The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man (34 page)

“What are you going to do Baucis?” Mavis
Talik asks, dumbstruck. Tennay was thankful someone besides himself
asked the ecologist what they had all doubtlessly been
thinking.

“I'm ready for the final adjustment
procedure. But we can't be hasty. We have to test the old one
first. If we can't control him, there's no hope for the young one,”
Baucis replied curtly. Just like that, they were back to their old
patter. The Council lost at sea and Baucis with all his
answers.

“Can we put all of our faith in the ape's
implantation?”

“I see no other choice.”

“And if your boy misbehaves like he did last
time?” Luca sneered. Baucis let the question hang in the air long
enough to grow a skin on top of it.

“Do you truly believe Skup tried to strangle
me?” Baucis asked, his voice like hot needles. The weatherman
couldn't reply but only mumbled indistinctly.

“I don't think Luca is implying anything so
direct. But I do wonder about the twin's psychological profiles,”
Master Psychologist Mavis Talik said.

“You don't those demons corrupted my angels?”
Ntelo asks incredulously.

“Impossible. If that was true then Urea never
would have captured the
Wild Man
at all... why would they
bring him all the way up here?” Rufus trailed off. His thoughts him
like a charging prongelk.

“Their true intentions are anyone's guess,”
Talik replied. Tennay agreed, but thought nothing could really be
done about that.

“We could probe them. VRCs work both ways,”
Luca grunted.

Ntelo gasps, “blasphemy.”

“For once I agree with the High Priestess,”
Talik said, “Besides, Baucis has been like a father to them. Or as
much as anyone is a parent up here in the Spire. I don't think that
they're plotting against us... I just doubt their convictions.
Maybe they've never questioned their actions until now. I'm sure
any sort of hesitation is magnified during synchronization. The ape
might be exploiting that doubt.”

“What are you recommending?” Baucis
asked.

All eyes fell the soft spoken Psychologist.
Mavis Talik looked around the room and saw a pack of wolves sizing
her up for weakness. She cleared her throat, certain their eyes
darted to her jugular.

“I would advise against either of the twins
synchronizing with the ape.”

“They're are most talented pilots. If not
them, then who?” Aurelius was beside himself.

“I don't think anyone should synchronize with
the apes! This whole thing is just slavery in a new form!”

“People have been using animals for
millennium,” Baucis said patiently.

“Not like this! Can't you see these are men?
They really are are long lost brothers! They know how to live down
there, among the Scourge! We need to release them! They just want
the little girl. Give them to her, apologize and send them on their
way! Ask them to call of the
biselk.
It's worth a shot!”

“I think you've been to too many of my
services,” Ntelo said, her voice sticky silken strands of spider's
web.

Mavis Talik turned bright red. “Maybe you're
right. But you're deluding yourself if you think that
everything
you say is lies. Some truth crept in High
Priestess,” she finished, her face thankfully less crimson.

“It appears the religion needs another
martyr,” Ntelo made no attempt to disguise the threat with any hint
of humor in her voice.

“Ntelo, please, don't be dramatic. Dr. Talik
is supposed to look into minds, that's her job. Correct Dr.
Talik?”

Mavis nodded hesitantly. But Baucis's voice
was worse than Ntelo's, like he was building a steep pit with sandy
walls, once inside there's no escape save the hungry jaws at the
bottom.

“She makes a good point. The Council sees
these issues differently than the rest of the Spire. We have a
different set of data, am I correct in that assumption Rufus?”

T he media Baron nods, never one to make
waves that don't attract viewers. Baucis continues:

“We can't trust any of the Pilots, not
really. They've all been immersed in Naturalism their entire lives.
They're confused, relics of their time. We can't blame them of
course, but to expect them to synchronize with the force they've
been taught to fear their entire life, well that's asking too
much.

“Most of them simply can't do it. It'd be
like asking Tennay to give up working with his hands. We're relics
of our time, aye old boy?” Baucis doesn't wait for a reply.
Tennay's grateful. He wants no part in whatever the ecologist's
speech will crescendo with.

“But the youth never respect the status quo.
Sure, some of them want to work up to our positions some day, but
what of the rest? What of the intelligent, the doubtful, the
capable? I remember how I changed things when I was boy, I upset
the status quo, broke a cardinal rule and brought us closer to the
surface. I imagine there's a rebellion again now.”

“Every inch of this place is monitored
Baucis, we've seen to that for years,” Aurelius interjected.

“And every frequency? I remember as a boy
being frustrated in the amount of time it took for my teachers to
explain concepts that had already become established. They were
complicated to them, but to me, they were second nature. Those
children, for they are children, have had VRCs for years. Before
the Scourge it was illegal to have one before eighteen. They had
them at eight. I don't doubt for a second that the most capable
have found new ways to use the technology, new ways to
communicate.”

“But that would break person to person
protocol.”

“Brilliant, Luca. Whatever would we do
without your insights?"

Luca said nothing, only half stammered.

"Do you remember being a child? I was always
trying to explore all of the hidden tunnels, the secrets, the
forbidden. The youth haven't changed, just the taboos.”

“What are you getting at Baucis?”

Baucis waited a long moment, finally the
lights flickered, the flourish he had been waiting for.

“We have a rebellion on our hands, of that
I'm sure. The question is: who leads them?”

“And how do we figure that out? Who can
possibly infiltrate the pilots??

A dull concussion a kilometer below and the
lights dimmed briefly. Only Tennay was aware enough of the Spire's
workings to listen for the ever present hum weaken then resume its
full strength. Talik's skin crawled, and though she knows nothing
of the static generated by the Spire's electromagnetic field, she
explained the phenomena easily enough: Baucis's sneer is twisted
and malicious. She fears for them all.

We have been blessed with twin angels, and we thank
Nature the goddess for that. Pray that they stay true, and don't
fall to her dark power, for if they forsake us, truly, we are
lost.

Urea prowls the hallway near Kao's cell. Skup
should be here. She chimed him and he said he'd come.

Urea has to free the Kao and his elder.
Baucis and his Council of controllers have no right to infiltrate
their minds with sick machines and self serving ideas. Urea knows
technology is not corrupt, only its application. For without
technology, she could not have brought the seed of destruction into
the Spire.

The halls rumble, an ominous sensation
especially with its increasing regularity. The black outs are
growing in length, soon they'll be tenths of seconds long. The elk
grow stronger, each collision leaches more power from the Spire.
Jacob and his crew don't have the energy to stop the elk from
ramming every hour of the day, especially with Jacob's Alpha dead
and gone. His new Evanimal is fine but Urea can tell the
difference, and that troubles her. Nights are becoming particularly
frightening. Urea does not want the Spire to go down like this, and
still she does not believe that it has to. The people of the Spire
only have to see the errors of their ways before it is too
late.

And the Spire will see, of this she is
certain. Once their eyes are opened, people will be just as
desperate to survive as ever. The surface will be a challenge, but
does not possess all of the dangers in Ntelo's sermons. The Scourge
is not what it is made out to be. The
Wild Man
is no more a
demon than they are. If the Spire cannot see any of that, she will
make them. Kao isn't dangerous, he just wants his family. He is
more human than those in the Spire. Why can't they see that?

Between Baucis's Evanimals' exploits, Ntelo's
religion, and Rufus's propaganda, the Council perverted Naturalism
to a sick shadow of itself. Urea and her brother were the stars of
the show. She despises what she had been tricked into doing since
she was a girl. All the people she's lied to, all the pilots she's
battled, the animals she's killed so people can feel closer to
their beliefs and maybe get a taste of something
real.
Urea
believes Nature is something to be studied and learned from, like
what she does with her
panthera
. What the Council does is
horrendous. Baucis wishes to enslave anything he can use, and the
others work to justify any and all of his actions. None are
innocent in her eyes.

Only the engineer truly helps the greater
good. He keeps the city running yet his exploits remain anonymous.
The Spire would be nothing without him. If he had chosen to, he
could have stopped Baucis long ago. His complacence is his
guilt.

But things like blame and justice are
irrelevant when thrust against survival, and when people believe
something helps them survive, no matter what it is, its hard to
shake that belief. Urea wouldn't have to convince mankind that they
didn't need the Spire, the
biselk
were seeing to that, but
Naturalism? That belief would be tested on the surface.

What is clear to Urea is that Naturalism does
not exist. Or maybe it does, but differently for everybody.
Nothing's really clear to the troubled sixteen year old, but she
hates that most people blindly give their minds to whoever claims
them. Because of her, and the Spire's dull compliance, Ntelo's fake
version of Naturalism was being swallowed by all. History files
showed this had all happened before, too many times to count, yet
here they all are, replaying the roles of martyrs and blasphemers,
popes and prophets.

There are a precious few thousand human
beings left, and most are obsessed with leaving their own bodies
and using the Evanimals. A good deal of blame belongs to Urea.
Before her and Skup, Naturalism had been a fringe belief, something
people talked of and believed in, but never the dogmatically blind
religion it had become. By going along with Baucis and Ntelo, she
had allowed this to happen, rather, made it happen. She was a
little girl then, and didn't know any better, but not anymore.

She doubts there is anything she can do for
the
biselk
, or the
howluchin
s. There are too many
pilots, too many enslaved. Dozens and dozens of Evanimals are
piloted daily, she cannot end that any more than she can end Spire
City itself (Another dull thud brings that reality closer) yet her
panthera
is a different story. Urea has to save her from
generations of enslavement. The
panthera
is intelligent, and
even more importantly, craves freedom. She can do something about
that.

But even that pales compared to the
Wild
Men.
They are artists with feelings and language. They are
human, or as close to it as the ghosts who live in the Spire. It
sickens her that Skup had actually been in the mind of one of them,
but surely he'll understand. He'd said the ape explained things,
surely he saw their value as mindful beings. She doubts anyone else
could control them. Ntelo had turned them into deities, for too
long had that power gone unclaimed. That changes now.

Urea can't do it alone. She is a pretty
figurehead, no doubt. The people love her
panthera
, but Skup
has the real power. He commands a flock of more than twenty deadly
aerial predators. If he wanted to, he could destroy the garden or
save it. She was only one cat, one hungry predator against dozens
of elk. She needs his help.

But he is late. She told him to meet her
here, in Baucis's wing of the amplification Control building. Kao
is trapped just down the hall. Seeing a man trapped in a cage will
swing his heart. It must.

Footsteps echo down the hallway. Urea holds
her breath, they shouldn't be here, but she can think of no setting
more compelling than the rooms of invisible cages. Her and Skup's
Evanimals aren't held like this, they live outside the Spire, and
have more freedom than those than enslave their minds. Those
trapped in the Spire are prisoners, captives, slaves. She needs him
to see that. The footsteps grow louder.

Around the corner, taller than it should be,
looms a shadow. It grows too large. Something's not right. A limp
in the shadow's gate, a bow in its back.

Skup wouldn't have come here like that, would
he?

The old ape rounds the corner, limping along.
When he rounds the bend in the hallway his eyes meet Urea's, and
the two freeze. She sees nothing of the old man's soul. His eyes
have the bright blue electric spark the VRCs put into them. Urea
cannot believe her brother came to her in this form. They can't
even have a conversation. Still she had to try.

“How's the VRC working?” she asks
hesitantly.

The hominid avatar smiles faintly, a gesture
she had never seen the wise old ape do. It looked menacing and
alien, like a
panthera
laughing at a joke she just told to a
doe that she plans to eat.

“I thought there would be problems.”

The ape holds out his arms and Urea sees long
straight scars, cauterized shut. There are scars in his fingers,
down his back, in his legs, even his toes. Implants on every
bone.