Here's Chapter 22. Not sure when you can expect to see chapter 23, but you've all been waiting for this for too long.
Earlier chapters are available on this thread and on my website, although i know that the website is missing some of the more recent chapters.
I'm finding this story harder and harder to tell lately, and I'm really starting to feel that it's drifting off in the wrong direction. I'd really appreciate any feedback on this. Does anyone think there's too much emphasis on the emotional side of things lately? is it getting bogged down? Is it clear what's happening to the two main characters in terms of their development since their reunion? I find it really hard to look at it objectively, I'd really appreciate some help.
Anyway, here it is, Chapter 22.
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Cane began his tale.
“The Oxy wars took place about fifty years ago- I’m afraid I can’t translate that into the Earth or Cue Cappan Calendar.”
“Fifty-nine years on Earth, about forty Cue Cappan.” Chipped in the Navigational Officer, who had a huge store of such facts and figures available for instant retrieval.
“Thank you.” Continued Cane, now addressing myself and Loorl. “This is all long before we made contact with your Commonwealth, so I should explain a little of the background history. Ceres IV was colonised just under eighty years ago - Plenty years - at the end of the first great human expansion. It has a favourable climate, huge surface area and rich natural resources, so it was quite a prize. To this day it is the wealthiest, most heavily populated planet of any nation in the known galaxy, if you discount homeworlds.”
Everyone nodded sagely, including Loorl who had adopted the habit of bobbing his eye stalks to indicate a nod.
“With the scarcity of uninhabited nitrogen/ oxygen-atmosphere planets in the galaxy and the proliferation of oxygen breathing species looking for worlds to colonise, a planet like that was bound to cause aggravation for whoever got there first. We did, and none of the other oxygen races were happy about it. Most notably, the Sergetti claimed to have had a coloniser fleet on the way which mysteriously disappeared just before arrival.”
Several of the crew grumbled sourly at this point, and Cane chuckled at their response. He explained for the benefit of the non-humans.
“Even though the war ended half a century ago, anti-Sergetti sentiments are still strong on Earth.”
I sympathised, but did not mention the uneasy relations between the Sergetti and my own people.
“Ironically,” added Cane, “those feelings are now almost non-existent on Plenty, where we have the best reason to hate them.” The audience fell silent again, allowing Cane to continue.
“The Sallega also claimed to have rights to this system, since it is close to their space, and there were at least two other oxygen breathing species who wanted it. Now this was shortly after Earth’s first contact with these races- who were among the first non-humans we had ever met- and interstellar relations were shaky to say the least. The framework we have now for interspecies trade and politics was not in place, and in a way, this lack of understanding was one of things that delayed the inevitable war. We all knew very little about one other and no one wanted to risk conflict with an unknown opponent. As understanding and political co-operation grew, however, so did jealousy and discontentment. Twenty-five years later, when Earth colonised some oxygen moon in the Quikil system, the Segetti declared it the latest act in a greedy monopolisation of the galaxy, which had started with the unlawful colonisation of Ceres IV. A coalition of the Sergetti, Sallega, Praetorian and Piundon declared war on Earth. It was fairly evenly matched. Due our extensive colonisation, we Terrans were by far the largest power in the known galaxy, and with support from the methane-breathing Druckshoka we were able to hold them off.
Plenty, as we had optimistically named Ceres IV, had grown impressively in the three decades it had been colonised. Although its industrial and economic contribution was limited in comparison to the homeworld’s output, it was strategically important and so was equipped with impressive defensive installations and considered itself ready for any attack. However, no enemy fleet came. The Sergetti had a far more sinister offensive planned, concentrating their firepower instead on the eastern end of the Terran territories.
The Sergetti captured a human officer and then allowed her to escape in the southern portion of their empire. She stole a ship – as they had intended her to do – and made her way to the nearest human outpost, which at that time was Plenty. Unfortunately, they had introduced into her gut a specially engineered breed of Sergetti knife-worm, suspended in tiny capsules. Within hours of the escapee’s triumphant arrival, the capsules made their way into the environment and dissolved as they were designed to. The knife-worms were released and began to multiply.
Plenty has no native animal life, but it has evolved its own plants, which happen to be toxic to just about everything. Therefore humans had to either ship in all their food or set up the ecosystem necessary to grow it there. Setting up a full ecosystem takes decades, even over a small area like the islands which hold Plenty’s human population. Hydroponics and dome farms and so on are all very well, but on a fertile planet like Plenty it is far more economical and reliable in the long run to have old fashioned farms growing meat and vegetables in the context of a fully self-sustaining ecosystem.
First, then, they introduced bacteria, grasses, mosses, plankton and seaweeds from Earth which competed extremely well with the less-evolved native flora. After just five years or so, the terraformers were confident enough to introduce herbivorous insects, small plant-eating mammals and fish, and a variety of more complex plants. The animal life flourished, and soon minor predators had to be introduced to keep their numbers in check, with larger herbivores and other creatures imported and released later at the appropriate stages. Balancing all of the different parts of the complex food web, from tiny bacteria all the way up to humans, is crucially important and extremely difficult, and it is now understood that the original plan for Plenty’s ecosystem was far too ambitious- They introduced too much too soon. In thirty years they had almost a complete ecosystem installed around the inhabited islands, but and it was unstable. Every year one link or another in the food chain would be verging on extinction or explosion.
The Sergetti knew all this and their voracious knife-worms tipped the balance. They damaged everything they encountered on land or sea, multiplying more rapidly than anything could kill them and feeding at an unsustainable rate. They ate the introduced plankton and plant life, but they would also infest the digestive system of animals, including humans, knotting together to cause painful and damaging blockages. With the basic plant life under attack, the ecosystem was doomed. Once they had eaten every shred of introduced chlorophyll on the entire planet the knife-worms starved to extinction, but the damage was done. Plenty had only a month’s worth of food stored up. The Sergetti moved to block relief ships from Earth, forcing us to divert fleets away from the eastern front in an attempt to get supplies through.
With all the introduced plant life gone, people ate the starving cattle and other herbivores, and then when the herbivores were gone they ate the starving carnivores and then the starving scavengers. Then everything was gone. A few pockets of introduced life remained in unreachable parts of the ocean but effectively, there were now just the humans, the inedible native plants, dirt-and dung eating bugs and the flies which fed off the dead humans. In the end the people of Plenty were reduced to eating worms, maggots, fabrics and even – allegedly – one another.
It was horrific. Four million people – a third of the planet’s population - were dead within five months of the first knife-worm. At was at this point that a Terran and Drukshocka joint offensive seized a number of key Sergetti planets and forced the coalition to make peace. The Sergetti themselves flew in the first relief packages to Plenty, and were allowed to establish a community in the planet’s vast ocean as part of the peace treaty’s terms. Disease and malnutrition affected every single survivor to some extent, and more than a half of them were destined to die less than two months after the aid finally came.”
Everyone had stopped eating.
“My grandfather lived through it all.” said Cane, solemnly. “So did my father, but he was just a baby. My Grandmother and her three other children all died in the famine. All of my mother’s family was wiped out except for her and my uncle. My Grandfather died ten years ago on Festival’s Eve, at just eighty-eight years old. He was one of one of the Last of Plenty’s first-generation colonists, and until the day he died his cupBoards were always stocked with a half-year’s worth of food.”
Loorl looked guiltily at his plate. I noticed with some alarm that I had already emptied my wine glass. It didn’t seem to have affected me so I accepted some more.
“That is why we fast.” Concluded Cane.
The meal had a rather more solemn tone after that, although it did recover a certain amount of joviality toward the end. For once I was actually enjoying myself, my frustrations at being restricted to just conversation and eating forgotten for the time being. I was pleased that Cane seemed to be prepared to converse with me once more, although he was understandably quiet for the rest of the meal. He left the table quite soon after finishing his story, leaving me with Loorl, who for some reason seemed more tolerable than usual. I retired that night more satisfied than I had been in months, and awoke the next morning with a persistent, thumping ache in my brains.
Loorl came to find me in the morning, making loud and irritating jokes about hangovers, whatever they are. I was feeling far too uncomfortable to take much notice. He told me that Cane had persuaded him to resume my instruction in viking lore, and that he would try to be more tolerant of my intolerance. Under ordinary circumstances I would have thrown him out and told him exactly where he could tolerate his instructions, but I took the quieter option and accepted his peace gesture.
We began immediately. Loorl started in his usual style, speaking authoritatively on a subject I had already researched for myself. Within ten minutes, as usual, he had meandered away from the topic in hand to tell a tale about the time he and his friends had been drinking with the murdered human. Rather than provoke another argument, I simply allowed him to talk, listening absently to his words, and discovering that my brain-ache made it very uncomfortable to read his mind. It soon became clear that he was inventing much of this re-telling - his official accounts of his night in the container had been very complete and not consistent with what he was saying now- and I was about to dispute this fact with him when suddenly it all clicked into place. I knew he was making it all up, and he knew that I knew, but it didn’t matter. That’s what he had been trying to teach me all along. He had altered the events of the night to include a lengthy retelling of one of the old myths and I felt a pang of recognition. The myth he had woven into the story concerned the thunder god Thor. Thor’s hammer had been stolen by a giant named Thrym, and in exchange for its return the thief demanded Freya, a much desired Goddess, as his wife. Freya was unwilling to participate, so Thor himself disguised himself as a bride to retrieve his property.
I suddenly realised that the story was about me: He was drawing a parallel with my undercover mission to infiltrate the Viking clan in the guise of the murderess. From the emphasis of certain parts of the tale I also guessed that Loorl cast himself as Loki, the quick-witted half-god, half-giant trickster who accompanies Thor and explains away Thrym’s suspicions.
This story-telling that I had dismissed as childish foolery had taken on a new depth, and I listened carefully to the rest of his tale. I was at once gratified and dismayed by the ending in which Thor successfully accomplishes his mission, but then having retrieved his hammer bludgeons Thrym and his family to death with it. By the end of the story I had much to think about. His story concluded, Loorl left to find some of his new human friends. He was genuinely surprised as he exited when I thanked him for the lesson.
Alone again and lost in my thoughts, for the first time in a long time I took time to stare out at the stars. This time, the sense of peace and comfort I normally find in the void escaped me, and I felt something I do not ever remember feeling before- loneliness.
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Addendum- the norse tale Loorl told is known as Thrym's Lay. If you want to read it for yourself, there are a million Versions of it available Online.
Click here for one of them.