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| This is a picture of Rhyl on Assim overlooking Port Curou from the top of one of the warehouses. |
Over
the years I wrote – or mostly began to write – a number of other
Rhyl Dunbar stories. I have one completed short story entitled “Death
on Glou’ay” that I might post here – a slightly revised
edition.
Looking
through my papers I have found several more stories, started, mostly
not finished. In addition a packet of background information of the
universe I created. It outlined how the faster than light ships work,
mapped the human corner of the galaxy, and had a time line for Rhyl
that I could use to fit stories into their proper place.
As
I may, or may not have, mentioned before – looking over these old
pieces going back the better part of 40 years, I can’t help but
notice that my style of writing hasn’t changed all that much over
the years. These days I try to be a bit more focused on dialog rather
than description, and hopefully write more fluently, but the tone
hasn’t changed all that much. For better or worse.
Here
are some samples of these long lost stories:
“Last
Call”
‘Sorry
to intrude, Rhyl, but you’d better have a look at Anjere S2’
whispered a quiet voice from the implanted speaker in my left ear.
Touching
a micro-switch in my wrist chronometer, I activated my larynx
microphone and ship-con transmitter. I spoke a’loud to the empty
shadows of the ship’s saloon. ‘I’ll be right up.’
‘No
need to come to the bridge...’
‘On
my way,’ I replied, climbing to my feet. I picked up the steaming
mug of tzanifa from the table and wrapped my hands around it to warm
my fingers. I felt the cold breath of the black ones. The ship about
me was thin and insubstantial. And the wolves of the infinite night
were closing in on my soul. They wanted to tear it from me. I
welcomed Lene A’Vere’s call.
I
went forward past the ship’s office, the in-systems station,
chartroom and weapons station. A’Vere, the ship’s external
systems mate was a dark silhouette against the glow of the ex-systems
displays. She glanced back from the 3-dimensional display she was
studying as I approached.
‘Lonesome?’
she inquired. The pale light of the displays illuminated the smooth
angles of her subtly feline face and highlighted the golden waves of
her hair. Her large eyes searched my face and read my eyes. No reply
was necessary.
‘What’s
so interesting about S2 that can’t wait a quarter watch for me to
see?’ I asked, stepping close to peer into the gravicon display
floating above the projection table before her.
The
omnisenors gather and interpret a wide band of energy, one facet of
which is the gravitational continuum within a half a light-year
radius of the ship. This data is displayed as a 3-dimensional cross
section that normally sweeps around the axis of the ship’s course.
Because gravity is the manifestation of the renaming un-shattered
unity of the homogeneous proto-universe, a single “particle”
encompassing the entire universe, the gravicon is able to display
data in real time – what is occurring “now” up to its half a
light -year range.
What
A’Vere discovered is a star, with an inhabited system, on the verge
of going super-nova. The Cir Ay Cey’s cargo consisted of 30,000
sleeper pods that could be used to evacuate a small fraction of the
inhabitants… Reluctantly, they feel obliged to help and barely
escape the resulting nova. (I assume, since I didn’t read it to the
end – I think I do actually get to the end of this one too.) In any
event, I am always surprised about how much stuff I included in the
Wil Litang stories that must have been rattling around in my head for
decades.
Next
up:
“The
Near Wreck of the Shadow of Dreams on the Reef of the Crystal Comet”
or “An Account of a Crystal Comet” (I like the former title
better.)
I
sit in a pocket of day, though the night sky lay all around me. I
imagine the stars of the Noussier Cluster, a’drift in the night
sea, have gathered in a silent throng just beyond the transparent
muunciim crystal hull plates of the Shadow of Dream’s crystal prow,
to pear in on me. While, at the edge of the bridge’s sunlit deck,
the full, bulging shape of the World of Barrage rolls languidly in
the midnight sea, vibrant hued and covered with a glistening white
froth. I know every curve and contour of its lands and seas, and I
can call by name every city of note which sparkle by night like jewels in black sand.
I
lounge in sunlight that is warm on my skin and my down-side cap
shades my eyes from the glare. About the bridge the taerah-wood deck
is as bright white sand and the sunlight gives rare fire to all the
brass fittings and trim. Tiny sprites of sunbeams dance over the
crystal lenses and dials of the binnacle and other control consoles
of the bridge who’s deep hued wood panels have a glow deep within
them, as if they seek to store up the warmth that was lost in the
tri-watches of the long night of our passage here.
I
had a dream of exploring a crystal comet, and this story was an
attempt to make a story out of the fragments of that dream.
And
then we have:
“A
Night of Evar”
I
was down to Evar for only an evening, as me orbits were plotted and
ready to fly, but my ship, the Shadow of Dream, was still embarking,
far overhead, the last of her cargoes for Tarver-Constant and
inwards. For a time I walked alone the streets of fabled Evar, “Evar,
a’lovely and a’lone in black starry sea, ‘tween forbidden
Taezing and the Haunted Shadow,” as described in an old sarfeer’s
ballad. For she lies far off the myriad trading routes of man’s
fay-sailed ships and is but infrequently when a captain and a shp
brave the hazards of the passage, that other-world men do call on
Evar. I know of no time when two ships lay in Evar orbit together. So
alone they circle Evar, calling for her spice, Ev’sarimm, famous
throughout man’s realm, from Rehaar to Eiribu, where it is said a
handful will buy for you a moon of your own. But few sarfeers can
say, in truth, that they have walked the brick streets of Ceysance
Town under Evar’s night sky. Though far more could say, in truth,
if the dead could but talk; “We sailed for Evar.” but found the
course plotted “carried us to Desryries World,” for it a most
dangerous passage. And while I walked the streets of Ceysance, having
plotted my orbits that carry us to Traver-Constant, I feared that it
was to Desryries World that I sailed to come morning.
That,
anyways is the opening of the first version of this story. I have at
least three versions of it. One concerns Rhyl going down to Evar to
find the ship’s first mate who appears to have jumped ship. What I
can remember of Evar is that it a very seductive planet, beautiful,
peaceful, with a native species that feeds on electricity – and
glows, so that the street lights of the city are animate beings. And
I think, as the first opening hinted, Evar is far off the beaten
trading routes, and that like Rhyl, the first mate and others have a
premonition that the return voyage will not end well…
Next
up;
“Passage
to Assim”
About
me, the dreary gray of a winter’s day on Cartay was fast deepening
to black as the night fell in sheets of india ink, as I trudge
through the Great Portal of the Exotic Otherworlds into the Small
Craft Harbor of the Starport of E’Sarths. Behind me, in the distant
darkness the lights of the city of E’Sarths rose through the low
lying clouds, giving them a faint, cheerless glow. Closer behind, the
more ancient, low built building of the sarfeers district rose like
the foothills of a ragged mountains of light to cast its sinfully
cheer blaze skyward and chase my shadow before me. A broad mall
stretches ahead of me. At its distant end, the bright-lit pile of the
Custom House sprawled before the vast field of the Small Craft Harbor
while on both sides of the mall, large building stood. To starboard
it was the Sarfeers Guild Hall, built in some Inward Stars
architectural style, and looking ever so much like a great primordial
bird struggling, vainly, to free itself from the many-fingered clutch
of a tar-pit. It has been said of this structure, that perhaps its
most distinctive character is its ability to resist the forgiving
touch of years, to remain as painful to the eye today as it was when
first raised, a thousand years ago. Across the mall for this
monstrosity is the rambling pile of the Sovereign Space Yacht Club of
Cartay, whose many additions blend to give it a quaint, respectable
air.
Rhyle
makes it to Assim since we have:
“Planets
and Passages, A Sarfeer’s Life” perhaps a collection of stories.
One of which was to be: “The Riddle of Coursou’s Last Voyage”
I
approached Port Cursou low and from the sea. Below me flashed the
landing quays that dotted the shallow sea, their spidery array of
gantries silhouetted against the sunset mirroring sea. A tracery of
transport lines on tall stilts zigzagged over the oily waters linking
the quays and factory isles of Assim World’s free-zone archipelago
with the mainland. Soon Greater Cursou grew on the horizon, the
city’s kilometers high glass towers formed a sweeping crescent
shaped escarpment against the ruddy sky. Ad I closed, I could see
office lights twinkling to life across their glass facade in the
deepening twilight. Port Cursou proper first appeared as a forest of
black stumps against the pastel towers of Greater Cursou. These were
the high-rise warehouses that held the celestial trade of Port Curou
until it was re-exported. The hominoid inhabited Port Cursou, its
sarfeers quarters and stevedore tenements huddled at the feet of
these towering godowns and around the shore of Celestial Bay. The
quays are enclosed within a paroled security energy barrier that
isolates it from Assim proper. At least in theory. This area within
the barrier is known simply as the Enclave.
I
slowed as lighter traffic thicken around the warehouses, jockeying my
lighter with its continerhold off of a Q’Intre packet liner into the
flow pattern, breaking off as my destination, the warehouses of
MyKyntre, Tezhm & Co, Traders appeared ahead. I maneuvered to
landing bay 37 and set my cargo container down on the carrier that
would deposit on its assigned ledge within the vast structure. Then,
as it was my last run of my shift, I set the lighter down in her
service bay near the top of the tower and took the personnel elevator
to the ground.
Cursou,
as I pictured it, became Despar’s Sanjoor, on a reduced scale.
Another ghost of stories untold, stories unfinished, brought to
light.
And
finally we have one fairly recent start to a story set in this
universe, though I don’ think ol’Rhyl is the narrator. I started
writing this on my iPad with the thought of submitting it to a now
defunct website called “Raygun Revival.” I thought I’d written
down more of it, but if I did, it is now lost. I wish I could
remember just what the story was about – beyond that it was set in
a spaceship salvage yard and the girl with the Vez1 disrupter, is
like the wrecks she lives among, an unsalvageable ghost. The rest is
lost.
“Unsalvageable
Ghosts”
I
can't say what I heard, but I heard it too late. I spun around
sweeping the jumbled nightscape with my augmented eyesight.
Augmented, stars of the Inlopar Cluster burned so brightly I could
almost hear them hiss, illuminating the weird landscape of By'tilieth
Salvage and Sales' back lot in a cold blueish light. Deep in a hollow
beneath a pile of twisted metal, the last remains of a dead starship,
I saw her and her deadly, if antique, Vexiana Mk1 disrupter aimed
unwaveringly at my chest.
Damn.
By'tilieth's scrapyard sprawls across a hundred square kilometers of
a small moon of Arnilitha. It's gravity is artificial and low so that
between it and my augmented strength I could flip over to the far
side of the derelict gig I'd been examining in three ticks. The only
problem is that anyone halfway competent in arms could snap off six
shots even with a Vex1. The first, my personal force-field could
absorb. The second, maybe. I'd be blowing in the breeze with the
third hit. Judging by how unwaveringly she held the heavy Vex1, she
was certainly an augmented sarfeer like myself. She would not miss.
Nothing left to do but smile.
Next
up, my fantasy novel, the Brigand Sea-Prince. You’ve been warned.
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