Once Upon a Pet Show (A Redpoint One Romance) (27 page)

Even better, the air cleared. For the first
time since waking up, Vallory took a deep breath.

***

Damien kept her hand in his as he moved closer to the strange
tree. Anything to get further away from the stink of the dark
trees, before he lost whatever contents still remained in his
stomach.

He wanted to reach out to the tree, to see
what the texture in the frosted lighter color felt like. Would it
feel anything like a normal tree? Would it feel warm, or cold like
the surface of a computer like the neon blue color
indicated?

So many questions, including what it was in
the first place. What did it do?

The baby chirped, looking up towards the
ceiling. Penny put her head over it protectively just before the
dark lumpy goo poured over the bright colors of the
tree.

Both he and Vallory took a hasty step
backwards, even as it flowed through the daubpups without touching
them.

The tree flexed, some of the deeper lines and
textures dimming under the fluid. But, hardly any of it reached the
ground. It disappeared into the surface of the tree.

Absorbed?

"What is this place?" He looked up at the
ceiling. Not a figment of his imagination. Some of the blobs in the
fluid were ragged electronic parts and bits of metal. "Garbage
processing?"

"Shouldn't there be stuff from the houses
here, then?"

"I think there was. Ground up." The more he
thought about it, the more he thought he was right. What the fluid
was, he didn't want to think.

The tree glowed brighter, the last of the
fluid and parts disappeared from the surface.

"It's doing something with the stuff." Vallory
hugged close to his arm, pressing herself to his side. "So, we
found a place where we can breath. Good step. Now what?"

"You sweet-talk your daubpups into finding a
way out," Damien said with a wry smile.

She pointed to the communicator on his wrist.
"Or hope your crew gets to us?"

Not the right communicator. He checked the
battery reading on the communication pack. Still juice, but the
level now read below half. It wouldn't last much longer. "Still
broadcasting, but if they didn't get to us in the other room, they
won't be able to get to us in here." He shook his head, giving a
rueful laugh. "I'm sorry. I don't intend to sound so depressing.
I'm not giving up."

She hugged his arm. "You're being honest. It's
something I appreciate."

She didn't sound scared. No hysteria, either.
If anything, only worry infused her voice. His esteem of her rose
to a whole new level.

"We're together, and we're both reasonably
smart people," he said, smiling down at her, kissing her on the
forehead. "We'll figure it out."

Vallory leaned into the kiss. "I would kiss
you right now, but it's hard to properly kiss when one wants to
throw up." And then her face grew stormy and stern, but with still
a bright twinkle in her eyes. "And you aren't allowed to take it
back. I won't let you!"

"Take back the kiss? I wouldn't want to." In
fact, he wanted to do a much more proper kiss, but like Vallory,
his stomach still roiled from the stench before.

"No, I mean about the "I love you" thing. I
heard you. Can't take it back."

He should shy away from such plain words.
Blame their situation or the lack of oxygen for what he said.
Saying the words out loud meant dealing with them. Dealing with
Vallory. Dealing with their uncertain future.

For once all the voices inside him said the
same thing.

He slowly smiled, releasing her hand to pull
her into a full embrace. No kiss, but he could still give her a
proper hug. Against her forehead, he whispered, "I'm not taking it
back. I meant every word."

A chorus of daubpups voiced their support. Or
cries for attention? Hard to tell, really.

Damien released Vallory with a sudden
movement, realizing something important. "I hear more than two
daubpups."

"What?" Vallory looked up at Damien, her eyes
glazed. They cleared, widening as more of the sounds surrounded
them.

She whirled towards the tree where Penny and
the baby still perched, just in time to see other daubpups
appearing from out of the floor or through the trunks of the dead
and stinking trees.

All of them squealing, yipping, chittering,
moving fast on short little legs with their hair flying. All
heading straight for the one remaining working tree in the
place.

Damien rushed forward, putting himself between
three of them and the tree. "Wait!"

The daubpups ran right through his legs. He
didn't feel a thing, but he could see it. Penny and the baby
watched from their vantage point, egging them all on.

"Damien, what are you doing?" Vallory
demanded, putting her fists on her hips.

"Do you see any other trees in here working?
This may be the last one!" Not that he could do anything about it.
With their ability to walk through solid objects, it was a lost
cause even trying.

The daubpups swarmed around the tree, climbing
it with ease. Vallory grabbed his arm, tucking her hand under to
hook his. "They aren't hurting it. They're only
climbing."

"We don't know what would hurt it. I don't
know what it is other than it's vitally important to the station."
Her confused expression echoed so many other people's in the past
that he quickly added, "It's the station connection. The instincts.
Don't ask me to explain them, they are just there."

"I understand. You protect the station like I
protect the daubpups. Trust me. I understand."

"Now look. They are running in and out of it,
too. Who knows what that will do to it." The daubpups were almost
frantic in their movements. Happy, but frantic, moving through it
at the base, up higher, running up and down the trunk through the
bigger branches. He shook his head, knowing there was no point in
trying to pull one of them off, but still wanting to do something.
"The stink has been coming from this room, and maybe other rooms
like it. It's the same smell."

"Something for you to fix. But, really, I
don't think my little ones are doing damage. Look, more garbage,
and the tree absorbed it even faster than before."

The goo barely reached the middle branches, in
fact. Maybe the station didn't dump as much on it as before? There
must be some explanation for it.

The goo didn't slow the daubpups down a bit.
Their frantic movements calmed to a playful game of tag. Penny
joined in, leaving the baby to drape itself in the forked corner of
a limb to drowse.

Damien rubbed the back of his neck with his
other hand, forcing himself to relax. "Okay, maybe they aren't
destroying it."

He blinked. Wait, wasn't the baby still
sleeping on the tree limb?

Vallory jerked away, pointing at the base of
the tree. "Did you see that?"

When the small shape reemerged from the trunk
of the tree, it was hard not to.

A new baby, only this one of blues and whites,
trying to follow another daubpup up the tree, and not quite doing
it. It cried out. One of the daubpups paused, and then moved back
down the tree to nuzzle the baby. With encouraging noises and a
helpful push from its nose, the older daubpup started helping the
new baby up the tree.

"Did another one just have a baby?" Damien
demanded.

"I saw it. I don't know how it's possible, but
I saw it." She turned wide eyes to him. "One moment Clementine was
wrestling with Neon, and the next she glowed blue. Then the baby
just appeared next to her."

"Just appeared?" he repeated.

"Yes, just appeared. That baby wasn't just
born. It split off from Clementine as she passed through a root.
What if this is how Penny had hers? With the help of the
tree?"

***

Vallory's head spun with
the implications. Not normal births. It must be some type of
parthenogenesis. One parent splitting a part of themselves off to
create the next generation. Or, maybe a process science didn't know
about. Whatever it was, it involved the trees. The babies appeared
only after the parent passed through a tree.

She knew she was babbling it all to Damien,
and she didn't know if she was making any sense at all. When
another baby appeared, with Damien saying he just saw it do the
same thing, her thoughts crystalized.

"Amazing. I came to this place to save them,
to find a new habitat on a new planet. And, instead, it's this
place that is giving them new hope. They are breeding." She gave a
little jump, flinging her arms around his neck. "Damien, the
daubpups are breeding!"

And she kissed him.

She meant it to be only a spontaneous kiss. A
kiss of joy and happiness. But, Damien didn't let her go. After his
initial surprise, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her
close, not allowing her to pull away.

She didn't mind. As the kiss deepened, she
didn't want it to stop. This was where she belonged. In his arms,
in his life, with him in hers.

She smiled up at him as they finally broke,
pouring all her love into her gaze. "It's happening. It's all
coming together."

"Slowly," Damien said, a warm smile lighting
up his face. "After we get this all figured out and us out of here,
we'll talk and figure out what we need to do. I have vacation time
coming up. I can use it to come out with you to help set up a
habitat for them."

If it were possible, her smile increased.
"Damien, don't you realize what happened here? Look!"

Regretfully, she pushed away from him and
pointed to the tree. In front of their very eyes, another baby
appeared. The tree shivered and moved, another branch coming out
near the top. Other branches grew new twigs with strange dangling
bunches growing off of them. The tree's version of
leaves?

Two of the daubpups rolled in their wrestling
through a nearby tree. The tree shook. As their game of chase
continued, a spot of neon blue started to glow among the dingy
brown and gray. Then a spot of frosted ivory grew over the
surface.

She grabbed him around the middle and squeezed
as tight as she could. "This is their home. This is their habitat.
And where they go, I am. I'm home!"

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

ARTHUR KNELT NEXT to his bot, placing his hand on
the top of his shell. The bot faced a blank part of the wall along
with several of the other bots that Zane had called.

"What's here? How do we get through?" The bot
chirped at him, the same sound it made before when it arrived at
the place after Zane told the assembled army of bots to find a way
to get to Damien. Which they did. Hopefully. The group swarmed to
this part of a corridor, and then stopped, waiting on the
humans.

Arthur's bot chirped again, but he didn't know
how to interpret it. Encouraging, as if pointing to this spot, but
with no other meaning behind it.

Tish angled past Arthur's back to place her
hands on the hard wall. She felt along it as far as she could
reach. "If there's a door here, I can't see it or feel
it."

Arthur called out, "Zane, anything with the
other groups?"

Shay crossed his arms over his chest, looking
over the large group with them. "I didn't know there were so many
types of bots."

"This is only a small sampling. There are much
larger and smaller ones," Arthur said. When Zane appeared from
around the corner of the main corridor, he asked,
"Anything?"

"No, not a thing. They are just like this one.
Groups of robots gathered in the corridor stubs that end at a blank
wall," Zane said. He looked over the wall Tish was still searching
with her hands. "They are trying to tell us something, but darned
if I know what it is."

"You asked them to find a way to Damien," Shay
said with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Looking at a bit of wall is not telling us
where or how to do it," Tish said. She glanced at her three,
hovering at the back end of the group. "But, they are earnest about
it. There must be something we aren't seeing."