Read Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) Online
Authors: David Coy
Tags: #dystopian, #space, #series, #contagion, #infections, #fiction, #alien, #science fiction, #space opera, #outbreak
Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) (34 page)
“Yes . .
. ”
Phil
wasn’t. The glazed expression was still there. He’d dealt with many persons who
on drugs or otherwise out of control had their brief, lucid moments.
“Mary,
close the space hole,” he said.
She was
losing touch, drifting; he could sense it. The panel was absorbing her
consciousness, and the line separating the ship’s mind from her’s was beginning
to blur.
She
grimaced, and it took Phil a moment to realize that the weird ape-like
expression was a grin of pleasure, a feral, lascivious grin.
Christ,
he thought.
This is too much.
Mary
closed the hatch and as she did, the light from Earth shrank to a pinpoint then
vanished. She reached over with her free hand and pressed the device to
equalize pressure. The sound of rushing air filled the airlock.
“Can you
open the seams now, Mary?”
“No. But
you can . . .”
Phil
reached out cautiously and put his hand down on the opener.
“It’s
okay . . .” she said with a dreamy look.
The seams
separating the air-lock from the staging area bloomed open.
“Mary,
let loose. Let go of the panel.”
To his
abrupt surprise, the thick roots unfurled, then balled up around the center.
Mary got a brief pained expression as the probe slipped out of her arm. She
stepped back from the panel and rubbed the point of entry with her thumb. Her
thumb came away pink with blood.
“Are you
all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you
sure?”
“Yeah,
I’m all right.”
“Do you
know where you are?” He didn’t want to ask it, but there was no telling what
kind of residual after-effect such a union might have. He wanted to be sure.
“Better
than you do,” she said evenly, then smiled.
He would
have preferred a less clever answer, but at least she didn’t hesitate in giving
it. He stepped up and rubbed her arms. The smile of friendship he got in return
put him at ease.
The sheer
size and mass of the shuttle overwhelmed them. In color and texture, it was
exactly as one would expect of an insect: beetle-brown like the rest of the
ship and as shiny as a lacquered table. The legs were stunted, almost
rudimentary, and fit smoothly along the creature’s sides. The head part was
smallish in comparison to the rest of it, giving it a swollen look and
contributing to the impression of a larval or immature form of whatever it was.
The mechanical parts woven into it were perfectly fitted when viewed up close.
“This is
it,” Mary said pointing to the patch on the creature’s side. “This is the
opener.” It was a raised patch of tissue, and an obvious add-on like all the
ship’s openers.
They
exchanged looks and Mary reached out to put her hand on it. Phil stopped her.
“You said
one of these things was frightened,” he said. “What happens if we scare it more
by opening it?”
Mary
scratched her chin. “They can’t do anything except what they’re told. Pressing
the opener tells them to open. They can’t resist even if they wanted to.”
“Then
they’re not dangerous?”
“I didn’t
say that. They just can’t resist a command. We could get hurt if we get
careless.”
Phil
studied her face, looking for some remnant of a panel-induced psychosis.
Seeing nothing but a sane and confident Mary, he put his hand down on the patch
of tissue with a show of resolve.
There was
a sound like a grunt deep inside the creature, and they both took an
involuntary step backward. The creature seemed to arch against the dull metal
frame, and then half of the abdomen split and rose up toward the top of the air-lock.
From the cavernous interior, a plate of thick chitinous material slid out
silently to form a ramp. From somewhere inside they heard the sound of hissing
gas. The creature had acted precisely like a machine.
They
moved down to the end of the ramp, and Phil started up into the interior. It
was like walking into a cave without knowing for sure if the opening might
close you in.
There
were dirt and leaves and litter all over the floor, and Phil wondered why there
had been no housekeeping here like there was in the tubes.
The
interior had a more fabricated look than he’d expected. Although the walls and
ceiling were clearly organic in form, there were storage cabinets or lockers
along the walls that looked built-in. They didn’t have the straight, square
look of the human variety, and Phil had the impression that the designer,
whoever or whatever it was, had drawn the plans for them by hand. The floor was
the first real, solid floor he’d walked on since his abduction, but it met the
walls in an irregular, waving line. The entire chamber had a hand-drawn look
about it.
The cargo
bay was dominated by a large pit about fifteen feet wide. A woven net, used to
cover it, lay in the bottom. The sight of it gave Phil the flash of a memory—of
being trapped down in just such a place, and he swallowed hard. He thought he
could smell animal musk coming off the floor, but couldn’t be sure it wasn’t an
olfactory element to the memory itself. When he looked at Mary, he could tell by
her knitted brow that she was having a similar reaction to it.
There
were two large, strangely shaped gray formations on either side of the pit.
Phil walked over and looked down at the nearest one.
It took
him a moment to realize that he was looking down at the humped back and long
neck of one of the gray creatures that had attacked him the night of his
abduction. His heart jumped to his throat, and he signaled urgently to Mary,
pointing it out with a silent, jabbing finger. He backed away from it and moved
over to her position.
It was so
well-fitted to the floor that he’d wouldn’t have recognized it for what it was
if he hadn’t seen one before. It was sunken down into the floor as if it had
melted into it. He realized that the depressions they were in must have served
as their traveling stations. Mary stood looking at it calmly like it was an odd
rock stuck in the floor.
“They’re
asleep,” she said.
“How do
you know?” Phil whispered back.
“I could
feel them when I was . . . connected, but I didn’t know what they were
exactly.”
“We’d
better get out before they wake up.”
“They
won’t wake up. They can’t.”
To prove
her point, she walked over and toed one with her shoe a couple of times. “See?”
Phil
walked over and cautiously nudged one with a toe, too. The bumpy skin was loose
under his foot, but the loose skin couldn’t hide the thick muscles under it. He
imagined what they would look like scrabbling up out of those odd seats in a
rage and hoped he wouldn’t get a chance to see it.
He walked
over to one of the lockers and put his hand through what looked like some kind
of alien handle and tried to turn it. It was well fitted and firmly locked.
When he twisted his hand in any direction, he could detect no play in it at
all. The handle had an antiqued and burnished look as if it had been opened and
closed for hundreds of years. It occurred to him that perhaps it had. It was
clear that the aliens gave no thought to the straight lines, hard right angles
and precise measurements that make repeatable, mass production possible. Each
mechanical element here had a one of a kind quality to it. He tried some
others with the same result.
“We won’t
be hiding in these,” he said. “They’re locked.”
“Let’s
look up front,” Mary said.
The cargo
area narrowed as they walked toward the head, finally narrowing to a walkway
approximately five feet wide— just wide enough for a big bastard to pass
through. The channel opened abruptly into another chamber a fraction of the
size of the cargo compartment. There were two clusters of root balls on each
side of the cockpit and Mary knew exactly what it meant.
“Looks
like a spot for pilot and co-pilot,” she said. “I’ll bet you money.”
“Sure
looks like it.”
The
entire wall was inclined forward at such an angle that in order to contact the
root balls, the pilot would have to lean over and nearly fall down on them.
There were five of them on each side. As if wrapped in thick rope, the
pilot—completely enveloped—would be bound to the shuttle. One root ball on each
side was conspicuous by its location: the pilot’s forehead would rest directly
on the red center, and the roots, like a bizarre turban, would wrap the pilots
head.
They had
the same thought at the same time, but Mary was the first to voice it.
“Phil, we
can fly this thing back home,” she said.
He
thought about it; turned it around and considered the possibilities. Then his
mind locked on the problem as if he’d found a lost puzzle piece.
“There’s
one little issue,” he said. “Who stays behind to open the space hole?”
11
The sun, Greenbaum explained, was such a bright backlight that it
wouldn’t be possible to get any details of the craft and filter the sun’s
blinding brightness at the same time. They’d have to use filters that would
reduce the sun’s brightness to a manageable level. But the contrast would be so
high between foreground and background that what they’d see at first—if they
saw anything at all—was a shape, a speck, in silhouette against the sun’s
flaming nuclear backdrop.
The first
step was to find it. He was counting on the fact that it measured maybe
five-hundred yards in at least one dimension based on Phil’s description and
was in an orbit no greater than one hundred miles in altitude. Given those two
parameters and a little luck, they could find the speck. “That’ll be the hard
part,” he’d said.
Once
they’d spotted it, and assuming the speck was fairly stationary, they’d
increase the magnification and let the camera do the rest. They wouldn’t see
any details until the film was processed. He was fairly sure no one had ever
attempted such a thing; but with enough care, it just might be possible.
The sun
was as straight up as it would get in June at 33 degrees of latitude. Greenbaum
fit the dark eyepiece on the scope, sat in the chair and cranked the big scope
around at the sun. He adjusted the viewing angle and tweaked the focus. After
two hours of searching, he raised his head away from the ocular.
“Huh!
I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s huge.”
“What
is?” Linda queried, knowing the answer.
It was
one of the stiffest smiles she’d ever seen. She would have expected some
genuine enthusiasm from him. What she saw reminded her of a frightened child
smiling through fear.
“We’ve
found it, by God,” Greenbaum said.
Linda
looked like she’d just heard the phony zinger from a snake-oil salesman.
“Let me
see,” she said in a stony voice.
Greenbaum
guided her into the chair, and she scooted up to the eyepiece.
Greenbaum
would be right about something like this. He’d know what he was looking at.
She framed
the eyepiece with her hand, and her heart began to race.
The sun
was a perfectly round, flat disk in the viewer with perfectly crisp edges. The
dark eyepiece reduced its godlike brightness to a cool, comfortable shade of
gray. In spite of Greenbaum’s description of what they’d see, she still
expected to see some fantastic and glorious image of a sleek alien starship,
but there was nothing of the sort to be seen. But there was a tiny eye-shaped
speck up near the edge.
“It that
it? The little swirl up there?”
“That’s a
sun spot. Look right in the center.”
Linda
did, and it took a moment to find the tiny round mote in the exact center of
the eye of God.
“That
little round dot?”
“That’s
it,” he said.
Linda
studied the dot for a moment longer, hoping that by staring at it some detail
would emerge. None did. It was inconceivable that Phil was stuffed into that
little dot. She wished she could reach up, and by magic, pull him out of it.
She felt herself shudder.
“It’s
awfully small . . .” she said thickly.
“It’s all
relative.”
“Now
what?” she asked.
“We’ll .
. . increase the magnification about fifty times and get some pictures,”
Greenbaum said with another stiff smile.
He’s
afraid,
she thought.
I can almost
smell it. The actual sight of the ship, the seeing of it, has pierced him like
cold steel.
Her mouth
was suddenly dry, like it had filled with cotton. She felt herself go faint,
and she leaned over with her head down trying to regain her balance. The evil
dot against the sun was like an afterimage she couldn’t clear from her mind’s
eye. She blinked several times and still saw it. It floated in
her
space, against
her
sun, perched like
some vulture, waiting. It wasn’t just Greenbaum’s fear she’d smelled—it was her
own.
“Where
did it come from?” she asked with a weak voice.
Greenbaum
shook his head with his mouth open, not looking at her.
“Well,
it’s not from Mars!” Greenbaum said stupidly.
Shut up.
She
glanced over at Greenbaum expecting her gaze to bounce off him, but it stuck
fast, held there by the fear she saw behind the mask of his face.
“We have to talk,” he
said.
*
*
*
“Bailey
and Gilbert are both gone,” Mary said. “It’s been over twenty hours. There’s a
new guy in Gilbert’s hole—a little Indian of the South American variety.” Her
voice was flat. There was no panic in it, just resignation. Being
gone so
long could only mean one of two things: either they were dead—or they were
alive and worse than dead.
She stood
with her arms folded, chin up, keeping her grief down with the force of her
will alone. When Phil put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in, she
broke down like a child and wept.
They’d
all become attached to brave, innocent Bailey. The injustice and horror of it
was almost too much for Phil as well.
“Goddamn
it . . .” Ned said softly and turned away. “This place is eating us alive.” He
walked away shaking his head.
“There’s
nothing we can do for her,” Phil said to Mary. “Nothing.”
He held her
until her sobs shrank to sniffs, and the sniffs died to a cough or two. She
wiped her eyes and face on the sleeve of her floppy shirt, then walked away
toward her chamber. On the way, she dug a cigarette out of her pocket and lit
it.
They’d
worked out most of the details for the time being except the major one: someone
stayed behind. That individual would sacrifice himself or herself for the
others. They thought about trying to somehow trick the control panel or maybe
operate it from remote, but those were just empty suggestions. There were no
real options. Someone would have to stay.
Phil
reached into his pocket and pulled out the little folded envelope. He opened it
and took out the five straws he’d fashioned out of the copper wire from the
lamp cord in the dump. Since Bailey and Gilbert were gone, he tossed two of the
long ones away.
Nobody
said anything when they decided to do it, but they’d all hoped it would be
Gilbert who drew the short straw, and Phil had briefly considered rigging the
draw to ensure it.
Now, it
was just the three of them.
Phil
decided it would be best to do the draw just a few hours before they attempted
their escape. There would be less time for the loser to think.
He placed
the remaining straws back in the envelope and put it in his pocket. He checked
his watch. It was almost time to call Linda and Greenbaum.
When he
got to Mary’s chamber, Mary already had the phone ready to go. Phil was amazed
by her resilience and kissed her gently on the forehead for it. There was still
some strength and determination left that hadn’t been carved away.
Linda
answered the phone on the first ring.
Phil told
them about the plan to escape, but left off the part about one of them staying
behind. When he was finished, he thought he heard Linda say, “Oh, God” under
her breath but wasn’t sure.
*
*
*
Greenbaum
ambled through the kitchen and out into the living room as if he didn’t quite
know where to sit. Linda watched him, and waited patiently.
“What’s
going on,” he asked.
He
finally picked a spot on the sofa and squatted down into it. Linda followed
him and sat down across from him, hands folded. When she looked at Greenbaum’s
face, it was ashen as if he’d just climbed ten flights of stairs. He brushed
his hair out of his face and tried to smile. The effort was too much for him.
Her own
heart was still pounding. “What the hell is wrong?” she asked. “You look like
you’re having a heart attack.” She felt a little like that herself. She leaned
in toward him.
“Are
you?”
It was
possible. He wasn’t in the best physical shape. A part of her hoped it was
only
that.
“No. I’m
fine. I mean, I’m not dying just yet.”
“Then
what? What’s wrong?”
Greenbaum
just looked at her with that pained expression on his face. The look alone was
starting to annoy her.
“Well,
what? Speak,” she said.
Greenbaum
took a deep breath, then did just that, using only a fraction of the air in his
lungs.
“Do you
know what that thing is against the sun?” He let the remaining waste air sigh
out.
“Of
course I do.”
“Are you
sure?”
“What are
you saying?” she snapped.
This was
ridiculous. They were acting like children. Nothing productive could come of
this.
“Look,
you said you wanted to talk, so talk,” she said, clearly annoyed with him.
“We’ll
never be able to convince anyone with any influence,” he said, “that the
attack is real in time to prevent the deployment of the alien weapon.”
“You’re
like a leaf in the goddamned wind, did you know
that?”
“You
don’t understand enough yet.”
“I
understand just plenty.”
“Look at
what’s happening with your eyes wide open. The facts are just too
fantastic.
The attack is
damned
apocalyptic.
We’ll sound like Chicken Little—or assholes because that’s what humans as a
species, and as individuals, are conditioned to hear. Even the reality of the
ship, the hardest evidence of all, won’t set off alarms fast enough to save us.
Do you get what I’m saying?”
“You
won’t even try, will you?”
“Linda,
there’s no way we can make them believe us! Don’t you get it? Have you been
asleep for the last week?”
She crossed
her arms and fell back into the sofa.
“I refuse
to believe what you are saying.”
“There is
no policy, no charter, and no rules of engagement to
protect us from this thing.”
“You’re
weak.”
He sucked
in another breath and let the words out one at a time putting stress on just
the right ones and talked with his hands.
“I . . .”
she started but couldn’t finish. She looked at her hands, her human hands, and
folded one over the other as if to protect it.
“What do
you feel when you look up at the stars at night?” he asked.
“I don’t
know. I can’t remember,” she said flatly. She wished her leg would stop
bouncing.
“Do you
know what I feel?”
“What?”
“Wonder,”
he said. “Wonder and horror.”
“Oh, shut
up.”
“The universe
has horror in it beyond our imagination.”
“No shit
there, Sherlock,” she said. It was silly.
She sat
there hating him for the truth. The truth didn’t help them. The truth was cold
and stupid—and she hated him.
“There’s
a glimmer of hope in all this. We have to maximize what resources we have—put
our effort where it can do the most good.”
“What?”
“Phil.”
“What
about him?”
“He’s a
soldier, isn’t he?”
“Was.
So?”
*
*
*
Greenbaum
leaned over towards the phone and Linda leaned away to give him space. She felt
as if she was being torn in half.
“Even if
you escape, you’ll die,” Greenbaum said into the speaker. “You’ll die, me,
Linda, the whole planet will die. Forget about escape. It wouldn’t mean
anything anyway.”
Linda’s
anger flared. He didn’t have to put it like that.
“Even if
you capture a shuttle,” he continued, “you could fly the damned thing down and
land it on the Pentagon and not get any action on it for weeks. It would be
taken as an elaborate and highly detailed hoax, then it would be taken
under advisement
. The very fact of its
existence would suggest,
first,
not the reality of an attack, but the lengths some people will go to create a
hoax. It would be so fantastic it would
have
to be a hoax, don’t you see that?”
