by Pam Uphoff
"In three days we'll open the last colony world, and then we'll find this one again and arrest those . . . retrieve the company property wrongfully taken from here."
"The government has already taken over, and they may be glad they're gone." Wolfgang looked down on the killer, and a wave of rage flooded through him. It would be so easy . . . he shivered as he fought down the impulse to just kill the man on the spot. Later. Invisibly. Along with Brent.
Hasting must have seen something in his eyes, or posture. He slunk back and soldiers with red MP armbands intercepted him and led him away.
More MPs trailed them to the dorm buildings, but they did not attempt to enter the buildings.
Wolfgang was half starved by morning, and downed a huge breakfast.
"How can you eat like that?" Pax demanded.
"Because I'm hungry. Because I've seen people die before. Because I'm going to destroy those bastards for everything they've done to us."
He spent the day under the eyes of multiple guards. They watched through a long supply gate, paced him in a golf cart when he ran later in the day, and again the next morning before breakfast. The cafeteria looked empty as he walked toward the glass doors. Probably fired the cooks, with just five of us capable of eating.
Little alarms went off in his head.
Have they taken everyone?
He blinked away tears at the memory of little Rebeccah's limp hand in Charlie's paw.
And yet, she was there two days ago, helping with the gate. Are they just drugged, down there? Is there still a chance to escape?
I can get away anytime I wish to . . . now.
But if they have me, drugged and brain pierced . . .
But will they ever be able to escape if I'm not there? They aren't brain dead, although they may be damaged. Rebeccah was helping with the gate. They all were. Paralyzed—or just drugged?
Can I live with myself, not knowing what has become of them?
Or worse, if the gate keeps working, can I live with myself, knowing that all my friends are all still down in that basement?
His stomach clenched.
He was sweating and close to hyperventilating as he forced himself to walk through the doors.
"Anyone here?" he turned around as he called.
And the room kept turning and he appeared to be watching it spin from somewhere on the floor . . .
He'd been gassed.
That was his first thought.
That he was blind, his second.
His third, that he must be drugged, else he’d be in a full blown panic. He couldn't feel his body, to know if it was moving. Please let it be drugs, not deliberate spinal damage.
He could see with his second sight. All the fizzing bubbles around the world. Yes, there were all of his, a big island of quivering but otherwise immobile bubbles. If he looked close enough he could . . .He couldn't quite transition into one of his bubbles, his mental projection couldn't cross the dimensional membrane without his physical body to create a hole.
He had layers and layers of protection over his loot. Anyone breaking in would find a modern redwood building, with wine casks ageing, a comfortable chair with a good reading light, and a small library, all fiction.
In fact, looking, he could see that someone was "near" in some fashion, more mental than physical. Oh, ho. A spy to see what he did? Wolfgang slipped around and studied the aura hovering around it. Paxal Gamma, of course.
Wolfgang pulled in all his thoughts, barricaded them behind mental shields.
He watched as the pretty boy fought to form a body from the ambient energy. Perhaps too honest a copy—he had something stuck to his head, a half-seen giant spider, trailing a web of imaginary wires that wasn't going to let its victim get away.
In the supposed privacy in between the dimensions, Pax clutched his head and screamed.
"Why? Why? I did everything you asked. Everything! Why did you do this to me?" he panted and whimpered for a bit. "Maybe it's all for the good. There won't be more than a couple of hundred thousand people there. Five worlds. They can start out right. They can all be peaceful. Right from the start."
Wolfgang whispered. "You could show them the right way, if only you could go too."
"What? What?" The illusionary Pax looked around wildly, but couldn't see Wolfgang behind his shields. And then something changed in his expression. "Of course. This is what must be. I must go. I must pass through and shut the gate from the far side."
Wolfgang slipped gleefully away. Nothing like a genuine fanatic to really mess up a project.
He watched the bubbles roiling about for awhile. When Pax went away, he checked his interior bubbles. Tried Pax's trick with a energy body, with no more success. I must have my very own spider. But he could look into the bubble. Everything was fine and dandy. The black colt still there, amidst the accumulated stacks of materials. Wolfgang had been collecting for so long he had stuff he was starting to forget about.
That black ops raid on the Russian gene labs; rats and some odd sheep-like creatures . . . And weapons of course. All sorts. Modern, ancient, you name it. The grape vines from everywhere he'd ever been. And lots of books. Tons of books. Food. One could never have too much food.
He was going to need it. Depending, of course, on whether he really could get away, and after he'd done so, how much damage they'd done to his brains.
And how much damage he did to himself, getting away from them.
The surface-to-air missiles. Now there was some potential for mayhem.
He didn't need to touch them physically if telekinesis would work across the membrane. He shoved hard on the outer bubble. It deformed, but didn't open. But where it contacted another bubble it started to merge, and formed a hole between the two bubbles. He shoved the outer bubble hard up against the bubble with the SAMs. And where they overlapped, he reached through with a hand of energy.
He pulled a single SAM carefully outward. Could he detonate one remotely? Aim it? He needed to physically destroy the rings. He grabbed another bubble and anchored it. Pushing with the SAM, he opened it, and kept a grip on the launcher. He moved the bubble. In the real world, twelve feet up and over a bit and the SAM was aimed, side on, at the rings. He narrowed the opening in the bubble, squeezed it nearly closed. Triggered the missile and shut the bubble. As quick as he'd been, the bubble was definitely distorted, the missile on its way. Ten feet out of the tube. Would it explode? It really didn't matter, so long as it hit the rings hard enough.
Wolfgang shifted the bubble further away. Checked his aim. Pulled out a long string of bubble. He needed only to pop it and the rings would be destroyed. And heaven help anyone standing near. He wasn't sure if he was capable of physically shivering, but he rather thought he just had. He contemplated his work, and value of a society that cared so little for individuals that it would allow such a thing as this state he was trapped in.
He left the missile in place.
He felt a jerk, an odd internal pulling. Ah! Some of his friends. Well, fellow Tellies. Gods. What a joke. Was this any way to treat a god?
Rebeccah was holding the power steady, and Pax reached out.
And then there was a hole, a huge pathway, a tunnel, a roaring funnel of lights and colors. He followed it, and stared at a barren waste, choked on the fumes and was jerked away. And away from his fellow gods.
It happened several times, with variations of what was at the end of the path. Pax can't steer worth beans.
:: Shut up, baby killer. ::
Finally Wolfgang reached up to the High Branch. That beacon was the first exile colony, there was Great Plains, with a slowly blinking beacon. Pineapple with a fast blink. That double blinking one was Ice, where Charlie had taken everyone. So they should reach for this one . . . There were grasslands, and trees. He didn't recognized the species, surely those were oaks of some sort, tall pines . . . bison grazing, wild horses, huge cattle, lean and mean looking with substantial horns.
:: Texas Longhorns on steroid
s. :: That was Jason, somewhere almost in his mind.
Deer, multiple varieties. Or antelope. Birds everywhere.
The gate attached, weakly. Was he doing it wrong?
The ground was turning beneath the gate, or perhaps the gate was skittering around. Cars were traveling through, skidding as they hit the moving ground. He reached for the gate, tried to steady it. That's one way to distribute people all over. He let the gate move slowly, so the transition wasn't too bad of a jolt. More vehicles drove through. Fancy and new, shabby and barely running. He tried following a car through, but was pulled back. A doolie pulling a trailer full of cattle. A sedan stuffed with children. A truck pulling a horse trailer. Wolf let the gate skip over a river, then reconnect. Van full of dogs. Truck full of saplings. It seemed to go on for hours, and Wolfgang let the attachment jump several times, spreading people out, not dumping them in water or those massive sand dune fields. . . .
Our bodies, hopefully just drugged. Time to move them. He removed himself from the matrix of minds and reached for the nearest ordinary mind. A young nurse. She was looking at them all, in their fluid beds. She responded to what she thought was a doctor's orders, and started removing the IVs. Leave the headsets, for now. People rushed to stop her, and fell to the ground, stunned. The headsets were wireless. Excellent. A bad miscalculation on someone's part. He mentally grabbed a loose bubble, and maneuvered it up each body as the nurse removed the medical gear tying it down. He left their heads sticking out of the holes. It no doubt looked quite gruesome, but the gate had to be maintained.
The nurse fetched a gurney. Loaded the heads, covered them all with a sheet, tucked neatly in so they wouldn't fall off.
He checked the progress of the missile. It overlapped the outer supporting rim of the casing of the rings. I wonder what that will do? He held on to the string of the bubble. The elevator opened, the nurse wheeled the gurney into it. Pushed the button for the ground floor.
The last cars trickled through.
At the corner of his awareness, he heard the commands of the gate crew, they were going to slow the spin, the gate was closing.
:: No! Hold the gate. I am bringing our bodies to it. ::
A disturbed wave in the group mind.
:: I am destined to lead this world to Peace. :: That mental voice was calm and sure. Pax kept the whirlpool grounded on that distant world.
Jason controlled the gate techs, kept the rings spinning at operational speeds.
Mercy tuned the rings, Rebeccah steadied the magnetic bottle.
The nurse pushed gurney out of the elevator, turned dreamily and pushed it toward the Ring room. Wolfgang left the gate in Pax's hands and mentally ordered a man to open the door and hold it.
He could hear the confusion clearly now, as the rings kept spinning and the gate refused to close on command. The man at the door turned and escorted the nurse and her lump filled gurney across the room. They were in front of the rings before someone with seniority advanced to block them. Run! Push it into the gate! The man he had under control bumped the officer aside, the nurse rushed the gurney past them. It was sucked into the whirling energies, the nurse clinging to it, mouth open in the start of a scream as he released her mind.
But now he only had the bodies, their minds were back there.
Wordless screams of pain. A roaring white funnel, ready to tear them apart.
His head hurt.
:: The computers. They're holding us ::
:: The magnetic field will pull us back! ::
He tried to dig into his head, to mentally remove the things that tethered him to the old world. Tried to reach forward and grab the new world. The gate was skipping around, uncontrolled. No telling where he'd be, if he could get there at all. He opened his mind and tried to grab one of the colonist's mind for an anchor. Couldn't do it. What about his personal bubble? It was right there, could he slide it down wires, insulate himself? The tunnel twitched and looked like it could collapse. Not that way. He pulled the bubble back.
More people ran into the ring room, the medical staff from below, officers and a few managers from the other building. Dr. Brent was screaming orders. Above, people crowded against the glass of the observation windows.
:: The new computers are maintaining the gate, we need to cut our links to them. ::
And Paxal Gamma's monomania transcended pain. He reached out and back to the old world and sliced. The computers died, the links disappeared. The gate started spiraling closed, sliding away from them, or them from it.
Wolfgang popped the bubble.
He had a brief impression of two masses trying to occupy the same space, an explosion, cryogenic superconducting magnets, rings spinning at thousands of revolutions per minute sudden losing casing, pieces. Huge electric arcs, shattered shards of cold death ripping a building to pieces. A magnetic monster that reached and took a bite out of reality . . . The nuke would have been overkill. He shoved himself away, down the roaring gullet of the tunnel. Bright flashes and flares. A slow motion experience of the exploratory trips he'd taken. He stripped the cocooning bubbles off his fellow Tellies. Naked hairless bodies spun away.
And he fell into the grass. And saw the future in a single blinding flash. Comets in the stars, meteors streaking across the midnight sky, a woman dressed all in black, trim and deadly, advancing to kill him. A statue of a laughing boy on a prancing horse. A line of fire, rushing across a world. A dragon, a goat . . . the precog faded as the other talents came to the fore.
A strong telepath, telempath. With minor brain damage. A world flooded in. People and animals. Wishes and hopes. So different, each one. But not completely different. The differences cancelled out, and left behind the Archetypes ground deeply into the collective subconscious of the species. Some resonated and stuck, others oozed stealthily in, some bounced. All the expectations and hard held beliefs of tens of thousands of people twisted him. He fumbled, snatched for knowledge not held by everyone, fought to keep the bits that were him, and found a memory of a shield, a mental shield . . . and the pressure faded away.
He flopped in the green grass and stared blankly at the deep blue sky.
People came and eyed him dubiously.
He caught muttering that ought to have been too quiet for him to hear. "They’re the gods. The ones they talked about, that run the gates to the other worlds."
Gods?
He could twitch his hands. He rather thought that was a good sign. He couldn't remember why. People came and went. Some looked at him closely, some hurried away. Pinprick feelings all over. A pack of teenagers rolled him onto a blanket and moved him into the shade. He couldn't even thank them. After some time, he sat up, wobbling and feeling very . . . drugged. He was stark naked, apart from a slimy gel, the blanket and a framework of some sort on his head.
A young woman leaned into his field of vision. "Welcome to Exile. Relax, the doctor said she knew how to remove that thing on your head. She's getting the mobile hospital set up. Just, just stay here until she's ready for you." Her eyes darted to the side. Some moans and muffled cries registered. "And for the other people, whoever they are."
He looked over. More people in his sort of condition. The woman was . . . a doctor? She looked funny with a cage instead of hair. Two men he ought to know. He had a vague idea they weren't supposed to be here, but the reason faded from his understanding.
He looked across a rolling plain; grass, trees, a large lake in the distance, or maybe the ocean, he couldn’t see the far side.
"It looks like a nice place." He took a deep breath of clean air. "And it smells free. We're free."
About the Author
I was born and raised in California, and have lived more than half my life, now, in Texas.
Wonderful place. I caught almost the first bachelor I met here, and we’re coming up on our thirty-eighth anniversary.
My degree is in Geology. After working for an oil company for almost ten years as a geophysicist, I “retired” to raise children. A
s they grew, I added oil painting, sculpting and throwing clay, breeding horses, volunteering in libraries and for the Boy Scouts, and treasurer for a friend’s political campaign. Sometime in those busy years, I turned a love of science fiction into a part time job reading slush—unsolicited manuscripts—for Baen Books (Mom? Someone is paying you to read??!!)
I've always written, published a few short stories. But now that the kids have flown the nest, I'm calling writing a full time job.
Other Titles by the Author
Wine of the Gods Series:
Outcasts and Gods
Exiles and Gods (Three Novellas)
The Black Goats
Explorers
Spy Wars
One Alone
Comet Fall
A Taste of Wine (Seven Tales)
Dark Lady
Growing Up Magic (Four Novellas)
Young Warriors
God of Assassins
Heirs of Crown and Spear
The Fiend
Empire of the One
Warriors of the One
Dancer
Earth gate
Mages at Large
Art Theft
Triplets
Sea Wolves
Bad Karma
Dark Side of the Moon
Cascades
Olympian
Embassy
Rael
On the Run
God of the Sun
Cannibal World
No Confidence
The Directorate Series
Directorate School
A Tale of Three Interns
Trouble in Paradise
First Posting
Surveillance
Fort Dinosaur
The Lawyers of Mars
Fancy Free
Time Loop
Writing as Zoey Ivers
YA Cyberpunk Adventures:
The Barton Street Gym
Chicago
Fantasy:
Demi God
Excerpt from the sequel to Outcasts and Gods