Demonworld Book 5: Lords of the Black Valley (Demonworld series)

by Kyle B. Stiff

  The camouflaged demon forced itself up, then crept through the forest once again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tales of Pale Number 27

  Thirty-Nine Years Ago

  The mission to study the wooded valley in the wasteland and attain a sample of demonic DNA was a complete success – in theory. In reality, several men had lost their lives in the operation, and the Department of Science received a black mark on its name in the eyes of the people of Haven. While the wasteland expedition was not cited as a reason, the senate’s funding of the DoS was reduced.

  Despite the negative press, the scientists who took part in the venture were considered heroes among their colleagues. Childriss’s work gained the attention of the Head of the DoS, and his influence expanded greatly. Didi was rewarded with the title of senior scientist, and was given his own research team and funding. Didi immediately concentrated his team’s focus on one task: Decoding the demonic genome.

  The Founding Fathers brought with them many mythical accounts of the flesh demons. Nearly six hundred years later, the scientists of Haven held more progressive opinions on the creatures their people so feared. Included among their assumptions were these points:

  ONE. Because there are so many flesh demons in the world, they must breed very quickly.

  TWO. It is their ferocious appearance and bearing which give them sway over primitive, backwards people, who are always eager to invent a god they can fear and placate.

  THREE. The wildly varying appearance of the flesh demons comes about from an inherent genetic instability, which would most likely result in a high mortality rate among the young or, at the very least, a shortened life span.

  FOUR. Flesh demons have no culture because of a lack of intelligence. Culture is, of course, a fundamental expression of intelligence.

  All of these assumptions proved to be wrong.

  One day, Didi summoned Childriss into his research lab. When Childriss arrived, he was shocked by the appearance of his friend. Didi was gaunt, he blinked his red eyes often, it was obvious that he’d slept in his uniform for many days, and he would not sit but rather stumbled about in circles on his creaking brace, shaking slightly. But his voice remained hard, his syllables clearly intoned, so Childriss hid his concern.

  Without any sort of greeting, Didi said, “Childriss - here,” and brought up a visual file of the demonic gene-sample on a large screen, with short-hand notes and highlights already attached. “Here, here, this here,” said Didi. He stared at Childriss until he nodded in understanding.

  “Developed musculature within the larynx,” said Childriss. “This creature has the potential capacity for speech. Is the brain...?”

  “Oh-h-h-h, the brain is quite up to the task. Disgustingly so, William. This is not the potential capacity for speech. All of the genetic statements here were expressed, mind you - there was nothing potential or vestigial or incomplete about any of them. This monster could speak as well as any human.”

  “So -”

  “Let me finish,” said Didi. His voice was so quietly firm that Childriss immediately fell silent. “The flesh demons hid from us for weeks. They hid so well that we doubted they were even there. Then, they attacked! All at once. Right there you have elements of communication and coordination. They waited. They patiently bided their time.

  “The Guardians that killed this demon say that they happened on a primitive sacrificial ritual. Before, I would have been inclined to think that such a ritual was a savage people’s way of bartering with imaginary gods. That is, they were feeding one of their own to a brute beast on the off-chance that they could control their status as victims. But now... now, William, I think that those demons, or at least this one in particular, demanded sacrifice. I believe that it was a well-planned, thought-out program of one species suppressing another.

  “Furthermore, we’ve determined something else from this sample. This flesh demon was well over one hundred years old.”

  “That old!” exclaimed Childriss. “But there’s no reason for any species dependent on evolution to create such long-lived members. Such “dinosaurs” within the species would only slow down further development.”

  “There’s more,” said Didi. “This genetic code is a tangled mess. We haven’t nearly gotten to the bottom of it yet. But one more thing I can say for sure is this: This creature was a mule. It had a few hormones typical to males, but no ability to mate. All those complicated genetic traits, William, many of which have no precedent among other species we’ve studied... and it’s not even built to pass them along to another generation.”

  Didi finally stopped his circumambulation of the office, then said slowly, “This brute monster was capable of speech yet incapable of culture, and capable of communication as organized as our own yet living a life of solitude. This thing, which was over one hundred years old, and is a member of the dominant species of our world - was not even meant to pass on its genes, which is a mark of success among any species. This creature was an end in itself.”

  Childriss sat down, then said, “The documents brought here by the Founding Fathers… we always regarded them as the stuff of mythic storytelling. Tales of men making deals with devils, of communities tricked by devils, of men and animals being stolen in the night, forced to breed with ghastly devil-mothers...”

  “Probably all of those old tales are true,” said Didi. “The flesh demons are feared for good reason. The existence of Haven is far more precious than we ever thought.” Didi’s eyes burned into Childriss for a long time, then he said, “We have to fight this thing, Childriss.”

  Childriss smiled slowly. The gesture was surreal and sickening to Didi. “Man cannot fight the flesh demons,” said Childriss. “He’s too weak. You know that as well as I. No, the important thing is not to fight the demons, but to strengthen man.” They stared at one another for a long time, then Childriss added, “It is not beyond the two of us to create the last invention. Our creation could… well, it seems so vulgar to say it out loud, doesn’t it? We need a wiser, stronger man who can create tomorrow.”

  Didi immediately thought of the treasures taken from the nightmarish cave. “Childriss, did you not destroy those things?”

  “Thinking about them robs me of sleep,” said Childriss. “But our species has done enough sleeping, don’t you think?”

  * * *

  After their creators abandoned them, Pale Number 27, the blue-skinned boy, and the gray-skinned girl foraged what little food they could and took turns sleeping uneasily. During the first few nights, they were terrified of the rustling branches, the shrieking in the dark, the skittering animals that had no cages. Pale Number 27's ruined eye ached terribly, then became infected. Eventually they all became sick. Pale Number 27 withdrew from the other two, and was always so tired that he did not care if he lived or died. The gray girl whined constantly. The blue-skinned boy became a bully, and when he did not feel like foraging for food, he made the others do it for him. Pale Number 27 and the gray-skinned girl learned to forage for themselves only when he was not around.

  They found a stream and lived beside it. They slept in the open and ate eggs and berries, hungry all the time and speaking less and less to one another. Eventually the blue-skinned boy became sick and weak. Pale Number 27 watched him drinking from the river and thought of drowning him. He was too scared, but when they slept that night he rose and strangled him, just as he’d done to the other bully, Blue Number 39. The next morning the gray girl cried over the body and Pale Number 27 hated her for it, but when he moved upstream with some notion of abandoning her, she followed.

  Their bodies grew and in the weeks that followed Pale Number 27 became used to craning his head sideways so that he could see with his single eye. They were emaciated, tired, and only once did he catch a fish with his hands. He ate it raw, and it was wonderful. He gave the remains to the gray girl and she slurped up its intestines and sucked on its spine and ribcage for most of the day.

  In the days afte
r that, they slept near one another and often rubbed their bodies together, embracing fiercely and drinking one another’s heated breaths. But during the day they were very angry with one another and became cross over the most trifling matters. Then one night when they embraced, Pale Number 27 slipped into a velvety-smooth superheated fold of flesh in the girl, and within the space of a few pumps she was sent shivering and he felt himself sneezing all over. They slept and the next day they were relaxed and carefree. They stripped a bush of its berries and then took turns at a game where one of them hid a berry under three stones. When the girl cheated and hid the berry in her hand, they laughed together for nearly an hour.

  The winter was mild in the valley but still terrible for them. They learned to build a shelter out of mud and branches, sleeping often and clutching one another close. They invented new words for objects and even abstract concepts on those dark nights, and there was always the comfort of the wonderful embrace before sleeping. When spring came they were less than one year old and the gray woman gave birth to a son. Pale Number 27 thought that it was a gift of food from the mysterious world inside of them. They fought bitterly but the gray woman saved the child’s life.

  By the end of their second year they had made five sons, all of them pale and gray with blue veins visible in the light of day. Some of them understood the words of their parents and made still more words. Others were foragers. One was good at building, and still another fashioned spears and learned to hunt fish. Now their hunger was ended. The father told his sons how the two gods had made them, how there was a war in their strange birthing place, how the gods had rejected them and how they had barely escaped with their lives.

  In the third year of their lives Pale Number 27 become feeble, and his mind wandered often. Not only was it difficult to remember the names of his sons, but they became quarrelsome, and he did not have the strength to discipline them. The gray woman was no help, either. With each birthing her mind faded a little, and her body became dumpy and gross to look at. They had a sixth son, but one of their other sons disappeared one day. Pale Number 27 remembered his old impulses and suspected that he had been slain by one of his own brothers, most likely because of that unreasonable anger that grips the young. But there was nothing he could do about it.

  Their sons began having sex with their feeble-minded mother. Pale Number 27 did not feel right about this, and spent much time away from them all. Grandsons without grandmothers were born. Around that time a giant monster attacked their camp, destroyed their possessions, ate up one of the sons, and another son died in their winter flight from home. Pale Number 27 blamed his sons, and so they took to beating him. But then daughters were born to them and, within four or five months, the males divided the young girls among their possessions and the mother was spared some of their attention.

  In the fourth year, the sons that were born to them were noticeably shorter, less intelligent, and had less self-control. They were not interested in the stories told by Pale Number 27. To their credit, he often rambled or mixed his stories without reason. They saw him as a burden on their resources. One day when Pale Number 27 woke, he felt worn out and confused and, seeing one of his granddaughters, he tried to touch her as he had the gray woman, who was asleep in another stinking, old hut. The granddaughter whose body he felt belonged to another, so when his grandson caught him, he raised a stone and killed Pale Number 27 with it.

  The hunters found a village of primitive humans in the foothills. These people were amazingly beautiful giants with ornately decorated clothes. They lived in large huts, and each hut was filled with jars of clay that kept vermin from their food and were a wonder to behold. The giants even made bread from crushed grain. The hunters discussed the matter, then attacked, but the humans picked up sticks and rocks and with terrifying strength they killed or drove off the hunters. They learned their station. They made hatchets, and they used mud to fashion pots similar to the ones they had seen the giant humans using, but these were only poor copies. They became aware of their worsening appearance and their constant victimization by diseases that wracked their small bodies. With each generation they became less of what they once were. Their potential became more streamlined.

  In a few more years the camp grew to such size that it attracted the notice of more demons. They could not fight them, and could only run and then rebuild once the demons left. Eventually their population grew to the point that constant, stressful bickering became the norm. Civil war broke out in the camp. After a day-long battle over the women, the strongest males divided up and went their separate ways. In that way tribes developed and, since any tribe could make whatever kind of spear or hut it needed, the tribes were mostly indifferent toward one another.

  Years later, most of the demons disappeared. A new one replaced the old monsters. Favored tribes often felt the new god possess certain members. They gave sacrifice to this devil. In time the demon-god grew in power. Times of conscious thought came fewer and fewer between as the demon-god took possession of their minds. What little culture or craft they had, what little progress they made toward something more, was ground up by the ever-expanding needs of the blind demon-god.

  But they did not mind the trade-off, because violent rivalry between the tribes also disappeared. The few of them that were capable of contemplation decided that life without the demon-god’s influence had little to offer.

  * * *

  Childriss opened the chest and laid the two items before Didi. Didi’s prize was the metallic sphere; Childriss’s was the strange document made of thin, unbreakable pages. The artifacts from the place of nightmares did not seem wholly out of place in the close, musty air of Childriss’s apartment, which disturbed Didi.

  Didi picked up the sphere. “It’s some kind of computer. You see the hole, here? It must be a sort of input/output jack.”

  “I wonder what it does?” said Childriss.

  “Does it matter?” Didi set the object aside. To Childriss, the gesture seemed childish, an awkward suppression of every scientific instinct that drove his friend. “And your little ‘gift’, William? What did you get?”

  Childriss opened the document to a random page, then slid it over to Didi. Didi leaned over, peered closely at the tiny writing, and saw long strings of the letters G, C, T, and A, which covered each page and left no room for margin.

  “Gods!” said Didi. “It’s some sort of genetic blueprint!”

  “Or perhaps a biological-historical document,” said Childriss, smiling. “Perhaps it’s a journal documenting the life of the first demon. Who can say?”

  “Did the giver have nothing to say about it?”

  Childriss thought for a long time, then said, “I’ve reason to think it’s a blueprint for some sort of… godlike being.” Didi flipped through the pages and ran his fingers across several lines of code. “Don’t bother,” said Childriss. “I’ve already looked at it. I can’t make heads or tails of it.”

  Didi looked for a long time, then shook his head. “We’ve already gained some renown for our ability to look at code and see traits emerge, even without the use of notes and markers. We’re the only two men in Haven who can do that. But this...”

  “You’re really the only one who can do that, Didi, but even I can see that it’s a tangled mess, isn’t it? Either that, or so alien and advanced that it’s beyond us.”

  “Beyond us!” Didi laughed, then glanced at the script again and fell silent. “Childriss, do you remember any particulars?”

  Childriss furrowed his brow as he searched his memory. Didi understood his struggle. The place that they had gone to was not easy to recall, as if the details easily slid through the cracks of conscious thought. “It called the thing... the code, I mean... a holy parasite. It’s… it’s difficult to recall. I was shown things that I didn’t understand. But Didi, do you think that we could use this code to-”

  “No, Childriss. Not ever. This is an artifact of the Ancients. They may be the ones responsible for turning the
world into a wasteland. Perhaps they even created the flesh demons.” Didi suddenly closed the manuscript, then said, “It would be better to simply work with the fit models of the post-humans that we created. Those ten survivors. If they were retooled, tweaked slightly, perhaps...”

  “But we vowed never to create such things again.”

  “Yes. Yes, you’re right, William. Yes.” Didi shook his head quickly. “You’re right, of course. Other paths can be taken. Perhaps this strange device will help us, somehow.” Didi grabbed the sphere and stuffed it into his pocket.

  So, thought Childriss, we’re to use your gift, but not mine?

  I wonder, thought Didi, why he was given such a dangerously powerful gift, but I was not?

  “We’ll continue in our official capacities, then,” said Childriss. “We’ll retain the appearance of two well-meaning, career-oriented scientists who would never do anything to upset the balance between mankind and the flesh demons.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Didi, “I’ve been thinking of mounting another expedition to the wasteland. I need more samples. I want to make comparison studies between multiple flesh demons.”

  “Be careful about your timing, Didi. You are rising in influence. To suggest that sort of thing, while people still remember that place, would put you on the outside lane.”

  “Oh,” said Didi, blinking. “I guess you’re right. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “You wouldn’t, Didi. That’s why you need me. And as for me, I’ve already put in my application with the Makers of Mothers.”

  “What! But there’s no research to be done there, Childriss!”

  “I’ll always have our research together, Didi. Besides, to work with the Makers is to earn the trust of your fellow comrades. It will put me in even greater standing in their eyes, plus it will keep me out of the hair of a lot of researchers who simply do not like me.”