“Is that all? You’re afraid of what they think of you?”
“Of course that’s not all,” said Childriss, smiling wickedly. “I’m simply doing a little drudgery, and earning a little trust, so that it would not be inconceivable for me to snatch the title of Head of the DoS.”
Didi looked at his friend for a long time. He had no idea that this raging, emotional wreck had the very kind of career-oriented ambition that he often scorned in others.
“Why bother to try to become Head of the DoS, William?”
“Don’t sound so shocked, Didi. I would only be doing it for us. For our work.”
* * *
Years passed as the two worked in the gray subterranean halls of the Department of Science. Professor William Childriss gained admittance into the Makers of Mothers, and toiled many long hours in darkness with his heavy light-magnifying goggles. He eventually became a manager, then moved into the position of Ethics Manager, which meant that he double-checked the double-checkers who oversaw the handling of zygotes. When he proudly told Didi of his advancement, Didi laughed and reminded him of his theft of incubators in the past. “Be careful that you do not double-check too closely, friend!” said Didi. This rankled Childriss. Still, he was finally allowed into the inner circle that hovered about the somber parties held by the Head of the DoS. He never had one single outburst during any of these functions.
The two grew apart. Childriss attributed this partly to the fact that Didi was completely absorbed in his study of the demonic genome and his grappling with the moral riddle of how an unmodified species could possibly fight against such monsters. He attributed the other part of their distance to the fact that the two simply did not need one another. They met whenever they wanted, and at that point in their lives there was no need to support one another. He had no idea that Didi had moved on into another secret circle of close friends, men vocationally different but morally similar.
In his own work, Didi needed power and resources to achieve greater heights. Being respected, but not having the skills for social manipulation that Childriss had, Didi knew that he could never reach the lofty offices that hovered beneath the Head of the Department, much less the office of Head itself. So, very quietly, and with what little influence he had, he founded his own office: the Department of Research. Bright, energetic young scientists came to him, rather than climbers keen on tradition and social standing. In the DoR, results mattered.
With his increased resources and manpower he developed, among other things, a very precise gene-editing tool. He and his team developed the bovine plant, a copyrighted and marketable slab of living meat that, when fed a little intravenous stew, produced great amounts of nutrient-rich milk that could be flavored in a variety of ways. The “nutrimilk” was sold and a great profit was made by the DoR and the DoS. Suddenly the DoR was spoken of with that combination of respect and shrewd mistrust that, formerly, belonged only to the DoS. The Head of the DoS wondered just how he had been forced to share the throne with a quiet nobody who spent all his time tinkering with gadgets.
Didi spent a great amount of time with the gift given to him by the cave in the Black Valley. He could tell that the metallic sphere housed a variety of functions, but there were many problems in terms of technological translation; he simply could not build an interface system that would allow him to tap into the machine’s full capabilities. But through trial and error he learned how to use the thing to create a living map of neural impulses. While the device showed some understanding of its distance from the subject, the distance itself seemed to have no effect on the strength of its ability to read the subject’s brain activity. Didi called the device his Neuron Sensor Array, or NeuSen.
But ultimately the thing remained a super-advanced toy left over from a dead people. He could see the neural activity of a cat as it chased a mouse, of a rabbit given a variety of drugs, of a human while it slept and dreamed, but he certainly could do nothing with it to destroy the flesh demons. They remained the dominant species, the incontestable masters of reality. All his work, all his research, all his power, was so much masturbation.
One day Didi was invited to a party held to honor the son of the Head of the DoS, who had just graduated from the University and would enter into the Department. Didi knew that Childriss would be there. He had not seen Childriss in... months? Years? Many, many times before Didi had shrugged off such invitations. This time, he attended.
He watched Childriss getting drunk, and he knew his old friend well enough to know that he was hiding a hundred daggers behind his eyes. Childriss smiled as he hated everyone around him. Getting drunk helped him to lose himself, to lose his anger, and simply float.
As the party died down, Didi limped over to his friend. Childriss was putting on weight. His hair was thinner, and the flesh around his eyes drooped down at the corners. With feigned nonchalance Didi said, “William, do you remember that time we entered an old cave run by a self-aware computer program that drove us temporarily insane and gave you a genetic blueprint for the construction of a god?”
“I vaguely recall something like that,” said Childriss, laughing with his teeth clasped shut. His eyes stabbed into Didi, then he said, “Do you realize that you’ve never once given me a simple ‘hello’ in all these years?”
Didi ignored the question. “Were you ever told of any special conditions that were necessary for the thing’s development?”
“Are you implying that I entered the Makers of Mothers just to-”
“Not at all, old friend. I’m just curious.”
Childriss sighed, looked around, leaned against Didi, then thought better of it and leaned against a wall. “The thing in the… the thing in that place said that the parasite had to be put into ‘a woman recently seeded’.”
“It used those terms?”
“It did indeed. And then it showed me… well, it showed me what such an act would look like, just in case I did not understand the phrase.”
“What a place, eh?” said Didi, chuckling. After a few awkwardly exchanged trivialities, Didi left the party with sudden haste.
It’s obvious that you joined the Makers just to get close to a zygote, Didi thought. Your social pretensions and the excuse of angling for the office of Head of the DoS make for a terribly thin mask, William. You’ve hated humanity for as long as I’ve known you, and now I’m expected to believe that you have some sort of human-modifying genetic code, a so-called holy parasite, that you’re content to allow to gather dust without ever using?
Didi thought of his own aborted attempts to create a superbeing. He was ashamed that he and Childriss had been forced to kill the awful creatures, but he was far more shamed by the urge he had to continue working with Childriss in the morally black area of genetic perversion.
* * *
Thirty Years Ago: The Second Expedition to the Black Valley
Against the better judgment of his colleagues, Didi accompanied the other scientists on the expedition into the wasteland. The previous landing site could not be found; it had been swallowed by the forest. Didi breathed a sigh of relief mixed with frustration, for he knew that the strange cave would not be found again.
They landed in the wooded foothills. The Guardians were prepared for a long wait and a hasty retreat similar to the previous expedition. Instead, within the first few days Guardian hunters sent back word that they’d “found some flesh demons, sort of.” There were so many miscommunications ranging the gamut from “All Guardian units at ease” to “RETREAT!” that, among all the shouting, a manager of laborers got into a fist-fight with the Guardian acting as commander-of-operations.
The hunting team brought in their specimens and laid them out on the ground, and everyone gathered around the bodies. All of the corpses were pale, emaciated humanoids that stank of death and looked even worse. They were a mockery of the human form. While Didi and his researchers ran tests, the Guardians hovered on the periphery of the camp, stroking their rifles and cursing the snail’
s pace of science.
The researchers tore into the bodies in their laboratory, passed organs back and forth, spun black blood in their analysis-looms, and took turns gagging on the stench. Eventually Didi went to a radio and contacted the commander. “These creatures have reproductive organs and uniform appearance.”
“What of it?” said the commander.
“They are not flesh demons, commander.”
“So...”
“We stay, commander.”
“Right. Fine.”
Within an hour, a junior scientist had a genetic analysis ready for Didi’s perusal. He pored over the thing, and his soul grew colder with every passing minute.
“What do you think, sir?” said a young junior scientist.
“It’s a new species,” Didi said hurriedly.
“Then that means you get to name it, right?”
“What?” said Didi, looking up suddenly, his face frozen with terror.
“Well, if it’s a new species, you get to name it. Right? So, what should we call them?”
Didi’s throat constricted painfully. Call them the offspring of Pale Number 27 and Gray Number 9, he thought, horrified. Call them the products of extreme inbreeding, call them examples of streamlined and reinforced weak and strong genes with a quickened maturation and short lifespan that weakens overall social development. Call them my own awful, aborted mistakes. Call them anything, but please, please do not call on me to name these horrible, unnatural freaks!
“You name them,” said Didi.
A gasp went through the crowd of researchers. The young scientist drew himself up, honored and humbled by the great task.
“Might I suggest,” said another researcher, “the name Homo retardens?”
“Why?” said the other, clearly put off by someone else horning in on his opportunity.
“Well, not only are they shaped like mankind, but a name like that also quite cleverly – if I may say so – captures the macabre nature of their difference from us, Homo sapiens, the “wise man” who-”
“No, no, no, absolutely not. We’re not naming them Homo anything, I can tell you that much right now.”
“It was merely a suggestion, which I feel-”
“Ghouls. That’s it.” The young scientist beamed with pride, thinking that his hours of gaming were no longer a complete waste of time. “We’re calling them ghouls. And that’s the end of it!”
* * *
After the hunt proved successful, the Havenders rushed back into their ships just ahead of a horde of attacking flesh demons. They killed and stole the limbs of several demons, although they had many dead and wounded Guardians to show for it. Didi sat in the back of one of the ships with his researchers crouched all around while the dying cried out and their Guardian brothers ran back and forth, comforting them and slipping in blood.
One battered Guardian suddenly left his charges, stomped into the back of the ship, and glared at Didi.
“You,” he said, voice cracking, seething with hatred. “You think this shit was worth it? You think my dead buddy is happy you got some samples you can play with? Are you good an’ goddamned happy about this shit?”
“Everybody. Dies.”
The Guardian blanched as Didi returned his gaze. The other scientists stared at the floor and hunched their heads into their shoulders.
“Do you think,” said Didi, “that we are not at war with those monsters? Do you think that Haven exists so that we can live in some illusion of peace while the entire world slides into extinction? Go back and tend to your wounded, soldier. This war has only just begun.”
Immediately the Guardian turned about. He approached another, and Didi could just barely hear him say, “You hear the shit that little bastard said to me?”
Didi leaned back, unmindful of the eyes of others fluttering about him. They had their samples; they had exchanged blood for blood to get them.
After analysis, Didi learned that the father of one demon was a small desert rat, that the father of another was a flightless bird that was long extinct, and that the father of another was some sort of hard-shelled insect. Of the mother - and they had in common one mother - Didi would learn nothing, save that she existed, or at least had existed at some time. Didi learned that the flesh demons were a half-species who rode piggyback on the procreative potential of other species. They were not even a full species of their own, and yet they somehow ruled the world.
But in the cramped hold of the ship, Didi did not think of the demonic samples and the potential knowledge they would gain from them. He was thinking of the ghouls.
So this is the result of my attempt to create a post-human being, thought Didi. Perhaps I’ll need Childriss’s help again, after all. Perhaps I need Childriss.
When we were in the cave and Childriss was asked for his heart’s desire by the thing that… no, by the program that lived in the cave, he had the strength to ask for what I could not. He was given a living, ancient code so subtle in design that I cannot fathom its ultimate purpose, much less put it to use without the idea of it terrifying me. My own attempts at creating the next step in our path to victory over these monsters have resulted only in the creation of more monsters.
Didi shook his head. He closed his eyes, but saw only small, hideous pale heads covered in scabs and exposed veins. Black nubs of teeth chattering, chattering in silence.
Childriss, you power-hungry dimwit, when I return, I hope you’ll be ready to continue our work.
Chapter Sixteen
Arrows
Zachariah Hargis wandered through the treacherous hills at the foot of the mountains. It was difficult to remember the attack on the mines, the desperate fighting and running, the cries of his comrades as they died all around him. For two nights and one emotionally numb day he had tried to put the details back together. He ended up confusing the attack on the mines with the terrible night when his father’s kingdom was overrun by shrieking flesh demons. He remembered only fires, slipping in blood, and aiming down the sights of a gun that was shaking beyond control.
On the second day after the flight, his mourning was replaced by a detached emptiness and simple awareness of his surroundings. There was mist in the valley below, a sea of clouds. Gray mist hovered about the blue-gray lands far above, throbbing with the hum of a distant rainstorm. The stone was cold, but only cold enough to sharpen his awareness.
Zach wandered through that mist-covered desolation until he saw trees hanging from a slender strip of land perched overhead. He climbed up to it and disturbed a group of squawking birds. He wondered if he was the first creature to ever disturb their lonely oasis. He rested in the grass, then saw a nest, climbed up to it, and plundered its blue eggs.
Sorry, mama bird, he thought, crunching and slurping. Your courting days are not over yet. The birds shrieked overhead. He slowly made his way to another nest and emptied it as well, calmly committing genocide to relieve his discomfort.
That night he slept under a blanket of dirt with a family of cold boulders. The cry of coyotes tumbled down from high in the mountains. At night the sound was terrifying, as if his soul was an instrument to be played by inhuman forces. When he woke in the pale morning, the idea that the coyotes could find him and put him out of his misery was comforting.
The next day he found another cluster of trees with sharp-petaled blue flowers covering every inch of ground at their base. He spied a giant hive near the top of one tree. Purple and gray bees hovered in a constant train from hive to flowers. He was weak with hunger and he knew that their honey could keep him going, and wondered if it would be possible to build a fire out of green limbs to drive away the bees.
No good, he thought. A person would have to be an idiot to build a fire this close to a war-zone.
He moved on and came to a mountain stream that broke off into a deep, slowly circling pool. He drank until his stomach hurt, then was surprised to see that the pool was inhabited by fish, great fat things with shining red scales that stared intentl
y at clouds of small, nearly-transparent fish. He had never fished before, but immediately sought out a grove of trees. He spent an hour whittling a springy branch into a short, bent spear.
He rolled up his pants and crawled into the icy water. The fish disappeared. He waded into the middle and stood for a long time. He stuck the spear into the water over and over and studied the strange reflective qualities of the water, how it distorted the spear (and thus, the target) by some law of its own. By the time he was used to the distortion, the fish returned and hovered about his nonthreatening frozen legs.
Hours passed and the sun was crawling behind the mountains by the time he caught a fish. He never speared it through, as he meant to, only jammed the point along its scales where it caught on some splinter. Desperate to keep the thing, he threw both fish and spear onto dry ground before either could get away. He scurried after the flopping giant with legs frozen stiff, then slapped the fish against the ground until it lay still. He jammed the spear into its belly and ignored its continued protestations. Still flopping in his hands, the steaming entrails plopped down in one mass.
While he ate the fish raw, he studied the shining scales and realized that they looked almost exactly like a vein of pale, red crystals that someone in the mines had pointed out to him. One law, many manifestations. He stuffed the glittering hide into his pocket and, spear in hand, moved on.
That night he found a grove of trees and laid down to rest, but was troubled and laid awake for a long time. His worry must have been a beacon, for he spent much of the night wrestling with an insect that was obsessed with his nose and mouth. Any time he slept, he dreamed of the creature laying eggs inside his face.
The next day the sun was out, humming its single note in a pale sky, and he could see the vast field of green in the valley far below. He stayed in the foothills. He decided to remain in the foothills until he came to the river, for he had no idea what kind of monstrous force was lying in wait just beneath the surface of the calm, green forest canopy.
Demonworld Book 5: Lords of the Black Valley (Demonworld series) Page 25