The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (19 page)

The ad disappeared and Byron’s call list came up, listing available contacts at the moment. But the ad had distracted him. He’d kept an eye on Meyer Kidd until the boy left town a month after Byron talked to him. Byron had checked into the boy’s story and it seemed honest enough. Meyer had registered when he left, putting his destination city as Texas, and he had registered his arrival the next day, having traveled by private aircraft back to his Texas mansion.

Byron looked down the contact list and saw his family listed as “available, home.” Glancing out the window, he saw that the light had only begun to push into the sky. He sighed and changed his screen from contact mode to search mode. Byron punched in
Meyer Kidd
in the information search and waited for the system to find the boy. The same story he’d read months before filled the screen. The boy himself, or his company, had supplied most of the information in his public file. More propaganda than biography.

Byron found the information he needed, switched his screen back to contact mode, and instructed the device to make contact. A few seconds later a yellow message popped onto the screen. “Contact Accepted” flashed, and then Meyer’s face came onto the screen. He had the same slicked-back hair as before, shiny with hardened gel and lined from the stroke of a comb through it. He was as pale and childlike as Byron remembered.

“Hello there, Enforcer. What a pleasure,” the boy said with a smile. He sat back away from the screen a little and waited for Byron to show his respects.

“It certainly is,” Byron said. “How’s your business?”

“Very well, thank you. Especially down in this area. Everyone wants a design-bine in his backyard, and we’re working on the best one yet. When we get it just right, we’ll own the world,” the boy said, sweeping his hand in front of him grandly.

“That’s…good to know.”

“So, Enforcer. To what do I owe the pleasure of this little chat?”

“I just thought I’d check in with you. I have a fondness for children.”

Meyer laughed. “Ah, I see. I can assure you, sir, I am no child.”

“I suppose you’re right. Well then. Can I ask you a few more questions about your sapien, Herman?”

“Of course you may.”

“How old was Herman when you last saw him?”

“Oh, he must have been…around his twenties, I suppose. Late twenties, probably.”

“I see. And how long did you own him?”

“I’m sure you can check in the system, sir. As you know, I am an important man with lots to do.”

“Yes, I know. So. How long?”

“Perhaps ten years.”

“Did you bring him to
Princeton
each of these ten years?”

“Yes,” Meyer answered. “Why?”

Byron smiled. “Just getting the facts. No need to get defensive.”

“I’m not defensive.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about. Unless you’re lying to me. You know it’s a crime to kill a human, and an even greater one to claim they’ve disappeared so you can gather insurance money on one.”

“I didn’t kill him,” the boy said, his voice shrill. “I would never kill Herman. He was my favorite pet.”

“Accidents happen, Meyer.”

“Stop saying that,” the boys said. “I didn’t kill him! I would never kill a human.”

“Yes, you quite like them, don’t you?”

“They are delicious.”

“And why didn’t you have one with you in Princeton this year?”

“I haven’t found a replacement for Herman. It’s expensive to travel with them.”

“Isn’t it?” Byron said, backing off and adopting a more friendly tone. “I brought two here myself. I’m breeding them to sell the babies. I noticed in your file that you have bought some very young sapiens.”

“The saplings taste cleaner,” Meyer said with a shrug, his shoulders moving up and down with the exactness of a robot. “And they are even more resilient. Isn’t it amazing, Byron, how we are just like them, and like animals in this way? All of us will do whatever it takes to survive. We guard our lives so jealously, don’t we, Enforcer?”

“I guess that’s true. But a life that can last as long as ours is worth guarding. A human life, that’s so temporary. They’re gone before you can remember their names on a regular basis. Their lives are meaningless and pitiful.”

“And yet they would guard their lives as fiercely as we would ours. To them, life is as precious as ours is to us. Isn’t it the goal of all life to keep living? Animals and humans, they keep living through their offspring, by producing more of themselves. That way they aren’t living but their blood still is. We’re the only species that never ages and never produces more of ourselves.”

“And this is why we are Superior and they are human. We don’t need to produce offspring, and if we did, the world wouldn’t sustain our number. We live out our own lives instead. What being wouldn’t want to keep living instead of the cheap substitute that animals have? We simply found the answer before any other species.”

“We are also the only species that remembers its own evolution,” the boy said, leaning forward. “Tell me, sir, do you remember what it was like to be human?”

“I don’t think about it too often. That part of my life was petty and meaningless.”

“I remember my own life as human. Now I have so much more. But in some ways, I have never changed.”

“We’ve changed in many ways, but you’re right. Our basic nature, I believe, is always with us. And you will always look like a child.”

Meyer smiled. “I despised that for the first century or so. No one took me seriously. Now I’ve learned it can be quite an advantage.”

“I can see you’re not missing anything in the intelligence department. How old were you when you evolved, Meyer? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Twelve,” said the boy.

Byron thought he stretched the truth a little. He looked more like ten. “Were your parents killed in the War?”

“No. They were killed in the Time of the Takeover.”

“Your parents never evolved?”

“They weren’t given the option.”

“Then how did you end up being changed? The only children I know were evolved by parents who couldn’t bear to be without them.”

“Yes, well, I will tell you my story if you wish to hear it.”

“I’d be very interested.”

“Alright,” Meyer said, leaning forward. “I’ll tell you what happened. I was at a boarding school, and a very good one, too. My father was one of the richest men in England. Do you remember where that was?”

“Yes, off the coast of Belarus. It was destroyed during the War.”

“Right. Well, I was in a boarding school out in the countryside. A school for boys, with a girl’s school opposite. When the Takeover began, there were a few reports on the radios before the stations outside big cities were taken down. It took a few weeks for the Superiors to reach us in the countryside. Though I’m sure it took much longer in this country. There’s much more space here.”

“Yes, as long as a year or more to reach all of them.”

“Out there, we knew they were coming, so the headmaster kept us all and wouldn’t let us go home. He locked everything up and barred the windows. We had everything we needed right there, and it was summer so we didn’t have to worry about the cold. We went on with our lessons as if the world wasn’t ending outside. The only difference was that after a week, the girls’ school transferred into our building because it was more secure. They brought all their food and supplies, too. We had a cafeteria there, and lots of space for food storage. We just holed up and waited for them to come, although of course we didn’t know who they were. There were about two hundred of us counting both schools and the staff.”

“Did anyone else survive?”

“I’ll get to that. So when they came, we stayed inside and locked the doors. We thought they’d go away, but they waited us out. There were perhaps a dozen or more of them, but nothing compared to us. We didn’t know what they wanted except to kill us. We didn’t know what they were, of course, just that they came out at night and seemed to disappear during the day, which we thought was a trick to lure us out. We stayed inside for three months without setting foot outside.” Meyer paused to let Byron appreciate this fact before going on. He looked quite self-satisfied with his story.

“Well then, after two months we had run out of everything edible in the place, and other essentials like our backup electricity supply and toilet paper and the like. Do you know what we ate then?”

“No, what?”

“A human will do anything to survive, Enforcer. They’d even eat their own excrement. But that’s not what we did. You see, we had food right there. But then this stupid girl got too scared one night and ran outside, and then all the Superiors came in, and they killed all the other children. I hid, naturally, bright boy that I was. But they found me, of course, and one of them was about to rip my throat out, and do you know what I said to him?”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘You don’t want to do that. My father is one of the most powerful men in the country, and besides, I can help you. My brain is about twice the size of yours already and you’re a grown man.’ And do you know what he said to me? He said, ‘I don’t give a rat’s ass who your dad is, and the only thing your brain is good for is my breakfast.’ And do you think I was scared, and screamed for mercy?”

“Probably not.”

Meyer smiled, leaning forward, his eyes shining. “You’re right. I didn’t. I said, ‘You know, that’s funny, because that’s exactly what I said to Suzy Shepherd right before I cut off her head and ate her brain fried up with peppercorns and sea salt.’” Meyer laughed and slapped his knee.

“Ah, well,” he said. “Guess you had to be there. But see here, the Superior laughed, and then he looked quite surprised himself, and said he hadn’t known he could laugh anymore. He said I was worth holding onto because I’d made him laugh, and he wasn’t that hungry anymore anyway, having just eaten about ten children. So he took me out and told the others he was taking me back to where they had saved all the very young children. The rest of them went on, and he took me back. Of course he fed on me on the way, but he delivered me up to one of the older ones, a First. They put me in with a bunch of screaming smelly little babies for about a week, and that was torture, let me tell you. Then they figured out how intelligent I was and one of them evolved me. I’d already read books about our kind, of course. I wanted to evolve, and I was pretty convincing, even as a human. I was still a child when I became Superior, but I’ve developed into a man inside.”

“I see. So you were already feeding on humans before you evolved.”

“Out of necessity, you understand. Like I said, animals and people alike will do what it takes to survive. We knew the staff would make us all starve to death, so we did away with them first. Most of us were the sons of aristocrats and the like. But there were a few boys attending on a grant to see if a pig farmer’s or mailman’s son could do as well as a rich man’s son if given equal opportunity. The mailman’s son didn’t do so well, as it turned out, but a pig farmer’s son knew a thing or two about butchering. So did a rich man’s bastard son whose mum worked in a meat packing plant. We had a big cold storage area behind the cafeteria where the school kept all the frozen hamburgers and such. The staff at the school wasn’t very large, especially when packaged individually.”

“Many of us have tales of barbarism. If you meant to shock me, you failed.”

“I don’t mean to shock you, Enforcer. Just to let you know that I am and will always be a survivor. If you’re scared some stupid sap is going to seek revenge on me while I sleep, rest assured I can take care of myself. And certainly if I die, it won’t be at the hand of a sapien, least of all one I treated as kindly as my Herman. I only wish that if he is alive, he’s not being treated badly by a less kind master.”

Byron wasn’t sure what to make of this change in direction. The boy was certainly clever. Byron hadn’t for a moment worried about Meyer’s safety. Meyer surely had all sorts of security in place night and day. The child had a healthy consciousness of his own worth.

“Yes, we would all hope for that,” Byron said, although he’d never waste such hope on a sap.

“Do you think there’s a chance he’s still alive then?”

“It’s possible. We’ll let you know if we hear anything else.”

“Thank you, Enforcer. I very much appreciate it. And if you ever feel like contacting me again, please do. I find our chats very amusing. Please think of me when you’re not too busy.”

Byron switched off. Somehow the child always made him feel like the fool. For someone so young to be evolved alone seemed strange, no matter how smart Meyer was. But he had certainly learned to patronize, probably through his own experience with it.

Byron sat thinking about the child’s story and the information he’d gotten, and he compared it to the information the boy had given him on his earlier visit. The only inconsistency was the boy’s estimate of the length of time he’d owned Herman, and that could have been oversight or forgetfulness. Time wasn’t as set in stone as it had once been. People often made simple mistakes concerning amounts of time. Meyer just didn’t seem like the type to make them.