Maggie was put to work on a gene scanner, dyeing and scrutinizing dronon DNA. Thousands of healthy dronon specimens had given tissue samples over the past six years, and all of these were well catalogued. Now, Maggie and the aberlains studied samples from unhealthy dronon.
So it was that Maggie spent her day encoding the DNA of dronons who were born with lung defects. Genetic aberrations that led to weaknesses were never tolerated in dronon society. The congenitally insane, retarded, and deformed were always killed when their abnormalities were discovered. So Maggie found herself working with tissue from dronon infants. The workers who had shipped the specimens from Dronon had not taken great care to clean and prepare the tissues. Instead, they had shipped crates filled with pieces of the dead. The whiplike sensors had been ripped off the young dronon mouths. The feelers were then placed in refrigerated boxes and labeled according to deformity.
Maggie’s job was to carefully unwrap the feelers, remove small samples from each and label them according to specimen, then place each in a gene decoder. Computers would then store information on the mutant DNA, match identical genetic structures from different samples of mutants, and thus by defining the areas of aberration, learn which genes controlled which functions.
Maggie worked at her grisly task all morning. For days she had been fighting her Guide as it attempted to stimulate her emotions. When she was angry or frightened, the Guide continually sought to calm her, send feelings of bliss. Maggie had found herself nursing her anger, trying to overwhelm the Guide. But now she was so weary that she could not fight it any longer. If not for the Guide, she would have collapsed from exhaustion. But the Guide kept her awake.
The Guide carried her about the room, fed her comfort and information. She knew that her work was important, and Maggie found herself wishing that she could do more, hoping she would discover the actual genes that led to Adoration.
But the most important work was left to others, to aberlains with greater skill. They worked with tissues from the criminally insane, decoding genes from those few dronons who did not adore the Golden Queen.
Few such specimens had ever been born in dronon history, and they had been completely eradicated. Since the dronon used their own dead to fertilize their fields, the tissue samples of these insane individuals were rarely available. Still, a great search of the dronon worlds would eventually turn up a few new individuals. Maggie could only hope that when such samples became available, they would be sent here to the laboratories on Fale, so that she might have the honor of decoding them.
The tissue samples that Maggie used came from dronons who were born with a disorder that caused the chitin around their breathing orifices to form scarred nodules that could block the air passages. The breathing orifices on a dronon consisted of a row of nine holes located on the back upper hips of the dronon’s hind legs. The orifices led to small lung sacks between the inner wall of the exoskeleton on the hip, and the hip muscles themselves. The dronon could not properly be said to have hearts. Instead, a rhythmic movement of the back legs caused the hip muscles to pump oxygen through the lungs and oxygenated blood through the rest of the body. For this reason, a dronon actually pumped blood more efficiently when it walked or ran. When it stopped walking, it would be forced to crouch and rhythmically bob up and down to keep its circulation going.
By evening, Maggie’s work allowed her to isolate a defective gene and thus learn the gene’s purpose in the great act of controlling the development of dronons.
The dronon technicians congratulated her and rewarded her by letting her work late. Her Guide fed her a sense of rapture, and she felt thrilled to be engaged in such a great and noble cause. Thus it was that she finally stumbled to her cubicle.
She opened the window, smelled the fresh night air, listened to the sound of the river lapping against the living walls of the city. A hundred thousand stars filled the night sky like white sand, and she looked up at a great swirling galaxy, wondering at its beauty.
She set the temperature of her bed higher, took a quick shower, then put on a thin robe and lay down to sleep. Out in the hall, she could hear the comforting sound of a dronon vanquisher’s feet clicking as it patrolled the hallways of her sleeping quarters.
In the middle of the night, Maggie woke to a consuming lust that rolled over her in waves. She knew Avik was coming, and she did not think she could fight the Guide’s commands anymore.
She was lying on her stomach, and the air stirred behind her. She realized that Avik must already have entered the room; the light did not go on, but she felt the weight of his body as he climbed on the bed. He moved quickly. She could hear his heavy breathing, and feel his weight as he straddled her back.
She whimpered softly. He pulled at the Guide on her head, thrust what felt like a chisel against the base of her neck. There was a searing pain, and hot blood spurted down her neck, and suddenly she was free from the Guide.
Maggie’s only thought was that Avik had decided to kill her. She screamed, twisted to her side so that she could wrestle the knife away.
Gallen sat atop her, knife in hand, lit only by the starlight shining from the window. He thrust the Guide in a sack, then hit the sack sharply against the wall so that it made a sickly crunching sound, like breaking bones.
Maggie’s head was reeling from fatigue, from a sudden overwhelming sadness. She couldn’t think what was happening. “Get out,” she whispered. “Avik is coming.”
“Who is Avik?” Gallen whispered.
“A rapist,” Maggie said, and behind Gallen the door whispered open. Light from the corridor shone in. Gallen surged from the bed so quickly that Maggie hardly saw him move. He seemed almost to fly across the room, a black shadow in his robes, a gleaming silver knife in his hand.
Gallen’s knife fell just as Avik began to cry out. Gallen tossed the body to the floor with a thud.
In the corridor outside her door, the dronon guard shouted and scrabbled to come to Maggie’s rescue.
Gallen slammed the door and locked it, saying, “Quick! Out the window! Jump in the water!”
Maggie staggered off the bed; horror overwhelmed her-not just horror at the thought of the dronon guard racing to the door, but a horror at all that had happened here.
In one instant, she realized what kind of work she had been engaged in, and an image flashed in her mind-a vision of the bloated sacklike mothers she had helped engineer, the remembered smell of dronon body parts stacked like cordwood in bins.
Her hands felt filthy; her entire skin felt filthy, and Maggie dropped to her knees and simultaneously cried from the core of her soul and tried to keep from retching up her dinner.
With a squeal of rending metal, the dronon guard hit the door, peeled it back with one chitinous claw, tearing it from its hinges. It held its black incendiary rod forward, pushed it through the door, and Maggie could see the wicked serrated edges on its forward battle arms. Gallen and the beast were dancing shadows in the light thrown from the corridor. As Gallen rushed to the torn door, the dronon’s wings buzzed in anticipation.
Gallen grabbed the dronon’s incendiary rod, twisted it away and spun, firing through the rent door. He was far too close to shoot the weapon, and Maggie hoped that the thin metal door would shield them from the heat.
The chitinous black flesh of the guard squealed as its body temperature rose above boiling, and smoke roiled from its carapace and crawled along the ceiling. It became a blazing pillar of white fire. Intense heat filled the room, and the broken door caught flame. Gallen threw up his arms and staggered back to her.