by Joe Darris
Rufus Aurelius had insisted Skup and Urea attend the gala in person. Baucis had disagreed about the boy, but Aurelius had insisted. “Its more his victory than hers, and it'll be good for him.”
Seeing the young man dressed in black, with his hawkish nose and slicked back hair, he'd softened. Skup was taking the event very seriously. He looked like the next generation's Councilor, though that was still a long time off. Baucis had gone through a rebellious period himself, perhaps tonight's accolades could bring Skup's to an end, and his true grooming could begin.
Urea looked resplendent. She was wearing a black habiliment, chosen by High Priestess Ntelo, that hung off her muscular shoulders flatteringly. Her short hair highlighted her stunning neck and shoulders. Sharp, unreadable eyes surveyed the crowd from a face prettier than any killer's should be. She looked haggard, and Baucis supposed she must be exhausted. The day's duel hadn't been easy for her, he knew that, but it had been necessary to set the ambiance for this evening's event. A pang of emotion for all the girl had done, and the woman she'd become, and then it passed. There were more pressing matters.
Baucis sat at one end of table, next to the podium, at the place of honor. The twins were to his left (Skup first), then High Priestess Ntelo. She looked absolutely stunning. She had handpicked habiliments from the gaggle of designers desperate to make a splash in the Spire. She brought in a new era of fashion, and as its matron, looked the part. Tonight she wore a silvery blue habiliment gown that changed shades as she moved in the warm light. The gown made her eyes sparkle as she surveyed the crowd. Her painted skin shifted between snowflakes and doves. Baucis didn't see the connection, but knew it probably didn't matter. The Spire knew nothing of seasons or animals.
At the far end of table sat Tennay. The oldest member of the Council wore the standard silver habiliment, and had done little more than comb his eyebrows for the evening's festivities. He was the image of tradition, prudence, and frugality. Baucis was glad to see him here. More than anyone, Tennay appreciated the animal's utility. None knew better than Tennay how tools were needed. The engineer had maintained the Spire for near a century with nothing from the surface. The animal would change all that.
Rufus Aurelius stood at the podium, immaculately dressed in a black and gold trimmed habiliment that had some of the same muscular definition as Baucis's. His clean cool scalp contrasted sharply in the warm lights to Baucis's sweaty bald head.
Aurelius could drink in the crowd's energy, feed it back to them, and make them love him for it. Years as the Media Baron had made the man obsessed with two things: his appearance, and putting on a good show. Tonight he would do both in spades.
Aurelius cleared his throat and the auditorium dimmed. The crowd drew closer to the stage to better hear Rufus and perhaps sneak a peak at the giant shrouded case that rested on stage.
“We are here tonight, to honor a great thinker, a genius of our time,” Aurelius smiled around the room as if searching for the subject of his speech. He turned to his fellow councilor with warmth in his eyes. “Baucis is unlike any ecologist before him. He has revolutionized his role on the Council, and it all began with a simple desire, to garden.
The crowd cheered and applauded. Howlers yipped and hooted. Baucis smiled at the surreality of it all.
“Before him, our ecologist did little more than survey the fallow wasteland below. It was a dark time, after the Scourge, few believed we'd survive, let alone prosper. Baucis changed all that. He took precious seeds from our rooftop, and gave us hope! No more nutritionally complete rations, but food, honest to Nature food!
Aurelius waited for the applause to quiet.
“The challenge was the Scourge. It destroys the indestructible, and makes everything biodegradable. The Scourge was the finishing blow to a civilization suffering from environmental degradation, disease and cancers caused by its own radiation and slew of volatile compounds. The Scourge was designed--with technology lost--to erase mistakes,” he paused, to let this sink in. Baucis though he actually looked like he was considering the thought for the first time.
Then, “Maybe it would have, but Nature herself stepped in,” the holy word sent the expected ripple through the crowd. “Many of you were born in the Spire, and know only stories of the flood, but I assure you, it was real. Do you think we would have loosed the Scourge upon our own? No! Nature made that choice, she washed away our cities and our safeguards, and the Scourge was free.”
“Some here believe that the Earth made the Scourge to protect itself from humanity, I assure you, that is quite false. However I cannot say with any certainty, if she withheld her deluge until there existed something strong enough to rid her of us.
Low murmurs through the crowd.
“Our ancestors naively assumed the earth could bear the brunt of our damage, that it would survive. Of course, we know now our ancestors were blind to the truth. The earth survived just fine, it is we who teeter in the clouds on the brink of annihilation.”
Nods and murmurs. Aurelius had thousands hanging on each word. “Nature rose up and struck a blow to our species, and our pride. But Nature did not finish us off! She challenged us to survive, and survive we have! We survive thanks to the genius of people like Master Tennay, who helped build the Spire, Master Luca, who brightens our every day. Inspirations like Priestess Ntelo give us hope, but most of all we survive thanks to Baucis's magnificent garden!
Raucous applause. Baucis smiled, as much for the accolades as Aurelius leaving Mavis Talik out of his roster.
“Was it luck that allowed the Spire to survive the deluge and the Scourge it released? Our hallways still bear the words this city was founded upon. LEAVE NO TRACE. When the Scourge devoured our past, Spire City was high above, polluting nothing, harming no one. Maybe we are the chosen ones, the men and women deemed worthy of the earth. Perhaps Nature has finally found her masters.
“Was it luck that led us to the Spire? Tennay can attest we were going to dot the earth with them, each one harnessing the power of the earth's magnetosphere to power every machine on the planet. Why did the deluge happen when it did, and not another moment in history?”
“Was it luck that determined the survivors of mankind? I see before me a wonderful assortment of Naturalists, scientists, and engineers; an odd but fortuitous mixing of people.
Baucis noted that he left gamblers out of the mix, though that was who most of the Spire had descended from, damn lucky gamblers.
“Our fathers and grandfathers realized they were stuck up here in Spire City. They had escaped sure death for an eventual one. Did they call it bad luck? No! Babies were born. Problems were solved. Progress was made.
“Was luck what saved us? Or fate?”
Dead silence in the room. Even the howluchins had stopped. The Spire itself was quiet as the clouds.
“A man humble as myself cannot attempt to answer such a question. Instead, I concern myself with our history and our future, where we've come from and where we're going. We stand poised on the next chapter of history, and Master Baucis holds the key.”
Aurelius flourished a hand at the veiled case, and took his seat to more raucous applause. The crowd cheered until they were hoarse. Aurelius had said to wait to let the signal broadcast and words be retold. Baucis smiled and waited for crowd to quiet down. Soon they fell silent.
“When I was a child, I recall being quite concerned that there were so few homo sapiens. You must understand there were a scant few hundred in those days, and hardly enough food to go around. Reclaimers were a way of life.” Vapid smiles absorbed Baucis's speech.
“I distinctly remember my first tomato. My mother thought to make the rooftop garden productive. We pilfered the kitchens, already abandoned for years, and gathered every rotten fruit and vegetable. We planted every seed we found, and composted the rest. Sprouts burst the surface after a few excruciatingly long days.
Baucis smiled. No one laughed. He turned to Aurelius, who had written the story and the joke, the Media Baro
n motioned to continue. So he did, shaken.
“So I grew taller, the earth grew further from me.” He cursed Aurelius for every joke in the damn speech, but there was nothing else to do, Baucis didn't want to improvise.
“Life was endurable. There was an abundance of Virtual Reality Chips, game rooms, a wealth of knowledge stored in the computer databases, and the Spire keeping us aloft. We had ships in those days, and men brave enough to navigate them, so a few expeditions were sent. We learned the Scourge works fast, for none returned.
“When of age, I joined the Ecology department. We had access to all of the digiscopes and best of all, the casino's menagerie of animals. Most had been eaten by then, but a dozen genetically engineered howluchins had been spared. Pity alone preserved them, for their diet was identical to ours, and twelve of their number meant twelve less of us. I became obsessed, spending hours with them. Their hands pleaded for the earth and I began to ponder. I thought that perhaps they could brave the surface and survive the Scourge. The digiscopes made clear that organic life seemed immune to its hunger. But if those hands could reach the earth, how could I train them to do something as complex as gardening? I was confronted with a conundrum.”
The words flowed easier now. Truth speaks for itself, and if Baucis believed one truth, it was his story of the Garden.
“A colleague suggested using a Virtual Reality Chip. Technology allowed us to see through another life form's senses as easily as we synchronize our consciousness with a digital avatar. But the real breakthrough came quite by accident, or fate, I suppose. I caught one of my implanted monkeys doing elaborate flips and acrobatics. I had never seen anything like it before and knew immediately something was amiss. I examined the connection and realized that the interference was from a Gaming Chamber. With a few tweaks and an alignment of their frequencies, I discovered that a human could control the howluchins with as much grace as a digital character!”
The crowd was awed, silent like eager children. None seemed concerned of his glib rewriting of history. The technology would have remained intangible it not for Tennay, but it was Baucis's night, Aurelius had made that very clear.
“The project was immediately successful. With no foe but time, I sent the howluchins down the Spire with seeds from the garden and transformed the world below us. As the howluchins tended the Garden, biselk appeared. The captivating species was long thought extinct, I knew immediately that Nature had sent them for us. They too, are a genetically engineered hybrid. That Nature would send another of mankind's creations to help was enchanting.
“Through the unwieldy controls of Amplification Chambers, teams of howluchins implanted a few choice biselk. Once in place and implanted, the Garden thrived. The biselk could till the earth with their antlers, leaving the howluchin free to do the more delicate tasks like planting and weeding. More importantly they could protect the garden from predators. In the early years we lost quite a few howluchins to those hidden carnivores. Though unfortunate, we could always breed more, but every VRC we lost was an unrecoverable tragedy.
“I introduced the vultus to recover lost VRCs and cull the biselk. There have been problems though, and I was excited to move forward to pantheras, and what I believed was the final stage of Natural Order. Until this morning, I was convinced that they were the Nature's final instrument in the symphony of evolution.
“I had no idea the gift Nature intended for us.”
The crowd was silent. The history lesson was over. This was the moment they were all waiting for. All eyes turned to the veiled box. Baucis grabbed a corner of the curtain and pulled.
Nearly two meters tall, and covered in gray hair, the brute beat its chest with its fists and snarled at the audience. It paced back and forth inside of the enclosure, beating on the electromagnetic cage with huge hands. People gasped, others fainted, the howluchins hooted wildly. But most significant to the Spire wasn't what happened in the ballroom to a few dozen, nor what was transmitted over the network of VRCs to a few hundred, but what was told to thousands who had to make do with listening.
“It's him! They've caught the Wild Man!”
Chapter 21
I like stories with magic, do you believe in magic?
The girl scratches her head.
I don't know if I do either, or monsters. Baucis says all of that can be explained with science.
The hermit says some things can never be explained.
Who's the hermit?
She looks away, terrified she said too much. The girl does not press her.
Do you believe in monsters?
The girl eyes her warily.
I do... I think everyone knows a few monsters... What do you believe in?
I believe in my brother.
The darkness is complete. It envelopes Kao, caresses him. Kao sees only glimpses of lightning. It illuminates the world for moments, then plunges it back to darkness. The moon is nowhere to be seen, hiding close to the sun. He did not want to be in the Garden so soon, he wanted to wait for a full moon to attack the towering white totem that stabs the clouds and bleeds their lightning, but he can't allow the Hidden to do what they please to his sister or the hermit.
Sound and smell supplement his senses, though after all he witnessed today, he doubts their honesty. Now he hides in the darkness, for he does not want to see or be seen. The duel was sickening. It had started out fine enough. The lion and the prongbuck, a story older than any the hermit told, but it had turned sour. When they had paused the air of the place changed. The monkeys stopped cheering. The two fought on in grim silence for too long. They were bloodied and bruised, exhausted beyond reason but neither would finish the other. Finally, the prongbuck fell to its side, and something snapped in the lion's mind.
She leapt forward, with renewed savage vigor. It greedily bit the prongbuck's neck and gorged itself on the flesh of her opponent while the monkeys watched on in horrified silence. The two kingcrows, slaves of the Hidden if there ever were, tried to chase away the cat but she swiped at them and roared and held her ground. Finally she ate her fill, gave a knowing look in Kao's direction that had chilled his blood, and slunk off, out through the hallway the prongbuck had entered through.
The duel dances before his eyes, and he hopes the darkness will make him forget what he saw in her eyes. It warned him of something, of that much he is sure, but he does not know what.
For now, the Garden is mostly empty. The monkeys sleep high up the lightning totem. Though unbelievable in its own right, Kao was not surprised to see the kingcrows carry them into the heavens. When its huge shadow darkened the landscape in the late evening sun he took cover, but the monkeys paid it no heed. Instead they waited in the stone bowl patiently as the birds returned again and again for each monkey. Three clamored onto each leg, making twelve per trip. Numbers that would have baffled Kao not long ago not came as easily as throwing knives. Kao watched the birds fly to the height of the Totem until they vanished into the clouds. He had hoped for an identical miracle to be performed on the lion, but no such feat came to pass.
The cat's scent is still strong in the air, but it is not fresh. The lion is far from him. Nothing else stirs. It is so very dark. The waxing moon is near half full, and had illuminated the valley from sunset until it passed behind the cloud bank that perches atop the Totem. Since it had moved into the Totem's domain Kao has seen nothing of it. Not once do the clouds thin. The moon is completely blocked, as if a mountain stood betwixt him and his goddess, his source of power. He can feel her pumping his blood, stronger than she had the night before. Now that the moon is more than a crescent, the hunter can feel its pull easing his blood flow. His muscles feel the familiar surge of lunar strength. He can jump higher, run faster, ask more of his muscles than he can under a weaker moon, but tonight his mind seems sharper as well. Did the hermit's potion give his mind access to lunar strength? Whatever it was, he feels better than he had last night.
Kao creeps from his hiding place. The lightning high above stri
kes just enough to keep his eyes from fully adjusting.
This place is bizarre. The air feels different, touched with an alien energy. Kao feels it like he does the moon's energies, in his bones and blood but it is different, not as benevolent. Kao feels it as a physical presence in his head. It is a dull ache mixed with a high pitched hum he knows is not from his ears. It feels like his heart cannot pump to its own rhythm, like his muscles try to conform to the rigid vibration that is in the air. At times it makes him nauseous or dizzy, always it weighs heavily on his mind. It is different than the moon's power, but that is all he knows to compare it to. It feels so much closer than the moon, more intense, more present, yet he cannot feel its anticipant strength, like he can the moon's, and in his bones he knows it will not grow any stronger. Instead each flash of lightning from above saps some of its intensity, not enough to make his discomfort subside but enough to notice.
So the Hidden play with lightning, just like the hermit says. Even if only to use it like he uses the moon then they are as formidable as the hermit's stories make them seem to be.
Only the fruits of the garden lessen the uncomfortable sensation. Each bite of food, each crackling spark, lessens the persistent discomfort. Kao knows not if the plants make him resistant or oblivious to the hum, only that they make the feeling vanish, albeit temporarily.
The young hunter hurries towards the glowing Totem on silent feet. Kao hopes The Hidden do not stir late in the night, that they bask in the radiant golden glory of the sun and not the hypnotic silver pull of the moon. The cat smells no stronger here, no more present than it had anywhere else in the sprawling garden. But Kao hurries, not content to trust the sense that warns of danger and professes its safety.
A hundred tiny horizons of alien fruits and vegetables fly by as Kao marches stealthily onward. They're invisible but for their scent and the flashes of lightning, which illuminate the disorienting feast. Frozen for a moment, hundreds of plump fruits hang in the still night air, each ready to burst with sweet juices. Kao is careful not to touch them for fear they'd spill drops of the saccharine nectar and betray his carefully masked approach.
