Wine of the Gods 1: Exiles and Gods (12 page)

"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 thous
and 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?”

Richie 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 i
diots. 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 w
ant 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.

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.

"No. A government that paid you to make the coins, and your word to make only as many as they ordered." Chris grinned. "I wonder if the money could be marked, magically, so it couldn't be counterfeited?"

Lillian and Ariel slipped out of the crowd.

Lilian raised an eyebrow at Milly consorting with a man.

Ariel grinned. "What's up? You two look like your plotting something."

Milly nodded.
"Yep. A bank, money. Come along, witches, we need to talk about this. Do any of us do any artwork? And we need to write up a petition about it, too."

Chris fell back. Metal, he regretted to say, was still women's work.

Old Wolf had figured it out, and could do it fairly well. Even the other gods were clumsy at it. The rest of the men were just pathetic. The women acted like it was child's play.

Infuriating.

Of course the women couldn't do weather work. Or wood.

So it all averaged out, in the end.

Lance and Matt started studying the older men's wood working skills. Then Vince and Tyrone suggested they build a boat and start trading up and down the coast. Hugh, Dane and Javier pitched in, and Chris made it a full "compass" and what the eight of them working together could do to wood was nothing short of awesome.
They made small fishing boats for practice while Chris dug into computer files for boat designs, and they settled on a fifty foot single-masted cutter for their first trading ship. About the only thing they argued about was whose girlfriend their ship would be named after.

***

One of the petitions was to build a jail, driven by a spate of thefts. Some of valuable items, some of increasingly rare luxury items. Jokes about the women who stole each other's pretty undies made the rounds.

Until Cassie was attacked. Hit over the head, raped and left unconscious behind the public barn.

Then petitions for a justice system, courts, judges, and as a starting point, a sheriff.

Both sheriff and judge were
added to the slate of offices they wanted to fill. No one registered for the judicial race. Two men vied for the Sheriff's post. Ira Penner was elected.

***

The late crops could use the water, so no one formed up to chase the clouds away. Huge, billowing high thunderheads. Brilliant white, darkening as they built, spreading, thickening, moving in from the lake. A gust of cool air stirred the trees, thunder grumbled in the distance, and the day grew dark and gloomy. Chris hurried to finish all his barn chores. Easy enough, with almost all the animals out to pasture. Today he helped extend the fencing outside the barn, so they could split up the cattle for more efficient feeding, according to the experts. They hung the last gate as the first big fat drops hit the ground. He was soaked before he made it through the doors of the Inn, and headed straight to his room to change. Back in the dining room, the kids on serving duty had already lit candles.

"Good thing we're cooking on a wood stove." Neil plunked macaroni and cheese down in front of him. "I'll bet the electricity would be off, if we had any. Milly wants opinion
s about the cheese, it's local, not fabbed. It think it's pretty good."

Another crash of thunder rattled the windows.

Chris nibbled. "Good, nice and sharp." He took a forkful and eyed the steamed broccoli.
Vegetables. I still haven't escaped from having to eat vegetables.
He ignored the green thing and dug into the mac.

Karina and Elnora hustled in, dripping.

"Man, it's wild out there. The cows and horses are running all over the place."

Chris swallowed. "We'll have to go out and check them for barbed wire cuts after this is over. I hope they don't go through the fences." He winced a bit at the thought, but all the cattle ranchers had tall tales about what spooked cattle could do, fences, cliffs, rivers apparently no obstacle once they panicked en mass.
I'd never see those mares again.

Three hours later he'd changed that to
I'll never see those mares again
as he stretched wire to repair the breaks. Rider were out searching for the hopefully tired but not injured or eaten escapees. Roughly half their cattle were gone.

When they finished the fence, Chris started walking south. He stuck to the better drained ridges. He sighted several groups of animals being herded homeward. Spotted a trio of cows huddled in a grove of trees and waved down Romeau to point him at them.

"I suppose Sungold is much too smart to panic over a bit of thunder?"

Romeau grinned. "Of course. The fact that he and Jet took refuge from the storm in my front room had nothing to do with it."

The horse nodded his agreement. Chris grinned and hiked on. Romeau's front room was large and bare, except when they brought out the folding chairs for a wedding
. Wish my horses had that much sense. Or socialization. No telling how far those critters went. In fact, they may still be going.

He camped, damp and uncomfortable despite a fire, and circled around, checking for the hoofprints of cattle and horses. He spotted one of the polled hereford cows with her calf, and two wild heifers with big V brands on their butts, and circled to carefully aim them back toward home. He managed to not spook and stampede them again, and turned them over to Leo around noon.

"We've got most of them back, or accounted for. Lions and injuries . . . lost five for sure. Vito'll be glad to see these two. And Ira might even start talking to you again."

"Maybe." Chris shrugged. He doubted it would make much of a difference.

He made a long sweep around further west, but his wild mares were long gone.

And the first time he saw Iris, she was chatting one of the 'normal' boys.

Just as well I've got the boat, and trading as a backup occupation. I don't seem to be getting anywhere as a rancher.