Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits (10 page)

One of
the leading Council members, the new one known as Jacob, stood up and addressed
the crowd.

He was
the strangest looking man Joan had ever seen. He frightened her to her core.

“This man
is profane and has shown disrespect for the will of God,” he said gently. “He
has used profanity to erode the Godliness of this holy body. The Lord God now
will punish him for his transgression. Let this be a lesson to us all, not to
trifle with the holy will of God and always to show respect to his agents
seated here.”

What
shallow crap, Joan thought. What absolute bullshit. If they’ll kill us for
that, they’ll kill us for anything.

When he
stopped speaking, the rubber-clad man holding the flask turned to Jacob for the
signal, and Jacob nodded. The man began to pour the liquid over the head of
Duggings. Duggings blinked as the liquid ran into his eyes, and then he wiped
it away with a disgusted hand. He spat it away from his mouth and just tried to
smile as the stream covered his head and upper body.

“Fuck
you,” he said, spitting and trying to grin. “Fuck you and your Council, and I
hope you go straight to Hell, since you believe in it so damned much. We all
gotta die of something.”

“Go now,”
Jacob said to the crowd, “and listen to the profane man die.”

It was
dusk, and they knew that before dawn, they’d be hearing Duggings scream as the
fecund juice from the Vilaroos plant penetrated his skin and turned his body
into a living incubator for its seeds. Short of being burned or skinned alive,
it was the most grisly death Joan could think of; slow and painful and hideous.

“Why don’t
they just shoot him?” Joan wanted to know. “Dammit! They could just shoot him,
couldn’t they? Assholes.”

“Joan,
shut up,” Bill said, “unless you wanna be next in that goddamned cage.”

Habershaw
happened to glance at Jacob and saw that he was looking their way, and thought
for a brief, gut-churning second that Jacob could hear what he just said.

Jacob,
they say, had walked in out of the jungle and become an immediate member of the
Bondsmen’s Council. Some said it was just because he was strange, and the
Council itself was strange so they matched right up. Others said it was because
he carried with him a book called The Bible that had been printed almost a
thousand years ago. The Bondsmen’s laws were supposedly based on that book and
much of the original meaning, changed and watered down through the years, had
been re-claimed, and rejuvenated from it. Now they said, they had the authentic
document, the original blueprint. They said the Bondsmen’s scientists looked at
it for a week before deciding it was genuine. There were other rumors about how
Jacob was God’s Chosen One and destined to become High Priest. Almost everyone
believed that one. The stuff about being in suspended animation for a thousand
years got sideways looks most of the time.

He scared
the hell out of everybody, even the other Council members. That part was true.

“Somebody
ought to come out here tonight and kill Duggings,” Lavachek said. “That would
be the humane thing to do.”

“You’d be
right in there with him if they caught you,” Habershaw whispered. “Let’s get
out of here. Maybe he’ll go quick.”

“They
never go quick,” Joan said as they turned away.

When
Jacob came along some ninety Verdian days ago, things began to get much worse
and much stranger fast. They couldn’t say or do certain things now and wear
certain clothes—even certain colors on certain days. Rules had been applied to
almost everything. Each day the bulletins would describe some weird-assed thing
to be done. Things they’d taken for granted as commonplace suddenly couldn’t be
done anymore. One of the worst offenses was speaking against the Council, and
Joan constantly walked that razor’s edge. Habershaw worried constantly that
she’d be taken away and executed. Oddly, no women had been executed yet, but
there was always a first time. Habershaw prayed that Joan, with her quick
tongue, wouldn’t be the one to set that unfortunate precedent.

“I heard
today that Jacob found that thing he’s been looking for,” Lavachek said as they
walked along.

“You
know, that big-assed plant thing he’s been talking about. They found it over by
the shore.”

“What
kind of plant thing?” Joan asked. “There're lots of plant things on the
planet.”

“I heard
it was some huge hive or something. Big. We’re talking a half a kilometer big.”

“No
plant’s that big,” Joan said.

“Hey, you
asked,” Lavachek said with a shrug.

“What’s
he going to do with it?” Habershaw asked.

“You
won’t believe what I heard,” Lavachek said.

“Try us,”
Habershaw said. “I’d believe just about anything that bastard did at this
point.”

“Well, I
heard he was going to move the entire settlement to it.”

“Now that
is bullshit,” Habershaw said.

“That’s
what I heard,” Lavachek said. “I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“How
would he do that?” Joan asked, mirroring Habershaw's disbelief.

“Well, if
you stop to consider that the machinery is already

sitting
on this ball to cut a road thirty meters wide—in one pass I might add—from here
to the sea, it’s not such a dumb idea.”
 

“You mean
you and me cut the road is what you mean,” Habershaw asked to make sure he
understood.

 
“That part’s possible.”

“Yep.
Then the trucks start hauling the stuff over. The only thing is whether he can
get the other Council members to go along with it. I heard they don’t have a
choice.”

“Goddamn,
Lavachek,” Joan said. “You hear it all, don’t you?"

“Hey, it
pays to have your ear to the ground.”

“So it
sounds like a done deal,” Habershaw said.

“I’d say
so. Weird, huh?”

Joan
shook her head in disgust. “Who is the sonofabitch that says he can do that to
us? Somebody tell me.”

“He’s the
Grand Poobah, is what he is,” Lavachek said. “He can do anything he wants. Did
you hear the rumor about the women?”

Joan
swallowed involuntarily. “No. What about them?”

“I heard
he—excuse me there, Joan. I heard he wants to fuck all of them.”

“Oh, for
shit’s sake, Lavachek,” Habershaw said, trying to put Joan at ease. “It’s bad
enough without you making it up.”
 

“Hey,
don’t blame me,” Lavachek grinned. “I’m just tellin’ you what I heard—I’m just
the messenger.”

“They used
to kill the messengers, too,” Joan said setting his coffee down hard in front
of him. “Don’t you go repeating that little rumor. You’ll have every woman in
the settlement in hysterics.”
 

Lavachek
shrugged. “Fine, then.”

“So if
you’re right we should be hearing about the road at any time,” Habershaw said,
wanting to change the subject.

“Any day
now, I expect.”

The phone
buzzed and Habershaw picked it up. Joan and Lavachek looked at nothing and
sipped coffee as Habershaw listened, I-see’d and uh-huh’d a few times. Finally
he said, “We’ll be there.”
 
Then he
closed the connection.

When he
was done, he drew a deep breath through his nose.

Joan knew
the sign.

“Guess
who that was, Mister Lavachek,” Habershaw said. “Who?” Joan asked.

“Someone
who claims to be the Chief Engineer for the Sacred Bond, someone named Pen
Patel.”

Lavachek
pursed his lips knowingly.

“And . .
.”

“He says
he has plans to cut a road from here west to the ocean. He wants us to go over
the plan with him in the morning.”
 

Lavachek
shook his head and chuckled silently. “It’s a bitch to be right all the
goddamned time!"

“Kiss my
hind part,” Habershaw said.

“Mine,
too,” Joan added. “This isn’t funny.”

Lavachek
kept a little smirk on his face. They didn’t say anything for a while.

“You can
spend the night here if you want, Greg,” Habershaw said gently. “It’s farther
from Duggings.”

Lavachek
nodded his head that he’d like to stay. Listening to a man go mad with pain
wasn’t the best way to get a good night’s sleep.

“We should
do something, Bill,” Lavachek said. “I knew Duggings pretty good. He was a good
man.”

“Do
what?” Habershaw barked. “What should we do?”

“Sneak
over there and put him out of his misery is what,” Joan said.

“That’s
too goddamned risky,”

Habershaw
said firmly, looking into Joan's willful eyes.

“Maybe we
wouldn’t have to get too close,” Lavachek said. “If we had a gun, we could
shoot him from a distance.”

“Well, we
don’t have a gun. So forget it,” Habershaw said.

“I’ve got
a gun,” Joan said abruptly.

Habershaw
glared at her to shut her up.

“Well, I
do,” she repeated. “I stole it. And I’m keeping it.”
 

 
“That’s it, then. We can use that,” Lavachek
said. “Hell, I’ll do it.”

“Like
hell you will,” Habershaw snapped. “If they catch you, they’ll find the gun,
then they’ll find out where it came from—and we’ll all get Vilaroosed. Fuck
that. You’ll stay right here.”
 
Lavachek
didn’t like the answer. But he took a sip of coffee in silent, tacit agreement.
Habershaw was still his boss.

“It’s
your call,” Lavachek finally said.

Later
that night, as Joan and Habershaw lay in their bed, the sound of Duggings’
cries reached them over the jungle’s din. It came adrift on the wet air like a
dark wisp. It wasn’t possible to close the windows or block one’s ears to keep
it out; that would be turning your back on the man’s pain, turning his agony to
nothing.

Bill and
Joan tossed and turned fretfully; and when they weren’t tossing or turning,
they lay unmoving, trying not to listen but listening still. Joan was having
the worst time of it. Habershaw heard her sigh and groan slightly with each cry
that seeped snakelike through the shelter’s screens.

At some
point, Bill heard and felt Joan get up out of bed as slowly and softly as a
cat. He heard her faint noises at the rear door and heard the slight click of
the door shutting. He hoped to hell she wasn’t doing what he thought she was
doing. He got out of bed and looked out the window in the direction of Duggings
but didn’t see anything. He finally convinced himself she had gone for a walk,
perhaps to distance herself from the sounds of suffering riding the jungle’s
busy clamor.

When he
heard the first shot, Habershaw went stiff, as if the bullet had gone through
his brain. A moment later he heard another, then another. He went to the window
and looked out. Duggings' cries had stopped, and the jungle’s buzz had shed
that soulful rider. He could feel the settlement breathe a sigh of relief.

A few
minutes later he heard the soft click of the door again. Joan slid cat-like
back into bed. When her leg touched his, he felt cool sweat.

“That was
stupid,” he said evenly.

She
didn’t answer right away. “I doubt Duggings thought so,” she finally replied.

Sometime
before dawn, they slept.

At
breakfast the next morning, no one said a word for a long time.

“I guess
he went quick after all,” Lavachek eventually said, looking at Joan.

“Yeah,”
Joan said. “He went quick.”
 

* * *

When
Habershaw and Lavachek got to the Chief Engineer’s office, a man neither had met,
nor had heard much about, greeted them. He was a small man, clad in the brown,
clean, cotton commonly worn by those within the Council’s inner circles. The
garb gave the man away.
 
This had
suddenly turned into a situation with unanticipated consequences.