Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits (41 page)

“I don’t
want this . . .” she said.

“But you
dooo . . .”

“I
don’t.”

“Oh, for
shit’s sake,” Erhlich said. “Hold her down. I’ve got work to do.”

Rachel
felt herself bent backwards and pressed down like the limb of a weak plant.

“Stop,” a
voice said. “Not yet.”

Rachel
knew the voice; one made soft and gentle by practice—a voice designed to fool
you.

“Release
her,” Jacob said. “Take off those restraints. Give her some air. She looks like
she can’t breathe.”

She
couldn’t see him, but she could feel him. When he was close enough, she turned
to face him. He was naked, and the sight of his body made her reel with
disgust. The flesh looked as if it had been poured on him and dripped from his
arms and chest and legs like thick, pale goo.

“That one
tried to kill me,” Jacob said, nodding slowly at John, “just when we were going
to consummate our love once more. The good doctor brought me back. He’s a good,
good man.”

“Thank
you, Jacob,” Erhlich said.

“I should
have put that bullet in your head when I had the chance,” John said.

“God
stayed your hand,” Jacob intoned. “It was His will. I will not die until God’s
will is done.”
 
He turned to Rachel and
leaned in toward her, his arms hanging down like weak ropes, his neck stretched
out. Rachel heard him sniff the air.

“You have
the same scent,” he said. “You have the same scent as her.”

“As who?”
Rachel asked. “As Bailey Hall?”

“Yes,”
Jacob said and swallowed with his mouth open. “You have her scent.”

“But I’m
not her, Gilbert,” Rachel said. “I’m not Bailey Hall.”
 
At the use of his real name, Jacob blinked.
“Gilbert,” he said. “How did you know my name?”

“I read
Bailey’s journal. I read all about you and what happened to you.”

“Everything?”

“Yes.”

“Then you
must know who you are? You must know that.”
 

“My name
is Rachel Sanders. I am not Bailey Hall!”

Jacob
studied her with his drooping eyes. “You are her as surely as I am he.”

“But I’m
not her!” Rachel cried. “Leave me alone!”

“What is
this?” John said. “What are you talking about?”

“He
thinks I’m Bailey Hall,” Rachel whimpered. “He thinks I’m that girl who
betrayed him . . .”

Jacob’s
thin hand reached up and caressed her face. The clammy touch of his fingers
made her pull back and shake her head to rid herself of it. The hand pursued
her until it caught her again. With nowhere to go, she let the spider crawl
over her face and neck. “I hate you,” she said. “I hate you.”

“You are
the first and the mother to many,” Jacob said. “We shall populate this planet,
you and I. Our seed will find root here and flourish in this good soil.”

“No!” she
cried.

“We shall
inherit this rich heath and fill it with our flesh. We shall grow and multiply
like the wheat of the field.”
 

“You’ll
ruin it,” she whimpered. “You’ll ruin this sweet place.”
 

“Ruin?”
he asked, smiling his madman's smile.

“You’ll
spoil it.”

“God’s
plan cannot ruin . . . anything.”

“No,
God’s plan can’t destroy it,” she said. “Only you can do that.”

Jacob
raised his twisted head toward Heaven and extended his arms. The flesh hung
from them as if the thin bones had been dipped in gray tar. “Glory to God!
Glory to God Almighty! He has delivered me to this place to save it!”

Rachel
stood helplessly and looked at the creature in front of her and began to sob.
Her shoulders shook, as she wept openly, without restraint. From deep inside
her the wails came and gushed out, swirling, mixing hatred, fear, grief and
frustration with Gilbert’s words.

“Glory
be! Glory be! I am the one! I am come into this place to deliver it to the
Lord, our God!”

“You’ll
kill it!” she gasped.

“I will
fill it with the word of God! I will give it as a sweet fruit to my God!”

“No!”

“Get away
from her, you bastard!” John screamed.

“I am the
one blessed!” Gilbert raved. “I and no other!”

“No!”
Rachel screamed.

“You are
mine!”

“No!”

“You are
my field!”

“You’re
evil!” she cried. “Your God is evil!”

Jacob’s
hand came across in a straight line and slapped her, nearly knocking her down.
“I will save you from yourself! I will deliver you from yourself!”

“Stop
it!” she begged.

“You are
mine to fill!”

“Please,
stop.”
 
Her voice was exhausted.

“Mine!”

“No.”

Rachel
wailed and sobbed. Then she sank slowly to the floor in a heap. “No . . . no .
. .” she whimpered.

Gilbert
looked down at her and smiled, his slack mouth drawn loosely away from his
teeth.

Suddenly,
Gilbert cocked his head as if he’d heard something curious. Back and forth, he
cocked it. Then he turned in a circle, trying to locate the source of the
inaudible sound.

“Jacob?”
Erhlich said. “Is something wrong?”

“Can’t
you hear it?” Gilbert asked, smiling stiffly. “Can’t you? Are you deaf? Can’t
you hear it?”

“I don’t
hear anything,” a guard said.

“Me,
neither,” another said, confused.

Gilbert
hobbled over and quickly put his robe on. Then he pinched it tight at the neck.
“I have to get out of here! I have to get in . . . side something! I have to
hide!” He turned in a staggering circle, searching the room.

“What is
it?” Erhlich cried out, thinking Jacob had slipped into madness.

“It’s
closer!” Gilbert screamed. “Put me in something, goddamn you! Hide me!”

“From
what?”

Gilbert’s
face went blank and seemed to droop even more. He looked up and closed his
eyes. The words seemed to fall out of his mouth.

“From the
worms . . . of God . . .”

The first
of a million wasps flew into the room, stopped and hovered. The sound of its
buzzing wings filled the space like something solid. Then it zipped here,
there—a flash of black and white. It sampled the air. When it came to Rachel,
it moved slowly to within an arm’s length. It hovered. Rachel looked up at the
insect’s iridescent form, and smiled at its perfection.

The wasp
zipped away.

“What . .
. ?” Erhlich said.

The wasp
moved like a shot and hit Erhlich in the face with a loud smack! Erhlich jumped
back, blinked, and then felt the spot with his hand, leaving a smear of blood
where his fingers touched. He shook his head as if clearing it, then staggered
against the table. He slumped to the floor and rolled onto his back.

Then the
wasps swarmed into the room by the hundreds, filling the air with a fury of
buzzing wings. One of the guards ran for the door, waving his arms around his
head, but was hit time and time again. John was knocked to the floor as the
guards holding him ran. Waving their arms, they ran, screaming, out of the room
and down the tube. Erhlich’s assistants backed against the wall and froze. The
insects slapped into their faces and arms.

Rachel
crawled through the cloud of buzzing wings. When she got to John, she covered
his body with her own. “I’ll protect you,” she said. “I’ll protect you.”

Moments
later, the virulent buzzing began to diminish. Soon it died to the sound of
just a few, then none.

They
found Gilbert on the floor with his blue robe splayed open. His naked body was
crawling with dozens of silent wasps, many with ovipositors buried deep in his
gray flesh. His face stared up sightless and blank.

“Is he
dead?” John asked.

Rachel
looked down at Gilbert and felt no pity. None.

“No,” she
replied with no feeling in her voice. Then one corner of her mouth turned
slightly up. “Not yet. But soon.”

20

R
achel said
she thought it was best to bury Jacob’s body deep in the jungle where no one
would ever find it.
 
John had offered a
less forgiving twist on the idea. “Burials are for people you want to
remember,” he’d said. “I’ll drop it in the green. It’ll be bug crap in a
few hours.”
 

Donna had
echoed a similar sentiment and the decision to provide absolutely nothing in
the form of ritual remembrance for Gilbert Keefer, known of late as Jacob No
Name, was made firm in their minds—if not in the minds of the group as a whole.

Rachel,
Donna and John were not the only contributors to the decision. Just over four
hundred people had survived the wasp storm, a good half of them Bondsmen with a
sentimental or emotional attachment to the memory of their stumbling, lopsided
leader.

The issue
would clearly take time to work out. When someone suggested just keeping the
body in a cooler, under guard, until a resolution could be reached, a few in
the room echoed the wisdom of it.
 
Others, however, wanted to organize the funeral right then and railed
with discontent.
 
Soon the meeting was
out of control.

To Paul
Kominski, the decision about what to do with Jacob’s corpse was just another
line item on a growing list of things to do. As the President Pro Temp of what
was left of the colony, he calmly and dutifully made a note of it on his pad,
then tapped on the table with his pistol to call the meeting back to order.

“Okay,”
he said. “There’s a motion on the table to keep Jacob’s body on ice until we
can look at the issue closer in committee. With no further discussion, I’ll
call for the vote. All in favor of keeping Jacob’s body on ice for the time
being, vote with a show of hands.”

Seven of
the nine members of the new council raised their hands. Paul counted them.

“All
opposed?” he asked.

The
remaining two raised their hands.

“The
motion carries,” Paul said firmly. “We keep the body on ice. And we’ll form a
committee to figure out what to do about the, uh, burial, and when it will take
place. The council will act on the decision of the committee. End of
discussion.”

“Who’ll
be on that committee?” a portly Bondsman named Jones asked with a sneer in his
voice.

“I’ll
make sure the committee has fair representation from all interests concerned.
End of discussion,” Paul replied and tapped the table with his lethal gavel
once more.
 
The room went dead quiet.
“Let’s move on,” he said. “We have a full agenda and a lot of ground to cover.
Next, Rachel Sanders will report to you on her research about the wasp
attack—if she’s ready.”
 
He looked over
at Rachel.

Rachel
stood up. “How much time do I have?” she asked.

“As much
as you need,” Paul said.

Rachel
cleared her throat. “I don’t have all the answers yet,” she said. “But I think
I’ve got enough to give us all a good idea about where the wasps came from and
how they operate, biologically speaking. More importantly, I think I understand
enough to give us all a good idea about the future threat.”

“Okay,”
Paul said. “You’ve got the floor.”

Rachel
moved to the front of the gathering with her pad, turned around and scanned the
worried faces in front of her.