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.

Chapter 7

Close World, Distant World

This flying vehicle didn't look like the image relayed by Dazz III. The outsiders from the Emptiness, the ones arriving recently, the ones Ter Abanta Krora had tried to vaporize, were many, and their starship looked like a smoky gray cloud of that sort puffed up by a volcano. According to Dazz's message, their ship looked very strange, almost alive, but he'd failed to establish a mental contact with its inhabitants, who were, of course, also alive. That meant they were different in many ways from those like Fardant and the galactic races they'd fought in ancient times.

The vehicle flying from the west, from the ocean coast and the Offshoot's domain, looked like two crisscrossed cylinders with a central spherical core. Its outlines were fairly defined, not blurry, and scanning confirmed that what Fardant was looking at was an artificial object composed of an unknown material. Its design was also unfamiliar. There was nothing like it in Fardant's memories.

The ship was moving quickly, which limited the scanning time, but Fardant was still able to note lots of damage: punctured hull, destroyed engines, streaks of molten metal on the hull, burned ends of the cylinders. Without a doubt, the vehicle had passed over Krora's continent and was attacked by his crushers. The fact that it had survived surprised Fardant; this awkwardly-shaped object was not at all aerodynamic and yet possessed incredible maneuverability and survivability. But Krora's offspring had damaged the outsider, and, while it was still holding itself in the air and moving fast, a crash was unavoidable. It was falling, quickly getting closer to the planetary surface near the northern mountains, eventually passing beyond visual scanning. For several moments, Fardant VII, having engaged the visual organs of the border guards, had been expecting to see the flash of an explosion, but no bolts of lightning or flaming bursts lit up the twilight sky over the mountain ridge. Either the vehicle didn't use the energy of volatile materials for propulsion, or it had come down gently, avoiding total destruction.

The last thought inspired Fardant. No longer relying on scanners, he extended a mental probe to the west, opened it in a wide fan, and touched the mind of the outsider. Actually, there were several minds at the landing site. Two of them belonged to living beings, while the third was an artificial thinking device similar to Fardant's offspring but far more complex, one that recognized its own existence and possessed individuality.

Fardant would be unable to design an intelligence of such a level, not that it was his goal. In the end, all his offshoots and auxiliary modules, even those that possessed partial autonomy, were a part of him. Still, he understood that beings from the Outside World might have made use of other methods of expanding their minds and memories, ones involving the construction of machines independent of their mental field. Fardant's ancestors had also taken that path, and the result of their efforts was obvious: four immortals on a lifeless planet. Five, if he included the Rotten Offshoot… But that one hadn't been created anew, merely split off by Fardant from his own personality.

These considerations flashed by in an instant, as they seemed obvious. He focused on the minds that belonged to living beings. Fardant couldn't picture their appearance or physiological characteristics, but he could clearly feel their mental strength and complexity. He wasn't even able to penetrate one of them, while the other was protected by mental barriers and screens deflecting foreign thoughts. Touching the latter mind that wasn't as defended with a mental wave and receiving a barely perceptible response, Fardant rejoiced. He felt that the level of structure was exactly what he'd been trying to reach in his creations. For a moment, he was doubtful of the principal side of the experiment: eight thousand Big Revolutions, hundreds of attempts, with the result being outwardly beautiful but mindless beasts! However, if he took genetic samples from an outsider…

He hurriedly pulled the probe back to avoid revealing his presence. He was unaware of the outsider's mental sensitivity, and now wasn't the time to break through their barriers. They could turn out to be as strong as those of Mataima, Dazz, or Krora. Deciding that caution was advisable, Fardant VII shut off his link to his offspring, except for the channels to the border guards, and fell deep into thought.

The possibility of a star-faring species reaching his planet hadn't been large, but was also nonzero. He knew that his world, along with its star, was drifting in the chasm between two galactic arms, gradually approaching its edge, an area with a higher density of stars that might possess habitable systems. Perhaps, Fardant mused, they were controlled by the Great Enemy, but it was highly doubtful that their observers were watching every ship and every interstellar route, of which there were millions of the galaxy. So, as his planet, lost in the darkness, drifted to the edge of the Void, the possibility of it being visited as a result of a random encounter or a deliberate expedition grew.

He could calculate that probability and evaluate the reality of what had already taken place, a visit by two different ships. The ship Dazz had informed him of and this second vehicle that had landed by the northern mountains after several Small Revolutions… Such an event was unlikely to have been random. After examining the situation, Fardant came to the conclusion that the encounter had been planned. Perhaps it was an expedition of two star-faring races, or maybe the first ship, damaged by Krora's crushers, had called the second one for help… But, of course, the second one wasn't what had landed in the west, as that one was far too small for interstellar flight and didn't seem to be armed. It was a scout, Fardant decided, suddenly realizing that two alien starships were at the edge of his system. If they were like the ones his own race had once built, the warships comprising the Invasion Fleet, it was best not to bother them. Either they dealt with the immortals and their planets or summoned the Great Enemy… Both outcomes would be frightening.

Krora made a mistake! he thought. Krora, the spawn of the Dark Lords!

That meant he had to hurry. He needed to establish contact with the two living minds, convince them of his own peacefulness, and direct their ire at Ter Abanta Krora. And he needed to do it first! Fardant knew that Mataima, Dazz, and even the Rotten Offshoot might have the same concerns. He had to hurry! Any of them would, without hesitation, try to turn the outside force that had arrived onto their world against his rivals, and no one would wish to unite… That had already happened. No wonder the ancients had created four immortals instead of one.

Connecting to his strategic module, Fardant once again weighed the situation. His domain was the closest to the alien ship's landing site (or was it a crash after all?). One of his airships could reach the northern mountains in one-eighth of a Revolution, but how would the outsiders react to it after Krora had nearly destroyed them? Should he send his offspring in the airship? But Fardant doubted he'd be able to maintain control over them from so far away. Ordinary offspring would not work here, and neither would any other primitive devices, so he decided that he would form a Contacter, an intelligent and nearly autonomous offshoot. Initiating its synthesis (which required about as much time as the trip to the mountains), Fardant once again extended the mental probe, touched the minds of the living outsiders, and froze in shock. One of them was still hiding behind an impenetrable screen, but the other's barrier was a lot weaker than before, their thought processes had slowed, their life function rhythms had dropped; it was as if the being was dying, maybe as a result of the crash, or maybe for some other reason. But the agony never came, and Fardant soon decided that he was observing a drop in activity, a strange collapse related to the outsider's physiology. It was a convenient chance to penetrate their mind, maybe not the deep parts of the brain, but at least the part that held the clearest memories, ones that left an impression. Fardant brought them to life with a mental effort and shuddered. Giant mountain peaks were towering over him, disappearing in gray clouds, two suns, one white and one red, were blazing in the sky, while their beams, like bolts of lightning, struck the sand of a vast plain. A monstrous image! But the scariest part was that he seemed to be falling, or maybe actually falling towards the hot sandy hills with a stream of air moving against him.

Then scenes unfamiliar to him that lay at the edge of consciousness followed. The being whose brain he was probing found itself on a primitive world, which was surprising, as this species clearly possessed interstellar flight capability and was able to create thinking offspring! But Fardant was looking at images of deserted arid lands, wretched structures, pitiful vegetation, and various creatures that seemed to serve as food for local sapients. They lived on the surface of a hot planet that had no roads, modes of transportation, airfields, machines, or large structures of the sort that had once existed on Fardant's world. The beings themselves, vile in appearance and aggressive, seemed more like animals, different only in scanty clothing, incomprehensible speech, and pitiful tools. The mental link with the collapsed outsider was relaying most of his sensations, and Fardant, after making use of his analytical modules, was able to quickly decipher the language. It was as primitive as the planet's inhabitants and carried very little information, as the meaning was drowned out by the roaring, the howling, and the screeching. It seemed like the outsider was looking for something or trying to come to an agreement of some kind, making strange gestures along with loud screams. One of the final recollections was a catastrophe caused by an energy beam coming down from the sky, which was the only indication of high culture Fardant was able to understand. Maybe, he thought, the hot arid world wasn't the outsider's homeworld after all. Maybe it was a colony that had been settled in antiquity and that had degraded into savagery. Such things had happened in his own people's history.

There wasn't enough data to draw that conclusion, so he decided to do another probe session during another collapse period. The memories of the outsider could reveal the path to his own homeworld and other planets where the stranger had been, and then maybe his intentions and goal would become clear. Fardant, who never forgot anything, remembered the existence of starships that were hiding somewhere in the darkness as well as the threat of attack; his strategic module insisted that the more information he'd be able to obtain, the more likely a peaceful contact with the outsiders was. Besides, the creatures in the outsider's visions might have seemed savage, but they did look somewhat like the ancestors that had created Fardant himself and three of the other immortals. A vertically-oriented body, paired limbs, the number of limbs, a skin layer, and a massive vertical protrusion that contained sensory organs — all that, excluding the details, was the same as that of his ancestors and the beings synthesized by Fardant. He no longer had any doubts that, with the outsider's chromosomes, if he agreed to provide them, the act of creation would succeed. True, the language he'd just learned was a primitive and not particularly convenient method of communication, but it was still better than nothing. Besides, both of the living beings that had come down from the mountains possessed the ability to communicate mentally… In any case, he'd be able to find common ground with them!

Breaking the mental link, Fardant switched his attention completely to the offspring working on the Contacter. The synthesis was done, and his new organosilicate offshoot, clad in strong armor and properly programmed, was awaiting orders. Implanting all the information he'd obtained from the outsider into its mind, Fardant sent the offspring to the airships. Soon one of them flew out from the underground spaces through an open hatch and headed north. Fardant's thousands of eyes were watching its flight in the darkness of the night, under the skies with a scattering of sparce stars that smoldered at the edge of the spatial chasm.

Consul Yui Sato was giving a lecture at the Academy's Small South Hall. He was doing that in the flesh, meaning in person, as he was extremely conservative in many respects, including education. No one could convince him that a hologram was, in essence, no worse than a living professor, and that it was a lot more convenient to teach classes from his office aboard the Kinnison station than to bother with flights to Earth. But, as far as the consul was concerned, a lecture wasn't merely a transfer of information from a professor's lips to a cadet's ears, but a sacred act that strengthened the connection between generations and information relationships. He liked engaging with both the youngest cadets and those who were already interns; knowing them for years and selecting the best, he filled his research teams. An important reason not to part with the Academy and full academic load… As a rule, FDAC consuls lacked the time for such tasks.

The Xenological Academy wasn't among the oldest educational institutions like the universities of Paris, Beijing, or Moscow; it had been established in the 25th century and, three hundred years later, handed over to the Foundation for the Development of Alien Cultures to for the purpose of personnel improvement. The Academy was located in Andalusia, in a sunny and pleasant climate, near the blue waters of Gibraltar, where one could make out the African coast on a clear day. The auditorium building, shaped like an octagonal tower, wasn't tall, made up of only six stories that contained classrooms, the Large Hall, and four Small ones that were oriented in cardinal directions. The windows of the South Hall were facing the sea and an ancient mountain that had long ago been called a Pillar of Hercules.

Now Yui Sato was standing at the lectern by a wide window that was covered in the haze of a force curtain. The spacious hall, shaped like an amphitheater and immersed in semi-darkness, was nearly empty; there were maybe three dozen young men and women in green uniforms with the silver patches of interns. The Academy wasn't a military institution, but they did have their traditions. The uniform, the indicator of the year of study, the graduation ring, and several other rarities had remained unchanged in three centuries.

"Osier," Yui Sato said. "The subject of today's lecture is Osier. While we continue our work on this world, it's too soon to add it to the list of successes."

This course was the final one before internship. Its official name, Specifics of Contacts with Civilizations Under Progression in Atypical Conditions, only really appeared in the syllabus, in all the other situations it was referred to as the Failure Course or, at best, the history of failures and mistakes. It was supposed to be studied dispassionately and thoroughly, as the price of a failed mission was incredibly high and at times resulted in cultural decline and fall (or destruction) of civilization. When urging the future specialists to be cautious, the consul typically spoke of Ruins and Icy Hell, Bitter Berry and Ash, Collapsed Hope and Damned Hole. The names of the worlds spoke for themselves, and all of them had been given by humans, members of the Foundation, to remind them of those irredeemable failures. The subject was difficult and wasn't easy for Yui Sato to talk about.

But today he was talking about Osier, a world that was alive and relatively prosperous. Fortunately, Osier hadn't been harmed by interactions with human emissaries, but it also hadn't benefited in any way, as all attempts to progress it had sunk like a rock.

A map of hemispheres unfolded in the window behind Yui Sato, showing a huge eastern landmass the size of Eurasia and Africa put together and two small western ones stretched out along the meridian. The lands of the west were uninhabited, while the east was populated by multiple races, peoples, and tribes subordinate to centralized imperial authority. The Empire that took up the strategically important region in the middle of the continent had, over the centuries, brough into submission all the kingdoms, principalities, merchant republics, and free cities, all the barbarians in the south and north, even the pirate clans and the bandits hiding in mountain gorges. Despite this, the indices of technological and social development of this culture weren't particularly high — no higher than Italy or France in the Middle Ages. Naturally, there were some differences: in some respects, Osier had surpassed those ancient nations of Earth, while in others it lagged behind, demonstrating surprising stubbornness and resistance to new ideas. For example, the people of the Empire did not ride on horses or try to form cavalry regiments, even though they had excellent carriages and coaches; the naval vessels of the coastal territories, powered by sails or oars, could transport any manner of goods but only traveled along the coast; metal was being smelted using ancient methods, oil retrieved from natural wells wasn't being separated into fractions, salt was being produced out of seawater, while gunpowder and paper were unknown. But the entire inhabited part of the continent, with the exception of the tropics and the northern forests, was covered in a network of roads that stretched from the Western Ocean to the Eastern, connecting cities and army camps, which were equipped with guard and communication posts, as well as horse transportation for moving cargo and wealthy individuals. The rest, including squads of soldiers, walked the roads on foot, as horses were expensive, and chariots were only meant for military leaders and the nobility. But, despite the technological disadvantage, the Empire had done what remained a dream to the Mongols, Chinese, Persians, Romans, and Arabs — it truly did rule the world. It had no enemies, competitors, or rivals, and that was why there was order within its bounds. Occasional rebellions were quickly put down, with the rebels sent to the mines and their leaders were hanged.

"As a result, we're observing stagnation," Yui Sato said, completing his analysis of the Imperial customs. "Stagnation or, at the very least, extremely slow development atypical of humanoids even in archaic ages. Our field research confirmed the thousand-year permanence of their farming, construction, and metal processing methods, the lack of a thirst for naval expeditions, the constancy of transportation arteries, the stability of population in various regions, and the skipped damping of social conflicts. It seemed that the situation was clear: in the absence of wars, rebellions, and religions strife, any useful estep would be received positively and quickly spread across the continent. But that never happened."

"Even with the last estep?" a fair-haired young man with the face of the Greek god Apollo asked. He was a Teruxi and, with the exception of his rare handsomeness, looked no different from a human. The girl sitting next to him was staring at the man in adoration.

The consul nodded, "Yes. Having confirmed the fruitlessness of our efforts, we decided that we were being counteracted by the Empire, an inert structure that rejects new ideas. Naturally, a forced implementation of esteps was out of the question, as was attempting to strengthen the peripheral nations as opposition to Imperial power. It would have undoubtedly led to a civil war with all its horrors, which was why that option was rejected." Turning to the map of Osier, Sato circled the western landmasses with a light beam. "We chose another path by spreading information on the western lands and the spherical nature of the planet in an Osieran university. It was assumed that sailors would, after receiving said information, cross the ocean and establish colonies on the new continents, followed by settlers from among the dissatisfied in the Empire. Impoverished aristocrats, fugitives from the law, landless farmers, pirates, the poor and the hungry… The way it happened on Earth after the discovery of the New World."

"Heitler's project," the young Teruxi said. "Formulated by Heitler, Sawyer, Kolesnikov, and Tasman."

"Correct. I see that you, Dainos, have familiarized yourself with today's subject ahead of time." Sato smiled. "And so, Heitler's team enacted their plan, after which we mothballed the Osieran base, leaving the planet for fifty years. The last estep was a large-scale one, and time was needed for its implementation. We assumed that the western lands, after being settled, would become a counterbalance to the Empire, that new nations would rise there, ones more dynamic and receptive to new ideas. That would've spurred progress on all of Osier."

But we were once again mistaken, the consul thought and fell silent. Behind him, the map of Osier gave way to slowly moving tables, charts, and formulae, the mathematical justification of Heitler's project. While the cadets were familiarizing themselves with these materials that required no commentary, Sato was thinking over the causes of the mistake.

The primary causes were, of course, arrogance and pride. The Foundation had assumed that the idea of helping out alien civilizations had come only to humans, that no other developed species had thought of it before: not the Lo'ona Aeo and the Kni'lina, and definitely not the Dromi, the Faata, and the Haptors. But the galaxy was far too large for there to be only one species prone to selfless humanism. As a result, what had happened on Osier came as a complete surprise. There, the Foundation had run not into the inertness of a medieval empire but a far more serious force, covert civilizers whose power was at least equal to that of the humans.

The Paraprims… That mysterious race believed that natural development should not be hurried or, at least, that it shouldn't be forced to move at the rate chosen by humans. The counteraction of the Paraprims on Osier had been stubborn, and even though it hadn't been a direct confrontation, all of FDAC's esteps, including Heitler's plan, were being covertly suppressed quickly and effectively. No, Osier could definitely not be called a success of the Foundation for the Development of Alien Cultures!

"After fifty years passed," Sato said when the screen behind him was empty, "we sent an emissary to Osier. His task was to verify the effectiveness of the last estep, but he found no positive shifts. He—"

A highlight appeared over the dark hair of the girl sitting next to the young Teruxi, and Yuri Sato broke off.

"Did you have a question, Selma?"

"If I may, Professor…" She rose politely. "Was that emissary Ivar Trevelyan?"

"It was, my girl."

The auditorium erupted, which was a rare occurrence in Sato's lectures.

"Trevelyan, socioxenologist…"

"The one who found Paraprims on Osier…"

"He was awarded with the Medal of Honor…"

"No, he got the Wreath of Courage for Osier and the Paraprims!"

"You're wrong, Gregor. He got the Headband of Glory! I'm sure of it!"

"He worked on Highmore and Heliri…"

"And on Pta…"

"He…"

Someone voice cut through the muttering of their classmates, "Tell us about Trevelyan, Professor! He attended the Academy, didn't he? You taught him, right?"

The consul lifted a hand to his face, covering a smile. Trevelyan was very popular among the cadets in general and girls in particular; nearly every cadet strived for such great deeds on other worlds, dreamt of adventures, and tried on the Headband of Glory and the Wreath of Courage in their sleep. Well, the Metal of Honor at the very least.

"I'm going to tell you about the last mission to Osier because that is the subject of today's lecture," Sato said when the auditorium quieted. "But it will also be a tale of Trevelyan, as he was the one sent on this mission and crossed the enormous continent from the Eastern Ocean to the Western in the guise of a rhapsod… It's a very interesting story, which, I hope, will teach you some valuable lessons."

Highlights once again blinked over Selma's head. Sato turned to her, "Do you have another question?"

"Yes, Professor. Where is Trevelyan now? We've heard that he took part in the Saikat Project, and that something bad happened there… Is he still on Saikat? I mean, aboard the station built by the Kni'lina?"

"No." Yuri Sato made a negative gesture. "Trevelyan has an urgent mission on Inferno. As far as I know, he's currently approaching the Asura-Rakshasa binary system."

That wasn't true, but the consul had no way of knowing that.