Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits (3 page)

“All the
livestock, too,” Donna said. “They’ve got all those sheep, cattle and chickens
in Warehouse Three.”

“Well,
I’ve got news for them,” Rachel added. “Those species won’t survive here—not
unless they plan on totally isolating them from the environment. They have no
immunity. The parasitic species on this planet will literally eat the stock
alive.”
 

“It also
explains all the farming equipment and seed in Number Five,” John said. “They
were never planning to rely on a flow of resources from Earth. It looks to me
like they planned to become independent from the beginning.”

“I doubt
farming will work either,” Rachel said. “From what I can see, any species,
plant or animal that you tried to transplant to this environment from Earth would
be devoured by it. We humans can survive only because we have the tools and
medicine to fight the planet’s life with. But things like crops, animals—any
native species from Earth will croak here. You couldn’t take enough measures to
protect them. Eventually, they’d succumb to something ugly.”

“Then the
Bondsmen are doomed, too,” John said.

“Not
necessarily,” Rachel said. “Humans have an incredible ability to adapt. They’ll
just have to figure out how to live on what’s already here, like we have. This place
is one huge green salad with lots of meat mixed in. The problem is figuring out
how to eat it before it eats you. That’s what the biological surveys are
supposed to do—provide a foundation for all that. I hope they’ve got some good
biologists among their ranks, but I doubt that.”

“Why do
you say that?” Donna asked. “They’ve got everything else. I bet they’ve got the
best technical people and equipment. They proselytize like all hell.”

“Yeah,
but I’m talking specifically about biologists,” Rachel said. “Biologists have a
unique view. It’s just a personal opinion I have about mixing theologies. Some
things don’t mix.”
 
Finally, the talk of
collapse and survival died to the sound of Verde’s jungle, and the talkers
drifted away to their private places, thoughts, and overwhelming grief.

Rachel
was sure the last few minutes of talk, though somewhat useful, had been only a
mask, a temporary barrier against the coming grief. The conversation had helped
them choke down the worst of the news, to nibble tentatively at its awful edges
when its freshness was the most debilitating and toxic.

Sometime
later she found herself in bed crying silently. She heard Donna’s occasional
sniffing and knew she, too, was weeping for the loss of home and family. She
could see Donna’s form on the bed across the chamber, a tight knot with arms
pulling her knees up to her chest.

With a
long sniff, she wiped her eyes, rose up and saw John staring out into the green
from the entrance, a mere shadow in the dim light. The shock of the earlier
news, now unfettered by talk of other things, seemed to have rendered him
motionless and silent. She thought he might have been there for hours, but
couldn’t be sure. She had lost track of time as if it had vanished completely.

She hoped
when morning came the world she lived in would ground her once more, or perhaps
let her forget, at least a little. She wasn’t sure anything ever could again.

Finally,
she slept.

* * *

Donna
thought her patient was doing better. His breathing was regular, and his
temperature was up to normal. When she checked his pupillary response with a
sweep of her light, she thought she felt him move, just his left arm, ever so
slightly. She couldn’t be certain it had moved; but ever the optimist, she took
it as a good sign. She made a few notes and decided that tomorrow she would
irrigate his wounds again and decrease the flow of antibiotics. It had been
five days since Rachel brought him to her; and although he was still in a state
resembling a coma, she was fairly sure he would live, if not fully recover. He
would have to wake up first; but she had decided that, if he did, she would put
some effort into trying to restore his hearing.

The
organism had penetrated both ears, ruining any chance of him ever hearing
without the help of technology. She had never actually installed an auditory
prosthesis before but had seen the operation a few times. She had some
reference material that described the procedure in detail. She was pretty sure
she could do it. All she needed were the devices themselves. They weren’t all
that common, but she’d wager there were some, at least one set, somewhere in
the Bondsmen’s stores.

She took
another look at what used to be his auditory canals.

There was
no need to close them off; they were completely healed. They were nothing more
now than two extra holes in his head. Fairly smooth and as big around as her
thumb, they terminated deep inside with no remnant of his hearing apparatus in
sight.

“Is the
guy going to live or what?” Eddie asked from the doorway.

“I think
so. I was just thinking about how to get his hearing working again. I need some
equipment to do it with.”

“What
kind of equipment?”

“They’re
hearing devices made by Siemens called AUD's. If I had a set of them, I think I
could fix his hearing.”

“I know
how to find those things if they’re on the planet,” Eddie said.

“You do?”

“All I
have to do is get on a terminal for a minute. I can find them.”

“Just
how’s that?” she puzzled.

“I know
just about all there is to know about how stuff comes in, where it goes and who
gets it. I was the lead on the first crew from Transportation.”

“You
don’t say,” she said with a frown of appreciation.

“If they
haven’t changed the system too much, I can locate ‘em for you. If it’s in a
warehouse, I can tell you the container number and where it is. If it’s been
delivered, I can tell you who’s got it and where they are.”

This was
an unanticipated bit of luck. If what Eddie said were true, they could
inventory the entire settlement. A portable terminal or pad could be a
veritable shopping list for a bunch of thieves like them. All they needed was a
pad and rights to the system. They had their pads. Even when useless, pads were
something one never discarded. Donna’s was about six feet away, stuffed in a
locker.

“Do you
have the rights?” she asked.

“They’ve
probably been suspended by now, but I know how to get them back.”

“You do?”

“Sure.
It’s easy, especially on the trans system.”

“What’s
in it for you?” she asked with a grin.

Eddie
didn’t grin back, and Donna got the feeling she’d accidentally strummed a
nerve. He stood there for a moment looking at the ground as if some ugly memory
was taking shape just in front of his shoes.

“Nothin’,”
he said finally.
 
“I’ll do it for you for
free.”

“Deal?”

“Deal.”

As if to
seal it, Donna went right to the locker and fetched her pad and handed it to
him.

“Do your
stuff, then,” she challenged. “Show me what’s on this planet.”

“It’ll
take a few minutes to queer the system so I can use it,” he said sheepishly.

“Take
your time,” Donna said, stepping behind him so she could look over his
shoulder.

Eddie
turned the pad on, thumbed it, and then keyed it. A few minutes later he was
attached to the trans system.

“Very
nice,” she said, looking over his shoulder.

“I’ve
done this a few times.”

“Like
riding a bike, huh?” she asked. The comment brought a brief smile of pride to
his face.

“What’s
the part name again?” he asked.

“A-U-D,"
she spelled out the name.

Eddie keyed
it in. An instant later the system responded. “Two sets,” he said. “Both in
container YTEG778 in Warehouse One.”

“How do
we find the container?” she wanted to know. “The place is a mess.”

“It only
looks like a mess. If you know how it’s organized, it’s not so hard. I can find
it. What else do you need?”

She
almost said, “Booking on a transport back to Earth," then remembered there
was no Earth to return to; nothing you could live on anyway.

“Hmm . .
. this is interesting. You really can find anything we need—or want. All we
have to do is steal it.”

That
solemn look came over him like a cloud. “Yeah. All you have to do is steal it.”

“Can you
tell what’s been ordered—what’s on the way? Just curious.”

He
checked.

“There’s
nothing in the queue. No shipments at all. It’s blank.”

“So
that’s it then. John was right. It looks like nothing’s coming from Earth ever
again.”

“Looks
like it.”

“It seems
they’ve brought everything worth bringing with them, anyway. Damn, they must be
loaded. All that shit's just for them.”

She
thought for a moment. Eddie watched her blue-brown eye flash as if there were a
fire behind it.

“Eddie?
How many occupants are there in the cloister?”

“You mean
the Bondsmen’s place?”

“Yeah.”
 

“I don’t
know. I’d say maybe a thousand, maybe more.”
 

“And how
many contractors now, do you think?”

“Two
hundred. They sent some back, I heard.”

“That
figures. So about twelve hundred reside on the planet. And what? Ten or twelve
million metric tons of foodstuff, another ten million tons of just
stuff
—not including the heavy machinery?”

“I don’t
know. I guess so.”

She
thought some more.

“They
could last a long, long time before they ever had to leave the cloister.”

She could
see them now, peering out the windows, sanctimonious noses pressed flat against
the glass, safe behind their sacred walls. Nice and cool. Plenty to eat. No
bugs. No reason to go outside. Reading their Scripture. Eating. Praying.
Eating.

She
wondered who their leader or Grand Poobah or priest or whatever was now. She
tried to remember who the last one was.

They
seemed to change leadership quite regularly, if memory served her. She’d never
looked too closely at their doctrine and had only a cloudy picture of it. It
seemed to have lots of rituals, dogma and weird practices involving that
plus-sign-thing in it. But a few things stood out in the fog in sharp relief.
The stuff about procreation was one of them. She wondered if proliferation was
still the Sacred Bond’s first call to duty. That tenet wasn’t too hard to
understand. Offspring made the best, the easiest and longest-lasting converts.
That’s why they made it a commandment, a responsibility, to breed. You could
start children out at an early age and give them a lasting, lifetime dose of
dogma. You could drip your theology into their veins for their entire lives.
You could mold them like putty anyway you chose. They would be a continual
source of labor and a bottomless repository for any doctrine you could dream
up. Never questioning, rarely thinking. Believers—true believers, who in
isolation, would spawn no counter-culture, no new or different ways of
thinking. Their dogma would grow into the planet itself like an invasive plant,
impossible to remove.

They
would breed; breed while they could. Safe behind those sacred, plastic walls,
they would pray, eat and breed.

“Call up
all the medical supplies, do a query and use the sub-qualifiers pediatric or
infant and show me a summary by part name.”

“Can you
spell that first word for me?"

“You
bet,” she said.

3

“W
e
don’t work for Smith’s organization anymore,” Bill Habershaw said.