Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series) (17 page)

“My, we’re over the jungle again.
What the heck . . .”

Donna went stiff in her seat and
stared straight ahead.

They wouldn’t dare.

“We must be taking a short cut .
. .” he said.

She thought she heard a slight
chuckle coming from behind her. She swallowed. Her mind raced in no direction
at all.

She ventured a look out the
window and had to crane her neck around to see the cleared patch of jungle
behind her. When she looked straight down, she could make out the tops of trees
drifting past and then the long, straight stripe of a wide swamp.

She had to get out of her chair.
The safety straps felt like an executioner’s restraints. She had them off in a
flash and got up, fear tightening her chest.

“Where are you going?” James
asked.

“To talk to the pilot,” she said
almost gasping.

“He’s busy,” he said with a
smirk.

She had to do something.
Anything. She put the strap of her purse over her shoulder and approached the
forward door just like any concerned passenger might do who had noticed that
the craft was suddenly way off course.

She knocked.

When she heard James laugh, the
rush of fear almost made her faint.

No. This isn’t happening.

She noticed that the shuttle had
stopped and now drifted high above the green.

“What’s going on? Why have we
stopped here?”

She knew the answer. She turned
at the sound of the cockpit’s opening door.

Another Too-Clean had replaced
the pilot. Actually, he looked nasty. “Can you fly?” he asked.

She wanted to faint.

“No, can-you?” she asked as one
word.

James chuckled.

“Well, I’d suggest you grow wings
really fast.”

“Why’s that?”

“Cause you’re gonna need 'em,
really fast.”

She heard the shuttle’s exterior
door open and looked over. A thick patch of cloud hovered just a few hundred
meters from the open door. She could see the green mat of the jungle stretching
forever.

“You’ll never get away with
this,” she said with sudden resolve.

“Yes, we will. You won’t be
missed.”

“You’re wrong. They’ll investigate.
They’ll know I’ve been to the orbiter.”

One of them took hold of her
arms. His hands clamping like a vise. She instinctively tried to drop to the
floor and started to kick and flail.

“No! You fuckers! You bastards!
No!”

James grabbed her by her shirt
front, and together they wrestled her to within a few feet of the open door.
The green below looked soft and cushiony like the cloud.

“See that?” James said. “That
shit goes all around the planet. There are a zillion ways to disappear on this
ball. They won’t find so much as a single little toe bone. No body, no crime.”
Nasty
leaned down close to her ear, but
his voice was far away.

“It’ll be fun.”

She felt his hands cinch a little
tighter. Her panic gave way to numbness.

He shoved her out.

She felt herself tumble, but she
didn’t fall. She spun weightless in the shuttle’s suspensor field with nothing
under her but air. She looked down at the soft cushiony treetops and felt her
mind drifting, fading from reality.

“You didn’t push her far enough,”
James said. “She’s stuck. I told you this was stupid. We should have just
jettisoned her into space.”

“Oh, yeah?” the other said.
“Watch this.”

Nasty reached up and held onto
the railing above the door just as Donna tumbled back toward it. When she was
in just the right position, he jumped, swung out and kicked her with both feet.
She tumbled across the suspensor field and slid down the far side of it, then
out into mid-air.

She gained speed quickly, and the
rushing air tore at her clothes and hair, and its sound filled her ears. Her
mind retreated further, she went limp, and let the arms of gravity pull her
downward.

She rotated slowly, feeling the
force of the air twist and bend her. Once or twice, she saw the stationary
shuttle far above, getting smaller and smaller as she fell.

The treetops approached slowly at
first, then faster and faster, filling her vision with green. She wanted to
scream. What came out was a long groan—vanquished by the sound of rushing air.

She hit the treetop like a bullet
and crashed through the upper branches in a mere half second. Spun and twisted
violently by the impact, her world was a tumbling flash of green and light and
crashing sound. Slowed by the top branches, she shot down through the woolly
tree and hit the spongy ground at its base with a thump, square on her back, at
a modest speed of ten meters per second.

She lay still.

Then her mind crawled up, slowly
up, like a wounded animal, into the bright light of a sweet and certain
reality.

* * *

I’m alive
.

Her lungs nearly devoid of air,
she gasped until she could force enough into them to breathe again.

She took inventory, trying to
sense broken bones and burst organs; any injuries illuminated by flames of
pain.

Her feet worked. That was a very
good sign. She twisted them around slowly, just to feel them move. She felt a
thing crawling on her neck and reached up to pluck it off. Another good sign,
but the skin on her arm was red and welted, scratched and bleeding as if feral
cats had attacked her. She could hear and see and a sweet scent reached her.
She licked her lips and spat something twiggy from the tip of her tongue. Her
face began to sting, and she realized her face must have suffered much like
her arm had. She took a deep breath and felt some pain in her diaphragm, but
nothing that overwhelmed her. She had no idea if she had any internal injuries.
Those would show themselves soon enough.

She’d landed in a thick patch of
ferns. When she looked up through the fronds, she could see the sky above as if
looking through a ragged tube; her body had cut a trail through the branches
on its way through the soft, bushy tree. It was the tallest, woolliest tree
she’d ever seen.

“Thank God for you, tree,” she
croaked at it.

She took another deep breath and,
moving in slow motion, rose up. Everything hurt, but she managed to make it up
on one knee. She coughed.

She was amazed when seeing the
thing at her feet, recognized it as her purse. The strap was completely
missing, probably hanging from a broken branch above.

Christ.

Standing stiffly, she looked up
through the canopy to the sky above. Looking up made her stagger slightly to
catch her balance. As the shock subsided, she began to feel as if she’d been
beaten with a big stick.

“Stupid idea after all, you
pricks,” she said weakly. I’m still alive.”

She looked around at the thick,
nearly impenetrable foliage and the thought occurred to her that maybe that was
exactly what they’d planned.

She tried to sit but fell more
than sat down on her rump, legs akimbo, and the shock of hitting the ground
shot through her like a bolt.

A moment later, her eyes slowly
closed and then she fell softly over onto her side.

A pulsing pain in her arm brought
her back to awareness. She could tell by the fog over her brain that she’d
slept awhile. She struggled up and got to her feet, each movement sending shock
waves through her.

She sat back down on a
moss-covered log and looked around. Nothing moved; not leaf or twig. Something
small, a seed or nut, dropped from above and left a brief trail of sound along
the leaves and branches as it fell. She lost it completely in the tangle.

Just like me.

She had no idea where she was; no
idea which way to go.

Panic reared up like a beast, and
she breathed deep to keep it at bay. She looked around, twisting painfully one
way and the next, trying to gain some clue, some hint of which way to go.

If she could get up high enough,
maybe she could see the installation.

She giggled, almost hysterically.

Which way?

She looked up. The sun was
directly behind the cloud cover that had drifted over her position. She
scowled. It wouldn’t help her even if she could see it. She had no idea where
the sun rose or set relative to the installation. That hadn’t been on her list
of things to check in the first two days on the project.

The purse was a problem. She
wouldn’t be carrying it without a strap. She opened it and scratched through
the contents, taking inventory. She put the compact with the mirror in her
shirt pocket then added the penknife and a half package of chewing gum. The
little flashlight was a sure bet, and in it went. She’d carried the little
sewing kit for years, its package worn dull by the numerous pockets it had
ridden in. She put it in her pocket. She took her ID card. There were two
foil-wrapped doses of aspirin in the bottom. She tore a pack open and munched,
then swallowed the tablets and put the other pack in the pocket. She scratched
through the remaining stuff to make sure there was nothing else worth keeping.

Satisfied, she tossed the purse
away with a sigh. She’d been very fond of it.

Which way?

After thinking about it, she
decided on what to do and tore another straight twig off the tree. She cleaned
it off as best she could, decided which end would be the arrow-end.

“Here goes.”

She twirled it up into the still
air. It landed a meter from her feet. She traced the direction from the
arrow-end into the green. It was as good as any.

She started to walk. Every step
hurt—more so because, for all she knew, she could be heading in the dead wrong
direction.

She walked for about a half hour
before the pain in her chest caused her to stop and rest. She wasn’t sure, but
she realized it was getting darker, and the sudden thought of being out in the
jungle at night sent a shudder of dread through her guts like some forgotten
horror, newly remembered. She needed shelter, any kind of shelter, if she were
going to make it through the night.

She got her breath and continued
on, keeping her eye out for anything that might shelter her; any hole or
depression—or screened in room.

As dusk approached, the
oppressive green cast to the air got thicker and more sinister.

She entered a grove of enormous trees,
even taller than the one she’d fallen through. But unlike that one, which had
been similar to a feathery conifer, these were oak-like monsters of gigantic
girth, with roots twisted and gnarled, branching out into the ground from huge
trunks. The massive arms sprawled out into huge umbrellas that blocked out the
light from above. The areas under their canopy were relatively barren of plant
growth. She reasoned that where there was less foliage, there would be fewer
insects and other unpleasant fauna at night. There were at least a dozen trees
in the grove, and the shelters formed by the branching roots, she figured, were
about as good as she’d find.

She approached one tangle, and
peered in. It looked buggy and too tight, and she thought she could see strange
droppings on the floor inside it. She sniffed the air—then promptly went on to
the next one.

This one had a much bigger space
between the roots and looked a little cleaner. It passed the sniff test. She
eyeballed the space up under the arch of roots then cautiously slipped inside.
It was tight but not too bad. She spent a few minutes inside just to get used
to it, trying from time to time to see up into the dark crevices and channels
formed by the thick roots above her head. She scooted around on her butt and
found a spot for her back that wasn’t too painful.

Satisfied that no immediate
danger existed that she could see, she climbed back out through the narrow
space.

She’d passed several clusters of
flowering vines that had clumps of what might have been fruit hanging from
them. There was an especially large cluster just at the perimeter of the grove,
and she headed toward it.