by Joe Darris
Baucis hoped no one would bring up the enigmatic figure that had killed his biselk and maimed his most powerful vultus. If he could catch it, then he could easily incorporate it into his garden. But he had already prepared for the next stage of his Garden without knowledge of the mysterious beast, and was ready to proceed. Baucis gambled:
“Alpha management has been successful for our crops and our Garden's security for a long time, but there are undeniable problems. The biselk lacking VRCs often eat the crops they're guarding for us, especially when their population grows too large for the food supply we have for them. Sometimes un-piloted biselk wander off and either die or— just as dangerous in my opinion— release their superior genetics into the ever growing feral population. Sometimes the herbivores die, leaving their bodies fester with disease. Most problematically there are the feral predators, whose numbers surely increase as they steal biselk.
He looked around the table. Most sat back, drenched in shadows the lights of the ancient chandelier couldn't pierce. Ntelo nodded, her face the image of encouraging contemplation. She played her part well.
“These problems can only be solved by human Hunters controlling predators through the same VRC system. biselk fear Alpha members of their species, but not as much as they fear predators. Already, a single Hunter's presence has reduced their desertion to almost nothing. It seems the biselk understand they're safe if they stay with the group, and will not leave if a predator is present. Urea and her panthera have successfully isolated our population of animals from the wild. The biselk will no longer go feral, nor will they be eaten by wild predators. In short, Shepherds always failed at what my Hunters do with ease.”
Baucis let his closing statement sink in. He thought introducing predators was brilliant. They solved so many problems with elegance. He hoped the Council saw them as he did.
“And how do you control these carnivores?” Ntelo asked. They really did make a great team. Her tone of voice had all of the Councilors nodding in agreement. He answered the question easily.
“Like the other Evanimals, the carnivores will be constantly monitored during waking hours. Our Hunters are trained to not allow them to do anything too egregious. They will not attack any Evanimal implanted with one of a VRC, nor will they reproduce without my permission.”
“And you're sure your Hunters can control these natural born murderers?” Rufus Aurelius asked, his voice goading. Sometimes the Media Baron had a way of sounding a bit inflammatory. His eyes twinkled more than the gold paint he wore upon his skin.
“Hunters monitor them at all times, of course... When a predator--we've been experimenting primarily with cats--begins to exhibit hunting behavior, it's Hunter counterpart assumes control and notifies me. I then personally choose an appropriate target. The Hunter, and eventually teams of Hunters, then removes the unwanted animal, and disposes of it."
Aurelius nodded, seemingly placated. The Media Baron loved a good show, and multiple pantheras would make a grander spectacle than only one.
“I am ready to support Master Baucis,” Tennay announced, “We have seen Urea and her panthera handle the herds with ease. They have far less problems than Shepherds alone had.” Baucis had assumed that Tennay would support him. The engineer turned custodian understood the power of having tools on the surface better than any other. He had actually been there.
“They'll eat meat that could feed our humans,” Orus Luca’s bluntly stated. He was the Weatherman, a position that largely ran itself. Baucis's gardens required rain every three days, Orus simply followed the ecologist’s orders. He still paraded his opinion at times, though Baucis mused that only he believed he had any sort of power. Orus was most interested in food from the Garden, especially biselk meat. The only member of the Council with any sort of muscle mass (though his appetite far surpassed his strength), Luca would not risk his position or the perks that came with it. He could be placated without effort.
“I admit my predators need to eat too, but records show that prior to my system, we lost at least ten percent of our herd to desertion, predation and accident. My predators eat that amount, but only individuals we deem inferior or anarchic to the system. We're able to use the preferred ninety percent of our meat for human consumption, and only have to sacrifice old, diseased or inferior individuals to the predators. Isn't order worth more than a gamble?
Cold stares from those trapped in a casino.
“But do we need the predators Baucis?” asked Ntelo. “Sometimes I wonder if you do this all only for the glory and grand spectacle of your beasts. They're certainly more impressive since you've become Master Ecologist.”
Baucis smiled, Ntelo was a perfect partner, in every sense of the word, she asked the questions he wanted, denying others the opportunity. “It's true our citizens love to watch the animals, especially with your brilliant spiritual insight, High Priestess, and my predators have undoubtedly reintroduced another aspect to the eternal game of life. But I do this for the glory of the world we live above, not for myself. Our ancestors engineered the original biselk out of the struggling elk and bison populations that were sure to go extinct. Did they do this to glorify themselves? Or was it to restore the earth to a more Natural state?”
“But Baucis, what you've done is far beyond anything the earth ever was” Ntelo replied. The rest of the Council nodded, enamored like spectators at an ancient political debate. In this event too, both sides were controlled and the outcome predetermined.
“Mankind began to sculpt the earth long before the Scourge imprisoned us here in sky. Before our ancient ancestors the world was teeming with colossal and impressive beasts, giant sloths, mammoths, bison, and my favorites, the lions, eagles, the primates.” He hesitated, not intending to mention the errant beast, nor meaning to place it in his own taxonomic order. Baucis continued, smoother he hoped, “Mankind began to eradicate animals long before they recognized their beauty or utility. If we had their DNA I'd gladly bring them back, but we don't, we have only the animals that we’ve managed to reach from our perch in the Spire. Now that we survive precariously above the earth, isn't it our privilege...nay, our duty, to guide that most magnificent spectacle Nature ever devised, evolution?”
“The wild vultus populations prove that you don't have complete control of your little symphony,” Mavis Talik said, her voice saccharine. Younger than the rest, almost as young as Baucis, she was the least garishly dressed. She had none of Lucas’ bulk, Ntelo or Aurelius's paints, nor the hard hands and strong knuckles of Tennay. Her veins didn’t protrude as much as Baucis’s, though her skin just as pale (only Tennay’s skin held any melanin in it). As the council's Psychologist, Baucis detested her. How that position survived was beyond him, yet the public liked her well enough. She had an unshakable optimism even when criticizing him.
Baucis scowled at her. He had explained and apologized for the vultus population too many times to count.
“I began working with the vultus nearly fifty years ago, before I was a Councilor and have been learning from my mistake since. I was young, and engineered them from wild vultures to eliminate the diseases that were plaguing the herd at the time. They performed their task adequately for years and still do. Even my predecessor told me they were 'a genius stroke of ribonucleic acid.' How could I have foreseen mutations that ruined my inserted Alpha-pack gene?”
No one else predicted such misfortune. Why am I alone expected to be prescient with the Evanimals?
“A predilection to an Alpha societal structure was not the only modification you made to their genes.” Aurelius said. The Media Baron knew his history. The Council were like a flock of vultus themselves, if one sensed weakness, the rest pecked and pecked.
“No. I never make just one modification, if geneticists worked at that speed we'd be scarcely faster than Natural evolution,” he tried not to sound insolent, “There was no way to get the birds to dispose of the sheer number of bodies, and be implanted with VRCs given their diminutive size, so I made them larg
er. I did not anticipate that that gene would mutate and give rise to the individual who killed my bird and stole Alpha status for himself. But I do not think we should dwell on past mistakes. We have since implanted birds of the larger variety and have regained control of the flock.
“And what if history repeats itself?” Baucis didn't see who asked the question. It wasn't Talik's singsong voice so it must have been one of the truly insignificant Councilors, the chief of air quality, Borath, or the head of external communications, Lyzet, were likely bets. Both were fools with positions as pointless as Luca's that insisted on badgering Baucis with questions they wouldn't understand the answers to.
“I have discontinued direct tampering with an Evanimal's genetics, given our inferior tools in the Spire, I will concede it is too... erratic. However Urea's panthera is not from a lab, but the Earth itself! All we must do is find her a suitable mate, select the best of their litter and repeat. Urea has proven the species is quite accommodating of the VRCs. Time and attention to detail will allow less skilled pilots to handle the felines. With no more than husbandry, I have given the biselk their second set of antlers, made them more susceptible to the Field, our commands, and in the process, bettered our lives.”
That wasn't exactly true, but no one needed to know that.
“I intend to fix our problems permanently by restoring the natural order to the earth with my predators.”
The unintended consequences his experiments caused were infinitely fascinating to Baucis, but he would not debate them here in the Council's chamber under the gaudy chandelier. It was a conversation for scientists in a laboratory, not a bunch of power hungry figureheads in an ancient poker room.
“You're not worried another individual will arise from your system that will challenge the order of things?” Talik’s voice dripped honey.
“And what do I do against an empty threat of chaos? Admit defeat and surrender prematurely? I'm not concerned for my Hunters, if that's your insinuation. Fear and power are the only factors that have ever interfered with either the VRCs or perfect implementation of my plans. With more sophisticated techniques and increased power I have solved both of those problems. Nothing will challenge my Hunters, and they do nothing without me knowing,” Baucis said, annoyed with their irritating questions and still angry at the masked opponent who bested his vultus earlier. He loathed the idea of sweet Mavis Talik finding out about the ape. She'd be delighted in the sheer abandon of the creature.
"We must see the experiment through for as long as we are able. Do you propose that I let the predators run free and the wild descend upon us?”
The council agreed to further the experiment. It couldn't be stopped now anyway. Baucis would continue the Hunters program.
Chapter 5
The flood changed them. They are but a shadow of what they once were. There used to be more than one could count, more than one could see. They loved the plains but were so many that the forests retreated and the earth paid them in stone. Some animals are ghosts of what they once were... others have been tainted black.
Urea's head reeled from all she had learned. Were the legends true? Had Nature finally fashioned a warrior to thwart its mistake? Was that all mankind really was in her eyes? She knew her brother would only scoff at the contemplation; he’d call her superstitious, but Urea was not so sure.
The young huntress had been to many of High Priestess Ntelo's Spirit of Nature services. As one of Baucis's most prestigious Hunters, she was expected to be a part of the religion. Since the first time she synchronized with a howluchin, Baucis had expected her to attend the religious congregations with poise and grace. The High Priestess and ecologist didn't require any of their other Shepherds to attend ever service, but her and Skup faced dire punishment if they missed. They were too important, Ntelo would say. There were fanatics who worshiped the two's ability to work through the Evanimals, they were expected to be present for their sake. When guilt didn't work, Baucis used coercion to force their hand. He said he expected a lot from his most privileged pilots. Of this, she was certain: no one was more highly privileged than the black haired twins.
Urea wasn't sure if Baucis truly believed in the Spirit of Earth or Natural Order. She could never believe wholeheartedly. She thought too much. She didn't see how Baucis, the most brilliant person she had ever met, could have unquestioning faith.
The religion was a paradox. It preached non-interference with Nature and of returning to simpler times and leaving the Earth's processes to themselves yet Naturalists were the largest consumers of the Garden's crops. They paid handsomely for the tender vegetables and traded hours of labor for a miniscule cuts of meat. A single biselk could be sold to thousands of people, each getting no more than a single morsel. In her more cynical moods Urea thought it was beneficial that there was some sort of incentive in Spire City. Without fresh food from the Garden, people might not work at all.
The Hunt was the cornerstone of the entire religion, but it seemed more paradoxical than anything else. Ntelo championed it as Nature's most sacred spectacle, despite the fact that it was viewed through a Virtual Reality Chip that was implanted in the brain of an animal, its vision and hearing broadcast back into hundreds more VRCS, a blasphemous mix of Natural and technological worship. Ntelo touted it as Nature's Sculpture and charted the rapid changes and impressive adaptations zealously. She spoke of the siblings often, always with their titles, prince and princess, but she had to, without them, there were no Hunters. But when she did speak of them she shrouded their role in mysticism and prophecy.
Urea often had trouble deciphering all the High Priestess said. She knew humans made fundamental interaction with the Natural world, yet any human action could be defined as artificial, so they could never be truly natural anyway. If anything, the forces the Naturalists worshiped alluded to a balance, a sacred order to be sought. But it did not exclude technology like they preached, nor beseech machines as inherently dangerous.
The Garden operated under the same principle. Urea loved the fresh fruits and vegetables more than anyone, but she knew that the irrigation channels were plowed and dammed as necessary by the biselk. Howluchins carefully tended the plants. The entire food operation was anything but Natural, yet the Naturalists worshiped it as if it was. It seemed to matter to very few that there were humans controlling the predators, the prey, the plants, everything.
Some people, religious extremists, talked of the paradox and prophesied its demise. Ntelo spoke of them as devils and heretics who'd been cooped up in the clouds too long and longed for their own deaths. Urea wondered if these were the same fanatics that were placated by her own presence at the service every week.
Ntelo wasn't innocent of fear mongering either. The High Priestess’s sermons often railed against the injustices her species had wrought against the Nature's innocent plants and animals.
Pollution, destruction of forests, and the eradication of thousands of species were all sins for which mankind had and would continue to pay.
“Man grew bold and careless. He expected the earth to purify his actions and absolve his sins. But even this could have been forgiven,” the Priestess would shout to an auditorium full of the sinners’ grandchildren and great grand children. “But man went too far. Irritated with Nature's cycles of decay and renewal, reminders of mortality, man created something better.
“Carbon, the building block of life itself was perverted into tubes, textiles, buildings and machines. Nothing could destroy them, not the ocean, not the wind, not even the sun. Mankind was becoming buried in its own waste and then...”
The Scourge. Urea still didn't fully understand the puzzling, invisible force that had brought an end to the age of man in a matter of weeks. Urea knew Ntelo was at least partially correct about the broad strokes of the past. She had watched recordings on her VRC. Sure enough, the surface used to be covered in buildings, automobiles that trundled along the surface or flew through the air. There were a million different things to do. Musi
cal instruments, pools of water, casinos right on the surface.
It was impossible to say for certain if mankind, inevitability, or the vengeance of a planetary force created the Scourge. Regardless, one day, civilization began to melt. Urea didn't know how else to describe what she saw. There were hundreds of digital recordings of people finding their roof simply gone, or their automobile half submerged in a puddle that matched its color exactly. Without its tools, humanity crumbled. Millions died of starvation, those with enough food to survive were wiped out by infectious diseases or cancer, (a disease Ntelo called Nature's Proof). No one truly knew what happened to the surface once broadcast technology was lost. Without the planetary receivers the satellite grid was useless. Spire City became isolated, solitary survivors of a horrific end. No one even knew if the Scourge made it to the other continents.
Thankfully Spire City protected itself and all inside, human occupants and computer records included. Ntelo’s predecessor preached that the citizens of Spire City had spared their descendents Nature's wrath by trying to live in harmony with the planetary force. The Spire was elevated high above the surface, and harnessed the heat and the electromagnetic force created by the earth's spinning molten iron core. The Spire utilized this energy to power every device inside, heat its own carbon surface hot enough to keep out the Scourge, and eventually control the Evanimals. Their ancestors had literally been off of the earth, and survived.
But Ntelo's sermons weren’t so positive. She was quick to point out the Spire was little more than a resort thrust high into the sky. Like the games that people used to play in the Spire, chance favored the few and ruined the rest. No one had gone to the Spire to give the earth a rest or even avoid the Scourge. Ntelo preached that Nature would come back and finish the job. She'd say that Nature was merely biding her time, sculpting another demon to destroy her mistake. Ntelo called the thing the Wild Man, and it sounded an awful lot like the ape that had killed Baucis's biselk and maimed her brother's vultus. The Priestess was convinced some people had survived in another form on the earth, and were waiting for the perfect moment to bring down the sinful Spire Casino.