Ferryman

By Caldon Mull

Digital Twins are big business. It is 2450AD and the Sol Senate desperately needs something that is in critically short supply to sustain itself and its technologies: actual human beings. Digital Twins are supposed to be exact copies of human minds, but are they really? Xe! is a Ferryman collecting and dispatching digital packages in the Light-scape from the outpost at Sedna. This is its story.
Caught up in affairs way above its specification, Xe! must dredge deep into its digital banks to recall what it was like to be human. In order to unravel what appears to be a sinister alliance between the Sol Senate human elite and an Alien Species, Xe! must go where no Digital Twin has ever gone before. Xe! has a unique class of mind and is undaunted by challenges, because Xe! is a Ferryman!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Silver Bark Books
• Release date: May 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9789527555132

Caldon Mull

Caldon Mull is the pen name of a veteran storyteller with continent-spanning work experience consulting for the financial and military sectors. His work includes his primary series the 'Sol Senate Cycle' and his time-tripping fantastika series 'Agency Tales'. He is best known for supporting Games Master Content for the GENCON, UPCON, Oubliette and ICON game and comic conventions but is lesser known for his more edgy literary Fiction.His genre-skipping Fiction work has received 'honorable mention' over the years beginning with the 1986 Q2 Writers of the Future contest and from the SFSA Nova Award over later decades. His shorter works have been published in Omenana, RPGA Network and the SFSA Probe magazines. His longer works have been published under his eponymous Caldon Mull brand and by Sera Blue Publishers. He is currently resident in Finland with his wife and many cats.

Book preview

Ferryman

by

Caldon Mull

Copyright © 2020, 2023 by Caldon Mull

Published by Silver Bark Books

at Smashwords

Publisher information

Silver Bark Books

Linkorinne 5 A2

Espoo, 02630

Republic of Finland

Credit section

Copyright © 2020, 2023 Caldon Mull

Cover art copyright © 2023 by Silver Bark Books

All Rights Reserved 2nd Edition

ISBN 978-952-7555-13-2 EPUB

ISBN 978-952-7555-14-9 PDF

ISBN 978-952-7555-15-6 Print Softcover

2nd Edition License Notes

Ferryman... is a work of fiction, any resemblance of any character to any person, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Part One - Kalahari

Part Two - Sedna

Epilogue

About Caldon Mull

Other books by Caldon Mull

Connect with Caldon Mull

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my wife Marie, without who nothing would be possible and less would matter anymore.

I also wish to thank my Emeritus Editor Russell Goldman who has also walked a long path with me. He is a spark behind these words of mine that you read, as both a fiery forge and a cool balm.

Part One - Kalahari

"Everything is the light."

The caravan had been nearby for almost a week when his father had relented and allowed him to pack a small bag, so that he could go and see what they would offer him for his digital Reading from last year. They had finally talked about it; Ken had made a point of sitting at his father’s feet near the cooking fire, until he had relented to the silent insistence and invited open discussion about the matter at hand. They had both presented their respective cases and methodically agreed (or agreed to disagree) on each item, as was their way with each other; until his father had admitted that Ken had the stronger case and should proceed with his plans.

Ken couldn’t explain all of his reasons for wanting to go to the traders with his father, so he carefully kept his argument focused on points he knew he could defend reliably and close convincingly. If Ken was honest with himself, winning his fathers’ blessing for his endeavour was his ultimate desire; what came afterwards was less significant in his mind’s eye. The discussion with his father helped Ken to establish his social inventory.

If he had really wanted to, he could have simply gone to his grandfather for permission to go; and be done with it. But if he had done it that way, there would have been a void in the clan which relied on him for the meat and labour he provided. Ken thought it better to seek approval and have plans in place for his cousins and kin to agree to fill the gap while he was gone.

That promise of service having been secured, the rest of the petition was quickly ticked and checked down the list without too much resistance. Ken was eighteen and newly married. He was already an expectant father and was delighted with his prospects and his wife, so he was certainly not going to leave and never come back…Ken just wasn’t that sort of character, a fact to which his clan could attest.

It was Autumn, so the game was plump, the fruit were ripe and both were bountiful, no hardship requiring extra hands was anticipated over the next few weeks. It was the best time to go and so he should. Once this process had been discussed and negotiated, the agreement was presented to his grandfather, the Headmaster of the Clan, and it was ratified. Ken was on his way!

Words of advice and caution in dealing with the Wagon Lords were still ringing in his ears as Ken set out just after the sunrise, on an easy jog towards the crumbling station that used to be the heart of Keimoes. The old irrigation channels still gurgled with running water this late in the year, groups of springbok nuzzled at the browning leaves in the riot of cane shoots and grape vines that vied for purchase among the ancient cement structures as he sped past. They were tame enough to watch him speed by with twitching ears and wary gazes, canny enough to realize he was going somewhere else and not intent on hunting them.

After all, it had been hundreds of years since there had been sufficient numbers of humans in the region for them to merit the raising of an alarm within the herd. Ken grinned to himself as he trotted, they were sensitive to certain things, the animals. If he just moved past them, intent on going somewhere and on a trajectory that would pass them by, they would not react in alarm.

On the other hand, if several of his cousins moved together in a certain way, if they regarded those deer in a certain way, that would immediately make them wary and prone to flee. They knew somehow that they were being hunted and worked actively to avoid being prey. Ken chuckled to himself as he contemplated that irony.

The prey was always more elusive and cunning when something sought to make them their quarry. He could appreciate that level of cognition; in fact he had to account for it, in order to survive with a full belly. That thought submerged in his subconscious as he threaded through the vast channel complex, onwards towards the Keimoes encampment.

It was past noon when he arrived on the bluff overlooking the encampment of old ramshackle station buildings and new shiny-silver wagons. He leant against a ruined concrete water tower and regarded the activity below him. All manner of movement greeted his sight as he sipped water from his eggshell in the shade of an acacia tree that grew through a crumbled section of the concrete; people hustling and bustling around the shimmering carriages hunkered over their thick tracks.

In the large flat area around the station platform they ported water from the springs and channels feeding from the Orange river in large clear containers. Some returned from the tangled vineyards with clippings of the now-wild vines cradled in handfuls of soil, others clustered around a portable signal tower that Ken guessed was a GPS gateway.

He finished his water and hauled his tablet out from his kaross, he grinned as he saw the WiFi signal light up and set the downloads he wanted before approaching the laager. There was an update on the game finder app he really wanted and a couple of hundred books from the global library that could download while he still had charge.

Chandri stood above the rest of them, leaning against the old station doorway in the shade provided by a corrugated iron awning. Ken headed for her. She looked up as he approached but didn’t leave her spot in the cool darkness that ran the length of the porch. The building wasn’t quite derelict, just shabby. The Traders had maintained some older and newly-built structures to suit their industry and maintain their outpost. Their mandate was to service isolated communities, like Ken’s own clan, as they had done for long centuries.

Ken knew that Keimoes was a terminus point on caravan trail and thus wasn’t subject to the same intensity of maintenance that it could be, and Ken’s clan and associated clans throughout this area weren’t big consumers of the goods and services provided by the Trader network; aside from medical, technical, enlightenment and other knowledge-based products.

His father had told him that his father’s-father had once worked right here, in the long-ago time before the big people had faded away from the dying rural towns and his people had been forced to return to their old ways. That wasn’t really by choice either... after decades of petitions to be reinstated to their traditional lands, then then-President of the Republic had eventually conceded completely. The state claimed ‘Victory of Diplomacy’ had a sinister and unforeseen consequence that was almost typical of the narrow-issue 21st Century political process. He had loaded the protestors from the gardens of the Parliament building where they had camped for years, intent on being acknowledged and presenting their claims; and had dumped them into a resettlement village not far from where they were now.

A few weeks later, he had arrived with a treaty, got the signatures he had wanted and left: never to return. The growing desert fringes around Keimoes may have been the Gaza walls; or may have been the gulag tundra for all the end result was the same: they were trapped within and the world carried on outside.

The seed corn never arrived, the grant accounts were