Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits (43 page)

“Okay,”
Jackson persisted. “So are the wasps coming back or not?”

She
looked at Jackson and smiled a little. It was a difficult concept to explain
without something to write on, and she wished she’d had time to create some
visuals to make clearer what she was trying to communicate.

“When the
wasps attacked, they reduced our numbers from over a thousand to two four and
eleven individuals. The wasps have put our population numbers below the
critical breeding mass required for a species to recover without significant
inbreeding in two generations—if left to chance. Left alone, with no additional
threats, and by paying special attention to who mates with who, we might have a
chance to recover as a gene pool. But this planet is dangerous. It’s dangerous
from the ground up to the canopy. Something biting, stinging and usually
dangerous lives under every leaf. In terms of biological hazards, I’ve just
scratched the surface. And if we lose even ten percent of our remaining
number…” She put her hands on her hips. “The bottom line is that, if I’m right,
the wasps are no longer usable to the Verdians as a weapon against us. Our
numbers are too small. Few, if any of us, belong to the same direct lineage so
there is no way to condition the wasps against us.”

She took
a deep breath.

“Look,
the wasps don’t matter. There’s more to worry about than the wasps,” she said.
“They’re just the tip of the iceberg.”

21

S
mith was
being stupid the way Paul figured it. He could stay in the orbiter until he
starved to death if he wanted to, but threatening to blow it up in exchange for
a full amnesty was a bargaining strategy that was beginning to grate.
 
The orbiter still had supplies and equipment
the colony could use, and Paul didn’t want to run the risk of losing any of it.
He’d had just about enough of this shit from Smith. The worst of it was that
with the exception of this single channel, he’d turned off the communications
satellites, effectively truncating the colony’s phone service.
 

As far as
they could tell, only four people remained on the orbiter: Smith, his personal
assistant Ashwin and two others; one Daniel Wethers and one Ralph Lindstrom,
neither of whom Paul knew much about except that they had been employed by
Smith since the orbiter arrived over two Verdian years ago. The four had
sequestered themselves in the orbiter right after the wasp storm and had
refused to come down. Worse, they had closed off the orbiter’s boarding docks
from the inside and set them to secure, precluding any attempt to dock with the
orbiter in a foray designed to drag them out by force. They had also changed
the access codes to all of the orbiter’s systems, making it impossible to
reconfigure or redirect any of the orbiter’s functions. Without those codes,
the orbiter was simply a dumb, giant hull filled with enough food and water and
air to last years.

The
holdouts wouldn’t be able to fly the orbiter away, principally because they
didn’t have the engineers to do it. The other reason: Where would they fly it
to that made any sense? The existing colonized planets were dead or nearly so.
Fuji was a mineral-rich ball with few organic resources and dependent on a
supply chain from Earth since its opening. With Earth now all but dead itself,
Fuji would soon follow. Cunningham Moors, though richer with life, was still
dependent on Earth’s now empty supply line. Reports told of widespread
starvation there.

The
orbiter was built to move enormous amounts of material from one point in space
to another and lacked the propulsive resources to act as an exploratory vessel.
Even if they had an idea where to go for sanctuary, the orbiter was not capable
of making the trip. So, for Smith and his little crew, there was simply nowhere
to go.

But in
terms of what the orbiter was or wasn’t able to do while it was in orbit over
the planet, Smith was clearly holding the cards for now, and Paul didn’t like
it.

The two
things Paul wanted was to get Smith down to face justice and to safeguard the
orbiter and its contents— the latter his first concern.

“Try
Smith again,” Paul said to communications specialist. “Let’s see what he has to
say today.”

“Looking
for more abuse, Captain?” the tech, a fresh-faced young man named Adams, asked.

“I’ve got
nothing better to with my time for the moment,” Paul said. “Dial up the
bastard.”

The tech
punched at the console and the system rang Smith’s number. His slightly
disheveled image appeared a moment later on the screen.

“Yes?”
Smith said.

“Good
morning, Mr. Smith,” Paul said cheerfully. “Are you ready to resume our
negotiations?”

“Of
course,” Smith said. “Remind me. Where did we leave off?”

Paul
grinned a sideways grin. Smith knew precisely where they had left off.
 
“You were telling me when we spoke last that
you would do something like blow up the orbiter if I didn’t grant you a pardon
for your crimes. Some bullshit like that I think.”

“I will
do it,” Smith said.

“I don’t
see what you’ve got to gain,” Paul said matter-of-factly. “If I’m not mistaken
the blast would kill you.”

“That’s
the price I’m willing to pay. You can have the orbiter when you agree to
absolve me of all the alleged crimes I am supposed to have committed.”

“Alleged
crimes?” Paul asked, with an emphasis on alleged.

“That’s
right.”

“I see.”

“I’m sure
you do.”

“You
know, you can stay up there for what? Six years? Maybe nine years, if you
conserve resources? Then what?”

“I
self-destruct the orbiter.”

“Ah,”
Paul said, feigning surprise.

“What
have I got to lose?” Smith asked with a frown. “If I come down sooner, you’ll
kill me. What’s the advantage?”

Paul knew
Smith would be tough. He was obviously dealing with a man who had negotiated
things his way his entire life. Such men lied, cheated, bartered and bargained
for everything they wanted.

“I never
said I would kill you,” Paul offered. “All I said was that there are some
people down here who expect you to pay for what you’ve done to them.
 
That’s all.”

“Being
led by the crowd mentality, are we, Captain Kominski?”

“Not at
all. I’ve got the final say,” Paul said. “But I do have some other opinions to
consider.”

“Playing
all the angles?” Smith said with a sniff.

“Look,
I’ve got eight of the Bondsmen’s highest ranking council members locked up. The
rest, as you know, are dead. If you, Wethers and Lindstrom come down now, I’ll
negotiate a reasonable sentence with you. You’ll come out of this alive at
least.”

“I don’t
want a sentence,” Smith said. “I want a pardon. And in exchange, I’ll leave the
orbiter as it is.”

Paul
pretended to think it over. He’d made up his mind where this was going before
the conversation started.
 
He sucked air
through his nose.

“You
promise to leave the orbiter intact?” Paul asked. “I wouldn’t want you going
back on your word.”

“You have
my word.”

“What
about Ashwin, Wethers and Lindstom?” Paul further inquired.

“I’ll
take responsibility for them,” Smith said. “They were following my orders.”

“I see,”
Paul smirked.

“They are
my trusted employees and still work for me. They cannot be held accountable for
actions, even alleged ones, they may have committed while under my direct
supervision now or heretofore.”

“I’ll see
what I can do.”
 
Paul said. “Bring them
down with you.”

“Then we
have a deal?” Smith asked.

“We have
a deal,” Paul said. “You’ll get your pardon.”

“Fine,”
Smith said, self-satisfied. “Then we’ll be down within the hour.”

“Nice
dealing with you, Mr. Smith,” Paul said. “You’re a tough man. See you soon.”

“See you
soon,” Smith said and closed the connection.

Paul
turned and walked over to the two officers standing by the chamber’s entrance.
“Smith’s on his way down with his two bodyguards Wethers and Lindstrom and that
little puke of a secretary of his, Ashwin,” he said to them. “Greet them at the
landing site. Be nice. Get the orbiter’s system codes from Smith then test the
codes. When you’re sure they work, lock the bastards up until I decide what to
do with them. If they resist, shoot them.”

Paul
opened his pad, and checked the item labeled “Get control of the orbiter” off
his list.

Plan your work and work your plan, Dad used
to say
, Paul thought.

* * *

 
“I thought your report to the council was very
good Dr. Sanders,” John said wrapping her tight in his arms from behind.
“Very…very… good.”

She
wrapped her arms around his. “I think it was accurate,” she said cautiously.
“But there are still so many unanswered questions. So much to learn.”

They were
standing just outside one of the monolith’s many entrances, the pool she used
to bathe in, deep and cool at their feet. The stream gurgled gently out of the
pool’s downstream end. “The last time I jumped naked into that pool, I had
rifles pointed at my head a minute later,” she shared her frightful memory,
then grinned. “I’ll never look at my little pool the same,” she said with mock
sadness.

“I don’t
think we’ll ever look at anything the same again,” John said. “Everything is
changed.
 
Change is good.”

“I’m not
so sure about that right now,” she said.
 
“This planet…”

“This
planet is fascinating,” he said. “You said so yourself.”

“Yes,
it’s fascinating. But it’s also deadly. It’s a very dangerous place, and it
will do everything it can to kill us. And it will try at every opportunity. It
will never stop trying to kill us.”

“That’s
pretty pessimistic,” he said.

“I
suppose it is, but I can’t help it. You’ve seen it yourself. No one could have
dreamed that this planet was so hostile.”

“Then
we’ll just have to beat the hostility out of it,” he offered.

She
squirmed around in his arms to face him. “That’s just it, John. You can’t tame
a place like this. It won’t be tamed. And on top of the fact that the entire
planet is one enormous hothouse that sprouts plant and animal life from every
square inch of it, there are the Verdians, a race of beings we’ve never seen
and may never see. And the only thing about them we know for sure is that they
are advanced technologically and extremely hostile to other species, including
ours—especially ours.”

“Not a
pretty picture, I admit,” he relented.

She
sighed. “No. Not a pretty picture.”
 
She
turned around and faced the deep green and implacable face of the jungle just a
few dozen meters away. “Out there are millions upon millions of square
kilometers of the most biologically rich environment ever discovered. John,
it’s as if the entire planet were alive through and through, just one big
organic ball teeming with life forms. We’ll never fully understand it—the
systems, the symbiotic relationships, the billions of species, the predators
and the prey.
 
It’s an endless ocean of
life. You could spend a lifetime here and never scratch the surface.”

She was
growing agitated, and that was usually a prelude to the mania, and the mania a
prelude to the seizure. He felt her through his arms and the front of his
thighs for the telltale twitching. It didn’t come.

“Life is
competitive, John. Each life form carves out its niche and struggles to keep
it. Now here we are, two hundred thin-skinned, soft-bodied, protein-filled
morsels, just waiting to be eaten by something—to be used by another species
from the outside in or the inside out.
 
This is not a planet that you colonize, John. It’s one you admire from
the safety of an air-tight, bug-proof, flying machine for a few hours—then
leave it the hell alone.”