Wine of the Gods 4: Explorers (19 page)

She
suggested he step back, cross his arms and wait, as if for an answer. She wiggled the fingers of her left hand to throw an illusion of herself stepping forward, while she warped light and stepped back. Not smoothly enough.

They jumped for her.

And collided through the illusion, as she ducked away and sidestepped smartly. A few more illusions, and a few chairs pulled out from the table, to trip people. The hard-to-read soldier backed up and flattened against the door. One man bumped, then grabbed her. She tossed a stun spell and dropped him. Jumped over him as the others closed in.

Burning pain in her wrist. Her grasp on the light warp wavered. She held it, tears running down her face. Clutched the books. She ducked between people trying to fence her in physically. The light on the bracelet was red. S
he reached into the metal parts and they flowed, lengthened. She slipped the bracelet off, dropped it in a man's pocket. Hissed a bit at the painful burn on her wrist.
Time to stop being "nice." These people need a lesson in magic.

She climbed invisibly
up onto the table, tossed an illusion of her own features onto one woman, stunned the first two men to grab her. When the poor woman went down under a mile of men, Never jumped down and felt the back wall. Paint, plaster and paper over an inch of gypsum, compressed. Ribs of metal, far enough apart for her to slip between. No problem. She laid an illusion across the wall as she molded it around her, and backed through a thin space, another gypsum board at her back. It yielded to her, and she healed the first gypsum sheet as she kept backing through the other.

In the new room, three people were staring at the gypsum in dismay.

At least they didn't see me.
Never walked to the door and turned the knob. Not locked. She opened it and walked out.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Now she just needed out.
Never wound between people, looking for stairs, and turned toward natural looking light. She was at the building entrance, on a balcony, plenty of stairs, but also plenty of scuttling guards. No loud alarm, but obviously they were controlling the entrance. She walked down a hallway paralleling the front of the building, tried a knob. The door wouldn't budge for her. Two women walked out of the next room, she sprinted to grab and squeeze through the closing door. Behind her, she heard alarms, and doors slamming closed. She was in a small office, no windows, an open door on the other side. It led to a bigger office. Nobody home. She stepped around a desk and touched the wall. Gypsum sheet over the concrete of the outer wall. "No. Problem." She put the books down with a frown. A quick hunt of the office turned up a flimsy sack with holes for holding. It would have to do. She slid the books in, then turned to deal with the wall.

She
called up the feeling of the slash spell and ran her finger around a square, pulled the gypsum off the wall. Cast an illusion through the wall, and tried to hold it as she cut the square deeper. The concrete square fell outward. She cursed, trying to catch it with a levitation spell, and her illusion quivered. She reinforced the illusion, grabbed her books and climbed through, feet first, to dangle at the stretch of her arms. Hold the light warp. Hold the illusion. Mold cement for a toe hold. She sighed as the strain eased on her arms. She was only one floor up, but people were running toward the concrete chunk. She molded hand and toe holds as quickly as she could, healing them behind her, as she crabbed sideways away from the guards below. The bag of books swung and thumped against her right arm, the holes in the sack stretching, but holding. She got clear of the guards and dropped to the manicured lawn. She trotted away, as more vehicles pulled up, soldiers leaping out. She was beyond most of them and dodged the few between herself and the sidewalk.

Good timing.
She breathed the dry desert air, with its gyp exhaust smell.

:: Question? You around?
::

:: Never! Damn it, I thought you were going to take forever! Now. Turn, turn. There. You are, roughly, fa
cing me and the gate. Come this way. ::

Since that direction was diagonally through the building, Never headed south instead, and cut east on the first street. The wind was stirring, and there were clouds gathering in the sky, rapidly thickening. Even in a desert . . .

:: It was a dark and stormy morning. Question must be nearby. Doing magic. How did you get out and free? :: The bag the books were in started ripping and she scrambled to grab them, tucked them into the crook of her elbow.

Question gave a mental snort. ::
Get rid of your Eye Dee, they can trace it somehow.
I
being a sensible person, got on the empty buz that was going to the Gate Complex to pick up another load of laborers. ::

Never glanced down and ripped off the Eye Dee. Did a light warp interfere with it?
No one seemed to be tracking her. She stepped to the edge of the road and tossed it into the next gyp to drive by. Looked herself over. She couldn't see anymore bits of electricity. Thunder rumbled overhead and a few large drops hit the ground.

She turned her head at running feet, and trotted more or less the direction Question had indicated. After a bit she heard the yelp of dogs, and cursed. "Dydit could just gallop away and the old gods help the poor dog that caught up to him. Life is just not fair sometimes." She was barefoot, leaving an obvious
scent trail. A gyp cruised down the street, men looking out both windows. She stepped to the side of the road, and eyed it . . . no, it was going too fast. It passed and she trotted on. A second gyp, slower, with brilliant lights was coming toward her. She stepped to the other side of the road and concentrated on the light warp, for minimum distortion. There were too many men on it to even try to grab a ride. She walked after it, then hearing the dogs, trotted again. Two dogs were coming fast. She drew power and threw stun spells at them. Dogs didn't respond to spells the same way humans did, with variances even between breeds. These two stopped as if they'd run into a barrier, and backed away hackles rising. The gyp with the lights was turning, and the men hopping out, spreading out. She trotted forward quickly, slipping between two men before the cordon got any tighter. The gyp drove past her and left her in darkness again. Thunder grumbled up in the thickening clouds. Street lights were coming on.

There were gyps blocking all traffic, not that there was much, and soldiers searching all the other gyps.

:: Q? are your streets being searched? ::

:: No. I think you are in a walled off area. Never, you
have
to get here. I can't face Dydit without you. ::

::
Oh yes you can. Tell him they probably come and go every fourteen days, so he'll just have to wait for me. ::

:: NEVER!!!
::

:: Hey, I have what, two hours, right? Sheesh. ::

She walked carefully around all the gyps, and up a large road. She stayed well to the side, where hopefully the gyps wouldn't squash her. Several miles to go, the way Question's mental voice felt. No big deal, so long as there weren't any more dogs.

A few minutes later a flying machine cruised over. It was one of the very noisy kinds, Hell-o-cooper, something like that. Shining a bright light down on the road. She looked behind. Men with dogs. The lights came her way and she made sure the light warp covered her from the top. She stayed in the open, where it was
obvious
there was nothing there. The traffic coming toward her thinned then ceased altogether, and gyps came from the other direction, cruising slowly, looking for her. One of the open kind, with a cage of pipes drove up slowly. She stepped in between it and the next one, grabbed the back pipe and ran so she could transferred her weight gradually, stepped up on the metal bar at the back. It kept cruising slowly, voices coming out of the box at the front. Ahead, a line of Gyps across the road had stopped all the traffic. She stepped off her ride as it swung around to go back. The guards were all talking as they looked around; she passed between two of the gyps, and then down the line of big wagon things. She stopped, and climbed out of her one-piece. She crawled under one of the big wagons, and tied it to a metal brace so it would drag. Crawled out and kept walking. She was invisible, after all. So nearly naked didn't matter. She heard mechanical noises, and jogged to the side of the road as the traffic started moving. No guards back this far. She switched the books to her other arm and started trotting.

::
Never? ::

:: You sound close.
::

The main road turned. A small alley led to some gyp sized doors, and then a substantial fence. She sent a picture of the fence to Question.

:: Yeah. That fence. Gods know where, in relation to you. ::

Eight feet of concrete, wire above.
She formed hand and foot holds in the slightly sloped lower portion. Never used them to scramble up to the wire. Ordinary iron, it yielded to her, easily. A gyp pulled up and Question hopped out.

"Catch." Never started dropping books, then skinned
through the hole and patched the wires quickly. Dropped down into Questions' fierce hug.

"Now let's get out of here, before they notice me stopping." Question tossed the books into the gyp. "They watch everything, electronically. I've figured out how to briefly shut them down, but from all the sirens, they've started checking the outage areas. So I've been using illusions."

"Good. Now what are we going to do until they open the gate to our world?"

"I went to that glass control room. They've changed some of the lists. There are guards of some sort there, arguing about what destinations are not going to be allowed to open. They are really after us."

"Dallas Twelve fifty-three?"

"It is still on the list. They are talking about how far up they can move their schedule. We'd better hurry."

"Right."

Question fiddled with the controls and the gyp drove away with a bit of a jerk. She muttered something and the light dimmed further as a light warp surrounded them. The young wizard drove the gyp up onto the pedestrian walkway as three gyps with flashing lights rounded a corner ahead of them and slowed, as their lights showed the empty street. They cruised past and Question rotated the wheel to steer them back onto the road. "I really, really would like to keep this gyp, but I don't think I could find fuel for it."

Lightning leaped from air to a nearby building, the crack of thunder swayed the gyp.

"Hey Q, maybe I should do the light warp?"

"You're off the ground."

Never felt for Earth. It was indeed out of reach. If they had been stationary, perhaps . . . Question turned the gyp around another corner and let the light warp go, as other gyps careened around them.

"Q, stay on the right side of the road, where the gyps are going our direction!"

Question veered back to the right side. "Half of their streets, all the gyps go all one way. I can't tell, until I've got it wrong."

"Perhaps those signs with the big arrows? The ones that say one way?"

"I can't read while I'm driving.
And don't glare, I'm good at this. I've only bumped a couple of the other gyps."

Lon
Hackathorn drove across the intersection ahead, in a gyp full of people. The lights changed and they drove ahead with the other gyps.

"Did you see him? Q
uestion, we have to turn back."

Question tu
rned the gyp in the middle of the next intersection, with other vehicles honking at them. One shot forward, lights flashing. Question pointed and lightning flashed down. "Did I see
who
?"

Never blinked flash blinded eyes. "Turn right."

"See who?"

"Lon Hackathorn. He was in a gyp packed with people . . . There he goes. Turn left on the next street."

Question veered across three lanes of traffic, turned left and hastily warped light again. The street was almost empty, people were organizing a collection of vehicles. Numbers counted down on a bright display above the circular gate. The people walking around stuck a red flag on Lon's gyp.

"I think that means he's the last one." Never said. "The gyps going the other way really rush in, so you'd better stick very close to him."

"Right."

Sparks raced across the
gate. The big truck, carrying something large and tubular jerked into motion, and the rest followed at close intervals. Question drove right up, almost touching Lon's gyp and they were sliding and the green rushed in and fresh air. Question wrenched the gyp away from a charging tank truck and then drove around Lon's gyp as it parked. She pulled up beside the last vehicles parked at the side of the long road and turned it off. They looked around carefully, and Question let the light warp go.

Spring 1360

Old World

Question
looked at Never. "You go east, and I go west, so Dydit and Lefty can't gang up on us."

Never stepped shakily down and warped light around herself. She
grabbed her books then walked between the buildings and onto the grass. Kept going. Over the first hill and out of sight of the camp. Let the light go wherever it damn well pleased as she folded up on the grass.

Running footsteps and a sudden heavy weight. The right one. She smiled.

"Are you out of your mind! What did you think you . . . woman where are your clothes! I don't believe you just hopped on that gyp and disappeared. What the bloody Hell did you think you were doing?"

Lefty called from the hill crest. "Pipe down Dydit. We don't want them coming to watch the superstitious Native fre
ak out over a mere dimensional gate."

Dydit's weight shifted. "Ha! I see you, Question. I hope Lefty paddles your ass."

"Gently!" Never interrupted. "She's in a delicate condition, which they fixed with their medical machines and they think she'll probably carry to term."

"She still needs a good spanking," Dydit grabbed her shoulders. "As do you . . . Damn it woman, where are your
clothes
?"

"I tied them on under a gyp to drag and lay a false trail for the dogs to follow."

Dydit put his head down on her shoulder and whimpered. "I spent the last fourteen days thinking about all sorts of mechanical horrors. I missed the old fashioned chased through swamps by dogs nightmare. I'll add that to the list.

"There's only one thing to do. If you kill me this time it'll spare me a lifetime of terror and frustration. Stop smiling. No, grinning doesn't count."

Never shot a glance up at Lefty and Question, saw them chivvying the kids off toward the camp, and turned her attention back to Dydit.

He stretched out beside her and gathered her up against him. "I love you. I've loved you since you were a beautiful sixteen year old playing with magic as easily and as happily as a puppy plays with a ball. And I couldn't tell you that, dared not get near you." He kissed his way down her face and neck, his hands making quick work of her few garments. She rubbed her knee against his thigh and he rolled her over and entered her as easily and naturally as a man coming home. He moved gently, pumping power slowly, and she filled herself from the Earth and gave him more. He came with a shiver, pouring the power back into her, and she channeled it away, stopped the flow, reversed it. He kissed her eyelids, temple, ear. He slipped off of her and pulled her close, cuddled her against his chest as he nuzzled into her hair. "I love you. Eight years ago I loved you so much I couldn't stand to see you running off with Treham. I went to Nil and begged. Begged." She could feel him swallow as his arms tightened. "He suppressed the goat spell till dawn, added an illusion so I'd look just like Byson."

  Never blinked. "Did you just say what I think you said?"

"Yes." He let her go, edged away a bit.

"You didn't!" Stood up. Snorted, tried to cough, clear her throat. She started laughing, tried to stop, snorked, wiped tears. Sat down abruptly.

"It's not funny!"

She threw an arm around his neck and giggled helplessly into his chest. "Yes it is! So Rustle is your daughter. In every way."

"Yes.  So, if you want another daughter just as smart, you shouldn't kill me. Although I suppos
e you could do the black widow spider thing and kill me during."

She flinched. "I came too damn close the first time. I'll try really hard to not hurt you at all." She turned her head but couldn't see anything but his neck. Her breath caught and she nearly choked on air that didn't know which way to go. "Oh Dy
dit. Old Gods. No wonder you're so afraid of me."

"I'm afraid I'll let you do anything you want with me. Use me, kill me, discard me, anything." He shifted uneasily. "I'd have been al
l right it I could of just
stopped
and breathed. Or climbed out of the pool before getting back to screwing you. I was drowning and it didn't seem to matter."

"I, yeah, I was drunk on Power. Couldn't think straight."

"Me too," he nodded.

"I figured that was why witches never married. Because we'd kill the man sooner or later," her voice had gone small. "Playing with him."

He breathed into her hair. "Well, if you're not going to kill me for fraudulently deflowering you and getting you pregnant, I figure I'll be safe so long as I stay away from hot springs."

"That's my Goat. Can we go home now?"

"Were you around Lon? No? Then we'll check on what Lon's been up to, and then leave."

***

Lon was shocked by the amount of information that had been amassed in his thirteen day absence. Shocked by some of the information, too.

"A canyon through the ice cap, caused by an active, mid-continent spreading ridge?" He looked at Nelson's tentative map, showing the Lake Baikal ridge tentative
ly extending south through the Mongolian highlands to their position, and running the other direction, into the Arctic. The North American rift was also marked, and tentatively branching at the Missouri and heading off into the Artic to tentatively meet up with the Baikal rift.

"I. Need. A. Satellite." Nelson glared. "The comet impacts have serious rearranged the active tectonic zones.
From what Dudit and Levty have said, there's been hundreds, if not thousands of miles of splitting and spreading in just the last thirteen thousand years since the split. Do you realize how fast we're talking about here? If I can get any dates, even relative dates, and look for magnetic reversals . . . Lon! This could be a whole new leap in our understanding, if seafloor spreading happens in bursts, and possibly the close magnetic reversals were caused by the core's response to the impacts and the rapid crustal changes and . . .  I need to trace them. And then start exploring, I need to collect samples."

Lon blinked at the overly energized geologist.
"Umm, right. Yes, Doctors?"

The biologist and physician had pretty well duplicated Jim's work. And made some interesting connections.

"You think the natives are the descendants of exiled genetic engineering experiments from World War five?" He blinked at the chromosome maps. "And that they were sent to an unstable world in the expectation that they would all die, which almost happened about three hundred years after they arrived, when the comet struck, which was about a thousand years ago."

"Exactly, sir."
Rae Galena glowed proprietarily at the gene map.

"Unless they're from One World." He handed over a copy of Jim's report.

"Really? Tell me, does the One World also genetically engineer horses?"

"What?"

"Lefty and Dydit's horses are all closely related, possibly all from the same sire who is highly engineered. Horses are very useful for genetic research. They've got long strings of genes all in the same order as the human versions. But someone went further with these beasties. They've got a bunch of the actual
human
genes in them. Very, very illegal."

"And they have some of the artificial
genes the people have. Obviously they were tested first in the horses."

"And there are a lot of horses on the planet. Maybe as many as there are people. We estimate, from the long range drone pictures, a world population of perhaps half a billion," Nelson preened.

Lon opened his mouth to say something about the expense of drones that hadn't had enough fuel to return, then closed it. The information was worth it. The Drone had managed a high altitude sweep over the west coast, finding two more cities and hundreds of towns. Then it had cut across the continent and found even more and larger cities.

"I've brought a team of astronomers in, a mid-sized telescope, hovercraft for crossing these damn rivers, and linguists and sociologists." He looked around. "So, where are our
natives?"

"Dudit has some superstitious mania about the
gate, sir. At least he didn't attack anyone this time, just ran off howling. Levty took the kids the other way for a bit, then followed. Gave him time to calm back down, I suppose. I think Dudit, at least, may be, umm, odd."

"Umm, well, let's go see if the fellow is going to be reasonable now. Superstitious or not. "

The fellow was down the hill, bare chested, and as the embarrassed linguists and sociologists looked away from Dudit, Levty walked over to them.

"Hel
lo. Adding to your team,  Dr. Hackathorn?" The effort and attention he paid the words was evident, but the pronunciation was perfect.

Lon blinked. "You talk good. Err, much better than just a week ago."

"Thank you."

He introduced Meyers and Prescott the linguists, and then Jerkins and Farnsworth, the sociologists. Prescott and Jerkins were female.
Dudit and Levty had been accepting of the women in the cadre. If they were typical men of their culture, there wouldn't be any problems.

Prescott smiled at the tawny native
. "Levty. That's very interesting. I notice that you are left handed. Is it a nick name? Lefty?"

"Yes, but part of my name also. If we are going to be formal, I am Carwell Lebonift. I am, roughly translated, an explorer scout in the army of the Kingdom of the West."

Jerkins perked up. "Kingdom? You have a king?"

"King Rebo Negue. He
has just turned ninety years of age. His son, Crown Prince Leano handles most of the daily business of the kingdom, these days."

Lon scowled a bit.
I would have liked to have known that before I reported. Or is it something they invented while I was gone?

Dudit, plucked a shirt from
somewhere—had he washed it? That explained the bare chest—and walked up the hill buttoning it. The introductions passed around again, upscaled for the language improvements. Dydit Twicecutt. "I'm helping with some of the special logistics necessary for exploring over here." He explained blandly. "I'm not in the Army, but do acknowledge King Rebo as my liege."

"What does that mean, how does being a liege affect your life?" Farnsworth was all bright eyed.

"The king is my liege. I am his vassal. It means that ordinarily I do whatever I wish, unlike Levty who is always in the Army. When the King needs my particular abilities, he calls on me, knowing that I will come." The native gave them a charming smile. "In this case, because I am interested in exploring here, and Lefty is an old friend, I. . . umm, follow teared?"

"Volunteer. To offer to do something. Often for no recompense," Meyers offered.

"I volunteered. Yes."

"Dydit, you automatically follow our rules of grammar. I am curious about your native language, will you say all of that again, as you would have formerly?"

Dydit obliged with an almost understandable run of words.

Meyers lit up. "That is nearly perfect Old
English. My dear fellow, we must talk." He grabbed the man by the arm and led him away, speaking gibberish himself.

"So, Lefty, tell us about the rest of your society . . . "
The other three grabbed him and led him away too.

Lon watched them walk off. "Army scout. Bloody hell. And speaking of which, Ray? DONA
will be coming soon. Leave the gate building open and the anchor on, in case they don't wait for the scheduled times. There's a complete cluster fuck going on over there at the moment, but the Gate Authority won't say why. Right now, lets get these astronomers out of here." He turned back to the other aspects of his job, which at the moment meant finding a good mountain for the astronomers.

The big hovercraft made transporting the scopes feasible, if still not easy. It could cross rivers, but a deep gully or oversized ditch would ground it. They'd have to take the heavy tractors as well, and hope that between all options they could get to where they needed to be. Especially with all the other equipment the astronomers had. They had more computational power than the rest of the departments combin
ed, and a modular office and living quarters.

It took three trips and damn near half his fuel.
The lack of native trees was a boon, minimal grading got them a passable route to the crest of the mountain they chose and they completed the move in just ten days.

Then the g
ate opened. Gate Authority troopers with tracking dogs came through first, blocked the whole arrival area while their dogs sniffed around, and then left without an explanation. Ray hustled the truckers and had them ready. As he'd hoped, the company had piggybacked on the troopers and sent supplies through early. The fuel truck came through, and two more gyps, the last one with a red flag. The empty tanker from last week was cleared to leave and the tractors that had carried the astronomers' gear followed.
They'd better not try and charge the company for the government time
.