Dominant Species Omnibus Edition

by David Coy

  “I know what I’m doing, Phil.”

  Mary’s conscience wasn’t going to give ground quite so easily. “No,” she said flatly. “He’ll stay right here until we can carry him on board. He’s sick. He’s disqualified for the duty. He’s on R and R, or something. No.”

  Suddenly, Ned grabbed Phil around the neck and pulled him down close. With his mouth close to Phil’s ear, he whispered something the others couldn’t hear. It took a minute, then he let go and sagged back down.

  Phil turned to Mary. “Help him up,” he said. “He’s got a job to do.”

  Phil walked away a few steps then wagged his finger at Mary.

  “No. Leave him where he is—and don’t wag your finger at me,” she said getting up and coming over. They moved a little further out of earshot.

  “What did he say to you?” Mary asked up close, challenging Phil. “Some macho crap only the boys understand? Was that it?”

  “No. He just said his dying wish would be to help his friends.”

  “He’s sick!”

  “Look,” Phil said impatiently, “We’re running out of time. He draws a straw then, just like the rest of us.”

  Mary thought it over. Along with her conscience, her sense of survival was alive and well.

  “Okay. Fine. He draws a straw.”

  Working quickly, Phil pulled out the envelope and unfolded it. He picked up one of the shorter straws with his nails and cut it not quite in two by working it back and forth, then did it again. Now he had five wires. He arranged them in his hand and walked over. Before he could stop her, Mary reached right out and plucked one of the straws, a long one, out of his fingers. She looked at Phil and tried to read whether she’d just drawn the short straw.

  Phil just glared at her. Then he bent down and let Ned draw. Ned hesitated, then drew one out, a very short one.

  Phil slowly unfurled his fingers, revealing nothing but longer wires.

  Bailey just turned away. Mary blinked once or twice and tossed her wire down.

  “Help me up now, goddamn it,” Ned said, struggling to get up. “We’ve wasted enough time.”

  Working in unison, they pulled the big man up on his feet and helped him over to the control panel. The effort in the thin air exhausted all of them.

  “What do I do?” Ned asked.

  Talking fast, Mary explained it. Ned listened and nodded as she went over how the system had to be cycled before the seams could be activated.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  Ned nodded silently then reached out and placed his hand on the structure that opened the vents inside the airlock. There was a sudden sound of rushing air.

  “Cool,” Bailey said.

  When the air inside the lock had been evacuated, Ned reached up and placed his big hand on the mud-red ball in the center of the tangle of roots. His face pained further.

  “It’ll sting a little before it grabs you,” she said, just as the roots wrapped his arm.

  He really grimaced, his mouth forming into a silent oh

  “There’s the probe . . . ” he managed to say.

  “That’s the worst of it,” she said. “Can you open the space hole?”

  Ned looked over at the shuttles and a bright star-shaped pattern of light formed on the ceiling as the space hole opened wide.

  When Phil looked back over at Ned, he was smiling.

  “I don’t feel so dead anymore,” he said.

  “Okay, close the hole,” Mary said.

  “You bet.”

  The hole slowly closed, pinching off the bright, clean light from the planet below.

  “Open the seams, Ned,” she said firmly. She could sense that Ned was in that euphoric state caused by union with the mechanism.

  The seams on both sides of the enormous, translucent plate bloomed open, and Mary felt an odd mix of elation and sadness. There were two remaining shuttles, each brown and gleaming. One of them would carry them home. But Ned was now undeniably the odd man out. He’d be glued to the control panel while they were on their way home. She looked at Phil with an imploring look. Phil saw the look, but there were some things you just couldn’t change. When Ned had pulled Phil close, he had told him to put the short straw on his left so he could deliberately pick it.

  “Get moving!” Phil barked at her.

  Bailey started for the shuttles with a war-whoop, running with her legs extra-high. Seseidi sprinted after her. Mary touched Ned’s arm, then with a last look into his eyes, turned and ran toward the airlock.

  Phil reached out and took Ned’s free left hand with both of his and shook it firmly. “Adios,” he said.

  Phil turned and ran for the air lock.

  “So long,” Ned said after him.

  The two perfectly formed depressions on either side of the hold were empty. Bailey and the Indian jumped down into the containment pit, and Bailey stretched the netting over the top and hooked it into place. She was moving so fast, Phil wondered if he was watching her in fast-motion.

  “We don’t wanna fall out, do we? Okay, I’m ready!” she yapped. “Ready to go!” She grabbed the Indian and gave him a quick hug. Seseidi just smiled. “He’s ready! Hit it!” Bailey said.

  The odd, organic wall with its two groups of biotic connectors looked bizarre but not exactly menacing, especially for Mary who knew what to expect when she made contact with the connectors.

  “Are you sure this will work?” Phil asked.

  “No, I’m not,” she replied “Let’s just say it probably will.” She left him standing there on one leg and started to take her clothes off.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting naked. The goons are naked when they attach, so we should be, too. Besides, I don’t know what effect clothes might have on the connection. They might even prevent it.” The idea of letting those peculiar organisms wrap him up with their tentacles and put their wire-like probes in his body and into his head was bad enough on its surface. The idea of doing so stark naked was almost unendurable. He watched blankly from a distance as Mary kicked off her pants.

  “C’mon soldier,” she said, now totally nude. “You can handle it.”

  “Christ . . . ” he said and started to unbutton his shirt.

  “I’m not sure how to do this,” Mary said, standing in front of her section. “I guess we just do it.” She saw something. “Oh! Those are foot holes—of course.”

  She squatted down and looked into the depressions where their feet would go. In spite of her nakedness, she looked as if she were examining a piece of broken machinery.

  Mary considered the wall for a moment longer, her arms crossed over her breasts.

  “Maybe I should click my heels three times,” she said. She waited just a moment more. “Well, here goes.”

  Mary stepped into the foot holes and slowly leaned into the panel until her naked body was posed just inches away from the tangled forms of the connectors. The fit wouldn’t be perfect, since the layout was designed for a larger physique, but all of the connectors would contact her flesh nonetheless. She looked over at Phil and lowered herself down on the organisms. When her body was in contact, she craned her neck out as far as possible and pressed her forehead against the root ball placed there for that singular purpose.

  Mary’s body stiffened and Phil thought he heard a muffled moan—one not entirely painful. Suddenly, the formless, tangled mass of tendrils came to life like a thousand snakes and swaddled themselves around her arms, her back, her legs and head in neat flowing patterns like the grain in wood.

  Then nothing.

  He didn’t know what to expect, but hadn’t expected nothing. He assumed she was still alive, and hopped over closer to see if she was breathing and to his relief, he could see her scarred back swelling out against the tendrils in an easy rhythm.

  “Okay, fuck it . . . ” Phil said with resignation.

  He leaned forward, stretched out and flopped down on the mass of tendrils, his forehead bumping squarely into the red ball of the
head connector. The mass of tendrils felt just like he thought they would; like cool, soft rope. A moment later he felt the snake-like tendrils flail at him and slide over him then encase him, bonding him tight to the living wall of the vessel.

  There was warmth approaching heat in his arms and legs and his body bristled against it. There was sharp pain in a dozen places and the stiff feel of penetrating wire in his arms, abdomen and feet. The last probe pierced his forehead causing a tight knot of momentary pain between his eyes. He clenched his teeth. He could hear the probe sliding though bone.

  The airlock bloomed into sharp relief before his eyes. The image was so bright and crisp he could make out the smallest imperfections on its walls—all of its walls. He’d expected the creature’s compound eyes to render a multi-faceted image. Instead, his field of view took in the entire air lock as one image with no edges, no dividing line left to right. He could even see Ned behind the separator, welded to the control panel. Without trying, he could make out the details in Ned’s bandage and the wet seepage that permeated it. It was as if he was watching the entire scene on a panoramic screen and by shifting awareness from place to place within it, his eye within eyes could see any detail if he so willed. When he shifted awareness to Ned’s face, Ned was looking at him with a grin, not at the shuttle.

  His body didn’t feel forty feet long and fifteen feet high. If anything it felt somewhat smaller than before, tighter and neater, well defined and contained.

  There was a voice in his head, perfect in fidelity, clear and cool like spring water.

  “Boo,” Mary said. The laughter that followed swept around him like cool silk in a summer breeze.

  “Well, how about this?” she said. “We’re no longer human, Phil—we’re a godamned bug!”

  She had that same giddiness he’d seen when she was bonded to the control panel. There was a euphoric of some kind at work, perhaps a chemical. He was feeling the silliness himself; a growing and carefree—and inappropriate joyfulness. He sensed a danger in it, a losing of one’s self to it that was unsettling, and he fought to keep it under control.

  There was a brief sound of the fine probe chattering slowly through bone again and he suddenly felt Mary’s entire body, as if he had somehow covered her like warm rubber. He could feel her breasts and thighs and the muscles in her face in sharp relief like he was running his entire body over some raised map. He swirled himself over her effortlessly, smoothly like a form-fitting mist going from head to foot.

  “Wow. Yumsters . . . ” she said and caressed his mind with laughter. “I like it.”

  He was her skin and the lover of it at the same time.

  “Ooooooo ” she said.

  Something was wrong, he was being pulled in by something, losing himself to something. The sensation of being something, someone other than one’s self was centered, like a seed, deep in his libido and was sprouting out of control. He felt Mary’s mouth and tongue on his body, not as a sexual kiss, but as a devouring force. Beneath the ringing, excited laughter was a frantic need to possess, to have him, to be him. He felt her body wrap around his like a moist cloak and suck at his loins with savage recklessness. His newly gained crisp edges dissolved under her wet mouth.

  “Stop . . . ” he said.

  Her voice, which a moment before rang with innocence, now growled at his resistance. He felt his body opening like a melon under the force of her primal contact.

  She squirmed into him like an eel at the base of his spine, insinuating herself around his organs and flowing up and up and out into his limbs and breast with open-mouthed abandon.

  “Get out . . . ” he breathed. “Mary get out . . . ”

  “Don’t you like it?” she hissed and stiffened and flexed and pushed deeper. It was as if she’d squeezed his very libido between her wet lips and he dripped with the pleasure of it.

  She forced herself deeper, twisting and turning, and he felt her slick, swollen veins pulsing inside him. He wanted to moan but could only breathe in with a slow, endless gasp of pure and lascivious delight.

  He had to gain control. He had to somehow loosen her grip. If he didn’t, he was sure they would remain so bonded until they died from the pleasure of it.

  “You’re killing us . . . ”

  There was a growl deep from her breast. and she twisted, sending a pulse of pleasure through him and down his abdomen.

  “Mary, you’re killing us . . . ”

  He tried to will the connector to release his head, but Mary was too much in control. It had been her who sent the probe deeper into his brain, down into the primal mid-brain, enabling this lewd bonding in the first place.

  A peel of guttural laughter was the prelude to the thrust that followed. It hurt.

  That’s enough.

  “Stop!”

  By focusing on it, he could still make contact with his physical body. He willed the unattended connector holding his left arm to release, stretched out his hand, groped around and found the back of her neck under the mass of tendrils surrounding her head.

  He squeezed.

  A gasp of pain rang in his head.

  “Owwwwww ”

  “Then get out. You’ll kill us.”

  He felt her squirm in his groin. He willed the pleasure to cease and transmuted it into his grandmother’s dry, sexless touch.

  He squeezed again, harder.

  “You’re hurting me!” she said.

  “Then get out, goddamn it!” he yelled. “Get the fuck out or I’ll crush your neck!”

  There was a whimper and a sniffle like the sound of a disappointed little girl—a schizophrenic little girl.

  “It feels so good. ”

  “Yes it does. But you have to stop now. We have to go home. You have to make us go home. Do you understand?”

  “Yes . . . ”

  “Then get out.”

  There was a sound of probe against bone and the sensation of Mary being in his body ceased.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m all right. Are you?”

  “Listen to me. This thing, these connectors, are dangerous. More dangerous than any drug.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re the pilot, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then . . . be that. Let’s go. Signal Ned to open the hole.”

  There was the sound of rushing air that faded to nothing, and he was aware of the vacuum around him as a slight outward swelling and tightening of his hard skin.

  When the port opened, the bright light flooding the chamber turned it from dull brown to crystalline blue.

  “I’m gonna let go of the ship now,” Mary said. “Are you ready?”

  He took the fact that she was concerned with his well-being as a good sign.

  “Ready when you are,” he said.

  There as a sudden lightness, a quickening that flowed through his body, reducing its mass to nothing at all, and they drifted up from the connectors in the airlock as easily as a skate off the ocean floor.

  “We’re airborne . . . ” he said with surprise.

  “Weeeee ” she said.

  They glided over the open hole and there was a sudden gain in weight that pulled them down through it.

  The earth loomed under them in razor-sharp relief. He thought he could make out individual roads and structures on the globe below. Before he tossed off that notion as ridiculous, he realized that he really could make them out.

  Adrift a thousand yards below the ship, he could finally make it out in all of its hideous splendor. The ship looked more like a corpse than a living thing; its surface mottled light and dark like a diseased leg. Swollen bands ran its length in grotesque regularity. He could see the appendages Linda had mentioned sticking out at right angles from the bloated form; shrunken and useless extremities. There was a sense of great and infirm age about it.

  Phil could see in it the horror of a sentient being captive to the alien’s will. The head hung down from the a
nterior end of the ship on a long neck like a sick giraffe. The mouth was splayed open and the edges of it were torn and frayed. A silent cloud of debris spewed out of it and was floating like dust around the end of the ship.

  The frog’s poison had caused the mouth to peel open, probably short-circuiting some alien-installed inhibitor to prevent just that. The breech in the ship had occurred when the animal opened its mouth to roar its pain and hate.

  It was screaming still, the head twisting and writhing, fanning the debris back and forth in a thin spray as the creature vomited into the void. Soon it would surely die, and become a freeze-dried husk adrift in space, better off by far than it was.

  With his new eyes, Phil could see that much of the stuff adrift around the ship was pupae. He could clearly make out the bodies of at least a dozen witches in the flotsam as well. As he watched, a single, finger-long capsule drifted straight at them, its casing split open down the middle, revealing the immature wasp within. A thin string of fluid trailed behind it.

  17

  L inda locked and bolted the cabin door then propped the heavy oak chair up under the doorknob. She’d closed and latched the windows and drawn all the curtains but left just a sliver of space on each to see through if she had to. She’d been in the cabin for three days now, coming out to amble around and look and hope and cry only when the sun was high and the comforting calls of quail or the random squawking of a scrub jay told her that the area was intruder free. She was constantly armed with pistol and shotgun, never leaving the pistol unholstered, or the shotgun further than an arm’s length away. At night she slept with the shotgun lying along her right leg. So barricaded and armed, she would wait until she was sure there was nothing more to wait for.

  She’d tried to estimate the odds in Phil’s favor and then given up immediately. The senseless algorithms she’d conjured made her sigh and shake her head at the futility of trying to guess the odds of such an outlandish thing. Besides, she knew what the odds were without benefit of mathematics. The odds were slim to none.

  Nonetheless, she would not give up hope. And as long as there was a mere sliver of it left, she would persist in her vigilance. She would not give up her watch until that something in her heart clicked off in response to the utter hopelessness of Phil’s return. Be it a month, or a year or several years longer she would keep watch. As long as her heart held out hope, the sentinel in her would persevere.