The Chronicles of Misty Read online

  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.

  Chapter 4: Welcome

  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, and then drifted back off to sleep.

  He barely ate anything for breakfast and immediately sequenced the ship to anchor in hyperspace and slip the southern pole up under it. Sensors began working before releasing the anchor. 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, beyond which there seemed a fog bank enveloping everything.

  It seemed there was 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. He was frankly surprised the sensors could not duplicate actual eye vision. 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 protection 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 writing 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, and 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 sentiment 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 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 encounter anywhere on the entire planet. Unlike most worlds, we did not develop such a widely diverging mix of cultural array. The population is fairly sparse, living 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 rest of 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 technol
ogical specifics, your ship may have trouble leaving. We would be loath for you to find yourself trapped here.”

  Chapter 5: A Different Place

  It took only a short time to check his ship, and 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 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, 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 its 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 he had already known before starting his journey.

  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 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.”

  Chapter 6: The Story

  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 have to ask later.

  Taking a sip, George gazed into his cup, and then his gaze drifted to the open tent door. “We would like to claim our religion has been around as long as mankind, but it seems all religions 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 have been 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 call the spirit. Our religion is 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 for the wider society, 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 nonetheless 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, a powerful otherworldly focus. 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. 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 simply 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 temporaril
y into standing room on the ships, slipping them up into the Arctic zone, and 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.”