wife’s blood poured out of her torn body. He fell to his knees and lowered his head to the ground in anguish. Zal was unaffected by the woman’s death or her mate’s reaction.
“Point the weapon at me, human!” Brun’s voice offered no compromise and the man looked up, dazed. He closed his tear-washed eyes and lifted the weapon toward the Minith obediently. A sound of grief and anguish began deep in the man’s chest, but not so deep that it went unheard by either Brun or Zal. It quickly spewed forth as a strangled cry of pained torment.
Without waiting for any further action by the human, Brun lifted his weapon and took aim at the two young females who had turned toward the lumps of blood and rags that had been their mother. One of the girls screamed and the workers in the field turned in time to witness her death. The piercing dagger of her scream echoed through Zal’s head as the second daughter ran to her sister. When the heat of Brun’s weapon burned off the top of the second girl’s head, the echo was replaced by the sound of blood and brains sizzling.
Zal was both amazed and excited. The man’s family lay dead but the human had made no move to stop the attack. The gun lay lifeless and dead in his pale hand.
It would have been comical to the Minith except that the sound that had begun as a whimper deep in the human male’s chest was now a screeching cry that brought pain to the Minith successor’s sensitive hears. Having held back as long as his excitement would allow, Zal walked over to the kneeling human, grabbed his smallish head and lifted him from the ground. With a sudden twisting movement, he snapped the man’s neck and dropped him indifferently to the ground.
Zal pulled the weapon from the human’s grip and tucked it into his belt. He then looked out upon the other humans in the field. The smell of fear was still strong in them, but they appeared once again to be hard at work. Not one of them looked in his direction. Zal felt disgust at their weakness but also found delight in what that weakness meant.
“You are correct, Brun,” he remarked to his predecessor. “They are not capable of fighting.”
Ruling such animals for the next four cycles would be a boring exercise. He would have to use his imagination.
CHAPTER THREE
Amazing. That was what Tane Rolan thought as their experiment opened his eyes and looked around at the nature-cage. No one knew what to expect. There had been dozens of conversations about what the man would do when he awoke – if he awoke. Everything from idiotic slobbering to manic rage had been predicted, and the assembled group held their collective breath while the object of their attention decided how he was going to react to his new surroundings.
* * *
He opened his eyes and found himself in a garden of waist-high grass and green foliage. This was a new place, one he had never visited before. There were no trees but the point was a small one, meaningless in the importance of the moment.
He could see! And smell! The scent of wildflowers hit his nose and he felt as if his head would explode with sensory overload.
His eyes, nose and mind drank in the virgin scenery like a drowning man gasping for air. The bright green leaves and brown shoots were cool air blowing across the baked soil of his weary mind. Until that moment, he had not realized how starved for new input he had become.
He stared ahead, not wanting to miss a single detail. He milked the scene for all of its heavenly freshness – its newness. He committed the scene to memory as quickly as possible, fearful that he might be yanked suddenly back into the incessant replay of the memories that he had become. The fear threatened to consume him as it coursed savagely through his body. Was the garden a mirage or, worse, just another long-buried memory suddenly flung to the surface of his being?
* * *
Cryogenics had evolved significantly since its inception in the twentieth century and, together
“Point the weapon at me, human!” Brun’s voice offered no compromise and the man looked up, dazed. He closed his tear-washed eyes and lifted the weapon toward the Minith obediently. A sound of grief and anguish began deep in the man’s chest, but not so deep that it went unheard by either Brun or Zal. It quickly spewed forth as a strangled cry of pained torment.
Without waiting for any further action by the human, Brun lifted his weapon and took aim at the two young females who had turned toward the lumps of blood and rags that had been their mother. One of the girls screamed and the workers in the field turned in time to witness her death. The piercing dagger of her scream echoed through Zal’s head as the second daughter ran to her sister. When the heat of Brun’s weapon burned off the top of the second girl’s head, the echo was replaced by the sound of blood and brains sizzling.
Zal was both amazed and excited. The man’s family lay dead but the human had made no move to stop the attack. The gun lay lifeless and dead in his pale hand.
It would have been comical to the Minith except that the sound that had begun as a whimper deep in the human male’s chest was now a screeching cry that brought pain to the Minith successor’s sensitive hears. Having held back as long as his excitement would allow, Zal walked over to the kneeling human, grabbed his smallish head and lifted him from the ground. With a sudden twisting movement, he snapped the man’s neck and dropped him indifferently to the ground.
Zal pulled the weapon from the human’s grip and tucked it into his belt. He then looked out upon the other humans in the field. The smell of fear was still strong in them, but they appeared once again to be hard at work. Not one of them looked in his direction. Zal felt disgust at their weakness but also found delight in what that weakness meant.
“You are correct, Brun,” he remarked to his predecessor. “They are not capable of fighting.”
Ruling such animals for the next four cycles would be a boring exercise. He would have to use his imagination.
CHAPTER THREE
Amazing. That was what Tane Rolan thought as their experiment opened his eyes and looked around at the nature-cage. No one knew what to expect. There had been dozens of conversations about what the man would do when he awoke – if he awoke. Everything from idiotic slobbering to manic rage had been predicted, and the assembled group held their collective breath while the object of their attention decided how he was going to react to his new surroundings.
* * *
He opened his eyes and found himself in a garden of waist-high grass and green foliage. This was a new place, one he had never visited before. There were no trees but the point was a small one, meaningless in the importance of the moment.
He could see! And smell! The scent of wildflowers hit his nose and he felt as if his head would explode with sensory overload.
His eyes, nose and mind drank in the virgin scenery like a drowning man gasping for air. The bright green leaves and brown shoots were cool air blowing across the baked soil of his weary mind. Until that moment, he had not realized how starved for new input he had become.
He stared ahead, not wanting to miss a single detail. He milked the scene for all of its heavenly freshness – its newness. He committed the scene to memory as quickly as possible, fearful that he might be yanked suddenly back into the incessant replay of the memories that he had become. The fear threatened to consume him as it coursed savagely through his body. Was the garden a mirage or, worse, just another long-buried memory suddenly flung to the surface of his being?
* * *
Cryogenics had evolved significantly since its inception in the twentieth century and, together
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