a brief history of ooranye
15: the age of spies

[continued from 14: The Zinc Era]

The Sight Projector

The long-foreseen finale of the Zinc Era was brought about by a great discovery. This is not surprising: as the expected time drew near, researchers naturally stepped up their efforts, knowing that it was quite likely that one of them would prove to be the trigger of the eomasp. And one of these teams turned out to be right. This one made the breakthrough at the precise time decreed for the end of the Zinc and the start of the Gallium Era, Era 31 (which would last 5,260 Uranian days plus 22 hours – roughly 18 Earth years).

The momentous achievement which sparked off this era consisted of a technique for projecting one’s vision, so that an explorer could sit in a chair in a safe place in Syoom and rove with nen’s sight thousands of miles into Fyaym without having to go there.

Peculiarly, the actual content of the achievement was not at first known.  That is to say, the eomasp occurred – and the new era was seen to begin – even though for a while the inventors refrained from publicising what they had done. This could happen because everyone knew that the Zinc Era would end on the day it did.  Expectations therefore created the excitement and this alone was enough to cause the eomasp – because everyone knew that something big had happened, secret though it was.

Meanwhile a select company of “mind-nauts” were chosen to undergo the initial test-voyages with the sight-projector. Some of those who projected their vision into Fyaym never came back; their bodies languished in Syoom, their minds lost who knows where. On a few occasions a worse thing happened: a Fyayman power effected a mind-swap, keeping the Syoomean rover imprisoned and sending another mind to occupy nen’s body in Syoom.

Finally it was discovered that mental projections were being deflected in a systematic pattern to forbid views of a certain area. A ring was then drawn on a map to determine the bounds of that area, a huge realm deep in Fyaym, thousands of miles from sfy-50, the border with Syoom. Something in that distant “pocket” did not want to be seen. The Sunnoad and his advisors theorised about the possible reason: that an attack of some kind was being prepared against Syoom.

The time had come to cease reliance on sight-projection and to organize a physical expedition to penetrate the area of mystery.

The Other Syoom

Sunnoad Restiprak Zentonan 33337 gathered a fleet of airships and set forth. Journeying deep into Fyaym, the fleet approached the forbidden area and found that the Sunnoad’s previous assumptions had been wrong: the inhabitants were not trying to hide from him.  In fact they were overjoyed to learn of his coming. The area was under siege, and it was not the inhabitants but the besiegers who had been deflecting the sight-probes.

The besiegers were a pirate culture of near-humans, to whom the Sunnoad now gave battle.  He gained enough of a victory to open a way into what became known as the “Other Syoom”.

This land consisted of two allied human empires, named after two cities, Yalar and Nii. For some time, both these beleaguered states (it turned out) had been transmitting telepathic appeals for help, appeals which had become blurred and muted by distance into vaguer excitation, responsible, perhaps, for a rise in inventiveness, including the discovery of sight-projection itself. And the Other Syoom had another surprise in store.

Ipemenir

Because Yalar and Nii had been isolated for so long, their siege mentality had forced them to intensify certain areas of research. This had an effect on their racial unconscious or rather, semi-conscious.  Half-knowingly, they had accumulated a “bank” of mind-energy like the Bank of Light in the Phosphorus Era. Only, this “bank” was not under any control at all. It had no release-button reachable by any human finger.  Its contents, heaving about like an invisible monster, chose its own moment, this moment, to become purposive, to focus upon a human target and to expend all its force in energizing that particular individual.

So it happened, that as soon as the Sunnoad’s fleet had cleared a way through to the Other Syoom, a flash of raw power surged out and across the distance between it and the main Syoom, to the city of Jador where lived a certain Ipemenir Honnd.

No one knows how the “bank” knew – if it did know and was not just picking blindly – which person to energize. The effect on Ipemenir, who already possessed a certain renown as a fighter, was awesome. The change in him caused an eomasp straightaway. The 63 days and 4 hours that followed were the Germanium Era, also known as the Era of Ipemenir.

The Sunnoad had not been able to prevail further against the enemy, nor had he succeeded in keeping open the way to the Other Syoom. The enemy once more surrounded that land and resumed the siege. But now Ipemenir took a hand in the struggle. His feats as a warrior have never been matched before or since. Showing superhuman strength and cunning, during the era which is frequently nicknamed after him, his legendary exploits saved the Other Syoom from disaster. And then came the time of the “Burnout”.

During the next four very short eras, 33 (Arsenic, 18 hours and 47 minutes), 34 (Selenium, 16 hours), 35 (Bromine, 2 days, 26 hours and 35 minutes) and 36 (Krypton, just 3 and a half minutes), Ipemenir succeeded in creating a salient of Syoom reaching out through Fyaym towards the Other Syoom, though not the whole distance. His final achievement was to capture a great fortress which became known, in Era 37 and after, simply as the Rubidium Fort. Then he crumbled into ashes.

The Rubidium Era

Era 37 lasted 5,955,630 U-days; 242.6 U-years; the equivalent of 20,382 Earth years. It has acquired the sobriquet, the Age of Spies. A great alliance was forged between the main body of Syoom – the 400,000,000 square miles around the Sunward Pole of Ooranye – and the Other or Lesser Syoom, namely the empires of Yalar and Nii. It was an era of great conflict, of active hostility from Fyaym, where powers had arisen which subjected civilization to severe, concerted pressure. Altogether it was a fighting era. During all this time the salient, at the end of which stood the Rubidium Fort, was successfully defended and preserved against fierce enemies who enfiladed its length. Mind-nauts housed in the Fort would project their sight from the greater to the lesser Syoom in order to transmit vital intelligence to Yalar and Nii. And sometimes these same mind-nauts chose to become physical agents and would go in person to bring help across the stretch of Fyaym to the Other Syoom.

Eventually, the enemy forces in Fyaym evolved a defence against Syoomean sight-projection. This defence took the form of vegetable mind-traps, flowers which could dazzle and hypnotize; these caused mind-nauts to “stick” where they had snooped and become unable to return to their bodies. Such evil flowers were soon planted in so many places, luring so many visual explorers to destruction, that the official corps of mind-nauts was disbanded. So the efforts to help the Other Syoom failed for lack of intelligence, and finally the Rubidium Fort itself fell to the enemy.

The woe of this latest event triggered the next eomasp and the next era.

Finale

After these catastrophes one might have expected the onset of a new dark age, like the Nitrogen Era. However, Sunnoads and their advisors had long perfected plans for what to do when the Rubidium Fort finally fell. Under the redoubtable Sunnoad Jad Darkal 35480 these plans went into operation. They depended upon utter secrecy and loyalty on the part of the entire Syoomean population. Remarkably, the plan succeeded.

For forty-two days (Era 38, the Strontium Era) enemy Fyayman forces, fresh from their victory over the Rubidium Fort, advanced into Syoom. The Sunnoad waited, while the airships of the foe sailed steadily into the trap he had laid.

Details of this epic must be left for fuller treatment elsewhere [see the tale, “The Open Secret”]; here suffice it to say that the trap was successfully sprung. Era 39, the Yttrium Era – 163 U-days, 28 hours, 2 minutes – was taken up by the colossal battle in which the Fyayman coalition forces, which included some Quonians, tried vainly to escape encirclement by the Syoomeans. Hundreds of airships were destroyed or captured; hundreds of thousands of Fyaymans surrendered. News of the victory caused another eomasp, and the Zirconium Era began under good auspices, appropriate for a great new age.

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