Wine of the Gods 1: Exiles and Gods (2 page)

Chris eyed their hair. Yeah, when a light hit
, it was iridescent and almost purple.

"And Steven said we shouldn't be allowed to go to school. Which is stupid because we can already read." Temper Tantrum climbed up onto the seat between her sister and Chris. Scrunched up agai
nst her sister, who was pressed against the door.

"Yeah, everyone calls us moron
s, but we're actually smarter than most of them. I'm Chris Dunmeyer. What are your names?"

"I'm Sky and she's Sea." Tantrum thrower matched her sister's scowl. "Way. That's Mom's old last name.
Steven doesn't want us to use his name. We're five."

"We're twins. We were made this way on purpose."
Sea's scowl wobbled toward truculent.

"I'm sixt
een. Almost seventeen. I think my parents would have come, if I'd been their only kid. But I've got two little sisters, and they're just normal kids. Mom and Dad . . . stayed to raise them." He had to look away.

Tantrum, Sky rather, reached over and patted his arm. The silent sympathy had him blinking back tears himself.

The agents got back on the interstate and sped up, heading to the far left lane. Apparently three was their quota of kids.

Chris
looked out at the dimming light of evening and wondered how far they'd be going. A warm weight leaned up against him. The two girls were both asleep. He remembered when his sisters were young enough to just crash like that. And refused to cry. He diverted himself by looking at the agents. "Are you taking us all the way to Wisconsin?"

The driver took off his sunglasses, and met his eyes in the mirror. "No, we're meeting a bus in Springfield. They've got all the kids from Boston already aboard. I heard the bus is fixed up for you kids to live in, and it's supposed to have a whole bunch of cutting edge tech,
an auto-kitchen and a mini fabricator."

Chris bit his lip. "That's good. I guess we'll need that, until we get gardens going and so forth. Hunting and fishing."

"Some of the adults will have hunting rifles and so forth." The other agent chimed in.

Chris nodded. "I have my fishing gear."
And two rifles, two shotguns, and lots of ammo, but I'm not going to bring that to your attention.
"We'll be fine. Although I think they ought to have let the little kids stay until they were a bit older." Chris sat back and stared at the dark landscape and the bright lights of the other traffic.

In Springfield, they waited for half an hour at a rest stop before the bus from Boston arrived. Chris helped with the trunks while a woman led the cranky twins away. The trunks were all shoved into the luggage hold of a very odd looking bus. It was a cylinder, give or take the wheels and the rather minimal ground clearance between them.

"Shaped so it will fit through the gate." The
agent stuck out his hand. "Good luck, kid."

"
Thanks." He shook hands, and then climbed into the bus. Inside there were nice big seats, a single row down each side.

His assigned seat was up front, behind the driver. The driver looked at him over his glasses. "You must be Chris."

"Yes, sir."
I don't have to be polite, any more.

"There's only five of you with driver's licenses. Watch what I do, you'll be taking over soon enough." The driver turned away, pulled a lever and the door sighed closed.

Chris gulped. Drive this huge thing? "You're not going through the gate?"

"Hell, no. You kids are on your own."

No nanny. No teachers. No foster parents.
"Holy Toledo."

The girl in the front seat on the other side nodded. "They're just throwing us through the gate, they figure we've got enough stuff to make a go of it. I'm Milly. Amelia Prentice." She looked older, like a senior, or maybe even a college student.
She must be seventeen, else she wouldn't be on the bus.
Thick wavy brown hair, bright blue eyes in a tanned face. She waved at the three girls in the seats behind them; they all eyed him with disfavor. "Lillian Marshall, Ariel Wyss, Jamie Uchida. The five of us are theoretically in charge of the bus and the kids. Were those little kids your sisters?"

"Nope, never met them before." They were all pretty, like the popular girls that never wanted to have anything to do with him. Actually, the fat ugly girls hadn't either. Oh, well.

Lillian snorted. Bright green eyes, red hair. Her slightly tan skin was about as pale as the genetically engineered came, some combination of Political Correctness and the suntan craze of twenty years ago. Both extreme whiteness and extreme blackness had been left out of the genetic engineers' palate of skin colors. "We hoped Chris was short for Christine, and we females could run things sensibly. I suppose you think boys should be in charge?"

Only when the girls have stupid attitudes like yours.
"Nope. I'm going to go off and live in the wild. You four can be as in charge as the rest of the kids let you be."

A giggle from further back. "Yeah! We are
not
swapping our parents for perpetual babysitters."

Jamie leaned out and glared. "Shut up Mallory. We're just worried about the little kids.
You
can get into all the trouble you want."

A bunch of them looked as old or older than he was. "Only five of us have driver's licenses?"

Mallory scowled. She was tiny and blonde, with no figure to speak of. Female gymnast type, made to order. "My parents didn't trust their little monster with a big dangerous car. There was a kid that was in a wreck, killed two other people . . . it sort of poisoned the whole state about us driving. They didn't take the older monsters' licenses away, but us young ones? Forget it."

"Well, if we do very much driving, over there, you'll all get to learn." Milly turned her attention back to the front as the driver put the bus in gear and pulled out.

In the empty stretches between towns, the driver pulled over and let them all take turns behind the wheel. They didn't get much turning practice, but they got a feel for the weight and responsiveness of the bus, as they sped up, slowed down, and changed lanes. Huge powerful engine, massive weight. Chris loved it. It felt so powerful. But not nimble.

They picked up a few more kids in Albany. Roslyn and Lance could drive, the rest were younger
, or hadn't learned.

By the time they got to the Trans World Travel headquarters, they were all relaxed and comfortable with the handling. They slept on the bus, lined up with a wild miscellany of vehicles. Just ahead o
f them, a mooing mass of cows was crammed into a trailer made of steel bars, two horses stood stolidly in a separate section at the front. The man driving it cursed not being able to drive through immediately and fetched water and hay for the animals. The bus driver and the woman who'd been minding the little kids wouldn't let the kids out either.

Not that they needed out. They had two bathrooms, a fab machine and a kitchen in the back of the bus. The seats reclined till they were nearly flat, and swiveled to face either window
or the seat across the aisle. Facing the aisle, the trays could be pushed up and shoved a bit to the side, so they all met in the middle. Chris temporarily swapped seats with Jamie so the four girls could play card games. Chris walked back and checked on Sea and Sky. They perked up to see an almost familiar face, and showed him the kitchen. It was pretty easy to learn the controls, and he produced cookies to share around with the other kids.

Lillian
snorted as he distributed them. "Did you notice they're not programmed for alcohol? They gave us a 'child safe' kitchen! They're still controlling us."

"Never fear, someone is sure to start a still." Chris grinned. "I read how it worked once, I'll give it a try if we develop a desperate need to get drunk and rowdy."

There were four boys under ten, five boys and four girls between ten and fifteen, the other twenty-seven of them were older than that. Chris wondered if the older bias reflected the growing unpopularity of genetic engineering.
Or the younger the kids, the more likely the parents emigrated too. Or both.

Mid-morning the government
people walked the line, got everyone woken up and their vehicles started up. The driver and the nanny got off.

Milly sat behind the wheel, and inched forward with the line. According to their instructions, she tried to stay close to the trailer full of cattle in front of her, as the line lumbered forward and built up a bit of speed.

Lillian scooted up to Milly's seat. "Remember, hands off the wheel the moment we get to the wheel guides for the gate, get ready to start steering as soon as we pop through, and do not stop."

Mill
y nodded. "The cows will go left, I go straight ahead, the car behind veers a bit right, and everyone is happy . . . Oh. My. God!"

Chris gawped at the spinning h
oop of light and leaping lightening arcs. "Keep driving. Straight ahead. There are the guides, take your hands off the wheel . . . " The bus dived into the electrical whirlwind. A subliminal impression of a roaring torrent of light . . . and out into sunshine. The bus dropped at least a foot, the under chassis hit the ground and scrapped. Then they bounced over lumpy bumpy grass.   The cattle trailer ahead was wobbling badly. The driver wasn't about to try veering. "Edge to the left, I don't think that guy dares to turn at all." The bus jounced left, then she swerved hard as the trailer brakes lit. The bus swayed, and Milly turned the wheel back to steady it. Chris winced at a scrape and glanced back. Behind them, cars were appearing out of a glowing circle, but the circle was moving away from them, spreading the cars out further.

"Okay. You can stop now." Chris
took a deep breath, and stepped up to open the doors.

And down onto a whole new world.

"God damn it, you hit me!" The driver of the cattle trailer climbed down from his big Dodge doolie and stomped back to look at his cattle. Nothing showed on the pipe construction. "Stupid kids can't drive, no wonder your parents dumped you." 

Chris traced the long scrape down the side of the bus. "I thought the gate would be holding still, not moving like that. I guess that made it
impossible for you to turn left, like you'd been instructed. You're lucky we didn't rear end you. In as much as we'd been instructed to drive straight and not stop until we were way far away from the gate."

"Listen you little shit . . ."

Chris felt like every horrible moment for the last year was about to shatter his skull. From some detached observation point he heard himself talking. "Going to call the cops? You're the one who'd get a ticket. Call a lawyer? Sue us? You'll have to start a government, form up some courts, elect a judge, and pass some laws. And there's forty-two of us and only one of you. You're out voted." Chris turned back to the bus. "Asshole."

"Why you little . . . " The man started toward him.

The screaming body fell out of nowhere. Hit the ground between them. A man, naked but for some greenish slime all over and blocky cage-like helmet over his head.

Li
llian shrieked, and Chris was startled into motion. The man twisted on the ground, gasping for breath. He was big, muscular, looked like some weird Martian Warrior from a sci-fi story. All he needed was a big shiny sword and a loincloth.

Lil
lian screamed again, Chris turned in time see her knocked flat by another slimed and helmeted body. This one female. Screaming along with Lilia. Confused shouts drew Chris away from the first man. Two more men. They writhed on the ground, clutching the weird helmets and screaming.

Movement behind him.

A redheaded young woman trotted between vehicles, and crouched down beside the first man. His screams dropped off into panting gasps.

"What the heck? These are total immersion sensory helmets. With
implants
. I've never heard of such a thing on a
person!
Why on Earth would anyone . . . oh. Are these the gods? The animals that were used for test runs of all the genetic engineering? I'd heard people call them kids, but I didn't realize they looked so . . . human."

Chris gulped. "They
are humans. And they aren't kids anymore." In fact, this one was huge. He touched the helmet. "Is this how they controlled the gates? They said a few absolutely crucial monsters would be staying behind. I guess they decided these four weren't needed."

"Four?" The doctor or nurse or whatever she was, raised her head and spotted the naked woman on the ground. She'd curled up and gone quiet. The redhead checked her quickly, raising an eyelid with her thumb. "They've both had some sort of brain trauma. Not quite like a stroke, it'
s symmetrical. Minor. I hope."

Chris tried to concentrate on the woman's bald head, not the green slimed nakedness.

The doctor climbed to her feet and trotted over to the next man. He looked older, dark skinned, African features, bald under the cage that held his head. Chris looked back at the first man. Also bald. Or his head shaved. A deep tan, his face wasn't covered with goo. His eyes, as they blinked, were dark, nearly black, just a warm rim of brown around the outside, and enough flecks to tell where the pupil was.