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A.R.Yngve

DARC AGES Book Three
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Chapter 11


By the time of Darc's third weekly broadcast, several secret radio receivers were active throughout the city-states of Castilia. Most of these were constantly being smuggled from hideout to hideout.

Increasingly desperate city lords offered huge rewards to those who would betray the illicit radio listeners -- but the response proved poor. More and more of the citizens who gathered to listen were also members of the ruling families. Darc's new music made them dance like commoners, and his words made them think new thoughts. A sense of apprehension was in the air at every such secret gathering, of floodgates about to open, every time a radio receiver tuned in to the Voice of Liberty.

One of those illegal devices now also belonged to Sir Tharlos Pasko, who had installed it at the top of the main castle tower. He listened to Darc's speeches and music in tense silence. In fact this radio set, confiscated from an executed court mechanic, was the only one remaining in Pasko City. And Tharlos allowed no one to hear Darc but Tharlos himself. When the third broadcast was over, the yellow-haired usurper sat quiet for a long time, trying to conjure up in his mind a defense against this new threat. He found none.

Obviously to Tharlos, Darc's words were the antithesis of his own beliefs and practices. Yes, Tharlos also used music to get the attention of his own followers -- but within an exclusive group, among the select worshippers of Koban-Jem. The very idea of letting the common ear hear a sacred song in a dead language, and in public, struck the young aristocrat as disgusting. And there was another great difference. Koban-Jem's hymns were monotonous, wailing, desperate, dissonant, dependant on non-mechanical music and choirs. Darc, on the other hand, sang cheerfully even when the song was about pain and sorrow -- he was profane precisely where Tharlos would have been somber.

But worst of all for Tharlos was to hear Darc's promises of liberty, his suggestions that the Plague could be cured, and that the fear of Lepers and the Wasteland might be defeated. And that eventually, the people might not depend on the rule of the nobles and their knights. And even so, Darc kept urging for yet more profound changes in people's beliefs and thoughts. Tharlos's entire existence was being challenged.

"No one must hear this," he muttered to himself. "The church must banish him, call him a blasphemer. I will see to that.

"Liberty!" Tharlos spat. "I'll teach him a thing or two about liberty, I will." Tharlos nodded repeatedly to himself. "I have the liberty to seek out and crush Darc and his witchdoctor friends. As long as I live, there shall be no cures except the cleansing fire! My liberty. I can use you, Darc. I will use you to unite the nobility -- under me!"

Like a madman, Tharlos said this to his image in the mirror. And like a madman, he thought he saw his mirror image laugh at his speech. A part of Tharlos, the sane part, knew that he was a doomed man. But that part was shrinking, as the inner void ate away at Tharlos's mind.



The Kap Verita archipelago, this late in the year, was full of activity. The terraced fields were being seeded with next year's crops, and the people were arming themselves. Every islander was aware by now, that Darc's radio broadcasts would awaken the wrath of the outside world. Only the fear of the Plague secured them against any retaliation -- but it was precisely that fear Darc was attacking.

The ultimate cure against the second Plague virus seemed yet out of reach, when Darc visited Mechao and sons in the genetics laboratory one windy day. Mechao's first response, when he heard Darc entering, sounded evasive.

"Can you feel the tension, Darc?" he asked without looking up from his microscope.

"What tension, Mechao?"

"The pressure that is building up below our feet. Fogo has been silent for too long. There will be a new earthquake..."

Darc said: "The equipment, the laboratory, the radio transmitter -- we cannot afford to lose them now."

Still preoccupied by the sight in the microscope, Mechao scribbled down a few notes and said: "The mansion survived the last earthquake intact -- a chunk of the front wall crashed down the rock face, but this part is built into solid volcanic rock. I think it shall hold."

"Great." Darc paused. "Now, how is Eye-Leg doing?"

Mechao finally looked up at Darc -- one short white-haired scientist with Asian features facing a tall white-hared one with European features.

He gave Darc a strange smile, and replied: "She is feeling a little better, but her condition is still on the decline. I regret to say this, but she won't last until the end of next year. Have you told Shara this?"

"How could I? And she knows, she feels it."

Darc turned his attention to the large artificial womb standing on the floor behind Mechao's back. It vaguely resembled an archaic steam engine, with a central cistern connected to a control panel by way of several tubes and pipes. The whole contraption was sealed off inside a glass-panel cube, not unlike a greenhouse from Darc's own time. A greenhouse to grow bodies, he mused.

"Is the clone going to be finished soon?"

Too uneasy to speak about the subject, Mechao stood up and walked across to the womb cube. He wiped some vapor from a glass pane and pointed at a porthole window in the central cistern. A red light emanated from the porthole, but it was hard to discern any details inside. Mechao dashed to the control panel and turned up the lighting inside.

Now Darc could see the shape growing inside the cistern. It was a distinctly female body floating in artificial amniotic fluid; seemingly very young, but just into puberty. Since the splitting of its first cell into an artificial embryo, the body had successfully lived and grown for only a few months. Its head was out of sight, but Darc had no desire to see the head. He knew that it had always been empty, the clone kept alive by machines until Eye-Leg's head could be grafted onto it.

After a time, Darc noticed... something vaguely recognizable about the clone. He had to ask Mechao, who was just taking a drink from a bottle.

"Mechao... our plan was to make this clone from Eye-Leg's own cells... but with some crucial parts of their genes replaced, to avoid Virus B from distorting the growth of the clone."

Mechao avoided Darc's eyes and was quiet.

"But..." Darc peered in at the porthole again. Something was drifting down from the clone's obscured head, something black and stripy... "The clone, as it looks now, seems very... different to me. The replacement genes... where did you get them from?"

Mechao rubbed his balding head and tugged at his stripy white beard. He was struggling with his conscience, as all men with great powers are forced to do.

"You may not want to hear this, Darc." Darc took a sudden stride toward his colleague, filled with inexplicable anger. Mechao turned and faced him, wringing his hands. Then he spoke, and his old Oriental eyes turned moist: "Even my own people fear me as much as they love me. Our knowledge inspires awe and superstition among those who don't understand it. The city-dwellers wish my knowledge to be buried and destroyed. My own father told us how his ancestors escaped from the walled cities to places like this island. Even my own family... I know what fear is, what it does to people."

Darc couldn't recognize his friend any longer. Was this the same man who fearlessly toiled, laughing in the face of hardships? Mechao had obviously been affected by recent events. And Darc had failed to see it until now.

"Where does the clone come from?" he asked firmly.

Mechao sighed, and told him with a plain face: "A few days before you sailed away to Dakchaor, I found that our first plan wouldn't work. I could not risk contaminating the artificial womb with Eye-Leg's damaged genes -- the Plague virus might mutate inside, then multiply and spread into my laboratory.

"So I had to use a healthy woman's cells to grow this clone. The women on Kap Verita refused to donate any cells of their own -- you can understand that, no? In the end, only one woman volunteered. It is the offspring of her cells that is growing in there now. She wanted it to carry Eye-Leg's head."

Darc looked at the porthole again, and he saw. Raven black hair drifting down from the clone's empty, eyeless head. It was a younger copy of Shara's body. An acrid taste in his throat overcame him, and he was attacked by intense nausea. Darc rushed over to Mecaho's chair and fought down the vomit reflex. He drank a few gulps, and settled down -- pale, but in control of himself.

When he could speak, it was in a hoarse voice: "Why didn't you tell me?"

A part of him felt betrayed by Shara, by Mechao.

"She and I both agreed this was the best way. I grew up on an island run by women, Darc; I understand them better than you do. You chose to love a very strong and bright female, and you ought to respect her personal judgment. Don't rush ahead and accuse her of anything, no?"

Mechao put his hand on Darc's shoulder. Darc nodded repeatedly in a silent Yes, yes, I know. He waited for his hurt pride to cool off, before he said anything. It took half an hour.

"All right," Darc finally admitted. "Shara loves the poor girl. Of course she has the right to donate her cells. I would never have tried to stop her, if she had asked me first. I swear."

"Of course you wouldn't," Mechao said ironically. He returned to his work, and gave his taller friend a mocking smile. "You're above such vanity, no?"