Chapter Six
Once, the number of Parviis in the galaxy was far beyond our capability to measure. Now the Eye of the Swarm is in a desperate situation, fleeing with what little he has left. This is not a time for us to gloat. It is a time to be wary. Like a cornered animal, he may be at his most dangerous.
—Tulyan report to the Council of Elders
After all the eons of Parvii glory, the successes that went back farther than anyone could remember, Woldn couldn’t understand how things had gone so terribly wrong. Certainly, it was not due to any errors of leadership he had committed. He was far too careful for that, always using the resources of his people—and the podships under their control—prudently.
At the moment, he and his drastically diminished swarm huddled in the darkness of an unknown place. The hole through which they had escaped had not been there previously, or it would have been noticed by his people, who had been constantly checking every square centimeter of the Parvii Fold, making certain it was absolutely safe. They had all been taught from an early age that this was their sacred nest in a dangerous galaxy, one they had to protect it at all costs. Never before had holes appeared in the fabric of the fold. It seemed an impossibility, because the immense protective pocket was at the farthest end of the known galaxy. They’d always thought that nothing lay beyond the gray-green membrane, that it marked the edge of existence.
And yet, he and his remaining followers had gone through. Less than two hundred thousand individuals.
Now Woldn reached telepathically into his morphic field and opened up some of his own thoughts for his followers to read. In the process he felt the Parviis flowing to him and probing him, reading the particular thoughts he had opened up to them. In turn, all of the Parviis made the totality of their own thoughts more easily accessible to the Eye of the Swarm, so that he could read them at will himself. He did so selectively, a few at a time.
Where are we? Woldn wondered. No one seemed to know.
He and his swarm remained close to the tiny hole through which they had come, as if gaining some reassurance from its proximity. At least it gave them their bearings. They were very close to their beloved Parvii Fold, and yet so far from it. The galactic membrane separating them from the fold had not proven to be very thick, but it may as well have been the entire width of the universe. Woldn had stationed alternating sentries at the hole, peering through one at a time to the other side, and they continued to report extensive military activity in the fold.
Will we ever return? Woldn thought, or are we doomed to remain here forever?
One of his followers transmitted weakly: I think we’re in the undergalaxy.
Then another, equally diminished Parvii thought reached him: I agree.
But throughout the rest of the swarm, no others ventured opinions. They shivered and huddled, and flew nearby, ever alert to dangers.
A shudder passed through Woldn as he remembered the Tulyan legend of an “undergalaxy.” Parviis had always dismissed such a concept as just one of the harebrained ideas that their rivals, the Tulyans, had. Since their fall from glory long ago, when Parviis had taken control of podships away from them, the Tulyans had descended into superstition and stories of how things used to be. They were an odd race. Oh, they had their uses. On occasion Woldn and other Parvii leaders had used them for their timeseeing abilities, for that peculiar way they had of looking through what Tulyans called the “lens of time.” Bordering on the supernatural, the ability seemed to work. But not consistently.
Woldn wondered now if their stories of the undergalaxy could possibly contain a grain of truth. Or more than that.
Is that where we are? The undergalaxy?
Gazing past an opening in the huddled swarm, some of the darkness seemed to melt away, enabling him to barely make out faint and unknown star systems that seemed oddly configured. In happier times, he had led his swarms to every corner of the known galaxy, and this was not anyplace he’d ever seen before. Had he overlooked a portion of the galaxy, or could this actually be an entirely different place?
He strongly suspected the latter.
Woldn was terrified, but concealed it from his followers, and steeled himself. Two hundred thousand survivors didn’t amount to much, but they would have to form the nucleus of Parvii recovery. He was determined to not only survive as a galactic race, but to rise once more in power so that Parviis regained their former glory.
According to Tulyan legend, a dark terror resided in this nether galaxy, but details were murky. Woldn did not reveal it to anyone, but he began to wonder if this legend of his enemy could possibly be true, and if Parviis had ever been to such a stygian realm. Perhaps the horrors of the undergalaxy were buried in the collective unconscious of the Parvii race and could only be brought out in a laboratory.
Telepathically, he probed the minds of the seven latents, and absorbed their thoughts. At the most protected center of the tiny swarm, with their brethren clustered around them to preserve their body heat, these latents—two potential war priests and five potential breeding specialists—represented the future or doom of all Parviis. Seeds of the past grew in their physical bodies, which were of varying ages. Woldn probed deeply into the minds of the seven, into their memories and racial past. Into the long tunnels of their minds he went, probing, searching for facts. The paths joined, and continued back in time. From the embryonic war priests he found circumstantial evidence that an undergalaxy really existed.
But there were barriers to more information, to meaningful details. He found no personal accounts of the other dimension, so the two young men did not have those particulars yet. Even so, Woldn was beginning to suspect that his people had been to this place at one time, but the memories were too horrible and had been collectively repressed by his race.
Leading the paltry swarm, Woldn skirted the edge of the undergalaxy and circled back to the tiny bolt hole, hoping that the awful danger on this side—what could it possibly be?—did not sense their presence. When things quieted down on the other side he intended to lead the way back through, to the Parvii Fold. Then he would take precautions to seal the area off so that no intruders could ever get back in.
But his medical personnel and his own telepathic probes were revealing disturbing information about the condition of the swarm of survivors around him. Only a small percentage of them (including Woldn) had effective neurotoxin stingers in their bodies, which explained why most of them had little effect on the podships of the military attack force.
We are far, far from home, with no way to retake it.
It was a private, very lonely thought.
***