Daneesa was now more than a little upset with him, and a spirited cuff on the side of his head forced him to change his line of thought. He hurried to finish with her – not too hurriedly of course – while his mind was already wondering where Filipii, the tribunal chairman, would be.
He had worked with Filipii before, not just on this pilar for the peoples’ worship. He was an important man among the Descendants of the Prophet, and he would know what to do.
CHAPTER 2
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A group of Reaper ships were headed for the home planet of the Rothii, their ancient enemy, when they detected items of advanced technology in the sun of the Hud system. It was Rothii technology, and therefore it must, at all costs, be destroyed. A smooth arc inside the grainy, grey nothingness of star drive brought them about onto a new heading.
A short time later they entered the planetary system, slowing as they approached its sun. For a moment they paused inside the orbit of Hud itself, looking from the planet like new stars in the constellation of the Prophet. Then they turned toward the small moon that orbited the second planet, taking them closer to the system’s sun.
A series of flashes ejected material from the moon, nudging it out of orbit. Most of the material landed on the second planet, setting up a vast dust storm, and bringing about an artificial winter on the bleak, rocky surface. Far above the planet the Reaper ships kept edging the moon closer to the system’s sun.
Progress was slow to start with, and a day and a night went by on Hud as the moon picked up speed. As it accelerated across the orbit of the innermost planet, it started quakes on the sterile surface of the planet, quarter of a revolution away. As it approached the sun it was clear the moon was descending at a shallow angle to its surface.
The outermost layers of the moon baked until they reached temperatures when compounds began to break down and give up their gases. As the moon approached the surface of the sun it was followed by a flaming tail that caught and reflected the intense heat and light all around it.
At last the moon was close enough to disrupt the magnetic field of the nuclear furnace, and lazy arcs of plasma rose from the surface to embrace it. As the moon raced across the face of the sun the eruption of plasma intensified, and then the moon was ploughing across the surface, displacing great fountains of coronal fire.
In time the moon disappeared, but the shock waves of its entry raced around the sun and turned back onto themselves. Parts of the sun brightened as its nuclear furnaces were stirred to new life by the sudden activity.
The Rothii technology was made up of long strings of rods and spheres that collected energy for the now-departed Rothii star ships to use in their travels. The strings were few in number, and close to the surface of the sun.
The strings were a marvel of sophisticated technology in an extreme environment, and had worked perfectly for more than 200 thousand years, but they were never intended to survive a massive physical disruption.
First one, then another, broke apart as the moon, reduced to a vast ball of molten slag, preceded a massive shock wave through the upper levels of the sun. All of the Rothii strings were destroyed in the first passage around the upper levels, and then the remnants of the moon sank into the depths, where most of it joined the heavier elements at the sun’s core.
As if they considered they had done enough, the bright ships of fire now veered away, and accelerated toward the outer limits of the system. When they reached the edges of the system they winked out as they entered star drive.
CHAPTER 3
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Hudnee hurried into an imposing stone building in the centre of the little town. The offices of the Descendants of the Prophet loomed over the wooden houses on the main thoroughfare, and were far from the woven brush and mud constructions of the farmers at the edge of the settlement.
If only Filipii were here today, he thought. The tribunal chairman usually was, but his duties sometimes took him to the many villages that lay throughout the district. Hudnee approached the clerk who was sitting, copying manuscripts, in the library.
“Is Filipii in today?” he asked quietly.
The clerk pretended not to hear him, and carefully blotted a small over-run on an ornate capital letter. Hudnee waited, and wondered why the most officious and small-minded of people always seemed destined to climb their way to petty positions in large organisations.
Finally the clerk spoke. “Is he expecting you?”
Hudnee clenched his teeth and forced himself to wait a few moments until he felt calmer.
“I have urgent business with Filipii about the construction of the pilar. If you want me to wait here at his expense, then I will do so. I have set no work past the midday break, and if you want the labourers and drivers to sit around as well at his expense, then so be it.”
His business wasn’t about the building site, but the clerk didn’t know that. The misdirection seemed the best way to get him to do what he should have done, with good grace, in the first place.
The clerk grudgingly got to his feet and went through to the back.
Filipii bustled out. “My friend, my friend! Always good to see you. What do you want to discuss with me today? Or perhaps since it is close to the midday break you would care to come and eat with myself and my family? I was about to return to my home, perhaps you could join me?”
“No, no,” said Hudnee hurriedly. “Er, no thank you, very kind of you, but I have an urgent matter I would like to discuss with you.”
If he joined Filipii and his family for the midday meal, he would be limited to social chitchat until well into the afternoon, and he didn’t want that. At least, not today.
Once in the privacy of the Magister’s office, Hudnee quickly related what he had seen in the sky from the construction site. Filipii leaned forward, steepling his fingers and looking most concerned.
“Several people have reported this to myself or to other Descendants,” he said, “and some of them, like you, are reliable witnesses. I have no reason to doubt that this event occurred.”
Filipii looked at Hudnee’s expectant face. The man obviously expected him to do something about it, which was very inconvenient. Did these people really believe that every event out of the ordinary heralded a return of the Prophet?
Like a lot of officials who had come to a comfortable position of power, Filipii did not really want anything to change. Still, the lights in the sky had been in the constellation of the Prophet. He had better be seen to be doing something.
“I will report this to the Ordinate pilar in Roum, my friend, and I’m sure they will be very interested.
“On a local level we will declare an auspicious omen and hold a special service, while the Descendants try to understand what it means. You did the right thing by bringing this to my attention.”
Hudnee looked gratified. Filipii smiled outwardly, but grumbled inwardly about the extra work he would have to do. Still, he rose graciously and spoke again.
“Are you sure I cannot tempt you with the company of my family, and some plain fare?”
“Well, if you’re sure,” said Hudnee, well aware that the food would be anything but plain. Still, he reasoned, work on the pilar was ahead of schedule, and it was an exceptional event to see new stars in the sky.
It was certainly something to celebrate. He could not recall it ever happening before.
As it turned out, Roum was not at all interested in Filipii’s report.
The sudden appearance, and equally baffling disappearance, of five new stars in the constellation of the Prophet had been reported by every office of the Descendants in nearly every district on the continent.
When the report came in from Filipii’s outlying office, the leading lights of the organisation were already gathered in the elaborate ceremonial room normally used to confer high office. It was the only room big enough to accommodate them all.
“Order, order!” demanded the ArchOrdinate’s clerk, and the few whisper
s and occasional scraping of chairs ceased. The Descendants had not kept power for so many centuries by being undisciplined.
“The facts of this . . . omen . . . are not in dispute,” said the ArchOrdinate, looking around the room. His fellow descendants listened dutifully, but it was not the ArchOrdinate they had come to hear. There had been rumours of a dramatic discovery made by one of the Descendant science departments, and every eye was on a rather scruffy elderly gentleman who was sitting at the back of the room.
“However, the overall picture is somewhat disturbing,” said the ArchOrdinate. “I will now call on Descendant Peters to explain what I mean.”
He sat down, and the small, elderly man made his way to the front. The band of short, white hair around his receding crown looked somewhat like a halo.
“Thank you, ArchOrdinate,” wheezed Descendant Peters, a little overcome by all the attention, or perhaps the walk from the back of the room.
“As you all know,” he continued, “we in the Descendant constellation department have been mapping the heavens for some time now.”
An agitated murmuring greeted this remark, and a red-faced ArchOrdinate dug his clerk in the ribs, who quickly sprang to his feet and fiercely demanded order all over again. Descendant Peters looked a little embarrassed.
“Using the new combination glasses, two of my assistants were watching the night sky on the evening after these new stars were first reported.”
This time a number of the older Descendants at the back leaped to their feet.
“Lies, nothing but lies! Heresy! Expel him!”
The ArchOrdinate looked as if he was about to choke on something. He stood and raised his arms in the air. Under the threat of the ‘discipline cell’ (for whoever a raised arm lowered to point at was dragged out of the chamber to that damp, stinking place), the uproar subsided.
“Brothers!” commanded the ArchOrdinate. “Descendant Peters has some vital information to give us. I give you my word that it does not challenge the divine revelation that Hud, the birthplace of the Prophet (may he never be named), lies at the centre of the universe.”
At this the fundamentalist faction settled back into their seats. In the last fifty years, evidence from some of the new ‘sciences’ had supported the preposterous idea, first mooted more than a century ago, that the sun might be the centre of the universe.
Despite the fact this theory explained the movement of the planets much more satisfactorily than the established view, traditionalists had fought the new idea every step of the way. The new combination glasses in particular had been labelled “tools of the evil one.”
The ArchOrdinate motioned for Descendant Peters to continue. Peters looked around nervously.
“As I was saying,” he began. He paused, but there was no uproar, so he continued with more confidence. “As I was saying, two of my assistants were on duty the night before last at the constellation department, and they recorded a number of things.
“One of my assistants was marking the movements of Unis, the second planet, trying to work out its distance from us by its speed. He noted several sharp flashes that seemed to come from behind Unis, a little after MidNatus, in the third watch. This was duly noted, and then he got on with his work.”
Peters paused for a moment, partly in apprehension at what he knew he must reveal to them next.
“Last night, during the first watch, they were due to confirm some of the readings taken the previous night. The first thing they noticed was that Pelior, the name we have given the moon of Unis, was no longer there.”
The room filled with an urgent babble of voices. Very few of the Descendants kept up with the work of the new ‘sciences’, so they did not know that a moon had been discovered circling Unis. But even for those who took no interest in such matters, the message was clear. Things were changing among the heavenly bodies, and that would almost certainly mean changes on Hud sooner or later.
Descendant Peters held up his hand, and when that did not work the ArchOrdinate’s clerk called once more for order.
“This concerned us all,” continued Peters, “and every available person and every one of the combination glasses was busy for the rest of the night.” He paused again, thinking that the next revelation he had for them was even more worrying than the first one.
“Just before dawn, when the first light of the sun was creeping over Hud, observers noticed a bright half-moon shape close to the sun.
“It disappeared for a time, and then a black spot crept across the face of the sun. As the sun rose, one of the observers recorded that the black spot grew very bright and then vanished.”
They were all watching him now, confused and uncertain about what he was telling them.
“After much discussion,” he paused again, “we think the moon of Unis has fallen into the sun.”
The room erupted, everyone trying to talk at once. The terrifying thought that the world on which they lived, and the planets they knew so well, might be sucked into the sun one by one, had occurred to them all.
Over the next few weeks, the inhabitants of Hud talked constantly about the exceptionally fine weather. Hudnee remarked to Filipii that the sun seemed brighter than usual.
In his primitive laboratory in Roum, Descendant Peters measured the increase in brightness at close to eight percent. The ArchOrdinate maintained a calm and reassuring face but inwardly became more and more worried.
At first crops grew faster than usual, driven by days of fine, sunny weather, and nurtured by the boggy soil, but then the ground began to dry out, and the crops showed signs of heat stress. The pilars became full of worried people praying to the Prophet, and the Descendants put on extra services.
In the more remote districts some of the forbidden practices of sacrificing animals began to reappear. The ArchOrdinate prepared to reinforce the rules of the Descendants of the Prophet, and tightened his grip across the continent.
Then the rains came. Day after day, humidity across the planet began to climb. Most of the farmers had deserted their fields in the middle of the excessively hot, dry weather that preceded the change, but now no one could work at all. The combination of heat and humidity sapped the strength of anyone who tried to get more than the most basic of the day’s chores done.
As much as the inhabitants of Hud looked for a change in the weather, the rains continued unabated. The cloud cover became unbroken, and the rains came every day, starting at midday and continuing until they petered out sometime after the last of the light left the sky.
The crops rotted in the ground, and the people began to ration what they had stored away. The farmers started cutting branches off trees for the animals. The religious sacrifice of animals in the outer districts quickly ceased when it became obvious that every source of food was going to be vitally important in the months ahead.
Then, talk of ancient sky religions and the importance of sacrificing people began to surface. The ArchOrdinate knew it would take every effort by the Descendants of the Prophet, and the largest of the landowners with their private armies, to maintain the civilisation they knew. He began to draw up plans to fortify Descendant offices, and draw more recruits into the Descendant bodyguard corps.
The Descendant science departments had no idea of what was actually happening. They didn’t have the scientific framework that would allow them to understand how the passage of the moon through the sun’s upper levels had increased the efficiency of the fusion reaction in the sun. Though they might have understood that this was rather like stirring a fermented liquid.
In terms of the sun’s lifetime this released a little extra energy, a fraction of a fraction of a percent, and as far as the sun was concerned it was an event that was over in a moment.
But to the inhabitants of Hud, it was about to destroy the life they had previously known, and bring extinction to a large number of species on the planet. The big question was whether the Hudnee would be one of those species.
CHAPTER 4
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The grey light that filtered through the clouds reminded Hudnee of waking up in the early morning. There was little difference between the washed out light from above and the first smudging of grey that preceded dawn itself. He would often wake then and stare up at the thatched roof of his modest home, planning his building work for the day.
Unless Daneesa woke then as well. He smiled at the memories, and was thankful once again for his life. Then he looked across from the back of the Descendant offices. where he was working on a wall, to the flat, grey landscape that mirrored the unbroken clouds above.
Some plants had miraculously survived the change in the weather, turning a deeper shade of green as they sought to use every glimmer of light, but none of the crops in the fields had survived.
The animals were getting by on what they could forage, but the constant wet weather was taking increasing numbers of them with foot rots and lung diseases. He wondered how the ones in the wild were getting on. The farm animals would all be killed for food soon.
It was just after midday, and the rains would start soon. The only way to tell the time now was by the rain. If it was raining it was sometime in the afternoon or early evening. If it was not raining it was night time or morning. At least the rain was regular.
Filipii had contracted Hudnee and his building team to add a substantial extension to the back of the Descendant offices in the small town, and then turn the whole thing into a veritable fortress.
The work sapped their strength in the stifling heat, and they started as early as they could so they could finish early. They were being well paid, but what use was money when there was no food to buy with it?
Already there were reports of lawless gangs in neighbouring districts, and it was time for Hudnee to make the decision he had been dreading. Later that day he was waiting at the entrance to the offices of the Descendants, while one of the heavily armed guards took his request to Filipii.
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