by Pam Uphoff
Another man chuckled, as he joined them. "And no prejudice against the engineered. I'm not, but I got a slew of things fixed in my kids. My wife died of cancer, but my kids and grandkids won't. They're smarter than I am, they'll be taller and better looking. And they still manage to look a bit like Vera, and if you squint really hard, me. Very prettied up."
Another man snickered. "And so many of us are doctors! I swear, every village must have one or two."
"And lawyers." The doctor shook his head. "You can see them sweating, resisting the impulse to sue the hunters on behalf of the wildebeests." There was general laughter, and they sat and talked as the sun dropped to the horizon. Then they all migrated back inside the walls. Food and drink started showing up, and the speculation on the future continued. All in all they were minimally bothered by the thought of being marooned here.
Damn good neighbors.
As were the other villages.
"If those lions mean this is Africa, then the straights of Gibraltar are closed." This village had decided to go for the Medieval feel, and elected a High Sheriff. A big genial man who'd come with his two children and three grandchildren.
His wife rolled her eyes. "It's a different world. We ought to give the continents different names."
"It's supposed to be a parallel Earth," the High Sheriff returned, stubbornly. "Those bullies we kicked out, they came to be near the beacon. Talking all the time about parallel worlds, and which one they wanted to move to. Most of them wanted to go back to Earth."
Harry bit his lip. "Earth? Who were they?"
"Parents, adults who'd had a breakup with an engineered spouse, or walked away from kids who were engineered. Older brothers and sisters, who'd been dragged along. People who ought not to have come in the first place."
"So far, there has been sixteen women and twenty-five men." The wife smiled ruefully. "With such a small population, I tend to keep an eye on the gender balance here. So I noticed it with them. They weren't balanced at all."
"Which worries me." The High Sheriff frowned. "I'd hate to see them start raiding for food or women."
"In any case, that first group talked about the beacon, about how they'd go back home, as soon as the gate opened." The wife made a face. "I figure we did Earth a favor, taking them away, but frankly, I'd druther they'd been left behind. They've settled south of here, I think, through the hills and out on the Atlantic coast."
"With luck, the government will get the gate working again, without you gods, and they can all go back." The High Sheriff grimaced. "I doubt it will happen."
Harry stared over at the beacon. "It's been . . . I don't know whether to say it's already been five months, or to be amazed that it has only been five months. A year and a half, give or take, before the new gate is finished."
"What will you do?"
Harry pulled his eyes away from the beacon. "If they can open gates, then they won't need us any more."
"You hope."
"Yeah." A year and a half. Summer Solstice. Remember, and be prepared to run for it. This is one thing that we can't afford to forget. He eyed the beacon. It would make his life so simple, if something were to happen to it. He turned away from temptation.
Harry hiked the ridge of "Gibraltar" and viewed the "Atlantic Ocean" from the heights. He didn't go any further south. He didn't want to meet these putative rebels.
But salt. Yes. He hiked down to the shore and experimented with magically separating it from the water, and decided boiling it away was slower but less painful. He returned well laden, shared a bit of it with the village, and suggested that they had a valuable trade commodity just thirty miles away.
The return trip was faster, the current, however sluggish, was with him, and he stayed only a few days at each village along the route.
The ladies of his own village were delighted with the salt, and began salting and preserving meat. There seemed to be a lot more people than he remembered, and a second stockade was under construction two miles northwest.
***
The magic and hunting lessons and construction continued through the fall. Slice turned out to be a handy spell for cutting hay, and as the tractors started running short on fuel, they switched from baling hay to stacking it. By hand. Then scooping it up with a bubble, for later use.
Then the corn was ready to harvest, and needed a lot of hand picking.
The wheat was sliced and scooped up, to be run through a thresher run off of Muriel Westfallen's tractor.
There was a good chance that job would have to be done by hand, next year.
"And keep coming to the meditation and tai chi classes." Old Wolf called after her. "It's a good idea to learn how to concentrate and visualize before you have enough power to be dangerous.
Old Wolf was pretty slick, complementing Muriel, playing with her kids. Carrying her sleeping kids "home" to her RV, and kissing her goodnight in plain sight of everyone.
Chris gave the compliments some thought and managed to stammer out a brief version of some of them, Iris blushed, and seemed pleased to see him whenever he showed up.
Chapter Ten
15 October 2117
Harry curtailed his trips when the weather turned suddenly cold, and the first stormfront of the winter hit. Three days of chilly rain turned everything to mud, and finished off the gardens.
Wolf kept up the hunting and lessons in martial arts to anyone interested. And magic lessons for all the boys who could gather power. Gisele, Muriel, and Phaedra, were giving magic lessons to the girls.
Gisele cackled at his surprise. “I may be the oldest Goddess, but there were plenty of women engineered to have a single power gene, or single type of power gene before they decided to cram everything possible into me.”
“I thought the female gene meant the women could have only daughters?” Harry glanced at the mixed group of kids.
“The four boys are all invitro engineered. Happy Kids used the women's genes—and their husbands’—and the women bore the children normally, it’s only Y bearing sperm that gets attacked. Once conceived, a male embryo is safe.” Gisele sniffed. "Of course both their husbands used that as an excuse to abandon their families. Disgraceful. Look at Muriel, a wiggly five year old boy, a two year old and a baby! Out here alone in the wilderness."
Harry chuckled. “Wolf seems to like them all. I don't think she'll be single for very long." He turned back to the original subject. "So they’re magic, and so are their kids.”
“Yes, and about hundred other adults and teenagers, and thirty kids. Almost ten times as many people are engineered in non-powered ways. So less than half of us are normal.”
“If that holds for all the villages, normal for here is going to be very different.”
“Especially a few generations from now. The vast majority of the non-engineered are adults, here with their engineered children, and not planning on having any more. Perhaps a third of the youngsters are normal, siblings of the engineered.”
“Planning and reality may differ. We don’t have access to modern medicine, that is to say, contraceptives.”
Gisele cackled again. “We’re working on a spell for that one as well.”
Romeau snorted as he walked in. “You should have started earlier. These teenagers! I’ve got five upcoming weddings, if the families will stop the name calling and settle down.”
“No magic abortions?”
Gisele sighed. “I can make a death spell. I've tested it on animals. Can I cast it inside a woman without killing her, too? Pretty small target, a tiny clump of cells. I could probably do it if I wait until the baby is big enough to kill just a bit of the heart or brain, keep the field of the spell definitely inside the baby.”
Wolf nodded slowly. “How do you avoid affecting the tissue in between?”
“Exactly. I’m practicing with animals, and it makes me sick to think of killing a baby so far along. Karen’s six months along, and I can feel the sleeping thoughts of the baby. It would be murder, brutal and
cold, to kill that innocent child.” Gisele hunched her shoulders.
Harry was suddenly reminded of an elderly woman. This is what Gisele will look like at eighty. He turned his thoughts back to the matter of pregnancies. “Couldn’t you, oh, knock it loose? Jiggle everything around within tolerances the mother can handle?” Harry worried that one over. “I can sense—locate—people. But I’ve never tried to detect organs.”
“I can see small stuff like that. And do delicate telekineseis.” Wolf was frowning. “I sort of remember an aneurism, someone dying of a stroke.”
Gisele looked up, eyes bright. “Were you able to save him?”
Wolf hesitated. “Actually, I think I caused it. On purpose.”
“Oh. Dear. I think the other doctors, the ones without their medical knowledge scrambled, are secure in their jobs, for now.” Gisele shrugged. “We’re all teaching by example, and talking about a college, but no one’s done anything yet.”
“At least we’ll have an elementary school going all winter, whether the kids like it or not.” Romeau grinned. “And not is the answer. I suspect they’ll appreciate it more once the really cold weather hits . . . if it does. We’re pretty far south.”
***
Harry made several shorter trips up and down the lake, trading with the people of the three nearest villages. On his last trip, Phaedra accompanied him, and hobnobbed with the women in the other villages. Several times he saw them practicing magic, always in threes.
He added working in circles of eight to his own magic lessons. So odd, how men and women worked differently.
Chapter Eleven
25 December 2117
The Inn grew in fits and starts. Smaller than they wanted; a great big dining room and kitchen but only a loft upstairs under the high peaked roof. But it was weather tight, with a marvelous fireplace, before Christmas.
The fabber was worked over time, making presents. Two each for the little kids, one each for to older ones. The Inn was enclosed enough that they could hold a party during the day. Break out some games, play music, eat too much . . . the little kids sobbed openly, and Chris wasn't the only one trying to not remember real Christmases at home with his family.
The next winter storm roared down from the north with little warning. The temperature dropped off the cliff and rain turned to ice, then snow. The livestock crowded into the few sheds that had been finished, and the gods bubbled a lot of them. It seemed like a sensible thing to do . . .
Three days later the weather warmed, the bubbles emptied, and a frenzy of barn building started. A big public one, for all the people who owned just a few animals, smaller ones for the ranchers with small herds and bigger plans for the future.
"If that was a taste of the local winters, we're going to need to close off the sheds, and I'm not sure the hay will last." Vito fussed, but at least he worked and knew what he was doing.
There were a couple of whiners that were neither polite nor able.
Chris shoveled manure in the public barn twice a week, swapping dishwashing chores with Lillian. It had nothing to do with Iris Pender stopping by to coo at the wild heifers. Really. Regular applications of calming spells helped the critters accept people, but they were noticeably nervier and less friendly than the domestic heifers of the same age.
"We can bubble the bulls and the stallions, but that's just five animals out of five hundred. Well, we can bubble as many as we want, but they won't be growing up or gestating while they're in there." Romeau finished Sungold and turned to brush the patiently waiting Jet.
"Ha! You just solved one of my worst worries." Leo grinned. "I have cows that will be dropping their calves in March. It might be a good idea to bubble them for a month or two, make it May for calving. June was warm, when we arrived, the grass mature. The wild heifers, on the other hand, I'd like to see keep growing all winter. Breed them next fall and see what we get the following spring."
That idea spread like wildfire, and half their animals disappeared as the next storm's clouds loomed across the lake. It was the worst of the winter storms so far and dumped five feet of snow on them.
Old Wolf demonstrated a new use for bubbles. He bubbled the bus, and moved it so the door coincided with the door of the closet under the stairs. Then he attached the bubble edges, and there it was. The whole bus. In the closet.
That sparked a burst of innovations.
As they got out between storms and chopped down more trees, both for firewood and for lumber, they built rooms for themselves.
The upstairs loft turned into two short hallways, lined with tightly packed rows of windows, keeping the glass makers busy. The wooden rooms were built separately, encased in bubbles except for the window hole and the doorway. Installed, the bubbles turned the upstairs into tightly packed rows of doors, each opening into a generously spaced room with a window.
It was disturbing, to say the least. The kids laughed and moved in. Old Wolf finally built two long hallways, with holes for doorways spaced ten feet apart, bubbled the hallways and installed them over the packed doors.
Harry shook his head. “It looks fine, on the inside. So long as you don’t remember seeing a lack of building extending out the back, before you walked in.”
The kids voted, and named it the Fire Mountain Inn, for no apparent reason, beyond perhaps, the vid they'd watched the night before in the Chapel.
Romeau moved back into his Temple of Love, and Gisele did not move out. She found a nook she claimed would grow herbs, come spring, and studied the medicinal uses of everything anyone had seeds for. And how to increase or duplicate the chemical effect magically. Harry moved into what was supposed to be the wine cellar of the Fire Mountain Inn, swearing he wasn’t going to live in a bubble. The kids teased him, and loved their rooms. Harry shrugged and decided they could take their rooms with them, when they grew up and wanted to be independent. “I can build proper hotel rooms and put them in the vacant door and window holes. And in the mean time, I’d better think up a spell that will prevent anyone from noticing the lack of exterior wings.”
The dining room of the Tavern turned into the much delayed school, and the gods insisted the older kids read college level texts and discussed them with them regularly.
And they practiced magic. Invented magic. Shields. Push, pull, and slice. They couldn't figure out invisible, but managed to be very unnoticeable. Chris worked hardest on the calming and charming spells. He still needed to catch a horse. Two horses. One for him, one for Iris.
Gisele was remembering more of her training. She might have been a doctor, but she seemed to know a lot about genetics as well. She handled the biological subjects, talking with the older teenagers, and several adults with an interest, and helped in the hospital. Seven births and two deaths. Heart attack in one case, and an accident with a chainsaw.
The other gods worried less about their mental state. Old Wolf drilled them, gods and orphans and anyone else who showed up at the winery, in martial arts twice a week.
There were complaints about petty thievery, and glances sent toward "all those unsupervised teenagers, living in what is practically a bar. It was bound to happen."
Since Harry's first attempt to brew beer had been weak, tasted nasty, and had been finished off by the adults within a month, Chris figured the thief was more likely one or more of the other unsupervised teenagers, the ones who met out at the public barn and bought the even nastier stuff Marshal Wallace fermented and distilled.
Chapter Twelve
April 2118
Mark Lawrence, one of the men with a power gene and some friends had been working on bending and shaping wood. A mix of steam, magic and painstaking care. They could meld boards together so tightly only the change in grain testified to their one time separateness.
In the spring, Harry used their techniques on a larger hull.
"It needs a dragon on the front."
Harry grinned at Wolf. "It does look a bit like a Viking long boat, doesn't it? I'm thinking a simple sq
uare sail will save me a lot of paddling, without needing a deep keel. Since no one's got an actual harbor or dock, I have to get in close to shore so I have to keep the shallow draft."
"You could add a umm, catamaran? No, that's not right. Pontoon? No. Damn my brain. A cross arm with a float. Whatever the word is." He grinned suddenly. "Oh, the expression on your face! Okay, I won't say that again until you've tipped over."
"Outrigger." Harry growled. "Vikings do not have outriggers."
"Ah. Thank you."
The lake was twice as long east-west as north-south, with broad slow rivers connecting it to other lakes. They had enough contact, village to village by shortwave that Harry found himself carrying cargo and people from place to place. Viking was much admired, and he suspected would soon be much copied. He experimented with mentally redirecting the wind. It was almost as exhausting as rowing; he limited his use of it to times when the wind was blowing from almost the right direction, and the power needed to shift it minimal. And when he lacked companions to grab the second pair of long oars and work for their passage. At every village, he stayed long enough to teach Slice, Unnoticeable, Pesticide, Fertilizer, Heat, Light, Fireball and Levitate. To tell the women to work in threes, the men in fours and eights.
To the east, Harry skipped past Cairo without stopping.
He was relieved to find Michael alive and well in the next large settlement. And even more relieved to find the ordinary people in charge.
"They named it the Red River, even though it's not red. But the river has got to be approximately the Suez Canal and the Red Sea." Michael leaned down and pet one of his dogs. He had a handsome pair of black german shepherds, a great dane and a boxer. He hadn't pulled a single asinine trick yet. His pale, almost white hair gleamed in the Arabian sun.
