This is a fan translation of Dark Skies (Тёмныенебеса) by Mikhail Akhmanov, currently only available in Russian and, because of the author's passing in 2019, unlikely to ever be published in English. This is the fourth book in a six-book series called Arrivals from the Dark (Пришедшие из мрака), which also has a six-book spin-off series called Trevelyan's Mission (Миссия Тревельяна).
I claim no rights to the contents herein.
Chapter 12
Junior Adviser Patta
For as long as he remembered, Tihava had always been near, protecting and teaching him. Self-awareness had come to Patta when he was four, although that usually happened to Hallaha two-three years later. He was big, strong, and very curious. The early maturation of his body and mind must have been the reason why his mentor had chosen him. Actually, at the time, Tihava had not yet become a mentor, bearing the short name Tiha and overseeing young Sinn-ko of the sixth generation. There had been thousands of such Elders-with-Spot in the tribe that ruled Fytarla-Ata, but Tihava had clearly distinguished himself with the clarity of his thought and the precision of his speech. It had seemed apparent that he would not only live to reach the rank of Zong-ap-sidura but would become the progenitor's assistant, his voice and will, a mentor of the younger generations.
The warrior, technical, and worker clans had no mentors. They had overseers and instructors, who trained their Sinn-ko in certain techniques related to their purpose. Overseers, usually Elders-with-Spot, did not seek out the smartest or the strongest, preferring to rely on natural selection; the foolish and the weak did not survive due to a lack of food and the difficulty of the training. There was never enough food, and some Sinn-ko forcibly took it from others, grew and developed faster, and, close to the age of fifteen, a portion of them, having reached maturity, were transferred to the Zong-tii caste. This process used to be uncontrolled, until, long ago, thirty-forty tribes had appeared, who started to select the toughest and the cleverest from among their Sinn-ko. Compared to the other clans, these communities had been small, since their Hallaha were rigidly selected, and the number of individuals who received names had been less than two-three thousand. But half of them would reach the age of Elders-with-Spot, forming a bloodline of pure genes with a talent rare among the Dromi: the ability to foresee the results of today's events and actions. And so the system of the ruling tribes had been created.
Mentors were its most important part. The Zong-tii, the third generation, were suitable for the roles of executors, overseers, controllers, and junior advisers, but the development of strategy, as well as the making of important decisions, were the prerogative of the elder Zong-ap-sidura caste. There were few of them, a hundred to a hundred and fifty in each ruling clan, but they were the true backbone of civilization, its elite, the support of the supreme hierarchs, the progenitors and their first-generation descendants. The mentors were also Zong-ap-sidura and had a most important task: to replenish the ranks of their caste. The cycle of education continued until the younglings, chosen by the mentors, entered the Age of the Spot, becoming mature individuals. Dromi lives were short, ten to twelve years at the stages of the Named Ones and fifteen to seventeen each for the two elder generations, so a mentor had enough time to only educate and train one group of Sinn-ko. But this did not apply to Tihava; Patta believed that his teacher's life would be long and that he would, one day, become a Patriarch himself.
With that thought, Patta fell into a stupor that was his race's equivalent of sleep. The Dromi rarely lay down; such a position was difficult, given their anatomy. The junior adviser was sitting, tucking his bent legs under him, relaxing his muscles, and leaning on a small recess in the wall; this alcove, the equivalent of a bed, and a narrow table-shelf with equipment, gear, and a food tray, were the entire furnishings of the narrow triangular room, a sector of the habitation tower. It looked too small for a large Dromi, but Patta had gotten used to the tightness long ago; after the Sinn-ko barracks, where he had spent many years, the privileges of an Elder-with-Spot, the right to his own dwelling and the ability to eat as much food as his massive body demanded seemed like a genuine blessing. The large Dromi population inevitably led to scarcity and crowding; any colony would soon enter a period, where there would not be enough living space, dwellings, food, and raw materials. There was only one way out of this situation: to find, take, and settle new worlds.
Civil war, as a method of resolving such conflicts, was out of the question. Being a specialist in the area the Dromi called "what was, what is, and what shall be," Patta knew that the clans had never fought amongst themselves, not in the past, and not in the present. Human xenologists were surprised at this, after all, the Dromi did not value life, casually destroying what the humans considered sacred, their progeny. The specters of overpopulation and starvation, hovering over them, would seem to lead to a fratricidal war, a brutal struggle for resources, and inevitable self-destruction. But this recipe from Earth's historical experience could not be applied to the Dromi: they had their own history, their own experiences, and their own logic, which allowed them to kill mindless younglings but rejected any hostility between the clans. Without a doubt, the warrior tribes would have exterminated their rivals, but who would then build their ships and machines, habitation towers, spaceports, spawning pools, and orbital citadels? Who would supply them with food, spacesuits, compressed air, weapons, and thousands of other objects? And, finally, who would tell them what to do after a victory, which worlds to conquer, whom to fight, whom to destroy?.. The human idea of military hegemony, involving turning everyone else into slaves, also did not work here, for it could only be used by universal, self-sufficient beings, who were capable of fighting and ruling, destroying and creating, as well as discovering something new. The Dromi were limited by the scope of their clan, and each clan required partners with their own special skills.
Patta was thinking about that, for Dromi minds never fully shut down during the periods of passive rest. Thoughts flowed one after another; Patta thought of his mentor Tihava and the time when he was a Sinn-ko student, of his own clan and the other ruling tribes, of their intention to push away the human Hossi-moa or destroy them completely, expanding the borders of their domain to the Void that separated the outer galactic branch, of the wars that would follow this war, for there were other Paired Creatures, there were the Secretive Ones and their Defenders, there were Beings from the Emptiness [Beings from the Emptiness is the Dromi name for the Silmarri, a race of space nomads (see Appendix).], and there were unknown races, whom the Clans would one day encounter; and that may become their end, for the galaxy was large and full of surprises. The mentor had spoken of that, and once he let it slip that those surprises were, for the most part, unpleasant, like a claw clipping that got under one's scales.
These reflections were routine for the junior adviser, and, trying to imagine the future, he clearly saw a chain of unending battles and something frightening, powerful, and terrible hidden among the stars, capable of swallowing up all the Dromi, their warrior tribes, their ships, their cities, and even their planets. This vision seemed vague, unclear, and only the Thought Giver knew of this picture's relation to reality. But Patta had little doubt that this phantom would one day become a horrifying fact. All star-faring races had legends of the Daskins, the Lords of Emptiness, who had ruled the galaxy long ago and maintained peace in their star island. Those who thought themselves higher and challenged the Lords had been punished in a way the Dromi understood to a greater extent than the other races: punishment meant destruction. Of course, the Daskins had vanished millions of years ago, but this was true only of the known part of the galaxy. They could have moved to its farthest edge, or to the crucible of the core, or to the globular clusters, they could return from there to check what the younger races had done with their legacy. Besides that, there was more to the Daskin myths: it was believed that they had left someone to monitor the young civilizations and punish aggressors who went too far. Who it was, some trusted race or an unknown force, remained a mystery; these beings or artificial creations were sometimes called the Lords of Emptiness, although, sometimes, the Daskins themselves were given this title. Either way, the thought of vengeance from some powerful overlords wandered the galaxy, and each race that entered the interstellar stage adapted to it.
Patta, a historian in human terms, knew that this idea was full of special meaning for the Dromi. They lacked theology or any other divine science, but they did have a concept of a Higher Being. It was not the Creator of the Universe and not even a local god, who had sculpted the Dromi out of clay or mud; such primitive ideas ran contrary to facts. Facts, paleontological digs, computer modeling, and the Dromi analog to human anthropology confirmed with complete certainty that the Dromi had evolved from Fytarla-Ata's amphibians. The evolution of these ancient creatures had been studied in all details back in the age preceding interstellar travel, and three millennia had passed since then. No Dromi, starting with the Named Ones, doubted this evidence of their species' ancestry, and yet almost all of them were religious. The myth of the creation of the universe, so popular among humans, seemed insignificant compared to the real mystery: how had self-consciousness awakened in the primitive and savage beings? How had they started to think and why? What had caused the appearance of the mind? Which factors had played a key role in this: the long natural process of evolution, a stream of radiation from an exploded star, which had spurred the mutagenic processes, or a deliberate influence from outside? For the Dromi, the answer to these questions was obvious: a Divine Being, the Thought Giver, had taken them out of their animal state, allowing them to become what they were now: a sentient, great, and powerful people. As for the above-mentioned animal stage, each Dromi could observe it in the Hallaha and imagine himself that way, only he had gotten lucky: he had not been trampled, his bones had not been broken, his head had not been caved in, and he had not been eaten. He remained alive, which meant that the Giver had not breathed the spark of reason into him for naught…
But who was this benefactor? The rational Dromi avoided mystical secrets, and so their religion, or what could pass for one, managed without holy books, temples and priests, a pantheon of smaller deities, who helped the Almighty, angels and demons, vestments, icons and chanting, or concepts of heaven, hell, and afterlife. Their faith was simple and included only three straightforward axioms: the Thought Giver existed and patronized the Dromi; anyone who needed help could appeal to Him; He did not require prayers or signs of reverence, except for a single offering – a drop of blood from a shoulder.
So who was He? A Daskin, a Lord of Emptiness, some other incomprehensible being, who had decided to create a sentient people out of animals, wild beasts? Perhaps, Patta thought, He had given the same blessing to the Paired Creatures and then departed to return later and see how His seeds had grown. And if, instead of useful grains, He found claws and fangs, would He wish to eradicate the guilty?..
This thought seemed obvious to Patta, and he had once shared it with his mentor. "It's possible," Tihava had said and then uttered his saying of the unpleasant surprises, which filled the galaxy. "So what do we do?" Patta had asked then, but his mentor did not answer; that conversation had taken place long ago, and the Clans had yet to fight the human Hossi-moa. But he had received the answer later, much later: the Dromi needed to lose the war.
There was a sharp signal, indicating the end of the rest period, and Patta rose, straightening his legs. Today, he would once again fly with the Splinters, hoping for a lucky break… Something told him that this would happen sooner rather than later. What? Despite all his knowledge and experience, he could not say. He remembered the Hossi-moa, who had spared him, and regretted not having his xilot-tlan with the recording with him. It was unlikely that he would meet the same being… The continent was big, the hiding places of the Paired Creatures were unknown, and he would be unable to tell them apart and had no link to his savior.
Making a gesture of regret, Patta attached his shoulder strap, put the memory crystal under it, and headed for the narrow section of his dwelling, to the exit hatch. Unwittingly, he was wrong: the link still existed, for the thin line that remained after a telepathic contact had not yet dissipated. And, obeying this unseen guide, he chose a vehicle, got inside, and asked the Zong-tii pilots about their route. The craft was heading far to the north of the continent, exactly where fate had sent it to.
