As Gods Above

by Andre Labuschagne

  “What happens now?”

  “Well Michael, in a couple of days at the most, as soon as Joe is on his feet, you five will be leaving for Antarctica.

  And I will be going back to the United Nations to report on the marvelous find of a second inner temple, and the near fatal accident which almost destroyed a whole high level archeological team.

  I also have to report that due to the secrecy of the find you will be debriefed by various top level experts at a top secret location in South Africa.”

  Orange County, Los Angeles, North America– 25th August 2035

  “Well met, Joseph, you are welcome.” Harold J. Fox rose to greet the shorter dark man who walked in to his office.

  “I didn’t know you were in town.”

  “Well met, Harold. I was in town on business, and thought I would pop in and say hello. Peter and I were talking about you just a couple of days ago.”

  “How is Peter keeping these days? I heard he had called, but I have been a bit busy recently.”

  “I hope I haven’t come at an inopportune time?”

  “Don’t worry, I always have time for an old friend, especially one who is troubled.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You know my methods, Watson.”

  “You mean you took a wild guess and let my imagination do the rest!”

  “You got it in one, partner. Nonetheless, you do have something momentous on your mind.”

  “I think you may be right.

  I have been considering what you suspect for quite a while – very carefully as you may imagine. I haven’t made any specific plans, but I’ve been worrying recently.”

  “What about Joe?”

  “Peter, Frank and the council, to be quite truthful.

  They are building up to something, and I think it’s even more vicious than usual.

  I have the details on this disk, with everything else that seemed important. I need a safe place to go. I think Frank has a suspicion that I am no longer whole heartedly committed to the cause.”

  “I assume he doesn’t fully suspect you yet?”

  “If he did, I wouldn’t be here. That is one of the things that have been worrying me. As I’ve said, I’ve been thinking about this secretly, and only my shield has kept me safe so far.”

  “You realize of course that you will have to let your shields full down, if we accept you. There can be no secrets in this if you want to make this change.”

  “I would expect no less. You would not have survived against them all these centuries if you were not careful.”

  “You are quite right. The price of freedom – the freedom of all humanity - is constant vigilance.”

  “Who will do the search?”

  “Myself and two others, Anzashi for one. She will nominate the other searcher.”

  “I will submit. There is no way I can go back and face those guys.”

  “I’m always happy to welcome a new recruit. I have for a long time thought you were wasted where you were.”

  “I believe you are right. The problem is, their arguments sound so logical. I mean, why should we who have the power, work as servants to the heedless masses?”

  “If you substitute ‘common good’ for ‘heedless masses’ you will find that the argument changes considerably.

  The problem is that your ex-bosses have always suffered under the perception that the bulk of humanity are mere animals or cattle. They do not realize that their attitude cuts them off from both their heritage and their future.

  We believe that our future lies in the survival and improvement of the total human race. This includes a gradually rising level of civilization and culture.

  We have proven that this process is cyclical. It is also clear to us that a purely immortal civilization is not yet possible. For some reason we always tend to end up in a dead-end.

  One of the main problems id that we need the constant flow of mutation that is brought into the bloodlines by the short lived.

  We fear that eliminating this evolutionary force will mean that mankind will be unable to cope with environmental change.

  It may also be a prerequisite for successful colonization of new planets. After a couple of generations the short lived are capable of surviving the new environments as native.

  We hope and pray that the day will come when all of humanity will join us immortals on an equal footing, but not all are yet genetically suitable.

  That is one of the reasons why we do not indiscriminately recruit people from the mortals.

  The other of course is that there may be a perfectly good reason why there are mortals – as well as immortals.”

  “I know that they have been suffering an approximately forty percent mortality in their experiments.

  That is of course excluding the roughly fifteen percent who turn out to be Godchildren.”

  “That is exactly what I am talking about.

  They have no medical care for the infected, because of their damn principle of survival of the fittest.

  Not only does this increase the death rate, but it causes unnecessary losses due to awakening trauma. We have in the past hundred and twenty years had less than one godchild in a thousand candidates.”

  “So few?”

  “Indeed! Since we have instituted the Wake watch, we have been able to pick up the minute the panic began almost every time.

  By sending reassurance and calm, we have prevented the fugue condition you call the Godchildren. Ironically, those who are susceptible usually turn out to be some of our strongest telempaths.”

  “Why are they not doing that?”

  “They believe that the type of sensitivity that causes the panic is a form of weakness.

  To propagate weakness is against their principles.

  Even the deaths are not a certainty in almost eighty percent of the cases. If the patients receive proper treatment and life support they recover fully, and the genetic weakness is mostly eliminated by the symbiote.”

  “So they are wasting more than half of the new recruits for nothing!”

  “Exactly. They are also getting a lot more non-powered and mortals, because they recruit indiscriminately. We check the prospective recruit’s mindset and genetic map thoroughly before we go ahead except where an accident occurs like in Zimbabwe.”

  “So something did happen down there. Peter was sure of it, and it’s been driving him crazy. He’s been spending hours per day, trying to crack the shields you put up there.

  And when he caught any leakages, it only made him worse – almost unbearable.

  He thinks you have some kind of new super weapon or something down there.”

  “We do have something new, but not in the way you are thinking.

  You will find out all about it after your debriefing.

  The truth is, there was a small accident. You will probably meet some of the victims during your training.”

  “Training?

  Hell man, I’ve been a fully functional warrior for more than two hundred years.”

  “There are a lot of things you have not been taught.

  That is another of the disadvantages suffered by everyone in your ex organization. What you currently have are only your raw native abilities.

  Proper training can hone and extend your major powers, and strengthen the marginal ones. It can even raise latent capabilities into full operability in some cases.”

  “You mean I might have hidden capabilities?”

  “That’s exactly what I am trying to tell you – most of the recruits we get from your side have been using less than half of the capabilities they were endowed with.

  I bet that after a few months of training you will feel like a new man.”

  “I already feel like a new man – you don’t know the stress I have been living under.

  All these years, just trying to survive, scrambling for position.

  And they call it survival of the fittest…”

  New York – USA - 25t
h August 2035

  Peter Panapopulos stormed into the office of the senior partner in their law firm, leaving the scandalized personal assistant clucking helplessly behind him.

  “He’s gone! I knew it!

  I told you something was wrong!”

  Frank Eriksson looked his partner over coldly.

  “Who’s gone, Peter? Why are you in such a fury?”

  Peter ground his teeth.

  “Sprout of course. I told you last week I was getting worried about him. I knew he was hiding something under that shield of his. Heaven only knows what information he has taken with him.”

  “But he went shields down with both of us at the conference last week, and I noticed nothing.

  Are you sure they didn’t take him out?”

  “He went to visit Uncle Fox.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday.

  I was keeping an eye on him, but I lost contact when he entered their offices, and he hasn’t emerged yet.”

  “Damn. He must have learning something. He has never been able to block me out before. Has the computer been tampered with?”

  “Maybe our goody-goody friends are not above tampering with the enemy – with Uncle Fox you can’t be certain here. There is no detectable tampering with the computer.

  But then – would you expect any? After all he was in charge of operations.”

  “Are all the backup cycles still here?”

  “Yes. But he could have made a copy of any files he was interested in – or even a whole backup.”

  “Is there anything traceable?”

  “No. As far as I could see, nothing has been touched or copied except his normal work. All known tapes seem to be accounted for.”

  “In that case I think we may be safe.

  He was too closely involved in the planning to want to let them see what is going on in his mind. Any secrets he has, he has to hide – they would never accept him if they had even an inkling of many of the things he has been part of.

  In addition there are those new mental traps the psychologists have devised. They are implanted under hypnosis, and he doesn’t even know that they are there.

  If anyone manages to get deep enough to find anything useful to them, the traps will be triggered, destroying his mind, and hopefully taking the interrogator with him.

  They will get nothing out of him!”

  “I just hope you’re right!

  You had better be – or this could be the biggest setback our cause has suffered in over two thousand years.”

  Greater Zimbabwe – Southern Africa - 25th August 2035

  ”Anzashi!”

  Tina jumped when the call on her private band came in waking her out of a deep sleep. Sitting up, she glanced at the clock. Four O’clock in the morning – what could have gone wrong now?

  “Uncle Fox?”

  “Sorry! I forgot the time difference.” He apologized contritely: “But I have some good news for a change, my dear.

  Joseph Sprout has decided to come over to us!”

  “That is indeed good news. I always thought he was too good a man to stay in their camp forever.”

  “It gets even better.

  He brought a copy of a full system backup of their central computer, 2 days old, and he’s willing to go full screen down with a team of redactors of our choice – including you if you want in.”

  “What is your gut feel? Is it a trap?”

  “I’m sure he is on the level, and you know I’m not an easy sell.

  He is willing to take any security measures required; He even warned me that there might be subconscious traps.

  He is not sure of the details, but he knows he had at least three sessions with their psychologists.”

  “Congratulations. I know you have been angling for him for a long time.

  Can you get him to HQ safely?”

  “No problem. I’ll port him myself when you’re ready, just give the word.”

  “Very good.

  We should be ready in a couple of days. I will drop you a thought when land there, and you can synchronize your arrival to ours.”

  “Have a good nights sleep, my dear.”

  “ Thanks!”

  Chapter 8

  Bernardo O’Higgins Station – Chilean Zone - Antarctica – 28th August 2035

  The weather was unusually fine over most of Antarctica.

  The temperature rose to a balmy fifty degrees (Fahrenheit of course) and the whole contingent of the Chilean station turned out for spring cleaning.

  In no time at all, the whole station was buzzing with activity.

  Bernardo de la Paz Smith was one of the few who didn’t let the filleting Antarctic spring go to his head: he went quietly about his work as usual.

  He was quiet, thoughtful man of apparent early thirties, although he was on his third rota as head of maintenance for the Chilean Antarctic station. A position which, strangely enough, his father filled for thirty years in his turn.

  This was not particularly surprising. There are certain skills which seem to run in specific families for generations. And like his father, the younger de la Paz Smith was a mechanical genius, with an instinctive grasp of the scientific method.

  And like the father he also had that love for the icy wastes which made him an ideal member of a polar team.

  Very few people noticed his club foot as he moved about the station, a tall darkly handsome man with a friendly puppyish smile, investigating problems.

  Give him an impossible engineering problem, or an experiment which wouldn’t work, and he would invent a specialized tool to do the job..

  And his calm, thoughtful attention to your specialized problem which nobody else could understand, or listen to, often helped you identify the critical factor.

  Altogether a very handy man to have around.

  *** *** ***

  “Hephaestus?”

  Bernardo paused and put down the generator coil he had just removed.

  “Hi Anzashi! How’re my pet accident victims.”

  “I see you still have that one track mind boy1

  They’re fine. As a matter of fact, that’s why I’m calling you. Our little lost sheep has finally decided to join the fold.”

  “So he woke up, did he? Has he lived up to the rest of our African prodigies?”

  “Yes, he has, and no – so far none of the fireworks the rest of the gang caused. But as you know, he is a lot older than the rest.