Destiny’s Crucible
Book 6
PASSAGES
OLAN THORENSEN
Copyright 2019
All rights reserved
This is an original work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people and places is coincidental.
Color maps of Anyar with more detail than the cover image are at olanthorensen.com. The author can be reached at [email protected].
CONTENTS
Chapter
PROLOGUE
1AN END AND A BEGINNING
2A SECOND LIFE
3REFUGE
4ADJUSTING
5NEXT STAGE
6BEWARE THE STIRKIN
7FIRST INTRODUCTION
8TWO INNOVATIONS
9KALEDON
10RETURN TO KALEDON
11WEAVING
12BRAWSEA
13A VEILED WARNING
14ELATION’S DARK SHADOW
15HUNTED
16ASHES
17A COLD DARK FIRE
18A DEBT PAID
19WANDER SOUTH
20STAY AHILE
21DISPLAY
22SETTLING IN
23COMMITMENT
24THEN THERE WERE THREE
25DESTREX SOLO
26AN UNFORESEEN DANGER
27STAND AND FIGHT
28KEEP MOVING
29TEKLEUM
30SHIP WEST
31INTERCEPTED
32RIFLE AND MACE
33WHAT NEXT?
34IN THE SADDLE AGAIN
35CLOSER
36THE SONG
37A PASSAGE AND A RISK
38RECOGNITION
39SO MUCH FOR CAREFUL PLANNING
40LEAVE NOW!
41MUSTAFA
42AT SEA AGAIN
43“WHAT THE—”
“Finding our true selves can be a longer journey than one to the far side of the world.” —Saint Sidyrn of Nogolas
“We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.” —Marcel Proust
“We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” —John Steinbeck
“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.” —Dante Alighieri
“The longest journey is the journey inwards.” —Dag Hammarskjold
“Even the most successful traveler can stumble and lose their way. The trick is to stand straight and get back on course.” —Rhaedri Brison, Caedellium
PROLOGUE
Mark Caldwell tried to console himself that the seas were relatively calm. It didn’t help that he knew the sway of his position atop the main mast ranged more than twenty-five feet. He tried to avoid looking down and seeing either ocean or the ship’s deck a dizzying distance below. He failed in the effort when necessity required or when he couldn’t help himself.
THUNK!
The reverberations from the cannonball blow traveled outward from his spine to the tips of all four extremities and the top of his skull. He held his breath for a moment before being reasonably convinced the mast remained upright. If it broke, he didn’t expect to escape the harness holding him to the lookout platform. Then he would crash onto the deck or be dragged underwater by ropes and sails.
His relief was momentary before canister rounds impacted the inch-thick wood of the shield facing the Narthani sloop. Captain Partinel had assured him the creolin wood was impervious to mere canister or musket balls, most of the time. However, most of the time wasn’t always.
The irony would have been amusing under other circumstances. After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy, he had served the required minimum years before resigning to go back to civilian life. One of several reasons for his decision was to avoid sea duty. And yet here he was. If the Fates, God, or Gods existed, they must be laughing.
CHAPTER 1
AN END AND A BEGINNING
Beach Near Tregallon, Dominion of Frangel, Planet Anyar
He woke up staring at the sky. Scattered white clouds moved across a blue background—not the azure of Earth but a lighter tone, a muted cerulean blue. A V-formation of flyers crossed in front of a cloud. They were not birds. Sounds diverted his attention. Waves. Water touched his feet. His fingers flexed and dug into . . . warm, dry sand? He raised his head and saw surf breaking fifty yards away. Water from another spent wave washed over his feet. He looked to his right and saw an empty beach bordered by plant growth that was not quite trees. To the left, a hundred yards away, more beach ended in a rocky spine that extended into the water.
He shivered, but not from cold. A forlorn plea flashed over his consciousness: Was this the beach in Hawaii where he’d spent his and Jocelyn’s honeymoon? That had been perfect—or so he’d thought at the time.
Reality vanquished fantasy. Twenty feet away, another flyer darted through his vision—a blue body and white wings, whistling like no bird ever did. Strange-looking insect-like creatures buzzed past him. Creatures that were not insects.
Memories washed over him. Panic gripped his chest, and his fingers dug into the copper-colored sand. The artificial intelligence he’d named Hal had been truthful. This wasn’t Earth. The sun whose warmth he suddenly noticed wasn’t Sol. He knew this sunlight shone not on Colorado where he grew up, Palo Alto where he lived, or, for that matter, Finland, Madagascar, or Japan. This sun shone on an entire planet he knew little about.
The knowing made him dizzy. He closed his eyes and willed his breathing to slow and deepen. He rose to one elbow, rolled to that side, braced his other hand on the sand, and slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. He was naked. He hadn’t thought to ask in what condition he would be abandoned.
A larger wave broke fifty yards away, and he tried to stand until his spinning head precluded the thought to move higher on the beach. The final push of the wave encircled him before receding, and he crawled twenty yards into warmer, drier sand. There he sat and let the conflicting thoughts intertwine before they settled into acceptance.
Emotion swirled through his mind. Fear at facing an unknown future and elation at the chance to start life over—as if he’d fallen off a cliff, only half confident a cushion awaited his landing. He would never see Earth again. Never speak English to another person. Never see again any of the people he’d known over his lifetime. Have no physical ties to his previous life. Never watch TV, drink Coca-Cola, eat chocolate or tacos, or do any of the thousands of things that had made up his existence.
However, for reasons he didn’t fully understand, he didn’t despair the losses as much as might have been expected had he been content with his life. He knew his view might change with time, but he had a sense of being reborn. Whatever had gone wrong with his life had been wiped clean. Exhilaration at the possibilities warred with trepidation—both causing his pulse to quicken.
His vision whirled and he almost fainted when he tried to stand, so he crawled another twenty yards over the sand into the shade of vegetation and leaned against a trunk of a “tree.”
It’s real, he thought. I thought I finally believed it aboard the spacecraft, but maybe part of me held out hope it was somehow a dream, delusion, or illusion—anything but true. Now I know. I have to put aside anything except how to survive here. But not now. Now I need to wait until the dizziness passes. Just a few minutes, and I’ll try again to stand.
He let himself feel the onshore wind waft over his nakedness, hear the waves that sounded like those of Earth, and reflect.
***
It was odd what he remembered—the pinstriped suit he’d worn onto the plane because the meeting in Chicago was at the airport. He wouldn’t have time to check into a hotel and change.
The plane
filling, passengers jostling to find seats and storing carry-ons.
The nerdy-looking young man in the window seat when he found 28C, his own aisle seat.
The teenage Hispanic girl who sat between them. He’d had to step into the plane’s aisle to let her in, moments after seating himself.
The movie he’d watched on the flight to distract himself from the latest disappointment at home—this time his wife grumbling about needing a larger house because she’d decided their current neighbors needed upgrading.
Their fourteen-year-old daughter whining about her limited wardrobe that cost thousands of dollars, some items having been worn only a few times.
The embarrassed young mother walking her baby up and down the plane’s aisle in an attempt to soothe the infant into silence.
The teenage girl with the pink hair and the nose ring.
The sturdy man in cowboy hat and boots.
The distinguished-looking woman with gray hair.
A tall African American man helping a diminutive young Asian woman put her carry-on in the overhead compartment.
The man in first class with tattoos covering both arms and his neck.
Of the collision he had no memory. One instant he was focusing on the movie, and the next moment he was falling outside the aircraft, battered by turbulence in the freezing air, as he slowed from five hundred miles per hour.
Then . . . nothing, until he awoke in a white room. He looked around. He was alone.
“Hello,” he called out, his voice cracking.
After clearing his throat, he tried again.
“Hello. Is anyone there? Where am I?”
“You were in an accident and sustained minor injuries. Everything should be fully functional,” came a disembodied voice.
Accident? Functional?
He frowned. Then he remembered: the plane, falling. His mouth gaped, eyes widened, and heart pounded.
“What—?”
“Do not be alarmed. Everything is fine. We believe you are functioning within normal parameters.”
“Where am I, and where are you?”
The voice ignored his query and repeated a series of questions, only moving on once Mark answered.
“Thank you, Mark, your mental functioning seems to be satisfactory. Rest now, and we will talk more later.”
“Hey! I answered your questions, so how about . . . ”
His awareness ended, as if a door had slammed shut.
In his next conscious moment he was once again staring at the white ceiling. This time he tensed muscles and sat up on a white slab. Rotating his body, he sat on the edge. The entire room was the same featureless white.
“Hello. Anybody there? How about telling me what the hell is going on?”
Silence. He glanced down at a naked body. That fact did not shock him as much as the missing roll of stomach fat that for the last several years he had promised himself to do something about . . . and never did.
“What!”
His torso and limbs were pale and the skin flaccid. Had he been in a coma long enough for the change in his physique?
“Mark, there is something you need to be made aware of. It is theorized that since you said you are an engineer, a practical demonstration might make acceptance easier.”
“Huh?”
Suddenly, movement came out of the corner of his vision. He jerked his head to the right. A two-inch-diameter blue ball bounced off the floor at a forty-five-degree angle. It was the first color he’d seen in the room, but what mesmerized him was that the ball moved far too slowly. He watched as it hit a wall, then the ceiling, the opposite wall, and the floor . . . repeating the cycle twice more before Mark staggered to his feet and walked two steps to catch the ball.
He squeezed it—some kind of rubber or another material with similar elastic properties. He held it at eye level and released it. It fell too slowly.
“What?”
He repeated the act twice more with the same result.
“This isn’t right,” he said aloud. “Hey, whoever you are. Is this ball made of some odd material, is it hollow, or somehow has helium encased—something to make it fall slow?”
“Try the iron ball, Mark.”
“What iron ball?”
He turned to look around and stubbed a toe.
“Aw! Damn! What—”
Next to his foot sat a metallic ball the same size as the blue one. He picked it up. It was heavy, ten times or more the weight of the blue ball.
“How do you do that?” he questioned. The voice didn’t answer.
He held both balls at eye level and dropped them together. If there was something about the blue ball counteracting gravity, the iron ball should hit the floor first. He was repeating the classic experiment of Galileo. Absent air resistance or buoyancy effects, two objects, no matter the size or composition, should fall at the same rate.
They hit at the same instant . . . the metal ball not moving off the floor and the blue ball bouncing up.
A chill started at Mark’s neck and traveled down to his feet. He repeated the test twice more. He knew one answer to the puzzle, but it couldn’t be true . . . could it?
“It is assumed you are aware the gravity you are experiencing is less than on the surface of Earth.”
Mark didn’t respond, his mind searching for other options.
“It is understandable this may be difficult to accept. To aid your understanding, the gravity in the room will be altered slowly. Try not to make sudden movements or push off from surfaces too strongly.”
He suddenly felt lighter.
Although he could only estimate time, it must have been several hours later when he began to accept the voice’s assertions. He was on an alien spacecraft that had accidentally collided with his airliner. The aliens had rescued him after the plane had disintegrated, and they had healed—or repaired, as the voice told him—his injuries.
With no references to judge time intervals, he could only estimate the number of days that followed. This period was hard, as he cycled among disbelief, confusion, fear, anger, despair, hope, and, finally, so he thought, acceptance when the artificial intelligence (AI) he’d named Hal told him he would never return to Earth. His only options were to be terminated or placed on a planet inhabited by humans.
“Humans? On another planet? How is that possible?”
“The answer to your question is unknown at this time, only that humans, along with a selection of plants and other animals, were transplanted from Earth to other planets. All of these planets are being remotely observed.”
“What kind of selection? How many? What kind?”
The voice was silent for several seconds . . . which was unusual. Then . . .
“Details of the selection process are unknown. From orbit, only larger life forms are discernible. For example, there are horses but not elephants, redwood trees but not baobab trees.”
A thought rose in Mark’s mind. “Earth insects and . . . uh . . . spiders?”
“Unknown. They are too small.”
Well, there’s hope, he thought. Spiders rated as his least favorite creatures—to his embarrassment.
He had also experienced many moments that combined degrees of frustration, wonder, and revelation, such as the interchange that began when he inquired of other passengers.
“Are there other survivors?”
“I cannot give you that information.”
“Huh? Why not? Am I the only one?”
“I cannot give you that information.”
“Whether or not there were others, how did I survive? I should be dead.”
“We retrieved you in good condition, considering the circumstances. That your injuries were relatively minor is best attributed to serendipity, allowing straightforward repairs.”
“I wish you wouldn’t refer to me as a machine.”
“As you prefer, although, strictly speaking, you are a biological machine.”
“So, I was injured. Exactly how?”
Mark didn’t like the word additions.
“Uh . . . what additions are you talking about?”
“The gravity of the planet you will be taken to is 1.18 times that of Earth. Although the difference is not insurmountable for you to adapt to, as part of our obligation to you we have modified your energy-producing genes for more efficiency. You should find the added weight of no concern. In fact, you may experience enhanced energy over your previous condition, although our familiarity with human physiology makes this uncertain.
“In addition, in studying your condition, we discovered a mass of cells that apparently had escaped replication control and was invading several sections of your brain. Your current level of medical technology would likely have been unable to provide a positive prognosis, and you would have died within a year of your time.”
Mark’s hand tightened on the bar at the end of the platform he’d slept on.
“You mean . . . I have cancer?”
“You had cancer. While we made minor repairs caused by the collision and made slight modifications to improve your physiology, we also introduced elements into your system that destroy uncontrolled cells—the cancer. The elements are a permanent addition to your body, and be assured you will never again develop cancer.”
Mark assumed the “elements” referred to a type of nano-machine, as had been theorized might be developed to remove plaque from arteries, suppress neuron-associated amyloid bodies related to Alzheimer’s, and attack cancerous cells. From what he’d read, humans were a generation or more from such developments, but he wasn’t surprised that anyone, or anything, that could fly between stars would have developed amazing medical science. What did surprise him was the ability to apply such knowledge to alien physiologies. He had to ask.
Passages Page 1