The Star Whorl (The Totality Cycles Book 1) Read online

  And I just want it abolished, gone, he thought grimly, but tried not to convey that in movement, gesture, or glyph. Find some other way to motivate the populace, but not using the coercive means of the Malkia! By the slightly amused glimmers of glyphs from his parents, he understood that he was not entirely successful.

  Whorl Eighty Seven

  Kreceno’Tiv’s eyes went wide when he saw the rows of Long-Travel translation chambers. The Long-Travel construct glyph was one of the most complex and intricate that he had ever seen, an eminently elegant amalgamation of concrete and abstract glyphs, blended together for a singular purpose: to transport people and things to distant places, distant worlds. Worlds across the entire Totality, if necessary. It tangled elegantly around an immaterial sphere, taking up less than a sixteenth of it in uneven slices of slowly undulating glowing lines.

  He stood with his mouth agape, his vuu’erio waving forward and fully engaged to his semi-compounded vision, trying to memorize and decipher its intricacies all at once, but there was just too much information, too much to untwine and decompose in a few moments of contemplation. Nothing in the lecture he had taken had prepared him for the reality of it. For, despite his own experimentation with glyph translation, something about it unnerved him. And despite having made the fullest study that he could of the truncated glyph for Long-Travel, there was a vital part that he had not seen before, a part that disturbingly resembled consuming. For the glyph and construct took the subject-person in as part of itself and submerged that person’s glyph, as it reached out to its conversant self on the other side of the travel translation, transmitting the person along with it.

  I’ve always exerted influence on glyphs, he thought, hesitating for just the barest instant on the threshold. I’m not sure I like the idea of one exerting influence on me!

  “Think of it like the transport that took you to Secondus just this turn,” his mother said quietly, waiting in queue behind him. Apparently he had projected his thoughts quite clearly. “It exerted much the same influence on you – it moved you, you did not move it. This is just a bit farther, and a bit more – immediate.”

  He gestured assent, remembering his report on just that comparison, but still staring at it, and it seemed to turn some quasi-living attention to him and stare back. He caught himself just before he let his elytra-pace clack in agitation – and fascination.

  “Kreceno’Tiv,” Vespar-Drelano’Sev’Tiv said gently, smiling. Tearing himself away reluctantly, Kreceno’Tiv turned away from the siren-lure of the construct glyph and moved to follow his parents, who were able to go to the front of the line, due to his father being a Solidarim Counselor.

  “Remember, you won’t be able to enter until I’ve fully translated,” Vespar-Drelano’Sev’Tiv said, not in the least making any insinuation about Kreceno’Tiv’s ill-conceived modification of the Long-Travel glyph and translation to retrieve the Heretian girl, Okon. But the memory rose in his mind regardless, though he kept his face impassive. All the things that had followed from that he would just as soon forget, except all the time he had shared with Pavtala Ralili’Bax.

  Without hesitation, his father slipped into the transport chamber, and the Long-Travel glyph, out of sight above, was Nil-ized to send him to the Solidaris Orm. It seemed to take forever for the indicator on the chamber to show it was clear, and Kreceno’Tiv was hard-pressed not the clack his elytra-pace in impatience.

  It’s like being in the vuu-blitzed line for the Bustani, he wanted to gripe. But just then, the indicator cleared, and the chamber opened before him.

  “Your turn,” Vespa Kareni’Tiv said, a smile in her voice.

  Whorl Eighty Eight

  Trying not to draw a nervous breath, he tucked in his vuu’erio and stepped into the Long-Travel chamber with no small amount of trepidation. The chamber filled with Nil’Gu’vua, the power permeating his body and filling his mind. His vuu’erio tried to connect to his tertiary retinas, to see the shape that Nil’Gu’vua was taking. But he could not shape this Nil’Gu’vua – it shaped him, and he had a strange feeling of – floating, of lightness, of disorientation. And then the world stretched around him, and he could see the roof of the Long-Travel center, but it receded away as if attached to the end of a thin elastine-band, the curve of Gu’Anin also forming and receding rapidly. Fantastical shapes flashed by him, and then the star Anin’val that Gu’Anin revolved around was falling away also, then the entire stellar system. Then he closed his eyes and tucked away his vuu’erio, or at least, shut down his awareness, for there was too much stimuli coming in, too fast, too fast and too plentiful for him to comprehend or vuu all at once. He felt himself turn, if one could be said to turn in such a state, and when he opened his awareness the tiniest bit, things were rushing toward him, and he seemed to be going faster and faster, falling headlong to an enormous grey pearl hanging in a star-glittered sky, and he screamed as the hard surface seemed to drive toward him with implacable force.

  “Arrghhh!” he felt the tail-end of the scream rip out of him, and he was crouching with his hands up to shield against the impact that would surely splatter him thin and pastelike against the side of the huge construct. But he was whole, though his heart beat wildly in his chest, and his head pounded with the reaction to the perception of danger. His elytra-pace pressed almost painfully to his back, the wing-nets buzzing within.

  Thankfully, the chamber in which he found himself was sealed, affording a bit of privacy for his fear reaction. He saw that the glyph of the chamber included one of silence, so that no one beyond heard his wail as he reincorporated.

  So thoughtful. I wonder how many of them still wail when they arrive, though they might use the Long-Travel every turn? he wondered with asperity, as he stood and wiped his mouth and his brow. Someone had also thoughtfully provided moist wipes in a dispenser, and he took one to freshen up. When he felt composed enough, he touched the glyph gently with his Nil’Gu’ua, and it responded by opening the chamber so that he could disembark.

  Vespar-Drelano’Sev’Tiv smiled at him. “Well, you seem to have come through all right,” his father said, humorously, as if still able to read his agitation in his glyph.

  He probably can. “Yes, Father,” he said, smiling nonchalantly nonetheless.

  Whorl Eighty Nine

  The Solidaris Orm was one of a multitude of super-Hives located deep in the galactic core, where Nil’Gu’vua was thickest, almost opaque to Kreceno’Tiv’s vuu-senses. He could almost see it without readjusting his sight, for it pressed in on all sides, multiple curtaining draperies parting before his waking eyes, and hovering just in the corner of his vision.

  Is this what Father has to feel every turn? he thought, dazed by the density of it. Coming home must be like leaving a vat of heavy syrup and returning to a shallow pool of thin, barely sweet water! No wonder most Solidarim families relocate to the Orm!

  “Here is the Observis,” Vespar-Drelano’Sev’Tiv said, showing them into a round room with four entrances without doors, filled with rows of seats arranged in concentric circles. “Here, we’re able to view any of the wonders of the Totality. The Singing Rings of L’Loua, or the Cavroan Ice Showers, the Synchronized Phthalene Moon Geysers, or even the Living Tishan Star Flares. The things to be seen are endless – it would take a million lifetimes to see them all. But phenomena near the Nil’Gu’dae stars and worlds are more difficult to view, while those deep in Nil’Gu’vua are, naturally, the easiest. We do not, as a rule, try to view the Whorl-core – even a glimpse can blind you, temporarily, and prolonged exposure can burn out your Nil’Gu’ua permanently.”

  Kreceno’Tiv hid a shudder. Of course the fount of Nil’Gu’vua, the singularity at the Star Whorl-core, would be too intense to look at, much less try to sense. He did not plan to put the intensity of it to the test.

  His father indicated seats in the inner ring, and he and his mother sat. Vespar-Drelano’Sev’Tiv selected a stellar phenomenon for them to view. He came to take a seat beside Vespa Kare
ni’Tiv. The room darkened, even though there were no veils or entrance-screens to block the doorways, and the Star Whorl came into view, seemed to zoom toward them. It was like the Long-Travel, expect they were sitting still, and there was not the overwhelming deluge of information, for the view was at one step removed, merely the images of streaking stars rather than the actual streak of star themselves.

  Kreceno’Tiv tried to follow the flow of information, but there was just too much, going by too quickly, the glyphs almost out-of-focus blurs.

  The scene settled on a world with eight moons that seemed to box it in. They whirled like nothing he had ever seen, and then in perfect synchronicity, as they faced the parent planet, they shot pure blue geysers toward it, the hot water crystalizing almost instantly as it hit the outerness beyond the minute atmospheres of the moons.

  He gazed in wonder, speechless, letting the gyrating glyph and the visual panorama wash over and over him, becoming a part of his glyph forever.

  Whorl Ninety

  When the awesome experience was over, the light in the room rose slowly, as if giving the occupants time to reassimilate to their more confining environment.

  Vespar-Drelano’Sev’Tiv smiled at them, gratification at Kreceno’Tiv’s appreciation evident in his expression.

  “Come, there is something else you should see, before we go to my lodgings here,” he said, getting up slowly.

  Kreceno’Tiv and Vespa Kareni’Tiv did the same, and he saw that others had joined them in the Observis, unnoticed. The other observers also climbed to their feet and began to drift away.

  “What are we going to see now?” he asked, his head still whirling from the marvelous experience.

  “We are going to view the Totality.”

  The simple sentence conveyed many things. First, that the Observis that they had just left was not capable of showing what Vespar-Drelano’Sev’Tiv wanted him to see. Then, the new location was probably more private, more conducive to what they wanted to tell him, for they did want to discuss something with him, of that he was sure. And third, that it would be a lesson in inference and implication, that he would need to read into it all the things they wanted to convey – or find out later all of what they meant. He would need such skills in the Ministries. Vespar-Drelano’Sev’Tiv led them to a more enclosed Observis, one that obviously had restricted access, and was just as obviously more detailed, and of a higher resolution, to be used for study and analysis rather than entertainment. His father lowered the lights, and called forth the glyph of the Totality. It spread out before them, a panorama of glittering jewel-sparks against the black velvet of outerness, both slowly turning, dancing around each other.

  Vespar-Drelano’Sev’Tiv put a warm hand on Kreceno’Tiv’s shoulder. Vespa Kareni’Tiv put an arm around his waist. The overt gestures did not distract him from the utter beauty of the Totality spread out before them.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” his father said, as they gazed out at the foreshortened view of the Totality. The Totality spanned two Star Whorls, two Galaxies, close in the weft of the outerness. Their glyphs were almost solid spheres, they were so dense with information, information expressing everything about what comprised the whorls of stars. Around them, the false-pink haze of Nil’Gu’vua was spread unevenly, showing almost opaque concentrations along the spiral arms of the Star Whorls, and thin as tissue in the spaces between.

  “It is,” he said, smiling at his parents. There was something there, something he could almost see, if only he could – look closer, enlarge the view, have a moment or nine to contemplate what he was seeing, for it teased the provoking, uneasy thought that had almost formed in his mind a turn or so before.

  “You’ll be following your sister to Tertius,” Vespa Kareni’Tiv said, scattering his concentration. “You know you’ll be evaluated.”

  He gestured assent, tingling with a new excitement, the foreboding thought again pushed roughly to the outskirts of his thoughts.

  I’m going to Tertius! It was official, he would receive training in the advanced forms of the use of Nil’Gu’vua, and glyphics, politics, and governance. He contained his elation, his first ambition realized. He knew that his Nil’Gu’ua level was high – he was curious to see how high, and how he ranked in ability, compared to his contemporaries. Now he would be able to get on the path to reversing the OSI, to effecting positive change for the taken citizens of Gu’Anin.

  And perhaps I’ll get a chance to return to the Long-Travel center and get to fully understand the Long-Travel glyph, he thought, wanting to laugh and share the moment with Pavtala Ralili’Bax. He tried not to let the thought sour him. He missed her. But she would have been excited for him, and he held on to that, finding that he was not as depressed about her absence as he had been. He thought thinly of also finding Pavtala Ralili’Bax again, but practicality raised its vuu’erio tennae, telling him that by the time he matriculated from Tertius, she might well have true-mated. He did his best to let the thought of her go. He forced himself to smile. I’m going to Tertius!

  Whorl Ninety One

  “I know you’re excited to go,” Vespar-Drelano’Sev’Tiv said, squeezing his shoulder. “But – son...”

  Kreceno’Tiv looked at his father, then his mother, and their words registered on his consciousness, dampening his exhilaration. They both had quiet looks on their faces, quiet, intent expressions that told him more than words, though he had missed the glyphs of their thoughts. Their faces counseled caution, discretion. But what, exactly, were they cautioning him against, he did not know.

  “Tell me,” he said, knowing that he would have to work on understanding nuance and deducing answers more diligently. I really should not have to keep asking for clarification, he admonished himself.

  His mother did not sigh, but gave him a tiny squeeze. A glyph of privacy surrounded them. “Never show everything you can do,” she murmured. “We know you have very high Nil’Gu’ua ability, but...”

  “Never show just how high your skill level is,” his father finished. “If you have level eight, only evaluate to level six.”

  Kreceno’Tiv gaped at him. I’m not supposed to show my full ability? he thought incredulously, then clamped down on his dismay. He took a breath and thought through his confusion, looked for the reasoning behind their words. If his parents were telling him, explicitly, to hide his true level of skill, then there must be a reason, and a very good one. Which meant that they were also hiding their own true ability levels, by at least two, if not three levels. Both of them rated at level seven, which meant that they were either level nine, or even ten. So – they wanted him to test at a respectable level, but hide just how powerful he really was.

  There’s some danger associated with being evaluated at very high Nil’Gu’ua ability levels, he realized. Political, maybe. Or some very important advantage to hiding it. Or both. Not being evaluated to his full potential also meant that if he wanted to learn how to use his skills at the higher levels, he was going to have to teach himself.

  He gestured assent, his excitement blunted. But he understood, at least a little. They would not have brought it up unless it was really vital.

  “My dear, we don’t want to dampen your excitement of attending Tertius,” Vespa Kareni’Tiv said, regret and chagrin on her face. “But this is important.”

  He smiled. “I know, Mother. I understand. Don’t worry, I’m still excited.”

  He could almost feel their dismay at having put a damper on his mood. But he was grateful for the warning.

  Better to be dampened and warned than excited and credulous, he thought.

  Whorl Ninety Two

  As they walked back to their suite, Kreceno’Tiv found his steps arrested for a split moment – a glimpse of one of the most stunning young women he had ever seen flashed across his vision. The barest hint of her glyph was visible, and the subtlest hint of her chemi-scent was enough to make him respond, his physique changing almost irretrievably to match her. All thoughts and memorie
s of Pavtala Ralili’Bax fled away, except a mocking laugh and a reminder that she had said he would meet someone special.

  For that split instant he forgot how to breathe as her eyes seemed about to meet his, and they were somehow iridescent with rainbows....

  Then someone passed between them, and she was gone, turned away, hidden in the pearlescent halls of the Solidaris Orm.

  Suddenly remembering how to breathe again, his heart pounding, he held in a shiver and shook off most of the Genus-reaction that he had unconsciously taken on. He looked up to see his parents gazing at him. Their expressions conveyed amusement, and a glinting, knowing expectancy.

  Chagrined at having so baldly shown his attraction, he straightened his back and suppressed the last of the Genus-reaction, though it was difficult. He resumed walking with them, none of them saying anything.

  Once they reached the privacy of their suite, he raised guilty eyes to them, wondering how to apologize for his gaff.

  “You did well,” Vespar-Drelano’Sev’Tiv said, actually smiling and putting a hand on his shoulder again. “Extremely well. Better than most your age. Not many can resist the Tiphi, so young. I followed the first Tiphi woman I saw for marks, trying to fix her interest. Only my parents were able to head me off. This Lady – she is of the Tiphi Cav.”

  Tiphi Cav? he thought, shuddering. Already he could hear the additive to his name, Tiphir-Kreceno’Tiv’Cav. He felt himself beginning to respond again, and ruthlessly shut it off, tucking his vuu’erio so tight into his hair that it tugged at his face.