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| BACK to contents: Chapter fourteen | A brief introduction to J. Staute |
THE STORY SO FAR: Staute has been immersed in a sophisticated outlaw virtual reality of 2391 AD to seek out a particular player among the chaos. He is accompanied by the android Riki. They've successfully rescued a defecting trooper from the retribution of his superiors and enlisted his aid in locating the native rebel movement.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I recently ran across galleries of fantastic images by Layne Johnson and Jesse van Dijk (far better artists than me!) which look like they could have come out of the virtual gaming realm envisioned in this and related chapters. The Johnson links are Poxnora Illustrations, Concepts & Illustrations, and Sketches. Dijk's are to be found in this Portfolio, and include not only scenes which go well with the gaming environment described below, but some pics which seem to envision the futuristic eras I describe elsewhere in the novel, too. Check them all out for some jaw-dropping artwork! END NOTE.
The village was a strange place. For one thing, it was hidden so well in deep woods you didn't see it until you were right on top of it.
The nearer we came to the settlement, the more twisting and winding the road became. Piles of stones were everywhere alongside the road. As well as sharp spikes, with purplish stains on their tips. Riki said the purple denoted poison. The spikes were mounted on carriages that could be quickly wheeled out to block the road.
Large waxy looking denuded tree trunks hung suspended by ropes in some places, with both a machete stuck in a nearby living tree, and a tiny fire in something resembling a fragile glassed-in kerosene lamp. Evidently the lamp was used to set the treated log afire, then the machete used to cut a rope and drop the log across the road.
There were sentries with wolfish looking dogs stationed at almost every bend. But the dogs were curiously silent, doing no more than sniffing passers by.
By this time Riki had shape changed into a fierce looking sword-carrying warrior, looking very native to Sarum. My fourth skin had camouflaged me into something resembling a trader.
Being an android Riki's outer shell was near identical to a fourth skin in functionality. Hence the easy disguise capability. But independent accessories like a sword and others were harder to bring about. So stuff like that we'd collected along the way to the village. Basically Riki had stolen them using information from his databanks and Frans to guide him to such stores. And he didn't even have to do the dirty work himself: he'd dispatched our buffer fields for the chore.
After that both Riki's and my own third skins had combined to again form something akin to a cut rate fourth skin covering for the trooper. Though the third skins weren't as good at disguise as fourth skins, with the help of the various items scavenged earlier, they sufficed. The trooper, like Riki, now appeared to be a fierce-looking Vrr warrior.
The third skins on Frans also helped us keep him in line. If he started anything a simple mental command from either Riki or myself could nip it in the bud.
We'd hidden Frans's battle suit earlier. It might have represented an enemy to the villagers-- though some natives worshiped Sturme and his troopers, most did not.
Frans didn't seem too surprised by our ability to change both our appearance and his so easily. Riki told me it was because one grew accustomed to such things in Sarum.
When we finally passed through the main gate, I noticed that the village walls made it resemble a fort from America's Old West.
But it was a fort with a shallow moat. Two shallow moats, actually. One around the outer perimeter, separated by a ridge of earth from the second, inner moat.
The vertically standing logs of the wall itself stood soaking at their foot in the inner liquid-filled ditch. The outer channel seemed little more than a greasy pit though, from which a foul odor emanated. Its contents were more slimy looking than liquid.
This arrangement puzzled me, but I said nothing to Riki at the time.
It turned out the fort wall consisted of two layers of logs. The outer layer I saw first, soaking in the moat, stood vertically, while the inner layer lay mostly horizontally, with periodic vertical posts and other devices to keep them in place. There was a dark, narrow space between the two wall layers, which apparently held sentries.
These people had sure went to a lot of trouble here. But apparently it worked.
We soon passed through the gates into the village itself.
Netting stretched over the rooftops, with vines growing through it. In some alleyways the netting drooped so low with the weight of the vines that hanging green tendrils brushed the ground.
In the main avenues of the village, wooden trusses and other support structures rose from sidewalks and buildings to hold up the netting.
The noise in the village was very muted. Everyone whispered when they spoke.
I wouldn't say the villagers were fearful of the monsters which roamed their world. They'd already suffered so much that most fear had hardened into defiance, hatred, and grim determination. But their lack of obvious fear didn't prevent them from being cautious.
Almost no smoke came from their carefully shielded fires. Children worked little bellows that sucked smoke from flames into filters of some kind, before it was released.
It resembled an eerie twilight in the little town even during midday, as it was now.
There were weapons everywhere. It looked like these people were ready for war at a moment's notice.
There were lots and lots of kids. They obviously outnumbered the adults. But they weren't running about and playing like you'd expect.
No, these kids were every bit as somber and quiet and serious as the adults.
Everyone was busy, everyone working. It was like an ant farm version of a human town. Everywhere you looked, something was happening. Meals being prepared. Clothing sewed. Weapons made or sharpened. Eerily quiet contests of skill between warriors.
The competitions we witnessed were strangely limited in their violence. Actual weapons were not used, but only markers. A contest spear, for example, possessed a soft little bag at the tail end of the shaft, containing a dusty red chalk which puffed out onto an opponent when it struck him in blunt instrument mode. In-between strikes a youngster would run to the man reddened so and cover the crimson mark with a new puff of yellow dust. This way the next reddish strike could be easily identified from the last. The theoretical business end of the spears was remarkably like a giant artist's paint brush. Composed of long stiff bristles, shaped to a point, and full of a red dye. It was ingenious. For the 'deeper' that a warrior got speared with it, the bigger a red mark it would leave upon him, as it flayed out against his body. If the tip only brushed him, it left just a tiny trail across his body.
This meant it was easy to see the difference between minor make-believe flesh wounds and fatal punctures.
As violent and dangerous a place as Sarum supposedly was, it seemed strange that its inhabitants took so much care in their competitions. I'd expected a very violent and barbaric people.
Their real weapons were even more curious.
Evidently poisons were used in almost everything. So accessories like gloves and full body coverings were essential.
Antidotes to the poisons were cheaply available, and had some sort of distinguishing label on most of them. Riki told me it was a seal of approval from some native authority.
Crossbows and long bows were evident. But many were a curious collection of pullies and cords, like I hadn't seen before.
[In 1972 I hadn't seen these before; but later they appeared on Earth, and were called compound bows. Such mechanisms added much power and accuracy to the equipment.]
Many of the spears had long spiral ridges running the length of their shafts, and nasty looking complex blades at their heads. Riki told me over the net that the ridges helped them achieve greater accuracy and extended throwing range, as well as increased penetrating power.
I knew I didn't want one thrown at me.
Swords, clubs, knives, nets, and armor, were all represented here.
One curious knife I got to see up close, was evidently made especially for the careful application of poison. For the poison coated blade rested inside a handheld case at all normal times, and only extended outward when the case itself was struck in a stabbing blow against an opponent.
I didn't see too many of these floating around the crowd, however. They didn't seem too popular, for some reason.
We saw one fascinating display of a gas weapon. It was a real Rube Goldberg device, but nevertheless looked like it might eventually develop into something useful.
It was the size of a small horse drawn carriage and, indeed, used a couple of horses to power it.
The horses had ratty looking tubes running into something like giant gas masks on their heads. The masks apparently completely blinded and deafened the horses, as they covered their eyes and ears, as well as their nose and mouth.
The horses stood on moving ramps that they rocked their weight back and forth upon by stepping forward and backward on command. This mechanical action drove something like a huge bellows that was mounted behind them. This bellows spewed out a pink cloud for quite some distance.
Apparently the present pink cloud was only a non-toxic demo-- wisps of it floated over the crowd watching it with no discernable ill effects.
The guy hawking the device claimed it was a way to poison monsters without the necessity of hitting them with arrows or spears.
The crowd seemed leery of his claims.
But I knew the little guy had something there. Though it needed some refining, of course.
Gas weapons had become somewhat feared on Earth by 1972.
At least the little fellow had put gas masks on his horses. For no doubt they would be enveloped as often as the monsters.
The natives had also discovered the utility of phosphorescent paint. We saw it being sold in small amounts. Crudely camouflaged clothing and paints were everywhere. Seeds of thorn bushes and poisonous plants were available for sale too. Poisonous plants I knew how they were used; but thorn bushes? I'd sure hate to wait for a thorn bush to grow while a beastie was coming at me.
Then we ran into something that astounded me.
These for the most part primitive people had newspapers! But how?
I used a bit of our precious little native currency (Arbitur had made us some before we left the Pagnew), to buy one for examination.
It was somewhat fragile, being made of flattened, dried leaves of some kind, cut into squares, and held together in a sandwich of thin layers of something like a strong wax. The wax almost qualified as plastic, but not quite.
A thin strip of wood ran along one side of the paper, binding several pages together. The whole arrangement apparently used a glue of some kind too.
The markings were in ink, but their edges far from sharply defined. In some places the document was downright illegible (Apparently I should have leafed through the vendor's selection for a better quality copy before paying him. Oh well).
The markings looked stenciled, rather than printed in any conventional manner.
The papers were relatively expensive, compared to many of the other wares available in the market place. But still quite a few were bought by the people.
And no wonder. The little papers were goldmines of information.
One page held the latest map of the region.
I was surprised to find that the map did not show the locations of towns or roads, but only natural landmarks such as mountains, woods, and rivers.
The names of towns and roads that existed within this area were instead listed along the sides of the map, with little symbols beside them.
The symbols apparently provided reference data about the various places and byways.
One symbol gave the latest news about what places and roads to stay away from, as they'd been overrun by terrors, or taken by altereds.
Another one evidently meant that some sort of special event was taking place in that location.
There were quite a few other symbols on the map, but even Riki couldn't figure out what they meant.
Riki did tell me the reason towns and roads weren't depicted on the maps were so any altereds getting hold of them wouldn't easily find out where the lesser folk lived or traveled.
There was a sudden disruption of the quiet peace of the village.
People began moving in ways which seemed well rehearsed.
We moved with a group of warriors towards the source of the noise.
A-- pterodactyl? Whatever you call a flying dinosaur bird, there was one stuck in the netting which overhung the city streets!
It was fairly big. Much bigger than I'd ever pictured them when looking at dinosaur books as a kid. Each wing was at least as long as my car.
It made a terrible racket. The noise emanating from its vocal chords reverberated through the whole town. Its struggles looked like they might tear the net at any moment too, and send it crashing down into the street amongst us.
An array of bowmen began busily pumping poisoned arrows into its body.
Within only a few moments, the winged lizard was dead.
Even before it had stopped moving I could see men clambering among the rooftops, heading towards it.
The beast had knocked loose many vines in its struggles. So the somewhat brighter daylight outside was streaming in through the newfound gaps.
I say somewhat brighter light because it was never what you'd call sunny in Vrr. The sky was constantly overcast, day and night. This made every night pitch-black dark. During the day the sky might get fairly bright and hazy at times, but the clouds were ever-present. There was never a break in the cloud cover either.
The reason for the constant cloud blanket was the story-line. That all of Vrr actually existed within enormous terra-formed caverns inside a moon orbiting a gas giant. Powerful lighting systems were intalled in the roof of the caverns to provide artificial daylight. And an eternal unbroken cloud bank below the lights obscured them and the cavern roof to prevent Vrr inhabitants from learning the truth about their environment. With no window to the true sky, there was also no troublesome curiosity or speculation about the stars. Stars from which Wayar and his troopers had come to make Vrr their own private playground.
At least that was a major chunk of the virtual world plot here. A chunk meant to be one of the most profound secrets of Vrr so far as its hapless inhabitants were concerned.
Apparently the village natives were used to this sort of thing. A flying beast getting caught in their netting, I mean. I hadn't noticed it before, but they had ropes strung across between the buildings on either side of the streets, just below the netting. We watched as one man attached a makeshift harness to one, climbed into it, and then was wheeled out over the street by his buddies. I guessed there were pulleys on either side of the sling contraption, though I could not see them from where I stood.
The lone guy was pulled across to where the dead bird hung, dripping poisoned blood onto the street below. Once he'd reached the beast, he began cautiously cutting the net with a knife.
After a few false alarms the net finally gave completely away, and the mass of dead meat slammed into the street below.
I distinctly heard bones break within the winged reptile as it hit.
Other men on the ground immediately began carving up the beast where it fell.
I looked back up at the guy hanging below the ruined netting. He was now carefully repairing the net, with some supplies from a pouch hanging at his side. The guys on the rooftops appeared to be watching carefully for another pterodactyl as he worked.
It was about this time that I noticed a young boy had attached himself to our party. He was dirty and unkempt. He also stank rather badly (In fact, the stink was what I noticed first). He looked undernourished. I was puzzled, as very few of the kids I'd seen in the town looked this bad. I tried to ignore him. But he wouldn't let that continue for long.
We (me and Frans) were ravenously hungry by now. Though my fourth skin's systems could sustain me almost indefinitely via various methods, Ling had told me beforehand that was best reserved for emergencies-- and ingesting my own recycled wastes as part of the deal didn't appeal to me much anyway (you call that progress?). I'd already taken a couple meals from the suit since descent from the Pagnew, but figured those first ones couldn't be recycled since I hadn't been in the suit long enough yet. However, the uncertainty of content would rise with each suit meal to come. Plus, my skins would protect me from any poisons or bacteria in the local food anyway, and we had money to buy it, so we could eat up! Then there was Frans-- he had no choice but to eat the local cuisine anyway (I could only hope he didn't get sick!). So we stopped to eat at a little tavern kind of place. Indoors, the locals allowed themselves to be a bit louder, obviously. The people acted much more normally here than outside.
The kid was brazen enough that he plopped down right beside us at a table.
"Goddamn little bastard! Get the hell outta here!" Frans ordered him, with disgust.
Frans's reaction seemed a bit harsh, considering he'd risked his life to save children like this from the abuses of his fellow troopers. But the kid did stink badly enough to almost gag us. And we were hoping to eat a meal here.
The kid paid Frans no heed whatsoever.
"Hello. My name is Gjord. What is yours?" He was looking directly at me.
Frans raised his arm to either push him away or smack him maybe(?), but Riki stopped him with lightning fast reflexes.
I thought to myself that Frans had better be careful; inorganics like Riki had strong principles programmed into them to protect human beings from violence, even from other human beings. Riki would try his best not to harm Frans, but he also wouldn't let Frans harm the boy-- and if Frans escalated his efforts sufficiently I had no doubt he'd feel a proportional amount of pain for it.
Of course, if we had to, we could let the third skins monitoring Frans's movements tighten up some again-- but we didn't want to do that unless it was really necessary.
Arbitur had loaded my fourth skin with a language database for Sarum. But I was only now really getting the hang of it.
It was great to use for listening to someone speaking in the language. Because almost as you saw their lips move you heard their words in your own language, inside your head. The process was pretty transparent in that respect.
But it wasn't quite so nice in the other direction. If you had to speak in the strange language, I mean.
To speak in the Sarum languages, I first thought of what I wanted to say at my node translator, in English. Then my mix of fourth and second skins would manipulate my lips and tongue to mouth the words, while also managing my breathing to support the effort. This mimicking of the local language worked great so far as outside observers were concerned. But for me it was extremely unpleasant, awkward, and jarring-- the demands the process made on my natural breathing rhythms was close to painful.
It seemed an awfully cumbersome process. And helped me see why the crew aboard the Pagnew were so unpracticed in speech. Vocalizing was a drag when you had the net-- especially to speak a language in which you yourself weren't fluent. The aspect of using my voice at all now was getting unpleasant in general, after having been on the net for a while.
Most of the time I could squeeze out a whole Sarum sentence in one chunk-- if it wasn't too long or complex, that is. But still my Sarum speech was stilted and stammering for the most part, as I struggled to breathe at a pace that worked with the speech. When I got too far out of synch with the suit, I found my natural diaphragm being caught in a bind by the fourth skin's prodding.
Of course, all this trouble wasn't really necessary. The fourth skin could be set to simply speak for you, perfectly. But Riki forbade that, because it would ruin our disguises, since my fourth skin would make the sounds, but not sufficiently realistic facial manipulations to match them. It wasn't that the skins didn't have the potential to do it-- it was just that no one had ever taught these particular skins how.
Man! You'd think by 2483 they would have gotten around to doing something like that, right? Well, maybe not. Maybe I was just pissed because talking Sarum speak was hard on me.
"Look, Gjord. My friend over here doesn't like you much. And you do need a bath pretty bad. Why don't you go home and get cleaned up, and when you get back we'll talk to you?"
I thought myself pretty smart. Not only for getting all that out of my mouth; by the time the kid returned, we'd be long gone.
"I have no home." Gjord answered.
"Well," I figured he and his family must be nomads, then, "just go show your parents how dirty you are, and I'm sure they'll clean you up."
"I have no parents."
By now I was getting to know more about Gjord than I wanted to. But Riki didn't know I planned to stop asking questions there. When he detected a lull in the conversation he happily jumped in. And made it worse.
"What happened to your parents?"
"I believe them dead. I last saw them on Rockford Way--"
I remembered that as a major road listed on the map.
"-- during an attack by terrors. Many terrors. There was a caravan of us making the trek from Burning Hill to Casca. I have heard men say we were unlucky, we were caught in an early migration of a terror herd. It was awful. I had three sisters too. But I have seen none of my family since that day."
The little guy looked pitiful.
"Who takes care of you now?" I asked.
"I am alone. Gjord takes care of Gjord."
Evidently he wasn't doing very well at it. He looked not too far from starvation, now that I knew more about his circumstances. All the kids in my own family had been pretty lean naturally. So little Gjord's slim frame and near gaunt look hadn't struck me as that unusual when I first saw him.
A waitress of sorts was making rounds in the place. She stopped and took our orders. I ordered a meal for the kid too. I wondered how long our money would last.
"How long has it been since you lost your family?"
"Three weeks." My node translated for me, into units I understood.
"How do you eat?"
"I beg for scraps outside taverns, like this one."
"It doesn't look like you get many."
"No, I don't. Gurdnarheim has many orphans already on their scrap lists."
Gurdnarheim. So that was the name of this place. I'd have to look for it on the map later. Both Riki and Frans had warned me not to ask questions of the town folk, as certain sensitive information was passed only between family and friends.
Strangers asking questions could find they only got trouble for answers.
Wait. Was Gurdnarheim the name of this town, or the name of this tavern?
Maybe this kid was a blessing in disguise (excellent disguise!). For he might have lots of local information we could use.
"Gjord, what made you approach us?" Frans asked him, apparently realizing that Riki and I were not going to let him get rid of the boy.
"A merchant with two warrior guards must be rich. Maybe he needs a slave I think. A small one, who can go where his big guards can't. A spy. Or a thief maybe."
Gjord looked at me again. I was the one dressed as a merchant, so he thought me the head of the gang. Well, come to think of it, I guess I was.
"Well Gjord, we have no need for slaves at this time," I began. And watched all hope drain from Gjord's face. It was awful. I made a snap decision.
"But we could make use of a guide. We have traveled far from home, and have no family in these parts. Do you know the region well?"
Gjord's eyes welled up with tears, as his face beamed in a smile. And mine almost did too. I just had to hope my fake fourth skin face didn't emulate that part of my expression.
"Yes, milord! I will be the best guide you ever had!" Gjord jumped up from his seat, grabbed my hand, and began kissing it. It was embarrassing. Not to mention possibly very unsanitary. Even though there was a thin film of fourth skin (not to mention the second underneath) completely protecting my hand from germs, I quickly withdrew it anyway by instinct.
"That's not necessary, Gjord. I'm sure you'll make us a fine guide. But your first chore will be to get cleaned up, after our meal. And buy yourself some clothes. We can't be seen with a poorly clothed guide now, can we? It'd be bad for business."
"Yes, milord."
The meal was surprisingly good. Though Frans did complain several times about Gjord's stench. I had to admit that the kid's stink didn't mix well with the food.
Later I discovered I could have had the fourth skin filter out the odor for me personally, with a single command. Tsk, tsk.
After the meal we had Gjord show us the way to an inn, where we took a room and paid for a bath for Gjord and Frans (The nano tech aids of Riki and I rendered such things unnecessary for us, of course. Apparently second skins weren't yet widespread at Frans's origin-- or else they were far less functional at cleanliness).
Though I didn't let Gjord know it, we were fast running short of Sarum money. Ergo the cramped single instead of multiple rooms.
Gjord just assumed the arrangement was for security reasons.
It turned out that Gjord was only seven years old. He would have been a first grader on Earth. I wondered what would happen to the little guy when we left.
But I had to put that out of my mind. After all, I couldn't save the whole world-- no matter what Ling believed about me being the Signposts guy. I shook my head thinking about it.
Then the thought of all the room and resources onboard the Pagnew struck me. Enough to take care of all of Gurdnarheim for a lifetime. Keep them all safe from the terrors. But it wasn't that simple, was it? I was forgetting all these people here were more like ghosts in a big computer, their real physical selves locked away somewhere far from the actual Pagnew's location near the deep space communications relay. There was no way we could truly rescue even little Gjord from our present vantage point.
We had about as much chance of actually saving someone here as we did of me seeing Sym again.
I shook my head to rid myself of the thought, and try to go to sleep. Fortunately the trials of the day along with the surprisingly decent meal helped me pass out pretty quickly.
Gurdnarheim was indeed the name of the village, it turned out. And the scrap lists were names of orphans registered with the town, to be cared for by all the various businesses there whose resources might be relevant to supplying the basic needs of children, such as food, water, education, etc., etc. A good portion of the business owners had themselves been orphans at one point in their young lives, and that seemed to help keep the practice going. Many families of the village also took in as many orphans as they could. But it seemed there were always just a bit more than the village could easily absorb.
It turned out that many places did what they could to care for orphans on Sarum. At least in this region anyway.
But Gjord had suffered a particular bit of bad luck. Because he'd been from Burning Hill, a town considered an enemy of Gurdnarheim, and so they'd refused to put him on the lists. They wouldn't expressly harm him, or drive him out of the village, but they wouldn't go out of their way to care for him either.
Little Gjord was so happy to be with us, that it hurt. Me, that is. It made it even better for him that we were so interested in finding out everything he knew about Sarum. This meant we encouraged him to talk quite a bit. He loved the attention. After the loss of his family he'd been somewhat isolated among the town folk, and even among the local kids. Now all those folks saw more value in him-- due to his job working for us: a rich merchant with two warriors entourage.
Now he was in paradise.
It wouldn't last for long, I thought.
Riki and I had little else to go on but Frans's original plan. Arbitur's mission plan was very short on specifics. He'd told us he couldn't provide many details because even the master script for Sarum itself consisted only of vague outlines in many spots, with the details to be written in by the participants themselves. Only where the plot threatened to go out of bounds in a significant way would the simulation monitors apply corrections by force, or perhaps alert higher authorities to an anomaly.
Frans had deserted Wayar's forces after seeing what terrible crimes were being committed against the people of Vrr.
Frans didn't know all the details about what was happening throughout the land, but he knew whatever it was it had to be reported to the authorities.
His fellow troopers had reported his feelings to superiors however, and Frans quickly found himself in deep shit.
He'd barely managed to escape from the station. And there wasn't really any place for him to escape to. For virtually all the inhabitants of Sarum knew the signs of Wayar's minions, and hated them at least as much as the terrors and many altereds.
So Frans had known he was jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
But to insure that he was dispatched, the station had sent the Resigent after him.
Frans's plan had been (and still was, due to his uncertainty about us) a desperate one. He meant to locate a rebel center of operations and join their cause. He had little other choice, really. The only way off world, or even to contact the authorities-- so far as Frans knew-- lay exclusively in Wayar's hands. Our own cover story notwithstanding.
Frans figured he could greatly aid the resistance with his intimate knowledge of Wayar's strategies, tactics, and technologies, if only the rebels would let him live long enough to prove it.
Frans had heard rumors of a rebel camp somewhere near Gurdnarheim. So that was our destination.
We didn't want to risk asking the townspeople ourselves. So we sent Gjord out to do so. We told him to try to find out how we could contact the rebels, without attracting too much attention to himself.
We soon thought we'd succeeded. A meeting was arranged with a guy who could supposedly lead us to the rebels. For a fee, of course.
The next day, late in the evening, we met with the stranger. He demanded payment first, before all else. Then he led us out of town and into the woods. We quickly left all semblance of road or path behind. Darkness was soon falling, with no camp in sight.
I'd known from the very first that I didn't like the excursion to the rebel camp. It started so late in the day that we couldn't help but get caught by nightfall. I really didn't want to be caught in those woods after dark.
I didn't even like being in them in the daytime.
Our supposed 'guide' soon disappeared into the darkness. Or tried to. He meant to leave us stranded and lost in the woods, at the mercy of the terrors.
But he hadn't counted on the great powers of perception and adaptability that our technological toys gave Riki and me.
When we could see him in infra-red sneaking off while not answering our verbal calls to him, we used one of the third skins residing around Frans to capture him. The third skin immobilized the character, and he dropped helplessly to the ground.
We then confronted our would-be betrayer.
He was terrified. When the third skin first enveloped him, he thought it some new terror, or the action of a nearby altered being.
When he heard us approach and address him, his fright focused on us.
He now regarded at least one of us to be of the altered.
"No! Please! I am your slave! I will do anything you wish! Please do not harm me!" He cried with anguish.
Frans and Gjord of course were both in the dark, just like the stranger. Literally. Only Riki and I could see anything. We'd led the two of them with us to where the stranger was restrained.
"We should kill him." Little Gjord spoke in the blackness, with vehemence in his voice. "He was leaving us to die."
"Not true! Not true! I was--I was only checking the path ahead! I was going to come back for you! Truly I was!"
Riki and I knew he was lying.
"You have only one chance to live, you know," I spoke verbally aloud, with what I hoped sounded like conviction in my voice. Because I was pretty pissed at him, regardless of the fact that our high tech toys had prevented his scheme from working.
I kept in mind what he'd planned to do to us.
"Anything! I will do anything you ask! Please, milord, I do not wish to die!"
"All you have to do is what you originally promised to. Lead us to the rebel camp." Damn, but speaking through the fourth skin in this manner was tough!
"Milord, there is no rebel camp! Any rebels that may have been there before have left! Our town was afraid they would make the gods angry with us, and so we made them leave!"
My internal node readouts said he was lying again, based on analysis of his pulse, blood pressure, skin conductivity, and other things.
The third skin wrapped tightly around him was transmitting much more data to Riki and I than we could have gotten without it. We knew everything there was to know about this guy at this moment, physically speaking.
"Who do you think we are?" I asked him.
"You are gods?" His tone was unsure.
"We are not gods. We are just travelers, from far away."
"Please, milord, release me from your invisible beast! I fear it will devour me!"
The third skin really had him spooked. That gave me an idea.
"Though we are not gods, you can see that we are friends of the Earth-- friends of Vrr herself--" I corrected my gaff. "We are here to aid the rebels against the altered, and against Sturme himself. Not to harm them, in any way."
Something in my words struck a chord with the stranger. He stiffened inside his nano tech cocoon.
"But milord, cannot Vrr herself lead you better than I? I know nothing, while Vrr should know all!"
Damn! He had me there. If Vrr itself could speak to me, it could surely tell me where the rebels were hiding, couldn't it? Why would I then have to bother with a villager? I really had too little experience at being a lying con-man to carry this off. And dealing with the annoyance of the fourth skin synch just made things even harder.
"Do you not understand? Vrr is friend to the rebels as well. Friend to all the lesser folk of Vrr. Sturme and the altereds and the terrors do not belong on Vrr. They were brought here from elsewhere--"
Riki interrupted my tale over the net-- the others could not hear his words, or mine in response to him.
*You are breaking council guidelines, Jerry Staute. You speak truth that is not yet allowed to be known on this world. You must cease.*
*But anyone with an imagination could come up with the same tale, Riki. And I left out the fact that the lesser folk themselves don't belong here either! So I'm not really doing what you think...*
This silenced Riki for a moment, while he pondered my net words.
I returned to my audible train of speech.
"Vrr herself has told my people that we may only help the lesser folk if they wish it so. We have powers which could help the lesser folk a great deal. And we wish rid of the terrors as much as the lesser folk do. But Vrr has said all this is up to the lesser folk. For she loves them best."
OK, OK, so I got a bit corny at the end. But I couldn't help it. I was running out of material! And it wasn't like Mr. Super-advanced Riki know-it-all or Mr. from-the-future Frans were jumping in to help. I was by myself out here, so far as our story was concerned.
"But-- but--" The stranger was calming down a bit, as he realized he just might live through all this. After all, we hadn't dismembered him yet, had we?
"If you are not of the altered, or the lesser folk, then from what people are you? The dwarves?"
Uh oh. Think fast.
"We are older even than the dwarves. We are also very few. We knew Vrr before the terrors or the altereds came. We can remember when the lesser folk lived in peace and joy. The lesser folk know us not, as we have never wished to interfere with their lives. But we call ourselves--"
Come on, come on, come on, brain!
"-- the Okra."
Egads! I'd come up dry. I'd tried to think of something that would sound non-threatening and yet exotic to the stranger. But I'd ended up with the name of a vegetable from my home state of Tennessee. Okra. God, was I embarrassed. But I had to run with it, now that I'd said it.
"Plants good for eating?" The stranger repeated what he'd heard.
Damnation! My translating fourth skin had not let the guy hear 'okra'. Instead, it'd tried to translate the meaning into the closest Sarum equivalent.
Which was vegetables, of course.
I commanded my node to provide me with a new term. One completely unknown and meaningless to the stranger in his own language. And to speak the term aloud whenever I used the word "okra" in a verbal communication.
"No. I apologize. I was trying to translate the name of our people into your language. But it is difficult. We call ourselves the Okra."
This time the translators didn't muck it up.
And I made a mental note to watch out for such things in the future. For these universal translators could be real pains in the ass when you were improvising.
Or lying.
After much more verbal bungling of this sort, I somehow managed to convince the guy that we really were a strange new people no one had heard of before.
It helped that Riki and I could use our nano toys to show off weird abilities.
Of course, Gjord ate it all up too. Now he thought he was leading powerful beings of some sort around, and that made him happier than ever.
It turned out that our newest prisoner had family among the rebels, and so he would have rather died than give them away. So we couldn't get him to lead us to their camp. At least, not with the methods of persuasion we were willing to use on him.
Instead, we all returned to town, where the fellow said he'd bring someone who could speak with us about the rebels.
I got my money back from him. We needed it, and since he knew we could kill him easily to get it, he didn't argue.
I was a little uneasy about the turn events had taken. For we were now sitting ducks for an attack by our ex-prisoner's friends.
It comforted me somewhat to know that Riki and I had nano technology from 92 years in the future to protect us. But Frans had only the third skins plus some native attire over his trooper long johns, and Gjord nothing but the native Vrr clothes on his back.
If only one person got hurt it'd be Gjord.
Riki had been steadily adding to my knowledge of Sarum from his own store, over the net, as our journey progressed. Even had we not felt pressed for time into taking on this mission, learning this stuff in context as we went along was probably the most cost-effective means-- at least for most topics involved.
As Wayar's ships were themselves Realtime shifters according to the plot, they were quite formidable in their own right. As the energy requirements for shifting didn't change over time, that meant Wayar's ships (on paper anyway) possessed raw energy on a par with the Pagnew, at the very least. Perhaps more, as they were designed to be battle-ready, while the Pagnew was purely an exploration vessel (at least before our Sol and renegade tech inspired alterations).
In other words, despite our 92 year edge in technologies, we might still be vulnerable to the level of the energies applicable by Sarum-based forces, even in this virtual environment. So Riki advised we do our best not to 'get in the way' of such forces, if at all possible. Just in case.
It was the next day before anyone showed up to see us. Our ex-prisoner arrived, this time in the company of another.
The second stranger was dressed in a long gray cloak, with a hood pulled low over his face.
I didn't like this.
Surprisingly, the failed bushwhacker quickly begged off, and fled. Fled is the only word for it. He seemed genuinely scared.
I wondered if he'd delivered an altered being hit man to our door. If so, maybe we'd see just how much difference there was in Wayar's technology and our own, in this little fantasy world.
The hooded stranger began speaking.
"Jessup is a good man. He was doing what was expected of him yesterday, by leading you away from the village. He feared you brought danger to his friends and family. Do you fault him for this?"
Frans beat the rest of us to the reply.
"Goddamn right! We could have died out there! You damn well know there's forty one different kinds of death walking around out there in the dark-- and that's on a good night!" I marveled at the transparent language processing being carried out by the Sarum program here. For Frans was speaking in his own Swedish, while the stranger seemed to be using some dialect of Farsi, or Persian. And me, I knew only American English. But we all of us could understand one another like we were all speaking the same tongue. Yeah, my fourth skin was doing some disguise-related stuff with my own moments of speech, but the Sarum simulation itself was working the miracles with the disparate languages. The only way I knew what real languages everyone was using was they showed up in a realtime information box through my node.
The stranger showed no signs of being bothered by Frans's outburst.
"It was my understanding you were in no immediate danger when Jessup tried to leave your company--"
This time I jumped in to head off Frans. Speaking aloud again. Man! I'd be glad when even this simulation of verbal speech was over with! I want my shush net node!
"That's correct. We weren't in immediate danger. But we would still have been very unhappy to find ourselves stranded in that place. Also, we were dismayed that Jessup would take so lightly the bargain we'd struck with him. We had paid him good money to take us to the rebels--"
"Which he did, did he not?"
"What? No, he-- oh-- I see. You mean, he has now."
"Yes."
"But he only did that because we were able to catch him when he tried to sneak off."
"You are wrong. One way or the other, you would have met with those you sought."
I didn't understand what he meant. But I didn't feel like quibbling over it either.
 Kurellian in an early battle of magicks with one of Wayar's several incarnations in Sarum 128. |
"Look, let's get down to business. OK?" "That is agreeable with me." "Our friend Frans here was wishing to meet with you--" "You lied to Jessup." "What? Oh yeah. Well, we didn't quite know what to do, when he started to run out on us that way--" "I wish Chazra." "Huh?" Frans spoke up again. "He means he wants us all to meditate with him. It's a sort of ritual that's done on certain occasions." Frans didn't look too happy about it. "What's wrong, Frans?" "Chakra is something requiring the presence of a fairly high up member of the order of adepts in order to work. Either this guy is such a person...or he's impersonating one. I'm not sure which would be worse." "I am an adept." The hooded figure replied. "You have no need to fear Chazra-- unless you plan to harm my people. Or me. Do you?" This guy sure was direct. And seemingly extraordinarily confident as well, considering he was outnumbered three point five to one (counting Gjord), with one adversary a super strong, fast, and smart nano eye android, another a trained soldier from Wayar's forces (albeit unarmed I suppose but for hand combat skills), and the third, me, in a fourth skin that had already driven off a fully armed Resigent! Hell, I figured we could eat this guy for lunch if he gave us any grief. But Frans seemed apprehensive for some reason. Of course, he didn't know the full extent of what Riki and I were capable of. I never did like cockiness. I responded to the stranger with some of my own.
|
|
[Correction: I didn't like cockiness in others-- it was different if I could display it myself at that age. Ah, to be a young and naive half-educated American male in the early seventies. My tendencies back then would cost me dearly in the years to come. I wonder how such predilections will play out in this Vrr tale?] "Listen Mr. Adept, or whatever your name is: we don't plan on hurting anybody if we can help it. But if we did, we sure wouldn't be scared by the likes of you! So stick that in your pipe and smoke it!" The hooded figure said nothing. That irritated me even more. *Jerry, I urge caution,* came Riki's message over the net. The stranger could not hear it. *Caution from what? We aren't doing anything!* I protested back, via the same channel. *Nevertheless, the presence of an adept may be significant.* *How so?* *The adepts were among the leaders of the resistance which eventually drove Wayar from power in Sarum. Indeed, foremost among these was one called Kurellian. Kurellian single-handedly performed deeds which are looked upon near a century later as singularly fantastic, with many still unexplained-- if the accounts may be trusted.* *Like what?* I responded with skepticism. *The records are in dispute over the climax of the Endwar. But all speak of Kurellian grappling directly with the robotic form of Sturme himself-- and overcoming him.* *Well, if this Kurellian was an altered being, then he'd have a good chance of doing so, wouldn't he?* *Yes. But Kurellian was not an altered, according to the reports. He was essentially one of the lesser folk.* *Well, maybe there was something else that helped him. Maybe he got in a lucky lick on the robot.* |
 Wayar torturing a captured Kurellian. |
 Kurellian's revenge, and the climax of Sarum 128's Endwar. |
*Jerry, the Sturme ceremonial mechanism was one of the unique marvels created by Wayar's engineers in this simulation. It was humanoid in shape, but not in scale. It stood over ninety meters tall. Its design remains the largest animated humanoid form ever constructed in such functional and realistic detail-- even in mere simulations-- by my own origin.* *Ninety meters? Isn't that-- um-- two hundred and seventy feet?* I wasn't good at that metric stuff; I always had to translate it to real measurements to understand it. Apparently everybody from the Pagnew's time knew nothing else. Two hundred and seventy feet, divided by around ten, would make it around twenty-seven stories tall? No way! *Approximately so, yes.* *Goddamn! How the hell did he do it then? Kurellian, I mean. By setting some sort of trap for it?* *If so, it was a marvel of manipulation. For by the time of the battle Kurellian was a quadriplegic in Sarum. He was devoid of all limbs, as well as being blind, deaf, and mute.* *Damn! What the hell happened to him?* *Wayar mutilated and tortured him so. Kurellian eventually exacted his revenge despite those handicaps.* I involuntarily shivered. As the entire discussion had taken place between Riki and I over the high speed shush net, it had required only a second or so. But there was sufficient time passed so that the hooded figure took it as his cue to speak again. His words were not soothing. "We should introduce ourselves. I am Kurellian." Holy shit! |
It turned out that Kurellian was not such a bad guy after all. But he sure was smart-- or something. Because he could see right through lies. He saw the truth of the Okra ploy, and didn't find it a bit funny. But he seemed to understand that there were secrets about our own people which we could not reveal, just as there were about his own.
It turned out that Kurellian was considered a powerful wizard by his people.
Since using his real name kept conjuring up visions of his grim future as a quadriplegic, I quickly began referring to him by his popular title, instead.
He didn't seem to care much what I called him.
Despite his knowing that the Okra race was a spur of the moment lie, he still went along with our story that we were there to help. Though you'd think it impossible, I believe he could at least partially read our thoughts. So he gathered bits and pieces of the truth that we hid. I don't know how much he got exactly, but apparently it was enough to convince him we were OK.
After reading each of us individually in Chazra, he agreed to take us to his camp. I figured reading Riki had to pose some problems for him-- but if so he never let on.
He warned Frans that although he'd passed the first test in the reading, he'd have to pass still more before he'd be fully accepted into the rebel fold.
As Frans was the first defector ever from the strongholds of Sturme/Wayar, he would have a much harder row to plow than your average recruit. He'd be expected to give secrets which would allow a successful strike at Wayar's forces themselves; something that even Sturme's own rebellious and super-powered sons had not yet accomplished (though several had died in the attempt; long story there).
Frans had no compunctions against doing so. And in fact was trying to give Kurellian far more than that. Frans wanted to explain the full truth of Sarum to him (or, at least the truth as he understood it): that Sarum was a moon, and all that. But of course, then he had to go into all the facts about space and stars and light years and ships; which I figured would make him sound crazy to Kurellian. For the Vrr folk themselves weren't supposed to be aware of anything existing above the constant cloud cover over their landscape. Basically they supposedly all lived within the vast caverns which honeycombed a moon orbiting a gas giant. The innards of the moon had been terra-formed by folks in the hire of Wayar. Then Wayar had populated the place with real people, animals, and plants, along with a bunch of artificially enhanced folks and beasts too. Just as in real life, in the Vrr story Wayar had kidnapped and brainwashed much of the populace to plant them here. Then Wayar had begun lording it over them all with the advanced technology of his orbiting starship and troopers. As well as inventing his super god alter ego of Sturme.
Got all that? I hope so!
So Kurellian wasn't supposed to know if he climbed certain Vrrian mountains all the way to the top he'd find their slopes inverting to make them the gigantic supporting columns of an enormous cavern. Columns formed from the melding together of great stalactites and stalagmites. But Kurellian took it all seriously. Surprisingly so. I asked him if all this did not sound a bit bizarre to him.
"Yes. It is strange. But as I have heard of such a possibility before, it is not new to me."
"But where have you heard this before?"
"From a good friend. You may have heard of him, even in your own homelands. He was called Kadd White."
Kadd White? Who the hell was that? And how could he have known about all this? From what I understood of Sarum none of the players but Wayar knew of the scripted moon aspect of Sarum, and the idea that its malevolent god of gods was really just a rich kid from another world. If Frans was the first deserter from Wayar's group, where else could the information had come from?
Riki noticed my puzzlement over the net, and tried to answer me as best he could. His info flowed to me through my node.
*By my origin Kadd White was the accepted father of the resistance movement on Sarum. It is now known that his original identity before kidnapping and transplantation onto Sarum was Kit Drusann. From the records of the life of Kit Drusann it can be extrapolated that the routine brainwashing process was not entirely effective on this individual, due to an abnormally active lifestyle entailing heavy experimental drug use, and recreational altered states in general. Kit Drusann was a relatively well-known smuggler among the colonies of the time just predating Sarum's creation. He was somewhat wealthy from his trade, using much of his monies to fund his psychedelic and other experimentation. One drug he may have used was a close chemical relative to that essential to Wayar's brainwashing procedures. Kit may have developed a resistance to its effects from his own prior usage. It is also theorized that other factors played a role in his unique contribution to Sarum's uprising.
*These other factors included his selection as a candidate for Sarum, and the choice of character script given him after his initial brain wipe.
*The installation of Kit Drusann into the Sarum scenario was an accident.
*During the massive abduction campaign carried out by Wayar to populate Sarum, humanity was undergoing many important changes. Among these was a rapid integration of inorganic technology in ways new and profound to human beings. Such transformations, or retrofits, often required as much as several years to complete, during which much of the time the person undergoing the procedure would be incommunicado with their normal circle of family and friends.
*For one source of his victims, Wayar exploited this time of disassociation by abducting patients just admitted to a dummy institution he'd set up for the purpose, and immediately incorporating them into the Sarum project. As the demand for the procedure was booming at the time, he suffered from no shortage of candidates. Once he had them in his grasp, he could use them for several years before anyone would think anything amiss. What few inquiries were made by concerned friends and family were easily handled by his corporate resources.
*Though Kit was most famous for smuggling data, apparently he sometimes dabbled in its initial acquisition as well. For it is believed he was contracted to gather classified data concerning the C.U.W.S. contract Wayar's firm was using as a springboard for Sarum, and stumbled across some aspect of Sarum itself.
*He discovered the abductions and what was being done with the victims, and made the mistake of reacting immediately, solely on his own. Perhaps his previous easy victories against the government, other smugglers, and breaking into corporate data stores had excessively emboldened him. Perhaps he was overcome with outrage at the plight of the pilfered minds. Whatever the reason, Kit tried to break the project from the inside, the very night he discovered it. Kit managed to write himself into the script, much as we did. In his modification Kit outfitted himself with a formidable assault craft borrowed from those he himself had been pursued by often enough. He sought out Wayar's orbiting craft to disrupt the simulation's continuity by destroying it. However, he hadn't learned enough about the Sarum script prior to his attack to achieve his aims. Rather than strike Wayar's vessel, he mistakenly struck at two fictional alien ships who, according to the story line, were abducting potential Sarum inhabitants from space-liners. The alien craft and their mission were write-protected elements of the Sarum script-- too near the very beginning to allow any changes-- and so Kit triggered a contradiction in the script which the referee intelligences involved resolved by vaporizing his ship and making him a captive of the fictional aliens. In Realtime, Wayar's technicians were informed of the unusual occurrence, and Kit's body located and retrieved from where he sat entranced by the illegal game.*
*Yeah, yeah, yeah, Riki. But what happened after Kit was truly indoctrinated into Sarum?*
*Now that they had Kit, they used him. But as he was not one of those for which they possessed a comprehensive dossier, they were unable to make his transformation into a Sarum citizen as successfully as they did most others.
*The technicians involved, for instance, did not realize that the character script they replaced Kit's original personality with was much too close to his real one.
*This fact, compounded with that of Kit's unexpected resistance to the brainwashing process, and his own earlier voluntary insertion into the reality, left some parts of his original self and memories intact.
*This circumstance apparently led to Kit's new persona Kadd being much more shrewd and knowledgeable than was expected or desired by the Org.
*Kadd eventually became a galvanizing agent for rebellion, education, and technological innovation in Sarum. And these things led to the Org and Wayar ultimately losing control of the fantasy world they had created.*
As you can see, the shit was getting deep here. This adventure in Sarum seemed in some ways more complex than that with the Sol in the future. Future? It'd happened in my own past, but for Kurellian the Sol were still in the future. And yet, it was also still in the future for me too, if you looked at it from the perspective of my origin time.
Despite the deluge of future history I was getting here, and the havoc that was being wreaked on my sense of chronological perspective, I had to admit that being on Vrr so far had seemed at least a little bit like home. Because here were apparently real trees and people, as opposed to scenario gel fantasies and robots. Everything here seemed truly made of natural materials; you could see the grain in the wood, and feel the dirt of the ground. You could smell the plant life and hear the animals. The gritty realism of Vrr was different in some subtle way from the scenarios aboard the Pagnew.
Of course, I wasn't too crazy about meeting up with natural bugs again-- I much preferred the robotic versions of those.
Kurellian took us to his camp. I was surprised to find only a handful of people there. Then he informed us that the main camp was still a ways on.
We spent the night with Kurellian and about three other natives.
The campsite was near the base of a major mountain of Vrr. This particular part of the mountain presented a near vertical face, as if it had been sliced with a giant knife.
We were near the base of the mount here, but not actually at it. Instead, we were some thirty or forty feet above the lowest points around, on a generous ledge which also offered a convenient overhang for protection from the weather.
The natives had a couple of wolf dogs with them. Normally I would have been somewhat nervous about the fairly imposing looking animals; but now I was getting used to the idea that my fourth skin would protect me from such small harms as wolf bites.
Gjord struck up an instant friendship with one of the wolves and its master.
Frans was sullen, as if dreading proving himself to the rebels.
Riki mostly kept his silence. I suspected he was recording everything for the archives aboard the Pagnew. After all, this was a point in Sarum's history about which the official records of Riki's origin had little hard information. And here we were, in the company of one of Sarum's most prominent characters, Kurellian himself! If nano eyes could experience ecstasy, I suspected Riki was in it now.
As darkness fell, the natives distributed a handful of little contraptions about the outermost edges of the camp site.
"What's those things for?" I asked Kurellian.
"Those are axeri. They make sounds like those of a deadly snake-thing--" My translator told me 'snake-thing' apparently because it had no correlating term to Kurellian's word there.
"-- that man, beast, and terror alike all know to avoid. It is the animal from which we get our best poisons. With these sounds about us, we should have few problems during the night."
"You mean everything will stay away from us?"
"Yes. Everything but true snake-things. But that is good. The dogs will help us catch any that appear, and we will have more poison."
This made me a little uneasy, despite my likely bite-proof fourth skin.
But the night progressed well. In fact, it turned out to be great fun, considering that we were all pretty much strangers to one another here.
The weird combination hissing and clicking noise made by the axeri acted a lot like white noise generators for us inside camp. It soon got to the point that I noticed almost none of the night noises emanating from the forest. And we all relaxed pretty well too, as we grew confident that the axeri protected us from the terrors.
It didn't hurt anything that Kurellian's buddies had brought some skins of wine along too.
We actually got a bit drunk that night, believe it not. Well, all of us but Riki and Frans, that is. Riki couldn't, and I had a bit of a hard time explaining why to Kurellian. Frans of course was too uptight about upcoming events to loosen up in that fashion.
Even Gjord got a bit drunk. I didn't give him any, but the other guys did.
We all told jokes, and sung and danced a little, before turning in. All in all, it was a pretty fun evening. But it did take us a while to find suitable common ground joke-wise to hit it off there. It helped that I remembered a few jokes Steve had told me.
I found out later that it'd all been a setup, to screen us further before taking us to the main camp.
There'd actually been others outside camp, watching for anyone following us, as well as noting our own behavior.
I'd been born and raised in rural Tennessee. So I'd spent lots of times in the woods playing and exploring as a kid. There'd been wild and dangerous animals from time to time, but mostly they were few and far between. Bears out of the nearby national park occasionally wandered closer to town, and rumors of rare mountain lion sightings stirred up the folk every once in a while.
I'd been scared a few times by getting too close to bear country; seen the clawed tree trunks which represented territorial bounds between animals. And sometimes actually smelled the beasts, when I was really, really too close.
But I'd never actually encountered any bears face-to-face, except in my dreams. And at the zoo.
No, the greatest real danger in the woods of home had come later, when I was more fully grown. Then, packs of wild dogs had developed to roam the countryside, attacking small livestock and such.
I'd had the misfortune of encountering such packs several times.
After having had to deal with such animals a few times, I could never look at anyone's pet dogs in quite the same way again. For I knew then how easily they could turn into vicious killers.
Virtually all the wild dogs of my youthful encounters had been someone's pets at one time, or were the progeny of such pets.
Being so familiar of man was what made them dangerous; they'd lost their fear of him. Familiarity breeds contempt, or so they say.
In Tennessee, there were certain natural noises that you heard regularly: roosters crowing early in the morning, birds singing, crickets a'chirping. Sometimes a neighbor's dog would do some barking. Rarely, very rarely, you'd hear the howling of the wild dogs. Hopefully from far, far away.
But overall the woods of Tennessee had usually been a peaceful place. Especially in my childhood years. I could remember times me and my friends found secret valleys (actually small ravines) with enormous vines hanging from the trees, and swung about deliriously happy for hours on end. And deliciously perfect creeks, in which we built clay mud dams, and played mock wars with the natural paraphernalia that lay all about, such as empty tree nut shells for little boat fleets in the water. We built forts and secret hideouts of brush. Sometimes we merely careened up and down the winding hill paths at dangerously high speeds on our bikes, just for the thrill of it all.
But Sarum was vastly different from home.
Here, there were ominous noises all about you, all the time. At night it got a bit worse, but even during the day it could be unbelievably intense, in spots.
Now there was always something running and crashing through the trees and brush just outside your camp! The woods were literally filled with all kinds of nasty things.
By now I understood that my first landing on Vrr after the fight with the Resigent was something of an anomaly. Maybe the noise of water dripping from the trees had made it difficult for me to hear the normal thrashing in the woods around me, and also prevented predators from hearing my own, or maybe lots of animals simply didn't venture out into the rain here. Whatever the reason, my first foray into the woods of Sarum had been an abnormally peaceful one, judging from my experiences since.
There weren't any wild dogs in Sarum. Here there were only wolves.
But the rebels had domesticated quite a large number of them-- even calling them dogs already-- so real dogs might someday evolve in Sarum too, just as they had on Earth.
If the simulation ran long enough, that is.
Man! It was getting tougher and tougher to remember none of this was real! I could see now why the virtual reality tech of Sarum had been heavily restricted later on.
Anyway, the reason the rebels had recruited the wolves was that they needed all the help they could get against the other beasties in the world.
The rebels also had horses. I was thoroughly disgusted to discover that Sarum had no automobiles. I had to ride a horse to get anywhere with the rebels, if I didn't want to even more slowly walk.
At least, I did if I didn't want to give away the special capabilities my high tech gear gave me. Unfortunately, Riki said we had to minimize the use of our artificial skins and fields. To conserve energy reserves, among other things.
I don't like horses. They're too big, for one thing. And many times too hard to control as well, for another.
But it was easier to outrun monsters on horseback than on foot!
On Sarum the animal population was distributed something like this: normal large Earth type land animals like bear and deer and big mountain cats, roamed mostly the upper slopes of the mountains, which were fairly common here. The low lands were where the terrors ruled.
Many of the terrors were altered beasts. This included everything from never-before-imagined kinds of fantasy dinosaurs, to giant saber tooth tigers, mammoths, and grizzly bears as big as two story houses.
And then there were the living and breathing mythologicals!
The mythological terrors included dragons, griffins, harpies, giant serpents, and everything else you could dig up out of the legend books.
But all these were just the altered beasts in Sarum-- there were also the altered beings themselves. Both the Olympian and Norse God pantheons were here (or at least those members which had survived past conflicts), as well as their accompanying hordes of giants, elves, dwarves, trolls, sorcerers, centaurs, satyrs, nymphs, and monsters.
On top of all this were the living places. These were actual locations that themselves were haunted, or possessed by spirits or great powers. Some of them could and would talk to you. And some did things to you.
But places weren't the only weird things that appeared to live here. Certain inanimate objects did as well. Like magical talismans, or weapons.
The whole place was the ultimate fantasy horror trip, come to life.
And right smack in the middle of it were many thousands of normal, non-altered human beings, struggling as best they could to survive through it all.
Even though Ling and everybody had told me about all this before I'd came, still I thought that most of the tales being told around the camp fire were hogwash; until I saw the real things for myself-- usually only days later.
Sarum was a hell hole. I couldn't believe what Wayar was subjecting all these hapless people to in this place.
To be in Sarum was to live in fear. There were goddamn horrible monsters every-freaking-where. There were even goddamn mutant rats the size of full grown prize Tennessee hogs in that place! Do you how big that is? Picture a rat that's three feet tall at the front shoulder, while on all fours. Now figure it as being over six feet long from the tip of its nose to where its tail begins. And the root of that tail is bigger around than a man's thigh!
Even the biggest non-altered wolves on Sarum weren't bigger than those goddamn rats.
I hate rats.
The mountains of Vrr were considered the best places to live overall, as the majority of the terrors didn't often roam too far up the mountain-sides.
But if you went too far up the mountains, and into the mists of the permanent clouds of Vrr, worse things than even the terrors awaited you.
What was up there? No one knew. For everyone who'd ever passed into the mists had never returned.
It was rumored that Kadd White himself had passed into the high mists, after the nation he'd headed had been destroyed by the altereds. People said that he had went into the mists to look for a way to free Vrr from the terrors.
So in short, the high mists were taboo.
Although the mountainsides were considered great places to live, human beings still had to have hubs of more concentrated civilization for purposes of trade and general advancement. Hence the settlements of the highlands like Gurdnarheim which basically coalesced either in special spots protected by some sort of magic, or locations made easier to defend and hold due to natural terrain features, or where there were other elements conducive to self-preservation.
The next day we finally got to see the main camp. I was surprised to discover it was wholly underground. The entrance was at the base of another mountain. Inside, it expanded to an impressive network of passage ways that honeycombed the mountain and the land upon which it rested.
The refuge was a giant maze of tunnels which apparently extended hundreds of feet underground.
The rebels claimed there were many such places on Vrr. The only trouble was that not all of them were empty.
Riki knew from his origin records concerning Sarum that in the master script these formations were for the most part natural occurrences on Vrr; original caverns that honeycombed the world before Wayar's minions ever began modifying the place.
The network of caves fit in nicely with Wayar's fantasy plans. They'd been earmarked in the 'official' Sarum history books as being largely the domain of the dwarves. Supposedly a huge dwarf empire had existed in Sarum's pre-history. But its population had since shrunk to the relatively small numbers known to the present civilizations on Vrr.
Rumors persisted that the original and greatest ruler of the dwarf empire had somehow returned from the dead, and might soon revive the dying culture.
The rebels warned us about avoiding the ghosts of the caves. They said that dwarf spirits still haunted the tunnels, and would choke the very life from your body if you ventured too far into their realm.
Like everything else, in the beginning I took this with a grain of salt. But, as screwed up as this place was by Wayar, there was really no telling what might be true, or not.
[Hmmm-- this just sounds like bad air pockets to me. I've encountered them in Earth-based caverns many times. There's nothing mystical about them; they're just places where there's insufficient oxygen to support life, due to poor ventilation or other factors underground. Of course I'm talking real life versus a fantasy tale here.]
The rebels explained to us they were working to bring on what they called the Endwar. They planned to have as many of the inhabitants of Vrr on their side as possible before it began.
They claimed they already had a great many of the lesser folk pledged to their cause. And that even a few of the altered beings themselves were allied with them.
Their number one foe was Sturme himself, with Wayar second (they didn't know the god and the starship captain were one and the same). Kadd White had been the first man to target Sturme as the focus for the Endwar, some years before. He'd said then that Sturme was the ultimate source of the never-ending horrors they faced, and that they'd never have any hope of changing Vrr for the better until Sturme was destroyed or driven away.
According to Riki's archives Kadd White seemed to have been the primary galvanizing agent for the resistance. He'd first built up one of the strongest lesser folk nations in all of Sarum, and spearheaded the development of technological innovation and institutionalized education in this reality. Many of the organizations now existing among the lesser folk owed their beginnings to his efforts, either directly or indirectly. In other words, Kadd White had been to Sarum what the founding fathers had been to the USA in 1776.
But White had paid dearly for his deeds. For his beloved state had been besieged like no other in the history of Sarum. Sturme had made sure at the least that no nation the likes of Kadd's would lead an Endwar, should it come.
White himself may have been killed in the final death throes of his country. But the enormity of the siege on his city-state gave added weight to his words, so far as the people of Vrr were concerned.
The cause White had espoused during his lifetime eventually became the purpose of all those seeking freedom in Sarum.
Apparently there was already trouble in the main camp, when we arrived. Kurellian was advised quickly that something was amiss, though he wouldn't tell us what.
Finally we found out from Gjord, who could mix better with the rebels than we could.
There was a terror in the caves. Some sort of worm that was staging random attacks at the periphery of the regions inhabited by the rebels.
The rebels had to kill it, as they needed the stronghold too badly to relinquish it. But they were having trouble doing so, as the network was so vast, and essentially comprised a formidable maze of unknown avenues and byways.
Most of the women, children, and elderly had been moved into the areas considered most safe by the leaders. As our value was not yet known to the rebels, they planned to place us among those regions considered most at risk, along with their warrior class.
I thought that was pretty nice of them.
From that point on I was nervous every time we rounded a corner or walked past an opening in the caves. I half expected a monster to be waiting anywhere.
But several days passed somewhat uneventfully. Uneventfully, that is, as encounters with monsters were concerned.
There was actually a lot happened otherwise. Kurellian introduced us to the rest of his friends, and a big deal was made about Frans's defection. But ninety percent of the crowd were from Missouri, evidently. They wanted Frans to prove where his loyalties lay by helping them do some real damage to their enemies.
Frans was very willing to oblige. Kurellian had warned him not to refer to matters concerning space and such, however.
Kurellian said his compatriots weren't yet ready to know that sort of thing. First things first, and all that.
Riki and I also had a few things to prove. But it was a little more difficult than Frans's job. For there was much we needed to hold back from Kurellian, while Kurellian himself seemed able to sense some stuff directly from us, no matter what we did. And it sure was tough keeping our stories straight! Thankfully Riki was better equipped at that than me, and jumped in wherever I started to get mixed up about it all. He could even monitor my transgressions via the net when we were apart, thank goodness!
So we could only act as if we were a couple of altered beings who wanted to join in the crusade.
And say that we hoped our helping Frans reach them was proof enough. We told them a little about how we'd captured Frans, and drove off the Resigent.
Frans substantiated our story, but cast some doubts on us as well. One really grateful fellow, that Frans.
So the rebels had to have more. We demonstrated a few of the powers that our technology gave us; Riki his super strength and speed, and me infra-red vision and invulnerability to weapons. It was difficult not to instinctively dodge or otherwise resist the warriors plunging at me with their knives and spears. Ouch! But at least it did make me more confident in the protection the skins gave me. It helps to see such things with your own eyes, and feel them with your own unharmed middle.
With the new information from Frans, and the extra resources of Riki and I, the rebels decided to attack an undersea fortress! Undersea! Can you believe it?
How in the world these primitive people could attack an undersea hut, much less a fortress, was beyond me.
But I soon found out how they planned to do it. They were going to make Frans, Riki and me all major elements of the attack.
They planned to retrieve the depleted battle suit Frans had been wearing when we'd captured him. And refurbish its energy and weapons from things they'd salvaged from previous battles with Wayar's troops.
Then the three of us would make a frontal attack on the fortress-- while the rebels attacked from within.
It turned out that they'd discovered a tunnel leading right from another nearby underground refuge like this one to the fortress itself, running under the sea. They planned to use it to emerge in the midst of the enemy, even as Riki, Frans and I attacked from outside.
Hey, it sounded crazy enough to actually work! Except for one thing.
I was scared to death of deep water. And I sure didn't want to go into it to attack a fortress. Hell, the seas here were supposed to be full of gigantic monsters! We probably couldn't make it through the monsters to even get to the fortress!
But everyone was forging ahead with plans to do it anyway.
I hoped that Riki and I would get out of it, if for no other reason than that we'd be interfering too much with Sarum's natural development; a definite no-no as far as the authorities at the Pagnew's origin might be concerned. But no such luck.