The Star Whorl (The Totality Cycles Book 1) (3 page)

     “What did you do?” his
friend finally asked, an irritably affable chuckle in his voice. They went in
the direction of their respective store-cubbies. “Did you come up with a new
glyph for a pheromone that I can’t detect? Besides growing two deci-parts, and
putting on a ten-weight of muscle, that is.”

     “What are you going on
about?” he said, nonchalant, glancing down at his friend. It was ironic that,
having been shorter than Ro-Becilo’Ran for most of the time that he had known
him, he now towered a bit over his best friend, and had to look down at him.

     “What am I ‘on about’? You
mean you
don’t
see the pools of pheromones all the girls are putting out
whenever you go by?” Ro-Becilo’Ran said, incredulous. “If I weren’t pre-mated
to Galici’Bel, I’d be going half-mad with all the physique responses every two
steps!”

     Kreceno’Tiv raised a
vuu-brow and glanced around. Several girls quickly looked away as his gaze
moved toward them, but Ro-Becilo’Ran was right – many of them were putting out
deliberate pheromone clouds, and surprisingly, they
seemed
to be
directed at him – and not in just a random way.

    
I thought they were just
– gloming because they were going through second development.
He had felt
the slight reaction to the puffs of chemi-scent, but had shrugged them off.
I
thought that was just – part of being girls,
he mused, wanting to gesture
annoyance at his own thick-headedness.
Like my getting taller and deepening
voice. I thought they were putting them out for the other males around them,
too.

     “I – really hadn’t noticed,”
he half-lied, gesturing abstrusely again. Apparently, learning to ignore Gotra
Pelani’Dun’s advances had made him ignore
all
advances being made toward
him. He un-tucked his vuu’erio a little, and the glut of chemi-scents and the
associated glyphs directed at him almost made him reel. He tucked them away
again, quickly.

     “I’m sure,” Ro-Becilo’Ran
said drolly, moving his Ro-shoulders. “They’re all in awe of you now – taller,
more developed, and too aloof to notice any of them... you could have any girl
in Secondus right now, if you wanted.”

     Kreceno’Tiv snorted and
moved his carry-pack to the other shoulder as he sorted through his texts. That
was not how pre-mating really worked – girls chose boys, putting out their
chemi-scents for the male that they wanted, and the male, if he were amenable,
responded. But after Gotra Pelani’Dun’s callous treatment, he did not want to
be chosen by just anyone, he wanted a special girl, one with – depth, and a
certain quality that he did not have a glyph for, yet. They closed their
cubbies and headed to their next lecture.

     Then a familiar scent made
him cringe inside. Gotra Pelani’Dun was standing by the entrance to the lecture
room, her pheromone cloud almost cloying. He consciously suppressed any
reaction to it, keeping the cloud’s glyph from interacting with his own, and he
did not even get the very faint Gotrar-induction markings or physique that
would normally happen with a scent that thick. Ro-Becilo’Ran, even, had a
Go-reaction, going momentarily from Ropalir-induction to faint Gotrar-induction
as he checked for an instant, then went on by her.

     Her eyes widened as Kreceno’Tiv
came within range of her chemi-scent and nothing happened to him. She did not
say anything as he bypassed her without stopping – Ro-Becilo’Ran had paused,
almost perforce, the normal consequence of the powerful pheromone pre-mating
marker. If she had been interested, she would have extended her vuu’erio tennae
to him in that pause, letting him know unequivocally that the glome-trail was
for him. Kreceno’Tiv did not pause, but parted the cloud without actually
letting it touch him.

     “Frosty,” Ro-Becilo’Ran said
admiringly, as Kreceno’Tiv took his accustomed seat next to him. “How did you
do that?”

     “Do what?” he replied
ingenuously, as the Proctor came in, and Gotra Pelani’Dun hastily took her
seat, her elytra-pace clacking slightly in confusion and annoyance.

Whorl Seven

     “This first turn of this term
we will be discussing the Industrial Collapse of thirty orbises ago,” the
Proctor, a Lisso-Genus woman said, pacing at the front of the lecture room.
“What is this phenomenon generally attributed to?” She looked out over the
lecture-group, waiting for someone to voluntarily answer her question.

     A pupil on the other end of
the room indicated with the requisite projected glyph that she would answer,
then spoke up. “This is attributed to the long-term effects of the
Unification,” she said.

     Proctor Lisso Pel indicated
assent, waving her vuu’erio. “That is correct. The intermingling of the castes
seemed to have produced an evening out of the Nil’Gu’ua ability levels, so that
more and more of the populace had Nil’Gu’ua in the median-range, and could
manipulate Nil’Gu’vua to produce corporeal objects. Once that ability had
become widespread, citizens began producing their own life-necessities, rather
than using currency to obtain them. Coupled with the Unveiling Event and
subsequent Unveiling Laws, some authorities surmise that the Industrial
Collapse was inevitable. And it turns out that the Nil’Gu’ua levels were not
just evening out – they were increasing, throughout the population as a whole.
In fact, the generation before ours has had the highest ever incidence of level
Nnen’Nil’Gu, fourth level ability, and above, with ninety-eight percent of the
population of Gu’Anin showing these ability levels.” She looked over them.
“Those levels were unprecedented, and defied every model of population
adaptation put forth by researchers.”

     Kreceno’Tiv took notes,
though he had heard this information before. But it bothered him. There was
something there, something that did not feel correct about the postulate.

     “And because of this, as I
said, industries that manufactured goods collapsed here on Gu’Anin.” The
Proctor went on to describe the devaluation of currency on their home world,
though legal tenders among the worlds of the Totality still held value.

     As always, when the
Industrial Collapse was discussed, Kreceno’Tiv was faintly disturbed. The tenor
of the discussion always seemed to point to the Unification as a bad thing,
with the Industrial Collapse being the ultimate result.

    
Would they rather have
had the Castes remain as they were forever?
he wondered sourly.
And they
only
think
that the Unification is responsible for the homogenization of
Nil’Gu’ua. What if it isn’t? What if that is just a coincidence? Or even more
reasonable, what if that homogenization happened first, and is the reason the
Unification was able to come about?
Suppose the median Nil’Gu’ua levels
had begun to rise before-vuu, and enabled the lower Castes to overthrow the
Malkia-mothers’ reign?

     He would not voice these
ideas in lecture, however. Not after having made the same argument to his
parents, once. While they had praised his ingenuity and insight, there had been
a warning in their words to have a care to whom he said such things. They had
not discouraged his thoughts, just cautioned him not to speak about it, a subtle
but distinct difference.

    
The Proctors are almost
making a case for bringing back the inequalities of the Malkia-dominated era,
he
thought, the sourness forming a knot in his belly. He kept taking notes,
wondering about the motives behind promoting such regressive ideas. Other
lectures had tried to insinuate and advocate similarly deleterious notions
about the events that had liberated the population from the Malkia dominion,
and later, the reliance on labor-reward and industrial manufacture for
sustenance. Were the Solidarim and the Gu’Anin Magistrate Council trying to
prime the upwardly mobile generations for such a return to social
stratification?

    
Trying to force the
current populace back into a mfanya-consumer framework will be unsuccessful,
he
took comfort in knowing.
How many, once they leave Secondus and have no
prospects of moving on to Tertius will
want
to work for things that they
can simply glyph-conjure? I wouldn’t, though I do expect to go to Tertius.
The
thought of not going, he did not permit himself. That would only lead to paths
that gave in to the over-blanketing despair.

Whorl Eight

     Kreceno’Tiv sat in the new
lecture near the front of the hall, eager and excited. He had been looking
forward to this, the physics of Long-Travel. Short-travel around the world of
Gu’Anin without the use of designated terminuses had been prohibited in an
effort to bolster the ailing travel industries, and thus was no longer taught
as a lecture in Secondus. But Long-Travel was still necessary, and he was
particularly intrigued by it, though he could not say why. And this lecture he
had all to himself, in the sense that neither Ro-Becilo’Ran nor Gotra Pelani’Dun
were in it.

     The Proctor, after
introducing herself, turned on a view-glyphographic surface on the lectern
before her, and made it project a glyph more complex than any he had ever seen.
Was it a true representation of the Long-Travel glyph? He connected his
vuu’erio to his secondary retinas, letting his eyes go semi-compound, and saw,
with a slight slash of disappointment, that there were holes in the glyph.

    
Still, understanding the
parts that she
can
show will help me begin to understand the entire
thing when I
do
get to study it,
he thought, turning his attention to
what she was saying.

     “...if you have not guessed
already, this is, of course, not the Long-Travel glyph in its entirety – that
is sensitive and close-held. But we can see enough of it to understand the
theory of Long-Travel.” She manipulated the image, sending duplicates to all of
them.

     He accepted the duplicate of
the image that came to him, laid his view-glyphographic down and projected it
up before him. He set part of the screen to project, and the other part to
scribe.

     “What is Long-Travel?” Proctor
Diamma Jes raised her arms, as if she would embrace the entire class. “I’ll
tell you. It is, in essence, an idea, the idea that two distant points can be
made to align, to be close in some dimension of the All. This idea was first
conceived of by Vespa Ytoni’Dal, sixty millen orbises ago. When it was shown to
be credible, and sustainable, the Expansion began. We will touch on the
Expansion and how it gave us administration over the two Star Whorls and all
the Nil’Gu’vua worlds contained within. But that will be discussed more in
depth in your herstories lectures.

     “So, the idea that two
distant points can be brought close was radical, in its first iteration, and
the notion of aligning these two points and traveling between them – many were
skeptical that it could be done, even though Vespa Ytoni’Dal had actually
managed to conceive of the glyph for it, a somewhat more complex glyph than
what we are looking at now. Her detractors argued that, even though she had
created the glyph to completely describe what she wished, that no one had the
Nil’Gu’ua ability to apply enough Nil’Gu’vua to it to make it vibrant, Nil-ize.
She proved them wrong.”

     Kreceno’Tiv wondered what
level was required to activate the glyph, if he were to have it in its
entirety.

     “It turns out that it is not
just the level of Nil’Gu’ua that determines whether the glyph can be made
potent, but the disparity of the states of the distant points. Nil’Gu’ua level
comes into play when very disparate points need to be aligned.”

     Kreceno’Tiv was about to
project a glyph to ask a question, when she chuckled and raised her hands in
forestalling. “I know, it sounds as if I made two completely contradictory
statements. What I mean is this – for two points that align almost perfectly,
anyone capable of level Sabol’Nil’Gu can activate the Long-Travel glyph. That’s
the seventh level, that a significant portion of the population is capable of.
It was surprisingly easy to activate, given similar conditions. Nil’Gu’ua
does
play a factor when two points’ state-functions become more and more dissimilar.
For example, to align a Nil’Gu’vua world with a Nil’Gu’dae world, one bereft of
Nil’Gu’vua, would require the as yet undiscovered Lifi’Nil’Gu – an eleventh
level ability, the ability to bring Nil’Gu’vua to places where it does not
exist.

     “Now, we will first be
studying what is called the state-spaces that define translatable locations
that can be connected by the Long-Travel glyph.”

     Kreceno’Tiv leaned forward
eagerly as she began scrawling equations around the projection of the glyph,
and he copied them faithfully.

Whorl Nine

     “How was Secondus?” his
mother asked as he came into the food preparation area, once he had put his
things in his suite.

     He projected a glyph to her,
one entangling elation and frustration, boredom and annoyance, interest and
fatigue. Overlaid was hunger.

     Vespa Kareni’Tiv laughed as
she projected a glyph and applied Nil’Gu’vua to it, making a feast appear for
him. “You were always so eloquent, my hungry boy. Here, go feed that bottomless
chasm you have called a stomach, ever since you sprang up like Anin’Ma World-Tree.”

     “Thanks, Ma!” he said,
grabbing up the platter and carrying it up to his suite. Her warm laugh
followed him.

     Setting the platter down, he
pulled out his view-glyphographic and began skimming the interlinked dataSpheres.

    
:The Sweeper

     :Oh ha! All praise those
who know what’s best for us! But, alas, their last, best intention for us has
gone the way of all things, has, once again, failed. Only two turns old, and
already the Reform is dead! No one wanted to participate in their Employment Reform,
no one wanted to go back to the drudgery and reward system that we have heard
tell about, spending precious life in pursuit of others’ gain, and gratefully
gobbling up the scraps of rewarded time they so graciously allow us, giving us
tender to spend in return for the use of our talents, toil, and time. We gave
it all up, because, in truth, we have learned that life and the time one has is
precious, and should not be squandered making someone else wealthy – for how,
if we wanted or needed it, would we get that time back? Once spent, it is gone
forever.