by John Keeble
Really? How could they know me? He stares at Sandro, weighing probabilities and possibilities.
"The report on you was prepared two weeks ago. You have the ability to lead and unite. Your actions have been dictated by your wish to protect your communities. You are not motivated by violence or greed. Your followers and rival commanders thrive on hatred and avarice. There is no possibility that you can pacify them without our troopers. The same violent anarchy is gaining ground throughout FedUK."
"That would make me the most powerful numan2 in FedUK," says White Death. I don't want this but I could use it for the people.
"Yes, you would be the most powerful numan2."
"And the most hated."
"That too. But you will achieve your aim of saving your people."
*
Jack can see and hear everything in the room. He is aware of Alice and Max and their alarm at his condition. He can feel the stuffy air of their domed chamber deep inside the protecting rock. He can hear Alice talking to her sister via a satellite telecoms link and he knows they are sharing a secret about him. Alice would never do anything to harm him – still, their secrecy unsettles him.
He sees Max's great face almost touching his and then, apparently satisfied, Max jumping down from the sofa and returning to console Alice. But most of all, he is aware of the moving images in his head.
His inner consciousness roams unbidden through a giant chamber. A library. A stock room. What is it? There is no light, no clarity, but it is incredibly important. The realization makes his breath catch for a second, and Alice and Max rush across the room in their anxiety.
He slows his thoughts. He moves into an aisle stretching into the distance, impossibly high and impenetrably dark. He runs his hand along one side, along a row of tomes under his fingertips, an endless library of the world, and his mind lights in flashes as his fingers touch the spine of each book.
His emotions reel: this is no intellectual show. Every book is the memory of a living creature suffering the loneliness, the fear, the hopelessness of its extinction. One second, he is being boiled alive with hundreds of his brothers and sisters; the next he is a leopard tracking alone, over endless snow, dying without the comfort of another of his kind; then the last whale, alone in the chill of arctic currents. An unassailable depth of sadness catches him and he hesitates, his fingers lightly resting by chance on a book where he stops.
Jacknuman is preparing his gun and poison. He has changed from his numan family gown into a protection suit issued by his new contract employers. It is good work, good pay, and he is happy. The scientists say that a recent resurgence of an old disease, tuberculosis, might come from human animals. There might be a health risk to people, even his own family living only eight miles away. The FedUK Council has voted to cull the human animals as a precaution to avoid any risk. Other people, who talk of human animal rights, portray them as "animal people" and point to their emotional ways, mating for long periods, and raising their young in families that care for each other.
He is lucky to have this work. Eradicating a warren of human animals is easy. He will shoot the big, mature animals. The young ones might be cute in little dresses and leggings but there is not much meat on them.
"Time to go," says the team leader. "Remember, these are bad human animals. They have been eating numan farm crops and they carry diseases. We need to deal with them."
The twelve eradicators get up and mob off towards the areas where human animals are allowed to live away from people. The team's gas-protection suits look like a uniform and Jacknuman feels powerful as one of the squad. He has absorbed the operation's details: human animals in the open can be shot but the rest, out of sight in the places where they live with their young, must be gassed to make sure they all die.
"That will get the job done," he thinks. "Human animals do not feel pain like people. And their lives are nothing but eating and reproducing. It will be a mercy to kill them."
The team leader calls as they walk, "Remember, exterminators: no human animal is to be left alive. Those gassed must be burned or buried. The ones shot can be taken away as wild game and fed to your animals. They may not be sold for numan consumption. Fan out and take your positions in the sweep."
Jacknuman likes the team leader. They play nuchess together, which is probably why he got this job. Dick knows, he is no great shot and has never handled poison gas before the training for this clearance operation.
"Over there, on the left!" shouts one of the team. Three fast shots shatter the silence and two human animals go down. Good start!
Jacknuman's excitement and alertness rise and he walks faster, gun at the ready, gas pack bouncing on his back.
There! Dead ahead! He can see a young male human animal looking around startled after the earlier shots. He is maybe twelve years old, a bright blue shirt under a pale face and curly blond hair. The human animal is only half grown – not much meat but worth the price of a bullet.
Jacknuman lifts his gun, sights the human animal, pulls the trigger. Joy! His first kill. He runs towards the carcass, ready to slap a claim notice on it. But then he sees a bunch of mature and juvenile human animals running towards their warrens. He starts firing, shot after shot, as other exterminators do the same. Some of the human animals are carrying their young. One big male tries to shield a female already hit and going down. He is caught by half a dozen bullets, erupting in blood and spinning with the force of the impacts.
Several human animals are screaming. The first exterminators reach them and hack their throats to save bullets. Every exterminator slaps claim notices on all the carcasses he thinks he can justify.
"Gassing," shouts the team leader. "Forward!"
Jacknuman picks his target. He is enjoying this. He wishes he could keep a head trophy for a wall in his home. He walks to a human animal warren and looks it over. He is surprised that their warrens are quite like numan houses; smaller and cruder, but similar in shape. Human animals look a little like people, he supposes, although the similarity is not much more than the Great Apes he has seen in ancient images and videos.
Jacknuman can hear noises from inside the warren as he gets the gas pack off his back, unpacks the equipment and assembles it for use. There is a wailing from the young human animals and the mature ones are making threatening noises. He knows people who can talk to the human animals and who claim they have emotions and intellect, even souls, but he does not believe it. People are people; animals are animals. End of story.
This is easy work. I can make a career of this.
"Yes, that's what he did," Jack thinks, shocked, struggling to disengage from Jacknuman and the aisle of books. "He was one of the first generation of numans colonizing the land by killing humans. Then the numan2s came for him and his family..."
*
Galen paces in his prison cell. It is big enough for ten long steps before the wall forces him to turn back. His arm, now bandaged, aches from Max's bite. He still has his bargaining strengths. He has no intention of telling Alice what experimental upgrade he gave Aapeli – unless they agree to his terms.
As prisons go, this is not too bad. The bed is big enough for him and his two wives – but one wife sleeps with Jack, and the other has deserted him to work for the security forces. The rest of the room's fittings are worthy of his status but, annoyingly, the mediamat has been removed.
Galen hits a telecomms link to Jack's room.
"Yes, what do you want?" The sharpness in Alice's voice startles him. She has never forgiven me for hitting her. I will do it again. Soon.
"Balen, I want to speak with Jack," he says, ignoring numan codes of politeness.
"Don't call me Balen!"
"Alice, I want to speak with Jack."
"No."
"I need to speak with him!"
"He is coming out of a genetic memories regression. He cannot speak with you."
Galen hears the computer-generated "thup," like an artificial intelligence door closing, as
she breaks the link.
He tries the comms link again but he gets nothing. She has barred me.
Galen unthinkingly restarts his agitated pacing. He cannot go back to the World Council without handing over Jack and Max. He cannot join Aini and the military maniacs without giving them control of Jack and Max. Balen has her own agenda.
He jerks around as his door slides open. "Ah, Jack, come in," he says with illusory friendliness.
Jack steps in and the door closes. He looks like he has been dead for a week and Galen reads the signs, knows his medical and mental state. Yes, he will be easy to defeat.
"You are anxious to talk to me, Galen?" Jack asks, though to Galen it is the tone and erratic nature of the word spacing that offer the most useful communication.
"Yes," says Galen. "You are in danger and I can help. We can have an agreement. We can both survive."
"When you attacked Alice, you made yourself my enemy forever."
"Alice betrayed me. She will betray you. She is already betraying you." Am I getting through to him?
"Galen, don't try to manipulate me."
"I can tell you the secrets that Balen is hiding from you – she is numan4, she is my wife, and she works for me and the World Council."
"Tell me more."
"She will betray us both to the spookpolice. We must eliminate her."
"Tell me the secrets and then we will talk of Balen."
Jack has not moved. He is still standing a few feet inside the door, and Galen moves closer, but not close enough to be in striking range of Jack's fists.
"Do you remember when you were taking banya and hallucinating about the extinction of nonhuman animals?" asks Galen.
"Yes."
"It was not banya. It was a drug that I made."
"I bought it on the street," says Jack.
"You bought it from a numan posing as a human," Galen replies. "It was someone we borrowed from associates in Cambridge – you remember Cambridge? Where you got kicked out of your job and your home and where your beautiful wife ran away with another human animal?"
"The secrets. What are they?"
"You are an experiment, Jack. My experiment. Balen is conducting the experiment and everything you have experienced with her has been a lie."
*
Aini is in the luxury and hygiene of the FedOz Center's admin tower where he first met his animal, Mark. His stock of meat is safely in his freezer. He has presented his report to Commander Ra, the Director of the research center. And he is free of his research animal, away from the stink and crudeness. He is content.
"Commander." Aini looks up. It is the Director's assistant. Some say she is one of his wives but here, with such sharp knives in the constant infighting, it is never safe to show curiosity. "The Director will see you now."
"I am content," says Aini with the unease he always feels when he has to see Ra. "I have not requested an appointment with the Director."
"The Director is not content. He will see you immediately."
Aini buys a little time by fiddling with the security program shutting down his mediamat. A scientist can never be too careful. I trusted Galen with my mediamat and lost the best work of my career.
"I shall see the Director now," he says as he looks up from his mediamat but finds himself being insulted by the back of a subordinate walking away.
Aini sighs. He has never got on with the Director or his office staff. But he is trapped: he has risen to the top and there is nowhere else to go. Except taking the Director's job.
He walks over to the Director's office, impassive numan4 face in place, and obeys the impatient flick of the assistant's fingers to go in to see their boss.
"Commander. Thank you for taking the time to see me," says the Director. It's always like this: Director and Commander. Will he never forget that I was appointed against his wishes?
"I am content to see you at any time, Director," Aini replies. "How may I serve you?"
"I have reviewed the data you provided on your unconventional theories and I am not impressed."
"I am content to hear your assessment of the data and my preliminary conclusions, Director."
"Your methodology is flawed. You cannot use an animal by taming and training it, and expect to obtain reliable data. Plainly, the animal had some form of consciousness and its instincts dictated how it behaved. That includes its reaction to you."
"Director, may I mention that I cleared my methodology with you before beginning the experiment?"
"Your proposals were inadequate and misleading."
Aini's lightning mind stalls in astonishment. The experiment's preliminary results are far ahead of anything they have seen. Why is he wrecking my work? Is he helping the military topple the World Council?
"I am content to accept your decisions, Director," says Aini, hoping his voice and his face do not reveal his outrage.
"You will drop this nonsense and leave today to inspect our Center in Marseilles, in southern FedEurope, and then join an expedition by the FedUK military command to search for any research records – data or living DNA texts – in the Center run by your brilliant former colleague, Professor Galen."
So that's it. The Director has defected to the military. Does he know they have approached me too?
*
Chapter 26
Mark, bruised and sore, peers between slats in the side of the animal truck packed with him and fifty other human animals. Some of the animals think they are being taken to Dream City for their new lives, but Mark doubts it. We are going to the scrag meat processing plant. If I know what's outside, I have a chance of escaping.
"Watchitmate!" roars one of the others as he tramples on a foot. Before he can react, chaos strikes as the truck rocks and skids in a fast left-turn. "Ahh!" cries a voice in Mark's ear amid shrieks and shouts from others as they all slam into the truck's side.
"Oh, no," Mark gasps, aware only of the pain as bodies crash against him and everyone fights for every inch of space and air. His panicked arms try to fend them off but their weight overwhelms him and his ribs buckle.
The truck straightens and gradually everyone sorts himself out, some upright and unhurt, some moaning, some roaring with rage, some whimpering, some damaged on the floor and unable to move as others tread on them.
Mark gulps a lungful of stifling, stinking air. I'm okay. I'm alive. I will still be able to run. He looks out of the truck's side. Green fields. Open country. Nowhere to hide. I don't care. I will escape.
Without warning or time to brace himself, the truck brakes heavily and Mark is thrown sideways. His last glimpse of the outside catches a gate and farm buildings and then he is crushed with the rest as the truck skids to a halt.
The back door slams open before they can get control of themselves and brutes start grabbing the nearest animals and throwing them into a channel sealed off with high fences.
"Wait, stop!" shouts Mark as he is grabbed and dragged out in time to see the driver pulled from his cab by two numans and manhandled into the human herd.
Mark assesses the fence and his hopes rocket. I can climb that! I can get away! He jumps, his hands locking on the top. He pulls himself up, head over, eyes on the empty ground that offers a free run to safety. He scrambles higher, his ribs in agony. He gets a leg over. I'm making it!
Whack. Mark hears it more than he feels it. The blow stuns him. His head reels. An unseen hand drives up and pushes him back. Another blow catches his shoulder. He falls back into the herd. No! I must get away. He scrambles up again. Blood gushes from his scalp but it does not matter. Nothing matters except getting away. As he pulls his head above the fence top, an animal tickler takes him full in the face. The shock flings him down and he hardly notices hitting the ground or the brute hands dragging him along by his ankles.
The sound of machinery drives into Mark's returning consciousness, and anguished shouts and cries fill the air. He is gripped by pain from the tickler, the blows to his head and shoulder, and the brutes t
wisting his legs as they drag him. It's not too late! I can escape. Aini will save me. This is just part of his experiment.
Clamps close painfully around his ankles. What are they doing? A sudden jerk has him upside down, off the floor with his feet high, his head down, and rising as a conveyor chain carries him forward.
Six human animals ahead are nearing a vat of boiling water. A fat, screaming animal dips suddenly with the conveyor chain and its head and shoulders go in. An electric lance digs into the animal's back, which arches and he hangs loose as the carcass is carried on.
Mark cannot breath. He cannot think. He watches the same numane stunning take the shouting, squirming animals ahead of him. He is helpless. He is heading for death.
At the last second, instinct jerks his body away from the boiling water. The electric lance jabs him fiercely but he hangs on to consciousness. I will survive! Then he sees the automated knives. A second later the first blade slices into his throat. As the life drains out of him, he thinks: I am an animal. There is no escape.
*
Alice looks into Jack's eyes. Her nose is almost touching his and she can still feel the warmth of his lips on hers. They have been entwined in bed since Jack returned, angry and silent, from a confrontation with Galen. She had refused to let him write notes on his latest brush with extinction and insisted he rests. In the end, she coaxed him into bed and Max joined them, too, snuggling up behind Jack while she claimed his front.
"I love you, Jack. I don't want to lose you," she says softly. "We've been lucky so far, but I'm as worried about your health as I am about the military or spookpolice finding us."
Jack is fast recovering from his earlier ordeal and has other concerns on his mind. "You're such an intriguing shape," he tells her.
"You've told me that before," she says. Maybe I can relax him and get him to sleep.
Jack is not in the mood for relaxing and she cannot resist his lips and tongue as he explores her mouth, sharing breath and body heat. Max has seen all this before and slips off the bed.