The Druid Gene (6 page)

“I am an infirmary worker. I am not a guard.” He navigated through a few more screens on the control pad, then toggled the switch that opened the next door.

She immediately scanned for Adam’s familiar face, but was shocked by the sight she was greeted with.

A cavernous room lay on the other side. Upon the floor, a grid pattern was laid out. Every few feet, a square, circle, or polygon was marked out on the floor in a bright color. Inside each shape, a figure resided.

Darcy balked as Tesserae71 moved forward into the room, sweeping her forcibly along with him. She didn’t know why she’d thought that if there were any other prisoners, they’d be human. There wasn’t another human in sight.

She gaped. She could never have imagined that there would be so many. There were hundreds of individuals here, maybe thousands, if this wasn’t the only room like this.

She couldn’t comprehend it. She tried not to stare, but found that almost impossible. Every color of the rainbow was represented as well as fantastical shapes and great range in size. Most of the aliens were clothed to varying degrees in the shimmery white jumpsuits. There were many that, like the hymenoptera, didn’t resemble humans at all. Quite a few didn’t bear any resemblance to
anything
she recognized.

“It is safe for us to step onto the mat. Your designated space is just down here,” Tesserae71 said, forcing her to keep moving down an aisle. The dirty, dark-grey flooring was spongy under her feet. She kept her eyes down, glancing into each colorfully marked out cell as she passed it.

The room buzzed with a cacophony of disparate voices. Some of the individuals were disinterested in her arrival. They lounged on the floor, uncaring, perhaps sleeping. Others were more alert, sitting up or standing. Some appeared to be exercising in place.

Many watched.

Eyes of every imaginable shade and conformation followed them as they walked past dozens of prisoners. She felt like she was on display. Some of them looked as though they wanted to devour her.

“Will you look at the mammaries on that one!” someone hooted behind her.

Her face felt hot.

“Mammals. Always showing off the mammaries.”

“Ha! Too true. One of my wives has eight! After her last litter?” Darcy assumed a rude gesture accompanied that comment and the lascivious sound she heard following it.

“Are they that big?”

“Naw. It’s about quantity. She goes crazy when you…well, I’m telling you, the more the merrier, friend.”

“Not terribly hirsute for an anthropoid. I like that. I do.”

Darcy grimaced. That last had come from a provocatively sultry, feminine-sounding voice.

She turned in Tesserae71’s grasp and looked down. She wanted to burrow into his prickly, alien embrace. He was the friendliest thing she knew in this place and he was about to leave her there, alone. “Tesserae, please take me back to the infirmary.”

He tilted his head to one side, a sure tell that she’d said something stupid. “You address my entire birth cadre when you speak thus. My name is Tesserae71.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“The cell you occupied in the infirmary has been filled. Hain is performing the implant on another subject as we speak. Here is your designated space: yellow octagon 194. Step inside, please, and I will activate it.”

She hesitated.

“I will use the compliance wand if necessary.” He gestured with the rod he held.

Tears pricked the backs of her eyes. “No. You don’t have to do that. I’ll go.” She stepped over the grubby yellow rim into the small octagon, and turned to face him.

He manipulated something on the rod he held and the octagonal boundary lit up briefly. She thought she heard a faint humming sound. “Someone will be along to instruct you about the rules, as well as the schedules for ablutions, nutritive consumption, and voiding. You must stay within your designated area except at the appointed times or the consequences become increasingly dire. I urge you to comply.” He turned to leave.

“Wait! Someone was taken with me, at the same time. His name is Adam. I need to find him.”

“I know nothing of this. I must return to my post.” He skittered away.

She found herself calling after him, “Thank you, Tesserae71! My name is Darcy!”

She wasn’t sure why she’d done that, flung her name at him, vainly hoping she’d made an impression on him that could work in her favor. She immediately regretted it. He didn’t even turn to acknowledge that she’d spoken. And now all those around her knew her name.

D
arcy slowly turned in a circle
, forlorn, scanning the sea of prisoners for a glimpse of Adam’s dark, curled hair. She couldn’t see him anywhere. Either he was the one getting the language chip right now or he was in another room.

“You must be someone very important,” an imperious voice lisped from behind her.

She turned to see who had spoken, taking in more fully the individuals closest to her. She managed to hold back from a double take, but only barely.

Inside the next cell was a cobalt-blue slug-like creature that was roughly the size of a plump house cat, though much longer. Crowning its head were two cone-shaped stalks with brilliant orange comblike markings. They undulated bonelessly, moving independently of each other. It had raised lime-green stripes running the length of its body. It held itself up and leaned forward on two stubby tentacles protruding from its single foot. It seemed to be peering at her, but she couldn’t detect any eyes.

Darcy looked around, unsure.

“Yes. ’Tis I who speaks at you, mammal.”

It
was
the slug who was speaking.

“Um, hello?”

“Who
are
you?” The sound of its voice was haughty and almost…slurpy.

She’d just said her name out loud. Saying it again wasn’t going to change anything. “I’m Darcy Eberhardt.”

“This tells me nothing. They rearranged every person in this entire section before bringing you out. I want to know why.” It turned, its body rippling wavelike over the rubbery floor, leaving a glistening trail in its wake. It presented its backside to her, where a froth of fernlike tendrils sprouted.

She didn’t have any idea what it was talking about, so it seemed wiser to stay silent. She watched as the creature took a turn around its cell.

“I can practically taste your fear,” the mollusk accused. The stalks on its head pointed at her in condemnation and seemed to vibrate with anger. “There is copious mammalian stress-hormone in the air, and it’s all emanating from you. I demand that you stop. It’s a form of emotional pollution and I won’t have it.”

Darcy’s eyes widened. She didn’t know what to say. It seemed best to placate. “Okay. I’ll try.”

“Nembrotha is an irritable individual. I find it’s best to ignore them when they work themself into this state. I am called Selpis,” a rich, feminine voice said gently to Darcy’s left.

Darcy stared at the slug for a moment, realizing the person speaking was using a third set of pronouns that Darcy hadn’t heard spoken yet—she only knew what they meant because of the chip. They were gender neutral in nature and translated in her mind as the singular “they.”

This new voice was the most comprehensible to Darcy’s ear of any she’d encountered so far. As Darcy turned to look, she noted satiny, muted-green and brown scales making up Selpis’s skin. That, as well as her decidedly nonhuman features, marked her as reptilian in origin—as did the tail that effectively doubled the length of her body.

She was of a comparable size and shape to Darcy, but was leaner, wirier. She moved with a sinewy grace and wore the same white jumpsuit, drawn out into a gauzy, flowing skirted garment. Nembrotha was unclad.

“They? Um, is he…she…?” Darcy asked with a sidelong glance toward Nembrotha, who no longer seemed to be interested, but whom she suspected was listening.

Selpis’s large eyes blinked slowly and Darcy thought she detected amusement.

“They are hermaphroditic and I would recommend you take care not to misgender them. They get a little grumpy when people do that. Understandably, I think.”

“Oh.” Well, that made sense then. Darcy reminded herself not to stare, but she was intrigued by Selpis’s anatomy, just as she’d been by the hymenoptera. Selpis’s ancestors had clearly learned to walk upright at some point in their distant past, just as humans had. But their tails, flowing to a tapered point directly from their trunks, must have altered the way that their pelvises had evolved. Selpis was bowlegged. Her tail appeared to be prehensile, curling around her body. Perhaps it lent balance to her upright stance.

Selpis’s face wasn’t the pointy, triangular face you’d expect from a lizard. It came to a softer point, pushed back and rounded, displaying brachycephaly—the same phenomenon that makes the faces of human infants and baby animals appealing. Combined with her large, limpid eyes, it gave her a very youthful appearance.

There was frank understanding in the delicate features of Selpis. She seemed calm and kind as she settled into a tranquil position that reminded Darcy of a yoga pose, her fingers splayed out over her corded knees and her thick tail wrapped around her body. Darcy decided instantly that she liked her.

Silence fell as they regarded each other in furtive glances. Darcy’s heart returned to a more normal rhythm as she came to terms with the newest situation she found herself in.

Nembrotha slowed their agitated slithering, though the stalks on their head continued to ripple and twitch. The motion brought to Darcy’s mind her childhood dog, scenting the air. Perhaps there were chemoreceptors in those organs.

Darcy tried to relax, but it was very difficult because she felt like she was being watched, assessed. She couldn’t stop looking for some sign of Adam in the sea of bodies, and that just meant she continued to catalog exotic faces.

Someone should have told Hollywood a long time ago that aliens weren’t anthropomorphized animals. Sure, economics probably dictated that aliens in sci-fi would have to look human with some slightly different defining aspect—scales for a reptilian species overlaid on a human face, for example—because makeup was infinitely less expensive than CG.

But reality was quite different. Hollywood got it right that sentient alien life would take many forms, evolve from many kinds of species, but as it turned out they weren’t just human versions of lizards or insects or slugs. They seemed to be lizards or insects or slugs that had developed a certain, almost undefinable type of useful intelligence.

Something in the back of her mind speculated about the conditions under which this type of intelligence might evolve—was a certain brain mass necessary? A requisite body size? Or perhaps it required opposable digits or simply the use of tools. None of that explained Nembrotha. Maybe every species was on the same path to sentience, but took a greater or lesser span of time to achieve it.

It was too much. She sat down on the mat in the center of her yellow octagon, curled her knees up and rested her forehead on them. She wished for Adam to hold her the way he had in the gorge, to help her feel better. She wanted it all to go away.

“Feeling overwhelmed? That’s natural. You’ve just arrived. It’s an adjustment,” Selpis said gently.

Darcy didn’t reply. She just shook her head.

Nembrotha piped up, “You don’t know the half of it. Her anatomy’s been violated.”

Selpis said, “Violated? That’s…a bit unusual, even here.”

Nembrotha sounded disgusted. “You mean sex. I’m talking about surgery.”

Darcy could almost see the reptile’s pupils dilate. Selpis leaned forward and her nostrils flared. “Oh? I do believe you are one of the ones all the rumors are about.”

Darcy straightened a little. “Rumors?”

The reptile tilted her head to the side and swept Darcy with an evaluating look. “Rumors of a planet without the common language. Full of individuals so unable to communicate that Hain felt it was necessary to implant a specialized language chip in their brains normally used to help those speak who suffer cognitive limitations.”

Darcy frowned. “The hymenoptera called it a dummy chip.”

Selpis exuded warm understanding. “But you are not a simpleton, are you, love? Your world was simply untouched by the Cunabula. How remarkable.”

Darcy frowned. The words Selpis had just spoken echoed in her head. “Wait. There is…a common language?”

Nembrotha harrumphed, came closer to the edge of the yellow square that separated them, and hunched up their body like an accordion. Their wavering stalks extended as far across the divide as they could reach them. They remained outstretched like that until the tips of the stalks began to quiver. Then Nembrotha slipped back in a whoosh and slumped, the stalks gone droopy. “She speaks the truth, as far as I can detect. What strange doings.”

Selpis pulled her lips back in an approximation of a smile, and her large eyes gazed at the black ceiling. “I don’t believe I’ve ever explained this to anyone. I’ve never had a child of my own to share the wonder of the Cunabula with. Everyone just
knows
.”

Darcy began to feel impatient. “Knows what?”

The reptile’s neck elongated and her head tilted thoughtfully to the side, as though she were preparing to tell a child a story. She blinked slowly. “The Cunabula was a very powerful civilization that existed long ago, so long that very little of them remains extant, except for all of us, of course. Some have called them gods, others geniuses, others intrepid scientists. Whatever we may think they were, all we know of them exists as fragments of digital language, a few literary works, and the histories of the peoples who claimed to know them or at least know of them.”

Nembrotha put in, “There are many, many objects attributed to them, but none of them have any provenance. Most of it’s just fripperdoodle.”

“Fripperdoodle” didn’t fully translate for some reason, but based on context, Darcy took it to mean something along the lines of hogwash or crap or nonsense. Nembrotha was either using some kind of colloquialism or had made up a word.

“I’ve heard this word before—Cunabula,” Darcy said slowly. “What did they do that was so important? I don’t understand.”

Selpis nodded solemnly. “We owe them life.” She gestured grandly around the room. “They left the seeds of life on worlds throughout the galaxy, giving rise to all of us. And into each seed they programmed a genetic key that links all of us together, for better or for worse.”

Nembrotha made a gurgling sound and drew themself up into a narrower, thinner pose. “That ‘key’ is Mensententia, the common language.”

Selpis leaned forward, curiosity plain on her features. “It normally manifests during puberty or at some other time of great change in a youth’s life journey. But not on your world?”

Darcy drew her brows together. “You’re saying this language isn’t learned? It’s innate?”

“Yes.”

“No. We have many languages. There is no common language.” Her eyes drifted around the room again, taking in the incredible diversity. “All of these people speak the same language?”

“Yes. We are raised with a native tongue, but when we reach an age where we might travel among the stars, the common language emerges to prepare us for the journey. The Cunabula were very wise. They knew it would keep us on a more even footing, minimize catastrophic misunderstandings and wars.”

“Too bad they didn’t eliminate greed while they were at it,” Nembrotha said wetly, their head stalks sweeping the room as though making a point about all of them. They sagged a bit, flattening out.

Selpis gestured at Darcy, her bulbous fingertips splayed. “Your species may have evolved without the Cunabula’s interference.”

“How would I determine that?” Darcy asked.

Nembrotha shouted over her, outraged, “That’s blasphemous!”

Selpis said patiently, “It is not. It is entirely possible. With all of the stars in all the galaxy, you think it’s impossible that life could arise independently? I say it’s not only possible, it’s very probable. The fact that there aren’t more encounters like this simply speaks to the notion that independently evolved species may be remote or skittish or so entirely foreign we cannot recognize them.”

“I disagree! There are only three possibilities!” Nembrotha shouted as they resumed their version of agitated pacing. They turned abruptly, a frothy substance oozing from the O of their mouth as they proclaimed, “Either a genetic defect was accidentally introduced early on in their evolution, preventing the expression of Mensententia among her people, which would seem to be almost impossible.
Or
, she comes from a planet of idiots, too stupid to use it yet.
Or
, she comes from the warrior planet that the Cunabula engineered!”

Selpis stared at Nembrotha for a long moment. Her gaze unfocused and her mouth gaped slightly, her eyes shifting back and forth in their orbits before sliding slowly to evaluate Darcy with a questioning look that was slowly transmuting into a hopeful one.

Darcy wanted to shrink inside herself. Every individual in her immediate vicinity had gone silent, waiting for her to remark upon Nembrotha’s surprisingly loud declaration. She was in a fishbowl. All around her, the hush rippled out like a wave until the entire room had been silenced, every eye or eyelike organ pointed at her.

“She’s not stupid. You can see that plainly in her expression,” Selpis breathed.

A gravelly, disdainful sound burbled up out of Nembrotha, and their stalks folded back, their body sagging against the floor as though defeated. Their voice, too, was just a whisper. “She hardly looks like a warrior. She’s all round and fleshy. I doubt she could best
me
! Even the cerebral sectilians look scrappier than that girl.”

The quiet was almost unbearable. Darcy’s mouth went dry. She wasn’t sure what they wanted her to say, but it seemed like every person there hoped that her mere presence had generated some kind of opportunity. It was beginning to feel like a bad, quasi-religious experience. Thoughts sifted like snowflakes through her brain. She latched on to one of them.

She blurted out, “It has to be a genetic mutation. Humans can’t make their own vitamin C. There are four enzymes required in the liver to manufacture L-ascorbate from glucose, and humans can’t make it, though nearly every other animal on Earth can. Our gene for L-gulonolactone oxidase was broken at some point in our early evolutionary history. We have to constantly ingest vitamin C to prevent scurvy.”

“Oh, bother.” Nembrotha sank even lower to the floor.

A soft titter broke out behind Darcy.

Her face felt hot and she rushed to continue, “I’m just saying. We humans…we may be ignorant of all of—this—going on in the universe, but we aren’t stupid. We do, however, seem to be very unlucky, genetically.”