The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man (22 page)

Nods and murmurs. Aurelius had thousands
hanging on each word. “Nature rose up and struck a blow to our
species, and our pride. But Nature did not finish us off! She
challenged us to survive, and survive we have! We survive thanks to
the genius of people like Master Tennay, who helped build the
Spire, Master Luca, who brightens our every day. Inspirations like
Priestess Ntelo give us hope, but most of all we survive thanks to
Baucis's magnificent garden!

Raucous applause. Baucis smiled, as much for
the accolades as Aurelius leaving Mavis Talik out of his
roster.

“Was it luck that allowed the Spire to
survive the deluge and the Scourge it released? Our hallways still
bear the words this city was founded upon. LEAVE NO TRACE. When the
Scourge devoured our past, Spire City was high above, polluting
nothing, harming no one. Maybe
we
are the chosen ones, the
men and women deemed worthy of the earth. Perhaps Nature has
finally found her masters.

“Was it luck that led us to the Spire? Tennay
can attest we were going to dot the earth with them, each one
harnessing the power of the earth's magnetosphere to power every
machine on the planet. Why did the deluge happen when it did, and
not another moment in history?”

“Was it luck that determined the survivors of
mankind? I see before me a wonderful assortment of Naturalists,
scientists, and engineers; an odd but fortuitous mixing of
people.

Baucis noted that he left gamblers out of the
mix, though that was who most of the Spire had descended from, damn
lucky gamblers.

“Our fathers and grandfathers realized they
were stuck up here in Spire City. They had escaped sure death for
an eventual one. Did they call it bad luck? No! Babies were born.
Problems were solved. Progress was made.

“Was luck what saved us? Or fate?”

Dead silence in the room. Even the
howluchins
had stopped. The Spire itself was quiet as the
clouds.

“A man humble as myself cannot attempt to
answer such a question. Instead, I concern myself with our history
and our future, where we've come from and where we're going. We
stand poised on the next chapter of history, and Master Baucis
holds the key.”

Aurelius flourished a hand at the veiled
case, and took his seat to more raucous applause. The crowd cheered
until they were hoarse. Aurelius had said to wait to let the signal
broadcast and words be retold. Baucis smiled and waited for crowd
to quiet down. Soon they fell silent.

“When I was a child, I recall being quite
concerned that there were so few
homo sapiens
. You must
understand there were a scant few hundred in those days, and hardly
enough food to go around. Reclaimers were a way of life.” Vapid
smiles absorbed Baucis's speech.

“I distinctly remember my first tomato. My
mother thought to make the rooftop garden productive. We pilfered
the kitchens, already abandoned for years, and gathered every
rotten fruit and vegetable. We planted every seed we found, and
composted the rest. Sprouts burst the surface after a few
excruciatingly long days.

Baucis smiled. No one laughed. He turned to
Aurelius, who had written the story and the joke, the Media Baron
motioned to continue. So he did, shaken.

“So I grew taller, the earth grew further
from me.” He cursed Aurelius for every joke in the damn speech, but
there was nothing else to do, Baucis didn't want to improvise.

“Life was endurable. There was an abundance
of Virtual Reality Chips, game rooms, a wealth of knowledge stored
in the computer databases, and the Spire keeping us aloft. We had
ships in those days, and men brave enough to navigate them, so a
few expeditions were sent. We learned the Scourge works fast, for
none returned.

“When of age, I joined the Ecology
department. We had access to all of the digiscopes and best of all,
the casino's menagerie of animals. Most had been eaten by then, but
a dozen genetically engineered
howluchins
had been spared.
Pity alone preserved them, for their diet was identical to ours,
and twelve of their number meant twelve less of us. I became
obsessed, spending hours with them. Their hands pleaded for the
earth and I began to ponder. I thought that perhaps they could
brave the surface and survive the Scourge. The digiscopes made
clear that organic life seemed immune to its hunger. But if those
hands could reach the earth, how could I train them to do something
as complex as gardening? I was confronted with a conundrum.”

The words flowed easier now. Truth speaks for
itself, and if Baucis believed one truth, it was his story of the
Garden.

“A colleague suggested using a Virtual
Reality Chip. Technology allowed us to see through another life
form's senses as easily as we synchronize our consciousness with a
digital avatar. But the real breakthrough came quite by accident,
or fate, I suppose. I caught one of my implanted monkeys doing
elaborate flips and acrobatics. I had never seen anything like it
before and knew immediately something was amiss. I examined the
connection and realized that the interference was from a Gaming
Chamber. With a few tweaks and an alignment of their frequencies, I
discovered that a human could control the
howluchins
with as
much grace as a digital character!”

The crowd was awed, silent like eager
children. None seemed concerned of his glib rewriting of history.
The technology would have remained intangible it not for Tennay,
but it was Baucis's night, Aurelius had made that very clear.

“The project was immediately successful. With
no foe but time, I sent the
howluchins
down the Spire with
seeds from the garden and transformed the world below us. As the
howluchins
tended the Garden,
biselk
appeared. The
captivating species was long thought extinct, I knew immediately
that Nature had sent them for
us
. They too, are a
genetically engineered hybrid. That Nature would send another of
mankind's creations to help was enchanting.

“Through the unwieldy controls of
Amplification Chambers, teams of
howluchin
s implanted a few
choice
biselk
. Once in place and implanted, the Garden
thrived. The
biselk
could till the earth with their antlers,
leaving the
howluchin
free to do the more delicate tasks
like planting and weeding. More importantly they could protect the
garden from predators. In the early years we lost quite a few
howluchin
s to those hidden carnivores. Though unfortunate,
we could always breed more, but every VRC we lost was an
unrecoverable tragedy.

“I introduced the
vultus
to recover
lost VRCs and cull the
biselk
. There have been problems
though, and I was excited to move forward to
panthera
s, and
what I believed was the final stage of Natural Order. Until this
morning, I was convinced that they were the Nature's final
instrument in the symphony of evolution.

“I had no idea the gift Nature intended for
us.”

The crowd was silent. The history lesson was
over. This was the moment they were all waiting for. All eyes
turned to the veiled box. Baucis grabbed a corner of the curtain
and pulled.

Nearly two meters tall, and covered in gray
hair, the brute beat its chest with its fists and snarled at the
audience. It paced back and forth inside of the enclosure, beating
on the electromagnetic cage with huge hands. People gasped, others
fainted, the
howluchin
s hooted wildly. But most significant
to the Spire wasn't what happened in the ballroom to a few dozen,
nor what was transmitted over the network of VRCs to a few hundred,
but what was told to thousands who had to make do with
listening.

“It's him! They've caught the
Wild
Man
!”

I like stories with magic, do you believe in
magic?

The girl scratches her head.

I don't know if I do either, or monsters. Baucis
says all of that can be explained with science.

The hermit says some things can never be
explained.

Who's the hermit?

She looks away, terrified she said too much. The
girl does not press her.

Do you believe in monsters?

The girl eyes her warily.

I do... I think everyone knows a few monsters...
What do you believe in?

I believe in my brother.

The darkness is complete. It envelopes Kao,
caresses him. Kao sees only glimpses of lightning. It illuminates
the world for moments, then plunges it back to darkness. The moon
is nowhere to be seen, hiding close to the sun. He did not want to
be in the Garden so soon, he wanted to wait for a full moon to
attack the towering white totem that stabs the clouds and bleeds
their lightning, but he can't allow the Hidden to do what they
please to his sister or the hermit.

Sound and smell supplement his senses, though
after all he witnessed today, he doubts their honesty. Now he hides
in the darkness, for he does not want to see or be seen. The duel
was sickening. It had started out fine enough. The lion and the
prongbuck, a story older than any the hermit told, but it had
turned sour. When they had paused the air of the place changed. The
monkeys stopped cheering. The two fought on in grim silence for too
long. They were bloodied and bruised, exhausted beyond reason but
neither would finish the other. Finally, the prongbuck fell to its
side, and something snapped in the lion's mind.

She leapt forward, with renewed savage vigor.
It greedily bit the prongbuck's neck and gorged itself on the flesh
of her opponent while the monkeys watched on in horrified silence.
The two kingcrows, slaves of the Hidden if there ever were, tried
to chase away the cat but she swiped at them and roared and held
her ground. Finally she ate her fill, gave a knowing look in Kao's
direction that had chilled his blood, and slunk off, out through
the hallway the prongbuck had entered through.

The duel dances before his eyes, and he hopes
the darkness will make him forget what he saw in her eyes. It
warned him of something, of that much he is sure, but he does not
know what.

For now, the Garden is mostly empty. The
monkeys sleep high up the lightning totem. Though unbelievable in
its own right, Kao was not surprised to see the kingcrows carry
them into the heavens. When its huge shadow darkened the landscape
in the late evening sun he took cover, but the monkeys paid it no
heed. Instead they waited in the stone bowl patiently as the birds
returned again and again for each monkey. Three clamored onto each
leg, making twelve per trip. Numbers that would have baffled Kao
not long ago not came as easily as throwing knives. Kao watched the
birds fly to the height of the Totem until they vanished into the
clouds. He had hoped for an identical miracle to be performed on
the lion, but no such feat came to pass.

The cat's scent is still strong in the air,
but it is not fresh. The lion is far from him. Nothing else stirs.
It is so very dark. The waxing moon is near half full, and had
illuminated the valley from sunset until it passed behind the cloud
bank that perches atop the Totem. Since it had moved into the
Totem's domain Kao has seen nothing of it. Not once do the clouds
thin. The moon is completely blocked, as if a mountain stood
betwixt him and his goddess, his source of power. He can feel her
pumping his blood, stronger than she had the night before. Now that
the moon is more than a crescent, the hunter can feel its pull
easing his blood flow. His muscles feel the familiar surge of lunar
strength. He can jump higher, run faster, ask more of his muscles
than he can under a weaker moon, but tonight his mind seems sharper
as well. Did the hermit's potion give his mind access to lunar
strength? Whatever it was, he feels better than he had last
night.

Kao creeps from his hiding place. The
lightning high above strikes just enough to keep his eyes from
fully adjusting.

This place is bizarre. The air feels
different, touched with an alien energy. Kao feels it like he does
the moon's energies, in his bones and blood but it is different,
not as benevolent. Kao feels it as a physical presence in his head.
It is a dull ache mixed with a high pitched hum he knows is not
from his ears. It feels like his heart cannot pump to its own
rhythm, like his muscles try to conform to the rigid vibration that
is in the air. At times it makes him nauseous or dizzy, always it
weighs heavily on his mind. It is different than the moon's power,
but that is all he knows to compare it to. It feels so much closer
than the moon, more intense, more present, yet he cannot feel its
anticipant strength, like he can the moon's, and in his bones he
knows it will not grow any stronger. Instead each flash of
lightning from above saps some of its intensity, not enough to make
his discomfort subside but enough to notice.

So the Hidden play with lightning, just like
the hermit says. Even if only to use it like he uses the moon then
they are as formidable as the hermit's stories make them seem to
be.

Only the fruits of the garden lessen the
uncomfortable sensation. Each bite of food, each crackling spark,
lessens the persistent discomfort. Kao knows not if the plants make
him resistant or oblivious to the hum, only that they make the
feeling vanish, albeit temporarily.

The young hunter hurries towards the glowing
Totem on silent feet. Kao hopes The Hidden do not stir late in the
night, that they bask in the radiant golden glory of the sun and
not the hypnotic silver pull of the moon. The cat smells no
stronger here, no more present than it had anywhere else in the
sprawling garden. But Kao hurries, not content to trust the sense
that warns of danger and professes its safety.

A hundred tiny horizons of alien fruits and
vegetables fly by as Kao marches stealthily onward. They're
invisible but for their scent and the flashes of lightning, which
illuminate the disorienting feast. Frozen for a moment, hundreds of
plump fruits hang in the still night air, each ready to burst with
sweet juices. Kao is careful not to touch them for fear they'd
spill drops of the saccharine nectar and betray his carefully
masked approach.