Species Read online

  “I think I have enough on my mind without listening to this crap.”

  Fitch’s voice was cold and came from just behind Kyle’s left shoulder. The younger man couldn’t help flinching at the sound; sometimes Fitch moved too quietly, reminding him of an alley cat waiting for a rat to make the move that would turn out to be fatal. The man always seemed to have an unexpected move waiting in the wings. Techs and assistants scurried around the enclosure below them like highway personnel at the site of a car wreck, eyes gleaming with a frightening sort of kill-the-cat curiosity that Kyle found far too morbid. This whole thing bothered him more than it should have—the decoded message and instructions, the girl in the reinforced glass enclosure below, the decision to terminate the project.

  Especially that.

  “Go down and help them set it up.”

  Horrified, Kyle gaped at Fitch. “Me?” As if she’d heard, the eyes of the girl below suddenly blinked open and looked up, seeking the observation booth and him automatically. Their gazes locked for a fraction of a second, then Kyle yanked his away. “But she trusts me!” he protested. “I can’t—”

  “You can and you will,” interrupted Fitch. “This project is over and those are your instructions.”

  Kyle opened his mouth, then shut it again. Punishment? Probably; his work here went a lot further back than two years, and if he blew it now by refusing direct instructions, his future would fade to nothing but a gray void. Fitch might think his work was decent—barely—but the wrong response could turn Kyle into just another member of the Fitch Lab Assistant Alumni. He gave a curt nod and headed down to the first level; what he did here today might haunt him for a while, but he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life working for Fitch and time would eventually dull the memory.

  Sometimes the other workers down here reminded him of androids, robots in sheaths of human flesh doing Fitch’s bidding without question or emotion, mobile computers hardly capable of making an independent decision without additional input. In fact, the only thing that seemed alive down here right now was the girl, whom Fitch had code-named Sil for some unknown reason. Fitch insisted that it was nothing more than a randomly assigned computer code, but for all Kyle knew about the older man, the letters could have represented anything from Fitch’s mother’s initials to an obscure acronym known only to the doctor. In the lab area around Sil’s enclosure, the other workers moved with the practiced efficiency of those who had terminated projects before and knew exactly what was expected of them. The main monitors were being shut down by a dark-haired tech whose brilliant white lab coat made his sallow skin look unhealthy under the harsh fluorescent lighting; one by one, the machines inside the glass enclosure went dark as their power sources were disconnected. Kyle could see Sil sitting docilely on her cot, following the shutdown of the monitors with little turns of her head as the powerdown made a circle around her confined area. No one that Kyle could see would look Sil in the eye, and from his spot coming out of the elevator he saw her staring fixedly up at the control booth. When he followed her line of sight, he realized she and Fitch were in a staring match, a visual battle for dominance.

  “Hey, Jacobson!” Kyle turned and saw one of the labor supervisors directing his men as they connected the feed lines from four slender tanks to closed valves at the bottom right corner of Sil’s glass cage. The heavyset man said something into a radio clipped to his left shoulder, then listened and nodded. “Dr. Fitch says he sent you down here to man the valves. We’re just about ready.”

  Kyle nodded grimly but said nothing. It figured; he’d dared to show a little compassion, so Fitch would make him do the ultimate dirty work. By the time he reached the enclosure, Sil was standing again and watching the activities outside her window with narrow-eyed interest. The tanks were in place and the supervisor was doing a final check; clearly visible on the sides of all four tanks were the stenciled words HYDROGEN CYANIDE. Kyle reminded himself that it didn’t matter, Sil couldn’t read, but when she saw him she tapped urgently on the window and tried to get his attention. He forced himself to meet her gaze calmly, but couldn’t hold the connection. Was it fear he saw reflected in those clear blue eyes?

  Now the lab area was nearly empty. The supervisor and his workers had made tracks as soon as the last valve was tightened, and the sick-looking medical tech had pulled the last of his power plugs and gotten the hell out. Only a few guards, Kyle, and two or three more technicians stuck it out. And Fitch, of course, lording high above them within his own disconnected world inside the control booth.

  Reluctantly, Kyle looked up. Fitch was waiting, his nose practically pressed against the glass, yet the expression on his face wasn’t one of eagerness, as Kyle expected. Although his post was a full story above Sil’s cage, there was an odd, bittersweet shine in the doctor’s eyes that made Kyle wonder for a moment if the older man was crying. Kyle’s speculation was shattered by Fitch’s curt nod, and the low-pitched murmurs around the room stuttered to nothing as the lab assistant swallowed with difficulty, then quickly—one two three four—opened the valves on the canisters. Thick white gas swirled into Sil’s enclosure, rolling over her panicked face. Kyle thought he saw the girl swipe at it, but he couldn’t be sure; ten more seconds and the glass cage looked absurdly like a huge aquarium filled with clouds.

  The deed was done. The technicians and guards around the room began moving again, although no one said anything. Fitch’s orders were to leave the cyanide in the enclosure for at least a quarter hour before siphoning it off, and Kyle had already decided that he would be halfway home by then. The lab assistant turned and headed for the stairs, reasoning that his had by far been the worst task; as far as he was concerned, someone else could handle the cleanup. Maybe he’d stop and pick up a six-pack of Bass on the way; that might help him get the girl’s face out of his mind when he fell into bed.

  There was a sound like an explosion behind him, strangely sharp, and Kyle spun with crazy images of car crashes in his head, along with thoughts of dialing the emergency code on the intercom. He had time to register the jagged-edged hole in the front panel of tempered glass that made up Sil’s enclosure, then the rest of the panel disintegrated with a tremendous crack!

  The fragments of safety glass held for no more than an intake of breath before they fell, like a hundred thousand diamonds spilling from nowhere. There was a millisecond of beauty as the lovely young girl inside dove through the faux-jeweled waterfall, oblivious to the tiny pieces of glass layering the floor, then the guard closest to the enclosure went for his sidearm. Paralyzed five feet from the stairs, Kyle realized that Sil was holding her breath against the clouds of hydrogen cyanide that were now boiling into the lab. The instincts of the guard headed toward her were not so swift, and he fell forward, dead, long before he could pull his pistol free of its holster.

  The alarms went wild. Bells and sirens began blasting from the junctures of the walls and ceilings, garbled voices screaming through the speakers. The girl was still holding her breath, and Kyle tried to follow suit as the cyanide swept through the room. A fool’s belated wish, Kyle thought haphazardly as the technicians closest to the glass cage staggered and collapsed; his balance went as dizziness raced across his eyesight and he began to gag. As he went to his knees Kyle knew it was already too late for him and the rest of the room’s occupants; Sil ran past as Kyle’s vision began a black-and-yellow shimmer, not even sparing him a glance as he retched uselessly on all fours.

  It took monumental effort, but Kyle found the strength to lift his head toward the ceiling. His last sight was of Xavier Fitch’s grim, white face, staring down from the observation booth.

  2

  She finally got air when she reached the end of the corridor.

  Sil could see the cyanide at the other end leaking from beneath the door she had yanked closed behind her. To her, the fumes weren’t white, they were black—poison. When the men who had watched her constantly through the flimsy glass walls of her home wouldn’t watch he
r anymore and the malignant-looking clouds began filling the enclosure, only instinct, primitive and previously silent, had saved her. The air saturating her lungs now smelled medicinal, like the alcohol pads the technicians used to clean the adhesive from her skin when they moved an electrode or swabbed her arm when they wanted to take a sample of her blood. It didn’t taste good in her mouth or lungs, but it was better than the death-filled air in the lab. She needed to move fast, though, had to stay ahead of the carpet of cyanide gas seeping from underneath the door to the lab and rolling slowly down the corridor at floor level.

  Why did they want to harm her? Sil didn’t understand the reasoning behind it—especially Dr. Fitch, on whom she had come to depend the most for companionship. True, he didn’t say much, but she could sense his bond with her, the way he charted her fantastic growth and rapid learning processes, the way he jealously scrutinized the actions of Kyle or any other lab tech or assistant who dealt with her. He had been there when she’d opened her eyes for her first sight of this world—Sil remembered the exact moment—and had held her hand when she’d taken her first tentative step not long after.

  And she would never forget that he had been there at the end, too, expecting to watch her die. Betraying her.

  There was a door in front of Sil and she hesitated, uncertain. The same kind of stencils were printed on it as had been painted on the poisonous cyanide containers, but the words were different—FIRE DOOR—and no colors leaked from around the door’s frame. Since there was nowhere else to go and a backward glance showed the low cloud of black gas passing the halfway mark in the corridor, Sil grasped the silver bar across the door and pulled.

  Nothing happened. A knot of panic burgeoned in the center of her chest, identical to the one that had appeared when the sandy-haired technician, her favorite, had turned the knob on the first canister and begun releasing the cyanide into her cage. Sil slammed her hands against the silver bar and had a millisecond to feel foolish as the door opened easily, then she fell forward against the barrel chest of an anxious-faced, heavyset guard headed into the same corridor she was trying to escape. He backstepped twice, then pointed a weapon at her. She glimpsed the words PIETRO BERETTA on one side of the pistol before he leveled it at her face and started bellowing.

  “Hold it right there! You just freeze—” He was terrified, babbling like a confused child.

  Would he fire? Sil didn’t want to find out. She shoved him, faster than he could react, and much, much harder than she had pushed the door. She didn’t know which of them was the more surprised when he was flung a half-dozen feet back. He hit the ground at a bad angle and Sil heard a muffled snap, then he went limp. She crouched in front of him, ready, but he didn’t move, just sat and stared with his head at an odd angle and his eyes blank and unblinking. Sil prodded him experimentally with one toe; when she got no response, she darted around him.

  She’d met the guard at a doorway set about ten feet into the concrete building. Outside, the sight of the sparkling heavens made her falter, its beauty and size so outrageous that it stunned her for a precious five seconds as she gaped up at it. Then she saw a high security fence rimmed with razor wire thirty yards in front of her and headed toward it, an unexpected step onto the paved surface surrounding the building the only thing marring the swiftness of her progress. The fence was all but useless in stopping her, and Sil was up and over it in a matter of seconds, swinging easily over the razor wire. On the other side was nothing but dry, desert scrub stretching as far as she could see, a hundred tones of gray beneath the star-splashed sky.

  Then Sil was gone, fleeing into the shadowy arms of the desert night.

  Far behind her, lights exploded from the rooftop of the building and new alarms began shrieking in tandem with the muffled clanging of the bells inside. Pools of light spilled onto the concrete from doorways that burst open as guards rushed out, flashlight beams swinging frantically in every direction. More followed, weapons clanking amid harshly shouted orders and static-filled transmissions from walkie-talkies. As she ran Sil heard another, more dangerous sound: the whirring of helicopter blades rising from the helipads on the other side of the complex, their strong Night-Sun spotlights far away but already slicing the air in her general direction. A half-dozen muted hissing noises made her pause and she saw parachute flares dotting the sky close to the building; apparently they had no idea she could run as fast as she had.

  Sil didn’t know how much distance she put between her and the searchers over the next ten minutes. She knew only that she ran at top speed, pushing her legs and lungs to the limit but not tiring, until the frantic lights and noises surrounding the complex were only silent pinpoints in the black expanse of the desert behind her. She slowed only when she was convinced that she could hide herself among the scrubs and rocks that peppered the landscape, occasionally sending the faraway spots of light a wary glance as she picked her way between the loose boulders and twiggy bushes. Silver gleamed in the ground ahead and Sil stopped and peered at it curiously, finding twin strips of metal that stretched across the desert floor to disappear over an unseen horizon.

  Something huge bellowed behind her and Sil spun, paralyzed with terror. A vehicle rushed toward her and her brain instantly selected a piece of information from one of the picture books she’d been given—a train. She threw herself out of its way before the first boxcar lumbered past, then scrambled back to her feet and sprang for a handhold on the nearest car.

  Pulling herself through the first open door she found, Sil searched for a hiding place within its darkest spaces as the train rumbled on into the night.

  3

  “Get a cleanup crew in there now,” Xavier Fitch barked into the telephone. The person on the other end said something that served only to deepen the already startling shade of scarlet that suffused Fitch’s face. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he yelled, “men are dead down there. Of course your crew will still need gas masks, you imbecile!” He was shouting when he slammed down the receiver.

  Fitch turned back to the window and gripped the sealed edge of the sill, digging at it until his fingernails went white. There were bodies everywhere below. Five guards sprawled at various posts around the large room; three of them had blundered into death at the call of the alarms, while three technicians had crumpled in place, one still clutching his clipboard and pen. And Kyle, of course, lying by the staircase and staring up at him with dead, accusing eyes. Fitch had sent his most competent lab assistant down there out of nothing more than annoyance and now the man was dead. Fitch shook his head; foolish, foolish.

  Tension etched its way across his forehead as he snatched up the receiver again. The alarms were making everything crazy and it took seven rings—he counted every one involuntarily—before he finally got the switchboard operator. By then the fingers of one hand were drumming erratically against the window glass while the other hand was twining around the extra-long cord that ran from the receiver to the telephone’s base on the desk. “It took you fucking long enough!” he snarled at the faceless voice. Whoever the woman was, he cut her off when she started to defend herself. “Just get me McConnelly at the NSC—now!”

  It took so long to make the connection that Fitch was starting to think the operator had intentionally disconnected him, an act he could guarantee would end her government career—menial as it was—forever. Finally, nearly synchronized with the entry of a horde of gas-masked workers into the polluted laboratory below, he heard a series of clicks on the line and a voice spoke on the other end.

  “Sir,” Fitch said. His voice was shaking for the first time since he’d seen Sil’s speedy destruction of the supposedly indestructible glass cage. “This is Dr. Xavier Fitch, Visitor Base One. You asked to be kept in the loop on all pertinent developments.” Fitch was fighting valiantly now to keep his words steady.

  “I’m afraid we have a serious emergency on our hands.”

  4

  She was floating, weightless, spinning slowly in warm fluid. Wate
r? No, something thicker, more secure, like amniotic fluid in a mother’s womb. Drifting without care, sinking slowly toward an untroubled abyss as sight suddenly returned to reveal the barest shimmer of light from far away, the surrounding liquid not black but pale amber. Breathing steadily and heavily, there was a firmness to the sound that suggested stability and size, predator not prey. Shifting, the effort of movement sent graceful tentacles to ripple at the sides of her limited field of vision. A jellyfish passed without pausing at the sight of her, an ancient and beautiful coelenterate, like a multicolored man-of-war gliding undisturbed through its domain. She concentrated then, the passage of instructions along her neural pathways marked by sparkling biolights in her dim golden surroundings. There was a sensation of movement on her left side as something tiny drifted close, a fish lured by the swaying loveliness of her tentacles. Abrupt hunger as the fish nibbled tentatively, the instantaneous release of energy—CRACK!—and the fish jittered and died; the smallest mental command and her appetite was appeased—for now—as her luminous torso covered and consumed it.

  A change in the atmosphere and her breathing accelerated twofold, then doubled again, spurred by the presence of something dark and sharp in the depths below, bigger, faster, infinitely more dangerous. She could see it all too clearly, its lean, arrow-shaped frame rushing through the murkiness, blind but aiming by sheer instinct, a deadly internal guidance system that would lead it right to her. She tried to spin, to flee, but she was too slow, grace and beauty exacting a deadly price in the lush golden environment. Sound then, growing, and louder than her own panicked breathing, the enormous reverberation of the creature’s charge as it hurtled toward her, the end of its chiseled head yawning wide, revealing hundreds of glimmering, needlelike teeth—