Cannibal World (Wine of the Gods Book 30) Read online

  Xen walked to the stacks. The last of the extra wood had disappeared. The blank paper was gone. He pulled out a book, and found it full of loose pages, the print faded but legible. He pushed it carefully back into place.

  The walls of the library were lumpy, but felt firm to the touch. "Everything here was already merged, I thought. Maybe it was only partly merged. All the extra stuff is gone entirely now."

  "Do you have any idea where we are?" Q asked.

  "The truck I grabbed a ride on headed west for about six hours. I was thinking maybe Kansas City. The edge of the shadow zone's just a block west."

  Q nodded, and headed out the front door. "I think that I failed to stop the next jump, and the way the sky looks – so completely normal – the merge may have completed."

  Xen followed her as she walked out into the street and listened. Nothing. She turned and headed west. It was impossible to tell where the old shadow had ended.

  Q studied the nearest of the ubiquitous apartment buildings. The wall rough and pitted. If there had been rubble piled against the exterior, it was gone. A few crumbled walls from the Target World stood about, embarrassed to have lost the battle for Armageddon. Locks crumpled as she approached them and she stepped into the first apartment, forcing the warped door over the uneven apartment floor.

  The inhabitants had also lost the battle. What looked like a sizable tree had exploded and become a part of a woman and two children, a table and chairs, cabinets, walls.

  "Things like this didn't happen in the shadow zone." Quicksilver turned and walked back out. "I think that was an artificial transition zone. Once the merge went all the way, the transition was gone. Or maybe I did enough damage that the transition zone couldn't expand, even as the merge completed itself."

  Xen nodded. "They were supposed to report to the merge centers – every hospital in town – as prisoners were brought in for them to merge with. What was left of the population was all crammed in this region, near the transition zone."

  "So . . . should we head east and see if the transition zone is holding up at all, or west and see if the evacuations were finished before the merge."

  "East first, and then west." He decided.

  It took a long hunt, but they found successfully over-lapped vehicles in the police department garage.

  They stopped at the library and bubbled the whole building. The roads were nearly impassably until they were clear of the Helios city. They drove until dark, then camped. The sky was clear, and almost empty of stars.

  "It hasn't stopped." He explained, talking to get their minds off of their hunger.

  "That's Venus, setting. Mars and Jupiter." She pointed. "Assuming the twelve light year radius is center on the Earth, the alpha Centauri triple star system and Barnard's Star would be included. And neither is visible from the northern hemisphere. That's . . . so strange. I wonder what caused it?"

  They were both able to throw corridors, so they leapt across rivers, traffic jams and fallen buildings. And enemy troops, when they first spotted them.

  On second thought, they were a welcome sight. With judicious use of light warps they were able to refuel, fill enough gas cans for another fill and a half, and raid for food uncontaminated by merger with inedibles.

  There was no shadow zone in sight, and listening to the troops they gathered that it was all gone, and ninety-five percent of their own population dead.

  Xen shook his head at their grief. "Enjoy your win, fellows. You started the war."

  They headed back west, making good time using the Corridors they'd left in place, until they started having to make new ones.

  They left the Corridors behind them, but with a magical lock. Lacking the little twist of mind to open them, the enemy would never see them, could walk right through without going anywhere.

  They avoided troops except to raid, and reached the west coast in five days. There were neither troops nor living civilians. Nor dead people, for that matter.

  "They all evacuated." Q shivered. "Old Gods, even the Helaos didn't deserve what they let their government do to them."

  "Not that I regret for a minute getting everyone out of here." Xen said. "I wonder if they can come back now? Or if they'd get shoved into a merge with something awful?"

  "Hard to say. So . . . what happens to our merged asses if we leave?"

  "Only one way to find out. Let's check the other gates first, before we do anything we might not walk away from."

  They drove south, and finally ran out of gas. Then they used a combination of walking and thrown Corridors. The gate site was guarded, but there was nothing there to guard.

  "We could steal more food." Xen suggested, looking large, then suddenly zooming in on one of the troops. "Ha! I think we may have found some friends. That sure looks like Ben Goldman. Let's walk in and see what we've found."

  The beep of a car horn brought the camp to alert. Ben took one look at them and told the guard to relax.

  "Xen and Q, I hope?"

  "Yep. And I take it you won over your merge?" Xen shook his hand happily.

  "Yeah, all of us here. So . . . what in God's name do we do now?"

  "We can probably make a Gate anytime we want to. What will happen to us when we walk through it though is anyone's guess."

  "We're putting it off as long as possible, in the theory that things may still be settling down and the longer we wait the more likely nothing bad will happen." Q shrugged. "I got zapped in Chicago. How about you guys?"

  They settled down and swapped stories. Ben was savagely pleased to find that the situation here was duplicated all across the continent.

  "Hopefully the World."

  Xen winced. "I don't think there were Helaos anywhere away from the shadow zone. Dear god, I hope the other nations evacuated their people."

  Nods all around.

  "Last I heard, they didn't really believe us." Gwen looked away. "It was so hard to evacuate the US . . . What a horrible thought."

  Ben hugged her. "How many of them are left? They aren't going to do this again, are they?"

  "Hopefully they've lost so much of their tech base they can't keep the merge machines running." Xen said. "They looked to have had about twelve million men in the military, and those were their priorities for mergers. After Pittsburg they didn't catch many women—I don't know how many they did catch, but they must have a ten to one male to female ratio if not worse."

  "They were doing what they called battlefield merges in Memphis." Ben described the process.

  "So there are a lot of transgenders." Gwen looked at them hopefully. "Anything you can do about that? In fact do either of you have any medical experience? Some of the guys are pretty sick."

  "Probably and yes. Show us the sick and then we'll see about these gender things."

  The sick men were mostly suffering from the inclusion of inanimate objects in their bodies due to the mismatch of sizes. The cells that had tried to pull matching atoms from wood had gotten some bonus molecules and were slowly dying. Easy enough to remove them, and stimulate a burst of cell growth from the healthy neighboring cells. Something a bit more delicate was necessary in the brain, and they took their time carefully removing molecules that had no place in the human cell. Two men had rather bad auto-immune problems, easily stopped, and the repair process started. Xen missed having his flask of wine, but easily duplicated the eight main healing spells that had been incorporated in it.

  Gwen and Melody were hard to sort out, suffering from an nasty combination of hormones, as well as incorporated inorganics in the, umm, mismatched parts. Q's spell was still working slowly altering all the DNA to the women's original. "Once we've got your genes back and theirs gone and all the messed up reproductive parts have been absorbed I can initiate growth of new organs. Fast embryonic-type growth. Should take about three months. Male or female, your choice."

  "Female! Umm, I don't suppose you can do anything about the beard now can you?" Melody looked wistful.

  "Oh, sure.
No problem." Xen assured her, grinning. "But I'll let Q do the chest hair removal, so you don't kill me, after."

  With the prospect of leaving, the group cheered up considerably. They were hunting and fishing for food. Many fish and shell fish had made it through the merge without a problem. Cattle, horses, sheep and goats that must have been in approximately co-located pastures were doing well. A few had merged across species. Ben's company mostly hunted the mixtures, on the assumption that they were probably sterile.

  "We figured that if we wound up stuck here, we'd need the livestock. Lots of stray dogs and cats as well. They seem to be living on rats and mice. We've adopted a few of them. Eventually the ferals may be a problem." Ben shrugged. "Pets seemed to help get peoples' minds off the idea of never seeing their families again."

  "I'll scan for the World North America evac'ed to." Q told him. "You may want to round these critters up and take them with you. Until the first harvest there may be food shortages."

  Jeff looked her up and down. "Since you don't have any equipment, I take it this is a magic scan?"

  Xen snickered. "You have the honor of addressing the top dimensional witch in existence. I'm in the top ten, and so is our mother. Just about everybody else needs to work in teams to create gates. As far as I know Q is the only one who can simply look and see what's over there."

  Gwen studied them. "Our mother, as in you two are brother and sister? You never mentioned that."

  "We tend to not mention it, fewer hostage-to-fortune problems. And may I say that you lot have been wonderful hosts? Most Governments have totally freaked and, umm, reacted hostilely even when there's no fighting at all. I really figured you guys would shoot first and ask questions later, and with cause."

  Q had been sitting still for a long moment, and stirred suddenly. "Found it. What a mess! Everyone is all over the place, with no roads or bridges or communications. There's a sort of odd quiver around here. I think we ought to wait and see if it is muting before trying another gate. I got Dad. They're home, recuperating. I suggested they get witches busy making Corridor bridges and mountain bypasses and so forth for your people." She yawned. "If you don't mind, I've been either walking or throwing Corridors for days. I'm going to catch up on my sleep and check that quiver tomorrow."

  Chapter Twelve

  29 Hekatombaion 4721

  Helios Shadow Zone

  Nikostratos looked gravely into the vido. "Brave Helaos, the merger is over and now we must pick up the pieces and persevere. I spoke out about rushing this merge, once the ability of the damos to evacuate became clear. But our leaders, having already merged themselves, their families and cronies already merged . . ." He looked away, then back. Public moments of emotion needed to be very brief and very rare. "I have arrested Silouanus and Usiris, but too late, and so some of the blame for this disaster is mine as well.

  "We will begin with a census, for the purposes of distribution of stored food supplies. Then we will begin to spread out again . . . "

  Behind him, Pent Tarasios led the former ArcHelaos away. Tarasios's wife and children had survived the merge. Nikostratos wished he'd thought of the ashes and water trick earlier. He suspected that the slow merger with the unstructured inorganics had enabled the bodies to take the chemicals into their cells without losing the cellular structures. The survivors of the process had been in the shadow zone for two days, slowly absorbing new world matter. The application of large amounts of new world water and chemicals at the end had completed a process probably a quarter done already.

  Well, it was over. Now he had to form a stable society with shockingly few women. He rather thought that all the trans should be surgically altered to the female this time. They were going to need whores, with all these single men.

  He'd need to be seen taking an interest. The greenhouses would be going up quickly, he'd tour as soon as there were green sprouts to form a backdrop of hope. He'd sent Vaslios and the workers to the farms around his citadel. Hopefully they'd find enough livestock to ensue a future. Other farms will have been doing the same. He made a note to send people to the former officials' farms to check. Perhaps he'd distribute them to the officers that had proven so loyal to him.

  He spotted the Ertecno standing stiffly to the side, and finished his prepared speech, cut the broadcast.

  "Ertecno Okenpkoros. You have the look of a man with unwelcome news."

  "The merge has slowed the Universe so much that the next merge is certain to be the last. We will stop, a member of the greater Universe again."

  Nikostratos frowned. "Did you not hear me, there will be no more merges."

  The Trans smiled sickly. "As slowly as we are moving, I believe we will merge naturally. One final fast merge. In two to four years. There are a dozen other Worlds in our path. If we hit one squarely, we will merge. Only two have a human population. The closer of those two is a primitive place, with very few scattered tribes of humans. If we pass it, we may strike the other, a very attractive technos civilization."

  The Trans shifted nervously. "The other worlds have only animals."

  Nikostratos nodded thoughtfully. "There are options. We will use the gates to find a different World, not one in our path, and we will evacuate to it."

  Okenpkoros' expression lightened. He nodded thoughtfully. "We have seen Worlds at all stages of development. We must balance a desire for modern living against the growth of populations as technology advances."

  "Yes, we need a small population that we can dominate. We have lost so many women . . . We will simply have to supply the techno ourselves. Or perhaps a world with no people at all, and we can raid for the women we need." He looked thoughtfully at the Trans. "You've had three male only merges, haven't you? Yes, we will definitely raid. Move some selected young men to this World we're bound to merge with, get you trans one last addition of maleness."

  "The old men and women would be glad of that as well." Okenpkoros looked eager. "We have time to satisfy all. We can simply hold a small shadow zone while we match people up with captives from all over."

  Nikostratos smiled. "Indeed. Get me a plan, with your staffing and financial requirements. What of the equipment?"

  "Oh, much of it needs a solid workover, but we didn't have any problem with finding the right materials for the critical parts to merge with. They only evacuated Damos. We'll have a gate working inside of weeks."

  "Excellent. We can keep the troops busy scouting out a new home, and new people to merge with as well."

  Chapter Thirteen

  21 August 2055

  Southern California, Merged World

  Q reported the quiver perhaps slightly abated in the morning, and recommended waiting another week. Then she went back to sleep.

  "We do that, when we overstrain ourselves." Xen shrugged. "I feel all right, but she's been doing a lot since the merge."

  "Well, a week—how about we have a round up? Catch some of these loose animals. As you say, we can take them with us when we leave."

  Fencing was a bit of a problem, wire warped and twisted to reach other metal, and lumber mostly crumbling at a touch.

  But there was lots of rubble, and plenty of buildings still standing. They managed a fair trap and circled with their vehicles before driving honking at the mixed herds. They managed to trap—and keep—close to three hundred head of cattle. Mostly the black and white kind that Ben associated with dairy farms. "Funny that when we have overlapping cattle, they'd even be the same breed."

  Jeff grinned at him. "If, on the other hand, you'll look at that one, I think you'll find a wide variety in his background."

  Inasmuch as the bull so indicated was black in front and red and white behind with one horn going up and one curling under, Ben didn't argue the point. They had also trapped ten horses, that, with a bit of sweet talking suddenly remembered being tame and trained.

  With mounts, they regularly rounded up cattle and more horses in smaller lots, and when Q finally opened a gate they shoved the mixed up bull
though it, then waited until he balked and came back through the Gate to be with his fellow bovines. He was fine so they drove themselves and three hundred cattle through the Gate.

  By popular vote, they'd chosen the rough equivalent of Memphis for an arrival spot. It was now unpopulated. Ben tested the radios on the track and got in touch with the military, and everyone else was glued to radios on popular stations that interspersed music with news and bulletins.

  The highly populated northeast had gated to the Eastern seaboard of North America, the southeast to northern 'Africa', currently a verdant grassland. Almost everyone west of the Rift had evacced to either 'Eurasia', a swath of the Great Plains for grain farming, or a west coast region longer and wider than California.

  All told the Fallen had placed sixty-two gates to ten different Worlds. And then come back to place corridors.

  And gates to their Embassy World, so aid could be sent to a mostly urbanized population that was not doing well trying to live off the land. The old and chronically ill were . . . not receiving the support they needed, and mortality rate in the over-eighty-year-olds was climbing.

  Ben was referred to a radio frequency that was dedicated to finding people. He listed all of his people, and within an hour was getting replies. Fran radioed that the whole family was alive and well.

  A military helicopter arrived the next day and a young woman hopped out, and with a few slaps opened a Corridor to New Angeles. She knew Xen and Q and the helicopter took them away. Various family members radioed that they were coming, and the tales of muggings and violence in the refugee cities was enough to keep everyone in "Memphis."

  Except Gwen. "I have to report in. The doctor's reports will be interesting." Quicksilver had started the regeneration process before she left, but it was far from finished.