After Earth: A Perfect Beast Read online

  He emerges from his pod and is surprised to discover that there are only six Obsessives outside. He considers this odd; they have been making such a racket that it is hard to believe that their number is a mere half dozen.

  Ultimately, it makes little difference.

  When he returns to the confines of his pod, there are six fewer Obsessives outside. He finds the silence, however temporary it may be, most enjoyable.

  The gathering bell clangs sonorously throughout the city. Members of the Ruling Class cannot ignore it even if they are inclined to do so. They have sworn an oath to attend it no matter when it may be struck, for its tones indicate that a time of great change is about to befall Krezateen society. At least, that is the intended purpose. Should it ring without something of sufficient moment to prompt it, the individual doing the ringing is subject to immediate execution.

  The High Minister, however, sounds the gathering bell with supreme confidence. He has waited ninety-seven years for this moment (the High Chancellor, good to his word, has done his best to speed matters along).

  Speculation is rife within the assembly as to the reason for this unexpected summons. Word has spread quickly that the High Minister has sounded it. There is much discussion that it has something to do with the Vermin who infest the Holy World of Zantenor, but the formidable Warlord Knahs is making very loud pronouncements that the High Minister had best not be getting any ideas that he has any authority in the matter.

  “The reclamation of Zantenor is within my purview!” the Warlord bellows to anyone who will listen.

  Not many do. The fact that Zantenor continues to be defiled by the tiny hands of the Vermin remains a sore subject in Krezateen society. Indeed, there have been many who argue that Knahs should be stripped of his title—and preferably his head—for his failure to mount a successful campaign that would reclaim the land in the name of the gods.

  In the place of the grand gathering, all the faction leaders are assembled. Warlord Knahs has a prominent place among them since his position makes him leader of the House of War. But there are many other factions, many other disciplines—over three hundred of them—represented at the gathering place.

  When the Krezateen address one another, it is with a combination of telepathy and audible grunts and clicks of their mandibles, and the gathering place echoes with those staccato sounds ricocheting all around. The gathering place is a series of descending spirals, with the more powerful and influential houses close to the top in order to reinforce their station.

  What is to be discussed? That is the recurring question that they think and hiss and snarl and click at one another. Zantenor? New tithes? Planetary disasters? What could it be? What?

  Then conversation dwindles to a halt as something is lowered slowly from above on a mag-lev platform. It is a cube made of a smooth, solid black material that is impossible to see through. The assembled Krezateen remain silent at first, curious, and then a new swell of conversation rises, redolent with confusion.

  The High Minister monitors this with a great deal of satisfaction. The Chancellor had been less than enthused about the prospect of this showy introduction of his work. The High Minister doesn’t care. The Krezateen are such a fractious race that before doing anything else, one has to get their attention. This, at least, he is managing to accomplish.

  The platform descends another hundred feet and then comes to a halt, suspended there and garnering continued discussion and speculation.

  “Minister!” It is the bellowing voice of the Warlord, echoing throughout the gathering place. “Is this what you have gathered us for? To perform some sort of magic trick?”

  This garners a mixture of amusement and muttering. At least nine religious factions have outlawed even the suggestion of magic as an affront to the gods, if not to logic itself.

  “No magic,” announces the High Minister to perceptible relief among some factions. “But instead science, harnessed to benefit the whole of our race. I have here the final solution to the Vermin problem.”

  He taps a device that dissolves the smoky blackness of the cube, and as it happens, there are gasps throughout the gathering place as the creature within the cube is slowly revealed.

  It is huge, monstrous. Its cavernous maw opens in a slow yawn as it licks its chops, its tongue running across a double row of teeth. Its body is long and lean with multiple legs that look crouched and ready to propel it forward, presumably to strike at its prey. Its head slowly and calmly sweeps back and forth, taking in the presence of the Krezateen but not appearing to be impressed or agitated.

  “This?” says the Warlord. “This creature is intended to rid us of the Vermin?”

  “That is the intention,” says the High Minister.

  The Warlord laughs. Not a chuckle or snicker but instead a loud, bold howl of derision.

  The High Minister at that moment seriously considers leaping across the gathering place and tearing into the Warlord. The odds are that it would not go well for the Minister; the Warlord is powerfully built, one of the strongest of the Krezateen. The High Minister probably would not last very long, but that does not matter to him at that moment …

  Softly, nest brother. The words sound within his head as the High Chancellor, a short distance away, wisely counsels him. Do not let yourself be pulled into a needless battle. Bring them to you. Demonstrate.

  Even as his wisdom sounds within his nest brother’s head, the High Chancellor is now standing and says in a flat, toneless voice, “May I ask what there is about the salvation of Zantenor you find to be so amusing? It is not as if, after all this time, you have developed a plan of any worth.”

  He has spoken calmly yet provocatively. The Warlord is no longer amused; his lack of success remains a sting to him. “You cooked this up, I assume,” and he points accusingly at the Chancellor.

  “Indeed I have.”

  “To what point and purpose? To unleash this … this creature upon the Vermin?”

  “You have asked and answered your own question.” He speaks as a parent would to an offspring, and thus his response carries an air of carefully structured condescension. Not enough to provoke the Warlord to attack but sufficient to make his point clear.

  “Look at it!” The Warlord remains determinedly disdainful. “I will grant you, you have crafted a rather fearsome-looking fighting machine. Teeth that bite. Claws that catch. But it is clearly a placid monstrosity. For all the apparatus you and your genetic geniuses have provided it, it has no killer instinct.”

  “Really? Are you saying that you could dispose of it yourself without a weapon in your hand?”

  “Unquestionably.”

  The High Minister knows what is coming and smiles inwardly. If there is one thing on which one can count when it comes to the Warlord, it is his insufferable ego.

  “Very well.” The High Chancellor maintains the air of one who is utterly servile, eager only to please. “If you wish, I can bring the creature to the combat pit, and you may engage it in one-to-one battle.”

  Excellent! Excellent! It will tear him apart! The High Minister can scarcely contain himself.

  He is so excited that he cannot block his thoughts from being picked up by the Chancellor. His nest brother casts him a contemptuous glance. We do not want him dead, brother. We want him humiliated. For all his bluster, the Warlord remains a bully. And bullies are cowards. And we both know what it would do to the Warlord’s standing in a society that abominates any sort of fear, much less cowardice. So be patient. A live ally can be of far more use than a dead enemy.

  He shifts his attention back to the Warlord. “I am happy to accommodate you,” he says. Then, almost imperceptibly, he touches a remote control device in his pocket.

  Suddenly the creature crashes against the side of its confinement. It does so with such ferocity that everyone at the gathering jumps, almost as one. Then it bares its teeth and crashes again.

  “No killer instinct?” he says.

  The irony is there to be
seen by all. The creature is practically out of its mind with fury. It slams repeatedly against the walls of its confinement, bites at the air. Its claws rake across the clear surface, making high-pitched screeching sounds that prompt a number of Krezateen to cover their ears.

  His voice soaring above the unabated howling of the frustrated creature—for it is unable to tear its perceived target apart—the Chancellor calls out, “You may now display your puissance, Warlord!”

  “What’s going on?” Knahs demanded.

  “All I did,” says the Chancellor, “is pump a small whiff of Vermin into the creature’s cage. After all, such is the species it is designed to hunt and destroy—Vermin, not Krezateen. But if you are determined to demonstrate your prowess as a warrior, we wouldn’t think of shaming you with an inferior adversary. So I offer to spray you with the Vermin’s essence—just a bit of it. Thus exposed, you can take your place in the pit without worrying that you will be wasting your time.”

  There is clear satisfaction in the voice of the Chancellor and also an unmistakable hint of challenge. “This is what you want,” he presses, “is it not?”

  All attention is now on the Warlord. The only other sound in the meeting area is the roaring of the creature.

  Only his cowardice will save him, the Minister thinks smugly to the Chancellor. The question is: How will he rationalize it?

  Not much of a question at all, actually, thinks the Chancellor back at his nest mate.

  “You,” the Warlord says, “are insane if you think I am going to allow residue of the Vermin to be put upon my person. I will not have the gods abominate me so that you can provide a demonstration for your … freak.”

  And there it is, thinks the Chancellor smugly. Aloud he says, “This freak is the answer to our problem.”

  “Our problem,” calls out one of the religious faction leaders, “is that the gods feel that our civilization is going in the wrong direction! They feel we have not been devout enough! That is why they allow the Vermin on the Holy World in the first place: to express their anger with us. And your answer is to introduce yet another life-form upon Zantenor? The moment they set claw upon Zantenor, they will be unclean! And since we sent them, we will be unclean as well!”

  “Then we are damned either way!” the Minister calls out. “What would you have us do? Restrict our efforts to futile barrages and the occasional prayer?”

  “The gods will show us the way!” comes another voice from the religious quarter. “We should wait—”

  Enraged at such closed-mindedness, the Chancellor for a moment loses his patience. His voice thunders through the vastness of the gathering. “The gods gave us brains to think! Resourcefulness to invent and explore! The will of the gods resides within each and every one of us. If we refuse to take advantage of the resources the gods provide us, that is the true insult!”

  It is an argument that, as far as the High Minister is concerned, is irrefutable. That should be the end of it.

  Instead it is only the beginning.

  For years it goes on. For years, a debate that for a time seems as if it will crack the entirety of Krezateen society apart. Ultimately the decision comes on one raucous day after a debate that lasts nineteen straight hours. It is decided that the Unclean—as the creatures have come to be known simply through repeated use of the adjective—will be unleashed upon the sacred world in order to annihilate the Vermin.

  The High Chancellor remains furious over one compromise that he has to make. To him, the most devastating aspect of the creatures is that they will propagate themselves. He has labored long and hard to make them as fertile as possible. Their desire to procreate will be second only to their compulsion to hunt and consume Vermin. But the religious factions simply will not bend: The notion of something crafted by the Krezateen breeding on the Holy World is to them simply too much of an abomination.

  Most frustratingly, even the High Minister refuses to support his nest brother. “The creatures are intended to have a specific purpose,” he says. “They are to rid the Holy World of an unholy life-form. But if they breed as quickly as you propose, then once the Vermin are gone, the home of the gods will be overrun by monsters of our own making. Can you guarantee that the gods will perceive that as any better a situation?”

  “I would not presume to guess one way or the other how the gods would react to anything,” says the High Chancellor.

  So it was that he and his team had to reconfigure the creatures so that they would be genderless and incapable of breeding. Of course, what will happen through the hand of nature once the creatures are unleashed upon the land, even the High Chancellor cannot predict. But he, at least, will have done all that he can. The rest struggles in the claws of the gods.

  The High Chancellor could easily do without the absurd festivities that have been crafted to celebrate the launch. That he considers something of an affront to the gods. The High Chancellor has always believed himself to be an austere individual, and he considers the launch a solemn occasion. For the first time in a long time, the Krezateen are taking a positive step to take back their Holy World. Why saddle the event with gaudiness?

  No reason. No reason at all. But they do it anyway.

  Yet another compromise that he has lost.

  Well … at least he will be along on the journey to monitor firsthand the effectiveness of the creatures (he never uses the term unclean in his musings. The term offends him even if he has learned to tolerate it).

  Are you almost here, nest brother? The sound of the High Minister’s voice echoes in his head. The High Chancellor assures him that he has nearly arrived as he moves through the elevated maze of roads that constitutes much of the surface of the Homeworld. One of the roiling rivers of lava upon Homeworld’s surface surges far beneath him. Heat billows up like a fist. He ignores it. He has bigger things to worry about.

  He has almost reached the launch site. The vessel that will carry them to Zantenor is not, of course, there. It is in orbit around the Homeworld. Instead, there is an array of shuttles that will lift off and carry the High Chancellor and the High Minister to the transport vessel. It is a standard-issue pilgrimage ship, capable of transporting two hundred Krezateen in one trip. However, this crew load will be far less: only the High Chancellor and the High Minister and a complement of scientists to observe how the creatures perform against the Vermin. If things go the way the Chancellor is hoping, they will return home with reports of success.

  Sure enough, there are the shuttles, placed on a huge round platform. He and the Minister embrace quickly, patting each other on the back. “We are accomplishing great things today,” says the Minister. “It could not have been accomplished without you.”

  “You are absolutely right,” the Chancellor replies.

  There are speeches then. Speeches and blessings and endless prayers. The heads of seemingly endless factions step forward one at a time, each trying to outdo the other in his religious fervor. The Chancellor finds it bleakly amusing considering how many of them had offered protest and resistance when the project was announced. Obviously they have come around. It has been the Chancellor’s experience that that is often the case: Massive resistance to new ideas is followed by an eventual embracing of them.

  After what seems far too long a time, the shuttles are on their way. They arc gracefully skyward toward the ship that is waiting for them.

  The creatures have been loaded aboard. They are safely secured, in suspended animation, inside a smaller vessel—a drop ship—within the larger ship’s hold. Once they get within range of Zantenor, the drop ship will descend upon the holy planet and its contents will be unleashed upon the unsuspecting Vermin.

  The High Chancellor, the High Minister, and the rest of the crew likewise will be slumbering for the duration of the trip, which will require eighteen years to complete. The ship’s automated systems will revive them once they are within range of Zantenor. And then …

  … and only then …

  … will it be
possible for them to recapture the approval of the gods.

  Minutes later, the shuttle delivers them to the pilgrimage vessel. The High Chancellor and High Minister enter. Excitement is beginning to pound within the Chancellor’s chest cavities. He has never had the honor of making a pilgrimage, and his time has been running out. Long-lived he may be, but even he and his nest brother will not last forever, and he might not live long enough to be part of the next pilgrimage.

  So instead he is part of not a pilgrimage but a great scientific adventure. What does it matter, the pretext? He will be traveling within range of the planet of the gods, and he may actually oversee its liberation from the Vermin. Is that not a prospect to be—?

  A chill suddenly strikes his spine. He sees by the Minister’s reaction that he is responding likewise.

  The Warlord and his soldiers are standing there within the ship to greet them. “Welcome aboard, Honored Ones,” Knahs says with what he no doubt considers to be some sort of suavity.

  “What are you doing here?” the High Minister asks him fiercely.

  The Chancellor is equally outraged. “This is a scientific mission.”

  “This is a battle. A battle that is part of a much larger war,” the Warlord informs them. “If a military situation presents itself, it will be the job of my soldiers and me to be prepared for it. Furthermore”—he smiles maliciously—“we wish to make certain that the results you present to our people are accurate representations of what actually transpires on the Holy World.”

  “This is intolerable,” declares the High Chancellor.

  “Very well,” says the Warlord with an indifferent shrug. “You are free not to tolerate it. The shuttle can readily take you back to Homeworld.” He gestures toward the entranceway through which the Chancellor has just come.

  The High Minister trembles with indignation, but once more the Chancellor speaks to him in a soothing manner.

  Let him have this small triumph, brother. The greater triumph will be ours, and he will ultimately destroy himself. I know his kind.