Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) (48 page)

The aliens in the room began to whistle and squeal again. The
sound cut through him like a cold knife.

“How is the poison produced? From what part?”

“I don’t . . . know.”

“How much do they have? Answer or suffer.”

Gilbert swallowed and ventured a brief glimpse into the alien’s
face and fear lurched in him suddenly like a heavy black toad. He was in danger
so profound that he could not swallow, though he wished to. That look, those
alien eyes were the devil’s own. He had just seen into the face of an
unfathomable being with the power of life without the reprieve of death and the
pain of hell itself at his command. Gilbert felt weak and wanted to sit down
but he stayed on his feet and tried not to fall. He felt himself rock forward
and back and wished he could make it stop. His new anatomy didn’t help any. He
clutched his Bible tightly.

“I haven’t done anything,” he managed to say dryly. “I am
innocent.” His voice trailed off. “I am innocent of this.”

Gilbert started to pray. Solemnly, calmly he formed the words in
his mind as his heart raced and his mind reeled with what could happen next. He
prayed that the unfairness would be lifted from him and those who had killed
the goons would feel its weight instead. He longed for them to suffer and not
he. He prayed to transfer the debt to the others, to let them pay, not he.

The alien unsheathed its sting and propped its hand like a spider
over Gilbert’s face, the sting posed right between Gilbert’s eyes.

Gilbert continued to pray as the thorn-like sting jabbed down
once. The sudden pain blinded him like a camera’s flash, and the prayer was
flushed from his mind by his high-pitched scream.

He went to his knees trembling as the heat radiated out over his
face and shoulders like hot tar. He fell to his side and shook. The pain cooled
an eternity later, leaving him in shock

and
disconnected.

“What is the nature of the poison?” the alien rasped. “From what
part is it produced?”

Gilbert heard the question and was dimly aware of whistling and
squealing in the distance like an odd sound from a radio turned down too low.

“I . . . don’t know . . .” he said weakly and started to pray once
more, his lips moving slightly. He prayed that Bailey and Lynch and the queer
woman would suffer in his place, not he.

The alien opened Gilbert’s mouth with one thin-fingered hand and
jabbed its sting into the center of his tongue with the other.

The pain rushed through his head and down his throat like a fierce
wind.

*
 
*
 
*

No one had mentioned it. They wouldn’t have known how to express
it anyway.

Their lives were expendable. Their flesh and blood were tools; just
a means to an end.

They were moving as fast as they could in light of Ned’s
condition. He stopped frequently and leaned against the wall. With each stop,
he seemed to lose strength. This one was the worst yet.

“Hey, Phil,” Ned croaked. “I’m done. You go on without me. I’m
done. I can’t help you.”

Mary put her hand to his head and felt the heat from it as if he’d
just come out of the hot sun. She looked over at Phil and shook her head. That
was that. A good friend was dying; but, more important, they’d have one less
soldier to fight the war. There was a deep depression in the wall of the tube a
few feet behind them and Phil and Mary walked him back to it and helped him
into it and down on the floor.

“You wait here,” Phil said. “Take a rest.” He placed his hand on
Ned’s shoulder and gripped it. “Take a rest,” he repeated.

Ned just looked up at them and said nothing because there was
nothing to say. There were no words of wisdom or poignant parting shots. Mary
patted his big chest then leaned in and kissed his hot brow.

“So long,” she said.

“So long,” Ned replied weakly.

They sat there quietly for a moment more, then Mary and Phil moved
away. They knew he wouldn’t be getting up. When Phil glanced over at Mary, he
saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

Phil fought back tears himself.

“Go!” he said to them. “Get moving!”

*
 
*
 
*

Gilbert had no idea how many times he had been stung. It felt like
an infinite number.

The alien’s voice echoed in his head. Time and again he’d been asked
where the poison came from. He had been truthful and answered that he did not
know. Time and again, he answered the same—and time and again, he’d been
stung.

He was lying on the floor as the pain from the last sting was
ebbing slowly from his groin. He was aware that the whistling and squealing
had stopped and that the aliens were gone.

Perhaps
they’d had enough
, he thought
.

He reached over and picked up his glasses and put them on his swollen
head. The chamber came into sharp focus. He sat up and turned and saw the teeth
of the alpha, and the massive legs of a goon. It was then that he noticed that
he wasn’t in the alpha’s chamber at all. This chamber was smaller, darker.
There was a sound like a sticky hiss coming from all around and a deeper sound
like a groan under it. It was too dark to see the source of it.

They are
finished torturing me,
he thought
. My pain is over.

He was too exhausted to get up, and he leaned back on his arms and
waited for the goon to help him. It was the least it could do for him after
what he’d been through.

He stared straight ahead and waited to be lifted up.

The goon did just that and jerked him to his feet then carried
him a few feet backwards and sat him down on a strange pedestal. Instantly,
vine-like tentacles sprang from the trunk of the seat and wrapped tight around
his legs, wrists and hips, holding him fast.

Gilbert swallowed.

The alpha stepped up closer to him. In its frail arms was what
looked like a large dark vase. Its surface was veiny and iridescent.

“In the shallow seas of my home world lives an organism with no
life of its own,” the
 
alpha began. “It takes from
others the life it needs and returns only pain. We call the organism . . .” the
sound that followed drained Gilbert’s blood. He’d heard it once before. “. . .
it requires little nourishment and can live on an organism with your mass for
many hundreds of your years. We reserve the use of this parasite for those who
are not truthful. We believe you have not been truthful about many things.”

“I haven’t done anything . . .” Gilbert said through dry cotton.
“I haven’t done anything.”

“Where are the others?”

“I’ve done only as you wanted me to,” he choked.

“What is the source of the poison?” the alpha rasped.

“I . . . don’t know . . . ”

The alien whistled once, and the pedestal next to Gilbert was
bathed in light from above.

The man was sitting on the same kind of pedestal, his legs and waist
bound tight by the pedestal’s vines. Perched on the top of the man’s head was
an amorphous mass about the size and shape of a cantaloupe. Dozens of
pencil-thin tentacles ran out of it and down into the man’s nose, ears, mouth
and eyes. Where the tentacles made contact, there was a raised and molded seal
as if the tentacle and the man’s flesh were one. The thing on his head pulsed
slowly; and as Gilbert watched, the tentacles slid out and in as if probing him
continuously. The man was frozen into a posture of extreme pain; the fingers of
his hands splayed open and stiff. The man’s skin was sallow and thin, sickly
translucent as if he’d been in that state for a long, long time. His spine was
bent over in an exaggerated stoop and his head tilted back in a pose of
grotesque bearing.

Gilbert felt his bladder release uncontrollably. Urine pattered
out onto the floor.

The alpha stepped up to the man and pointed to one of the
tentacles with a thin finger.

“The probes sustain the host,” it said. “They sustain and take
nourishment.”

It turned to Gilbert. “How much poison do they have?” it asked.

Gilbert prayed that his answer would be heard, and he would be set
free. “I do not know where the poison came from or how much they were able to
produce. That is the truth.”

The alien reached into the jar and lifted the parasite out. Its
tentacles hung limp from the round body like the strings of a wet mop. Fluid
dripped from the ends back into the jar with a hollow tinkle. Gilbert smelled a
sweet thick scent like the ocean shore at low tide.

“It is inert until the probes touch living material, then it
becomes quite active as you shall see. Answer or suffer.”

Gilbert pleaded. “I have answered you truthfully. Do as you wish,”
he added thickly. “I have no other answer.”

The alien brought the organism closer to Gilbert’s face. Gilbert
thought he saw several of the dark, wet tendrils raise up in his direction as
if pulled by static. If he didn’t answer, the alien would attach the parasite.
That was certain. He had already surrendered all there was about the Earth’s
major weather patterns. He had little to bargain with now.

He decided to do what he did best.

“The poison was produced from an . . . the base was derived from
nicotine, a component of the cigarettes you provide. The tobacco was heated to
extract the . . . nicotine. The nicotine was further heated to . . . to
separate and . . . concentrate the alkaloid.”

“How?”

“It was heated in cans and . . . condensed out, on the inside of a
short . . . tube . . .”

“How much was made?”

“The entire supply of tobacco yielded . . . less than a gram of
useable poison. Only enough to coat . . . two or three tips as you saw.”

“There is no more?”

“There is no more,” Gilbert said and prayed.

The alien raised the parasite up over Gilbert Keefer’s head.
Gilbert moaned and shook so violently to get away from it that his glasses flew
off his modified head. The tendrils touched cool, wet and still on his forehead
then sprang to life and writhed and crawled on his face and head seeking greedy
entrance. He screamed and flailed and the vines holding him tightened further.
The first tendril, squirming stiffly, went up his right nostril into his sinus
and down the back of his throat. The others crawled into his ears and crashed
with the sound of dynamite through his eardrums. He thrashed and clamped his
thin lips tight but the sharp, stiff tips of the tendrils found the corners of
his mouth and worked in.

The pain that would not end began. His body stiffened.

When the alpha returned to its chamber, it summoned the others and
told them that the danger was no danger at all. A few captives may have escaped
and would be recaptured soon.

The strange one was no longer of
use and was being made to suffer. The weather information was filled with
untruth.

*
 
*
 
*

“That’s the lab up ahead,” Bailey said quietly, pointing to the
large opening. “It’s so gross.”

“Get ready,” Phil said and plucked an arrow out of Seseidi’s
quiver. Seseidi took the hint and withdrew another and mounted it in the bow.

Phil approached slowly and peeked around the edge of the opening.
When he looked back at them his face was a mask of fear and hatred. He signaled
Seseidi up with a wagging finger then guided him up to the edge of the opening
by the shoulders as if showing a kid a display at the zoo.

Phil thought about just walking past the opening and continuing
on. Something told him that
just
wouldn’t be right.

“Kill them,” he said calmly and made like shooting the bow at
them.

Seseidi took aim and let the first arrow fly.

At the sound of the bow, the closest alien looked up with a snap
of its head and the arrow struck it in the face. It squealed and grabbed the
sagging shaft and held it there as if holding it up neutralized it. The second
alien looked up and froze when it saw Phil and the Indian standing in the
opening. Seseidi readied another arrow and took aim.