Wine of the Gods 1: Exiles and Gods

by Pam Uphoff

  “The doctor will be seeing you and your husband this afternoon.”

  "Get out of here. Leave me alone!"

  Harry walked on. Came to a dead end, turned and walked back. A nurse was hustling out of the occupied room, red faced and bustling about to expend emotions.

  “I guess, without modern medicine, infant mortality will be rising.” Harry ventured.

  The nurse hunched a shoulder at him. “We can’t support people who’ll never be productive. Can’t have people like that reproducing.”

  Harry felt ill. “So you kill infants with . . . problems? Or sterilize them? Or is it the mother that you sterilize?”

  “Mother and father both. The baby would have died in a few days anyway. The Goddess just made it painless and quick. Merciful.” She hustled off.

  Harry walked back to the open room. “Excuse me? Why don’t you get dressed and walk out. Right now. Change your name just a bit.”

  “I, I . . .”

  “Where’s your husband?”

  “He’ll be by after work, and they’ll do him, us, then.” Tears welled.

  “Are you well enough to walk to where he works?

  “Yes. Yes!” Uncertainty changed to determination.

  Harry walked out, stood for a moment listening to the women in labor. I’m surprised there are so many babies, they must have been conceived within a few months of the Exile. People running out of contraceptives, or the Gods wanting a growing population? He thought about Gisele and the spells she was devising. Energy to support the effort, a web of spells that relaxed some muscles and strengthened others. Took the edge off the pain. He whispered the gentle poems a few times, then walked on. The sounds quieted behind him, and then as he walked back, the squall of a new born baby. He whispered the poems, stopped outside Mercy’s door for a round of them. Paced.

  Another baby, then the last in the large delivery room. He paced for another hour before the cries came from the private room. He waited, chewing fingernails himself, until Mercy waved him in through an open door.

  She had a glow of pride, accomplishment. She waved at the cradle as he peered. “My daughter Grace.”

  “She . . . well, she looks like a new born. I dare say she’ll be a beauty soon enough.”

  Mercy snorted. “Flattery, Harry? I must look a wreck.”

  “You look triumphant.”

  She smiled a bit smugly. “Go away Harry. Find the others and tell them I’m fine, and the baby, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Somewhat at a loss, he wandered back past City Hall and spotted Marty and Abrams walking out. They were indifferent to the news about Mercy and Grace, discussing a proposal to electrify the city as they walked.

  “Perfectly feasible, it just takes a turbine on the outfall of a dam.” Abrams said.

  “But do we want a society that depends on electricity, rather than the power of mind and body?” Marty countered, turning up a walkway.

  And when it comes to the power of the mind, you will always be on top, won’t you Marty? "I see you've gotten away from Classical designs." Harry frowned at the upside down pyramid. The ground floor was a square, about fifty feet on a side. The second floor was cantilevered out over it by ten feet or so. The third floor added another ten feet all around.

  "I've put my living quarters in the basement. Want to come and see my private museum? I’m attempting to recreate high society, but it’s an uphill battle.” Marty fanned himself, a faint sarcastic smile on his face.

  “Museum? I’d love to see what you have. Did you bring it from Earth, or is it all new?” Harry tried to sound neutral. He had no doubt but that Marty’s idea of high society had himself on the top tier. Mercy and Pax as well, no doubt. His eyes strayed toward Abrams. He didn’t like the specific memories he could recall. Would she talk to him? Would she remember the same things from her point of view?

  Marty led the way into the museum. Polished wood floors. Expensive rugs. Subtle lighting that drew the eye to the pictures on the walls, the statuary. The pictures gave Harry a feeling of recognition. And doubt. They can’t be the originals, just excellent copies. His memories of Earth were so shallow, he felt no surprise that copies were available, while having no idea how it was done. The statuary was realistic, natural and breathtakingly detailed. A handsome young man, joy and laughter on a face just breaking into a smile. A horse, magnificent and bold, ears half back in warning. A snake, coiled to strike. All in bronze, no marble. A girl on the cusp of womanhood, balanced between caution and boldness sat on a bench, playing with her hair.

  “Well, Marty, your tastes in art are impeccable. I’m a bit surprised by the lack of modern art, though.”

  Marty shrugged. “This is my personal museum. No doubt public museums will appeal to broader tastes.”

  Harry nodded. Where did he get all these? Did he bring them with him, like Wolf and his winery? He made a face.

  “Problem?”

  “Just remembering Barry and Edmund. They would call you the God of Art.”

  “God of Art? Oh. My.”

  “Oh. Indeed. I’m not at all comfortable with their nonsense. I remember that the term god was sarcastic when applied to us. I remember that we were virtual slaves.”

  Abrams had been following them silently. She spoke now. “I remember you as one of Them. I remember screaming, throwing things at you. But I don’t remember why.”

  Harry frowned. “My memory is bad as well. I think I was older, an adult. Most of you were children, with circumscribed rights. I think I was trying to change things from the inside . . . and I have a nasty feeling it didn’t work.”

  Abrams snorted. “Indeed. I believe it was Wolf who got us all away.”

  “And him the perennial troublemaker.” Harry smiled a bit. “I guess he gets designated the God of War. Will you be the Goddess of Logic?”

  “I will be content to be a Professor of Logic, thank you.” She turned away and frowned at a peaceful arrangement of horses and trees. Willows wept, and mares lounged, half asleep. “How did you get that through your doors, Marty?”

  “In a bubble.”

  “Oh. Of course. I should have realized that. I think it’s my favorite. Drowsy, content, safe.”

  “I shall have to design a fountain around it, perhaps place it outside the Art Department building.” Marty looked thoughtful. “Those one way flow pipes of yours would be useful for fountains, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, they would.”

  Harry frowned. “One way pipes?”

  “Yes, a very useful spell, all water in a pipe is urged in one direction. With a pressure shut off, mind you. My first plumbing exploded impressively.” A faint smile crossed Abram’s face.

  That led to a discussion of spells, and over the next few days, demonstrations of men in fours and eights and women in threes and nines. In a city of twelve thousand, there were almost six thousand people with engineering, close to a thousand with a single power gene. It was rather intimidating to think of over a hundred ‘Compasses’ and ‘Pyramids.’

  Just as well so many of them are kids. there’s time for a smaller number of adults to organize training and usage, before the main swell of children can access that power. Hopefully they won’t have battles over the weather. Harry thought of bar brawls, gang fights, wars, fought with fireballs and slice. It was not a good thought.

  Mercy released herself from the hospital and invited Harry to stay in her home. A mid sized mansion, not over done. Tasteful. With servants who scurried to sew him a new wardrobe, and take over the care of the baby.

  Two weeks into his visit, Richie Xi showed up.

  He eyed Mercy’s daughter with trepidation. Shrugged. “She’ll be a lot more interesting in sixteen years.”

  Mercy’s eyes flashed. “Richie likes to go hunting. Of course it takes weeks, and involves parties nearly every night. It’s a wonder they bring in any meat at all. How many people came along on your hunting trip, this time, Child?”

  Rich
ie grinned, unrepentant. “Couple hundred. Must have friends along, and cooks, and people to set up the tents and take care of the horses. And clothing.”

  Pax snorted. “Oh, I thought they were there to do the hunting.”

  Richie laughed out loud and walked out without answering.

  “No manners at all.” Mercy sniffed. She reached out and snared a bubble, popped the baby into it and attached it to the wall beside her. “So, Harry, where are you going to settle down? Whose side are you on?”

  “Side? What sides are there?” Harry frowned at the bubble. “Is that good for her?”

  Mercy rolled her eyes. “There’s virtually no time in there. If I double layer the bubbles I could leave her in there for centuries and she’d think I’d just closed and immediately opened the bubble. There’s no reason for motherhood to inconvenience a goddess.”

  “Sides, Harry.” Pax shifted forward. “Are you on the side of the gods who rule, or the gods trying to pretend they’re just regular people?”

  “Are you insane? With the number of kids with power genes, we’ll be swimming in gods inside of a couple of generations.” Harry shivered. “I saw what Barry and Edmund are doing. Are you doing the same?”

  Mercy laughed. “Heavens no. We’re much more subtle. We want real power, not an orgy every month. Those two are fools. We have a city council and a Mayor to look good and deal with the paper work. But I run the hospital. Pax the courts. Abrams the education system, and Marty the planning council. The government does what we tell it to do. And we make sure everyone is reasonably content and safe and that’s all anyone really cares about.”

  “What does Richie run?” Harry tried to shake his brain into action.

  “He in charge of idiots. He takes all the restless youngsters and would be youngsters out on hunting trips where they can do their worst and harm no one but themselves.” Pax snickered. “He likes it because it keeps him away from all the middle aged women who climb all over him, here in town. They say he makes them younger, and they are relentless; we're quite short of unattached men. There must be a dozen or so of them who are pregnant now, but he claims they can't possibly be his. Like most of us, he was sterilized. No doubt I’ll be saving his financial ass in court, soon enough.”

  Harry boggled a bit. Richie as the Fountain of Youth? And who cares? His cynical side raised its head. These two may carry on and act like they’re running the show, but are they? Really? Like Barry and Edmund, they may be in for a rude awakening. And Marty, Richie and Abrams aren’t here to support this claim of being the power behind the throne. Apart from this conceit, they’ve got an excellent basic city setup here. I should study it, copy it when I get back home.

  “And in any case, we’re the only gods and goddesses there will ever be. Remember? Witches have only girls, Mage power is inherited father to son, on the Y chromosome. There will never be any more double sourced babies.” Mercy smirked and glanced at the bubble. “Even my own daughter has only the witch X chromosomes.”

  Harry nodded in relief. No matter how obnoxious, tyrannical or kind, we are not immortal. eventually we will die and the rest of the human race will be free of us.

  He sought out the others, to see how they felt.

  Richie laughed. “Me? In charge? Fat chance. Someone else should do the hard work, while I attend the parties and try to get into the pants of something young and interesting. Why is it only the old crones chase me? The young ones ignore me.” Harry thought the women hanging around in Richie's vicinity were quite attractive, even though obviously older than Richie. And he complains!

  Art shrugged. “They’re barely the same species we are. Why should I care how they organize themselves, so long as I can do whatever I wish.” His eyes tracked across the people walking by. “Ugly. Look at them. They’re all so ugly. All I want is to preserve beauty at its peak of perfection.”

  Abrams treated it like a school assignment and dissected the idea. “In theory, light handed, behind the curtain, leadership by the most qualified would be good. Of course we aren’t talking about the most qualified, are we? Mercy, Pax and Marty? Pardon me while I laugh.”

  Harry did laugh, then. "I'm not sure what is most offensive, the highly magical putting on airs and acting like they are above the law, or the least magical accepting their place at the bottom rung of the ladder."

  "The latter, if you've any sense." Abram's abrupt retreats into cold logic was starting to bother him. "Yes. It bothers me as well.”

  Not to mention the mind reading.

  “Some times I feel as if society as a whole is squeezing me into a role, whether I want it or not, whether I even understand what they want. Look at us, all of us. People want mercy, but cynically they think it comes with a price, a catch. And you get Mercy, down at the hospital, relieving parents of the burden of raising children with extreme needs. They want Peace, but they think it will have to be imposed from above. Look at the way Pax is behaving."

  "You're talking about the collective subconscious. A universal belief in Archetypes. In fact, you sound a bit like Barry and Edmund."

  "Yes. Vice and Virtue, but they cynically don't believe in true Virtue, so Barry back slides and then tries again. Apparently Virtue is seen as trying to resist horrible impulses, not in not having them in the first place. Vice, combined with power, is unrestrained. Michael is Vengeance. Karma. Would you like to bet that if we ever have a War, Wolf will somehow wind up in the middle of it?"

  Harry shook himself. "However interesting the theory, I somehow doubt it'll affect our actual actions. But I'll think about it."

  "You do that, Dan'l Boone."

  "I'm not . . . "

  "The ever-traveling, self-sufficient frontiersman?"

  "That how I am by nature, it's not imposed from outside."

  "No? Enhanced, perhaps? Or piggybacked upon a strong characteristic?"

  Harry hunched his shoulders in rejection.

  Abrams was the only one who walked him down to his boat.

  At least they didn’t try to feed me to the sharks.

  Chapter Fifteen

  13 August 2118

  They finished building a town hall. Finally.

  And then they started trying to organize an election.

  "They're too young to be voting." Ira Penner shot a glance across the square toward the Inn.

  "And what about those gods. They're why we all wound up out here. They shouldn't even be here." A big man, red faced with sunburn.

  "Nobody magic ought to hold office. You can't trust them. They're magic. We know all about that sort of creature." This one was skinny and dark. "What they did to our wives and daughters."

  Chris winced. "You're from Cairo? I think we've all heard about how those two so-called gods behave. You're right, that powerful magicians can abuse their authority. But anyone powerful can do that. What we need is to keep would-be tyrants out of power. With or without magic."

  "You're one of them!"

  "I'm engineered. I know about prejudice. And we need to avoid it, for any reason. Race, language, genetics, age, wealth. Origin. You live here, now, so you ought to have the vote."

  "You're just a kid." Ira Penner spat on the ground, and glared. "You and your 'Magic' friends."

  "They've worked their butts off, not that you've ever so much as thanked them. I ain't big on praise, myself, but I can see who's goofing off and who's working." Vito Richardson glanced at Ben Penner. "And who does the least he can get away with when someone is watching, and squat other times."

  Chris gawped. Mr. Nasty Rancher was backing him up?

  "Tell you what. We'll make up a ballot. Everyone who wants one, gets one. In a booth, alone. Then they turn it in. At the end of the day, we tally them up. And if some of them just have flowers and butterflies some kid drew on them, so what?"

  "So, how do we decide what goes on the ballot?"

  Jack Otts fanned a sheaf of papers. "Just like this. We're going to tack these petitions up on the wall. Anyone can write one
up, and post it. Then people can read them, and sign on the bottom, or the next sheet. Keep each one brief, because I think we need at least ten percent of the, well, sorry Chris, adult population to sign 'em before they get on the ballot. I've got a bunch of basic laws. Stealing and killing, and whatever. Yes, Leo, your brand laws are down on paper. I'll start by putting these up. Five hundred signatures and it's on the ballot. Nobody better even think about tearing one down. So? Comments?"

  "What about the Mayor's office?" Some one called.

  "It's up for grabs. I know I got elected by a simple hand vote, but that was when there were maybe a thousand people here, including the kids. We're close to ten times that now, so we need paper ballots."

  "How we going to print ballots?"

  "There's six fabbers in town. We'll get it done."

  "Who does the counting?"

  "Volunteers. Shall I count you in?"

  It went on for hours. The Mayor took some of the suggestions, rejected others. In the end a rough agreement that anyone thirteen or older could vote. Penner looked put out, but he grudgingly gave way.

  The next day, Chris spotted him nailing up papers on the wall. He waited until the man had left, then walked over and joined the people already reading them. Use of magic illegal in town? Use of mind control punishable by ejection from the town? No alcoholic beverages sold on Sunday? Women to dress modestly?

  "Taxes! Is that man insane? How the hell do you tax a barter economy?" Chris threw his hands up and stalked off. Magic illegal. Son of a . . .

  Milly fell in at his side. "Dress modestly? Yeah, right. But you know, we really do need some sort of money. Swapping I.O.U.s isn't working very well, now that we're a lot bigger. Nobody knows who the original person is, whether he's good for it, or a dead beat."

  "And there've been some claims of forgeries, too." Chris scratched his chin. "I can't work metal, like you witches can. Do you think you could make coins?"

  "Oh . . . Now there's a good idea. But we'd have to have some sort of central bank that, umm, bought the coins from us?" Her eyes narrowed in thought.