The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man (20 page)

And then, in the blink of an eye, he pities
the prongbuck. In his excitement, Kao had forgotten the shadow of
death that slunk into the brick passageway. She emerges into the
sandy field and Kao understands what this all is, an arena. These
two beasts will duel here today, the monkeys and the elk came for
the sport. But it can be no duel, not truly. The prongbuck is
formidable, but the lion is the essence of murderous victory, a
savage confidence Kao recognizes in himself. She does not lose, and
the thought of such an exquisite killer dying to the prongbuck's
clumsy antlers amuses the hunter in Kao. This will be no duel. It
will be a slaughter, sacrifice for the masses to consume.

The lion looks towards him and his heart
stops. His leather and prongs are tucked behind a stone bench, his
body is hidden, only his sharp eyes peek out, but he is certain the
huntress sees him. But she looks back to the duel and his blood
begins to move again. She is different from the rest, like One-eye.
There's more than one mind at work behind hers, and Kao fears all
of them.

Do you have pets?

She scratches her head.

We do! We have lots of them! A whole Garden
full.

“
Pets?”

Animals you keep and take care of?

Her eyes grow cold.

No... not you. Her voice is pleading,
apologetic.

You're not an animal... I've never really talked to
an animal... not like this. But we treat them well!

She speaks quickly, desperately.

We play with them, feed them, make sure they get
exercise. Everyone loves them! Everyone will love you too...

Hunger. That savage urge to feed clawed at
her insides and made her sharper, keener, like the razor edge of a
knife, begging to fulfill its purpose. Her senses were heightened,
at the peak of their performance. She felt no fear, only a cold
resolution to survive. She was ready.

Urea guided her
panthera
from the
Garden into the Colosseum. The structure was huge, bigger than the
Spire, built for a Sport Aurelius called Feetball, or something
like it. It was made of concrete with steel supports buried deep
inside, like bones in a
biselk,
so the Scourge hadn't
devoured it like all else in its path. Stone was immortal. The
surface dwellers would have been wise to use more of it. The
concrete was wearing down from rain and wind, but didn't melt like
wax as did rest of the city below the Spire.

The only thing that held up better than it
were the Spire itself and beautiful but terrifying granite dome
Urea had almost lost her panthera too. Government, sport and
gambling were the only relics left of a once great society. One had
been re-purposed, one forgotten but sport would live on. Ntelo
called it religion but the two were synonymous, ritualistic symbols
that channeled human instincts.

A growl from her
panthera
and her mind
refocused on the hunger. Neither had eaten, Urea insisted on true
synchronization, and they would both hunt better if it meant
something to them. Then later, they'd both feast on
biselk.
Morbid? Perhaps, but it felt
right
to Urea so that was what
she did. She was a hunter, not a philosopher.

The true hunter growled again and Urea forced
herself to focus. She was giddy. She loved duels, even if they were
one sided.

The two minds in one deadly body slunk
through the dark halls of the Colosseum then into the blinding
light of the arena.

They were greeted with raucous cheers. Except
the voices weren't human, they were
howluchin
. They screamed
and yipped in the stands, a few dozen of the most privileged humans
controlling the least privileged primates. The cheers were loud and
piercing. The pilots knew better than to use the discombobulating,
unbalancing shrieks they had been named for, but the pitch was
close. The
panthera
bared her teeth at the noise and Urea
did the same. The decibels increased her VRC told her, but her mind
understood the data.
They love me.

Urea wondered if those in the Spire could
hear the cheering below. They could certainly see it, every
digiscope was pointed at the battlegrounds, and probably every
analog telescope too, though those had little chance of seeing
through the clouds that always obscured the Spire. Still though,
the less fortunate could dream if they could do nothing else. Maybe
the clouds would clear for a small hairless girl and she'd fall in
love with
pantheras
like Urea had, not that she'd have a
chance of ever piloting one without a head of black hair.

The two feline femme fatales eyed the crowd
warily. It seemed nearly every
biselk
was in attendance. The
fifteen birthing does were there as were all of the great antlered
males, save Jacob's Alpha. Someone had to watch the Garden, Urea
reasoned, though she wondered who she'd be dueling. All the
biselk
but his were in the stands, surely Baucis wouldn't
pit her against a wild one? With so much at stake, he and Ntelo
would want a show. Even if she took her time with an unsynchronized
biselk
the battle would be over in less than thirty seconds.
Wild ones had no courage, let alone finesse. They saw the two ton
killer barreling down on them and practically bared their necks and
slit their own throats.

Two shadows eclipsed the sun, one after the
other and the duel was ready to begin. Skup and Elia were in place,
the final animal cameras (powered by VRCs) Aurelius and Ntelo
needed to put together a proper show. They shadowed Urea, which
meant her challenger (not that it'd be much of one) was about to
enter.

Her
brother chimed, derisive laughter in his voice. Of course Baucis
knew nothing of their communication, that was why he still insisted
on the shadowing for communication.

Elia chimed. So Skup
had shared the chiming program with her. Urea wasn't surprised at
that, only that Skup's protege had been bold enough to use the
technology in the middle of Naturalist service. The girl was
learning arrogance as well as synchronization from her brother.

Her panthera bristled as the shadow fell over
her. Every black hair stood on end, sparkling an iridescent rainbow
as the sun fell back upon her. It was time to kill. Her mane
bristled last, blooming like some deadly flower with fangs and
killer's eyes instead of pistil and stamen. Urea shook her own head
of hair as the panthera did, consciously jealous of the iridescence
of the cat's fur. Phoebe's hair was iridescent, why not Urea's?

Now that
vultus
had signaled, there
was nothing to do but wait and see what came out of the entrance
across the the arena. The
panthera
was content to bare its
teeth and snarl, but Urea's mind wouldn't allow her such savage
tranquility.

Instead her thoughts jumped as they always
did to the Naturalist service that was going on right now, watching
her every movement. She hadn't ever been to one. She and her twin
had black hair, even as toddlers, so they had been adopted by the
Evanimal program and turned into Pilots before they were old enough
to so much as miss their mother, so Baucis claimed. Like all of the
Pilots, she understood Naturalism through a different lens than the
rest of the Spire. They had grown up as a sort of acting troop
commune. Baucis and Ntelo played mother and father, Urea and Skup
were big brother and big sister (their generation was so skilled
that none of the older pilots so much as attempted to synchronize
anymore). Others had their roles. There were younger, but Phoebe
played the baby. Zetis played the cousin, his hair, thinner than
the pilots, marked him different in look and strangely, skill.
Jacob seemed to be the big brother to most, But Urea had never seen
him that way. She and Skup were the only two of the whole group who
knew that they had family at all. They were so clearly twins that
to imagine a stranger as a brother seemed childish and desperate,
though she was sure many of the
howluchin
pilots were only
able to sleep at night knowing they had someone like Jacob to take
care of them. Really he was the eldest of the group, and acted as
such. He cared for the others, commanded them. Skup and Urea did
nothing save work miracles with their predators, but without Jacob,
the Garden would not function. He was a Shepherd, true to his
title.

But none of them, not one, had ever seen a
Naturalist service. In a sense they had, a Naturalist service was
little more than what Ntelo called a “consecration to the life
force” a term Urea understood as bloody sacrifice. But every Pilot
saw the duel through their own Evanimal's eyes. They were given
strict orders on how to watch, where to sit, even what sort of
emotional state to be in (hence the ridiculous cheering) and told
it was all for something greater.

Aurelius explained it to them from time to
time, but his words did no more than they were intended to: still
their questions and encourage them to continue with Nature's
mission. He had explained that he would take all of their footage,
edit it together as Ntelo spoke her sermon over the top of it,
making some sort of Naturalist montage. Then those wealthy enough
to already possess VRCs, a few hundred people, no more, would offer
tithing for the privilege to kneel in the ballroom and watch it as
a group,
live,
or so they thought. The Media Baron wasn't so
dense as to let a thirty second battle last an actual thirty
seconds when he could stretch it into fifteen minutes of action.
Afterward the congregation shared communion, meat and vegetables
from the Garden, then were absolved of their transgressions of
artificiality, though Urea doubted anyone ever mentioned the VRC
that made the whole show possible, and finally left, ready to
return again a week later.

All of this Urea could almost swallow. The
Pilots were allowed to watch the recorded services and she could
almost see the allure of them. They were flashy, extravagant
things, with lots of jumps from one view to another that made the
battles stretch on and on, longer than they could ever hope to be
in reality. Ntelo's narration had always seemed appropriate enough
to her, though now that this
Wild Man
had surfaced her
foundation of belief had been rocked. There was some nonsense (her
insistence on the duels being Nature's sculpture instead of
Baucis's or—Nature forbid--Urea's) and calls for impossible action
given the situation of those that lived in the Spire, but it
certainly was moving. Sometimes Ntelo's sermons, timed to the ebb
and flow of the edited battles, moved Urea to tears. If she hadn't
been blessed with thick black hair and the most beautiful and
powerful Evanimal in the Garden, Urea could understand working for
credit all week long for the opportunity to attend the services,
see a spectacular show feel
something
inside of the cold,
lonely tower of a city.

But what she couldn't understand, what was
forever out of reach and beyond the scope of her imagination, was
the droves of people
without
VRCs who flocked to Ntelo's
“Peasant services.” After each Noble service (as Urea thought of
them), Ntelo would leave the ballroom on the fourth floor, climb
two flights of stairs to the gardened roof of the Spire and greet a
crowd of thousands. Urea knew that not
everyone
in Spire
city was a Naturalist, but it sounded like everyone went. Peasant
services went on the day after the duels, to give Aurelius and
Ntelo time to prepare, and Urea could always hear the chants of the
crowds from her Amplification room a floor below. It was good the
Spire was made of Carbanium, surely a lesser alloy would have
crumbled beneath their stamping and enthusiasm.

Urea had never been to one of the Peasant
Services, no Pilot had, they were always working, synchronized in
the minds of beasts and unable to so much as eavesdrop on the
hullabaloo happening barely ten feet above them. All Urea knew was
what Zetis had told them. The weatherman turned VRC programmer was
drastically underemployed, and seemed to be able to find his way
into anything. Even he was unable to give fair accounts of the the
event though. Every time he spoke of it a look of mystic confusion
fell upon his face, like he had seen the sun rise in the west, or a
biselk
strolling through the halls of the Spire.

“Its... well... its just Ntelo talking, and
everyone kneels and stands and they all sing, but...” and his eyes
would get that faraway look, “its powerful... I can't explain it,”
and he'd blush, a boy who had invented a new way to talk at a loss
for words.

Were there tears in his eyes? Had his voice
cracked a bit more than the usual teenage changes? Urea knew she
and her brother were focal points for the whole show, but those at
the Peasant services saw none of the action. Yet it was usually the
unimplanted who called her and Skup “Prince” and “Princess,” but
how could words alone placate the entire Spire?

A snarl and her musings fell away. Had the
panthera
seen something? Was there a glint of light in the
darkness of the tunnel? Urea raised one of the
panthera's
clawed paws, caught a beam of sunlight and reflected it down the
dark hallway. Instantly the entire hallway was illuminated, as if
the chandelier that lit Baucis's private poker room and had been
switched on. Urea recognized the light for what it was, a massive
rack of antlers reflecting and refracting her beam hundreds of
times over. She was certain the Naturalists would watch this scene,
probably this exact angle, but could the Peasant service do it
justice?

The
biselk
bellowed a challenge in
response, galloped out of the hallway into the bright sun and
reared up on its hind legs. It was close to fifteen feet tall,
twenty with its antlers. Its hooves kicked at the air, sparkling in
the sun. His black fur, twice as thick on his shoulders sparkled
iridescently as it hung from his muscled frame. He was beginning to
molt, and clumps of fur hung carelessly from his shoulders. Urea
would snatch at those and they'd pull free, tangling her claws. His
haunches flexed as he stood upon them, daring the
panthera
to strike. The beast was much closer to bison of old than elk. The
elk's contribution to the genetically modified creation were the
antlers that enveloped its body like a crystalline shield. Before
the Scourge or the Garden, those antlers had only gone one way, up,
but diet and necessity had wrapped them around the
biselk,
transforming the animals into something from before human times. It
was twice as big as the
panthera,
three times perhaps.
Instead of a twenty claws and twice as many teeth it had hundreds
of black-iridescent, spring loaded barbs, ready to pop loose and
lodge themselves in anything foolish enough to attack the
invulnerable monster.