“They aren’t.”
“You didn’t kill them?” Alessandro asked, in horror. Oh, it had occurred to him, but in a world where death was rare even killing your enemies had become unthinkable. And then, it would be far more cruel to remove their access to the virtus and drop them somewhere in the middle of nowhere. If they lived through a few years, perhaps they’d understand what they’d done the innocents they’d dropped in the wilderness and hurt to vampirize their feelings and sensations.
Lyda shook her head. “No,” she said. “But I hit them hard enough with the back of the burner to make them unconscious. If they can’t think, they can’t access the virtus.”
***
And so the maid and the god walked into the halls of the gods and cried out, “I tell you of great evil done to men by gods. These gods created this people to torment, and put them in many different cities and their cities they set upon each other. And tormented the people further with plagues and illnesses. And their suffering the gods inhaled like incense.”
The gods who knew the god of justice yet thought he lied, for you can’t — you couldn’t — be so cruel and evil. But other gods said, yes, it could have happened. And they used their far eyes and they saw that the god of justice spoke the truth.
And the evil gods, who’d tormented humans were caught, in the middle of their actions and their evil, inciting Lyda’s people to attack the tower where the god and the maiden had taken refuge.
They were stripped of all their powers and made mere humans. And sent to live as humans in the raw earth that they might be purified and become worthy to be gods again.
***
“Created people?” Blaise said. “And put them in the world with no resources and without affording them a choice of how to live?” Perhaps because he’d just woken up, he looked confused. “And that fellow, Lars Anglome, you were asking about...” He leaned in the reclining chair of a flycar, programmed to fly Alessandro home. “He’s her grandfather? And he died of old age?” He looked at Lyda who reclined on one of the other seats and seemed half amused at his confusion.
“He could replicate his health nanos,” she said. “But he couldn’t stop their decay. They replicated at increasing levels of decay. Until they weren’t effective to stop his aging anymore... And so he died.”
She looked at Alessandro, “Thank you,” she said. “For freeing my people of the cruel overlords who tormented them. Now they can progress.”
Alessandro sighed. “I didn’t want to tell you,” he said. “Didn’t know if you’d understand. But you see, they are people and they’ll be given a chance to choose to come fully into civilization, to be integrated in the life net, to use the virtus.”
“If you told them that, they wouldn’t understand,” Lyda said. “It is so far out of everything they understand.”
“Yes,” Alessandro said. “And so you see, it rests with you. If you will, can you come back to my home and live in the modern world a while, in and out of the virtus? And then maybe you can think of how to relate it to your people.”
Lyda nodded and Alessandro felt unexpectedly buoyant. It had been a long, long time since he’d shared his living quarters with a woman. Perhaps, he thought, as he remembered holding her tight against himself, a man shouldn’t spend all his time on Lifenet. “ balance. That was what was needed between the virtus and the real world. If only the real world could be made interesting enough.
He smiled at Lyda.
***
And so the golden-haired maiden has returned from the halls of the gods. From them she has earned this boon for her people, that they, who are kin to the gods, be considered worthy to become gods themselves, to live fully in spirit and body, in both worlds, and know hunger, disease and poverty no more.
But it is each generation’s choice. Each one must choose. Will he go on living like a man on the face of the raw Earth and earning his living with the sweat of his brow? Or will he step forth into paradise recovered and become a god?
Angel In Flight
WHEN HE HEARD THE SIRENS and understood their meaning, Jarl knew he was going to die.
He closed his eyes, then opened them again. He looked down at his hands, in the grey fingerless gloves, holding the circuits for the holo advertisements that flashed high on either side of the zipway, right above him, where he straddled the zipway wall. Beneath him flyers zipped, end on end, hundreds of miles an hour, towards Fridstadt and Eastern Europe beyond.
The zipway bisected Europe East to west and the speeds and closeness of vehicles were only possible because driving had been turned over to a series of control towers. The passengers in the flyers had nothing to do but read the advertisements, until the zipway exited them at their chosen exit.
His fingers were a purplish blue, the result of the biting cold of this December night. His body felt just as cold, of course, insufficiently protected by the baggy grey tunic that billowed in the snow-laden wind. And the knit pants that molded his skinny legs below weren’t much help, either. At least he’d put on two pairs of – borrowed – socks, beneath the thin slippers, which were all Hoffnungshaus ever gave its inmates. Which meant he could sort of feel his feet, and was probably not at risk of losing a toe or three.
In fairness to Hoffnungshaus, Jarl must admit the inmates weren’t ever supposed to leave Hoffnungshaus. Though he did, of course. And paid the price. He shrugged his sharp shoulder blades under the tunic, feeling again the sting of the last whipping.
That was no matter. Nor were any other penalties associated with leaving Hoffnungshaus, nor even what they might do to his roommates, Bartolomeu and Xander, for having let him out yet again. No.
Despite the cold, he felt sweat rolling down his forehead towards his eyes, and wiped it with the back of his sleeve.
None of that mattered. Not his infraction in leaving Hoffnungshaus. Not how they might punish Bartolomeu and Xander. Nothing mattered because Jarl would be dead before morning.
He looked down at his fingers in the open circuit box, purple fingers against the blue, green and red wires, and the snowflakes drifting in.
Above him, the holo ad remained unchanged. He knew, from analyzing it, that it advertised the resort just up the zipway, at the next exit, from this spot. Eden Cavern, it was called, and he had no idea what it was like except for the advertising line that ran in cool green holographic letters, A taste of paradise.
He couldn’t see the holograph – not the whole of it, at least – from where he sat. It was a mere shimmer of colors and disconnected dots, meant to be read from the zipway itself, as flyers zoomed by at hundreds of miles per hour. It was only through fast math that he could see, in his mind, clear as day, what it would look like and say to the people below. And he’d be a cyborg if he had the slightest idea why a resort used a naked woman wrapped in a serpent and holding up an apple as an advertisement.
Perhaps they have prostitutes he thought. And then the siren went again, and another series of sirens, and over the zipway, but facing him a long distance away – which meant he could read it even from where he was, a holographic sign showed, deep red against the black of the snowy night: Break from Freistadt. All exits past Eden Cavern are closed. Traffic in the zipway will be stopped. Every flyer will be examined. For your safety cooperate with the authorities.
Shit, I am so dead. His mind formed the words clearly. His body refused to get the message. Even as he thought the words, his numbed fingers were closing the control box on the wall, not bothering this time with re-locking the genlock he’d hacked into, just slamming it shut to prevent more snow from getting in. There was no point in wanton destruction.
He felt at his waist band for his stolen burner, then looked towards the zipway, where flyers were slowly coming to a stop, starting at the distant horizon. The other way were dark fields, a couple of country roads, a golf course, a hunting preserve, and ten miles off, as straight as Jarl could run, Hoffnungshaus, where he would be missed as soon as head count was done at dawn. If h
e could get to it, he would be protected. Getting to it was the problem. What “break from Freistadt” meant was that mules had rioted again, and a few of them had managed to escape the fortified work-camp. And if the authorities thought even one among them might be able to pass as a normal human, they would be looking at everyone’s hands.
Jarl’s fingerless gloves stopped just short of the bright red band embedded in the skin of the ring finger on his left hand. The mark of a made human, an artifact. No different than the mules that had just escaped. In this sort of circumstances, he would be shot on sight. And that was if the mules didn’t get him first. Creatures manufactured as slaves, created to serve humans all their lives, were remarkably lacking in fellow feeling. And if they could understand Jarl’s own situation, they’d probably feel about zero empathy with him.
The thing was – there were burner indentations on the side of the wall towards the fields. He’d made them and climbed up them just an half an hour ago. There were none on the other side, where fifty feet below, the flyers on the zipway were coming to a stop.
Normally descending towards the zipway and running across would have meant death. Just the friction of heated air in the space beneath the flyers was enough to kill. But as the flyers stopped there was just a chance... Only it had to be done before the authorities got there to check people in the flyers. He had to be across and up the other wall, and over the side, into... He wasn’t sure what was on the other side. Other cities and fields, he imagined. But what wasn’t there was Freistadt. Freistadt was on the same side of the zipway as Hoffnungshaus, which meant it would be the side of the highway that escaped mules – without burners or the agility to scale the walls of the zipway – would roam, and where their pursuers would scour.
He bit at his lip and frowned. His grey attire would be conspicuous as he was descending the wall, and people in the stopping flyers might call the law on him. On the other hand, the night was dark, there was snow, and the light of the suddenly unreadable holographic advertisements above would cast a pattern of light and shadows on the walls anyway. Moving light and shadows. It was just possible, in the confusion, he would pass unnoticed. If he could be fast enough. Fortunately, he’d been bio-engineered to be fast. Among other things.
Getting to the other side of the zipway would get him stranded away from Hoffnungshaus, and he would still have the trouble of being an escaped bio-engineered artifact, proscribed on his own and acceptable only under supervision of the authorities. On the other hand, it would keep him alive past the night. He could always get back to Hoffnungshaus, if he survived. He could always steal a flyer. He’d done it before.
His body had already made the decision for him. He bent sideways, pointing the burner at a point down the zipway wall, melting an indentation deep enough for a toe hold. Then he swung down, holding on to the top of the wall, setting his foot in the indentation, and thinking fast.
The problem was he usually did this going up – not coming down. Going up, he made toe holds and hand holds, and then toe holds again, all the way up. Coming down, he’d need to make handholds, and rely on his cold fingers to hold him up. Difficult. Not impossible.
Working quickly, he melted an indentation for his hand, waited a few seconds for it to cool in the December air, and, holding onto it, melted an indentation further down.
He scrambled, hand over hand down, sometimes rushing it and getting singed fingertips, feeling as if he were going incredibly slow but knowing he was faster than any normal human. The sirens still sounded down the zipway, and the flyers below him were still moving, though slower, as the central control slowed them down so it could stop them.
By the time Jarl was near enough that the wind of normal zipway traffic would have knocked him down, the flyers were going slower and it was a mere stiff wind. He waited there, poised in the area of darkness below the light cast by the holographs and above the lights of the flyers below, hearing the sirens come ever closer, feeling the wind die down.
He could hear his heart beat loudly. The sound of blood rushing in his head made him near-deaf. His fingers felt numb with cold, and he wished the flyers would stop before the sirens got any closer. But he couldn’t change either rate. He could only hope it would work out for him. He could only stay there, suspended halfway between the top of the wall and the zipway, and wish would all come out all right. He’d taken a gamble, and sometimes you lost ambles.
He felt more than saw the flyers stop, and he dropped down, the remaining meter and a half to the surface of the zipway. The flyers, in stopping, had come to rest on the zipway. It was something he hadn’t counted on, which was stupid. Parked flyers always rested on the ground. But he’d counted on that space of darkness beneath the flyers, to run to the other side of the zipway. Stupid Jarl. So much for bio-engineered for intelligence.
Now he faced nine rows of flyers, side by side, with their lights on in an endless traffic jam extending way back, completely obstructing the zipway. He had to run among them, somehow, without getting all of those people on their links, calling the authorities.
The only thing he could think of – the only thing he could do – was what he used to get out of trouble at Hoffnungshaus, or at least to keep his trouble as limited as he could. Look, he told himself, as though you have every right to be here.
He added a minor flourish, by rounding a flyer in such way that for people of other flyers, it would look like he had come out of it. Why anyone should come out of a flyer in these circumstances was anyone’s guess. But people did things like that. At least Jarl thought they did. He’d read about them doing things like that. Truth be told, other than books and holos he knew precious little about what real people outside Hoffnungshaus did or why. But he would pretend he came out of the flyer, and walk sedately across
The problem with walking sedately across was the ever-closer sirens. But Jarl didn’t dare run. He felt as though he were holding himself sternly in hand, and not rushing across was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
By the time he reached the other side, by the foot of the wall, it had become obvious that he had already lost too. The sirens were close enough that he could hear the voice blared at intervals: “Do not let anyone into your flyer. Some Mules have penetrated the zipway.” The Peace Keepers were close enough that in another five minutes their floodlights would illuminate the flyers in the zipway and the wall on each side as starkly as the full light of day, if not more.
Even Jarl could not climb the wall that fast, bio engineered or not. And if caught halfway up, they would know there was something wrong with him, and he would probably be shot down. But if he didn’t try it...
He could as easily be taken on the ground.
Wild thoughts of dropping to the ground and knitting himself with the base of the wall crossed his mind and were quickly dismissed, followed by thoughts of running, using his extra speed – just running between the flyers and disappearing. But you could not disappear when each flyer contained people who could come out and grab you. Or shoot you.
Do not let anyone in your flyer. The words, coming over the announcement system of the Peace Keeper flyers seemed to echo themselves in Jarl’s head, in his own internal voice. If they were saying that, it was because people might.
Fine Jarl in their place would never do so, but he didn’t understand people and would freely admit that, he couldn’t imagine any of them being silly enough to allow a stranger into their flyer with mules on the loose.
Whenever there were reports on Mule riots and Mule outbreaks, they went out of their way to tell everyone that some mules looked just like any other humans. Their lack of soul wasn’t visible from the outside – hence, the artifact ring. This made it hard for Jarl to believe he could find refuge due to his youthful appearance, even if he faked innocence.
On the other hand, Jarl had a burner. And many, if not most people were unarmed.
He took a deep breath, again, feeling the cold air singe his lungs with a burning sensation. It was a r
isk. Perhaps too great a risk. Anyone coerced at burner point to let him into their flyer was likely to turn on him the minute the authorities arrived. That was almost certain. But not certain. Not absolutely certain. While getting shot standing out here was absolutely certain.
He scanned the flyers around. Most of them were too small for him to climb aboard and conceal himself when the authorities arrived. But nearby was an eggplant colored one. It seemed to be a family flyer – six seats at least – and unless there were little ones asleep on the seats, it had only a man and a woman aboard.
Jarl walked back towards it, dipping his hand under his tunic for the burner. He must not show it before he was behind the flyer, because if he did, then the people in the flyer behind or to the side might call the authorities.
So he kept his burner in his waistband, until he got right behind the flyer, then shielding it with his body, started burning the genlock. This would set off alarms in the flyer, but it was better than going to the window and waving the burner and demanding to be let in. First, because a lot of the flyers had burner-proof dimatough windshields. Second, because–
Second because by the time the man clambered back over the seats, towards the rear door, the genlock had burned off, the flyer was unlocked, and Jarl could pull the door up and clamber in, burner in hand, all without being seen to be armed by anyone else but his victims.
The man, standing in the middle of the last row of seats, facing the cargo area, was probably forty. At least, he looked like the director of Hoffnungshaus, who was forty. He had streaks of gray hair back from his temples, marring his otherwise thick mahogany-red hair. He was thickly built too – powerful shoulders, strong legs, big hands clenched on the back of the seats.
Here Be Dragons: A collection of short stories Page 23
