Species II

by Yvonne Navarro

  Eve nodded complacently. “That’s good. And I want to help you find him.”

  Laura swallowed and gave the young woman a nod of her own, then hurried out of the habitat and back to the control room to set up the cyclotron. There were so many possible repercussions to doing this, so many things that could go wrong. Even the life-form’s last statement—

  “And I want to help you find him.”

  —worried Laura, because simply put . . . she was afraid Eve would do exactly that.

  “Are you comfortable?”

  An inane but automatic question, and when Eve nodded, Laura checked the straps—wrist, across the upper chest, hips, and ankles—a final time. Uneasiness was running along her spine like a tingle of electricity and her hands were jittery on the buckles. With everything tight, the doctor stepped back and gave it a visual check, hating everything she saw.

  The device into which Eve had been fastened looked like a parody of a dentist’s chair, or perhaps the absurdly padded seat of some deviant’s torture mechanism. The whole thing had been designed in white, and combined with the bright overhead lights shining off the glass enclosure—yes, another one—around the cyclotron and Eve’s painfully white medical grown, there was a sort of unearthly radiance coming from this part of the room.

  “Yes,” Eve said. She didn’t bother to elaborate.

  “All right.” Laura’s voice was halting. “I’m going to power up. You’ll hear a high-pitched sound . . . with your ultra-sensitive hearing, it might even hurt. I’ve set the machine to radiate for ten seconds, then it will shut down. If you can, you should try to keep your eyes shut. I don’t . . . the sensation is probably going to be very much like a huge, sudden sunburn.”

  Eve said nothing and Laura realized belatedly that Eve had no idea what a sunburn felt like. She’d never seen the sun or felt its warmth. No matter what Eve thought, Laura would never, ever, be able to think of this young woman as a laboratory rat. For an instant she hated Carter Burgess and his compatriots more than ever. But if she didn’t do this, Burgess had the power to put someone else in charge; she had no doubt that he’d handpick someone with a level of compassion matching his own, and then what would happen to Eve?

  “Are you ready?” Laura asked, feeling even more thwarted. Again, no response. Laura looked up from the controls and saw Eve staring up at the white metal device looming over her as though it were some kind of sanitized metal monster. The female life-form looked small and helpless, in awe of this thing that was about to change her forever. For a heartbreaking moment, Laura wondered if Eve had ever wished she could be fully human. Now she was doomed to go in exactly the opposite direction.

  Let’s just get this over with, Laura thought. “Here we go.” She snapped four switches to the ON position and turned the control key, then typed in her password when the computer demanded it. For a timeless moment nothing happened, then the screen flashed, giving her one last chance—

  RECONFIRM REQUIRED: BEGIN CYCLOTRON PROCEDURE NOW? NO/YES

  Laura set her jaw and hit Y.

  Light filled the laboratory, accompanied by a piercing whine that was shockingly loud. Several of the women around the laboratory clapped their hands over their ears instinctively; Laura only stared down at the cyclotron and Eve and wondered what in God’s name it was like to actually be the target of the machine that was making this unearthly racket.

  Then again, in view of what was happening to Eve, maybe she didn’t have to wonder at all.

  The alien woman’s skin was as fresh and unblemished as always . . . on the surface. Beneath it, everything seemed to wrench and grow suddenly translucent, as though she were blistering six layers down, cooking from the inside out, right down to the yellow-orange glow that suddenly surrounded her. Laura had garbled thoughts about microwaves and moths cooking in the coils of insect zappers, then a scarlet drop of blood—startling in all that brightness—leaked from the corner of Eve’s left eye and trickled down her cheek. If the device hadn’t cycled itself out and shut down, in an abrupt cessation of function that was exactly the opposite of its start-up operation—Laura’s fingers would have found the emergency shut-off switch.

  For a moment, there was absolute silence in the laboratory. Then Eve groaned, her voice several octaves deeper than before and carrying a strange, echoing quality that made the skin along Laura’s neck quiver.

  Right on cue, all the normal sounds rushed back in to fill the void. Around the room, people began to talk—

  “Check the settings on the monitor—”

  “Did you record the blood-gas levels while—”

  “The thermostat control on this doesn’t—”

  —and Laura hurried to the cyclotron and pulled the lock release, then yanked open the hinged door. “Are you all right?” she asked anxiously. At each corner of the machine, the female guards watched Eve warily. “Eve, answer me!”

  Nothing.

  Eve felt like she was dreaming awake.

  There were things about her that she knew weren’t normal compared to full-blooded human beings, but sometimes she had trouble accepting that she herself wasn’t fully human. She looked like them, talked like them, felt the same emotions, no matter what her keepers believed. She knew, too, that the people who watched over her, including Laura, also believed she had the potential to be dangerous. This was the thing she’d had the most trouble understanding. She felt no inclination in her to hurt anyone, or even to escape. In that regard, she wanted only to come and go as she pleased, like the people outside her glass home. Why could she not go out and visit the world and come back at the end of the day like they did? And mating . . . even now, after having been exposed to the two men whom Laura had accused of “contaminating” the laboratory, she felt no real urge to do anything. They’d smelled . . . good, touched her inside in a way she couldn’t identify, but the only result was a sense of yearning that soon went away and a few nightmares she couldn’t remember when she woke up.

  All that was changed now.

  Eve was still human, but that part of her had been . . . reduced. No, overpowered by a darker and so much larger core of herself that she’d never known existed. Her body was filled with a new set of sensations like power and frustration, restlessness, and . . .

  Desire.

  Someone touched her on the shoulder, and Eve’s eyes flew open; she knew the touch, the scent—Dr. Baker—but the scene she was witnessing wasn’t taking place anywhere near this laboratory. Her eyes moved from side to side of their own accord, back and forth and back again, like she was experiencing REM sleep without closing her eyelids. Laura’s touch again, this time on her cheek as the doctor wiped at Eve’s face with a lab towel. But that didn’t break her concentration, nothing in this room mattered, because—

  “I’m connected, Laura.” To Eve’s ears, her own voice sounded hoarse and far away, as though she were talking through a length of long, rusty pipe. “I can see everything he sees.”

  Patrick stares at his reflection in the rearview mirror, satisfied with what he sees: clear blue eyes, clean face, neatly combed hair. No one could know by looking at him that anything is different—he has no blood on his hands or his clothes and he is thinking clearly and concisely. His driving has been perfect, his shirt is tucked in, even his shoes are shined.

  He is perfectly human.

  Dismissing his reflection, Patrick spends a moment listening to the newscaster prattling monotonously on the radio station—

  “Authorities are still baffled by the recent disappearances in the Washington area, and so far the perpetrator of a number of grisly killings continues to elude—”

  He reaches over and turns the knob until the announcer’s voice is cut off and the sounds of the morning fill the car the traffic passing on the street, people talking on the sidewalks and outside the tiny stores that are so common in this area, the hissing of the automatic doors in the small supermarket across the street. He looks over there now and sees a young woman headed toward the s
tore, then she stops to smile and talk to a little boy playing on a coin-operated mechanical hobbyhorse out front. They are fifty yards away but he can hear them as clearly as if he is standing there with them—

  “My mom’s inside and I ran out of money,” the child explains to the woman. “It’s a quarter.”

  The woman is pretty in a homespun way with shining light-brown hair and hazel eyes. Her skin is clear with a fresh-scrubbed look that reminds him of farms.

  And of Melissa.

  And he did so love Melissa.

  “Eve?” Who—oh, yes. Laura’s voice, cutting into her mind and forcing her back before she could meld completely with the man-thing to which her mind had become connected. “Eve, stay with me,” Laura said sharply. “You have to talk to me, tell me what you see.”

  Eve blinked and tried to refocus, this time without becoming so deeply immersed. “He’s in . . . Maryland, I think. There are little shops everywhere around him. The human part of him likes them because they’re different from where he’s been the past couple of days. They’re cleaner. Little stores with odd names and other things, too—Kookooroo, McDonald’s, Benetton. There’s an ad for Camel cigarettes at the corner of Rogers and Elm.” She cocked her head to one side, straining unconsciously. “He’s driving his best car. It’s a midnight-blue Mercedes, very expensive. He . . .” Eve stopped, her eyes widening as she understood what Patrick was about to do.

  “What?” Laura prompted. Sometime during the time that Eve had kept her eyes closed, Laura had picked up a cell phone and was now relaying their conversation into it. “What do you—what does Patrick see right now?”

  “There’s a . . . woman,” Eve said softly. “She’s across the street by the Mayfair Market. She reminds him of his dead fiancée.”

  “Oh, shit,” Laura said. “Dennis, are you there? You need to listen to this.” She repeated Eve’s words into the telephone at rapid-fire speed, then made sure he’d heard the name of the supermarket correctly. “Elm Street is where? In Haverford? All right. No, nothing more just yet.”

  Eve didn’t know or care who Dennis was, only that she could maintain her bond with Patrick Ross. It was hard, so hard, to do that and keep track of Dr. Baker here, to do what the doctor wanted, to pass along the information. Being in Patrick’s head was so . . . fulfilling. It let her see the things outside the lab in a way that the television could never do. How tawdry and simplistic the overly loud programs and commercials seemed now, when compared to the beauty of the day and the sun and the sound of everything beyond the lab.

  “What’s happening now?” Laura shook her arm slightly, forcing Eve’s attention back to her. “Stay with me, Eve. You know we need your help.” The person on the other end of the phone must have said something because Laura gave a ghost of a smile, then said, “Yeah, I know he drives like a maniac. If I were you, I’d buckle up. You never know what that man might do.” She hit the END button and turned back to where Eve was still strapped in. “Eve? Can you tell me what he’s seeing?”

  Patrick steers the Mercedes into a space at the far front of the parking lot that’s out of the main flow of traffic, shaded from the harshness of the sunshine by the lush growth of an oak tree that might be half a century old. He climbs out and heads toward the store, noting that the child is still on the mechanical horse, although the contraption has once again stopped its motion; the little boy looks at him and maybe even recognizes him—another woman coming out of the store certainly does—but the kid inexplicably backs away when Patrick starts to approach him. Some people, Patrick notes wryly as he pauses to help the middle-aged woman who has just dropped half her groceries because she saw him, have an innate sense for survival, and some clearly don’t. He wonders if the child will be alive in five years when his new species has taken over this planet.

  The inside of the Mayfair Market is the antithesis to the green, sweet-smelling morning outside. Bright fluorescent lights reflect off everything and leave no room for hiding. The floor is made of slick tile and the sounds are an unpleasant mixture of hard rubber tires squealing beneath the weight of metal carts, voices over the intercom, and customers and staff members yammering at each other, all floating over the scent of old meat and slowly rotting vegetables.

  Patrick follows the woman for a while, watching the way she moves, letting his craving work up while he enjoys the game of choosing his next consort. She is so lovely, even when engaged in the mundane things of human nature; in the liquor aisle, she examines the shelves and finally selects a bottle of Sutter Home Wine to add to the small shopping basket she picked up by the front door. She goes through the store slowly, aisle by aisle, someone who doesn’t have a list but is in no hurry. He paces her along the corridors like a big deadly predator, watching her scan toiletries, coffee, beans, and pasta sauces. Finally she pauses in the cereal section—Cocoa Puffs, Apple Jacks, Fruit Loops—

  Wheaties.

  Patrick makes his move.

  “Hi.”

  She looks up warily but her expression melts into disbelief when she sees him. She looks from his face to the Wheaties box she holds in her hand, then back again. “Oh, my God,” she says. Her hand grips the cereal box a little tighter. “It’s you!”

  Patrick gives her a falsely embarrassed smile. “Yeah, just me.”

  The woman giggles nervously, sounding like a shy high-schooler, then offers him the Wheaties box. “Will you autograph my cereal?” She giggles again.

  Patrick drops the embarrassed act and gives her a smile full of charm. “Can I tell you a secret?” She nods and it’s clear she has no clue what to say. Patrick leans closer. “Wheaties—I hate these things. I think they taste like cardboard.” He motions toward the back of the store. “If you want something autographed, let me show you what they’re going to put on the shelves this afternoon . . .”

  Laura’s cellular telephone rang, and Eve heard the tension in the doctor’s voice escalate as she tried to answer the questions from the other end. It was only a few, slow heartbeats before Laura’s hand touched her arm and tried to bring her back a little, pull her out of the head dream that being inside Patrick’s mind had become.

  “Eve, I’ve got Press on the phone. He can’t find Patrick. Where—”

  “He’s in the cereal aisle,” Eve said faintly. “No—wait. I see boxes, lot of them, the stockroom maybe. Now he’s taking her outside.” Her eyelids openly slowly. Beads of heated perspiration slipped down her temples and across her collarbone, the sweet moisture collecting beneath her breasts and elsewhere that couldn’t be seen. She smiled languidly, unable to stop herself.

  “Eve?”

  All that alarm in Laura’s voice, but it was far, far too late; the radiation had done its work, performed its magic—so many new and wonderfully dark feelings were awakening inside her, such hunger, and there was nothing to do but sit back and revel in all of them. When Eve spoke again, her voice was lower than she’d ever heard it, filled with anticipation and anger and, yes, jealousy.

  “He wants to mate with her.”

  “Damn it,” Laura hissed from beside her chair. “What the hell have we done to her?”

  “It’s okay, Laura. I want to help.” An automatic response as Eve tried to find her place in the world again, in Laura’s world. Nearly the same words as she’d said earlier, but this time Eve could only half believe they were the truth. No—they had to be. Laura Baker was on her side, fighting to keep things bearable for her, or at least as good as they could be given the circumstances. It was the circumstances that bothered Eve, how unfair that she must be the one to endure an existence like this. But nothing could be done about that. She was what she was; Patrick Ross might be the master of deception, but Eve had never been outside these walls, and besides, she could never, ever lie to Laura.

  “I can’t see anything,” Eve said abruptly and opened her eyes. “He can sense that I’m tapping in, and he’s too strong—he’s blocking me. The connection is gone.”

  She could never lie
to Laura.

  Could she?

  Patrick drags the woman who reminds him of Melissa through the stockroom. She is terrified and struggling but his hand is over her mouth and she is too weak, her movements like a moth caught in the mouth of a bat, and he is vaguely disappointed by this. Even the single scream she managed before he stopped her was small and ineffective, does not even turn a head toward the stockroom to where he had coaxed her. He would prefer to mate with someone strong and fierce, someone like himself. He would prefer, too, that his mate not die every time in childbirth and leave him with no choice but to find another and to care for the offspring alone.

  But he will take what he can get.

  The parking lot in the back of the Mayfair Market is deserted, all the spaces taken and marked “Employees Only.” He pulls her through the rows of parked cars, searching for just the right one, knowing he will never be able to take her around the front and to the Mercedes. At last he spots it at the far end—a Chevrolet Econoline van. It is easy to hold the woman with one hand and wrench open the back door with the other; it does not matter that it is locked. It takes barely a hard twist to make the handle turn. He forces the woman inside without ever removing his hand from her mouth and begins ripping at her clothes.

  But something’s wrong. Someone’s . . . watching him somehow. He can feel danger closing in, is sensing somehow through a presence in his mind that his enemies are about to drop on him. The thing in his head is pulling him away from his prisoner, insisting that he focus on himself and the need for self preservation rather than on the urge to mate; he must let his hostage go, too, for by killing her he will place himself in a position of greater potential harm.

  He releases the woman who looks like Melissa but keeps his hand on her mouth. “I’m going to let you go,” he says in a deadly cold voice. “Head directly back to your car. Don’t stop anywhere and don’t go back into the store. No one will believe you anyway, and if you scream, or if you stop and talk to anyone, I will find you. And I will kill you.” He takes his hand away and the young woman is already nodding her consent—