Abominations

by P. S. Power

  At first.

  Then the news people would sit around and discuss the story for about five to ten minutes, moving to the next one when they ran out of new things to say about it. As often as not, they weren't very kind about what they said.

  In the first story, a child, a boy named William Henning, had to be rushed to the hospital after falling out of a tree. Hardly even news to her mind. The broadcasters freaked. How did this boy's parents live with themselves? Didn't the boy, being seven years old, have the sense not to climb trees beyond his ability? They'd called in emergency services to take the boy, costing them, the tax payers, several mets in transport fees! That they didn't call for the boy to be preemptively sterilized probably had more to do with simply not having thought of the idea than thinking it too harsh, Gwen realized as she sat listening.

  This went on for about five minutes, until they changed to the next story, one about a small disruption to come because of road work. They repeated the process, the harsh comments flowed rapidly, pointing out how, as citizens, they had a right to use the streets unimpeded and having a road shut down so that some rich people could have a slightly less bumpy ride later was a slap in the face to everyone that had to walk to the next street over to get around it.

  After four more stories, Gwen asked if this was an unusual show.

  “I mean, back home we have some radio – basically a telesar, really, they even work the same way as far as the controls go for the most part – we have some shows where people talk like this, but we have regular news too, where just the story is given and then you're allowed to make up your own mind. Is this like that then? Like a talk show?”

  It took a while to explain the whole idea clearly, but Beth finally told her that no, this was the regular news. All the programs were all basically like that, though of course, different people handled the commentary after the story differently. This show being fairly evenhanded, as far as that went.

  Half an hour later, a story about them came on. The news portion of it read in a pretty straight fashion. The newsie, what they called the people that read the news and then commented on it, had a nice enough voice, and didn't make her sound too bad. Katherine Vernor, heiress had been seen dining the other day at a small theme restaurant with her Mother and Father as well as her friend, Miss Bethany Westmorland, one of the very rare Westmorland Detectives.

  She expected, by then, a lambasting in the press, with them taking off after the restaurant, her, even the Vernors for having raised her so poorly. It seemed the fashion in the news here, so she steeled herself for it. Even ready for her sexuality to be impugned, based on what she'd learned a few days before. Fuck it, she thought, let them do their worst. If she was accused of liking to lick pussy, at least it would be better than being thought a monster like she was back home.

  The newsies actually were pretty nice about the whole thing for the first few minutes. They applauded her efforts to fix her life, the fact that she was trying to learn to control her own spending and actually doing an honest day's work. They even suggested she might make a good role model for others someday. If she could actually manage to stick with it.

  Then they took off after Bethany as if she were Satan.

  “What I'm saying is that this woman, if we can claim her to be a person at all, is dangerous. We may need such things to keep the balance of power in the world, but we don't have to let them run around in public, endangering innocent children and families at restaurants. She should be kept in a safe facility, well away from the rest of us, unless needed to be dropped over an enemy military base.”

  Gwen felt her mouth open in shock as she listened, Beth, who'd pulled out a needle work round from a small cloth bag, hardly seemed to notice what they said. Needle moving back and forth smoothly as if from long practice, she just raised her chin at the telesar.

  “Don't be too shocked. Those are the moderates. If you want to hear some real vitriol we can listen in to the same story on one of the less friendly stations. You could hear about how I'm mind-controlling you into unwholesome sex acts or drinking your blood when you aren't looking.” Beth grinned.

  “I do think you're cute enough, of course, but honestly... blood? Yeek. Why would I want that?” It was teasing and she winked at Gwen, who just sat, feeling shocked. Not at what her friend had said either.

  Gwen stood up then, as the newsies kept going, listing all of the places and things a Westmorland shouldn't be allowed to go to or do. Like have children or own a home. Beth looked up and snorted in an undignified fashion.

  “Shows what they know, right? All Westmorlands are sterilized as children. The program was designed to make certain we'd do our jobs without qualms or distractions if called on no matter what. As for owning a home... That would be nice. Their point, that a Westmorland could blow up at any time – which isn't true at all, special codes are needed to make it happen, which only a few people in the whole world have – isn't exactly a balanced one. Living in apartments all our lives won't help anything at all. If one of us did get accidentally triggered, which has never happened by the way, being near dense population centers would increase the death toll. Having a nice home in the country would be about the best option. Well, unless someone wants to give us some islands to live on, I suppose.”

  Her eyes got a slightly dreamy look then.

  Sitting down with a thunk, Gwen just stared at the twin spheres that let this noise into the room. She'd never heard anything like what these people were saying. On everything else they'd seemed a bit mean, but their ideas had been sensible enough, if a little narrow and angry sounding.

  This though... seemed worse than anything from her world since the end of slavery. Even the backwards laws in the South that had lasted into the sixties seemed tame compared to what these people called for openly.

  “Don't they realize that you were all taken as children and had this done to you? That they're all responsible for each of you now? At least on the governmental level?”

  Beth started laughing, a tinge of bitterness in it, finally stopping and setting her needle work down, looking at Gwen closely.

  “You're the first person I've ever heard say that. Ask the public to be responsible for us? I... I think you'd best be careful not to say that at the party tonight, if you don't want to give away that a body transfer really has taken place. People might accept that you have a pet Westmorland like some people keep leopards, but asking people to accept us as equals, or people at least worth considering as human? That would be a little too much I think.”

  She waved her hand in the air for a moment.

  “Well, that's a little unfair. A lot of people treat us just fine, especially to our faces. Behind our backs or in their heads, not nearly as much. It's just the way the world is right now.”

  Gwen didn't like it, but knew that there wasn't anything she could do about it right now. The program didn't even have a call in section, so that the audience could respond. She wondered out loud if that would go over here at all or if the newsies would feel it pushed into their territory. Bethany just said that she didn't know, but that it sounded more interesting than what they were currently getting, since at least on occasion a different opinion might be heard.

  Changing the dial to a music station then, something that sounded like oldies music from the fifties to her at first, Gwen settled in, realizing that she needed a hobby like Beth had, maybe knitting or something, to do while she listened.

  After a bit some of the words started to come through, and her mind put things together.

  “Wait, did that song just say something about putting a boot in the behind of a constable?” It had sounded very polite, an acappella group it sounded like to her, but the words were pointed and a bit harsh for all that.

  “Yes. The song before it was about sex. This is a rather naughty music program, I'd have to say. Not nearly as bad as some of the newer stuff though. That can get very explicit. The censors can't shut them down, because songs are protected language
here. They can say anything in songs, so they do. There's even a whole class of music devoted to Westmorland hate. I try to avoid it when I can myself... Nothing worse than to start humming along with a catchy tune and then realizing that it demands you be incinerated for the public good.”

  Nodding at the box, Gwen reached over and turned the telesar off. It seemed clear why her friend didn't listen to it a lot. Nothing but hateful garbage on it, at least so far. It had been instructive, if not in a way that anyone here would have wanted it to be.

  When it got to be around five in the evening, Beth decided that they should get dressed for the party, since they were due to be picked up at seven. For Gwen they picked out a beautiful blue dress that probably would have looked good on anyone, she decided. It laced in the back and required both of them to make work. If anything happened to Bethany she'd have to cut herself out of it, but it did look nice. And it hid the fact that she wore flats. Detective Chuan was only about an inch taller than Katherine's body and Beth felt it would be polite not to point that out overly. Gwen agreed, but mainly because high heeled shoes were something she'd never taken the time to master.

  Beth walked into her own room and came back half an hour later wearing what looked like a military uniform, done in deep blue silk, it had a skirt that hit above the knee and had shiny pins on the collars that looked significant to Gwen, seeing the look and where it pointed, the Westmorland detective brought her head up.

  “I'm not just a detective. I also have the rank of full Captain in the Navy, Air-Navy, and Army. This is the female Westmorland dress uniform. I was going to just wear an old thing I have in my closet, but the talk on the sar today made me feel a bit perverse. At least this way the bigots will know who to talk about.” She smiled, and smoothed her skirt.

  The effect looked more like a stewardess to Gwen than a military officer, now that the whole effect had hit, but if that was the uniform, what could be done about it?

  When seven o'clock came they met the men in the lobby. They'd apparently been waiting for some time, not wanting to show up late.

  “You both look lovely,” Chuan said as they descended the stairs to the first floor.

  Wilbur looked at Beth's legs and blushed, but offered his arm after saying his own greeting.

  Smiling, Gwen took Chuan's arm, which felt firmer than she thought a man with a desk job would have going, and let him lead her to the carriage, which waited for them directly out front again.

  Into the pumpkin, Cinderella, she thought to herself as James, dressed in a much nicer outfit than he normally wore, with white gloves and a top hat, gave her a hand into the lorrie. She wondered which of the men would turn out to be prince charming?

  Looking at Chuan sideways with a smile, she noticed how Wilbur stared at Beth's legs without shame, until she looked up at him, then he blushed a deep red and looked away quickly. Chuan gave her a seated bow and a grin in acknowledgment to this byplay.

  “Good! Now, everyone, remember... I'm Katherine Vernor. If anyone says different, laugh at them. Especially me, if I mess up!”

  Wilbur chuckled and assured her he would.

  Then, trying to act casual about it, he returned to staring at Beth's legs.

  Chapter eighteen

  “Oh my, but Mother knows how to throw a grand party, doesn't she?” Gwen's voice came out in a crisp manner, as close to the local dialect as possible. The people around her, who were all standing off to one side of the room about halfway between the band and the door, nodded in agreement and made polite noises. The room, one that she hadn't seen on her previous visit, was about the size of her old high school gym, and had been decorated like an old-fashioned ballroom. Even for this mansion it looked impressive.

  In the center of the room, floating she thought, there was a giant glow globe chandelier. It really floated, or at least seemed to, bouncing slightly in the air, not attached to the ceiling in any way. Trying to be covert about it, Gwen looked for the wires, glancing as hard as she dared, since she didn't want to gawk in what everyone was supposed to think of as her own home.

  So far the party had gone well as far as their part went. No one had tried to throw a drink in Bethany's face for daring to be a Westmorland, or insisted that Gwen had somehow stolen Katherine's body. For that matter, no one seemed bothered at all that Detectives Chuan and Wilbur weren't exactly wealthy people.

  As far as she could tell, there were two types of people here. Mr. Vernor's work colleagues and friends, who didn't talk about things like money at parties, and Mrs. Vernor's friends, who thought that being a detective amounted to having selected a life of public service, which held its own honors that money couldn't buy. They seemed quietly impressed by the men.

  The drinks Daniel had gotten them had a lot of crushed ice and almost no alcohol, he assured her, being mainly seltzer water and fruit juice. Wilbur had tried to get something stronger for Bethany, but she'd begged off, since her abilities and training didn't mesh well with it, she'd told him gently. From the way her friend kept touching her escort's arm, Gwen didn't think the night would have to be a complete bust for him, even if Beth did have to stay sober.

  To pass the time, she and Chuan finally had a discussion about martial arts, and their backgrounds in it, his at least, since talking about ways to kill a man instantly would have been outside of Katherine's area of expertise. Still, it turned out that they shared a common language in a way that most in the room couldn't grasp at all.

  “When I was about six, I began Chi-gong training, and learning external forms. Then my Father, who was a Sifu at the academy, taught me the true internal arts. My love has always been for the external though. Few bother to learn such things well, as I'm sure you would imagine.” He sipped his drink and spoke softly to her, so as to not alert the room, but even when people overheard, they didn't seem to catch on at all.

  Wilbur, who'd actually trained a bit with the slightly older detective, didn't get most of what the other man said, though Gwen did. She made up her mind to try and get Daniel alone some time for a real discussion of things and maybe to practice. While she didn't feel like she would be getting rusty yet, lack of training could sneak up quickly on a person. When you were, by nature, smaller and weaker than your opponents, you had to stay sharp. That and cheating whenever possible were the only real edges a girl could have sometimes.

  From what he'd said, it seemed like internal martial arts could actually work here, if you practiced enough and had the aptitude for it, which he assured her, regardless of the propaganda, was exactly the same thing needed to perform magic.

  “There's a... prejudice, I think you'd call it, in the Chinoise Empire, where I'm from, that tries to separate the ability for magic from the ability to use internal power. Only the trappings are different. The basic energy is clearly the same, even if the eventual effects present in an alternative form.”

  What he listed as being possible amazed her, though she tried to keep her face merely politely interested. Real iron skin kung-fu that could stop swords and knives, making yourself light enough to float through the air and run easily up walls or fall like a leaf from great heights, striking at a distance and even, at least it had been rumored, the ability to kill at a distance just by pointing at a person. Daniel held his palms up, as if to minimize these abilities.

  It sounded cool to Gwen, whose personal experience with the vaunted internal martial arts had never gone beyond feeling a bit of a tingle as she tried to do the energy exercises in class. It made her wonder if the magic of this world had to do with the physics of the place or the people? Was this world different that way or had something made the people here different, allowing them powers that her world had totally lost or maybe never had at all? Honestly she couldn't think of any way to check that out. If she could get some of these people back to her world or if they could bring the physical bodies of people from there here... Gwen didn't know if that would be possible at all. Probably not. No one had offered to get her back home at least, n
ot even to simply help her trade bodies back.

  The Vernors were rich, so if it could be done, even at great cost, someone would have mentioned it.

  An older man, in what looked like a black dress uniform of some military or another walked up to them, bowing to the ladies a bit, and introducing himself to the men first, which seemed to be the custom here, she'd noticed.

  “Merchant Admiral Thomas Welk, Vernor Industries air fleet. Pleased to meet you.” He sounded formal, but grinned a little at the end, looking at Gwen, giving her a small wink.

  As the men introduced themselves, then the women, Gwen scrambled mentally. Did that wink mean something? Had they been lovers in the past, Katherine and this man? He was older, but in a kind of dashing way, she noticed, fit and very well groomed, even if not within twenty years of her body in age by looks. If she were in her own body she'd have dated him in a second, not even being way too young for him. Of course if she were in her own body he'd be running away from the abomination by now. She could certainly see how Katherine might have been attracted to him however, if that turned out to be the case.