CHAPTER X


AN ENCOUNTER OF DECISION MAKERS




	Finally as evening cooled, the grass crickets brought their frenzied concert to an end and 
night currents drifted down into a dreamy state of calm.  Two days had passed since Trajan and 
Leoynar arrived on the sleepy rivershore town of Shantelar and the weather had stayed mild.  
During those days they had been spoiled by a climate designed for indolent tourists, warm 
mornings inducing lazy relaxation and cool evenings for more leisure under the sprawl of 
brilliant stars.  On Phylee-Patre the season was efflorescing in Tyro but here on Evening Star it 
was Sunder.  

	Tomorrow, the mood would be entirely different, for tomorrow morning they would start 
their journey into the Terahydra Forest.  

	The flight across space had proceeded with uneventful dispatch.  Chief Guillen had seen 
them off at the Spaceodrome with last instructions, best wishes and an extra set of equipment for 
Leoynar.  When Leoynar was told the nature of Trajan's mission, he was outraged that his 
nephew wanted to go into the Sphere alone and indignant that the Tres-Tiorem had sanctioned 
his decision.  "I will not let you go off on your own," he emphatically advised Trajan, "the 
wilderness experience I've gained in the Steppes will avail us both."  Turning a deaf ear to 
Trajan's cautioning of the dangers in this mission, he had delivered a petition to the Tres-Tiorem 
and the Supreme Order of the Command, a passionate plea that would have been dragged 
through governmental echelons to a state of ragged trumpery, but for the Medical 
Commissioner's autopsy report.  

	The report not only granted Leoynar his wish but also gave a new face to the mission.  
From a straight seek and destroy it had now gained multiple facets of search and rescue and a 
quest for the whereabouts of someone illustrious, mysterious and undiminished in the memory of 
many and in his influence in shaping the present and even the future.  Leoynar was in the best 
position to identify the great Lar since for a while he was so fortunate as having been indulged 
by his Grandfather. 

	Leoynar had to postpone in making Ferngarthen his permanent home, something that he 
had been looking forward to but readily put aside to accompany Trajan on this mission.  He went 
through a brief initiation course at the Command in the use of a rephar and the Command's hand 
computer equipment.  An optic strip was implanted beneath his right clavicle and he was taught 
to code it with both hands.  In a sudden lust for adventure, he had bought himself a stingthruster 
complete with night power vision.  

	Sitting on a cot he fondled his new possessions, wiping and holding them admiringly to 
the single light bulb in the wooden ceiling.  Seated on the bunk across, Trajan stole a glance at 
Leoynar and smiled, feeling content just seeing him there.  The old map, Lar Irwain's letter and 
Krystan's note lay spread out before him.  

      Before his departure Trajan had travelled to Calitre to meet with the young outworlders 
now settled in Eskar Royan's home municipality.  They had gathered in the family home of 
Royan's floating island villa.  Surrounded by a congenial atmosphere of blue waters and waving 
palms, he had steepened fingers with each of them in greeting, and in searching their minds for 
any hint of treachery.  But they all stood in awe of him, of what he had done for them and what 
he stood for.  Should he give any command, they would all follow him like one army, though 
they all dreaded that he would order them to go with him.  Trajan's final act before leaving 
Phylee-Patre was his surrender of the old parchments to the Stewardship.  The study of these 
parchments would be combined with the revival of the Starstream Conduit research and testing.  
Trajan had a brief moment of insight as Fredric, the newly appointed Supervisor of the Research 
Committee, closed his hand around the parchments, that this time, with new-found knowledge 
and purpose, Iucari-Tres will succeed in building the Starstream Bridge. 

	Now before the next stage of their journey, the two of them sat together in the wooden 
cabin without speaking, Leoynar absorbed in the intricacies of the multilyzer and Trajan 
retracing a previous journey undertaken by a great Lar whom he had never known but who had 
never stopped to tantalize him, a personality he thought, with a twitch of discomfort, whom he 
resembled in many ways.  

      'Starglory can create many gateways but for the safety of Iucari-Tres you must use the 
gateway over the Continent of Aberon,' was Krystan's advice. 

	"Do you hear that?" Leoynar muttered starting to his feet. 

	"Yes," said Trajan said, keeping his voice low, "someone is outside."  

	He nudged towards the window and Leoynar nodded.  Leoynar took position near the 
door while Trajan swiftly climbed through the window.  Shantelar was shrouded in silken black 
and the stars were swimming across the sky.  Under the shadow of the eaves a figure crouched 
against the wall.  When the figure heard the foot crunch behind his back he jerked into motion 
but Trajan grabbed him by the shoulders and forcibly pushed him forward, through the door and 
into the ceiling bulb's cone of light.  

	Leoynar shuddered as if he was seeing a ghost. "Eugene," he croaked.  

	"More correctly, Nagus," Trajan said, studying the newcomer curiously. "Well, I've been 
expecting you.  I don't think that hiding and running from the videts has done you much good.  
You have positively aged."  

	The fire in the eyes that had shone like rubies in the shadowy halls of Casteltheyne had 
subsided to a mere lurid flicker.  The rough coat and trousers hung loosely on his body and even 
the sneer had lost its impact appearing more or less like a toothache snarl.  

	"Then it is true," Trajan said, "To go or not into the Sphere has become for you an issue 
of life and death.  Leoynar, meet the third member of our little expedition!"

	Leoynar scowled as if the idea of dragging a half corpse as extra burden through the 
wilderness struck him as absurd but he made no protest.  Shrugging his shoulders he offered with 
slight disdain:  "He looks as if he has not eaten for days. Shall we feed him too?" 

	Trajan gave a laugh.  "Go easy on him, Leoynar.  He might be useful.  That he has 
managed to come so far and find us is remarkable indeed.  Nagus, let's hear from you how you 
did it while I heat up some food."   

	"I know I could count on your goodwill, Trajan," Nagus sniggered and told them how he 
had been stalking Anjelie Trevarthen ever since he had been chased out of Casteltheyne by 
Eugene wielding a stingthruster.  In Larkae before the Surety Videts had been alerted she had 
hurled at his face her Insta-Fund slip and told him to bury himself on Evening Star as her Lar 
once did. 

	"I have heeded her words, and thus I am here," Nagus concluded while he stuffed food in 
his mouth. "Although circumstances have not exactly developed to my liking I have not 
forgotten your promise.  One day I hope to return to Phylee-Patre to remind you of it but I have 
also been closely monitoring all arrivals either from Phylee-Patre or from Calitre.  So I know you 
have come at last."  He took a long swig of cold water and refilled his plate. 

	"Are you sure, Trajan, that you want him to come with us?" Leoynar asked perturbed. "Is 
he for real?  How can he have any relation to Eugene?" 

	"He is real," Trajan said sombrely. "In many ways he is also Eugene."  

* * *

	After an uneasy and restless night they gathered their luggage at the hour of dawn and 
embarked on the last, most strenuous leg of their journey.  

	"If you want to join our little trip," Leoynar snapped and tossed his backpack to Nagus, 
"you'd better start learning how to carry a bag!"  

	Trajan looked at them briefly, strapping on his backpack with a half-smile and without 
saying another word led them straight into the Terahydra Forest.  He and Leoynar wielded 
flashwilters to cut a path through the thick undergrowth. 

	For several long days they marched through the unrelenting impregnability of the forest, 
struggling through the tangled walls of hydrafrond trees and occasionally being startled by a 
jabbering teramoss-hide scurrying up a trunk or across the overhanging canopy of rioting boughs 
and fronds.

	Trajan had Lar Irwain's testimonial of his previous trek tucked away in his pocket and 
now and then he would take it out and compare its notes with the surrounding reality.  He was 
satisfied they were on the right path and for him nothing mattered more than to reach their 
destination at the right time of the equalizing rainstorm.  He spared neither himself nor his 
companions, rising early and marching on even when darkness had fallen; it proved to be a 
backbreaking progress for his fellow travellers.   

	From the very first day of their hike Nagus complained about the humidity, the plague of 
insects around their heads and the brambles tearing at their feet and had never stopped since.  As 
for Leoynar, he would sooner face a whole army of crazed teramoss hides than that steady 
whining behind his back.  Once, Nagus threw the backpack on the ground with a snort and 
walked past as if there was not a cloud in the sky.  Leoynar's face was a hideous play of fury and 
Nagus was only moments away from receiving the punishment beyond all imagination.  Trajan 
looking over his shoulder waved a gesture of restraint and took Leoynar's stingthruster to lighten 
his burden when Leoynar took his baggage back on himself.  

	At long last, on a grey and misty morning they stood on the crest of the hill overlooking 
the canyon and right in front of them the Acier Shield rose to the sky as stony spectators to the 
continued Sundering of orange-red HeliĆ. 

	"We're nearly there!" Trajan said. 

	They followed him down the rain gulley of the slope with Nagus carefree in the middle 
and Leoynar now bringing up the rear.  Their pace was fast and brisk and before the day had 
ended they had arrived at the foot of the Shield.  Leoynar arched his neck, thunderstruck by the 
vast immensity of polished stone stretching far away into the pinkish clouds.  "Aberon," he 
whispered, awed, "incredible!"

	He turned and asked Trajan, "What now?"

	"We wait," Trajan answered, lifting his eyes up at the sky and noticing the gathering of 
heavy clouds. "We will have to pitch tent.  It looks like rain."

	"Rain," Leoynar groaned, "as if we needed it."  He glanced around, hoping whether he 
could entice Nagus to give him a helping hand but the good-for-naught had disappeared 
somewhere into the bushes. 

	Nagus only reappeared in the hours of twilight when Trajan was in the course of cooking 
their meal and Leoynar was stretching out his weary limbs in the tent.   

	"We are not alone," Negus glibly remarked.  

	Trajan shot him an irritated glance. "Don't be silly, there is no one here except us."  

	"I tell you we are not alone," Nagus repeated playfully.  

	Trajan shrugged; his mind was too full of other things and since the first day of their trek 
through the forest it had become his habit not to pay too much attention to ramblings coming 
from Nagus. "Come on, let's eat," he said curtly.

	After their dinner of herb soup, grilled meat and crispbread Leoynar and Nagus crept into 
the tent, curling up in their separate far-away corners for the night's rest.  The first raindrops 
began to fall.  Trajan sat with knees drawn to his chin near the half-open flap of the tent, 
maintaining watch throughout the evening.  

	Leoynar grunted with annoyance when he was shaken up from his sleep and stole a 
glance at his chronodisc.  It was a few minutes past Meridian Noxt and the air was filled with the 
crisp tang of soil refreshened by rain.  A small storm had broken loose while he was asleep and 
through faint starlight creeping through the night clouds and trickling into the tent he saw how 
Nagus similarly was being bundled to his feet.  Staggering out of the tent Leoynar uttered a gasp 
of awe at the sight of a boulevard of colours spanning the sky and thence spearing through the 
mountain walls.

	"Hurry!" Trajan urged. "Gather your things, break up the tent fast.  We haven't got a 
moment to lose. 

	"Nagus," he ordered severely, "give Leoynar a hand, now, or I leave you behind!"

	Leoynar and Nagus stamped around the camp in panicky haste, picking up some things 
and discarding others.  Trajan had gone ahead reaching the end of the rainbow before its 
massiveness penetrated the flanks of the mountains.  Nearby stood a mound shadowed by the 
sapling which had now grown to a sturdy tree.  

	A Will pulled him towards the mound.  With trembling hands Trajan touched the tree.  
There is something buried in that mound, something that reached out to him with a faint pulse, 
very faint, beating like a heart almost spent but still there.  There is another Core, the essence of 
a Traveller, a dear companion, laid to rest by someone who is now looking at him from the mist 
of the distant past with large, grey eyes, shining as crystal lakes in bright morning.  He clutched 
at the painful throbbing of his heart.  

	"Don't look at me like this," he panted.  "I am coming, I am coming to you!"  

	Hurried footsteps sounded behind his back and Trajan pushed himself away from the 
mound.  His face betrayed nothing as he told them:  "Stay very close to me.  Follow the light, 
remember always follow the light."  

	Trajan drew a deep breath; the end of the road was just a few minutes away.  

	Plunging into the rainbow was like being engulfed by a sea of stars.  For moments the 
fierce pulsing of the resplendence painfully dazzled Leoynar's eyes but as soon as he had 
adjusted them he saw that a path of white light bored through the breadth of the Shield, crossing 
to the other side, and a spear of blue radiance was lengthening from Trajan's hand.  

	"Someone is following us!" Nagus shouted in Trajan's ear.  

	"Shut up, Nagus!" Trajan snapped.

	"I think he is right, Trajan," came Leoynar's voice gratingly from the back.  

	They stood once more under the canopy of black velvet night.  Aberon was still a desert 
of crooked pillars and crumbling masonry, cloaked by the dust of time, the silence of the dead 
and never-ending midnight stretching from one rim to the next, except where they stood huddled 
closely together under an arch of brilliance. 

	Furiously Trajan broke away from his little circle to pounce upon the intruder with 
Starglory beating white-blue in the palm of his right hand.  He greeted mockingly:  "Well, well, 
Superpre Deyron.  I salute you. I did not expect you'd have the nerve or the resourcefulness to 
pull this through.  But here you are, all in one piece, in a lost and forbidden continent, a feat only 
a few of us have been able to accomplish."

	"I only want my perpetrator," Deyron rebutted doggedly, his face a red-bluish circle in 
the expanding light.

	"You followed us the whole way through the forest!" Leoynar whistled with grudging 
respect.

	"Yes I did, Lar Leoynar," Deyron confirmed, "and if my guides were still around I would 
have caught up with you sooner.  Those damned imbecils left me stranded in the middle of the 
night.  Now, Captain, surrender him to me and you are free to do what you want."

	While they stood arguing, the arch that Starglory had formed, spiralled to the sky, 
cleaving through the blackness of night and other nights far beyond, enclosing the group in a 
cocoon of radiance.  

	"Leave it be, Deyron!" Trajan shouted.  "Whoever committed those crimes is out of your 
reach.  Turn back before it is too late!"  

	Aberon writhed and convulsed beneath their feet as if it was reliving the White Radiation 
Ingress in Cycle 101 of Fourth Radix.  With each spasm the bridge of effulgence rotated into 
solidity, encapsulating them between maelstroms of blue, white and red galaxies, cutting off 
realities of a devastated continent, Phylee-Patre, Calitre, playful HeliĆ, locking out home, 
Iucari-Tres.  The Other Sphere appearing, lands sinking in consuming fog, mountains of stone, 
dry plains, the fumes of war, one yellow circle hanging on the firmament: Age of Great 
Devolution, Terra Minus Zero.

	"What is happening!" Deyron roared.

	"Superpre Deyron, I have a surprise for you," Trajan laughed teasingly.  "You are 
coming with us after all!"  



END OF PART I