The Outer Atomic Explorers and the White Moon, or How We Made the Useless Discovery of Dragon's True Relation to Time, By Flatius Amensis
Part I
The little ship bucked the winds of Chaos. Glorius Matobolus, captain of the band of Outer Atomic explorers, strained his fat body to see out the viewport. Before his eyes, he recited to himself "lay the dark illimitable boundless oceans of Chaos, the secrets of the hoary deep without dimension, where length, breadth, and height, time and place are lost."
Their predictions were right, he thought. Even here where Chaos, ancestor of Glorantha, held "eternal anarchy amidst the noise of endless wars and confusion," the sail vanes of the ship, crafted from the machines and force-fields of the Jrustelans, still worked, as did the phlogiston generator that powered the ship.
But glancing out the viewport did not help Matobolus. For Light itself, the ruling sense of his species, did not really penetrate here, where Light, Earth, Water, Air, Sky and Dark, six fierce champions, struggled for mastery with Chaos as umpire. Here, where Chance governed all, he thought to himself, the senses of the Malkioni, governed by Law, did not work well. Into this wild abyss, the womb of nature and perhaps her grave, the little ship sped.
The theory had been simple. There were two ways to travel outside present Glorantha, through Godtime and through space. But Godtime travel still limited one to the orbs of the Gods, while now the magics were were holding -- and it was theoretically possible to view Glorantha from OUTSIDE. That is, it would be, if either his senses, or those of the ship, or his magics were working.
Matobolus laughed suddenly: "We are climbing the stairway to heaven," he said to his companions. Out of habit, he began to bark orders to his men, then ceased, for he realized that they all knew what to do.
Setondal, the chief operator of the generator, made an adjustment, and its high-powered whine faded. Fyrantus studied the instruments of his machine, casting a pain spell upon the master spirit that controlled it, stirring that spirit to force those under its control to search the area with their various senses.
Genanbus Flavius began casting his location spells, whilst Mudhyr Flavius (always called Flavius the Lesser, in mocking tribute to his great height) activated the maguffin detector.
It was clear that there was one great danger of being in the midst of Chaos -- literally ANYTHING could exist out here, for that was the definition of Chaos. Indeed, some philosophers held that Gorantha itself was simply an example of chaotic creation that would some day vanish as suddenly as it appeared. If Glorantha was a little bubble of Law in the infinity of Chaos, surely other such little bubbles must exist? Of course, this was an heretical view, since any good Jrusteli knew that the Invisible God had created Glorantha of his own unique will. And the purpose of the Chaos was to serve as the source of creation, which would remain unless the Almighty maker ordained the creation of more worlds.
Indeed, it was just this hope of finding other worlds which had animated Matobolus to take the chance of this trip.
Some, of course, held that it was heretical to think that any creation greater than Man could exist. For was it not true that Solace was designed only for humans, while the Krjalki were doomed to the Dark and to Chaos? Matobolus doubted this simplistic theory, for he knew well enough that many of the Krjalk were as much possessors of the Man Rune as humans themselves. Personally he agreed with those more subtle theologians who pointed out that only Man himself was the possessor of the unmodified Rune, so it was obvious therefore that Man was the only creation of the Invisible God, whilst the other races were modifications of the IG's creation, carried out by the false powers.
Others argued that the Creator could well have given other worlds to other species, as He had given Glorantha to humans, while yet others others argued that every world would itself have its own form of humans.
There had also been a major argument also about the question of the relation of Time and Space. The false "Gods" seemed to have limited themselves in their relation to time in some fashion, but since Chaos was neither part of this agreement nor was it primarily Gloranthan, it was at least theoretically possible to travel through time by travelling through Chaos.
Well, thought Matobolus, no point in speculation, let's see what we can see. He laughed again, realizing that they could see nothing at all. In a second of trepidation, he remembered the religious admonition of his youth "Nothing is very strong." Although the ship, so far, had survived the disintegration of Chaos, he could feel with his magical senses both the sickness and the allure of abandoning everything to it. It was as difficult to survive here mentally as physically, he thought. And what if they could find nowhere to go? The danger of Chaos was that travel itself might be impossible, that the Chaos outside would corrupt everything inside.
So far, however, the mighty Law runes and spirits in the walls of the ship were holding. That had been the first necessity of vessels such as this, the ability to survive amid the roils of Chaos. Unfortunately, the second necessity, that of successful self-location and travel, could not be tested except by actually exposing themselves to the danger of being lost, and eventually destroyed.
And there was a third problem, as well, surviving possible encounters with other creatures that might survive here, most of which would be either or both more powerful than the intrepid voyagers and quite likely hostile to those with the Law Rune as their main protector.
After several hours the reports began to come in. The results were grim: two of Fyrantus' spirits had vanished -- one apparently destroyed, and the other escaped. The others skulked back into their machine, refusing to emerge no matter how much they were tormented -- they were more afraid of what was outside than of anything that could happen to them here. Flavius the Greater reported sadly that none of his detection or location spells seemed to work adequately; Flavius the lesser that his detector detected nothing. Even Tamathus, the Chaos expert of the small group, could detect nothing with his chaos gifts. At the moment it seemed hopeless, they were lost.
Matobolus sighed. He had been afraid that this would happen, but had hoped that the more dangerous alternatives would not have to be tried. He ordered half the crew to dinner, and waited himself to eat with the other half. Then he ordered the night time routines. Of course it was not Night, but then it would never be Day either, in this place that mixed both.
Everyone had better be relaxed and full for the more dangerous steps that would have to be taken on the "morrow." It took a while for Matobolus to fall asleep, for everytime he began to lose consciousness the horrid murmurings of Chaos seemed to come through the bulkhead. At length, the captain fell into an uneasy slumber, "mixt with dreams of transformations both horrid and beautiful."
In the morning, after a quick bite, it was time to take measures that Matobolus
had hoped not to use. The first was to release the chaos beast they had trapped
and bound in the rear compartment. This creature, at least, would have no
trouble functioning here -- though the fear was that it would be too much at
"home" in this place -- or nonplace -- of Chaos -- and thus that neither
binding nor controls would last for long -- or that the creature itself might
grow too strong for those who controlled it.
Tamathus stretched his lanky frame, and grinned lopsidedly -- a necessity, given
that he had teeth on only one side of his huge mouth. "Time to try our little
beastie, is it?" he said in his remarkably irritating voice. Matobolus tried,
only partially successfully, to repress his natural distaste for this Krjalki
creature. Hard to remember, he thought, that two centuries past, we would never
have permitted Tamathus to live. Well, I guess we are more practical now, he
sighed to himself. But, suddenly, he looked keenly at Tamathus -- if being here
affected him as it did, what effect was it having on this Chaos devotee? So far,
all he could observe was that Tamathus seemed more energetic and vital than ever
he had been on Glorantha, whilst
all the other crew members seemed drawn and
haggard. "I wonder what I look like myself?" he thought.
"Yes," he replied evenly, if curtly. "Start it up." Anyone but Tamathus could
not have kept Mindlink with a Chaos creature for long, but that was one of the
reasons Tamathus was here. Flavius the Lesser pushed the levers that opened
the rear compartment, naturally enough, on the outside of the ship, not the
inside. As Tamathus began the chants that released the paralyzing bindings,
whilst Flavius moved other levers, the awakening and stirring monster in the
rear began to utter its horrid screams. In any other place than where they
were, Matobolus would have shuddered. Here, the sound of the screams simply
merged with the greater sense of oppression that he had felt ever since they had
come out here.
With a final multi-voiced scream, the creature in the back left the ship, or so
Matobolus judged by the mighty lurch which forced him to grab the rail by the
view port.
. . . to be continued . . .
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