The Power of Gnaris (3 page)

“This will
require sacrifice, Barrow. To show your unfaltering loyalty to the
gods, we require the sacrifice of sixty-four of your servants.”

“Do we add to
the numbers that are slaughtered?”

“Do not
question my authority, Barrow, or my decision. This sacrifice will
put fear into the minds of the Karavec warriors and servants; but
above all it will put fear into the mind of the murderer. He must
be caught.”

“These things
will be done, oh Great One.”

* * * * *

Forster sifted
through his notes, trying to piece together all the facts he had
been able to establish from evidence of the day of the Arion
murders. He had seen this scenario many times before in the human
worlds that he had visited and worked in over the past three
hundred years, but this was the first time he had worked with the
Karavec. The scene of the crime and its enactment were familiar,
but the players in the crime, both perpetrator and victims, were
not.

Several
thoughts passed through his mind.
Why would a Karavec betray his
own people? Why did he use such a crude weapon? How did he gain
access to the Embrycultural Centre? How did he exit again, leaving
just one clue and leaving the centre locked to appear from the
outside as if nothing had happened? Most significantly, how had he
travelled to Hikon? Could there be another murderer on the main
planet? Unlikely. The killer must have found transport to Hikon . .
.

. . . The
ferry ship. He must have travelled on the ferry ship. I must warn
Barrow. The ferry ship must not be allowed to carry passengers when
it leaves Hikon. No one should be allowed to leave the planet
except the crew.

He moved
towards the door, intending to summon a servant to take a message
to the Great Savant, but took a pace back when there was an
unexpected knock on the door. He leaned forward and peered through
the peephole. He recognised the female Karavec, Elena, who had been
assigned as his assistant. He opened the door.

“How can I
help you?” he asked.

“I just wanted
to find out whether you have got any ideas about the murders
yet.”

“Not yet, but
please come in. I could do with some company.”

Forster
reached for the light dimmer to reduce the light in the room.

“That’s
enough,” Elena said when he had partially dimmed the lights. “My
eyes became accustomed to the light when I lived on Earth. My
retinas are less sensitive to bright light than the average
Karavec.”

“Can I take
your coat?”

Elena removed
her coat to reveal a slim curvaceous figure, exacerbated by a
tight-fitting jumpsuit. She handed the coat to Forster.

“Would you
care for some refreshment?”

“No, thank
you. The Karavec only eat when food is genuinely required, and
that’s not often.”

“Sit down,
please.” Forster motioned for his guest to be seated in an armchair
next to his own.

“Thank you,
Captain.”

“Please, call
me Jim.”

Elena flushed,
and her face turned a deeper shade of green.”

“We are
working together, so perhaps we should be more formal.” she
said.

Forster bowed
his head. “As you wish. There are lots of questions I would like to
ask you, many things I need to know that might help me to better
understand what’s going on here. First of all, can you tell me why,
when I first set foot on this planet, I was not immediately frozen
to death? We are on a sunless world at the extreme of the Ogien
solar system. Your sun is barely visible, let alone a source of
light and heat needed to sustain life. When I stepped down from my
ship, I was cold, but not as cold as I had expected. This planet is
very different from any other I have ever encountered.”

“The answer is
simple. We do not need light, but heat is necessary for our
survival. We have learned to enhance the heat stored at the core of
the planet.”

“But how do
you grow food without light?”

“All our
plants and animals are cultivated in cradles, similar to the embryo
cradles you saw in the Embrycultural Centre. These need heat, but
very little light. As for ourselves, we only use light when our
other senses elude us, and that is not often.”

“Tell me more
about yourself, and your people.”

Elena
hesitated before answering. “Karavec do not live in families. We do
not even know who our parents are. But the man who raised me when I
left the Embryological Centre on board the
Endeavour
was one of its
captains. He is not my biological father, but I call him father. He
now lives in exile on Earth.”

“The
Endeavour
?”

“The first
Karavec spacecraft to arrive in the Milky Way.”

“The ship that
broke up?”

“Yes. Do you
know why it broke up?”

“No, tell me.
Tell me the whole story.”

“Our original home is
in another distant galaxy where the Karavec gods created our
people. We have travelled from our homeland and spread out across
many galaxies, spreading the word of our gods, and warning other
races that the gods are coming. Barrow, the mighty Great Savant,
was also our leader on the voyage to the Milky Way.”

“Yes, I know. How long
ago was that?”

“Many hundreds
of years.”

“How is that
possible?”

“Karavec live
long. We have the ability to replace damaged limbs and organs.”

Yes, Barrow
told me.”

“ Barrow
himself has been alive for more than three thousand years.”

“Is he the
real leader of the Karavec? I mean, was he the leader before you
left your original home?”

“He has been
the leader for as long as I can remember. He conducts all religious
happenings, like ceremonies, gatherings and sacrifices. He is also
the supreme commander of the Karavec armies. However, there are
rumours that the Karavec are ruled by a secret group of
individuals, a group of mysterious lords called the Council which
works alongside the Great Savant. We do not know if the Great
Savant controls this Council, or if they control him.”

“I’m told that
your original home is three million light years away. How did your
people travel such a vast distance? Even if our spacecraft
travelled at their maximum capacity, which is eighty percent of the
speed of light, they would take nearly four million years to make
such a journey!”

“The
technology of which you speak is limited by the speed of
light.”

“But nothing
travels faster than light in a vacuum. This was proven many
centuries ago by a famous physicist from Earth named Einstein.”

“The General
Theory of Relativity?”

“You know
about that?”

“Of course. I
have lived on Earth, remember?”

“Yes, but I
didn’t realise that you studied Ancient Physics.”

“Ancient human
Physics,” she corrected.

“So, enlighten
me. How can one travel faster than the speed of light?”

Elena thought
for a moment. “Did you ever skate on the ice on Earth?”

“Yes.”

“Well imagine
the ice on a pond freezing with many stones frozen into its top
surface. Then try skating on it. What would happen?”

“The stones
would slow me down. It’s friction. That’s simple Ancient Physics,
known even before Einstein’s time.”

“And, if the
stones could somehow be removed, then most of the friction would
also disappear, and you could skate freely again.”

“Yes. What has
this got to do with the speed of light?”

“Not the speed
of light, the speed in darkness.”

Forster looked
puzzled. “How can darkness move?”

“I didn’t say
the speed
of
darkness; I said the speed
in
darkness.”

“I don’t
understand.”

“Space, the
vast empty regions between the planets and stars, and even
galaxies, is not really empty. There is electromagnetic radiation
everywhere in the form of light, ultra violet, x-rays and gamma
rays at one end of the spectrum, to infra red and radio waves at
the other end. It is these rays that slow us down, just as the
stones in the frozen pond would slow down the skater. These rays
travel at the speed of light; hence they determine the maximum
speed, just as Einstein predicted.”

“But if we
could remove the electromagnetic rays, just like we remove the
stones, then . . .”

“Exactly. We
built a ship that could plough through space, pushing the
electromagnet rays to one side. The rays no longer slowed the craft
down. It could travel at any speed. There were no limits.”

“The speed in
darkness has no limits?”

“Right.”

“But I still
don’t understand. If I want to skate freely, I have to remove the
stones. In doing so, I use energy and slow down anyway.”

“You are
right, Captain, but when I said we push the rays to one side, I was
simplifying things. We do not push them physically; we use
gnaris.”

“Gnaris, what
is gnaris?”

“It is sense,
possessed only by Karavec. The Karavec have little use for eyes and
find continuous exposure to light to be painful. Instead we made
use of a different sense; not sight, hearing, taste, smell or touch

we possess all of these, though sight is
the least important to us

but an
additional sense that allows us to feel the things and people that
surround us without using our eyes or any of the other senses
possessed by other races. This sense, we call gnaris. For any being
that does not possess the sense of gnaris, it is difficult to
describe.”

“You use this
gnaris to remove the rays?”

“To put it
simply in language you can understand, we use our gnaris to wish
the rays to move aside.”

“What happened
to the spacecraft? Can I experience this ‘travelling in
darkness’?”

“Unfortunately
the spacecraft was destroyed. After we arrived in the Milky Way,
the braking system failed and we were unsuccessful in our efforts
to slow down the craft quickly enough. It began to shake violently
and started to break up. We had to abandon ship and took to the
life rafts, smaller craft that took us to the surface of Hikon. We
have the technology to build a new ship, but it will take us many
thousands of years to do so. I understand one is already under
construction on Hikon.”

“So what
happened to your people?”

“The Karavec
gods were angry that the ship had been destroyed. They instructed
Barrow to sacrifice all the captains to make amends for their
mistake.”

“All the
captains, including your father? What happens during such a
sacrifice?”

“Only Barrow
knows these things; and maybe the members of the Council. But there
are rumours. Before the victims of the sacrifice die, the gods give
them the gift of sight; and, in return, the victims yield to the
gods their gnaris.”

“So the
Karavec gods gave your father the gift of sight, and took away his
gnaris. But why did he not die?”

“He did not
accept his fate. One of the most important things about a Karavec
sacrifice is that the victims are willing, and that they accept
their fate. At the beginning of the proceedings they recite
together a prayer saying that they are honoured to have been chosen
by the gods for this sacrifice. He did not recite that prayer; so
he did not die.”

“Isn’t that
shameful? Doesn’t that mean that he has disobeyed the will of the
gods?”

“He chose
life.”

“So what
happened next?”

“After Barrow
had completed the rites of sacrifice, and the other captains were
all dead, he became very angry. He told my father that he had
defied the gods and that he was no longer Karavec. He banished him
from Hikon and every planet in the Karavec Empire. He sought refuge
from the humans on Earth, and has been living there ever since.
Much has changed during that time.”

“Did you see
him when you were on Earth?”

“Yes, we spent
a wonderful few days together.”

“Now, if
you’ll please excuse me,” said Forster. “I have to rest in
preparation for our journey to Hikon.”

Elena rose to
leave.

“Will you be
accompanying us?”

“Yes, Barrow
has insisted that I assist you. Maybe he does not fully trust you.
Besides, I am from Hikon. It is my home. I travel around the
Karavec colonies with the Great Savant.”

“I’m so glad
you’re coming.” Forster felt his face turn a deeper shade of red.
He glanced at the Karavec woman who stood before him.
She is not
unattractive,
he thought.
True, her eyes are a little large.
But mostly in her favour, she is very intelligent. But these are
human emotions. She is different. She does not think like a
human.

“Can I meet
you tomorrow?” he asked. “Maybe we could dine together.”

“Dine? We do
not eat special meals like humans do. We eat only when there is a
need. You will not find any restaurants like those on Earth
here.”

“I forgot.
Well, maybe we could just talk some more.”

“Meet me at
the spaceport at noon. You can show me around your ship, and I will
give you a tour of the town before we depart for Hikon. Oh, and
bring a thick coat. It is still cold on the surface, though not as
cold as you expected.”

After Elena
had departed, Forster continued to think about her, and about her
father and the ship that had been destroyed. Then he remembered his
earlier thoughts that the murderer might have travelled on the
ferry ship.
I must tell Barrow, and warn him that no passengers
should be allowed to depart from Hikon.

He opened the
door once more and called for a servant to take a message
requesting an audience with the Great Savant.