Breeding Ground Part 17

The next display was a kitchen gadget that had made fresh, warm bread in a second flat. Alex closed her eyes briefly, recalling that she and her dead husband had owned that very model once upon a time.

This was getting to be too much. The trip down memory lane was hurting far worse than she had expected it would.

"What happened?" Alex softly asked. She took a deep breath and batted her eyelids to keep the tears at bay as she grabbed the bars separating her from a refrige-a-stove. "What happened to my people, Fija?" She turned her head to look up at the taller woman. Try as she had to school her features, there was no mistaking the moisture at the corners of her eyes for anything but what it was. "Why are they gone?" she rasped.

Fija studied Alex's gaze with a gentleness Alex hadn't known her capable of. "We don't really know," she murmured. "Not details anyway."

"Generalizations then?"

Fija sighed as her gaze absently took in the refrige-a-stove. "No. Not even that. These relics you see washed up on the sh.o.r.es. From them we have tried to discern our past. But until you?" She shrugged. "We didn't even know when these people-your people-lived. You say one hundred million years ago, so perhaps it is so."

"There was a war that devastated the entire planet." Alex's nostrils flared with anger toward the country she'd once called home. Thanks to a certain Zutairan man, she had a pretty good guess as to what had befallen humanity as she had once known it. "What I meant was after," Alex clarified. "What came after the wars?"

Fija spoke as they resumed their walk down the corridor. "From what we can gather from the few relics we have found and been able to decipher, instant death for most. Of those that did survive the wars, famine and disease wiped out the majority of humans that were left. Very few made it through the decades following the aftermath."

"But some did."

"Yes. Some did."

Alex absently took in the sights as she was given her history lesson. "They were different from my people?" she asked. "n.o.body could survive a biochemical and nuclear war without their body chemistry evolving to s.h.i.+eld them."

Fija shook her head. "I do not know. You ask me to speculate on things my people hold no answers to. Over the course of what you are saying has been one hundred million years of evolution? Perhaps."

"And the changes to humans could be..."

Fija came to a halt and met Alex's rapt gaze. "In the beginning of time as the Takuri know it, the predators became stronger, faster, and more agile. Not to mention bigger...and smarter. The Takuri had to as well, to flourish and multiply. Or at least, such is what the Book of the Dead Prophets tells us. We have no other herstory to go by."

"So," Alex said, thinking back on the principles of Darwinian evolution, "those humans who were the fastest, the strongest, and who could cunningly elude predators, survived long enough to produce offspring. Those who didn't possess said attributes died off, and their inferior genes died with them."

"Something like that."

"But over the course of millions of years of evolution..." A frown marred Alex's features. "I don't know what I'm trying to say," she muttered, "but certainly more happened to the biological structure of humans than being strong, fast, and agile."

"Undoubtedly."

"Then...?"

"I do not know. I've nothing to compare us to. At least not until...you. If," she emphasized, "you are who you say you are, little warrior." Fija shrugged. "Other than the Book of the Dead Prophets, Takuri possess no knowledge of years gone by-according to you, one hundred million years gone by."

"Do you think I am who I say I am?"

Silence.

"Yes," Fija said softly. "You look different, you carry an unfamiliar scent, and you are convincingly ignorant of our world." She sighed. "This is why I brought you here. To find out the truth."

Finally they were getting somewhere. "And you will do that how?"

"Follow me," the Amazon murmured. "Into the most sacred lair of this temple."

Goose b.u.mps zinged up and down Alex's spine, but she followed nevertheless. She had no idea what it was Fija meant to show her, but gut instinct whispered it would finally-finally-answer her questions.

Her host led her down a literal maze of corridors, up three sets of twisting staircases, and then through another series of narrow halls. Finally, they reached their destination-the entryway to a chamber that was, again, flanked by female guards. Just like before, the women warriors bowed to Fija's authority and permitted them unquestioned entry.

The further up they got, the less ventilated, and therefore hotter, it became. For once Alex was grateful for the conical hat she wore. It kept her hair up and off her perspiring neck. Fija, all but naked, didn't seem to be affected by the heat.

"What about men-human males?" Alex asked as the doors behind them were closed and the Amazon prepared to open one final door. "Why are they lowly chattel in this world? Are they biologically inferior? What?"

"In some ways, yes, but in other ways, truth be told, no." She sank an antiquated looking skeleton key into the door they stood in front of. "But biology has nothing to do with the reasons behind s.h.i.+elding them from knowledge."

Alex quirked an eyebrow.

"Tradition needs be upheld because they are weak-minded," Fija said. "Under male dominion, your people died off because of male greed, pilfering, and perversion of nature." She turned the key in the lock. "The Book of the Dead Prophets proclaims it thusly."

"I see."

Alex couldn't offer an argument to that. Men had, in fact, caused every war Earth had endured in so far as she was aware. Or at least that was how things had been before the Methuselah left Earth. It was hard to say what the world was like during those crucial years Alex and her crew had been removed from it. Who knew what clout women had held during the years just prior to the biological and nuclear wars? Alex didn't. Fija didn't, either.

"What is the Book of the Dead Prophets?" Alex questioned as they entered the most sacred of the temple's chambers. "Is it housed in here? Can I see it..."

Her voice trailed off and her eyes widened. "Oh my G.o.d," she breathed out.

Alex's jaw went slack and her heartbeat raced as she came face-to-face with the statue of a woman who was a dead-ringer for someone she knew very well.

Herself.

"Behold the Mighty One," Fija whispered, inducing Alex to swallow roughly. "For She is the Giver of Hope and the Voice of Freedom. Behold the Great One for She is the Deliverer of Justice and the Avenger of Tyranny. From the belly of the terrible xandor beast the G.o.ds did birth the Protector of the people." Their gazes met and held. "A mortal," Fija murmured. "A human. A warrior-queen."

Alex's entire body was shaking. How? This couldn't be! It made no sense.

"Alexandria the Great is our savior as foretold by the prophets. She is to free us from hands far more wicked than that of any human male."

Alex said nothing. Just stood there as still as the statue of herself.

Fija's sharp gaze drank in her shocked expression. "Her name," the Amazon informed her, "is Dr. Alexandria Frazier, Commander of Methuselah. We always believed 'Methuselah' to be a city unbeknownst to the tribes."

"This is impossible," Alex breathed out, her eyes unblinking as she stared at the metallic thirty-foot statue. Shaking like a leaf, she felt this close to pa.s.sing out. "This can't be me."

"You are a bit short," Fija quipped. Her smile slowly evaporated into a solemn frown. "But I saw you emerge from that xandor beast myself. And, what's more, I watched in awe and shock as you defeated it."

No-no, no no!

"Anyone carrying the kind of ammunition I had on me could have done the same," she protested, resisting that this woman of legend could be her. She was just Alex-plain old Alexandria Frazier! "That doesn't make me...her."

Fija's spine went ramrod straight. "That is what we are here to find out."

The p.r.o.nouncement gained Alex's wide-eyed attention. "How?"

She nodded towards the statue. "At her base lays one of the relics that washed up on sh.o.r.e from the black waters thousands of years ago. It is the hand impressions of the true Alexandria the Great. Many have claimed to be her, but none have matched up to her hands. They are, for a Takuri, rather...small."