Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series) (9 page)

Maybe I should have worn some clothes this time.

He felt himself going suddenly downhill and had to hang onto the
soft branches to keep from falling. His feet slid some on the next step, and
the one after that had him flailing and grabbing, then tumbling, rolling and
sliding down the incline head over heels, clutching at the tool to keep from
losing it.

He rolled to a stop at the bottom and stood up, brushing the
leaves and bugs off his naked body. He stung in a hundred places from scrapes
and cuts. He felt bugs all over him.

“Goddamn . . .” he muttered in frustration.

It took him less than two seconds to realize he had no idea what
direction to go in.

He turned around to try to get his bearings.

The jungle answered back with a monotony of leaves and branches,
giving no hint of the right direction. The din around him made the idea
hopeless of homing in on some shelter borne beacon of sound.

He slapped at an especially big and ugly bug and felt its mass as
his hand hit it. It smacked with a noise into a broad leaf some distance away.

He took his best guess and started to walk. A few meters farther,
and he was going uphill again: a good sign. Encouraged, he picked up the pace.
That was it. He’d fallen into the ravine and started back up exactly in the
direction he’d intended in the first place. Using the vines and branches to
pull himself up, he was up out of the ravine and on level ground in no time.

He walked a few meters farther and, when he judged the distance to
be just right, turned ninety degrees again and headed for what was surely the
clearing.

When he reached the point where he should have broken out but
didn’t, the sense of dread built with each step. He continued on until he was
absolutely sure he had gone wrong.

He stopped, and fear welled up and made him choke.

Kelly wasn’t stupid. There was a way to do this. He just had to
keep his wits
. That’s all
, he
reassured
himself. The way to do it
was to walk in sets of four straight lines of progressively longer distances
turning ninety degrees to the left at the end of each leg. That would do it. He
wasn’t
that
far from the clearing, he
just didn’t know where it was.

He started off. The first leg would be one hundred meters and he
paced it off as accurately as he could. He slapped and whacked at the foliage
as he struggled through.

A hundred paces later, he stopped.

No clearing.

He turned left and started counting.

He stopped at one hundred paces to slap at the insects on his
sweating face and chest. They were getting thicker by the minute, and he
thought they must be attracted to his sweat or body odor. He had intended to
stay in the jungle a couple of minutes, no longer. He felt a flush of panic at
the prospect of staying out in the crawling mass of foliage all night. He felt
a sharp sting on his abdomen and smashed the hard little crawler that caused
it. Another on his neck got the same treatment. He wiped at a dark spot on his
leg and felt the place mash wetly under his fingers. He had the sudden animal
impulse to run.

He turned left again.

One hundred paces farther, he stopped and had to put the tool down
to swipe and whack at the bugs, large and small on his sweat-slickened skin. He
could feel some of the smaller ones stuck in the heavy sweat, squirming for
freedom. He brushed them off as best he could and dove ahead through the
foliage, using the tool to move the vines and branches. Visions of maggots and
flies with sharp probes filled his head.

He turned and walked, stopping occasionally to swipe the crawlers
off his legs and butt. His feet and ankles were especially vulnerable and felt
as if they were covered with
crawlers
.
They were.

Flustered and nearing panic, he lost count of the steps about
halfway through the last leg and guessed at the remainder.

He slapped hard at a sting on his back. Another bite farther down
and out of reach made him use the tool as a scraper to get it off. Something
crawled in his groin, and he caught it in his fingers and felt it squirm. He
mashed it against a thick branch.

He was dripping sweat now, and the panic was rising in him like
bile. He had to get out.

He’d completed the first circuit, and the need to double the
distance on each of the next four legs filled him with horror. He brushed bugs
off and started out, faster this time, swatting and whacking at the branches as
he went.

“Christ!”

The bite on his calf made him stop and grab at it. He touched the
tough body of the thing that had attached itself and felt an acid when he
squeezed it.

But, the goddamned thing was not going to stay on him.

He brushed his fingers over his sweaty face one way then another
to clear the bugs off, then gritted his teeth and tore the thing off his leg
with a single yank.

The searing pain as the tough little bastard came off made him
howl. The thick foliage and hissing, clicking din swallowed the scream.

He crushed the thing into the soft dirt under his feet, then
pounded the spot with his hand. While he was bent over, something else
fluttered into the crack of his ass. It was hard-shelled like a beetle; he
crushed it with his fingers.

“You mother fucker!”

Panting from the pain in his leg, he stomped blindly on. He tried
to run but found it impossible; each step sent a jolt of pain up his leg.

A vine snagged his foot, and he crashed through the tangle to the
ground. He struggled to his feet and felt a mass of crawling and squirming on
his torso and brushed and swiped at the spot frantically with both hands.

He stumbled on, moving as fast as he could, sweating, and praying
now to burst out into the clearing with the next step.

He stopped and swiped at his chest and shoulders and arms and legs
at random.

“Gotta . . . get . . . out . . .”

He ran through the thick tangle of vines and branches, crashing
through them, beating them out of the way with the tool, stumbling and falling.
He tried to count and prayed he was right.

He viciously swatted the huge bugs and crawlers, smashing them
flat and leaving raised welts on his skin. He stopped and wiped his hands over
his body top to bottom, trying in vain to achieve just a brief moment of
bugless existence. He felt a sharp stinging on his butt and slapped at it
madly, turning in a tight circle, a dog chasing its own tail.

His heart pounding, he began to swing the tool back and forth like
a bat, hacking at the infinite mass of vines and thick leaves. He staggered
forward, swinging and hacking at the jungle, trying to kill it with the tool.

When he could swing it no longer, he let the tool hang at his side
as he stumbled blindly on, oblivious to the bugs that bit and sucked at him and
stung him.

Walking zombie-like, he pushed a large leaf out of the way and
came out, to his shock, in the clearing.

The utter absence of leaves and vines in front of his face caused
him to laugh out loud.

“Fuck
me
!”

He looked at the cluster of shelters to his left. He’d missed them
by two hundred meters at least. He shook his head in disbelief, not at the
measure of his miscalculation, but at the fact that he made it out at all.

Half smiling at the insects, he took a few swipes at the large
ones crawling up his legs and arms.

“Get the fuck off me.”

With little concern about being seen, he trotted along the
perimeter and back toward the cluster of shelters. He grinned nearly all the
way back.

Showered, bandaged and dressed, he stood behind the screen of the
rear door and looked out at the patch of jungle visible between the shelters.
He’d been foolish and lucky. A few more minutes in there, and he would have
been dead. He would have stumbled around and collapsed, and the bugs would have
eaten him alive.

He decided not to do any more freelancing. It was risky, and Smith
probably wouldn’t like it.

He itched all over and hoped the clinic was open. He planned on
going there first thing in the morning.

7

       
Donna wondered which
gene bastards like this one were missing that allowed them to do work like
this. It was one of life’s great mysteries. She’d read about people who could
do anything to anyone provided they did it as an order from someone higher in
rank than themselves. The prick sitting in front of her was one of those
types. Natzers or natzys, she thought they called them—something like that.

“That’s the deal, Applegate,” the facilitator said to her. “Take
it or leave it.”

Anyone could get down on his or her luck; it was part of life. But
why was it so many predators had to charge in, ripping and tearing as soon as
your knees hit the ground?

“You’ll be more than a nurse. That must appeal to you, am I
right?” the bastard asked.

“Sure. That’s not the problem. The problem is the pay down. I’m a
grade five. I should be paid down as a grade five.” She watched him scowl and
fiddle with the numbers a little. She knew what would be next—an itsy, bitsy
increase in the pay down, maybe enough for a sandwich each week, if that.

“I can go ninety-two fifty per annum, Applegate, but I’m afraid
that’s just about it.”

Two sandwiches.

“When would I leave for Verde whatever?”

“Verde’s Revenge. Verde for short. You’d leave tomorrow. They say
it’s the richest planet Richthaus-Alvarez Mining has
ever discovered.”

“Oh, really?”

“That’s right.”

“Any profit sharing?”

“Nope. I’m afraid not.”

“There never is any profit sharing, is there?”

“Rarely.”

“Then why would you bring it up?”

“I didn’t know I had.”

“You did, and you didn’t, didn’t you?”

It had to be one of those sadistic little things these rotten
bastards did just for fun. It had to be.

“I just thought you might find it interesting.”

“I see. I’ll take the deal. I think you knew I would. I’m sure Richthaus-Alvarez
appreciates your negotiating skills. You’re one smooth bastard. Pardon me.”

“It pays down,” he said.

“Right. It pays down . . .” she scoffed.

She shook her head right at him. He stared at her and finally
pursed his thick lips. Donna thought she could detect just the hint of a sick
little smile in those worm-like structures. Her Irish temper was flaring. She
could feel her ears beginning to turn red and wished for a perverse second she
could be this prick’s personal nurse for just a couple of days the next time he
got good and sick.

Something was wrong about this Verde deal. It didn’t make sense to
her that the alleged richest mining project in the Commonwealth was using the
cheapest contractors in same. Something was wrong about that. The fact that
Judy and some of the others from Fuji were there cemented it all down. They
could get all the Fuji workers for peanuts. To top it off, they’d signed her on
as a Nurse Administrator; some kind of double-duty contract. That was a sure
sign the pay downs were skimpy.

This contract would put her back five years. Five full years. All
because the director of the clinic on Fuji, where she worked last, was a
goddamned crook. Now everyone who had worked there had a blight on his or her
record; a permanent stigma attached to them like a nasty, derogatory addendum.

“You could look on the bright side. You could be out of work
completely,” the facilitator said through thick lips.

“Can I just sign and get the hell out of here, please?”

The facilitator sighed a big ol’ huffy huff and turned the pad
around for her. Donna scratched her signature in the flashing boxes with the
stylus; once, twice, three times. She tried to push the stylus right through
the pad on the last one. It didn’t do anything but stress out her signature.
It looked like a crazy woman had signed in her place. She almost laughed at it.

Perfect
.

She didn’t look at him, but she knew he was gloating. She slumped
back in her chair and closed her eyes tight. She was tempted to open her eyes,
lean forward, and let her evil eye flare at him. She knew how unsettling it
could be. Then, without trying, her head started to shake in denial.

“There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said, smelling blood.

She could have strangled him. She leaned forward with her hands on
her knees and glared at him. There was a beam of light coming in the window,
and she put her eye right in it to light up the blue part. She watched him
squirm as she fixed him with it.