Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits (44 page)

“Well,
you certainly seem to have changed your mind about this place,” he said. “I
thought you told me once you thought this planet was a paradise. What happened
to that?”

“I
haven’t been seeing clearly until just now. Jacob’s presence seemed to
somehow…I don’t know…maybe it was the centipede bite…” her voice trailed off.

“I know,”
he said.

They
stood, wrapped as one; heads turned in opposite directions, and silently took
in the enormity of the jungle for a moment.

“I
couldn’t have imagined this,” Rachel finally said. “The sheer volume of the
biodiversity here. It is awesome and beautiful, yes. But I’ll tell you one
thing—this planet will never be conquered. And if yours is the attitude we take
we won’t last a decade. So don’t give me that beat the shit out of it
horseshit.”

“I only
know one thing, Rachel,” he said holding her tighter. “You have our child—our
own little parasite—growing inside you. And I’ll do everything in my power to
make sure she survives. Even on Verde’s Revenge.”

It may not be enough,
Rachel thought.

* * *

 
“You seem to have things under control,” Donna
said. “I like that.”

Paul was
sitting at his desk in the middle of one of the main sub-chambers he had
commandeered as his office. One of his enforcers was stationed at the door, as
usual, guarding him, and she’d had to throw the comment around the guard’s body
to get it into the room. Donna recognized the guard as Javier something, a
youngish ex-soldier with eyes that flashed from quizzical to predatory with
ease. She gave him a predatory look of her own as she swept past him into the
room.

 
“Well, I’m trying,” Paul said, leaning back in
his chair as she came in. “I don’t expect to be in this job too much longer.
Someone better-equipped to lead than me should have the role.”

“Look, I
. . . uh . . . I wanted to thank you for saving my life,” she said, sliding one
hip onto his desk. “That was very good of you.”

“My
pleasure,” he said.

“I mean
it,” she went on. “I’m in your debt.”

“That’s a
debt you don’t have to repay,” Paul said. “Besides, Mike thinks the world of
you.
 
He talks about that little surgery
you did on him as if it were a miracle.”

 
“Mike’s a good kid,” she said with a smile.

“Yeah,”
he said with a proud look, “And I told our father I’d always look after him. We
Kominskis keep our promises.”

“Nice
quality,” she said.

Donna had
something else on her mind and let a beat pass before bringing it up.

 
“So, I heard that Smith’s on his way down,”
she said. “What’s going to happen to him?”

“What do
you want to happen to him?” Paul asked.

“Well, I
have a biased opinion of Smith,” she said with a scrunched smile. “We don’t see
eye-to-eye on some things.”

“Ah. I
see.”

“Yes.
Smith had those two sonsofbitches he calls assistants pitch me out of a shuttle
five hundred meters above the jungle. I survived that little fall—thanks to a
very forgiving tree—and hiked for five days back to the compound. Can you
imagine what it’s like to spend five full days in the green—without shelter—or
even a net suit? No food, no water, just a useless little purse and the clothes
on your back?

“Well, I’ve
never carried a purse…” he said wryly.

She
smiled. “Well, it’s no picnic.”

Paul drew
a breath. “I heard about your ordeal. That’s just one other thing Smith will
stand trial for.”

“Stand
trial?” she asked, her jaw dropping.

“Yes.
Stand trial,” he repeated. “It’s the thing to do.”

“Okay,
Paul. Put him on trial. But know this… if I get the chance, I’ll kill the
sonofabitch—him and those pretty-smelling assistants of his, too. And I’ll do
it with a clear conscience.”

“Look, I
know how you must feel,” he said. “And in spite of what I’d like to do to him
myself, it’s best for the colony if we at least go through the motions of a
trial.”

Donna
thought it over.

“Fine.
Give him a trial. But if he and his bodyguards wind up dead or missing, it
won’t be me that's had a hand in it.”

Paul
looked up into that half-blue, half-brown eye as it blazed. He was sure he had
never seen a face so bent on revenge. “No. I guess it wouldn’t be you, would it
now?” he said knowingly.

Donna
looked him steadily in the eye, pursed her lips and slowly shook her head.

"Between
you and me, I don’t think either of us will have to worry about it,” he
said.
 
“Smith’s going to get exactly what
he deserves.”
 

* * *

Mike
thought the work was going well. He was doing a good job. It had scared him at
first because he and Peter were the only expeditors left, and the job had been
so big and so important; but now, after a day or two of actually doing the
work, things were okay.

He made a
note on the record for the container he’d just inventoried and sat down to give
his foot a rest.

“We’re
almost done with this section,” he whispered to himself proudly. “Almost…”

Paul had
given Mike the job of inventorying the containers and of creating a map so they
could tell where everything was. He wanted the job done by end of the week,
just 3 days away. But the job was going much faster than he thought it would,
and he was sure they could finish a day early—easy.

Mike had
recruited Peter and the new girl Jody to help him. Jody was the daughter of the
one of the Bondsmen, but she and Peter had become fast friends.
 
The same age as Mike and Peter, she had
followed Peter around for a whole day, like a puppy, as Peter explained how the
movement of stuff happens. Peter had explained to her that the usual process
hadn’t been followed when they moved to the monolith, and she soon understood
that everything was so scrambled at the site, they’d never be able to find
anything until it were re-inventoried.
 
When she offered to help, Mike told her, “Hey, we can always use a good
hand.”
 
It had been the first time he’d
acted in a supervisory position, and it felt good to give someone who was smart
and ready to help a job. She’d pitched right in, and Mike liked that.

She told
Mike and Peter on one of their breaks that she never liked all the gunk, as she
called it, that the Sacred Bond taught in those daily classes. Mike was
intuitive and knew that since he and Peter didn’t believe in that stuff, Jody
might just be saying it to be friendly. It didn’t matter much to Mike. He would
have liked her even if she did believe in it.

Peter and
Jody walked toward him between the stacks of containers. Jody was slapping at
Peter’s arm as if he’s said something fresh. Peter was flinching away from her
taps and laughing.

“Hey,
Mike,” Peter said. “Jody likes you!”

“Shut
up!” Jody smiled and slapped at him again. “I do not!”

Mike
didn’t know what to say. He smiled shyly, “Oh,” he said.

“We’re
done with the stack on the other side of this one,” Peter said. “Do you want us
to start on another one?”

Mike
could tell that Jody was tired from all the walking and scrambling over the
containers. She was pooped and probably bored. “Nah,” he said. “That’s enough
for one day, I think. It’s getting late, and I’m hungry.”

“Me,
too,” Jody said, brushing her hair behind one ear.

“Besides,”
Mike said. “Paul says he doesn’t want anybody outside when the sun starts to go
down.”

“That
won’t be for hours yet,” Peter offered.

“I know,”
Mike said. “But this isn’t the only thing we have to get done. Paul wants us to
finish moving the medical gear into the new clinic area. While we're there, we
can show Jody how to drive a lift.”

“Yes!
Yes! Let’s do that next!” Jody said, perking up considerably. “That sounds like
fun!”

“Okay,”
Mike said. “That’s settled then. Let’s go.”

The
containers were stacked three up in four rows in a staging area that had been
carved out of the jungle by the huge dozer. Each row was about five hundred
meters long. They walked back toward the monolith through the canyon of
containers.

“I didn’t
know there were so many of these,” Jody commented.

“I know,”
Peter responded. “Me and Mike and…some other guys…” his voice trailed off.

“The
other guys we worked with are dead,” Mike said.
 
“The wasps got ‘em. Anyway, they helped us get all these moved from the
compound to the monolith. That was a huge job.”

“Oh,”
Jody said.

Peter
brightened a second later and continued his lesson on Logistics 101 for Jody’s
benefit.
 

The
containers, Peter explained as they walked, were spaced far enough apart that
the doors on either end could be opened, and the contents removed with a lift
when needed. All you had to do was to know where everything was at all times.
That was the key. Inside the containers were closed crates packed with
supplies. She knew that already, she said. The lifts were designed to interlock
with the crates. Everything was modular. A lift could lift two thousand kilos
and move at twenty-four kilometers an hour on level ground. She knew that, too,
because he’d told her that yesterday, she huffed.

As they
walked past the space between two stacks of containers, something caught Mike’s
eye at the jungle’s edge just a few meters away. A big patch of leaves had
moved as if something had been startled.

“Did you
see that?” he asked them.

“What?”
Jody asked.

“The
leaves moved,” Mike said.

“The
leaves always move,” Peter said, his eyes scanning the foliage.

“Not like
that,” Mike said. “Let’s get back.”

“Yeah
let’s go,” Jody said. “You’re scarin’ me.”

Thoroughly
spooked, they raced back to the safety of the monolith.

* * *

 
“Thanks for coming, Rachel,” Paul said to her.
“I know you’re busy.”

“No
problem,” she said. “I could use a break.”

“Have a
seat,” he said.

She
obliged with a warm look but wondered what the meeting was all about. She hoped
it wasn’t about Smith. She’d heard he was in custody, and she wasn’t very
interested in being distracted by any business around that particular bug right
now.

“So how
can I help you, Paul?” she asked.

“I haven’t
had a chance to ask you about the Verdians in any detail,” he said. “And I need
all the information you can give me about them.”

Rachel
thought about it. “Sure,” she said. “I can give you what I know…”

“I know
what you know already,” he interrupted with a consoling smile. “What I really
need is what you think!”

“That’s a
tougher question,” she said.

“I need
to know how much of a threat they are, Rachel.”

Rachel
mulled it over a little, shifted in her chair and crossed and uncrossed her
legs. The Verdians were a mystery, but she did have some interesting, and
disturbing, ideas about them. Most of the ideas she had come to her when she
was in her more fright-filled moods. The Verdians scared her.
 
There was something inexplicably wrong about
them. Somehow, they didn’t fit. She couldn’t put her finger on it. All she knew
was that they occupied a large part of her imagination during every waking
hour. They’d even found ways to violate her sleep state; and when they did,
they transmogrified any innocent or curious vision she might have been having
during her dreams to horrid nightmares filled with pain or fat spiders.