Meritorium (Meritropolis Book 2) (6 page)

Marta watched Jameson, her thick fingers tapping on her upraised knee. “Anyone can fight a wild beast, some more successfully than others, of course.” She looked at Jameson pointedly. “But it takes a very special person to become a true venator, one who can tame the savage beast.”

“You capture the beasts—you don’t hunt them?” Sandy asked.

Marta pointed to the remains of their meal. “Well, we do hunt some of them, of course; your dinner is testament to that. But on the whole, you are right: we aim to capture them unharmed. It takes patience and a little know-how to hunt and kill any animal combo, that is for certain, but it takes real
skill
to capture one alive. That is what we do.”

Grigor leaned forward. “I have heard stories of this. We would very much like to participate and assist you in any way we can—as a thank-you for your hospitality.”

Marta smiled. “Oh, believe me, you will. In fact, we are counting on it. I regret to say that our hospitality is not entirely altruistic. We could use some more muscle from the likes of you where we are headed tomorrow.”

Grigor nodded. “It would be my pleasure—” He looked to Orson, who nodded assent in what would ordinarily be a stately curve of his lips, were it not for the sauce staining his mouth and beard. Orson resumed plowing into his food vigorously, head down and dark hair bobbing. Ever since his recovery from the plant pheromones, he had been quieter than usual and possessed a ravenous appetite. Grigor looked back to Marta. “It would be
our pleasure
to assist your company in the hunt.”

Hank chimed in, looking over at Jameson and matching his enthusiasm. “Count me in!”

Charley picked at a piece of char from the fire that had floated onto his knee, and started to speak slowly. “Well, don’t get me wrong; I want to go on this hunt, too. But, Marta, could you fill us in on some of the details?” Charley knew he should just stop talking, but he thought back to the magnificent llamabill trapped in the vines and its desperate cry for help and he found himself continuing to speak. He met Marta’s appraising eyes. “I mean, I am all for hunting animals when we need them for food, but if we are trapping these animals alive, what exactly are we going to do with them once we catch them?” Charley acutely felt the eyes of the others on him, watching and wondering at this seemingly sudden change of character. Glancing at Sandy from the corner of his eye, he saw her looking at him. He saw surprise in her eyes, but something else too: respect, perhaps?

Marta nodded. “That’s a very fair question. If we are to work together in this way, then it’s only natural you would want to know. Okay, first of all, how much do you know about Meritorium?”

They looked to Orson, now finishing his third helping of meat. In response to their collective gaze, he lifted his head. “Don’t look at me, all I know is that Meritorium is the closest city to Meritropolis.” He looked down again, licked his leaf plate tentatively, and then took a bite out of it. Charley suspected that Orson knew more than he was letting on, but in his present condition Orson hardly seemed interested in anything other than gorging himself, let alone dredging up old memories of his father’s city planning.

Marta leaned back. “Alright, let’s start with a little history lesson. Meritorium was founded just after the Event with a simple guiding principle—” She paused, seeming to enjoy the rapt attention and her role as storyteller. “Everyone contributes to society, either in life or in death. The System of Societal Merit was implemented, but then again, you all are already familiar with the scoring system.” She motioned to the Scores visible on their forearms. “But what you probably aren’t familiar with is that we do things quite differently from Meritropolis and other walled cities.” She now leaned forward, her eyes gleaming in the light of the pulsing fire. “We don’t put Low Scores out of the gates, their lives wasted. We allow Low Scores that are unable to contribute to Society with their lives, to do so with their deaths.”

“We feed them to the beasts!” Jameson burst in, unable to control himself.

Marta frowned, annoyed at the interruption during the climax of her story. “Well, in a way, yes, he’s right: we feed them to the animal combinations in our amphitheater. We are modeled after the Roman Colosseum, you know; that is where we get our name from—but its much more noble than that. We allow these Low Scores to exhibit bravery in death as they bring revenue to Meritorium. People come from miles around quite willing to pay to enter the Titan Amphitheater.”

“So, you trap wild animal combos for use in this Amphitheater?” Sandy asked slowly, her brow knitting.

“That’s right,” Marta replied. “There are many other hunters like us; we are one of the smaller outfits. But, believe it or not, it’s actually quite safe from animal combos near Meritorium now; we’ve hunted them into scarcity, that’s why we’re forced to travel further and further away from the city, like we are now, to find good hunting.”

“But we have to hurry, don’t we, Mom?” Jameson interjected. “The next Venatio is in just one week.”

“Yes, that’s right.” Turning from Jameson to the others, Marta explained. “The Venatio is a gladiatorial event that draws visitors—
paying visitors
, I might add—to Meritorium from all around. This is actually great timing for you, to be showing up to Meritorium so close to a Venatio. It means that as long as you can pay for entrance, then as visitors your Low Scores won’t have to worry about the System.” She stopped, gave them a calculating look, and asked, “You
can
pay, can’t you?”

Charley looked toward Grigor, unsure of what to say. Grigor remained impassive, his big, brooding face set as if chiseled in granite.

Marta continued hurriedly. “Well, that’s no matter. If you can hunt half as well as you look like you can, then the animal combos we bag over the next couple of days will earn us more than enough to purchase access for your company.” She hesitated, her eyes roving to Charley, and then back to Grigor. “That is, if we still have an agreement to work together …”

At this, Grigor turned, the shrug of his enormous shoulders rising and dipping in Charley’s direction.

Charley couldn’t tell if everyone was looking to him because they actually thought him capable of making a decision as leader—or if they just didn’t want make the decision themselves.

He sighed, looking around at the remains of their dinner feast. “I guess we don’t really have a choice, do we?”

Grigor turned back to Marta. “An agreement is an agreement.”

Marta’s face brightened, and she relaxed visibly. “Great! We head out first thing in the morning.”

Charley turned from Marta and gazed into the flickering flames. The campfire hissed and crackled as a log rolled from its precarious perch and into the bright red-orange coals, sending smoky wisps ghosting up into the starry night sky above, gone from sight forever. Maybe life was like the fire, he thought; you take action while you can; you try to do the right thing, even if you aren’t really sure what the right thing is. Your actions flame bright, but then your time is gone, and you just slip away, gone from sight forever.

Wistfully, Charley hoped that he might be remembered for at least trying to do the right thing.

He thought ahead to Meritorium, where Low Scores were given a death sentence, just like his brother Alec had been in Meritropolis. But even worse, they were sacrificed for the pleasure of a roaring crowd of spectators. His gut twisted, stirring to life the ever-present rage he tried to keep concealed. He pressed his eyes together tightly, thinking of Alec’s cherubic, grinning face. He could keep it under control.

At least until he reached Meritorium.

Then, his actions would flame bright indeed—people would pay attention; he would
demand
their attention—and bring retribution to Orson’s father and everyone who followed the System that had zeroed Alec and the many other innocents. Charley opened his eyes to watch a knurl of smoke, feathered in sprouting curlicues, dance in the air, before blooming and then dissipating.

If he couldn’t control his anger, he likely wouldn’t last much longer.

Charley stood up, tossed a stick into the fire, and then walked off to get some space from the others and look for a quiet place to sharpen his blades.

If not the right thing, he hoped he might at least be remembered for doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.

His weapons probably wouldn’t be needed in the hunt tomorrow, if all they were doing were capturing combos alive, although they would likely still need to kill something for food at some point. Either way, though, Charley needed his blades ready.

For Meritorium.

***

Orson rose early, sneaking out before the others. He made his way to a copse of cork oak trees towering like timeless guards over the camp’s eastern quarter, the still dawn sky hinting at the light to come. He passed by the camp’s night watchman sitting cross-legged on the ground, sinewy forearms resting lightly on knees, eyes alert and watching Orson while remaining expressionless. Orson nodded briefly without stopping.

Finding a small stream of barely moving water, Orson crouched down with his pocket blade and began to shave, alternating between scraping the razor-sharp blade across his cheeks and eyeing his reflection in the gleaming blade’s edge. Shaping his dark scruff into a Van Dyke beard that set off his dark flowing mane of hair, Orson admired his reflection for perhaps a moment or two longer than was strictly necessary for grooming.

He sat back on a rock, thinking. He didn’t know how to describe it exactly, but ever since their excursion into the Bramble he had felt … strange. Not himself. He twirled his blade absentmindedly. The fog of the last few days was lifting, but he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was wrong. His head twitched to one side quickly, a nervous tic he had never noticed before. He frowned. Sheathing his pocketknife, he bent down and splashed more cold water on his face. Orson wasn’t so much nervous about Meritorium itself; he wasn’t one to shrink back from violent confrontations, and Meritorium seemed to promise plenty of those, but there was one confrontation he was not anxious for.

His father.

Orson’s relationship with his father was strained. Thinking of him, he subconsciously reached for the assurance of his sheathed blade. He knew that Charley wanted to kill his father, and when it came right down to it he wanted his father dead, too. Orson thought back to when he was a little boy. He remembered learning from his father that his own sick mother must be put out of the gates, simply so the citizens could see his father’s commitment to the System. It had forever changed Orson’s feelings for his father into something dark: a twisting of love and hate, forever intertwined. It was now hard to know where one began and the other ended.

To hate was one thing, but could he bring himself to actually murder his own father? Orson shuddered. He was many things; he had carried out atrocities in Meritropolis that would cause many a weaker man to shrink back, but those were all for the greater good, weren’t they? Charley and this ragtag band of revolutionaries could say what they wanted, but as Commander of Meritropolis Orson had maintained order, kept them from starving, and kept the wild beast attacks to a minimum. Orson was no stranger to killing men in battle. He and Grigor were virtual wrecking balls of destruction. But to murder a man in cold blood because of premeditated malice was not the same thing as killing someone in battle or sentencing a citizen of Meritropolis to be put outside of the gates.

No, to Orson it was not the same thing at all.

Sweat bubbled up on his brow just thinking about it. And this person he harbored such a deep bitterness toward was not just anyone. It was his father.

Orson stood up slowly and began to walk back to camp. If he was honest with himself, part of the reason—really, the only reason—he had allowed Charley to live, and to lead them on this hare-brained journey into the wilderness, was so that, maybe, just maybe, Charley would lead them to his father. And—admitting it to himself now for the first time—Orson wanted Charley to kill his father, so that he wouldn’t have to. But, looking up to see the sun beginning to streak the sky with bursting rays of gold, Orson suspected he was being foolhardy.

His father was not a man to be trifled with.

CHAPTER 4

The Hunt

H
is feet were killing him, but Charley trudged on wearily. Blisters were already a foregone conclusion, but he kept his head high and maintained a steady pace with Jameson, who chattered happily, seemingly unaware or not caring that they had been hiking virtually nonstop for the past six hours since waking.

“Check it out!” Jameson picked up a stone, and with a spry little hop he twisted his wrist and side-armed the rock into a burrow along their sandy path.

Charley forced a smile. “Nice throw, you made it in,” he said, looking away from the hole the rock had disappeared into.

“No, wait—just look!” Jameson pointed at the hole, still skipping along the path with an enthusiasm and energy that Charley thought was downright inhuman. “Give it a second, just one more second. Here it comes …”

Charley watched, grateful for the opportunity to slow down. The sand encircling the burrow shuddered, little granules capsizing inward as something pressed its way out to them slowly. A slender snake head poked its way out, a long, blue forked tongue flickering in their direction. Charley started, taking a step back.

Jameson looked at Charley with a scornful lift of his eyebrows. “You’re scared of it—a little snurtle? I thought you killed a bion …”

Hank snorted. “Please, Charley hardly did anything.
I
killed the bion.”

“Sure, whatever you say, Hank.” Charley kept his eyes glued to the creature. Hank could be so annoying with his exaggerations and braggadocio. “If you want to know the truth, though—” Charley turned to look at Jameson—“even Sandy did more in the bion hunt than Hank.”

“
Even
Sandy?” Sandy approached, a frown creasing her forehead. “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

Charley gulped. “Umm. It didn’t mean anything …” His voice trailed off lamely, and he mentally kicked himself for being so preoccupied with the snurtle that he hadn’t seen her walk up.

“Oh come on, tell her what you really mean, Charley. She’s just a girl, right?” Hank taunted, shoving Charley in the direction of the burrow. “Or are you as scared of her as you are of snurtles?”

Charley twisted away. “I’m not
scared
of snurtles. I just don’t like them,” he mumbled, still eyeing the creature emerging from its home while carefully trying to avoid the look of displeasure that was growing on Sandy’s face.

“Yes, Charley.” Sandy jutted her hip out, blocking his path. “What exactly did you mean?”

Charley couldn’t help but notice Jameson and Hank watching carefully, eager to see how the mighty bion hunter would handle this confrontation.

Charley drew up short, eyes narrowing. “Why don’t you just put a lid on it? I don’t need to explain anything to you, especially if you’re gonna go all psycho.” He brushed by her, accidentally clipping the edge of her shoulder. He paused, starting to turn back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“Oh, don’t you worry, I know exactly what you mean.” Sandy pushed by him. “I’ll leave you
men
to yourselves. I’ll just head over to the other womenfolk—if you need some cooking or cleaning done, you just holler.” She did a mock curtsy, and then in the space of an eyelash flutter, drew her bow over her shoulder and unleashed an arrow sizzling through the air directly at the snurtle, killing it instantly.

She turned and walked away, the arrow still vibrating from side to side, impaled in the snurtle’s neck and pinning it to the ground.

Jameson looked from Sandy’s receding form to Charley and Hank before laughing nervously. “Well, it ain’t nothing to be scared of anymore; that thing’s dead as a doornail. Not that any snurtle is something to be scared of—they’re mostly turtle.” He pointed at the burrow, where other snurtles were slowly emerging. “Look at the little guy’s family—they’re going as fast as they can, and they’ve hardly made it out.” Jameson looked over at the sweat bubbling on Charley’s brow. “Why, even hiking as slow as you guys, a snurtle couldn’t catch us.”

Charley looked closer. The creature was long and slender like a snake and had a snake-like head with multicolored bands of black and white, but its body was covered by a hexagonal plated shell. And it had four stubby little legs, each moving so slow as to be comical.

He grinned, trying to laugh with the others and pretend that the exchange with Sandy wasn’t a big deal to him, and that he wasn’t still unsettled about the slowly cruising snurtles. All the same, he quickened his pace down the trail.

Charley heard Hank muttering to Jameson up ahead. “I told you I was the one that did most everything hunting the bion; half the work is breaking up lovers’ quarrels from these two.” Charley shook his head—he knew that he had likely created more problems for himself with Sandy up ahead than with the snurtles behind, but he couldn’t help himself from looking over his shoulder every now and then—just in case.

***

Gradually, the terrain changed from the sandy plains that butted up to the lush Bramble to a savannah golden with wavy grass and scattered scrub trees. Buffelgrass tickled Charley’s outstretched fingertips, the foxtails waving delicately in the afternoon breeze. Charley heard noise—animal noise—and lots of it. Or perhaps it just seemed that way to Charley, so jarring was the contrast with the dead zone that buffered the mammalian-hostile confines of the Bramble.

Drawing near to an umbrella-shaped acacia tree, where Grigor, Orson, Marta, and the rest of the hunting party congregated, handing out supplies and hunting gear, Charley was certain of one thing: the savannah was alive with the hum of life. Far off in the distance, Charley heard a roar, followed by trumpeting that soared on the wind in a crescendo punctuated by the sound of pounding hooves. The little hairs on the back of his neck stood up. A distant squeal pierced the air and then was abruptly silenced.

“Charley, here you go!” Marta tossed a large wooden club in his direction.

Charley started, but recovered quickly, and caught the club. “Okay, thanks …” He ran his hands over the gnarled wood that was as thick as his forearm and as long as his leg, the end swelling to a knot perfectly weighted for delivering a brutal whack.

“Remember—” Jameson tapped the stick with his own—“these sticks are for subduing the combos, not killing them. We want to capture them alive, and as undamaged as possible.”

“Only use your blades and bows as a last resort,” Marta added. “We already have some others in our company hunting some easier game for our meal tonight. You will all be helping us with the much harder chore of capturing some animal combos for the Venatio.” She looked at Charley, Sandy, and Hank meaningfully. “They
must
be all in one piece, and fit to fight.” She turned back to instructing Grigor, Orson, Sven, and some of her men on the assemblage of a harness-like traveling cage. It was big enough to send a shudder down Charley’s spine at the thought of whatever animal combo the contraption was to be used on.

“Right, okay …” Charley hefted his club uncertainly. It was a brutal weapon, but it was just a
stick.
He looked to Sandy and then to Hank, his thoughts suddenly flashing back to their bion hunt. They had done the seemingly impossible then, how hard could this be?

“Oh, and one of you three needs to be the bait.” Marta stood up straight, her hands massaging her lower back and then resting on her substantial hips.

Charley’s eyes widened, his pulse quickening.

Marta eyed the three of them quietly for a moment, and then, seeing that no reply was forthcoming, she sighed. “Okay, if you must make me choose—how about the mighty bion hunter?”

Hank released his breath audibly. “Yeah, great idea. Charley, you heard her. Get on over there and be bait while we hunt this thing.”

Marta smiled, her teeth gleaming brightly. “Why, no, not Charley. I want the one who was talking my Jameson’s ear off all morning about being the mighty bion hunter who is unparalleled in bravery. It takes a lot of bravery to be bait and face down any combo that comes sniffing around.” She looked directly at Hank, eyes narrowing. “I want
you
to be bait.”

Charley’s shoulders relaxed. He could see Sandy out of the corner of his eye, still doing her best to ignore Charley but now fighting back a smile, neither wanting to attract the attention of Marta. Hank froze in place; his mind appeared to be scrambling for an excuse while his mouth was unable to dispense with anything that would manage to leave his pride intact. “Why, yes … me, of course, if it requires bravery, then it should be me. It’s just that—”

“You’ll do great,” Marta said, turning away from Hank with a dismissive bustle of her hips and toward Charley and Sandy. “Now, as for you two.” She eyed them carefully. “You look handy with that club there, at least for a Pretty Girl, eh, Pretty?”

“My name’s Sandy,” Sandy said, dipping her chin to eye Marta steadily in return.

Marta continued unabashed. “Right, anyway, I have a good spot for you. And, Charley, Mr. High Score himself—a Score of 173—the highest I’ve seen in quite some time…” Marta’s eyes shone bright as she stared at Charley’s forearm, almost mesmerized. Charley saw a look of envy, or greed, or something flash across her broad face. He shifted away from her gaze and wondered just how high of a Score Marta had seen in Meritorium; had she seen a Score higher than his?

Marta started speaking again abruptly, her eyes lifting to his. “Yes, I’ve something special planned for you indeed …”

“So,” Charley said. “What kind of animal combo are we trying to capture exactly?”

“I’m glad you asked!” Jameson appeared at Marta’s side, looking as if he might jump out of his skin with excitement. “So, this is a great area for seeing all kinds of combos: there are lots of chimpanzelles, chimp-gazelles—Hank told me that you have already seen plenty of those, but those aren’t really worth that much in Meritorium; the crowd wants to see bigger game.” He hopped from side to side in a way that Charley thought was reminiscent of a chimpanzelle himself. “Let’s see, you will likely see some marmosals. Those things are weird: they are a combination of marmoset and jackal. Umm, those aren’t worth much, though, either …”

“Which combos are worth the most?” Charley asked.

Marta interrupted Jameson before he could begin. “Well, the bigger the better, as a general rule. So that is what we are going for.”

“Right,” Jameson said. “But there are some smaller combos that are crowd favorites and pay well, too. Hedgedogs, hedgehog-wild dingo dogs—those add some spice to any match in the arena, at least for the wild beast fights since their spines make them so difficult to kill, not so much as a danger to humans, though. And if you spot any weird lizard combos, sometimes those will do well.”

Hank, still slightly ashen-faced, asked, “So, what are the
big
ones that we might see? The ones that
are
a danger to humans—not that I’m worried or anything, of course. But since I’m the bait I just thought it might be helpful for our planning, you know …”

“Well,” Jameson said. “What we would really like to bag is a zippo—basically just a big zebra-striped hippo. Those things are like wrecking balls in the amphitheater; they go for a lot of money.”

“How do you catch one of those?” Sandy asked.

Jameson’s eyes twinkled. “No clue! We’ve never caught one.”

Turning to Hank, Marta said, “If we see one, and we likely will, you just make sure to get its attention. We’ve got a lot of manpower now so this is our chance to go for one; we’ll take it from there. Your job is just to keep on your feet long enough to let us get the harness on it.” Marta nodded at a contraption of iron shackles and what looked like rods reinforced with bamboo that Grigor was closely inspecting, a frown on his furrowed brow.

“Just don’t get gored,” Jameson said. “I’m sure even a zippo will be nothing compared to facing down a bion, though. Right, Hank?”

“Right …” Hank said, looking suspiciously green around the gills and weak around the knees.

“Alright, enough chatter.” Marta turned and made a motion to some of the other hunters in her group. “Show everyone to their positions and let’s move out.” She pointed at a tall, broad-shouldered man with a beard tapered to a point. “Carter, you take Grigor, Orson, and Charley. Let’s see how the four of you do with the tethers.” She looked at Sandy. “As for you, Pretty, you hang close with me. Hank, Jameson will show you where to best, umm, make yourself available.”

In spite of the twisting knots rising in his stomach, Charley fought to stifle a grin at Sandy’s gritted teeth and Hank’s unaccustomed speechlessness.

Sure, he was about to try to tether a rampaging, highly aggressive animal that likely weighed in the tons, but it could be worse. He tried not to think about what might be done to the animal in the arena; at least he wouldn’t personally be responsible for killing the animal just for sport.

Charley’s insides continued to churn. In his experience, when things could get worse …

They usually did.

***

Charley eyed the harness with a raised brow. “Do you think it can actually restrain a zippo, or whatever?”

“I don’t know …” Grigor said, still running his enormous calloused hands slowly along the lengths of bamboo lashed by thick twine to the iron manacles. “I’ve never seen a zippo, or any sort of hippo combo—I have heard stories of them, though, and if the stories are to be believed, they are fearsome creatures.”

“That they are,” Carter said, their handler from Marta’s group who walked up with Orson. He gripped an iron shackle and rattled the iron chain. “These are built well, though; we’ve never had a problem with them.” He paused, and gave it another shake. “Not that we’ve ever tried them on a zippo …”

Orson narrowed his eyes, appraising Carter and his Score of 86. “What exactly have these chains been tested on?”

Carter spoke slowly, meeting Orson’s eyes. “Nothing as big as a zippo
.
” He paused, seeming to weigh his answer. “Just smaller creatures.”

“I see, well I’m glad someone with your expertise is going along with us,” Orson said dryly. “You’re about as useful as an accordion on a durkey hunt.” He fingered the chains. “Well, if the zippo breaks free, then I guess it’s up to us four to subdue it.” His eyes glittered. “By any means necessary.” Orson casually flipped out his blade and did an intricate pirouette, not quite close enough to Carter as to be insulting, but just close enough to be insouciant.