Carapace (Aggressor Queen Book 1) Read online

  “And then what?”

  “We will generate new queen,” Sorm’ba answers.

  “New queen? A healthy queen? Why can’t you do that now?” I ask. What in the world have we been fighting for if they can just make a new “not sick” queen?

  “Queen cannot be generated except by queen or at death of queen.”

  “New queen,” I say, more to myself than to Sorm’ba, trying hard to digest this enormous amount of new information. “Then what happens to humans?” I hold my breath after this question.

  “We ask forgiveness. We repair.”

  I want to scream and call this ant a liar. It’s too much to hope for.

  “Our people are not sick,” Sorm’ba repeats.

  “You are not sick,” I say.

  “No. I am not sick.” Sorm’ba pauses and says, “I am shamed for my people.”

  My breath is quick and harsh. Our plan for striking at the ants includes a widespread attack, lots of trucks, lots of foci. I’ve coordinated with four other rebellion pockets in Douglasville, Stone Mountain, Forest Park and Lithonia and they have a similar number of outside contacts. It’s a sparse net, but we have a plan. We hope that in another year we can...

  But, if I’ve understood this ant, our assault can be far more focused, aimed at the center, at the queen and those closest to her. I’ve thought for a long time that things seemed worse in this city than others – then dismissed the idea as self-centered. But what if it’s true? What if it’s because we’re at the hub of the infection? Hope surges through me and my mind races through new alternatives.

  I have much to do!

  I jump up, and say, “Thank you. Most sincere thanks. May I be dismissed?” The energy that flows through me could keep me moving for a week.

  Sorm’ba says, “I do not dismiss brothers. You are free to go when you wish.”

  I’m out the door before I register his statement. Humans – brothers? Even then, the import of his statement barely gives me pause.

  I need to call a meeting.

  I need to talk to Tanner and Diane.

  My heart races as I leave the bar in slow steps and move down the dark humid street, thinking of the other thing I need to do.

  I need to find Khara.

  CHAPTER 22

  NESTRA

  In the war I fight within myself, self-preservation has won. Or perhaps not won, since concessions have been made between the conflicting drives that govern me.

  Following the session that almost killed me, I was summoned to the queen’s side for another session too soon and without sufficient cleansing. The repentant, honorable, loyal aspect of myself was too weakened for personal control. The aspect of myself that fights for life lapped with hunger at the rich dewdrop of the queen’s strength. I awoke to a quiet and subdued queen, but with at least the strength to remain on my own feet to return to my room.

  I fight with my own conscience and conflicting instincts, vacillating between the opposing ideas of taking my own life, and preserving it, even at cost to the queen. The compromise I convince myself is best is to taste minutely of the queen, since my survival is essential to her own. Unless and until she allows another Shame Receptor to be prepared, my death will damage the queen. I vow that should a new Shame Receptor be prepared, I will then end my own life . . . perhaps even confessing all to Queen Tal and accepting the killing blow from the queen herself. I think this just. I do not focus on the inconsistency of failing to suggest to the queen that a new Shame Receptor be prepared, thus allowing my thievery to end all the sooner.

  I sit in the garden, knowing myself to be alone in the world, and believing myself deserving of my solitude. I sit before a blank canvas, painting supplies gathered around me, and find I cannot summon the loose serenity that will allow imagination to grow into inspiration.

  Refusing to allow frustration to build, I push my painting supplies to a jumbled pile near the base of the easel and turn on my stool to face the grandeur of the private garden. Colors, scents, plays of light and dark as the sun settles toward late afternoon, combined symphonies of sound wash over me. I drink it in and force calmness upon myself, letting myself descend into the lightest of trances.

  I am drawn from my dreamlike state by the sharp snap of a twig nearby – a sound which does not belong to the slight breeze through the leaves or the purring of insect wings. There, quite near me, the two human gardeners squat pulling weeds from a bed of mixed flowers. They do not look at me, and I wonder if they can have failed to notice me. The humans have not been this close to me since I first approached them.

  I determine not to move, not to alert them to my presence, so I can once again observe them. I am sure this time, if I watch, I will find an explanation for their previous appearance of sharing which will defy the meaning I have assigned to it.

  I wait. I watch.

  For a brief time, the humans work, weeding, near to each other, but not touching. Disappointed, I suppress a sigh that might have been loud enough to arouse them. Then, the larger human, the one with lighter hair, stops weeding long enough to wipe its brow with the back of one dirty hand. It leaves a smudge of dirt on its wet forehead. The smaller, dark haired human looks up at the other, then pulls a rag from a pocket and, with slow, gentle motions, wipes the other’s forehead. The taller human pulls the smaller closer and they touch mouths. It is intimate, visceral. Not quite the intimacy of sharing palpus to palpus, but then these humans do not have palpi. I shudder, with a pang of ecstasy and torture combined.

  Either my slight movement or some small sound it produced causes the humans to look toward me. I brace for the feeling of rejection which will come with their withdrawal, but neither human moves. One reaches for and clasps the hand of the other, soft dirty fingers intertwined, but they do not rise, do not flee. They continue to look toward me. The various facets of my eyes focus on the touching hands dangling between the two crouching humans, creating a visual tunnel that includes the humans and the plants nearest to them, but all pivoting around the hands layering imperfectly in the center of my vision.

  I raise myself from the stool, all four arms held out in a posture of supplication. I take several long steps towards them. Still the humans do not flee.

  “I will not hurt you,” I say, realizing again the humans cannot understand my words, and hoping the sound of my speech will not frighten them and cause them to leave.

  The smaller human stands first, pulling the larger human to its feet. Still clasping the other human’s hand, it moves its other arm out in a mirroring posture of supplication and says, in my own language, “I will not hurt you.” The voice is high and watery and weak, and the accent is strange, but the human has repeated my words.

  I step closer, keeping my arms out, and repeat, “I will not hurt you.” I wait for the moment when my approach will cause the humans to withdraw, but step after step I approach and they do not flee. Even after I am close enough to tower over the two small humans, close enough to reach out and touch one of the soft creatures, they stay. I can taste the rich scent of fear emanating from the two.

  Again, I say, “I will not hurt you.”

  The larger human releases its hold on the other human’s hand, then pulls the smaller one closer and wraps an arm around its shoulders. The smaller looks to the larger, which nods its head without taking its eyes from me. The smaller human looks back to me.

  Very clearly, it says, “You will not hurt us.”

  Not a repetition this time. An acknowledgement. In my own language.

  “You speak my language!” I cry, my surprise raising the volume of my words above the low level I have used thus far.

  The humans flinch, shuffling backward. I glance toward the garden entrance where my escort waits, but cannot see the entrance from where I stand with the humans.

  I throw my head back in the gesture of absolute subservience and repeat, “You speak my language. I will not hurt you.”

  When I bring my head down to gaze again at the humans,
the smaller has moved a step closer. The scent of fear that blossomed at my outburst is dissipating.

  “I learn your language,” the smaller human says. “You will not hurt us?” This time the second phrase is formed as a question.

  “No.”

  I find the idea of humans speaking my language almost distracting from my focus on the two beings touching each other. My surprise leaves me with nothing I can think of saying to the humans and for a time we three stand, unmoving. The humans lower themselves to the ground, and, again clasping hands, look upward at me.

  Delighted, I fold my long limbs, amidst small cracks and pops, until I am seated in the warm grass before the humans.

  “You share,” I say. My words are more a statement than a question.

  “I do not know ‘share’,” the small human answers.

  “You touch,” I say, and move my high right pincer to touch my lower left pincer. The humans do not flinch away at my movement.

  The small human shows its teeth in what must be their equivalent of a smile, and says, “Yes, we touch. We are . . . ,” it seems to be searching for words, “hive brothers.”

  Again I am surprised, delighted.

  The taller human speaks for the first time. “Hive bond brothers,” it says. Its accent is terrible, but it is clear the addition of the word is important.

  “Bonded hive brothers?” I ask, and wonder how humans with no discernible hives can have learned this distinction between business relationship or other relationship and bonded friend.

  “Bonded hive brothers, yes,” answers the smaller. The flavor of fear is almost gone and the warm flavor of my curiosity seems enhanced by a similar scent from the humans.

  “We touch,” says the smaller human, demonstrating by moving her hand to the arm of the taller. Then, with hesitation, “I touch you?”

  The taller human says something quickly – sternly? – to the smaller in its own language, but the smaller seems to ignore it, not answering or turning, but continuing to gaze at me.

  Despite my curiosity about these humans, I find myself repelled by the idea, both because the soft creatures are vaguely repellant, but also from the ingrained dictum that no one touch me, under penalty of death. I do not move, do not answer.

  The smaller human moves its hand toward me. My curiosity stays my instinct to pull away. After all, the queen’s order does not include humans. The soft human hand comes to rest on my lower arm, well above the pincer.

  The flavor/scent of curiosity heightens with the contact, laced with a tinge of fear. It is not true sharing. There are no vague images that pass from the human to me, but even so, the increase in the intensity of emotional content is pleasant and yet jarring. I do not move, but focus my attention on what I am receiving, hoping to expand the sensation.

  After minutes, the taller human reaches for me, hand coming to rest on my other lower arm. The flavor difference between the two puzzled me – both curious, both a bit frightened, and yet the difference in scent is clear. Almost as if the two are of different species, or of different divisions within species.

  “You are different,” I say. I color my words with the visual scents of my meaning, knowing even as I do there will be no true communication outside my simple words.

  The smaller human bends its head to one side, as if listening to strange insect song, or perhaps even catching a small bit of what I attempt to share. Then it shakes its head and says, “I don’t understand.”

  I do not know how to explain further and so remain silent. I focus on the flavor/scents the humans exude.

  “You communicate in this way?” the small human asks.

  “Yes,” I answer. “We share.”

  “I don’t know ‘share’,” says the small human again.

  “Exchange meaning, emotion, insight, identification,” I say, hoping the human understands at least some of my words.

  The taller human makes a small noise and both smile at me. The smaller human asks, “Do you ‘share’ humans?”

  “I taste your curiosity, I smell your fear,” I answer. “Not much fear,” I add, hoping not to elicit more fear and thus cause the humans to leave.

  “Do humans share?” I ask. The humans look at each other, but do not answer. “You touch mouths,” I continue. “This causes great sharing in my people.”

  The humans smile again, and without removing their hands from my arms, lean toward each other and touch mouths to each other, not briefly this time, but for a prolonged moment, mouths locked together as if they indeed have palpi. The warmth and velvet purple-blue emotion that flows over me causes me to droop in my posture. The rasp of my rough breathing sounds as the two draw apart and gaze again at me. The sour scent of questioning comes from both, colored with concern.

  Concern? These humans feel concern for me? Confusion boils in me as I sit torn between an expanded feeling of loneliness, and a desire to keep the humans with me always. Crush them to me.

  “Powerful emotion,” I say. “You share powerful friendship.”

  “Yes!” Both humans respond together and the flavor of concern fades, blended into peacefulness and quiet. The bright red scent of fear is now undetectable.

  After another several moments during which I focus again – these humans are difficult to taste – I enjoy the lapping tides of emotional current of the two . . . confidence, triumph, curiosity, and under it all like a deep underground spring, the velvety purple-blue passion ripples serenely.

  The smaller human breaks the silence. “I am named Diane,” it says.

  The taller human adds, “I am Tanner.”

  “Nestra,” I answer.

  “We are hive brothers? Friends?” asks Diane. “We share together, and are friends?”

  “I would share with you again,” I answer, ashamed I am so desperate for sharing, yet treasuring the experience. I know if I never see these humans again, I will always remember the trust and kindness shown me this day.

  Without releasing its hold on my arm, Diane reaches with its other hand up higher than the level of its head, toward my mandibles. “Share with mouth,” Diane says, and brushes my mandible.

  Bewildered, but willing, I extrude my palpus.

  “Feel my happiness,” Diane says. It closes the covering over its eyes, and smiling, reaching high, places its palm against my palpus. It is not the banquet it might have been with a brother, but still, a sweet bouquet of peace, happiness, friendship, trust.

  Tanner stands. “We go now,” it says. “Night comes.”

  Diane removes its hand from my palpus and stands with Tanner. Their heads are on level with mine as I sit, their soft eyes squishing as they blink their covers open and closed.

  “We will come again,” says Tanner, “hive brother.”

  I am unable to rise until after I have watched the two depart, again clasping hands. Just before they move beyond my vision, they touch mouths again, and I feel a resurgent glimmer of their passion in my chemical memory.

  I return to my room, tranquil, quiet, and ready for sleep.

  CHAPTER 23

  KHARA

  I’m lost. My routine, my safe existence, my oblivion has left me. I wander, wanting to crush my head against a wall, against the pavement of the street, but know this’ll give me no peace. And the damned patches don’t help either.

  After seeing Samuel I returned to the patch, hoping to recapture the blankness that overrode the blackness inside me. Three days of masking my anger in the wash of the drug led me to a feeling of failure, disappointment, a yearning for the purpose that had illuminated my days as I searched for Samuel. Memory of my temporary consciousness defeated my grasp on oblivion.

  Damn Samuel.

  I still don’t want Samuel’s rebellion. I want life before the invasion. Or I want the amnesia and nonexistence of the days since. Yet each day calls to me now from a direction I can’t see, a path I can’t find.

  I have abandoned my old haunts, both wanting to avoid Samuel and determined not to be a consc
ious person in the places where the ghost of myself once lived. I don’t want to face that memory of myself.

  I bathe myself more often these days, eat more often. Lost in new-found clarity and wakefulness, I wash others as they sprawl in the dorms, half-human, as far gone in their escape into the oblivion of drugs and alcohol as I was. I feed those too weak to move.

  I endure Ilnok and his associates. I choke down sweetmead and prepare my body for violation, prepare myself to act as drinking vessel and toy. I behave.

  And yet I’m lost. I’m conscious now and lost. And angry.

  ***

  I’m leaving Dominique’s, leaving Ilnok, empty and raw. The last of the session was unbearable because I didn’t renew my patch. It was a red, red end of the session – red light in the dim room, red flashes behind eyelids squeezed shut, red revulsion as the palpi entered me, red menstrual blood on the table, on my legs, under my buttocks. The ants don’t seem to care. This stickiness is on my legs now, different from the sweetmead, or the other fluids that often bathe my lower body. Away from Ilnok now, I want to wash. I want a drink.

  I don’t know if I can stay awake that long.

  I move away from the entrance to Dominique’s determined not to limp, although my hips and knees seem loose. One step. Another. I’ll go to a dorm first and then a bar. If I have the strength.

  I haven’t gone far when I am supported by a hand taking my elbow. I jerk away from the touch, stumble, and catch myself on a graffiti-painted rough brick wall. I straighten and begin walking again. I don’t know who touched me. I don’t care. I care only they don’t do it again, but I’m sure my reaction will have cured any intentions to help me. One step and another.

  “Khara.” I stop. A human voice. Deep. Gentle. I don’t know anyone who would speak to me. An ember of fear ignites in the emptiness of my middle. And a small glow of hope. I lean a shoulder against the wall, hoping I’ve imagined my name in my exhaustion.

  “Khara.” Again. I squeeze my eyes closed and roll until my back is against the wall. I open my eyes.