Michael Cobley - Humanity's Fire book 1

by Seeds of Earth

  breezes, he could make out voices coming from further

  up the gorge, from its northerly incline.

  He found them on the other side of a cold, clear

  stream that ran between rounded rocks and the arched

  roots of ancient trees. Greg was helping a limping

  Catriona Macreadie as they emerged from a shadowy

  notch in the gorge wall. Twisted trees flanked its

  entrance and bushes sprouted high up, choking off light

  from above. As he drew level with Greg, he glanced into

  the fissure, from which a brook ran, pouring into a suc-

  cession of small pools before joining the stream ... and

  for a moment felt as if he was being watched from the

  shadows.

  Greg went first, offering Catriona support as they

  crossed from stone to stone. Her face was pale and she

  gasped occasionally but eventually they were both safely

  on the other side, Theo offering his arm at the last.

  'So what happened?' he said. 'And what were you

  both doing down here?'

  At that, Greg glanced quickly to Catriona, who

  answered.

  'It was my fault, Mr Karlsson -1 was sure I saw foot-

  prints leading down to the stream, so I led the way, went

  across, and . . . and . . .'

  'And Cat slipped and twisted her leg, Uncle,' Greg

  added, exchanging another look with her. 'I got her to

  rest for a few minutes before deciding to head back, and

  then you showed up.'

  Theo smiled and nodded. Well, that's a fine line of

  nonsense you're giving me, boy, he thought. What are

  you hiding? Or should I be wondering?

  He was about to ask exactly where Miss Macreadie

  had injured herself when there was the sound of footsteps

  and rustling foliage from the ridge overlooking the gorge.

  'Found them,' said a voice, and several figures came

  into view - some OG officers and an Ezgara commando.

  'Hello, Mr Cameron - are you and your friends in need

  of assistance?'

  'We can manage, Mr Ingerson,' Greg called back.

  'Did you catch the gunman? Is the Hegemony envoy

  badly wounded?'

  'The High Monitor fortunately escaped serious

  injury but, tragically, his attendant is dead. The

  killer ... is nowhere to be found.' He broke off and

  turned his attention to someone unseen on the other

  side of the ridge. 'Right, Mr Cameron, Major Karlsson

  and Doctor Macreadie - you'll have to leave the area

  now as the forensics people will soon be here. Let me

  know if there's any problem.'

  With that, he retreated out of sight, although the

  Ezgara lingered, staring down. Theo gazed back for a

  moment then turned to Catriona. 'Well, girl, I don't

  think you'll manage that climb with a bad ankle, so in

  the spirit of gallantry I hereby volunteer my nephew

  Gregory to carry you to the top on his back.'

  Greg stared at Theo, eyebrows arched in surprise,

  but then Catriona uttered a low, warm laugh.

  'Well, now,' she said. 'It is the manly thing to do.'

  At that, Greg's reserve dissolved into a grin.

  'Aye, well, just as long as it's manly!'

  Watching Greg ascend the slope with Catriona on his

  back, and hearing them both laughing, Theo smiled and

  wondered. Then he paused to glance back at the shad-

  owy gap in the side of the gorge, frowning.

  No, he thought. Just my imagination, populating

  dark corners with spirits and kobolds, even though

  there's a real monster running around.

  Shrugging, he followed the others up the steep path,

  noting that the Ezgara was gone.

  17

  PATH MASTER

  From the sheltering veil of shadows he watched the

  Humans depart, feeling something akin to amusement

  as the eldest of them paused to look back before like-

  wise leaving. Then he was alone with the shadows and

  cold, the trickling brook and the simple creatures, as

  alone as he had been for nearly ten thousand years. Last

  of the Pathmasters, last bearer of ancient knowledge,

  fading remnant of cherished duty.

  Was it all chance and happenstance that his essence

  should be drawn here on the same day that a slaying

  took place upon Waonwir, directly above the Sleeper's

  vault? And that a Human female stunningly radiant

  with potential should then wander close enough to get

  his attention? Well, the Pathmasters who taught him

  had always reminded him that coincidences were only

  the most obvious manifestations of the light touch of the

  Eternal. After all, the female had said, 'I've been search-

  ing for you,' and he had seen in her thoughts the

  fruitless outcomes of her exploring in the depths of

  Segrana.

  Such a prize she was, the avidity of her cognitive har-

  mony burning so brightly along the transient edge of the

  stable dimensions that he could almost make out the

  ambits of possible futures. Questions had come tum-

  bling from her in a torrent, but he had stanched it with

  a command - seek out a vudron and undertake a vigil.

  For in the end it came down to Segrana, to her slow but

  sure perceptions, and to the reckonings she made. The

  immemorial awareness of the great moon-enfolding

  forest, vast yet thinly scattered, was close to the under-

  lying qualities of the Eternal, which could not help but

  influence Segrana when the human female entered a

  vudron back there.

  Then her male companion had arrived, a surprise

  that had caused her to lose her footing by the brook, slip

  and fall. The Pathmaster had allowed his visible mem-

  brane of coerced particles to melt away so that when

  next they looked he had apparently disappeared.

  All the Humans and others were receding and he

  knew that there was another place he had to be, a

  daughter-forest where another fascinating Human was

  taking his ease in strange company. The Uvovo-culti-

  vated sanctuary lay several miles away, yet for such as

  himself that distance was no greater than that between

  one thought and the next, thoughts that were long and

  complex, thoughts that bound this self with that succes-

  sion of other selves which stretched away towards the

  Eternal. He formed the thought of a glade in that daugh-

  ter-forest, sweet and strong offspring of Segrana, and by

  virtue of the entwining green weave of seed and leaf his

  disembodiment travelled there, slipping through to

  unfurl his essence in green, sheltering shade.

  He found the Human, a male named Horst, sitting

  on a low wooden bench beneath a sunny sky, leaning

  sideways against the armrest, reading a book balanced

  on a raised knee. Next to him on the bench was a

  small flat device, its dark surface gleaming in the sun,

  while on the long grass a short distance away a young

  human female sat crosslegged, making chains of small

  flowers.

  But this idyllic scene was not at all what it seemed to

  be. The Pathmaster knew that, like her flowers, the child
<
br />   was an illusion, an insubstantial image cast by Horst's

  cunningly wrought device. Earth Ambassador Horst

  was a man in the grip of grief, as much a prisoner of it

  as if he were weeping rather than smiling, and in his

  grief he had surrendered part of himself to an unthink-

  ing, visionless instrument devoid of true self.

  Yet that was not the worst of it. Horst also played

  host to one of the Dreamless, an artificial entity of a dif-

  ferent magnitude: unlike the clever image of a dead

  daughter, these Dreamless possessed a kind of volition

  and a degree of self-critical awareness very similar to

  their anti-life predecessors who had brought most of the

  galaxy to the brink of disaster ten millennia ago.

  Unlike those long-vanquished entities, however, these

  Dreamless had evolved in symbiosis with a dominant

  species, the Sendruka, thus spreading their influence far

  and wide throughout the Hegemonic territories and

  beyond. The new Dreamless had attained levels of

  power and existence unimaginable to those predeces-

  sors - every artificial entity consisted of two parts, a

  lesser part occupying a physical matrix in the vantage of

  the Real, either a device or an implant, and a greater

  part that resided in that understratum of reality known

  to Humans as the first tier of hyperspace. Such scraps of

  information the Pathmaster had gleaned from innumer-

  able overheard fragments of offworlder conversation,

  the occasional stray thought, and those observations of

  scholars and Listeners which he had received.

  And the implications provoked in him a deep unease.

  Were the implant Dreamless merely a manifestation of

  the greater, hyperspace ones, or did they possess auton-

  omy? What was the hierarchy of the hyperspace

  Dreamless and how did they communicate with their

  implant counterparts? That last unknown was the most

  immediately worrying - did that method of communi-

  cation bear any similarity to the frail bonds that linked

  his essence to those former echoes of himself which were

  on the path to mergence with the Eternal? His unease

  deepened still further when he thought of the Sentinel

  asleep in its vault, and how it communicated with deep,

  hidden allies.

  He regarded the Human Horst once more, noticing

  how the man's attention was focused on a point in the

  air just beyond the other end of the bench. His lips were

  scarcely moving but he was speaking, softly in his

  throat. From a tall, broad tree nearby the Pathmaster

  tentatively reached out with rarefied senses, trying to

  see into Horst's thoughts, with a touch of the mind so

  light as to be scarcely extant.

  Yet he felt the resonant disturbance of linkage, and he

  saw ... so strange, another man, tall and well-propor-

  tioned with a relaxed, even amused demeanour, yet he

  was an image lacking any colour. Blacks, whites and

  shades of grey.

  They were talking, something about the sister ships of

  the Hyperion, the ones that had gone missing, a tale

  that the Pathmaster was acquainted with. I've had an

  enquiry from another group of ship-hunters, Horst was

  saying, calling themselves the First Flight Association.

  And what's their pet notion} said the Dreamless's

  monochrome image. That the Forrestal and the

  Tenebrosa were flung far back in time and their crews

  became the original ancestors of the Sendruka?

  No, that's the HTF Society's theory. First Flight have

  somehow deduced that all three ships ended up in the

  Huvuun Deepzone and they've asked me to persuade

  the Hegemony's Grand Archivist to release any Huvuun

  survey data into the public domain.

  But Robert, don't these people realise that the

  Hyperion colonists were incredibly lucky to find an

  uninhabited world like this, lucky not to have encoun-

  tered any interstellar marauders or resource raiders, and

  lucky not to have succumbed to some native micro-

  organism? The other two crews would need similar

  amounts of good fortune to survive the potential haz-

  ards.

  Which are many, said Horst. No - / fear that the

  Hyperion's luck was a fluke and that the other vessels

  were overcome by tragedy or violence. Perhaps in a hun-

  dred years, or even tomorrow, a traveller will find a

  dead hulk of a ship drifting around an uncharted star, or

  the ruins of a settlement on some inhospitable world,

  and the mystery will be solved.

  The Pathmaster listened, amused at the finality of

  Horst's declamation yet puzzled to see a knowing smile

  pass across the grey-pale Dreamless's features. And as

  the Pathmaster paused to ponder, he felt an echo of

  wrongness resonate back from that sombre verdict, as if

  there was something out among the stars to contradict

  it.

  Then the Dreamless turned a thoughtful gaze over at

  the seated figure of Horst's daughter. For a moment all

  were still in that tableau, the two apparitions hingeing

  on Horst's state of mind.

  The Pathmaster withdrew his perceptions, returning

  to the simpler imperatives of plantlife, to build, to grow,

  to put forth leaf, flower and seed, taking in the sun

  while drinking from the soil. The cycles and rhythms of

  nations and species, however, were vastly more com-

  plex than those of plantlife and the Pathmaster had

  come to know for certain that several ruthless ventures

  and ambitions had been drawn together by the discov-

  ery of Umara. Very soon these intersecting forces would

  bring great pressure to bear on the colony's leaders, and

  also on Horst, whose position might prove to be pivotal.

  Also, a lot would come to depend on the resilience and

  character of Cheluvahar, the new Artificer Uvovo. The

  husking of Cheluvahar would soon take place, shortly

  thereafter to be followed by the dispersal of Artificer

  teams to their appointed destinations and tasks, many

  secret, some formidable, all vital. Assuming that Segrana

  was able to carry out the husking as planned.

  Now a man approached, one of the ambassador's

  staff, attired in a blue, high-necked uniform and per-

  spiring visibly as he came hurrying round the forest

  path and into view. He would be carrying news of the

  shooting, the event that would set the first cogs in

  motion, their turning bringing certain forces into play,

  allowing larger cogs the freedom to turn, while other

  things moved and stalked between the stars ...

  As the Pathmaster watched, Horst nodded to the offi-

  cial then turned to the ghost-image of his daughter,

  speaking gently to her as if she were really there.

  Reality, the Pathmaster thought. When it comes, will

  it break him or will he learn how to survive?

  PART TWO

  18

  KAO CHIH

  Outside his armoured cabin the winds of the gas giant

  V'Harant raged and roared as the grav
ity-tug Biaolong

  maintained its spiral ascent, carrying its pendant burden

  of six ore containers. Relaxing in the huge, ancient pilot

  couch, retrofitted for the human form by Roug techni-

  cians decades ago, Chih kept a practised eye on the

  exterior monitor and the generator gauges while deftly

  swapping the music tab in the couch's headrest. Like

  the couch and most of the instrumentation, the exterior

  monitor was a conversion hack, a dusty panel cased in

  grey plastic and fixed to the original console with webby

  struts. It showed a montage of views of the Biaolong's

  hull, looking for all the world like an inverted stepped

  pyramid, its flanks studded with tapered blocks, while a

  perpetual blast of corrosive atmosphere whirled and

  scoured and howled.

  Watching it, Chih smiled, remembering Great-Aunt

  Mei's assertion that the murky skies of V'Harant were

  really Di-Yu, the underworld, the abode of demons and

  punishment. Then he listened to the sound of that never-

  ending storm, muted to a low whisper by the thick alloy

  hull and the chemo-suppressor field, imagining it to be

  the fangs of a demon host grinding uselessly away, just

  beyond the armoured shutters. He laughed and was

  about to start the music, a selection of Yunan school

  electroniki, when the voice of his copilot, Ta Jiang, came

  from the headrest instead.

  'Chih - number seven is sliding out of resonance.'

  'Not again,' he said, leaning forward. The generator

  gauges were flat displays set on brassy, octagonal

  plinths that jutted from the main console. Slipping on

  the spectrum goggles, he studied gauge 7, switching

  between colour lens pairs to take in all the 3D data.

  The Roug's willingness to modify the instrumentation

  had not extended to the antigrav generator displays,

  stemming from the conviction that all operators had to

  adapt their sensory perceptions to the equipment in

  order to preserve the conceptual integrity of the primal

  schemata. Fabulously intricate assemblages of motors,

  gyros, gears, levers, mirrors and crystals constituted

  the control systems of the gravity-tugs, the mines down

  on V'Harant's core, the orbiting refineries, and the

  cities of the Roug, floating somewhere in the gas giant's

  turbid atmosphere. Three generations of human engi-