Read Online Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits by David Coy - Free Book Online Page A

patient for a response to Rachel’s rant.
    “Yikes?
Yeah, I’d say yikes to that,” Rachel said with a sneer. “How about you Jacob? Yikes? Doesn’t that say it all?”
    No reply.
    “Well, yikes to that,” Rachel mocked and walked away indignantly.
    “He’s
tired and obviously doesn’t know anything about what you’re talking about,”
Donna said apologetically to Rachel’s back. As strange as Jacob was, he was
still her patient. She did have an investment in him, if a somewhat reluctant
one. She didn’t know if defending Jacob was entirely appropriate, but it seemed
the thing to do.
    Jacob put
a slow forkful of food in his mouth.
    He waited
until Rachel was across the chamber before he spoke. “You said there was a
settlement not too far from here?"
    “Yes.
It’s about two hundred kilometers away,” she replied. “Why?”
    “I think
I’d like to go there. I don’t feel welcome here.”   Donna thought it over. Maybe it was best. He
was having a very bad influence on Rachel. The problem for Jacob was that there
was no guarantee he’d get a better reception at the settlement. He was too
damned weird. “We’ll see in a few days,” she said. “Let’s see how you’re
feeling then.”
    “Can you
tell me about it?” he asked. “Can you tell me about the people there?”
    Donna
thought about it, then began to tell him what she knew about The Sacred Bond of
the Fervent Alliance.  
    For the
first time, she got the feeling Jacob was really paying attention to what
someone was saying. She also got the sense that he didn’t want her to notice
that fact. She talked for a long time.
     
    * * *
     
    Rachel
unslung her pack and threw it down.
    Her
fascination with the structure and its contents had turned to something else
entirely. She had stumbled upon something unique in the universe, found
interesting evidence and unraveled it. She should have been happy about it.
    It had
been the tree’s sheer enormity and its organic perfection she’d admired. But
the truth hiding inside it had finally revealed itself like a rotten corpse. It
had come to her in the form of dreadful remnants of an alien science that was
less science than the simple torture of living things.
    When
Rachel was ten years old, she’d plucked a few flowers from her mother’s little
flower garden—a poppy, a rose and a purple morning glory—brought them inside
and drew them with pencil on sheets of yellow paper. Thus began her journey
into the realms of the living. A profound respect for the denizens of those
worlds became her lifelong companion. In time, her love became suffused with
reverence for all things living. But there was none of that within these
strange walls; only some wicked, selfish desire to change, mold and modify for
reasons which had nothing to do with natural attributes. Evolution shaped all
perfectly, exquisitely over eons. Each limb was immaculate, each turn ideal.
There was no better sculptor than time and tide. She tried to imagine what it
would be like for some perfect but hapless entity to find itself in the hands
of these beings—to wake up with its physiology painfully altered by them.
    She wanted
to cry, not out of sadness, but out of anger. No tears came, only rage.
    It was
Jacob who was the source of it, the rank nucleus, and the filthy center. It was
as if some feeble scent from him set her anger on fire like a pheromone in
reverse. There was something about him that tugged on a raw nerve like a
gnawing rat. She could feel it but just couldn’t think out the reason for it.
    “What’d
you find?” John’s voice said.
    She
turned, took a step toward him and leaned against him for a hug. “It’s there,
over by the table. It’s there. The thing is there . . .”
    “You
don’t sound happy,” he said.
    “No,” she
said weakly. “I’m not happy.”
    “Okay,”
he said, “maybe you’ll have better luck next time.”  
    “There
won’t be a next time. I’m not going back in ever