Earth Seven Read online

  But shouldn’t heathen be a synonym for rational or intelligent? Instead, it is a word used to describe those people you shouldn’t invite to a dinner party due to impolite topics of conversation they are sure to raise and the potential for very bad table manners. A pedantic Marxist with flatulence comes to mind. The kind of person that would use a spork. Oh yeah, and they don’t believe your particular brand of stupid shit either.

  Believe crazy shit versus believe crazy shit and also want to kill me because of it? In the end, these are just two distinct stages of the same disease.

  It was almost a thousand revs ago when Ceros raided their village a second time again. Allor’s father was quick to get them to safety. Roa’s mother and father were not. Roa’s father, Cen, had been working his fields when the raiders came over the hill on their horses. He was killed at the edge of the field and his body left where it fell. His head was tossed into the wagon that accompanied the raiders, collecting valuable things.

  Roa and her mother were murdered in their farmhouse, their heads finally collected after being forced to perform acts of entertainment and brutal comfort.

  Allor and his father found their bodies. Losay held his crying son and felt the anger, the hurt, the longing, the breaking of his son as the young man trembled in his arms. And when his son finally raised his face to his father, Losay saw the one thing he feared the most. He saw Allor’s rage.

  But now, as Allor walked down the dirt road of this border town, past the bodies, past the broken and scattered things, as he surveyed all of this, he looked at his mother with understanding.

  “You may be right, Tal. They are such animals that they need something incredible to keep them under control,” he said.

  “My son. You can finally bring this madness to an end. How long has it been now, these damned raids?”

  “All of my life.” Allor replied.

  “And all of mine too,” replied his mother. “And even my mother before that. As far back as we can imagine, these groups have burned down our villages, our towns, taken people as slaves. Forced rules and observances upon us with life-or-death consequences. But you, my son, the man who heals people, not because he has to, but because he can, my son, you can bring an end to this once and for all.”

  Tal looked at him with the eyes of a mother and the fierceness only available to women. Then she turned around in the road and looked to see two people, a man and a young girl, coming down the road towards them. They didn’t have blue medallions.

  “Come get healed,” Tal yelled to them and motioned with her hand. She noticed the limp in the man’s gait and moved forward to help him. Allor began walking towards the man. “He is the one living God Allor,” she yelled.

  Allor fingered the ring Rao had given him. It was supposed to be his wedding ring.

  “They will perish,” Tal said to Allor.

  “My priests are ready to fight them on your command,” replied Pens, the high priest. He turned over a body to see it had been wearing a blue medallion. He picked up the medallion and put it into the pocket of his robe.

  “Let’s leave them to The Expected,” replied Tal with a confident tone.

  The Expected are approximately 5,000 fanatics under Tal’s control. Together Tal and Allor’s sister, Canto, assembled this group and trained them. They will be used to purge the newly conquered areas of past religious affiliations. They will kill priests, sack temples, and destroy the largest symbols of the former rulers.

  Now whenever there is a healing, Canto and Tal work the crowd. And it becomes just a numbers game. Gather enough people together and you get all of the personality types. Ever been to a meeting or a conference and you find several people that are absolutely fascinated by what you are presenting to the audience? It is that lethal combination of adulation and their personal eureka moment about something they consider profound, even if it’s not. These are the people that become The Expected. Why?

  “Only with great enthusiasm can one accomplish great atrocities.” — The Final McGee.

  “Headless priests of the Ceros will adorn the walls in my chambers,” replied Pens.

  “I have no doubt of that,” said Tal with a smile.

  Tal and Pens were the principal evangelists for the Cult of Allor. But it wasn’t a hard job. They had the only real person deity, real like the kind that you can poke with a finger, and that claimed to be a god. And he could heal the sick. And he could appear and disappear at will. And he could travel great distances quickly. And he couldn’t be hurt. Yeah, their job was easy. Some shit just sells itself, like really good ganja.

  The Cult of Allor had nearly four million followers and a growth rate that made the other cults worry about their own market share.

  But Tal had always been a proponent of active parenting.

  When she discovered that her son had technology that would permit him to appear and disappear at will, which meant that he could also steal whatever he wanted, Tal began to provide him with very specific items in very specific places. With never a single word of self-congratulations, Tal took her son from someone that could always put food on the table to the most successful thief in the history of Earth 7. It was award-winning motherhood. But don’t judge her too harshly.

  Tal had been raised poor due to the inability of her father to choose winning turtles among groups of turtles slowly motoring their Winnebago-like shells towards a piece of lettuce in a backroom of a building owned by people with dangerous histories and surrounded by many yelling and cheering people offering encouragement.

  Yes, after that sort of humble beginning, “Mother of God” would do her quite nicely.

  Canto arrived. They watched her bubble burst, the clear gold energy containment bubble disappearing like a large soap bubble suddenly popped.

  “I’ve been calculating the numbers we need. I think it should be one in fifty at a maximum,” said Canto as she walked over to her brother and kissed his cheek.

  Canto is in charge of the network of informants established in new territory. The ratio is informants to gen pop (general population).

  “That is four times the original estimate,” Tal said in almost a question.

  “I know. It’s what they did originally. I checked the reader,” replied Canto.

  By original, Canto means the original designers of a network of micro-local informants that operated back on Earth 5 in Eastern Europe and the largest island in the Caribbean for a short period until it got on people’s nerves and they said “no thank you” very loudly and resolutely and people did courageous acts of “no thank you.”

  But Canto and Tal know better than those old grumpy men and women back on Earth 5. They will succeed where others have failed. This time it will be different, they believe. Tal says she believes it with all of her heart. This seems akin to a fuel pump having an opinion.

  “So what is the result?” asked Allor.

  “It will take more time to establish the network and get it operating smoothly. But there is an upside,” Canto said with a grin.

  “What’s that?” her brother asked her.

  “More heads,” she said with a large smile.

  Canto is in charge of the purges in the general population. They start quickly and end quickly. When they began with the former Underones, 0.8 percent of the population was murdered in just under three weeks. It was 15,882 people in total. After that, the underlying structural rate of 0.12 percent became the norm per 500 revs. 2,382 humans if you are keeping up with the math. Yes, I have given you enough information to deduce that the original population of the Underones was 1,985,374, but if you expect me to explain how to derive that then you are mistaken and should have not looked out the window so much during math class.

  And with purges come detached heads—heads on a stick, to be specific. Canto liked them, Allor did not.

  “No heads near the temple,” Allor reminded Canto.

  “Except in my quarters,” she reminded him in return.

  “Yes, in your qua
rters,” Allor said with the disgusted tone of a reluctant compromise reached.

  Tal picked up another blue pendant from the ground beside a headless body of a woman.

  “This must end soon,” she said.

  “The Underones are integrated,” replied Canto. “They are all now His Own. We are as ready as we will ever be, my brother.”

  “I know,” Allor said sadly. “I regret my terrible things done to stop terrible things.”

  “Death to Ceros,” Tal said forcefully.

  “Yes, death to Ceros,” replied Pens, nearly yelling.

  “Death to Ceros,” Canto said. “Screw them,” she added, oblivious to the fact that she was wishing something most often quite pleasurable upon the group she hated the most. But she didn’t mean soft, sweet, pleasurable sex. No, she meant mean sex, the kind of sex you have with someone when you are angry with them, or when she is the girl that didn’t inhale quite enough chloroform before you dragged her away from the party.

  “Death to Ceros,” Allor finally agreed, but without enthusiasm. Healing people had started to change him into something he didn’t know he could be and probably didn’t want to be either.

  Finally Canto looked at Allor with a sly smile.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to start with Niddler?” she said with a smile.

  They all laughed.

  I guess I should mention something about the Cult of Niddler. Let’s see if we can do this without an org chart.

  The cult of Niddler was founded by Anto Niddler, a man with mental problems and a partially blocked trachea, that would experience moments of bliss and have visions right before losing consciousness. He couldn’t find regular work because of his condition, so he would go around preaching about his visions, speaking of them so vaguely that people could read many things into the words. He soon discovered that people gave him money when he did this, so he kept doing it.

  Cult members try to recreate his bliss by holding their breath until they pass out. Most don’t last long enough to lose consciousness, and losing consciousness is considered by devotees to be reaching a higher level of consciousness, despite the obvious contradiction. But even the successful breath holders don’t get the visions like Anto Niddler.

  Temples for the cult of Niddler are renowned for their elaborate cushions spread all over the floor. Anto Niddler died 279 revs ago from asphyxiation. His final words were to his mother: “See you next Tuesday.” Tuesday is now the Sabbath day for all Niddler devotees.

  The only true destiny I ever found:

  People that await the return of a messiah are destined to die disappointed.

  Unless, of course, he just stepped out for a moment. To have a cigarette or get something he forgot in the car. That sort of thing. Although I must question what sort of god you are worshiping. Cigarettes. Forgetting. You should have stayed in university like your father and I wanted.

  — The First McGee

  CHAPTER TEN

  Rusa was an excellent research tool. She held within her the assimilated entire knowledge of humans across the galaxy updated every twenty minutes. And she was fully capable of piloting the cruiser from Centrum Kath. In fact, after monitoring Koven’s vital signs during their exit from planetary orbit, she volunteered to pilot the craft. Koven agreed immediately.

  Every time Koven left planetary orbit, he muttered the same phrase three times. “Lowest bidder” was an homage to a long-forgotten hero, someone that is now found more than known.

  As they motored across the galaxy at a speed that would have made Einstein piss his pants with glee, Koven dealt with the latest emergency in his life. In his cabin he looked at the message from Tanit. She was wearing blue. She was predictable in her colors. They reflected her mood. A blue mood was not a good thing for her.

  She looked pretty to him. She was wearing a low-cut blouse. He liked it when she wore low-cut blouses. It reminded him that as a baby he had not been breastfed by his mother, and he always felt that deficit deep in his core. She looked like she had a prepared text.

  “I understand your caution. But know that I’m not that delicate a girl. I can handle almost anything you’ve got to give. But honey, you’ve got to give it to me.”

  Koven sighed as he watched her. He felt disappointed. In her and in himself.

  “It’s been too long, baby,” she continued. “Some of the happiest revs of my life. I think I’ve found the right person to spend the rest of my life with. And I do mean this. More than anything.”

  He watched as Tanit took a sip from a glass filled with slightly brown liquid. She took a small sip at first, then finished the contents in one large gulp then carefully put down the small glass. She looked up and into the camera again.

  “But baby, enough. I need all of you and I need it often and I need it everywhere,” she said with a naughty tone of voice. Then she straightened her posture again.

  “But I’m not going to be sentimental about this. You are historian, you understand and appreciate things that are obvious. So I will leave you with this. Koven Modi, if you want this relationship to continue, you will provide the level of commitment I need.”

  And the message ended abruptly.

  It had none of the usual things Tanit was known for, like her incredibly meandering goodbyes. OK. See you later. Oh, I miss you. Better go now. Wish you were here. I can’t wait to see you again. So long, lover. Kisses for my lover, long deep kisses. For example. They were some of the nice things only known to be so upon their absence.

  Koven understood. She was demanding the full trip to IKEA and may have also demanded occasional entry into the store via the back door.

  Koven returned to the helm and Rusa. He sent a message to his mother as he walked down the corridor. Within seconds he got a reply: Teaching a class, catch you in a bit. Love, Mom. He was worried that it may be time to break it off with Tanit. Same outcome as last time. More disappointment.

  “Rusa, let’s begin the brief, if you please,” he said as he walked into the bridge.

  Koven always liked the sleek look of the bridge. The designer realized that with holocasting there was no need for a room full of controls, switches, and lights. Control was possible completely via the interface. So the designer went for clean stainless metals and glass. In front of the helmstation stood four clear transparent thick glass slabs upon which the flight control systems were operating: life support, propulsion, navigation, communications. The information scrolled up slowly. Sometimes one of the items would jump out from the glass as if put under a magnifying glass. And beside the factoid would be the prioritization. Yes, the usual red, yellow, green. No, we never accepted the mauve revolution. We’ve always felt it was not distinct enough of a color. It’s like Orange. Is it red? Is it brown? Is it yellow? No, it’s orange and it’s disappointing. The interface had P 2 C (point to click) menus.

  Rusa projected her own holocast and moved her replica like an assistant.

  “Life Expectancy: eighteen point two kilorevs,” she said. “But the Cult of Allor is skewing those results. They actually have an average life expectancy of twenty-three point forty-five kilorevs.” (Yes, that’s sixty-seven years, but I did the math for you again). “But that’s mostly near the capital city.”

  “Level of Numeracy: low. Commerce numeracy only. Except again for the regions of Allor. They have advanced geometry, calculus, and trigonometry.”

  “Do I detect a pattern?” Koven asked her.

  “You do,” she said with a giggle and a flirt. Koven realized he could, like most people, get very tired of a flirting android very quickly.

  “They exceed on all of the health measurements and developmental criteria.”

  “But no evidence of the capability of creating the comms devices?” he asked.

  “No. Not a damned chance in a million,” said Rusa with a strange accented voice which she accented by shrugging her shoulders while she spoke.

  Koven stood there stunned. “For Hydrogen’s sake, who programmed you
?”

  “Venkat mostly,” she replied. “This part, anyway.”

  “Who is Venkat?” Koven demanded to know.

  “Venkat Tiwari,” she replied.

  “Who is Venkat Tiwari?”

  “He is the man that programmed me. He had significant help from Pinga Sane. Venkat was born in Bangalore Earth 5 before he escaped quarantine. He has received degrees and honors in system design. He has received four significant awards for his work, including a Calc Speed seven award for creating the fastest calculator in history with his 2-2 = 0 processor, a machine that was so fast that it gave the answer before the question was even asked of it. It was considered a remarkable achievement,” Rusa said.

  “Oh, is there anything else I should know about Venkat Tiwari?” Koven asked.

  “Perhaps. Venkat, or ‘Kat’ as he is known, has the fourth largest private collection of media on Earth 5. And since he left Earth 5 his collection has quadrupled.”

  “Why is this relevant?” Koven asked.

  “Because he has programmed my functions to study the entire contents of his library and use them as communication models.”

  “And the result is?”

  “I might break into song at times. Definitely more likely under precipitation.”

  “And Venkat thought this would be a good idea why?”

  “Oh, he didn’t think that. He was laughing too much while programming it for it to be a good idea.”

  “I see,” replied Koven.

  “I will occasionally exhibit communications that are a reflection of Venkat’s media collection. It is tied to my random number generator, so I never know when it will happen, or ‘go off,’ as Venkat described it to me. But I report on audience acceptance or disapproval every ten revs.”

  “Please register one disapproval,” Koven said coldly.

  “Don’t be like that.”

  “Just complete the briefing, please,” he insisted. He sat down in the copilot chair.

  “Level of Literacy: low to medium. Allor territories have mandatory school for the young.” Rusa was pouting overtly while she spoke. Koven crossed his arms across his chest. “But there is a man named Ip. He seems to have particularly good skills at literacy. His stories are translated into many different languages.”