Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) (9 page)

Phil’s
body weight hovered around one hundred and ninety pounds, but he’d been hauled
out and lifted up and over the creature’s shoulders like he was a rag doll.
Draped over the immense back of the behemoth, he could see the backs of the
massive legs and the bare feet with their thick fleshy pads. He wasn’t carried
far. When the creature flopped him down on the flat-topped structure, Phil got
a glimpse of the row of ten or more cells along the dark wall.

He got a
full look at the creature that had carried him there. Its head reminded him of
those fancy goldfish with the globular structures covering their heads, except
in this case, the head wasn’t fish-like, but humanoid. The thing was massive,
easily four hundred pounds. The musculature was distorted and overdeveloped,
but not like the clean cut and appealing form of a body builder. It was just
enormous and huge without detailing. The eyes were fixed and blank in the folds
of its face and there was a dull, staring coldness about them like he’d seen in
the eyes of many psychotics. The mouth was barely visible and buried in the
globular folds surrounding it.

The huge
hands straightened his arms and legs onto the table roughly. Then, as it turned
to go, it patted him on the chest in mock comfort with one of those enormous
hams. When it did, Phil saw the tattoo of the unicorn on the giant forearm,
stretched and distorted by the underlying bone and muscle, and realized that he
was looking not at an alien creature, but a human made alien by having been
given some incredible growth hormone that exploded its bone structure and
musculature. He managed to turn his head slightly and saw another one just like
it at the wall removing a limp body from one of the cells. He watched it swing
the body up over its shoulders like a sack and then lumber over to one of the
tables and flop in down.

With
effort, he turned his head back and saw the alien devices hanging from the attachments
above like grotesque and menacing fruit. The devices had little relation to
anything from any science he was familiar with. Many of them were dull metallic
in construction, but some of the more formidable ones seemed to be biotic,
alive, or nearly so. He thought he could see what looked like a rapidly pulsing
vein in one of the more bizarre mechanisms. One dripped a clear fluid from the
tip of a thin and sinister appendage.

The alien
was at his side in a blink, touching his body, his face, probing his mouth with
its quick fingers. It reached up and took hold of the device with the dripping
appendage then worked the thin, wiry probe up his left nostril, and he could
feel it,
feel it
,
moving though his sinuses. He was sure the probe was moving under its own
power, squirming in his head. He tasted a bitter taste in the back of his
throat.

With the
strength of his will . . . he forced the horror down deep. He sealed it there
with his tightly closed eyes, then sank into the relative haven of shock.

Sleep was
Mary’s benefactor. She dreamed about her muttly dog, Puck. In the dream Puck
was humping the jeans-clad leg of her friend June while the two of them, with
their heads tilted back like debutantes, laughed at the irony of it.

“This dog
has a very, very misplaced sex drive,”
June said clearly in the dream.

“Oh, I know,”
Mary replied perfectly.

The
hissing whistle sound sneaked around Mary’s barrier of sleep like an unwelcome
guest and poked her meanly awake. She snapped to full consciousness, heart
racing.

The
whistling was down the tube to the left and when she heard the whimpering pleas
of Fred Jones, she knew he was one of the ones this time. Sweet Fred. A
man-child without a trace of guile. He had been the one who had oriented her to
this horrific world. When her mind had sunk deep into the bog of denial, Fred
had gently led her to the truth.

“Not me!”
She heard him say. That was not like Fred at all. “Not me! I just went! No! No!
I won’t!”

Big
mistake,
Mary thought.
Don’t
get mad. Just go. He should know better.

When she
heard Fred’s scream she knew that a big bastard had grabbed him. It wasn’t fun
being grabbed by a big bastard.

The noise
woke Bailey. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Guy down
the way won’t cooperate. Big mistake.” There was no rule against it, and Mary
wanted to know what was going on so she got up, moved to the opening and looked
out.

Fred was
screaming and choking at the same time. The goon had him around the neck with
one hand and was shaking him like a doll. It was shaking him and whistling that
childish whistle at him, too, trying to make its point all too plainly. Fred
finally stopped choking and screaming as if he was a strange toy someone just
turned off. The goon shook him a moment more then let him go and he crumpled on
the floor of the tube. The goon watched him for a second, then kicked him a
little with its huge bare foot. The intention was obviously to rouse him, but
the massive foot’s inertia actually moved him two feet across the floor as if
he’d been shoved by the leg of an elephant.

Gilbert
glided out of his hole and around the two big bastards and squatted down next
to Fred. His Bible, as usual was in his hand. He put his free hand on Fred’s
shoulder and Mary couldn’t hear what he said, but she could imagine it. First
“God this” and “God that.” Then he’d tell Fred he had “to go or he’d die.”
They’d put him down a feed hole and that would be that—if he was lucky. “There
were even worse things, Fred,” he’d say. There wouldn’t be a lot of sympathy in
the thin voice, just reason—the kind of rock-cold reason that gives the
listener only the most impossible of choices. After that, then some more “God
this” and “God that” and Fred would get up and go. He might call it “tough
love.”

Gilbert
was tight with Tom Moon. They shared a hole. Birds of a feather flock together,
Mary’s mother had taught her.

Distrust
one, distrust them all.

It wasn’t
like Fred had a real choice in the matter, anyway. They’d do with him as they
wanted. It was common knowledge that for some reason, once a captive gave up,
he was useless to them and nothing more than meat for the ship. If Fred got up
off the floor now, his choice was made.

Slowly,
Fred got up on one knee. Gilbert helped him the rest of the way up. There was
very little loose dirt in the ship, but in a show of sudden resolve, Fred
brushed dirt from the legs of his pants and the front of his plaid shirt and
smiled at Gilbert. He held the smile and turned it to Mary. When she saw that
smile, she thought it was the most insane smile she had ever seen. He was
smiling like a mindless, spineless sap who’d just bought a used car he didn’t
want from a smooth salesman he wanted to please. His ministry done, his holy
job finished, Gilbert nodded knowingly to the big bastards that Fred was,
“Okay now boys.” The goons ignored him completely and pushed Fred roughly down
the tube.

Part of
Mary would rather have seen Fred kick and punch and be killed by the big
bastards than to have witnessed the total, sycophantic surrender she was
seeing. She started to turn away in disgust, then her anger turned her back
like an irresistible force.

“Why
don’t you just kill him!” she yelled down the tube.

Gilbert
turned slowly and looked at her like she was an annoying child. Then he held
his hand up like a priest to silence her. Speechless heads appeared in the
openings to the holes along the tube, drawn to the ruckus.

“Fuck
it!” she said. “Just kill us all!”

After
venting, she cooled off a bit and thought it best to hold her tongue. She’d
made her point, at some risk to herself, and there was no sense in pushing it
further. She might have pushed too far already. She pulled back into the hole.

Bailey
had drawn up into a fetal position under the blanket. Mary sat down at her
feet, drew her own legs up and stewed.

“Fucking
place. Fucking things. God, let me out of here.”

“Is this
Hell?” Bailey asked her.

Mary
thought about it then smiled wryly. “At least in hell you’d know why you were
there,” she said. “In this place nobody knows shit.”

“What do
they want?”

“Ha,” she
blurted. “Nobody knows what they want. They just want to use our bodies. That’s
all anybody knows.”

The first
big bastard looked into the hole and glared at them. All of the goons’ looks
were dirty looks, so Mary couldn’t tell if she was getting one now as a direct
result of what just happened or not. She could sense the tension in Bailey from
the sight of the thing’s big ugly head. It didn’t whistle, confirming what she
knew already that it wasn’t them they’d be taking. When it moved away from the
hole, Mary gave it the finger, careful not to let the good see it.

Gilbert’s
head appeared in the opening next, and he crooked a finger at Mary to come
over. He’d never stoop to actually entering her domain, Mary was sure of it.
She had some words for this sonofabitch.

“You
shouldn’t do that,” he said.

“Don’t
wag your finger at me.”

Gilbert
seemed to think about it, but gave away nothing of what he was thinking. He had
the very annoying habit of tagging key words or phrases with an interrogative
so that everything he said sounded like he was apologizing for it.

“You
shouldn’t . . . yell? . . . at them.”

“Why not?
Am I gonna get my brains sucked out if I do? What a laugh! Besides, it’s just a
matter of time before I’m dead and you’re dead, so to hell with it. If I go off
once in a while, I’m sure you’ll understand.”

“You
might . . . survive? . . . if you don’t do anything to cause trouble? . . . for
me or the others?”

“What do
you mean ‘cause trouble’? Are you nuts? You
are
aren’t you? Don’t you realize where you are? What in the fuck
could I do to endanger you more than you are already? You’re stupid.”

“You
shouldn’t be so rude.” He pushed his big, aviator- style glasses up on his nose
and wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and middle finger. “That’s
not right. And I wish you wouldn’t use the ‘F’ word.”

You sanctimonious prick!
She thought. “How dare you—
that’s it. Listen to me, you shit. I’ve been using the ‘fuck’ word since I
could speak. I don’t think I’ll stop now just to spare your pious ears.”

Mary was
livid. She felt her cheeks growing hot. That’s the way it was with the
religious. The priorities were all too often distorted and artificial.

Gilbert
just looked away and thought.

Mary
suddenly wondered if he had any real empathy for anyone. Something about his
voice was
too
damn sincere. Apologizing for everything he said was his way of oh-so-gently
getting you to swallow every lame little phrase that came out of his mouth. He
was wiser, more holy than thou, it had to be so.

“Got any
more . . . ideas? You know, any single thing that might be . . . useful? . . .
to us?” she asked, mocking him with her own interrogatives. She paused, waited.
“Well? Do you? If not, get the fuck away from my door.”

Gilbert
didn’t leave, he just looked away and Mary knew that the thin relationship
they’d had, had just taken a turn for the worse. He was thinking how much he
hated her, and Mary could feel it like infra-red. She could feel his mind
racing, rationalizing his point of view in broad sweeps when a thoughtful
person would have simply walked away. His hatred for her had nothing whatsoever
to do with this incident, either. He wouldn’t look her in the eyes, and Mary
was sure of it. So ultra-cautious. A perfect liar. He hated her. He couldn’t
have said it with words and said it better, but he didn’t have the guts to say
it out loud. She did.

“You
know, I bet I could beat your bony ass to a pulp,” she said evenly.

She was
positioned in the opening like a cat and could leap out at him at chest level
and easily knock him down. Then she’d clamp her hands around his neck and crush
it, just like the big bastard almost did to Fred. She draped one strong arm
over her knee and tensed it and stared and let that soak in, too.

The
statement was intended to shock him and mess with his mind. Running with the
rowdy boys of Trader had honed the ability to insult, to bluff or to fight well
at an early age and she was pleased with the result of this little interaction.

How do
you like that, you prick. A woman just challenged your twisted ass to a fight.

He
couldn’t leave just yet, because if he did so too quick it would show that he
was intimidated by her. His mouth was open just a little and he swallowed out
of fear but managed to keep his mouth open to try to hide it. Mary could see
his big, damn Adam’s apple work in a single big pump. He harrumphed just barely
loud enough that she could hear it, then turned and walked away.

That’s right, you run,
she thought. “‘And ‘F’ you,” she
said to his back.