Katherine MacLean - The Kidnapping of Baroness 5

The flares fizzled out and the crowd surged in. She was surrounded by nomad children and young women breathing wonder, awe, and fear of witchcraft, and in male voices, angry attempts at explanation from those who did not believe in witchcraft and did not believe a pig had given birth to a human child. A drunken man tried to force his way to the front to kill the child and the others held him back. “Kill the demons,” repeated one drunken voice, while another male voice soothed drunkenly, “Only a fake. Don’t worry. Only a fake.”

“Quiet!” Lady Witch raised her voice over the noise. “I must try to turn the Baroness back to a woman while she gives birth. I must save her next child from being a pig forever. Please let me do my work.”

The crowd was ready for a show. They quieted and stared at the sow, waiting to see it turn into a human woman. Lady Witch muttered chemical formulas and felt the great belly to see which shape of bulge was nearest. Then she was busy helping push and then pull. Some of the crowd gasped in horror and others cheered as she pulled out another completely human infant. This one was a female, a clone-cross between her own genes and some dry tissue of a very famous scientist.

Some of the audience decided this was intended to be a magic show, and clapped. The cheering and clapping repeated more loudly when she cleaned this new baby and held her up, like a rabbit from a hat. “The Princess!”

While they clapped, the sow grunted and very easily gave forth four small shoats that were natural pigs, and those began to suckle. The babies heard the sucking sounds and began to whimper and grope the air with lips and tiny fists. They were hungry. Lady Witch laid the babies up against two of the many nipples.

There were gasps of protest from the audience and growls and threats from a few men. In their morality, babies should not suckle sows. Distraction was needed. Lady Witch called out. “We need a volunteer to tend to the babies. This sow is Baroness 5, my captive. She was a Lady Baroness whose real name I keep secret. I turned her to a pig when she disobeyed me. I am sorry for it now, and I am sorry I can’t change the enchantment. The babies need to be cared for. They need someone to make sure that the sow does not lie on them. Can anyone volunteer to help the babies?”

“Real babies.” “A little princess.” Whispers spread among the women. They lost their fear and moved toward the babies with smiles, and bent toward them, cooing. There were noises from the back of the crowd and barked demands to clear the way. Two leather-armored men with short swords and leather shields shouldered through the crowd to Lady Witch and grabbed her arms in a hard grip.

“The Sorcerer wants to see you,” one barked.

She stiffened up as tall as she could and glared at their hands gripping her arms and switched her glare to their faces.

A woman screamed, “Ricci! Don’t get her mad. She’ll turn you into a pig!” The crowd agreed and pointed at the evidence, and the soldiers stared at a row of four suckling piglets and two suckling human infants, and understood. They let go of her arm and stood back. One said, “Uh... your pardon, Lady Sorcerer.”

Lady Witch guessed that the other one was dangerous, for he backed away slowly, his sword gripped tightly in a warding position and his eyes as round as marbles.

The sorcerer-healer of these wandering people had made them too fearful of his magic. This nomad might go berserk from fear and attack her. She smiled at him, “I’m called Lady Witch. Please show me the way to your sorcerer.”

To seem less threatening she turned her back to his round-eyed glare and smiled at a strong girl who was cooing at the babies. “You have a good heart. I choose you to help the babies while I am away.” She saw a plump young woman also leaning over the babies from the other direction. “And you have experience. Help her. Don’t let anything harm the babies. I trust you.”

The two nomad soldiers had been whispering to each other. The one who had not been afraid raised his voice, “Come with us. The Sorcerer wishes to see you.” He pointed.

“And I wish to see him.” She avoided seeming to be a prisoner by walking rapidly in the direction he had pointed, letting the soldiers follow. The crowd trailed, chattering excitedly and hoping for new wonders.

As they passed the nearest campfire she smelled sizzling pork chops and saw a large caldron with chunks of meat, carrots, turnips, and potatoes beginning to boil. All her fears returned. “I hope my two enchanted boars are still alive,” she said loudly to the two soldiers and the crowd following. “One is called Lord Randolph and the other Lord Jeffrey. They were stolen from me last night when The Baroness was taken.”

“Pigs! The boars are men turned to pigs!” There were multiple exclamations of dismay, and some of the men ran, calling warnings at each cook fire against eating pork from any pig stolen the night before.

The two nomad soldiers brought her to a tentlike building covered with leather, fur side in. She pushed through a double flap. It was darker inside except for orange and white parachute silk draped around the dais, making a bright background of color for the sorcerer. He was thin and wrinkled, wearing a vest of furs turned leather side out and gold chains with pendants of symbols. “Is this the witch?” he demanded of the nomad soldiers. “She doesn’t look like a witch.”

Lady Witch began to strip down to her whites. The soldiers looked at her nervously. “She came into camp somehow and turned two newborn piglets into human babies,” said the calmer one. “She said the sow was a human she had turned into a pig. That’s witchcraft. She’s a sorcerer.”

“Everybody saw it,” said the other, nodding vigorously and sweating. He watched Lady Witch throw the brown clothes down and stand in the shining white uniform, shaking her long hair loose, and he backed up against the door flaps and halfway out. “She’s a tech too! Look out for weapons!”

“Stand outside, both of you!” barked the sorcerer. They obeyed eagerly.

Alone, the skinny man looked at her appraisingly. “You are a biotech! I’ve found one! The locals down the coast talked of Lady Witch living up this way doctoring and not getting old, and I heard lies about enchanted pigs and demons. I didn’t believe them.”

“Believe them,” she said.

He laughed. “I don’t believe lies. You’re a biotech. Those pigs are laboratory animals. That’s why they say you are a good healer. Genetics and tissue culture. That’s what I was looking—” He tried to laugh again but choked and coughed pathetically.

She saw a pattern to his motions, the crying and crouching and wincing of a child being hit, crying disguised by habit as coughing, pain felt as illness. The unlucky man was trapped in a childhood trauma of being beaten. She restrained herself from wanting to release him from it.

He straightened up and glared. “How long will it take you to teach me your foolery?”

“I don’t teach my secrets!” she snapped. How could one teach biochemistry and genetics in their short lives? If a girl started to bear children at twelve years old she would die of senility at twenty-five with only three children produced and the youngest only eight. A boy occupied himself with helping the aging olders and learning work skills and fighting.

She liked the sorcerer for being clear-headed about what biotechnology had been all about. Many laboratories had been working on life extension. She herself had been in safe work, transplanting helpful thymus tissue and prion resistant genes from carnivores to herself. But many of her friends were researchers who had suspected prion viruses to be the killer, and complained that the prion viruses they studied worked too slowly to affect mice. She felt guilty on behalf of friends and researchers who had committed a possible great error and accident that no one knew about. New faster prion viruses could have been loosed with the magnetic pulse that burned out all safety controls.