The Druid Gene (5 page)

D
arcy had come
a long way since the uncontrollable shrieking of her initial waking. She’d worked through several emotional stages since Hain and friends had picked her up in the desert. First, there’d been sheer terror. Next came a period of disbelief and intense feelings of isolation and hopelessness, which had been quickly followed up with outrage, and that was where she’d stayed.

Anger was going to get her and Adam out of here.

She’d arrived at a point where she accepted her current situation but was unwilling to give up hope of escape. She’d been kidnapped for a purpose that wasn’t readily apparent. They’d surgically implanted a language chip in her brain, which the insects called a dummy chip whenever Hain wasn’t within earshot. It enabled her to communicate with them, which for some reason they found hilarious, and they’d kept her isolated in a recovery room with no contact aside from the insects themselves.

She let out an exasperated sigh and looked down at her itchy, ashy skin. They’d explained that it was standard procedure to strip the topmost layer of epidermis to minimize virulent outbreaks on the ship. That made sense, she supposed, given the history of devastating germs decimating unsuspecting, unexposed populations on Earth. Those kinds of problems would have to be worse within the confines of a ship that kidnapped people regularly from various worlds.

Unfortunately, with that layer of skin went all of her natural bacterial flora as well as her comfort. Her skin had been an itchy, flakey, uncomfortable mess since then, despite the probiotic lotion they’d given her. At least the clothing they gave her to wear wasn’t irritating. The fabric skimmed her skin, warming or cooling depending on need, without any weight at all. A shimmery-white jumpsuit, it was made of the most amazing self-healing fabric.

It had been a strange experience to put it on for the first time. One of the insects had stood her up and another held her there. As her head spun, another one of them had poked a hole in a shapeless blob of fabric with a pincer, then pulled that over her head. He’d created holes for Darcy’s arms and yanked on the fabric until it covered her. This tugging-and-fitting process had only taken a few minutes before Darcy was dressed in what appeared to be a soft, seamless, form-fitting garment. She had no idea what it was made of, but it was extraordinary.

With nothing much to do during her recovery besides sleep, eavesdrop on the insects, and fret about where Adam was and how to escape, she fiddled with the clothing until she figured it out. She found she could adjust it herself into infinite configurations by clicking a small button imbedded in the fabric of the sleeve. It released the tension in the weave allowing her to manipulate the garment until she was satisfied with the fit. Then she clicked it again to save the setting.

If she kept the sleeves and legs shorter, or the neckline pulled lower, the fabric became denser. Alternately, she could opt to cover more surface area by pulling the fabric up high like a turtleneck or even farther, into a hood over her hair, which made the fabric become more sheer. She just wished they had let her keep her shoes. It felt weird to be barefoot.

Ultimately, she opted for capri-length pants, three-quarter sleeves, and a scoop neck so that the fabric remained opaque. That was a nod toward modesty. While it wasn’t transparent enough to titillate her insect friends with views of her areola and pubic hair, it left little to the imagination, clinging to her like a second skin. She sighed. Who cared if she had back fat or how big her ass was if she was kidnapped on an alien ship in space? As long as the insects didn’t mistake her for a grub, she figured she was probably okay.

But she wasn’t okay.

She had lots of questions and, so far, very few answers.

Neither Hain nor the insects knew or cared what they’d just done to her medical career, which might very well be over now. No one told her anything about Adam though she asked them about him constantly. She hated that her last night with him had been so strange and volatile. She’d jumped to conclusions about his reaction to the blue light and that hadn’t been fair. He deserved better than that. She should have given him more time, a little benefit of the doubt. She’d just been so upset and reacted badly. And now none of that even mattered. She might never know what the hell had happened when she touched those stones.

Hain’s offhand commandment had been followed to a T—no one had explained anything to her. They ignored her except to monitor her convalescence from the surgery and ask her general health questions.

But she’d ascertained a few things, just by keeping her eyes and ears open. First of all, she was on a spaceship called the
Vermachten
. It boggled her mind. She’d gone from being someone who didn’t believe that such things existed, to having a bizarre experience in the desert, to being abducted and experimented on by aliens. The paradigm shift was too great. It was enough to make her think she might have had a psychotic break.

But she’d been treated relatively well. She’d been fed, kept warm. Physically, she felt great. From what she gathered from overhearing snatches of conversation, they now considered her recovery to be complete and were about to put her in some kind of cell.

She dragged her bare feet, trying to take in every detail that she could manage without annoying her escorts so much that they would be tempted to use the knock-out sticks they held. If she and Adam had any hope in hell of escaping this place, she needed to gather as much information about it as possible.

So much of it looked the same. It was a rabbit warren of cramped, dimly lit hallways, coated with a varnish of grime. There was little to differentiate one section of the ship from another, once they left the small infirmary where she’d been kept. She had no idea where Adam was, but now that she was out of the infirmary, she was determined to find him and a way out of this mess.

One of the insects prodded her from behind with the same kind of weapon that had been used to capture her. “Move along, little bigot.”

She glanced back, trying to figure out which one of them had made that comment. She’d been cared for by the iridescent green insects throughout her recovery, but she honestly couldn’t say if it had been by the same two that were escorting her now or thirty different individuals. They all looked and sounded the same to her. That thought made her uncomfortable. She didn’t want him to be right. She’d been trying to pick out some unique characteristic to distinguish between them, but thus far, she hadn’t been successful.

She’d become habituated to the sight of their gleaming, oily shells. She no longer shrank from the touch of their pincers or the brush of the hair bristling from their forelegs as they nursed her through the postsurgical recovery.

She’d observed their behavior scrupulously. Yes, they were aliens. And they were giant bugs. They clearly operated under a different set of cultural conventions, but it was equally clear that they had roughly the same set of hierarchical needs that Abraham Maslow had described in his theory of human motivation. So, she could relate to them on a fundamental level. That was a starting point, anyway.

She sensed that this ship had already put a lot of distance between her and her home. She and Adam would need to find an ally on the inside if they were going to escape. Logic dictated that it was more likely they would sneak out, rather than fight their way out, since neither of them had any experience fighting and she doubted that Adam’s tai-chi lessons counted. So she kept trying to break through the cultural barriers, to cozy up to her jailers, in hopes of finding someone sympathetic enough to assist an escape attempt.

It was a long shot, but she didn’t have a lot of options.

However, her attempts at communicating with her captors were hampered by a few issues. She didn’t even bother to try with Hain, who treated her more like a fascinating science project than a person. There was no empathy to be found there.

The insects were taciturn by nature. They seemed to be irritable and quick to take offense. They were focused on their work and disgruntled by distractions. They were annoyed by her naiveté of the universe at large.

And then there was her lifelong aversion to insects. They’d picked up on that early on, before she’d mastered herself. That hadn’t endeared her to them.

But being called a bigot? That was just so damn messed up.

She planted her feet and stopped. She couldn’t go another step without being heard. “Look, I’m not a bigot, okay?”

One of them twitched an antenna.

She interpreted that to mean he was annoyed, based on prior experience.

“Really? What’s my name?”

She wracked her brain, but had no idea. She’d overheard a few names, but couldn’t be sure which name went with which individual. Whatever differences there were between them, she just hadn’t figured out yet.

But she would eventually, she was sure.

He folded his forelegs. “I didn’t think so.”

The other one let out a staccato laugh, and his mandibles worked, an indication of his amusement. “Aw, come on, give the anthropoid a break. Obviously none of them ever leave that rock. You’d be backwards too, if you’d never seen an outsider to your world. She’s probably never even heard of the Swarm.”

Darcy latched onto the modicum of compassion she’d heard. “Yes! And what if your first exposure to outsiders was being abducted?”

“Not my problem.”

A door opened behind Darcy. The less sympathetic of the two insects prodded her to go through the door. She remained focused. “I’m not an anthropoid. I’m human.”

“Are you? That distinction means very little here.”

“What’s the Swarm?”

“You’ve got a lot of questions.”

“I’d have fewer if you’d just answer some of them.”

The meaner of the two ignored her quip, backed up a little bit, and turned slightly. After a moment it chattered to the other one at a rapid-fire pace, too fast for Darcy to understand.

She’d figured out a few days before that they had spiracles on their shoulders through which they forced air to form vowel sounds. It was the concert of these sounds with the consonant sounds made by the joints in their forelimbs that made speech possible for them, since they did not appear to have vocal chords. It was amazing, actually. But when they spoke rapidly, the clipped, forceful consonants were all Darcy could hear.

It was embarrassing that they spoke far slower when speaking to her, just so she could comprehend them. She’d overheard them joking about it, which she was certain was their intent.

They thought she was stupid.

The mean one turned his back and walked away.

The one remaining ducked his head in a gesture of acknowledgement and gently put his foreleg around Darcy, ushering her into a darkened, closet-sized room where just a few dim lights glowed in relief. The door closed behind them.

As soon as they were alone, Darcy appealed to him. Maybe a different tactic would work? So far she’d been unable to get them to tell her why she was there or what they were planning to do with her.

“Please, help me. I just want to survive. I want to know more about your species—how I can tell you apart, what your names are. Please—tell me something about you. Isn’t it possible that we could be friends?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t move or look at her. He seemed to be deciding. Finally, he gestured at the room. “There is no need for decontamination. You have already undergone the procedure.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his clicks came out slow and soft. “No one answered your questions because someone could have been listening.”

She held her breath and waited, searching his alien features.

He turned his unblinking, multifaceted eyes to her again, briefly. “My brothers and I are a species called the hymenoptera. We are from a world ten times the size of your world, far distant from here.”

She wrinkled her brow. “You’re all male?” She had surmised that, but never been certain.

“Yes. Hain is our queen. Her consort, the Lovek, rarely leaves his quarters. He does all his dealings through Hain. I’m told he is like you. An anthropoid species. Apparently he doesn’t like us either, because none of us ever sees him.”

“Oh.” She felt mortified. She wanted to protest, but everything she thought to say sounded crude and insincere.

How could she be blamed for disliking her captors? That only highlighted how alien they really were. There had to be something more to that, a reason why they were so hypersensitive. The whole situation and their reaction to her seemed bizarre. There were so many things she didn’t understand.

“We are a hive species. We commonly work interstellar jobs like this. It is work others prefer not to do, but for which we are well suited.” He turned away and reached out to the computer interface near the door, pressing a few keys. “Blame is laid at our feet for the wrongdoings of others. These are things you cannot possibly understand.”

“But I might—I want to understand.”

“You have species like us on your world?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “Similar. But they are smaller. Much…smaller.” She was afraid to say anything else, for fear of offending him.

“Ah. Yes. Oxygen is the limiting factor for species like ours. Your world’s atmosphere must contain a lower oxygen content. I am called Tesserae71. I am distinguished by the downy black fur around my ocelli.”

“I don’t know that term…”

“Ocelli? Simple eyes.” He tapped a pincer next to the dark spots above his large, compound eyes.

She stared at that part of him, committing his anatomy to memory.

He shifted. “In future, you may not want to stare with such frequency. It may be acceptable within your culture. We find it offensive. It will behoove you to be very cautious once you are inside here.”

She looked down at her hands. “Of course. I apologize. I just want to remember you.”

“It is unlikely you will see me again.”

“What? Why?”

Her stomach flipped over. She’d finally broken through to someone and now she’d never see him again? At least she’d gained some information from him. That was something. Now she knew that Hain pulled the strings for someone else and these guys, the hymenoptera, were merely working joes who punched a card and did what they were told. They weren’t the ones behind this. Someone called the Lovek was. She’d heard that name before. From Hain.