May, Julian - The Golden Torc

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SYNOPSIS OF VOLUME I
THE MANY-COLORED LAND
THE GREAT INTERVENTION OF 2013 OPENED HUMANITY'S WAY to the stars, giving the people of Earth
unlimited lebensraum,
energy sufficiency, and membership in a benevolent civiliza-tion,
the Galactic Milieu. Humanity became the sixth of the
Coadunate Races, a commonwealth of planet colonizers who
shared high technology and the capability of performing mental
operations known as metafunctions. The latter—which include
telepathy, psychokinesis, and many other powers—had lurked
in the human gene pool from time immemorial, but only rarely
were manifest.
By 2110, when the action of the first volume in this saga
began, a kind of Golden Age prevailed. More than 700 fresh
planets had been colonized by exuberant Earthlings. Humans
with overt metapsychic powers were slowly increasing in num-ber;
however, in the majority of the population, the mind-powers
were either meager to the point of nullity, or else
latent—that is, nearly unusable, because of psychological bar-riers
or other factors.
Even Golden Ages have their misfits, and the psychosocial
structure of the Galactic Milieu had its share. A French physicist
named Theo Guderian unwittingly provided these square pegs
with a unique escape hatch when he discovered an apparently
useless phenomenon: a one-way, fixed-focus time-warp open-ing
into France's Rhone River Valley as it existed during the.Pliocene Epoch, six million years ago.
Certain that a prehistoric
Eden must exist on Pliocene Earth, an increasing number of
misfits prevailed upon Guderian's widow, Angelique, to let
them pass through the time-portal into "Exile."
From her husband's death in 2041 until 2106, the rejuven-ated
Madame Guderian operated a peculiar establishment that
the Galactic authorities reluctantly tolerated. Her French inn,
l'Auberge du Portail, served as a front for transporting clients
from Old Earth to a world six million years younger. After
suffering qualms of conscience about the fate of the transpor-tees,
Madame herself ultimately passed through the one-way
gate into Pliocene Exile. Operation of the time-warp was taken
over by the Galactic Milieu, which had found it to be a con-venient
glory hole for dissidents.
On 25 August 2110, eight persons, making up that week's
"Group Green," were transported to the Pliocene: Richard
Voorhees, a grounded starship captain; Felice Landry, a dis-turbed
young athlete whose violent temperament and latent
mind-powers had made her an outcast; Claude Majewski, a
133-year-old paleontologist recently bereaved of his wife and
colleague; Sister Amerie Roccaro, a physician and burnt-out
priest who longed to become a hermit; Bryan Grenfell, an
anthropologist in search of his lover, Mercy Lamballe, who
had preceded him through the gate two months before; Eliza-beth
Orme, a Grand Master metapsychic operator deprived of
her stupendous mental powers by a brain trauma; Stein Oleson,
a misfit planet-crust driller, who dreamt of leading a Viking's
life in a simpler world; and Aiken Drum, an engaging young crook who, like Felice, possessed
latent metapsychic powers.
These eight people successfully made the jump six million
years into Earth's past—only to discover, as other time-trav-
elers had before them, that Pliocene Europe was under the
control of a group of maverick humanoids from another galaxy.
The exotics were also exiled, driven from their home because
of their barbarous battle-religion. The dominant exotic faction, the Tanu, were tall and hand-
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some. In spite of a thousand-year sojourn, there were still less
than 20,000 of them on Earth because their reproduction was
inhibited by solar radiation. Since their plasm was compatible
with that of humanity, they had for nearly seventy years utilized
the time-travelers in breeding, holding Pliocene humanity in
benevolent serfdom. Antagonistic to the Tanu and outnumbering them by at least.four to one were
their ancient foes, the Firvulag. These exotics
were mostly of short stature and reproduced quite well on Earth.
Tanu and Firvulag actually constitute a dimorphic race—the
tall ones metapsychically latent, the short ones possessed of
limited operant metafunctions. The Tanu wear mind-amplifiers,
collars called golden tores, to bring their powers up to operancy.
Firvulag do not require tores, and most of them are weaker in
mental power than the Tanu.
For most of the thousand years that Tanu and Firvulag re-sided
on Pliocene Earth (which they called the Many-Colored
Land), they were fairly evenly matched in the ritual wars fought
as part of their battle-religion. The greater finesse and more
sophisticated technology of the Tanu tended to counterbalance
the superior numbers of the cruder Firvulag. But the advent of
time-traveling humanity tipped the scales in favor of the tall
exotics. Not only did Tanu-human hybrids turn out to have
unusual physical and mental strength, but humans also en-hanced
the rather decadent science establishment of the Tanu
by injecting the expertise of the Galactic Milieu. The seventy
years of time-traveling had seen nearly 100,000 humans trans-ported
to Pliocene Europe; their assimilation gave the Tanu
almost complete ascendency over the Firvulag foe (who never
mated with humanity and generally despised them).
The lot of humankind under the Tanu overlords is by no
means grim; people who cooperate are treated very well. All
rough work is done by ramapithecines, small apes who wear
simple tores that compel obedience. (Ironically, these "ramas"
are part of the direct hominid line that climaxed in Homo
sapiens six million years later.) Humans occupying positions
of trust or engaged in vital occupations under the Tanu usually
wear gray tores. These do not amplify the mind, but do allow
telepathic communication between humans and exotics; the de-vices
also incorporate pleasure-pain circuits, through which the
Tanu reward or punish their minions. The tores are not easily
made, requiring a rare barium component in their manufacture,
and so they are not used on the majority of "normal" (that is,
metaphysically nonlatent) humans, who are coerced into obe-dience
by other means. If Tanu testing shows that an arriving
time-traveler has significant latent metafunctions, the lucky
person is given a silver torc. This is a genuine amplifier similar
to the gold collars worn by the Tanu—but with control circuits.
Silver-torc humans enjoy a privileged position; rarely, they may.even be granted golden torcs and
full freedom as citizens of
the Many-Colored Land.
The eight members of Group Green, like all new arrivals,
were taken for mind-testing to a Tanu fortress, Castle Gateway.
Almost at once, the Group proved to be anything but typical. The starship captain, Richard,
temporarily escaped and had a
terrifying encounter with a Tanu slave-mistress, Epone, who
administered the tests for latent metafunctions.
Elizabeth, the former farsensor and metapsychic teacher,
discovered that passage through the time-warp had triggered
restoration of the awesome mental powers she feared had been
lost forever. Her discovery was noted with excitement by an-other
Tanu, Creyn, who promised Elizabeth that a "wonderful
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life" lay ahead of her in the Many-Colored Land.
Stein Oleson, the huge driller, was driven temporarily insane
by the trip back through time. Smashing the door of his de-tention
cell, he was subdued only after killing a number of
gray-torc bondsmen. To insure Stein's future docility, he was
fitted with a gray torc of his own. His heroic physique made
him a candidate for the Tanu-Firvulag ritual war, the Grand
Combat. Still unconscious from his recapture, he was readied
for a trip south to the Tanu capital city of Muriah.
Also torced—but with silver—was the trickster youth, Aiken
Drum. The exotic testers had detected strong metapsychic la-tencies
in him, which would be brought up to the operant level
as he became accustomed to wearing the amplifier.
The anthropologist, Bryan Grenfell, possessed no signifi-cant
mental latencies. But his professional talents seemed
strangely valuable to the Tanu, with the result that Bryan was
able to bargain his cooperation in return for Tanu help in finding
Mercy—and a torc-less status.
The old bone digger, Claude Majewski, showed no hidden mind-powers. With some disdain, minions of
the Tanu in-formed
him that he would be sent north to the city of Finiah,
together with most of the week's bag of time-travelers, and put
to work. He found himself incarcerated in Castle Gateway's
"people pen," together with more than thirty other ordinary
humans, awaiting the departure of the northern caravan. In the
prison dormitory lay Richard, comatose from mental abuse by
Epone.
The last members of Group Green to be tested by the exotic
slave-mistress were Sister Amerie and Felice Landry. The nun
had no important latencies. Faced with being tested next, Felice.seemed seized by hysterical fear;
her agitation made an accurate calibration impossible. Epone gave up on the girl, since she could
be tested later in Finiah. Then, in an offhanded way,
Epone informed the two of the Tanu custom of using human
women for brood stock, dismissing their indignant protests with
the promise that they would eventually accept the role and even
be happy with their new life in Finiah. When the exotic woman
left them, Felice's feigned hysteria vanished. She had suc-ceeded
in concealing her strong latent metafunctions from Epone,
escaping the torc at least temporarily; and now she resolved in
cold fury to "take" the entire Tanu race.
That evening, two caravans left Castle Gateway, traveling
along the Pliocene River Rhone in opposite directions. In the
northern group, bound for Finiah on the Proto-Rhine at the
edge of the Black Forest, were the partially recovered Richard,
Claude, Amerie, Felice, and the majority of the other human
prisoners. They were escorted by Epone and a squad of gray-torc
human troops. In the southern cavalcade, led by Creyn,
were Elizabeth, Bryan, Aiken Drum, the wounded Stein, and
two other silver-torc humans: a former juvenile officer from a
colonial satellite, Sukey Davies, and a glum Finno-Canadian
forester, Raimo Hakkinen.
At first the northern train made peaceful progress. Suffering
from having to ride a huge Pliocene mount called a chaliko,
Amerie searched her soul and began to understand the neurotic
pressures that had led her to abandon her ministry. Richard,
recuperating with the help of Claude, stewed in helpless rage
when his position became clear. He was dubious, but subcon-sciously
receptive, when Felice proposed a scheme for escape.
Two days out of Castle Gateway, Felice's plan was acti-vated.
She had three weapons: preternatural strength in a de-ceptively
slight body, the ability to mind-control animals (an
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aspect of her metapsychic latency she had used during her
athletic career), and a small knife that had escaped detection.
Felice broke the chains holding her Group Green friends and
those of four other prisoners. Then Richard, disguised in Amer-ie's
religious robes, was able to stab the officer of the guard
to death. Meanwhile, Felice mentally coerced the caravan's
ferocious bear-dog escort, forcing the animals to attack the
other soldiers and Epone. A wild fracas ensued, in which the
freed prisoners, together with the mind-controlled bear-dogs,
killed not only the rest of the soldiers, but the Tanu Epone as
well..In the moment of triumph, Felice sought to take Epone's
golden torc, knowing it would release the latent metafunctions
heretofore imprisoned within her brain. But a half-crazed time-traveler
threw the device into a lake, where it sank in deep water.
Felice was prevented from murdering the interfering man only
when Amerie administered a powerful sedative from her medical
kit, causing the little athlete to fall unconscious.
Bewildered and frightened, the ex-prisoners realized that
telepathic news of the attack must have been flashed by the
dying Epone. Most of the escapees elected to follow the moun-tain-
climbing Oxford don, Basil Wimborne, who proposed to
lead them in small boats across the prehistoric Lac de Bresse
to safety in the high Jura. Claude, wilderness-wise from ex-peditions
on wild planets of the Galactic Milieu, demurred. He
advised taking to the forests of the adjacent Vosges Mountains,
where it would be difficult for gray-torcs on chalikoback to
pursue them. Only Richard and Amerie agreed to follow him,
taking the still-unconscious Felice along.
From a high ridge, the four members of Group Green saw
gray-torc boats in pursuit of their former companions. That
evening, Amerie felt herself strangely attracted by Felice's
violent behavior, which seemed to reflect some dark shadow
within her own conventional spirituality.
While crossing a torrent on the following day, Amerie fell
and broke her arm. The others made camp and tried to decide
what to do. Felice seemed to take for granted that they would
all lead a guerilla existence, harassing other caravans in the
hope of getting another golden torc. Richard received this no-tion
with scorn. The only sensible thing was to make for the
sea, away from the regions that the Tanu were known to inhabit.
Claude, knowing that Richard was right, but troubled at leaving
the impetuous girl behind on her own, went off into the quiet
woods to think. After burying his late wife's ashes, he fell
asleep, waking at evening to find that a tiny Pliocene cat with
illusions of domesticity insisted upon accompanying him back
to camp. The cat, Claude felt, would be a valuable distraction
for Amerie, who was becoming morbidly preoccupied with
Felice.
Man and pet returned to camp to find that all trace of the
others had vanished. Fearfully, Claude went up the riverside
path. The time-travelers had been warned of the terrible Fir-vulag
who inhabited the Vosges forest. Now it seemed that
Richard, Felice, and Amerie must have been abducted by the.shape-shifting little exotics—or else
recaptured by minions of
the Tanu. Hearing voices, then compelled against his will to
reveal himself, Claude came upon the very desperados who
had seized his friends. They were not exotics but human beings—
free humans who had escaped from exotic bondage and now
lived an outlaw life.
Their leader was a well-rejuvenated old woman wearing
a golden torc; the widow of the time-gate's discoverer and
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the ultimate author of Pliocene humanity's degradation...
Angelique Guderian.
On the last day of August, the four members of Group
Green, Madame Guderian and her band, and some 200 other
"Lowlives" (as the free humans proudly styled themselves)
came to a hiding place in a giant hollow tree deep in the Vosges
Mountains. The forest now swarmed with Tanu and their gray-torc
henchmen, sent by Lord Velteyn of Finiah to search out
the killers of his sister, Epone. Velteyn himself, proficient in
the metafaculties of psychokinesis and creativity, was con-ducting
personal sorties as the head of his Flying Hunt, a cadre
of glorious Tanu knights in glass armor, made levitant by their
lord's mental power.
Safe in their sanctuary, the Lowlives and Green Group en-gaged
in mutual assessment. Madame told the newcomers of
her grandiose plan to free all of Pliocene humanity from Tanu
bondage, a task she had undertaken in expiation of her own
guilt. She had engineered a fragile alliance between Lowlives
and Firvulag against the common Tanu enemy; but the entente
had been only minimally productive.
The Tanu were oddly invulnerable to the vitredur glass and
bronze weapons commonly used by all three races. Tanu might
suffer injury, but after a recuperative course administered by
redactors—metapsychic healers—even the worst wounds would
be cured. Madame and her chief fighter, a Native American
named Peopeo Moxmox Burke who had once been a judge,
were keenly interested in how Group Green had managed to
dispatch Epone. Until this time, no Lowlife had ever been able
to kill a Tanu. Felice displayed her little steel knife, and a fact
that Amerie had already suspected became confirmed: Iron was
poisonous to the Tanu, perhaps acting in some way to destroy
the linkage between the exotic brain and the golden torc. (Felice
looked upon Madame's own golden torc with some speculation
at this point, but the intrepid old woman simply pricked herself.with the blade to show that
humans were made of tougher
stuff).
At this point, a personage named Fitharn Pegleg arrived
within the hollow tree. Resembling a short, sturdy human,
he proved to be a Firvulag capable of assuming a monstrous
shape, one of the Little People who had originally befriended
Madame Guderian in the Pliocene. As she explained her plan
to liberate enslaved humanity, Madame asked Fitharn to recite
an ancient lay traditional among his people. It told of the
original arrival of Tanu and Firvulag on Earth in a gigantic
living spaceship that had as its spouse Brede, a woman from
the exotic galaxy. In making the incredible journey across
millions of light-years, the Ship was fatally strained. Tanu,
Firvulag, and Brede escaped from the hulk in small flyers
and watched the remains of the huge organism crash upon
Pliocene Europe, forming a crater "too wide to see across."
To consecrate the Ship's Grave, a ritual battle was fought
by two heroes—Sharn of the Firvulag and Lugonn of the
Tanu—the former armed with a photonic weapon called the
Sword, the latter using a similar laser-type projector called
the Spear. Sharn was defeated. The victor, Lugonn the Shining
One, had the honor of receiving a blast from his own Spear
between his eyes. Laid out in his golden glass armor, Spear
at his side, Lugonn was left at the Ship's Grave to "captain
it upon its final flight."
After a thousand years had passed, the remote location of
the Ship's Grave had faded from the memory of Tanu and
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Firvulag alike. But the legend had sparked hope in Madame Guderian. The Sword of Sharn was now in
Tanu hands,
serving as a trophy awarded to the winner of the annual Grand
Combat religious war. But the Spear of Lugonn must still be
there beside the crater lake, together with the gravo-magneti-cally
powerful flying machines that had carried the exotics from
their dying Ship. If the Lowlives could secure the photon weapon
or a flying machine—or both—they would gain an unprece-dented
advantage over the metapsychic barbarians who con-stituted
the Tanu chivalry.
Lowlives and friendly Firvulag had searched in vain for the
Ship's Grave. But now Claude, knowledgeable in future ge-ology,
told them where it must be. Only one astrobleme in
Europe fit the description, a crater called the Ries that lay some
300 kilometers to the east, on the northern shore of the Danube
River..Jubilation greeted this intelligence, and it was decided to
mount an expedition at once. With luck, the searchers might
return before the end of the month. Then Firvulag would join
Lowlife humanity in an attack against Finiah—provided that
the fighting took place before the start of the Grand Combat Truce beginning at dawn on October
first. The expedition would
consist of Fitharn, Madame Guderian, Chief Burke, a dynamic-field
engineer named Martha, a former gravomag repair tech-nician
named Stefanko, and three members of Group Green.
Claude would guide them to the spot. Richard (over his protests)
would pilot a flyer if one could be made operational. Felice
insisted she would be useful fending off wild beasts with her
special talent, as well as doing chores such as hunting for food.
(She had to go; around the neck of Lugonn's skeleton was a
golden torc.)
Fitharn proposed that the expedition receive official sanction
from the Firvulag monarch, Yeochee IV. Before leaving the tree, Madame gave secret orders to a
Lowlife metalsmith, Khalid
Khan, to take a group of men to a site designated by Claude,
where iron ore might easily be found. They were to smelt as
much of the "blood-metal" as possible and bring it back to the
principal Lowlife settlement of Hidden Springs as soon as the
Tanu search parties withdrew. The iron was to be kept a secret
from the Firvulag, since their loyalty was strongly tinged with
expedience, and no Lowlife knew how long the shaky alliance
might last.
Amerie would go to Hidden Springs and reside in Madame's
own house. There her arm could heal and she could minister
to the outlaw humans, who had lived for years with neither a
physician nor a priest. Meanwhile, messengers would go to
other Lowlife settlements thinly scattered about Europe, at- tempting to attract volunteers for
the Finiah attack—now ten- tatively scheduled for the last week in September.
In the Firvulag stronghold of High Vrazel, the little expe-dition
met with a skeptical King Yeochee, who warned that
the regions east of the Black Forest were full of Howlers,
deformed mutant Firvulag only nominally under his authority.
He presented Madame with a royal order commanding the
cooperation of Sugoll, reputed to rule the Howlers in the regions
around the Danube headwaters.
On the fifth day after leaving High Vrazel, in the Vosges
Mountains, the expedition arrived at the Rhine—and encoun-tered
disaster in the shape of a pig the size of an ox. This.creature attacked from ambush, killing
Stefanko and badly
wounding Chief Burke. Fitharn urged that they turn back; but
the humans feared that if they delayed, the Firvulag might seek
out the Ship's Grave themselves. Frail Martha, who had been
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forced to give birth to four children in quick succession as a
Tanu slave, began to hemorrhage. Nevertheless, she was firm
in demanding that they press on—and so five of them did,
with the dauntless Felice carrying Martha until she was well
enough to resume hiking. Slowly, the expedition made its way up the great escarpment
on the eastern Rhine shore, into the eerie zone they named the
Fungus Forest, which crowned the highland where the modern
Schwarzwald lies. It was not until September eighteenth that
they reached the Feldberg, home of the Howler lord, Sugoll.
This individual, wearing a handsome illusory body to screen
hideous deformities, toyed with the humans while his horde of
goblinesque subjects projected hatred and fear of the interlo-pers,
demanding their death.
Claude brought about a reprieve when he explained the cause
of the Howler mutation to Sugoll: The population had split
away from their western brethren hundreds of years earlier,
and had inadvertently settled in a region rich in radioactive
minerals. These, combined with the exotic sensitivity to ra-diation,
had caused the terrible birth defects. There was hope
for the Howlers, Claude said, if they would move out of this
area and, using their powers of shape-shifting to assume a more
attractive aspect, resume mating with normal Firvulag. The
Howlers might further be helped by the skills of a genetic
engineer from the Galactic Milieu; but unfortunately, such a
skilled scientist would surely have been enslaved by the Tanu
for their own purposes.
To express his gratitude, Sugoll assisted the expedition. The
subterranean source of the Danube rose only a short distance
away. A single day's travel on this would bring boaters to the
open river, which flowed so swiftly and smoothly that they
might hope to reach the Ries Crater in only a few days more.
Once again the five people set off. Richard's navigating
skill told them when they had reached the approximate lon-gitude
of the Ship's Grave. On September twenty-second, they
arrived at the crater, around the rim of which stood forty-three
exotic flying machines, layered in dust and lichen. A cursory
inspection convinced Richard and Martha that the exotic craft
were indeed gravo-magnetically powered, quite similar to the.machines of the Galactic Milieu.
Cleaned up, refueled with
distilled water, with the exotic controls deciphered, one of those
thousand-year-old birds might still fly.
Felice found Lugonn—but the golden torc was not around
the ancient hero's neck. Years ago, a ramapithecine had in-vaded
the parked flyer where Lugonn rested and had stolen the
glittering bauble. Frustrated again in her quest, Felice reacted
with great violence.
Richard and Martha, who had become lovers during the
long trek, set about to repair a single flyer and the photon-projecting
Spear, which was found next to the skeleton in
armor. Time was growing perilously short; but if even one day
remained before the Truce on October first, the Firvulag would
join with the Lowlives in an attack upon the Rhineside city of
Finiah, source of the vital element barium, without which no
type of torc could be made.
Richard tested the flyer successfully on the twenty-sixth.
But Martha's old affliction had returned, and she weakened
from heavy loss of blood. In spite of this, she and Richard
made plans to flee together immediately after he had assisted
in the bombardment of Finiah. Three days later, at dusk on the
twenty-ninth of September, the flyer landed at Hidden Springs
with the Spear ready for use. Martha was in shock from the
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hemorrhaging, and Amerie could only rush her away for trans-fusions,
praying for a miracle.
Down on the western bank of the Rhine, a Lowlife army
waited in a secret camp opposite Finiah. The city, gorgeously
illuminated with twinkling lights, was still undisturbed at dawn
on the thirtieth. Chief Burke was ready, together with several
hundred free humans, many of them armed with iron. The
Firvulag army under Sharn the Younger was also on alert—
although still skeptical—poised to attack on two fronts should
the promised aerial bombardment materialize.
Richard piloted the flyer to a position above the Tanu citadel.
Screened by Madame Guderian's metapsychic power, the craft
prepared to attack, with the photon weapon manned by the
rock-cutting paleontologist. Claude fired twice and missed, but
his third shot broke the Rhineside wall, allowing penetration
by the Lowlives and a large unit of Firvulag. Changing targets,
the old man demolished a wall on the other side of the city;
Ayfa, general of the Warrior Ogresses, led in a second prong
of attackers opposite the main strike. With power in the Spear
running low, Claude knew that there only remained enough.energy for a single great blast at the
strategic barium mine in
the heart of Finiah.
But now there came streaming up from the city a train of
glowing knights mounted on chaliko chargers. Velteyn and his
Flying Hunt had penetrated Madame's illusion and identified
the enemy. The psychocreative lord sent balls of lightning
soaring into the open hatch of the aircraft. Dodging, Claude
fired, striking the mine squarely. Before Richard could get them
away, the globes of psychic energy did their work: Claude was
seriously burned, Richard lost an eye, and Madame lay on the
floor of the smoldering flight deck, surrounded by toxic fumes.
Half mad with pain, Richard crash-landed the flyer at Hid-den
Springs. At the same time, a successful invasion of the
Tanu city was being carried out by combined human and Fir-vulag
forces. The battle of Finiah lasted twenty-four hours. At
the end of that time the barium mine was destroyed, the city
was in ruins, the Tanu population was slain or had fled, and
the enslaved human inhabitants were faced with a choice that,
for some, was oddly difficult: Live free or Die.
Richard awoke in Hidden Springs and discovered Martha's
body laid out in the Lowlife chapel. Remembering the promises
they had made, he took her up and stumbled to the still-op-erational
flyer. Madame and Claude were going to recover,
and no doubt the old woman would press ahead with her scheme
to free humanity. But not Richard. He had a plan of his own.
Waving farewell to Amerie, he launched the gravo-magnetic
craft into an orbit thousands of kilometers above Pliocene Earth
and began to wait.
Far below, Felice was trudging through the forest toward
smoking Finiah. She was too late for the war, but somehow
or other she would find a golden torc in the ruined city and
fulfill her promise to take the Tanu.
The other four members of Group Green encountered an
utterly different face of the Many-Colored Land.
Six weeks earlier, The Tanu overlord, Creyn, had mounted
his chaliko and departed Castle Gateway. With a minimal escort of three soldiers, he had led
Elizabeth, Bryan, Aiken Drum,
Stein, Sukey Davies, and Raimo Hakkinen along the track
toward the Rhone River. As they traveled, the Tanu man told
these privileged prisoners something of the wonderful life that
awaited them. They would take ship at the riverside city of
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Roniah, and after a journey of five or six days arrive in the.Tanu capital, Muriah. There Stein
would be healed of the
injuries suffered in his escape attempt. Aiken and Raimo and
Sukey would learn how to use the metafunctions made newly
operant by their silver torcs. Bryan would assist in a cultural
analysis project that had been initiated by the Tanu King him-self.
And Elizabeth... her destiny would be the most splendid
of all. Never before had the time-gate admitted a genuinely
operant human metapsychic to the Many-Colored Land. (It was
prohibited by Galactic statute.) Elizabeth's mind might be con-valescent,
but when she recovered, her farsensing and redactive
abilities would far exceed those of any Tanu Great Ones. Creyn,
himself a skilled redactor, was humbly aware that her probing
and healing powers dwarfed his own. Elizabeth would not
receive the common initiation. No, she would go to the Ship-spouse
who was the guide and guardian of both exotic races;
she would go to Brede.
The exotic healer's promises only filled Elizabeth with fear
and dismay. There was a good reason why the Galactic Milieu
forbade operant metapsychics to pass through the time-gate.
In the Milieu, all persons with great mental power—human
and nonhuman—were bound in a benevolent Unity, incapable
of any selfish action that would harm civilization. But bereft
of the Unity ...
Elizabeth felt as though she were the only mature adult cast
away in a world of children—and malicious children at that,
who would seek to use her. This must not be permitted.
Elizabeth was roused from her reverie of despair by the
necessity of rescuing Sukey. This young woman, who also had
redactive power, had gone snooping into the mind of uncon-scious
Stein. Discovering his longstanding psychic hurts, Sukey
tried inexpertly to drain them. Only Elizabeth's intervention
prevented the deeply traumatized Viking from crushing his
would-be healer into imbecility. Temporarily postponing non-involvement,
Elizabeth began to teach Sukey proper techniques
so that she would not harm herself or the man she was growing
to love. Before the trip south concluded, Sukey was able to
bring Stein genuine relief from mental dysfunctions that had
plagued him from childhood. Stein in turn reached out and
pledged himself to her. Their two minds, operating on the most
intimate telepathic level of his gray, and her silver, torc, took
each other for husband and wife. Such a union, Creyn had
warned, was forbidden to silver-torc women on pain of death;.but the lovers hid their secret well.
No one knew the truth but
Elizabeth.
The madcap Aiken Drum's reaction to his new mind-power and the dazzling splendor of the Many-
Colored Land was pro-foundly
different. He gloried in both. In Roniah, he was the
star of a rowdy debauch and the darling of insatiable Tanu
women. Later, he and his new crony, Raimo, assumed the
illusory forms of butterflies and took an impromptu tour of
the riverside city. This ended with the partial destruction of the Roniah dock as part of a
metapsychic practical joke.
Creyn programmed what he thought was a firm curb upon
the trickster's metafunctions. However, as the journey length-ened,
it became evident that Aiken—self-confessed Connect-icut
Yankee in King Arthur's court, mechanical genius, recidivist
delinquent, charmer, wearer of a golden suit with a hundred
pockets—was something far out of the ordinary run of latent
metapsychic. The mental powers that had been chained in his
skull for twenty-one years of misspent youth were of incredible
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potential. Elizabeth saw this clearly—and so, to a more limited
extent, did Creyn.
The boat carrying the travelers plunged over a torrential
slope, la Glissade Formidable, into the prehistoric Mediterra-nean
Basin. Sailing over shallow lagoons, it approached the
Tanu capital, Muriah, which lay at the tip of the Balearic
Peninsula. Most of the human passengers were increasingly anxious as the voyage neared its end;
but not Aiken Drum. His
silver torc, instead of merely freeing his metafunctions, had
acted as a trigger to a psychic avalanche. Control circuits that
had easily held normal human minds in thrall burned out before
Aiken's mental blaze; and his powers, unlike the gentle ones
of Elizabeth, were fully oriented toward aggression. Behind
the grinning face of the young man in the shining golden suit
was a personality that might, in time, seek to dominate not
only the exotic races of Pliocene Earth, but humanity as well.
Now begin Volume 2, which follows Aiken, Elizabeth,
Stein, and Bryan on the sixth day after their passage through
the time-gate into the world of Pliocene Earth...1
THE DRAGONFLY HOVERED, A GOLDEN SPARK, JUST ABOVE THE
bare mast of the motionless boat.
As the first breezes broke the water with cat's-paw dimpling,
the dragonfly darted off. He zoomed powerfully into the sky
and hovered once again. The boat below him was now trans-formed
into a lonely speck amid a pastel expanse of shallow
lagoons and saltflats, all blurred in pearly mist.
Higher! His shape-shifted wings lofted him into the dawn.
Keen compound eyes that covered most of his head showed
him the continental slope's dark rampart along the northern
horizon: the brink of Europe punctuated by a single towering
cloud that marked the cascade of the Rhone River, pouring
down a vast slope of sediment into the nearly waterless Med-iterranean
Basin of Pliocene Earth that was called the Empty
Sea.
Should he fly toward the mainland? His wings had the strength
to carry him more than 100 kilometers per hour for brief sprints.
He knew it would be easy for him to retrace the journey the
boat had made on the previous day; or he could fly eastward
to the upthrust mass of Corsica-Sardinia, where Creyn had said
no Tanu lived.
He could go anywhere he liked. He was free now.
Gone were the mental restraints programmed upon him by
the exotic slavemaster. This morning when he awoke, the silver
torc at his throat was cold rather than warm, the neural circuitry
of the psychocoercive device overloaded and rendered useless
by his mind's new power. The metapsychic latencies that the
torc had unlocked remained operant. And were still growing.
He reached out with his farsense, listening. He perceived
the slow-cycling rhythms of the seven people asleep in the craft.beneath him, and farther afield,
telepathic murmurs from other
boats scattered about the Great Lagoon. In the distant south—
he concentrated his farsense, clumsily attempting fine focus—
was a conglomerate mental shimmer. Fascinating! Could it be
coming from the Tanu capital city of Muriah, the goal toward
which they had been traveling these past five days?
If he gave a hail, would anyone down there answer? Try!
There came a hard bright response, shocking in its eager-ness:
O shining boymind who?
Well... Aiken Drum that's who.
Hold still littlemind so far yet so glowing. Ah!
No. Stop that—!
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摘要：

file:///F|/My%20Shared%20Folder/May,%20Julian%20-%20Pliocene%20Exile%202\%20-%20The%20Golden%20Torc.txtSYNOPSISOFVOLUMEITHEMANY-COLOREDLANDTHEGREATINTERVENTIONOF2013OPENEDHUMANITY'SWAYtothestars,givin\gthepeopleofEarthunlimitedlebensraum,energysufficiency,andmembershipinabenevolentciviliza-tion,theG...

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