by Pam Uphoff
Eventually they organized and sorted themselves out.
"Thirteen Witches, twelve Magicians, and two people with that substitute California Kids tried to call Wizard. It didn't work very well." Milly looked around at them. "We need to ask for magic lessons.”
Chris shuffled his feet, his stomach flopped over. “That’s why we were exiled.”
Milly nodded. “I know, but think! Now we’re on a World where most of the kids have engineered genes.”
Chris nodded slowly. Iris was exiled, that means she's engineered. Or her brother. Or both. “And about half of us with power genes. If no one is prejudiced, then we could use it for anything. Openly. I wonder what we can do? I wonder if the gods know? As soon as we’ve got the wall up, I’m going to ask them.”
Milly nodded. “We’re going to ask them.”
The bus had a shortwave radio. Lance fiddled with it, not broadcasting, but listening in as other people talked about what they were doing. Most of them had lost livestock, and were building walls as fast as possible. One place had a large river, and crocodiles. They also had three gods, and the person on the radio sounded a bit dubious. A group right on the lake reported that the water was very cold, and that they'd seen an iceberg. Three villages said they were on salt water bodies, and that the fishing was excellent. A man from here, what had Harry called him? Chow? Or someone who sounded a lot like him, talked about the possibility of the gate having been damaged, and how it could be two years, or more if there were construction delays, before the new gate was finished. That brought a storm of comments from everywhere. Chow commented that everyone ought to be especially cautious around the mentally unstable 'gods' and that when the gate was open they ought to arrest the gods and send them back. That increased the storm. Few people spoke in defense of the gods. Chris finally elbowed his way to the radio.
"Do you approve of slavery? You think the way you were treated was harsh? Exiled because of a few engineered genes to keep you healthy? These sarcastically named gods were legally not human. They had no civil rights. They were property. They were used for experiments. Raped. Murdered. Drugged. They had brain implants as if they were animals in an experiment. They escaped.
"And maybe they were necessary for the operation of the Gates, but nothing, nothing, excuses the way they were treated. You don't like it here? Remember what the alternate was? Sterilization. No right to vote. Some places you weren't allowed to drive a car. Tell me, does a person who was treated the way you were treated have a right to bitch because these people escaped much worse conditions?
"Of course you have that right. You just won't get any respect, slaver. You are indeed less than human. You are a disgrace to the entire mammalian phylum. You sicken me."
He slapped the microphone back into Lance's hand and stalked out.
A couple dozen of the bus kids gawped at him.
"Wow."
He didn't look to see who he'd impressed. Or horrified.
***
The next morning, Harry shoved himself to his feet and headed for the nearest grove of trees. Limping, but without crutches. "Wolf, come show me that slice of yours." Before he was halfway to the trees, he wished he'd brought the crutches.
A hardwood sapling was his first victim. With a staff to lean on he started felling the straightest of the trees, the spell cut away limbs with ease. He passed out about noon and woke in the Mashed Hospital, again.
"That was a brilliant idea, Harry." Ginny Wacolm beamed at him. "But you need to pace yourself. Use outside power sources as much as you can, and stop when the inner power is low. Your Indian friend showed all the other magically able how to do it."
"I thought we four were the only gods here?"
"You are, but we've got some people with a single power gene. They can do this as well as you lot can."
"Oh. Of course. I didn't think. Good." When he tried to get up she pressed him back down.
"Dinner in half an hour or so, and a good night's sleep, for you. Tomorrow you can get back to over-doing."
A couple of the boys trotted in to check on him. "Everyone was worried." Brandon frowned at Harry's head. "Lady Gisele said you weren't really bald."
"And she said she wasn't bald either. Then she went and cried on Romeo's shoulder. She's worse than my big sister." Pete scowled fiercely. "And I don't miss them."
Nine years old. How could his parents send him away?
"And the Old Wolf said we should bring you home for dinner. All the boys are camping out in the attic. Some of the girls are going with Lady Gisele to the Temple until she builds a house." Brandon was about the same age. Showing a bit more hurt, but perhaps feeling a bit less.
Harry levered himself carefully out of bed and took his time climbing the low hill to the winery. The Old Wolf had pulled two beds out of nowhere and stuck them in his back rooms.
"That one's all yours. Romeau’s taking the other. I've got twenty boys sleeping on the floor upstairs. Gisele's got fifteen girls across in the Temple. The older girls are still in that bus. I think they think we'll enslave them, or steal their bus, or something."
"We're going to need a hotel for them all." Harry wrinkled his nose. "Maybe a boarding school."
"Tavern and Inn." Brandon looked around and shook his head. "Harry, you should think about living there, too. You know you'll outgrow this room almost instantly."
"And then you can mentor all the older kids, and be a male role model for the younger ones." Dane stuck his head in the door.
Harry snorted. "Kid, you are proof that it is possible to read too much. What are you? Twelve?"
"Fourteen. You know, a bunch of us kids have power genes. With a bit of training, we could be serious assets to the village."
Wolf eyed the boy. "Can you gather power?" He compacted a ball of light between his hands.
Dane squirmed. "Are you doing something?"
"Yep. You're still a bit young. I couldn't do it until I was sixteen, almost seventeen. But I should start teaching some preliminaries. Meditation. Yoga and Tai chi."
"Karate! And how about sword fighting, if we're headed for medieval times?" Dane's enthusiasm flooded back. "Do you know how to sword fight?"
"Is that why you have the black colt? To be a war horse when he grows up?" Pete brightened as well. "He's going to need a stable this winter, you know."
"We could build stables onto the Inn." Chris's voice came from beyond them.
Wolf and Harry swapped grins.
"I think we're being managed, Harry. So, where do you want your inn, tavern and stables?"
Harry snorted. “I suspect it’ll go wherever the kids want it. And children cannot have a tavern. They can have a restaurant.”
They didn’t let him share the night watch, either. Bonfires and rifles at ready. But the lions, leopards, wild dogs and hyenas stayed away.
***
Chris gave a brief lesson in shotgun handling to all the bus kids. And worried about whether his buckshot would stop a lion. The loaded shotgun was left by the driver's seat, in case of emergencies. "No body touches it, otherwise. Until all of you get more lessons, and some target time." He mentally increased the order he was going to place for ammunition, when the gate opened in a month. If.
By late the next morning, the wall was complete to the north, west and south. The two buildings crowning the west ridge were built into the walls. The east wall was going up fast. Gates, roughly centered in each wall were a bit of a problem. The farm gate hinges seemed to be holding, they'd just have to brace them shut until they got a blacksmith shop up and working for the brackets they needed for a crossbar to secure it at night. Inside the wall, they had a confused mass of cars and livestock.
Jack Otts kept trying to organize the chaos.
"Cattle and sheep pens to the north. Then a nice broad street running north and south, and another running east and west. Anyone who wants to have a shop, you get a lot on one of those streets. Everyone else gets a parcel back behind them." He frowned a bit at t
he two buildings on the ridge. "Guess we'll just ignore them for now."
Chris, once again the designated spokes person waved a hand for Jack's attention. "We're a group of forty-two kids whose parents didn't emigrate. We want to build something with long term use potential." Milly had written a speech and made him memorize it. "A big inn, maybe a stable on the back, a hall for meetings. Us kid's will live there for now, and move out as we grow up—more than half of us are sixteen or older. Then the town will have a place for travelers to stay. Maybe a restaurant, or . . . something." No doubt she'd read him the riot act over his ad libs.
"Right. We'll put you on one corner of the two main streets. The other corners we'll leave empty, for an eventual Town Hall, maybe a church, library or school on the other corners."
Chris blinked. No arguments? No charge?
As other people called out suggestions or demands, Otts pulled out a bunch of stakes and survey gear. He put everyone to work, and soon enough, had them all moving their cars to their plots. Chris watched, a bit awed. Sometimes someone who knows what needs to be done just steps up and yells enough to get it done.
***
"So? When do you think you'll start planting your grape vines?" Harry frowned out at the sunset. Over the last week they’d hauled rocks and laid them out for a patio behind the winery. It made a nice meeting spot for the gods, and however many people came by. Up on the hill, they had a long field of view to the west.
The predators had quickly learned to stay away.
Or perhaps they had killed them all.
The older kids, Jack Otts, Muriel Westfarlin and Phaedra Shandy were regulars. Both the women’s husbands had declined to follow their wives and children into exile. Tonight Miriam Wilson had come with them; she and her husband George still planned to build a store—once there was something to sell.
"We don't even know what time of year it is here." Old Wolf paced like a big cat. "The vineyard will have to be outside of the walls. There's no room inside. Keeping the antelope away is going to be hard. And for all we know, there will be elephants."
"It was June when we left Earth." Dane looked up from a book on architecture. "I doubt we could do a dimensional gate if the planet wasn't in the same place in the same orbit. Although with the days four minutes longer, we may not have the same rotational speed as Earth, and that may be why the gate was wobbling all over like it did."
Gisele and Wolf eyed each other uncertainly.
"It was wobbling?"
"Yep." Chris sighed. "It spread us out, which is nice."
"It got kind of scary when it started raining naked bodies, though." Dane's eyes flicked toward Gisele, and he visibly suppressed a smile. "Good thing there were only four of you and you only fell about five feet.
Muriel cleared her throat. “I’ve got an auger, I can drill holes for your vines, if you don’t want to use the voodoo thing for it. Bill and Jerry both have fruit saplings they need to get in the ground soon.” She had her youngest daughter in a basket, asleep at her feet. The other two were inside watching some horrible cartoon. Harry occasionally wondered how Old Wolf had acquired such an odd collection of shows. The man himself didn't remember.
Jack nodded. “We’d best start allocating land out here. Originally, it was just going to be, fence it and register it and it’s yours. But between the predators, and the pests, everyone wants to be close in.”
Wolf stared out at the twilight plains. “The vines don’t need to be so close to the wall.” He flicked a quick grin at Muriel. “I forgot about the voodoo thing. I can probably protect them. Jack, why don’t we get together a town meeting, elect you mayor officially, and decide on a land registry and plan. Maybe close in, ten acres, a mile away forty, two miles, a hundred and sixty acres. Three miles away, and you could start allotting square miles.”
“Yes, something like that.” Jack frowned at the gods. “And eventually we’ll whittle down the predators and the deer and the antelope or whatever will be so afraid of us that they won’t come near. But what about bugs? Fungus? We’re going to have to import fuel, fertilizer and bug spray. If we can. It’s beginning to look like we aren’t going to find much oil or natural gas here."
"Which is going to complicate farming enormously. And at the rate villages are combining, there's going to be some large concentrations of people to be fed."
Jack snorted. "Even the people who think you lot are dangerously insane part-animals admit we got the barricade up in a quarter of the time other people took. Those magic techniques of yours, you need to teach them to everyone with the right genes." He looked wistful. "My grandkids have some, I think." A widower, he'd accompanied his daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren. "Magic. I'm damned glad you're here, and frankly, the way they treated my grandkids? I'd just as soon they never contact us again."
Old Wolf nodded.
Harry didn’t care for himself, but it hurt a bit to wonder if the parents of the so-called orphans had had regrets and made plans to come over, a chance now forever lost. If they showed up in two years, would even the youngest kids care any more? I can’t substitute for a parent, but I’ll help this collection of lost boys and girls as much as possible.
***
Milly and Lillian were talking to two girls Chris didn't know, and summoned him with a wave.
One of the new girls giggled. "Hi, I'm Cleo, and this is Cecilia. We just got here."
Chris nodded. "People keep coming this way, I dunno why."
Cecilia rolled her eyes. "You have walls. It's safe here." She looked about eighteen, blonde with big brown eyes.
"That's it? It's going to get really crowded if people keep coming, umm, why didn't you just build your own walls?"
She wrinkled her nose. "We tried. We ran out of gas for the chain saws, and people didn't want to syphon their cars, and anyway, by the time we got to Wisconsin, we were running a bit low."
Cleo was blonde too, her eyes a clear pale blue. "You guys seem to know what you're doing. That's . . . irresistible. I mean, you're starting to plow, the lions didn't get your cows, you've got buildings." Cleo looked around. "Two months ago I would have laughed at a crappy little third world shithole like this. I was old enough to be on my own. I can't believe mother talked me into coming with them."
Chris bristled. "It's not a shithole. I take it you aren't engineered?"
"Eww, no! Just my stupid little brother." Cleo eyed him and edged away. "You are, aren't you?"
Cecilia stopped smiling at him.
Typical. He'd really hoped he'd left that behind. "Better get over the attitude. More than half the people around here are engineered. Or better yet, go back to Earth if they get a gate open again."
They flicked a glance behind him. He turned to find Iris and two other girls walking up. They'd all come with their parents, but he'd met them a couple of times. And encountered Iris as often as he could make it happen.
Iris looked over Cleo, then Cecilia. Stuck her nose up in the air. "I'm engineered. I'll live longer than you, and be healthier than you. My teeth are straight, I don't have zits. And I don't have brunette roots showing."
"You don't have the really bad genes, do you?" Cleo was red faced, embarrassed and getting mad, judging by her changing expressions.
Cecilia looked Iris up and down, then the rest of them. "You look normal." She sounded dubious. "For a bunch of freaks."
Chris stood as tall as he could, which wasn't tall enough to look down his nose at her, but he gave it his best try. "I have tons of engineering. I have the power genes." He held his hands out in the warm sunshine, and imagined squeezing the heat into a glowing ball of energy. "I am a magician." The palms of his hands glowed. A fainter glow formed a sphere above his hands.
Milly was gawking at him, her embarrassed flush paling. Iris and her friends stared.
Cleo and Cecilia started laughing.
"What a loser!" They turned together, and walked away.
Chris stared at the glowing ball in his hands. Hot
but not painfully so. More like a welcome relaxing heat. He tried to shake it off. It stuck to his left hand, but his right still glowed a bit, too. He pictured it darkening and going out. It glowed.
He swallowed panic. "I think I'll go talk to the gods, excuse me."
Milly hovered over him all the way to the winery. Empty. Out the west gate to take a look around. He spotted Wolf up on the next ridge and strode out to where he and Romeau were pointing at things and talking.
They glanced around, and stiffened at the sight of his still glowing ball of warmth.
"I can't make it go away." Chris shook his hand.
"Touch the ground. Imagine it soaking into the ground like water." Old Wolf knelt beside him.
Chris crouched and grounded both hands. The light seeped reluctantly away. He swallowed. "So, do you guys teach magic?"
"We'll start this afternoon." Old Wolf glanced at the sun, then at Milly. "Can you do that?"
Milly held out her hands and tried to gather sunlight. Her hands just shaded each other. Her shoulders slumped.
Romeau shrugged. "Gisele says that she and the other goddesses mostly used their spare Y chromosome and the Mage gene. She said Muriel and Phaedra get their power in some other way. I think we'll need to split everyone up, with all you girls learning as much from Muriel and Phaedra as from Gisele. Talk to the three of them, about lessons."
Milly brightened. "I'm going to go talk to them, right now." She headed down hill.
"Chris, why don't you round up any boys who know they have the power gene and are fifteen or older. Not just your group, but the other kids as well. We'll hold a meeting in the winery . . . say in two hours."
Chris looked at his hands. No redness, not even a sunburn's worth. "Right. Two hours." He walked back to town, thinking. He knew who had the power genes on the bus. The other kids? Ugg. Probably a bunch of them would be like Cleo and Cecilia. He looked around and spotted a bunch of teenagers hanging around the far side of the stock pens and walked that way. A couple of the gang stepped out to intercept him.
