by Joe Darris
But he cannot give them pity, for they would rather work the hermit's body than their own. That is unjust and they will not have it. Instead he will give the bittersweet prize of freedom: freedom from control, freedom from their cage in the sky, freedom from their position as gods of the earth.
A monkey approaches. It came from the back of the room, a dish in its hands laden with foods and drinks. The hermit stops pacing and stares at the monkey. He focuses his mind on the monkey, asks it to smell his discontent and understand. He implores it to look into his eyes.
It must understand the slavery its own complacency creates.
The monkey's nose twitches as it nears him. It looks back and forth, sensing the air. It closes its eyes and stops for a moment. The hermit knows The Hidden's magic courses through its mind, urging it to walk forward. But with every breath, he sees their hold weaken.
The room goes dark. Gasps from the crowd. Then the lights are back on in an instant.
Murmurs erupt.
None of them notice the the monkey's body start to tremble. The hermit notices. The boss with the veined head notices and mumbles something under his breath. The twin children who sit next to him are on their feet and out of the room.
The monkey bares its teeth. A low whine comes from its throat. It is close now, only a few paces away, caught between the sky people's control and the hermit's pleas of anarchy. Finally the veined little man stops talking and stares at the monkey. The silence is thick, the monkey has trouble walking through it.
The lights go out again. This time the crowd erupts. No one but the hermit hears the clatter of a tray as it crashes to the ground. Again the lights are back in an instant.
The monkey's scratches is head, and asks hooting questions. The hermit nods, his eyes merry and encouraging.
“Go!” he says, in a tongue not far from the monkey's, “Escape!”
The monkey reaches towards one of the tables, covered in food and drink, and cautiously knocks over a cup. Liquid pours from it to the floor. The monkey is awed. He pulls back his hand, and knocks everything from the table to the floor.
Before the clatter has subsided the monkey screams with joy, leaps towards the hermit and beats at the invisible cage that holds him. It flips backwards then bounds around the room. It tears off its clothes and bounds into the crowd of people.
They scatter like fat flightless birds. The monkey doesn't chase them though, he is too preoccupied with running laps around the room. He runs halfway up a wall and surveys the room as he clings to a seemingly barren surface. Another monkey stands watching, a low whine comes from her throat.
The first monkey leaps from the wall and knocks over the other in one magnificent bound. Her tray clatters to the floor. The wild monkey holds the other down with his weight, tears of her clothes, grabs her head and pounds it against the floor.
THUNK! The monkey thrashes and tries to escape but has none of the raw aggression of her attacker. Again and again the monkey smashes the other's head to the floor.
THUNK, THUNK, THUNK!
Each strike reverberates throughout the room. It looks as though the first intends to spill the other's brains. Finally the female yowls and breaks her pathetic silence. At this, the first monkey leaps away from her, jumping and hooting excitedly. The beaten monkey, rather than attacking the first stands up in bewildered awe. She immediately races around the room even faster than the first. She lands on sky people's shoulders and bounds off. They tumble to floor from her transferred momentum. She tears at their clothes and snatches at the drinks they hold. Anything she touches she destroys. The first monkey follows gleefully in her wake, hooting encouragement.
The hermit jumps up and down in his cage, howling along with the monkeys. The sky people are defenseless against them! The other monkeys cower in the back of the room.
Except for one. One monkey with a patch of white fur on her forehead marches towards the two troublemakers.
They stop tearing around them room and inflate their chests. In tandem, they let out an ear piercing shriek. It grows louder and louder and the hermit feels it dig deep into his skull. The sky people all cover their ears and run for the exits. Some of them crash to the floor, unable to right themselves while the sound assault batters their inner ears. The hermit stands as long he can, but he too falls to ground.
Whitepatch is unaffected. She stomps towards the other two like an angry mother.
The female stops howling and attacks. Whitepatch parries each strike easily. With a quick turn she kicks the monkey in the chest and she flies across the room, crashes into a pile, and does not stir.
She picks up a bowl and hurls it at the male, the instigator. He dodges, and in that moment Whitepatch is on him. Her motions are fluid, sublime and savage. A spurt of red blood and the fight is over. She looks at the hermit and bares her teeth. Blood drips from her fangs.
The hermit sits down. He knows when he has been beaten, yet he counts this as a victory. He never hoped to escape. He just wanted the sky People to learn terror. They scurry around the room now, tears streaming, mewling like soft headed newborns.
Whitepatch does not take her eyes off of him. She studies him like an insect. She sniffs at the air but the hermit sees no recognition in her eyes. Does she know what secret power he used against her kin? (for it is obvious Whitepatch was controlled by the twin girl who ran from the room) Or will his trick work a second time?
The Hidden of legend do exist, there are true masters among the race of sky people. The hermit hopes to discover their secrets before they steal his.
Chapter 23
Do you know any secrets?
She shakes her head.
I didn't until I met you.
She furrows her eyebrows, confused.
They told me to keep you a secret. From everyone I guess... but I guess it’s not a secret to you...
The girl shakes her head and smiles.
They way we're talking is a secret. Zetis only taught the pilots how to talk like this, I guess that means you're a pilot too.
Zetis?
He's really smart... but I haven't seen him since the storm...
The storm?
She slaps her hand over her mouth though she hadn't used it.
What storm? Even in their heads, her voice is a menacing growl.
Urea and Skup marched down the hallway towards Baucis's offices. The fifth floor was his. The amplification chambers made up only a small part of the entire floor plan. What had once been a labyrinth of distractions now held all that fed the Spire. Most of the rooms were sealed behind opaque force fields, but a few were open and filled with Evanimal Skeletons. In just a few generations, Baucis had accomplished much. The skeletons grew larger, blacker and more crystalline. Compared to the older and simpler off-white bones, the black as coal skeletons that sparkled like diamonds were beautiful sculptures, odes to human ingenuity and natural adaptability.
But tonight the siblings did not appreciate the lesson in artificial selection laid out around them. Baucis had summoned them. They both knew it was about the disastrous evening. He said only that he held them accountable. Skup was furious, he hadn't been synchronized with any of the howluchins, yet he knew the Master Ecologist would pin much of the night's mishaps on him. Urea felt entirely responsible. Her team lost control, and she had actually killed an Evanimal in front of a crowd of terrified people. The Spire was used to watching her panthera or Skup's vultus hunt an elk through their implanted Virtual Reality Chips, but never had anyone seen death with their own eyes.
They spoke privately, as to not be overheard by Baucis's long ears.
said Urea, her voice trembling.
p replied more viciously than he intended.
Unsavory memories filled the silence.
After a moment Urea spoke up.
“Don't call me that!”
His outburst surprised them both. They walked in silence for more than a few paces.
They walked another few silent paces before Skup asked
Urea actually hissed at that. She had been through a lot today, for the second time in as many minutes, Skup wondered if he was drifting away from his sister. She was so hard to understand sometimes... they were the same age yet sometimes she acted so naïve. Could she really buy in to Naturalism, even with all the knowledge their privilege afforded them?
“There's two?” Urea's words, spoken to the empty hall stung Skup like only hidden secrets can,
“You're so... cruel!” The tears that spilled out made the words sting that much more. Skup knew he was cruel... he had to be. The flock demanded it, but is that how his sister saw him too? Had piloting the vultus affected him that much? Or had he always been that way? Maybe his influence turned the birds into the malevolent, infighting flock that they were. But he didn't think so, he thought cruelty, like kindness, had its time and place, but that most of the time people did what they did simply because they had to. There were so few actual choices in the Spire, and so few people actually got to make them. Which brought him back to...
Skup chose to ignore this. He'd rather have been dueling howluchins than sitting as Baucis's trophy. He supposed he understood how Urea must feel most of the time. Still he went on. She had to understand.
Urea started to protest, Skup heard her mumble in his mind, but she stopped. They were at Baucis's door.
Skup rapped on Baucis's door and the opaque force field dematerialized.
Baucis stood in the center of his office, a hexagon like every room in the Spire. It was the old security headquarters, located in the very center of the fifth floor. It still had ancient televisions wired to cameras that once watched every gambler in every square meter of the entire games floor. Some of the screens still worked, and though Baucis publicly denied it, most of the cameras did to. The room was also amplified, so Baucis could see almost anything. He could watch any action that involved an Evanimal, however magnificent or tedious from either the pilot's synchronized perspective or from the cameras that recorded their body movements. The twins both silently prayed he knew nothing of Zetis's chiming program.
Currently the footage of Urea's howluchin biting the other's jugular played on the screen from a variety of angles recorded by both cameras and by the VRCs of those in attendance. It seemed Baucis recorded every perspective possible. Urea watched in disgust as she witnessed--through a hundred different sets of eyes--the murder she committed with her thoughts if not her own hands. It made her sick to see it all again.
“Enter,” was all the Master Ecologist said. Skup and Urea obliged.
“What exactly... transpired this evening? I need to assure the Spire that it will not happen again.”
Skup turned to Urea, daring her to share her theory with the conservative mind.
“The Wild Man did something, pheromones or psychic power--”
“It is an ape, nothing more!” Baucis hissed, the he continued, coldly “If I wanted to hear mystical gossip, I would have summoned the High Priestess.”
“The ape was up to something sir. The Howlers were acting strangely,” Skup said.
"Something?” Baucis asked icily. “I can make my own pointless conjecture. Thank you. Those incompetent howluchin pilots were distracted, caught up in the excitement of the evening.
“Sir I handpicked that team-” Urea said.
Baucis cut her off, “You're too self deprecating Urea. I know you were overwhelmed too. Look at your footage.” Every screen in the room bit the uncontrolled Howler's neck, then turned to the caged ape. “Look at the static! This looks like amateur synchronization. You were as distracted as the rest of them. They just don't have your considerable skill.”
“She's trying to tell you that was the Wild Man!” Skup growled.
“Oh come now. You're not hiding your own shortcomings? Are you going to blame your vultus's embarrassing loss to the ape on some mysterious force as well? Perhaps your maturing brain is rejecting the Implant,” Baucis turned to watch the screens. “I knew you were both too young.”
“It's not us sir!” Urea pleaded. “The...ape, his will was in the howluchin with me!”
“I expect this drivel from your
brother but not from you. You were all distracted by the beast. Your more gifted mind simply managed to retain control longer than theirs, thank Nature. The ape does not possess superpowers. Its no more dangerous than the other Evanimals.”
“Perhaps the Evanimals are the problem” Skup added dryly.
“If that is your opinion you will be grounded.”
“You won't do that.”
“Elia shows promise. I think some independence could do her well. If you disagree, then you will tell no one of the mis-perceived dangers of the ape. I do not want the Spire rejecting my proposals before they've even been made.”
Skup left it at that. He'd let the arrogant old man have the last word, and he'd keep on flying as much he liked.
Urea and Skup trudged back towards their quarters. They needed sleep if they hoped to have successful synchronizations tomorrow. Evanimals could sense fatigue in them, and would spend the day testing their limits if their pilots couldn't maintain dominance.
Urea had to admit she hadn't.
Urea didn't like that idea at all. She was already quite convinced the Wild Man was clever and dangerous, and she didn't like that it understood the Spire more than they did the earth. Combine that with Howlers intelligent enough to know how they were being controlled... and that led to... what next, her panthera fighting for freedom? Thankfully that one was down on the surface, and the Spire with its electromagnetic charge stood in between her and the predator. The whole idea made her shudder. Urea was only certain of one thing: Intelligence could be dangerous, especially if it was caged.
