Metal Boxes - Trapped Outside (15 page)

Numos snorted, “Oh hell, boy. I’ve been in charge for as long as I can remember. You are the planetary governor. I will not, repeat not, circumvent an order from the Emperor giving you authority. I’m not on speaking terms with the big guy like you are. So you say you want us to get out of the open and into a hidey-hole? A command I believe is eminently practical, by the way. Well, I will dig us a deep hole and pull it in after us, if that is what it takes.” He pointed a finger at Stone. “Give it up, Ensign Stone, the doctor says things are changing in you. Tell us what you know.”

Stone nodded, “Yes, sir. I didn’t think—well, I guess I can see things I shouldn’t. I don’t know. It all looks normal, but maybe it isn’t. I can see Tuttle in her suit, even though she has the gilley setting on. I can see through her, too. However, I do see an outline, kind of like a fuzzy coloring book outline. And I can hear Jay and Peebee.”

“You what?” the doctor asked.

“My drascos. I can hear them chewing leaves and slurping at a bucket of water.”

Tuttle said, “I’m sorry, Ensign. I haven’t gotten around to having someone take water to them.”

Stone nodded, “That’s okay. I heard Dollish talking to them when he took the bucket over there. He’s afraid of them, yet he took them water anyway.”

Allie said, “You heard them?”

Stone nodded. “I wasn’t thinking anything of it at the time because all I hear is just a dull buzz unless I listen carefully.

Numos said, “That is what? A hundred yards from here?”

Stone thought for a moment. It didn’t seem that far away, he could smell his girls. Both were wafting a chocolate mint odor. When he had smelled Dollish taking the water to Jay and Peebee he smelled mint with citrus and the same odor of burnt engine oil he smelled wafting off the doctor a few moments ago. Dollish had been friendly, scared, and on the verge of panic.

He realized what he had just thought. He’d smelled Dollish from a hundred yards away, not just the man, but he’d smelled the man’s emotions. Jay and Peebee’s sense of friend versus foe was in their ability to smell through the receptors in their mouths. He had always thought they liked who they liked and matched the person’s smell to their friendship, but what if they could identify a human’s emotions by smell? Didn’t some Earth animals have the ability to smell fear on humans? Someone had once told him cats could tell who was a cat person and who wasn’t, maybe they did it by smelling the human’s emotions or whatever secreted from their bodies.

Thinking hard caused his headache to come back, still he realized he was on to something about drascos. He smelled an overwhelming mixture of mints—and what was becoming clearer to him by the moment—it represented a friend. Wintergreen was friendly help. It had to be, as the odor was coming from the doctor and Tuttle, two women with strong biases toward aiding others. Peppermint was a loyal friend. Numos reeked of it.

Dr. Triplett had tripped his smell sensor. He could smell her sour milk disloyalty, the same for both scientists who made him angry, yet to varying degrees. The one Ryte had tied up smelled stronger than the other. His drascos were a wonderful mixture of all the mints he’d ever smelled with a chocolate overlay. He could smell the love and friendship from them even now. He looked at Allie and stood up. His head was spinning. She smelled of wet, dark chocolate. Yes, she loved him and he knew it.

He looked up to see faces staring at him in concern. He could smell a lemony scent of concern coming from all of them. He couldn’t say why lemon matched concern, but something in the back of his mind said so. Ryte slid into the tent, joining the group. Peppermint and—and licorice. What the hell did licorice mean? He could hear Jay and Peebee wonking at him from across the meadow. He was excited, scared, curious, and—

Tuttle caught Stone as he passed out just before his head hit the grass.

TWENTY-ONE

Stone woke with a start. Replaying his dreams through his memory, he found them muddled, mixed up, not making any sense. Was it something in a dream that pushed him to wakefulness? Were the voices chattering away in the distance too loud? Was his body just done sleeping? The conversations shouldn’t have bothered him, they weren’t as loud now that he was fully awake as he thought they were when they wormed their way into his dreams. Listening carefully, he heard simple, everyday chatter.

“Where did I leave the—?”

“Who’s got duty?”

“Double nickels! Beat that you goobers!”

He was in a cool, dark room, not at all what he expected. He clearly—sort of—remembered being in a hospital tent in the middle of a meadow. Dark as the room was, there was enough light from a dimmed lantern for him to see a decent ceiling, bulkheads, and a deck. Breathing a sigh of relief, he sat up and reached out to pat the bulkhead. Yes, the walls were rough, natural, slightly damp rocks, real, not some hologram. Real was good with Stone, at least he was inside and it didn’t matter whether the room was manmade, carved out by wind and water over millions of years, or scooped out by the hands of the gods. Inside was inside.

His movement tripped the motion sensor on a lantern across the room. It raised the light level from dim to slightly less dim. It didn’t do much to improve his vision, but it would allow him to move around the room without stumbling over the uneven floor or anything else scattered about.

There were a dozen men and women sleeping on pallets in the large room. He was able to see each sleeper clearly without the increased light, yet was glad for the extra light. Seeing something in startlingly clear detail in a relatively dark room was disturbing. He shook his head trying to wake up, wondering if he was in a coma, delusional or something else, because his head felt fuzzy and he didn’t feel quite right. “
No,
” he thought. “
It’s worse than not quite right. I don’t feel like me.
”

The soft breaths coming from most of the people sleeping in the room were gentle and slow, filling the air with a pleasant floral odor mixed with mint. A couple sleepers in the back were neutral, almost odorless. Stone wondered if their odorless breath was due to the drugs he could smell coursing through their bodies or due to their being so close to death their bodies’ resources were concentrating in a stubborn effort to live.

Stone stopped thinking and muttered, “No. That’s not right at all. I can’t see in the dark any more than I can smell drugs in someone else’s blood.” He remembered his last thoughts back in the hospital tent. Menendez said he was contaminated by drasco blood and sperm through the deep gash in his arm. He rubbed his arm. The gash had closed over and scarred. That part was simple modern combat medicine, the military nanites doing their job. Somehow, his touch felt wrong like he was wearing thick leather gloves and was running his hand over his arm through multiple layers of clothing.

He lay back down. The fuzzy feeling eased, but he couldn’t fall back asleep. He thought he must still be dreaming and couldn’t wake up. How else could he explain using a sense of smell to identify friend from foe, to discern if someone was lying, and to know without a doubt that Allie loved him? He smiled. He definitely remembered she smelled like wet, dark chocolate. Jay and Peebee smelled like milk chocolate and they loved him, so Allie loved him, too. The love wasn’t the same type, but both were chocolaty just the same. He knew Allie still felt that way because he could smell her breath. She was seated with Numos and a small cluster of marine NCOs outside about a hundred yards from the room entrance.

Yes, he must still be dreaming. There is no way he could tell where she was, much less who she was with. Humans can’t do that. He hadn’t even known his drascos could do it. He could clearly smell Allie and Numos. He could smell the breaths of the other marines, and could identify individual odors, just not who was whom, they were just blank slates at this point, yet they all had a mint overtone to the wide variety of odors coming from the group. Mint was friendship and loyalty, or loyalty and friendship. He realized the pairings were different depending on which emotion or condition was the person’s primary motivation.

He tried to wake up and realized he wasn’t really asleep. He wanted to be asleep. He wanted to be dreaming so he could wake up and be normal again. A raised voice from outside the room interrupted his thoughts. “What the—”

A second voice said, “Just give them room.”

“No shit, but did they have to step right in the middle of my backgammon game?”

“Feel free to complain to the boss.”

A thick tarp was pushed aside, covering a small opening in the cave wall letting in the light from another room. Jay squeezed through the little gap, wonking softly as she expanded back to her normal size. Stone was a little shocked. He hadn’t realized his drascos could pass through a hole smaller than their size. Jay, followed closely by Peebee, came to lie down next to him. They both tried to put their massive heads on his chest, jostling back and forth, sharing breath. Something tickled the back of his mind. Triplett had said both girls were pregnant. He didn’t require Triplett’s confirmation. He now knew they were both pregnant. Each of his girls carried three fertilized eggs, growing larger and stronger. Both Jay and Peebee knew they were pregnant and both were happy about it. Well, Peebee was happier than Jay. Jay was still angry about how she’d gotten this way, but Peebee pointed out that was the only way to get babies, males being what they were.

Jay snorted in derision. “
Human males aren’t that way
.”

Peebee laughed, “
I’d swear you think we are more human than we are us.”

“
Would that be a bad thing?”

“
No, it just isn’t.”

Jay asked, her voice ringing clearly in Stone’s head. “
Are you awake for now, Mama? You’ve been asleep too long. Get up, please?
”

Stone said softly, “I’m awake.”

Jay shook her head and snuffled to clear her breath in confusion.

Peebee wonked excitedly. “
Mama? You can talk now
!”

Jay said, “
Hush, Peebee. That isn’t possible. Mama is still a human male and can only jibber jabber in human talk.
”

“
But I heard Mama in our talk! Do it again, Mama
.”

Stone hesitated. If he wasn’t asleep—and he was sure he was awake—then he must be insane. He loved his girls, but they were drascos, alien animals, smart animals, but they weren’t sentient by any definition of the dozens of tests performed on them by a plethora of human scientists. He gave a mental snort. Yeah, like human is the standard for intelligence the galaxy should follow.

He said a sample, “Hello?”

Jay wonked and Peebee puffed herself up, stretching to the ceiling, flapping her wings with a snap and a pop. Both drascos were shouting.

Stone whispered, “Shhhh. There are sick people trying to sleep here.”

Peebee settled her head back down on Stone’s chest. “
See, Jay? I told you.”
She giggled. Stone couldn’t interpret the noise any other way. She giggled in a high-pitched little girl excited squeal. “
Mama, you’ve changed! Did you get pregnant, too?
”

“No.”

Jay laughed, her voice only slightly less giggly than her sister. “
Don’t be silly, Peebee. He is a male. Males cannot get pregnant and if he could, we could smell it. I can smell your eggs and you can smell mine.
”

“I can smell the eggs in each of you. I’m sorry we didn’t stop the male drasco before he could do that to you. You’re too young for such a change.”

Peebee giggled.
“We aren’t babies anymore. We get to have babies to take care of and teach just like you teach us. We can keep them, can’t we? Jay says the navy won’t let us keep our babies.
”

Jay said, “
They already think two of us is two too many for you, Mama. You won’t let the navy send marines to kill our babies, will you?
”

Stone shook his head. “No. I will do everything I can to protect you and your babies. Why would you think the marines would kill your babies? You’re friends with marines, aren’t you?” He wanted to deny he was even having this all too real and way too weird conversation.

Jay replied, “
There are some good marines and there are bad marines. The bad ones like to kill. They keep it hidden, but they like it. They would kill us if they could
.”

Peebee added, “
We are careful around the bad marines. We are careful not to have an accident
.”

Stone thought, trying to direct his voice subvocally. “
You tell me which are good marines and which are bad, okay
?” There was no response. Oddly, he could tell they hadn’t heard him. Crazy or not, there were rules to his insanity. He could hear them in his mind, the sound never reaching his ears. They could hear him, but only when he spoke aloud to them as if the action of speaking made his thoughts loud enough in his mind for them.

He repeated aloud, “You tell me which are good marines and which are bad, okay? Let me get up now.” He carefully pushed at their heads to not scrape his hands against their rough hides, but they didn’t feel as rough as normal. His own skin felt like he’d wrapped it in thick leather swaths. He looked at his hands and arms. It looked like normal human skin. He looked up toward the tarp covering the opening. “Doctor Menendez is coming.”

Jay said, “
I can smell her, too. She is nice, but she is afraid of us.”

Peebee giggled, “
Not dangerous, just afraid. I like to sneak up on her from behind. She’s funny when I do that.”

“You girls behave yourselves while she is here, okay?” He stood up, realizing he was naked. Grabbing a blanket, he wrapped it around his waist and faced the opening just as Menendez slipped into the room.

She hesitated when she saw the drascos. Seeing Stone standing, she walked over to face him. Without speaking, she flashed a small penlight into his eyes, harrumphing at what she saw. Running a scanner over his body from head to toe, she shook the scanner, pounded it against her other palm and ran it again.

Grabbing a marine uniform from a stack near the door, she tossed it to him. “We had to cut your uniform off, so these should fit.”

She turned to leave, but Stone stopped her with a question. “So, am I all right, Doctor Menendez?”

Looking up at him, she shook her head.

He realized she was shorter than he remembered. Slipping the utilities on under the blanket, he stood, looking down at her. He was almost five feet ten inches tall and he clearly remembered she was only four or five inches shorter. Now she looked almost a foot shorter. He looked down at their feet. Yes, it must be the uneven cave floor. She must be standing in a low spot and he was on a high spot.

Menendez said, “No. Yes. Maybe. Hell Ensign Stone, I don’t know. Every database I have available says mixing alien blood into a human will kill said human. That doesn’t even come close to mixing in alien sperm. You should have died, not in hours and certainly not days, but within minutes. We’re not designed to mix species. Humans and canines fell from the same planetary evolutionary chain and have been best friends for thousands of years. Dog blood would kill you just as fast as alien blood. For that matter, swapping blood with some humans who have different blood types will kill you, too. So, no. I don’t know how you are.”

Stone nodded. “What has happened to me?”

Menendez said, “Happening. You are still changing for all I know. All we can do is wait and see. We don’t have any database to explain why you aren’t dead and we don’t have any equipment to even begin to investigate your condition. My only possible theory is your reconfigured marine and navy nanites combined with the free floating drasco DNA strands are managing to keep you alive.” She shook her head and rushed out of the room, ducking through the small opening.

Peebee said, “
See? She is afraid of us.”

Jay added, “
Mama, now she is afraid of you, too.”

Stone didn’t know what to say. He smelled the fear rolling off the doctor in waves of grapefruit and lime. “Corporal Tuttle is waiting for us at the cave entrance.” He could smell Tuttle’s breath: a weird combination of wet wintergreen. She was all charged sexual desire and friendly help. He smiled “Yep, that’s Tuttle all right.”

Peebee laughed, “
I like Barb. She let us watch her mate with human males. It was funny.”

Stone said, “She what?”

Jay said, “
Not here at home, but at the other place when Mama went away and Barb stayed with us. At home, she can’t get out of her metal skin.
”

Stone shook his head, “Babysitter sex on the couch! Yeah, my cousin Jimbo and I saw the movie once. Kinky, but I guess it won’t hurt you to know about humans.” He was curious about the girls calling Allie’s World home. He didn’t remember ever telling them where they were going, so how did they know this was the planet of their birth. He was due for a long conversation with his drascos. Were they even his anymore? Could he keep sentient, intelligent creatures as pets? They’d been born on Allie’s World, but they couldn’t survive in the wild any more than he could. Turning them loose would kill them. He would have to find a quiet place where he could talk to them privately so others wouldn’t think he was nuts talking to himself.