Wine of the Gods 26: Embassy

by Pam Uphoff

  "What the fuck!" There was panic on all channels now.

  A man ran out of the gate and grabbed the girl as she tottered. Bare chested, he was wearing a weird mask, all spiky and spotty and . . .

  "All machine guns fire on that girl." Ghadir ordered.

  Mantigo felt his guts twist, and he shuddered. His head felt like it was splitting open.

  The pair dropped, flat on the ground, an invisible barrier bouncing all bullets. Not nearly enough bullets. Only Ghadir's track is firing.

  "Back through the gate." Ghadir's voice rasped oddly and he coughed.

  A gunner somewhere opened up with the cannon. Two shots, then silence.

  Mantigo could see the weird man picking up the girl and running through the gate. One track went through. They were in motion, turning for the gate, turning, turning in a circle, he pawed at his seat restraint, he couldn't seem to, he couldn't open it with a hand that ended in split hooves, and he could hardly turn his head, something was sticking out, jamming against the overhead. He needed to run. He had to get out of this trap . . . he was stuck.

  He managed to get his head into a position to see outside, as the track turned in idiot circles, occasionally jerking. From the noise he figured his driver was a stuck as he was. He tried to tell him to calm down and steer, but only goat bleats came out of his mouth.

  The natives were laughing. He could see them laughing. Chasing goats. A few of them were angry and trying to kill the goats. Every once in awhile the track turned so he could see the street the tracks had fired down. Some people who didn't look local were mixing with the natives. Lots of arm waving and fist shaking. Wine bottles, for some reason. The track kept circling as the wounded and dead were carried away, and finally someone climbed up on the track and opened the top hatch.

  He shouldn't have been able to do that.

  Frantic goat bleating, and a black goat went flying off the track. Had someone pulled Mike out? How about poor Goh, the driver? Thumping and cursing. Another tumbling goat, then the track stopped. Would they free him next? He bleated to make sure they knew he was here. A man looked in and studied his fix. Reached in and unfastened the seat restraints, reclined the seat and then grabbed him unceremoniously by the . . . muzzle and hauled him out. Shoved his muzzle out the top hatch, then boosted him from the rear. Mantigo scrambled out and looked around. Black goats running around terrified, everywhere he looked.

  The man that had freed him laughed. "Look you, if you can understand me, you need to get through the gate before somebody decides to have barbequed goat for dinner."

  Gate? Oh yeah. That thing over there. He jumped down bleating loudly and walking toward the gate. He butted a couple of stupid goats, and a bunch of them seemed to think going his way was a good idea, and then more joined and then all the goats were heading for . . . where was he going? Oh, there was grass on the other side of these rocks. He galloped through and started munching. There were people around, though, so he ran off a ways. Marvelous thick grass. He ate as he kept putting distance between him and the people. He ate until he was full and happy, and started trying to think. What was going on?

  He looked at the lay of the land and headed up slope. Several goats followed him, and in half an hour they were in a position to look down on the people and their stone buildings. And all the other goats. They seemed to be spreading out in all directions, in small clumps and individually. He didn't know anything about goats, but looking at his companions he could see that they were a strong and handsome group. Their horns came in all sizes and shapes, thick and thin, straight and curved. He couldn't see his own, which was a bit frustrating. Thirsty, he wandered further, and found a stream. Excellent. As dark set in, he found another high point, and folded up his legs to watch the lights in the buildings below.

  He must not forget that he was once a man.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Early Spring, 1398

  Embassy World

  Xen grit his teeth, and tried to subdue his panic. I did not expect my baby sister to be the first casualty in a cross dimensional war. "I suspect Q will be just fine. She is in the hands of the Goddess of Health and Fertility. What I want to know is . . . " who I should kill. "What sanctions we should put on Earth. And for some odd reason I am now having trouble thinking of the God of Suns as an insane moron, since he managed to escape from the control of his priest long enough to save Q, before that priest committed mental assault and battery upon him, off the grounds of their embassy."

  And he'd better not be dead!

  Garit scrubbed his face. "Yes, I want to bar-be-que some goats as well, Xen. But they are soldiers, and the largest problem is the people giving them orders. Let's try diplomacy first. And, umm, can you change them back?"

  "When I want to." Xen crossed his arms and tried to not simmer too obviously. "When I have a reasonable assurance that they won't be sent off to kill random civilians on the next world that holds a wage protest."

  The Oners were eying him with alarm. The Earthers looked worried, upset.

  All of them. Nice people with poisonous governments. How did they come to this?

  Garit looked around at the sound of footsteps. "Ah. Mr. Montgomery. How are you today?"

  "Infuriated. Where the hell are all the soldiers and what have you done to them?"

  "Nothing yet." Xen showed his teeth and refused to flinch when Garit kicked him under the table.

  Garit's shields were up as solidly as he was capable of, leaking smoldering anger and contempt. None of which showed in his mild expression. "As you saw yourself, most of them freaked out and bolted. In their present forms they can eat grass, and there are no predators here, so eventually we'll find them all."

  His aura belied the casual shrug. "As I said, you can send unarmed search parties out looking for them. And don't worry, the changes are just physical, not genetic."

  The ambassador gritted his teeth. "The Geneva Conventions, which you keep quoting, specifically mentions treatment of prisoners."

  "Yes it does, however the goats are quite obviously not prisoners. And are you sure that you are in a position to be citing the conventions?"

  The ambassador reddened further. "No I am not sure. My superiors would like to know when to expect you to get back to making gates?"

  "For Earth? Six months to a year."

  The ambassador straightened. "We require a hearing on this matter."

  "Oh, what an excellent idea. How about next week? I'll round up a judge to run the proceedings. I don't suppose the President of the World would like to address the Court?" Garit pulled out a notebook. "Judge, invitations to other Worlds, hmm, shall we subpoena witness? We'll certainly have Hetman Vernes speak about the treaty negotiations and your brutal invasion and murder of fifty-three people. I wonder if we should discuss who can be held accountable? And what we could do to them?"

  "I am calling for a hearing about your deliberate and illegal restriction of our access to the Multiverse!"

  Xen stared him down. "See the 'Multiverse Agreement' that your President signed and your Council ratified. Penalties for attacking another World are spelled out quite clearly. Your Government murdered fifty-three people to set an example, to avoid having to increase wages. I am seriously sick and tired of the Earth's attitude, and I suggest you point out the clause of the agreement that addresses repeated infractions to your masters before they do something really, really stupid and wind up isolated for another decade."

  "Are you threatening us?"

  "Nothing else seems to work." Xen took a deep breath and released it. "I will un-morph and return to you every soldier I encounter. If you allow observers to all the legal proceedings involving the invasion. I want to know what orders were given, by whom, under what governmental authority. What I want, Mr. Montgomery, is for this to not happen again. Convince me that the government has thought better of this decision to break a wage strike with cold blooded murder."

  "You have no right to monitor us. That woman was in a secure
area, without . . ." He broke off at the glares.

  "Q was checking that the concentration of gates in Nowhereistan was not destabilizing anything, or each other. And inspections are in the treaty." Lon eyed his own ambassador. "The Council had better realize that they can't commit murder at will."

  Montgomery hunched a shoulder his direction and kept his attention on Garit. "And you closed the gate from there to Earth. We want it reopened."

  Xen bared his teeth. "Fuck off. Please do pass that on to the World Council."

  Garit cleared his throat. "Xen . . . Umm, Mr. Montgomery, please explain to your government that they should take this treaty seriously, and they really ought to take us seriously as well."

  Montgomery scowled, but turned and stomped out without further comment.

  Xen glared at his back. "Right. So, I suppose it was inevitable that someone would do something stupid. Let's wait and see if they want to double down, or quit before they dig themselves in deeper." He looked back at Garit. "I need to go check that they aren't doing anything elsewhere, either."

  "Yes do. Xen? Do. Not. Kill. Anyone."

  Xen nodded. "Unless I'm stopping another invasion. I'll check in tomorrow." And I'll get my temper under control. "We knew one or both of these people would see the gates as making them more free with the Multiverse and see an opportunity to be more brutal. Now that it has happened, we need to put our foot down and show them the consequences. One more misstep and they get isolated."

  Garit nodded. "And an open hearing would be useful. See if we can establish some facts. Hmm, you know, William Michaelson would be perfect for this. He'll definitely be on my short list for a judge."

  Xen pinched his nose. "Do we really want that much honesty?" He shook his head. "I'll just take a quick swoop around, looking for obvious problems. Maybe even remember some diplomacy."

  So of course the first person he talked it over with was a horse.

  Even Pyrite was angry. :: You need an army. Cavalry. We can get places fast. ::

  Xen leaned on him. "I wasn't fast enough. Even you wouldn't have been fast enough. Q . . . came so close to being killed. And the man that rescued her was punished for it. I'm going to have to figure out what to do about him."

  He saddled up Pyrite, and they checked out dozens of mining worlds, talking to the local governments that had sprung up when the Earth's gate had been destroyed, either the first time, twenty-two years ago, or three years ago. One of them had been isolated twice.

  Word of the massacre had gotten out, and none of them wanted an immediate reconnection with Earth. Five wanted to be left completely alone, so he collapsed their gates. From the Embassy side. He checked Q at least every other day, and he and Pyrite talked to all the horses around the Crossroads, and Ash. They were all enthusiastic about fighting bad guys, and Pyrite stayed to teach them how to shield.

  A long chat with everyone in Magic Central, then Colonel Janic and eventually Rufi. An enthusiastic batch of troopers trooped out to ride the smart horses and train for cavalry charges that involved magic being used against them.

  "If," Rufi warned, "We agree that Disco has cause for the action on hand, and . . . well, our world's best interests are also served, I'll loan them to you."

  Leano looked at Rufi. "Why don't we get Garit back here? He can train them, and they know and trust him."

  Ouch! "Please send him back when you're done. Everyone likes and respects him, and he's much more diplomatic than I am."

  Xen spent a bit of time reinforcing the identity he'd set up on Purple when they first discovered it. A general construction laborer, with an alcohol problem to explain the long absences. But Earth continued to treat Purple like a trading partner, and showed no sign of aggression toward them. So the identity was probably a waste of time.

  His father had laughed when he'd heard about that world. "There were two colony groups, already organized, before the Exile. They each wanted their own world, and wound up exiled together. No gods, but some power genes."

  "But why do you smile, thinking about them?"

  "Oh, one group was a bunch of historical reenactors, playing at a Wild West culture that never really existed. The culture was highly sanitized in books and movies, and it was the movie version they copied. The other group was the Peacock Club. They all had kids with the peacock gene. Blue or purple hair. You'll have to tell me how they turned out."

  They'd turned out to be a rather swaggering batch. The Purps had an industrial civilization. Motor vehicles, electricity was ubiquitous, mass manufacturing on a resource rich world.

  There was some magic, some systematic training of the strongest men, but the elite, the government was all purple or blue haired, with or without power.

  Xen rather suspected that the mental abilities were the reason the Earth explorers had decided on friendship and trade, rather than their usual conquest.

  Pity we didn't try that!

  But Q was healing, and a bit to his surprise, he found that he could find home, Embassy, Earth and the One World from anywhere else.

  Because I've been there so often? Or because I've been influential there? I should get Q to study that . . . in her spare time. Ha!

  So he set up a network of clandestine gates, for his own use.

  Disco's use. If Earth ever tries something like that again, or tries to bar us from the gates we've already installed, we can still check on them.

  And in the meantime, he fetched rock and a few friends to build a library.

  King Leano sent copies of everything, including reports of every interaction they'd ever had with Earth or the Empire of the One.

  Including all my reports. Ouch! That's going to put a few . . . thousand noses out of joint.

  Easterly, helping unload, grinned. "Fuchsia sent us a computerized printing press. Typists are now one of the highest paying professions in Karista. Heliotrope is scanning all the old printed books your father and hers have . . . well, she's started. She took one look at your Dad's library and said. 'This will take me ten years. Kill me now.' She probably didn't mean it."

  Peter nudged him out of the way. "So eight wings? Three floors? Who was your architect? Lord Snowflake?"

  "Orion claimed to know what he was doing." Xen nodded to the right. "That's our wing."

  "And I'll bet every world wants their own wing."

  "Yeah. We're holding them to a single floor of a single wing each, so far. Fortunately both One and Earth are paranoid and vetting every single book for dangerous secrets before allowing it to be sent here. So they actually haven't overwhelmed us. Yet."

  Easterly grinned. "So we're taking up the slack?"

  "Apparently." Xen glanced over his shoulder.

  A collection of Oners, scanners in hand. Following them. A second group, with different types of scanners. Earthers.

  Xen grinned. "Please shelve the books as you unload the boxes and scan the books, eh?"

  Chapter Thirty-two

  20 May 2234 [1399 Spring CF]

  Seaside

  Rior worked his injured shoulder, healed shoulder, rather, and scowled around at the gang. "All of you? One! Nine children are hard enough to keep track of. So, you had a big orgy while I was laid up and you all got pregnant. " He threw his hands up in exasperation. Seventeen women . . . One! "Never mind. Tell me about this new plan you have."

  "It's about copyrights. Books and inventions. Movies. We buy a best selling book in one World, and sell it in another and rake in all the profits." Mag smiled happily and waved a book with a couple dressed in rags embracing on the cover. "This, believe it or not, raked in eight million dollars. I talked to Rivolte, and he's going to buy a mid-sized publishing house to handle it, and said if it worked out he'd do the same in three or four Worlds."

  Rior snatched the book from his hands and read the blurb. "This was published on Earth, but is an adventure on One World?"

  "Rumor has it that Comet Fall agents actually wrote it as political propaganda. It's been 'adapted' for publication
on Earth." Mirk snickered. "It's quite amusing, but a bad example to use. I suspect its popularity is due to its provenance."

  "How the hell did Earth get it? It can't really be from the One World."

  "They claim they got it from Granite Peak."

  Rior's head jerked up. "Granite . . . Never mind. So it won't sell elsewhere." Granite Peak! Have we gotten back to Granite Peak? Is there a war going on? What . . . He tromped hard on mental speculation. I don't care what the Empire is doing. The One can screw itself.

  "Try this one instead." Mirk handed over another book. "Selling inventions may be more problematic. I think fad toys and gifts might be an interesting test. Take this, for instance . . . "

  The results were slow, coming back, as there was a time lag for printing and manufacturing. But about half the books caught on, and almost all the toys. 'The Crystal Ball' and the 'Flying Disk'. 'Barbaras' and 'Bricks'. Rivolte had persuaded Dawn, Frost, Arrow, Bender, and Mirk to each 'be' one of the writers they were pirating. Rior was a bit surprised to learn they could all read and write. Those five all did it well, and they even changed the books a bit as they typed them into the computers of the World they were being released on first.

  Pity the Natives Jade transferred the computer skills from. Jade has no delicacy of touch and their victims, with no magic, have no shields to protect their minds. I don't think I'll ask if they all survived.

  "It gets them completely familiar with the books, and I even got them to read some books about history and the regions those books are set in." Rivolte snorted. "They can even speak intelligently about their next books, and give readings."

  To Rior's surprise, the books did well.

  To Rior's alarm, the "authors" paraded about, to signings and conventions and got their pictures plastered all over the papers.

  This is not going to end well.

  Chapter Thirty-three