Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits (6 page)

“Helll .
. .” the stranger said.

“What did
he say?”

“Quiet,”
Donna commanded.

“Helll .
. .” he said again

“Is he
saying hello?” John asked.

“Quiet,”
she insisted. It sounds more like help. Now shut up!"

“Helll .
. .”

A few
more sluggish attempts followed, and Donna thought she saw him swallow,
although his mouth was partially open at the time.

John
leaned in over Donna’s shoulder. “What’s your name?” he asked loudly.

“You can
forget it, John,” Donna said. “He can’t hear a thing.”

“Oh.”

“Come on,
Buster. Just say anything,” John persisted.

The
disconcerting blue eyes slowly closed, and the mouth dropped open and stopped
moving altogether.

“Well, I
guess that’s all we’ll get for now,” Donna said, blotting his desiccated mouth
with a moistened towel. “All that work must have tuckered him out.”

John
scowled and shook his head. “I don’t know why we’re bothering. He’s useless to
us. Look at him. He’s so emaciated he looks like . . . like . . . he’s dead
already. He can’t hear. He can’t talk. What a waste. I say we just euthanize
him and bury him outside. Or better yet, just leave his carcass out on the
dirt—at least his body would be some use to the bugs.”

“Sorry.
We can’t do that,” she said to John with a little smile.

“I
could,” John said with confidence.

“Oh, I
know
you
could,” she replied smiling, “And that’s why we can’t leave you
alone with the sorry bastard.”

She had
to admit the patient was having a peculiar effect on them. These mixed feelings
they were developing were quite pronounced, at least for Donna and Rachel.
John, on the other hand, rarely had mixed feelings about anything.

“I
wouldn’t murder the sonofabitch if that’s what you mean,” he snorted.

“Oh, I
see,” she replied.

“Oh,
what?” he asked.

“Nothing,”
she said, still bemused. “Skip it.”
 

* * *

The next
day, the patient did open his eyes again, and Donna irrigated them. This time,
they moved from side to side, giving the odd impression of sneakiness. Finally,
they came to rest on her as she cleaned him, and she smiled down at him. The
dim blue eyes stared back up, and her smile soon evaporated. Her doubts about
him were growing. She kept thinking about Rachel’s strange comment about
wanting him dead, but not yet. Perhaps it was just the desire to find out about
him, to unravel the mysteries he held. What was he doing here anyway? Where did
he come from? What was the bible book doing in his hand? Rachel was right:
there were questions that needed answers.

The
patient's mouth opened and stretched out slowly like a fish yawning; Donna
heard him take a deep breath.

“I . . .”
he said, "I've . . . been . . . in Hell.”

Those
words flushed her doubts away, and she leaned over him and nodded that she
understood.

“You’re
out now,” she said clearly and loudly. “You’re back among the living. We’re
going to take care of you.”

His eyes
fluttered closed. Later, she saw one claw-like hand open and shut, then freeze
there, as if it had never moved.

That day,
Donna steeled herself, put her hands on his strange, pale skin and started to
slowly work his limbs, starting with his feet and ankles. The joints were so
stiff they felt almost fused, but she applied pressure a little at a time until
they moved just slightly, then a little more, then a little more still. By the
next day, she had his ankles and knees loosened to the point that some of the
motion was restored. By the end of the week, she could move most of his
joints—wrists, shoulders, neck, elbows, knees and hips through nearly full
articulation.

He did
not speak for the entire week, but when his eyes were open, he watched her with
that strange empty stare.

She never
got used to the way his body felt. His skin was more like a loose rubbery
covering over bone and gristle than skin. That dreadful impression made her
want to wash her hands repeatedly, which she did, after each session. And how
one arm got longer than the other was a mystery to her; she’d never seen
anything like it.

* * *

Rachel
was spending more and more time in the structure’s interior, especially in the
laboratory with its alien technology. Occasionally, she would bring something
back, something bizarre or especially peculiar to show and tell. Most of the
devices were so far removed from anything they’d ever seen that their intended use
was an utter mystery. None of them looked friendly. They had in common elements
of shape and color that suggested a profound malevolence, but they were not
entirely lacking in their own grotesque beauty. Some seemed marvels of
engineering with parts that moved in complex ways— puzzling anatomic structures
from some fantastic organism.

They
fascinated Donna less than Rachel. They frightened Donna on some deep,
unfathomable level. They fascinated John as well, and he scowled with mock
repulsion at them the entire time. He turned and twisted them, trying to make
them work.

“This one
looks like it’s for separating tissue,” Rachel was saying. “Look at this.”

She held
the spider-like device up and actuated it by slipping her fingers down into
holes in its center. The fine-tipped legs moved slowly in and out, up and down.

“See,
look at that,” Rachel said. “Great precision, huh?”

“Ugh!”
Donna said. “Get that damned thing away from me.”

Playfully,
Rachel chased Donna with it into the shuttle. Donna screeched the whole way
like a schoolgirl, laughing, finally darting around to the far side of the
patient. Rachel feinted one way then the other with it trying to get at her.

“Stop it,
Rachel!” Donna laughed.

“Give me
your boobs! Give me your boobs!” she teased, wiggling it at her.

“Get
outta here with that!” Donna smiled.

Donna saw
the patient’s reaction first and held up her hand for Rachel seriously to stop
it. He began to tremble as if shaken from the inside out. His head vibrated
back and forth in hysterical denial. His arms and legs began to move aimlessly,
uselessly in a lame attempt to get away.

“No. No.
No. No. No. No. No.”
 
he repeated. Each
"No" was separate from the others, as though to emphasize the terror
of each moment the patient had suffered under some such instrument.

“Rachel,”
Donna said. “Put it away, quick.”

Rachel
swung the device behind her and backed slowly out of the room. Donna put her
hand on the man’s shoulder to quiet him.

“Sorry,”
Rachel said to Donna.

“It’s
okay,” Donna said to the man. “It’s okay. It’s gone now. It’s gone now.”

Like
waves in a pool that slowly flatten to nothing, the man finally settled, calmed
and slept.

Rachel
waited a few moments then returned to the room, a little sheepishly.

“What was
that all about?” she asked Donna.

“I’d say
the patient has had some experience with that device or something like it,”
Donna replied. “I don’t think he liked the experience very much.”

For some
perverse reason she couldn’t explain, Rachel was tempted to bring the device
back into the room and show it to him again—real close up.

“Well,
this just gets more and more mysterious all the time,” she said knowingly for
Donna’s benefit. What she really wanted to do was grab the man and shake him
and make him tell her what it all meant. “I wonder what the relationship is.”

“We may
be able to find out,” Donna said. “I plan to install the AUD's tomorrow. I
think he can handle it. We know he can speak. If he could hear, we could
communicate with him.”

“That’s a
good idea,” Rachel said, disguising the anticipation in her voice. “That’s a
real good idea.”

Sometimes,
during the daylight hours, when her thoughts were busy, confused and filled
with figuring out this or that, she was sure it was only her professional pride
that kept her wondering, seeking answers about the structure and the stranger’s
role in it.

But it
was in the in-between state, the time between sleep and wakefulness, when
certainty came.

When she
first awoke, in that half-real state at dawn, clarity came to her and her
questions were answered before they were phrased. Adrift there, she felt in her
nerves, more than thought it in her mind, that the man was part of something
more horrible, more hideous than she could ever imagine. She could feel it, as
surely as she could feel her own flesh, that something terrible, something
loathsome was here; something fantastic, dreadful and vile. Try as she might,
she could find no clue to its form, no hint of its shape. There was no picture
of it, no image of it to be found, but she knew it was there, invisible yet as
tangible, as revolting, as rotten meat.

There was
something else about the man that frightened her. In his appearance, she found
something terrifying, yet familiar, like an ugly afterimage from a nightmare.
Somehow those limbs stirred the dimmest and most nauseating feelings. She was
sure that, somewhere in the hideous man’s soul, a repugnant thing lay dormant,
squirming, waiting for release. When those feelings occurred, in the half-light
of daybreak, she was sure she held the key to the damned thing’s liberation.

“Hey,
what’s going on?” John said into her ear. “You’re as tight as a spring.”

She
patted his arm and made a conscious effort to relax a little. The response drew
a fond and lengthwise hug that caressed her from neck to feet.

* * *

Rachel
wanted to see the operation and to be there when Donna turned on the stranger’s
hearing. She wanted to be the first to ask questions. The problem was that she
didn’t know what those questions should be, but she was sure she could think of
something.

By the
time she had bathed and dressed and made her way to the shuttle, Donna already
had the patient under anesthesia. He was on his stomach with his head in a
steel support to keep it immobile. She was preparing to open his skull, just
behind his ear, with a small bone saw.

“Put this
on if you want to stay in here,” Donna said, handing her a mask.

Rachel
put it on and took a seat. She wasn’t in the least squeamish and very
interested in the procedure.

Two hours
later, Donna was finished and the AUD's were in place, looking like shiny
walnut shells behind each ear.

“They
look painful,” Rachel said. “Are they supposed to stick out like that?”

“Well,
there’s only so much that can go inside his head,” Donna replied. “Most of the
works are right there where we can get at them to tune them.”

“Tune
them?”

“That’s
right,” Donna answered. “We can adjust his hearing to be quite powerful if we
wanted to. You can turn them up so his hearing is better than a canine’s. Not
that you’d want to do that. Most humans would find that much auditory reception
pretty distracting.”

“What
about the devices themselves?” Rachel wanted to know. “Aren’t they going to get
in the way? Like when he’s sleeping?”

“They’ll
cause a little irritation for a while at the point where they make contact with
the epidermis,” Donna said. “But the proteins in the seals will bond
permanently with the skin there and in a week he won’t even know they’re
there.”
 

“That’s great,”
Rachel said, not meaning it. “When does he wake up so we can talk to him?”

“In a few
hours if all goes right.”

“I’ll be
back,” Rachel said. She left her mask on the table by the door.