by Pam Uphoff
"We're spread out all over, but we swap and trade regionally all along the curve of the Israeli Coast and over the mountains. The next settlement is Kuwait, clear across Arabia, then Karachi and New Bombay. No one's actually been to any of them, but we talk on the radio all the time. Too far across the desert, and yours is the first seaworthy craft I've seen."
"You can't go overland? We were wondering about the Middle Eastern oilfields. I’m afraid I didn’t put a shortwave in the boat. Wasn’t someone going to go take a look?"
Michael snickered. "That might have something to do with the millions of square miles of natural asphalt and near surface tar sands they talk about in 'Kuwait,' perhaps?"
"Damn. One of the geologists was talking about all the earthquakes and a highly active lithosphere." Harry nodded at the waterwheel to change the subject. "You look like you're doing well."
"The town is. We power a small core of the city. Hospital, school, city hall and a couple of factories. If we can find enough iron and copper, we'll build another one, and really get going. A couple of people had electric cars, and they've formed a taxi service. Oh, and we pump water to the holding tank up there. Everyone has running water in their home."
They'd been strolling as they talked. A man strode around them and gave them an unhappy glare as he marched passed. The dogs all hackled a bit. The man tripped and staggered into a woman carrying a canvas bag of rolls.
When Harry would have stopped, Michael just grabbed his arm and steered him onward. "I get blamed for everything that happens around me. So I try to not be around very much."
They ended up at the top of the ridge the city was built on. Michael waved his arms at the land on the other side. "We pump water for the fields and orchards. Those mountains over there have copper ore and they've found iron to the south. They figure they can build another alternator in a year, and start a second town to the north where we cut all our lumber."
"You've done . . . "
"They've done. Not me. Them."
Harry looked at him in exasperation. "How are they cutting these trees, Michael? Making glass? Keeping the bugs off the crops?"
"Chainsaws. Charcoal and sand. Pesticides."
“There’s a lot that can be done with magic. I’ll show you, and anyone else who can gather power.”
Michael looked surprised. “I’m the only one. The engineered here can only do very simple low powered things. I’ll introduce you to the Committee on Magic. Everything here is committees.”
All appointed by the Town Council. Harry stayed in his boat at the wharf, there being no facilities for visitors at all. Michael lived ten miles out of town, by order of the Town Council, on the recommendation of the Committee on Magic.
The committee was clearly unwelcoming. Harry discussed the pest and fertilizer spells first, went on to those useful in hunting, the woodworking and leather making spells. They allowed him to teach a small selected group of adults. Michael showed up most days and watched from a distance. He made people nervous and gathered the blame for all clumsiness. The Committee thanked Harry for the lessons, then showed him the door.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile, Michael.”
The tall man shrugged. “At least now I see that I’m not being singled out for exclusion. No gods welcome here. I guess I’ll go somewhere with no other people at all.”
“Would you like to sail around the peninsula to Kuwait and then on to New Bombay?”
“I’d just make your boat sink, or a storm blow up and drive it onshore.”
Harry finally admitted defeat. "You are just going to have to cheer yourself up, Michael. No one can do it for you."
“I’d wish you smooth sailing, but it might doom you.”
“I’ll see you on the return trip, Michael.”
The tall youngster just shook his head and walked away.
The Red River was swift but deep enough to not be too dangerous during the day. The shores were unremitting desert for close to a thousand miles. Harry fished and cooked over small fires of wood he'd brought along.
Chapter Thirteen
Spring 2118
" . . . and if the women aren't going to shovel manure, why should they get a heifer in the roundup drawing?"
Chris looked at Ben and shook his head. "Some of them do, like your sister, and some of them trade, like Lillian. I mean, I just hate washing dishes, especially when it involves forty-two kids." He racked his shovel. "And with the cattle out to pasture every day now, the manure volume was down to half or less. So it's even less work than it was all winter. And if they help with the roundup, they get into the drawing."
Ben shook his head. "You are so soft on women, let them run everything."
"I let them run themselves. Instead of trying to take over and order them around."
That got him a sneer.
If he wasn't Iris's brother, I'd totally ignore his existence.
Still without a heifer, Chris decided it was time to try his other tactic.
He stalked the wild horses carefully.
Projected the calming spell as hard as he was capable of. Added unnoticeable.
They paid him no more attention than if an antelope had wandered among them. There were two prime targets. He couldn't judge the mares' ages, but they were huge and round, due to foal. Now to find out if this would work . . . He tied off both ropes to the closest trees. Slipped a noose over one mare's head, then the other, quickly, as the first raised her head in alarm. They both shied back and the calm broke with an almost audible snap
Chris shielded for all he was worth. He got knocked flat, rolled around, stomped by the stallion . . . and emerged shaken but unbruised.
With two frantic mares flailing about, falling and scrambling back to their feet to throw themselves at the end of the rope again.
Chris kept his distance, and waited for them to learn they couldn't escape. He'd put knots in the rope, a large one to keep it from choking them, a small one that would keep the noose from falling open. Their first panic had pulled the end loop over the small knot, and they were in the bag.
It took them a long time to admit that. They were wild, not feral, like a mustang. There'd been no thousands of years concentrating the genes that made domestication possible. Mousy gray, with a dark strip down their backs and double slashes of black over their withers. He studied them carefully, and finally decided one was a bit taller than the other. "Right. You're Mutt and you've Jeff, and I doubt I'll ever be sure which one of you is which."
His voice panicked them all over again. He really wished he could do that bubble thing.
They finally calmed down enough to be susceptible to the Calm spell, and he untied them. He moved them carefully from grove to grove. Tying them often, so he could relax the spell and recuperate.
He camped, and his tiny fire spooked the exhausted animals again.
Romeau rode Sungold into camp about midnight. He whistled when he saw the mares. "Excellent. I've thought about doing that but never got around to it."
Chris yawned. "They haven't broken their necks yet, but could you bubble them? I'd like to get home in less than a week."
He did, and helped build two small sturdy runs for them, behind the Inn.
Chris fed them hay by the handful, all day, for days, and layered on spells, and they remained wild animals. Minimally socialized, never really tame. He registered a brand, and used magic, a reverse of the silly hair growing spell to mark both mares. And the colt and filly they produced a week after he'd gotten the mares home. He tried, hard, to imprint on the foals. They were a bit friendlier than their mothers, but . . .
He bred the mares to Jet, and moved them out to the larger pastures, to make room in the pens for the next batch of wild heifers.
Milly shook her head at him. "Still trying to impress that Iris Penner? You could have a hundred head of cattle, and still fail."
"She likes horses. She spent tons of time trying to make up to the filly." Chris scowled at the fast
disappearing horses. Hopefully they wouldn't run right through the barbed wire fence. He had a nasty suspicion he was going to need his calming spell to catch them again.
Chapter Fourteen
18 June 2118
Ms Abrams dismissed the senior calculus class, and closed her folder. Math, science and basic logic were the only subjects she trusted herself to teach. History was hopeless with the holes in her memory, and even English was a bit iffish. She was very careful in her preparation for science, so she didn't overlook something obvious, but she seemed to be adjusting to the new person she was.
New Bombay, from the very start was beautiful. The four gods had split the responsibilities of governance among themselves. Mercy had appropriated the hospital and Pax the police and courts. Marty had taken over all city planning and approval of buildings. And they'd built them, working together. Magic worked quite well on stone.
Abrams had gladly picked up the schools. If anything needed to be run logically . . . Basic education, then tracking to either vocational training or university prep. The University was a bit thin on professors, but by building the hospital as an adjunct to a medical school, she'd managed to recruit two doctors to be the medical school. Marty had designed a building for the school of law, she was going to have to talk to the exiled lawyers about how to organize it. The geology department was run by a rather rude texas oil man, whatever that was. He’d been silenced by the blocky, random "crystals" stack that was the science building. Marty had basked in the man's total bogglement. She had biology, chemistry and physics professors, one of each, and she lectured in philosophy and taught math at the college level as well as in the high school. Art was a major department all its own, of course. Marty also managed the public museum. Richie managed nothing what-so-ever.
It was all very grandiose for a "city" of twelve thousand people.
Most of them hunters and farmers and farm workers.
Abrams remembered enough history to know that at the Medieval level it took ten people working in the fields to support a single urban specialist. She hoped they’d kept enough tech to do better than that, once they had everything organized. Pest control alone should tip the ratio in their favor.
She trotted down the steps (graceful, sweeping white marble) and headed down the street toward the University. She planned to expand the University into the current high school buildings and grounds, and build multiple local high schools as the city grew.
But the way Marty built, it would be a good while before they outgrew their current quarters.
Bright colors resolved into Mercy, trotting down the street toward her. She was getting quite alarmingly large. She'd been impregnated with engineered sperm prior to the Exile.
"You must be nearly due." Ms. Abrams continued her speculation aloud as the other woman got within hearing range. "It's been almost twelve months since we arrived."
"Yes, the doctor said if I didn't start labor within a week she'd induce. I really should have declined the honor, but who knew this was going to happen?"
"Indeed. And we have no idea what the normal gestation is for a Goddess. Brave of you, to be the first." Abrams said no more, as her recollections of the pre-Exile were rather dim. The only strong one involved the lack of someone. She couldn't even remember his name. But he wasn't here.
"At any rate I came to talk to you about Harry."
Abrams looked at her blankly. "I don't believe I have any students named . . . "
"No, no, no! Harry. He's one of them."
Abrams frowned at the shorter woman. "One of the people who exiled us?"
"A traitor." The deep voice was directly behind her.
She spun around and frowned at Pax. She hated it when he snuck up on her.
"He's one of us, a God. But he worked with them. He thinks we won't remember. So act nice but be on your guard."
"He's here?"
Pax looked down the Street of Exile to the harbor. "The Viking boat with the square red sail. An undersized Viking longboat. I'm shocked it's actually sea worthy."
"I dare say he hugged the coast." Abrams still couldn't remember anything about a Harry. "Should we walk down and meet him?"
"Much though I dislike seeming to give him any honor, I'd as soon control who he talks to." Pax hunched a shoulder and set off down the hill.
Mercy scampered after him and Abrams followed at a more deliberate pace.
Marty walked out of the Department of Performing Arts building and fell into step beside her. "Do you remember him?"
"Not a glimmer." Until she saw him. He'd been in a suit, not these raggedy khaki things. She remembered fury, screaming, terrified and sick. The emotions, not the reasons. It was going to be difficult to judge. Emotions were poor things to base a decision on, but apparently that was all she was going to have.
***
After the tiny seaside fishing village of Kuwait, New Bombay was astonishing. White marble buildings, broad paved streets. Landscaping. Dramatic shadows and highlights in the early morning sunshine.
No wonder Karachi and all those smaller villages shut up shop and moved here.
Everyone walking, not a car or horse in sight.
Harry lowered his gaze to the harbor as he approached. The Viking wasn’t the largest vessel there, but the largest looked more like a barge than anything he’d want to take on the ocean, himself. Pax glowed like the sun, hair and clothes golden. Harry kept his mental shields down, in case the man had anything else to say. He could feel speculation from the brown haired man to Pax’s left. The woman on the other side bubbled with chaotic emotions, her poorly organized thoughts underlain with self interest. With a start, he realized there was a second woman. No emotions at all. Faint intellectual curiosity.
At a gesture from Pax, a pair of boys scampered to catch his lines and snug him up to the marble pier. Wish I had more bolsters. This could be tough on the wood.
He stepped ashore. “Paxal, nice to see you again. Marty, Mercy and err…” He recognized the woman now, but in his memory she was screaming at him. Spat on him.
“Abrams.” She frowned. “Yes. I remember that emotional encounter as well. Odd that I can’t remember what triggered such an emotional outburst.” She stared at him.
Thoughtful? Watchful? Utterly indifferent? He couldn’t tell.
Mercy gasped faintly, a hand going to her abdomen. Harry blinked. He’d been concentrating so hard on the mental impressions her shape hadn’t registered. Now it did, with faint alarms. Marty and Pax drew back from her a bit. Abrams was as indifferent to her as to Harry.
Harry stepped forward. “Are you all right Mercy? I hadn’t realized, well, that any of the Goddesses could have babies.”
“I agreed to an experiment. I was inseminated before the exile.” She gasped and leaned on his proffered arm.
Over twelve months ago? Harry tromped hard on his cynicism. “I think it’s time to get to the hospital. Are there any cars still running? Wagons?”
“Bah. We don’t allow things of that sort into town, dirty the air or poop in the streets. Walking is the healthiest exercise. And labor, especially first labor, takes hours. I will walk to the hospital.” She steered Harry around and started walking.
Behind them, he could hear Pax asking Marty something about a rural police station. Abrams, when he glanced back, was pacing along the Viking, studying it.
The route to the hospital took them past a high school. The University of New Bombay. Across the street, City Hall. All done in white marble, Grecian style, whatever that meant. The term had drifted up out of his battered mind, unaccompanied. Mercy was silent, concentrating inwardly, or perhaps frightened. He couldn’t read her at all, now. They turned. The hospital was a block beyond City Hall, perhaps part of the University. He supported her through the front doors.
The girl manning the reception desk gawped, eyes going wide. Then she bolted through a door behind her. She was right back, and orderlies with a stretcher right behind her. Mercy was whisked away with a c
onstantly increasing flood of personnel.
“Impressive reception.” Harry glanced over at the girl, once again the sole occupant of the reception area.
“The Goddess of Mercy owns the hospital, and takes a personal interest in every aspect of it.”
“Really. Well, where can I wait, and stay out from underfoot?”
She eyed him dubiously.
Not fair! I swam and changed into clean clothes before I entered the harbor! Clean or not, he was pretty ragged. He straightened. “I am Harry, the God of Travelers. I will wait for my friend.”
She gulped. “Of course.” She ducked back through the doors, and again returned quickly. A teenaged boy followed her, this time.
“Take him to the father’s waiting area.”
The lad led him up three flights of stairs. They carry pregnant women up three flights? A corridor opened out on the right. Lots of seating, facing out, into rooms where women paced or lay. Or screamed, in one case. The Goddess of Mercy takes no pity on fathers. They get an overdose of women in labor.
He spotted Mercy being carried into a separate room and looked around. The lad had already left. The three men chewing their fingernails looked like they had problems enough of their own. Harry walked further down the hallway. He caught Mercy’s voice, sharp and commanding from one room. On the other side, a windowed room with cradles. Two occupants, at the moment. More rooms further down. An open door and sobbing.
“Just let me go home. Bad enough my baby wasn’t perfect. Too much work for little or no return, indeed! That hag. How dare she decide my baby’s fate.”
“She was merciful, she doesn’t believe in prolonging pain and suffering.”
“Bethany wasn’t hurting, just . . . Oh, go away. Or let me leave.”
