ted@usceast.UUCP (Ted Nolan) (03/10/85)
Quite a while back (during the Christmas break I think), I proposed
a net round-robin sf story contest. I wrote part one of a story,
and asked for part 2 from the net at large. Well, the response was
not overwhelming. I decided that maybe everyone was on vacation, so
I let it sit for a while to let everyone get back. I got involved
in other things, and kept putting it off, but finally here is the
first winner. On the assumption that everyone has forgotten part 1
by now, I am including my original posting at the front (I don't think
this practice will continue). The winning entry is from Davis Tucker
(druri!dht); please take a bow. Now..how about those
part 3's people? Remember, if you don't like the way things are
going, you can change them!
Ted Nolan ..usceast!ted
----------------------------Original posting-------------------------
Well, here it is. The contest that nobody has been demanding: The
first and possibly last annual net.sf-lovers round robin short story
contest.
The idea is simple. A high percentage of sf readers are known to be
frustrated authors, this contest gives you a chance to take out some
of that frustration. Here are the rules. I have appended part one of
an sf short story below. Your mission is to write part two. Simple
right? Where, you ask, does the contest part come in? Well, it's
like this. I'm asking you to send your part 2's to me by netmail , and
the person who I judge has best continued the story will have his
part 2 posted as the first winner.
Of course, I can't keep you from posting it own your own, but where
would be the fun in that? There are a few requirements for a winning
entry. First and foremost, don't end the story. Second, don't send
me anything I would hesitate to post except as rot13. Third, it
should be good (whether or not you think part 1 is good). Make your
submissions a reasonable length also, I think 2 pages would be
sufficient for most purposes. Finally, there will be a slight
penalty for killing off either of the main characters -- you can
do it, but it had better be worth it.
I think you can take the story in many directions, adventure, humor
who knows, perhaps even mystery or romance. I doubt very much that it
will go anywhere near the way I envisioned it when I plotted it 8 or
so years ago, but that's ok, surprise me.
If I get at least 3 respones to this, I will post a winner and go
ahead and ask for part 3's, otherwise, the contest ends
(ignominiously) right here. It's in your hands now!
Ted Nolan ..usceast!ted
Use the path on this article for email or ..
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Ted Nolan ...decvax!mcnc!ncsu!ncrcae!usceast!ted
6536 Brookside Circle ...akgua!usceast!ted
Columbia, SC 29206
("Deep space is my dwelling place, the stars my destination")
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The Tower of the Sun
Part 1
by
Ted Nolan
Mertion flexed his hindlegs luxuriously, relaxing under the
singleminded ministrations of his attending workers. He allowed his
mind to wander to the fast approaching queening flight. Now there
was heaven. To soar the clouds, his sleek wings driving his glistening
body faster and farther than any of his competing brothers, to catch
his intended, the beautiful Mother of All as she darted teasingly
ahead of the drone pack and to know that brief final ecstasy of mating.
He shook his head in irritation as the workers started to
groom his antennae. Ecstasy, yes he could deal with that. It was just
that recently, the "final" part of it was beginning to seem a little
much. There was still so much to do, there were never enough drones
to do the research that workers were too practical to fool with and
after the queening flight, there would be none. Who would invent the
cargo balloons, the grub warmers and sting debarbers while the new
generation matured? And what about his own work, the flying of the mind?
There was so little time. As the workers started to clean
each pane of his huge multi-faceted eyes, Mertion began the mental
exercises to free his mind from his body, the discipline he had
developed and that would doubtless die with him. Suddenly, his
perspective changed, and he watched with interest from above as the
workers flicked at an minute dirt spot on one of his lenses, but he
couldn't linger here, he had to try again the barrier he had come to
know so well and with such disgust. He hurled himself,not exactly
upward, but outward. It wasn't movement in any physical direction he
suspected, but more of an attuning of the senses to a more fundamental
reality.
As always, he came up on the barrier with no advance warning.
It stretched in all directions a formless gray nothing, less
substantial than the thinnest mist but as impenetrable as the bedrock
of the hive's foundation. Mertion began to slide along the surface
looking fruitlessly for the opening he knew had to be there somewhere.
As always, he thought , there is no limit to the Great Ones' creation
so this cannot be an ending. Time seemed fluid in this world of mind,
but after what seemed to him a long interval of searching, he took the
thought to a conclusion that had escaped him before. There is no
limit to creation, therefore the limit must be in me. He stopped,
considered the strange thought from all sides and found it sound. He
was at the limits of his mind, not his universe.
The thought goaded him, pampered but ignored what did a drone
have besides his mind? He would accept no limits on that. He tensed
himself and made the ultimate leap that he suddenly knew as the final
inevitable result of his studies and.. looking down on his mind as he
had earlier looked down on his body, saw the built up prejudices of
his racial heritage and rearing. Saw them and erased them, only a
mind newborn could solve the problem he had set himself, the knowledge,
yes, keep that, but the viewpoint had to go. Finally, the strain
overcame him, and he fell back into himself, the moments of
metaknowledge gone, but the difference..He laughed with joy.
The surface he had perceived as formless gray was now a
riotous kaleidoscopic rainbow of color and form, riddled with portals
and lines of ethereal force flashing between them. He floated for a
timeless instant, entranced with the wonder of it all, and then he
dived for the portal nearest him. Die he might soon enough, but till
then, he would live as no drone ever had.
* * *
The battle moved furiously around Rale as he yelled orders to
the men of his squad. "Fall back damn it.. they've almost got us
surrounded!". He swung his heavy sword furiously, trying to stem the
sudden unexpected onslaught of the Aldwin forces. The clangour of
weapons and the confused shouting of troops were deafening. According
to the Relban spies in Aldwin the thrust into this part of the Relban
line was supposed to be just a feint. The king had placed Rale and
his mercenaries there to provide token resistance, withdrawing the
royal legions to the south where the real attack was to fall. Rale
fell back swearing. There had been treachery somewhere, the whole
damn Aldwin army was coming through the pass. Heads were sure to roll
over this bit of nonsense. And mine could be the first, he
acknowledged grimly. They had sent a rider down the line early on,
but Rale doubted very much that they could get more troops in
time to keep the Aldwins from marching right to the heart of Relba,
and right over Rale and his men.
He parried again and caught a thrown spear on his shield. His
principal foe ducked in reaction to almost being shafted by the toss
from his own rear line and Rale spitted him before he could raise his
guard again. Stupid fools, no coordination , what the hell was a
spearman doing behind the swordsmen? It there weren't so damn many of
them this would be easy. He gave ground again. Or if we had some
archers. Suddenly, he felt a shooting pain in the back of his skull
as if someone had hit him full on with a bludgeon. He crumpled to his
knees, his last feeling ,as darkness closed over him, was dull
surprise.
* * *
When he woke again, the sun was sinking over the horizon, casting long
bloody shadows over the corpse strewn field. He shuddered and closed
his blurry eyes. Dead, he thought, I've been left for dead. Then the
next logical step... well, am I? It seemed not, though he might have
been more comfortable that way. His head was one massive ache,
feeling easily big enough for two people.
"Funny you should think that". Rale looked around wildly for
the voice; there was no one there. "Actually, you can't look close
enough. Allow me to introduce my self. You may call me Mertion".
Rale knew then, he was worse than dead. He was possessed.
END OF PART 1
---------------------------Winning Part 2------------------------------
THE TOWERS OF THE SUN
Part 2
by Davis Tucker
King Angemar VIII, Protector of the Clannat, Saviour of the Peoples
of Relban, Lion of the Continent of Peragia, High Priest of the Loyal
Church of Siyalanda, was feeling a bit bowed under by his titles, among
many other things. He was not a young man anymore, and the years had
weighed heavy upon him as he had passed through them, first vigorous and
headstrong, a natural force, a conqueror, then as a husband and the
renewer of a dynasty, then as a defender and a missionary, now as a
beleagured monarch with ambitious sons and treachery in high places.
"I have been too many things in my life", he thought, "do I now have
the strength to be something else again?" But it was a passing thought,
for he was not one to face away from the unpleasant. No king worthy
of the name king could.
The treaty with Aldwin had been a farce from the beginning, a means
of buying time for both sides. Angemar needed the time to raise precious
funds for outfitting an additional army, unfortunately mercenary, but
he could not conscript and train a large enough force from his own
countryside in the few days that the truce would last. He had allowed
for a month at worst, three months at best. His worst guess had been
confirmed. His cousin, the Emperor of Aldwin, had been inclined to
honor the treaty for a time because of the marriage ceremony between
Angemar's daughter, Ilona, and the son of the Most High Priestess of
Siyalanda, Har-Jamil, the young acolyte with a head for inventions. It
behooved the Emperor Raskamhashir to have peace for a time, for the
majority of his subjects were Siyalandites, and his capital city
unfortunately happened to be the Holy City, Shangara itself. Angemar
smiled at the recollection of his petty triumph. "Ilona may have wanted
to marry that damn priest over my dead body," he mused, "but praise be
she let me choose the time and place." Of course, now that the
marriage had finally taken place, the gloves were off, and
Raskamhashir would quite probably win anyway. Not without a good
fight, though.
The recent reports from the front and from his spies in Aldwin had
been disconcerting, to say the least. Angemar had been assured from
all sides that the Aldwin forces would come up through the south, where
they would be assured of good foraging for an army of such size, where
sizable gains in position and significant chunks of territory could be
gained with minimal effort. It was all good farmland, some important
port cities, and it was an area which at one time had been part of
Aldwin. Angemar and his generals had counted on presenting a great
show of numbers at the river Gar, the traditional dividing line
between south Relban and north Relban, fighting a large,
inconclusive battle, and then suing for peace at a disgusting, if not
terrible price. As much as it pained him to consider it, Angemar knew
he would have to give the Emperor the south, to save the north for his
sons. "They should be the ones fighting this war," he grumbled to his
chamberlain, "I'm too old for this - I should be dead already."
But as he and his staff listened to the reports of wave upon wave
of troops rushing through the mountain passes of Kagger Sar, the
traditional home of his family, where his father had taught him the
ways of the world, the ways of warfare and weapons and peace and
kingship, Angemar felt a cold chill grip his stomach. "The information
is all wrong", he thought, "the Emperor wants it all... everything. he
will leave my sons nothing, bury them alive or break them on the
Wheel, rape my daughters and sell them for cooking slaves in far
Katushya..." The mercenary force had been wiped out, with the
exception of three men, three out of a force of one thousand, three
who had been found by the huntsmen of Kagger Sar as they scavenged the
battlefield. One would be dead by tomorrow, with wounds too infected
and severe to ever heal. Of the two that remained, there was the royal
attache', Sevener Lareg, a native Kaggerat who had been given to the
mercenaries as a scout, but whose primary purpose was to report back to
the king if any of the usual improprieties occurred. Mercenaries
sometimes fought well, sometimes not. But they always looted. Angemar
merely wanted an accurate accounting of the damage. Sevener had served
him a long time, and although the king hardly knew the man, as he
hardly knew any of his subjects, he trusted him to be loyal and exact.
The Kaggerat had served in this peculiar position before, with
mercenaries, and had proved worthy.
The last man was a puzzle. His first name was Rale, his last he
did not remember or care to divulge, and Angemar had ruled out torture
primarily because there would be little gained from it even if this
man's last name was known. He was a sergeant in the mercenary force, a
good swordsman by all accounts, had served with this particular
mercenary army for three years across the continent, and had in fact
served in the pay of the Emperor of Aldwin at one time, as had most
mercenaries. Angemar shrugged - in difficult times of war, one took
what soldiers one could get. His father had always taught him that any
soldier was better than no soldier. "You never know what will happen
to a man in battle, what he will become." the old man used to say. But
this man here before the king, this man had become something very
different.
He had the usual look of a veteran mercenary, old scars poorly
healed, long hair, untrimmed beard, a uniform composed of millions of
uniforms, medals from the dead of a few vanquished armies, the
feast-or-famine body of a man who has known not just good and bad,
but great and terrible. Angemar had looked like that, once, in his
youth, before returning home to retake his inheritance. In all respects
he was like a thousand other men, the thousand who had died in his
stead. But in his eyes, in his face, there loomed a presence so alien,
so powerful, so beautiful, that he hardly seemed in touch with the
stone under his feet. Angemar remembered the prophet who had come once
to Shangara, back when Angemar was himself a mercenary, seeing the
world and learning of his potential enemies, young but certainly not
gullible.
The prophet had come to the Holy City to proclaim its wickedness,
its greed, its preoccupation with all things material. He had set
himself upon a pillar in Jaya Square, the main column of the ruined
Temple Of The Honeycomb. He had stood silent there atop the crumbling
obelisk for three days and three nights, and the the fourth day he had
begun speaking to crowds that milled about the square, going to and
fro in the great city of the Emperor. He had railed at them, power in
his voice, fire in his eyes, beautiful and terrible like a sword
raised above a woman's neck. After a time, the entire square had
ceased moving, all eyes were on this holy man, including a much
younger and much less weary Angemar VIII. He had held them spellbound,
holding up each man's wickedness to himself, each man's hatred, each
man's ignorance of himself and his brothers, each man's refusal to be
a part of the greater whole. Angemar had been moved as never before,
and in his long life he had never been moved the same since.
This man, Rale, before him, he had that same look, that same quality
that distinguishes a king or a god or a prophet from a mere man.
Angemar did not know what could have happened - he did know that in
his inspection of the mercenary troops, which seemed like ages ago,
no man among that bunch had stood out as this man would surely have,
and this man was not what he was before the battle in the Kagger Sar.
Whatever had changed this Rale from a common soldier to something
incomprehensible and holy, it was not one more savage fray of sword
and spear. It was something powerful, something wonderful, and at this
point, Angemar needed the closeness of the sublime as he faced his
greatest challenge which would in all likelihood prove to be his
greatest failure. For the time being, he had other things to occupy
himself - such as how to save his kingdom.
-----------------------------End of Part 2---------------------------
--
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Ted Nolan ...decvax!mcnc!ncsu!ncrcae!usceast!ted (UUCP)
6536 Brookside Circle ...akgua!usceast!ted
Columbia, SC 29206 allegra!usceast!ted@seismo (ARPA, maybe)
("Deep space is my dwelling place, the stars my destination")
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