London Wild

by V. E. Shearman

  ‘Indeed,’ Mitsiobon replied. ‘It’s only a rumor though; I don’t know of anyone that’s actually done it.’

  ‘And so once a month she sends out for this booster and…’ she stopped, although dazed, as something about the monthly nature of the booster occurred to her.

  ‘The chemical in question is found in the mind of all creatures with any sort of brain. The best examples, though, are those that we might classify as intelligent creatures, those that develop a clear language.’

  Lowsiobenno was frozen to the spot for a moment, unable to think properly. ‘I-I, er, can I…’ She took a deep breath. ‘C-can you remove this chemical without damaging the rest of me?’ She was shaking again; the idea that the door was right behind her and still open was a lost thought.

  ‘I can,’ the cook replied happily, ‘but that would still kill you, as you can’t live without the chemical any more than the Goddess could. Besides, she would prefer it if you were served to her as a proper meal.’

  ‘Cannibalism!’ Lowsiobenno stated in near panic. She was unable to move, and she began to feel as if her mind was actually crystallizing; just what had that drug done to her?

  ‘Not really,’ the cook responded. ‘You and she aren’t of the same race. To her you’re nothing more than a herd animal.’ And with that she threw the cleaver with an expertise born of experience, hitting Lowsiobenno directly in the forehead and killing her instantly.

  Everything seemed to be going well for the Goddess. The Compare had done an excellent job of twisting the facts to match his story. ‘The crowd had been gearing up for an attack on the Temple itself. The Goddess obviously acted in self-defense.’ For most of the population of the city, that was enough, and everything went back to normal as they awaited the next lottery. Maybe the crowds that regularly gathered outside the Temple gates on these days and who were really little more than a nuisance would be a lot fewer in number when the next ‘selected’ was chosen.

  In order to make everything work properly, the immediate families of those killed in the crowd that night also paid the ultimate price. Several Herbaht death squads moved about the city and began to visit the relatives of more than a thousand families, cutting them down ruthlessly to pay for the invented crimes of their kin. A few managed to make it into hiding, but they were very few in number, and the death squads continued to search for them day and night whilst their pictures were broadcast on every channel of the television, asking for people to volunteer their whereabouts.

  The Goddess herself wasn’t involved in the orders. She couldn’t have brought herself to have given such orders, even though she knew they were necessary if the status quo was to be maintained. Instead she blamed Mitshutosh for all the deaths and demanded that he leave her service to head up the death squads personally. She would simply have to find another driver for when she next wanted to leave the confines of the Temple.

  The problems started fairly soon afterwards when it was discovered that someone had actually made their own tape of the ceremony. Hunshubai was a great fan of the Goddess, believing her to be only capable of good things. He had spent a lot of money making tapes of the various ceremonies; it was a hobby of his, and he had been doing it for the last ten years: one hundred and twenty-seven ceremonies to date. He rarely bothered to watch them again; after all, virtually every ceremony was identical to every other ceremony. It had been partially because of this that they had been so sure no one would bother to tape it. But Hunshubai had them all—all from the last ten years, anyway. All so that the names of the ‘selected’ would be honored forever and would never be forgotten.

  When he started to hear the official version of what had happened at the most recent ceremony, it came as a great surprise to him. The description was totally different from how he remembered it, and so he decided to watch it again. He was dumbfounded if he could see what they meant when they claimed that the crowd was on the verge of attacking the Temple; to him it looked as if they were moving to leave. Those on the edges of the crowd had actually been moving away from the Temple when it had fired upon them.

  He watched it again and again. It certainly didn’t seem to be as the Goddess’ representatives were claiming, but maybe he was missing something they had caught. After three days of watching the tape through, he decided that whatever had happened to trigger the massacre was beyond him. He needed another pair of eyes. He made a copy of the tape and then delivered it to a friend of his with a simple note: ‘I cannot reconcile the events of the day with the reports we are hearing on the news. Please check this tape over and tell me where I am going wrong.’

  The friend, Nikshubose, watched the tape and couldn’t believe his eyes. It was definitely not the events that had been reported so clearly over the news time and again and which were still being reinforced nightly. Though a good friend of Hunshubai, Nikshubose wasn’t as big a fan of the Goddess, and watching the tape and listening to the spin that was being reported about the event simply made him angry.

  Nikshubose made copy after copy of the tape and started to distribute them to his friends with a simple comment: ‘Judge for yourself.’

  It took the death squads less than a week to trace the source of the tapes back to their origin. Both Nikshubose and Hunshubai were taken into custody and put to death on a charge of distributing subversive material shortly afterwards. But the damage had already been done: there were hundreds of tapes already in distribution, and the number was more than doubling every day. Copies began to move beyond the confines of the city to other towns and cities, the message changing slowly from ‘Judge for yourself,’ to ‘Can we trust them?’

  The whole thing came to a head eight days short of the next lottery. A Herbaht death squad was on the trail of a parcel of tapes leaving the city; they had planned to check the addresses both of where they were going and where they had come from. It seemed that the whole thing was a setup by a small group that included two of the relatives of those originally killed in the crowd and who until now had been in hiding. They ambushed the death squad and wiped them out to a man. What was worse for the Goddess, they took possession of weapons that until now she had always been very careful to keep them from.

  Shortly afterwards, Herbaht began to turn up dead everywhere, including the Compare of the lottery show and the disgraced Mitshutosh who had started all this in the first place.

  The day of the lottery came and went and no draw was made; no one was willing to make it. Mitsiocaler watched her screens as the city burned. She watched as the gangs of throwbacks stalked the streets in the way they wouldn’t have dared to a bare month ago. She watched as a group of well-armed Herbaht engaged one of the gangs in combat and slaughtered them mercilessly. The Herbaht still had better weapons, but they were greatly outnumbered. The Gods and Goddesses had always feared being usurped by one of their own race much more than those they had simply despised as throwbacks and had therefore kept the numbers of their own offspring to the barest minimum.

  She watched as the same group of Herbaht found a second gang and slaughtered those in much the same way, only this time one of the throwbacks had a lucky shot and killed one of the Herbaht. She watched the group for a while, feeling her morale soar as with every encounter there was always the same outcome, and the group of Herbaht got bigger and bigger as those in hiding came out to help.

  When she turned in for the night, it was with a feeling that everything was going to be all right after all. The Herbaht would continue to find the offending gangs of throwbacks and destroy them. The rebellion would be over tomorrow and all would be right with the world.

  When she checked the screens the following day, though, there was no sign of the Herbaht anywhere. Lots of gangs still roamed the streets, but the Herbaht had vanished except for one or two bodies here and there, the numbers of which came nowhere close to how many she had seen roaming the streets last night. Perhaps they had left the city and were trying to make their way out into the perceived safety of the wilderness, away fr
om all the death and destruction, but where did that leave her?

  She checked the screens again. There were at least three different gangs of these throwbacks heading towards the Temple. She was lucky they weren’t already knocking down the marble doors.

  She quickly activated the various weapons scattered about the Temple’s grounds and set them on automatic. They would attack anything that came within range with deadly effect. But that was all she could do, and though the weapons might be capable of taking out a small, badly-equipped army, there was still a danger that an organized mob might be able to find a way through.

  ‘Time to leave,’ she muttered to herself. The nearest of the gangs was too close. In fact, she could already hear some of the Temple’s weapons open up on them as she climbed off her chair. She didn’t have time to pack anything; there was no telling how long it would be before the throwbacks got past the Temple’s defenses, assuming they did so.

  Instead she moved to the wall with the empty picture frame and pressed a few buttons.

  The frame went blurry for a second, and then the image of her slightly younger sister’s Temple stateroom replaced the wall. Her sister lived in the neighboring city of Jay over a hundred miles distant, but the image was beautifully clear. Her sister Mitsioni turned in her chair at the sound of her screen activating. She sat at a bank of screens similar to those Mitsiocaler had in her Temple and had obviously been playing close attention to the situation in her own city. ‘I’m not sure this is a good time. My entire city is under martial law, but the throwbacks are on the rampage anyway.’

  ‘I am sorry, my sister,’ Mitsiocaler replied as calmly as she could, but her face belied her urgency. ‘I seek sanctuary, as my own Temple is under attack from gangs of throwbacks even as we speak. It can only be a matter of time before they get in.’

  ‘The way I hear it, all this is your fault anyway,’ Mitsioni commented dryly. ‘Why should I help you?’

  ‘You’re my sister!’ Mitsiocaler replied, unsure of what else she could say.

  Mitsioni sighed heavily. ‘I’d probably receive a medal from the others if I just shot you down, but you are my sister. You’d better come on through.’

  ‘Thank you, my sister,’ Mitsiocaler replied, relaxing visibly. She hadn’t known what sort of greeting she might expect after everything that had happened, and she had half expected a much worse reception than that she’d received. Not wanting to leave the gateway open for any members of the mob that did manage to breach the walls of her Temple, she tapped in a simple code that would give her five seconds to get across the threshold before the code was scrambled and the gateway became unusable.

  ‘We don’t have a lot of time,’ Mitsioni told her as Mitsiocaler entered her sister’s Temple and before she was able to speak. ‘My city is burning; they even burn their own homes in their attempts to flush out members or our race. They are scum. We have treated them far too fairly in the past.’ Then she looked at her sister, a little surprised. ‘Are you all alone then?’

  Mitsiocaler nodded with a bit of a sigh. ‘At least one of my servants is dead. Two others were outside the Temple doing whatever they could to keep my people together. I think most Herbaht in my city have left for the wilderness, and I don’t know if my servants were with them or not. I hope not. I’d hate to think they were so cowardly. The only one left in the Temple was the cook, and I wasn’t sure that I had the time to fetch her before the throwbacks got in. She’ll just have to cope for herself.’

  ‘Can’t be helped. Besides, it’s probably just as well,’ Mitsioni responded coldly. She glanced between the walls of screens and her sister as they talked, wanting to keep an eye on what was happening in the city but also wanting her sister to feel at least a little bit welcome. ‘Hatshulosk and I have an escape plan, and there isn’t a lot of room for anyone else. As it is, I’ve sent my own servants off into the city to aid with the defenses and to get them out of the way. That’s why I hesitated to invite you in, but I’m sure we can find room for a third. Food and space might be a bit tight, but when I explain to him that you are my sister, I’m sure he’ll agree.’

  Mitsiocaler nodded simply. She felt a little out of place, as if she didn’t really belong and was in the way. ‘So what’s the plan?’

  Mitsioni answered slowly, ‘You understand that before we decided on this course of action, I’d already been in contact with nearly everyone, trying to get some sort of advice and maybe some sort of cohesion between us. I had been hoping we might fight back, but no one seems willing to take orders from anyone else, and without proper leadership we’re bound to fail. Besides, it seems as if this thing has spread totally out of control. Everyone is having problems of some description, and already the Gods and Goddesses of many of the smaller cities have fallen.’

  ‘So, what about this escape plan?’ Mitsiocaler asked; she crossed the room slowly.

  ‘How well do you know Hatshulosk?’ Mitsioni asked her sister, turning in her chair to follow her across the room.

  ‘He’s kind of an eccentric, likes to look at the stars and has even made one or two trips to some of the closer ones in the belief that one of them might possibly be capable of supporting life. When he does, he usually leaves his city in turmoil because the lack of lottery draws has the people believing that their God had deserted them. I believe he actually needed to be re-injected with the elixir on one occasion because he had been away too long and a mere booster was no longer enough. But most of that’s hearsay.’

  ‘Some of it’s right,’ her sister replied. ‘Most of it, really, including the journey to a distant planet. Anyway, according to Hatshulosk, the planet he explored on that occasion had a very primitive form of intelligent life, but intelligent nevertheless and therefore capable of sustaining us in the same way the throwbacks have been doing here. The natives refer to themselves as human, and they do have the great advantage of looking very similar to us, except perhaps for our tails, our claws, our stripes and our eyes. But if we hide or disguise these features, we’ll be able to fit right in. Hatshulosk assures me we could pass one in the street and they wouldn’t notice anything funny about us, so long as we were properly disguised first, no surgery involved. I have to admit I’m more than a little excited at the idea.’

  ‘How do you mean primitive?’ Mitsiocaler rested her hand on the back of one of the gem-studded wooden chairs that surrounded the gold filigree table, in both cases almost identical to the ones Mitsiocaler had left behind. So similar because they were sisters, they had been elevated to the position of Goddesses together and their Temples had been built and equipped at almost exactly the same time.

  ‘Well, it was over a thousand years ago he went. Things might have changed slightly now, but apparently the human race were still slaughtering each other with swords and spears and wearing funny exoskeletons in an attempt to protect themselves from each other.’

  ‘And we hide out there until this all blows over?’ Mitsiocaler asked, only really half listening. A lot could happen in a thousand years. Indeed, had the throwbacks been allowed access to the same technology as the Herbaht, there could be no telling how much further technology might have gotten in the last thousand years on this planet alone.

  ‘We don’t really know if it ever will blow over,’ her sister replied. ‘Hatshulosk and I intend to settle on this planet, raise a few kids and basically take control of it. It revolves in much the same way ours does, is roughly the same size, and except for the fact that it only seems to have one moon there are virtually no differences. I think we’ll be fine there.’

  ‘You will have Hatshulosk; perhaps I should choose a male!’ Mitsiocaler suggested.

  ‘I’m sorry, my sister; as I told you, we’ll be stretching things to get you on board, and there really won’t be enough room for a fourth. Perhaps you can choose from the natives when we land!’

  ‘Choose a native? That’s a disgusting idea. Besides the fact that we’ll be eating the natives to survive, we simply wouldn’t be
compatible with each other. Our genes would be totally alien.’ Mitsiocaler sat on one of the chairs and leaned forward a little to rest her arms on her knees. From her expression, it was clear that she was unhappy with the suggestion.

  ‘We’ll have plenty of time once we arrive, and there’s no saying we have to pick a mate immediately for you. There’ll be time to get used to the idea. After all, we’ll have to learn to speak their language first. Hatshulosk has some of the fundamentals from a thousand years ago, but it has probably changed a lot since then, assuming we even land in the same area as he did and thus encounter the same people and anything akin to the same language.’

  ‘So while you and Hatshulosk are colonizing this new world, I will slowly make my way through a selection of non-Herbaht partners, never having any children, no one to care for me, no one to guard me.’ Mitsiocaler was fast going off the idea. The alternative of staying and dying didn’t really appeal much either, but she was fast considering the idea of trying to form some sort of Herbaht resistance with the survivors from as many cities as possible. To go out in a blaze of glory rather than sitting around on some distant planet alone and unwanted.

  ‘It won’t be like that,’ her sister explained. ‘Firstly, we’ll take some of the immortal elixir with us so that your chosen partner will be just that for as long as you desire. Secondly, I managed to get ahold of five phials of a slightly different type of drug.’

  ‘Tell me.’ Mitsiocaler felt as if she wasn’t going to be all that impressed.

  ‘Well, you remember how Susioleh was fascinated by how D.N.A. and R.N.A. strands of various creatures worked, including those of us and the throwbacks.’

  ‘I remember she had some weird hobbies,’ Mitsiocaler replied.

  ‘Well, something she played with was trying to actually reprogram the D.N.A. of some of her subjects and, well, turn them into something else.’

  ‘Where are you going with this?’ Mitsiocaler commented.