Thick Black Theory: A Symbiont Wars Book (Symbiont Wars Universe) Read online

  “I brought coffee, pure Kona.”

  Kaitlin shouldered arms and waved him forward. “Good coffee makes good neighbors, I say.”

  Chapter 15 — Alien rockstars

  Kaitlin stretched and sat on the stump near the fire circle.

  “What are we listening to tonight, Kaitlin?” Sammy said as he built a small conversation campfire from the coals that had cooked supper for them earlier.

  Kaitlin shrugged. “Whatever’s next in line.”

  Her smartphone, the only one in Wet Gulch to survive the pulse—had become the source of evening entertainment for the community. Kaitlin had several gigabytes of music and streamed video downloads on her phone. They charged it every day with the solar panel Bernard had found at an abandoned roadwork site. It had been offline when the pulse hit. And, when he hooked it up to car batteries that had survived inside parked cars and attached it to a 12-volt charger, the system worked fine.

  Someone else had found Bluetooth speakers that still worked, so they’d managed to put together a forty to fifty minute cultural event each evening from Kaitlin’s digital library.

  Paper-based reading material was sadly lacking in Wet Gulch, and they treated the few books they had like treasures as they passed from one reader to another. Sometimes Kaitlin read to everyone from her collection of digital books as they listened to soft instrumental music.

  Jordan had accepted an invitation to stay overnight. Now he leaned back in one of the bench seats borrowed from an SUV. When he finished his plate of rabbit and squirrel stew, he reached into one of his saddlebags, pulled a flask from its depths and measured a taste into the plastic cup he’d been using for tea. “Anyone else?” He looked around the table.

  Bernard and all the sentries looked to Kaitlin.

  “If you aren’t on first watch, do what you like, but you might want to ask first if it will make you blind,” said Kaitlin.

  Sammy and Danielle—a forty-year-old librarian bodybuilder—both held out their cups. Then Cleo surprised Kaitlin by holding out her cup too.

  First time I’ve seen her even look at a man for more than a second, let alone accept something from a strange one.

  Bernice traded glances with Kaitlin. Kaitlin shrugged. She pulled out her phone and turned it on then flicked her fingers across the screen until the next item in her queue came up—a concert by Nighthawk and Windhover recorded in San Diego. When she read the title to announce the performance, Sammy sighed.

  “I know they are super-talented, but just once, I’d like to hear something from a fresh rap artist.”

  Kaitlin rolled her eyes. “Just once, I’d like to hear something else come out of your mouth when I announce the recording.”

  Just tell them. What could it matter now?

  Kaitlin paused, considering. It might not be a bad idea.

  She laid the phone down. “I’ve been sitting on something I’ve known since we were rescued, but this seems like a good a time to tell you all.” She flipped through her albums and pulled up the cover photo of the first album Nighthawk and Windhover had released. “Do any of you remember the name of the alien girl who saved us?”

  Everyone was silent for a few moments.

  “You were the one who spent the most time with them, Kaitlin,” Danielle said. “The rest of us who weren’t in here recovering were too freaked out to get that close to them.”

  “Ayleana,” said Cleo. “Her name was Ayleana.”

  Everyone stared at her.

  “Cleo,” Sammy said. “I know for a fact you were unconscious, and you’ve said you don’t remember anything about the whole event.”

  “But she came to me right when I woke up in the store. She told me her name, gave me a note and told me to read it when I was fully alert. They must have left right after that. I wish I’d read it right away. Now I have so many questions.”

  “Can you share what the note said, Cleo?” Bernice said in her gentle voice.

  Cleo shook her head rapidly. “No, that part is personal, but she signed it, A. Y. L. E. A. N. A.”

  Bernice nodded. “She told me her name too. We spoke for a few minutes just before you woke.”

  Fredrick, a man who had managed to escape when Kaitlin had caused a sudden loss of manpower among the slavers by resisting arrest, cleared his throat. “All I remember is her kissing me after I warned them about the ambush. That was right before I passed out. The tall, dark and handsome woman called her something else.”

  “What was that?” Kaitlin said. This was opening up more information, but what did it mean?

  “She called her Nepenthe.”

  Kaitlin smiled. “I guess she considered it a suggestion and decided to just put you to sleep. She obviously didn’t take orders from Amber.”

  Fredrick stared at Kaitlin. “I have no idea what you mean,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Nepenthe is a mythical medicine that’s supposed to make you forget,” Bernice said, “like what Ayleana did for Cleo.”

  Cleo shifted on her bench seat. “One thing in the note that I will tell you,” she said as she stared into the fire. “The note said if I ever wanted to remember the hours she took from my mind, I only had to want to remember, and it would come back.”

  Kaitlin’s lips pressed together. Her stomach muscles tightened as though she was steeling herself for pain. Would she be willing to put herself through that? Would the memories come back fresh as though the torture had just happened? It was bad enough remembering when it happened to Cleo. Could she handle the horror if it had happened to her? It made her angry that she was glad she didn’t have to make Cleo’s choice.

  She raised her eyes and found Cleo watching her.

  “Why did you ask about her name, Kaitlin?” Cleo said.

  Kaitlin picked up the phone and zoomed in on the section of the album cover that held the faces then turned it around so the others could see.

  “Holy shit!” Sammy said. “That’s her. That’s a drawing of her and the guy who was with her. Wait, I’ve seen that before...”

  “Yeah,” Kaitlin said. “It’s the cover of their first album, Surfing with the Ayleana.”

  Jordan laughed. “You guys were rescued by rockstars? From outer space? I guess there is a first time for everything.”

  “I don’t think Windhover is from outer space,” Kaitlin said. “Just her.”

  “You know,” said Bernice. “I thought there was something otherworldly about their music the first time you played that Fight for the Future soundtrack.”

  “So she didn’t just arrive recently then,” Danielle said, steepling her fingers together. Her muscular shoulders and arms gleamed in the light of the fire and her dark eyes reflected its sparks as her eyebrows pulled together in a thoughtful expression.

  “Okay, now I want to hear their music,” Sammy said, an unrepentant grin on his face. “It’s too bad we can’t buy their albums to say thanks, now.”

  “They could have my whole 401K,” said Cleo.

  Kaitlin wasn’t sure who giggled first.

  Before Kaitlin had kicked Cleo’s obnoxious husband, Sean, out of Wet Gulch for refusing to work and causing trouble. He had annoyed everyone by stressing and moaning about what was happening to his 401K and how big it was. When Danielle had asked him if he might be overcompensating, he’d tried to slap her. Danielle, who’d been a rising amateur bodybuilder, had punched him in the nose so hard he’d fallen backwards into a bench and gone ass-over-teakettle into a nest of raspberry crazy ants. The ant bites had brought him back to consciousness quickly, but no one would risk getting the scent of the ants on them to go near him to help. The more ants he killed, the more the scent of the smashed bodies drove the rest to attack him. Kaitlin had threatened to shoot him if he didn’t leave camp and not come back till he’d washed off the chemical triggering their frenzy.

  When he came back and caused another scene, Kaitlin finally told him he was no longer welcome in Wet Gulch. Cleo had refused to leave with him in spite of h
is demands.

  No one had dared mentioned the incident around her since.

  The first giggle triggered muffled snorts, and when Cleo smiled, everyone roared with laughter. Danielle buried her face in her arms and shook.

  “But it’s SO BIG,” Sammy crowed.

  “How big is it?” chorused Donny, Brewster and Melanie.

  Jordan just looked at them with a puzzled expression. Of course, that just made them laugh harder.

  Kaitlin wished she didn’t have to stand on her dignity, but all she could allow was a smile. Strange to think that she was the one everyone looked to for security, yet she was scarcely more than half the age of most of them... not counting the Handys.

  It was a long time before everyone calmed down enough to ask her to start the concert video.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  As usual, the concert ran for twenty minutes before a break. Then Ayleana’s voice came through the speaker. “Thank you all for your kind attention. During this short break, we’ve asked Jonah Galt to share part of a talk he gave at a SimSociety-two-point-O conference. We hope it will raise your awareness of the important issues facing the world, not only today, but since the beginnings of civilization.”

  Jonah Galt was someone Brian followed avidly, Kaitlin remembered. With a twisting feeling in her stomach, she wondered where Brian and Marlee were.

  Kaitlin had heard all the intermission talks before and had found them interesting and insightful, but she resolved to pay closer attention this time. The recent path the world had taken was changing her perspective about many things, and she wanted to see if that made a difference to what she pulled out of the talk.

  Sammy snorted at the introduction. “Do we have to listen to the commercial breaks?”

  “There’s a reason it’s included,” Kaitlin said. “They always have these talks in the middle of the concert. They’re connected. I suggest you pay attention.”

  “Fine,” Sammy said, raising his hands in surrender.

  “Good evening everyone,” Jonah Galt’s voice came through the speaker and joined the song of cicadas coming from the nearby creek. Kaitlin let her gaze drift upwards with the sparks and smoke from the fire as it all ascended toward the brilliant lights in the starry sky.

  “When Nighthawk and Windhover asked me to share some thoughts with you, I struggled with how to squeeze the research and findings from our foundation’s last five years into a few minutes for you to be able to take home what we believe to be the biggest open secret of our time. It’s something we all realize but ignore—the way we do with all the things we think are out of our control. Let me show you a picture to start us off.”

  Kaitlin made sure the phone was in place so everyone could see the picture of a white mouse and a cat touching noses.

  “Oh, that is just too precious,” Sammy groused.

  Danielle punched him lightly on the shoulder.

  “Oww!”

  “That’s just a warning tap. Shut up and resist the urge to be the center of attention for once.”

  Sammy folded his arms and rolled his eyes.

  Galt’s voice went on. “Some of you may be thinking this is a cute picture on the order of the-lion-lies-down-with-the-lamb. It seems a hopeful image doesn’t it? Two creatures, normally predator and prey, appear to be exploring a relationship that transcends their usual roles in a violent dynamic. But what’s really going on is not so warm and fuzzy. There is a third party here, unseen in this picture.”

  Another picture, of crescent-teardrop shaped one-celled creatures, blue in a liquid medium, came on the screen.

  “This is what you don’t see in the previous picture—a tiny parasite called toxoplasma gondii. T-Gondii is a cat-loving parasite. It loves cats because, in the bodies of cats, it can reproduce sexually, which is more efficient for it and probably a lot more fun. When found in mice, T-Gondii causes damage to the mouse brain which causes them to love cats too. It makes mice much more likely to become meals for the cat. This allows the parasite access to the sexual reproduction stage of its life-cycle.”

  A picture of a happy family petting their cat came on screen. “T-Gondii can then be spread to other animals that come in contact with cat feces. Animals such as humans. In a weakened human immune system, T-Gondii can cause damage to human brains and eyes and can be transmitted from a pregnant mother to her unborn child.”

  Galt paused, and the camera changed to an audience reaction shot of a woman, eyes wide, with her hand over her mouth.

  “The Center for Disease Control estimates that a third to one-half of humans are currently infected with T-Gondii. In a healthy human immune system, the parasite is unable to cause damage..., until the immune system becomes compromised.”

  The screen flashed back to the mouse and the cat, but now the mouse was under the cat’s paw.

  “It seems almost like a conspiracy doesn’t it? The notion that a one-celled creature could act in ways that seem consciously diabolical caused findings like this to be discounted and ignored for decades. There are other examples of this dynamic in nature all around us. For myself, I doubt that anything conscious is behind this particular parasitic behavior. Evolution can also account for it by itself, so why add to the puzzle?”

  “But...,” He let the word hang. “Maybe it’s worth our while to wonder if there is a similar behavior in higher-level parasites. Our simulation models indicate that corporations or political systems can become so loaded with parasites that the systems themselves bend into patterns that benefit the parasitic rather than other stakeholders. We are finding many ways this happens. The most commonly known ones are cronyism, scapegoating and stealing credit from other stakeholders.”

  The screen flashed up a picture of two crowds of angry people confronting each other and carrying signs—some saying ‘Peace Now’ and others saying ‘Support Our Troops’. A moment later, the picture was replaced by a Star of David made from yellow cloth with the letters J.U.D.E. in the center.

  Galt’s voice continued. “Does encouraging conflicts like this enable political parasites to distract us while they hide for reasons of their own? Perhaps these tactics are merely taken advantage of after society’s immune system is already compromised and the conflict is in place. After all, war mongering can be extremely profitable for those not on the firing line. We decry the evils of the holocaust and our own nation’s use of slavery before the civil war, but do we really think the parasitic elements of our society have disappeared?”

  The screen returned to a view of Galt on stage. “Symbiotic Mutualism is a difficult balance for a society to find and maintain. We certainly haven’t reached it yet. Maybe we should keep our eyes open. Oh, yes... and be careful out there, people.”

  Galt turned and walked off stage before the audience could react, and the strains of Nighthawk and Windhover’s Nocturne: Requiem for the American Dream began to play. Flickering spotlights pierced the shadows on the stage and the rumble of bass timpani rolled out like the thunder of an approaching storm. The plaintive theme of the first section, We Won’t Be Fooled Again, wove through the percussion, out of the speakers and across the East Texas landscape.

  Kaitlin let her eyes drift to the silhouettes of the crates of bones lining the fence.

  Slavery..., maybe not that easy to eradicate after all.

  Chapter 16 — Yee Hah!

  Kaitlin held on to Jordan’s belt as the two of them rode his big sorrel gelding up the bank of the creek. She’d accepted his invitation to visit his ranch so they could do some ‘horse trading’, Kaitlin wasn’t sure what it was that Jordon wanted to trade, but he assured her that she’d find it worthwhile.

  Bernard had objected to her leaving on her own, to go with a man none of them really knew that well, but Kaitlin had years of practice judging character. Her life depended on it every day. She was pretty sure Jordan was safe enough if you weren’t the wrong kind of person.

  And, Kaitlin had her own reasons for wanting to visit his ranch. She needed to scout
it to see if it would be safe for the citizens of Wet Gulch to move to when she left.

  In addition, Jordan had agreed to leave one of his walkies with Bernard after demonstrating that the signal would reach Jordan’s ranch so they could stay in communication.

  As they rode, Kaitlin shifted on the folded blankets Jordan had put behind his saddle for her.

  Wonder if this is more of a pain for the horse.

  Jordan gestured with his thumb behind them. “That creek bank we just climbed was the border of my property, but I don’t suppose that makes a difference now that real property has become whatever you can hold on to.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Can I also suppose we’re nearly there? Belle seems a good horse, but her butt is even bonier than mine, at least in the particular location where the two are touching.”

  “Ha! And everyone in Wet Gulch thinks you’re some fierce, stoic amazon warrior maiden.”

  Kaitlin sighed. “I was suffering from the misapprehension that you wouldn’t need me to make you feel all safe and protected, Jordan. I can put on my badass hat again if it makes you feel more secure. And, since amazon already indicated my gender, maiden is unnecessary especially since my maidenhead is none of your business.”

  “Nope, I’m convinced already—and grateful for the lesson in diction. But...” He took off his hat for a moment to wipe his forehead. “I suggest you put that hat back on when we reach the ranch. I expect I’ll have no end of trouble if my crew doesn’t take you seriously.”

  “Noted.”

  “It’s just another mile.”

  Kaitlin smiled. “I suppose I’ll survive then.”

  After they crossed a wide footbridge, Belle picked up speed, and Jordan needed to rein her in to keep her from breaking into a trot and further punish Kaitlin’s posterior.

  They went through a windbreak of low pine trees, and Kaitlin saw the ranch house, barn, bunkhouse and outbuildings spread before them. Jordan guided Belle to the hitching post and water trough in front of the house and slid from the saddle. He wrapped the reins around the hitching post and looked around.