Wine of the Gods 4: Explorers (13 page)

Never tapped symbols in the corner of the rectangle. "Page numbers." The page of this very odd book flickered and changed. Never touched the other corner and it flickered back to the first page. They busied themselves tapping various parts of the pages to see what happened. Never found the front of the book and started through it. "Only some of the numbers have changed." She pulled her pad of paper out of her pocket, and listed the numerals. "Just remember that the upright infinity is an eight, and the five looks a bit like an upside down two." She started suddenly as she noticed the instructor standing at her side.

"Ladies? We are on page forty-two. Please turn to it." He waited until they both found it. "Now you," he reached out and t
urned Question's Eye Dee around. "Christian, read this sentence."

"Do nit criss t'road in the red light."

"And can you tell me why?"

"Gyps go
very fast." Question guessed.

"Yes. A gyp or some other vehicle could hit you." He checked Never's Eye Dee. "Neva, read
this
line."

"Workas must do what t'suppavisa urdas for safty."

"And what does that mean?"

"That t'suppavisa knows what is dungerous."

The instructor nodded. "Excellent. Horrible accents, but you do understand."

He strolled up to the front of the classroom and led the entire class in reading.

Question listened carefully, envying Never her easy pronunciation.

The history class was fascinating.

They were in a class of all new people, mostly wearing orange, and the teacher started with archeological findings, some that were ten thousand years old. Much older than the old gods.
Is this where they came from? In that exile they barely remember?
They got what the instructor said was an introductory vid. A colored, moving, picture that shone on the wall, like looking through a window. And what it showed!

The big four sided pyramids in the pictures didn't look like anything she'd ever seen, even the ruins in the New Lands. But from other buildings these people had actual surviving writings. Then there were badly corroded limestone and marble columns and buildings and statues. With even more writing preserved. Actual excavations of early primitive houses and mills.

Then something called an industrial age, an atomic age, a bio age. All interspersed with wars, of course.

And finally, the Dimensional Age. The discovery of entire
worlds, lying nearly parallel to their own, where history or nature took a different course. That they could cross and colonize. Or if there were people there, take over and use the 'natives' for labor.

Which was why all the students were there. To be trained to be useful.

They were released for lunch, their heads full of pictures and new ideas.

"Never, we have to stop them. They can't do that to our
world."

"Yes, but I want to take some ideas back. I'd like to take a compooter back, actually, but, some of these machines, for sure."

"Thirteen days," Question warned. "We can't stay any longer."

"Rig
ht." Never looked around as their unofficial guide from the day before joined them. "Mani, can we buy and sell things? Where?"

"Uh Huu! Brit some trade
goods, eh? Yu lemme show yu where de traders be. Tonight, avta dinner."

Before dinner there were classes in math and 'living' which was mostly instructions on how the locals lived, and their machinery. It started with an overview of the jobs available to
natives.

Hard hand labor and servant type jobs. They weren't training '
natives' for the upper positions. One could be an assistant to a doctor, or lawyer, or cook. But they weren't training even cooks. It seemed quite odd—people always had to treat wounds and illnesses and grow, catch or find food and then cook it. She supposed the laws were different for each world, so not training lawyers made a bit of sense.

Question flagged down the instructor. "What is yur medicine like? What
do you do fer women's priblims?"

"If you are interested in medicine, we can get you some specific classes that will answer those questions for you."

Never concealed a smirk.
In other words, you don't know anything about medicine.

He made a few notes on a thing in his hand, aimed it at Question's eye dee. One of their electronic things, that they used instead of paper notes. "And you, Miss, do you have a preference?"

"Hiztory and law are very interesting, but cooking I can do already."

He aimed his thing at her eye dee and tapped more as he walked on to other students.

Finally he circulated back with new assignments for everyone. She and Question were in advanced language, history and advanced math every morning, and in the afternoon Question would have medical aid training while Never had kitchen assistant training.

Question giggled. "Kitchen assistant? You get to peel potatoes and chop carrots."

"That part will be all right. It's the lessons in how to wash a pan that will be . . . tedious. Unless they do it with some electronic thing."

The t
raders were a line of irregular buildings just inside the back entrance of the village. The man in the wooden shack Mani took them to eyed their orange one-pieces and looked unenthusiastic. Question produced a single gold wafer, and he perked right up. He assayed it right on the spot, and bought it, paying by doing something to her Eye Dee. "Wid dat you can buy durn neer anyding here," he waved around the store. "If it ain't here. Benny Altman can find it and get it for you."

Never found a small stack of normal paper books and looked through them.

"You like books? Fun stories, eh?"

"History?" she asked. "Math? Gates?"

"Hu, you gotta regular smart one here." He looked calculating. "I can get some, but they're expensive. You got any more gold?"

"Yes. When can you get more books?" Never pulled out a wafer, then tucked it away. The man was practically drooling.

"I'll be going into town tomorrow, come by tomorrow night." His eyes followed the gold, hungrily, rose and stopped about Never's breast level. "I'll bring by any I can find."

One of the books, Mysteries of the Past, might have some history in it. She handed it to Question and kept looking. She wondered if a book that called itself a historical romance might be useful. Question took it from her.

"They're cheap."

That was all they bought from Benny Altman. The other traders had clothing, fancy belts, a few machines. Question bought a game machine to practice on. No books. There were guards at the end of the row.
Never eyed them. There had been guards on the front gate, too. Who attacked these people with all of their powerful machines?
Or are they there to keep us in?

They walked back into the compound proper.

"Dey don let you go any vurther." Mani said. "Til you got a job." He fingered his Eye Dee. "I been here a month, gon to m'vurst job vair tomorrow. Never gon gho home and starve again."

Question rubbed the ache in her side, and nodded. "That's good. I guess that's why most people come here."

"Yup," he grinned up at them, an inch shorter than Question, barely reaching Never's shoulder. "Lots uv vood where yu bug straping lasses cum vrom, I bet."

"Yes, but there are other problems," Never said. "How these guys treat you? On your
world? Polite-like?"

Mani wheezed with laughter. "Hill noo. All noses un the air and telling us whut to do. Yu hirt one o dem, yu in bug truble. De kill someone, dey hustles hem away, and say dat de punished him, but we don see it huppen." He spat. "Worse other places, places that ghot stuff worth taking," His eyes slid toward the pocket Never had slipped the gold wafer into. "Dey send the harmy, den. Take ut all."

They wished him a good night and walked across to their barracks.

"Hey, cutie!" a dark masculine shadow reached out and grabbed Never's elbow.

She pulled power from him, until he collapsed. The two that had bracketed Question were down, one yelling. Never tossed a stun spell on him to shut him up. She checked to make sure they were all breathing, and they left them where they were.

Question giggled. "Wonder what they'll think in the morning?"

"Do we care?" Never kicked off a shoe to touch the ground and channel the rest of the energy. Mmmm, that had felt good and made her horny as hell. She really was going to have to do something about Dydit, soon. She toed the shoe back on. "Twelve more days of classes, and then we'd best get back to the gate and wait till it opens up to the right place."

"Good plan," Question rubbed her side. "With books."

The lights were still on in the barracks, and they started reading. Question was snickering within minutes. "Oh, Never, if this is real history, I mean if the background of the story is factual . . . the clothing!"

Never read over her shoulder, then retreated, snickering, to read about famous missing ships, a semi-human creature called a Yeti, strange aliens from outer space and the genocide of millions of genetically engineered people who had psychic powers. On that last, the book went into a fair amount of detail with genetic engineering starting with repairing deadly mutations, then
diverting onto now-forbidden ground, adding animal genes, and artificial genes. Then the deliberate creation of "super soldiers" who escaped control and went on killing sprees. Apparently the many theories for the death of all the "mutants" were enabled by the destruction of their home place by "possibly a nuclear bomb." The range of possible fates included genocide, mass suicide . . . exile through an early dimensional gate.

Never sat up and reread that whole section. All other countries had destroyed their super soldiers and ceased genetic experimentation. The business that made the last of the genetically engineered people was also the company that made the first dimensional gates, although the first commercial gates were
hundreds of years in the future. At the time when the legislation to destroy all the genetically engineered people in the world was passed, the basic theories were known, but power and computational abilities were still too primitive. Tall tales that they'd actually had working gates and colonies was generally dismissed as unfounded. But the theory of an "Early Diaspora" persisted. The place where the genetically engineered test people lived out their lives, to which all the other genetically engineered people were brought was destroyed by a huge explosion.

Well. I know four Gods who are going to hear about this!

She was in the middle of reading about the mysterious fate of the first Martian Colony when the lights dimmed.

The next day in her history class, she skimmed ahead in her history book searching for the time period, for confirmation, and received a reprimand. The math, once she'd gotten over the weird numbers, was Nil and Dydit's Scooner algebra, geometry and calculus. She found herself assigned to help the other students.

The cooking classes, in the afternoon were just pathetic. Because the ingredients were all canned and preserved, or already cooked and just needing to be opened and heated. They were being trained to do the simple part of what went on in a large commercial kitchen. Open the can and heat the vegetables.

"They hardly need to worry about training for this! Do they think other people eat raw meat?" Never wrinkled her nose at the soggy vegetables.

The thin woman beside her giggled. "I tink the problem is that they don eat raw food. Tey get so much of ter food from machines tey tink dealing with plants an meat is hard.

The teacher looked down his nose at them. "And what, pray tell, would you make of, oh, say, these raw ingredients?" He poked at his machine and the wall disgorged a bunch of food, that, if not raw and natural, at least had potential.

Never looked them over. "No eggs? I don't suppose you have pots and pans? Oil for frying?"

He curled a lip and poked his machine. A dozen eggs and a quart of oil. "The pots and pans are down there."

Never mixed up the pasta dough and rolled it out and let it dry for a bit. She breaded and fried thin strings of the 'spam' meat, stir fried the veggies, sliced the noodles and boiled them, then added them to the frying pan. The overly salty soy sauce was good enough with the garlic and ginger for the sauce and the crispy strings of fried spam went on top.

Her neighbor had made flat bread and chopped the spam with onion and celery for a crunchy filling.

The class sampled everything, and the instructor took notes. "I can have the machines make most of that, soon enough." Never wondered how the machines would get the meat crispy.

And they did have machines to wash the dishes.

The next day the official instruction was brief, then they got to really cook again. The whole class got into it this time, and everyone tried for favorite dishes.

"Haven't you ever turned people loose to cook before?" Never asked the bemused instructor.

"No, I always had trouble getting them to just open the cans and heat according to directions." He poked her veggies uncertainly. "Bacon and onion and
fry
the canned green beans?"