great integrators, but the simple stuff eludes them.”

  “Like stupid how?”

  “Well, consider for a moment their choice of weapons,” she said, knowing that the question would pique his attention. “They spend generations upon generations developing a biological weapon that, as effective as it is, is not nearly as destructive as a simple bomb.”

  “But from what you described,” Paul said with a thoughtful frown, “their weapon targets only their enemies with little or no collateral damage. Sounds like a good weapon to have in your arsenal.”

  “Yes. That’s true. We, on the other hand, if we could find them, could wipe them out with just a few nukes. Sure, we’d leave craters the size of a city in the jungle and kill everything for kilometers all around, but they’d be dead. That would be our goal. I don’t think the idea of using a bomb is something they would think of as a rational thought.”

  “How do you know they don’t have a nuke or two waiting for us?”

  “Because they didn’t use it,” Rachel said flatly. “It’s almost as if the biological precision of the wasps is somehow a cultural imperative, and that killing only a ‘bad’ species is permitted.” She paused and ran her hand over her eyes and back over her head. “Look, I’m a biologist. I understand how important each species in any ecosystem is to the whole. They do, too. But for them it’s like they…they take it to the next level. They understand so much more about how the pieces fit together in an ecosystem than we do. So, like I said, they’re smarter than we are—and dumber, too.” She shook her head ruefully. “At the same time, they’ll take individual representatives of any species and cut it up, blend it with, amalgamate it, morph it with and stitch it to any other species just to see what happens. I think they do that just to see what use they can make out of the new little monster they’ve created. Unlike Erlich and his little team, they really know how to use that blending technology. They invented it.”

  That was the part she didn’t understand. That was the thing that churned inside her and gave her the nightmares. That was the thing that was wrong.

  “So you haven’t told me what kind of threat you think they are to the colony,” Paul said cocking his head.

  She swallowed and put aside the thoughts of the hideous artifacts she’d found in the monolith. “In the short term,” she went on. “I doubt they’re much of a threat. I think they used the most effective weapon they have against us, and it worked—it killed most of us off. That weapon can’t be used again as I understand it. I doubt they have anything like an infantry or air force or tanks or guns. They may have other biological devices you might call weapons available, but my suspicion is that they they’ve used their most destructive one on us already. And for all we know, they may be perfectly happy with the result.”

  “What do you mean?” Paul asked.

  “It’s like I said in the meeting,” she said. “Our numbers are so low now that we probably won’t survive as a species. My guess is that they think they’ve won the war already. All they have to do is sit back and wait for the last one of us to die. The planet itself will kill us. They know this entire system inside and out. So they must know that, too. It’s just a matter of time.”

  Paul nodded, his eyes narrowing just slightly.

  “That brings me to the last thing about them I think,” she said.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Patience. They are extremely old—and extremely patient.”

  “From what you’ve said it doesn’t sound like they’re much of threat,” he said.

  “We’ll be lucky even to see one of them,” she said, desperately hoping it was true.

  * * *

  Donna held up the vial of clear liquid, pushed it through the bars a few inches and swished it around so Smith could see it. “Know what this is?” she asked him, her eye blazing.

  “New sweetener you’ve invented?” Smith asked sardonically.

  “Not quite,” she said. “If I have my way, I’ll be the one to pour this shit over your heads.”

  Wethers and Lindstrom were sitting side by side against the far wall, and were not quite as nonplused as Smith. Wethers couldn’t quite take his eyes off the vial of Villaroos plant extract. Lindstrom gave his fear away by deliberately not looking at the plant extract.

  “I suppose you’d enjoy that,” Smith said.

  “No more so than your boys there enjoyed throwing me into the jungle from a shuttle,” she laughed. “That was fun wasn’t it, Wethers? You both must have loved doing it, ‘cuz you were smiling about it quite a bit as I recall.” She swished the vial as she spoke. “You know when you kicked me off the force field, Lindstrom, you must have broken one of my ribs. I still can’t take a deep breath without feeling it.” Her fingers found the spot on her side and massaged it. “Yep. Still hurts. Imagine what it’s like to be reminded how much I hate you every time I breathe.”

  She leaned back in the chair. “You sonsofbitches…” she said, shaking her head slowly and beaming wickedly. “Aren’t you just surprised as hell to see me? I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be you, looking at me. In a way I feel sorry for you.”

  “If our roles had been reversed,” Smith said, “you might have done the same. Your actions right now only confirm it.”

  “You know, I can’t argue with you there,” Donna said. “And now look, I get the chance to be you with three sonsofbitches like you to get revenge on. Feels nice, actually.”

  She uncapped the bottle of liquid, raised it to her mouth and took a big drink of it. She held it in her mouth with twisted glee, then pissed it out of her mouth in a long, thin stream from Smith to Wethers. She ran out before getting to Lindstrom. “Got lucky there, Lindstrom, no Villaroos juice for you today. It’s just water, you stupid bastards,” she said and got up. “This time … but I’m working your case every day, so don’t worry. I’ll see that you get what you deserve. That’s a promise.”<
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  She put back the chair and walked out of the brig. On her way out she thanked the guard at the entrance. “That must have felt good,” he said to her.

  “Nah. Not so much really,” she replied. “A bit of a let-down, actually.”

  She headed to the clinic, but decided she would stop off at the commissary first for a bite to eat before taking on the stream of patients she knew she’d find waiting for her when she got back. Her phone hadn’t rung in the last two days with any emergency calls, but she knew it would just be a matter of time before it did. Spend ten minutes in the green and something would find you, try to make a meal out of you, or use you for an incubator for its nasty progeny.

  They’d set up the clinic and the biology labs adjacent to one another so that she and Rachel could exchange information better. The concept was simple. Rachel was making daily excursions with the two volunteers she’d Shanghaied to help her. Rachel's job was to continue to inventory the biological hazards and put out releases through the communication system with any information gained about the hazards and how to avoid them. Rachel’s sample collection work required a certain amount of scientific rigor to classify the risks. Donna’s sample collection system was far more efficient. The infected colonists themselves were the collection vectors. All she had to do was go to work each day and let the colonists’ bodies provide the perfect collection mechanisms for the jungle’s virulent life forms. They had a nearly constant flow of new hazards whose modus operandi they could view firsthand. And since so many of the incidents were duplicates, there were often some additional details revealed that helped round out their knowledge over time.

  The commissary was comprised of two long rows of open-air tables and benches all covered with a suspended and stretched fabric roof to shield the sitters and standers and talkers from the hot Verdian sun or sudden downpour. Against one side was another long table stacked with the day’s fare and tended by a Bobby Cooper, a cheerful and dutiful son of one of the Bondsmen. Bobby’s job was to keep the food organized and sanitary enough to eat during the day. The job wasn’t too hard when the sun was up, but by the time the sun started down, it was time to seal the containers and put the remains of the day’s offerings in the metal larders behind the table.

  The commissary was the informal gathering place for the colonists where they’d breakfast before pursuing the day’s work or break when the sun was high for lunch; or if not too late in the day, stop off for dinner before going home. It was the community gathering place and the site of daily, informal town meetings. Here, rumors were exchanged or squashed flat, and the latest news always communicated in the fastest known way: mouth to ear.

  Donna picked up a meat and vegetables platter from Bobby and headed over to sit with John and the other shuttle pilot, Tom Yelton. Donna didn’t know Yelton very well, and had never spoken to him, but she knew him as a friend of John’s. And any friend of John’s was a friend of hers and came with an automatic endorsement.

  She sat down with a glance of approval at Yelton and took a swig of coffee.

  “Nice hot day, huh?” she said to either of them.

  “Nice hot day,” they said almost in unison.

  “Seems a little cooler than yesterday,” John offered.

  “Who can tell?” Donna said.

  “Who can tell?” Yelton agreed and sucked his teeth with a pleasant expression. Donna considered him with a candid look with her blazing eye.

  “Who’s your pal?” she said to John. “Introduce us.”

  “Oh, yeah,” John said hustling through it. “Damn. I’m sorry. This is Tom Yelton, Shuttle Pilot Grade Four. He’s an old friend of mine. Tom, Donna Applegate, Nurse Grade. .whatever. You’ll have one of her needles in your ass eventually, for something.”

  “I’ve heard of her,” Yelton said.

  “Yeah?” Donna replied, “What have you heard?”

  “Just what everybody else has,” he said. “That you’re a damned good doctor.”

  She offered him a sideways grin. “Well, that part’s true, I guess. Anything else you hear is a lie.”

  “That works for me,” Yelton said.

  Donna had Yelton sized up immediately. He would be one of those rare and truly easy-going persons, relaxed and unflappable under even the most demanding conditions; the kind who would sleep through a thunderstorm, she was sure, or one who would keep his head to the very end, running coolly and efficiently through each logical corrective action in step-wise fashion as his shuttle crashed nose-first into the sea. She liked him. But that could change based on his next answer.

  “So what brought you to Verde?” she asked him. “Your contract or your religion?”

  “Contract,” he said flatly. “Not much into religion. What about you?”

  “Then we have something in common,” she said. “I came here to run Health and Safety. Turns out I still have the job. Not that Smith’s too pleased about it about now.”

  “Why’s that?” Yelton asked.

  “The bastard tried to kill me,” Donna said. “And now he wants me dead more than ever. But that ain’t gonna happen.”

  “Well, he’ll get what he deserves,” Yelton said easily. “Guys like him always do.”

  Donna nodded and forked up some vegetables. “You got that right, she said. She took a bite and chewed. “Hot sonofabitch today,” she said past her food.

  “Cooler than yesterday,” Yelton added, taking a pull on his coffee.

  22

  Donna’s face had that “another really bad one” look on it and Rachel sighed and steeled herself for the news she knew was coming.

  “You’d better come over here and look at this one,” Donna’s little face in the phone said. “Bring your tools, too. You’re going to have to help me with this one.”

  Rachel picked up her kit, slung it over her shoulder and headed out the door. “Mind the shop while I’m gone,” she said to Beverly Hobbs, her newly-acquired assistant. “And stay away from those big ants I just dumped in that container. They sting like fire and squirt acid out their asses.”

  Beverly eyeballed the big greenish ants in the plastic bottle with a frown. Ants had never been one of her favorites. “Sure,” she said.

  When Rachel entered the clinic, she was greeted with a cloying and pungent odor that clung to the back of her throat. She contorted her face at the smell. Donna was standing next to a middle-aged male patient on an operating table under a bank of lights. The patient had a respirator over his nose and mouth. His eyes were closed. The white sheet that covered his body was stained with a wet yellow material near his right side. Donna was already suited up, her hands gloved with a surgical mask on her face. More of the yellow material stained the front of Donna’s gown and her gloved hands. In one hand, was a gleaming surgical scalpel.

  “What’s that smell?” Rachel asked her.

  “It’s coming off the juice from this damned thing,” Donna said and pulled the sheet back from the man’s torso.

  As if glued to the man’s right flank, just above the hip, was a dark and shiny organism about the size of a rat. Where the smooth seam of the organism met the man’s flesh, a red and angry welt had raised. The life form reminded Rachel of an ancient trilobite, the dorsal area striated with thick curved plates. The thorax was thick, too, and ended abruptly at a blunt head. Small compound eyes stared out from the sides of the head. Dark antennae lay flat against the organism’s back.

  “There’s one we haven’t seen,” Rachel said frowning.

  “I think I have,” Donna said. “I think I saw one of these attached to the flank of an ungulate one night in the green.”

  “Have you figured out what it’s doing to him?”

  Donna shook her head. “Not yet. But one of the scans seems to show tendrils around his liver originating from the organism. He was agitated and in pain when he got here. I put him under so I could work on him. Every time you touch the damned thing it oozes this smelly shit.” She showed Rachel her ooze-wet gloved hands. “It
comes from glands or something under the carapace. I’m betting it’s toxic, but I haven’t analyzed it yet.”

  “Hm. So what do you want to do?”

  “Take it off him.”

  “Lance it off? What about the tendrils?”

  “I’ll deal with those later.”

  “Hm. Where did he pick up this thing?”

  “The guy who dropped him off said he saw him stumble out of the green a couple of kilometers down the road. Looks like he stopped his truck and walked into the jungle for some reason, maybe to relieve himself, and came out with his little buddy here stuck to his side.”

  “Who is he?” Rachel asked.

  “Tim Collins. He’s a truck driver. And a Bondsman.”

  “Hmm.” Rachel pulled up a wheeled stool, leaned in and took a closer look. “Lemme see your blade,” she said. Donna handed it to her handle first.

  “Don’t get that shit on your skin,” Donna said. “Here, put this on,” she handed Rachel a clear face shield. “And these gloves, too.”

  Rachel put on the gloves, slipped on the face shield, leaned in and touched the organism with the tip of the scalpel. Immediately a thin stream of pale yellow liquid appeared at the seam of parasite and human flesh and ran down in a slow-moving rivulet. “God that stuff stinks!” she said and gagged almost simultaneously. “I wonder what it does? Have you collected any of it yet?”

  “Nope,” Donna said. “Have a ball.”

  Rachel wiped a few swabs-full of the stuff off the table and stuck the swabs in a glass vial. “It could be toxic, but I’ll bet its most toxic characteristic is its stench. It’s probably designed to warn you off when you try to remove the organism. It’s noxious for sure. Toxic, we don’t know yet. I wouldn’t want to eat any of it, though, or get it in a cut.” She picked around at the organism’s hard surface with the tip of the scalpel. “Hm. These are interesting,” she said. “These look like sockets for wings. I’ll bet this thing was airborne until it landed on the victim. It probably shed its wings after attaching to him. Ant and termite alates do the same thing when they land after swarming. Once the wings have served their purpose, off they come. Hmm.”