FEODAR’S WORLD

By

Amy Gallow

 

 

© copyright May 2007, Amy Gallow

Cover art by Jenny Dixon, © copyright May 2007

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

 

 

Book Two: A New World

 

Prologue

Karrel sat on the crest of the sand dune and watched his sister emerge from the surf. Anneke was ten now, mature beyond her years, patient with her mother’s desire for her to age normally, content with the simple pleasure of absorbing knowledge.

“This one will need worlds to change,” Peter had said when she was born, and he was right. Anneke’s placid determination was balked by nothing. She steamrollered opposition without fuss.

She bridged the distance without effort, translocating to seat herself at his side. “You’re going away again.”

“Yes.”

“It’s a good time to go. I think Mother will be preoccupied for a while. She’s not grown tired of having babies yet.” Anneke’s view of the world was an odd mixture of childlike acceptance and mature prescience, a devastating combination to those unaccustomed to her. “Have you found her yet?”

The change in subject didn’t faze Karrel. His sister had sensed a half-formed thought in his mind and given it substance in a quest for his ideal woman. “No,” he said. “I’m still looking.”

“You might find her this time.”

“It would make it very difficult if I did.” Karrel smiled. “Pushing back through time should create the same imbalance our father found in coming to this world. I wouldn’t be able to stay in her time, and she couldn’t come to mine.”

“You’d find a way. You always do.” Anneke always dismissed difficulties, viewing them not as challenges, but mere irrelevancies.

“I couldn’t use the same method a second time.”

Anneke fell silent.

Their father, Peter, had fashioned their world out of an ideal conceived in the face of his imminent death of old age on Earth, his home world. A decorated veteran of many wars, he’d wished for a world without conflict and environmentally sustainable. He found it between the ticks of his world’s clocks, but the underlying logic of his desires had warped his ideals into a shape he couldn’t accept, and he’d set out to change it. Dael, their mother, was the tool he chose and grew to love, while Karrel was the culmination of his plan to provide a different future for his creation. Time had caught up with Peter on his own world, and Karrel had duped Belen, their mother’s Hive Master, into dying in Peter’s place, satisfying the equilibrium between worlds and time streams.

Done in the heat of the situation to save his father and driven by his mother’s grief, the action had seemed justified, for Belen was not a likeable character, but Karrel was older now and knew more about the individual he’d destroyed so casually. He’d never do the same again.

“You were right then, and you still are,” Anneke said.

Dael’s race had lived in symbiosis with humanity, using individuals as hosts for agreed periods and rewarding them with improved bodies, status and wealth. Telepathic and immortal, they’d had no physical bodies until Dael had created hers in response to Peter’s manipulations. Her children retained her telepathic powers and much of Peter’s ability to create new realities. Increasing numbers of Dael’s people were following her example, producing long-lived telepathic children, but none with Peter’s powers. Karrel and Anneke were unique.

“It no longer feels right.” Karrel closed his mind, hiding the pain. “I’m learning too much about Belen. He’s my path to the past, and the more I learn, the less right it feels.” He could feel Anneke’s warmth surround him, but he held the barriers intact.

Peter had worried initially when he discovered his children had inherited his power to change things, and suggested Karrel research the past, partly to give him back the years he’d sacrificed to save Peter, and partly to separate the two people capable of changing things as far as possible. When Anneke was born with the same power, he’d understood this wasn’t a solution, but Karrel’s interest in the past remained, and he spent much of his time researching the possibilities in the Group Mind of his mother’s race, a repository of every individual’s memory, living or dead. It was here he’d come to know Belen, the Hive Master he’d destroyed.

“So, what do you intend to do?” Anneke was persistent.

“I’ve identified the world they came from,” Karrel said, speaking of his mother’s race, called ‘the Blood’ by the human inhabitants of this world. “I’ve been there, but nothing explains what happened. I’m going to use Belen’s memories as a target and go back to the original confrontation.”

“Are they reliable enough? Peter thinks Belen went through a serious trauma in the past and closed down the memory of it.” Anneke had unintentionally revealed the family discussions of Karrel’s search for answers.

He smiled at her momentary confusion. Peter had already shared his concerns and suggested the solution of checking Belen’s memory against those of the hive members who’d existed as subordinate personalities within Belen’s host at the time. Dael had been one of them, but there were others, as well. He had found the summons Belen had issued when the invading ship had arrived. It gave him an identifiable moment in time to use as a target.

“I’ll stay in Limbo,” he reassured her. “I’ll be safe there, and it won’t disturb the temporal equilibrium.” He crossed mental fingers.

Don’t do that! Anneke’s mental reprimand was sharp, and she reinforced it by grasping his arm. “Be careful. I couldn’t bear anything happening to you.”

Limbo was their father’s first experience of this world, part observation post where everything could be viewed at once through portals created by his mind and part instantaneous connection between any two points in time and space. It had many properties, not the least of which was its ability to shift between the time streams of Peter’s Earth and this one. Karrel had used this to save Peter’s life. Now he intended to stretch it even further, translocate himself through time to the distant past, and find what had driven the Blood from their world.

“If it works as I expect, I should be able to come back to an instant after I leave, so you won’t even know I’m gone.” He grinned at her.

“Don’t try to be too smart. Concentrate on coming back. We’ve plenty of time.”

“Bye.” Karrel prepared to leave.

“Wait.” He felt himself surrounded once more as her small arms held him close. “Be careful.” She gave him a final squeeze and stepped back.

Karrel dematerialized and slipped into the eggshell-blue void he knew as Limbo. The portal he’d created into Belen’s world was still there, and he slipped through it to hover unseen above the streets of its capital, sampling the thoughts below. Nothing had changed. The theocrat Pontiff still ruled. The priests still practiced a primitive form of telepathy, degraded to where they could sense dissent and not much else. The Pontiff’s power was stronger, but Limbo hid Karrel from him. Peter would probably insist something be done about him in the future, but Karrel saw no reason to interfere. His interest lay in the past.

He checked his location against the memories stored in his mind, making adjustments for the tectonic plate movement he sensed below him, and translocated to the east and north until everything matched. This was the point from which Belen had summoned the others. Blanking out everything but the memory of the summons, Karrel slipped back into Limbo and focused his mind ... and found Belen

Not the Belen Karrel remembered. This was a far stronger individual, with a leader’s confidence, based on certainty, not the self-delusions that had weakened his bid for power against Peter. This Belen would never have fallen for the ruse to replace Peter. Karrel could feel the subordinate personalities of the hive in the distant Group Mind and took a moment to identify the one who would become his mother. She was hardly recognizable. Peter and his machinations lay far in her future. Karrel acknowledged anew his father’s superiority. How he’d identified Dael’s potential was a mystery.

He submerged his personality and let himself sink into the mind of the Hive Master.

* * * *

Belen stared up at the night sky. The discomfort of his host body had called him back from the Group Mind to attend to a purely physical need, but he wasn’t bothered. Someone had raised the issue of the subordinate personalities of the hive and the discussions were following the usual trail of futility. Let the others rehash decisions made long ago and still valid.

The responsibilities created by immortality were not easily avoided. They’d reached the sustainable limits of this world long ago and were holding back a population explosion of Commoners by the slimmest of margins. Were it not for their control of innovation, the planet would be on the road to ecological ruin. As it was, the Commoners accepted the current level of Chosen as normal. Increasing it would bring disaster. The subordinate personalities must remain as they were, linked physically to their Hive Master’s Chosen and enjoying the freedom of the Group Mind, a state not without its benefits.

A niggle at the edge of perception begged his attention. It wasn’t local, nor in the Group Mind. He looked inwards, considering the swirl of subordinate personalities making up his hive as they relaxed in the Group Mind. Not there either. He summoned them back, called for stillness, and focused them outwards.

A whisper from the night sky? He focused, catching a fleeting sense of something passing high overhead, and turned his head to follow it. Strange thoughts encased in a metal reality.

A babble of comment from his hive distracted him, odd words forcing their way to the surface. Diaspora--Colony Ships--planetfall--Survey Orbit? He let them run on. The ship had passed beyond his horizon, and he needed to organize his impressions before he informed the Group Mind. Action was imperative. They must have more information quickly.

Stop! The Hive stilled. You. He selected thirty. Calculate the orbit. Another thirty. Collate impressions. I want to know their intentions. He focused on the rest. We need information about them. Weed out everything not confirmed by others. The babble became a purposeful buzz, and he left them for the Group Mind, seeking the other Hive Masters.

With their numbers limited by the population and resources of the planet, they responded promptly, allocating duties to their subordinate personalities and returning to consider a course of action.

Are they hostile?

Insufficient data yet. Unnecessary chatter irritated Belen. He had enough of it from his hive. Wait until all the hives report.

It kept them quiet while the information flowed into the Group Mind and was sorted--not all the Hive Masters had enforced discipline and confusion reigned in some groupings. Belen allowed his host body a smile. It was working out very nicely.

Belen discovered them. Channel all the information through him. It will be quicker. We have other duties, said a Hive Master notorious for his inertia. Belen was too polite to think ‘laziness’.

Sensible. Another’s thought led a chorus of assent, and Belen achieved his first step. They can all report directly to him, from another Hive Master, gave him his second stage.

The others withdrew, and Belen gave them time to depart before he acted.

All stop! He loaded the thought with authority and the chatter stilled. You. He chose one of his own. Collate all the information on orbit. He chose another of his own hive. You, deal with the information on intentions. The rest to me, and I will allocate tasks.

He liked this. The exercise of control had an addictive feel to it. There were probably traps, but he could feel his mind stretching, leaping forward to tasks yet undone.

It took two orbits, neither of them near him, to harden his data, and the results were unbelievably bad. This was a disaster. The scout ship heralded the advent of countless immigrants, the fleeing population of a long-dead planet. The only ray of light was the vulnerability of the crew. They’d all undergone some form of hypnotic conditioning. It left them open. The subordinate personalities could assume command of individuals without their consent.

He thought on this before returning to the Group Mind. The situation had possibilities, some of them frightening. The Hive Masters must be carefully handled.

I’m ready to report. He limited the communication, stopping short of full mind sharing, so he could control the flow. We are facing disaster.

The response was everything he wished for, shock, horror, disbelief, but total focus. They were listening to him as they’d never listened before. It gratified something he’d not known existed. He felt like laughing aloud as the babble around him reached a peak and began to die. This was power.

Explain. It was a chorus.

The intruders, several thousand of them, are on a scout ship of a fleet of colony ships fleeing the destruction of their home system by a wandering black hole. He reinforced the strange words with the images culled from the crew. While they are short-lived, they follow a cultural imperative to survive and dominate as a race. Their near-destruction has hardened this drive, and where the scout ships discover habitable planets, the colony ships, each one dwarfing the scouts, follow. They will come here.

This triggered another burst of babble, and Belen drank it in. He held them in the palm of his hand.

When?

Soon, probably within the next three millennia. An immortal’s concept of time would seem strange to the intruders in the scout ship.

Can we stop them? someone was thinking. It was time to start preparing the ground. They’d never accept his idea unless he prepared them.

Only if we can stop the scout ship from deploying the beacon to broadcast our location. He made explanation unnecessary by sharing the images in his mind.

How? asked the same Hive Master.

Belen made them wait, feigning reluctance to heighten the impact. Everything depended on their reaction. Their hypnotic conditioning makes their minds accessible. We could set our subordinate personalities the task of gaining control and, on a given signal-- He allowed the moment to linger, heightening the effect. --kill them all.

Another moment to savor! The shock silenced them all. Hive Masters, hives, individuals, they were all aghast at the horror he proposed. The Blood rarely killed. The dissolution of another being was incredibly painful. Belen had proposed the unthinkable, multiple killings.

* * * *

Karrel blinked as he resurfaced in Limbo, shaking free of Belen’s personality. Destroying the Hive Master no longer seemed such a crime. Belen was enjoying the monstrous proposal. Feeling the ship approaching, he fled from the contamination of a mind on the edge of madness, and opened a portal in space to study it.

It looked worn, its surface plating scored with a thousand impacts of space dust. Large areas had been replaced, some more recently than others, perhaps as the result of collisions with larger debris. A long cylindrical body, waisted at mid-length with a conical radiation shield at the after end protecting the forward section with its annular ring attached by radial spokes, the whole thing rotated slowly around its axis. He zoomed closer, picking up the mind of a watch keeper in the main control room and finding it unbelievably familiar. He’d come into the past of his mother’s world and found himself in the future of his father’s. This ship was from Peter’s world.

It made finding the commander easy. She was in her private control room studying a hologram of Belen. Strikingly beautiful, a disciplined abundance of dark hair framing an intelligent face, she understood part of what was happening and was planning to increase the radius of the orbit. He didn’t think it would stop Belen, but it might make him pause long enough for some other Hive Master to act. His mother’s people couldn’t do the thing Belen proposed. Relief made him chuckle, more from nerves than amusement.

She reacted to his chuckle, and he found himself thrust out of contact and back into Limbo by an impenetrable barrier.

Her future was barred to him, and he must know why.

Karrel probed backwards, using the ship’s timeline as a guide, until he found the barrier gone.

It was six months earlier and her hypnotic conditioning had just been removed so she could assume command from her predecessor.