Table of Contents
The Halcyon Dislocation (The Halcyon Cycle)
Chapter 1 The Dislocation
Chapter 2 A New Beginning
Chapter 3 Mobilization
Chapter 4 Fish Tales
Chapter 5 Calm to Chaos
Chapter 6 Training for Sea
Chapter 7 Botany Bay
Chapter 8 Happy Berries
Chapter 9 Bay Trouble
Chapter 10 The Expedition Heads South
Chapter 11 The Southern Fens
Chapter 12 The Worm Caves
Chapter 13 The Pass
Chapter 14 The Quarry
Chapter 15 New Jerusalem
Chapter 16 Natural Justice
Chapter 17 The Inner Circle Decides
Chapter 18 The Halcyon River Gambit
Chapter 19 The Expedition Sets Out
Chapter 20 The Discovery
Chapter 21 Fort Linderhof
Chapter 22 The City of the Dead
Chapter 23 Attack
Chapter 24 Return to Halcyon
Chapter 25 The Inner Circle Meets
Chapter 26 Resolve
Chapter 27 Exodus
Chapter 28 Rescue
Chapter 29 Higher Education
Chapter 30 The Dream
Chapter 31 City Point
Chapter 32 Return to the City of the Dead
Chapter 33 The Citadel
Chapter 34 Taking Possession
Chapter 35 Another Kind of Evil
Chapter 36 A Conspiracy Unmasked
Chapter 37 The Prison Pit
Chapter 38 From the Frying Pan into the Fire
Chapter 39 The Council of Granomer
Chapter 40 The Storming of Linderhof
Chapter 41 A New Beginning
Chapter 42 Another Dream
Chapter 43 Eleytheria
Praise for THE HALCYON DISLOCATION
“In a truly original sci-fi fantasy that literally transcends space and time, Kazmaier hurls readers into a world with shady morals, dubious friendships and exotic surroundings. It’s one turn after another as this colonization epic unfolds.”
—Robert McCallum, Producer of Earthlight
In his first novel, Kazmaier combines the knowledge of the scientist with the imagination of the story teller. The Halcyon Dislocation is an incredible tale that seems frighteningly credible, thanks to its compelling insights into human nature. It’s an adventure; one that progresses on the weighty consequences of moral choices made without regard to morality. This novel will leave you thinking about freedom; what it really is, and how to preserve it.
—Patricia Paddey, Freelance Writer
“In the great tradition of cautionary tales, The Halcyon Dislocation explores the intersection of faith and science when the world of its protagonist is turned upside down. Chilling and relevant, this story is a wild ride that shakes the foundation of its character’s faith and world view.”
—Scott Weisbrod, Experience Planner
“A gripping story with great ideas and insightful characterization”
—Mark Jokinen, Mark Jokinen Books
“The universe that the author creates is one that I can only best compare to Tolkien's epic ... It's often a tall task for any author to portray a simple world around [its] main character, but in Tolkien fashion, Peter Kazmaier creates a vivid universe filled with multiple cultures, philosophies, character-types, and story-lines, all handled with care representative of someone who truly understands and loves the characters and universe that they have created. I give this novel 4 out of 5 stars, and highly recommend it.”
—Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
“This novel deals with important issues for older teens and undergrads. The Christian message is clear and unambiguous, and the author avoids anything graphic or explicit. Though a bit rough around the edges, with too much “show” and not enough “tell”, it is well enough written to be recommended to those who enjoy science fiction.”
—The Curious Presbyterian
“I was drawn in by the author’s vivid descriptions and imagination in this new world that is Middle Earth-like.”
—Lisa Hall-Wilson, Marantha News
“For his first novel, Kazmaier does well at quickly getting the plot in motion and describing the new world. The science makes for good reading, too; perhaps no surprise, since Kazmaier is a working and teaching scientist. He makes dimension and time travel seem plausible and comprehensible.”
—Lloyd Rang, Faith Today
Throughout the novel there is a keen and vital sense of adventure and discovery with elemental forces at work, both in a material and metaphysical/religious sense. The interest level is sustained throughout.
—Writer’s Digest
An original, exciting novel.
—Kevin Miller, The Word Guild Canadian Christian Writing Awards
If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.
Niels Bohr
THE HALCYON DISLOCATION
Copyright © 2009, Peter Kazmaier
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or any other— except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the author.
All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, King James Version. Copyright © 1977, 1984, Thomas Nelson Inc., Publishers.
ISBN: 978¬0¬9810566¬0¬9 (Print ISBN)
For more information or to order additional copies, please contact:
Wolfsburg Imprints 2421 Council Ring Road Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L 1E5 http://www.peterkazmaier.com
Print version printed in Canada by Word Alive
Dedication
To Kathy and my other book club friends (Doug, Patricia, Dwight, and Hope), for your encouragement to follow my dream...
Chapter 1 The Dislocation
Dave Schuster sat in the chancellor’s office drinking coffee. The conversation had lapsed. Pushing back a strand of unruly black hair, Dave looked at his uncle across the desk and waited, respectfully, for the older man to say something.
Chancellor Charles O’Reilly lounged back in his chair. Fifty-three and clean-shaven with gray hair, O’Reilly had maintained his trim military build. While admiral of America’s Sixth Fleet, he’d had few opportunities to visit Dave’s home. Nevertheless he still enjoyed a close relationship with his sister, Dave’s mother. With O’Reilly’s recent retirement from the navy, his appointment to the University of Halcyon as chancellor, and Dave’s arrival as an engineering student, they had determined to get to know each other better. However, the demands of the chancellorship and the frenetic pace of first year engineering had conspired to make this visit—on Wednesday, March 2—their first since Dave had arrived to live on the island campus in September.
“Are you still interested in astronomy?” O’Reilly asked warmly, gazing at his nineteen year old nephew.
Dave was jarred from his train of thought. “Yeah, I am. I didn’t bring my telescope, but I still can’t get enough of it.”
“If you love it so much, why did you go into engineering?”
“I didn’t think I could get a job in astronomy,” Dave laughed. At six feet two inches tall, with the broad shouldered physique of a linebacker, Dave was as large as he was practical.
O’Reilly rubbed an old scar on his chin. Suddenly, he bolted upright in his chair. Dave followed his uncle’s eyes and stared through the large balcony doors across from the desk. Angry gray storm clouds had replaced the bright sunlight of only a few minutes ago. Immediately, a flash of lightning followed by a cras
h of thunder rent the air. The lightning lit up the room in a dazzling display, as one bolt followed another in rapid, artillery-barrage succession.
“What in the world—” began O’Reilly.
A bright flash of red light blazed through the glass doors, giving way a moment later to a tremendous shock wave. The room shuddered. Several books fell to the floor from the shelf behind O’Reilly’s oak desk. Dave’s stomach lurched as if he were falling through the floor.
Startled, both men jumped to their feet and moved to the glass doors. Half a mile distant, a fireball rose from the experimental field in the center of the island campus. Smoke from the explosion had already begun to obscure their view.
The phone rang. O’Reilly darted back to his desk.
“O’Reilly!” he barked. He listened, grimfaced, to the caller, only occasionally grunting assent into the mouthpiece.
Placing the receiver on the cradle, his eyes hard, he squared his shoulders.
“Dave,” he said, “I’m going down to the emergency response center in the basement. I don’t want you out on the street until I know more about what’s going on. Come with me, but try to stay out of the way.”
“Yeah, sure.” Dave bit back the temptation to ask questions when he saw the set of his uncle’s jaw.
Uncle Charlie’s military face! Something big is going on, and I get to be on the inside of this emergency.
Glancing at his phone for messages and updates, Dave thought it odd that there were none, and returned the device to his pocket. He followed the older man as O’Reilly left the office, turned first toward the elevator, and then changed his mind, headed toward the nearest stairwell, and raced down the stairs, two at a time. Reaching the subbasement, O’Reilly entered a key code into a keypad. The door clicked as the lock disengaged. Dave kept pace as they hurried down the long corridor, and then passed through an open door into a large room.
Dave quietly slipped in behind his uncle and took a seat just inside the door at the back of the room. As he sat down, he glanced at his phone again. Still nothing. Two more people came in, and sat down at a bank of consoles facing a wall-sized display at the front of the room.
The buzz of conversation stopped as O’Reilly strode to the center of the room and approached a tall man in a white shirt. After a lengthy whispered conversation, O’Reilly turned to address the emergency response team, his expression grim.
“For those who have just arrived,” he began, “there has been an explosion at the experimental area. Do we have any word on casualties?”
“No word on casualties,” said a man wearing earphones.
“Is our nuclear power station still on line?”
“Yes,” said the man, peering briefly at his monitor. “There was a power surge from the experimental area, but it didn’t overload the safety systems, and power generation at the nuclear plant is nominal. That power surge ended abruptly at about the time of the explosion.”
“Has the campus fire department been dispatched to the experimental field?”
“The first truck has just arrived. I’m in contact with Chief Gamble, but he needs a few minutes to assess the situation.”
O’Reilly rubbed the scar on his chin. “Have we requested support from the mainland?”
“We’ve tried, but our communication links have been disrupted. We can’t get through,” said the communications technician.
“How can that be? Was every microwave tower knocked out?” exclaimed O’Reilly.
“I don’t get it, either,” answered the communications technician. “One of the towers is clear on the other side of the island and couldn’t possibly have been affected by the explosion. I can reach the naval station on the south side of our island, but even they can’t communicate with anyone on the mainland.”
At least that explains my phone, thought Dave.
The wall display showed the firemen scurrying to deal with the blaze in the experimental area.
“Could you search the camera archives for the footage prior to the explosion?” asked O’Reilly.
“Yes, of course!” said the technician.
The video on the screen flashed backwards in time. The technician expertly froze the video frame at the point when the explosion had started, consuming part of the experimental field building.
“Go back two minutes and let’s run forward,” said O’Reilly.
The intact experimental field building appeared on the screen, surrounded by a spherical bubble shimmering faintly, like air over a ribbon of blacktop in hot desert sun. In the distance, the sky was blue, dotted with small cumulus clouds, but directly over the experimental building a black storm cloud was roiling violently.
The cloud grew more turbulent, and lightning flashes lit up the dark mass. Soon lightning began to hit the experimental building, and the shimmering bubble expanded rapidly outward, passing beyond the camera as the lightning strikes increased in intensity.
A short time later the explosion occurred, and the whole sky turned coal black. A moment later, like a television changing channels, a bright blue cloudless sky appeared, marred only by the black smudge of the explosion.
“Where did the clouds go?” someone asked.
The phone rang. “It’s Professor Hoffstetter,” said the communications technician, handing the phone to O’Reilly.
“Bertrand, are you all right?” O’Reilly asked. “What about the rest of your people?” O’Reilly’s face gradually relaxed as he heard the answer.
“Calm down, Bertrand. What do you mean by ‘have you seen the bridge?’ What bridge are you talking about?”
O’Reilly listened for a few moments more, then cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and said to the technician controlling the view screen, “Ed, would you display the bridge to the mainland on the screen? Hoffstetter seems to think that something is the matter with the bridge.”
The main screen shifted from a picture of fire trucks working at the explosion site to a view of the bridge to the mainland. Everyone gasped. The bridge was only half there. The camera showed the familiar blacktop running in a smooth curve to the bridge at Causeway Point, only to end abruptly after a few hundred yards, as if sliced off by a knife. Five people had emerged from their vehicles and were pointing at the truncated end of the bridge. But it was not only the bridge. The mainland of North Carolina, only half a mile away twenty minutes before, had disappeared and been replaced by an unfamiliar shoreline that could be seen as a hazy shadow across miles of sea.
Dave was stunned. His heart raced, the room felt hot, and sweat beaded on his forehead. He had been following the accident with the detached excitement of a television viewer watching a disaster movie, but when the truncated bridge appeared on the screen, his mind reeled.
What’s happened to the bridge?
O’Reilly, still holding the phone while staring over his shoulder at the main screen, was first to recover.
“I’ll get back to you, Bertrand,” he said softly into the mouthpiece and hung up.
“Where are the students now?” he asked in a deliberately calm tone. None of the staff answered. O’Reilly scowled at each person in turn. Every eye was transfixed on the amputated bridge.
“Where are the students now?” he asked in a louder tone. Still no one answered.
“Most would still be in class,” answered Dave from the back of the room.
“Ken, get what’s-his-name, the head of the campus patrol,” ordered O’Reilly.
“That would be Ben Wychek,” said the communications technician, tearing his eyes away from the bridge.
In a quiet voice O’Reilly continued, “Use the public address system. Tell the students we’ve had an explosion. It’s under control, but for their safety, all classes are cancelled. They should clear the streets for the movement of emergency equipment, and return to their dormitories. Then call Ben Wychek and ask him to round up all the stragglers and get them back to their dorm rooms. For once I’m glad all of the students live on campus.”
&nb
sp; “Will do!” returned the communications technician. In a few moments his voice was blaring over the campus public address system at a volume so high they could hear the echo from a distant loudspeaker. The main screen shifted from campus camera to camera as the group clustered in the emergency response center watched the campus patrol begin to implement O’Reilly’s most recent instructions.
“Go back to the camera observing the bridge,” said O’Reilly.
“Yes,” said the communications technician.
“Retrieve the footage from the archives, and roll the video from the point where the bridge is still intact.”
In a few seconds they saw the bridge as it had been, spanning the strait. Nothing changed for some minutes. Occasionally a car crossed the bridge and headed toward the mainland.
“The explosion happened at 14:31, according to the other camera,” said the technician.
The time counter at the bottom of the screen passed 14:30. Suddenly a curved, shimmering curtain appeared, passing the camera as it expanded across the bridge. As it did so, the whole screen turned coal black. In another moment, the blackness vanished and bright, clear blue sky appeared. The bridge was truncated, and the shoreline had receded.
The room was silent, deathly silent. The video clip ended, and the screen again showed the live video feed from the explosion site.
Dave saw another man, whom he recognized as Darwin Blackmore, the vice-chancellor, silently enter the room and approach O’Reilly. Blackmore was a tall, thin, impeccably dressed man with a sallow face ending in a goatee. He carried himself with the easy confidence of a man aware of his gifts and the power he wields.
“What seems to be the trouble, Charles?” he asked.
“Eh, what did you say?” said O’Reilly as he turned around and pulled his attention away from the video screen.
“What seems to be the trouble? Why were the students sent back to the dormitories?” repeated Blackmore, an icy edge to his voice.
His tone caused O’Reilly to give Blackmore a searching look. “I’ll tell you what I know, Darwin. Hoffstetter was running a full-scale test of his force field generator as a run-up to the Department of Defense demonstration next month. Somehow, during the test, there was an explosion,” he gestured to the screen, which was still centered on the experimental area. “But we have an even bigger problem. Show him the bridge!”
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