Smart girl.
Yet Lavender was neither fully human nor an aniwoman. She had no ‘Mark Twain’ flaw. She was just The Bull’s hot stone girlfriend, a creature of no significant account. She should be just a minor obstacle to eliminate.
False.
What was she not picking up on? She needed to know soon, lest any argument she try to make be torpedoed by her ignorance. There was more going on here than a silly tour.
True.
Damn that snooping mind! This was like playing a tennis game blindfolded.
True.
“This way,” Villainous said. He stood and led the way back to the entry ladder. They ascended one by one. Lavender was last, following Templa. Those legs! At least The Bull was not getting freaked out by that nether perspective.
I may be your friend.
Lavender very much doubted that.
They were in a larger chamber surrounding the hatch. “This is pressure and heat controlled, of course,” Villainous said. “Because we are two miles down, and the pressure and heat would otherwise be lethal. It’s actually a shell, a bubble in the rock. It will be much larger, in due course. This is really just a model, a sample. But it shows the direction.” They walked out the open door.
And paused, stunned. The vista ahead was of a mountain villa with a grassy slope descending to the valley below. White clouds floated in a blue sky, and sunlight reflected off the surface of a valley lake. Petite picturesque cottages formed a village where two small rivers joined. The air was sweet, with a trifling breeze. A lone deer bounded across a field.
“And there are fish in the lake,” the president said. “And corn and wheat growing on the farm.”
“This isn’t underground!” The Bull exclaimed.
“Ah, but it is, my friend,” Villainous said. “Observe.” He turned back to the house they had just emerged from and tapped the stone wall with a finger. There was a hollow clink.
The Bull tried it. “Plastic!” he said. He walked to the side and tapped the air beside the house. There was another clink. He drew back his fist.
“Uh-uh,” the president cautioned. “You don’t want to punch a hole in the facade and let the noxious gas in. The whole scene is a model, as he said. Like a winter blizzard ball you can shake and put down. But we don’t want to shake this.”
“All fake?” The Bull asked, amazed.
“The inner wall of the shell is painted, as is the sky,” Villainous said. “The mock sun crosses it by traveling on its track. But inside the bubble, it is as you see. The air is not generated naturally; it is more like air conditioning so as to keep the local environment fresh and wholesome. We have terraformed this much, and animen are laboring to extend it so that more can reside here. The whole job will take time, but we will have time, once the disruptive folk above are gone.”
“Animen,” The Bull said. “Let me see them.”
Lavender kept silent, happy to let him ask the questions.
“Here.” Villainous walked to the edge, found a crevice, and pulled open a panel. He ducked through it, disappearing from view. The Bull followed, and then the others. Templa and Lavender were the last, again.
“How can we be friends?” Lavender demanded quietly.
“When we are on the same side.” The woman ducked through the aperture, and Lavender followed. She had hoped to provoke a more informative response. So much for that.
There was a short passage leading to another dome, but this one was quite different. It was like a mine, and smelled of sweat and rock dust. Animen and aniwomen were working with sledgehammers to break up rock at the base and sides, enlarging the space. “We don’t use power tools here,” Villainous explained. “Too difficult to process the pollutive exhaust in this confined space. We do use fossil fuels to power the larger equipment that forms the initial chambers, drawing from the virtually inexhaustible supply in the low layers. That pollution gets piped down below. We do not want to mess up our realm the way the humans are doing in theirs. Utopia has to be climate controlled.”
They returned to the first bubble. “This doesn’t seem too bad,” The Bull said to Lavender. Yes, they were impressing him.
“Remember, it’s just a sample, a show,” she said. “It could be prettied up, unlike the reality.”
“It is,” Villainous said. “But it presages the reality. We intend to have the full enclave every bit as nice as this.”
There was a false note here. This was not adding up. Lavender had sent out the “Mark Twain” information to protect herself, but now she doubted they cared about that. What was their real concern? “And what is the reality?” she demanded. “What do you really want of us?”
“We need your help, Lavender,” Templa said. “We may not be able to do it without you. Wiping out the humans will be pointless if we can’t make a viable population to replace them.”
“What are you talking about? We’re your enemies!”
“We need you as our friends.”
“This is crazy!”
“No,” Villainous said. “This is reality. We really are trying to save the world, but not humanity, which we feel is beyond redemption. But we have one potential opponent who can destroy it all. We need to nullify that opponent at the outset, lest all our efforts be wasted.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The volcanoes. We are setting up beneath bedrock, working our way down. Below us is the magma. The volcanoes can raise it at any time and wipe us out. Their minions can read our minds; they know precisely what we’re doing. They can strike at any time they choose. We need to be sure they won’t. That is why we need a deal with the lava folk.”
“I don’t believe this!”
“Show her, Templa.”
“Read my mind,” Templa said, and laid it open.
There it was, spread out like a gourmet banquet. Everything relevant, without restrictions on the irrelevant, in case Lavender wanted to verify the larger picture. It was impossible to deceive, this way. The woman had laid herself out like a virgin on an altar, completely vulnerable to the men of the tribe.
And it was all true. They were building Utopia. They needed a deal with the volcanoes. They were not offering to save mankind.
Again, which side was she on?
Chapter 21: Death
I scratched my chin, watching Lavender watch Templa.
That the woman I had come to have some strong feelings for—sex and saving the world will do that to a guy—was having a wide range of emotions was obvious. I had no clue what the telepath, Templa, was showing Lavender. Nor was I sure I wanted to.
“She’s in conflict, Vil,” said Templa, blinking and stepping back.
“Understandable,” said the massive polar bear. Come to think of it, maybe I needed a catchy name, too. The Bull was rather obvious. Villainous didn’t go around calling himself Polar Bear. He called himself Villainous
“And this one,” said Templa, jutting a thumb at me, and surprising me with her ability to read two minds at once, “is busy wondering what name he should choose for himself. Apparently, he’s not happy with being called The Bull.”
“Simple thoughts,” said the massive white bear, “for a simple man.”
I considered taking offense to his words, until I realized that, yeah, for the most part, I was simple.
“The simplest of men,” said Templa disdainfully.
Truth was, I enjoyed living a simple life. I enjoyed drinking, playing pool, watching football, and working as a rodeo clown—which could be damn exciting at times. I hadn’t asked for any of this. But I decided to let it go. Now wasn’t the time to let loose, but I sure hoped it came soon. My horns were veritably itching to tear through all this plastic crap.
“Horny wants to destroy something,” said Templa.
“A classic bull in a china shop,” said Villainous. “Or, in this case, a bull in Utopia.”
I lowered my head. A man—or bull—could only take so much.
“Bull, wait!
” said Lavender.
“Why?” I asked, and wondered if that was actual steam I could see wafting up from my nostrils. “So that you can have time to decide to join them or not?”
“Is their offer so terrible, Bull? This place has potential. And he’s right, we are the freaks up there,” she said, pointing vaguely up. How far below we were, I hadn’t a clue. She continued, “Down here...”
“Down here, you are with brothers and sisters,” finished Villainous.
“That you created,” I said.
Villainous, whose tufts of white fur scattered over his broad face made him look almost elderly, smiled and said, “My children.”
I shuddered at the thought.
“You know,” I said, lowering my head some more. “I never asked for this shit. I never asked to be turned. And yet you did it anyway. You made me into what I am. And you know what? That just pisses me off.”
“Oh, how I would love to have a shut-off switch for you, old boy,” said Villainous. “Perhaps there is some way to convince you to join our cause?” He snapped his fingers. Like me, part of him was human, and although long, dark claws stretched out from his fingers, his hands were just that: human hands. Big hands, granted, with thick tufts of white fur along the back of them. Just as he snapped his fingers, a panel in a nearby wall opened and three women appeared. All were nude, and all were shivering. The sight of them, however, had the opposite effect, especially when I saw that some sported lash marks.
“Human playthings,” said Villainous. “I couldn’t, after all, let all of humanity go to waste.”
“And on that note,” said the president, stepping forward. “Are you no better than the men above, the governments above, the corporation above? Sure, some of their practices might be destroying the world, but there are many good people up there fighting to save it. Your solution is to accelerate the destruction. Which is no solution at all.”
The giant polar bear turned his massive head toward the president. “I don’t call myself Villainous for nothing, Mr. President. The nukes, which you will soon authorize to launch—”
“Like hell I will!”
Villainous ignored the president’s protest. “Will launch only at the biggest cities in the world. The initial destruction will wipe out more than half of the human population. The rest will be dispatched over time with my special anti-primate remedy.”
“Poison,” said the president, seething. He was a good man, despite the fact that I had not voted for him.
“Of course. As you can see, I have an affinity towards animals. I do not wish to see the earth completely destroyed, or to harm more animals than is necessary. I only wish to see man, the real plague, removed.”
“And who are you to decide the fate of mankind?”
“Who am I indeed? Templa, show them.”
His shapely telepath nodded, and what came next was an onslaught of images and memories, all culled from Villainous and broadcast to those of us in the room. Yes, Templa was a powerful telepath indeed.
What I gathered from the barrage of visions and scenes was of a troubled scientist, a genius before his time, who had been badly disfigured growing up. Indeed, this young genius had endured ridicule and pain that few would ever understand. He had first used his great mind to devise a way out of his limited apparatus, and into something very, very powerful. I next saw series after series of experiments, many of which had gone horribly wrong, and many good men and creatures had to be put down. I had been one of the first successful blends, apparently. And it had been entirely by accident. Wrong place and time. Well, that explained that.
Shortly, he improved upon his experiments, and in the intervening years, had mastered the process, so much so that he had created an army...and had given himself a powerful new body. And, apparently, a desire to end the human race.
“So kids were mean to you,” I said, when the visions had ended. “Is that any reason to take out your pain on the entire world? There are many good people on earth. Many people helping other people.”
“And if I could save them, I would.” And the villain merely shrugged his hulking, muscle-packed shoulders. Yeah, he was certainly no longer the deformed boy in a wheelchair.
“So that’s it, then?” said the president. “You had a rough life, and so the rest of the world must suffer?”
“Partly,” said Villainous, and now he strode around our little group. Like me, his lower half was all animal. Or mostly animal. He sported a fuzzy little nub of a tail that was almost comical. “I realized that I was put on earth for a reason.”
“Really, now?” said the president. The man had, as my dad would say, chutzpah. “I am, after all, part of nature too. So, why would the world give birth to someone like you?”
“A psychopath like you?” I asked.
“A genius like me,” said Villainous, and he continued to circle our group. I kept my eyes on the furry bastard. “I realized it was to put my great intellect to use.”
“To destroy?”
“To rebuild. I am here for a reason, ladies and gentleman, and that reason is to purge the earth.”
“Jesus,” said the president, turning to me. “Someone has a God complex.”
“Lucky for us,” said Villainous, “that we need only your retinal scan and fingerprints to unlock the launch sequence.” I noticed again that the president was sporting a small briefcase. A briefcase that Villainous snatched from him with one great paw. “My clone, of course, can do the rest.”
“What are you saying?” asked the president.
“I’m saying, there is no more need to keep you alive.”
With one quick thrust, a set of twelve-inch bloody claws appeared from the president’s chest. The man struggled briefly, gasped, and then slumped forward.
The President of the United States was dead.
And that’s when I charged.
Chapter 22: Shunt
Several thoughts tumbled through Lavender’s consciousness in that instant.
One was that Villainous had deliberately provoked The Bull to violence. He wanted a good fight, and to get rid of an animan he could not directly control. Another was that Villainous would not have done it had he not been sure of winning. Fair play was not a significant part of his repertoire, as his slaughter of the president showed. Yet The Bull was if anything stronger physically than the Bear, and he had been fighting folk throughout, while Villainous had been dallying with captive human women while planning his holocaust. He was probably out of shape, physically, despite his passion for violence. So what was his secret weapon?
And there was Templa, watching the fight with interest as The Bull collided with the Bear. She was the weapon! She could project thoughts, which meant she could probably mess with The Bull’s mind and render him unable to fight effectively. She didn’t need the Mark Twain logic gate. Suppose she turned off his sight, or stunned him so that he was vulnerable to the Bear’s attack? How could Lavender protect him from that? Well, maybe there was a way, if she could set it up. A long shot, but if it worked—
She had to act quickly. Using the cover of The Bull’s nearly mindless rage, she sent another message to the lava folk for them to relay to the volcano. Shunt! Would they understand the accompanying sentiment? Maybe not, but maybe the volcano would. It was after all in touch with other volcanoes, including her grandfather. Grandfather knew how she thought. But it had to be fast, within minutes if feasible. Seconds, if possible.
Templa glanced at her. “What are you up to, lava girl?” she asked. “I had better see.”
Before she could follow up with a probe into Lavender’s mind, Lavender charged her. She knocked the human woman back against the wall. She was far stronger physically than the telepath, just as The Bull was with respect to the Bear. Templa could not focus mentally at the moment; she had to save her own lovely ass.
Meanwhile the two males were having a blast. The Bull was swinging fists while the Bear was gouging with claws, each scoring repeatedly on the other. T
he pain of their wounds radiated out, but neither cared. The smell of blood only revved them up further. This was what combat was all about, and they reveled in it.
Stupid males, Lavender thought.
Agreed, Templa responded. Stop foolishly attacking me like a thoughtless male and see the light. You are destined for great things in the new order. Villainous likes you. She sent a picture of the Bear kissing her naked flesh. Lavender was revolted. She would never let such a monster get at her body.
Forget it, witch! Lavender took hold of her by the shoulders and shook her. My doubts were quelled the moment Villainous gratuitously killed the president. My body is not for the likes of that. I’ll never join you now.
Too bad. You’d like the Bear’s hug. Now the telepath fought back, using her strength of mind. Suddenly Lavender’s vision clouded; it was as if she had blundered into thick fog. But she still had hold of the woman, knowing better than to let her go.
The fog cleared, leaving her standing on a rocky summit. All around her the slope dropped down toward a turbulent sea far below. Wind tore at her, almost pushing her off the pinnacle.
How could this be? She could not have been teleported from the underworld to such a distant site. Templa had a powerful mind, but there had been no sign of such ability when she read it.
Then there came a speck in the sky. A bird flying toward her. A large one. A very large one. In fact, it was a winged dragon.
That was the giveaway. Dragons were popular in fantasy, but they had never actually existed. Credulous primitives had found the giant bones of dinosaurs and conjectured their fantastic origin. Thus the wild stories of fire-breathing monsters. What reptile had ever breathed fire? It was rubbish. This was an illusion, nothing more.
The dragon oriented on her and blew out a blast of fire that would have toasted any ordinary person who failed to leap off the mountain. That was evidently the design: to trigger an involuntary reaction to avoid getting badly burned. To make the victim plunge into the surrounding sea, where hungry water monsters surely lurked. But Lavender was no ordinary person. If there was one thing she had no fear of, it was fire. She was a creature of the fire, of a volcano. So she stood her ground and took the blast on her chest.
Lavabull Page 10