Humans are the vertebrate equivalent of the cockroach. They can, and will, adapt to nearly anything. The Alpha-Morkth hives pushed this adaptability close to its limits. At this point most humans crack. Some go insane, some try to rebel, and some become catatonic. Still, after more than three hundred years of selection, the Alpha-Morkth had to weed out about seventy percent of each crop of humans they bred. The culls went back into the food supply for the others. The remaining thirty percent were almost all perfect Morkth-men. Almost all . . . but there were always a few exceptions. Adaptation to survive could always be pushed one step further. A few of the humans the Morkth bred had learned not only to survive, but to exploit the system. S'kith 235 was one of those. He was a great danger to the entire hive system. Not only had he learned to exploit it, but also he still had his balls.
The Alpha-Morkth wanted uniformity, absolute obedience, and antlike industry from the humans they bred to replace workers and, reluctantly, warriors of their own species. The warriors were a problem. A good fighter needs a certain amount of flexibility in their response to an enemy. A degree of tactical adaptability is also needed. A soldier may also have to be deployed at a variety of tasks, given the chaotic nature of war. The sheer stupidity bred for in workers was thus unsuitable, but with too much intelligence and flexibility the warrior Morkth-men could be dangerous to their creators. The cull rate here was over ninety percent, and the resultant warrior-breds were still somewhat less effective than wild-human fighters. The selection bias toward strongly left-brain-dominant warriors failed to adequately deal with the erratic nature of hand-to-hand combat. It was the main reason for the hive cities' lack of speed in their advance against the internecinally squabbling city-states.
In the lower levels of the hive were the small lightless cells where the Alpha-Morkth kept their brood-sow humans. It was a place where no male Morkth-man should ever be found. Even the cleaners down here were microcephalic hormonally-altered male neuters. S'kith 235 moved calmly along behind one as it mopped the passage. It would almost certainly not turn around, or react, no matter what noise he made, but S'kith never took chances. His curiosity was almost equally matched by a secretive caution. The mopper moved around the corner. Experience told him that it would be at least twenty-five minutes before it came back.
The grille on the bottom of the cell door was intended to allow any solid matter to be washed out after its daily hosing down. The floor within was curved and sloped towards the door to ensure that the system worked efficiently. Even the food and water dispensers were positioned on the back wall, to assist gravity. S'kith knelt down beside the grille, and spoke, his voice very low. There could be no mistake about the eagerness of the whispered reply.
Copulation through a six-inch-wide by five-inch-high steel-barred grille is not easy. It can be done, however, if both participants are very determined. The warrior class are bred for physical strength, agility and speed. They are fed on a well-balanced diet—the protein often coming from the most biologically suitable source: their own species—and are renowned for their stamina. Thus it was that the human cuckoo was able to beat the Alpha-Morkth artificial insemination team five times. Then the sound of the mop bucket being pushed forced him to withdraw and retreat hastily up the passage and onto the internal beam structure which he railed along to reach the next level of the hive. He had another fifteen levels to go before he reached the place where he was supposed to be on guard.
Morkth drone males are nonintelligent. In fact, the brain is reduced to pinhead size. The body, too, is a stunted thing with few functional internal organs. Before maturity they could not survive for an hour outside the caring nurture of the hive. Even their food has to be carefully predigested for their growth period. On maturity the mouth parts meld and change, forming a long tube with vicious extrudable hooks on the end. They crawl up the vast body of the Morkth queen, following pheromone tracers till they reach the soft spot in the chitinous armor, where the great vein pulses close to the surface. Then the sharp snout is forced in through the soft tissues, and the hooks extrude. Sometimes up to a dozen drone males may hang like small, bloated ticks just above the egg vent.
Most of the eggs would be neuter, unmaturing females, the workers and the warriors. The Queen selected which drone male fertilized which egg, depending on the purpose of the egg. She secreted the hormones into her bloodstream which altered the eggs to produce new drones, or new queens. The same hormones in her blood affected the male, altering the fertility and type of gamete he produced. If a drone gene line proved less than viable, the Queen's giant chela would pluck it off, and leave it discarded, to die and be cleared away and eaten by the workers. It was scant wonder that the Morkth found human sex and the emotions associated with it totally incomprehensible. One sex must, logic insisted, be just a source of gametes, nothing more. To the Morkth this was the province of males, but their first human male captive had shown some sign of intelligence by escaping. Therefore females in this species must be the gamete source. It was strange, but then the entire species was strange. Decision was reached. Thereafter the subject was closed. The noises the human sows made were not speech, just instinctive speech imitations. They were fed, watered, washed . . . and bred.
Most of the Morkth-men gene lines were bred stupid. With pain as a punishment, and food as a reward, workers could be trained to perform their tasks regardless of thinking ability. With intelligence-poor gene lines, deprived of almost all sensory stimuli in the dark, small rearing cages, many females producing dim-witted workers had become a pitiful once-human equivalent of the Morkth drones. Brood sows that produced intelligent offspring went to the flesh renderers . . . or, if these offspring had good physical characteristics, the females were used for warrior breeding. The genes for good warrior broodstock also carried other linked characteristics, characteristics that had little to do with the traits the Morkth sought. The harsh selection process had refined and reinforced both the desired and unrequired, carried-along traits. Good warriors of the clockwork type the Morkth liked were powerfully left-brain dominant. This made, purely incidentally, for a natural predilection toward math. . . . They were also good at logic. . . .
Since the Morkth denied that female humans were capable of speech, communication could be easy enough, so long as one did not make too much noise. Noise caused punishment. And punishment meant pain. The Morkth were expert in the administration of pain . . . to other Morkth. Unfortunately, the frail humans died quite easily. The less intelligent and less logical worker brood sows, kept separately from the warrior broodstock, had never realized that they could talk, so long as one kept speech quiet and away from high-pitched sounds. Their section of the hive was virtually silent, apart from quiet, purely animal sounds.
It was different, vastly different, in the layer of hive where the warrior brood were kept. Here there was always a susurration of low-pitched cage-to-cage talk. The human mind needs stimulus of some kind. Without stimulus it atrophies. But speech, even only speech, can be enough to keep sanity and, if the selection pressures favor intelligence, can produce far more . . .
The oral tradition had generated a strange and distorted picture of the outside world, passed down from the first captives, but the women had a very real idea of the function and structure of the hive. They had time, endless time, to talk, to theorize, to plot and to scheme, until they became reproductively dysfunctional and were taken away to the rendering rooms. The only other distraction in the tiny cells was one's own body, and the products thereof. The Morkth were unaware that in the eternal semidarkness of their warrior breeders' bare cells they had been fomenting a rebellion for generations now.
This ultimate form of hell had not produced dehumanization, as it had in worker brood sows. Instead it produced a terrible richness, a flowering of poetry, philosophy and mathematics, all directed toward one end: the ultimate destruction of the Morkth. Now they'd found their tool—S'kith 235. And it was even more pleasant than masturbation. It provided a basic human need they'd all been long denied: simple physical contact with another person. For some seven years now the Alpha-Morkth warrior breeding program had been quietly sabotaged. At least eleven thousand new Morkth-men were growing up through the indoctrination classes. Passing unnoticed, yet with a terrifying gene cocktail of high intelligence, intense curiosity and instinctive secretive cunning, virtually from their first reasoning thought. This latter feature was S'kith 235's unique mutation, but he bred true, in more than eighty percent of cases. His male offspring were passing undetected up the layers of the Alpha-Morkth warrior training. All around them other lines were culled. But S'kith 235's children were tailored to survive and flourish in the hive.
It was certain that a reasonable percentage would, like S'kith 235, find a way around the just-post-puberty castration rite of passage, when the Alpha-Morkth collected and selected the semen that was frozen and used for future breeding. And if they had testicles . . . sooner or later they'd find their way down to the breeding cages. His female offspring were already being selected as potential warrior sows. The vertebrate cockroach was adapting yet again. It would beat this system too, before inbreeding weakened the strain.
In the dark, the statisticians calculated again. There was no need. They knew the answer. They simply did it for the sheer satisfaction. The point of break-even probability had long since been reached. They knew that with each S'kith-fathered conception the time of Morkth destruction came closer. They also knew that with each conception the chances of S'kith's capture grew greater. S'kith 235 knew nothing of love. He had little understanding of what the brew of emotions and hormones were that drove him down into this dangerous place, again and again and again. But among the warrior-brood women he was dearly loved. And they were already preparing to mourn him.
It was the twenty percent of his offspring that were culled that were reaching to enmesh S'kith 235. He had manipulated the gene records after the women had pointed out that this would certainly trap him if he did not. After his changes the gene records of his offspring were not what they were supposed to be. Resultantly, when the cull-tissue sample was analyzed, the two did not match. An improbably high number showed a particular chromosome group. A group not in the sperm-bank records. A mutant. A mutation that bred without Morkth supervision. Slowly, slowly, the methodical net of the Morkth was closing in on the Alpha-Morkth guard on the roof of the hive.
There were two possible ways that S'kith 235 could evade certain capture and death at the hands of his masters. A Beta-Morkth raid, or flight. The probability of the former was about 0.2 percent. The Beta-Morkth would simply kill him, it was true; they despised the Alpha's use of humanity. The human race was something to be destroyed utterly, and not consorted with. The probability of S'kith 235 fleeing was even slimmer: The hive was his universe, a conditioning going to the core of his being from his earliest thought. The Alpha-Morkth had attempted to breed the kind of loyalty which was instinctive to them, and constantly reinforced by the pheromones unique to each queen's gene line. At the same time they had done their best to remove all normal human emotional cues: love, family and sex.
They had failed to make S'kith loyal to anything but himself. In humans loyalty is a two-way street, and the hive gave none of the emotional return humans require above such physical things as nutrition. But they had managed to make him terrified of the non-hive world.
The women had known his time was coming. They had not realized that the time was tonight. S'kith stood watch in the darkness on the hive roof. As soon as he saw them come out of the exit port, the Morkth-man knew something was wrong. The mistresses never exposed themselves on the roof of the hive. Besides the safety aspect, they found clear, bright light unpleasant. The gene mistress leading the all-Morkth party was easily recognizable, her high-status patterned chelicerae gleaming in the moonlight. The conclusion was inescapable. They'd found him. S'kith drew his sword and began the ritual of bioenhancement exercises he knew would double his reaction speed, and stop all pain for a few minutes. There was a high physiological cost to this, but he doubted that he would be alive to pay it.
Two hundred zeth-klicks away the Beta-Morkth scanners were watching with their endless robotic patience. They registered the presence of the traitorkind in an exposed position, and alerted their masters.
The target was tempting: so many Alpha exposed in one fire zone. Clawed hands flickered across the console, calculating the possibility of success, against the use of scarce and irreplaceable resources. The target was declared worthy of one low-impact chemical missile unit. It streaked away on its killing trajectory.
The blast knocked S'kith off his feet. But by the time the debris was starting to fall the warrior training took over. He was up and running. This was a target zone for ordnance: get out, get down. The action seemed to break down barriers within him. Now, he would not, could not stop. He hurtled across the broken masonry, swung down from beam to beam, and ran at the gate of the outer hive enclosure.
The gate was intended to prevent entry by human ground troops—a low probability threat here, deep in conquered lands. The hive roof was where Beta-Morkth would attack. The best Morkth-men warriors were put up there. After all, to defend the hive against true Morkth warriors with technologically advanced weapons called for near superhumans. The next best of the crop of Alpha-Morkth bred warriors went to the invasion troops. The gate guards were the bottom of the barrel, adequate for their task, but almost totally rigid in their responses. They were gate guards. Not even an explosion from the hive behind them would turn them. The gate was open, to allow the passage of a worker Morkth-man party. The gate guards would continue to watch for any threat from outside, unless otherwise ordered. S'kith, his body converted into a deadly killing machine by the bioenhancement and pure adrenalin, cut through them like a sharp scythe through wheat stalks.
He was out, and still running. The surviving gate guards stood staring, confused. They watched as S'kith 235 hurtled straight into the flood-full river at the foot of the hill. He was gone, the black of his uniform swallowed by the darkness and the black muddy churn of earth-laden water, and its broken flotsam of branches and logs.
Swimming was not part of a roof guard's training. Drowning, however, was something for which he needed no prior experience. S'kith 235 had, in his frantic thrashings, managed to break the surface several times. He was about to go under for what would have been the last time, when a section of uprooted walnut tree caromed into his back. He managed to grasp its branches with all the strength of a drowning man.
It had taken the last of his energy to haul himself onto the trunk of the long-dead tree. Having roughly wedged himself upright between two branches, his mind slipped into post bioenhancement oblivion.
He regained consciousness to find his clothing being torn away by a scarecrow figure in a long, ragged skirt. The stirring and opening of his eyes elicited a start and a surprised comment, "Well, damn me if it ain't alive. Mebbe there's more profit in it than just a few bits o' black rag." He was vaguely aware of being dragged, then of a delicious warmth stealing through his limbs.
The Morkth-man drifted in and out of consciousness several times in the next few days. The man who gave him broth and tended the fire, confirmed S'kith 235's beliefs that non-Morkth-bred humans were very alien creatures indeed. Totally misshapen, bulging with fat on his chest, and wide about the hips, and not wearing proper trousers. Long-haired too. Fever and darkness took him down again.
The place was silent when S'kith woke clear-headed at last, some three days after his flight and involuntary escape from the hive. His ribs ached, and his scalp and chin itched furiously. He looked about the place, trying to piece happenings together from a patchwork of memories.
He was in a low cave, crudely fronted with rocks, and a half-drawn curtain of hide. A smoky fire burned at the back of the cave. He was lying under some rough covering on a straw pallet. His clothes were gone, and his hands and ankles were bound. He heard voices, and they were coming closer.
". . . . found him on that spit yonder, more dead 'n alive, jammed in a dead tree, free days ago."
To S'kith there was something familiar about the voice. "Them Morkth-men is good workers. Too dumb t'stop, heh, heh! You gonna give me a goo' price fer 'im then?" There was a wheedling, whining quality to the voice.
Somebody snorted. "Likely not worth a bent copper, Sheela. He's probably so bent 'n buggered by the river I won't find a buyer for him."
"Naw! 'E's in good nick, I promise. Checked him out meself, all over. 'E's well hung too. Fought of keeping 'im for a stud for me old age, I did." The vaguely familiar voice went off into a cackle of laughter.
"He's entire?" The second speaker was incredulous. "Then he's no bloody Morkth-man. Stole the clothes y'showed me, likely enough. Stupid bastard."
"Well, I'll take 'em off, then. I'll not let 'is nuts stand between me an' a goo' price." The hide was pushed aside, and the skirted figure with long hair was suddenly outlined against the background of a river sand spit. The face was prune-wrinkled. It was something that S'kith had never seen before. Morkth-men were killed when they began to age past their prime. The eyes that looked out of the face were sharp, and flickered across his attempt to sit up.
"See, Ser Farno. 'E's in good shape, considering. Now, I'll cut his cods off quickly." The knife that came out of her sleeve was long and wickedly sharp looking. It was a mistake. The sight of the knife triggered defensive reactions. To the Morkth trainers the best form of defense is attack. The old cords that bound his wrists were no match for S'kith's iron-hard muscles. They snapped, and he was moving, propelled by his still-bound legs. The knife wrist was seized, forced down. The blade of his hand struck the knife wielder's neck. There was an audible brittle crack.
Without pausing to look at his fallen victim, S'kith took the knife and sliced his ankles free. Stepping into a crouch, knife extended, he advanced on the other person who had entered the cave with her.
"Keep away from me, you bloody madman! You've killed the old woman! You'll hang for that!" There was real fear in the fat man's voice as he edged back against the wall.
S'kith paused. "Woman? That was . . . a woman?"
Trying to press his way back into a crevice behind him, the man stuttered. "Yeah, I, I know she was an ol' bitch, and as ugly as sin, but you didn't haveta' kill her. Just . . . just lemme out, okay?"
"You are sure that was a woman? Are you a woman too?"
"Me!" Squeaked the fat one. "No . . . no really, I'm a man. Just like you. I saw . . . it . . . it . . . it was an accident. Honestly! Now I'll just go an' tell the Sheriff . . ." He made a sudden lunge, attempting to reach the mouth of the cave. S'kith cut him down without remorse. He'd killed a woman . . . that was wrong . . . somehow. He'd never wanted to kill warrior-brood women. He looked down at the tumbled body. Was this really what they looked like?
He lifted the dead woman's skirt. Yes, undoubtedly. She was physically different from him. So that was what it actually looked like. He had never been able to see it properly before. His emotions, those strange puzzling feelings, were stirred. If he had known the term he would have said that he was saddened by the killing. So, as it was what the females in the Morkth cells had always wanted of him, he had sex with the body. It was not particularly pleasant, but he felt it was the least he could do. Getting up afterwards he realized he was hungry. So he cut himself some hunks off his male victim, and ate them. He took some of the clothes and dressed. He stropped the knife carefully, and shaved his face and head. Then he cut some more steaks for later, put them into a sack, and set out into a world he felt he did not belong in. The gold from the slave buyer's purse was left scattered in the dirt of the cave floor. He had no idea that it was of any value.
It was nearly four hours later that the hue and cry was raised. The country was up in pursuit of the monster: Rapist, Murderer and Cannibal.