a brief history of ooranye
30: the cyborgs

[continued from 29: The Quest for Solor]

Many of those who had not agreed with the idea of the expedition, and some of those who had repented of it, were determined to punish those responsible. Agitation led to a discovery which aroused indignation and fear still further: the “loss of Solor” had been perpetrated by beings who were not fully human.

A variant on the theme with which the Gold Era had begun – that those who thought themselves without souls, thirsted after them – returned to haunt the era’s end. This time, however, the culprits were not mere Ghepions masquerading in man-shape. They were real hybrids. Man/machine dualities, created (presumably by Ghepions using human subjects) by some process unknown to the public at large, and plotting for the supremacy to which they thought themselves entitled.

And this time it was a case of plotters being properly ready. Instead of allowing themselves to be prosecuted, the Cyborgs revealed their true strength.

Accumulated unseen during the Gold Era, their power now virtually took over Syoom. They seized strong points in what was left of the Sunnoad’s Navy and in all of the major cities except Vyanth and Pjourth. The rule of the Cyborgs began. It was a rule of despair, for all they really wanted was Solor, which they regarded as the key to the possession of souls; and Solor was gone.

The Mercury or Quicksilver Era, the 80^th era, lasted just 7,342 Uranian days; equivalent to 25 Earth years. No doubt the Cyborgs’ rule was unstable and would in any case have ended before many Uranian years had passed, but the fact that it was so short as to last not even a third of a Uranian year, was due to the emergence of the first great mind-reader among the Nenns.

Hevad Notoxt was a formidable woman of great natural authority, razor-sharp wits and cunning, in addition to the further talent which she hid at first. She succeeded in overthrowing the Cyborgs by splitting them into two camps, winning some of them over by showing them that they must already have souls, and using them as allies to defeat the other camp, that of the irreconcilable pessimists.

She could do all this because she was a telepath, and in a more general sense a psi, able not only to read minds but to operate on moods, encouraging co-operation. A highly dangerous and ambitious woman, she left a record in her “Confessions” of the efforts she had to make to repress the dark side of her character, and she convincingly revealed that her reluctance to accept high office was not feigned. After much hesitation and refusal, she became the 69,546^th Sunnoad, and the second most famous female Sunnoad after Hyala Movoun 1.

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