Lesser Gods

by Duncan Long

  I backed away as the creature lumbered around for another attack. Glancing down, I saw that his claws had penetrated my armor, ripping my clothing underneath and grazing my skin with jagged scratches that already throbbed and bled profusely, despite their superficiality.

  But all was not lost. With a smidgen of hope welling up inside me, I noted that my sword had struck him after all, and had left a gash in the creature’s arm — and an even uglier look on its face.

  “Well, done,” the dragon’s voice boomed.

  “Purely accidental,” I protested quite truthfully. “No hard feelings, I hope.”

  He circled around and I realized he was trying to back me toward the edge of the cliff, thereby limiting my ability to maneuver.

  To counter this, I ran forward, yelling and swinging my sword as if to initiate an attack, then swerved to the side at the last moment as his huge paw smashed downward, rattling the earth where I would have been had I continued forward.

  Almost beside him now, I dived under his spread hind legs and slashed at his belly with my sword as I passed, releasing a torrent of green blood.

  He roared in pain. “You’ll pay for that!”

  I cringed at the thought that I most likely would, and pay dearly at that.

  He turned to face me and I jumped aside in time to avoid being bowled over by a scaled tail, which flashed past, almost taking me by surprise. But I miscalculated my landing, managing to clear the tail but stumbling and losing my footing, falling in a jumble of man and armor.

  I struggled to rise, then saw him striking like a giant snake; thinking better of standing, I rolled out of the way as his jaws snapped shut just inches from my head. I continued rolling like a barrel of tin cans, finally stopping on my knees and hands to rise as quickly as I could and then retreat from the creature.

  It was then that I realized I’d left my sword lying where I’d fallen. I stood empty handed.

  Huntington produced a ten-foot wide, toothy grin. “Hand-to-hand combat is it?” he asked. “Humankind is so poorly matched to tooth and claw. Brains don’t do a lot of good in a situation like this, do they?”

  I backed toward the brush, thinking a quick retreat was my only chance to avoid certain death. Then I saw a flicker of movement behind Huntington as he stepped over my sword.

  Alice!

  At first I thought she was escaping and I didn’t think any less of her for it. Better one escape than both perish. Then I saw she was not rushing away but rather dashing toward the creature, trying to reach the sword I’d dropped.

  “Huntington,” I said, trying to keep him distracted so he wouldn’t notice Alice’s approach behind him. “Couldn’t we just call it quits without any more trouble?” I backed away at an angle now, forcing him to keep his good eye toward me, less likely to observe Alice.

  He turned cautiously, apparently suspecting a trick.

  “Don’t you see how playing a SupeR-Gs like this is a terrible waste of time?” I asked, half turning as if to run.

  The monster laughed with a rumble that made the hair at the back of my neck stand on end. “Where else can you smash people freely with a stomp of your foot? And where else can you enjoy the taste of human flesh?”

  Great, now I was the main course.

  He took another step toward me. “Quickly or slowly?”

  I didn’t need to ask what he meant by that. Had I known I really had a choice, I would have opted for a quick death. But I also knew my answer would make no difference since he was only playing with me, enjoying my suffering. On the other hand, talking would enable me to stall, perhaps long enough for Alice to mount her attack — or buy time for the jet to wear off. “What are my choices maybe you could elaborate?”

  Huntington didn’t answer.

  Instead, he struck. His jaws snapped off my left arm, just above the elbow. At the same moment, Alice raced forward toward the sword.

  I staggered back, pain clouding my vision as I saw Alice hit the creature’s under-belly with a two-handed swing, leaving a jagged cut that gushed green blood to coat her, head to foot, in the sticky, foul-smelling liquid.

  Huntington roared in pain, spitting out my arm as I tumbled to the ground. He whirled around and chased after Alice who sprinted toward the edge of the cliff.

  I fought to remain conscious, watching in horror as Alice stopped at the edge, turned to face the monster, and then tossed the sword toward me. It twirled in a rainbow arch through the air, landing on its point in the hard soil next to me.

  “Good luck, sweet knight,” Alice called. Then, with a determined smile, she turned and leaped over the edge.

  With a sick feeling in my stomach, I pulled the sword from the earth and stood to face Huntington as he wheeled back toward me.

  “My,” he snarled, “such feats of bravery, today. You two have been a notch above the standard fare.”

  The sword seemed very heavy in my hand and I fought to keep from fainting as blood continued to spurt from the stump of my arm. All that kept me going was my anger at the death of Alice. I lifted the sword as Huntington cautiously circled, watching me intently, looking for an opening that would permit him to attack without being wounded again.

  He jumped forward just as I stumbled to the side. He crashed into the earth with a mighty belly flop and for an instant his head was lying on the ground right beside me, as he scooped up a mouth of sand instead of me. In that moment I brought down the sword with all the strength I could muster. The shining, razor-sharp blade struck with a wet “thunk.”

  The monster shuddered, lifting his head as blood gushed from a jugular vein. He pawed at the wound, leaving himself exposed to another slash.

  I threw my body behind the blade, ripping through the other side of his neck. This time the magical blade almost pulled me along behind it as it slashed through a massive expanse of reptilian flesh.

  And abruptly, his head and body were two entities rather than one.

  The head rolled away as I staggered back, the monster’s jaws snapping in its death throes even as the body thrashed about, tail whipping through the air with a loud cracking sound. This went on for nearly a minute, and then the creature lay still.

  But not for long. Because then the carcass did the impossible.

  It stood upright and staggered forward, step by step, its front legs groping along the ground, searching for its head. The claws finally found the head, lifted it from the ground, and placed it atop the bloody neck that gurgled blood like a volcano.

  Flesh rejoined and the creature stood up straight. “There, that’s better,” Huntington said, turning toward me with an evil, toothy grin on his reptilian mouth.

  My head seemed to spin and all the color drained from the dragon. At first I thought I was about to pass out. Then, with exhausted relief, I realized the jet was wearing off and I was about to leave the SupeR-G. I drew the sword back and then heaved it toward the monster, hoping for one last lucky break. The blade seemed to guide itself, plunging deep into the creature’s heart, just as I blacked out.

  Chapter 10

  Jacque Thuriot de La Tribunat

  I opened the hatch to the Emperor’s apartment and stepped in, half bouncing in the light gravity that I was still unaccustomed to. I laid my helmet in its rack by the door and then carefully removed my suit and boots and stored them before entering the bedroom to strip off my uniform. Finally I arrived at my goal: The misting stall for a quick shower.

  Or what passes as a shower here on the Moon, I thought. Bathing with as much hot water as I wished was a luxury I only enjoyed when on Earth, and even there only in the Emperor’s palace. Here I turned on the water mist, my thoughts returning to exactly what it was that seemed so pleasant about the Moon. It’s quietness? Barrenness? Questions for the psyche examiners, I decided.

  After moistening my skin, I quickly turned off the water so I’d have enough of my daily allotment left to rinse off the suds once I lathered up with the bio-soap. Five minutes later I was drying under the sun
lamp. “Courrier,” I told the computer as I pulled a terry cloth robe around myself.

  “Sixteen advertisements and one voice email.”

  I shook my head. Why any business would insist on sending advertising to me I didn’t know. A pure waste of electrons and my time. I hadn’t ordered anything from the e-companies for years. “Delete the ads and let’s hear the mail.”

  “Message recorded 13:23 10-12-2139,” the computer said. Then my ex-wife, Dorothy, appeared on the wall screen, “Jacque, did you realize that this was our anniversary. I bet you forgot — but I didn’t. Honey, I really would like to see —”

  “Delete message,” I interrupted. I bounced into the kitchen and poured myself a drink. Dorothy just didn’t know when to give up.

  Ralph Crocker

  I found myself sitting in a daze, the terror of what had happened clouding my mind as the news server in my apartment fed oddities from the news to me…

  Does your video visor leave you

  Blurry eyed?

  Then maybe it’s time to come to the friendly folks at Ace Medical Labs for a hardwire interface. Pipe your computer’s video straight into your frontal lobe where Mother Nature intended it to be.

  Click here to schedule an appointment

  Lightfoot News Service — News you can use.

  New Guinea Massacre Just a mistake.

  Plymouth, New Washington — Today spokesbot for the MS/AppleSun Corp. released the findings of their study of the recent New Guinea Massacre™.

  “We were quite surprised to see that our soldiers had been killed purely through a software bug,” Mason Greb told news-cams.

  “This is the first time since the formation of our company that anything like this has happened, and the first and only time our soldiers have died anywhere other than on a major corporation battlefield. The management expresses its deep embarrassment over the death of nearly one thousand people.”

  According to MSAS, the original riots leading to the massacre were the result of bugs in the translation computers company troops are routinely issued.

  According to company spokesmen, whenever soldiers addressed the indigent peoples as “Sir” or “Madam”, phrases dictated by public policy, the computer embedded in the troops throats translated the words as “bastard” or “whore” in the villagers native tongue.

  “We knew something was wrong from day one,” one of the surviving troops who asked to remain anonymous told reporters. “From the very first we could see the villagers were reacting badly. But we just chalked it up to cultural differences. We never suspected our translators were going to get most of us killed.”

  Click here for full story

  Click here for 3-D/hardwired version

  Winged Dragon Sighted in New Kansas.

  Topeka, NK — UIP Officials were perplexed by reports of a dragon-like creature sighted near the downtown area today. According to a police spokesman —

  “Stop,” I sputtered to the computer, abruptly aware that somehow I was now back in my apartment — and alive. I knew I’d come close to reaching the super-stress point that makes jetters ooze blood from all orifices. Somehow, I had escaped it by the very thinnest of margins.

  I pulled off my goggles and looked down at my arm in disbelief in the dim light, realizing my body was whole again, my missing appendage now magically rejoined to a body soaked only in sweat instead of gore.

  Closing my eyes, I could feel my heart pounding, racing in my chest. How close had I come to stroking out during the SupeR-G session?

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax, releasing the air slowly from my lungs. I took another deep breath, and then rose from my chair. “Time.” I finally demanded.

  “Eighteen hundred, thirty-four, UT.”

  No wonder it was so dark in the apartment.

  “May I suggest a trip to the emergency room,” the computer offered. “Your heart rate was alarmingly high and your blood pressure is still rather extreme. While the chances of your having a stroke are now only at fifty-eight percent —”

  “I’m okay,” I said, hoping I really was.

  Besides, going to a hospital was risky in itself these days with the omnipresent super-bugs and organ pirates that were rampant in most medical establishments. And one blood test would let them know I’d recently used jet, a fact routinely reported to the authorities. Last time I’d gotten off lightly as a first-time user. The second time would be serious given the recent two-strikes-and-you’re-out legislation.

  Unless I was leaking vital fluids at an alarming rate with a one hundred percent chance of dying if I did nothing, the last place I wanted to take my chances at was the local hospital. And even then I’d need a few minutes to ponder my choices.

  I took another deep breath and tried to collect my senses. One thing was sure, I wasn’t going to beat Huntington on his home turf. Sooner or later, he’d ace me before the jet wore off. Not only that, he’d somehow managed to stack the deck in his favor. A severed head should be fatal to a jetter. A player would never be capable of remounting his head in the middle of a game. Somehow he had managed a way to cheat the system at the most basic code level.

  Then I remembered I had been persuaded that I’d mistakenly thought him decapitated in the Vietnam War SupeR-G. Now I was pretty sure my first impression had been correct.

  Somehow, some way, Huntington had learned to control the code or had created a new form of jet — and I returned to my earlier question: How many jet fatalities might he be responsible for? Huntington might have racked up quite a body count.

  But that wasn’t my main concern right now. If I continued to fight him on his turf, I would join the legion of the dead. I was lucky to be alive right now and had only been saved by the jet wearing off when it did.

  I could never beat a guy who was impossible to kill — especially if I could kick off from a massive brain hemorrhage at any moment due to my imaginary death in the SupeR-G. Sure, I might learn more about him if I continued to explore the SupeR-Gs he frequented, but it was also very likely I would never live to tell about it. It was almost certain I would instead become another statistic in the jet-abuse column.

  “That fries it,” I said, getting onto feet that seemed to be connected to my body by two rubbery legs. Without permitting myself to argue me out of my decision, I picked up the bottle of jet, and staggered over to the sink. “I know I’ll hate myself later, but I’m going to do this before jet cravings cloud my judgment.”

  I dumped the liquid down the drain, watching until the last of the liquid was out of the bottle and then rinsing it. After that I ran lots of water through the sink so I wouldn’t be tempted to tear it apart and suck on the drain later — something I had little doubt I’d do when the cravings returned in a few hours.

  “There,” I said, wondering if I’d lost my mind or committed the first act of sanity in some time.

  Either way the deed was done.

  Time to get on with it, I told myself. I still had a job to do and now it was going to be harder.

  I settled into my moth-eaten recliner and pondered my next move.

  Running away sounded good. Tahiti was nice any time of the year.

  Yet trying to escape would eventually fail because I didn’t have enough e-cash or anything of real value that was easily hocked. Sooner or later I’d have to try for a score and then chances were good that some citizen would put a bullet through my carcass, Death’s goons would track me down, and/or the police would catch me in the act. I knew how the kid felt when he wanted to run away but couldn’t because he didn’t have permission to cross the street. Helpless and trapped, I knew time was running out.

  I rubbed a hand across my chin, trying to sort out my predicament in a rational fashion. Several things were apparent:

  1) I no longer felt any need to protect Huntington from Death or the government. After seeing his savage behavior, I would be happy to lead a parade with his head on a stick.

  And…

  2) Dea
th would be happy to carry my head on a stick if I failed to come up with Huntington’s hard address by the end of tomorrow.

  Time to roll up my sleeves.

  I sat for a minute.

  A desperate idea formed in my mind.

  “Computer?”

  “Waiting.”

  “Clear the decks. We’ve got some serious searches to conduct.”

  Chapter 11

  Ralph Crocker

  I’ve always been amazed at how most people remain clueless when searching for information. Oh, sure, the automated search algorithms do all the work with umpteen commercial super computer search engines. But they often fail to find those little clues that are key to a successful search, or that point to those minor hints that can pay off in big ways. And people like Huntington could pay to have their info hidden from the engines.

  So a really good search on someone keeping a low profile wasn’t easy — but I won’t complain since if it were easy, I’d be out of a job, right? I didn’t go around spouting off my trade secrets, either; a good magician makes even the easiest illusion appear hard to accomplish. So when it came to selling the knowledge, I hacked and hijacked, and did pretty much whatever was needed, and I remained tight-lipped and even exaggerated the difficulty of the work when I did talk about it.

  The fact that Death lacked the finesse to obtain the information I might turn up came as no surprise. Criminals like him operated by brute strength with a minimum of strain to any gray cells they might possess.

  That the government hadn’t found Huntington either was worrisome. Sure, some of the best net engines were coded to cripple searches by government agencies when the telltale footprint of a bureaucratic snoop was discovered; the net had remained government unfriendly since the Privacy Wars that led to the destruction of the United States of North America.