“Houses were searched with and without warrants. A day-care center was closed. Its grounds were dug up by a cadre of parents and a team of archaeologists who looked for the hidden tunnels the children were molested in. Fields, backyards, basements, and crawl spaces were excavated. Cemeteries and funeral homes were searched. And they dragged two lakes, looking for bones or a ritual gear.”
Puddeck concluded, “All of this made the 1690s Salem witch trials appear downright wishy-washy.”
The three of them chuckled in appreciation.
“And?” prompted Rafirre.
“And nothing,” said Puddeck. He snorted in mock disgust. “Prodded by crazed parents and under a relentless barrage of leading questions by investigators, the small kids lied through their teeth, descending deeper and deeper into that foul, bubbling mass delusion. But all good hysteria must come to an end. By the early 1990s, it fizzled out, and within a few years most of the condemned were cleared of all charges and allowed to resume life, or what was left of it at any rate.”
“Yes and yet,” said Aratta. “The beating heart of this paranoia outlived the day-care moral panic and has been buttressed henceforth by a legal edifice, which, once in the books, is all but impossible to dismantle or even dial down. This brings us to the present era—with children supervision on a war footing by parents and by the state apparatus.”
He went on, “Ever since forever, small kids ran outside and played unsupervised—venomous snakes and fast moving rivers notwithstanding. By comparison, nowadays, some think a twelve-year-old should not walk home without an accompanying adult. Some are worried about watchful busybodies who will report something unseemly to Child Protective Services. Some don’t feel comfortable to let their children have sleepovers at friends’ homes. Fear and vigilance and bubble wraps characterize parenting.
“This may very well be the first human society in history where it is within the realm of the possible to forbid children in a school setting to hug one another due to it being ‘inappropriate display of affection’; to ban games of tag as they violate a ‘no touch policy’; to forbid embracing small children who cry as ‘there is no safe touch between a teacher and a student’; and to forbid staff members from being alone with a young person.”
“It is for their protection,” interjected Puddeck. He beamed, gleeful. “I mean, for the adults’ protection.”
Aratta added, “It is a society with an unprecedented level of adults involvement—and intervention—from mediating conflicts among kids to scheduling their playdates. This, of course, makes it hard for the brain to wire up properly, to wire up for risk-taking.”
Chapter 29
Aratta lowered his head in acknowledgment as Jetro Lan and her small team approached him a little while later.
“I am surprised Nero Maichan and Oreno Eire do not speak English,” Aratta commented when he was introduced to the two.
Jetro Lan raised her eyebrows. “Well, we only arrived a few days ago.”
“Arrived a few days ago?!” Aratta was dumbfounded. “You’ve not been with the rest of the Nature Survey Group those past two years?”
“Survey Group? We’re members of the Cleanup Group, obviously.” She stifled a yawn. “In about a week, we begin our work.”
She then noticed the shock etched on his face.
“The Cleanup Group!” he exclaimed. “On Earth? Now?”
Jetro Lan blinked, a little taken aback; she reckoned he would have known. “Arriving by the thousands as we speak.” They all came under the heading of the Cleanup Group, but in fact, her team was a part of the nature-rewilding task force within it. There were other task forces, as well. “The staging grounds are on the salt flats of Lake Eyre. Why? What’s the matter?”
“I just…need to check on something. You’ll have to excuse me.” He bowed to the four guests and vanished in a rush of air.
Salt Flats of Lake Eyre, South Australia, the Netherworld
It was midday in Australia.
Hagar waited for him amid the sand and the hills. Her blonde hair was considerably longer than he had seen it last. “I saw your beacon!” she shouted over the sudden gust of wind. “What’s the matter?”
In reply, he threw an arm around her, and they teleported to a hilltop a few miles away. A brisk, warm wind was blowing, and a small dust devil skirted the hill they were on. Beyond it was the endless expanse of salt flats. Through the haze and dust, they could make out many hundreds of large trucks and earthmoving machinery drawing near.
He jerked his head. “That’s the cleanup crew.”
“What?”
“She’s here. On Earth.”
Hagar cursed, and she nimbly tore down to the base of the hill, Aratta racing alongside her.
Grim, they stopped and waited for the giant convoy.
Under their feet, they felt the tremors of the army of mechanical behemoths as they were making their approach. One titanic dump truck led the way and came to a stop about fifty paces from them, the rest of the fleet following suit.
A door opened in the cabin and a few rough-looking men climbed down the metal staircase and walked over until they stood in front of the two.
“Lord Aratta, High Mistress Hagar,” yelled the foreman over the deep rumble of many engines and lowered his head for a moment.
“What’s going on?” shouted Hagar over the clamor.
“Frankly, I was hoping you could tell me,” he hollered. “I have instructions to get things started a week from today.”
Aratta and Hagar exchanged alarmed glances.
“I’m afraid a terrible blunder has been committed. You guys are not supposed to be here, on Earth, at this point,” shouted Aratta. “I need to talk to your boss. Where is she?”
In response, the burly man pulled from his vest pocket a device. He consulted the display screen for a moment, then silently handed it over to Aratta.
Tielt, Belgium
The open floor of the slaughterhouse was bloodstained and smelled faintly of organic things left out for too long. Hagar and Aratta could not tell if the odor wafted from the dozens of hogs milling about or the long row of limp people dangling from meat hooks high up, tranquilized by the look of it. A pig was squealing somewhere far down the cavernous building.
She turned around at the sound of their footsteps.
“In the nick of time,” the woman called out when she spotted Hagar and Aratta. “Some of the hogs weren’t stunned properly and were conscious when they were boiled alive.” She laid her arms on a large metal table and leaned forward. “Others were dangled on these meat hooks and made to witness the horror that was to come their way.” The woman grimaced. “You really should check out the next building over. The grownup pigs are in such confined quarters that they can’t turn around. Crammed together, biting each other, squealing and screaming—the equivalent of a cattle train filled with tormented three-year-old children. The building is this way,” she said, picking up a wooden stool and hurling it at one of the walls. There was a minor explosion as it hit the wall and broke up.
She spotted the last prone figure on the floor. “They also have another daily show,” she said, walking toward the tranquilized big man, “where you could see piglets torn from their mothers and the ends of their teeth snipped off with pliers. But, after I visited the attraction, they had to shut it down for repairs and restocking.”
The woman was pretty, athletic-looking, and appeared to be in her thirties. She wore skinny jeans and a fitted white T-shirt. Her hair was bound in a sleek ponytail. And her gold-yellow eyes blazed with inner fire.
She grunted as she bent down, grabbed the unconscious large man, and heaved him up. Slinging him over one shoulder, she jumped onto the elevated conveyor belt. The woman lifted the body over her head and hung him on a meat hook by his belt.
“I know what you’re gonna say.” She was breathing
hard and paused to regard her handiwork. “I could’ve killed the people here in the slaughterhouse and it would have made not an iota of difference.” She wiped sweat from her face. “I mean, hell, I could’ve killed one hundred thousand Terraneans”—she made a sharp cracking sound as she slapped her hands together—“Yet, by the week’s end, there would be a million more than the week before.”
She jumped down and strode to the large, heavy metal doors of the slaughterhouse. She kicked, and they exploded outward, crashing hard against the walls, half torn. She yelled, and the few dozen pigs on the floor made a run for it. She watched the freed animals as the dark night gradually claimed them.
“Been busy, huh?” said Aratta.
“Yup.” She scrubbed her hands briskly on her thighs and walked back in. “Arrived on Earth a few days ago and checked out some things listed as ‘must-see’ attractions. Lemme see here.…” She frowned thoughtfully. “I visited Texas, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe, where crocodiles are placed in minuscule, filthy concrete pits for months on end before they’re eventually hauled out, have metal rods shoved up their spines, and are flayed, often while still alive.” She beamed. “But at least when the crocodiles finally die, they die secure in the knowledge their skin will be made into handbags, right?” Her yellow eyes flashed dangerously. “They have thousands of those crocodile farms, you know.”
“Jilieth…” Aratta started.
“Hey, did you know they make belts and gloves from dog skins down south in China? Using big-ass pincers, they nab the dogs by the neck and hit them over the head with a club. They cut their throats and rip the skin off. Good thing I put a stop to it, huh? But I am sure they’ll resume operations in a few hours.”
“Jilieth, I—”
“Shucks, I also checked on sheep shearing in England. The boys stood on the heads and necks of the panic-stricken sheep and kicked their stomachs. In India, it was different, though. The cows there collapsed from exhaustion, so they rub chili peppers into their eyes to force them up. I let the fellas experience how it feels. Won’t pull this one off any time soon.”
She approached them.
“So, whose idea was to postpone the hearing here on Earth by a few decades?”
“Mine,” said Aratta.
Jilieth turned away and through the wide-open doors gazed at the distant city lights. “That’s on you, then.”
“Yes,” he said. “At least the first few decades. And then I couldn’t send any communication out of Earth.”
“Yeah, I heard.” She turned to face him. “How could you do such a thing?” she demanded of him. “How could you!” she screamed at him, her burnished yellow eyes a pair of roaring furnaces.
“I had reasonable doubt,” Aratta replied, his voice low. “I decided to delay a possible hearing. I wanted to give people a chance, one that we’ve never given to my full satisfaction.”
“Well, now you have.”
“Now I have.”
The three of them stood there, looking at each other, faces drawn and grim.
Hagar broke the uneasy silence. “Hi, Jilieth.”
“Hi, Hagar,” Jilieth said in an almost friendly tone. She flashed a tired smile. “What’s it been, guys? Two centuries?”
“I think probably more like three since we’ve last met,” said Hagar with a fleeting smile of her own and glanced at Aratta, whose face remained impassive. “Time flies.”
The woman with the yellow eyes sat down, leaned against the nearby wall, and closed her eyes.
“Jilieth, why are you down here on Earth?” asked Aratta.
“That’s what I want to know, too,” said Hagar, her voice even. She strode over to the other woman and crouched across from her. Jilieth opened her eyes.
Hagar produced a switchblade and released the blade. She reached in and scraped some dried blood off the other woman’s thigh. “Jilieth, what in blazes are you doing on Earth, along with thousands of your team members?”
The other woman closed her eyes again.
“Jilieth?”
“The humans here are cancer on the planet, Hagar,” she said in a hoarse voice. “Millions of living things die at their hands each day. They’re oblivious to everything except the dreamscape reality they’ve constructed around themselves.”
Hagar closed the switchblade and put it away. She sat back.
Jilieth looked at Hagar then at Aratta. “The destruction and mayhem stop this week,” she said and slammed her fist into the palm of her hand.
“What a creep,” said Ashley.
“It would be disgusting enough to address this way a woman,” said Heather. “Imagine ogling then saying it to a child. What is wrong with Brandon?”
“So many men are simply jerks, pigs.”
“His past should be looked at. If this creep has no problem catcalling a seventeen-year-old kid, fancy what he would have no problem doing to one.”
“He is in his twenties. What sick and perverted dude his age finds teenage girls desirable?”
In an adjoining dim alcove, Hinata, a college graduate student from Japan, was straddling Gary on a leather chair, facing him. After overhearing the exchange between Ashley and Heather, she glanced up at Gary, a question in her eyes. Then she blinked once, black eyelashes fluttering against baby-smooth, porcelain skin. Luminous, jet-black eyes regarded him. “Hey, don’t look at me,” Gary protested. “I would never check out someone underage. Such an attraction is a sick perversion—needing severe treatment.” He then put on his most winning smile.
Gary had a good feeling about getting laid tonight.
Hinata bit into a wet apple she held onto and chewed, her black eyes, now inscrutable, bore into his. “Yes,” she said in a small, high-pitched voice. He could make out her nipples visible under the filmy blouse and inches away from his face. Her hand curled and closed painfully around his manhood. Hinata leaned in. “Such perversion,” she rasped in his ear, “rupturing the innocence of youth. Deflowering…” she hissed and rubbed his hardening member against her crotch.
“We should start a petition to have him dismissed from his job,” Ashley was saying at the far end of the room, oblivious to the couple in the alcove. “Do you know what company he works for?”
Heather smiled nastily. “Actually—”
“Scary times we’re living in, eh ladies?” Rafirre cut in as he joined them.
“I’ll tell you what’s scary, that grown men sexualize minors,” Heather told him.
“Should have kept his creepy thoughts to himself. Men truly do not think with their brains 99 percent of the time.”
Rafirre smiled diplomatically. “On the other hand, women do think with their brains 99 percent of the time—and yet almost everything was invented by men. What does that say about women?”
“Fuck you,” said Heather, now glaring at him with intense dislike.
Aratta knelt next to Jilieth. “You will stand down,” he told her in a tone that brooked no discussion. “They’re about to convene as we speak. Like always, we will let the hearing take place, let the commissioners examine and—”
“Examine what?” Jilieth snapped.
“Noting the ecological degradation of Earth, we’re also sick to our stomachs,” Hagar told her.
“We had to deploy cameras and monitoring devices throughout the planet; my team also needs them,” said Jilieth. “I have waited for those two years—but not a day longer.” A cold light entered her eyes. “Do you have any idea how much havoc those psychos can cause in the marine fish communities and remaining old-growth forests during the eight-month period such a hearing will take? Wrapped up in their dramas and mind games, the people of Earth won’t even notice if the world burns.”
Rafirre held out his hands in reconciliation. “I came to say they just messed with us. Lorraine Warr is actually twenty-one and Jetro Lan, nineteen.” He waved to the two women, and from
across the hall, the two nodded in confirmation.
After some more muttering, Ashley and Heather were assuaged and wandered off in search of appetizers with toothpicks.
“Aratta owes me one,” said Jetro Lan after they left. “Good night all,” she then said and strode out of the house along with her small team.
Puddeck, Susan, and Rafirre led Brandon aside. “You almost got unmasked as a closet creep.” The glint in Puddeck’s eyes belied his grave tone of voice. “Some pious women-folk whipped each other up to a froth and were about to have you doxxed, denounced, and driven out of town. The three Ds.”
Brandon paled. “We all thought they were of legal age. You know that.” A hurt expression came over his voice. “Hell, I reckoned they’re early twenties, a couple of years younger than me.”
“Aratta, you can’t be serious, this—”
“You will remain silent!” Aratta roared, and Jilieth flinched. Aratta glared at her. “Have you lost your mind? You will condemn billions and their future offspring—without a hearing?”
“Jilieth,” said Hagar, “we are making a request to fast-track it.” She smiled encouragingly. “This is likely to be over in a matter of weeks.”
“All is well,” Susan assured Brandon. “They were persuaded those two chicks were not minors after all.” She squeezed his shoulder. “In the future, keep it in your pants.
“Nowadays,” she told him, “it is best not to make suggestive comments about any woman: younger, older, or otherwise. And no sexual banter at work, either. Save it for your dates,” she concluded. Then thought some more. “Yet, be careful what you say on dates, too. These days, a man can get slapped with more than a hand.”
Brandon raised an eyebrow in question. But Susan had already moved on.
Rafirre excused himself. Once out of sight in the patio, he held onto a beam for support, heaving with silent laughter. It was beyond him how anyone could keep a straight face around the Terraneans. He pulled out a pocket watch. Any moment now. Any moment now this passenger ship called human civilization on Earth was going to hit the reality iceberg.
The Earth Hearing Page 31