Wine of the Gods 1: Outcasts and Gods

by Pam Uphoff

  The woman who had traveled with them handed him a pad. He mated it with his own and transferred data.

  "Excellent. Just four missing." He looked down the aisle, where all the kids were stirring now. "Okay, we're here. We'll get you your rooms and the tour of the facilities will start with breakfast at nine."

  The confused, and in Rebeccah's opinion, still drugged, children filed off the bus and were parceled out to people who took them into the building in front of them.

  "Mercy and Rebeccah?" The one woman meeting the bus smiled as she led them through several sets of doors. "I'm Mary Coventry. I'm the house mother for this building. Let's find you two some rooms in the girl's wing. Mercy, room twenty-two right here, and Rebeccah, down here in room eighteen. They're all the same, until you personalize them."

  "We won't be here long enough to personalize them." Mercy didn't suffer from any shyness. "I don't even have any clean clothes along because no one told me this was an overnighter, and you'd better let me use a phone, or my parents are going to be really upset."

  "Dear, you don't have any parents. The people who were hired to raise you have no actual legal standing."

  "What!" Mercy straightened, eyes snapping. "I can't believe you said that. My dad is going to sue your ass off."

  "He can try. But the Company is your legal guardian, and always has been. Now, bed."

  Mercy was manhandled into her room, and the door closed. There was an electronic click as it closed. And despite the loud rattle, it didn't open again.

  Rebeccah walked stiffly down the hallway to room eighteen. It was third from the end.

  Forty kids per wing, two floors equals a hundred and sixty kids. And there are at least four other buildings. So eight hundred kids? That must be most of the unattached test kids in North America. And North America is much more accepting of genetic engineering . . . Is NewGene pulling in all the gods and goddesses ever created? Well, all the young ones. The ones already emancipated are untouchable. Why are they gathering us all up? She looked around the bare room. The window opened, but had a pretty metal grill over it. Decorative, but strong, and solidly affixed to the concrete exterior. One door was a closet, the other a private bath.

  She didn't even have her note pad to help organize her thoughts. She pulled off her clothes off and showered to clear her mind.

  One. Collect data. Find out what they want.

  Two. Emancipation is your first and foremost goal. Even running away won't help. The foster parent contracts must have allowances for repossession or they wouldn't dare pull this on so many kids.

  Three. Find allies. Stop cringing at the thought. Stop being so shy! All of us need to stick together. Work for the same goal.

  Four. When is it time to run like hell? Should I wait until I'm eighteen? No matter what?

  Five. Monetary resources. Presently zero. Think about that. They are playing dirty . . .

  Which brings up six. What opportunities will I have to hurt these miserable pigs?

  There was neither soap, nor shampoo. A hunt through cupboards produced no towels. She let herself drip while she hand-washed her undies, and laid her blouse and slacks out so they wouldn't wrinkle worse than they already were. Back in the bedroom she opened the window to get a bit of a breeze through. Good thing it's nearly summer.

  Shivering a bit she crawled into bed to warm up. Sleep was nowhere to be found.

  ***

  Wolfgang had played too many war games, listened to his dad and his fellow retired Army buddies tell stories, and read too much to not realize he was in deep trouble. He'd shifted stuff around surreptitiously as soon as he realized things had gone bad. Pocket knife down the side of his shoe. Three-fourths of his money and cards out of his wallet and down his other sock. Leave the driver's license. ID can be used against you. Leave enough money and cards to look good.

  But they hadn't been searched. So he split up his meager hoard between three hides in the room and the remainder he'd keep on his person.

  What he most needed was an eight millimeter wrench, to remove the grill from his window. It obviously bolted into anchors set in the concrete. But he had also better scout out the grounds, the lights, think about the best way to get over that fence.

  Figure out what to do after that. Because the legalities must be murky enough that the company was confident they could kidnap the twenty-seven kids that had been on the bus and not get any grief over it.

  News. He needed to find out how to monitor the news. He stretched out on the bed fully dressed. He'd find out what the company line was in the morning. Right now he was going to sleep. One. Two. Three.

  He twitched to instant alertness at the first beep of the intercom.

  "Good morning students. You will find your new school uniforms and toiletries outside your door. Breakfast will be in half an hour. Don't miss it." The voice was female. Cheerful.

  An electronic click sounded and he pulled his door open, and looked up and down the hall. Everyone else was looking around too. The rooms that had had closed doors last night were opening too. The room across from him was one of them.

  "Are you from Milwaukee?" he eyed the cautiously cracked door.

  It swung open. "Born there. Now I live in Texas. I flew up to Milwaukee yesterday morning, wound up drugged and bused here. You?"

  "I live in Milwaukee. I had an appointment at six in the afternoon at Healthy Kids, and wound up drugged and bused."

  "My appointment was nine in the morning. I took the Red-eye, and dragged in at three in the morning." The boy, the young man, was brown haired with bright blue eyes, tall and handsome.

  "There were twenty-seven kids on my bus, and I heard one of them say there were only four missing. How old are you?" Wolfgang felt suddenly small and scrawny. He'd just started a growth spurt, but he knew he looked like a growing teenage boy, not a man.

  "Six weeks shy of eighteen. I suppose they got those of us out of school early in the day, and the rest of you later. I'm Jason."

  "Wolfgang." He looked at the pile at his feet. "I guess we'd better get ready for a really interesting day."

  ***

  Rebeccah was really glad for the hairbrush. The uniform was bad. Artificial fibers that wouldn't wrinkle, fade or stain, the cut was one size will fit one-third of all kids so it was loose and short on her, and Mercy had her cuffs turned up to keep them from dragging when she finally showed up. Rebeccah hoped the bright yellow didn't make her look as awful as the other girls. Mercy's darker complexion was the only one that could handle it. Rebeccah sighed wistfully. Even in different clothes she'd never match Mercy's India-genotype exotic beauty.

  Rebeccah had found the door from the hallway to the entry hall locked, and when it finally buzzed, Miss Coventry was there to count heads and inspect the twelve girls.

  "I'll get you a sewing kit to put up the hems properly." She turned away from Mercy and eyed Rebeccah. "I hadn't thought you were that tall, the way you hunch and cringe."

  Her remarks to the other girls were similarly disparaging. Even the gorgeous blonde girl was exhorted to fasten her shirt all the way up so she didn't look like a slut.

  Having cheered them all up, she led them out and between two other buildings to something that looked rather like a school cafeteria. "Yellow group will sit in that corner," she pointed. "Now go through the serving line quickly, we have a lot of ground to cover today."

  They didn't have any choice in what they got to eat and the drink choice limited to milk or fruit juice.

  "It's just like kindergarten," the boy ahead of her muttered. "At least there's enough of it." The tall guy ahead of him laughed.

  Rebeccah had to agree. Her dad always joked about how much she could eat. Her mother just sighed and ate salads.

  They trooped out to the tables, where, yep, just like kindergarten, they just filled up the seats as they got to them, no choice of neighbors.

  "Umm, umm, all this and no spices." The boy shoveled it in anyway. "I'm Wolfgang."

&nbs
p; He'd caught her with her mouth full.

  Mercy leaned forward to look him over. "I'm Mercy Green. This is Rebeccah Abrams."

  Rebeccah nodded and swallowed.

  The tall boy on Wolfgang's far side was Jason, and across the table, Harriet, Jack, Kevin and Robert.

  "So, any of you get so much as a chance to say goodbye to your parents?" Wolfgang asked. Heads shook all around. "Right. Anyone have any ideas about what they think they're going to do to us?"

  There were lots of ideas, most of them gruesome and medically unlikely. The reproductive ones were also sick-making, and hopefully just as unlikely.

  Rebeccah suddenly noticed the stares of the boys from the other color groups. They were tastelessly displayed in red, blue and green. But only about half as many as I expected. Are there more of us still being collected?

  They were staring at the girls. At her. "There aren't any girls in the other groups." Her voice was all squeaky and nervous.

  Wolfgang looked the other groups over, and nodded. "I wonder where they're from?"

  Another group of young men and women entered then. They were dressed in normal clothes. They looked older than their group.

  "Staff, do you think?" Mercy looked the group over carefully. "They must live here, but surely they get weekends off and go to town. Maybe they'd take messages, let our parents know what's going on."

  A man in his late twenties, sub-saharan phenotype, walked up and looked them all over. "If you will hurry and finish, we'll get this show started. I expect you have a lot of questions, and I think our presentation will answer most of them."

  ***

  "I'm Harry Murchison, training manager here at NewGene. Let's start with a brief history of genetic engineering."

  Wolfgang studied the man. Tall, black, good looking. An aura of importance. No, that wasn't quite it. There was no arrogance or ego. He just drew the eyes and held ones attention. Wolfgang closed his eyes and could see the man glowing. Much brighter than most people. As bright as all the other kids sitting around him. One of the earliest of us "gods?"

  "Genetic engineering started when mankind began selective breeding sometime in pre-history. But what we, today, call genetic engineering is direct, hands-on alteration of the DNA of the chromosomes." The plain wall behind the man lit up with a display of stick figure chromosomes.

  "The early experiments started in the late twentieth century, very close to a hundred years ago. And early on, politics and religion jumped into what should have been a scientific endeavor." Pictures of a march with anti-engineering signs showing.

  "But the budding industry survived restrictions on stem cell research, to cure some of mankind's most persistent genetic diseases. And then we went beyond, maximizing the potential of babies by selecting the best available alleles to be found in nature." A collection of beautiful children.

  "And soon we were improving on Mother Nature." Another collection, these were noticeably handsome and tall.

  "And we noticed something odd."

  "ESP, Extra Sensory Perception, has been tested numerous times, but never before had the results lifted beyond the range of error in the tests. But now, our children, the genetically engineered children, were doing it. Some better than others, and the differences were tracked down, copied and then improved."

  Oh goody. Chromosomes with flashing lights, now.

  "The first of what they called the Power Augmentation genes, completely artificial DNA complexes, was placed on the Y chromosome to prevent its interfering with other genes. And because the group paying for its development didn't want to do something that might interfere with pregnancy. This was twisted by the sensation-chasing media as a deliberate ploy to subjugate women."

  "Oh, nice spin. NewGene must have been involved." Wolfgang barely breathed the comment. The surrounding snickers were louder.

  "Women's groups responded with a similar complex on the X chromosome, adding a nasty twist, a gene that changed the surface of the ova so that it rejected the Y bearing sperm. This would insure a massive imbalance in the gender ratio of those women's children."

  A picture of lots of little girls, and two boys, lost and lonely among them.

  "Add ten years and those boys'll think they're in heaven." Jason whispered.

  That got more snickers.

  "Of course, a bit of testing turned up a way to block those genes for the few critical weeks until they shut down themselves. This was sufficient for the creation of children with both the Power Y and the Power X. Boys of course. In order to get a duplicate of the power genes, XXY babies were also created, with hormonal additions so the babies born were definitely female. But apart from the fanfare and further experimentation, very few of these children were created until the first bunch reached puberty twenty years ago and their abilities suddenly blossomed."

  Earnest children working with headgear and screens.

  "Then for five years it seemed like every lab in North America turned out these unfortunately nicknamed 'gods' and 'goddesses' as fast as they could. Since development of the vat was still in its infancy, that wasn't actually very fast, as there are and were considerable restrictions on surrogate pregnancies and cross species gestation. With the commercialization of the vat, the numbers of these special children rose quickly. Then negative publicity caused by yet another backlash of the Religious Conservatives and their outrage made these types of genes unpopular, and they were rarely requested, even singly, by parents. Most companies stopped producing the double power gene kids, for testing, about that same time. Just now, there's a bill in Congress making the use of any of the power genes in human genetic engineering illegal, so you who are here will most likely be the only double gene people, ever."

  Wolfgang frowned. What about our kids, though? Don't any of these older gods have any?

  "The first of this surge of special children are just now approaching nineteen, most of you are fourteen to sixteen. In North America, less than five hundred of you were created. Europe was late to human genengineering, and banned it earlier, perhaps a hundred test children were born there. Russia and China haven't admitted to any at all. A few other nations may have dabbled a bit, but the US remains the leader in human genetic engineering.

  "NewGene has bought up all the private companies involved. All of you are here for training in the special skills you were engineered to possess." He waved expansively. "Not just the video game mastery you've heard about, but control of robotics and even subconscious computing. Come, we'll tour the labs, and you can see what we—what you—are capable of doing."

  Wolfgang blinked. Training? I really need to learn about that fire I can gather. And video game mastery, yeah, that sounds better.

  So, why kidnap us? We'd have mostly volunteered for a summer camp.

  What else do they have in mind?

  All of us? What good is a monopoly? What do they know that they are not telling us?

  He stayed in the middle of the group, trying to look unobtrusive. He grinned briefly. His clothes certainly blended in.

  He eyed the group, estimated their size quickly. Just over a hundred. A dozen girls. Obviously most of the labs hadn't wanted to bother with what it took to make the goddesses. There'd been triple their number of other people in the cafeteria. There hadn't been any girls at all in the other three color groups. Eight in the normally dressed crowd of adults.

  Twenty women, four hundred plus guys. If these guys tried for social activities like dances, it was going to be a flop. The group was broken up into smaller pieces and parceled out to several different people. Wolfgang maneuvered himself into the entourage of a fantastically beautiful woman. He could see that she was trying to minimize her attractiveness, and wondered about the behavior of the rest of the staff.

  "I'm Doctor Gisele Heath. I'm the head of the genetic research laboratory, which is over here. We maintain a sealed environment worthy of a bioweapons plant, not to keep things in, but rather to prevent any accidental contamination of our work . . . " />
  Wolfgang ignored most of it. It wasn't much different than everything he'd heard before at Healthy Kids.

  ". . . two hundred and twelve gene complexes have been improved, by various companies and Universities. Modified to prevent diseases, and to enhance the human potential. Now some, such as the controlling genes for the manufacture of pigments, have multiple alleles. So, as you can see just looking at the ten of you, you can have better blonde or red hair. Or purple, for that matter, although I dislike that trend, as it hard for a young woman to be taken seriously as a lawyer or a doctor when she's got purple or blue hair."

  Wolfgang snickered with the rest. Personally he rather thought that she was over-reacting, possibly due to her own problems with her extremely good looks.

  She escorted them out and over to the school. "Like Healthy Kids, NewGene cut back their test program after the gods became unpopular. They, we, rather; I joined the team just two months ago, have only eighteen test kids under the age of fourteen, and they don't have the double power genes. None of the NewGene children lived with families. They all grew up here, and so they're familiar with our school. Our private school is now concentrated on college prep and the specialty training that you are here for specifically. All of the NewGene test kids are ahead of you in the special training. You, and scattered children from the smaller laboratories around the world will have your work cut out for you, if you are going to beat the NewGene teams in our big contest in August."

  "August!" The lone girl in their group protested. "You can't keep us here for months."

  Dr. Heath bit her bottom lip. "I do not approve of how NewGene is going about this. However, they believe that they have the legal right to take you from your foster homes. I expect it will wind up in court."

  "What is NewGene's policy on emancipation?" Jason asked. "I'll be eighteen in six weeks."

  "I will have to check on that. I know there are older children here, but they are attending University, at NewGene's expense. They may be delaying emancipation for tax or tuition advantages."