The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (5 page)

“Hm, not bad,” he said, tasting it again. “Maybe your babies will have this flavor, too. I’ll get you settled in, and you’ll have a baby in no time.”

Cali
could see him better now and guessed that day would break soon. She couldn’t see her master’s face, but she thought he sounded like he was smiling. He must have wanted to start some kind of human-raising program himself. He should have let her pick a mate if he wanted to do that. But Superiors, for all their supposed superiority, didn’t strike
Cali
as a very smart bunch in general. They didn’t seem to realize that she’d be making a lot more babies with a mate she liked.

Not that she didn’t like Shelly. He was a thin boy, but pretty in a bland sort of way. His legs were spindly, his brown hair longish, and his face still smooth.
Cali
guessed his age to be a few years older than hers. Twenty at the most. She liked him just fine. But the only desire her body felt for his was the desire for his warmth. Once their master had left, they huddled together under the scratchy wool blanket, and
Cali
was grateful for a companion, no matter his intended purpose. She got warmer than she had in days. The sun god had answered her prayer. Now she had to do her part so she wouldn’t anger it.

If Master wanted her to have a baby, she could try. She would try, because she had promised the sun-god that if it gave her warmth, she’d do what her master wanted. And she wasn’t stupid. She knew how to make a baby. She’d been around people making them most of her life in the Confinement. It seemed like a pretty simple process as far as she could tell. She’d wait until they were settled, like her master had said, and then she’d do what he wanted. She didn’t want a baby, but she didn’t guess that would matter. Her master would sell it soon enough, anyway.

Chapter 8

Draven was looking for a place to sleep for the day when he came upon the house. It stood in a clearing laden heavily with snow. But the snow around the house lay flat to the ground, packed by the passing of feet. Draven stopped and considered the house. He had never heard of anyone living so far from civilization. Perhaps a few people did so, in extremely rare cases. But people so isolated wouldn’t have any way to make money, to get essentials, to eat. Did they own their own livestock? The house was small. It didn’t look like the type of house where a wealthy
Superior
would live.

Then he heard the sounds. He had stopped when he saw the house, and now he stood still and let his senses out to the furthest reaches of his ability. A foul odor drifted about, repulsive and foreign. But the sounds—he knew the sounds. The sounds of a fire crackling in its dying stages, the sounds of breathing, and, as he crept closer, the sounds of hearts that still beat. Human heartbeats.

He crept closer, listening still. Many hearts beat within. Four, perhaps more. And other, more rapid heartbeats. He stopped.

He could smell them then, the dogs. He retreated to the side of the house without dogs. The sharp, frozen air didn’t stir. His feet whispered softly in the snow, the only sound in the crystalline silence. He climbed the three steps and stopped. If a
Superior
lived here, it was a very wealthy one, to own all those sapiens. Perhaps Draven could stay for a day, eat properly. Perhaps the
Superior
would want the company of another like being.

Or perhaps he only wanted to be left alone. Why else would anyone live so far from society? Perhaps an incubus, a mutated form of
Superior
preferring solitary life, that kept company with humans instead of drawing from them, had collected a harem. Or one of the human-rights activists Draven read about so often could have purchased some land. The news stories came up every now and then when the activists got arrested for freeing homo-sapiens from Confinements or stealing them from their owners and setting them free. Draven didn’t judge the activists for their arrests—he had his own arrest record—but their actions seemed geared more towards making a point than changing anything. Perhaps one of them had avoided arrest, stolen a group of saps, and gone to hide in the mountains with them. If Draven knocked, perhaps no one would answer the door. An activist wouldn’t want company, except that of the beloved saps, of course. An activist might fear arrest.

Or perhaps no
Superior
lived there at all. The owner could have built a separate house for saps while he lived elsewhere. But where? Draven hadn’t seen another house. The windows to this house were not darkened or light-tight. It had transparent glass windows. And no lights burned inside. Did someone sit inside in the dark, watching him? He shook the thought away. It didn’t make sense. What kind of
Superior
would live in a house made entirely of wood, anyhow?

Draven stood on the porch for a bit. He thought of knocking or forcing the door and going in to see what scene lay before him on the other side of the wooden wall. But he couldn’t do that. He’d be arrested. Entering another man’s house, even an odd man, without invitation was inexcusable, no matter how hungry and cold the trespasser had become.

Draven hesitated, paralyzed with indecision. He stood looking at a mirror on the door, looking at the dark shape of himself, at the way his wavy hair made his head look oddly misshapen. He had to do something. The dogs might catch his scent any moment.

He would go in. He would go in so silently that the saps never knew he’d entered. And if he found no
Superior
…he would eat properly on his way out. Yes, it was illegal. But who would know? By the time their owner arrived, Draven would have gone on his way. He didn’t plan to kill or steal a sap, not even to harm one. Just a meal. Besides, he hadn’t picked up his rations in weeks, so in a way, the government owed him.

But he couldn’t do it. He stepped forward, then stopped. He’d decided what he’d do. Now he simply could not. He placed his hand upon the doorknob and paused. It wasn’t that the knob would not turn. He couldn’t even try to turn it. Shaken, he stepped back from the door. Had his limbs frozen without his knowledge? Impossible. He flexed his hand and looked at it. When he turned in a circle on the porch, all his muscles functioned properly. He stepped back to the door and put his hand on the knob and stood paralyzed.

By now the sky had lightened, and Draven had grown a bit frightened as well as irritated with himself. He would enter. He would turn the knob and push the door open, stealth be damned. But he could not. He could do all the usual things he did, but as soon as he touched the door, his motor skills vanished. Several more tries yielded the same result. Now he could see himself in the mirror clearly, not just his shape. He’d been on the porch for quite some time.

He studied the greyish crepe lumps woven into a frame around the door. He’d isolated the repulsive smell, the one that emanated so strongly that it masked the sapien smell even when he knew they lay sleeping within. The smell alone made him want nothing more than to turn and bolt for the woods. He tore the flattish globes down and tossed them off the porch into the snow. Even after he’d rid the porch of the bulbs, their sickening odor lingered. He tried the door again, and again found himself unable to perform the act he wished to perform. He had thought perhaps the smell had kept him from entering. But still he could not enter, and now he’d left evidence of his visit in the snow beside the porch.

There was nothing to be done for it now. Even with some effort, he couldn’t have put things back as they had been. He’d torn the braided chain when he pulled it from the door. So he turned and descended the steps, walked to the edge of the woods and looked back. His footprints didn’t stand out. Many sets of tracks wove together throughout the snowy yard. Draven stood at the tree line considering.

He didn’t know what had come over him, but he knew one thing for certain about sapiens. They had to come out eventually. They had many needs. A
Superior
could stay inside for years. He’d only need a sap, and lots of those lived here. Unless the owner came to check on them from elsewhere, Draven may not find the man who owned the saps. But he could watch them. He could count them, try to get an indication of what they did out here. But he would do these things in the evening when he awakened. Now he needed sleep.

As he turned to the woods, he spotted the first piece of good fortune he’d had in some time. A shovel lay in the snow next to a giant stack of wood. He shuddered at the thousands of pieces of chopped wood in the stack that leaned on the side of the building, each of them containing the potential to end his life. He crept closer nonetheless. After a time in the forest, wood didn’t scare him quite so much as it had at first. Still, seeing it chopped and lined and stacked as high as he could reach intimidated him a bit.

He retrieved the shovel and turned. Two dogs had come out from under the porch. They both started barking at the same moment. Draven walked away, and the dogs followed, and at the edge of the trees, Draven turned back to them. He liked dogs. He’d owned a dog, once. Now he spoke soothingly to the pair. Years of practice calming animals, homo-sapiens and their livestock, gave him the manner to allay their fears. The dogs soon stopped barking, but when Draven reached out to pet one of them, it backed away, baring its teeth. Both dogs’ hackles rose, and they let out a low growling sound and stood watching Draven retreat. He walked away backwards this time.

When he’d moved well into the woods, he began to dig. The snow came away easily once he broke the surface crust. He stopped digging and stood up straighter. He heard a man’s voice yelling from some distance away.

“Get back under the house, damn mongrels!”

So the residents of the house spoke his language, although he couldn’t place the accent or determine if the voice belonged to
Superior
or sapien. He turned and continued digging, this time a bit more quickly. He hoped the dogs would obey the man’s command and not lead him into the woods.

Draven finished his hole, dropped a backpack inside, and wrapped himself in the blankets he’d bought for
Cali
. Before climbing into the hole, he wrapped his sleeping sack around himself, which would keep any remaining heat from escaping his body. Covering himself proved more difficult. He could dig a hole and cover himself to the waist without difficulty. Then he had to try to bury his chest without moving, and then his head, and burrow his arms into his covering without getting too much snow inside and without leaving too big a hole on top of his shoulder area.

He completed his hiding spot, shifting around a while after he’d gotten his arms in, hoping the snow would sift down into the deeper indentations over his body. On windy days, the snow would blow over his hiding spot until, upon waking, he could not tell where his legs lay by looking. But no wind blew that morning.

Draven had walked into the woods some distance, but perhaps not as far as he should have. His resting spot lay a bit over a kilometer from the house. He could have gone further, a couple kilometers more. But now he had made his nest for the day, and he didn’t want to disturb it and have to dig all over again, although the shovel had helped. He’d have to keep the shovel. It made digging out a resting spot much faster and less unpleasant than doing it with his hands.

He’d gotten snow into his blanket cocoon when he’d drawn his arms inside, and the cold dampness of melting snow seeped into his skin. But he’d had worse days. He lay still for a bit, thinking about the house nearby. His inability to act on his impulse to enter frustrated and frightened him a bit. And why hadn’t he smelled any sapiens? Perhaps whatever lived there wasn’t human at all. As he’d walked in the snow, he had thought how good a real meal would taste compared to eating sap from a package and snow to wet his mouth. Perhaps that desire had made him misidentify the heartbeat. That had to be it. The person living inside must raise some other kind of animal and let it sleep inside the house during the cold winters. The
Superior
who had yelled at his dogs. That explained the missing smell of sapien.

It didn’t explain the door with the mirror, though. Draven decided he would arise early, before dark fell completely. He’d go to the clearing and watch, see who lived there, what they did so far from the comforts of
Superior
society. When things quieted as they had the night before, he could befriend the dogs, perhaps feed them some of the freeze-dried food he had purchased for
Cali
. Then he’d use the back door. He didn’t care if nothing he wanted waited inside. He only wanted to know he could do it, that it wouldn’t be mysteriously blocked to him like the front door. He would find out what was in that house, one way or another.

Chapter 9

“What’s gotten into them dogs this time?” Sally asked when her father returned.

“Nothing, so far as I can tell,” he said, stamping off his boots.

“They’re the stupidest blasted dogs I ever seen,” Larry said. “Darn things’d bark at a pinecone, I swear. I’ll go check it out later, see if I can’t see some sort of tracks.”

“Probably just a deer,” Sally said.

“Probably just the wind,” Larry muttered, then went back to his breakfast.

“So why you wanna check it out? What, you tired of fiddling around with your empty cage?”