Dominant Species Omnibus Edition

by David Coy

  It is the center.

  She felt herself go faint and closed her eyes, and the vision came.

  From the forest floor, the planet’s vines rushed at her and wrapped her legs like tight bonds. They pierced her and flowed into her and up through her feet and through the bones and muscles of her thighs. They filled her form as if her skin were a thin mold, finally sprouting from her breasts and belly and mouth in a green and joyous gush.

  When John and Donna got to her, she was convulsing violently just feet from the edge of space. She was drenched with sweat that ran down her face and neck as if she’d been rained on. Donna was afraid she would knock herself senseless against the hard surface and cradled her head in her lap.

  Minutes later Rachel’s seizure subsided, leaving her limp and breathing regularly. When she spoke her voice was weak and distant.

  “What is this place . . . ?” she asked.

  “God only knows,” Donna said gently. “Rest now.”

  23

  They’d moved camp to the base of the organic monolith after their first location, oceanside, had been overrun by a swarm of especially nasty bugs that crawled up onto the beach one rainy night.

  The monolith wouldn’t have been John’s preferred destination, but Rachel had insisted, talking about it and whining until they relented. At the monolith’s base, the jungle was thinner in places, providing some sense of openness. That was a plus. Another advantage was the shallow stream that ran around the base. The stream’s gentle motion hugged the structure’s curves and polished it like granite where the touch was strongest. The base of the structure itself was honeycombed with large caverns, remarkably smooth, clean and bug-free. It was as if there were an invisible barrier that started just inside the structure that somehow kept out the jungle’s denizens, large and small, preserving and protecting the corpulent and flowing, soft brown walls and floors from intrusion. Rachel had even remarked that the structure might give off some gas or chemical warning not to enter, which only the native life forms could detect. The interior did have a crisp and peculiar scent that was not altogether unpleasant. One of the caverns was large enough to drift the shuttle into and hide it completely—and they’d done just that.

  Rachel was drawn to the massive thing like an insect to light and hadn’t stopped staring at it for weeks. Her “spells,” as she called them, came over her regularly now, often leaving her spent and narcoleptic until the next day. Each time it happened, the event would be preceded by a prolonged period when the monolith would consume her thoughts and vision. She was doing it now, studying it, just looking at it, as if she was in some famous cathedral with art-covered walls and ceiling.

  “Is this thing alive?” John asked her.

  “Not like we think of a thing as being alive,” she replied idly, not taking her eyes off the walls.

  A latticework of tunnels, passages and chambers in the structure led from the largest cavern into the structure’s interior. Rachel was determined to explore them.

  “We need to go in farther. See what’s there,” she said.

  John didn’t share her enthusiasm. The thing gave him the creeps. “Maybe at some point,” he said. “We got other things to worry about, like staying alive.”

  He watched her carefully, ready to catch her when the first violent convulsions sent her to the floor. This time, they didn’t come.

  * * *

  They’d found a few edible items over the months—berries, nuts, Donna’s grapes, and a few crustaceans that were palatable—but there was no substitute for ready-to-eat, packaged food. The jungle’s raw fare was a poor replacement for what they called home cooking—especially when there was so much of it available now.

  It was Donna’s turn to go. Rachel had gone the last time and John the time before that; now it was Donna’s turn to play thief.

  “See if you can find some chocolate, too,” John said.

  “Chocolate what?” Donna asked.

  “Chocolate anything. I'm not picky.”

  “Anything chocolate—if I can find it,” she repeated for clarity. Then, in a crouch, she trotted off from their staging point just a kilometer from the warehouses.

  John didn’t think she’d have a problem, but he always played it safe. He studied the huge complex from right to left and back again, looking for signs of anything human. He could see the tiny figure of a guard standing silently in shadow on the easternmost section of the dock. No worry there. By the time Donna got to the warehouse door, she’d be out of his line of sight.

  Donna’s target was the new warehouse building on the near side of the living complex. Inside it were food and supplies stacked to the ceiling. It was an easy job to sneak in and steal whatever was required, provided you could find it in the jumble. John wondered why they bothered to sneak at all and often thought a better plan would be just to mingle with the daytime throng and cop food and supplies in broad daylight. Against the backdrop of the teeming mass of workers and moving material, they could easily have been mistaken for background noise and maneuvered undetected.

  The complex had grown so fast he found himself shaking his head in disgust. Its rambling, irregular and angular shape was a blight on the landscape. It looked to him as if in just a few more months, the entire clearing would be completely covered with the material and debris of human habitation. Against the western edge, the great cloister rose ten stories high and several kilometers long, stretching, in a rectangular and gleaming line, into the horizon. That was the home of The Chosen—God’s People—the Sacred Bond of the Fervent Alliance.

  He watched Donna’s miniature form show briefly against the open door of the warehouse, then vanish as the door closed.

  * * *

  Donna stood in the aisle and thought briefly, surely, that she knew where she was going, but a moment’s study of the shifting mountains of crates and containers caused her to revise that notion. The warehouse was filling so quickly that landmarks from her last visit, such as a distinctive container or arrangement of boxes, were now obscured or moved altogether. She might as well have been in the warehouse for the very first time.

  The crates labeled PERISHABLE, however, were generally a good bet. She headed toward a stack of them on the next row over. She opened the nearest one and checked the contents.

  Platters of packaged fish, beef, chicken and lamb were stacked neatly in racks on the inside. She unslung the sack and began to stuff it. Soon the bag was so heavy she had to put it on the floor.

  “That’s stealin’,” the male voice behind her said. She almost jumped out of her skin and spun on the sound.

  “Who the hell are you?” she asked, putting a note of indignation in her voice.

  “A thief like you, I’d say,” the figure in the shadows said, taking a step forward.

  When the light was right, she could see that it was a teenage boy, perhaps sixteen. He was dressed in rags and looked as if he’d been in the jungle a long, long time. His face was scarred, pockmarked and streaked with grime. His long hair was matted and twisted into knots. He walked with a limp. One side of his face was swollen and inflamed, as if he’d been bashed with a cudgel. Any swelling in this environment was cause for alarm, medically speaking, and the nurse in her instantly saw the danger.

  “How long have you had that?” she asked.

  “Had what?”

  “That thing on your face.”

  He reached up and touched it.

  “This? I’ve had a bunch of these. Things inside ‘em hatches out and I kill them. Not very good eatin’,” he said and smiled. The place on the side of his head was so turgid from edema that the smile seemed to go right around it, a thin road on a rough map.

  “I’m a nurse. You should let me help you with that.”

  “A nurse, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s a nurse doin’ stealin’?”

  “What’s a kid like you doing looking like that? You get lost?”

  “Nope.”

  Donna
considered him. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “You help me with some of this stuff, and I’ll take care of the thing on your face. How’s that?”

  She could have handled it herself. It was his face she wanted to fix. She saw his eyes dip down at the stuffed sack at her feet.

  “This thing hurts something awful,” he said. His voice for an instant revealed his age.

  He was just a kid. Donna had spent just a few nights in the green without shelter and knew how tough it could be. This boy had lived who knew how long in the jungle. She had to admire his courage, but he was in desperate need of medical attention as a result of his living there. “Well?” she asked. “My friends are waiting. What do you say?”

  She looked into his eyes and saw a distrustful, injured animal. She wanted to reach out and touch him, to rest her hand on his shoulder and soothe him.

  “Okay,” he said in his child’s voice. “I’ll help you if you help me.”

  “You got a deal. Help me fill this other sack.”

  * * *

  Together, they hauled the sacks back to the staging area at jungle’s edge. John and Rachel were nowhere to be seen, but Donna could almost feel the sights of John’s pistol trained on the newcomer.

  There was a noisy rustle, and Rachel appeared in the center of it, sweeping branches out of the way.

  “Hi!” Rachel cheerfully greeted Donna. “Who’s your friend?”

  Donna held out an open hand in the boy’s direction. “I’m sorry . . . “

  “Eddie,” he said. “Eddie Silk.”

  “Eddie, this is Rachel . . . and somewhere around here is a big spooky guy named John . . . something . . . ”

  As if summoned, John came out of the jungle behind them, hand resting on the pistol’s grip. Donna couldn’t see his face clearly, but she could still sense the caution in it. Nowadays, he assumed no situation was entirely safe.

  “What are you doing out here?” John asked, hand on the pistol’s grip.

  “Livin’. Tryin’ to live, that is,” Eddie replied.

  John looked over his bedraggled condition with a scowl, then softened some.

  “What are we gonna to do with him?” he asked Donna.

  “He needs medical attention,” she said. “We’re going to help him.”

  Donna’s voice had that edge of certainty and will in it that short-circuited any argument as surely as a copper switch. John didn’t like the idea much, but that didn’t matter. Donna had made up her mind. He reached down for one of the heavy sacks. “Let’s get out of here. Grab that other bag, kid.”

  * * *

  Donna had become very proficient at field surgery, having dressed dozens of bites and other jungle-related wounds since they’d gone into hiding. She fixed Eddie’s face as promised, and gave him a complete physical. In the process, she cleaned and dressed a number of other lacerations.

  “What have you been using for shelter,” she asked, applying a bandage.

  “Anything I could find. Barrels mostly.”

  “You slept in barrels?”

  “Yeah, and I found a container in the dump that worked real good.”

  Donna drew a breath.

  “What are you doing living in the jungle, Eddie? What happened to you?”

  He looked away. It was obvious he didn’t want to talk about it, and she was tempted to let it go, but couldn’t quite do it.

  “Tell me. What happened?”

  When he lowered his eyes, she saw the child in him, hiding just behind the clean bandages.

  “I almost killed somebody,” he said softly.

  “Oh. You did?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “I see. How?”

  “I didn’t do it with my own hands, but I almost killed him just the same.”

  Donna listened with empathy and gently continued to wrap his wounds. The soft bandage contrasted brightly against the boy’s dark skin.

  “I sent him into the jungle to get something—something I stoled—and he got infected from something and almost died. Now he’s crippled.”

  “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.
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  “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.