The Fathering Land

by Tripp Greyson

  My love? Aurora asked.

  I... I need a moment, I told her, as I gathered Calvin in my arms and he welcomed me home. Then suddenly Mother was there, looking twice her age, and Old-Father Trent was there, and they all welcomed me home with tears and the warm embrace of family.

  ❖

  Much later, as we sat around the table drinking beer we found in the Tejarkanye stores, along with most of the town's food, my gaze suddenly froze as I looked at Calvin. How old is he? Little Magic asked suddenly. Any chance he's entering puberty? I realized I could see the stamp of his coming manhood in his slim musculature, despite the near-starved look of him, and his face wasn't a little boy's anymore.

  Just over 20, I reported. I guess… 15 in old-years, so probably? Why?

  He's like you at the cellular level, my son responded. And I can see the remnants of the same geas that bound you on him.

  I just sat there open-mouthed, until Old-Father Trent looked at me shrewdly. "What's wrong, son? Talking to that Goddess of yours in your head?"

  "Our son, actually. Eos. I call him Little Magic."

  Their eyes widened, and my mother glanced up at the Dixies where they sat in the rafters, chattering away about all the pretty girls in the village, about how they were all way too skinny and tall but how they would "do them" anyway. They swapped names and compared notes, sipping the thimbles of beer I'd allowed them; they'd already introduced themselves to all and sundry, and had proceeded to charm the ladies of Hamiltown. I'd warned my family that they were crude little bastards, completely oriented toward fighting and sex, since those were their primary purposes in life, and they were proving me right with their topic of conversation. "You have another son?" Mother asked hesitantly, her brown eyes wide. "Besides these, um, six boys here?"

  I flashed her a smile. "I know it's hard to believe, Mom, but I was on the cusp of puberty when I was exiled. Plus, I turned out to be what the Goddess calls a Y-Chromosome Repository. I'm where all the Y-chromosomes of the men who Stepped Through from the other world ended up. Well, me and hundreds of men like me all over the world. I'm very fertile, and I have dozens of sons so far, with about a hundred more on the way. All those boys," I gestured at the Dixies, "also have dozens of sons, so hurray, you're a great-grandma. Besides them, I have two other adult Dixie sons at home, probably another eighty or so newborn Dixie sons by now, a harpy son named Isaiah," her eyes widened at that, "and a whole bunch of wolfin, vixen, faunlet, sylvie, and other sons. Oh, and six of my seven wives are pregnant." She gasped. "But the first son I conceived was Eos," I said, "though he has yet to be born. He's... well, he's a demigod, since he's my son with the Dawn Goddess, who fixed me and broke the geas that blocked my puberty. He has a lot of interesting powers."

  "I do," Eos said as he manifested in a bright flash of light.

  "Magic boy!" "LM!" "Hey, Eos, how's it shakin'?" "Yo, bro!" "Hey, E, you need to check out the babes in Daddio's hometown!" the Dixies yelled, spilling their beer as they enthusiastically greeted their brother.

  "Well met, Hero Dixies!" They all cheered. Little Magic bowed to my mother, father, and brother in quick succession. "Grandmamá, Grandpapá, Uncle, I am proud and happy to meet you all. My proper name is Eos, but I prefer to be called Little Magic."

  They just stared at him. He'd manifested this time in his bare-chested adult Elf form, which had quickly become his favorite. If any of the village girls saw him that way, the Dixies wouldn't stand a chance with them. Thank goodness he was wearing his trousers rather than the loincloth, or Mother might have fainted.

  "What Father has hesitated to tell you," the boy god announced, glancing at me, "is that young Calvin is also a Y-Chromosome Repository. After he matures, you will have many, many more grandchildren."

  Tow-headed Calvin's eyes widened. "You mean I can have seven wives too?!"

  "If you want them. And any other women who want sons from you."

  My brother grinned, his eyes twinkling as he rubbed his hands together. "Oh boy oh boy oh boy!" Mom, meanwhile, put her head in her hands.

  "I take it he's already showing interest in girls, Mother?" I asked.

  "Only in the sense that a fish shows interest in water," my father answered for her. "Before the invasion, he was very popular with the girlies. Had 'em following him around, practically eating out of his hand, doing his chores for him, and asking your mother constantly if he could 'come out and play'."

  "I had three girlfriends at the same time!" Calvin crowed, showing the appropriate number of skinny digits. He grinned again. "I guess I still do! We can get back together now!"

  "You, er, haven't comforted any of them yet, have you?" I asked.

  "Workin' on it!"

  "Oh. Damn. Uh, forgive the indelicacy, but are your armpits getting hairy?"

  "Little bit."

  "Aaaannnnddd... any hair growing... down there?"

  Mother looked up at me. "Tobias! We don't talk about such things at the table!"

  "We have to, Mother. It's a whole new world we're living in, and... well, if Calvin is entering puberty, your little boy's going to be repopulating a lot of it, since he's a Repository like me."

  "I got three or four pubes!" Calvin said excitedly. "Wanna see?"

  "Yeah, show us!" "Hurray for crotch hairs!" "Let's see the Big C!" "Shake yer babymaker!" "Dangle the wangle!" the Dixies chorused.

  "NO, we do not want to see," my father said sternly. He quirked an eyebrow at me. "Yep, puberty. Only a little late, this time."

  "Blame it on the damn geas," I muttered.

  "Speaking of mystical things," Little Magic prompted, "you had something to share with Mother and I, about the people who vanished when the worldlines merged?"

  "Er... yes. Your Divine Mother said she became a goddess when the vast majority of the people of her worldline achieved a certain level of mental and ethical development. They suddenly fused into one overmind and... Ascended, as she calls it. What would happen if two worlds' worth of people did that all at once?"

  Little Magic stared at me goggle-eyed. "Almost 12 billion people... MOTHER!?"

  That many people fusing and Ascending as one would result in a Supremity, the highest order of Deity, my lover-Goddess said coolly into my mind. Eos and I are less powerful, as my Ascension was based on half that number. If a Supremity were involved, that would explain the miracles today. The baby brought back to life, your Protectors.

  "But Mother, why hasn't our Supremity announced itself?" Little Magic asked, wide-eyed. "Why hasn't it rectified and improved things? There's a lot wrong in the world. Is it hiding? Did the way it Ascended hurt it, or render it mute?"

  There is no way to know or say. The ways of Deities are mysterious, and no Deities are more mysterious than the Supremities. I suspect some of the things that happened during Step-Through were its work. The EMP, the lost nano-bomb, the Y-Chromosome harvest and the creation of the Repositories... it makes sense, but Why is still a mystery. I suspect all this is part of some grand plan that even I cannot grasp.

  "Did... any of you hear that besides me and Little Magic?" I asked as I felt the Goddess withdraw from my mind.

  They all shook their heads, so I relayed what she'd said about Supremities. "So," my Mother asked, "the one who helped you bring Becca's baby back to life... that was God?"

  I looked at my son and shrugged helplessly; he smiled and addressed the others. "Yes," he said. "The Supremity is now the primary god of this worldline. But the previous reigning Divinity was my Mother, the Dawn Goddess Aurora. The New Supremity, whose name we do not yet know, is only 25 new-years old; in some ways it's an infant, but one who controls this whole living world and comprises the intelligences, personalities, emotions, and knowledge of two worlds' worth of human beings."

  "Wait. The Supremity is only the God of Earth? Not of Mars or the other planets and all the stars and universe?" Mother asked breathlessly.

  "Well... It's a bit hard to explain, Grandmamá, but yes, the Supremity reigns only over this
world in this universe. This is an oversimplification, but there are many, many universes, all crowded together like bubbles in a washtub. Each of those is infinite in extent within its boundaries. Think of our universe as a giant expanse consisting of all the stars in the sky and more besides, including trillions that are too far away to see. A few of those stars have living worlds."

  "What does 'a few' mean in this context, kid?" Old-Father Trent demanded, left eyebrow cocked upward.

  "Oh. Uh, Mother?" My unborn son cocked his head to his side, listening, then said confidently, "Ah. That would be about one per every ten thousand stars, on average. At any given time."

  "That's thirty million living worlds in this galaxy alone!" Dad exclaimed, flabbergasted.

  Looking a little annoyed, Little Magic corrected him, "Twenty-nine million, six hundred and eight-seven thousand, four hundred and three, as of... now. If you must know."

  Dad fell back in his chair, eyes wide.

  "Yeah, so humans aren't all that special, Grandpapá. And there are nearly as many Divinities as there are living worlds, so we're not all that special either, okay? Though I have to admit our solar system is. We actually have two living worlds right now. We once had three, but the Martians screwed that up. Now you know. Let's move on—

  "Uhhhh, no, Grandpapá, the asteroid belt was never a planet; Jupiter was just too big to let the planet that should have been there form. No, Jupiter isn't one giant living being. It was a gravitational perturbation thing, completely natural. Happens all the time. No, not that either. The Martians just wasted all their water and then nuked the hell out of each other. Remember all those craters in the pictures? No, no, and no. Yes, it's one of the gas giant moons. No, not that one. I said no! Seriously? Europa is ice clear through! Ganymede is sterile ice and rock. Io's all sulfur volcanos—No! All life in this universe is carbon- and oxygen-based! No! I'm not going to say! Ugh, why did I even bring it up?!"

  It must be pointed out that Old-Father Trent didn't actually ask any of those questions. Little Magic was heading off his thoughts at the pass. After this spiel, Eos rubbed his Divine forehead and muttered to himself, "Eos, abi gezunt dos leben ken men zikh ale mol nemen..."

  To his and my astonishment, my mother smacked his Divine hand with a spoon. "Don't you dare say that, Little Amoretz! There will be no killing yourself now or later!"

  "Grandmamá! It's only a figure of speech!"

  "It had better be," Mother snarled. "I've lost too many of mine already."

  We all stared at her. I knew what "abi gezunt dos leben ken men zikh ale mol nemen" meant, but only because Fathers Trent had both said it to themselves more than once while raising a perpetually curious boy who always told the truth, had no tact, didn't take no for an answer, and never grew up. It translates to Anglic more or less as "Stay healthy now, you can kill yourself later."

  She glared back at us. "What, I'm married to two Jewish boys for 15 years and I can't pick up a little Yiddiska?"

  Little Magic sighed and looked at my Old-Father, one of those Jewish boys. "Please don't interrupt, sir. It doesn't matter right now and we can talk about it later. Now, where was I–

  "Oh. My. MOTHER. Now I understand why the beheyme Dixies are how they are. And Dadday. I mean, Father. Yes, okay, right, that's the one. Yes. Yes, gasoline lakes. Ammonia rain. Yes, and yes. Now stop! Just stop!"

  "Beheyme, are we?" "BeheyYOU, ya cow's butt!" "Frickin' gonif." "Shvantz." "More like schmeckle, ha ha!" "We got memories from Dad too, ya know!" small voices drifted down from above.

  The little boy god took a deep, calming breath. "Thank you. Okay. Anyhow, it gets weirder. Each living world with the potential to produce intelligent life is attended by a cloud of what we call worldlines on several quantum bands—don't ask, Grandpapá—with each branching from the others based on major decision points. No, don't even think about asking, Trenton Cogswell Darius Senior!"

  "Cogswell? Really?" I asked Dad, but both he and Little Magic ignored me.

  "Sometimes the worldlines merge naturally," the pretty faux-Elf continued. "That can result in Ascension, but rarely. In this case, a technologically advanced worldline in which most of this continent was occupied by a single powerful nation called the United States of America, the result of the Old Union winning the Civil War, deliberately attempted to invade a nearby worldline where the Confederacy won the war.

  "Before my mother could intervene, the two worldlines merged, and most of the people in both vanished. Now we know they were forced into Ascension. Your worldline proved dominant, so most everything stayed the same for you, and those of you who survived the merger remained in the original human form, what my father has named 'terran.' But in what was probably a reflexive action, or maybe just some stupid joke, the new Supremity changed the invaders to the new races, and made them 100% female and all incredibly attractive. The Y-chromosomes of their males were sealed into hundreds or possibly thousands of boy children all over the world."

  "My Tobias was a baby on the Day of Ruin, but Calvin had yet to be born," Mother noted. "How did he become one of these, er, repositories?"

  Little Magic smiled kindly at her. "To the Divine, Time is just another direction," my demigod son told my mother. "It was probably safer to salt the boymakers up the timeline for a few decades than to have them appear all at once. More repositories may yet be born."

  All I could say was, "Oh, boy."

  Chapter Twelve

  Before bedtime, but after the former dissident prisoners had had an opportunity to eat their fill, there was a soft knock on the door. Calvin answered and immediately threw his arms around the man who stood there. "Clem! I'm so glad your baby's all right!"

  "So am I, Cal," my old friend said. "And all thanks to your big brother." He looked at me, his face serene and happier than someone who'd been imprisoned in a pig sty for months had a right to be.

  I rose and went over to him. "You'd've done the same thing for me if you could've," I said, embracing him and Calvin, careful of the squirming bundle in his arms.

  "He did, Toby," Calvin said in a slightly muffled voice. "If Clem hadn't taken care of me and Ma, we would've died."

  I pulled back and looked in his eyes. "Really? What happened?"

  Mother said quietly, "He fed Calvin more of his food than he should have. And he hid both of us when the Tejarkanye bastards came looking for someone to 'play' with."

  "Him and Becky squished us down in the mud an' sat on us!" Cal said happily, as he wriggled out from between us. "It was like playing secret agent man, but for reals!" He beamed up at Clem. "Hey, can I see your baby?"

  Clem grinned and said, "Sure!" as he pulled the wrappings away from the child's face.

  "Wow, he looks like a big red prune! And his head's shaped like a turnip!" Cal said. "Is something wrong with him?"

  "Babies always look like that at first, before they turn pink and fill out a little," I explained to my brother. "Better get used to it, because when you grow up, your sons will look like that too when they're born."

  Clem's eyes climbed into his hairline. "Sounds like you have some experience, Tobias."

  "Well... ummm... yes. Some. You remember why I was exiled?"

  "Yeah, you crippled that lying bitch Cally Miller." Nobody called her Yoder anymore, because she'd dishonored Hans Yoder's memory. His was one of the heads on a pike in the charnel pit.

  "Yeah, about that... I wasn't quite myself back then. I had this... well, call it a spell on me that held back my puberty, which was why I was still so immature when they kicked me out. But what nobody realized was that the spell was about to pop, and I was feeling really proddy and aggressive that week. So I snapped when Cally tore into me with that wicked mouth of hers. About a week after my exile, I visited the Dawn Goddess—who really is a goddess, by the way—and she fixed me. It's a long story, but I... uh..." I glanced at my mother and father, "Long story short, I became very sexual and went a little nuts afterward. Now I have seven wives, most of whom are pregnan
t, and over a hundred kids with them and other women." I glanced up at the ceiling, then barked, "Bellerophon! Don't you dare!" because he was about to pour his latest thimbleful of beer on the baby.

  "He looks thirsty, Old Man! I give my cobber boys beer! Puts hair on their chests, it does!"

  "And makes them destructive little brats, I'd say! I'm lucky I still have two eyes!"

  "Why you always gotta bring that up, Old Man?" He snorted and dribbled a little beer on my head.

  "Don't waste beer, stoop!" "Yeah, I'm still thirsty!" "Gimme that red-eye, Red-Eye." "Bite me, White-Eye." And then, just as they were settling down, Kyoop said smugly, "I never give my boys beer. Maybe that's why I have so many."