Wine of the Gods 1: Exiles and Gods (6 page)

They didn’t let him share the night watch, either. Bonfires and rifles at ready. But the lions, leopard
s, wild dogs and hyenas stayed away.

***

Chris gave a brief lesson in shotgun handling to all the bus kids. And worried about whether his buckshot would stop a lion. The loaded shotgun was left by the driver's seat, in case of emergencies. "No body touches it, otherwise. Until all of you get more lessons, and some target time." He mentally increased the order he was going to place for ammunition, when the gate opened in a month. If.

By late the next morning, the wall was complete to the north, west and south. The two buildings crowning the west ridge were built into the walls. The east wall was going up fast. Gates, roughly centered in each wall were a bit of a problem. The farm gate hinges seemed to be holding, they'd just have to brace them
shut until they got a blacksmith shop up and working for the brackets they needed for a crossbar to secure it at night. Inside the wall, they had a confused mass of cars and livestock.

Jack Otts
kept trying to organize the chaos.

"Cattle and sheep pens to the north. Then a nice broad street running north and south, and another running east and west. Anyone who wants to have a shop, you get a lot on one of those streets. Everyone else gets a parcel back behind them." He frowned a bit at the two buildings on the ridge. "Guess we'll just ignore them for now."

Chris, once again the designated spokes person waved a hand for Jack's attention. "We're a group of forty-two kids whose parents didn't emigrate. We want to build something with long term use potential." Milly had written a speech and made him memorize it. "A big inn, maybe a stable on the back, a hall for meetings. Us kid's will live there for now, and move out as we grow up—more than half of us are sixteen or older. Then the town will have a place for travelers to stay. Maybe a restaurant, or . . . something." No doubt she'd read him the riot act over his ad libs.

"Right. We'll put you on one corner of the two main streets. The other corners we'll leave empty, for an eventual Town Hall, maybe a church, library or school on the other corners."

Chris blinked. No arguments? No charge?

As other people calle
d out suggestions or demands, Otts pulled out a bunch of stakes and survey gear. He put everyone to work, and soon enough, had them all moving their cars to their plots. Chris watched, a bit awed.
Sometimes someone who knows what needs to be done just steps up and yells enough to get it done.

***

"So? When do you think you'll start planting your grape vines?" Harry frowned out at the sunset. Over the last week they’d hauled rocks and laid them out for a patio behind the winery. It made a nice meeting spot for the gods, and however many people came by. Up on the hill, they had a long field of view to the west.

The predators had quickly learned to stay away.

Or perhaps they had killed them all.

The older kids, Jack Otts, Muriel Westfarlin and Phaedra Shandy were regulars. Both the women’s husbands had declined to follow their wives and children into exile. Tonight M
iriam Wilson had come with them; she and her husband George still planned to build a store—once there was something to sell.

"We don't even know what time of year it is here." Old Wolf paced like a big cat. "The vineyard will have to be outside of the walls. There's no room inside. Keeping the antelope away is going to be hard. And for all we know, there will be elephants."

"It was June when we left Earth." Dane looked up from a book on architecture. "I doubt we could do a dimensional gate if the planet wasn't in the same place in the same orbit. Although with the days four minutes longer, we may not have the same rotational speed as Earth, and that may be why the gate was wobbling all over like it did."

Gisele and Wolf eyed each other uncertainly.

"It was wobbling?"

"Yep." Chris sighed. "It spread us out, which is nice."

"It got kind of scary when it started raining naked bodies, though." Dane's eyes flicked toward Gisele, and he visibly suppressed a smile. "Good thing there were only four of you and you only fell about five feet.

Muriel cleared her throat. “I’ve got an auger, I can drill holes for your vines, if you don’t want to use the voodoo thing for it. Bill and Jerry both have fruit saplings they need to get in the ground soon.”
She had her youngest daughter in a basket, asleep at her feet. The other two were inside watching some horrible cartoon. Harry occasionally wondered how Old Wolf had acquired such an odd collection of shows. The man himself didn't remember.

Jack nodded. “We’d best start allocating land out here. Originally, it was just going to be, fence it and register it and it’s yours. But between the predators, and the pests, everyone wants to be close in.”

Wolf stared out at the twilight plains. “The vines don’t need to be so close to the wall.” He flicked a quick grin at Muriel. “I forgot about the voodoo thing. I can probably protect them. Jack, why don’t we get together a town meeting, elect you mayor officially, and decide on a land registry and plan. Maybe close in, ten acres, a mile away forty, two miles, a hundred and sixty acres. Three miles away, and you could start allotting square miles.”

“Yes, something like that.” Jack frowned at the gods. “And eventually we’ll whittle down the predators and the deer and the antelope or whatever wil
l be so afraid of us that they won’t come near. But what about bugs? Fungus? We’re going to have to import fuel, fertilizer and bug spray. If we can. It’s beginning to look like we aren’t going to find much oil or natural gas here."

"Which is going to complicate farming enormously. And at the rate villages are combining, there's going to be some large concentrations of people to be fed."

Jack snorted. "Even the people who think you lot are dangerously insane part-animals admit we got the barricade up in a quarter of the time other people took. Those magic techniques of yours, you need to teach them to everyone with the right genes." He looked wistful. "My grandkids have some, I think." A widower, he'd accompanied his daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren. "Magic. I'm damned glad you're here, and frankly, the way they treated my grandkids? I'd just as soon they never contact us again."

Old Wolf
nodded.

Harry didn’t care for himself, but it hurt a bit to wonder if the parents of the so-called orphans had had regrets and made plans to come over, a chance now forever lost.
If they showed up in two years, would even the youngest kids care any more?
I can’t substitute for a parent, but I’ll help this collection of lost boys and girls as much as possible.

***

Milly and Lillian were talking to two girls Chris didn't know, and summoned him with a wave.

One of the new girls giggled. "Hi, I'm Cleo, and this is Cecilia. We just got here."

Chris nodded. "People keep coming this way, I dunno why."

Cecilia rolled her eyes. "You have walls. It's safe here."
She looked about eighteen, blonde with big brown eyes.

"That's it? It's going to get really crowded if people keep coming, umm, why didn't you just build your own walls?"

She wrinkled her nose. "We tried. We ran out of gas for the chain saws, and people didn't want to syphon their cars, and anyway, by the time we got to Wisconsin, we were running a bit low."

Cleo was blonde too, her eyes a clear pale blue.
"You guys seem to know what you're doing. That's . . . irresistible. I mean, you're starting to plow, the lions didn't get your cows, you've got buildings." Cleo looked around. "Two months ago I would have laughed at a crappy little third world shithole like this. I was old enough to be on my own. I can't believe mother talked me into coming with them."

Chris bristled. "It's not a shithole. I take it you aren't engineered?"

"Eww, no! Just my stupid little brother." Cleo eyed him and edged away. "You are, aren't you?"

Cecilia stopped smiling at him.

Typical. He'd really hoped he'd left that behind. "Better get over the attitude. More than half the people around here are engineered. Or better yet, go back to Earth if they get a gate open again."

They flicked a glance behind him. He turned to find Iris and two other girls walking up.
They'd all come with their parents, but he'd met them a couple of times. And encountered Iris as often as he could make it happen.

Iris looked over Cleo, then Cecilia. Stuck her nose up in the air. "I'm engineered. I'll live longer than you, and be healthier than you. My teeth are straight, I don't have zits. And I don't have brunette roots showing."

"You don't have the really bad genes, do you?" Cleo was red faced, embarrassed and getting mad, judging by her changing expressions.

Cecilia looked Iris up and down, then the rest of them. "You look normal." She sounded dubious. "For a bunch of freaks."

Chris stood as tall as he could, which wasn't tall enough to look down his nose at her, but he gave it his best try. "I have tons of engineering. I have the power genes." He held his hands out in the warm sunshine, and imagined squeezing the heat into a glowing ball of energy. "I am a magician." The palms of his hands glowed. A fainter glow formed a sphere above his hands.

Milly was gawking at him
, her embarrassed flush paling. Iris and her friends stared.

Cleo and Cecilia started laughing.

"What a loser!" They turned together, and walked away.

Chris stared at the glowing ball in his hands.
Hot but not painfully so. More like a welcome relaxing heat. He tried to shake it off. It stuck to his left hand, but his right still glowed a bit, too. He pictured it darkening and going out. It glowed.

He swallowed panic. "I think I'll go talk to the gods, excuse me."

Milly hovered over him all the way to the winery. Empty. Out the west gate to take a look around. He spotted Wolf up on the next ridge and strode out to where he and Romeau were pointing at things and talking.

They glanced around, and stiffened at the sight of his still glowing ball of warmth.

"I can't make it go away." Chris shook his hand.

"Touch the ground. Imagine it soaking into the ground like water." Old Wolf knelt beside him.

Chris crouched and grounded both hands. The light seeped reluctantly away. He swallowed. "So, do you guys teach magic?"

"We'll start this afternoon." Old Wolf glanced at the sun, then at Milly. "Can you do that?"

Milly held out her hands and tried to gather sunlight. Her hands just shaded each other. Her shoulders slumped.

Romeau shrugged. "Gisele says that she and the other goddesses mostly used their spare Y chromosome and the Mage gene. She said Muriel and Phaedra get their power in some other way. I think we'll need to split everyone up, with all you girls learning as much from Muriel and Phaedra as from Gisele. Talk to the three of them, about lessons."

Milly brightened. "I'm going to go talk to them, right now." She headed down hill.

"Chris, why don't you round up any boys who know they have the power gene and are fifteen or older. Not just your group, but the other kids as well. We'll hold a meeting in the winery . . . say in two hours."

Chris looked at his hands. No redness, not even a sunburn's worth. "Right. Two hours." He walked back to town, thinking. He knew who had the power genes on the bus. The other kids? Ugg. Probably a bunch of them would be like Cleo and Cecilia. He looked around and spotted a bunch of teenagers hanging around the far side of the stock pens and walked that way. A couple of the gang stepped out to intercept him.

He raised his voice just a bit. "If any of the guys here have the power genes, there's going to be some classes on how to use it, up in the winery, in a couple of hours."

"Listen you little abomination . . . "

Chris turned and walked away.

"Yeah, you better stay out of our territory." One hulk yelled after him, but didn't pursue.

Probably just because it's broad daylight.

He made a circuit around the town. People were building little cabins; the few larger, more ambitious ones were lagging behind badly. Chris made note of that. Start small, plan to expand.

There were gardens everywhere, looking pretty healthy. Little kids playing tag, running and laughing.

Not bad for a third world shithole. Maybe they should build a suburb for all these new people. Better yet, show them how and let them build it themselves.

Lance and Mathew could also already do the "gathering power" thing once Wolf had coached them. And some of the adults, as well, but most of them had already learned things like that tree cutting slice. The Gods split all of the magic students up into groups, according whether they could "collect power" or not.

Which put Chris in a group away from Iris. He'd just have to find another way to spend time with her.

***