The Druid Gene

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  “No. Never. I had no idea.”

  “That’s unfortunate. You are a rare and valuable specimen. It would be helpful if you had some knowledge of this.”

  “Specimen? I’m not a specimen! What is this? Some kind of zoo?”

  The Lovek’s lip curled into a satisfied smile.

  “No. Not a zoo.”

  “What, then?”

  “Would you like to know what your ancestors were called?”

  “You’re trying to distract me on purpose. What are you hiding?”

  “They called themselves drudii. They are sometimes referred to as druids in the literature.”

  The girl inhaled sharply. These words meant something to her.

  Hain could see it as plainly as he could. “So, you’ve heard this word.”

  The girl shook her head. “Yes, but not in this context. It’s probably just a coincidence—a similar word in my language.”

  “Perhaps. The drudii are known to have scattered throughout the galaxy, but often left evidence on the worlds they occupied. They built circular monuments comprised of living plant matter, posts, stone, or carved columns depending upon the technology available to them and how long they wanted such monuments to endure. They must have felt quite safe on your world. We observed a large, stone monolithic circle on an island off one of your most populated continents.”

  The girl’s heart rate picked up. He could smell the sweat evaporating from her skin. She whispered, “You must mean Stonehenge.”

  “You know this place by name? It is some distance from where we found you. Have you visited this place?”

  “No. My mother always wanted to go there.”

  “Ah. Why did she wish to go?”

  The girl’s voice was shaky. “It’s a spiritual place. It supposedly marks the cycle of the sun throughout the year…the solstices, things like that. An ancient people called druids were thought to use it as a temple. But I…she never said anything about being related to them.”

  “The name is not a coincidence, then. They were open about who they were, because the name meant nothing on a nonspacefaring world. The true purpose of these locations is unknown to the general populace, then?”

  The girl just stared blankly.

  “The circles mark strong, localized fields of electromagnetic force. These exist randomly throughout empty space, but when they coexist with the strong gravitational force of a large planetary body, they permit the drudii to funnel photons into themselves and store them for later use in specialized cellular organelles.”

  The girl stared at Hain, dumbfounded.

  “These organelles are called apochondria. To the untrained eye, they look very much like mitochondria, but serve a very different purpose. I’ve isolated them from your blood, Darcy. I wonder if you’ve ever used them. Perhaps you have, without knowing what was happening?”

  The girl sank bonelessly to the floor. “I…oh, my God.”

  Every hair on the Lovek’s body stood on end. His muscles strained. Against his will, the blood lust was rising in him. He breathed evenly to keep it at bay. Now was not the time. The girl was untrained. She needed further assessment.

  “Darcy? Can you demonstrate your power?”

  The girl still looked dazed. “No…I…don’t know how it works.”

  Hain flowed to the floor, facing the girl, and lightly touched her hand. “Allow me to assist you. We can learn the secrets together.”

  That was a miscalculation. Perhaps it was too soon, too familiar. Or perhaps the cool touch of her woody fingers was too foreign for someone raised on an insular planet. The girl was not willing to accept Hain as a confidant now, possibly not ever. Hain had erred by assuming the girl’s youth predisposed her to trusting a firm, but comforting, maternal figure.

  The girl snapped, sweeping Hain’s hand away. She was on her feet an instant later, seething with anger again. “Don’t touch me. I don’t want your help. I want to see Adam and I want to go home.”

  “That is wishful thinking. We must live in the present, always. I think you know that will not happen.”

  The girl narrowed her eyes. He could see her undeveloped muscles tense under her bald skin. She was holding herself back and that was delicious. Her voice, full of conviction, was equally so. “I’m not saying another word until you tell me why I’m here.”

  Hain unfolded herself. When she was fully erect again, she met the girl’s gaze without flinching. “We are simple traders.”

  The girl let out a strangled sound as she realized what Hain meant. “You…traffic…in people?” She advanced on Hain. Hain did not move. “You’re going to sell me?”

  “Yes. You will fetch a pretty price.”

  The girl flung herself on Hain in an awkward, unpracticed manner, trying fruitlessly to do Hain some injury. So she was untrained in any sort of fighting technique. A blank canvas. He would have to make sure she was trained then.

  The bugs moved into the room and quickly subdued and removed the girl. Hain ordered that they return her to her holding cell.

  He had plans to make.

  10

  Darcy groaned and closed her eyes. Her ego and body were bruised, but she was still seething. So much for the strategy of gaining allies on the inside. Hain was unlikely to be her new bestie after that fit of temper.

  She turned her head and winced. A couple of hymenoptera had just tossed her into her cell, and they hadn’t done it gently. Selpis and Nembrotha watched her curiously as she lay there, recovering from being manhandled so roughly.

  She felt shame—that she hadn’t fought back sooner, that she’d let herself be led like a lamb to the slaughter, that she’d trusted even the slightest bit. She’d always been an independent thinker. She’d never acted like a sheep before in her life.

  After being abducted by aliens was not a good time to start.

  There was no turning back now. She’d leapt on Hain, all of the frustration pouring out of her. She couldn’t think of a time in her life when she’d seen red quite like that, so angry that she wanted to hurt someone.

  Hain must have had guards just outside the door, because the hymenoptera had come in and pulled her off Hain before she could do any damage—not that she’d be capable of doing much of that. She hadn’t even tried to hit anyone since elementary school, defending herself from the bullies shoving her around on the playground. Neither Hain nor the hymenoptera had been surprised by her behavior, though. No, that was clear. They’d expected it.

  After keeping her in the dark all this time, Hain had suddenly decided to become a font of information. And it was so messed up. Darcy had dealt with being biracial. She’d been fighting that fight her entire life, but she knew its borders well. She knew what to expect, how to cope. And here comes some alien tree lady in a spaceship—and now she had to add part-alien to the mix and redefine herself all over again. With crazy organelles, extra DNA, freaky powers, and stone circles.

  She didn’t know if she should laugh or cry. What the hell was she? Human? Druid? She was both biracial and bispecies? Was that even a word? What did it all mean?

  But the worst part was to be sold because of it…it was too damn much. It was just too much! What would her grandma Harriet think of this situation? What would she tell her to do?

  Grandma Harriet had lived through Jim Crow and though she was a quiet woman, she occasionally spoke of what it had been like. Darcy would never forget the day she came home from school crying and curled up on her grandmother’s lap because a white child had teased her, gleefully saying Darcy’s grandparents had been slaves and what that meant. She’d been so small. She hadn’t believed it. How could people make other people do things just because of the color of their skin?

  Grandma Harriet had stroked her cheek and softly told her the truth. The horrible history. The civil war. The continuing struggle to be represented as equal and worthy. She’d been too young to understand all of it. But there were a few things that grandma Harriet had said then that she continued
to say again and again. “But we can bear it with the good Lord’s help,” she’d said. “You’re smart. You’re strong. You’ve got to be your own person, Darcy. Whatever that means to you. Be that.”

  Those words had always brought comfort. She evoked that again now, clutching it like a talisman against the fear of the unknown and the anger erupting at the mere thought of being sold. She was strong. She could bear this and she could find a way out.

  She dragged herself into a sitting position. “So, neither one of you thought it was important to tell me that we’re all merchandise?”

  “Are you joking?” Nembrotha sputtered wetly.

  “Joking?” Darcy let loose a string of curses, most of which the implant didn’t bother to translate. She leaned forward and pointed at Nembrotha accusingly. “You thought it was so hilarious that I’m from such a backwards planet that I can’t even speak properly without a chip in my brain, and it never even occurred to you that I wouldn’t have a clue why I was here? Well, I just found out.”

  Selpis said patiently, “Darcy, we had no way of knowing what you did and did not know. We hardly spoke before they took you away. We are not who you’re actually angry with. Direct that anger elsewhere, if you please.”

  Darcy huffed like a locomotive, nostrils flaring, and rocked back onto her rump. She hated that kind of patient logic. It was the way her mother spoke to her.

  Even worse—she hated that Selpis was right. She wasn’t mad at them, the hymenoptera, or even Hain. She was furious with herself for being so slow on the uptake when it was obvious what was going on here.

  Nembrotha scooted a little closer to their border with Selpis’s cell. “The strong emotional reaction she is displaying could go a long way to mitigate her lack of physical robustness. If she is a member of the warrior species, strong emotional response could be a better asset than being physically imposing.”

  The tip of Selpis’s tail swished and she turned her gaze on Darcy. “Are all humans this fiery?”

  Darcy just stared at her. They didn’t understand. Maybe they didn’t have racial divisions on their worlds. They didn’t have the history that made this so disgusting on such a personal level. In another mood, she might have explained. She might have asked more questions about where they came from. But not now. She couldn’t. She just could not patiently explain racism to them. Wasn’t being held prisoner, the thought of being sold enough to evoke rage in them too?

  “Who will they sell us to?” she choked out, trying to swallow some of the anger without it turning into tears.

  Nembrotha faced her and spoke quietly. “We know little more than you. The vessel makes stops regularly. Customers and brokers come aboard and make selections. If an individual isn’t chosen in a timely manner, rumor has it that they’re offered at deep discount to a wholesaler, to free up the space for more-valuable cargo.”

  People, sold wholesale? Her head was spinning. “That’s it? That’s how they make a living? They come to a planet, swoop in and steal people away—from their lives, their families, everything they know—and then just sell them to the highest bidder? What kind of…? This is the state of the universe? Aren’t there laws against this?”

  Selpis looked pained. “Certainly there are. No civilized society condones slavery. But where there are laws, there are always those who live on the fringes, eager to benefit from breaking them. It’s likely some of us will be discovered and freed in our lifetimes. You hear of these things in the news reports from time to time.”

  Just another statistic on the intergalactic nightly news. What a sickening thought. “What will happen to us?”

  “The unlucky—” Nembrotha gurgled, a juicy, throat-clearing sound, and their stalks pointed briefly at a hulking brute of an orange-tinged woman scrunched up inside her red hexagon nearby, “—will be laborers, doing some kind of lethal work that would be best left to machines, often in environments where machines cannot function. Or, they may be plunked into one of the many secretive and highly illegal entertainment wars that the rabble can’t get enough of. The two of you will do well to obtain positions as handmaidens to some aristocratic family, whilst I will likely become a sex slave in some two-bit whorehouse catering to a whole host of distasteful fetishes.”

  Selpis frowned and tsked at Nembrotha. “You’re letting your imagination carry you away. We don’t have any idea what will happen to us. It is best to accept whatever does with grace, have faith that we will be delivered from this untoward circumstance.”

  “That’s fine for you!” Nembrotha exclaimed. “Your species has a life-span fourfold the length of my own. I can’t afford to be so patient.”

  Selpis looked uncomfortable.

  Darcy stood and scanned the room. She set her jaw. “I refuse to accept any of this. I’m not a statistic. And I’m not going to be a…” She couldn’t even say the word. She was vibrating with anger. “I’m not going to be any of that. No way. I’m going to fight for my freedom. No matter what it takes.”

  “Oh, sit down,” Nembrotha muttered. “Do you think you’re the first one to think that? Everyone goes through that phase. Those who actually act on those feelings are all dead.”

  Selpis extended her hand, an almost maternal gesture, as though she wished to reach across the barrier and soothe Darcy’s angst. Then she closed her hand into a limp fist, the long, spindly fingers curling in. Her voice was hushed and barely traveled the distance to Darcy’s ear. “Nembrotha is quite right, unfortunately. That kind of attitude is suicidal. We’ve observed it more than once. If you create too much trouble, you won’t be worth keeping around. They can always take another. That is less risk than an uprising.”

  Darcy shook her head, refusing to submit to the caution they were urging. She had to be her own person. She raised her voice. “I have a feeling that’s not true for me. They aren’t going to kill me. If it’s an uprising that will get me off this ship, then I guess I’ll have to start an uprising.”

  “Shshshshshshsh!” Selpis hissed at her, her eyes wide, her pupils constricted to narrow slits.

  Nembrotha backed up a bit. “Don’t be a fool!”

  The others around her began to take notice and looked at her curiously.

  “Who’s with me?” Darcy called out to them nervously. She lifted her chin and injected more force into her voice. “Are we just going to sit here and take this? Together we have power! Let’s take back our freedom!”

  No one responded. There were some grunts, a few shrugs, and then one by one they all turned their backs on her, even Selpis and Nembrotha. Every individual within a twenty-five-foot radius huddled within their geometric outline as far from Darcy as they could manage without touching the perimeter.

  Her heart pounded. She started to feel silly. She didn’t actually know what happened to a person who tried to breach the confines of the cell. It just looked like an outline on the floor.

  She channeled every inspirational movie speech she could summon. “There are more of us than there are of them! Let’s bring these bastards to justice and get our lives back!”

  She was panting. She truly believed that if she could motivate them to join her, they could earn their freedom and take over the ship.

  Tesserae71 had cautioned her to stay inside the confines of the cell, “or the consequences would become increasingly dire.” That had to mean that she would survive a single escape attempt, but that it would be unpleasant. Couldn’t they see that? How bad could it be? If she showed them she could take it, they’d join her. They would storm the corridors and take control. That thought bolstered her resolve.

  She stood tall, and swept her arms dramatically. “There’s no way they can control all of us if we just step out of our cages as one.”

  No one budged. She saw a few hymenoptera with shock sticks enter the room some distance away. She was running out of time.

  She decided to try another tactic. “What are you people? Chicken?”

  That didn’t translate well. There were a few amused gl
ances over shoulders, a few guffaws.

  Right. No one would take her seriously unless she showed them she was willing to go all the way. She just had to be brave, and surely they would see that she was right.

  She backed to the edge of the cell, inhaled a deep, steadying breath, and lowered her body into a runner’s crouch. She pushed that breath out through clenched teeth and pursed her lips as she launched herself over the low curb the marked the outline of her cell.

  And crumpled to the floor in agony. She’d passed through some kind of invisible barrier that had given her an electrical shock, like cattle fencing.

  Her nose and teeth dug into the spongy flooring, flooding her senses with industrial scents and foul, organic odors. Hot bile rose in her throat as every nerve ending twitched and every muscle contracted.

  “Aughpfgh,” she groaned, and struggled to regain command of herself. She pushed her head up and gulped for air. “Come on!” she coughed. “All of us together.”

  She looked down at herself as she shoved up on her hands and knees. Translucent blue lines glowed under her skin. She didn’t have time to think about that. She stood unsteadily.

  The entire room had gone silent.

  The hymenoptera were heading for her. She took off, stumbling in the opposite direction, every eye in the room on her. She began to feel ridiculous and impatient. “Get up off your asses and fight with me!”

  There was no reply to her outcry.

  Crickets didn’t chirp, but the hymenoptera did.

  More of them funneled into the room. She was picking up speed when she saw hymenoptera coming her way and scrambled to turn and dart down another row. At least no one was laughing at her now.

  She continued in this manner until there were few options left. They were gaining on her and not another soul had left their cell to join her. Either they were completely beaten down and had given up all hope or they knew something she didn’t. She couldn’t believe it hadn’t worked. She felt a terrible sense of betrayal and loss. She’d been stupid to act so rashly.