The encounter that followed came to be known as the Pseudowar. In it, the supercomputing entity JEVEX, which managed all of the communications, information handling, and other vital functions of the Jevlenese worlds, was penetrated and defeated by a fictional interstellar attack force consisting entirely of computer-generated imagination. The just-proclaimed “Federation,” by which the Jevlenese proposed bringing their plans to fruition, collapsed, JEVEX was shut down, and Jevlen put on a period of probation. The Ganymeans of the Shapieron, displaced from their own home and time and needing an interval of respite to adapt to their new circumstances, were installed on Jevlen to take charge of the rehabilitation. Earth, rid of the corrupt element responsible for practically all of the more sordid side of its turbulent history, looked forward to assuming its rightful place in the interstellar community.
So, once again, after a few more old beliefs had been toppled, what remained was surely fact, resting on solid foundations. The future could be faced with assurance.
Nothing more could go wrong, now.
CHAPTER ONE
Nieru, the god of darkness, was descending in the west after his nightly domination of the sky, his cloak wrapped about him in a glowing purple spiral. Overhead, Cassona, the goddess who created weather, had become the dawn star. The three lesser stars of her daughters, the Cassoneids, which oscillated about her-Peria, Isthucis, and Dometer, the spirits of wind, rain, and cloud-were very close, almost in alignment, which meant that it was early summer. Compared to the splendor that the night sky had once been, the stars were few and feeble.
Cassona had once been capricious and vindictive, liable to cleave mountains with a lightning bolt or send storms to devastate an entire countryside on a whim. Today, however, she was placid. The morning was clear, and the first light revealed that the peaks at the far end of the valley outside Orenash had receded unusually far during the night, with the rooftops within the city walls and the patches of woodland on the slopes beyond noticeably lengthened in proportion. During the night, Gralth, the gods’ baker, who kneaded the world as if it were dough, stretched all dimensions in the east-west direction; he would compress them back to their evening minima as the day wore on. But so visible an extension at daybreak presaged an uneventful day ahead.
From an upper window of his uncle’s house below the rock upon which stood the temple of Zos, Thrax brooded to himself, confused and afraid with the bemusement of a youth whose world was running down just as he was approaching manhood and thought he had made sense of it.
But these days, everyone was confused and afraid. The old ways were ceasing to work, and the old wisdom had no answers. Priests prayed, seers beseeched, and people redoubled their sacrifices. But the force-currents waned, and life-power ebbed. No signs came; the oracles remained mute. And as the gods died, their stars were going out.
Some thought that a great war had been waged in the sky, that new gods had defeated the old, and different laws were coming into being to rule the world. Mystics spoke of having seen a higher realm that they called Hyperia, beyond the everyday plane of existence, where perpetual serenity reigned and impossible happenings were commonplace.
Perhaps, a few of the more hopeful reasoned, the breaking down of the old laws portended a transition of their world into a phase that would be governed by the new kinds of laws glimpsed in the world beyond. They experimented in unheard-of ways to prepare themselves, striving to grasp strange notions and unfamiliar concepts.
“Hold it, Thrax. I think it needs a bit more play here.” Thrax’s uncle, Dalgren, poked inside the contraption standing on the stone slab in his basement workshop and adjusted a clamp. “And probably this one opposite, too.”
It consisted essentially of two pairs of legs, each pair set one behind the other in an arrangement of vertical slides that allowed either pair to protrude below the other. In addition, whichever pair was raised could move lengthwise along a horizontal guide and descend at varying displacements with respect to the lower. Each leg had a foot in the form of a rocker that was tipped at one end by the metal mobilium, which was “apathetic” to most kinds of rock and slid easily over them, and at the other by frictite crystal, which bound when in contact. It was a fact of nature that all materials possessed an affinity for each other to a greater or lesser degree, determining how strongly they were attracted or repelled; thus, depending on the position of the rocker, the foot would either grip the surface or be repulsed. The whole thing was an attempt at artificially mimicking the sliding-planting-lifting-sliding of the leg movements of an animal, such as a drodhz.
Nobody had ever conceived such an idea before-carts and other vehicles had always been hauled along on skids of mobilium or something similar. The mystics who had seen Hyperia told of indescribable, magical devices capable of performing motions of complexities that defied imagination. They even spoke of constructions that spun.
“There. Try it now, Thrax,” Dalgren said, stepping back.
Thrax pushed one of the operating rods projecting from the assembly. While one pair of legs remained anchored to the bench, the other lifted, slid forward one half of a leg-pitch, and then descended in a new position. Then the rocker mechanism operated, locking the legs that had advanced, and releasing the pair that had remained stationary. As Thrax pulled the activating rod back again, the rearmost pair of legs moved past the others in turn, and reanchored themselves to complete the cycle.
“Yes, that did the trick!” Dalgren exclaimed. “Keep going!”
Thrax moved the rod slowly back and forth several times, and the contrivance walked its way jerkily across the slab. As it approached the edge, however, its motion became stiffer and slower, and Thrax had to push harder on the rod to keep it moving. “It’s starting to jam,” he said. “I can feel it.”
“Hmm.” Dalgren stooped to peer at the horizontal guides. “Ahah, yes, I think I can see why. The main guide is expanding and starting to jam.” He sighed and sat down on a stool. “I’m not sure how we get around it. It may need an additional compensating liner.”
Every problem solved seemed to introduce a new complication. They had adjusted the device for correct operation early in the morning, but as the world shrank from east to west under Grakh’s kneading, the mechanism’s dimensions had changed. Automatically, Thrax began mentally composing a prayer to Gralth. Then he checked himself, remembering that those were old methods that had to be set aside firmly if the new ones were ever to be understood. At the same time, he felt an inner twinge of discomfort at such defiance of all his years of conditioning.
As if echoing his doubts, a voice spoke accusingly from the doorway. “Sorcerers! Blasphemy! These things belong to a higher realm. They are not meant to be meddled with here in the world of Waroth. That is why the powers are failing. Just as you are abandoning faith, so are the gods abandoning us.”
It was Keyalo, a foster son of Dalgren and Thrax’s aunt, Yonel. He was a couple of years older than Thrax and had resented Thrax’s intrusion into the household ever since Thrax’s own family had been lost when Vandros, the underworld god whose blood ran as rivers of light, punished the Dertelians by consuming five villages in a lake of fire.