Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series) (41 page)

“I see.”

“I didn’t mean to do it,
but I did it.”

“So you ran away?”

“Yeah. I don’t care if the
jungle eats me. I don’t have no place else to go anyway.”

“Well, you can stay here
with us if you like.”

His head lowered again,
and she saw him swallow; the look of fear mixed with the need to trust, visible
on his young and soiled face.

“I . . . I shouldn’t be
around people. I should let the jungle eat me.”

Here was a child carrying
the gray, stone weight of the damned and the vision of it, and his words
dragged her down a slope of deep pathos. She looked at his crestfallen face;
and took his soiled hand in hers. Holding it firmly, she clawed her way back up
with the boy in tow, just for his sake.

“I see. Well, why don’t
you just stay here with us for a few days and see how it goes. If you still
feel that way, the jungle will always be there waiting to gobble you up.”

She was hoping for a
smile, even a hint of one, but it never came.

Donna managed to get him cleaned
up and gave him one of Rachel’s cottons to wear that fit him well enough. She
wanted to burn or bury the old ones that were filthy and reeked of jungle
poisons.

That evening Rachel
stuffed herself on the contraband foodstuff. It was as if she’d been starving
for days, the way she wolfed it down. Later, they all watched as she stood
against the cavern’s wall and trance-like ran her hands over the surface. John
and Donna knew the seizure was coming and rushed over in time to catch her. It
was the worst one they’d seen.

“What’s wrong with her?”
Eddie asked from a safe distance.

“I’m not sure,” Donna
said. “She was bitten by a centipede last year. The poison seems to have had a
permanent effect on her.”

“Oh,” he said in a
not-understanding voice.

They carried her to bed
and laid her gently on it. She flowed languidly into the rumpled space and
turned slowly away and whimpered, finally curling into a voluptuous ball,
streaked and spotted with the sweat of her anguish.

“Where does she go when
she has those things?” John asked. “What’s going on in there?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t
want to go there. I don’t think any of us do,” Donna said.

Oddly, her seizures
sometimes sent her into a deep and dreamless sleep that left her refreshed, and
this time she awoke rested and strong in the morning’s red light. The first
thing she did was eat some more.

“I’m going deep inside
today, please come with me,” she asked John.

“Where?”

“Inside. Inside the
structure. Come with me.”

“I’m in about as far as I
want to go right now. I don’t even like it here much.” Rachel thought how
unfortunate it was that John, of all people, seemed to have lost his sense of
adventure. It hadn’t been that long ago that John would have been the one
dragging her away to see something, to explore something new. That spirit had
been one of the things that had attracted her to him. Now he traded that sense
of adventure for safety and caution. She understood it. She just didn’t like
that it had happened.

“Please.”

“I don’t know.”

“Please. There’s something
in it I want to find.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s got to be
some interesting stuff in there, right?”

“Maybe.”

“Then come with me.”

He hesitated.

“I’ll pack lunch,” she
added with a smile.

Unconvinced, he took
another bite of breakfast.

“I’ll fuck you when we get
in deep enough,” she whispered and her sloe-eyed look of warm desire touched
him like a moist hand. They were packed up, ready to go and standing at the
entrance to the largest passageway a few minutes later.

“Aren’t you afraid we’ll
get lost in this thing?” he asked, getting out his lamp and turning it on.

“No,” she answered flatly,
“and you won’t be needing that lamp.”

“I’ll take it just in
case, if you don’t mind.”

“Suit yourself.”

The tunnel was about three
meters wide and as many tall. The floor was relatively flat. As they walked
inside and away from the morning’s red light, it became apparent why they
wouldn’t need their lamps. The walls of the tunnel contained bioluminescent
structures in random, irregular patches that filled the tunnel with soft
illumination.

“Why the light?” John
asked.

“Dumb question. Someone or
something must have had a biological need to see in here . . .”

“Fine, Miss Know-it-all .
. .”

They continued in,
following the twisting and turning path. There were no side tunnels to confuse
the route; John felt certain they could find their way back. It was the
destination that worried him.

“Do you know where you’re
going?”

“No.”

“Do you know what you’re
looking for?”

“No.”

“When do we do it?” he
asked, “We’re in far enough not to get caught.”

“Be quiet," she said,
smiling.

They continued for some
minutes; and as they walked, the light seemed to take on a more ominous cast,
losing its softness and putting them on edge. John felt each step now, as each
one propelled him farther and farther into this enigmatic structure. He wished
they could stop, or better, just turn around and get the hell out of there.

When they rounded the last
bend and the tunnel emptied high into the chamber, he felt his mouth fall open.

“What the fuck is this?”
he asked, dumbfounded.

The chamber was at least
three hundred meters across and forty meters high. The entire space was a
jumble of strange, dark devices and mechanisms that hung from a high network of
branches and vine-like structures woven as an amorphous web throughout the
space. The floor was covered with tables or what looked like benches, smooth
and organic. Cages and containment devices of various kinds dotted the area.
The cubic meters of strange, dark and alien tools hanging in the still air
brought to mind some nightmare vision, all jagged and torn, like the wings of
some wet and wounded bird. He blinked it away and scowled at the horrid
thoughts the sight caused him.

“What in hell is this
place?” he asked again.

At first he thought she
was having another seizure, and he worried about being able to care for her
himself if it were a bad one. As he watched her, he realized she was only
breathing heavily, hyperventilating.

“Rachel, what is it?”

“I have to sit down . . .”
she said, sinking to the floor.

“Are you all right?”

“This place . . . this
place . . .”

He squatted down next to
her and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Awful? Is that the word you’re looking
for?”

“No . . . not just awful .
. . hideous, horrible . . .”

“Good, we’re in sync on
that. It looks like we’ve made the find of the century, as sick as it is. These
are artifacts of some extinct, intelligent race, right? I mean, these things
didn’t grow like that.”

“No. They didn’t grow like
that,” she said thoughtfully.

She rose slowly to her
feet and took another deep breath. Without a word, she started down the incline
to the floor of the chamber. John straightened his pack and started down behind
her.

Up close, the objects and
structures and hanging devices were even more fearfully beautiful. Each one
looked like a work of art—the art of Hell itself. The curves, edges, sweep and
flow of each one held a particular horror that stabbed deep and twisted without
touching them. The slick textures, pointed tips and gleaming edges seemed to
probe and cut from a distance.

“God . . .” he whispered.
“Who could have made these things?”

“It’s a laboratory.”

“Whose?” he said, shaking
his head in disbelief.

Rachel reached up and
slowly put her hand around one of the hanging instruments, then pulled it down
to get a better look. The vine-like umbilical lengthened soundlessly and
allowed the device to travel easily. The tool was much like a scimitar, but
with a longer and more pointed tip. One edge of the blade seemed hollow; and when
she looked closer, she could see a translucent, tube-like channel running along
it. She felt around for an appropriate grip, one she thought might be right,
then lay her finger along a smooth trough on the instrument’s flank. A thick
stream of milky fluid dripped from the pointed tip.

“What the hell is that?”
he asked. He was puzzled by the fact that she was terrified of the things one
instant and seemed fascinated by them the next.

“It’s alive.”

“Alive? What do you mean,
alive?” he asked, an emphatic mix of fear and puzzlement in his voice.

“They still work,” she
said, almost trance-like, turning the tool over. “They’re alive and they work.”

They moved through the
tangle of alien devices and equipment in slow motion as if ambling through a
museum of twisted art. There were no signs of the designers of the technology.
John thought that good fortune considering the nature of the tools and devices
hanging there.

“What do you think
happened to them?” John asked.

“I don’t know. If we look
hard enough we may find out.”

There were several
sub-chambers adjacent to the space at the far side, and Rachel headed into the
closest one.

“Wait a second . . .” John
pleaded.

“What?”

“Where are you going?”

“We have to see.”

She went into one of the
smaller chambers, and John followed after, sighing away all hope on her now
empty promise of carnal pleasure. She seemed to know exactly where she was
going. It was as if she were following some internal map clearly drawn in her
subconscious. “How in Hell do you know where you’re going,” he asked.

“I’m guessing,” she said
without turning.

The short tunnel emptied
into a chamber perhaps twenty meters wide, round and dome-shaped. The light
inside was particularly soft and the air cool. The walls of the chamber were covered
with what looked like alien hieroglyphs starting at the floor and reaching
across the ceiling like vines.

It took John a moment to
realize what the objects on the flat protuberances were.

“Is that them?” he asked.

“I’d say so. What’s left
of them?”

“Burial chamber?”

“I don’t know . . .”

Rachel walked up to the
closest one and touched the shrunken and paper-dry skin. A piece of it flaked
away in her hand. “It’s hard to tell what they looked like,” he said.

“I’m not sure they looked
like much. The bones are frail and thin to begin with. They seem to lack
bi-lateral symmetry—that is very strange. Head is irregular and somewhat
pointed. These spines are odd. Cranium is large and irregular, too. Strange.
They seem completely . . . ugly. Totally ugly . . . wicked and unnatural . . .”

“I count about a hundred.”

“Seems about right.”

“I wonder what killed
them.”

“Unknown.”

“Why so few?”

“This may not be all of
them. Get some pictures then let’s check out the other chambers.”

“This place is starting to
get under my skin really bad, Rachel.”

“Chicken?”

“Yeah. So? I feel like I’m
looking at Hell and dead demons and shit.”

“Maybe you are.”

“That’s not funny.
Besides, you’re twitchy, too. You said so.”

“Superstitious?”