Centaurs (Parallel Worlds) Read online

  "Still, please be careful."

  "I promise I will."

  Nick's theory about the effect of the impending arrival of estrus was proven correct when Paula behaved quite demurely when she came to see them. She was exceedingly affable as she went through the computer operating instructions slowly and patiently so that they will be able to use it properly.

  "You’re extremely knowledgeable with computers, Paula." Nick said. "And we both appreciate your kindness in coming to instruct us."

  Paula blushed. "It was the least I could do for you. And the reason I know so much is that Mom, who’s a genius with computers, taught me all about them when I showed an interest in accounting, for which I have quite an aptitude. So much so that by now I’m fully trusted by the Gogians to convey all their directives to the executive board through me."

  Gogians? Strange name for a people. Jesus, Nikki, I think we just hit pay dirt.

  I agree, and let’s see where it takes us. As to their name, it's got to have a certain significance.... Oh, I get it. Like the Biblical Gog and Maggog, the mythical land of giants and demons. Strange.

  Marty smiled at Paula. "Will it take a special code for me to enter my account and see how much I’d earned and spent so far?"

  "All it takes is entering your personal serial number and it pops on right away. But you'll need one if you want to look at someone else's account, like Nikki's. Want me to show you how?"

  "I’d appreciate it." She watched closely as Paula entered her own password onto the computer, then looked at Marty's palm for her number and keyed it in. The account popped up instantly, showing the advance she had received and her food and personal items’ purchases.

  "As you can see, Marty, you were advanced two-thousand points and spent only six-hundred. This leaves you a lot to buy almost anything you want until you start earning more."

  "That’s great. Thank you so much, Paula, for being so kind to us."

  "It was my pleasure. Now I better take you to the meeting, which I have no idea why they want to see you."

  "We’ll soon find out, I guess."

  "Not me because I’m not part of the board."

  Chapter 9

  The management offices of the farm were quite lavish, which surprised them. Paula quickly confirmed their impression of the farm’s prosperity by telling them that its products were shipped all over since they have a reputation for great quality.

  Jenny’s office was in keeping with their first impression of the farm’s wealth as it was sumptuously furnished, with a mahogany conference table and thickly padded horse-hide couches. They were introduced to the third member of the group, Arvin, who seemed a little younger than Eldon and considerably larger.

  Jenny began speaking as soon as she made the introductions. "You’re probably wondering why I invited you to our meeting on the day that you know by now is quite auspicious for us, as we get ready to practice our special rights."

  Strange way of putting it, don't you think, Nikki?

  Actually, I sense a bit of sarcasm in her words.

  Could also be that she said it for someone else's benefit.

  Very possibly so.

  "Yes, on the day before the onset of estrus for all fertile females in Maggog." Marty said and watched everyone catch their breath. "But I'm not surprised by the reaction you just showed, considering your reaction yesterday when I called you centaurs and kentaurides."

  "Damn right you are that it caused Jenny and us great concern. And you just increased our anxiety about who you are when you mentioned estrus and called this place Maggog, which is true but few of our people are aware of it." Arvin said. "So please tell us where you came by this knowledge."

  Before Marty had a chance to respond, Nick put his hand on her shoulder to stop her. There are two hidden microphones in the room, by the door and above the window. Should I disable them?

  Definitely, if you think you can do it.

  Bet your sweet titties I can. So give them an answer.

  Sure.

  "The reason we know about centaurs is that where we come from they were part of Greek mythology rather than real beings, as you all most certainly are."

  "Not exactly correct, but close. And what about estrus, where does that knowledge come from?"

  "In our world, where mythological centaurs supposedly roamed the foothills of Mount Olympus, most animals reached estrus periodically but never humans."

  "And what is your world called?"

  "It's called Earth, where all sentient beings are bipeds and highly intelligent."

  "Which doesn't surprise us because so are we who are of the original group here, who didn't start our life as centaur-like beings."

  "What kind of people were you, and where did you come from originally?"

  "All of us were born on an island called Britain, about three-hundred years ago, in its largest city."

  "Oh, my God, you're from London of the eighteenth century? No wonder you speak such an archaic English."

  "It may be so to you but not to us. So where did you come from? Surely not from anywhere in England because of your odd behavior and mode of speech. All that we know about you is that you were part of a group who escaped the farm a few years ago and have been diligently hunted down ever since. The Gogians spared you because of your youth and excellent health, but had killed everyone else."

  "As a warning, no doubt. Anyway, we were born in twentieth century America, in a city called Miami, which is located on the Atlantic Coast of the continent."

  "None of us ever heard of your birthplace but we knew about America, which makes you what we called Colonials."

  "Which means that since you know about it, we may come from the same or parallel world, which this one that you call Maggog definitely is."

  "What does parallel world mean?"

  "Some scientists in the nineteenth century came up with the theory that the universe contains many similar worlds side-by-side, and that all of them are in essence similar to one another geographically but differ historically and racially."

  "Then you and we may be from the same world but not same time period?"

  "Correct."

  "Which makes sense in a weird way because it explains the existence of this Maggog country in parallel to Earth, where it was called Greece. But I'm curious about how old you were when you arrived here, and what were your occupations in your past life."

  "Just over the age of seventy. Marty had served in the military as a general, and if you’re wondering how it was possible for a woman to be a soldier, it was because she was a man and I a woman before we ended up here."

  "Fascinating. And what did you do, Nick?"

  "I started out as a teacher but then spent my entire life studying a myriad of subjects like history, biology, chemistry, and many other assorted topics."

  "But how did you end up here? Were you recruited by the Gogians?"

  "No. And I'm wondering if you call them that because of the Biblical name of the demonic giants from the land of Maggog?"

  "Absolutely. And unlike you we were recruited by these demons. I was a physician, herbalist actually, as was Arvin, and Eldon was an engineer. All of us veterans were offered jobs here practically on our deathbeds, and jumped at their deal not just to continue living but to become practically immortal and remain youthful forever. But why did you end up here?"

  "Immortals? Son of a bitch." Marty mumbled, then told them the story of their demise, unique mental powers, and how they had arrived on Maggog as a result.

  "Oh, my God." Arvin burst out. "We better erase the tape the Gogians had installed here or they'll discover who Marty and Nick really are and end up grinding them into hamburger meat."

  Nick chuckled. "No need to do anything like that because when we came into this office I scanned it and found two hidden microphones, which I'd silenced."

  "There were two of them? We only knew about one." Jenny said with a scared look on her face. "Which is the reason why we never discuss sensitive
things in here, but we never imagined in our wildest dreams who you’d turn out to be, so we didn’t worry."

  "In other words, you have no love for the Gogians?"

  "We consider them monsters, which was why we call them Gogians--from the land Maggog, who should be wiped off the face of the earth."

  "I’m glad you feel this way because we’d already decided to speed all of them on their road to oblivion. With Marty’s help, who’s the most ferocious and devious warrior you’d ever met in your entire long life."

  "I’m delighted to hear that because all of us from the original group feel this way."

  "But not those who were born here?"

  "No, because they accept their life as the normal way to exist."

  "So we’d observed, particularly from Angie and her friends."

  "Why did you decide on this course of action when you’ve only been here barely twenty-four hours and couldn’t know too much about the Gogians?"

  "In order for you to understand our mindsets you should know that we were born and raised in a culture that holds individual freedom to live as one pleases, as the most sacrosanct element of our life."

  "I see, which you must’ve quickly discovered isn’t the case here, where every facet of our life is strictly regulated and controlled by the Gogians."

  "Exactly, though we didn’t know about them at first so we thought of them only as our lords and masters. But the more we found about their restrictions and forced way of life here the more pissed off we got, particularly my having to extract and sell milk from my body to pay for food and lodging. And worse, was finding that we’d had electronic chips inserted under our skins to monitor and get paid for the number of intercourses we have, which in our time is called prostitution."

  "In ours as well, so I understand why it pissed you off because we still resent it after so many years of living here."

  "In any case, our anger caused us to review everything that we’d observed and pay close attention to what Angie told us about life here, from which we drew a few obvious conclusions."

  "Such as?"

  "Stuff that Angie accepts as a normal way of life, which I didn’t because of my long experience as a totally free person, or maybe because of my age before coming here. Anyway, my first conclusion after the debasing experience of being milked like a cow was that something here is terribly wrong. And the second one was the result of Angie telling me about your low birth rate, which didn’t make any sense to us."

  "Why didn’t it?"

  "Because of her statement about how ferocious and dangerous stallions are during estrus, so much so that all females have to be examined a week after it's over for fear that they might have suffered vaginal injuries. And that they bleed afterward for a while."

  "Indeed we do, and the Gogian gynecologists must treat us for it."

  "Did it ever occur to you as physicians that one-hundred percent of all your females can’t have identical injuries no matter how rough the stallions are?"

  "It did, but our training as physicians is quite antiquated so we couldn't unravel the reason for it. What conclusions did you reach?"

  "It was actually Nick who did since he's quite knowledgeable in the biological field and was therefore able to come up with the answer."

  Jenny turned to him. "Which was?"

  "That females are either fertile or barren and that if they conceive once in a while they should conceive every time during estrus because of the fertile males that they have intercourse with. I’m not a physician but I know that vaginal bleeding by healthy females must be the result of undergoing an abortion, and an awful thought crossed my mind—that all your embryos are being harvested for some reason that I can’t figure out yet, but it must be evil."

  The board members sat silently for a while, an appalled expression on their faces as they digested this information. Elwood finally spoke with a shaken voice. "We were so utterly stupid that we never even considered this possibility despite our knowledge of how malicious these creatures are and how little regard they have for us as human beings. Which we are, despite the way we look."

  "We'd already come to this conclusion, Elwood. Then you know why they need to collect so many embryos from us?"

  "Two embryos each from five-hundred females amounts to a thousand every three months." Jenny said with tears rolling down her cheeks. "Which we now know are being raised to maturity in a lab. Which also explains their need for both human and centaur milk--to feed so many babies until they can start eating solids."

  "Makes sense, but why would they do that?"

  "For specimens to conduct experiments upon, I'm sure."

  "Jesus, that’s real sick. What kind of experiments?"

  "To understand it you need to know about the history of the Gogians and how they had turned from a highly enlightened and compassionate society into a race of utter monsters. The history of our own time is full of stories about Greece being the cradle of civilization, which had reached its height three-thousand years ago and then began to deteriorate."

  "Which didn’t happen here?"

  "Correct. In this world the Greeks were so highly advanced that they became the exclusive governing race on Earth many thousands of years before our own ancestors had even become human. They were so technologically advanced that they were able to reach the stars six-thousand years ago and conducted extensive space explorations. Then, over two-thousand years ago, they ran into nasty alien beings whose attitude was that anyone unlike them must be destroyed. A war of attrition erupted soon afterward which lasted for about a thousand years, in which the other world was obliterated."

  "Sounds terrible, but not that unusual even on earth with all our own wars."

  "True. In any case, before the war ended this world was bombarded by those aliens with a bio-chemical agent that rendered every female on the planet, even including most animals, barren. Fortunately for them, being long lived the Gogians had plenty of time to look for a solution to the problem of impending obliteration, so they scoured worlds like ours and brought over large herds of animals and flocks of birds of every kind to replace the ones that were eliminated."

  "Sounds like a monumental task. I wonder, though, why they didn’t bring any cows from wherever they got the rest of the livestock."

  "They did, but as with most species, a poisonous residue remained in the air and soil that kept killing them off until the Gogians gave up on them."

  "So they replaced them with horses?"

  "Not quite. The original horses they had brought, like cows, also had no immunity and died off when they couldn’t reproduce, as did all humans--native and imported. And while a large group were busy restocking the planet with all kinds of animals and birds, their scientists searched for an antidote that would cure their women, which was an utter failure."

  "How did they solve the problem, kidnap females from other worlds and impregnate them?"

  "They did at first but learned that they were physically incompatible with any other existing sentient race anywhere."

  "In other words, they're a different species?"

  "Much like birds and fish. Which should've been evident to their scientists, but they tried it anyway in their desperation to find a solution to generating fertile females of their own race."

  "Are they that different from our own species outwardly?"

  "Yes. They look like giants from our old legends and story books, averaging seven feet in height and quite broad, with huge heads and limbs."

  "Then they are giants just as your name for them implies."

  "Yeah, demonic giants. And when nothing worked they got desperate, particularly when their older people started dying off without any young ones being born to replace them."

  "So how did they solve their problem?"

  "They thought they did when someone discovered a large centaur population in the forests far to the east of Greece near a huge inland sea, where they thrived after being chased there by the Gogians thousands of years ago."
/>   "Why did they try to exterminate them?"

  Jenny grinned suddenly. "There'd been a war of attrition between them for many generation because the male Gogian nobility used to hunt their females for concubines, which their males resented and for which they castrated any Gogian they could catch."

  "Oh, shit. So the Gogians are sexually compatible with centaurs not just in size but in their genes?"

  "Physically yes, but not genetically. Which they didn’t know at the time, only that the centaur herd was full of young—a clear indication that they finally found the answer to saving their race by mating with kentaurides. So they butchered the males and brought the females over to a special lab."

  "Where they discovered after impregnating them that all their hopes were just a pipedream?"

  "Even worse because the females bore them genuine looking horses rather than any two-legged Gogians. They killed and then dissected most females to find out why they wouldn’t produce any of their kind despite their many similarities, which went on for a while until nearly all the females were cut to pieces without the scientists finding any answers."

  "So that’s how the current horse herd was started?"

  "Yes, and even though they were their own offsprings these monsters began using them as a primary source of beef once they were no longer needed for research."

  "And if that wasn’t bad enough, though they do look like actual horses, these poor creatures are fully sentient—just like us and the Gogians are."

  "Oh, no, that’s frightening. How did you find that out, Marty?"

  "When we went on tour and reached the milking pens their painful cries penetrated my mind with such force that I had to leave the area very quickly. And it got even worse when a stallion was brutally castrated while conscious as we passed nearby and even through his awful pain he kept wishing that he were butchered rather than live like that."