“Yes… You have more in common with the New People than we do. You have their eyes…”
JC swallowed hard and fought to keep his voice steady. This would be a really bad time to sound nervous or uncertain. “Come with us. We represent an organisation that is used to dealing with strange and unnatural things. We have all kinds of specialists. We can help you.”
“Can you?” said a second Voice, the female Voice. It was just as savage, just as brutal, but there were emotional undertones that somehow made it even worse. “I don’t think you understand, you Good Samaritan. Can you undo what has been done to us? Make us human again? I don’t think so… We’ve moved on from being human.”
“What makes you think we’d want to go back?” said the first Voice. “To being merely human? That’s your limited thinking getting in the way there. If you could only see us, and our world, the way we do.. . without your petty human preconceptions getting in the way… This is a glorious world, and we glory in it.”
“I can See you,” said JC. “I can See everything you are. Step forward into the light, and show yourselves if you’re not ashamed to be seen.”
He put his sunglasses back on and gestured for the rest of his team to come forward and stand beside him. They did so, some more readily than others. There was a pause, and the two dark shapes moved smoothly forward into the blood-red light at the edge of the jungle. They straightened up, to show themselves off, and JC could feel the rest of his team fighting not to look away. The two figures were physically and spiritually monstrous, a blunt assault on the senses. The triumph of the beast over man. Like demons from the Pit taking on the shape of man to mock and befoul the human figure. They were both a good ten feet tall, and half as broad across the shoulders. Swelling chests, muscular arms and legs, all of it covered with thick dark fur matted with blood and shit and other things. Their hands had claws, their mouths held massive teeth, and sharp, pointed horns thrust up from their broad foreheads.
The male and female had grossly exaggerated sexual characteristics, as inhuman as every other part of them. They moved like animals, held themselves like animals, and they stank of blood and musk, of slaughter and sex. They were everything that humanity was supposed to have left behind and risen above. To look at them was to know there was nothing left in them of human reason, or human concerns. They would do what they would do because they could, and because they wanted to. They had left Humanity behind, or perhaps thrown it off, for the freedom that provided. Their faces still had human lines, but there was nothing of man or woman in them. And if the eyes are the window to the soul, only the Beast looked out.
“Oh God, JC,” said Kim. “Do you see what I’m seeing? They did this to themselves! ReSet changed them, but these shapes came from urges and needs hidden deep within them. Horrid dreams, bestial nightmares, all the things we’re not supposed to want or believe in…”
“Monsters from the id,” murmured Happy.
“We could have been anything that we wanted to be,” said the male. “But if we couldn’t rise to be New People, what was the point? So we let the Beast out. Followed the alternative path our partially awakened DNA showed us, the way we could have been if Humanity hadn’t got in the way. We didn’t have to give up much to become so much more. Meet the progenitors of a new race. All the power of the Beast, and the intellect of man, with none of the drawbacks. I am Gog. This is Magog. You may kneel and worship us, if you like.”
“Are we not glorious?” said the female, Magog. “We’re what happens when you strip away all the human limitations, physical and mental and spiritual… When you let the Beast out, and adore it. It’s amazing what you can do, what you can achieve, without conscience or ethics or control to get in the way. We can do anything.”
“And we have,” said Gog. “And we will. Oh, the things we’ll do.. .”
“What about the New People?” said JC. His mouth had gone dry, and he had to fight to keep his voice calm and apparently effortless. “You really think they’re going to let you run wild?”
“You think they care about the world?” said Gog. “They’re up there deciding what to do with it.”
“Making their minds up about what to make of it,” said Magog. “And when they’re finished with the world, we won’t recognise it at all.”
“They have no use for civilisation,” said Gog. “They don’t need it.”
“I really think we need to get out of here,” Melody said quietly. “We are not equipped for big-game hunting.”
“Look at the size of those brutes,” said Happy, very quietly. “They’d run us down before we got anywhere near the doors. Keep them talking, JC. Give us time to think of something that doesn’t involve wetting ourselves.”
“My plan exactly,” said JC. “Think hard. And quickly.” He raised his voice to address Gog and Magog again. “Do you know what the New People are planning? What their intentions are?”
“No,” said Gog. “I don’t understand them, any more than you could. They don’t think like people any more. They’ve risen above that. Perhaps they don’t think at all. Perhaps they do something better than mere thinking…” He rolled his head slowly across his broad shoulders. And then he smiled, to better show off his teeth. “They’re up there, at the top of the building, deciding the fate of the world. .. But whatever they finally settle on, you can be sure neither your kind nor mine will have any part in it. They don’t need machines, or tools, to change their world, or a civilisation to protect them from it. They’re the gods we were all supposed to become, before something went wrong in our DNA, and we all had to settle for being human.”
“Whatever kind of world the gods choose to live in,” said Magog, “odds are, we won’t understand any part of it.”
“So what are you doing here?” said JC.
“A world within a world,” said Gog. “A playground for the cute little doggies to romp in.”
“The jungle is where we belong,” said Magog. “The New People set us here, to wait for you. Oh yes-they knew you were coming. They’ve always known. I don’t think Time works the same way for them. They put us here to keep you from bothering them. Because we make such excellent guard dogs.”
“I don’t believe you,” said JC.
“You think we care?” said Gog. “We don’t care about anything. We don’t have to, any more.”
JC turned his head slightly to look back at the others. “Anyone got any good ideas yet?”
“I vote for running,” said Happy. “Everything forward and trust in the Lord, separate and hope they don’t get us all, and even I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Normally, I’d say we should at least go out fighting,” said Melody. “But look at the size of those things! They look like they could bench-press a blue whale.”
“They are the three-headed Cerberus, guarding the gates to Heaven and Hell,” said Kim. “We have to get past them to get to the New People. That’s why the New People put them here. To test us, to see if we’re worth talking to.”
“Don’t suppose you feel like glowing?” Melody said to Kim.
“I’ve been trying to bring it on from the moment I saw those awful things,” said Kim. “Not even a glimmer.”
“Terrific,” said Happy. “We can’t run, and we can’t fight. What does that leave? Hoping we choke them when they eat us?”
JC turned back to Gog and Magog. “What do you want? What do you want, with us?”
“Maybe we just want to play with you,” said Gog. “Play tag, in and out of the jungle. You’re It.”
“We’re Outcasts,” said Magog. “No place for us in the glorious new world that’s coming. So we might as well enjoy ourselves in the time that’s left to us. And take out our frustrations on you.”