Daniel Keys Moran - The Ring

background-1- -2- -3- -4- -5- -6- -7- -8- -9- -a- -b- -c- -d- -e- -f- -g- -clear-

color -1- -2- -3- -4- -5- -6- -7- -8- -9-

DANIEL KEYS MORAN

BASED ON A SCREENPLAY BY

William Stewart and Joanne Nelsen

A Foundation Book

Doubleday

NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND

CONTENTS

The Children

PART ONE - The Diamond of the Day

The Theft

The Sister

Elena

The Minstrel

The Diamond of the Day

The Academy

PART TWO - The Ring of Light

Senta and Solan

The Lords of Light

The Sickness

The Games

Senta's Star

Orion

The Ring

The Adult

A CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS

Date and Time Usages in The Ring

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

All of the characters in this book are fictitious,

and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

A Foundation Book

Published by Doubleday, a division of

Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.,

666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103

Foundation, Doubleday, and the portrayal of the letter F

are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of

Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

ISBN 0-385-24816-4

The ken Selvren race of humans previously appeared in

The excerpts which appear on pages 84, 85 from The Armageddon Blues

Designed by Ann Gold

Printed in the United States of America

October 1988

First Edition

For Amy Stout, who is basically a doll.

… the rush and roar soon took musical shape within my brain as the chord of E

flat major, surging incessantly in broken chords: these declared themselves as

melodic figurations of increasing motion, yet the pure triad of E flat major never

changed, but seemed by its steady persistence to impart infinite significance to the

element in which I was sinking. I awoke from my half-sleep in terror, feeling as

though the waves were rushing high above my head. I at once recognized that the

orchestral prelude to The Rhinegold, which for a long time I must have carried

about within me, had at last come to being in me: and I quickly understood the very

essence of my own nature: the stream of life was not to flow to me from without, but

from within.

—Richard Wagner

The Children

The Year 3018 After the Fire

^ »

In these, the Later Days of the Earth, Spring comes less quickly than in the youth

of the world, and flees sooner. Trees grow tall, untended oak and ash and walnut,

along the banks of the great river Almandar, and bring forth their leaves as the air

warms to the brief approaching summer. One huge patch of giant redwood spreads

slowly to the north of the Valley. Silence lies over what was once called the Valley of

the Rulers; from the north of the Valley, where the Great Dam keeps out the

encroaching water of the One Ocean; silence, down the hills and steppes across

which Almandar flows. Silence reigns in the buildings that are left standing now,

eons after man left Earth to the Dolphins. Gentle winds stir blossoms of cherry and

hyacinth, wild white orchids and the scarlet roses that are called Solan's Blood.

Birds break the silence now and again as Spring progresses, robins and crows

and bluebirds, fat pigeons, and seagulls by the thousands. Once a shrike blunders

into the airspace over the Valley, and weapons left dormant for thousands of turns

about the sun flare into life. Lasers designed to shear metal make short work of

feathers and hollow bone, and the bird falls with a single, almost human scream. The

Dolphins observe this from the waterlocks that overlook the Valley and chuckle their

pleasure to one another, for the shrikes are strong, fell creatures that have dragged

more than one Dolphin across the surface of the waves to a nearby grounding, and

made a meal of it.

Larger animals than birds pad quietly through the forests that have grown to fill

the Valley. Polar bears, less furred than the old breed from which they are

descended, are the foremost carnivores across the length of the Valley. Herds of

maverick horses run wild, and deer; beavers work along the river Almandar's length,

and trout and catfish and rainbow willies flash beneath its surface. The genegineered

treebunnies, with their grasping forehands, scamper through the tree-tops, their

passage contested only by the languid, almost disinterested descendants of the cats

who kept company with both Rulers and Workers in eons past.

North and east the Valley of the Rulers is ringed by the One Ocean, kept at its

distance by force fields and the Great Dam; to the south and west rise the

mountains. The Valley itself is not small; once there were eighty towns and villages

spread across its length, from the foot of the mountains to the Great Dam which

holds back the sea. At the north end of the Valley is the lake T'Pau, which is fed by

water filtered from the Ocean, and from which flows the river Almandar.

One with a penchant for the cynical—one such as, say, the flame-haired Loga,

Lord of Light, who has seen more wars than friendships; he of many vices, who

rediscovered poker, craps, and rock and roll—one such as he might be tempted to

point out the resemblance between the Valley of the Rulers and the Eden of one of

man's early religions.

It is unlikely, of course, that such a comparison shall be made.

The Valley is empty, and has been so for long and long.

Spring wears away.

"Forget I even mentioned Eden, forget I even brought up the concept of Paradise,

will that make you happy? Does it matter that the Creator T'Pau was a devout

Christian? In the wisdom of your five years you have struck upon the answer:

probably not."

Their shadows mingled with the shadows of the forest. The twelve children,

following the tall adult down the path among the overarching trees, hurried. They

were normal children; in their childhood they were all that was left of the childhood

of the human race. With the advent of adulthood they would take on powers and

duties the likes of which no human of an earlier day could have envisioned, would

metamorphose in a change more striking and no less fundamental than that of a

butterfly from a caterpillar.

But that would be later; they were, for now, only children.

Dressed all in green and black, the curled red hair flowing down across his

shoulders, the adult did not pause for them. His steps were even and measured, as

though he might walk straight around the world without slowing if the fancy took

him.

Despite the shortness of their breath, the children threw questions at him with the

zeal of inquisitors. At first his manner had intimidated them, but only for a short

time. For most of them this was their first time visiting Earth; for most of them it

would also be their last. Some of their questions the adult answered, and told them

of bears and why bears were carnivores, of the Ice Times and the Floods which had

followed the first and largest of the Fire Wars, and of the Dolphins and the treaty

that had given them the water-covered planet so strangely misnamed Earth. Some

questions he ignored, and so they did not learn of the laser weapons that protected

most of the Valley, nor of the genegineered red silkies and shriken which were

produced during the later stages of the Fire Wars.

In response to one question he said, "You should have gone before we left."

They came at length to a vast field, kilometers across, a clearing where no trees

grew, and no flowers. Wild grass filled it across its length, green and brown beneath

the bright sun. The river called the Killing Creek, flowing down to join the great river

Almandar, bordered it on one side, and the forest on the other. Standing at the edge

of the trees, they could see, if they looked south and east into the rising foothills of

the Black Mountains, the distant, glowing crystal spires of the city of Parliament.

The adult did not look toward Parliament. His gaze roved out across the empty

field. "It happened here," he said, so quietly that the children must strain to hear him.

"Solan fell here, and our hopes for peace…"

He stood so, silently, lost in memory, until the children behind him began to stir,

and one, a girl of some eight years, with more bravery or less sense than the others,

said, "Loga? May we see Parliament?"

The man said nothing. A brilliant band of light gathered itself in around them,

momentarily outshining the sun itself.

They were gone.

They appeared in the Hall of Mirrors.

Their images bounced away from them, hundreds of tall, blue-eyed Logas,

thousands upon thousands of children. It was a choice Loga had made for effect; as

a result he waited patiently as the children exclaimed in wonder at their surroundings,

and tried to walk through the mirrors to see what was on the other side. At length,

without word, he turned away from them and strode off down the length of the Hall.

The children made haste behind him, before the real Loga vanished into his

mirrored reflections.

They stumbled out into the Chamber of Parliament with shocking abruptness.

One moment they had been in the Hall of Mirrors; an instant later they were not, and

there was no doorway to be seen. That alone did not startle the children, for there

were such Gates at home as well, though they were always well marked and did not

vanish at the other end.

But the Chamber of Parliament was not what they had expected.

Oh, they had audited descriptions of it, to be sure, and seen holos, but that was

not sufficient to prepare them for the sheer grand spectacle of it.

The structure itself was laid in an open clearing hundreds of meters across,

nestled high in the Black Mountains. An ancient landpad, its once-brilliant landing

markers covered with the dirt of ages, was, with the Chamber of Parliament itself, all

there was to be found in that clearing.

None of that, to be sure, startled them at all.

But… the ceiling hung full fifteen meters above them, sculpted gold and silver,

without any physical structure supporting it. The walls rose eight meters around

most of the perimeter of the Chamber, to the south and east and west, and then

dropped to touch the floor at the north end, so that the entire north quadrant was

open to the air. From any seat within the Chamber one could look down, north, and

see the ancient landpad, and beyond it, the entirety of the Valley. Rows of seats rose

in a tier around the center of the Chamber, enough seats to accommodate hundreds

at once. Dusty white marble covered most of the Chamber. A single spire of black

marble, with gleaming veins of gold, thrust up two meters south of the exact

northernmost point of the Chamber, the podium from which the Rulers of Earth had

addressed one another on formal occasions.

"This is where the Rulers had meetings," said Loga. The expression on his face

was unreadable; the index finger of the glove on his right hand was gray from the

thick layer of dust he had traced off of the surface of the podium. "Here they tried to

bring everyone together—Cain and Maston, Warriors and Workers, and the

Giants…"

The boy who had questioned Loga about his reference to Eden, a grave-faced

five-year-old named Innelieu, said, "How do you know, Loga?"

"Hmm?" Loga looked over at the boy absently. "How do I know? It does not

matter."

The child refused to be turned away from his question. "Were you there?"

Loga considered the question. At length he said slowly, "There was a man named

Loga, and he was there, yes. But that was a long time ago, and things were very

much different, then, than they are now." He turned his back on them and looked

back out over the Valley. Someday he would have to stop making this trip, give the

burden over to another. The children needed it, needed to touch the soil from which

their people had sprung, to breathe the air of the planet that Loga still thought of as

home.

But perhaps Loga was not the one to bring them. Perhaps he would wait a couple

of decades and load the job down on one such as Innelieu, for whom the beauty of

Earth would be unmixed with the pain of memory.

"Will you tell us about it?"

Amazing, thought Loga, after all these years, a question I have never been asked

before. He had no intention of telling any of them anything about the childhood of

their race, about the horrors that the Rulers and the Workers and the Giants had

inflicted upon each other. They were far too young…

He heard his own voice coming from somewhere else, the words moving out of

him in a calm and measured fashion.

"A long time ago people warred upon one another. They fought, children, poorly

and without sufficient skill to destroy those whom they thought their enemies, only

enough skill to harm those enemies and leave them free to seek vengeance, in a circle

from which there seemed no end. It started because the Workers wanted freedom,

and the Giants, who were working for the Rulers… no," he said, and his voice

carried strongly, almost harshly, "it started because they wanted control…" His

voice broke in the middle of the sentence, and he became aware of the trembling of

his hands, and crossed his arms across his chest to hide their lack of steadiness.

"Fools they were, all of them, they fought over the Light as though it were something

outside them, as though it were a weapon or a tool, never once before the end

stopped fighting—and that is not the way to go from the dark to the Light." His

bright blue eyes staring out sightlessly over the length of the Valley of the Rulers, the

Lord of Light named Loga told for the only time in his life, as though it were a vast

weight being lifted from his shoulders, the true story of Cain and Loden, Senta and

Solan, and yes, the truth behind the legend that was Orion of Eastmarch.

PART ONE

The Diamond of the Day

The Theft

The Year 1284 After the Fire

« ^ »

Beneath the rolling hills of Eastmarch the starship took shape over the space of a

decade. In the huge Caverns at the east end of the Valley, technicians designed and

built and tested, flew the ship and redesigned it, ran stress analysis tests on it,

crashed it and rebuilt it again.

The subwave motor they could not even test; they did not know enough about

how it functioned. As near as the engineers could estimate, the engine was reliable

for—perhaps—four or five subspace Drops. They could not even attempt a Drop as

a test, for that would use up one of the precious few problematical Drops left to the

engine.

There was only one such engine in all the Caverns.

One morning, early in Winter Quarter 1284 a.t.f., a tall man with chalk-white skin

sought entrance to the presence of his master. The man's name was Kavad. He was,

to the folk of the Valley—Rulers and Workers alike—a barbarian from beyond the

Glowing Desert, one of the pale, silver-eyed ken Selvren. If he did not act the role of

a barbarian, perhaps it was simply because he was quite old, and well versed in the

ways of the civilized world. Most of his adult life had been spent in the service of a

man whom even Kavad's mother had found formidable.

He knocked at the door to Cain's suite of quarters, once, sharply. The guards in

front of his master's door—one of them ken Selvren, like Kavad—did not even seem

to notice him; they would near as soon have questioned Cain himself. Cain's bath

servant was sleeping with a blanket and pillow beside the door.

The soft, musical voice was muffled only somewhat by the door between them.

"Enter."

Kavad pushed through the door. The first room in the five that composed his

master's quarters was nearly dark; it often was, and it did not bother Kavad. His

night sight was better than Cain's, better than that of any Worker; better, he

suspected, than that of the genegineered Rulers. Cain was seated in the exact

geometric center of the room, among the soft rugs of deer fur and the cushions of

white sunsilk; sitting cross-legged with his spine straight, hands resting upon his

knees. Dim glowfloats bounced restlessly in the air behind Cain, sent his shadow

wavering out toward Kavad in grotesque shapes. Quietly, he spoke.

"Good morning, Kavad."

Kavad inclined his head slightly; his lord had never required more of him than

that. Had he been required to bend his knee as the Workers were used to doing for

their masters, he could not have remained in Cain's service. Thirty-seven years now

Kavad had spent in that service. Their roles were clearly defined, and Kavad was

deeply satisfied with them. Cain was his lord, and Kavad was his servant; and if they

were also friends, nonetheless the first relationship took precedence over the latter.

"Good morning, my lord."

"What have you for me, Kavad?"

"My lord, the shipwrights have informed me that the ship is ready, as ready as it

will ever be."

Cain's head moved in what Kavad thought a nod. "Have you learned anything new

regarding the plans of the Rulers? Something is happening at Parliament… I can feel

it."

"My lord, I regret, we have learned nothing new."

In the darkness Cain's features were not clear. Kavad thought he might, perhaps,

have smiled. "So. But the ship is ready." He clapped his hands together, sharply,

once. His bath servant appeared in the doorway almost instantly. "Bring me my flight

suit," he instructed. The bath servant, a young girl whose name Kavad could never

recall, ran past Kavad, into the next room.

The quiet sounds of clothing being prepared reached them.

"Ten years of peace," said Cain. As always, the voice was smooth, almost lyrical;

Kavad had often thought that his master might have made a fine singer, though he

had never heard Cain raise his voice so. "Ten years of truce with the Rulers, and

twenty years of war with them before they would grant that; and a thousand years of

slavery before even that.

"Now, Kavad," he said, "we will win."

It lacked better than an hour before sunrise.

In a flight suit of ancient design and recent construction, the tall, black-haired,

dark-eyed man who was Cain of Eastmarch walked alone through the dimly lit

corridors of the Caverns.

Seeing him for the first time, one who did not see the depths of his eyes might

have guessed his age at, perhaps, twenty-five.

The shipyard was at the far north end of the Caverns; Cain's quarters, and those

of his subjects, were, for reasons of safety, at the far south. The walk from Cain's

quarters to the shipyard was a lengthy one, mostly uphill. The living quarters were

deep in the Earth; the shipyards were only one level beneath the surface. It never

crossed Cain's mind to bring bodyguards with him, walking alone at night through

his own domain. He was the most feared, and likely the most hated, human then alive

on the face of the Earth.

Cain was, in his own person, quite certainly the deadliest. The Worker or

Workers who made the mistake of an attempt on his life would die, quickly and

surely.

Possibly the Ruler Loden was more dangerous than Cain; it was likely he was

feared by a greater number of sentient beings. But Loden, Cain believed, was not a

human being.

Cain walked down the corridors. Doors opened at his approach, closed again as

he passed. Once he crossed the path of two pair of his barbarian ken Selvren

guards, changing the guard at the East Gate. One was a half-breed, with darker skin

than his fellows, but the same silver eyes. Cain did not speak to them, but merely

continued on his way. The guards, after a brief pause, went about their business. In

the dim lighting that was the norm for the night hours, one might have thought that

the guards had not noticed his passage.

They were ken Selvren. One would have been wrong.

Despite the hour, the shipyard was acrawl with activity, the center of which was a

slim needle of black metal, utterly unlike any of the other fighter craft arrayed across

the yard. The ship bore no visible weapons; no mountings for lasers, no heatseeker

grips. The smooth black hull was one surface, without seam or weld anywhere upon

it. It seemed to absorb light; its surface gave no reflection.

It was the result of over ten years' labor by the finest human engineers in

existence. It was, so far as Cain's engineers could make it, an exact duplicate of a

Falcon-class slipship, the smallest faster-than-light starship ever built. The hull, the

instrumentation, the reaction engines, all were modeled upon the starships that the

Ruler Donner Almandar had built in the third century a.t.f. to serve as scouts for the

great fleet of starships which he had led from Earth in that century. The subwave

motor was more than "modeled" upon one of Donner's ships; it had actually been

taken from the shell of a thousand-year-old Falcon found at the edge of the Glowing

Desert, far to the south. They had reconditioned the subwave motor; repaired the

casing which held it, replaced with new materials all the parts which they were

capable of understanding. But the core of the engine, the blocks of molar probability

circuitry, they could not touch; had they, however accidentally, harmed that circuitry,

decades would have passed while they strove to re-create it.

Half a dozen junior Commanders stood behind them at rigid attention.

Cain and Mersai stood together in the Command Center, before the huge star

chart, with a full sixteenth of the galaxy spread across its surface. A bright blue

Daniel Keys Moran - The Ring

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: