Chapter Fourteen of my current wip. As before, all and any comments very much appreciated

Please note: This is now a weekly post

Unable to sleep, Jess was up and moving even before the forest began its morning clamour. As the zem, he had reports to read, notes to transfer. The Techs might be able to pick as they will from the Observers’ heads, but Jess needed a visual display of what they’d seen of their skein’s behaviour and the teams’ ideas of what it might mean. They might be better able to understand what they saw if they knew the language. Maybe this time, with the linguist Joel as part of the team, they’d fare better. He also needed to keep abreast of the Operators’ projects – the farms, their food production, their textiles. In all this, Jess used the regulation paper and pencil to be filed in card-folders.

So intent was he on his work, he didn’t notice when Armar joined him in the hive’s front cell, oblivious too to the domestic’s delivery of breakfast, juice and coffee.

Armar cleaned his plate of overcooked, over-salted scrambled eggs and dry toast – apparently their preevos hadn’t left them edible spreadable oil – and looked across to Jess. “Aren’t you eating?”

Called from his work Jess looked up. “Sorry. What?”

“Wow, you were in some deep place.”

Jess shook his head. “No-no. Just reports. Is that breakfast?” He grimaced his lack of interest. “You have it. I’m fine.”

“You are not fine – you’re not eating. Not sleeping either. Don’t think we haven’t noticed.” Armar loaded a plate with scrambled eggs and cold toast. “Eat.”

Jess looked at the pile of papers, and the plated food. He’d rather push the food away but knew Armar wouldn’t leave off the nagging until he’d eaten. He drew the plate closer.

“You’ve been like this since that incident with the dragon. It must have really scared you. Though I can understand that. The young must be terrifying enough, but a full-grown…”

Jess ignored him, dutifully eating his breakfast.

“But you were where you shouldn’t have been,” Armar lightly chided.

“The perimeter was breached,” Jess said around a mouthful of eggs. He swallowed and reached for the juice. But set it aside when he noticed its aroma. Fragrant. Like her. “I want to go back and check it. Ensure the Techs have done their duty this time.”

Armar nodded. “Agreed, it needs checking. So do you.”

Jess opened his mouth.

“Close it. Better to have Antel poke and prod than to have the Techs alerted that all’s not right with you. And Jess, all is not right with you.”

While Armar left to fetch the medic Antel, Jess pushed aside the half-eaten breakfast and tidied the papers. He would  have welcomed Antel’s examination – if it weren’t for the Techs. He would have sought the medic’s input before now if it weren’t for those hear-everything, know-everything Greys.

By the time Antel arrived, Jess had figured a way to keep the medic’s findings away from their prying minds. “Hey, great to see you this morning. Glad you could come. There’s something I want you to see. It’s a bit of a long flight but well worth it.”

Antel glanced back at Armar. “Ah, so that’s why the mystery. And where are you taking me?”

“Southwest. Some islands there. Amazing developments since the earlier surveys. If we go now we should scope a flier before the Techs use them all.” Jess bustled Antel out of the hive and towards the fly-port where he signed for a flier.

“Purpose?” the Tech asked, the leather-bound log held out for his completion.

“Investigative visit,” Jess said as he filled in the data. “That island I reported before.”

The Tech accepted the explanation. “Ensure you return the flier before the light dies.”

Jess nodded. “No fret. No intention of over-nighting there.”

No words passed between Antel and Jess during the flight.

*

Jess brought the flier down close to the southern shore of the southernmost island, eyes flicking towards Antel. This was his first visit to the island, Jess wanted to see his reaction.

Antel was nodding. “Not as we’d believed it?”

“Like everywhere within our breed-pool’s range, it’s volcanic in origin. This appears to be more recent than the major landmass – at least the flora and fauna are only now colonising it. And yet, unlike to the north, it’s no longer active and the rocks look much older.”

“What are you saying? Evolution without the Techs?” Antel’s remark was thick with sarcasm. “But that’s not why you brought me here. Armar says you’re not sleeping, not eating, and he’s noticing physical changes in you.”

Jess tugged at his cuffs, hoping to lessen the gap between sleeve and wrist. “We Monza – Imms – we continue to grow. It’s only the Techs who remain small.”

“Yes, I’m a medic, my duty to know these things. In fact, I’m pretty sure I know a lot more about this than do you. Like, we Monza continue to grow at a slow and steady rate – we do not shoot up overnight. And while I’m told that certain plants in our study area do exactly that, that’s only after the rains. Besides, why you and no one else in camp? You’re right to bring me here to discuss this. The Techs will notice it soon.”

That’s what was worrying Jess. What would they do? An aberrant Monza, would they remove him? He didn’t want to think about ‘how’ they’d do that.

“It’s not just my bones that are growing,” Jess said. “Other things are happening.” Things he didn’t want to speak about.

“You’re growing fuzz,” Antel said. “I can see that. Armar has noticed it too. Fuzzy arms and fuzzy chin and… fuzzy down there?” Antel nodded towards Jess’s crotch.

Jess swallowed. He didn’t want to ask this. He knew – or he thought he knew but maybe, maybe not. And he didn’t know which name to use for it. Pipy? That was the nursery name. He was doubly embarrassed. “It’s…that’s…grown. What’s happening to me?”

In answer, Antel asked him, “How are you on our history?”

Jess frowned, head atilt. “You mean the Monza-Adamzal virus?” He didn’t add in the ‘supposed’; that was Joel’s story to add. “I was already out of the nurseries and into schools when that wiped out our breeding females. So yea, I know about the war and all that.”

“That’s not the history I meant. Why are we Monza called Imms? It’s imm for immature, not yet able to breed. But why can’t we breed?”

“No breeding females, and without them we remain immature,” Jess answered with the obvious. Then looked away.

He walked some steps, turned and circled around the dodecahedral flier, his hand to his mouth while he thought. Thoughts collided, knowledge with speculation, his breathing rapid and shallow. Nausea played with his guts and a sweat began to form. She’d been no demon sent by the Pendols. She was one of their breeding pool, genetically modified.

“The breeding females triggered our transition into maturity, I know that. But how did that work?” Because Jess was now sure that’s what had happened to him. That Itamakku female had somehow triggered the process in him.

“The female releases a chemical when ready to breed,” Antel said.

Fragrant, alluring, attracting him – even into danger. “And in the presence of this chemical, what happens to the Monza? What changes?”

“Skeletal and muscular are the more obvious. He grows larger, stronger.” Antel glanced at the flier. “Better able to fight, to defend the breeders.”

“To defeat the Techs?”

Antel held up his hands. “That is dangerous talk.”

“And this fuzz and the other growth?” Jess waved his hand to his crotch which increasingly threatened to grow cocky.

“Enables the mature male and female to breed. When that happens, the now-mature Monza’s immature twin transitions to a milk-mother, to tend the young – however many there might be.”

But there’d be no transition for his sister; dead in the mine. “All this growth, getting ready to do like the larger animals here? Yet they don’t die.”

“And neither do we,” Antel said. “For we have no breeding females left.”

Except Joel had been to Adamzal where the Techs harvested the immature Amzal, a quota set by treaty after the War. There were breeding females on Adamzal.

“We’ve already discussed this,” Antel said. “When the time comes—”

“It has come.”

“—the Techs will do it ex utero. No Monza will have to die.”

“Yet here I am.” Jess swagged his hands roughly in front of his body. “Transitioning to a mature Monza. And it takes a female chemical to trigger this change?”

“You’ve been in contact?”

“Not close. Not as close as you standing here.” He couldn’t help but suck his lip.

“We can’t reverse it. We know no way.”

“Then the Techs must—I don’t know – remove me. Kill me? Please, Antel, you must drive it into Armar’s head, for when he’s made the zem after me, he’s to allow none of the clutch to stray beyond our perimeters. And those holos must be kept in good repair.”

He was ashamed, even in the secrecy of his head, to admit he wanted to get close, to hold and plunge deep into that Itamakku female even though it meant he would die. He must protect his team from that.

To be continued next Monday

Thank you for reading

Comments invited

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It’s not really a spoiler alert to suggest some of the future episodes could get a might more adult than these first have been. I will flag them when that happens 😇