The Druid Gene (23 page)

T
oward morning fatigue
took over and Darcy dozed. When light began to peep between the leaves on her improvised shelter, though, she came fully awake. Her feet seemed to have recovered from the trek of the day before. The reservoir in the canteen was full and she drank it greedily, grateful for the pure taste of water on her tongue. She was groggy and stiff, but she had a fresh feeling of resolve.

She’d had plenty of time to think about her options, and she had decided she didn’t know enough. There was no reason to trust anything anyone had said to her aboard either the
Vermachten
or the tern. The only person she could have any faith in at this point was herself.

She was going to begin by climbing the tallest tree she could find to get the lay of the land. She could hike for days in this wood and never reach the end of it, especially if she went in the wrong direction. Climbing a hill would certainly be preferable, but she couldn’t see any.

She crawled out of the shelter, the pack on her back with the water-generating flask dangling from it. She looked up warily but didn’t see any sign of the large, winged creatures from the evening before. The forest was markedly quieter now, though not silent by any means. There was just a lot of discordant, arrhythmic chirping and clacking with an occasional deep droning sound. Nothing moved that she could see in the immediate area.

She took off hiking down the tern’s trail. Again, she was struck with the sense that she didn’t need to be so cautious. She felt sure she could easily locate the landing site.

She found a small rise in the landscape and focused her search for trees there. One in particular stood out. With a trunk like an ancient redwood, it was stout and tall. It had a few branches low enough to the ground to be accessible. This was the one.

She hadn’t been the kind of kid to climb trees. She’d been born into the internet era. There were so many interesting things to do inside, like playing
Ocarina of Time
or blabbing on the phone endlessly about Buffy. Spending time outside had never held much appeal for her. But there was no reason why she couldn’t climb one. It couldn’t be that hard.

* * *

Y
eah
. It was hard.

She got her right foot firmly onto a knot and pushed herself up, reaching for the lowest branch, which was a few feet out of reach from ground level. Her angle was bad and she slipped back down, scraping the inside of her leg and both arms. She didn’t take the time to even look at the scrapes. She knew from her injuries on the tern that they’d be gone in hours. Getting to the top of the tree was more important than some bloody abrasions.

She kept at it until she figured out how to position her body properly. It took more than a few attempts to learn that she had to hug the tree with arms and legs and grip the bark with her left foot as well in order to stay stable for the seconds she needed to get ahold of the branch.

Then it was about sheer strength and lots of scraping against rough bark. She maneuvered her other hand onto the branch and swung her lower body, crunching her abs with everything she had, until she finally got a leg up. When she got herself seated on the branch, she stopped for only a moment to celebrate the achievement, panting, until the burn in her abdomen subsided a bit. Then she was up and going for the next one.

She’d chosen the tree well, despite the difficulty of heaving herself up to the first branch. The branches in this tree had grown in a radial spiral from the trunk, and the distance between them grew shorter the higher she climbed, so the work got easier with each successive branch. Luckily she didn’t have much of an issue with heights—a healthy respect, but no phobia or anything. When any doubts entered her head, she reminded herself that plenty of children on Earth had scrambled up and down trees since the beginning of time and lived to play another day.

Several times she startled creatures from their roosts, but it was hard to get a good look at them as they scurried for cover or took flight. They did all seem to be insectoid in nature, and bigger than any insect she’d ever seen on Earth, but harmless enough. They were obviously more afraid of her than she was of them, which was some comfort.

She’d lost the squeamishness she’d had over insects because of spending so much time with Tesserae71, but he was sentient, and they could communicate and understand each other. Raub had said there was no intelligent indigenous life on this planet, but she had no idea if that was the truth, so she began to use the dummy-chip language to greet each insect she disturbed. None of them answered her.

She felt driven to rush to the top, to ignore the need for breaks, food, or water. Only one thing gave her pause. Textbook images of human mutilation from freak accidents flashed through her mind. Clinicals weren’t supposed to be until next year, so she didn’t have any surgical or ER experience to counter her feeling of urgency, but she’d studied enough of human anatomy to know her body was fragile.

She didn’t have any safety equipment to catch her if she made a mistake. No matter how great her regeneration ability was now, she doubted it could fix the damage a cracked skull would leave in her brain or a sharp tree limb would through the heart. So she slowed down and kept anchored securely with three out of four limbs at all times.

She wondered what Adam would think if he could see her now. He would be proud of her, she thought. He’d always wanted her to enjoy more outside activities with him. She wished he were here. But then he’d be in danger too.

The foliage became less dense. She was seeing more and more sky and catching glimpses that spanned greater distances. She reached for a branch and tested its strength. They were thinner up here, and she wasn’t sure how much higher she could go before they wouldn’t be able to support her weight. Something pricked or stung her hand. She jerked back and swayed precariously for a moment before regaining control.

Several dots of bright red blood welled up on the back of her hand. She instinctively brought it to her mouth and looked more closely at the limb she’d been grabbing for. She stopped the motion to her mouth when she realized what she was looking at.

It was a stick insect so large she’d originally thought it was a small branch coming off the main one. It was hunched up with its hindquarters curled over its head, waving legs that sported wicked-looking spines. She hoped there wasn’t some kind of poison secreted from the points of those prickly appendages.

“Hey, I’m a friend,” she said to it. “I didn’t mean to surprise you. I hope I didn’t hurt you or anything.”

It kept waving the spiky legs at her and didn’t reply.

“Okay, okay, killer. I guess you don’t talk. I’ll just get out of your way so you can get back to eating leaves or whatever.”

She wiped her hand on her clothes and carefully moved away to try another limb, keeping her eye out for similar insects. If she’d just been poisoned she’d know soon enough. Potential treatments went through her mind, though none of them would be available in the treetops of an alien world. Wouldn’t it be funny if Raub tracked her down and found her stiff as a board at the bottom of this tree? It would almost be worth it to thwart all his scheming.

Finally she reached a point where she could see in all directions. The view was breathtaking. It confirmed what she remembered of their descent in the tern. The forest went on as far as the eye could see in every direction—except for small blackened patches that forest fires had burned, probably started by lightning.

But there was something. Wait a minute. She leaned forward to push down on an arching branch to lower it out of her field of view.

What the heck was that?

Okay, there were two things. One looked like a big industrial complex that had been carved out of the trees and walled in. She would have to assume that was the belastoise mining operation. It made sense that Raub would land near it. He would need a way off this planet once he was done with her. The compound looked promising. A feeling of hope surged up inside her. Except as her eye traced the circumference of the wall she didn’t see any breaks that looked like gates. That could be a problem. If she could find a way inside, she might be granted sanctuary—unless the belastoise were crazy bigots like Nembrotha had told her. She couldn’t be sure that was the truth.

But not far from there was…what?

She stared hard, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. She wished she had binoculars so she could make out more detail.

It was some kind of superstructure. Six—or possibly eight…the air was hazy with heat and humidity and it was far away—spindly black legs towered over the trees and supported a rounded, shiny, black platform topped with…clouds? Was that an optical illusion? The stuff on the surface of it was white and fluffy looking and receded into the actual clouded sky. It looked very sculptural, almost organic in nature. Who had made that? The belastoise? It was near their compound, but the two structures didn’t share any architectural elements.

Her eyes bulged. Wait…what?

It was moving.

One of the legs lifted in the air and then slowly set back down.

She leaned precariously forward, trying to see better. She slipped and scrambled to regain her footing, bracing herself again. She scanned the horizon in every direction, looking for more of these huge things, but there was just one that she could see.

Was that a spider? If so, what was on its back? And what could a spider that large possibly eat? She shuddered. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Could it be mechanical? Some kind of transportation? If so, hitching a ride could be a good way to outsmart Raub. She’d just disappear.

While she watched, the thing lifted another leg and eased forward another step. What would it do when it got to the mining colony?

She could sit up here and watch that thing all day and still be none the wiser. She had to get moving. Raub had only given her three days. Now she had an idea of which direction to head in, and she wasn’t going to waste another minute.

G
etting
down from the tree was harder than getting up had been. She was fatigued from lack of sleep, and the pack kept catching on branches. Her muscles were cramping from dehydration. She was hungry too, though she was dreading eating more of the crackers Raub had sent with her.

But she made it down. She turned slowly in a circle. That strange sense oriented her. She still knew where the tern had landed, but now she also knew which direction led toward the mining colony. Maybe it was an instinct that her druid ancestors had passed on to her that she’d just never noticed before, like homing pigeons using the Earth’s magnetic field. She hoped it wasn’t some hysterical delusion that was going to screw everything up. She decided to trust it because she didn’t have any other choice. Even if she’d had a compass, she wouldn’t know how to use it on an alien world. To be honest, she wouldn’t know how to use one on
Earth
.

She drank all her water and choked down some bites of cracker, then decided to do her best to throw Raub off her trail. She went back to the landing path the tern had made and continued down it in the same direction she’d been going in before for about a quarter mile, making sure to leave evidence that she’d been there.

He’d use traditional tracking techniques. She’d learned that from playing the VR hunting game with him. He thought employing anything aside from his own senses was cheating. But he had an advantage in that his senses were more developed than the average human’s. Tricking him wouldn’t be easy, but she had to try.

She doubled back, stepping carefully so she wouldn’t leave footprints or any other telltale sign going toward the tern. She reached a point where a low limb overhung the path, stood on top of a stone, and got herself up on that limb, then maneuvered around to the other side of the tree to a lower-hanging branch going off in another direction. She crawled out on that limb until it bowed down to the ground under her weight and dropped at least fifty feet from where she’d been on the trail.

She landed as lightly as she could and took off at a lope. It was hot and she was sweating freely. Dehydration was going to be her biggest problem if she didn’t find a stream soon. The water-making flask couldn’t keep up with the amount of water she needed.

Darcy took the bolt out of her pocket and experimented with it whenever she slowed to a walk as a break from running. She could make it plunge and soar if she really concentrated. She attempted to shoot it like a bullet and then called it back. She’d have to practice that a lot more.

She watched the shadows in the forest to keep track of time. When the twin suns were directly overhead the heat had reached its peak and she was slowing down from thirst and fatigue. She forced herself to keep going. Slow movement was better than no movement. She had no idea how long it would take her to reach that compound, but she guessed it would be longer than three days.

She kept up a clumsy plodding jog for what felt like a few more hours. She’d never tried to run this long in her life. She was somewhat surprised that she could keep it up.

She began to see glimpses of orange and yellow through the trees. When she got closer she could see the bright colors came from a small glade carpeted with large flowers with orange centers and floppy yellow petals that were stirring in the gentle breeze. She stopped at the tree line, bending at the waist and clutching the stitch in her side, sucking in gulps of air, to take it in.

This is what makes me human. I can appreciate the beauty in the sight of this.

Would Raub see anything of worth if he looked at this? What did he value aside from this insane hunt? She didn’t have a clue. She didn’t understand him at all. Everything he’d shown her had been an act.

She sighed wearily and stepped into the clearing. Without warning the glade transformed into a churning yellow mass as hundreds, maybe thousands, of enormous moths or butterflies took flight as a group.

Darcy stumbled back, coughing and waving her hands in front of her face as the air filled with a yellow dust that tasted sharp and bitter. She wasn’t sure if it was pollen or something coating their wings. They flitted off into the forest in every direction. Only a few stayed behind to re-alight upon the orange flowers, which she could now see—through a heavy yellow haze—were virtually petal-less.

So much for the glade. She skirted it and then realized why it was there when she began to hear a burbling sound. There was a stream nearby. She dumped her stuff on the bank and jumped in. Her perspiration-slick skin was coated with sticky yellow stuff, and while she suspected that the dust might mask her scent, it was uncomfortable and she wanted it off.

The water was cool and soothing after the long run. She splashed around for a minute, then reached up and grabbed the flask, pulling down the siphon attachment and sticking it into the water. She drank until she started to feel bloated, then filled the flask and set it aside to bathe more thoroughly.

The yellow stuff didn’t want to come off. She stripped down and used her jumpsuit to scrub her skin, then rinsed and wrung that out. It mostly worked. Her hair was a mess that was probably going to mat and turn into dreads, but that couldn’t be helped without handfuls of conditioner and a Denman brush so she just soaked it, squeezing and finger combing it under the water and rubbing her fingers over her scalp. Her jumpsuit was back to sparkling white again after its bath, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing, but at least it dried almost instantly after she put it back on.

She decided to walk in the stream for a while because it meandered in generally the right direction and she had some idea, probably from watching way too much TV as a kid, that walking through running water could throw a tracking dog off one’s scent. She didn’t know whether that was a real thing or not, but whatever she could do to hinder Raub, she would try.

When her toes got wrinkly she decided it was time to get out. She took another long drink through the canteen and refilled it, then scrambled onto another branch. The trees were denser here and some of the branches interlaced. She moved from tree to tree as far away from the bank as she could get and dropped to the ground, then began to go in the direction she’d come to think of as north. She wasn’t sure if compass directions made any sense on this planet, if there were poles and all that, but it made sense to her and led to the mining camp, so she went with it.

She decided it was time to try out some more of the druid abilities she was supposed to have. Other than the water condenser, there weren’t any electronics at hand, and she certainly wasn’t going to mess with that, so she settled on attempting to create bright bursts of light that the video had said could distract an opponent.

She had to be careful. She didn’t want to generate a spark that might start a fire. She concentrated on calling up the light to a point just short of creating crackling sparks in her fingertips. Then she imagined herself pulsing and flinging light away from her body.

The first attempt generated a bolt of electricity that arced between her hands and feet. She staggered and felt dizzy. The air sizzled but luckily nothing caught fire. She tried again, this time holding her hands and legs tight to her body. That worked. She created a dazzling white flash.

She repeated the process until it felt natural and she could consistently produce a result. She finally stopped when she produced a burst so bright that she blinded herself for a few minutes. It was time to resume her progress toward the belastoise colony.

The hardest part was finding a way through the crowded trees. Sometimes there was nothing she could do but crawl under low branches. She picked up a second wind and made better time through most of the afternoon. The extra water was helping. She forced herself to eat as often as she could. She kept her mind occupied with being alert for predators, thinking of ways to keep safe while she slept, and determining methods to throw Raub off her trail or slow him down.

When the light began to go, she realized she still didn’t really have a good plan for how to spend the night and started to feel a little frantic. She had just about decided she’d just dig into the undergrowth in a dense copse when she noticed a tree that was growing at an angle. Curiosity made her hike over to it. It had been tipped by high winds and was being supported by its neighbors, but half of its roots had been pulled from the ground, leaving a small depression underneath. It was the best she could do and was probably better than what she’d managed the night before, because it wouldn’t require any energy to make.

She found a dead limb with dry leaves hanging from the ends and used it like a broom to scrape leaf litter into the hole under the roots, hoping to make the spot more comfortable. By the time she finished that task, she was weary and didn’t care much anymore. She curled up inside, wrapped in her blanket because it made her feel safer, with the pack as a pillow and the knife in her hand. She was asleep before it was full dark.

thirty-eight

The night had gone by quickly. She’d been so tired she’d slept hard, only waking a couple of times to adjust position and make sure the knife was close at hand.

By her reckoning, she was halfway through her three-day head start, and so far she’d only been acting defensively. That had to change. She had to think in ways he couldn’t predict. It was her only advantage. She had to use the environment against him somehow.

The problem was that she wasn’t sure what to do or how to do it. If she didn’t figure that out fast, she’d be dead in less than a week.

Deep down she didn’t want to kill him. Her life goal was to heal people. But he wouldn’t let this go. He was a psychopath. Even if she could somehow outsmart him and find a way to escape this planet, he was going to hound her. He knew this galaxy far better than she did. Nowhere would ever be safe.

If she’d been able to finish medical school, she would have vowed to do no harm. But doctors killed things all the time—they worked hard to kill germs, to cut out cancers, to stop the progression of disease. If she wanted to live, she’d have to kill the thing that plagued her.

As soon as first light penetrated the tangled forest, she was up and out of her hidey-hole and on the move. At midday she found herself on a narrow trail with thickets on either side funneling her forward. She couldn’t know what kind of insect or animal had made it, so she stayed alert. It wasn’t a great place to hang out, but the only other option was to keep struggling through dense woods. That would slow her down too much. So she alternated jogging and running down the trail at a pace she hoped she could maintain for a long time. The druid gene gave her more energy and stamina. She would need every bit of it.

She came to a low branch blocking the path at about chest height. She pushed it up and back as she went by. When she let go, it snapped into place with a vicious slap.

She stopped and turned around.

She pulled on the branch again, farther this time, then released it. It violently crashed back into its natural position.

This was something she could work with.

She began to scavenge for stout sticks, cracking them down until she had eight of them, all about eighteen inches long. Then she kneeled and scraped the tips with her knife until she’d made a sharp point on each one. She also gouged a thick notch in each of them so she could anchor them to the branch. She carefully gathered up the whittled chips and disposed of them in the thickets so they wouldn’t be visible.

She sat down and stared at the tree, working through the problem, mapping out a potential diagram of a contraption in her head. She had watched Adam occasionally set traps for game when they were camping—mostly snare traps, but the concept she had in mind was very similar. She needed two lengths of rope, string, or vine and to build a trigger mechanism out of wood—that could be made with the knife and sticks lying around on the forest floor.

First she had to find something she could use to tie the stakes to the tree and to pull the branch back and hold it taut. She also had to make a trip line that would blend into the background on the trail. She’d seen vines clinging to some trees the day before, but now of course none were in the immediate area. It took some time to find one. She pulled a long piece down from a tree and hoped it wouldn’t give her something like poison ivy.

The vine was woody and inflexible. It wouldn’t work as rope. She sat down with it and tried scraping it with her knife to see if she could peel away a long, thin section that would be flexible but strong enough to use. Once she got through the tough outer layer, she was able to pull the vine apart, but only in short sections. Wherever it branched, it invariably broke.

She sighed and sat with her hands buried in her hair, trying to think of other solutions. She tried tying the short pieces together into a longer strand, but she didn’t know how to tie any knots aside from a shoestring knot or a surgical knot. The surgical knots made the pieces splinter and break. When she tried overhand knots the pieces slipped apart. She tried braiding the sections together, but that went nowhere. She briefly tried twisting them and that didn’t work either. She threw the pieces down in disgust and walked away. Someone might be able to turn this vine into rope, but she couldn’t.

She paced back and forth.
Dammit.
She didn’t know
anything
useful. How was she supposed to do this?

Her gaze landed on the pack. She grabbed the knife. If she could just take off the top rim in a spiral… But the knife wouldn’t puncture the alien fabric no matter what she did to it. She pulled out the blanket Raub had given her, but it was the same.

She started to shake with frustration, then put the knife down carefully and pushed it away from her. She fingered her jumpsuit thoughtfully. Maybe she could take it apart. She pressed the button on the edge of her sleeve that made the garment flexible. Then she stuck the knife through the fabric about an inch from the bottom of the leg portion and sawed at it. A small piece came off. She tugged on it. It elongated and grew thinner. She pulled again and again until it was as thin as a hair. If she tried to make it any thinner, it broke.