Snakes in the
Cradle.
M y
name is Winteroud Sole and I am twelve standard Caldris years old.
The name “Winteroud” was my father’s idea, an homage to my mother
who was not born on Caldris, but on the far away world of Erial,
which is always cold.
He and my Mother met in
college at the University world, Lux, where the NeoWrightians
settled. I have never been to Erial, or Lux, but I have studied
them both extensively on the hypercasts, and in the family computer
libraries.
Today the Royal Security
detectives came and questioned me at length. I could feel their
eagerness to know all about me, for I am an empath and that is a
very special gift. Mother was furious. Father was somewhat proud
actually.
I think Officer Hammerstein
is a good egg.
I could feel Officer
Hammerstein was deeply troubled over many things. A desperation has
formed in his mind and he believes I may be able to help him sort
out his most current sleuthing.
He is probably right,
although I fear he doesn’t understand that it may kill him if we
untangle this particular mystery. Him and many others. In his mind
I perceived a layering, a mentality of his military background that
sees everything as a war.
Neil Thacker
I have always been an
empath. Caldris is known for producing an abnormal number of us.
Some say it is the massive amounts of heavy metals in the planet.
Others say it is how the metals interact with the complex fields
which stream into the higher dimensions. I don’t know. I have
always been this way and although my mind swarms with the
impressions and feelings of others, I have not yet learned exactly
what it means to be a human without empathic powers.
My Educator at the school
says, “You will learn with time how they live their lives in
solitary realities. There is a sadness about them, alone in their
thoughts. But not now. Not yet. Now when you feel their thoughts
and emotions across a room it seems you are one with them. It is
not so, Winteroud. You share their reality, and they are immune to
yours.”
Officer Hammerstein is very
sad. That much I could tell right away. He is a man with a mission,
as they say. His mission has hit a “platinum wall, me boy, a
platinum wall with heavy-duty military defense shielding wrapped
around an enigma.” More accurately, I realized the machinations of
very bad and powerful men who wish to keep the Officer on one side
of the truth.
I think my mother knows
best, and rages against the dangers of my involvement in the
Hammerstein case. Father is carried away with the pride of his son
being treated by the Royal Security Detectives as someone important
and worthwhile. Later, I know, he will pass through the sudden
pride and begin to mull over dangers to the family and the
estate.
We are an old family, long
in the business of mining the volcanoes. Danger and opportunity our
twin fellows for generations. He will see the danger soon
enough.
It’s Moonsweek and all four
moons are purple in the evening skies. The tides are frothing at
the ancient steps of the estate. Each evening now I have sat on the
sea steps and felt the minds of the balloon crabs eager for
Silver-darters swarming in the shallows. Hunger and gluttony,
simple creatures.
The silver darters have no
minds at all. They have the most primitive of neural nets, their
existence all stimulus and response. The universe to them is not
even a place. Stimulus. Response. That is all. In their swarming,
however, wonderful patterns emerge which can be thought of as a
hive mind. Although such is a poor analogy; when one thinks of the
great and terrible hive mind of the Imperials at far away Deneb IV,
with all its billions of humans and millions of Transhumans, I
embarrass myself with the analogy.
My android, Edward Gibbons, sits mechanical
behind me, ever watchful. Father came around to fear as I knew he
would and cautioned the android, “Watch for assassins,” he said
simply, grim and fingering his disruptor. It is an antique,
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