Stars Beneath My Feet

by D L Frizzell

  “Unify?” she said. “What do you mean?”

  “Your minds are linked,” I said. “Some can only communicate with those who share a common language like telepathy or telekinesis. Others have the ability to mediate, or unify, those with differing abilities. The T’Neth are all about communication, aren’t they?”

  “It defines us,” she said. “We are fully…unified.”

  “Then why do you need a fourth test?” I said, feeling the certainty well up inside me. When she stared blankly at me, I answered for her. “Because the other abilities didn’t fully unify the T’Neth.”

  “We all think the same,” Kate frowned. “What else is there?”

  “Uniformity isn’t the same as unity,” I explained, but I could tell she was already losing interest in the conversation. “The T’Neth had to have this ability once, but it must have gotten lost over the millennia.”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said, stifling a yawn. “Nobody knows.”

  I turned to look at Kate. “I believe somebody did know. He passed the fourth test. He wouldn’t have passed any of the others, but this…this was the important one.”

  “Who was it?” she asked, her eyes focusing again.

  “It was my father,” I said.

  “A human passed the fourth test?”

  “He was a man of vision,” I said, remembering the words that so many spoke at his funeral. “Throughout all of history, humans have not had any real telepathic abilities, yet there have been times when they were unified. This happened whenever they were led by people with vision.”

  “Vision?” Kate asked, looking confused. “You mean he had eyes?”

  I laughed softly and squeezed her closer. “I can hear you, Kate, but I don’t use my ears. My father had vision, but he did not use his eyes.”

  What did he use? Kate had given up using words by this time, relying only on her thoughts to communicate.

  “Well,” I said, “He used his mind, just like the T’Neth do. He envisioned things that didn’t exist as though they could, and then made them a reality. He did more than communicate. He unified people with his vision.”

  How did he do this with his eyes? Kate wondered, missing the point entirely.

  “I’m still trying to figure that out,” I said quietly as I brushed a stray lock of hair off her face. Her eyes drooped again. “Don’t worry about it, Kate. It was just a silly thought.”

  Okay, she thought to me. I love you.

  “I love you, too,” I said, and kissed her. It took her a few minutes, but she finally dozed off. As I listened to the soft, purring noises she made in her sleep, I stared at the ceiling and thought about what my own vision for the future might be.

  The End

  And now, a sneak peek at

  The World in My Hands

  Book Three in the Marshals of Arion saga

  Chapter One

  I stared at the space-suited man frozen in the glassy ice two meters below my feet, wondering if he died before or after he got stuck there. I suppose of all the questions I could have asked, that was the least relevant. More important, perhaps, was the question of whether the T’Neth put him there. He’d been locked under the ice plains of the south pole for about five hundred years, ever since the Founders came to Arion. That was the same time that they discovered the T’Neth had colonized this planet long before humans arrived. If the historians in Dolina were correct, the T’Neth were a naturally peaceful race. A few months ago, I thought they were murderous savages. Now…well, let’s just say things are complicated.

  The details of the frozen man’s death were lost to history. The Dolinians called him ‘The King of Denmark’, though I have no idea why. I thought Doctor Harlan Mayford was joking when he told me about the solitary figure, though he seemed eerily spooked by it. When the King beckons, the tale went, you can kiss your ass goodbye.

  I didn’t know what to make of all this, especially since Mayford was a solid intellectual, not given to flights of fancy. Maybe it was just one of those ghost stories that starts small and grows over the generations. I kicked at the featureless ice with the heel of my boot, but suddenly became aware that my spacesuit looked a lot like the king’s. Engineer Seku – one of the handful of T’Neth who accepted our presence on Arion - had manifested these suits for us with her telekinetic abilities. Her intent had been to make us feel more comfortable with T’Neth technology. Now, looking at the figure beneath the ice wearing the same design, I couldn’t help but wonder if we would someday find ourselves in the same predicament.

  “Nobody knows how he got there,” Mayford said next to me, his identical spacesuit protecting him from the frigid air at the south pole. “What has always puzzled me is how he got submerged in such a monolithic field of ice in the first place. We estimate this region to be eight thousand years old.” He gestured to the smooth ice plain that stretched to the horizon. In the distance, a soft yellow glow permeated the surface. Light from the sun traveled through a massive corridor in the planet’s axis to diffuse in the ice. “The T’Neth probably built that corridor in the last five thousand years,” he added. “It seems implausible that they would have anything to do with this man’s death.”

  “You need to get out more, Doctor,” I said. “They have killed hundreds, maybe thousands of humans in your lifetime.”

  “Marshal Vonn,” Mayford said, ignoring my statement, “do you mind if I ask why we are once again visiting this area?”

  “Technically, my title is Ambassador-Marshal Vonn,” I said flatly. When he frowned, I reminded myself that I needed to be a little more gracious around others. “Don’t call me that, really. Alex will be fine.”

  Noticeably relieved, and then a bit annoyed, Mayford continued. “Alex, why are we here?”

  It was a good question. I looked at the shadowy bedrock hundreds of meters beneath the solid expanse of ice, my eyes following the ridges to the drop-off where the planetary corridor began. I wasn’t here for answers, or even a history lesson. Most of the relevant information was available in the library archives of Dolina. What was I here for?

  I answered without thinking. “I’m looking for inspiration,” I said.

  “Ah,” Mayford said. “You are trying to formulate a plan that will save us from a war with the T’Neth.” He began to expound on the subject of inspiration the same way he spoke about everything else, in a very longwinded and uninspiring manner.

  The last thing I wanted was to feel the pressure to save humanity. I would do my part, of course, but I hardly expected to do it alone. To prevent a war with a physically and technologically superior race like the T’Neth, every human on the planet would have to work together. This could only happen if they were unified under a common vision.

  Yeah, no pressure there.

  As Mayford droned on, I looked across the smooth plain and saw another person crossing the ice, her feminine features not entirely disguised by her spacesuit. She splashed across a puddle of liquid nitrogen, looking very much like a child at play. Kate Runaway. No, I reminded myself, her name is now Kate Vonn. She is my wife. I would always think of her as Kate Runaway, though, my crazy nomad girl. I smiled at her antics.

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny, Alex,” Mayford interrupted my reverie, his face a mask of hurt feelings.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor,” I replied, giving him my full attention once again. “I just noticed…” and pointed toward Kate, who was now skating on the ice and performing flips like a gymnast.

  “Perhaps we should rejoin Engineer Seku at the buggy,” he said, sounding miffed.

  “I agree,” I said, and set off next to him.

  We signaled Kate by waving our hands, as the one thing these T’Neth suits lacked was a radio. We joined her at the buggy where Seku was hard at work redesigning the buggy’s passenger compartment.

  Blue wisps darted back and forth around the driver’s seat. As they collected, and then swirled, a control yoke solidified out of thin air by the buggy’s front left seat. Th
is was a scientific process, not a magical one. Seku had the ability to manipulate matter in the same way a modeler uses clay, except that she used her mind instead of her hands. The new controls resembled the controls on a maglev vehicle. I’d asked her to add this feature so she wouldn’t be the only one who could pilot the vehicle.

  Aesthetically, the buggy left a lot to be desired. It looked more like a kitchen appliance than a vehicle, with four razor-sharp wheels that dug into the ice like pizza cutters and a chassis that resembled a giant food processor. As we climbed into the transparent enclosure, I cringed at the thought of sitting in something that looked like it could blend us into a puree. Seku was just getting started with her designs, though, so I hadn’t said anything about it.

  “Can I drive?” I asked Seku.

  She nodded, and then climbed into the front passenger seat. Kate and Mayford took their seats in the back, and I settled behind the controls.

  I tested the controls, turning left and right. The wheels reacted as I hoped they would, canting one way or the other to compensate for centrifugal force, feeding resistance back into my hands, and not turning too much. Seku had improved the wheels at my request as well, adding teeth to the outer diameter for traction. Now that I saw them, I was happy to sit inside the protective crew compartment. One wrong turn or a bad bump, and an unprotected person could fall into one of those blades and be cut in half before the driver could react.

  “Looks good,” I said. “How do I get it moving?”

  Seku mimed the action for me, moving her hands forward and backward as if she were holding the yoke.

  I pushed the control tentatively and the buggy leaped forward. It took a few seconds to get used to the acceleration. Feeling exhilarated from such precise controls, I accelerated until we were going about eighty kph. I kept it going straight for a minutes, and then pulled back to test the deceleration. It was just as smooth. I gave Seku a thumbs-up, which she now understood as a compliment, and accelerated again.

  I steered the buggy toward the center of the ice plain - or as I called it, absolute south - testing its capabilities. I tried a few skids, managing to scuff the ice a little in the process. I felt like a kid with a new toy. When Mayford protested from the back seat, I chuckled and accelerated even more towards the yellow glow ahead.

  Seku suddenly jerked her hands into the air. She wasn’t very good at talking, even for a T’Neth, but her facial expression was clear – something is wrong.

  I pulled back hard on the controls and felt the buggy grind to a halt. Thinking I’d broken the buggy already, I looked at Seku to apologize. She wasn’t looking at me, though. She was staring straight ahead. I followed her gaze to the horizon. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary as far as I could tell. The great expanse of stars overhead, what looked like an entire galaxy’s worth, lit the permanent night sky as well as any sun could, but the frigid expanse looked different than it had on my last several visits.

  Is everything okay? Kate asked me in her thoughts from the back seat.

  “Is everything okay?” Mayford asked. He was human, so there was no way he could know that he’d mimicked her telepathic query.

  I’m half human and half T’Neth, so I heard both equally well. “Not sure yet,” I replied.

  Seku continued staring ahead.

  That’s when I noticed the shafts of sunlight coming out of the planetary corridor were undulating the same way that rays of sunshine move in a lake.

  “That shouldn’t happen,” Mayford said. “That effect can only be seen as we move along the ice, but we’ve stopped.”

  I was hesitant to suggest any reasons why that kind of visual effect might happen, though only one came to mind. I glanced back at Mayford, but he didn’t seem eager to suggest anything either. When I looked forward again, a fog bank had begun taking shape over the ice cap.

  I jammed the controls forward and steered hard left. The buzzsaw-shaped wheels dug into the ice as Seku designed them to. The buggy fishtailed until we were pointed back the way we came but straightened quickly when I leveled out the yoke. My weight was soon pressed firmly into the seat. Mayford groaned behind me, but Kate didn’t seem to mind. She was a T’Neth. They were at least twice as strong as the average human. She hadn’t grasped the implications of what was happening, though. I’m pretty sure that Mayford hadn’t missed it. That might have been why he was groaning.

  A glacier wall peeked over the horizon ahead of us. That was where the ice plain ended, and the mountains began. A matrix of blue wisps formed over Seku’s lap, shifting back and forth in midair as she moved her open palms around them. She wasn’t in design mode anymore. From what little I understood of her telekinetic thought processes, it seemed like she was examining the structure of the ice. Her grim expression was all I needed to confirm my fears.

  “The ice is melting,” I said over my shoulder. No one else expressed a need to reply.

  The buggy jolted once, twice, three times. Where I hadn’t perceived any contours on the ice before, our increased speed made it feel like we were bouncing over ruts. I felt a stinging sensation where I’d just bit my tongue.

  A moment later, the jarring motions subsided. Seku was actively modifying the shape of the wheels to give us optimal traction and stability. Little blue wisps danced across the blades as they dug into the ice. Only she and I could see the wisps, as neither Kate nor Mayford had the telekinetic sense needed to perceive such things. Still, it was a mesmerizing effect that I almost couldn’t take my eyes off.

  “What is that?” Mayford blurted.

  I almost explained the wisps, but then realized he was pointing toward the ice ahead.

  It was an arm rising out of the ice, and it was moving. No, I thought with growing dread, it’s beckoning…

  We sped past the King of Denmark, who flopped around like a rag doll in a pool of boiling water. I didn’t care why the ice surrounding him was still intact, or why there was steam rising around him. All I knew was that we needed to get to the glaciers where we’d be safe, where I hoped we’d be safe.

  An explosion boomed out behind us. I jerked my head instinctively to see what happened. We nearly flipped before Seku took control of the buggy with her mental abilities. I threw her an apologetic glance, but her attention was elsewhere. She would be driving from this point, and she was better suited for it than I was. That gave me the opportunity to turn around to see what happened.

  The king was no longer in the ice but spinning wildly into the sky. Below him, superheated water had shot him out of his pool like a cannon, and then immediately crystallized into a fine vapor. Beyond him, the fog bank had grown large enough to hide sunlight from the corridor. That’s not to say it had gone dark. For some reason, it glowed an iridescent blue.

  The buggy shuddered again. Seku immediately slowed the vehicle down. Everything outside the canopy was still a blur, but now I could make out details. Cracks had formed in the ice Our razor-thin wheels hit a larger one and briefly lost contact with the ice. We came back down roughly, bouncing over ridges that hadn’t been there moments before. Seku slowed the buggy down further and made a beeline toward the nearest glacier. Fortunately, the white, vertical walls showed no sign of coming apart like the ice plain.

  We made it off the formerly-smooth ice a minute later, and not a moment too soon for my taste. Seku angled the buggy along the base of the glaciers where the snow was thickly packed, and then headed toward the canyon that would lead us away from the south pole and back to Dolina. The wheels bit deeply into the snow, momentarily causing us to bog down. Seku took it in stride, morphing the blades into bulbous wheels with the power of her telekinetic mind. Now we sped along, forced to go slower again as the modified buggy crunched along the packed snow.

  The ice plain was now on my left. It was the one part of the planet I thought would exist forever, but it crumbled before my eyes. The blue light intensified and pulsed beneath the fog bank. Geysers erupted along the frozen shoreline, too close for comfort, and
showered us with frozen mist.

  A deep rumble vibrated through the buggy. Seku gave me a wide-eyed look. She didn’t need telepathy, or rudimentary language skills for that matter, to communicate that she was now very afraid. I shared a nervous glance with Kate and Mayford, both of whom shared the same look.

  Seconds later, the buggy veered back onto the ice and bounced across widening crevices where superheated steam was already wearing down the broken edges. What the hell was Seku doing? I wondered. I looked at her just in time to see a huge block of glacier crash onto the snow to the right of the buggy.

  Either we fall into the corridor when the ice plain collapses, I thought, or we get crushed under a thousand tons of glacier. Neither thought was appealing.

  That’s when the ice plain shattered into a million angular chunks. The smaller ones were big as houses. The bigger ones dwarfed the glacier wall to our right. I fully expected to get drawn into the corridor along with the ice, and then eventually fall beyond the north pole on the other end of the planet.

  I was wrong. Instead of falling downward, the ice exploded upward. Besides my surprise, I felt disappointment. This new development meant that I would die without ever getting to see Arion from space.