Beyond Zoaster

by Neil Charles, Denis Hughes

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact; Space Opera

Synopsis

When Zaan, the ruler of the dying world of Ginya, set his sights on Earth as a place where his race could prosper and be safe from extinction, conquest was assured. The people of Earth were decadent and sunk in idle complacency and peace and technological advancement came to the world when the Ginyan race became Earth's overlords. Only a small group of human beings saw far enough ahead to exile themselves on dark Zoaster with a view to freeing the world from alien rule in the future, hoping to build up an army of synthetic supermen who would one day sweep the Ginyan race from the face of the Earth. They did not count on the weird elementals that dwelt on Zoaster, spirits of evil and darkness . . .

Release date: April 26, 2018

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 320

Sample

“Bring us news that is good, Zaan. Return to us here with word that will mean our succour from destruction. May luck go with you.” The woman stopped, her hands reaching out to Zaan as he stood before her in the hushed silence of the temple. For a moment he said nothing, only watched her with the fondness she knew so well. Then a smile touched his lips and softened their natural hardness. He stepped forward and clasped her tightly, looking over her head at the sober-faced priests and acolytes who waited on his word.

“I shall return,” he told her. “And while I am gone, my Feesen, guard my body well. The future of our race depends on my findings; the future of me depends on you.”

He put her from him, standing away and trying to ignore the plea in her eyes. This was no time for weakness.

“I am ready!” he said with sudden harshness. “Kringa, make certain that all is prepared. Time passes and the world we love dissolves around us! Do what is necessary.”

Kringa, old and bent, his white beard flowing in a patriarchal manner, his old eyes bright and keen, detached himself from the waiting group. As he approached the tall figure of Zaan he wondered if this leader of the race would ever again return to the flesh he must soon desert. He knew, as everyone knew, that Zaan was the bravest of the brave, and that his armour was not confined to the glistening metal that covered his body. The armour of Zaan was armour of the mind and spirit. But the mission on which he was bound was likely to strain to the utmost all his mortal powers. Not many who voyaged as he was about to do were strong enough to return. Yet so much depended on this one man’s success.

“It is well, my lord,” said Kringa. “Your spirit is bright with courage. Our prayers go with you.” As he spoke he gestured to Feesen with a slight bow of his aged head. “Please follow us,” he murmured. “You are permitted to attend on account of your position. I need not say that the honour is mine.”

Zaan took the woman’s hand as Kringa led the way to a tall, narrow archway in the wall of the fabulous temple. The arch gave onto an inner sanctum. Here the air was warm and aromatic, hazy with the drifting smoke of a thousand scented burners. Only their flickering pyramids of flame gave light, reflecting on the white robes of the motionless priests who stood one on either side of a bare polished slab of stone set like an altar at the end of the apartment.

Zaan went forward. Despite his upright bearing and immobility of expression there was fear inside him. His own inborn powers of prescience now warned him that the journey he was about to make would be one fraught with peril, and that the outcome of it—and of his report when he returned—might well prove an evil thing for his people. That he would return he had no doubt, and even the knowledge that his mortal flesh must remain in this weird apartment of the temple did not influence him. It was the fears and doubts that crowded his mind as to what the future might hold that were uppermost before him.

His fingers tightened on Feesen’s hand, clinging, as it were, to the sweet reality he must forsake for a time.

“Come back to me soon, my own,” she breathed. “I will be waiting here at your side.”

“Only duty takes me from you,” he answered.

Then the still air of the temple was throbbing with the strains of music, magnificent and awe-inspiring in its volume, crushing in its power to sway the mind. As if in a dream Zaan released Feesen and stepped up to Kringa’s side where the old man waited by the polished stone.

“All will be well,” he murmured. “The music shall bear you on mighty wings. Bring us comforting news of this distant world where our people may rest and prosper.”

“I shall do my best, Father Kringa,” he answered. “Now speed me ere my courage fail at this late moment.”

“It will never do that, my lord. Not for nothing have your ancestors ruled over Ginya and its peoples for years without number. In you, Zaan, is reposed all the regal strength of long-lost time. Go now.”

The music swelled louder and louder till it filled their very brains with its throbbing rhythm. This was the music of Ginya, so old and so wise that none dare change it, nor question its beauty and power.

Zaan threw one last look at Feesen, standing a little apart, her deep dark eyes alight with unshed tears, her hands fluttering out towards him.

He turned and faced the old priest and the bright stone slab. Kringa gestured without a word. And Zaan, still clad in his glittering armour, lay down on the slab. His eyes were closed, his mind open to the throbbing beat of the music, his conscious thoughts fused by its unearthly power. And then he could no longer hear the music, but was aware of an incredible lightness, a weightlessness as if completely detached from his body. The unseen walls of the temple dissolved around him, and instead of seeing the pin-pricks of yellow light from the thousand burners he saw the blue-white gleam of uncountable stars. Instead of lying on the cool stone slab he seemed to soar above the world of Ginya, above all life, far removed now from Feesen, his queen, from Kringa and the others. All was peace, with only the distant throb and harmony of the music to remind him of its power.

“He must return,” whispered Feesen. “He must! All is lost without him, the world is barren. He must return.”

Kringa stood in the shadows watching her as she bent over the motionless, lifeless frame of Zaan stretched corpse-like on the polished stone slab. All around was the yellow gleam of the burners, revealing the two guardian figures of the attendant priests, revealing, too, the beauty of this woman Feesen. And Kringa was content that she should watch over the flesh of the man now travelling the unseen paths beyond the edge of existence. Hers was a dutiful spirit, a good one, and therefore a powerful one. Kringa knew that Zaan would return if only for the sake of this woman, and he felt quite sure in his own mind that, again for Feesen’s sake, Zaan would leave nothing undone that might at last bring the Ginyan race to a sanctuary.

“He will return, Feesen,” he murmured, coming soundlessly up behind her and laying a gentle hand on her arm. “Have no fear of that. When Zaan, Master of the Ginyan people sets out to undertake a task it is always completed—as you yourself are aware.”

She turned with a faint smile. Even her mind was numbed by the constant battering of the hypnotic music. But she could still rejoice in Kringa’s gentle help and sympathy. It gave her strength in Zaan’s absence, and when her gaze returned to the motionless body on the stone she could look on it without experiencing that icy fear that this state which had the appearance of death was death itself.

“Yes,” she whispered, “he will return. I know it, yet belief is so hard to attain when the subject is one so close to the heart. You are wise, Kringa, you see these matters differently; I see them as a woman and a mother. Zaan is my man.”

“Zaan is our ruler,” murmured the old man. “It is duty not desire that drives him from your side in this time of peril that faces our world. Others might have made the journey, but because he is built as he is Zaan himself must do what has to be done.”

She nodded gravely. “Well I know it. And your faith and loyalty help to support me in his absence.” She broke off. Then: “How long may he be away, Father Kringa?”

The old man spread his hands. “What is time but an illusion foisted on animate life?” he countered. “Once clear of existence, outside it and therefore unfettered in the great Beyond, time must surely cease to be. Zaan may return to us here in a moment, yet have lived a century since leaving our side. On the other hand he may not return till you and I and all our people are dust and decay. There is no way of knowing, for in this we are dealing with unknown laws.”

“You frighten me.”

“Yet you are not afraid. Our scientists know of the existence of this other world to which Zaan has journeyed. In the night sky you yourself can observe it from the window of your room. There is little mystery about it, save for the fact that we cannot be sure what manner of beings dwell on its mass. Are they like us? Do they talk and laugh and form attachments among the sexes? How do they live? And above all are they likely to accept the coming of strangers from a distant globe? These things we must know before attempting to save our race from dissolution—as it will and must perish on the world of Ginya. Zaan will return with such information, the unseen observer in the void of space.”

“Sent to spy on some hapless creatures who must perish for the sake of our own survival,” she breathed.

“Not sent, madam. Zaan travelled alone, of his own free will and from his own inclination.”

She rounded on the old man with sudden fierceness.

“I know! I know! All this is for the good of the race, of course. I merely tried to see it from the point of view of a stranger. Is that so wicked?”

He shook his head gravely. “Not wicked,” he said. “I would say it is revealing of the greatness you inherit; but if Ginyans are to continue as a separate race of animate life no thought can be spared for the incidental fate of another race about which we know nothing and can have no feelings.”

Feesen sighed and glanced again at the handsome features of Zaan, immobile as in death, unbreathing yet alive; here was the dead and yet not the dead.

“I feel it wrong somehow,” she whispered. “How can we tell what manner of people we seek to depose? How shall we know that we are incapable of fellow feeling towards them when the moment to strike arrives?”

Kringa eyed her reproachfully. “Feesen, my queen,” he said quietly, “it is hoped that Zaan will form some opinion when he observes this race. You may be sure that no blow will be struck unless conditions warrant it. We Ginyans are unwarlike, though powerfully armed. If conquest must be violent that will be the working of fate; if it is gentle and friendly then so much the better. All we can do is wait for our master to return.”

“Wait,” she mused. “Is there anything harder to do, Kringa? I think not … But wait we must, as you say.” She paused, conscious of the old man’s scrutiny as she stared down at Zaan. Then: “Leave me now, Kringa,” she told him. “I keep vigil at his side. Leave me and take away your acolytes with you. I have no fear in being alone, but fear only watching eyes that guess at my uneasy mind.”

Kringa bowed low, leaning heavily on his staff. “The lady Feesen is alone,” he said softly.

At a sign the two guardian priests withdrew from their positions near the motionless body. Kringa himself was the last to leave the weird apartment. He saw Feesen kneel beside the great stone close to Zaan’s pallid features, watching them hungrily. And as he turned to go the strains of the music that ruled Ginya with as firm a hand as that of man himself swelled and rolled in hollow tones of beauty through the length and breadth of the temple. Music was the god and goddess of Ginya, as potent as the sway of its rulers, as vital to life as the very air, that same air now turning to poison and slowly but surely destroying the people.

“I see and yet am unseen,” thought Zaan as he hovered over the green fields and crystal cities of the world called Earth. “Ginya seems a long way off, yet I never left it in body; and now I see with invisible eyes the strangers of a strange new world.”

But the people he saw and studied were not so very strange. Rather were they closely related to Ginyans, though he did not think their minds were so highly developed in spite of ample evidence of scientific advancement superior to that of his own race. There was comfort and doubt side by side in the realisation. The more he saw the more comfort he drew from his observations, and the deeper grew his misgivings.

These people, he decided, were dissolute, degenerate, forever on the brink of self-destruction and tumult. Their cleverness and culture, evident enough at even a casual glance, was insufficient to withstand such weakness as jealousy and internal intrigue. He judged them to be as ancient a race as his own, and it caused him pain when he realised that not without their annihilation would the Ginyans establish a home for themselves on this highly suitable world.

“They are too unbalanced and blinded to visualise more than disaster to themselves,” he mused. “Their own minor quarrels bulk so large on their mental horizon and colour their vision so vividly as to dazzle them to any possible advantage of such an advent as the coming of the Ginyans.”

And even as he said it, hovering there above one of the vast crystal cities, unseen and unsuspected, he foresaw a scene of terrible carnage, the debris of two strong peoples locked in mortal combat, invaders and defenders; and the brief and horrible vision brought sadness to his heart because he knew that in the end the Ginyans must triumph and impose their superior rule on this world, and that much suffering might be saved to both sides were it possible to win without violence. But he was just as positive that these people were too stubborn and short-sighted to accept an alien control. Only by proving it in battle and defeat could the might of Ginya be established. Perhaps, thought Zaan, annihilation would not be necessary. Perhaps these people would see the wisdom of co-operation and so save themselves the complete destruction that might otherwise be needed to gain control. As yet he could not tell with any certainty, but his inherent powers of prescience war. . .