DISCLAIMER: The Thundercats are owned by other people and
institutions and not by the author of this work. The author is not benefiting financially by
this work. The author owns any other character
appearing in this work that is not Thundercats or part of the Thundercat
Universe.
“One Million Years”
By RD Rivero
Ó
[Part One]
The piercing howl of steam whistles sounded the end of one
shift and the beginning of another.
Although the jarring alarms ceased in a matter of seconds, the hot
vapors emitted lingered in that damp, sooty underworld as swirls of hot gasses,
streaming across high ceilings and skeletal supports -- the ancient ironworks
upon which the heavenly city of
Motion. Everything, everywhere was in motion. Slow or steady. Even the noxious air was kept in constant circulation by the fans that cooled the rapid, timeworn wheels, gears and cogs. The machines ran nonstop, except for those few days out of the year when their parts were checked, oiled or replaced. The workers, too, the throwbacks rejected by the elite of the city above, were slaves to an eternal flux, as untold thousands labored in ten-hour shifts, day after day after day.
The imperfect Thunderians toiled to their deaths in deep, dark shafts that few in Metropolis knew or even dreamed about. And when they were not wasting away their lives in perpetual, societal bondage, they would 'relax' up on the surface of Third Earth, a land once covered by lakes and forests, wide, living rivers and snowcapped mountains, a planet once beautified by untamed oceans and bright, blue skies but that a never-ending line of industrial machination had reduced to a wasteland replete with foundations of bulk steel and titanium frames, jetting pipes, turning blades, teeming cesspools and gapping holes dug straight through the core. And darkness, perpetual darkness but for those few spots here and there where the city had yet to reach.
That abhorrent hell of moonless, starless night teemed with the humming of machines vibrating. Power generators, steam turbines and pistons -- it was an awesome feat of engineering, a spinning, whirling fervor that went no where. Progress had transformed the planet into an artificial entity and all the processes that nature had once taken care of now had to be synthesized. Machines that cleaned air, machines that purified water, machines that decomposed wastes into more useful compounds. All of that and more required unyielding attention. No, the metallic heart of the city could not be allowed to stop, not for a moment.
Up from the hives of the bowels of the earth came the leery workers of the past shift. Time had long ago drained their emotions and so without expression they gathered onto the rolling sidewalks from all directions in absolute chaos. From lions to cheetahs, saber-tooths or not, the masses came together in a mindless unity borne of necessity. Their uniforms, like their exposed fur, were dirtied black with soot and clung onto their bodies like a permanent, second skin. Their masters issued them only one pair of garments their whole adult lives and if or when those linens disintegrated, outside of the charity of others, they were gone forever -- many of the men were naked but because of the darkness and the filth few ever, really noticed or cared.
Inch by inch the walkways merged and the lowly cats were brought into freight elevators that lifted them up to the surface levels while others were dropped down to replenish the hives with refreshed blood. Up and down, down and up, the air echoed the trampling of heavy feet that evolved in step to an eerie and silent funeral march.
In the ‘upper’ levels, foremen herded their sluggish, weakened counterparts into cubicles, hardly ever the same one twice. Within the males bred with the resident females. The interactions were timed and monitored to make sure that the act was done quickly, that there was no frivolity, no stalling -- not even for what could pass for polite conversation.
Afterwards the adults were grouped with boys to instruct them on the working and maintaining of the machines that they would one day soon service for the rest of their lives. Girls, at an even earlier age, were put aside into nurseries then placed into cubicles where they were to bide their time in sporadic isolation, conceiving or birthing young in an endless chain that stretched unto their own gruesome, putrid ends.
What little free time the men had was spent loitering in immense, gothic-like rooms. There they fraternized in pools, ate, drank or slunked into stacked, horizontal shelves one, two or three at a time for a different sort of relaxation. Yet, even there, they were kept in motion, never allowed to stay in the same spot for longer than an hour.
Such was the world that the Thundercats had created, but how could it be that the descendants of Liono and his allies, the Warrior humans, would find themselves in such a precarious situation, such an uneasy balance? After one million years of bliss few knew, less cared and for the most part the people were content. Little had changed and so it seemed, after ages of complacency, that little needed changing. The first, few steps into that brave, new world were tiny, unnoticeable. Many of the ideas were already there, so artfully, cleverly disguised. The snobbery of the Thunderian nobles, the prejudices of the humans, only the slightest push was required for those ancient, ignorant tendencies to spiral out of control. It was, in brief, only a matter of time.
[Part Two]
In the open, green pleasure gardens, half a mile into milk-white skies, an air-screen, perched above the swaying tops of bushy trees, looked down upon youngsters huddled about sparkling fountains on grassy sheets -- the children of the masters of Metropolis lay back, bodies intertwined, filling the air with the soft sounds of moaning. All the while the angled monitor displayed the latest news-flash:
A thin, frail-looking human with short, black hair and tiny, black eyes peered into the camera as he spoke: “These three, throwbacks,” he said, his face visibly disgusted, “were found in possession of plans,” he raised his hand -- in his grip were flapping scraps of linens, “plans to subvert authority and to instill among us a new order founded on the seditious notions of their fellow cohorts. You may examine the evidence.”
The camera moved back from the close-up to take in a panoramic view of the glass-and-iron courtroom.
The man handed the ‘documents’ to a panel of six humans and six purebred Thunderians. Standing in the background were the alleged conspirators, naked but for loose loincloths, their faces above the shot on the screen to spare the sensitivities of the ultra-elite, to whom the judicial proceedings were being aired. Armed Thundercat guards surrounded the accused.
At the far end of the garden, away from the carnal worshipers, where the soil gave way to concrete, a thin door slid open and a lone figure entered the scene. He was a lion, mane dark red, long and flowing, fur a dense shade of tan-yellow. Silently and without fanfare he approached a fountain. Looking from side to side he saw before him the nude, convoluted bodies of humans and Thunderians on display -- his schoolmates slumbered, morbidly exhausted.
“What verdict reach you?”
The young lion peered up at the air-screen -- the image was sharp and so clear that the substance of the wall behind it was not visible.
“Guilty,” a woman said and in no particular order came the rest of the votes:
“Guilty.”
“Guilty.”
“Guilty.”
“Guilty.”
“Guilty.”
“Guilty.”
“Guilty.”
“Guilty.”
“Guilty.”
“Guilty.”
“Guilty.”
The man sighed and stepped back from the jury, dismissing them with the wave of the hand. “So be it,” he said at last as the twelve-member pool cleared the area. He turned to face the three condemned, imperfect Thunderians, whose heads a trick of the camera had chopped off, their massive musculature -- a quality of physique unknown to most of the inhabitants of the city -- was darkened with ash, glimmering with sweat, standing in direct defiance to their minuscule judge and -- “then by the powers granted to me by Phaeton, Lord of the Thundercats and Livia, Queen of the Amazons, I hereby sentence you to death.”
The cloudy images of the trial, fuzzy but distinct, were ‘broadcasted’ onto a circular pool through methods long ago made obsolete by mere technology. Glowing red eyes looked on in an odd mixture of happiness and despair -- as they had for centuries seemingly without end. The pictures faded into steam and, as the vast chamber plummeted into lengthening shades of darkness, a vile cackle shook the stony vault to its foundations.
The cloudy heights
of the city were spanned by many tall buildings and enormous edifices. Rail tracks at every thousand feet and
imposing highways transported the prosperous inhabitants of Metropolis to and
from their professional jobs. Stratified
from top to bottom were the different classes of Thunderians and humans and
their cross breeds. The common
folk. The nobles lived at the top and at
the very top, in the tallest tower of them all, in a windowless room known only
to a few, paced the most frightened man on Third Earth.
In the shadows, while a monitor in the distance played un-watched, he laid a hand on the Sword of Omens -- but its eye remained closed, providing no comfort.
The young lion sprayed his face with the clear water of the fountain. He caught only a passing, instant glimpse of himself before the turbulence of the rippling surface destroyed the unity of his reflection. Shadows lined his face around his nose and mouth. There were very few mirrors around -- his father hated mirrors -- and he seldom ever got a chance to look at himself. He wondered why he did not quite appear like his companions -- not the humans. His doctors had told him not to worry about it, that it was just a phase of self-consciousness that all adolescents went through. Yet he could not help but feel that there was more to it, that he was --
“Kara,” a soft voice called his name and he turned to the side.
Just under the sight of the air-screen -- that had at that very moment shown the smoky residue that was left of the executed subverters -- was a girl in her late teens, just a year older than him. She held a deep-red, purplish flower in fingers that she twiddled seductively.
“Mesilina,” he answered her. “I haven't seen you in a while.”
He gave her a friendly though timid smile as she came closer.
“I know, I know, I’ve been away for too long. My mother insists that I learn the old ways,” she snickered, eyes rolling. “As if we lived in trees or something.”
The two shared a slight, passing laugh.
She leaned forward. He grew tense, nervous that she might kiss him. Instead she wove the flower stem into his mane, over his right ear.
“Oh, you look so cute,” another female said -- a lioness and regular to the garden.
“Agripina,” Kara called her by name.
She hugged him -- he merely draped his arms over her back and no more. Her hands roamed about his fur, her well-defined claws met his flesh -- he shivered in shock at the intimacy of that unexpected contact. She giggled as if amused.
Sprawled on the grass, the other purebred Thunderians groaned quietly and looked away. The males especially had no real love or admiration for the lion -- reality, however, kept their tongues quiet, their contempt in check. It was not any single thing in particular -- no, it was just something odd about their would be --
“Hey!” one of the human boys shouted as he ran toward the lion, whose open, white robe fretted in the breeze. “You’re it!” He lightly tapped the feline’s wrist.
“I’m going to get you!” he roared as he ran after the naked teenager, letting his own garments fall to the grass.
Mesilina looked at the lioness. Agripina’s eyes had a certain glister. It was as if she knew something that the Warrior Maiden did not.
[Part Three]
“Hahaha!” Marcelus laughed as he stormed through a field of knee-high grass.
Kara growled playfully behind him. He did not want to scare the boy, it was just something that came naturally to him. No, he would not, could not hurt him, he was a good friend.
The human man-child stopped and checked about around him while he stood in the hanging vines of a weeping willow -- its leaves scantily covering the exposed flesh of his body. He saw the lion steaming toward him, his face flashing a bright grin. He let the Thunderian come close, only to nimbly strafe off to the side from the tree, trampling over its roots to one of the main fountains.
When Kara had again caught up with his prey, he found himself in an uneasy balance. He and Marcelus stood at opposite sides of the round, concrete structure. For endless moments the two just leaned over the rim, sipping the clear waters. An idea came to the cub just then:
“I guess the fountain is safe,” he said, displeased.
“The fountain is always safe,” Marcelus said, as he held onto the edge -- Kara was stepping closer to him. His impulse was to turn and run, but, when he saw his friend in full, he felt, oddly, a certain chill, a coldness that needed the warmth of the feline to tame. Lost in the lull of that dreamy netherworld, he did not notice until too late that he had let go of the safety of the fountain.
“Grrr,” the lion purred as he grabbed the teenager’s shoulders and lifted him up off of the ground an inch or two. Marcelus tried to squirm out of Kara’s grasp but he was not strong enough. The Thunderian eased him onto the ground and got on top of him. He straddled him, their nakedness pressing together. A kind of lust came into his eyes as he realized that he was flesh-on-flesh close to the human -- and that he was not nervous. But then again, he was never nervous around boys that way. He had just never realized before that the closeness that he enjoyed was something that could be craved.
Still thinking it was a game, Marcelus tried to get up from under the lion’s weight. In the mock struggle that followed the two ended up tumbling about, hand-in-hand. Kara’s flower came off his mane to fall onto the grass. The boy's wrestling wilted the petals as their rolling bodies pounded it into the dirt. At the end neither had made any progress and so they ended where they began.
“Marcelus,” he whispered as he let go of the human’s hands -- the man-child now no longer resisted. He arched his head up to be closer to the lion’s, whose own face was dropping down slowly, trembling in uncertainty. They got so close that they sensed the heat of their lips.
Kara let his legs relax as he carefully cupped the back of the youth’s head in his paw.
“Ahhh!” a girl screamed.
“Look!” someone else shouted.
The startled boys hastily separated and lay on their stomachs. They looked ashamed and afraid but they had not left each other’s side.
“What are they?”
The pair studied the scene around them -- the voices were coming from another part of the garden. They had not realized that where they had run off to was very remote and isolated.
“Thank Jagga,” Kara said as he arose. The cub, more muscular than his companion, helped Marcelus to his feet.
The teenagers hugged, letting their hands wander about the tensing contours of their backs. The feel of such gentle fingers exploring his fur made the young lion purr. He petted the moaning human in places where only the shade covered him.
The shouts from the others continued and brought them out of their euphoric haze. They ran across the fountains, around the bushes and past the trees until they had returned to the main entrance of the garden. There the girls were looking forward to the sliding door and backward to the surrounding walls in a frenzy of terror, not wanting to see something horrid but not being able to resist either. The boys covered themselves with their hands as they retreated into the foliage. Even Marcelus was spooked -- he kept trying to drag Kara to the side for cover but the lion's mind was elsewhere.
Huddled before the front steps were two children, their faces different and unusual. Clearly they were Thunderian, but they deformed in a way he had never seen before. No, that was not entirely true. He had seen faces like theirs once. Perhaps that was why he was not afraid. And then --
Herding the silent children was a human, about the same age as Kara. The youth had long, dark hair that went down to his shoulders. His eyes were a shade of violet and shimmered in a kind of wetness that hinted of the passing of tears and yet despite the sadness his face had an air of resolved confidence. The stranger was clothed in a simple, white cotton vest, open to his unusually toned form and a loose loincloth of the type that was in vogue in upper echelons of Metropolis society.
Kara trembled at the sight of such perfection -- quickly he spotted his robe and tied it around his waist. He stood, mouth agape and studied his god’s every move.
“Children,” he said, “these are your brothers and sisters.”
“That’s enough!” a stern voice boomed. A new figure approached from the concrete,
from the side. “These, children, don't
belong here!” It was
The stranger sighed and turned around -- at once the children followed him back through the sliding doors that had opened without a sound.
“Go back to your play,” the man said as he looked back around the garden. The adolescents were emerging from their hiding spots. “There’s nothing to see here, those things are gone,” he reassured them. “Kara,” he said, having then noticed the lion. The cub was on the platform next to him by that time, inching toward the now-shut entrance. “Kara, I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“Sorry?” he shook his head. “It was like a dream, a heavenly dream.”
“What ever are you talking about, lad?” He laid a friendly hand on the lion’s shoulder. The teenager seemed oblivious to his surroundings -- Marcelus, Mesilina and Agripina were already at his back but he did not notice them at all.
Approaching the sliding door, through which the demonic children had passed, he treaded past his friends and schoolmates as though in a trance, forever rapt by that, that man --
“Son?” the human spoke. “You’re not upset?”
He turned to face
“His name is Caesar, he’s of low noble blood. He works for a hospital that cares from the throwbacks.”
“You must take me to him.”
There was a look of bleak despair in the lion’s eyes, a need, a longing that, though reluctant, Marsala knew too well.
“Most of his time is spent underground, that’s no place for a --”
“I am not afraid. I am a Thundercat.”
“Of course.”
The two walked out of the garden under the open archway that the sliding door had temporarily made.
“You were not frightened by the children?”
“I can’t say that I was,” he answered. The door slid shut behind him -- he gave no backward glance to the green garden or his peers, who were once again engaged in their simple lives. “Something about their faces was familiar.”
“Oh?”
“Like I’ve seen faces like that before -- and I certainly
wasn’t afraid of them.” He noticed then
that
“Nothing. Nothing really.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Perhaps it was in a dream where you saw those faces?”
“Maybe -- but that Caesar!” He thought to himself, as he twirled his mane in his forefinger, that the hazel-eyed youth looked like an angel. He did not catch himself until too late: “Do you think he might, I don’t know, like me, like a friend?”
“I don’t know," he said, matter-of-factly.
“I’d like to find out.”
He donned on his white robes.
“I want to experience his world,” he said, “I want to know what he does, where he works. Hold nothing back.”
[Part Four]
Amid the ethereal clouds, the tallest
The chamber’s doors opened and for a moment a slant of light seeped into the room and swept over the golden inscription that was carved over the unused, official throne: ‘Purest of the Pure.’ A man in a blue, yellow uniform entered the darkness of the spacious office. It took him a second or two for his eyes to adjust to the eternal dim but he was so used to the effect already that it seldom bothered him anymore.
Left to right he squinted as he tried to get a panoramic sense of the austere interior. “Sir?” he asked at length, clearing his throat. “Sir, your secretary said I could come in.”
A chair in the distance shifted in a long, pronounced creak. A figure leaned forward over a semicircular desk and spoke: “Doctor Pallas. Indeed, you said it was urgent.”
“Your son was in my office this morning, for his weekly treatment. Well,” he cleared his throat again and looked down to the floor for a moment, trying to gather together the words. “Well, it’s something that I’ve noticed happening for a while now and he’s begun to see it, too.”
“What is it exactly?” he asked, dispassionately.
“Our treatment is failing.”
Phaeton’s sigh was as loud and as chilling as a pang of thunder.
Pallas continued: “We always knew this day would come --”
The seated figure nodded his head.
“Admittedly, it’s happened earlier than we feared,” again he paused to clear his throat, “the problem was more serious than we had believed.”
An awkward pause followed. The lord leaned back on his chattering chair, his silhouette revealing murky hints of his hidden features. The doctor turned his eyes away, partly out of respect, partly out of fear -- toward the portrait of the Lady Xenobia, the late lioness.
“What do you suggest we do?”
“Breed him and quickly. If he does it now --”
“He’s barely out of boyhood --”
“The sooner the better. Your brother took long to mate and you know what happened to --”
“Yes, yes,” Phaeton said, relenting, his hands over his
face. He remembered it well -- it could
have been quite a scandal had anyone outside his most intimate circle known the
truth, but the lioness had been put away and the rest properly taken
care-of. “You are right, of course,
Pallas. If it has to be done, then so be
it. I’ll have
“Understood, sir.”
Again he sighed as though realizing just then something he should have known all along. “He’s been sheltered from the truth long enough, I suppose,” the lord said in pensive thought, drumming his fingers over the tabletop -- and with that he turned his chair around, its shrill squeak echoing through the air.
The doctor scratched the back of his head, adjusted his collar and turned around to leave from whence he had entered.
[Part Five]
Despite Marsala’s objections, the stubborn lion was determined to have his way. He wanted to know more about the throwbacks, the untouchables of society, not so much because of any perverse curiosity toward them, but because it was, in essence, a part of Caesar’s world. Caesar -- his crush was not something he felt he could talk to the Master of Activities about, despite the fact that he was very comfortable and otherwise open with the man.
Kara pled with him and at the end used the excuse of wanting to see the machines -- as it turned out that much of the underworld he was allowed to see.
Still, his brothers? It stuck in his mind like nothing else. And then Marsala’s question resurfaced. Why had he not been afraid?
A bell rung in the elevator and its alarm brought the youngster out of his trance. The five-mile trip had taken so long, even for the turbo-lifts, that he had lost himself in his ever-evolving fantasy world.
“We are one hundred feet below the surface,” Marsala announced. Even before the doors had opened the air was already clearly hot and muggy. “Stick by me, son, don’t try to wander off.”
Past the open doors of the car was a long corridor kept at a low degree of light. Glass hatches and multicolored panels adorned the walls. Every so often, at random intervals, the sides were interrupted by the bright intersection of perpendicular halls in which a combination of half-breeds -- engineers by trade -- and foremen conversed freely.
Kara caught scant views of the people only -- the blue, yellow uniforms of the professionals had emblems on the sleeves that designated gradations of field or speciality while the throwbacks wore brown uniforms with red numbers stenciled on their left breasts. Their outfits were clean, tidy, their fur kept prim. Since the foremen had day-to-day contact with the masters, it was thought proper that at least they would be presentable.
As he studied them from quick glances the more he realized that he had in fact -- and not in dreams -- seen such faces before. He saw nothing ugly about them, the Thunderians society had expunged itself of, indeed, he was quite acutely aware of the beauty of their shapely, manly forms. Firm, strong bodies, built from constant toil, it almost seemed as if they had been bred to be supermen in every way.
“Here,” his would-be guide said. “Here’s one of the power generators.” Kara found himself on a balcony, peering into the deeper depths below. Strong spotlights were fixed on the machine that was as large and as vast as the chrome-topped towers of the city of light above. Pipes and vents jetted out from its top and sides, curled behind it and deviated upward to the effective ceiling. The actual form of the dynamo was lost, the bulk of its frame hidden behind long, finger-like shadows for it was mostly buried in rock and the lights were not strong enough to break through the profuse conflagration of secondary structures. Steam puffed out of bellows and heaving pistons. The very ground shook and even the balcony, so far removed from the immediacy of the scene, vibrated in a dense timber.
Little, tiny men, like half-naked, cat-apes, lumbered about the working parts of the gargantuan device, feeding it coal, tweaking its dials, adjusting its levers in a macarbe dance that went on and on around the clock.
“Don’t they ever rest?” the lion asked.
“Once every ten hours.”
“Ten hours!” His eyes widened in a gasp of shock all their own. He followed a train of workers as they inched up the iron façade of the generator.
“No need to worry, it’s been that way for centuries and everything is still in working order.”
“What does Caesar do here exactly?”
Up at the apex of the large, inverted ‘u’ that bounded the invisible parts of the machine, was a column of mercury and an array of spinning governors. A dial on a pedestal near the thermometer regulated the excess heat produced by the throbbing behemoth. A single worker had his hands on the control turning it left, right, ever so slightly, to keep the conditions below maximal operational tolerances.
“Well, his is a humanitarian group that runs a hospital. They take care of injured workers and fit them for new uniforms. He tries to use his influence to better their conditions.”
“Does he keep company with them?”
“I suppose so -- but, well, dealing with them wouldn’t be like the way we do things. Theirs is a different society, if you can call it that.”
A single worker, clad in sooty, shredded cloths, filed past the two. Marsala tried to act as if nothing had happened but Kara took notice, letting his eyes wander. Below the ashy surface, beneath the grime --
“It’s like a whole new world’s been opened to me.”
“Hahahaha!” a dry
throat laughed, masking in its cackle the sound of a salt sprinkling upon the
pool’s turbulent waters.
“It isn’t meant for you,” the Master of Activities said, turning to the cub. “You must think of higher things, better things than this underworld.”
“I wonder if Caesar could use help.”
“Kara, you don’t yet realize your importance. You are a Thunderian noble, this is no place for you, no matter how well-meaning your intentions might be.”
“I’m a Thundercat, we’re supposed to help, Marsala. It’s in our code --”
Marsala sighed -- how was he to explain it -- “You are only young, that’s all, you’ll soon see the ways of this world. What can and cannot be done.”
The throwback in charge of the thermometer had slipped on a puddle of condensation -- the smoke and haze had obscured the sight, the distance and ambient din had masked the sound of his piercing screams as he fell. Without him at his post the temperature ran up unregulated, exponentially. In response the pistons jammed, sparks arced across the air from one stack of coils to another.
The ground rumbled. The two on the overlooking balcony ducked down as a plume of gray haze puffed up from the depths. Frantic shouts followed. Kara leaned forward amid the chaos that ensued around him. Marsala tried in vein to hold him back. Unprepared workers were ejected from their posts or were just knocked out cold by the intense blasts that came later in rapid succession. Flickering bands of red-orange crackled in the pits around the machine and, as the hoards of innocents backed in the hellish fire, it seemed to the lion that the generator -- no more than a man-made, earthly device -- had been transformed by the flames into a beast of satanic dimensions, a horrific demon that with its pipes and dangling wires dragged the unsuspecting, malformed Thunderians into the chewing teeth of its metallic mouths to their doom.
He screamed in terror as he turned back, just as the vision faded into the fog. Fire extinguishers had subsided the flames and already a new workforce was on the scene to continue the machinations of the dynamo. Spare men were busy collecting the wounded and the mangled bodies of the dead.
Kara collapsed into Marsala’s arms in semi-embrace that was not fought off or rejected. The man patted his mane as though to comfort him. The lion-cub whispered: “Take me to my father.”
[Part Six]
It would not appear obvious from the outside that anything at all ever happened in the office of the Lord of the Thundercats. The secretary was on the floor beneath for one thing and then there was the fact that the lights were always kept off or dim -- it had not always been that way. But then, no one ever really questioned the benevolent master himself.
Standing in the middle of the room was Julia, the eldest daughter and official representative of Livia. The humans were, theoretically, second in command only, but in practice much of what had been the responsibility of the Thundercats had fallen upon the hands of the Amazonians. She was running through a list of security items to an attentive Phaeton, who, as always, remained in shadow.
“Over the past several months,” the well-shielded woman said, “we have been detecting minor instances of clandestine activity among the throwbacks.”
“We had an execution today. Would you call that minor?”
“Those three were, of course, the extreme. They must have acted on their own, apart from the other movement we’ve detected -- we found none of the usual papers on them.”
“Are you sure they weren’t agents or part of a rouse to distract our attention?”
“The plans they did have were far more sophisticated. It must have taken them the better part of a year to produce them. What we usually find -- when we find anything among the conspirators -- are scraps, tissues, drawn erratically with ash or blood sometimes. Those three had a different style all together.”
“Hmmm,” he leaned back and seemed to rub his chin. “Well, we don’t often ever see such determined, conceited efforts from them, anyway. What does it matter? The truth will out. Anything else?”
Just as she was about to answer, a sudden and unexpected disturbance came from the world outside. Acting on instinct Phaeton crawled up out of his chair into the darkness. Julia, on the other hand, spun around to confront the doors -- that had hen opened.
“Kara?” she asked, a little confused. Her meetings with Lord Phaeton were always private and with the highest level of security. That and she had never seen the cub so hysterical.
“Father?” he asked. Once completely in the chamber his eyes scanned the interior from side to side. “Father,” he said, in tears.
“Kara, what’s the matter?” She wrapped an arm around his back and with her free hand pushed back his mane to wipe his cheek.
An out-of-breath Marsala stammered into the office, closing the doors behind him. He looked around but not to find Kara -- indeed, he had only taken partial notice of Julia. It was a shape within the shadows that alerted him and told him where to go.
“Oh, um, Julia,” he said, stopping to look at her for a moment. “Forgive the intrusion. Sir, I tried to stop him.”
“That’s all right,” Phaeton reassured his Master of Activities. “My son can meet me when ever he wishes,” he said, adding sternly: “perhaps next time he’ll knock first.”
Julia had petted the youngster into a state of calm. She looked at the recess of the chamber where now two shadows, side-by-side, stood at watch. “My lord, I have little else to add to my report. If you’d dismiss me --”
“Yes, you are dismissed, Lady Julia.” He nodded from the darkness.
She gave the cub a slight peck on the cheek -- a light gesture and no more. She often acted like a mother to the boy. “Take care,” she whispered then vanished out of the doors.
He watched her leave then stood there, in the slant of light from the only open window. The room was quiet and tense. “Father,” he said as two silhouetted forms made their way to him. “Let me hold you,” he reached out but Marsala stepped into view to hold him back.
“What’s going on here?” The old lion growled.
“It’s my fault. He wanted to see a part of the underworld, so I showed him a dynamo.”
“Is that so? You brought my son down there?”
“He was adamant. Something happened earlier today that sparked his interest.”
“I wanted to see my brothers,” Kara said, trying desperately to touch even the hem of his father’s robe.
“Did he see their faces, Marsala?”
“I saw them, everything.”
“And you were not afraid?”
“No -- they’re beautiful faces, father.”
Phaeton and Marsala seemed to look at each other for a moment in that weak ambiance. The lord’s expression was masked by the darkness. The man acted only more apologetically. He whispered something that made the Thundercat leader draw back.
It was at that time that Kara began to relate the story, starting from the events of the afternoon. He had just come back from his appointment with his doctors and wanted to relax in the Imperial Garden -- notice that he said nothing about meeting with friends in the garden. After playing a game of tag he was startled by the screams of the other youngsters. He ran to the scene and saw the malformed children -- notice that he made no mention of Caesar. That had been the incident Marsala had hinted of. It had caused an old memory to resurface and a curiosity that like all cat curiosity had to be satisfied. He told his father that he had forced the human to take him down there. And then, at the end, he related the experience of what he saw at the power station. The explosions, the hellish fires. In the minutest detail he recalled what had unfolded before his eyes. He ended with the picture of how the men were falling into the red-orange flames.
On a chair he sobbed into his paws. He felt a strange, furry warmth on his shoulder that was not completely familiar. He turned to see but by then it was too late.
“Such things are to be expected. They are inevitable,” the grown-up lion said to the man-cub.
“And that’s it? Father, you are the Lord of the Thundercats. Don’t you care?”
No answer.
“It’s our job to help people who can’t help themselves. And they are people, under the smog and dirt, they are beautiful people, like what the ancient Thunderians must have been like.”
Silence.
“Theirs were the hands that built this city. But where are the hands in your plan?”
“Where they belong -- in the depths.”
Kara looked at Marsala. His stone face was expressionless. “How can you be so cruel? I don’t understand -- Code of Thundera!”
“Kara, be reasonable! This isn’t as simple as you think --”
“No! I won’t hear it!” He stood and wrapped his arms around his ears. His face was painted in a newfound terror more horrific than his fiery visions of the underworld gone awry. A new kind of horror he thought -- now hoped -- was impossible.
Marsala tried to approach him but that only shocked the young lion who then turned tail and stormed out of the room.
“Don’t --” Phaeton said. “Let him go. Let him work this out on his own. He’s young, that’s all. He’ll grow up, we all did.”
The man returned to his master’s side and helped him stagger onto his favorite chair -- the one before the circular desk.
“I’m sorry I took him down there.”
Phaeton reached up and rubbed the stubble under his advisor’s chin. “Don’t be, you know him better than I do, old friend. Once he gets his mind on something, nothing can stop his --”
“Much like someone else I know.”
The cat purred -- then something, some stray thought brought him back out of that lulled trance. “The doctors say he’s reverting.”
The news caught Marsala’s tongue for a moment. “What are you going to do?”
“We have to mate him -- fast. Look over his schoolmates, find an appropriate lioness. All the top noble families are a part of his class. Anyone of them will do.”
Marsala stood and nodded in compliance. “Will you tell him? Everything?”
“What he needs to know only,” the lion answered, turning his head to that small, side chamber. “For the rest he’ll have a whole lifetime to get used to.”
[Part Seven]
The ragged peaks of Metropolis were crowned with permanent layers of dense, misshapen clouds the color of gray metal. The coincidence of their hue to the shade of the up-most edifices was no accident, no happy side-effect of blind inspiration. It was designed to be so in cold, political fashion. For if it was hard to tell the heavens apart from the towers, then was it not also difficult to distinguish their inhabitants from the gods?
Just under the rarefied, restricted levels of the nobles and blue-bloods, down to the blackened surface, were the sectors of the city reserved for the lofty middle classes, the half-breeds and common folk of low birth. The professionals, who possessed important degrees of knowledge, were considered by the ordinary populace to be ‘first among equals’ and so were placed in those positions above the others. The tradesmen and artisans, who in their own particular way beautified and animated the sterile, urban atmosphere with their esteemed culture, were given a slightly lesser degree of importance. The merchants, who provided the material and financial lifeblood important to the day-to-day vitality of Metropolis, were kept nearer the bottom yet they were by no means downtrodden for more often than not they represented the richer families from which the majority of the upper-crust of society originated.
Kara had eased his way out of school without notice -- or so he hoped -- and, armed with meager recollections of the mechanics of his past trip to the underworld, he boarded one of the very same turbo-lifts he had ridden in with Marsala but got off down at levels immediately before the boundary to the forbidden, surface zone. Working on little more than instinct -- for Marsala had expressly told him never to enter those sectors -- he thought for sure that he would be able to find Caesar in that general area. To be sure he was uneasy, he had never disobeyed his superiors that way, that defiantly and so he was anxious, wary even.
Especially unnerving was the damp, humid air that circulated through levels that he searched -- was unused to that kind of hostility but it was more than the elements that seemed inhospitable. He was immediately struck by how out-of-place he felt as he maneuvered through the vast, almost formless crowds. He felt alone, utterly alone as the pressure of eyes studied him, the harshness of snarled, annoyed faces were hurled at his direction.
The people had clothes but there was not much to their garments. The Thunderians for one had next to nothing on. Again on instinct alone he reasoned that if he wanted to blend in, then his robe simply would not do.
He ducked into a side-street and behind a parked vehicle he took off what he wore. The soot and ash that regularly plumed up from Third Earth’s surface had singed the once white and pristine cloth with a brown-gray grime. ‘Perfect,’ he thought as he tore a large section off of the back with his claws. Quickly, the lion fashioned the rough strip into a loincloth and discarded the rest in a pile on the curb. He was pleased with the results but it occurred to him perhaps too late that his was much tighter than the others. Nevertheless, he convinced himself that no one would notice, or care and with that he set on again, out to resume his search.
Now he looked more like the natives and yet he sensed that he did not entirely fit in. It was not a new revelation to him, it was a familiar feeling, one that he had come to know very well. Starting almost as soon as those first, few days of preschool, when Marsala had introduced him to the children of the other nobles, yes, he knew from as far back as that that he was not part of the group, alike his peers. But what he never understood was why, why did the other Thunderians not like him? Surely the felines must have seen something in him that neither he nor the humans noticed. He had no one he could talk to about it, indeed, for the longest time he did not even have the words to communicate the idea to anyone. Such was his world and after a while, without resistance, he came to accept it, he just assumed that he was supposed to be alone.
And that was why it was so important for him to find Caesar -- it was a hope, dim and uncertain, that perhaps with him he could break free from that personal isolation.
No -- at last it came to him, he saw exactly why he was different at least down there, in the lower levels of the city. It was his walk, his manner. His very looks, un-battered by work and toil, were alien to the area’s denizens. For their own part the people were unfamiliar to him, too -- their language, inflections, cordiality. He found that, in response to his sudden bout of self-consciousness, his hands were in constant motion, frequently covering his face with the excuse of scratching.
Choking and suffocating in the throngs, he thought that the only way to relief was to break away from the crowds. Pushing his way through tight groups, cutting across lines and jumping over barriers, he stumbled inadvertently onto a part of town that was eerily quiet. The only sounds that echoed in the cavernous streets were those of the rolling sidewalks he had just escaped from and humming. He looked down -- though still, his feet vibrated. It was a familiar sensation and with the bellowing of a gray haze it occurred to him that he was much closer to the planet’s surface than he had believed.
He did not turn around, despite the seedy atmosphere, the blinking, neon lights. He was comfortable in the relative shadows that the larger, rising buildings around the scene provided. A speeding vehicle appeared from the distance, its sirens and red spinning lights startled the lion in its sudden arrival. He hid behind a metal crate that brimmed over with the burnt and shredded scraps of what had once been a house, now partly demolished. The strange car slowed around the area of the bin and seemed to stop for a moment or two.
He looked about him, past the empty lots, toward the backs of whitewashed buildings of brick and mortar, ancient structures he had only seen before in picture books. He feared that his quest was over, that all was lost. He wondered how badly he would be punished back home where his father and the Master of Activities, the official representative of the Lord of the Thundercats would find out.
But without notice the vehicle sped away, splashing through the pools of brackish filth in its way -- it windows were thick and blackened and offered no hint of its interior. He sighed and almost laughed in delight. He was again alone -- or so he thought. He stood and the hot, muggy air attained a biting chill. The sound of sprinkling, of sand or salt pouring came to his ears from both everywhere and no where at once.
Kara ran out of the scene, terrified -- and then as if all at once his strength was sapped. He stopped, huddled over, his head hot and aching. The world was spinning, darkening in a haze of confusion. An array of new, unexpected sounds -- notably a crackling laughter -- surrounded him. He had without thinking returned to the rolling sidewalks and was now a prisoner of a new mob. Where were they going? What was he doing there? -- his mind reeled with endless questions as he wandered about in circles, unable to concentrate.
Limping at last to the side, he tried desperately to reach the anonymity of shadow but he had no energy, no will. He stumbled on his knees over the concrete and there, on his side, he lay still. A hand grasped his shoulder and with that he remembered no more.
[Part Eight]
When he awoke he had no idea where he was, how long he had been there, or -- more importantly -- what had happened to him. With a long, loud exhale he rubbed his eyes, letting them adjust to the ambient light. He could tell he was in a room, small and intimate, with painted, plaster walls. A door was to the left, shut but hopefully unlocked. A window was to his side, its blinds down, letting in only thin slants of filtered sun.
Convinced that he was alone in that silent, bare chamber, he pulled back the sheets that were tightly wrapped around his body and tried to get up from the bed.
A hand -- that same hand from before -- caught hold of his arm and kept him reclined on the mattress.
“What?” Kara asked, looking up and around, finding no one.
“Don’t be afraid -- you’re safe now.”
That voice, the very same voice, was coming from behind.
“What happened to me?” A thin strip of cloth was placed around his brow. It had been dabbed in ethylene alcohol and both its cool feel and sweet scent were strangely comforting.
“You must have been hit on the head or had a nasty fall or something,” the still unseen man answered, massaging the lion’s head and temples.
Kara arched his back in a vain attempt to see him. “I honestly can’t remember. I did feel lightheaded and disoriented.”
The strip was removed and then the hand petted his mane, its fingers caressing the outline of his ears. The touch did not bother or shock the young lion -- he welcomed it, encouraged it with his soft purring.
“There, there,” he said in whisper, in a tone as dulcet as sugary silk. “You’re all right now.” The man stepped out from behind into the slants of thin light that shone from the blocked-out window. “You’re not from these parts, are you?” he spoke casually. “Did you get lost?” He took the sheets the lion had pushed aside in an effort to re-cover his near-naked body.
The Thunderian clasped the human’s hands in his own to stop him -- he looked at last into his now-revealed face. “Caesar!” He sat up swiftly at the visual confirmation of what he had hoped, what he had wanted to be true. “No, no, I’m not lost, not anymore.”
The well-built man let go of the blankets -- they fell limp over the lion’s legs. Kara eased his head up -- their eyes met and for what felt like endless, eternal moments they were lost in the wet, glimmering orbs of the gateways to their souls. Caesar was the first to break away from that ethereal coupling, he was distracted by a sound that he sensed coming the door.
“We must be careful,” he said. “How do you know me?”
“I saw you in a garden a few days ago.”
“A garden?” He paused, rubbing his chin in thought. “Yes,” he nodded at length, looking away, almost in shame. “I hope I really didn’t scare you, or anyone.”
“I wasn’t afraid.” Kara took hold of the man’s cheek and turned his face over to meet his. He stroked his black hair, noticing only then that his own fingers were smudged with ink.
Caesar looked down around the lion’s waist and gingerly ran his fingers across the dingy fabric of his garments that though tight and distorted was -- “I remember you now, you didn’t crawl away. Are you sure you weren’t afraid?”
“I’m sure I’m sure,” he said with an added grin. “I thought they were adorable. And the adults are just absolutely gorgeous.”
“You think so?” he asked, cheerfully surprised. “You’ve seen any of them?” The lion nodded in answer. “Hahaha, I’ve always thought so, too.” He chuckled a little more. “I’ve always been attracted to them, always, I think they’re beautiful, all of them.”
“And I think you’re beautiful, too, all of you.” Kara let his hands, that were around Caesar’s shoulders, dip down to lightly explore his back.
As the man looked at the lion, he saw something in the Thunderian’s face, in the lines and shadows the dim light produced and magnified, that he found irresistibly charming. He leaned in closer, to the point where their lips almost touched, but he broke away -- again -- and at the end all they could do was giggle in the heightened excitement they both felt at that moment.
“But I still don’t know who you are?”
“My name is Kara.”
A strange expression came to him and after the shock passed he whispered: “You mean that Kara? The Thunder --”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“What are you doing down here?” He looked around the room carefully, suspiciously. “We must be extra-careful. Um,” he stammered in utter nervousness. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gotten so close.” His hazel eyes were again pointed down as if he was embarrassed.
“Oh, come now,” he took the man’s hand in his own paw and brought it up to his ready mane. “I’m a cat, I love being petted you silly human,” he teased.
“I might be a noble, too, but I’m not at your level, if people ever found out --”
“What does that matter? What do people have to know anyway?”
He purred as his mane was fretted with.
“You’re not like the others, I’m very surprised,” he spoke at length. “Would you like to see what we do here?”
Kara stood up from bed just then as he had wanted to all along. “I’d love to -- I’d like to help, too, if you need it.”
“You sly lion,” he laughed. “We could always use more help. Of course, we’ll have to give you another name. Wouldn’t want to attract too much attention. How about, hmmm --”
“Liono.”
“Liono?” he smiled, adding: “Sure, why not?”
Caesar told him that they were in an modest, area hospital, one of only a handful in Metropolis that admitted throwbacks, one that had been run by his parents before an accident had killed them when he was very young and that he had found to be more homely and comforting than anything else he had known in that snobbish world above. The two walked out of the room into the main corridor of that floor. Nurses and doctors in white, lab coats strutted through the passage, room to room, lost in the machinations of their respective jobs.
The man began his impromptu tour by explaining the reason everyone was so busy. “Several days ago one of the dynamos overheated and exploded.” The simple words brought back nightmarish visions and vivid memories in the lion’s mind but he did not interrupt. “Five workers died on the scene, another five more died here. The rest are in intensive care right now. Some might be out in a few days if they just have minor injuries, some might be here weeks, even months before they must return to the underworld. One or two, I’m afraid, might never be able to work again, ever.”
“What happens to them, if they can’t?” He stopped as he passed an open door and looked in to see a group of nurses applying bandages to an injured, burned, malformed Thunderian.
“If it wasn’t for places like this,” he said, nudging him forward, “they would just be allowed to starve to death in a cell somewhere. Here we train them to do other, less demanding jobs.”
Caesar wanted to show him more but it seemed that there just was not enough time. For Kara’s part -- or Liono’s, as he was being introduced -- every second with that silly, sweet human was like an eternity of blissful euphoria. He was like a god and the lion felt he had no choice but to worship him. He was grateful then for the empty lobby they had wandered into. He wanted to say something, something anything out of the blue but the dark-haired man cut him off with a coy and playful peck on his cheek.
The two hugged and laughed uncontrollably for a passing, fleeting moment. Caesar fondled the lion’s pointy, hidden ears. Kara ran his paws up and down the man’s back.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, you know, but someday, someday soon we’ll be living in a better world than this. I know it, I believe it, Kara. This hell we created for ourselves can’t possibly last forever. Evil always fails, no matter how powerful or invincible it might seem to be.”
Again he wanted to say something --
“Ah, there you are,” came a sharp, feline voice -- the two stepped apart in that sudden intrusion. A cheetah doctor in a blue, yellow uniform, walked up to Caesar. I was just about to page you.”
“Yes, doctor?”
“That lion cub you found on the street, well, his fingerprints were recognized.”
He looked at his hands, at the dark stains on his short fur around his digits.
She looked down and flipped a few pages on her clipboard then turned her face back up to the man. “They wouldn’t say who they were or who the teenager is,” she paraphrased what she had scribbled. “They just said they’d be here shortly to pick him up.”
“Thank you, doctor,” the human said, cordially. “We’ll be waiting here for them -- who ever they are -- to come.”
The cheetah nodded and with a flash vanished, a smear of blue, yellow trailing her swift movement through the otherwise still air.
The two looked at each other nervously.
“I hope my father isn’t to angry at me.”
“I’m sure he couldn’t be mad at you, for long.,” he patted the lion’s chest lightly over his heart.
“No matter what happens, I’ll be back -- I promise.”
“I --”
Mechanical glass doors slid open and let a gust of cold wind into the small, cushy lobby. Potted plants shivered, their wide, green leaves rustled together. Magazines on an end table shifted to the side, their glossy pages flapping about wildly until the doors shut and the effect subsided.
Heavy, thudded footsteps stopped about ten feet from the pair, approaching no further. The two friends turned around to see who had intruded upon yet another of their private moments.
“Marsala,” Kara gasped, the face of the Master of Activities was long and cast in shadow despite the intense light from the hanging, fluorescent fixtures above. The lion approached him anxiously, taking several looks back at Caesar all the while. “I’m sorry if I worried you.”
“Let’s go home, son, it’s late and you cut a whole day of school -- you have some explaining to do.” He clasped the youngster by the arm, surprisingly very gently and directed him to the door.
“I --” he tried to speak as he looked back once more, but he managed only a slight wave before vanishing past the sliding, glass doors.
In the rear of the car, that then began to drive away, Marsala turned to the youth and said: “I know what you’re going through, but it’s just a phase, it’ll pass. You must remember that you have duties, responsibilities.” He stopped for a moment, took a breath and looked away. “Your life will be changing very soon and you must be prepared for it. You can’t be doing things like this anymore.”
“What do you know about what I’m going through?”
More than you know -- he thought but gave no answer.
[Part Nine]
That single classroom was larger than the apartments of most of the residents of Metropolis. No lights were on but none were needed for while three of its four walls were made a shiny, bright metal, ornate with shelves and doorways to other parts of the building, the fourth one did not exist at all, at least not really. The whole left side of the chamber was a series of ten windows, five feet wide, one hundred feet high and separated by thin, iron pillars. Clouds, crisp and icy, swirled across the view and spread minute crystals of snow on the edges of the panes. White sky loomed above while ever-sharpening profiles of tall buildings breaking through the thinning haze seemed to plummet to a darkness of unimaginable depths below.
Only about twenty-five students filled the center portions of the room. Up front were the older males of various Thunderian noble families. Behind them where the female humans -- including Mesilina, who kept sneaking sly, backward glances. The rest of the space was a mixture of various origins in no particular order. Only at the very end was Kara and Marcelus. The lion-cub tended to fall to the rear of classes that were not his favorite subjects, in often-vain attempts to go unnoticed. As for the man-child, he was always there with him at his side, his right arm of support.
The observed of all observers, he seemed interested in what his classmates were discussing, which was more attention than he would usually give them. He had something of an opinion on the matter and, considering the topic, he was a bit of an ‘authority.’ But he kept silent, he said not a word, preferring to let them continue babbling secure in their illusions.
“Oh, Draconis, you can be encourageable,” said a human female to scarcely-bearded panther. “Everyone knows it exists -- at least it did back then.”
“I have to agree with her,” Typhonis added. Everyone turned to face the quiet tiger. “Back when Third Earth was, shall we say, less civilized.” The Warrior Maidens raised an eyebrow as slight giggles came from the other students. The albino tiger waited for it to subside before continuing. “Once it wasn’t need anymore it just, went back.”
“Back where?” Draconis persisted.
“Back where ever Jagga pulled it out of!”
A stern tiger interrupted the manic laughter that followed. “Enough talk of this nonsense!” He added the wave of his bare, red-black striped arm for emphasis. “The Sword of Omens is a myth. All the Lords of the Thundercats from as far back as written records go have firmly denied its existence.”
In that small,
somber, clandestine room, the Lord of the Thundercats sighed as he stroked his fingers
across the length of the shortened blade.
It was the very Sword of Omens, the object of his vain worship, the
mystical weapon so long kept hidden that only the ruling family knew of its
existence. It rested on a stand before
the Claw Shield, in its seemingly-permanent six-inch mode. Its eye closed shut, nothing more than a line
of black, on either side encompassed by a semicircle of brown, like an
eyelid. Quietly it slumbered in that
chamber, never stirring, never responding, in a stasis that had lasted
millennia, ever since the astrophysical configuration that had been the conduit
of its power had, by the laws of natural philosophy, come undone in that
unending dance of stars that was the universe -- and as he looked upon the
spiritless sword, he was thankful that for his whole reign there had never been
a problem so grave that --
“Long ago,” the red, purebred Siberian said, pointing up, “it was Thunderian engineering that put an end to the dark forces of MummRa when it was discovered by our scientists that the electromagnetic fields of our technology kept him and the ancient spirits of evil confined to their pyramid.”
A single hand, gray
and withered -- cobwebs visible beneath broken scabs of rotted flesh -- fingers
loosely bandaged, skimmed over the surface of the violent pool:
“And as time passed, human and Thunderian cooperation has ensured Metropolis’s continuing success. Why, we have expanded our society to the very edges of Third Earth.”
Sparkling, red
powders were diffused in the collimating waters.
“No,” the tiger lecturer stopped to fill his lungs with air but a newfound blockage in his throat made him choke. He could feel the oblong mass clogging the back of his mouth as he clutched his neck. It was a mass that had formed so suddenly that he had no time -- or will -- to question where it had come from. Doubled over, he collapsed to the floor, heaving dry gasps, just as several students got up and reached him.
“Mwahahahahahaha!”
Kara thought he had heard something, something familiar. He turned to the side but Marcelus was not there. Upon his desk was his language book, open to random page, notes stuffed between sheets, pen rolling down the tabletop until it slid off and landed on the unoccupied seat. He reached over to pick it up, feeling the warmth of the chair with his fingertips, looking to the front of the class just then to see that the lecture he had been paying no attention to had come to an end. To his surprise it was with much ruckus -- he had been so lost in his fantasy world that he was oblivious to what was happening around him.
He saw the humans and noble cats scurrying around the naked, red tiger, who was on the floor, on his back unresponsive to their violent first-aid application. Odd, but for a moment he thought, he actually thought that his fellow seniors were devouring their fallen instructor. He put away his notebook, whose lined pages were filled with the name ‘Caesar’ and shrugged off the image just as a team of medics entered the classroom.
[Part Ten]
No bell run to announce the closing of the school-day, rather, it was the frenzied pitch of ambulance sirens that signaled the abrupt end of class. The medics zipped the dead corpse of the red-black tiger into a green body-bag unaware that the students, still in the room, watched from afar in shocked disbelief. A team of administrators appeared and tried to escort the youngsters out but they had acted too late and their weak pace was too slow for by the time the whole ordeal was over the graduating seniors had seen a precession of things they would have as soon as forgotten.
The full weight of what had happened dawned on Kara. His spirit was filled with a sense of shame and his mind reeled in a stream of unanswerable questions that repeated over and over. ‘What could have happened?’ ‘What could I have done?’ ‘How could I have helped?’ ‘Who will teach us now?’ and, strangest of all, ‘What will his family do?’ He had never had really thought of such things before -- all his life his future was assured, his livelihood inherited without care to his merits or qualifications. While others had to work and toil to support themselves and the city, his time was idled away in play. While others had to struggle to earn their respect, his fame would be handed down to him as if by the gods above.
A bad taste came to his mouth, dry and sticky, perhaps it had always been that way, perhaps not, it was only then that he noticed it.
Out in an open-air courtyard of concrete and steel, the males of various species filed past him with hardly a glance to the side -- except for Marcelus who waved a warm good-bye. That group was headed to a nearby recreation room. Soon the girls would follow them there but for the moment they were gathered around the unfrilled banks that surrounded a series of red-marble pillars. The females were discussing something, something tawdry and gossipy. Every so often one of them would sneak a wicked glance at the lion-cub.
Kara paced about mindlessly, lost in a world of his own creation.
A hand touched his robed back. He turned to see -- it was Mesilina. Agripina was already strutting up to him, too.
“It’s a shame what happened back there,” the Warrior Maiden began.
He nodded, his mind still somewhat numbed.
“Thrax was such a cute-looking tiger, too.” She rubbed her hands over his exposed biceps that had oddly begun to develop lately. His fur was short and soft, his flesh was untensed.
“Yes, he was, I mean,” he caught himself in a trap of the tongue, “it is a shame.”
The girls about the red columns giggled uncontrollably, their hands covering their curled lips.
“You want to come to the garden later?”
“I --”
“He can’t,” the lioness said, catching her breath. “He’s going to be busy today, aren’t you, Kara?”
“Um, um,” it was not nervousness but a caught-off-guard absentmindedness that caused him to trip over his words. “Marsala said my father wanted to see me later.”
“So you haven’t been told?” she pondered aloud, regretting the leak.
“Told me what?”
“No, um, never mind.” She grabbed Mesilina by the arm and all but dragged her back to the chattering girls who sat watch attentively from within the cool shade of the imposing, circular towers of crimson rock.
He watched the two fade back into the small mob, their faces and forms melting into an indiscernible obscurity of cruel viciousness -- eyes that stared, lips that laughed, fingers that pointed. He wondered how anyone at all could be attracted to that and, thoroughly repulsed, he recoiled from the scene before it could infest him with worser thoughts of vile and dread. But it was the feeling of self-consciousness that disturbed him more. He had experienced it unmasked already, that day he had snuck down to see Caesar so he knew full well that it was more than just the girl’s foul teasing, it permeated the entire society.
What was it? What could it be?
Across a hall and into an adjacent room, he hid and shut the door behind him. Out of breath from his hasty jog to cover, he paused there in the semi-darkness until he had regained his composure.
A single, square window, five feet in front of him, was the only source of light visible in that closet, that was cramped with an assortment of gray uniforms, the types the school custodians wore. He stepped silently to the glass, a slight but perceptible image of his face reflected off of the clear pane. But he paid no attention to the shadows and strange, new lines that had evolved around his features, instead he opened the portal, disappointed to find a thin, wire mesh on the other side.
The pressure difference across the boundary was substantial and a strong breeze leaked out of the room. A web-spinning spider shook violently in the current then fell onto the inner sill, its legs upward, fretting quickly in terror until it had uprighted itself. The minuscule creature scurried to the corner where it was safe in the crevices.
Kara stared out of the window for what must have been forever -- his mane waving all the while until the current had at last waned. He stared in wonder and adoration at the immense structures of Metropolis: the ornate towers and solemn temples of titanic grandeur, the snakelike bridges and, catching his eye, were the small planes that hovered between buildings, taking their passengers from one part of Third Earth to another. He stared and as the minutes passed his attention sunk downward, to where light dimmed, to where shadow was ever-present.
He wanted to examine the depths, too, but the thin, immovable restrained kept him back.
But then, or he could look from afar or he could go there himself.
The lion removed his white robe, opting for a more humble attire. The clothes of a laborer would do just nicely in his plan. He searched the racks for a set of shorts his size then completed the outfit with a fluff, loose shirt. Ruffling his hair -- not that the wind had done little do dishevel it -- he snickered thinking that no one would recognize him in the made-up guise of Liono, his alter ego.
Carefully he opened the closet door and just casually came out while no one was watching.
He knew that Marsala had tightened security around the turbo-lifts so he had to find another course to the lower levels. The only thing that came to mind was the course that the driver had taken from Caesar’s hospital so he decided to backtrack along that trail.
Exiting the school, he strolled through an area of Metropolis that was very close to where the nobles officially resided -- the crests and colors of numerous, individual clans adorned the sky. Flags and other symbolic decorations hung from the bases of buildings, flapping over the horizontal, glass squares that protected the streets from the elements. Around him were crowds of businessman in hats who were too busy arguing stock prices to have bothered to notice him -- his invisibility was, in a way, reassuring.
A turn into a corner brought him before what looked like a religious temple. Tall, wide columns, evenly spaced, supported a triangular roof of rough granite. Carved faces, protruding heads -- lion heads, almost reminiscent of throwbacks in character, the areas around their snarled mouths corroded green -- sitting over the pillars seemed to guard the establishment, frightening away those bothersome evil spirits that populated the worlds of ancient superstition. Throngs of people paraded into and out of its brass, revolving doors, the inscription over them identified the place to be a bank.
He stood on the foot of its spacious front steps in a kind of haze -- seeing it there so suddenly, abruptly, triggered a flood of forgotten memories.
He and his mother
were walking down the very same steps -- it was morning and slants of orange
sunlight diffracted through the array of unconquerable towers around them. She stopped him and they sat on the rocky edifices
together. She gave him a candy bar and
he opened it, breaking its soft, chocolate length into little, squares.
“Can I have some?” a
voice asked and he turned around.
It was another boy,
a human child with --
“Black hair and hazel eyes,” Kara said, grinning as he stood alone on the sidewalk. He shrugged and snapped out of it. “No, that’s impossible. That couldn’t have been her, that couldn’t have happened,” he concluded, reasoning that it must have been only an illusion, brought on by wishful thinking and hopeless romanticism. His mother had died in an accident after he was born, or so he was told and Marsala and his father would never lie to him, or so he believed.
It was a half hour of unnerving adventure on trains, on busses and on foot. He treaded around places of the city that he had never been in before. He was not completely afraid, not entirely confident. He found by experience that he had a great sense of direction. The deeper he went the more daring he became and he got to a point where he no longer stopped to look up or hesitate to go on. The freedom, the urge to roam through the wilderness, it was in his blood, in his nature and it was coming out then and there as though it did not matter how long it had been buried or suppressed by the mores of his adult superiors.
Almost exhausted, young Kara finally reached the automatic sliding doors of the small hospital. A massive storm cloud over the tops of overhead-highways -- swift winds galed across the streets -- it had already begun to drizzle and the light wetness added an extra dimension to the lion’s unkept appearance. The small lobby the entrance emptied into was lit by the soft glow of ceiling lamps. He was drawn to the back where he found a reception desk -- yet he saw no one, no one anywhere.
He stopped to study the nameplate on the tabletop. “Doctor Z --”
“Why, hello,” a feline voice prompted.
He put the nameplate back, running a hand across his face, through his mane nervously until he recognized the source of the intrusion -- the cheetah doctor he had seen there before.
“Hi,” he said.
She eyed him suspiciously until she, too, was able to recognize him. “Hey, you’re that Liono Caesar found the other day.”
“Yes, that’s me.” He grinned, not really wanting to. “Is he around?”
She pressed the pen she was holding up to her lip then, realizing that she was holding it, she slit it into the top of her clipboard where it was meant to go anyway. “Not today. He’s in the lower levels today.”
“The lower levels?”
“Yup, where the, er, throwbacks live,” she acted as if embarrassed by the word, not so much because of the word but because of who she was saying it to. “He’s checking up on them. He’ll be here tomorrow, if you’d like to --”
He sighed silently. “How does one get down there?”
The cheetah was somewhat shocked by the question, mostly because no one had ever asked her that. “Not too sure myself, never been to the underworld. You could try looking though the power stations nearby, I believe that’s where Caesar goes to, they should connect to the surface.”
Kara nodded and she excused herself. She had things to file, she said and, with a flash of fading, blue, yellow, he found himself alone, staggering to the exit. He wanted to shrink into the corner and cry. He felt lost and alone, thinking for a moment that his fantasy world had come tumbling down to a bleak reality.
Outside he sniffed the cold, metallic air -- thunder crashed above and the snaking, twisting flashes of lightning caught his attention. Watching the macarbe spectacle from the safety of a concrete overhang, he tried to reason a plan. He had come along way and he did not want to quite, not when he had come so close.
Still, even if he could get to the power stations -- where ever they were -- there was no guarantee that he would ever be able to find Caesar in that infernal underworld. He had glimpsed only a portion of it earlier but even that little bit was enough to tell him what odds he was up against.
He stepped out of the safety of the dry shade and let the rainwater -- warm and rich with ashy particles -- intermingle with the strands of his red mane. Resolved despite it all, if there was a way down there, then he was going to find it. Even if he could not reach the ‘silly’ human, he smiled, he was determined at the lest to learn more about that oft-ignored and misunderstood part of Metropolis -- its subterranean, mechanic heart.
[Part Eleven]
In the lower parts of the city stood an old, wooden house, large and weather-beaten, that, amidst the permanent shades of luxury high-rises, was completely ignored by its neighbors. Indeed, as the surrounding merchants busied themselves with the day-to-day activities of their lives, no one, no one at all, noticed the arrival of a small vehicle, its windows tinted completely black. The car stopped so close to the side entrance that, even if someone had stopped to look, it would have been impossible to describe the single, solitary figure who had emerged out from the vehicle into the constricting, plaster passageway.
The low ceiling too close to the top of his mane to be comfortable but he had traversed that same walkway many times before to be bothered by it now. Memory and just a tad spark of instinct led him through the hall -- at the end he was greeted by a sturdy, panel door. Its bell did not work but even that was not a surprise. He had to knock in code. Three fast knocks, three slow knocks, three fast knocks again.
He stopped and stepped back. For breathless moments the world was an eerie silence, punctuated by the mechanistic tickings of unfathomable inventions. And then footsteps -- a dull and heavy gait -- that came to the door from behind it, closer and closer, faster and faster. The patter ended and the turning of locks began -- the thick, oak barrier creaked open.
An image formed itself out of the slant of light that poured into the passageway.
“Dr. Algernon,” a gruff voice spoke.
Recognizing the visitor at once, the mysterious man of the house pulled the door back all the way and let him in. “Lord Phaeton,” he said in answer, bowing his head in a display of reverence.
The Lord of the Thundercats embraced the half-man, half-tiger -- he and the doctor rubbed the sides of their faces together.
“I should have called, but I could not wait,” the lion said, drawing back.
The half-breed’s face remained unchanged -- a Beethoven-esque countenance of untamed character. He had once been a nobleman, but when his homo sapien nature had at last begun to show he had been quickly and unapologetically banished from decent society by the snobbish blue-bloods. “You came at a most fortunate time,” he said, in ultra formalism. “I was just about to call you, in fact.” He shut the door in a swift move to the side and, with his free hand, pointed his guest to the spiral staircase in the back of the foyer.
A small, square window at the top edge of the wall was the only source of ambient light, weak though it was.
As the two headed up the helical steps, the outcast began to speak: “I have made several, important discoveries very recently.” In the upper level he showed the lion into a macarbe scene, painted by stocked shelves outlying a morgue of ancient technology, mangled by time, mounts and piles of Jagga-only-knew-what that were covered by thick, sooty canvass sheets. Spider webs, quivering spider webs. A large arachnid spun its was down from the ceiling while the doctor continued his lecture -- he clasped it with his thumb and forefinger and popped it to a red, gooey death. “It began ten years ago when a cemetery was unearthed by,” he paused to choose his word carefully, “undesirables while they mined for coal. It was no ordinary burial grounds.” He pulled back a tarp then turned on a small bulb that hung nakedly above.
“What are these things?” Phaeton asked in shock as he looked upon the entangled mass. He had stepped back into the surrounding darkness.
“Berbils.”
“Berbils?” The lion thought back to his schooldays -- it had been that long since he had heard that word. “They all --”
“Died out, that’s right. Their extinction happened long before all this,” he waved his finger about, pointing upward. “The Wollos, too, did not survive. Apparently, the electromagnetic radiation of our machines -- even back then -- was too strong and overwhelmed their delicate biology.” He paused and rubbed the fur around his neck. “Strange that the humans were spared that fate -- as if they had been conditioned to it.” His mind, too, stopped for a moment of contemplation, perplexed by how the pre-civilized Amazonians had gained immunity to the effects of the --
“But that was ten years ago?” Phaeton, like all cats, had a profound sense of curiosity.
“Yes, yes,” Algernon returned to reality. “I used that time to study their bodies but I was making little progress, until just a few months ago, that is.” He grabbed from the mass of corpses what appeared to be an arm and brought to the brighter shadows where the lion could better examine it. “Robotic. A bizarre mixture of the organic and the technical, just like the old legends said.”
“I don’t believe it,” he grinned, “that you would listen to ancient folklore.