Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits (15 page)

“Five, I
think,” Mike said.

“So Jacob
is the main one now—the highest in rank?” John asked.

“That’s what
I heard. He’s the boss.”

“Christ,”
John said under his breath, “and he’s got a boner for the three of us.”

“A what?”
Mike asked.

“Never
mind,” John said. “Sorry.”

“Mike?”
Donna asked. “There’s something we need you to do for us. It’s very important.”

“What?”

“It’s
really important, Mike.”

“Okay.”

“Can you
bring us a pad in good working order? It doesn’t have to be a new one.”

“I don’t
know,” he replied tentatively, “I’d have to steal it.”

“Just
borrow it,” John said. “You could just borrow it for us for a while.”

Mike
thought it over. “I know where there’s one that nobody uses. I don’t think
they’d mind if I got you that one for a while. I might have to ask, though.”

“No. No,
don’t ask,” Donna said quickly. “You see, we don’t want anyone to know we have
it.”

“Oh . .
.” Mike said.

“Great,”
Donna said. “That would be a big help. If we had a pad, we could find out for
ourselves when everything was happening, and we wouldn’t need to depend on you
so much for the answers, okay? And I promise we’ll give it back as soon as
we’re done.”

“Okay.”

“Can you
bring it tomorrow night?”

"I
guess so.”

 
“Good.”

“Thanks,
Mike,” John said.

“Yeah,
thanks, Mike,” Rachel added her real gratitude.

“Well, I
guess you two buddies want to talk some, so we’ll get out of here. We’ll see
you tomorrow night, okay?”

“Okay.”
 

When they
were in the hallway, Donna took Rachel by the arm. “Don’t ask him to take a
risk like that again.”

“What are
you talking about?”

“That key
business. He can’t be skulking around trying to cop a key to the damned door.”

“Oh fuck
it,” Rachel said disgusted. “I was just asking.”

“Well,
don’t. You’ll get him killed.”

"Fine.”

“Good.”

“There’s
no difference between that and making him steal the pad, anyways,” Rachel said
to Donna’s back.

“Hey,
we’re all going nuts. Let's just forget it. Okay?” John asked of the two women.
He was right, of course. They were all going nuts.

That
night John and Rachel made love. Under the hot sheets, they tied themselves
with arms and legs and labored against those willing bonds until the sweat ran.
They lost themselves in each other’s scent and touch and taste and forgot for a
while where they were. In that mindless time and space and for the briefest of
moments, dread died with a carnal gasp.

7

S
oaking in boredom,
they were perched atop the rig, which was now parked a few hundred meters west
of the structure. The last thing they’d done before parking the behemoth was to
level the ground in front of the entrance to make a staging area for the
material as it came from the settlement.

“Who the
hell are those guys,” Lavachek asked idly, looking over the activity below.
“They look like doctors or something.”
 

“Good
bet,” Habershaw said. “I think they’ve been here for a while already.”

“Doin’
what?”

“Got me!
Doctor stuff, I guess.”

“On who?
Nobody else’s here yet.”

“How the
hell should I know?” Habershaw asked vacantly, sucking at his teeth.

From
their high vantage, they could see most of the activity below. There hadn’t been
a lot. Looking westward, they could see the flat, nearly motionless ocean
stretching to the horizon. It wasn’t like any ocean Habershaw had ever seen. It
was as flat as a sheet of glass; and when the sun set, the impression of
uniform smoothness was enhanced by the red light that reflected from it as if
from a mirror.

The ocean
usually looked dull and dead; but the evening before last, just at sunset,
Habershaw saw something break the surface far, far out. It was something large
enough to send ripples expanding for what seemed like kilometers in all
directions. Habershaw’s bored mind found the sight pretty interesting, and he
asked Lavachek if he’d seen it, too. Lavachek said he hadn’t and seemed about
as interested in it as a speck of dirt on his filthy boots. He looked where
Habershaw pointed with a trace of courtesy, but smacked his lips in mild
disinterest. “Aw, well, shit. It was there,” Habershaw said.

“I
believe you,” Lavachek yawned.

The rig’s
cab was big and had sleeping quarters in the back with two bunks. There was a
cooler and a heater for food and a fold-down table at which to sit and
eat.
 
There was a toilet and a little
shower. It wasn’t as nice as a shelter, but it would do in a pinch. They’d been
in the rig for three nights now waiting for their next orders from Chief
Engineer Patel. The last thing he’d told them was to “relax for a while and
enjoy the view, high away from most of the bugs.”

They
hadn’t heard a word from him since. Once or twice Lavachek had suggested they work
their way back and smooth out a couple of sections of road he thought were too
rough, just for something to do. “Hell with it,” Habershaw had said. “Wait ‘til
the little prick tells us to.”

Habershaw
talked to Joan a couple of times a day by phone to see what was going on. She
was grumbling, moaning, bitching and loading trucks and told him that the first
load was coming over in two days. She couldn’t understand what was going on,
that was her problem. She was an expert in logistics, and what they wanted to
get done and the way she’d been told to do it made no sense to her. She’d been
instructed to move the settlement as quickly as possible but hadn’t been
allowed to plan what to do with the material when it arrived. The only plan
they had to work from was a simple priority list from the Council. That was
all.

Most of
the home shelters would be left behind. A good part of them were empty now
anyway since the residents, former contractors whose work was done, had been
sent back to Earth just prior to, what was now referred to as, The Collapse.
The remaining science labs would go first, which Joan thought was strange. The
trucks were big enough to carry ten complete shelters or labs at a time,
stacked on them. That part wasn’t too tough. Then the warehouse contents would
go. Next would be the Bondsmen’s personal stuff—the tons and tons of furniture,
art, fixtures, china, knickknacks, bric-a-brac, baubles and whatnots they’d had
shipped out with them.

She’d
been too short-handed to meet the schedule and had asked for permission to
recruit resources from other trades. Working nearly day and night, almost all
that shit had been crated and sealed and marked by Joan and her crew of nearly
one hundred workers. The occupants of the cloister were left with a minimum of
possessions. Living in near-empty apartments, they sat patiently on bare
floors, waiting for the big pilgrimage to begin. It made her sick, she said,
how they just smiled and blindly went along with any goddamned thing Jacob told
them. “Damned dummies," she called them in one breath and “fuckin' sheep”
in the next.

Her
biggest complaint was that she hadn’t been allowed to create a storage system
at the destination. There would be a pile of crated stuff fifty meters high by
the time she was done shipping it. There wasn’t a chance in Hell anything could
be found in that massive heap until it was all distributed back to the owners.
To top it off, the structure, from what she could gather, was some kind of
organic thing with no goddamned markings on it, or in it—no order to the layout
at all. It was going to be a damned maze inside. She’d have to think of some
way to distribute the material other than conventional methods. They hadn’t
built any platforms for the material, and Joan hoped they could get it disbursed
quickly. The rain, bugs, mud and mold would get to anything left outside for
long, even if it were in sealed crates and containers.

The whole
thing was making her sick. She was exhausted and could barely deal with it any
longer. She threatened again to run away into the jungle. He had told her that
wouldn’t be a good idea.

She cried
over the phone. He tried to put her fears to rest gently but couldn’t quite do
it in the end. Finally, he told her that if she caved in, if she gave up,
they’d kill her for it. They were that ruthless, and it was that simple. He
didn’t have to tell her that because she knew it already—that’s why she was
crying. He told her to finish her job; to knuckle down and finish it. “Work is
what we do," he told her. “Fuck ‘em,” she said. “I hate them all.”

Lavachek
had been spending a good part of his wasted time looking at the structure,
puzzling over it and staring or squinting at it top to bottom. Sometimes, he’d
just look and shake his head. Sometimes he’d idly squirt spit in its direction.

“Are we
gonna live in that goddamned thing?” Lavachek asked.

“Christ,
you keep asking me that. I don’t know. Don’t ask me,” Habershaw replied.

“Just
askin’.”

Habershaw
laughed at him. “Well, don’t! I don’t know shit anymore!”

“Okay,
fine. You don’t have to be pissy about it.”
 
Lavachek was leaning on the railing looking down at the entrance when he
saw two men bring the thing outside. At first he thought it was some kind of
flesh-colored garbage, some bundle of strange meat they were throwing away. He
was high and far away, and Lavachek had always been proud of his good
vision—“Runs in the family,” he’d say. But the distance strained even his good
eyesight. The two men, dressed in dun-colored fatigues, were carrying the
object between them. He could see that it hung down, bowed in the middle and
that the men were carrying it by what looked like its legs and arms. The
problem in Lavachek’s mind, the thing that puzzled Lavachek, was why the thing
seemed to have so many legs and arms. Some of the limbs were flailing
aimlessly, others barely moved or just waved in the air. He could swear he saw
two things like heads attached to the pink and brown mottled trunk.

“Hey!
Hey, Habershaw! Look at this goddamned thing!”

“What is
it?” Habershaw asked from the cab.

“Look,
goddamnit!” he pointed. “What is that?”

Now it
was Habershaw’s turn to be disinterested. All things needed balance. “What?” he
said. “I can’t see that goddamned far.”

“There!
What the hell is that?”

“Two guys
carrying something. I said I can’t see that far.”
 
Lavachek shook his head in disgust at him.
“Go get the scope out of my locker. Hurry up!”

Habershaw
didn’t mind doing a little step-and-fetch-it for Lavachek since over the years
Lavachek had done plenty of it for him, but what he couldn’t do was hurry up
about it. Lavachek understood that and dashed past him as Habershaw ambled
toward the lockers.

“Never
mind! I’ll get the goddamned thing!”

“Okay.”
 
Habershaw muttered and returned to the
railing. In seconds, Lavachek was back at the railing with the scope trained on
the activity below. Now he could see it all close up. As the men carried the
thing across the freshly graded ground, Lavachek’s mouth formed into a tight
scowl. His deep breathing hissed and whistled through his nose. Habershaw
noticed it. “What is it? Let me see,” Habershaw said.

“Hey . .
. uh . . . Habershaw . . .”

“What?”

“You’d
better take a look at this . . .” Lavachek said, handing the scope to him.

“That’s
what I said, goddamn it,” Habershaw barked. “Gimme that thing.”

“I hope
you haven’t had breakfast yet,” Lavachek added. Habershaw put the scope to his
face and looked. “Breakfast is my favorite meal of the . . . day . . .” His
voice trailed off.

The men were
carrying the body directly across his field of view, one guard walking
backwards, so Habershaw had a perfect, unobstructed view of it.