Fulcrum Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  foreword

  quote

  Prologue - Exodus

  ONE - The Day Job

  TWO - "Commutication"

  THREE - Breach

  FOUR - Reassignment

  FIVE - The Underneath

  SIX - Tunnel Dog

  SEVEN - Purification

  EIGHT - Shadow

  NINE - Feast

  TEN - Prophecy

  ELEVEN - Crash

  TWELVE - Blood on the Fake Cobblestones

  THIRTEEN - Hidden, Now Revealed

  FOURTEEN - Last Rites

  FIFTEEN - Implements of War

  SIXTEEN - Breach Redux

  SEVENTEEN - Saladin

  EIGHTEEN - Conflagration

  EPILOGUE - Out of the Rabbit Hole

  BOOK 2 Chapter One Preview

  BOOK 2 Chapter Two Preview

  Acknowledgements

  FULCRUM

  The Adventures of Letho Ferron: Book 1

  By Doug Rickaway

  This book is dedicated to my mother, Tricia Rickaway. Thank you for all the times you took me to the library during the summer when I was growing up. I am able to think, reason, and communicate well because you did that for me.

  Foreword

  For years I’ve taught Creative Writing students that a good story should be like a big sandwich. That is, it should be made up of lots of good things, all of them adding to an ultimately pleasing taste and experience, with no one thing overpowering the others. I’ve told them a good story should always include these absolutely essential ingredients: interesting characters that the reader cares about, excellent sensory description throughout, a well-established setting, believable dialogue, sufficient suspense, conflicts, irony, foreshadowing, and some degree of resolution.

  The novel you are about to read nails every item in that recipe.

  The old theme of an average Joe being plucked from mediocrity and hurled headlong into the business of becoming a reluctant hero, battling injustice and evil with little more than a pure heart and good luck, has been trotted out countless times down the centuries. In the modern era in characters as wide ranging as Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings, Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, and a plethora of reformed gunslingers who stand up for settlers against malevolent ranchers in tons of westerns. Doug Rickaway takes up the quest yet again in Fulcrum, giving us a fascinating fellow named Letho Ferron and plopping him down into a world so different from our own that it is intriguing, and so similar in some ways that it is recognizable. Add to that a cast of mysterious, hulking creatures that crawl slowly out of the darkness of the setting as they emerge into the important station they’ll occupy in this novel.

  And others, the author promises, having christened this one Book One. And that makes me very happy indeed, for I look forward to Letho’s further adventures.

  Now, settle back and enjoy. I can offer you no stronger recommendation for Fulcrum than this: it is the big sandwich.

  - Ron Rozelle

  Author of Into that Good Night, The Windows of Heaven,

  A Place Apart, and Touching Winter

  “Aurum et argentum mentiri sed ferro non.”

  Gold and silver may lie but steel does not.

  PROLOGUE – Exodus

  The young Tarsi’s body shivered from the combination of icy rain and fear. Water soaked the yellow-green fur that covered his large frame; even in adolescence he was considerably large, roughly five feet tall. He dug his snout into his father’s side, and the elder Tarsi placed an enormous hand on his son’s shoulder. They continued their walk among the other Tarsi, forming a great serpent that stretched out across the rain-soaked plain.

  In time, they reached their destination: a clearing several klicks from the capital city. Hundreds of massive metal titans loomed over the fur-coated pilgrims. To the young Tarsi, they looked like the eggs of some mountain-sized leviathan. At once he recognized them, though their outward appearance had changed since he had last seen them.

  “The colony ships?”

  “Yes. They have been repurposed,” his father said.

  The young one did not like the almost undetectable quaver in his father’s voice. He knew his planet was dying. He could see it on the faces of the Tarsi that passed by as he and his father paused for a moment. He could see it in the erratic jerk of their limbs as they made their way toward safety, as if at any moment they might break into a terrified sprint.

  The elder Tarsi held his only child against his hip for some time, and then knelt before him so that they were eye to eye.

  “Why are we going into the colony ships, Father? Aren’t they for the others?”

  “My son, you have grown into a fine Tarsi,” the elder said, “but there is much you do not understand.”

  The father’s amber-colored eyes began to water. The rain had soaked his fur to the skin, causing his spiked mane to droop onto his brow. His mouth—a nest of razor-sharp teeth at the end of a broad but short snout—attempted a smile.

  The planet Tarsus was normally a veritable utopia encrusted with lush, verdant forests and vast blue seas. But today much of it was on fire. The young Tarsi could see the massive wall of smoke and embers; to his eyes it looked like the robed arm of some great demon, sweeping across a horizon dominated by the capital city. The child sniffed, drawing the scent of death and conflagration into his little snout.

  The father placed a finger on his son’s chin, drawing his eyes away from the chaos behind them, an attempt to shield his only offspring from sights that would harden his young heart.

  The son knew more than his father realized. He knew the dark ones had come back to Tarsus. They wanted to fire everyone, and take away all of their propitees.

  These were the words that reverberated in his head, ideas formed by hushed dinner-table conversations that his mother thought he hadn’t overheard.

  Mother, he thought.

  But Mother was gone. She had sought to give the bad ones medicine. They were sick but would not take their medicine. The young one could not understand.

  Nearby, Tarsi mothers consoled terrified offspring, wiping away tears and grabbing up smaller children whose legs were unable to keep the pace set by the adults. The young Tarsi found himself resenting these children who still had mothers to wipe away tears and wrap them up in arms that could repel any terror.

  They drew closer to one of the massive metal orbs that glimmered under the undulating sheen of rain. Water roared off the sides of the giant orbs in streamlets and waterfalls.

  Houses, the young Tarsi thought. But the windows are so small.

  They soon reached their destination under the shadow of one of the eggs. The father knelt and placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders, and spoke to him in a low voice:

  “The Corrupt One has come, and we fight to hold him at bay. You and many others will leave our home world, perhaps never to return. But let us speak no more of tragedy. Today is the day that I pass on to you a sacred duty.”

  “When will we come back? Aren’t you coming with me?”

  The son had so many questions. The father felt great pain in his heart, as he knew the time for him to answer such questions was coming to a close.

  “My place is here, with my brothers. We must fight the abomination. It must not leave Tarsus.”

  The young Tarsi felt grief stab his chest and wring his stomach into knots. It felt like the greatest sadness he would ever know, as all emotional pain does to a child.

  “I will not leave without you,” he said.

  “You must do as I say. Today many Tarsi will die in battle. I would bring dishonor on our family if I did not join them.”

  The young Tarsi nodded, staring into his father�
��s eyes.

  “All is not lost. You will see. I have received a vision from the creator, Je-Ha. He has given me a prophecy.”

  Nearby, another Tarsi, outfitted in the garb of war, motioned for the elder Tarsi to follow him. The young Tarsi recognized this new one as his uncle, his father’s only brother. The eyes that had often looked upon him with a deep fondness now looked through him with a coldness that he felt to his core.

  Just weeks before, they had shared laughter and the discussion of the trivial things. Now his uncle regarded him as an obstacle, a complication. The left side of his uncle’s face was drawn and ragged, the eye lost to the kiss of accursed claws.

  The elder Tarsi nodded in assent, and raised his index finger to ask for a little more time. The other Tarsi nodded.

  “I must go now. Never forget me or those who fight on this day. May your children someday return to build their homes on this ground that we shed our blood to protect!”

  He held his child in a long embrace, his nostrils snorting as he drank deep the musky scent of his offspring. He placed his hands on his son’s shoulders and pressed their foreheads together, nuzzling. He spoke in the oldest of Tarsi dialects, and planted a kiss on his son’s forehead. For a moment the thunderheads parted, allowing the slightest trace of sunlight to fall upon the surface of Tarsus, highlighting the two Tarsi.

  “I entrust the collected wisdom of our people to you. Heed it well, for when your time has drawn to an end, you will pass it on to another,” the elder Tarsi said.

  “I will do as you say,” the son replied.

  “Go now,” the elder said.

  Nudging his son toward one of the colony ships, the elder suppressed the urge to cry. Their eyes met one last time, just as feathers of soot began to fall among the droplets of rain. They both turned and began to stride toward their destinies, one’s gait in great swaths, the other’s in small, unsure steps.

  ONE – The Day Job

  The day began in the manner of an endless stretch of days before. The buzz of Letho’s wake-up alarm rattled the aural implants inside his ears. His eyes opened, and he christened the new day with a salvo of murmured expletives.

  A whir of tiny parts in motion, combined with the soft puff of air from the retracting lid of his sleep capsule, nudged him back to blissful half-sleep. Letho found himself lost in a waking dream where it was Saturday instead of Monday, and he had nowhere to be at any particular time.

  The alarm system bleated again, drawing him back to reality. It wasn’t Saturday, and he did have a place to be.

  Work: the hell you go through so that you can purchase what you need to survive on the days you aren’t working.

  Letho ran through the Monday checklist in his mind:

  Is there any way I can get away with not going in today?

  How many sick days do I have left?

  I really don’t feel well; stomach’s a little upset, and I have a slight headache.

  I should probably stay home.

  Letho decided that it wasn’t worth subjecting himself to the derisive sneers of his co-workers and lying to his boss, who had heard the same story one time too many this quarter. He disconnected the tubes from his mouth and nose, rubbed his swollen eyes with one hand, and with his other reached for a raised panel on the inside of the sleek capsule. With a soft click, a drawer slid open, and he reached in and pulled out a red jumpsuit. The suit was made from a semi-reflective material touted as “superbly stain- and wrinkle-resistant.” Blue runners trimmed in yellow traced down the arms, sides, and legs of the outfit. The front was adorned with a tiny patch, featuring an embroidered representation of Eursus and a space station that said “Centennial Fulcrum: BOLDLY GOING since 2174.” On the back were his name and a four-digit serial number: 0219.

  Better check the hot spots, he thought, sniffing the armpits and seat of his uniform. He attempted to smooth out the wrinkles in the legs, but to no avail. He shuffled himself into the bright red suit and checked himself in the mirror-steel surface of his sleep capsule.

  “Good enough,” he muttered, as he fastened the sleeves of his suit and laced up a pair of scuffed black boots.

  He stared at his reflection in the lid of his sleep capsule for a moment longer, longing to climb back in and sleep for an hour or two. Examining the coarse layer of jet-black stubble on his face, he decided that the need to shave had not quite reached critical mass. He hated how the air made his skin itch after a shave anyway.

  Letho stumbled to a nearby low bench made of hard translucent plastic, feeling the greasy crunch of old carpet beneath his feet. Some of the more upper-scale domiciles actually had real wood floors, and he had heard that some even featured living, synthetic grass.

  He looked around his apartment with distaste. The room was just tall enough that he could stand upright, but the ceiling was curved, and came down low enough at the sides that he had to crouch to get to many of the cabinets and stowage compartments that lined the walls, no easy task considering the swell of his belly. The wall panels were made of some burnished metal that Letho didn’t know the name of. It bore a dense web of swirl marks from the wipe-downs of previous tenants.

  Furniture was sparse; even calling it utilitarian would be much too generous. His buttocks complained as they made contact with the cold material of the bench, having just been swaddled by the soft womb-like inner lining of his sleep capsule, which somehow managed to feel moist and warm without dampening his skin.

  He pressed his index finger and thumb together, and an almost inaudible click issued from the fleshy pad at the tip of his fingers. He opened his index finger and thumb to their full span, and a glowing screen appeared in the gap between them.

  He used his other index finger to navigate to the electrotext menu, and the screen of his uCom modulated from a light greenish-blue to a warm pink.

  Zip. Zero. Ninto.

  “Jimmy,” he said.

  A round, green, grinning face appeared at the sound of his voice. It hovered there on his uCom screen, waiting for a prompt. Letho wanted to punch the smirk right off uCom Jimmy’s face.

  “Good morning, Letho Ferron! Please speak your query, Letho Ferron,” said uCom Jimmy.

  “Do I have any more domicile-productivity credits remaining?”

  “Records indicate that you have zero remaining credits. Please speak to your supervisor for an extension.”

  Guess I am going in today, he thought.

  Letho was of average height, somewhat round in the middle, his face set in a slight scowl, as if he were trapped in a state of perpetual disappointment. Lines had begun to form across his pronounced brow due to his tendency to furrow it when deep in thought. Piercing blue eyes peered out from beneath it, circled with darkened tissue that made him look more tired than he was. Laugh lines had begun to form at the corners of his eyes: scars from happier times.

  Yesterday had been Letho’s twenty-third birthday. He had gone out with his old friend Deacon and a few acquaintances from work to some of the bars in the entertainment center, and as usual he had come home alone. He looked around his apartment, and after gazing for a moment at the toppled pile of dishes in his sink he decided that coming home alone was probably for the best.

  His pulse drubbed in his temples, and there was a sickening-sweet taste in his mouth. He belched, and the acidic aftertaste of bile and cheap whiskey seared the back of his throat. It had been a great time; he recalled the lurid neon signs and pungent smells of smoke and liquor, but he found himself wondering if the headache and acrid, sewer-water aftertaste in his mouth were worth it.

  Deacon, he thought. They had been roommates during the Formal-Ed sequence, but now that they had been placed in their vocations he saw less and less of his friend.

  Probably just as well. You have to hang credits around your neck to get girls to notice you when Deacon’s around, he thought.

  Letho went to the square-edged couch and brushed a few discarded wrappers off crinkled, gray vinyl cushions that made flatulent n
oises as he sat. The readout screen still hovered near his hand, displaced from its perch between his fingers by the change in his hand shape. Letho reformed his hands around the glowing square and drew them away from one another, expanding the screen.

  “Comics,” Letho said.

  A virtual representation of a long white box of comic books appeared before him, and using his index finger he scrolled through them, selecting the one he wanted. The uCom implant fired information back to his brain, which obediently told his nose it was smelling the sweet musty pulp scent of the comic before him. Brilliant images of twenty-first-century Eursan beings flooded his mind, garbed in capes and tights of all the garish colors of a dot matrix rainbow.

  You don’t have time for this. You need to eat some breakfast. Something healthy, perhaps?

  “Shut up,” Letho said to the voice in his mind.

  But the damage had been done. He turned the pages gently, tweaking the rounded corners with his fingers. He longed to really feel the soft but rough texture of the pages, but alas it could not be. There was no more paper. No more trees. They could grow any number of vines, shrubs, and tubers in the hydroponics sector, but it seemed that trees simply could not exist in the void of space. He let the thought trail off into a whirlwind of others. He didn’t know enough to even form a hypothesis as to why this was the case.

  In disgust he pressed his hands together, wringing them. He reached over his head and thrust his arm downward and forward, sending the wadded paper that existed only in his mind arcing across the room, where it crashed into the far wall and exploded into an infinity of pixels.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Over the intercom a tinny voice shouted: “Attention Red Sector workers, the last shuttle to your work center will be arriving in five minutes.”