Galway

by Matthew Thayer

  The Terrarium Towers housed the lion’s share of the city’s population. I often daydreamed about what it would be like to live an entire life locked inside a little, self-sustaining world. What did the farm dwellers think each day when they wiped the fog from their thick windows and saw the flying cars, pretty onion domed churches, drab communist-era apartment buildings and a few hundred thousand people of privilege walking freely on wide, empty streets?

  Our mark was the great-grandson of an oligarch. Well-dressed and rather fastidious in his ways, Petrovich was also greedy enough to believe my friend Marco and I were space junkmen. Decommissioned satellites, wreckage from the UberMind’s moonshuttle fleet, there was a gold mine of materials floating around free for the picking. We attempted to convince him we had developed a gravity beam which could deliver those goods right to his doorstep. All we needed was a partner with access to vast tracts of land and a shallow lake where the materials could be crashed for salvage.

  He treated us to a delightful afternoon sharing simple, authentic Russian fare like cucumber slices on black bread and hard sausages cut thin like poker chips. (And with about the same consistency.) We drank vodka, of course. Served in old glass jelly jars it was neither chilled nor diluted to cut its potency. Marco needed a clear head to perform his part of the operation. I was left to match our Russian host jelly jar for jelly jar in what turned out to be a riotously drunken afternoon.

  As his club tie drifted askew and his comb-over gently flapped in the breeze, Petrovich and I engaged in a friendly singing and drinking contest. We told so many jokes and shouted for more vodka so many times, we were both hoarse when he finally invited us back to his estate for a nightcap. The pills I had taken to neutralize the alcohol could not stop me from falling and bloodying my shins on the marble steps of his grand entryway. We all had a good guffaw over my torn trousers.

  Marco had also matched the Russian glass for glass, but through deft use of clear hose and pumping system in the sleeve of his jacket was able to replace most of his alcohol with water. We had this down to an art, Marco and I. I knew just when to create a diversion to allow his deceptions to go unnoticed by the target, as well as onlookers and serving staff.

  Once inside the Petrovich manor, Marco put additional gizmos in his plaid sports jacket, as well as behind his eyelids, to work. No security drone or camera would have detected anything amiss as he slouched on a garish, red polymer sofa and pretended to nod off while our host and I dabbed medicine on my legs and drank sloppy toasts of port to my clumsiness. Behind his closed eyes, Marco methodically accessed every computing device in the house and stole its access codes and passwords. By the time the oligarch’s progeny said “thanks but no thanks” to our space junk scheme, and helped the staff load us into an air taxi for transport back to the hotel, Marco’s programs had already penetrated Petrovich’s accounts and installed spyderrs that allowed us to siphon enough money to keep us in champagne and women, but not so much as to raise any alarms.

  That was a good, clean con. I liked them like that–little chance of getting hurt or caught, and no significant harm to the mark. I believe that cow was still producing milk when I jumped, which is funny since with Marco dead and me on permanent hiatus, Petrovich’s money is going into a Swiss account without an owner to claim or spend it. I am sure the Swiss will figure something out, most likely pocket the money for themselves.

  Memories of that operation drifted through my throbbing cranium like wispy cirrus clouds as I endured the attempts of Father and Dr. Duarte to drink one another under the table. She asked me to brew the most potent beverage possible, and even stated her intention to test Father’s ability to “hold his liquor.” Why then was I surprised when she hustled him into divulging his secrets in exchange for...for what? For the chance to see her throw up? It takes a con man to spot a con. Duarte pulled off a beauty.

  Father is no fool. His story about Martinelli was most certainly a red herring, an attempt to lure her off on a tangent. Duarte had enough brain cells left firing to sense it. She knew it would require 30 more shots to get to the bottom of the supposed “Martinellism.” And to what end? There will be no bringing that monster back. Let’s hope not! Father tried to entice Duarte into posing questions about herself. Instead, she zeroed in on him.

  “I wanna go dance soon,” Duarte slurred. “Two more questions.”

  “And that would be two more shots.”

  “Fill ‘em up, Buster.”

  Duarte took another long pull from her water skin and used a sharpened stick to skewer a piece of cold goose breast to nibble as Father measured out the next round. Suddenly, the drums stopped and the happy voices wafting up from the valley bottom became shouts and threats. From my seat, it appeared that a trio of Sons had encroached into Green Turtle territory and were attempting to exert their brutish wills upon our women. Jones and Kaikane quickly gathered up their weapons and sprinted off to join the fray. They were about halfway when Father’s amplified voice echoed off the valley walls. “Everyone sit down and touch your toes.” He said it in three different languages–first, in the dialect he shares with his Sons, then Green Turtle, and finally English. The Sons, even the troublemakers, went right to ground. Jones and Kaikane refused to stop until they reached their riled-up comrades and joined a defensive circle around the baby.

  “Sit down now!” Father roared. “We do not need any broken collarbones or dislocated shoulders on the eve of our great journey. Last chance. Sit down or fall down.”

  My toes were in an inconvenient place, so I crossed my arms on the table and leaned my head upon them just in time to feel the life whooshed from my body. Judging by the stiffness in my spine and the way our fires had burned low, we must have been asleep for an hour or more. Father explained that the people in his closest proximity–those of us seated at the table–were subjected to the biggest dose of what he affectionately calls “knockout sauce.”

  It is part of my nature to search for a bright side to circumstances, and the silver lining to this cloud was that the nap had done wonders for my headache. Those of us who were awake to see Duarte flash open her peepers and blurt “Give me another shot!” had a good chuckle. How nice to laugh aloud without ice picks jabbing my skull.

  While we were asleep, Father stripped the warm capes off his three troublemaking rapscallions then trussed them to trees. That was where the louts spent the rest of the party, serving as stark reminders to the next joker contemplating throwing a punch. Bongo and Conga had already resumed pounding their drums in brilliant syncopation and the wingding was in full swing by the time we in the loge section regained our wits.

  Father apologized for the doses we took, explained the knockout function of his belt is an all-or-nothing proposition. To validate his point, he directed our attention to the dozen or so furry bats and two snow owls that were asleep on the ground near us. “They’ll wake soon,” he said. “It takes the wee animals longer to revive. Don’t worry, my knockout sauce won’t hurt them or you, so long as the fall doesn’t kill you.”

  Sure enough, the bats and owls did rally to pick themselves up, shake themselves off and fly away. All except one owl, who somewhat befriended us. Sir Owl ended up hopping about, scavenging scraps of meat from our table and studying our antics with wide gray eyes for the rest of the evening.

  Once Capt. Jones and Spc. Kaikane were assured that Dr. Duarte and I were going to be OK, they drifted back down to the party. Father waited for us to regain our composure before pouring two glasses of wine and one of gin. “Prior to the interruption, Doctor Duarte, you claimed to have two more questions. Do you remember what they were?”

  The break had been beneficial for both combatants, though Duarte looked a bit peaked.

  “Can we continue this another day?” she asked.

  “Is that one of your questions?”

  “If it must be.”

  Father gulped his gin and Duarte wearily matched him by downing her overfilled cup of wine.

  “
Probably, we’ll have to see.”

  Not letting the lame answer faze her, she returned her empty cup with an impish smile on her pretty face. “I let you off easy with that question,” she said. “The next will require a longer answer. I don’t think you’ll mind.”

  She guzzled her wine the instant the shell cup was pressed into her hands. Checkmate.

  “Please detail your breeding program here in 30,000 B.C.. Explain how it has been conducted, outline your long-range plans and tell us how you plan to keep your progeny from changing history.”

  “To me, that sounds like more than one question, but I will try to oblige–as long as both of you promise there will be no interruptions and no requests for follow-ups this evening. Am I the only one looking forward to hearing the Cat Killer sing with his choir? And, kind Doctor, perhaps you and I might share a dance. What say you?”

  “Probably, we’ll have to see. Let’s hear your answer first.”

  “Ha ha, so be it. Salvatore and I were just talking about this. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you.”

  Father circled back to his life extension treatments. To put it bluntly, he claimed nanos make his penis hard, and he never shoots blanks. He did not phrase it in such a crass manner, but said the nanos that repair his body and keep him young also bless him with a state of perpetual horniness. His prototype nanos were tweaked to increase libido, while his sister’s were designed to cycle sexual desires on a bimonthly basis.

  “I arrived to this land a man with sexual needs, and now 60 years later, those needs have not lessened one iota,” he said. “It is a blessing and curse.”

  Nine months and three weeks after he and his crew beached their ship in the midst of the Fish Eater Clan, his first offspring in the Paleolithic was born to the winsome daughter of the clan chief. Though Father refused to settle down with a girl he barely understood, the birth of his boy brought the young lass great honor. She was content to remain with her family and raise the child while Father roamed the land, disappearing for handfuls of years at a time to make forays across the ice and tundra. Traveling to the warm lands of southern Europe, Father was a regular Johnny Appleseed, sowing plenty of seed along the way. He wasn’t planting orchards, however, but wives, sisters and daughters. More than a few of the seeds he deposited took root and grew.

  “We don’t have enough time to cover the many ways the social dynamic of the Fish Eater Clan evolved as the surviving crew integrated into its society. As you can imagine, the changes were many, and quite profound. It wasn’t long before my two companions were running the place. I use the term ‘my crew’ loosely, for I swiftly learned why these particular men had been booted off The Team. It was a sorry lot. Someday Sal will have to distill another bag of turpentine and I’ll tell you about it.

  “My point is this, whether it be the Fish Eaters, the Tattoos or any other Cro-Magnon clan, these early modern humans all eventually try to turn us into gods. Either that, or they grow bored and wander off never to return. They have brilliant imaginations and an uncanny ability to spot patterns in events. Their intense desire to put sense to those patterns, to understand the cause of things, makes them quite susceptible to outlandish theories and beliefs.

  “Cro-Magnon elevate the strongest and smartest to places of leadership and then jabber to other clans how their Big Man is better than everybody else’s. I swear, Early Modern Humans are like little boys arguing over whose daddy can whip the others’. When I was running Cro-Magnon packs, I probably got in three or four fistfights a month with rival chiefs and wanderers who had to test me to see if I was as tough as my clan said I was. Even with my force field to protect me, it was most unpleasant to find myself always looking over my shoulder.

  “Cro-Magnon are generally a very spiritual and superstitious people. You happened to hitch your wagons to Leonglauix, who runs one of the most agnostic clans you’re apt to find. Again, back when I was running Cro-Magnons, every one of them eventually began forming rituals around my actions and words. Understandably, as a man who does not age, one who recovers quickly from injury and does not die when slammed by a mammoth tusk, I must expect a bit of admiration and awe from my natives. Even so, the groveling and desire for constant guidance quickly grows tedious. Under a strong leader, they disengage their brains and expect the boss to do all the thinking. It is no fun being God. Ask Jesus, or Lorenzo Martinelli, they would agree.”

  Reading between the lines, Father must have become disenfranchised from his modern associates rather early on. Something caused him to choose a life of roaming and hunting over staying put on the foggy Irish coast with its majestic, moss-covered trees and constant warmth of the Gulf Stream. Though he has yet to divulge the names of his hijacked crew, I believe I have pieced together enough hints to theorize who some of the characters were. Knowing Stupid Franz and Michael the Mud, I would have grown weary of their company as well.

  “I started by recruiting young men and women of the Fish Eater Clan to accompany me as I made my first crossing of the ice shelf to the east. I desired to see what was on the other side. No big thing. Those that survived never forgave me. We reached the flatlands and swamps of Doggerland on a wet and windy spring afternoon. My people took a long look at the vast wetlands, watched the herds of mammoth and woolly rhino trundle by, then spit on my fur boots and turned back for home. To tell it true, I was angry enough to slay them for their desertion and for forcing me to consider turning back myself. I ended up punishing them with stiff shocks before continuing south alone. Best decision I ever made.”

  Father said the initial betrayal put him off human interaction for a month or more, but he soon found himself gravitating toward campfires and other nomads he crossed paths with in the forests and meadows.

  “What fun is it to hunt alone?” Father asked quite seriously. “With whom do you discuss the finer points of the chase and kill? I recognized early that I needed a clan of my own. Not only for the practical aspects of having ready manpower to gather wood for my fires, procure my food and carry my belongings over long distances, but also because of a very fundamental need to be around other humans. Look at you folks, you new Turtles. How long was it before you lot attached yourselves to natives? I bet it didn’t take more than a week.”

  There were times, he said, when he traveled with Cro-Magnon hunting parties and clans, and other journeys when he made his way alone. Through France, Germany, Italy and the long way down into Africa, he immersed himself in a diversity of primitive languages and culture. Somewhere along the way he began gathering followers. Though the men and women started as friends and equals, they all eventually evolved into disciples.

  Father said he knew he would never find us, or signs of us, without searching. He claims in the first accounting by Duarte, she chronicled events from the Fertile Crescent to Bavaria, Bordeaux and Galway. Father made each place a stop on an 8,000-kilometer, transcontinental circuit. He said the round trip took roughly seven years to complete if he was taking his time, and four if he pushed hard. Through the years and decades circling the continent, he occasionally chanced to reunite with paramours. Some had children they claimed to be his. Father’s policy was to express not one iota interest in his progeny until they were old enough to hunt.

  “I understand your concerns about the future, this worry about creating a master race. You’ve heard of the concept of ‘Nature versus Nurture,’ correct? The deal I have made with myself and my conscience is this: my Cro-Magnon children receive my genetics, but no education or nurturing on my part. When we meet, I may take them on a hunt, or exchange pleasantries to allow me to adequately gauge their mental and physical capabilities, but no more.

  “I must say, my children begat with Early Modern Human women are not much different than other Cro-Magnons. They may be somewhat taller and a bit more intellectual. Some rise to positions of leadership, while others are thieves and lazy fools. Simply put, I think your worries about genetic contamination are overblown.

  “Certainly, you have spo
tted the gaping hole in my claims that I distance myself from my children, this from a man who runs with a pack of his own hybrid sons. The fact is, it is the only way. If Neanderthal are not linked to you by blood, they will never be faithful members of your pack.”

  Father said his first experience living with Neanderthal came while he was exploring a secluded valley deep in the Maritime Alps. He said he happened upon a coven of Neanderthal women who had spent the long winter waiting for their men to return from a hunting trip that had no doubt gone disastrously wrong. He gained their trust the way you do a starving stray cat, with food and patience. The short visit turned into yearlong stay, which gave him ample opportunity to learn their language and customs–and to try his first sampling of Neanderthal sex. The Neanderthals’ oral history described being pushed up into the hills generations earlier by a growing proliferation of Cro-Magnon along the coast.

  “I believe you folks spent some time in the area, did you not? The Mediterranean coastal city of Nice? The camp the natives call Swedsissi? Where Martinelli conducted his momentous Christmas mass? Right?

  “Well never mind, I understand it is a sore subject. It was all the talk when we arrived a week late for church. Maria, did you know he held his mass right on the spot where Salvatore and I used to watch ferries depart the bustling harbor? Son, you must have as many wonderful memories of that city as I do. Your mother loved the view from our red-roofed villa. I remember it as a joyful place. Perhaps that is because we celebrated so many holidays there.”

  “Good food and booze.”

  “Yes, yes, with plenty of food and wine. Leave it to Salvatore to focus on those two things, while I’m speaking of love and family.”

  I nearly swallowed my tongue fighting the urge to fire back. Oh, how I longed to inquire how many lovers he kept in Provence, hell, in Nice’s metropolitan area alone. His words were not false, we did enjoy many fine family moments in the villa in Provence, but I do not remember Father taking part in many of them. He was usually “off to a meeting,” or “dining with clients.” Mother spent a fortune redecorating the villa, and along the way took our French building contractor as her lover. She was discreet, but ferreting out people’s secrets has forever been what makes Salvatore tick. As a boy I was miserable in Nice, but as I grew older I came to accept the games my family played. There was no denying it, Mother was happier when she was ensconced in her villa on the mountain.