by Pam Uphoff
At dawn Romeau saddled up and rode out again. They needed to find all the loose livestock that had survived two nights out there.
Harry scowled at his leg and turned to watch Old Wolf, out beyond the circled vehicles.
Waving his hands. Backing away as an entire building slid out of nowhere.
Harry grabbed his crutches and limped up the hill. Stared at the low modern building. "That's redwood, isn't it? From California."
"Yes?" Old Wolf frowned. "I . . . might have gotten it there." He walked up the steps and across the porch. The interior smelled fruity, the first room was large, with barrels racked along one side, tables, wine racks, glasses.
"This is a winery, isn't it?" A young man had followed them in. Boy. Sixteen years old, maybe. Wide-eyed, he looked younger.
"This looks like a tasting room. I've toured wineries." A young woman stepped in carefully, as if she expected the floor to disappear beneath her feet.
More people peeked in the door.
They explored, and found rooms with glass and metal vats, presses, bottling equipment. An office and bedroom on one side. A fully automated fabber kitchen on the other. Laundry room, bathroom. Several other rooms, unused. An unfinished attic.
Harry squinted. "What is in those bubble things?"
Wolf frowned, looked where he was pointing. "I'm not sure." He reached and pinched one.
The black animal startled back, then stopped and looked around.
"Why do I have a horse in my winery?" Wolf looked baffled, but reached out and scratched the animal's neck. "And how am I going to get it out of the attic?"
"He looks like a baby. A big one, mind you." The young woman proffered a tentative hand. "I'm Milly Prentice."
"Old Wolf. That's Harry."
"Chris," the boy put in.
Other introductions circled. The horse was escorted out. It had no problem with the stairs.
They got some odd looks as the building drew everyone's attention.
Harry eased himself down in one of the chairs on the front porch. He could hear the comments circulating.
"They're gods. Of course they can do magic."
"There's no such thing as magic. It's . . . an odd effect of the genetic engineering."
"They look disgusting."
Harry pried open an eye. "Don't you kids have parents you could go help?"
A general shuffle. Chris got juggled to the front to be the spokeskid. "No. Our parents didn't come with us. The government people split us sudden 'orphans' up into bus loads, with enough of us old enough to drive and sent us through."
"Damn. How many of you are there, and what supplies do you have?"
"Forty-two. We have clothes, hand tools, seeds and a few weeks worth of food. A small fabber and auto-kitchen."
Old Wolf shook his head. "Good thing they stopped making babies five years ago, otherwise there'd be little ones too."
“They stopped making babies?” Harry’s alarm collapsed as the kids started laughing.
“Genetically engineered babies.” Chris wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. “That’s why they exiled us. They think we’re all freaks, especially you gods.”
Harry bit his lip. “There was a . . . gate?”
“To a parallel world.” Milly waved at the prairie around them.
Yes. They were exiled, but how did we four get here? They drove through a gate and we . . . hitch hiked? Looking over the kids, Harry estimated them from Milly and Chris's upper teens to a blue haired pair that looked about five. "We'll all band together and survive. Walls first. Then cabins."
"A store." Miriam Wilson was a tiny woman, slim and athletic, in the way of girl gymnasts. "I'm starting a list of everything everyone is going to order, when the gate opens again. I'll order a bunch of stuff as well as what we brought."
Harry blinked. "Oh. Right. Once a month all colonies get a connection to Earth, right?"
"Right. That should be in a month, twenty-six days, actually."
Jack Otts was big man in every sense. Darker than Harry, nearly as tall and much wider. "That's too soon. I need to get all the livestock owners to register brands before we get any more arguments about who owns which damned cow. Then we need to co-ordinate with all the nearby villages, get an agreement to honor brands. We should get an order out for branding irons as soon as possible." He shrugged. "There's always the month after that. I just don't like the idea of starting with fights over ownership of all these strayed cows."
"Surely we've got a blacksmith around here somewhere." Romeau protested. "We should do as much as possible ourselves."
Miriam nodded. "We need to make things locally; transportation is going to be a problem. The magnetic anchor is at the western-most end of the line. I’ve been talking on the shortwave, getting orders and payment information straight with the lady who has taken charge there. We figured it’s at least a thousand miles, but if there aren’t any major rivers blocking the path, we can probably get in enough of a road and temporary bridges to send trucks for our stuff, the next month. But what about the groups that landed further away? It's going to be a problem, getting stuff to the far east."
"We need a boat." Harry looked north, to the lake. "I wonder if all the lakes are connected."
"I think I have a boat." Old Wolf glanced at his bubble-filled winery.
"The far east and the near east are both on salt water bodies." Jack shrugged. "When I saw the lions, I thought, Africa, but those fresh water lakes aren't the Mediterranean. From what people have told me on the radio, there's no outlet to the West, just a river on the east end."
Chris bit his lip and blurted out. "I don't think you gods were supposed to have come. You may need to hide, if a search party comes through, looking for you."
Romeau and Gisele swapped startled looks, and then they both nodded.
"I don't think you'd better plan on that gate." Old Wolf frowned, obviously tried to remember. "I think we may have been a necessary part of the gate mechanism. So when we escaped we may have broken something."
"Broken . . . " Miriam looked at him, wide-eyed. "You mean we won't ever be able to go home? George and I were just going to pioneer for twelve years, until the boys were grown up and established. Then we were going to retire in Vermont. Visit for a month or two around Christmas every year." She looked around at the raw beginnings of a primitive village in horror. "Do you have any idea what old age will be like in a place like this?"
People had been listening, and gathered closer.
"Retirement, nothing. What about childbirth?"
"What about electricity?"
"What if we can't find oil nearby?"
"Are you saying we're stranded here? Forever?"
"What have you done?"
In the back of the small crowd a man snorted. "They're building another trans-dimensional gate in Pennsylvania. Remember? It won't be finished for another two years. But no one is stuck here forever. The next generation of computers will render your live assistance unnecessary."
Harry looked over the intervening heads. The man looked familiar. Oriental. "Chou. You're one of the Chou's aren't you. In accounting or something."
The man glared. "Yeah. Want to make something of it? With luck, once they get the gate up, I can get permission to move to the world that most of the family was exiled to."
"Most . . . Other world?"
"Fried your brain properly, didn't you, Frankenstein? Yeah, they sent all the engineered to five worlds. The family planned on finding a nice one just for themselves, and wound up arrested and shoved through randomly. I was on vacation. By the time I got home, everyone else was gone." He gave a disgusted snort. "Two years."
Harry nodded, vague memories, knowledge without context started surfacing. "There were protocols . . . if you were stranded. Marooned. Fire up the beacon on the solstice, summer or winter, because that could be found easily enough. They said that the week after was when they'd search for people. Weren't there classes?"
Old Wolf no
dded. "Right, how to track the sun and identify the solstice. The beacon needed to be boosted if possible. Batteries or a generator. They'd start searching on the solstice, and for a week after."
The stolid man stepped up beside Miriam, nodded. George, her husband. "Well, we'll all just have to get by with what we brought for a couple of years. Not the best situation, but hardly a disaster. And anyway, you could be wrong. Maybe the gate is just fine."
Old Wolf opened his mouth, then shut it.
Harry kept his mouth closed, and didn't say anything about, oh, sabotaging the beacon so they wouldn't wind up wired back into the machines. Leaving the matter alone was the best idea. When the gate opened, it would be time to worry about the personal dangers. Today they had other challenges. "So, getting back to building, which we need to do, with or without a gate, how are we going to build this barricade?"
A man of about thirty nodded. "There are plenty of trees. We need to start cutting them and ditching to plant the poles."
Wolf walked off to the side of the patio and stared at the ground. Chopped twice with his hand then gestured, as if inviting a guest in. A strip of ground obliged, flew into his face and exploded all over the patio.
The kids laughed and they all crowded around to see.
Harry estimated the hole three feet deep and twice as long. A foot wide.
The man cleared his throat. "Yes. Just about like that. Perhaps I'd better round up some people with saws. I'm Dave, by the way."
Old Wolf concentrated on the ditching, while the chain saws roared in the forest, and their single harness-trained team of horses hauled the long trunks to the ditch. A young woman named Muriel had a tractor and started ditching on the other side of the little valley.
Harry organized the orphans. Then more children gravitated his direction. He put them all to work. They packed the dirt in around the poles, fetched and carried supplies for the other groups, took water to the workers, and in a few hours, sandwiches some women were making. The littlest kids spent most of their time running and playing, making instant friends. The teenagers spent half their time eyeing each other, too socially inept to simply walk up and introduce themselves. Well, not immediately. The groups slowly merged, then new groupings started showing up. The little kids wore out, and Harry parked them in Wolf's tasting room with a movie on the vid screen there. Star Wars, the third remake, his own favorite. Of all the things to remember clearly.
All day long, riders returned, herding exhausted cows. Harry spotted Chris trailing after a thin girl to check on some big tame red and white cows. The boy ran off to the bus, and returned with a first aid kit. Ah yes. Kindness to animals. One of the easiest ways to a girl's heart. Although kittens were usually easier than cows. One of them kicked. Chris landed on his butt, while the girl giggled.
The wall lengthened, log by log.
Romeau rode in with a dozen cows. He gave the winery an odd look. He was back in a few minutes, sans animals. He walked to the end of the completed wall and pulled out a building of his own.
"Temple of Love" was engraved over the wide columned front porch. The Grecian style white marble edifice had a full catering kitchen, two large open rooms and an ornate apartment in the back.
Harry limped through it all and smothered laughter. "Romeau, this is not a house, this is a wedding chapel. Generic. It even has a honeymoon suite. Probably rents out with or with-out a generic semi-religious person with a license to perform marriages."
"Me?" Romeau looked doubtful. "To be honest, I don't recall ever sleeping in a round bed." He shrugged and invited everyone to sleep indoors.
Harry looked down at his bandages in disgust. I want to go, to explore this new world. I want to see everything. Instead, I’m stuck here, not even able to help. We could get run over by predators, or for that matter, elephants. We’re guessing about how tall to make the walls, what if we’re wrong? We’d be stuck inside with the lions. He shook his head. “Stop emoting, Harry.” Talking to myself now? Well, hardly the strangest thing about me. What I need to do is build a good, large house for these kids, and get them well set up and independent before I take off exploring. Which will have the added advantage of giving me a home to come back to.
Home.
It seemed like a foreign concept. Like something he’d never had before.
Chapter Five
1 July 2117
Town under construction, Exile
"They may have had their brains scrambled by the gate stuff, but they aren't dangerous to us. I don't see any sign of a desire to own us or control us." Chris surveyed the pack of kids. The four littlest were collapsed in a puppy-heap with a couple of the girls hovering over them. Scary to see otherwise attractive females going gooey in the brain. The tall native grass was tromped down in a circle beside the bus. Most likely they'd sleep inside again, even if the walls were finished today.
"I think we can depend on them to fend off other controlling people—like those teachers—while we steer them in the right direction. And they do need help. Hell, they need keepers."
Ariel, who was not interested in the littles, nodded. "I think it was the wires in their brains. I think they messed something up when they ripped loose."
Chris shuddered at the thought. "Nobody ought to be allowed to do that."
Mallory nodded. "It's slavery. Worse. They were treated like animals."
"They're part animal. So are we, but not as much." Lillian sniffed.
"One or two genes." Milly frowned at the other girl.
"They're people. They aren't animals." Jamie crossed her arms. "Gisele is brilliant. We talked about medical school."
"Oh, enough." Chris waved the gods' defenders down. "If they come to arrest them, we'll hide them. Or just watch for goons and warn them. They have a whole world to get lost in. And they can certainly take care of themselves."
"I'm not so sure about Harry, he needs help the most. But those building techniques are awesome." Matt was another of the almost eighteen year olds. "I think we should get Harry to open a . . . well, if we're headed for a Medieval existence, call it a Tavern and Inn. As we grow up, we'll move away, and then Harry can rent rooms. Be the Barkeeper. It'll be a good job for him if his leg doesn't heal right."
That got nods.
Milly added, “He looks so old. The others look, well, I suppose in their twenties. But we need to keep an eye on Harry. He's a nice old guy.”
Right. We'll just adopt the most powerful and scary people I've ever met. Chris waffled.
Lillian shrugged. "We'll keep an eye on Giselle as well, she goes all odd sometimes."
"We'll make sure Harry and Gisele have got homes. Anyhow, we’ll all want places for our own, as we get older. For now an inn sort-of-thing would let us have some privacy and freedom, and still take care of the little guys." Chris looked at his scribbled notes. I hope someone knows how to make paper. "Next thing: they're talking about school and college. I wasn't learning a thing in high school. I think we can just quit at about fourteen or fifteen. Work for awhile, figure out what we want to be, then either start college level classes if we can find an expert, or just apprentice, get the lectures while also learning hands on. Like Jamie working in the hospital."
Since that got twenty-seven of the thirty-eight kids who were awake, out of school, it was generally approved of.
The other eleven kids scowled. One of them, Dane Kyber, nodded reluctantly. "That sounds about right, but right now we need to earn a place here in the village as equals to any adults. We need to work, build and own our own homes, with or without this tavern of yours. And we especially need to stick to these gods, and learn how to do magic." Kid was pretty smart, for fourteen.
"But . . . " Benita frowned. "I just had my diabetes gene fixed. I'm not magic."
"What suites do you have? Do you know what company did them?" Milly drummed her fingers. "I researched most of the companies. My laptop will have the suites they were all offering, if it still works after being tossed around by that land
ing." She got up abruptly and climbed into the bus.
"How long will your batteries last, though?" Dane followed her.
"I've got a solar charger, but still, a couple of years and computers will be useless. Something is bound to break." She pulled a backpack out of the crammed vehicle and lugged it back outside.
"So? That means we need to produce something we can sell on Earth, so we can buy stuff."
Chris craned his neck and watched the screen over her shoulder. "Yeah. So, this list of suites, I've got the Happy Kids BTSS and something . . . F23?"
"Ooo! Bigger, taller, stronger, smarter! That's got improved antibodies and multiple enhanced cancer response, too. And the male power gene. Plus F23. That's a cosmetic thing, hair color, eye color, natural skin tones, nose shape. Happy Kids made most of theirs additive instead of replacement. So you've got your Dad's nose, slightly modified and so forth."
Chris sighed. "Mom's nose, actually. So, Mom and Dad never told me I was genetically engineered. Guess they were afraid I'd tell someone. Or afraid of what I might do, if I tried, you know, stuff. Like kill from ten feet away with a wave of your hand." He started to wave his hand, and tucked it hastily in a pocket.
Milly shrugged. "The power genes, because of the god controversy, were removed from their standard suites at some point. Fifteen years ago? And nobody ever did the double power genes for kids who belonged to someone. No gods 'out in the wild,' so to speak, except the early university experiments. Some of us may have two copies of the Witch gene, but that's a dominant, so two doesn't give us any more oomph than one, doesn't make me a Goddess. Lots of parents left out the power genes on purpose anyway. Anyone with BTSS2 doesn't have one unless they specifically asked to have it put back in. For NewGene . . . And let me see if I can find out when Number One Kids did it . . ."
"They didn't really call them Witches and Magicians. That was the media's fault. They went all sensationalist and ruined it for everyone." Lillian scowled, and read over Milly's shoulder.