The Worlds of the Sheaf

Gromm - Part 2

     "These all date from the Unification period," said Galia, indicating the display of crystal glasses and silver tableware in the glass cabinet. "Previously, Garon was divided between half a dozen eternally warring countries, but they were forced to unite to face the Amafrykan threat as the colonies on the mainland grew stronger and pushed further along the coast..."

     "Perhaps the history lesson can wait," said Saturn impatiently. "Our interest lies much further back in time than this. What are the oldest relics you possess?"

     "Those would be the archaic fragments," said the girl, bristling slightly at the wizard's brusque manner. "This way."

     The slender, dark haired woman led them into another room and to a single cabinet standing in the corner. Above it, on the wall, were several maps of the island continent showing what the experts thought it had been like during various parts of its history. The earliest showed the entire northern half of the huge island covered by ice sheets, with a handful of human communities clustered along the southern coast. That, a small label explained, had been the era of the Domination Wars, in which humans and shologs had fought each other for centuries for the right to be the dominant race. If humanity had lost that struggle, the sages said, humans, if they survived at all, would probably be a degenerate, nomadic race today, desperately trying to scratch out a living in the few areas of wilderness left between the mighty sholog cities. The reverse of the situation today.

     Thomas shuddered at the thought, but it was the second map that caught his attention. It showed the island continent several thousand years later and showed that humanity had spread across much of the southern half of the huge land mass, although there were still so many other powerful races occupying neighbouring lands that mankind was hemmed in. Safe, man's future secure unless some unimaginable catastrophe struck, but temporarily prevented from spreading further.

     Many of the cities in the human domain caught Thomas's attention. Yinnfarsia, Sholl, Agromay... His eyes roved the map, searching the area adjacent to the Great Northern Range, and there it was. Domandropolis. The city of the rak Khalkedon and, later, the Gem Lords. Small compared to its neighbours and distanced from them so that it was right up against the Borderlands, the tenuously populated regions on the fringe of human occupancy where sholog raids were common and only the hardiest could survive. He stepped closer to the map, so that his eyes were only inches from it, and searched for the landmarks of Tak's life, but the map wasn't detailed enough to show them and eventually Saturn cleared his throat impatiently, bringing his attention back to the business at hand.

     He turned his attention to the cabinet and saw that it contained only a few fragments of pottery and heavily rusted scraps of metal. "This is all we have from that remote age," said Galia apologetically. "They've been dated by the best diviners and definitely date from the eighth millennium before unification." She indicated a signed testimonial pinned to the wooden backboard. A browning sheet of paper on which a spidery sprawl of faded writing could just barely be seen.

     "No-one doubts the authenticity of these objects," said Saturn, barely glancing at the worthless fragments. "The era we're interested in predates even this, however. Do you know of any evidence of a civilisation even older than this?"

     "Not necessarily a human civilisation," added Thomas, in case any objects that had been unearthed had been mistaken as belonging to one of the planet's previous tenants. "Anything old, really old, that's clearly of artificial origin. Maybe something so weird looking, so bizarre that no-one has any idea what it might be."

     "Something like this perhaps," said Saturn, reaching into a pouch and producing an artifact from Fechlon. It was a cigarette lighter, although neither Saturn nor any of the others knew that. To them it was a pure mystery, its lighter fluid long since dried up. The electric charge of the ignition circuit long since drained away.