The Druid Gene

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  Darcy suddenly felt bone-tired. She didn’t like being called a specimen, and she was tempted to snap at Nembrotha, but when it came down to it she was simply too exhausted.

  She reached up to try to close the gap on the back of the garment, so no one could see the healing wound anymore. But she couldn’t let go of the mesh or she’d drift away, and one-handed she couldn’t properly reach.

  “Allow me,” Selpis said, and gently resealed the clothing.

  “Thank you,” Darcy mumbled. She clicked the button to save the setting on the jumpsuit.

  “We should eat,” Nembrotha declared.

  Selpis rummaged in the compartments again and doled out a few food cubes and small pouches of water. She handed two sets to Darcy. “Would you?” She indicated Raub at the front of the ship.

  Darcy took the food and water, cradling it against her body with one hand, and pushed off for the cockpit. She gave herself a large margin for error and bumped into the wall next to the empty seat. She turned awkwardly, hearing Nembrotha’s damp squeaks and chortles over her shoulder.

  She managed to maneuver into the seat and hold on while it swiveled to face forward. Raub didn’t acknowledge that she’d returned.

  She extended the food and water toward him with one hand, drifting out of the seat a little. “Raub?”

  He didn’t move or speak, just continued to pore over information on his screen.

  She spoke louder. “Raub, do you want something to eat or drink?”

  He inhaled sharply and turned those cold cobalt eyes on her. The whites of his eyes seemed greenish, as did his skin. She looked at the display for a source of yellow light, but it was mostly white. “Leave it. I’ve more pressing things to be concerned with.” He gestured with an open hand to a storage compartment on the dashboard near the top of his console.

  She slipped the food and water into it. “What is it?”

  “This craft has a limited range. I must find a planet within reach where we can either refuel or find passage to a larger hub. This sector is not well documented. It is not an easy task.”

  “Oh.” Darcy shrank down into her seat a little. She knew this news should concern her, but she’d just had enough. He seemed to know what he was doing. He could handle it. Her back ached something fierce and her body felt drained. She couldn’t process anything else right now.

  He turned away. “You should sleep while your body regenerates. It is foolish to remain awake. You’re practically catatonic.” And with that he was refocused on the screen again.

  She slipped her own cubes and pouch into a compartment and snapped the harness into place. She didn’t even try to keep her eyes open.

  28

  Darcy startled awake several times, her limbs flailing, with the intense feeling that she was falling due to the lack of gravity. Eventually she found that she could curl up and wedge her upper body sideways in the harness so that she felt more anchored to the seat. That helped and she slept soundly after that.

  When she woke, she noted that Raub was no longer in the pilot seat, and she kept hearing a soft thumping sound that she couldn’t identify.

  She flinched. A spurt of anxiety shot through her. What was Raub doing? She shouldn’t have left him alone with her friends. She had to protect them from him.

  She unbuckled the harness, triggering the seat to swivel once her weight drifted out of it. As it turned, she heard a soft clucking sound coming from below and to her left. She looked down to find Selpis, Nembrotha, and Tesserae71 crammed into a small hollow just below and to the side of her seat. They were safe.

  She set thoughts of Raub aside for the moment. “Tesserae71, how are you feeling?”

  Tesserae71 moved slightly and chirped, “Adequate to serve your needs, my queen.”

  “Your queen?” Nembrotha derided with their usual soggy bluster. “I thought Hain was your queen. Do hymenoptera shift loyalties so easily?”

  Movement in the corner of Darcy’s eye tugged at her attention, but she kept her focus on the hymenoptera. She wanted to hear his reply.

  He opened and shut his mandibles a few times then clacked, “I was dead to Hain and my cadre. Darcy Eberhardt has given me a second life. I will serve her now in whatever capacity she will have me.”

  Selpis laid a hand lightly on one of the hymenoptera’s limbs for a second. “That’s lovely, Tesserae71, but I doubt that Darcy will want you to serve in any role other than as her companion.”

  Darcy was about to chime in when Nembrotha spluttered, “You aren’t fit to lift a pincer for yourself, much less anyone else. Save your subservient foolishness for that churl.” Nembrotha’s sensory stalks swung toward the rear section of the tern.

  Darcy followed Nembrotha’s gaze, and the reason for the three of them being scrunched up in the front section became clear. Raub was utilizing the entire cargo area of the ship as a gym. He gently bounced off the ceiling, twisting his body through the space until he made contact with the floor and slowly pushed off again, curling into a new configuration. He wasn’t bouncing around like popcorn back there; his movements were slow, controlled, graceful even. He was still slightly greenish. She wondered if it was jaundice. His lightly furred body was slick with sweat, making him appear more humanoid. As he spun, droplets flung from the tips of his unruly mane.

  “That,” Nembrotha said, with ire, “is not good for the air recycling system.”

  “He’s been at it for hours,” Selpis said, blinking rapidly. “He clearly has enviable reserves of energy.” Selpis’s gaze flicked back to Darcy in an evaluating way that made Darcy feel uncomfortable. “Is he your mate?”

  “No!” The very idea made Darcy cringe. “My boyfriend and I were kidnapped at the same time. His name is Adam Benally. Hain sold him. I’m going to find him and buy him back…somehow.”

  “A hero’s quest. How quaint,” Nembrotha said with a wet snuffle.

  Selpis blinked. “Don’t buy him back—just take him and run. Those who traffic in sentients in this way don’t deserve any compensation.”

  “I will assist in any way I can, my queen,” Tesserae71 chittered softly.

  Darcy almost smiled. “Just call me Darcy.”

  “As you wish,” the hymenoptera said gravely.

  “Sickening,” Nembrotha gurgled.

  Selpis shushed the slug then asked, “Do you know what species Raub is? What planet he’s from?”

  Darcy shrugged. “No. He never said.”

  Nembrotha slithered over Selpis’s shoulder, down her front, and then up over one of the reptile’s knees. Darcy supposed they were able to create suction with their single foot, since they didn’t float away. They arched up, close to Darcy’s face, their sensory stalks twitching in the air just an inch from her chin. “You did not find that odd?”

  “Should I have?”

  “It is atypical not to reveal such details upon first meeting,” the slug replied.

  “Well, I don’t know where any of you come from,” Darcy said wryly.

  “Ah, yes,” Selpis said smoothly. “Our first meeting was unusual. And you did indicate that you didn’t know anything about the greater galaxy, so it wouldn’t have meant much to you, I suppose.”

  Tesserae71 clacked formally, “My species is from a planet called Giro, but I’ve never been there, nor has anyone I’ve ever met. All I’ve ever known is the Vermachten and now this tern.”

  Nembrotha began to make their way back up to their spot on Selpis’s neck. “I am a baryana. My homeworld is Limnuac. And there will be a large reward on offer for anyone who aids me in my return.”

  Tesserae71 turned slightly toward Selpis. “Is that why you care for them?”

  Selpis’s eyes lit up with amusement. “Because of a reward? No. Nembrotha prevented my sale to a loathsome slaver. They saved me from an unsavory fate and I owe them a debt because of that.”

  Darcy pushed herself down closer to them and wedged herself under the copilot’s seat. “What happened?”

  Selpis looke
d away, her eyes unfocused. Her tail seemed to curl around her body more tightly. “A merchant was paraded through the holding room, and she selected a group she wanted to inspect more carefully.”

  “Both Selpis and I were among them,” Nembrotha interjected.

  “My people are preferred for the most abhorrent positions in the slave trade because…because my world is gone…my people scattered across the galaxy.” Selpis took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  “Gone?” Darcy asked softly. She reached out to touch Selpis’s cool hand.

  Selpis ducked her head but didn’t pull away. “Consumed by the Swarm. Without a central government to appeal to for rescue, we are often stuck in these situations. Someone like Nembrotha might be sold, but if they are able to get word out, then recovery is possible.”

  “Only if that someone is as important as I am,” Nembrotha lisped. “There are many governments that are indifferent to the plight of their citizenry.”

  Darcy furrowed her brow. She didn’t think any governments on Earth were even aware that aliens were visiting their planet, much less going to bat for people when they were abducted in this way. But what if they were? What if someone was looking for her and Adam right now? It seemed unlikely. She was pretty sure she had no one to count on aside from herself. And Adam. He was smart. He might have escaped by now and was trying to find her.

  And she was hurtling away from him at unknown speeds.

  “We were removed to a private room. The slaver poked and prodded us…” Selpis sighed.

  “Humiliating behavior,” Nembrotha declared.

  Silence stretched out. The only sound was Raub’s padding feet and hands against the inside surfaces of the ship as he exercised. Darcy got the feeling that there was a lot being left unsaid because it was too painful to say out loud.

  Selpis tilted her head to one side. “A few were selected. I was among them.” Her eyes closed. “It would have been a difficult life.”

  Nembrotha’s small blue body rippled. “Hain invited the slaver to inspect my person more closely. Until that moment, I had been present as merely a curiosity. There had been no serious intention to purchase, praise the Cunabula. I secreted a slow-acting central nervous system toxin when she placed her hands upon me. She was dead before the negotiations were complete. No one suspected my part in it, and Selpis was returned to the holding room. Being a largely unknown species has its benefits.”

  Darcy felt her eyes widen and she looked at Nembrotha with a new level of respect. “Why did you do that?”

  “Selpis had been kind to me,” they said. “I didn’t want that fate for her.”

  A thin, transparent membrane slid down over Selpis’s eyes and her chin lowered, brushing over Nembrotha’s back. There was clearly some affection between them.

  “You’ve got quite an arsenal,” Darcy mused. She’d definitely underestimated the imperious little slug.

  “Size has nothing to do with it,” they replied sharply, their slushy speech not diminishing their umbrage. “My people are formidable. More so when challenged en masse, but even singly we are not to be trifled with.”

  Tesserae71 clacked softly in agreement and seemed to ease away from Nembrotha ever so slightly.

  Darcy bit her lip. “People keep mentioning the Swarm like it’s something everyone knows about, but…”

  Selpis’s eyes snapped back open.

  Tesserae71 chattered with surprise. “You don’t?”

  Darcy shook her head. “No. Would you tell me?”

  The trio began to talk over each other. She caught bits and pieces of what they were saying.

  “—a scourge on the galaxy.”

  “—and insatiable hunger.”

  “—simply evil incarnate.”

  The last comment trailed off and Darcy felt none the wiser. “But what is it?”

  “Big bugs,” Nembrotha said.

  Tesserae71 turned to look at Selpis. “You describe them,” he said.

  Selpis blinked owlishly. “It is a species of insect—a beetle—that is mammoth in proportion. There are many legends about them, many of which probably aren’t true. But what is true is that they devour worlds.”

  “What?”

  Nembrotha craned toward Darcy. “They consume every living thing on land, in air, and living in the sea.”

  Darcy might have wondered if they were kidding if they hadn’t all seemed so serious. “But how?”

  “A freakish confluence of evolutionary mutations that first enabled them to grow larger than any other known flying land-based insect species, then allowed them to conquer the sea, and then to not only survive in the vacuum of space between worlds but to zip around in it. It would be too much to be believed if it were fiction,” Nembrotha spat.

  “And they’re hard to kill,” Selpis said.

  “Good grief,” Darcy mumbled. “And these giant insects destroyed your world?”

  “Yes,” Selpis replied.

  Tesserae71’s mandibles worked soundlessly though his head was facing away. She sensed that this talk disturbed him somehow.

  Selpis turned to him and patted his thorax. “Insect species in general have a tough time because of the Swarm.”

  “Why?”

  “I think it’s natural to want to put taxonomic groups into the same categories—to say that they share traits in common. In some ways these classifications are true. All mammals are warm-blooded. Reptiles like myself are cold-blooded. We can make generalities like this. But to say all primates are aggressive or that all reptiles are subservient is inaccurate.”

  Darcy nodded vigorously. “Of course. People can be very different depending on a lot of factors.”

  Selpis went on. “There is a tendency to make other insect species scapegoats for what the Swarm has done.”

  Tesserae71 clacked in agreement, though his head remained turned away.

  That made sense. It put a lot of comments Darcy had overheard into a new context.

  Raub spoke from above and behind her, his baritone voice startling her so much that she lost contact with the bulkhead she was braced against. She bounced up, banging her head against the armrest of the copilot seat, arms and legs scrambling to find purchase and narrowly missing kicking Selpis in the face.

  “Your gossip session is over. Time to train.”

  29

  Raub finished his conditioning session and found a towel to scrub most of the sweat from his body. He was disappointed by how slowly the girl was adapting to null g. All the lessons he’d taught her about proprioception in the dark during her nightly sessions in the hymenoptera quarters seemed to have completely left her. He’d been preparing her to be ready for anything, to mold herself to any circumstance. It was as though he’d taught her nothing.

  The mere sound of his voice set off a bout of floundering.

  She was still too young, too soft. The flesh wound she’d incurred in the fight to get to the tern had probably been her first serious blooding. Such trifles were common among the children of his people. It wouldn’t have slowed him down or stopped him from fighting as a ten-year-old boy. She’d healed fast from the wound and that demonstrated her potential. Now he’d make her live up to it.

  There was still much work to do. During the escape, she’d frozen, become ineffectual, like a cornered prey animal. He had to trigger her need to fight and defend—to get on top and stay on top.

  These unsuitable companions made her weak. Sitting around and blathering would get her nowhere. She’d have to harden up or all of this would be for naught.

  He had many spins to accomplish this goal before they reached their destination, and the tern was stocked with a few methods he could utilize to put his ideas into practice.

  Petulance dominated her doughy features. “I haven’t eaten anything since I woke up.”

  “What of it?”

  Her confidantes cringed away from him, instinctively making themselves smaller when he came near. He relished the power he held over them. If they had a
ny intelligence at all they’d stay well under his notice. They knew they were only alive because of the girl’s whim. He would allow them to remain that way because they might prove useful to manipulate her in the future.

  Darcy let out a noisy breath. “I don’t want to reopen the wound on my back.”

  Whining.

  Unacceptable.

  “It’s healed. You just slept for most of two spins like an infant.”

  He repressed the urge to chuckle at her expression, because it would make her more difficult to motivate.

  “Even the worm laughs at how you handle yourself in microgravity. Are you going to let that stand?”

  “No!” she said defiantly, and her eyeballs rolled around in their sockets. “What am I supposed to do?”

  He began by directing her through a series of simple exercises. First, he made her target specific locations within the tern and move toward them at a slow pace with the goal of reaching them without losing control—simple sequences of aim, push, grab, absorb the momentum, maneuver the body toward a new destination, and then repeat.

  When she mastered that, he told her to curl into a ball as she moved through the cabin and unfurl fully as she reached her target. He repeated those exercises, the next time requiring that she spin a full rotation en route. Then again, but with a midcabin flip. Subsequently he required that she bounce off two surfaces from front to back of the ship and still reach her target point precisely. He continued to ramp up the complexity until her muscles trembled and sweat flowed freely from her pores. But she didn’t complain. She did the work without comment, her teeth clenched in concentration.

  It was inconvenient that null g was the least effective place to train. It was difficult to make gains without gravity forcing muscles to adapt. But it would allow him to refocus on the mental aspects of her development. To teach her to be more resourceful and cunning—and adaptable.

  When she began to lose accuracy from fatigue, he allowed her to stop. He was satisfied with the ground she’d gained. In only one session she’d learned proficiency in null-g movement.