This is a fan translation of The Missing Link (Недостаяющее звено) 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 third book in a series called Trevelyan's Mission (Миссия Тревельяна), which is a spin-off from the author's Arrivals from the Dark (Пришедшие из мрака) six-book series.

I claim no rights to the contents herein.

Note: Footnotes are located at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 1

On Distant Worlds

The experiment was a failure, the nine hundred and forty-fourth one over eight thousand Revolutions of the planet around its star. But the technique was being improved with each new attempt, and now Fardant VII had offspring executors, capable of delicate surgeries on a cellular level. Their visual organs could make out the tiniest genes in chromosomes, while their light cutters, manipulators, and injectors were precision tools that allowed them to extract and replace any elements of the molecular double helix.

The genetic material the offspring were working with, following Fardant VII's program, was incredibly old but still retaining the spark of life. Fardant couldn't recall what body tissues or organs these cells had once belonged to, but this fact was meaningless; specialized cellular structures, extracted from the skin or muscles, the brain, the digestive tract, the lungs, or blood, were equally unsuitable for recreating an entire organism. For that they needed to be returned to their original state, when the fertilized egg was only beginning to divide, and the results of that process, two, four, or eight cells, still contained the complete genetic set, the hundreds of thousands of genes that determined the entire uniqueness, all the characteristics of a living being. On Earth they were called stem cell, but Fardant, using the ancient terminology of his race, thought of them as simply the foundation of life.

He'd learned to get them over three thousand Revolutions ago, spending the rest of the time experimenting with the zygote, the fertilized ovum. Even for him controlling its development turned out to be extremely difficult, as after three divisions he had to initiate the chromosomal process that was responsible for differentiating each cell, for turning it into a particular organ or tissue. It ultimately boiled down to awakening some genes, blocking others, and combatting harmful mutations, a process that included a gigantic number of parameters, exactly as many as the units of heredity stored in the chromosomes. He wouldn't have had to do it during an organism's natural development, but that spark of life that still remained in the ancient cells needed to be maintained, expanded, and directed. Otherwise the biological vats produced freaks that were incapable of moving, digesting food, or even breathing, to say nothing of higher-order neural activity.

In time, Fardant VII and his offspring managed to resolve most of these tasks. Now their creations were superb: a skeleton with the necessary muscles, the right number of limbs that possessed bilateral symmetry, a dense skin layer, external organs, a source of sensations, and internal organs, suitable for processing nutrients and atmospheric gases, adjusting hormones, and maintaining the biochemical balance. These beings could not only move, feed, and breathe, they produced sounds, reacted to light and darkness, heat and cold, pain and food. Their nervous system and the brain matched the reference carefully stored in Fardant's mind. They seemed to be identical to his ancient brethren, the ones who had inhabited the planet in the distant, almost immemorial time and who'd died in the struggle of the immortals. Truly beautiful creatures! Only lacking in intelligence and unable to communicate with Fardant.

Over the last six hundred and sixty Big Revolutions he'd attempted to implant fragments of his thought matrix into their brains, but he was unsuccessful, since none of the specimens possessed the ability to communicate telepathically. Which didn't surprise him, as only sentient beings could have this gift, only a thought-generating mind could direct a mental wave to another. And since it wasn't happening, there had to have been a mistake made somewhere. And he needed to find it! Fardant VII continued to think on this problem in his underground shelter, producing new and more capable offspring, perfecting the biological vats and light scalpels.

Time, which he measured in the Small Revolutions of the planet around its axis and the Large Revolutions around the central star, passed. Time passed, and nothing was changing: thousands of eyes that belonged to his peripheral offshoots were staring out into the abyss of the Outer World, watching the skies that were either full of sunlight or were utterly black, almost completely lacking in stars; thousands of guards and crushers stood on the borders of his lands, prepared to repel attacks by his rivals; thousands upon thousands of mirrors were catching the emissions of the star and turning the into energy that was required by the offshoots; billions of tiny creatures were crawling deep underground and on the surface, accumulating the nutrients and elements needed by Fardant. All of them were him, and he was all of them — an enormous being in a green oasis shaped like a six-pointed star. Time held little meaning for him, since he had an eternity, well, almost eternity, since everything came to an end at some point, even the universe itself. But the time until its death was so gigantic, so monstrous that a thousand or even a million Revolutions meant no more than the moment an elementary particle impacted a target and produced a flash of light. There had to be enough time, and if Fardant VII couldn't complete the task, ten it would be done by Fardant VIII, or IX, or X, or C.

Unless, of course, he was killed before that happened, destroyed by Mataima or the Rotten Offshoot. It was also possible for his death to come from across the sea, from Ter Abanta Krora or Dazz III, coming on airships with combat offspring-crushers or falling from the skies in a poisonous rain. It was unlikely but possible, although Fardant believed that he was protected at least as good as his rivals. A portion of his mind, distributed into a strategic module, told him that the odds of his death were small, as his area lay far from the oceans, in the middle of the continent, and was separated from the domains of Mataima and the Rotten Offshoot by mountains, deserts, and a defensive strip.

And yet the prospect of death was real. Stakes were high in the game he was playing with the four immortals — control over the entire planet and the subsequent return from the cold dark emptiness into another galactic region, rich in stars and planetary bodies. In this situation of fragile balance between the rivals, any sudden move, any surprise could put an end to their ancient argument. Any intelligence or intelligences capable of acting independently, while possessing a single goal—the one pursued by Fardant—would become priceless allies, a guarantee of victory and return. Perhaps they would produce new immortals, ones more tolerant of one another, whose collective consciousness would be able to find a way to deal with the Enemy.

For besides the rivals on the planet, besides Maitama, the Rotten Offshoot, Ter Abanta Krora, and Dazz III, there was also the Great Enemy. Powerful, fearsome, and relentless! Hiding among the stars that smoldered in the night sky as distant dim lights.

The Kinnison complex, one of the base FDAC stations, was located at a point equidistant from Earth and Luna and was oriented in such a way that the crystal lens of the ceiling showed both planets: Earth's blue sphere, veiled in clouds here and there, and its silvery companion. The lunar disk was showing green spots, inhabited craters covered in forests, while Earth was surrounded by a ring of orbital settlements, observatories, and space harbors that received and launched ships. The ring glowed brightly and looked like a new galaxy that had appeared from nowhere quickly and suddenly. Which was not an exaggeration; after all, what were a mere thousand years to the universe?

The Kinnison was a large station, which included all the necessary services: from a center of galactic communication and port terminals to an R&R module with pools, cybersurgeons, and a cryogenic unit. FDAC, the Foundation for the Development of Alien Cultures, possessed dozens of such bases, scattered across the Solar System and near distant worlds that were part of the Earth Federation. Its emissaries worked—either covertly or openly—on hundreds of planets, which were not as prosperous as Earth's star colonies and were populated by either humanoids or beings that looked nothing like humans but still possessed intelligence. These patronized worlds were far from perfect; the ignorance filling them gave rise to violence, timid sprouts of knowledge were trampled over in bloody wars, burned in the fires of catastrophes and epidemics, Dark Ages stretched one after another, lasting for millennia. The Foundation tried to help them, not always in time and successfully, but all the defeats, failures, and mistakes, just like successes, were also seeds of invaluable experience. The Kinnison's artificial intelligence and the AIs of other bases stored them in their vast memory banks.

The two planets, one blue and one silver, shone in the transparent domed ceiling, a dim even light flowed from the acradeit walls, filling the large room. It looked empty: a round oak table, several large chairs, holoprojector stands, and an ancient statue of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom, the patron of scribes; and nothing else. Four men were sitting at the table.

"Trevelyan has agreed," Yui Sato said, tilting his dark-haired head to one side. His fragile graceful figure was drowning in the large chair. "He's actually supposed to go on vacation, but he agreed. Shcherbakov managed to convince him."

"That Shcherbakov is a crafty one," Mohammed Ortega noted. He was broad-shouldered, thickset, and had a deep voice, possessing the powerful and prominent chest of one born on T'har. The barely noticeable veil of a filtering mask was shimmering at his lips, as there was too much oxygen in the Earth-norm atmosphere of the station for Ortega.

Pierre Caralis, the swarthy, long-nosed, thin man sitting next to him, nodded in agreement.

"Oh he is! Moreover, he's a diplomat!"

"A future consul," Andrey Sokolsky chuckled, closing his pale gray eyes for a moment. "When I retire in a few years, I'll leave my chair to him. Any objections?"

Ortega grunted something approving, the swarthy Caralis bowed his head again, but a shadow of displeasure appeared on Yui Sato's face.

"Let's not get distracted," he said. "We don't have consul selection on today's agenda, we have Trevelyan's mission and the disaster on Inferno. As you know, the nomad horde has crossed the mountains."

The four men at the table were FDAC consuls, a section of the Consular Board, which was traditionally made up of a dozen members. The scope of their responsibility covered exotic worlds, the majority of which were populated by non-humanoids or had certain geographic, social, or other peculiarities. The concept of "exotic" was interpreted very broadly in the Foundation, including such planets as Saikat, whose natives were in the middle of their stone age, or Osier, which stubbornly refused to leave its medieval stagnation. Inferno, a scorching planet in a binary star system, with volcanoes, deserts, warlike inhabitants, and a lack of water, was undoubtedly an extraordinary world, where life and intelligence were balancing on the edge. An incursion of the northern barbarians, who had somehow managed to cross the impassable mountain ridge, could end both the first sprouts of civilization and the efforts of the Foundation, which had been nurturing this meager scrub for the past six decades. The problem demanded decisive action and the presence of an experience emissary, a specialist in extreme situations, someone like Ivar Trevelyan.

"Where is he now?" Ortega asked. The mask in front of his mouth was bobbing slowly in time with his breathing.

"He has departed the Saikat Research Station on transport vessel GR-15/4044. The transport delivered equipment for Shcherbakov's team to Saikat and will continue on to Highmore, and then to Bitter Berry and Inferno." Yui Sato waved his hand, the light in the room faded, and the map of the galactic outskirts appeared over the table in the beams of the holoprojectors. "As you can see, it's the most optimal route. The cargo to Highmore and Bitter Berry will be dropped in quadplanes, so the delay will be no more than forty to fifty hours. Three weeks for the flight itself, and Trevelyan will be on Inferno."

"The final jumps will be in the Void," Sokolsky noted, examining the map. "That region is almost never visited… Or am I mistaken?"

"You're not," Ortega boomed. "Nine hundred years ago, our flotillas were fighting the Faata in the Void, but not there, a little higher, beyond T'har and Ro'on, in the direction of the galactic pole. You can still find the remains of their ships spinning there…" He stared at the map with the gaping abyss of the Void that separated two of the branches of the galaxy: the Orion Arm and the Perseus Arm. The Void looked like a crack in a boundless star field, a giant black sickle four thousand parsecs wide. The course of Trevelyan's ship was displayed in red lines. "Station!" Ortega raised his voice. "Data on the final leg of GR-15/4404's route… Is there anything in that neighborhood? Rogue planetoids, gas clouds, meteor swarms?"

"Only empty space, Consul Ortega," the Kinnison's AI replied in a melodic voice. "The region has not been visited in the past one hundred and eighty years, but prior to that Star Fleet has conducted two cartographic expeditions there. Would you like to know the details?"

"No." Shaking his head, Ortega threw a guilty look in Sato's direction. "Don't be offended, Yui, I wasn't trying to test you… I was just curious. That region is not far from my home planet T'har."

Yui Sato waved his hand, the map faded, and the walls glowed brighter.

"Inferno is located at the edge of the Void, and that route is the most optimal one," he continued calmly. "If the ship moves from the Teruxi sector or past T'har, we'll lose eighty to ninety days. Then again, it's not too late to change the route, as the transport has departed Saikat only yesterday and has made its first jump to Highmore. The ship can't be contacted directly, but we can send a message to our mission on Highmore."

"Let's not overcomplicate things," Caralis said. "The route looks safe to me, plus it's not really about the route. The issue is about what's happening on Inferno and what we're going to recommend to Trevelyan. Andrey," he turned to Sokolsky, "your team is there now. Where are they? And what are they saying?"

"Everyone is safe, at the base. I told them to leave Kyoll, the trade cities, and the other inhabited lands north of the deserts, and we haven't yet worked in the far south, so none of our people are there. We also don't know how the nomads have crossed the Celestial Ridge. Here's an image of that territory…" Sokolsky snapped his fingers, and miniature mountains rose over the table. The holographic landscape was alive: over a hundred and fifty tiny volcanoes were smoking and disgorging lava, stone and dust avalanches were crawling down, herds of gray clouds were moving from the western and eastern seas, occasionally erupting in rain… "The barbarians are here, in the foothills," Sokolsky said, and several southern gorges were highlighted in gray. "The crossing was a difficult one, so now they're resting and won't move until their mounts regain their strength. They have plenty of food… they've slaughtered a few hundred wounded…" A look of revulsion appeared on his face. "I received Angela Preston's report with the results of aerial reconnaissance. It seems that the nomads will move towards Kyoll no sooner than a month from now: they're cutting down trees, fixing their carts, burning campfires, dancing in the rain, and the cattle is eating their fill in the bamboo grass thickets. They're amazed by the abundance of moisture and greenery."

"So we still have time," Ortega noted and asked after a pause, "Preston is the mission coordinator?"

"She is."

"Is she experienced?"

"Depends in what area, Mohammed. She's a volcanologist and, I think, is a little lost. The members of her team are volcanologists, oceanographers, planetologists, ethnographers, terraforming and weather control specialists. They don't have any socioxenologists, since we'd assumed that Inferno's primary problem is the climate. The lack of water and fertile land determines their societal structure, connections and conflicts between tribes, religion, customs — basically, everything from A to Z. Until the nomads broke through, Preston and her team were working quite successfully. Their primary task, to protect Kyoll and the trade cities, was being worked on from geological and geographic standpoints: cartography, development of navigation, search for water sources, stabilization of volcanic activity… They were doing a great job with it."

"Now they need different experience and different actions," Yui Sato said.

"Of course." Sokolsky stared at the polished tabletop, drummed his dry fingers on it, and repeated, "Yes, of course. That was why I requested to send Trevelyan to Inferno."

The room was silent for a minute or two, then Caralis asked, "Who's leading the northerners? Gray Trumpeter?"

"Yes, according to aerial reconnaissance. They saw his banner, his tent, and his features, adjusted for age, of course. He's about twenty-two by local count, or fifty-four in Earth years… It's not old age for Inferno yet."

"That makes him more dangerous, Andrey." Caralis rose and started to pace from one wall to another, hopping with each step, since gravity aboard the Kinnison was less than Earth norm. "I've examined the materials about Inferno and learned that we've only been working in the Foot of the World region and the adjoining seas, having assumed that all the centers of civilization were concentrated there. We have no permanent emissaries in the north, among the nomads, in the far south, and on the other continents, except for Hira. I think that was a mistake!" He turned sharply and froze next to the statue of Thoth. There were certain similarities between the ibis-headed god and the thin long-nosed man. "If we'd had an observer among the nomadic tribes, we would've been able to have a greater effect on the situation… at the very least, we would've been able to determine their DPI [Footnote 1], and the northerners' campaign wouldn't have been a surprise to us. But after the landing on Inferno and the first planetographic survey, there was a dominant opinion that the Celestial Ridge was impassable, which meant that Kyoll and its neighbors were protected from barbarian incursions. Who thought that up? Whose dumb head? Station, reference!"

"No need," Sokolsky said, patting himself on the head. "This is that dumb head, my friends! Sixty years ago, the late Shenandi and I were in charge of the Martian University's expedition, the one that discovered the Asura-Rakshasa binary system and landed on Inferno. Shenandi was the coordinator, and I was a planetologist and his second-in-command… The Ridge opinion was my idea. But the Ridge really is impassable." He leaned back in his chair wearily and added, "At least using the means available to the long-armed nomadic tribes: horned mounts, rope, ladders, and their own legs."

Caralis shrugged.

"And yet they did it. Gray Trumpeter's army has crossed the mountains."

"Let's leave what has already happened alone," Yui Sato said. "Our task is to prepare recommendations for Trevelyan. Your suggestions, Pierre?"

"What can we do? Use scary phantoms? Place an infrasonic screen? Block the horde's path with force fields?"

"Too noticeable," Ortega boomed. "I think we need to act in a more subtle manner."

"Mass hypnosis? But we won't have time to launch a mental emitter into orbit."

"This is out of the question," Yui Sato said and turned to Ortega. "Mohammed, do you mind explaining what you mean by 'a more subtle manner'?"

"I'll explain, but first I'd like to listen to what Andrey has to say. He has the most insight into Inferno."

Sokolsky's gaze swept his colleagues. It was obvious that he was hesitant; either his idea was too radical, or it was difficult to accomplish. Finally he said, "I can offer two options: one passive and one active. In the first case, we leave everything as is; Gray Trumpeter's hordes crush Kyoll and the other lands at the Foot of the World, wipe out the population, burn the cities, chop down trees, but, eventually, adapt to the local culture, merge with the rest of the natives and, finally, become civilized. This process of dissolving barbarians among the conquered peoples is well known: the Goths in the Roman Empire, the Mongols in India, Persia, and China, the Hyksos and the Libyans in Egypt. The same thing is going to happen to our long-armed fellows. In time, they will lose their vile habits—"

"Excuse me." Caralis stepped towards the table and sat in his chair. "By their vile habits… do you mean cannibalism?"

"Not only. Their religion, water search rituals, killing of prisoners, wounded, sick, and elderly — everything up to and including sex and means of execution. But there's no doubt that in a century or two, the convergence will produce a more civilized society, one capable of accepting and making sensible use of our esteps [Footnote 2]."

"But that time would be lost to us," Caralis countered. "A century or two… maybe longer."

"We'd lose not only time, but also thousands upon thousands of lives, the ones living in the Ridge foothills, in the oases over the Great Desert, and in the coastal cities," Sokolsky added. "Those barons and magistrates aren't particularly nice people, which also applies to their subjects, but I wouldn't want for them to end up in the cookpots of the savage cannibals. So I'm for option number two, the active one. Without drastic methods like infrasound or mental emissions, of course." He once more started drumming his fingers on the table, looking at the tiny mountain ridge that was still hovering in mid-air. "We'll infiltrate the power structures, our universal method of correcting historical mistakes… A messiah, a prophet, a religious leader, or a gray eminence standing behind a ruler, or maybe even a new ruler instead of one who has died… Well, I don't have to tell you about all these scenarios."

"Actually, I was planning on suggesting something to that effect," Ortega said after a pause. Then, casting his gaze towards the ceiling lens, where the blue planet and its silver companion continued to glow, added thoughtfully, "Earth itself is offering us plenty of different recipes… What's more, the vast majority of them have been tested before the appearance of force fields, mental emitters, annihilators, or even primitive lasers."

"Man is the most powerful weapon," Yui Sato said.

"One who is experienced and decisive," Sokolsky pointed out.

"Experienced and decisive!.." Ortega echoed.

"Soon I will be leaving you, my colleagues," Caralis said. "You're aware that there will be a meeting with the Paraprims, and in our delegation—the one that will go on the Gondwana—I will be representing the Foundation. The Paraprims were discovered by Ivar Trevelyan… I've heard much about him, including that incredible story about Osier and the Paraprims… Experienced and decisive, you say? I hope he's one of those."

A smile appeared on Yui Sato's lips.

"Have no doubt, Pierre. When he ends up on Inferno, I will feel sorry for Gray Trumpeter."

Footnotes

1) DPI is the Driving Passionary Impulse, which gauges a particular culture's ability to expand its inhabited area, population growth, mass migration, creating an effective code of laws, a combat-capable army, etc. It is measured on a scale from zero to a hundred, with the hundred being the DPI of Genghis Khan-era Mongolian tribes.

2) Estep or ESTP stands for "Element of Social and Technical Progress." They are introduced into a primitive society by Foundation emissaries. For example, such an element could be the idea of the world's spherical nature or of animal husbandry, a method of manufacturing steel or crop breeding, a steam engine or a loom project.