In the ancient literature, they called it "hyperspace." Lacking the conceptual tools for discussing the means for spatial displacement which didn't require actually crossing the space, they came up with a word which missed the point, but was still popularly used. The technical explanations were not his specialty, but he was aware enough to be able to say something about the process of cutting across vast physical distances between star systems in modern travel. The mathematics made it seem like grabbing hold of some anchor point and sliding space around until you had brought your destination to you. The process of grabbing that anchor point and moving space took time, and they referred to as "stepping into hyperspace."
Without that means of spatial displacement, there would be no particular need for him to travel. That is, there would really be no place for him to go. Humanity had long ago stumbled upon that technology, and immediately sent probes to places they had only dreamed. At first, they had to send them out, then bring them back. Information traveled at the speed of light, and this business of stepping aside from space was immeasurably quicker for unmanned machines. Send enough probes into enough distant places, and when they came back, they would have data which hinted at worlds which, as statistical probabilities had long told them, were almost like Earth. Given the vast number of stars, it was inevitable they found quite a few. It was human nature to want to explore these Terran planets first hand, with hopes of colonizing.
It took some time before anyone realized how to pass humans through that experience. First, the machines had to scale down the process of hooking up to those imaginary anchor points. All the previous speculation couldn't guess what it did to the mind of humans, and even now they still weren't exactly sure. The people came back from the initial attempts in all manner of different psychoses. Some were fetal, some permanently unintelligible with irregular noises and gestures which no computer could diagram into consistent patterns. Some were afraid of everything, and the worst were those unafraid of anything. The range was limited only by the limited number of failed attempts. Eventually the scientists simply slowed the process until some invisible threshold was crossed, and folks were able to adjust.
Then the search and classification began in earnest, followed quickly by colonization. And again followed quickly by the wars. For all their brilliance, humans could not tame that instinct, could not breed it out, reason it out, research it out -- it was a permanent feature. Oddly, it was the technological advances of war which made colonization easier. They found a way to pass some weapon strikes across the anchoring process without leaving it. With weapons came the ability to transmit data, since what's the point of striking if you can't aim the weapon? They discovered it meant adding another variable to the mathematical algorithms, because an anchor point wasn't actually in any one place. As long as the anchor point was validly constructed, so to speak, something could be released from it anywhere in space. It took some doing to figure out a way to calibrate the multiple points of exit, and correlate them with known places for targeting, then receive the feedback, but it all made colonization all that much easier and efficient, since any anchor point could examine any place.
Eventually someone with power or influence got sick of the fighting and convinced others to feel the same way. Then there were truces and pieces of peace, but there was never any really great peace without first an exhausting war across most of human space. This last war was particularly widespread, and many colonies lost contact with each other. Centralizing control would wax and wane with the winds of fashion, but centralized communications seemed always fundamentally essential. So after massive galaxy-wide wars like the last one, the academics who had been waiting for things to calm down would send out their researchers to survey what had changed among the known human systems. When, as was this case, they stumbled across a colony long forgotten, they were all the more eager.
Dr. Plimick was just such an eager researcher. His specialty was currently referred to as Interstellar Anthropology. Only half-way through his expected life span, he was already a member of several academic boards and associations, and on staff with three different governing entities. They had recently gotten in contact with a world which seemed to have missed the last three wars, which meant even Plimick's grandfather was not alive when this one went out of contact. So it was, Dr. Plimick was watching the few instruments he could understand on the ship's command console, indicating the predicted cyclical timing of anchoring, swapping space around, then releasing the anchor in hailing distance from the recent find. His education and experience indicated caution was essential in their approach to this "lost world."
He stared into the darkened ceiling.
The concept of "bureaucratic efficiency" had been an oxymoron since the creation of bureaucrats. His request for a separate space to simply sit and think quietly was almost unheard of in that day and time, so the agency disregarded it. Instead, he got a ship like all the others. It was therefore necessary to set the control for sleep mode, darkening the only living space in the ship, while he let his mind wander. Simply closing the eyes didn't do it. He wasn't sure why, but it simply worked that way. He would never have considered using the escape pod, as the ship itself was confining enough. Still, it was far better than hitching a ride with a freighter or military transport.
His lack of adventurous spirit was a major factor in his career choice and status. His intellect was quite ordinary, but it was sufficient to use the spooler system. His one advantage was what he called "intuition." By any other name, it was simply the mental trick of leaping across logical steps, even stepping outside the path somewhat. At any rate, the process was not entirely logical, but the results were sufficiently useful to give him an edge. He wasn't sure he could teach anyone else how to do it, but that was for the neuromedicine guys, and he wasn't one of them.
As with many things, neuromedicine research had chased a great many false leads before settling into a fairly mature path of progress. As soon as it became possible to make cyborgs by mating computer hardware directly to the neural system, it was performed on a large number of volunteers. Everyone wanted the advantage of improved memory handling and abstract number crunching. But of course, as soon as any hardware was surgically implanted, it was already obsolete. By the time any lab could produce a working prototype, someone else had already discovered a better way to interact with the nervous system.
Then the research chased a rolling upgrade by making the linking hardware modular, but even that became obsolete all too quickly. So they had on the one hand a bunch of test subjects either stuck with unsupported hardware, or undergoing a string of repetitive surgeries. Medical science, for all its advancements, never could find a way to poke artificial holes in people without causing problems of one kind or another. The tissue eventually broke down and refused to heal any more. That, on top of all the times when the process of "welding" man and machine itself went wrong.
Adding wireless technology created a really huge mess, and was still the number one problem some two centuries later. Make the receiver chip too sensitive and people couldn't easily shut off the mass of background noise from proliferating environmental signals. Automated filtering and range, or other attenuations, never quite worked. And what any good lab could do with decent intentions, a criminal lab could pervert with evil intent. So the entire human problem with addictions moved to this new wireless receiver neural implant technology, and each improvement only gave the "dope dealers" a new way to addict their victims. It became possible to stream into the mind an entire virtual existence, and the market in prerecorded fantasy worlds was still the largest economic engine in the galaxy. Connoisseurs could discuss the fine-grained differences between the engines which competed in blending reality with fantasy, so you could be blissfully lost even while normally productive.
It made it also too easy to turn people into the most horrific killing machines. Rather early in the game, some worlds became almost uninhabitable. It helped to confuse things for Dr. Plimick's research, because of the constant shifting alliances and battlefields, markets, and all the other manifestations of mass human madness. For all it's good, the cyborg sciences very nearly ended the entire human race more than once. They were currently in a fairly stable and boring cycle, and he greatly preferred that sort of boredom over the alternative.
By the time he was born, Dr. Plimick was in a fairly safe environment. The huge amount of human knowledge which made up the minimum these days required at least some computer assistance, so the spooling system came into use. It was simply a very minimal, very weak wireless receptor which allowed a fairly conservative and routine transfer of factual knowledge into the brain. It did so with a minimum of disturbance to the psyche, and by its very limitations prevented anyone hijacking his mind, though it could hardly help him verify what he was being fed. That was the ancient ways of academia, something which thankfully never died out.
But it was often entirely too objective and factual, and seldom gave meaning to all the mass of data. The very safety of the system for learning also made it essentially lifeless. He would have been the same as anyone else that way, but one day during a localized power outage which hit in mid-stream of a spool, he found his brain went right on as if the data was being fed. Having no actual input, there was something which kept processing -- not exactly synthesizing and extrapolating, but pulling sense from some "outside" source which was actually inside. Most importantly, it added a coloration, a value and a sense of demand which mere spooling data didn't have. He had no words to explain it, so he kept it to himself. Instead, he tested it carefully, and found it worked best when he was away from other people, and in quiet, low-light settings. It didn't always come to full blown life, but it came most reliably in such an environment.
About the only time he could reasonably do that in the hurry-hurry, high efficiency culture around him was during those times when most people were forced to use the pocket spoolers. One day, he simply didn't turn it on, but held it in the usual place so no one would notice he was not spooling, but doing something else with his brain time. Eventually, he would go to a spooling booth and simply keep the transmitter just outside the range of his receiver implant. It was this stepping outside, so very carefully, the mainstream of his academic world which gave him the edge over the masses, among whom all were accelerated by spooling to the point only a rare few could distinguish themselves. When others wasted their time with entertainment spooling, he was doing that other thing, which is how he found himself in competitive standing for one of the survey missions.
When he spooled the prospectus listing of what was known or guessed about these "lost" worlds, one jumped out at him. It was the first time he could recall having such a reaction during spooling. Normally, just about everything which wasn't automated routine physical behavior, or linked to that behavior, was almost smothered by the process of spooling data into his receiver. But that other hidden process seemed to have been waiting in the background, like a trap set for a specific prey, and it sprang on the one, oldest set of data. But its age was not what called up that other process. It was clearly something germane to the way the process worked itself, because nothing he could identify consciously made it all that special. Yet his intuition shouted this was what he had been waiting for, even though he never knew he was waiting for anything at all.
He was hoping that process would activate, giving him some new perspective, during this quiet time in the ship before the alarms notified him it was cycling off the anchor point. He knew it had provided that perspective, but this was the first time he sensed it without any obvious, concrete signs in his conscious intellect.
Caution, indeed.
His data indicated the most common name for the star was Dolores. For a moment Dr. Plimick's mind chased several humorous threads from that name. Ancient literature brimmed with associations. What brought him back quickly was the utter failure of the ship's sensors to detect anything useful about the planet. He checked visual: a fuzzy white ball. Great; a cloud world.
The planet spun retrograde to Terran standard, and the gravity was just a tad light at 0.93%. It was the fourth planet from the star, which was marginally larger than Sol, but well within expected habitable standards elsewhere. It's year was a few days longer, so it's orbit was just a bit farther out than Sol-Terra standard. Energy absorption from the star would make the planet a little warm, but the distance made it a little cooler. The magnetic belts were almost invisible.
The ship's sensors were fully automated, of course, and he could see the computers trying different ways to get some readings. Eventually what took shape on the console before him reminded him of the earliest spool sets in the academic library back home. The data was copied from ancient sources in other formats, and on some of it, the spooling enhancements were more prominent than the actual information. Just so, the data on the planet was sparse.
The computers ran more checks to ensure this was the right star system, the right planet, etc. Eventually, the console reported with some moderate probability a wide equatorial band of nothing. That is, no apparent activity which could be interpreted as humanoid. The northern hemisphere was relatively quiet, and most of the active signs were in the south. Extrapolation would indicate a moderate climate under such dense cloud cover, so polar regions might not be too harsh. There didn't appear to be any actual cities, and most of the land was probably in the southern hemisphere.
This was just a bit more detail than he already had from previous surveys.
By now, most planets would have noticed the scanning and hailed his ship, or even fired on him. The planet below him remained quiet. The ship had also been attempting various forms of signaling, but so far nothing resembling any known signal came back. Then the ship's sensors spotted a tiny artificial satellite, very close in to the cloud cover. It was almost flying as opposed to actually orbiting, since it was bouncing in and out of the thin outer reaches of the atmosphere, and hardly as large as a human body.
He watched the ship's system track, then try to contact the thing. It was part metallic, along with plenty of organic materials, with wings of fabric. The ship guessed the fabric included some sort of passive solar energy conversion. He watched it for awhile, using both visual and sensor displays trained on the thing. It was very slow, very small, and didn't seem to respond. Just as it began to approach the dark side of the planet, the little craft let loose a single squawk of radio signal.
The ship's computers processed it quickly, and noted it was tightly compressed coding of an older standard communication protocol. It was terse, though not exactly dense in terms of language use.
Welcome to Dalorius Four. Safe landing at our southern pole. Please forgive the lack of guidance beacons.
He knew the ship could program itself to cross hyperspace and drop out on the surface at the south pole without the usual landing beacons. He decided to wait one more lap from their flying message pod. Meanwhile, he tried to research the name spelling, and found one peculiar reference to something about a religious group, something unsavory. However, the context was itself a little unsavory, coming during the last attempt at creating a galactic empire. An incredibly intelligent dynasty of some three men and one woman had managed to gather influence and power. But when the woman took the throne, she decided a means of better unity was religion. It was fairly open, pulling in a broad menu of current and ancient ideas. You could choose just about any flavor you liked, as long as your flavor didn't include teachings contrary to certain imperial doctrines regarding interaction with political rulers.
While the whole thing collapsed in the usual ugly ways all empires fail, one of the episodes of decline included purging dissenting religious groups. The Imperial troops hounded some conscientious objectors, which naturally drove a fresh wave of colonization. One particular group was labeled with all sorts of hideous moral crimes, in a time when such was increasingly the tactic of unreasoning oppression. While every mention of this group was tinged with revulsion for their moral depravity, historians were pretty sure at least some of it was sheer propaganda. The group disappeared from the records just before the empire collapsed into the first of three, truly wide spread wars.
The official name was the Smiling Death Cult, but Dr. Plimick was pretty sure that was part of the propaganda. They didn't seem to have a name for themselves. There were no overt connections to the star's name, but he assumed either one of the leaders was called Dalorius, or it was a word with some peculiar religious significance.
At any rate, he settled back into his intuitive mode while waiting for the ship's sensors to detect the flying message pod again.
For once, he had actually gotten rather bored. It took quite some time before he saw the flying pod again, or one like it -- most of a waking cycle and half the following sleep cycle. He noted the unsurprising repetition of the previous sighting, then drifted back off to sleep.
He barely ate anything for breakfast and immediately sequenced the ship to anchor and slip the south pole up under it. Immediate safety checks showed the air was breathable, a light wind with cool temperatures. The humidity was predictably high for a shrouded planet. There were no perceptible threats anywhere near, just a tent some distance away. There appeared some life, but the sensors had trouble getting back much more than white noise. The visual display seemed similarly afflicted, barely making out the tent before what seemed a fog bank enveloping everything.
There seemed nothing left but to don appropriate clothing and step out. The airlock had little to do in this case, and his exit was almost as fast as he could normally move. A built-in platform grating folded out from beneath the portal just before he stepped onto it. His first surprise was the view was much clearer than the sensors indicated, though the clouds hung quite low. The tent in the distance was sharply defined and the horizon swept away to some low humped ridges in the distance. Glancing about, he noted one quarter of the horizon presented such humps.
The air tasted of the seashore, and a variable breeze blew. The ground was rocky, but the stones were mostly flat and dark, like broken shards of slate, but worn almost smooth. The ship had extended the landing legs fully, so he turned and backed down the ladder attached to one of them. The broken slate seemed rather packed and solid beneath his boots. His coveralls seemed sufficient for the ambient air temperature. As he strode in the direction of the tent, his hand checked for the tiny energy weapon in the low breast pocket -- it was about the size and shape of any stylus.
As he approached the tent, a figure stepped out through the open doorway. There were as many protocols as there were inhabited planets, and many more which vied for the most common use in situations like this. Against his own steady, faintly cautious gate, the fellow from the tent approached with some energy, though not quite in a hurry. Dr. Plimick stopped with just a few paces between them. The other fellow wore a light robe, falling just below the knees, over a comfortable looking tunic of the same length. The coloration was mostly brown and gray, but there were what appeared to be decorative patches and trim of dark red and green. The man's bearded face wore a wide, toothy grin, and closed the distance to about arm's length between them.
The man was a bit taller, clearly older, yet full of life. He quickly bowed slightly from the waist, then spoke. It was an almost musical, lilting dialect of standard galactic trade language. The vocabulary was fairly old, but Dr. Plimick had no trouble following it.
"Welcome to Dalorius Four, which we like to call 'Misty' for obvious reasons. I am called Elder Manley, but I would prefer you use my personal name, George."
Old Earth names. Dr. Plimick quickly matched George's bow. "My name is Doctor Plimick, and you can call me Fortis."
"We haven't had visitors in a while, Fortis. I'm personally very pleased to see a stranger to our planet, and I assure you that reflects the sentiment of those I represent." He waved his hands to indicate the landscape around them. "It's a rather dreary place to meet visitors, but it's the simplest and best answer to a very complicated situation. I'll be glad to explain more later. For now, I wonder if you have any traveler's needs?"
The man's bubbling sing-song enunciation was matched by wide ranging facial expressions and body language. On the one hand was the thoroughly trained wariness of any anthropologist visiting a foreign world, but this man's mere presence was altogether disarming. Dr. Plimick tried to avoid betraying any of this, but George seemed too aware, almost reading his mind.
"Fortis, please, take all the time and precautions you need to feel comfortable. Here on Misty, you will find us altogether unhurried. It is not merely our culture, but the necessary nature of our existence under this white foamy sky."
His hands indicated the billowing cloud bottoms rolling around above them, seemingly just a couple hundred meters from the ground. Here and there in the distance, an occasional wisp would drift downward to the ground. Then George crossed his arms over his belly and leaned back with a peaceful smile. Such an obvious gesture of patience made Dr. Plimick feel just a little embarrassed.
"My apologies, George. While the wars across the galaxy have quieted a great deal during the past decade, the relative calm seems always to be a hard, and brittle shell over something dangerous which never dies. To encounter someone who is utterly open is so rare, we have this gut reaction to be suspicious."
"So we understand from our news gathering birds," George answered quietly. Then with a renewed animation, "But I believe you will find I am a fair representation of what you'll find on the entire planet. Unlike most worlds, we did not develop such a widely diverging mix of cultural array. The population is fairly sparse, we live a largely pastoral and agricultural existence. The original colonists were mostly one extended family with only a few extra influences married in, so genetic variation is fairly narrow. There are no urban centers to offer the breeding ground of highly specialized interests, and the resulting rapid shift in language and culture. You will find us quite boring as anthropologists measure things."
Dr. Plimick's eyebrows rose at the mention of his academic specialty. How did this man know?
Again, George seemed to read his mind. "Then you are an anthropologist yourself?" He took Dr. Plimick's half-smile as affirmative. "We had anticipated something like that. Every time trade stops for awhile, and our birds pick up mostly encrypted traffic, we know there is war. Then, after the blood lust has spent itself, it's typical to see explorers of various sorts as the initial restoration of outside contacts. Surely you know there is a bit of the anthropologist in every explorer, whether his underlying motive is trade, war or anything else?"
Dr. Plimick's smile was slowly broadening. "So you are the Anthropologist's Reception Committee?"
"It is among the responsibilities I bear. I was hoping to offer you a summary of things you are likely to find of interest before we go and visit the planet. We are eager to renew trade, but for us, eagerness means we expect things to get going again in a year or so." He stopped and took on a solemn face. "However, it is my duty to ask you to ensure your ship's computer is able to navigate itself back out past our cloudy envelope without the typical sensing measures. Once out of our atmosphere, everything will work as you expect, but inside the envelope, almost nothing works. Depending on technological specifics, your ship may have trouble leaving. We would be loathe for you to find yourself trapped here."
It took only a short time to check his ship, then he approached the tent. Fortis hesitated a moment at the doorway of the tent, blinking. There was artificial lighting inside, but it still took a moment for his eyes to adjust. His attention was drawn to the odd luminescence in patches on the inside face of the sloping tent roof.
"Our eyes seldom encounter direct light on Misty, so we are quicker to adjust to to low light conditions. When you feel comfortable, please have a seat." The shadowy form waited for Fortis to sit first. The chair was some sort of fabric stretched over a hard frame. It gave just enough, and seemed slightly springy, yet altogether comfortable in conforming to his own shape. It held his weight easily, but the frame was obviously very light. His hand touched something rare among places he had visited -- natural wood grain. He would have to pay at least a month's salary for such a chair back home, if it were available at all.
As George eased into a matching seat almost facing him, Fortis saw a man somewhat older than himself. Unlike the almost generic olive-toned skin of blended races he was used to seeing, the lanky robed man was naturally quite pale where his skin was exposed. George composed himself slowly, then turned to face Fortis.
"I suppose your ship can find it's way out of this cloud envelope?"
Fortis half smiled. "The computers say they can't see anything, but would have no trouble reversing the last maneuver, which should be safe, since it was above the orbital plane of your star system."
George's eyes sparkled merrily in the light spilling through the tent doorway. "Isn't it strange how we continue to apply the ancient Terran standards of polarity? Technically, we sit at the very bottom of Misty, but it could as easily be the top. Then it would seem our rotation was normal, instead of retrograde."
Fortis nodded his recognition.
George continued. "I suppose your ship told you something about Misty?"
It took only a few seconds for Fortis to recount the few details, noting it was just a bit more than what he already knew.
George shook his head with what Fortis felt was exaggerated humor. Suddenly, the elder's face went rather serious, with a wrinkled brow. "I dare say, your automated systems didn't really read that from the planet itself." Fortis raised his eyebrows in question. "You are aware at one time it was necessary to plant beacons for interstellar navigation?"
"Yes; my ship noted one just outside your star system," Fortis replied.
George half-smiled. "Just before the last war started, a military survey ship stopped by, warning us things were heating up. He also told us he would update the beacon's records of nearby inhabited worlds. In those days it was considered highly encrypted. I suppose, given the nature of things, such encryption has been long broken."
Fortis wasn't even aware of any encryption schemes, but noted his ship's computers had no trouble reading the ancient beacon. He was surprised it still functioned.
"And I suppose you didn't perform any directed scanning, but simply allowed the automated system to do its work?" George seemed to be on the verge of delivering a punch line for a joke.
"No. I'm not even sure I would know how," Fortis replied with a shrug.
George nodded sagely. "I'm willing to wager your ship simply told you what it had collated from the beacon." He waited a moment, then stared directly into the eyes of Fortis. "Aside from the visible light spectrum, nothing penetrates Misty's clouds. Nothing. Your energy weapon is utterly useless here. Feel free to carry it, but you couldn't use it."
For just a moment, butterflies tickled Fortis's stomach. But his fascination with the subject pushed them aside. "You can't even transmit radio waves?"
"We once tested a visible light transmitter system, but it won't bounce off the clouds. The lack of range, and lack of usefulness, didn't justify what for us was a high investment in materials we can't obtain natively." He allowed that to hang in the air.
Fortis was able to capture a moment with his intuition. "Then you don't have much metal and petroleum here?"
Gesturing with his hands around the tent, George replied, "What you see here is some of our highest technology. It won't appear much immediately, but we have several centuries of careful development of what little we do have." He paused a moment, shifting forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I feel certain your questions will be answered best by the narrative of how we came to colonize Misty."
George stood, a fluid motion, unhurried, yet somehow quick. "Let me offer you some tea. I have a special blend which seems to please visitors from off planet."
Fortis was surprised the tea was so hot, when the cup was simply warm. It looked and felt like ceramic, but was hardly thick enough to explain the insulating effect on his hands. Another question he would ask later.
Taking a sip, George gazed into his cup, then his gaze drifted to the open tent door. "We would like to claim our religion has been around as long as mankind, but they all claim that, and none can prove it." He turned back to Fortis, who was thoughtfully sipping from his own cup.
"What we can document is a group of families separated themselves somewhat from the established organized religions of their day shortly before the first serious attempt to bring all humanity under a single government. You may recall that attempt unraveled before it was even fully engaged. Had it succeeded, that might be the end of the story. One element in that first Terran world government was the plan to force all religions to unify under a single institutional authority. The government policies clearly rejected the very thing which distinguished our religion, which was the insistence mankind was not merely body and soul, but there was a distinct third element, a separate faculty we called the spirit. Our religion was largely an attempt to cultivate that other faculty as a means for determining how men should live.
"We managed to establish an existence which did not withdraw us from all human contact, but limited it some while we built a different life. The degree of separation was the major source of conflict with any government we faced. Because our community was so small, we initially escaped much notice. But whenever things grew unsettled, our numbers surged. At that, entry was never easy. Our covenant of community was quite demanding compared to the world around us in those days. At some point, tensions with secular governments grew along with our numbers.
"During that first Imperium, things went well for us because His Majesty was too busy worrying about the mere mechanics of asserting control over basic resources. Humans had already begun interstellar exploration, with many colonies across the galaxy. Life on Terra had become almost unbearable as the result of pollution and social breakdown, so we began acquiring ships. They were, of course, the most primitive sort. Still functional, they made spartan accommodations, indeed. When we were almost ready to leave was about the time imperial policy began implementing all sorts of bureaucratic controls on colonization. We were caught in a bind, not quite enough ships for all to leave, but a strong sense we could not wait any longer.
"We held a council. You have to understand, a critical element in our religion is self-denial. In this case, it meant we did not have to struggle to find volunteers who would sacrifice and stay behind. Rather, it was a struggle to convince our strongest leaders to go, among other things. The logic of our choices would probably escape you, but the process of choosing very nearly took too long before someone had to take the reins and make it happen. A very strong leader rose up and gave orders, which is not something easily done under our religion. But it did save the day. The group left behind was small enough to hide in one of the few places left on Terra which was fairly safe.
"We took some risk packing them temporarily into standing room on the ships, slipping them up into the Arctic zone, then departing the planet as quickly as possible. The Imperium was not happy, naturally. They rescinded our negotiated plan, and placed troops on our destination, one of the few remaining colonies as yet uninhabited. We found out later the troops all nearly died as the place was marginally livable, at best. The group we left in the Terran Arctic was better off than those troops, by far. Given this situation, we simply stopped for a time near the edge of the galaxy quite a ways from any star system, and held another council.
"To avoid easy detection, we resorted to primitive means. We linked the ships physically and exchanged personnel until enough elders could gather for a quorum in the largest ship, speaking face to face. I suppose it was altogether fortuitous one of our engineers, a convert who had served in the military, insisted we then unlink the ships -- 'just in case.' That case arose when imperial targeting drones popped out of hyperspace. Those ships weren't armed, of course. We knew they wouldn't simply destroy our ships and kill us all; they wanted our military aged members for the war they had just declared. This would have been unconscionable for us, and we would have willingly died to a man to prevent it. No soldier fights so hard as a genuine pacifist avoiding war, even if he seeks to avoid killing.
"The only escape was immediately entering hyperspace, but we had to turn off our navigational instruments. On those primitive ships, the instruments would, in effect, broadcast our intended destination. Each ship simply grabbed space and fled. That was the last they saw of each other."
George was quiet, and mood was decidedly somber. He sipped his tea a moment.
"The ship with the elders ended up in this star system. We did find out where we were, but found no name for the star. The chief elder's daughter, a very young child, was singing a song about some event in our holy books, and mispronounced part of it. Instead of "Dolorosa" she said "Dalorius" and he seized on that as the name for the star. "Prior to the attempted council, we had balanced the ship assignments so each could have formed its own miniature colony, if necessary. In the bargain, the ship which arrived at Dalorius was short a few engineering specialties, most of our former military converts, and a few scholars. While the last group we could replace for the most part, the first two made all the difference in the world.
"Supplies were short because no one expected to be in those ships that long. The navigation beacon was not directly line of sight, but the presence of its signal bouncing off the planets made everyone nervous. Since it said the fourth planet was habitable, but offered no details, we decided to blindly land. Even if we did turn on our scanning equipment, a risk of broadcasting our location to the beacon at least, we would have gotten nothing back, as you know. So the pilot simply estimated the surface depth below the clouds and brought the ship down. He barely had the means to maneuver once inside the atmosphere and they bumped the ground rather hard. No one was hurt severely, and we disembarked.
"That was several hundred years ago."
Fortis was thinking how the situation resembled a child starting life over with an adult's awareness. "How badly was the ship damaged?"
George grinned. "Should you stay with us long enough, and tolerate the travel, you will get a chance to see it yourself. The place was not level ground, but we were too high above it for the standard thrusters to do more than slow our descent some. The landing gear collapsed on the high side, though, and the whole thing leaned into the slope. The hull was breached where it struck the rocky ground, since even such an old ship was not built to withstand much physical impact."
Fortis remembered the business about energy emissions not working on the planet. "So the impact resistant field generator failed?"
"Completely," George said, shaking his head back and forth. "The generator was working, but there was no field."
Fortis was puzzled. "My own ship does not have the old thruster technology, so I assumed it used the levitation field. Am I mistaken?"
George shrugged. "Most likely your ship had the beacon's data about the exact depth of our cloud layer here at the pole. The military surveyor who visited us last used a ship with extensive failsafe landing capabilities, as most military ships do. I suppose he made note of the depth in his update of the beacon. Departure is much simpler, because it's not based on fields, but on something else entirely.
"At any rate, our ship landed at the edge of the desert belt girdling our planet. According to our religion, the whole thing was miraculous. We couldn't leave because the ship was damaged and our alternative thrust system was spent. In the middle of the desert, we would have died before we could find our way to greener lands. But in the middle of the greener lands were predators we could not fight at that time, since all we had were useless energy weapons. And in the northern hemisphere it's all small rocky islands. Our ship would not have floated. Instead, we crash landed on the one place where conditions allowed us the most time to orient ourselves to the situation.
"Equally significant was the good fortune of having the one and only retired engineer with a collection of museum pieces he wasn't supposed to bring. Hand tools, of all things. It's not as if nothing electronic works here. Wherever there is a closed circuit for electrons to flow through solids, it's just fine. But we can't generate anything in the air, aside from the visible spectrum. Well, just a little into the ultraviolet and infrared, but not far enough for something like a burning laser, even."
Fortis thought for a moment. "So computers work, as I've already noted in my ship, because they are solid nano-circuitry. And you can create heat and light, and use powered tools, but how do you generate sufficient voltage?"
George gestured at the glowing patches on the tent ceiling. "The lighting is a coating extracted from insects. What powers it is the entire tent. It's outer surface is coated with a modified native mildew. It doesn't eat the tent material, but consumes what little energy comes through our cloud layer. It's enough to light the patches, heat the water for tea, and in while, help prepare lunch. We developed ceramics which heat with the application of a low current."
Fortis realized he was already hungry. It was one of the drawbacks of visiting other planets, because it meant shifting his circadian rhythm, but there was no way to avoid it. "Did you have the means to generate food, as most humans do these days, or have you found the local flora and fauna edible?"
George laughed, tipping his head back. "When we left Terra, most humans were still eating plants and animals in one form or another. We had learned about advances in artificial replacements much later. Again, fortunate it was for us what grows here was compatible to human biology. However, it took many years of serious health troubles to discover the absolute necessity of eating the fish here. The lack of sunlight creates a serious deficiency which only the fish satisfy. Our forefathers found them repulsive, which is why it took so long, but it's something we now take for granted.
"It was hardly idyllic. We had the predators, deficiencies, diseases, and were thrown back to prehistoric living without energy weapons." George pointed to a place near the doorway. "I suppose the light from outside prevented you from noticing the archery equipment there."
Fortis turned, held up his hand to block the light from the doorway. Sure enough, there was a curved piece of wood, pulling a line taut between the ends, and a collection of thin wooden shafts clipped together in a neat row. The fletching was not feathers, but something resembling a stiff fabric with small panels joining them across the edges. The heads were hidden by a protective cover. Turning back, he asked, "Do you also have other sorts of melee weapons?"
"All sorts of toys," George replied with a faint smile. "None of them metal. As I said, we have precious little of that here, and almost no means of smelting if we did. Because we came with rather modern technology notions, we were fairly quick to develop alternatives. We make fabrics from both plant and animal sources, but with highly advanced variations in properties. The same with animal skins, wood, glass and ceramics. We use a great many microscopic plants and animals in the process. If it grows here, we likely have done something to breed it for special uses.
"In the past we have traded these specialties for metal and electronics. Most of what we have is wearing out, and we would like to get more soon. I know you saw the 'bird' circling Misty, or you would not have known where to land. That is almost entirely fabric and wood, with one tiny computer and transmitter attached. We use them mostly to harvest the hyperspace radio traffic, which can only be read above our atmosphere. Our welcome signal takes quite a bit of energy, so it's broadcast only once each lap. The bird absorbs as much energy as possible during the sun exposure, then makes that brief broadcast before having to save power during passage around the dark side.
"We have to do that because there are only three working birds. When we still had a dozen, the message was longer because we could rotate them more often. Now they have to stay aloft until the memory is about full, then it descends down while another slowly makes its way aloft. It takes a couple of our days each way, gliding and climbing the weak updraft over the marginally warmer deserts. We have winds aloft, of course, but they are due mostly to spin, since the temperature is very stable. The other problem is the photo-reactive mildew tends to weaken during exposure to space, so we have regrow it some each time."
Fortis asked, "Have you never considered using an artificial satellite?"
His hands spread out in a powerless gesture, George said, "We thought about that. Bear in mind, for the first couple of centuries we were still fugitives from the Imperium. Why would we want them to find us so easily? Once that threat faded, we found it still very hard to establish regular trade relations. And while we do have a surplus for trade, it's not enough to easily afford something like a full satellite system. We would still need the birds to ferry the data -- physical closed circuits only down here."
Fortis couldn't think of anything else to say.
George continued, "We are content for the most part. We are loathe to breach what has accomplished so very much in favor of our religion. Frankly, too much technology is the reason we feel the rest of humanity is having such a difficult time, with wars and such. It's not as if we have no wars here, but they don't amount to much. Our culture is the result of our religion, and our stability and peace and..." He paused and took a deep breath. "We hold to a totally different value system. We didn't come here and gain those values because it was the best we could do in a bad situation. We had those values before we left Terra. We believe they come from God, and that it was His plan to put us here to keep them alive, because this world perfectly matched what we believed. We might not have known that so well when we got here, but the realization dawned on us as we made our way."
His locked eyes with Fortis. "Whatever you do, Fortis, I beg you not to take any actions which would destroy what we have here. I have no doubt you are well trained in dealing with us while you are here, observing without interfering. But once you leave to take the knowledge of our world back to your galactic academic network, it would be all too easy for something in your report to precipitate a disaster."
It had seemed like a good idea to pass one last night on the ship, since it allowed Fortis to file an initial report into the non-destructible memory module. He also ran several simulations before he noticed his circadian rhythm was far out of sync with his host. Barely ready to sleep yet, it was just a few hours before George planned to start taking the tent down. Fortis calculated this would be two hours before the feeble dawn at Misty's south pole. There was nothing like a hard day's ride on little sleep to make for a good natural nudge to the space lag.
Fortis stood rubbing his sleep deprived eyes, disappointed to find George already had the tent nearly folded. The fabric was far thinner than it had first appeared, and folded quite small. Fortis guessed the wagon he now saw receiving the various folded and packed up items had been the bed he thought he saw in the tent yesterday. Not only was it still quite dark, but George moved with too much skilled practice, and Fortis hardly kept track of the packing. By the time he drew close enough to offer help, none was needed. Before him was a small, light wagon on two wheels, and a harness rig attached to the end tilted into the air.
George strode quickly off toward one of the grassy humps of land barely perceptible on the horizon. Now as fully awake as he would be at any point during that day, Fortis realized it never really got all that dark, but it took some time for him to notice. The clouds of Misty kept the temperature even, with a similar effect on the light level. It had never gotten all that bright, nor really too very dark. Remembering George's comment about lacking direct sunlight, he realized the entire population probably saw almost as much at night as in day.
Fortis occupied himself poking about the wagon, not moving anything, but noticing how it was primitive in concept, yet with very highly advanced construction. The frame was that hard, light wood he found on his chair the day before. The wheels were similar, but very elegant, with some sort of tire which gave under hard pressure from his thumb. It felt like fabric and skin at the same time. The profile was wide and oval, like modern ground vehicles on many planets, but not designed for any sort of artificial pavement. These wheels had seen plenty of rough ground. Fortis wondered if the packed rocky shale under his feet was some of the better travel surface on Misty.
His reverie was broken by the sound of approaching heavy tread. No, it was not so much sound as palpable through his feet. The sound came shortly after, of heavy animals with large padded hooves.
George's voice was breathy from mild effort, approaching quickly. "Looks like we lost nothing to predators. That's a blessing."
Fortis noticed the bow and arrows were slung across George's back, as his host turned around to stop the large beasts. On the opposite shoulder he saw a short sword. He wondered what a sword would be made of on a planet where hard metals were rare. George led the largest beast around the wagon, then sidled it over in front of the wagon. It was a quick draw which brought the hitching down on the animal's back, and a few swift motions to cinch a strap under the belly. Then George stepped back to the rear of the wagon, and turned some crank handle Fortis had not seen before. The axle shifted so that just a little bit of weight rested on the animal's harness. One last check of the straps on the load, then George turned to Fortis.
"Have you ever ridden an animal, before?" Fortis had done so only once, as a special treat of some powerful figure on one planet he visited.
George explained, "These are the largest creatures on Misty. It wasn't hard to tame them, and it took only a little selective breeding to produce something with a natural riding saddle built into their backs. It doesn't hurt them, and they don't resist. Indeed, the odd thing would be they seem to lack any temperament at all. That is, until they smell predators. They don't scare easily, but do make a bit of noise until I draw some kind of weapon for defense."
George showed Fortis how to mount the creature, by pulling up a front foot and bending it up for a step. The beast simply leaned a bit so the one front leg bore the weight balanced, and Fortis managed to take a fairly comfortable seat. George mounted quickly and spoke in a sing-song voice words of gibberish. The two mounted beasts proceeded side by side, and the draft animal followed at the same pace. The stride was slow and gentle, so it was quite easy for Fortis to keep his seat. He noticed a faint increase in wan gray light on one horizon.
Ever the mindful host, George begin describing what to expect on the journey. "We are actually starting a bit late today. Normally we would be well on our way, but I knew you were out of rhythm for sleeping.
"The reason for this sort of schedule is because of the light gathering mildew on all our tents. We have the means to carry a charge stored up, but it has limits. We try to travel during the first half of the day, then stop and set up our tents to get the current generation going before evening mealtime. Plus, it allows us to charge up the predator fences. We didn't need one out here in the polar flats, because virtually nothing lives here. These mounts were a solid half-hour walk away in the thin grassy hillocks where they could eat and rest, and there the predators could be hunting."
Fortis reminded himself "hour" here, as on every planet, was an ancient term for whatever numerical divisions of the day each culture used. By now they were seeing a few wisps of greenish sprouts here and there, so it was probably at least two kilometers from the ship. The pace of the beasts was easily faster than he could run, but it seemed much slower if he didn't look down. In some ancient time, he supposed a Terran would think of the beasts as camels without the hump, and shorter legs.
George continued his explanation. "Once we enter more occupied lands, we'll keep our mounts inside a charged fence. The predators will smell the charge in the lines and stay away. Only the youngest ones are foolish enough to approach the fence."
Gradually, the grass grew thicker, taller. Fortis strained to see what was ahead in their direction of travel. It seemed there were no mountains anywhere, no sharp or great changes in elevation.
He could have sworn George could read his mind, as the man cited more pertinent data. "Misty has no detectable tectonic activity. The entire surface is relatively flat. The seas are shallow, and everywhere is a rather high water table. The desert in our equatorial belt is simply higher elevation, and thus a hard rocky place. With virtually zero precipitation, a mist rises in the middle to polar latitudes during the night, but there is none at the equator. Lacking a moon, we have no tides in our shallow seas. The breeze here at the pole is almost an accident, the result of winds elsewhere, which are quite stiff on the equator. We feel sure much of this is due to our star being in a very stable cycle itself, though we lack the means to confirm it."
Fortis promised himself he would find a way to check and let them know, even if only by transmitting the data to the birds.
George was talking again. "This hemisphere has more land, but this still leaves us using boats more than beasts for travel. In a few days we'll reach the shore of this polar island and find the ship I left anchored somewhere just off the coast. Our boats are wide and flat, and many people make their homes on them, seldom walking on land. Storms are exceedingly rare, just a bit of extra wind blowing the water in waves higher than normal. In most places, the currents run one way, the winds the other. It's all in giant loops, so travel is alternating between sailing and riding currents."
They had been climbing almost imperceptibly so far. Then the ground sloped downward just noticeably. They came to a narrow band of still water. Stretching to his full height, Fortis thought it was some odd, narrow inlet of the sea. It smelled of it. Yet it was amazingly shallow, as George never slowed and the beasts and wagon splashed across. The bottom was the same gray, slated stuff near the pole. Turning, Fortis could barely make out his ship, a darker sharp object against a vaguely dark horizon. He surmised the pole was almost a bowl of lifeless ground. Scanning in all directions, he realized they had passed through a low spot on the rim of this giant polar bowl.
George leaned over a bit toward Fortis. "I would like to apologize for not showing you a map yesterday, but was worried you might have absorbed too much already. You'll get a look at one when we stop for the day."
Fortis cocked his head to one side and looked hard at George. "Why do I get the feeling you are reading my thoughts?"
George looked almost sheepish. "Any answer I give would make little sense to you, I'm afraid. It's not as if I am conscious of your thoughts, as it were. I simply speak as it occurs to me. More than that would be hard to put in words, though I intend to try once you have spent some time among us."
Fortis realized for once he was actually just a little scared.
It was on the fourth day and the smell of sea was much stronger. The map Fortis saw the first afternoon, an electronic display sheet George produced when they had set up camp, showed how there were a great many long sea inlets, snaking inland, making the polar island look like a splatter. They had crossed several shallow inlets of varying widths, but none deep enough to more than wet the boots Fortis wore. George had explained only the polar island was like that, and the map images indicated it was so. However, the islands farther north were themselves rather scattered, randomly shaped, but fairly dense in the southern hemisphere. There was a wide band of continental land masses on the equator, with narrow seas cutting between them. The northern hemisphere was rather more thinly scattered islands, mostly smaller.
"What you notice as a sea smell will soon fade to olfactory accommodation, since it is nearly ubiquitous outside the equatorial lands," George explained.
Fortis settled himself for a long and tedious journey, still tossing around his intuition how George seemed to read his questions. It never dawned on him George, or his entire world, would possess anything like it themselves. Indeed, for all their primitive culture and technology, their mental abilities were far outside the norm, if George was any representative sample. Not in the sense of pure intellectual acumen; Fortis had seen lots of that in his studies. Some cultures encouraged such a high level of intellect one would think they all had the most advanced chip implants, but it went well beyond mere algorithm processing. It was more like a highly advanced process of branching off into new connections, and doing it altogether faster than most of the human race. Such people would have nearly died of boredom in this quiet long journey, because their worlds were filled with constant, rapidly shifting inputs. Here, it was simply on a different plane, as if intellect were itself an afterthought.
For all his rather ordinary intellect, with his secret gift of intuition, Fortis was terribly uncomfortable in those cultures. Yet, rather than the milder case of boredom he expected with George's ebullient and informative chatter, Fortis was stunned as George began to lay out the more shocking map of Misty, the philosophical orientation unlike anything Fortis had seen in his long years of study. After three days of entertaining and encyclopedic discussion of standard anthropological data, Fortis was anything but bored. George halted their progress for lunch.
Over the meal of smoked, dried meat, and a little of the harshly flavored fish Fortis could not yet bring himself to consume, along with various dried fruits and roasted nuts and grain, George remarked rather casually they would not be setting up the tent that day.
"In just an hour from here we'll be at the shore near the boat. We use something like a raft to move the animals out to the ship. They could easily wade out, but then we'd have to lift them aboard. They aren't particularly fond of getting wet, anyway. By nightfall, we'll be within reach of an island with no predators, and a fairly sharp bank so we can tie up directly to it. The currents just north of here are a bit fast and strong, so they create some unusual topography, though nothing dramatic. Tomorrow you'll get a taste of some stronger winds. Still, only in the high deserts, and the shores just near them, are they strong enough to threaten a boat much."
No sooner had they remounted and set out through the scattered sparse grass, when George said something in a totally different tone of voice. It was almost somber. "Some of the data coming back on our birds the past few years make us nervous here on Misty."
Fortis turned to look directly at George, who had been staring straight ahead, almost stony faced. Then his gaze sank to the reins in his hands, sighing deeply. Fortis was paying full attention, now.
George continued, "You are aware several religious temples were destroyed on three different worlds?"
"They weren't really very significant as buildings go," Fortis offered.
"But they were all belonging to a particular sect, or a family of sects. They held to some odd practices, such as chanting, or simply sitting quietly for hours. While the buildings were never large or fancy, they always included the latest sound dampening technology, so you could go inside and not know there was a whole modern world out there roaring away. They practiced a form of meditation."
Fortis remembered, but hadn't given it much thought. "I seem to recall they rejected all implants, insisting whatever they really needed to know could not be reduced to data streams." As soon as he said it, Fortis realized the possible connection to his own use of intuition.
George half smiled. "They roamed the Land Without Words." Fortis was slightly amused at how George could make it obvious the words were a proper noun. "The old generic term for such religions is 'mysticism.' Directly experiencing ultimate truth, they would claim, using non-intellectual faculties."
Fortis recognized the quoted standard academic definition. He filled in the rest. "It was regarded as a superstition, something which hindered normal human development. It also tended to make them socially troublesome. Too many of them were elitist, refusing to adapt or negotiate logically with the various social structures in which they lived. It hearkened back to ancient prejudices which have no place in such a far-flung humanity. When mankind went out to the stars, diplomacy was so essential it became hard-wired, something written into the very structure of the standard Galactic language. It's one of the first things infants learn when they begin to vocalize."
George halted his mount. "Whatever they did wrong, this oppressive move threatens to destroy the last hope for humanity." He dismounted.
Fortis realized there was a flat, oblong platform in front of them pulled up some distance from the water's edge. Glancing about, he could see they were on a spit of land just a dozen meters across, and wide expanses of water separated them from any other lands, now almost entirely behind them.
George strode to the platform and lifted the end closest to the water. Fortis noted it looked as if the surface was woven grass, with a curved frame providing the oval shape, apparently of that same light, hard wood used for almost everything. Before Fortis could dismount and offer to help, George had waded out a ways and let the platform down in the water. Letting it go, Fortis could see it was still resting partially on the bottom, with the front edge under water.
George called out in that odd gibberish used to direct the beasts' behavior, and the draft animal pulled forward alone, walking slowly toward the platform. George halted it, then stepped quickly behind the wagon and turned the crank which slid the wheel carriage forward until the harness began to pull upward slightly. In one smooth motion he released the harness and allowed the wagon to tip back, raising the arms of the harness skyward. He then directed the beast onto the platform. Fortis was no longer surprised to see something so flimsy looking bear the weight without flexing. Then George bent down and turned some handle Fortis could not see. There was an audible hissing sound as some sort of bladder inflated under the entire platform, spreading out and raising the whole thing out of the water just a bit, leveling the platform to float. From one side, George pulled up a long pole and pushed the raft away toward the boat some meters off shore. Fortis hadn't really noticed the larger craft before.
It took only an hour to ferry the three beasts and the men together with the wagon. Near the waterline, the boat was almost as flat as the raft, which was now strung behind the boat. Fortis had noticed during their approach and embarkation the underside had smooth, almost shiny pontoons on both sides. Up close, he glimpsed a ribbed structure under the surface, running straight the length of the pontoons. The beasts stood on the lowest deck in the center. Apparently they never laid down; Fortis never saw them when they weren't standing or walking. The wagon was rolled to the stern and locked in a frame made to receive it. Fortis had seen rigging for pleasure craft on many worlds, some with wind sails of all sorts of designs. He noticed this boat had a complicated framework of very stiff sails, which still appeared to be gossamer fabric. They could be turned vertically by a simple control on the foredeck. They had been folded together when he boarded, but George quickly got them spread out and turned to catch the breeze somehow. Almost immediately the vessel began to move.
Fortis sat on a woven seat mounted near the steering station. George sat down facing him once he was satisfied everything was working properly. He kept one hand on the controls, and glanced back and forth among the bright sails.
Still looking up, "You know, Fortis, the emperors had special tutors for their children and some of their staff. Among those tutors, it was a long tradition to have one or more of those mystics whose temples were destroyed recently. Legend has it they helped the rulers and close counselors anticipate things a whole planet of scientists could not have guessed. They took the mystics seriously. The imperial policies only failed when someone murdered the staff mystics in fit of political jealousy. While the last emperor of the our most recent Imperium hadn't really been paying much attention to the mystics, they still held strong ceremonial importance. Once they were dead, imperial favor for them declined. That trend carried over into the break up, and the council in that sector has been pressing them hard ever since then."
Fortis had not heard all the details, but recognized the story. "I take it something is brewing which you believe requires mystics to discern. Without them, the population of the galaxy is somehow threatened?"
George turned to Fortis with a grin. "Your intuition is quite good."
Fortis noticed George used the small electronic display sheet for navigation, mounting it near the steering controls. "George, you don't have the common navigational beacons around this planet, for obvious reasons. How does your navigation system work?"
"Every planet -- every celestial body -- has a magnetic polarity. The instrument reads it and reports direction, but as you noted, can't tell us much about latitude, since that's not a matter of polarity."
Fortis asked, "Does electromagnetism work here on Misty?"
"It does, just barely. You may recall that technology was deprecated during the period on Terra just before the discovery of hyperspace. There was a craze with wireless power transmissions and devices proliferated. The fields around most people were so numerous and intense, it caused all sorts of medical problems. Once the scientists realized the connection, and the information got out, popular pressure demanded alternatives. The use of electromagnetic fields became one of those unwritten cultural taboos, though we know very weak ones aren't really so harmful. The problem here is the fields generated are weaker than on most other planets. And the hardware required is an expensive import for us."
So the spooler Fortis carried was not necessarily useless baggage. He tested it and found if he held the device directly against his head, he could read from it. The technology worked both ways, of course, so Fortis spent some hours that first full day of sailing dumping all the anthropological data George had given him. Between the chip in his head and spooler's own artificial intelligence, the information was reduced algorithmically to take up comparatively little memory space on the device, fully indexed and searchable.
He showed the spooler to George. "In the case something should happen to me, I would ask you try to return this thing to my ship. There's a slot near the ladder where you can insert this. The ship's computer will read it automatically. It contains instructions for the ship to return to my home planet unpiloted with the data."
George turned it over in his hand. "Not a bad idea. I would surely be willing to try, and will inform others as necessary. So far there is little we've discussed which could return to haunt us here on Misty."
He handed it back and Fortis poked it into the pocket made for it. He announced gravely to George, "I'm not recording anything else. It seems I am forced by circumstances to cross the line, now."
"I could take you back to your ship, if you wish," George offered.
Fortis sat down. "No. Whatever it is I came to do officially is finished, but my own personal mission has just begun."
"You know you can't go back, then. You may be able to return physically, but you will be an alien to your own past." George was quite serious, but his expression held its normal subtle exuberance.
Fortis accepted that without further discussion. "Something tells me mysticism isn't really about predicting the future, as everyone assumed it was for the emperors."
George's smile twisted on one side. "It was never about future, past or present, really. Mysticism is focused on the ultimate reality of things regardless of time and events. The imperial mystical tutors were responding to things science can neither grasp nor explain when they warned of impending threats. Human intellect is rather confined to what can be measured. For all the wonders of advancements in materials, artificial intelligence, medicine, psychology, exploration of celestial phenomena, particles, fields, and such, they still can't reach a grand unified theory of the universe. That answer lies outside the universe."
Fortis gazed off at the fuzzy horizon. "The old paradox of anthropology is you can't really study it from the outside, but once inside, you can't be truly objective."
Fiddling with the steering controls, George noted, "It's almost the reverse image for mysticism. You don't go into mysticism; you come out of the object realm. So called 'objective reality' is the confined space, a prison you escape."
Fortis cocked his head to one side. "I thought the only way to get outside of reality was to die."
George sat down again. "There is more than one kind of death."
A lot of things died in Fortis, but some rather slowly. It was his life long exposure to planets with distinct polar climates which made him expect a long dreary voyage northward, but Misty's climate was virtually the same every place. In less than a week they sailed past inhabited islands and spotted other boats sailing the sea. There were no storms, just some times a little more wind. It never rained, but it was always somewhat dampish, especially during the relative darkness of night. He became comfortable sleeping in the open air with a blanket, and under a small awning to ward off the heavy mists of night.
Eventually he forced himself to eat the repulsive little fish necessary to supplement the lack of sunlight. The complete lack of direct sunlight would have been oppressive, depressive even, had he not be so utterly absorbed in the questions brought to life by his embrace of mysticism, and the long discussions with George on the voyage. Thus, while he felt as a bird leaving its cage, he found the cloudy embrace of Misty rather comforting in removing distractions of extreme variability in his surroundings.
Still, even after some three weeks, his eyes fully adjusted, he didn't see as well as George.
"There," George was pointing off into the hazy horizon. "I can see the spire on the hilltop of the southern approach to the largest city in this region. It bears the flag of Clan Johnston."
Fortis strained to see it, but detected nothing through the intervening mist. "You told me there were precious few permanent buildings on Misty. I take it there are some here?"
"Yes. But most of them are simply static frames with the same tent fabric for covering. That's always been enough here on Misty, and we have compelling reasons for clinging to semi-nomadic living. That's not so much a part of mysticism itself, but a peculiarity of our religion."
So far, Fortis had only gained a bare, intellectual view of the dominant religion on Misty. He knew that it was based in a very primitive version of Christianity, but there were a plethora of religions in the galaxy claiming that. Yet they were all incredibly varied in ritual and intellectual content of teaching. Most were hardly more than a cultural variation with similar terminology and key phrases. Most still made some reference to the ancient Book, but that seemed about all they had in common. George had not yet said much about doctrine.
Turning back to Fortis, George said, "This city has one of the best academies for our religion, and you'll learn more from them than you would from me. It will be perplexing, to be sure, at first. Still, you've already passed the greatest barrier. Without the mystical approach, you'll never really understand any part of it, except perhaps a confusing array of external manifestations. We still have a great many people among us who can't get that far, but we do our best not to alienate them. They have their place. Misty is their home, too, and mysticism isn't required for full participation in life. You could, given time, grasp what our religion is like for them, but you wouldn't really understand it that way."
In the silence, George stepped back over to the steering station and idly checked the controls. Fortis turned back from the horizon with a half-smile. "So the name of your planet is more a pun."
George threw back his head in full laughter. Still chuckling, "Now I can say to you truly, welcome to Mystical Misty."
By Ed Hurst
04 January 2010
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: People of honor need no copyright laws; they are only too happy to give credit where credit is due. Others will ignore copyright laws whenever they please. If you are of the latter, please note what Moses said about dishonorable behavior -- "be sure your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23)