Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

fine.

But the monitor system worried Tolakah. He and bis own people had managed to get around it, so he knew how vulnerable it was. As a result, he was delighted to get Talant Ypsir, an expert in administration whose ideas on how societies should be organized closely paralleled the late Kasikian’s. Using the computer talent on Cerberus, Ypsir plugged the holes and created a nearly ironclad society—but not for Tolakah’s benefit. Tolakah, in fact, was personally beheaded by Ypsir while the administrative specialist was showing him the master computers in the orbiting space station that totally sealed the society. Complicity with the other Lords was probable; they distrusted the erratic Tolakah, and preferred someone who knew he was as corrupt as the others, and enjoyed it.

In the meantime, the last of the survivors of the pogrom managed to gather in the various secret places, and decided on an organization for their society in the wild. Dominant among them was Dr. Kura Hsiu, a cultural anthropologist by trade, who’d come to Medusa as a life study of the Warden organism’s effect on society. She was particularly drawn by the idea of a society where people changed sex as routinely as they changed their clothes, and she considered the work worth the sacrifice. But not now—as a fugitive and exile in the wild. She realized that the remnants were no match for Medusa’s power, but Ypsir seemed to be lapsing into a tolerance as long as they didn’t bother or interfere wtih him. Medusa was too big a planet for it to be worth tracking down that small a group, which the last two Lords had both considered dispersed and neutralized.

Dr. Hsiu realized that the new generation would be born in the bush, and that they would be culturally far removed from their own children, and so she set about creating a society that would allow the Wild Ones to grow and develop as a native culture, free of all past cultural pollutants. In many ways, it was the greatest task, experiment, and opportunity for an anthropologist in history.

The greater family, or tribal system, seemed the only logical way to go. Groups would have to be large enough to support one another, yet small enough to move with the weather and the food and still not attract Ypsir’s attention. A simple system, based primarily on age, was developed and taught—the younger would respect and follow the elder’s lead, and eventually, if they lived long enough, they, too, would run things. Originally intended just to keep the first generation in guiding control as long as possible, the tradition became quickly institutionalized in the harsh land.

Since political unity beyond the tribal system was impossible, the only basic overlay that would unite the tribes in any way would be a religious one. So the few centers of refuge became holy shrines, and a system of simple belief based on many religions was established.

Early on, though, the religion had taken an odd turn. Instead of worshiping some anthropomorphic god, the religion turned inward, to planet worship, of all things. God lived not in the heavens but inside the earth itself, one god for each world. This seemed logical to the young ones, for did not the Elders say that the heavens were filled with stars and planets and that humans went between them? If God was not in space, then, where was she?

The original Elders went along with the theory because it worked; Dr. Hsiu herself noted that similar faiths in one form or another existed on all three of the other Warden worlds. Later Elders came to believe in it, and most, but not all, now did.

By the second generation in the wild, things had become pretty institutionalized. The Free Tribes everywhere prayed in the direction of the Mount of God, a particularly high peak in the frozen north said to be the backbone of God the Mother Medusa Herself. This explained both the ritualized prayers and the sacrifice of the animal remains back into the pool—a return to Mother Medusa.

The religious centers became retreats for study and meditation, as well as old-age homes for the most elderly, and also places where those who were pregnant came to give birth, if they could. This explained the pregnant woman with the hunting party, and as well why so many in the courtyard had been pregnant.

As to why the Mount of God was chosen, that particularly piqued my interest. It was said that a hunting party had stumbled upon it shortly after the pogrom was in full swing and the hunt was on, and had battled “fierce demons who seemed to besiege the mount but could not climb upon it; demons more horrible to behold than the human mind can comprehend.” These “demons” got a number of the party, but the rest took refuge on the mountain where they had what can only be described as a classic religious experience. They claimed that somehow they had actually touched the mind of God, and as a result of that experience they had found themselves able to change their shape, form, or gender at will. This was apparently the beginning of the change toward planet-worship, and their experience was borne out by others who made the journey in their footsteps.

Here was God, then, in a tangible but not easily accessible form, under constant attack by terrible demons who wanted to destroy Her but could not climb the mountain to do so. The demons were terrible enough in taking a fearsome toll of the curious, the pilgrims, and all others; but the experience of anyone able to make it to the mountain and then back off again was the same—a sense that they had talked with God, and had acquired the power to control every damned cell in their bodies by sheer force of will. I could certainly see why the revolution of malleables would be a real pain today for other than cultural reasons. Whatever those animals or creatures were that the accounts called demons, they were terrible and deadly—and very real. I felt sure of that. It would be tough getting enough people to that mountain, and back. Still, that mountain had something, some strange power that not only conferred this ability for life but also convinced a lot of hard-headed scientific materialists of the claptrap of this silly religion.

I knew then where I had to go next. Surprisingly, the Elders agreed.

“Yes, you must go!’ said the first woman, who I thought might well have been Dr. Hsiu. “You alone are the key to your family’s salvation. Without your drive and relentless will the other three would settle down and accept this culture. They dream your dreams because they love you. If, then, you make the Great Pilgrimage, and survive the demon trial, you will come mind to mind with God and you will know. Then will your life picture and world picture be irrevocably changed, as ours was. And, if you must still dream your ambitions after that, you will at least find the power that you seek.”

I smiled and nodded. “I think, though, that we should have more training in the use of the primitive weapons here first. I don’t want anybody killed out of ignorance.”

“We?”

“Why, yes. All four of us. We are together in this, one.”

“No.”

I looked puzzled and felt angry. “Why not? Give me one good reason for it!”

“I will give you two. Your wife Angi is four months with child. Your wife Bura is three months with child. They must remain here for the term.”

“Well I’ll be damned!” I said, genuinely surprised and shocked. “It never occurred to me. It really didn’t.” Even after all this time on Medusa, the idea of natural birth as opposed to scientifically controlled laboratory birth was simply not connected in my mind. “But why didn’t they tell me?”

“They did not want you to know as long as you were bent on your killing mission. Pregnancy does not show as much on us as on normal humans at this stage, nor does it produce any of the negative symptoms that normal human first-trimester gestation does.” She paused for a moment. “They were going to tell you and I stopped them. But now you know, and now you must make your decision. Go to the Mount of Gods, or remain to raise your children with those who love you.”

My mind was racing at all this, and I felt a little angry and betrayed that they hadn’t told me straight off—but, then, they had been behaving a little odd lately and I’d simply passed it off.

“What about Ching?” I asked. “If the other two are pregnant, then she sure should be. We’ve been together a lot longer.”

“As far as we can tell, no, but on Medusa a pregnancy usually has to be fairly well along before we know for certain. We believe she is determined to go where you go, do what you do, no matter what; being with child would prevent that. On Medusa, a solid mind-set not to get pregnant is sufficient to leave it that way.”

I thought it all out, trying to decide if the new situation really made a difference. It did, dammit, but I also had my own responsibilities to consider beyond the family. What good would it do to remain and have lots of kids and then look up one day to see a Confederacy world destroyer bearing down on Medusa, wiping out all of us and our futures? If anything, I thought, this made it even more urgent that I find the means to get to Talant Ypsir.