Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series) (19 page)

Sleep, when it finally came,
touched her as lightly as a feather.

* * *

The absence of sound was an
alarm. She opened her eyes into a dim pre-light that bathed the chamber in the
softest gray- green. She looked down through the opening to the chamber below
and was greeted by a slightly stronger light that came in past the mangled roots
like pale water.

She squirmed around until she
could get her head down the hole to get a better look.

The creature was gone. It had
left a pit three or four meters deep and at least as wide. The pit extended
under the tree, and the roots below were shredded and hung uselessly as if
blasted by an explosion. Two enormous mounds of fresh dirt were piled up behind
the pit—tailings from the night’s work.

She waited until the light was a
little stronger, then started down, feet-first. Wincing, she hung there for a
moment with her legs kicking the air, then squirmed through a little more and
dropped down. The rich scent of freshly dug soil hung in the air.

She climbed up, stopping just
short of the pit’s rim to look around. She saw no sign of the creature.

She climbed out and limped toward
for the grape vine. Everything hurt.

She sat down on a limb with a
large bundle of grape-things and looked back at the devastated tree. Given
enough time, the creature would have felled it, she was sure, and would have
made a hard-earned meal of her. Time and the pale light of day had been on her
side.

She looked around, just to be
sure it was gone.

The forest’s silence wrapped her
like soft cotton. Gone was the virulent buzz and whir of feeding, mating and
hunting. The jungle had gone back to sleep.

12

Rachel
stood outside the clinic and rang the bell again. No answer.

“It’s early, yet. Maybe she’s
asleep,” Joe said.

“Go around the back. See if you can
find a back door to bang on,” Rachel said.

"Sure."

A patient came up behind her,
assuming Rachel was just the first in the queue. He put one leg on the steps
and one on the railing to wait. Rachel turned around and looked at him and
through him at the same time. Finding no one home irked her. She shook her head
in disgust.

“Doctor not in, huh?” the man
asked.

“No. Nobody home,” she said with
an edge of frustration. “This is the clinic, right?” she asked the man’s shirt.

“Yep,” the man said.

“It should be open, right?”

“I think so,” the man said.

She pushed the buzzer again and
tried the door latch. She shook her head, then turned around and gazed blankly
out over the man’s head. She shook her head again.

“I can’t believe this.”

“You just get in?”

“Yeah,” she said to the door and
pushed the buzzer again.

“You sick?” he asked.

She shook her head, this time as
an absent response to his question.

“No,” she muttered.

Having circumvented the entire
facility, Joe approached from the opposite direction he’d left in.

“No answer,” he said. I even rang
the bell on both doors of the shelter. I don’t think anybody’s home.”

“Where in the hell is she? Out
having breakfast?”

She rang the bell again. “Shit .
. .” she said. “Well, let’s go. We can get my stuff moved to the lab. We’ll
come back later.” As the representative of Health and Safety and the clinic’s
administrator, Donna Applegate was the first beneficiary of the inventory. The
Statement of Work named her specifically as the Special Recipient of Information.
It was a goofy and contractual title only, but she
was
entitled to the results as they
were obtained until the final requirements of the inventory were signed off—by
Applegate. After that, the remainder of Rachel’s contract could be discharged
under any remaining terms. In Rachel’s case, there
were
no further terms. In essence her
contract read: “Satisfy Applegate’s minimum requirement and go home. Use no
more than 500 hours to do it.” Since Applegate wasn’t there, it was hard to get
clarity about what that minimum requirement might be.

“Excuse me,” Rachel said,
stepping past the man, acknowledging his presence in passing.

They headed through the morning’s
heat to the dock, both suffering from the unaccustomed heat, humidity and
slightly stronger gravity.

Rachel marched right to the
Expediter’s office, weaving past stacks of containers and material as if they’d
been deliberately placed in her way. Joe trailed behind, following in her exact
steps. The door to the office was just another obstruction.

“I’d like to get my containers
delivered to the bio-labs ASAP,” she said bluntly to Joan.

“Good morning,” Joan answered
back with a smile. “Can I offer you some coffee first?”

Rachel stopped and blinked then
buried her face in her hands.

“I’m sorry. I am just so pissed .
. . so pissed.”

“Welcome to Verde’s Revenge. It
has a way of doing that to
people.”

Rachel extended her hand. “I’m
Rachel Sanders,
Biologist Grade
III
.”

“Joan Thomas,
Chief of
Transportation
.”

“I guess you’re the one to talk
to, then.”

Joe stuck his hand out.

“Oh, I’m sorry. This is Joe
Devonshire, my . . . umm . . .”

"Apprentice,” Joe answered.

“Hi. Yeah,” Joan said. “I’m the
one if you need your goods delivered. Beyond that I’m not much help.”

“What is it with this place? Is it
me? Is it really that strange?” Rachel asked.

“It’s that strange. Nobody gets a
good deal here. My husband did okay, but he’s a hell of a negotiator and a
little sneaky besides.”

“I wish I could make that claim,”
Rachel said.

“Yeah, me too,” Joe said.

“We sure are glad you’re here,”
Joan said, brightening somewhat. “Between you and the nurse and the clinic, we
can finally relax a little. This place is crawling with nasty shit. We were
beginning to wonder if Health and Safety would ever make a showing.”

“I don’t get it,” Rachel said.
“This was supposed to be a first class project, plenty of financing, profit,
good contracts, long deals—that’s what the trades said. What gives anyway?”

Joan didn’t want to tell her
about the accident with the dozer. That incident had put the entire
construction schedule back forty-five days. Bill’s accident wasn’t the only
thing. The project was screwed up long before that.

“Well, it’s easy to put the blame
on poor management, so I say its poor management.”

“Good enough for me,” Rachel
said.

“Ed Smith’s an asshole,” Joan
said snootily in a whisper. “That’s what I meant to say.”

Rachel smiled. “From what I’ve
seen, I have to believe it.”

“Believe it . . . it’s a fact.”

Joan made two cups of coffee,
going on and on about how crappy things had gotten over the last third period.
Finally, she tired of her own complaining and gave it a rest.

“You haven’t seen Donna Applegate
today have you?” Rachel asked.

“The nurse? No. Not since the day
before yesterday. She gave me a shot for the rash on my ankle. I know I got it
from something on the ground here. Look . . .”

She started to strip off her boot
and sock. Rachel and Joe exchanged looks. Biologists were a lot like doctors
to some people.

She held her foot out. It had an
angry red rash that seemed to wrap all the way around it.

“Wow,” Rachel said
sympathetically. “That’s something.” She had no idea what it could be. “Does it
itch?”

“Stings. You ever seen that
before? I’m telling you, this is one nasty place. We’ll be glad when your job
is done.”

Rachel wanted to tell her that
her job wouldn’t take long, but held her tongue. There was no sense
contributing to the general state of project
fucked-up-ness
at the moment.

“I can imagine,” Rachel said
.

* * *

Joan called Eddie Silk and asked
him to get Rachel’s containers delivered pronto. Rachel thanked her, then was
on her way, promising to give her a good guess about what caused her rash as
soon as possible. She’d seen stress-induced seborrhea that looked like that.
She couldn’t rule it out.

Rachel had counted on the project
to supply the lion’s share of required containers, racks, bottles, nets and
associated equipment. But she’d brought some of her best stuff along just in
case. The Petri dishes, scopes, steel bottles and favorite lab-ware that had
traveled with her for the last ten years
just had
to go along to Verde’s Revenge.
She’d left most of the bigger things at home and still had enough to fill three
containers. It had taken hours to get it ready. Each time she’d added an item
to the pile, it seemed there were several additional ones to be packed. She’d
wondered at the time, since the project was so well-funded, if she really
needed to bring any of her personal stuff at all.

When she walked into the bio-lab,
that thought vanished like a feather in a strong wind. The lab was stark empty.

“Where’s the stuff?” she asked
Joe.

“Good question . . .”

It was a basic laboratory module,
she could tell by the benches, lighting and stools. What was missing was everything
else; no flasks, racks, aquaria, scopes or cages; nothing. The benches were
empty and covered with a thin coat of dust. The cabinets against the wall stood
open, and the empty shelves looked as if they’d been picked clean; pilfered of
every last item they may have once housed. She could make out ring-shaped
stains where bottles had stood on those now empty shelves; careless artifacts
of a once complete facility. There was a data center and toilets—big deal.

“Now what?” Joe asked.

Rachel vibrated her head in
complete disgust.

“I feel like getting right back
on the shuttle and going home is what. This is such bullshit, such bullshit.”

The stuff she brought with her
was supposed to supplement the existing equipment, not outfit the entire lab.
They would be pitifully under-equipped with her equipment alone. She was
pissed.

“Horseshit,” she said bluntly.

“Is there a budget or something?”
he asked. “Some way to order things?”

“No. There is no budget.”

“Do we have enough to get by
with?”

Rachel sighed and pulled out a
stool to sit on. Devonshire was suddenly all the more a liability. He didn’t
even know enough to know they couldn’t do their jobs.

“This isn’t a Roach Grab, Joe.
This is a . . . a . . . I don’t know what this is. Do we have enough to get by
with? Hell, yes. Screw it.”

“I’m sorry this isn’t working out
like you planned.”

She sprang back up off the stool.
“Hey. No sweat. Where’s the delivery kid? He’s got our equipment.”

She couldn’t remember the last time
she’d felt so frustrated. Her dream contract, her plum of a deal had turned out
to be rotten. Now, unable to toss it aside, she was being forced to eat it.

“See if you can find the kid,”
she said. “Help him get the containers put away. I’ve got some mail to send.”

 
“To who?”

“Never mind. Just get going.”

She dug out her pad and gave it a
message addressed to her old roommate Vic Sharp, asking him to pack up the
remainder of her personal equipment and ship it to her on Verde. Vic was a
biologist too and would know how to handle it. The message would be carried
back on the transport and wouldn’t be delivered for thirty days. By the time
it got there, and the stuff was delivered back, her contract would be
two-thirds over. It didn’t matter. Nothing much mattered to her at this point.