“It’s all in the genes,” the minotaur said, relaxing on the heap of human bones, a ruminative expression on its face. “But you probably don’t understand that, do you? The concept of ‘genes’? DNA? Chromosomes? Any of it?”

“I understand you’re a monster. I don’t need to understand anything else.”

“That’s the point I’m trying to make – my genes make me a monster. And you humans made my genes – well, my grandparents’ genes, anyway. Listen, do you know any history, or are you just some yokel with more guts than brains?”

“I know some history,” Jack said.

“Legends told around campfires? Stories handed down from generation to generation? That sort of thing?”

“I know some history,” Jack repeated.

“What I’m curious about,” said the minotaur, “is whether you humans remember a time, hundreds of years ago, when you little vermin actually owned the planet outright. Do you have legends about some Golden Age, some time before we came, we minotaurs and dragons and trolls, the current masters of the planet? Do you talk about Paradise lost, Eden abandoned? Or do you just accept your lot as natural – hiding in caves, skulking in forests, scratching out whatever meager sustenance you can from the lonely, harsh lands you’re forced to live in? Well?”

Jack stared at the beast, but said nothing.

“Oh, come, fellow! Enlighten me! I see so few humans anymore, and I know so little about you! Try to make your last moments of life useful ones, will you?”

“If I tell you these things, will you refrain from eating me?”

The minotaur laughed, a great chuffing exhalation, and leaned forward, crossing his massively muscled arms and resting them on his knees. “See, now we’re talking about genetics again. I have to eat you. I can’t help it. It’s like asking you to stop breathing – you might be able to for a while, but your body would eventually betray you. Same in my case – I was created to catch and eat humans. It’s my raison d’etre. I can resist for a while, so that we can have this conversation, but at some point I have to gobble you up.”

“So much for free will, huh?” asked Jack.

The creature stared at him, sudden interest flaring in its eyes. “You’re no yokel, are you? If you grasp the concept of free will – hmm. . . I’m glad I didn’t eat you immediately. It’s been ages since I had any kind of stimulating conversation with a member of another species.”

“Don’t count on having one now,” responded Jack. “Why would I want to give you any kind of satisfaction, if, in the end, I’m going to end up in your cookpot?”

“A valid point,” conceded the minotaur, “but not an insoluble problem. How about this? Should you decide to talk to me, I’ll promise to make your death quick and painless. Conversely, if you clam up, I’ll peel you like a grape and eat your skin while you watch.”

“See,” said Jack, “you’re truly a monster. What kind of civilized creature could discuss torture and mutilation so matter-of-factly?”

Again, the creature snorted. “And I thought you knew some history. You humans were the all-time champs at torture, back in your glory days. A little flaying was nothing compared to what your kind used to get up to.”

“Fine,” said Jack, shifting so as to find a more comfortable position in the ropes bound tightly around him. “How about we trade, then? You tell me how the world got the way it is, and I’ll tell you about humans.”

“And then I eat you,” said the minotaur. “Okay, fine. I like it. Plus, it means you get to stay alive a bit longer, so it’s a good deal for you, too.”

“Just call me Scheherazade,” muttered the trussed man.

Again, that flame of fascination in the eyes of the man-bull. “Definitely not a yokel,” he said. “You’ll have to tell me some of your story before the end comes. I’m sure it’s gripping.”

“Can’t wait, boss,” said Jack. “But, you’re going first.”

Again, the minotaur leaned back, and the staccato clatter of bones hitting bones and the clank of the beast’s broadsword scraping on the floor rang in the chamber. The creature found a comfortable spot, and idly began to run the fingers of its right hand up and down what looked to be a femur. When it spoke, it was in a thoughtful tone.

“Where to start?” it asked. “How about with genetics? The science of heredity? A science that you humans turned into an art form? Yes, we’ll start there.

“About two hundred, two hundred fifty years ago, the Earth was covered by humans. At that time, you were the only intelligent beings on the planet. You traversed the oceans, flew through the air in great silver chariots, you even walked on the moon. Amazing stuff, you accomplished. You even began to meddle in the mysteries of life itself – what makes a tree a tree, or a sheep a sheep, or a man a man. Their genes, in a word. The ingredients one uses to make an organism.

“And, like the ingredients in a recipe, genes can be switched, traded, modified, altered. So that, instead of lasagna, you get a Boston cream pie. Not,” interjected the beast, “that you know about those things. But I hope you grasp my point. The men of science, back then, began by learning about genetics, then continued by experimenting, and finished by creating – bugs that ate oil slicks, trees that split themselves into planks, fish that glowed in the dark, so they were easier to catch. It seemed that nothing was impossible to those men.

“Then, one of them created a unicorn.”

At this, Jack nodded, and spoke in a chanting cadence –

“ ‘A new thing on Earth, beautiful as the morn,

White as a snowfall, with one valiant horn. . .’”

The minotaur smiled, its huge lips drawing back from its teeth. “Good! See, that’s the kind of thing I want to hear – you have songs about the first unicorn!”

“And curses for Swenson, the man who started the whole mess.”

“You know,” said the minotaur petulantly, “if you’re already familiar with the whole story, I’ll stop and let you talk. I don’t need to hear myself pontificate, anymore.” The beast was miffed, a little of its thunder stolen. Jack smiled, and inclined his head as much as he could, in a placating gesture.

“No, no. I don’t know the whole story, just legends and rumors. And, I can’t be sure about how true any of them are. So, please, continue.”

Jack’s words mollified the creature, and when it continued its recitation it tapped one gargantuan, boot-clad foot onto the packed dirt of the floor. “Fine. You know about Swenson, the first real monster-maker. He was a genius, obviously, and his unicorns were a big hit – people paid ungodly sums to own them, though, from all accounts, they were a pain in the butt – neurotic, schizophrenic, mean – and, with their horns, more than a little dangerous. But none of that mattered – the rich humans had to have them.

“Eventually, other creatures were created. Three-headed dogs, giant insects, miniature elephants, whatever promised to pull money from the jaded upper classes, who were desperate to buy the next generation of exotic pets.

“Then, some other genius came up with a better idea.

“How about, he thought, rather than creating playthings for tycoons, I create the ultimate game creatures?”

“Dragons,” breathed Jack.

“Nailed it in one,” responded the minotaur, grinning. “You humans had a rich mythology, filled with fantastic beasts that, now, you could pump out in volume. In that mythology, dragons were the ultimate villains, the crème de la crème of antagonists. And your own scientists made then, built them like machines, and charged amazing sums so that you little pests could hunt them – armed with rocket launchers, submachine guns and grenades.”

Jack nodded, as if confirming something he had long suspected. “So it’s true – we used to kill them, didn’t we?”

“Indeed you did, human. Teams of ten or twenty men would hunt the early dragons down and rip them to pieces. All in the name of sport, and for the thrill of danger and competition. That’s how my species started, too, and the trolls and goblins and orcs, and most of the other violent, carnivorous beings that currently contend across the world. We were bloodsport to you, and nothing more.

“But then,” it continued, and stopped. “Well, who knows who it was, or how it happened? Was it an insane human genius? Or, perhaps, a random twist of evolution? Impossible to say, though we argue about it often. In any case, we monsters, we creatures, we created beings out of your racial nightmares – we got smart.” There was silence for a few moments, as the man and the man-bull looked at each other. Torches flickered in their sconces, casting spidery shadows over the rough-hewn walls, making the minotaur’s eyes seem balls of blood-colored flame.

“Intelligence. Previous to that time, we had been dumb beasts, fodder for your martial fantasies, existing merely to die in hails of bullets or in the heart of a grenade’s explosion. But suddenly, there were thinking monsters, creatures who could plan, could counteract, could band together and, with the advantages you gave us, turn on our creators and actually win!

“And, really, that’s the whole story. After that, the outcome was a foregone conclusion.”

“Bull!” said Jack. “Oh, sorry – nothing personal. I mean, Nonsense! That’s not the whole story, not by a long shot. What, all of a sudden all of you monsters got smart, broke your chains, and slaughtered billions of humans? Just like that?”

“Obviously not,” responded the minotaur. “It took years. And it took oceans of blood on both sides – my grandparents were young when the revolution started, and they aged a lot during those violent years. But that’s just window dressing over the bones of the story. My point is, once we non-humans achieved intelligence, the fight was over – our physical advantages guaranteed it. I could go over every battle in the war, give you a play-by-play on how we drove you from your cities – yes, humans built this city, and the highways and the bridges, and all the other technological marvels you wretches can no longer use – but none of those stories have any relevance. They’re all just stones in a mosaic, and when you step back and look at the big picture, you see us, triumphant and victorious.”

“You say that word, ‘us’, like all you creatures are united, like you all have the same aims and goals. Yet, that’s hardly the truth, is it?” asked Jack.

“Oh, we fight, all right. That’s the way of things, the Darwinian way – each species has a mandate to protect and promote itself, even and especially at the expense of other races. But, for a decade or two, all of us did share a common aim, a common goal. And, for that brief period of time, that was enough. Tyrant Man was overthrown, driven into the wilderness like a whipped dog, shorn of his power and hurled into the abyss. From what I hear, it was a glorious time, an era of good feeling when minotaur stood with centaur, troll with golem, and above us all flew the dragons, casting destruction and chaos wherever they went! A glorious era, indeed!” The minotaur’s voice had gradually gotten louder, and more impassioned, and as he came to the end of his tale, he rose to his feet, standing proudly and straight.

“Sounds like everyone’s lost their Paradise, doesn’t it?” asked Jack, quietly. The creature considered his words for a second, and then gave a silent shake of his head as he sat back down.

“I suppose you could say that,” he finally responded, “but I’ll take this world as it is – we haven’t fallen as far as you, anyway, and I’m not tied up in some monster’s lair, waiting to be dinner, am I?

“So there’s my brief history of the last few centuries. I believe it’s your turn to talk, now.”

“One last question,” said Jack.

“Well?”

“What happened to the unicorns?”

“We ate them, of course,” said the minotaur, promptly. “They served no other purpose – obviously, no one but humans was built to ride them, and they were too temperamental to keep around for the hell of it. Plus, they were damned difficult to breed, unlike the cattle and such we co-opted from you. So, they all got eaten.”

“ ‘beautiful as the morn’,” quoted Jack, mostly to himself.

“And tasty as hell, too,” laughed the minotaur. “So, Scheherazade, go ahead and sing for my supper.”

Jack, still lost in thought, was silent for a few moments. Then, he craned his neck so that he faced his captor directly.

“I’ll tell you a story, monster. It’s a story that begins maybe forty years ago, and maybe its ending begins tonight.”

“Well, that’s certainly an intriguing introduction,” remarked the beast. “Come, then – I’m all ears.”

“No,” said Jack, “you’re all smugness and stink. But, as you said, you can’t help what your genes make you, can you?

“Imagine, if you will, a small band of humans somewhere south of here, near what used to be a city named Eugene, before the goblins took it over and destroyed it. Imagine that, among that band, there were descendents of the men who lost that great battle two hundred years ago, descendents whose ancestors had been fighting men, men of honor and valor, men who had borne arms against the nightmare, men who had bravely struggled to stem the dark tide of monsters, and who had ultimately failed.

“You’re imagining all of this, right?” prompted Jack.

“Yes, yes,” the minotaur said, a bit testily, “and you needn’t go on in that stupid suppositional mode. If you’re telling me this stuff, I’m prepared to believe you.”

“Fine,” said Jack, resettling himself. “My father was one of those tribesmen, and he still wore the uniform of his five-times-great grandfather, who had been a sergeant in the military back then. It’s an old, worn, tattered jacket and pants, and along the course of time it’s lost most of its buttons and patches, and gained holes and stains, but it’s a proud uniform nonetheless, and I feel honored that, when he was near death, he gave it to me.”

“Where is it?” asked the minotaur. “You’re not wearing it.”

“No,” replied Jack. “I didn’t want to risk losing it on this mission.”

“Mission?” snorted the beast. “You’re a sacrifice, man! You’re a sop thrown to me so that I won’t wipe out that tribe up the river. What kind of mission could you be on – find out how a minotaur’s digestive system works?”

“I’ll come to that,” said Jack. “And, that tribe up the river? The men who brought me to the place of sacrifice? They’re now part of a bigger band, a group that includes my people, from the South.”

“Well,” the minotaur said, “you moved all the way up here, huh? Maybe you heard that minotaurs were easier to deal with than goblins?”

“No, we moved up here because this used to be Portland, and Portland, in its prime as a human city, was known for several things. Its public transportation system, its liberal freedom-of-speech laws, its land-use planning methods. . .

“. . .and its bookstores.”

The minotaur looked at his captive, curiosity shining from its cow’s face.

“We destroyed the books,” it finally said.

“Not all of them. We found plenty, trust me. In the ruins, in private homes, and, somehow, you missed a place up on one of the hills that had literally thousands of technical and scientific books.”

“Is that what all those damned raids were about, forty years ago? It seemed like you little insects were constantly sneaking in here and getting swatted!”

“Many died,” agreed Jack. “But their deaths bought us the tools we needed. We even managed to grab a memory bank from the Health Sciences University, a computer that contained most of what we had hoped for.”

“You keep saying ‘we’, human. Yet, you weren’t even alive while that was going on, were you?”

“No,” said Jack, “but my father was, and my mother, and her brothers. All dead now.” A pause. “All dead.”

“Well, too bad. That kind of stuff happens, you know? You play with the big boys, you’re gonna take your lumps.”

“I understand how the world works, monster. Even before I heard your lecture on Darwinism and genetics, I knew. I’ve seen it all my life, and I’m sure I’ll see more.”

“Uh,” said the minotaur, “I honestly don’t think you will, actually. I mean, soon you’re going to be dead.”

“Oh, that’s right,” said Jack. “I’d forgotten. For a moment, there, I imagined I was back in school, tossing ideas around with my classmates.”

“You little pests had a school?” asked the creature, incredulous. “Where?”

“None of your business, beast. Just accept it. We have wise men and women in my tribe, and with the addition of the books stolen back from you, we also had the resources of the Old World’s knowledge to draw from. We learned military history and tactics, sociology, advanced mathematics, the physical sciences, and, of course. . .

“. . .genetics.”

The minotaur nodded slowly. “So, you do know about chromosomes and such?”

“More than you’ll ever understand, minotaur. I had that stuff crammed into me from the time I was born. My father was, well, you’d call him a ‘genius’, like you did Swenson and the dragon-makers. But really, all it takes to be a genius at genetics is a certain kind of mind and a lifetime’s worth of study. My father had both, and so did three or four others he collected and converted to his ideas. What they lacked were the tools – the books, the computers, the instruments that most had believed lost to the wars, the monsters, and the implacable march of time.

“But Father believed! He knew that not everything had been destroyed – you can’t obliterate knowledge by burning a few books or knocking down generators and laboratories. So, by virtue of his sheer strength of will, he gradually, over his long life, drew others to him, others with the kinds of skills he needed in his task.”

“His task being?” inquired the minotaur, politely.

“Your ultimate destruction, of course. Humanity reclaiming its birthright.”

“I thought so,” said the beast. “Please, continue.”

“I didn’t have the easiest of childhoods, as you can imagine. Being the son of a visionary and a hero is a hard thing, not just because of the expectations laid on you, but because you’re basically indoctrinated, from an early age, in the hero’s philosophy, whether you agree with it or not.”

“You argued with your father?”

“Incessantly. I thought, sure, it’d be nice if we could retake the world, but what were the chances? I mean, people were dying collecting those damned books and calculators and lab tools. And the experiments! Playing around with genes like some idiot child playing with high explosives! Creating mutants and monstrosities, and for what? Didn’t the world have enough of those?”

“What happened to change your mind?” asked the minotaur.

“You ate my mother,” said Jack, eyes stabbing at his captor with rapier sharpness and nuclear intensity.

The words hung between them like a cancer, a virulent growth pulsating with diseased malignancy. Finally the minotaur spoke, and, for the first time, something other than curiosity or amusement tinged his voice – it was uncertainty.

“I did?”

“You did. She led a small party of scavengers here, to your demesnes. You caught her. You ate her.

“And, the next day, I began my studies in earnest.”

The creature shook its head, as if dispelling some swarm of insects. “You know, I think this story-telling is over. I grow hungry, and. . .”

“Oh, we can’t stop now, beast. We’re getting to the good part.”

“Regardless,” said the minotaur, “I’m calling a halt to it.” He began to move toward the bound figure, but Jack’s sudden whipcrack voice halted him in his tracks.

“Don’t you want to hear my father’s plan? The science he would use to defeat your stinking species and all the other misbegotten monsters that prowl our earth?

“Don’t you want to hear how I’m going to kill you, to fulfill my mission?”

“Fine,” growled the minotaur, standing only three giant paces away from his prize. “How?”

“Well,” said Jack, smiling, “you know that humans delved into mythology, back, two centuries ago, for their inspiration? They made dragons, centaurs, unicorns, and many other fantastic creatures. Yet, for all their hubris, their overweening pride and ego, there were some creatures even the maddest of them didn’t dare try to replicate.

“Well, my father dared. And his genius, his brilliance, came in the fact that he didn’t try to create his soldiers from the ground up – rather, he simply changed humans.

“I had to beg him, but, eventually, he changed me.”

“Great,” snarled the minotaur. “And a lot of good it did you. I hope he changed you so that you taste like lobster.”

“Oh, he did more than mere cosmetic alchemy, beast. For one thing, he and I and his team picked a target, a creation, that had incredible strength. . .”

As Jack trailed off, his face set into a strained expression, as if he were tensing all his muscles. . .

. . .and, in a volley of cracks and snaps, and a cloud of dust and motion, his bonds burst, frayed rope edges flying away from his body like high-tension lines hewn by a blade. In a quick motion, forestalling any attempt by the minotaur to close the gap, he was on his feet, flexing and stretching.

The monster stood, jaws wide, eyes numb. Then, it spoke.

“Impressive, human. I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”

“Oh, that’s just the beginning,” replied Jack, smiling a hard smile. “It took years, years of implants and chemical infusions, and long months of incredible pain while my body changed. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘form follows function’?”

“I understand the concept,” responded the beast.

“As I changed, the scientists in my tribe were dismayed to learn that, instead of simply taking all the strengths we wanted from our target creation, and ignoring its weaknesses, the weaknesses were part of the package! It’s as if we were creating something that had, at one time back deep in the lost fog of human history, actually existed, rather than some chimera of primitive imagination.

“I suspect it’s the same with minotaurs, and dragons, and all the other beasts Man brought to life two hundred years ago. I mean, there’s no earthly reason to make minotaurs that are compelled to build labyrinths, or dragons hard-wired to collect gold, if all you want is a prey animal, is there?

“No, all of you monsters, to my way of thinking, actually existed thousands of years ago. When scientists began to build you, they were subconsciously recreating their ancient enemies, the antagonists their ancestors had defeated millennia before!

“The same with. . .what I became.”

The minotaur, by this time, had slowly moved his hand down, and grasped the hilt of his huge broadsword. This posture seemed to give him more confidence, for, when he spoke, a touch of arrogance freighted his voice.

“And what exactly did you become, boy?”

“Like I said,” continued Jack, “there were problems with the flaws inherent in my design. It took literally years to even partially solve them – and, even then, the weaknesses weren’t entirely obliterated, only tremendously alleviated. But, the strengths. . .”

And suddenly, so fast that eyes couldn’t track it, Jack had somehow materialized behind the seven-foot figure of the man-bull, and rode its hard-muscled back like a jockey, arms twisted around its neck, moving with flashbulb speed to avoid the bellowing, bludgeoning bull’s head as it whipped back in a futile attempt to dislodge him. The minotaur roared in rage and flung itself backward, trying to squash the man between itself and the stone wall, but Jack was somehow standing atop its shoulders when the impact came, and the monster screamed in pain as its back boomed against the rough rock, and then Jack was riding its back again, smiling wildly as the creature thrashed around the chamber.

“. . .like incredible speed and agility. Good strengths to have, wouldn’t you agree?”

The minotaur, maddened past the ability to speak, did a whirligig of frantic dance, falling, rising, bucking like the bull he seemed; yet Jack easily outmaneuvered him at every turn. Every gambit was met with a fluid motion, a slide or jump or sudden dart, and after three excruciating minutes the man-beast stood, exhausted, in the center of the chamber, head bowed, panting and sweating, while Jack still rode his back comfortably.

“Now,” he said, conversationally, “since our time together is nearly over, I think I can reveal my weaknesses. I mean, you’re in no position to exploit them, are you?

“You were right when you said that a being can’t argue with its genetic imperatives. You had to build a maze, didn’t you? The thing is, I’m willing to bet you enjoyed it, too. It’s like sex, isn’t it? Giving in to what your DNA tells you to do? Do you get a kind of orgasmic pleasure from eating men?

“I’m sure you do, just as I’m sure I’ll enjoy what I’m about to do.

“Sunlight doesn’t kill me –- but it weakens me.

“Garlic bothers me, but I can live with it.

“But this,” he said, baring his fangs, smiling whitely, “this, the scientists left intact.”

And he dipped his head, and began to feed.