Wine of the Gods 1: Exiles and Gods (7 page)

Their
peeling, nasty, skin healed, but their hair didn't grow until Wolf remembered something about making his hair grow faster, and Gisele took his technique and made it into an odd jumble of words and phrases that she said twisted her thoughts the right direction to do what she wanted done.

Romeau heard it and shook his head. "Oh no. That just won't do. Let me see"

"Growing, growing, growing

Keep that hair on going

Sooooo loooong"

The little kids burst into laughter.

"That's silly." Rob looked offended. At fourteen he was apparently of the opinion that he was too old for silliness. "That’s a cowboy song. I heard it on the radio. Did you always have to say silly things to do what you wanted or is this new, since you came here?"

The gods looked around at each other.

Gisele frowned. "It helps shape the telekinesis or telepathy or whatever you want to call what we're doing. We always started with silly rhymes. I suppose that eventually we got so used to it that we could just twist the thoughts that way, without the words." She shook a finger at Romeau. "No. Scratching. I think that silly song will work better than my mishmash. Hmm, even the 'flowing hair' hand movements help. How odd. I suppose when it comes down to it, we're trying to communicate with our subconscious. Whatever works is good. We’ll just have to be silly until we’ve got the feel of it down pat."

Rob rolled his eyes
.

Shortwave radios had been on every list of every
colony company, so they were commonplace. Old Wolf had four. That he'd found so far.

People started music shows, told stories, read books. Told jokes (often dirty).

Harry limped out to the newly planted fields every day, pushing himself.

And every day they felled trees or plowed fields and experimented with the fortunately large selection of seeds a number of people had brought with them. In the evenings they listened in on the shortwave radios to the other groups. Din
ner tended to be communal, as they frequently killed multiple critters that came to eat their crops. Wolf kept the kids out from underfoot in the evenings with lessons in karate and tai chi. Gisele tried various herbal mixtures for mosquito repellant and salve for various rashes. And added a few bits of rhyme.

And every night they traded off keeping the watch fires burning, and watching for predators and pests.

Places were starting to have names. A few villages were named after people, or the cities they’d called home. But most of the exiles seemed to have concluded that they were in northern Africa, and the lakes were a much altered Mediterranean. Approximate place names started springing up, all along the south shore. The lakes became Lake Morocco, Lake Tyro, Lake Ionia, Lake Malta, Lake Egypt. In the west, the villages became Gibraltar, Tangier, Oran, Algiers, Tunis and their own town became Tripoli. In between them, and further south, there were dozens of smaller villages, collections of small farms, and people were still moving around. Some moving further away, some joined the dozen larger towns. Tripoli was growing.

To their east, a thousand miles or so of scrub and arid semi-desert was uninhabited.
Michael, Barry and Edmund had named their town Cairo, and claimed the river it was on was the Nile. Then Red River, and another long gap to Kuwait, Karachi and New Bombay. And there the line of the settlers ended, and another accumulation of "gods" had landed.

"There probably weren't more than fifty thousand people in the last
roundup of genetic frankensteins, all of us who came to this world." Leo stared out over the rolling grasslands. "My parents had a genetic propensity to diabetes and high blood pressure fixed in me. When my fiancé found out I was engineered, she dumped me. Hard to believe she'd have preferred me sick. Anyhow, with you four, that makes it one thousand eight hundred and twenty people crammed in here. Hard to believe that makes us one of the big towns. Everyone else is getting together in groups of one or two hundred; there must be over a hundred villages strung out along the path of the gate."

"We'll probably consolidate further, as we get a grip on survival, and start having time for things like school." Wolf nodded back at the village. "The kids are having a wonderful vacation, but we don't want to forget everything.
They may talk about going medieval, but I'd rather stay in at least the middle industrial age. Some of the teenagers are old enough to be getting college level classes."

Romeau nodded. "But first we work on that survival thing. Now that the palisade is up, I'm going to start hunting. Food, but also I think we should aggressively trim back the predators."

Harry nodded. "Bring me some hides, I've read up on tanning. Now to see if it actually works."

"At a distance, unless you're planning on something magic to deal with the smell." Wolf was sharpening a wooden point on a very primitive spear. "Do you think we could magically get iron ore hot enough to refine it? I've seen a lot of red rocks, but I haven't a clue what iron ore actually looks like."

Leo snorted. "We've got a couple of geologists. They're carrying on about not being able to find any coal, and they keep driving off, wanting to find tar sands or seeps so they have some indication of where to drill for oil. We're running short of fuel, fast."

"We'd better save it for the tractors. Now that the grain has sprouted we'd better figure out how to keep the deer and antelope and rabbits and everything else out of it." Harry narrowed his eyes. "What about compulsions? Can we give the local wildlife a compulsive fear of our fields?"

Leo grinned. "Can you scare the bugs off it? I like the idea, but can you really do it?"

"Interesting thought. And charms to keep our livestock close?" Wolf started doodling on the ground with his spear. "How about weather? We should really work on that."

Harry nodded. "Any time you spot something different or interesting, especially rocks, bring some back, and I'll work on it. Everyone will work on it." He scowled at his leg, where the lion slashes were slowly healing. "I'll be able to get out and hunt in another week as well."

Gisele made a rude noise behind him. "
You behave, or it'll take even longer to heal. I've found some nice sand for making glass, and I'm working with the women of power on levitating it as soon as we melt it. So we'll have window glass for the winter, assuming we need it. Peter and Harriet McCullough have a pottery wheel, and they dug a pit for firing, so we're good on housewares, so to speak. We need to work on fabrics and paper. If we don't find oil, then we'll need beeswax or tallow for candles. I'm running a list, tell me anytime you think of something we need."

Leo shook his head. "The kids are bringing in all the branches of the trees we cut for the wall, we'll have plenty of firewood, even though we weren't actually planning on doing so much of the cooking that way. We need to figure out how to make charcoal. With that and limestone we should be able to make iron. With a bit of experimentation."

"Good. In the mean time, we're finally running low on meat, so if some of you gentlemen enjoy hunting, please do. Now."

"Yes ma'am!" Romeau paused to kiss her, then followed Old Wolf  across the pasture, angling southeast. Their young horses galloped up to them, and followed.

Leo shook his head. "Whoever gelded that chestnut ought to treated similarly. But we'll be glad of the draft stallion, if we don't find oil."

"Can we run the tractors on vegetable oil? Or alcohol?" Gisele pointed to a log cabin being built outside the walls. "I told Marshal his still was going to be outside the village, so he didn't burn everything down. And we should have corn oil in, what? Three months?"

Leo nodded. "If you lot can keep the pests out of it. And a bit of rain twice a week or so would be nice as well."

"Pioneering is a bit of a challenge." Gisele looked around at what was fast looking like a secure little frontier town. "And we gods weren't well prepared."

"Well enough. We're glad to have you, and your magical abilities and training. Don't glare. Magic is close enough. And I think you're underestimating Old Wolf, he keeps pulling the damnedest things out of his attic."

"Very well, one of us seems to be fairly well prepared, and so long as we can keep hunting, we won't starve." Harry flexed his leg and grabbed his walking stick. "I think I'll go think about how to scare off bugs."

"I'll help. Those bug repellants . . . " Gisele followed him out to look at the fields of young wheat.

By the end of the day they'd come up with a simple vocal to stimulate the mental manipulation for repelling all animals, as well as one that seemed to be able to break up nitrogen and water for a scant bit of ammonia to fertilize the crops. The power requirements were so low Gisele persuaded a couple of the unpowered young women to try them. They promptly made songs out of the
rhymes and went dancing and laughing through the fields, fortunately watching where they put their feet. The young men were drawn to them like flies. Harry made sure they were armed, and spent some of their time looking for predators.

"We're going to grow into a very strange society." He watched Gisele carefully soaking the bandages off his leg.

"Yes. I need to figure out how to boost people's immune systems, and repair systems. I don't like the looks of this. It's taking too long to heal."

"Think about what you'd like to see. What should the cells be doing? How could you twist them to do it?"

"Humph. More T cells, to the injury site, for starters, and the repair . . . the cells at the edges ought to be becoming less specifically a specific tissue and edge back toward a stem cell. Then they should multiply enormously, then get all specific again."

"Think about how it would feel, how a cell would feel, fading back into the past."

"Feel? I know how it's done, chemically. It's just a little twitch, to restart the body stem cell process, that's fairly well understood." Gisele sat down, looking dreamy eyed and absent for a long moment. "And triggering cell reproduction. Humph. Yes." She waved a hand at his leg. "That should help, unless you dissolve into a gooey grey mass of stem cells."

Harry chuckled a bit nervously. "We aren't exactly following proper test protocols for any of the things we do. Perhaps we should think carefully and proceed slowly."

Gisele looked down at his leg. "What the hell am I doing? Telekinesis on a microscopic scale? Assembling the enzymes or ribosomes that are needed? That's what I was
picturing
. Was I forcing a pattern on the cells' internal mechanisms to make them manufacture what I think you need?"

Harry shrugged. "I'm not sure that rationalizing it will make a bit of difference. Although I suppose if you believe it could put a bit more oomph into it."

"I should work out a verbal trigger, so any one with . . . Harry, are we making
magic spells
? Have we always done things by magic? I swear sometimes if I stop paying attention, the past just slips away. The other women don't have this problem. And they're magic too. Muriel and Phaedra and I can get together like some story book coven and do things well beyond our individual abilities."

"That's right. Trios,
no, Triads, wasn't it? For women, and three Triads is a pyramid. Men work best in fours and eights."

"A compass rose of magicians. I remember someone saying that." Gisele frowned. "A very logical young woman. She analyzed what was going on, and made the fellows line up according to the compass points.
And sometimes she'd shift them around, and it always made the magic stronger. I wonder who that was?"

"Mark and Derry have power genes. Maybe, with Wolf, Romeau and me we can try a few major tasks."

"Eight, Harry. Add in a few of those older boys as well."

“Ye
s. I was thinking about what to teach the kids, setting them up for independence. I shall have to add group magic drills to the plan.”

"We already know how to do a great many things. It may be that we already know all of this. The bug repellant, the medical usage. Maybe we just don't consciously remember." Gisele's brows drew together as she hunched her shoulders. "I don't like this not-remembering. What did they do to us, that we can't remember?"

"And who are
they?
"

***

Harry found himself hovering over the shortwave. The village of Gibraltar kept the beacon turned on. The one month anniversary of their exile came and went. Another week passed, and the gate did not open.

And some internal tension Harry hadn't noticed eased inside his chest. Perhaps in two years they'd be hunted down like animals, but for now they could concentrate on . . . now.

Old Wolf's boat was a totally impractical huge speed boat with a huge fuel-guzzling engine. It was longer than the Owens they'd sold when they'd moved from California to Connecticut. Chris remembered days and weekends out on the bay, up the river, trips up the coast when the sea was calm. His Dad teaching him navigation . . . He blinked back tears, and concentrated on the boat and trailer. Fortunately, Old Wolf has thought to take this bubble outside before he popped it. Chris suppressed a smile, thinking about it in the attic.

They borrowed Leo's truck and backed it
s trailer into the stream where the bank sloped into deep water. It bobbed in the current, fairly begging to be taken for a spin.

Chris swung aboard and checked it out. "Fuel tank is full, wow, an auxiliary tank. Should have a cruising radius of several thousand miles, if we don't blow it all trying to see how fast it can go. How about it, Harry? Want to visit your fellow gods to the east?"

Harry limped up and shook his head at it. "What an insane thing to bring here!"

"You could check out what they're doing, with spells and so forth, without straining your leg." Chris pointed out. "By the time we get back, you'll be even further along
magically, and practically all healed."
It's as healed as it will ever be; Harry needs to learn about boats.
"And as it happens, I know about boats, and will be pleased to take you anywhere you want to go."
And hope I remember the navigating by the stars stuff.

Wolf chuckled. "Go, Harry. I'm tired of watching you constantly trying to do too much. Keep the speed down and you'll have plenty of fuel to get
to Cairo and back."

The corners of the older god's mouth twitched up. "All right. But when I get back, I'm damn well building a sail boat."

They packed, loaded a minimum of food and fishing gear into the tiny cabin, and left at dawn. They dawdled down the lakeside, then, more confident of the boat, turned north to find the other shore. The wind got chilly, and they started seeing floating icebergs. Small, but Harry stayed well away from them. Near sunset they found the glacier, filling a valley and running back into the tall peaks. A few hardy pines found root space in the rocky coast , but there was nothing else to be seen. They turned southeast and motored until full dark, then drifted. In theory, at about the same pace as any icebergs, so any encounters would be slow, and probably do no damage. Chris tossed a line over and pulled in a huge bass. He filleted it, while Harry looked for a way to cook it.

"Nothing. Big fancy boat without even a hot plate." Harry eyed the fish, then held out his left hand. Hesitated. "Wait. Put the fillets on this o
ar, and hold it out over the water."

"Fireball?" Chris tried to not twist the oar and dump the fish. "Is this a good idea, Harry?"

"I'm hungry." Harry grinned and tossed a modest sized fireball. There was no pressure when the fireball hit the oar, but the fish sizzled and the oar darkened and charred around the edges. Chris brought it all back, and Harry scooted the fish onto plates. Steam hissed, as Chris plunged the oar into the lake.

"Perhaps we ought to go ashore to cook." He sniffed the fish, hot and flaky. perfect.

Harry nodded. "If you insist."

"Yes. Then you can teach me how to do that without me accidentally blowing up the boat."

"Good point."

They traded off the watch, flash
ed the big battery powered spotlight around occasionally. No icebergs. The next night they slept on the south shore and dined on some sort of lake salmon. The third day they anchored offshore. Harry wasn't very agile, with his wounded leg, but Chris decided to swim. He climbed back aboard in haste at a large shadow moved purposefully toward him.

"Crocodile." Harry watched it carefully as it surfaced. "The snow and glacier melt from the north keeps the deep lake cold, but the shallow southern shore . . . It looks a bit sluggish, must be why we haven't had any up our creek."

Chris gulped. "I'm surprised there aren't crocs up every creek, they're pretty warm. A lot warmer than here."

"I'll bet this is just a straggler from the Nile.
I wonder if the smaller streams freeze in the winter?"

"
Suddenly, I hope so. However, if the Nile is in the same place as on Earth, we ought to be there tomorrow. Of course, with the days slightly longer, I may not be calculating the distances right." Chris glanced glumly at his instruments and charts.

By noon the next day they were trying to follow the largest streams through a delta
covered with head high grasses and reeds.

The streams merged gradually into a broad powerful river, and just upstream they found Cairo.

In Cairo they found religion.

Chris eyed the twin ziggurats askance. They weren't huge, but they towered over everything else. Looking out across the broad river, the delta, the cliffs that ended the greenery so abruptly, he rather thought that this town was well named. It was the largest town yet, easily
double the size of Tripoli. They were farming the east side of the river, and the town was on the east bank, up on a rocky hill. The ziggurats were at the top, with a plaza in between, centering a regular grid of roads. There were no walls around the town. They had sailed pasts hundreds of miles of desert before reaching the delta.
The desert must be enough of a barrier to allow control of predators in the valley.

By the time they’d cruised up river to the docks, two men were waiting for them, with a crowd of onlookers staying well back.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Massa Harry.”

Harry blinked.
"Drat. One of them had red hair, the other one was blonde. They'll be nearly impossible to tell apart, bald." He raised his voice to carry across the narrowing strip of water. “Barry and Edmond. Figures you two would stick together.”

“The Sigma brothers, forever together, forever at war. Welcome to Cairo, fellow God.”

Chris tossed bumpers over board, and leaped out to tie off the boat without any attempt on the part of either brother to help. Harry stepped onto the wharf and looked the brothers over. Chris thought they both looked like they’d been lifting weights, and as if they ought to have gone easier on the food as well.

“I hope you remember that it was meant sarcastically, when they called us that.”
Harry sounded a bit disturbed.

“Oh, we remember. But it’s such a lovely idea, we’ve de
cided to keep it.” The one on the left spoke.

The other one
grinned. “Isn’t that what every country needs? A benevolent God and an Evil God? I’m Barry, the God of Virtue.”

The first one
snickered. “And I’m Edmund, the God of Vice. Very fitting, don’t you think? Come on up, we’ll treat you to a welcoming feast suitable to the God of . . . Travel, I think would fit.”

"Absolutely not!"

“Oh yes, very nice.” Barry turned and faced the crowd. His voice rolled over them as if amplified. “Our brother God, Harry, the God of Travelers honors our City with his presence. Prepare a feast!”

The crowd cheered and started breaking up.

Chris grabbed luggage and followed Harry, hanging well back. The brother gods were getting his hackles up, and he'd just as soon not draw their attention. He’d felt a lot of spells flowing out with the speech.
Are these self-appointed Gods controlling their subjects with magic?
The thought sent a chill down his spine.
They're not really gods, but they could be damn realistic tyrants.

***

The party started quickly, with tables being carried out into the plaza with practiced ease.

A horseshoe of large ones, with covers and flowers and big chairs went up on a raised platform in the middle of the plaza.

“How often do you have feasts?” Harry watched the people, scampering to obey and felt sick.

“Once a month, minimum.” Barry grinned. “Everyone has a great time. See? Everyone brings food, the store keepers set up booths. Musicians. We’ve figured out how to brew beer – or something close enough. And wine. We’re using magic to control the process, and did you know you could change the time ratio on bubbles? We can get it from ten thousand to one all the way to one to twenty, the other direction.”

“Speed aged our first wine.” Edmund looked smug. “Damned good stuff.”

“You have grapes?” Wolf’s first small harvest
had been just a couple of weeks ago, his first wine still in big glass jars, fermenting away.

“We used every fruit we could get our hands on. Peaches and cherries, wild stuff growing on the delta and up the valley. Everyone just loves it.”

Harry eyed the two ziggurats. “I thought Michael was here, too.”

Edmund waved the thought away. “The God of Just Deserts was not simpatico. We made him go away.”

“Damned dogs. I don’t like dogs that smart. I think he stole them. ” Barry scowled and Edmund laughed.

Barry gestured at the northern ziggeraut. “Come and see the Temple of Virtue. Most of our fun is out of doors, so it’s actually quite basic. Throne room, spa, bedroom, servants quarters.”

Harry climbed the steps and wrinkled his nose at the throne, set up on a raised dais. “Servants? Look, it’s all well and good to show off a bit with your skills, but surely you aren’t really setting yourselves up as gods?”

“Why ever not?

Harry eyed the walls. "How did you build this, anyway? I don't see any seams."

"Magic." Barry grinned. And squeezed the arm of the stone throne, molded it like putty.

Harry felt what he did, pure applied power, no silly rhymes here.

"Ah, Sylvia, our guest needs a bath before the feast, and, I think, a touch of your healing magic.”

“Healing? Are you a doctor?” Harry eyed the young woman. Mid twenties, perhaps, slender apart from the obvious pregnancy. Green eyes, blonde hair.

“Massage therapist. Now that I’ve learned how to call up the magic to help, I can fix all sorts of things. Your shoulders look tense, and you’re limping. How about a quick shower, then I’ll work on all that, then a nice long soak.”

All the tightness and pull in the deeply scared leg relaxed under her kneading fingers, and the itchiness in the chest scar faded away. He nearly fell asleep, until her touch became seriously intimate.

“You have scars here, as well. An old surgery, like the other gods had. All fixed now. Why don't you take a long soak until the feast is ready.” She moved away before he embarrassed himself by finding out if she was being professional or seductive.

He tried to relax in a tub sized for company, but his brain kept conjuring up thoughts of magic as a force of coercion. He gave up, and climbed out of the steaming water.

Clean clothes turned out to be tunic and toga.
Mixing their Mythos a bit, aren’t they? I do hope there aren’t any gladiatorial contests planned.

No, just acrobatics, music, food, way too much wine that went straight to his head and then parts south and Harry found himself deep into what looked like a city-wide orgy as a pretty young woman refilled his cup then climbed all over him. It was dark, torches were guttering, the woman was eager . . .

***

They all ignored Chris. He carried the bags silently. And gazed wistfully at the beauty who was rubbing Harry down with scented oils. And spells. He saw Harry's eyes narrow, as he analyzed what the woman was doing. Chris listened in, mentally, but it just didn't make any sense at all. Harry was nodding like he understood. Chris sighed, and decided this was when he ought to duck out and leave Harry alone with the babe.

There'd been quite a few teenagers out there, helping set up for the party. He ought to clean up himself, and track them down. See if they were learning magic, too. When the woman led Harry off to another room with a steaming hot pool about the size of a Jacuzzi, Chris nipped back into the first room and took a shower. Washed clothes with the scented soap and dressed in his last clean outfit. His 'good clothes' in fact. He shook his head over the state of Harry's clothes and washed them too. Then he laughed at the heap of wet stuff. He rolled it up awkwardly, threw it over his shoulder and humped it back down to the boat.

A dozen teenagers were drooling over it. He gave them a tour, such as it was, and hung clothing everywhere to dry. ". . . so I suppose we'll have to mothball it for lack of gasoline when we get back."

Two boys and a girl had their heads down under the raised decking that formed the top of the engine compartment. Others were looking over the instruments, and a gaggle of girls were in the tiny cabin, admiring the woodwork and cabinetry. The sun was just hitting the horizon, but the breeze was so hot and dry Christ flipped all his draped wash over and let the other side dry a bit.

"How do you get along with your God? Are you his personal servant, or do you just keep the boat for him?" The girl had the tell-tale deep tan and red hair of the genetically engineered.

"Umm, Harry isn't like your gods. Our gods help us, and teach us."