Wine of the Gods 1: Outcasts and Gods

by Pam Uphoff

  He closed his eyes and looked carefully with his inner sight. The rest of the squad was over there, pinned down. The Qs were potting away at them, much lead, little accuracy, and one of them was running forward . . . He rolled through the window and fired three times. The man with the grenade collapsed. His compatriots stared in horror and dived, some away, one fool toward it, with the idea of grabbing and throwing it. Two didn't see what was happening and kept shooting.

  The grenade exploded with a flat crack and crackle of frags hitting various surfaces at various distances. The Q with the Bright Idea died reaching for the grenade, the two gunmen were too far away to be hurt, but turned to see what had happened. Wolf threw up his shield again, angled up, as the gunmen spotted him. One collapsed as Wolf's squad mates started shooting back. The other ran out of bullets and Wolf dropped the shield to shoot him, then threw himself into the next house, half demolished and providing more conventional cover. He closed his eyes to check on Qs, fired alternately at two that were in a position to hit his team mates as they dodged through the intact house and joined him behind the half wall.

  Sergeant Hays came last. "All right, we not only need to be up on that hill, we need to be reasonably sure no one will fire on the scoop. Dewulf, you seem to think getting shot at is fun, so go deal with the two that dodged over there. Lopez, Thorne, stay with him this time. Dewulf, don't outrun your covering fire. We'll see if the other two will let us sit here and pick them off. Fifteen minutes to ETA."

  Wolf ran crouched over to trot in pursuit, pausing briefly to check on the Qs' positions. The two they were after had stopped running and were circling back, trying to flank the demolished house. His head was aching; he was getting close to his limit. He took a good look at the surrounding ruins, and decided the Qs couldn't see the demolished house yet. He trotted quietly to the corner, Lopez and Thorne on his heels. He had two years less time in the field than either of them, but they'd learned to trust his 'instincts' two hairy missions ago. His inner sight told him the Qs were slinking down the street, and he let them get close, then stepped out and shot a quick burst into the first one, swung and got off a burst at the second. The first went down solidly, the second had enough warning to throw himself behind a heap of bricks, but one slug clipped him, and Wolf dashed forward toward his position, throwing himself down as the Q rolled up fighting, even as he screamed in pain. A burst of fire from Thorne and Lopez took him out.

  He surveyed the area. One left. Over there, where he had a great angle on the squad, and also the evac hill. Definitely a headache.

  "Let's circle a bit, see if we can show the Sergeant how it's done." He headed up the street with the others on his heels. Checked at the corner, the last Q had no line of sight on them, so they trotted across. The next street, the Q would be able the shoot them as they crossed, which meant they could shoot back.

  He snatched a look. "A block away, a big building came mostly down. The last Q is up there, but not looking our way. I'll fire from here, you two cross behind me. Feel free to shoot as you cross, but don't stop to aim. Ready? Go."

  Wolf stepped out and fired at where he knew the man was . . . behind concrete. "Damn!"

  He concentrated his fire, chipping away at the concrete, it wasn't magic after all, and the 800s had good penetration. A waste of effort, in his opinion, to carry the outdated European weaponry. No one would have any doubt who blew the dam.

  Behind the disintegrating concrete, the man panicked and ran. Gunfire from the right brought him down. Wolfgang listened carefully, looked with his inner vision. No one here but us Good Guys.

  "All right, let's check carefully, but I think we've got them all." He angled a shield that way, squinting against the pain, but cautious yells enabled them to get back together with the Sergeant without getting shot.

  The Scoop swooped down on vertical blades, they loaded quickly, and it lifted instantly. At two hundred feet the jets fired and shoved them back into their seats as the blades folded and the stubby wings took over the lifting.

  Wolf took a quick look below. A shining fan of water was rushing down stream.

  He winced. Blowing up a dam was a very indiscriminate way for them to hurt the Qs. But with eight camps along the river, this would be a death-less (for the NorAms) method of removing the river camps.

  The Scoop headed straight north on a nearly ballistic course and Wolf closed his eyes and slept.

  It was only three hours to home sweet home, barracks in Ft. Bliss. Chilly desert winter, instead of a tropical summer.

  Wolf showered, shaved and hit the mess hall.

  His head was fine. He was getting stronger every time he stretched himself.

  "So, Wolf. You still bullet proof?"

  "The trick Hennessy, is to never, ever let a good marksman shoot at you." Wolf set his meal—it was sufficiently generic to not deserve a more specific name—down across from the sniper and sat. "You should try it sometime."

  "I prefer to not get shot at, at all." Hennessy grumped.

  Wolf grinned across the table. "Don't tell me you did it again. I'm quite sure there was something I've heard about how snipers are slid into position and then exfiltrated with the greatest of care."

  "In some situations. Unfortunately I don't seem to be finding these situations. My targets keep being too deep into complicated areas."

  "Well, there's your problem. You gotta start with better target selection, then you'll have these little stroll in the park easy missions like I get, see?" Wolf poked at the dubious contents of his tray, and started eating. It was, after all, sure to have thirty-four percent of a human being's daily recommended allowances of several hundred vitamins and minerals, and the proper calorie load for his activity level.

  "Riiiight. And rumors about having to fight your way to the LZ and clear it are just rumors?"

  "Of course. See? We're all here, so how could we have had anything other than a walk in the park, right guys?"

  "It was nothing, compared to the danger inherent in this . . . did they call it tofu loaf?" Lopez wrinkled his nose. "I have to lie to my Mama, you know, tell her the food is great, so she's happy."

  Thorne looked at him in disbelief. "You're kidding, right? I tell my Mom the food is probably healthy, but it tastes like plastic and how much I miss her cooking. That is how you keep a mother happy."

  "No," Lopez examined a forkful carefully. "That is how you get your Mama to send you cookies nearly every week. If you had ever tasted my Mama's cooking you would realize how disastrous your methods could be. Although if she'd buy the cookies it would probably be okay."

  Wolf scratched his jaw thoughtfully. "Are you telling me that some mothers cook worse than the Army? I mean, I cook better than the Army."

  "It's this healthy craze. Tofu and beans and vegetables and shit." Lopez shook his head sadly. "My Mama bought into it altogether. The Army, on the other hand, just follows the regs, so they can put as much artificial flavor in as the regs allow, and that is the secret to cooking with plastic."

  Wolf eyed his next bite. "I read about some genetic engineering of yeast. That they can make them make anything. Do you suppose it'll be better or worse that this?"

  They all looked at the tofu loaf.

  "They couldn't make it worse, could they?" Lopez sounded resigned.

  Throne smiled. "We're all getting two weeks leave. I am going to eat right every single glorious day of it."

  "Me too." Wolf nodded. "I have it all planned out. I'm starting in San Francisco and eating and wine tasting my way north."

  Hennessy looked over in surprise. "No family?"

  Wolf shook his head. "Aunt, uncle, cousin. My parents are dead." He shrugged. "I call Uncle Henry every once in a while, let him know I'm still alive and that'll pretty much take care of my obligations."

  "Man, I got three sisters and they'll be trying to set me up with dates and so will Mom and all of her sisters." Thorne shook his head. "It'll be a zoo. Women everywhere."

  Lopez looked wistf
ul. "My Mama decided it would be politically correct if I was Gay. You don't even want to know what happened the first time she set me up on a date."

  Wolf choked on his fortified water. "Politically correct! Forget reality?"

  "Definitely. So I'll be setting up my own dates." Lopez sighed. "And checking out how they cook."

  "That was a double entendre, Wolf. See how it works?" Hennessy wagged his fork at him

  "I still think people should say what they mean. Although they should also avoid give a sweet innocent fellow like myself too big of a shock." Wolf looked down at his empty tray. "Although I must say I appreciate the ability of your conversation to distract me from what was coming in my mouth." He got up and walked off.

  "Wait a minute, did Wolf just say what I think he said?"

  "Yeah, but did he intend to say it?"

  "It's scary to think that we might have finally succeeded in ruining the Nice Boy."

  The best thing about leave was the time he could use to experiment with magic.

  Well, the best thing except for women. And some beautiful scenery, improved by women. And red wines, shared with women.

  Unfortunately the women were mostly accompanied by boyfriends and husbands. But there were enough single women around that would pursue a tall fellow who had money to spend that he didn't feel left out for long.

  As usual, his hair obliged by growing quickly when he concentrated, growing an inch while driving across the desert to SoCal, and then north toward wine country. He woke up Friday morning in an inexpensive motel, and checked his hair carefully. Still a bit shorter than the current fashion, but it didn't look military at all. His pride and joy, a sleek sports car, electric with a methanol burning booster engine, had collected dew, and thus dirt over night. But he could feel the interface between paint and everything else; he gave it a few swipes for show as he concentrated on the dirt flying off, it came clean and gleamed in the early morning sun. He drove down to a chain breakfast place, and loaded up. Another good thing about vacation. Good food. As much as you wanted to pay for.

  He'd done enough wine drinking to know which large wineries he wanted to visit. But the best time would be had discovering the little ones. The big wineries had tours, with canned speeches by people who didn't make the wine themselves. The little wineries, you generally wound up chatting with the vintner himself, and or family.

  But the big wineries were where one picked up chicks. Young women looking for a fun weekend of free wine and good company, usually sex. The families touring during the Christmas vacation were gone, the kids back in school. The off-season smaller crowds tended to be local, with a high percentage of singles. Wolf left the second winery on his list with a pair, looking for a fun weekend, no strings attached. Wolf aimed to please, and regretfully dropped them off at the northern-most muni-rail stop late Sunday.

  By Monday afternoon he was winding down the Russian River to the coast. The road wound with the river through rough hills covered with redwoods. They were the smaller coastal variety, not the giant sequoias but they were still impressive trees. In a tiny town whose name hadn't registered, he spotted a wine tasting sign and turned off onto a short gravel road to a long low modern building all of redwood, blending into the trees. Through a gap in the trees he spotted the rows of winter bare grape vines up the sunny slope.

  "I grow all my own grapes." The little old man sitting on the porch said. "Best merlot in California. Or at any rate I won a ribbon at the state fair once. C'mon in."

  The winery smelled of fruit and alcohol, and it was indeed an excellent merlot, which led to a discussion of wine making and grapes, and where to get the best, and the purchase of three newly grafted plants in pots, as well as a dozen bottles of the finished product. At Charlie's invite, Wolf slept on his porch and shared his breakfast before hitting the road again. The vines went into a bubble, for safekeeping, along with so much else.

  The bubbles were very handy. He'd finally decided they must be something to do with all the extra dimensions the physicists talked about. They didn't seem to have mass, inertia, momentum . . . maybe because they didn't actually move, not being present in 3-D space. He usually couldn't even see them, but if he looked carefully, the insubstantial things were everywhere. He could grab one, tear a hole in it and keep things in it. He could attach the bubbles to things, and close them up—and the interior experienced about a hundredth of a percent of the amount of time the outside experienced. Turned inside out it was an attractive bronze color with the same ten thousand-to-one time dilation inside. It was softer and much more flexible than the metal it resembled, and he really hadn't thought of much use for it. He cruised north, camped in a state park and practiced remote detection while working his way through a kata on the wind blown beach at dawn. Once done with the kata, he dug to see if he'd correctly identified buried rocks, shells, iron scrap, a crushed aluminum can, and the mixed alloys in five different coins. He left the rocks and shells, pocketed the coins and levitated the trash to the garbage can twenty feet away. Another kata, this time opening his mind to the wind and water, letting them wash through his mind until he could grasp them and twist them. Earth, wind, water, and then fire. The early dawn light was slippery to his mental fingers. He couldn't pull any power from it, could barely manipulate it. Now, at his most open and relaxed, he could hear a constant background noise jiggling through the air, and he narrowed down his listening. For a moment he caught words, his mind slipped and he narrowed again. Music, fading and then leaping out. That ghastly anti-punchu people his age were supposed to love. It slipped from his grasp. Interesting. Radio? TV? How was he decoding it? If he practiced enough could he catch a single radio or TV channel? Could he broadcast? There were too many other people camping nearby, and starting to wake, for him to do anything more. He lit a fire the old fashioned way, behind a wind break of sand. He warmed his fingers and toes and cooked a heavy breakfast. It was time to head home.

  He bought a postcard in Bodega Bay, addressed it to his parents and signed it Perry Took. He detoured to drop it in a mailbox near the East Bay Airport, then drove back to El Paso.

  ***

  " . . . manipulate the magnetic fields generated by the rings."

  Rebeccah pulled her attention away from the mesmerizing fountains of light erupting from the . . . whatever they'd called it. Two super cooled rings, side-by-side, inches apart and rotating in different directions. At speed, with an electrical current running through them (how? From where, to where? Around and around?) About three feet in diameter, they spat out flares and arches of light.

  A man from corporate headquarters, chairman of the company, Chow or Chou or something was talking. No one had bothered to introduce him to the telies, nor give the telies more than a passing brief on who he was. Whoever he was, he was pontificating to some of the local scientists.

  "But what makes you think they can affect it?"

  "The Russians." Chow curled a sarcastic lip. "They are too regimented, one department does not speak to the others. On one hand we had reports of their failures at dimensional phenomenon, and why. And from a different project, a report that the Russian super soldiers could do exactly what was needed by the first project. So nice of them to do all the basic research for us, eh?"

  "But . . ."

  "All it takes is the right amount of money, applied at the right spot. Much cheaper than repeating it all ourselves. My grandfather, of course, had experiments of his own. He started work toward maximizing this effect, and now, finally, we'll see if he is correct." Chow moved on, a few of the scientists dropping out of the group as it shifted toward the observation rooms.

  Ha! It isn’t even an original idea. Is that why all the secrecy? Because they can’t patent it without the Russians realizing they’ve been robbed? Or do they not want anyone to know how critical we are to the process?

  AK waved to catch Doctor Brent's attention. "What's with the lights?"

  "Lights?"

  "Yeah, mostly blue, and there, its
getting greenish, and a flash of red. That's not just decoration, is it?"

  Brent frowned, and leaned through a loop of pastel blue to frown at the rings. "I think that must just be colors reflecting off the white ring surface."

  The corner of AK's mouth tucked in as she tried to not smile. :: I told you they couldn't see it. ::

  :: And you were correct. :: Rebeccah reached a hand, and managed to stop herself from scratching the electrodes glued to her scalp. She turned to the computer, and used it to adjust the positions of the little permanent magnets outside the rings. She could make the light loops spin and dance. Sent one shooting out straight for Harry's chest. The creep flinched back and she snickered. Mercy glared at her, then turned her attention back to her computer.

  Rebeccah closed her eyes and played with the pretty lights she could see even with her eyes shut. There was another one down there. Far away, probably the basement. Other side of the building. It was like a loop, too, but with a big fat swollen base. Pregnant snake eating its tail. The swollen belly was unstable and she reached out mentally and supported it. Firmed it up. What was inside? Tiny atoms, hydrogen. High pressure. She squeezed the bulge slightly and laughed to see all the electrons squirting out and running around the loop. She brought up a memory of a song and squeezed in rhythm to it, building up the power with reinforcing waves. She heard the alarms dimly, felt herself being shaken and opened her eyes, half her attention still on the pregnant snake.