Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits (47 page)

“How’s
the new patient?” Rachel yawned at Donna. The sun was going down, and soon the
planet would come to buzzing, spinning, window-banging life, but Rachel needed
no bug-filled excuse to head for the safety of her shelter and the comfort of
bed. She was exhausted. She had been idly watching Bobby pack away the food,
and his rhythmic actions had made her even sleepier. It was dreamy to sit
there, not move and watch someone else work.

“Which
new patient do you mean?” Donna replied. “I’ve had a dozen today.”

“Oh,
um…Collins,” Rachel said, resting her head on her fist. She felt like she could
sleep just like that. “The truck driver guy, you know, stinky whatsit attached
to him.”

“Oh, you
mean with the Smith attached to him. That one. I dosed him with antibiotics and
sent him home,” Donna said. “He seems fine, but I’ll check on him for the next
week or so. Presuming
  
the Smith didn’t
get a chance to lay eggs in him, he’ll be fine. I hope.”

“Smith.
That’s rich,” Rachel said with a grin, then yawned. “I’m done in. I’m going.”

“How are
you feeling,” Donna asked.

“Tired,”
Rachel said pushing the empty platter away and getting up.

“You know
what I mean,” Donna said over her coffee mug. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine
actually. I haven’t had a seizure in over a week, as you well know. I think I’m
getting better, getting over them actually.”

“Just
checking,” Donna said.

“Thanks
for looking out for me. I’m fine.”

“Exhaustion
is one of your causal factors. You know that.”

“I do.
But there’s work to be done,” Rachel said. She dropped a pat of thanks on
Donna’s shoulder as she left. “I’m fine. See you tomorrow.”

Donna
watched her walk toward home, her arms and legs swinging heavily. Just when
Donna was wishing she wouldn’t walk so close to those hard metal tables and
benches when she was so tired, Rachel pitched face-first onto the ground, her
body twitching as if electrified.

“Dammit!”
Donna said. She hurried over to her and wrestled her vibrating form right side-up.
Rachel’s eyes were closed tight and her usually generous mouth was drawn into a
thin, tight line. Donna held her head on her lap and gently plucked leaves and
dirt off her face. There wasn’t a lot to do but wait until it was over.
 
This one wasn’t so bad. She’d seen worse

* * *

Tim
Collins got into bed next to his big, smooth wife and pulled her close. When he
did he felt the sore spot on his side flare up with a spate of heat. He winced
and pressed gently on the bandage. It felt warm. He laid his hand on his wife’s
thick waist, and although the thought of it made his interest rise, he
reconsidered the wisdom of snuggling with her just now.

Soon he
slept. And as he did, deep in his primitive mid-brain hundreds of tiny
organisms that had gathered there for just one purpose, released a cocktail of
stimulating chemicals.
 
Several others,
variants of the first, with a much different destination in mind, and just now
located in the vicinity of his testes, started their final journey.

Just
before Verde’s red dawn, Tim Collins awoke in heat, wanting to fuck and urinate
at the same time.
 
The latter sensation
passed and was replaced with a slight burning, crawling sensation deep in his
urethra. The sensation was not unpleasant and—combined with the powerful urge
to rut that had come upon him—had transformed his wife’s legs, and the familiar
spot far up between them, into a singular and burning passion.
 
His arms and hands squeezed her and groped
her, and soon he had muscled her into a position that would easily enable the
conjugal union his raging libido demanded.
 
She sprawled and mewed a short-lived and counterfeit objection, then
suddenly, he was in her, pounding and pounding; the burning, tickling sensation
in his urethra increasing with each thrust, driving him to thrust harder. He
was dimly aware that he was sweating and that his wife was smiling up at him
with a feral and lascivious smile.
 
The
desire to fuck was so strong and the strength of it so surreal that in a few
moments he lost all contact with the real world and felt only the sexual act
itself.

“Oh,
Timmmm” his wife crooned, “Fuck me!”

Tim
obliged and with his heart racing and his body slick with sweat, he pounded and
pounded, a deep guttural groan accompanying his dis-rhythmic thrusting. With his
wife’s big, smooth legs wrapped around him he pounded and pounded, his breath
coming in ragged gasps. Driven ever forward by his desire, he felt the burning,
tickling sensation suddenly increase a hundred-fold, and the sheer immensity of
it nearly overpowered him. He opened his mouth in a silent scream of primal
lust as the sensation became unbearable—and he came.

With a
long and sweaty gasp, Tim Collins flushed the squirming, wriggling larva out of
his urethra and into his wife’s vagina with a series of strong contractions and
a powerful gush of his own human semen.

And with
his heart racing out of control and his lungs pumping air, he rolled off his
wet and admiring wife, and died.

* * *

“What do
you mean, he’s dead?” Donna said into the phone.

The round
and weeping face at the other end of the line was inconsolable. “He just died,”
Martha Collins said. “He just…after we…he just died there in bed.”

“I’ll be
over there in a few minutes,” Donna said. “Don’t move his body.”

Donna
hung up and called Rachel. “Hey, our Smith-infected guy died,” she told her.
“I’m on my way over there now.”

“I’ll
meet you there,” Rachel said. She pounded down what was left of her breakfast
and headed out the door.

When
Donna arrived at the Collins’ shelter, Martha Collins was sitting on a chair in
the living area, her big pink legs erupting in plump splendor from her house
robe. Her face was swollen and pink, too; her eyes red from recent tears. Her
thin hair was stuck in moist strands to her tear-streaked cheeks.

“I take
it he’s in the bedroom,” Donna said, as kindly as she could, given her
overwhelming curiosity.

Martha
nodded her head a quick time or two and sniffed. “Yeah,” she said in a weak and
barely audible voice. “He’s in there.”
 

* * *

Donna did
a quick appraisal of the body, feeling for a pulse in his neck just to be sure
his wife hadn’t reached a premature conclusion. “Huh…” she said to herself.
“Dead as a doorknob.”

She’d
have to perform an autopsy to be sure about the cause of death. If she had to
guess right then, a massive cardiac or cerebral event would be high on her list
as likely suspects. But since she was on Verde’s Revenge, and her patient was a
man who’d just had a half-kilo parasite removed from his side just over twelve
hours ago, she wasn’t ruling out anything. She checked in his mouth and down
his throat with a hand light for telltale signs of something nonhuman in those
moist cavities. She lifted the bandage and looked for any change in or around
the wound and could detect none. She started to puzzle over it. When he’d come
to the clinic yesterday, his vital signs, including his blood pressure, were
good—especially good—in spite of the stress he was under. When she’d scanned
his heart, she found a perfectly normal, middle-aged heart beating slightly
fast but with no arrhythmia or other abnormal operational characteristics.
Those facts began to work on her, and she was soon inclined to the idea, if not
convinced of it entirely, that a cardiac event was very unlikely. She scanned
his naked body with the light.

Giving in
to an impulse she couldn’t resist, she got down on the floor and checked under
the bed for anything crawling there that might be lethal. She saw nothing but a
dusty sock and a dozen wadded-up balls of what she took as plastic wrappers
from food bars.

* * *

Rachel
sat down and leaned in toward Martha and put her hands together between her
knees. “I’m so sorry,” she said, with genuine kindness.

Martha
dabbed her nose with a tissue and nodded her thanks. “He was a good man,” she said.
“Basically.”

“Did he
give you any sign that anything was wrong?” Donna asked, walking in.

“Yes,”
Rachel said more gently. “What was he doing when he died?”

“Ahem…”
Donna said, trying to spare Martha the embarrassment. “They were making love at
the time.”

“I see,”
Rachel said, in her most professional voice.

“He was
very amorous,” Martha said.

“I see,”
Rachel said, twisting her mouth in thought.

“I’ve
never seen him like that before,” Martha said sniffing and dabbing. “He was so
excited. Like an animal.”

Thinking,
Rachel bit her lip. “Really?” she asked.

“Yes,”
Martha said. “He was fucking me like a…a…
teenager
,”
she said, suddenly weeping again.
 
“It
was great.”

Rachel
and Donna exchanged looks.

“So he
died right after he…finished?” Rachel asked.

“Yes,”
Martha said and sniffed. “He just rolled over and died.”

Rachel
leaned back and looked at Donna. Donna rolled her head toward the bedroom for
Rachel. “We’re going to look at the body some more now, Martha,” she said.

“Okay,”
Martha said, dabbing her eyes with the wad of tissue.

* * *

“So what
do you think?” Rachel said looking down at the naked dead man.

“I say
massive stroke. Aneurysm maybe, “Donna replied. “I’ll have to open his head to
find out for sure.”
  

“You
checked him for creepers?” Rachel asked.

“Yep.
Nothing.”

“Hmm.”

“What are
you thinking?” Donna asked.

“The fact
that he was so horny all of a sudden…that doesn’t precisely jive with being
sedated hours before and having a big, fat parasite excised from your flank,
now does it?”

“Nope. What
the horny business does jive with is good health, low stress and a feeling of
well-being, generally speaking.”

“Parasites
are tricky,” Rachel said.

“Don’t I
know it?” Donna quipped.

“Sometimes
they have incredibly complex, even remarkable life cycles,” Rachel droned on,
mulling it over.

“Ya
think?
 
What’s that got to do with our
dead guy?”

Rachel
thought about it. “I’m not certain yet. I’m working up a theory.”

“Care to
share it?” Donna asked.

Rachel
sucked a big breath through her nose and thought. “Sure. Let’s go outside.”

They
excused themselves and went out into Verde’s already-steaming air. Donna closed
the door behind them. “Okay, what’s your theory?”

“I think
the parasite used Collins as an expendable vector,” Rachel said flatly.

“Okay…”
Donna said, trying to derive the upshot.

“I think
you need to check Mrs. Collins for a parasitic infection,” Rachel went on.

Donna had
already connected the dots, and she nodded her head. “Makes sense,” she said.
“The parasite used Collins to get its eggs inside a female mammalian. Damn. Now
that’s one you wouldn’t guess early. Are there any analogs in the knowledge
base for that one?”

“Nothing
precisely like it that I know of.
 
Many
similar though,” Rachel said. “But it’s still just a theory until you can verify
the presence of some stage of the life form inside Frau Collins.”