Hermit ,Ch 6 Edited



The Hermit

Year 4990, OTT

The Old man was known as the Hermit, others called him a Wizard and most of Nilfeheim knew him as the Eldest. Almost no one knew or remembered his real name, Egill Skallagrímsson. He was a good deal over fourhundred years old.

He wore worn leather pants, patched with different material in a very unskilled fashion, the tunic and the fur anorak were smudgy and torn. There wasn't much pelt    left on the hooded fur cape and it too was stained and torn. Egill's emaciated face was framed by thin, stringy hair that had the same color as pale yellowish bones.

His thin, uneven growing beard was of the same color, but his eyes glowed with the spark of a bright mind. Near the end of the last Clan wars, he had done horrible things to avenge the death of his sons and then he retreated from society and for the most part he lived all by himself on a tall rock formation that reached above the water surface of the southern oceans. It was called the Pillar and was a thin column like rock, four hundred meters tall and on top no more than 80 meters in diameter. The base of the pillar, at the point where it reached the surface was only about 120 meters in diameter.

Here he had planned to live out his natural life, but it was here where he met Tyr and it was this god like entity that gifted him with psionic powers.

To reach the small Burg that was built on top of the rock pillar, one had to use a basket, attached to a steel cable and an electric winch.

The Pillar  was not far from the permanent ice of the south pole region of this world. The first year of a new Longnight had arrived and in another twelve or thirteen month the ice flows that drifted around his burg already, would become a solid ice surface.

Egill had just returned from one of his rare shopping trips. His submarine, the only one of its kind on all Nilfeheim was loaded with the usual dry goods and packed groceries.

He sighed. This was the down side of being a Hermit, he had no one to help him carry the things. He was muttering curses and grunted every time he carried boxes and bags to the elevator basket.

Egill did not turn as a deep voice in his head said. "You could get all the help you wanted, buy one of these robots I read about. Even use your telekinetics to float the things up in your nest. Instead of cursing the ice of the rock."

Egill placed a box with salt, spices and ready to eat dinners into the basket and turned. There next to the sleek Submarine, in the churning waves and between the ice floes surfaced an immense whitish shape with huge triangular shaped fins on top.

The largest predatory fish known to Union science was the Tyranno Fin of Nilfeheim, sleek true fish twice the size of an Earth Blue whale, the albino animal that just surfaced next to Egill's submarine was the largest Tyranno and it was sentient. Egill knew the white fish for almost all his life and it was Egill who had given the fish a a  name and called him Tyr.

Egill was the only one on Nilfeheim who knew Tyr, but there were countless stories and legends about the White Tyranno told by the Nilfeheim fishers and hunters.

Egill turned and said in the same soundless   way "And you could use a fraction of your telekinetic powers to help me instead of giving me a lecture." Egill approached the edge of the small dock at the side of the Pillar. "I am surprised to see you still awake. Longnight has begun."

"You short lived humans have not really noticed that the Longnights slowly grow shorter again, as they have been so long ago. I foresee the time when Longnights are of equal length with Shortsummer. Our rather odd Orbit, caused in part by the fifth planet that is technically a failed sun and its massive gravitational pull, is slowly but surely deteriorating..."

Egill held his head. "Don't fill my mind with all those equations, I am not interested in those things and I am not like you who hangs around the Union School rock telepathically spying on the kids and their lessons."

"Where else should a simple fish like me gain all the wonderful knowledge about the Universe and the United Stars? Thankfully your off-world brethren is much more interested in in these things than you and this is the reason your kind could bridge the vast distance and invade my peaceful and quite world."

"You are more a God than a Simple anything, and you know that you have to do is reveal yourself to the Union Outpost and they have to resettle and remove every single Viking from this world, if they want or not and this planet is yours again."

"It isn't that simple, and after almost 3000 of your years this is as much their world as it is mine, I am quite content and more so, without you I would not be sentient."

"How can we have anything to do with that? You told me you have been sentient being long before humans set foot on this planet."

"Because you humans always think in mono directional linear ways when it comes to time. Cause and effect does not always have to be in a simple line."

Egill sat down on one of the steel bollards and crossed his arms while he looked at the immense being before him with much affection. "So you saying future and past are the same thing and that everything is allready decided and that existence is pre ordained? If the future is set, then there is no such thing as free will. With a set future there is no good and evil. Heroes are heroes because the outcome is clear and criminals are not responsible."

"No Egi, the future is very much like dough, an unshapley mass of possibilites but the outcome is a cake, now no one knows what kind of cake or if it will be a good cake or a burned excuse for a baked product. However there are certain pre set conditions that must occur ...”

Egill, the groceries and everything vanished from sight only to re-appear in the main hall of his small burg, almost 400 meters above the water. Tyr once more demonstrated his vast psionic abilities. The trans location of almost a ton of groceries was no easy feat. He simultaneous completed his exolanation.

"...because some events and some conditions are preordained " Tyr's mental voice answered Egill's question."

"The Norse of this world believe I am a wizard I am supposed to have  clairvoyance and throw the runes, and then see the future as this is what a Seer and Wizard supposed to do, but I am no Wizard. However if you say the future is already set then sentience makes no real sense, as it makes no difference what we do, it is already decided."

"Time is not a simple line or stream as you humans think it is, but you are right, the details of what you see as the future are not determined and it is shaped by events and decisions made in the now by the sum of all that is alive, but there is a framework that is part of the RULE. Some causes have effects that must occur and foreseeing those are not clairvoyance. Was the cake analogy not sufficient?"

Egill rummaged through the bags and boxes of his shopping trip and found the bottle of Vodka he was looking for. "I would lie to you if I said I understand, but it somehow sounds as if it should make sense. So what does this all mean, big fish? Why are you telling me all this? I sense there is a reason for your visit. Not that I am complaining, any reason you find to visit me is a good one."

"I am about to go to sleep, Egill but while I sleep there will be such an event., it is an event important than perhaps any  other."

Egill poured himself a generous helping of the clear liquid into a reasonably clean cup and topped it off with Cola. Here inside his burg he didn't have to be too traditional. "Do you want me to wake you when it happens, whatever you think will happen?"

"No Egill, you can't reach me in our sleep mountains, but I want you to go to the Olafson Clan and be present when Ilva Ragnarsson delivers her first born and also be there at his naming day."

-""-

Gretel almost died, she had missed the Bendixen Burg and had spend several days guiding her little boat over the rough sea. While the boat had a power cube with enough energy to steer that boat at least two times right around the globe, it wasn't very fast, had no cabin and was used to drive short distances over the open water so fishermen could attach air hoses to harpooned Tyranno's and Three Fins.

Finding one of the small islands that dotted the otherwise featureless ocean of Nilfeheim was almost impossible without using navigational instruments. She had spend at least six or seven days at sea, cold, hungry and completely dehydrated. She had escaped the wraith of Volund with nothing but the cloth on her back.

She had been very lucky that she had been spotted by the School bus flyer pilot. He had brought her to the Union Clinic.

There at the Union clinic she found out to her surprise that she had a sister that lived off world. The Med tech had searched for relatives and found Lora and told her how she could make contact.

Lora Hemstaad, her oldest sister made it off planet; she managed to get away from the burg almost ten years ago while helping the workers delivering leather and salted fish at the Xchange; and lived now only a few light years away on a planet called Holstein.

From the Union post Office at the Space Port she had called her sister and Lora send her the money for a Space Bus ticket.

Now she too was on Holstein. Her sister had finished Union School, even served 22 month as a court clerk at the local district court and thus was a full Union Citizen. Lora, just like her the daughter of a Nubhir Scrubber Low men was now the Shift Manager at large local dairy farm and responsible for 200 workers, robots and 20,000 dairy cows. Laura earned 6300 credits every Union Month, owned her own home at the outskirts of Neu Itzehoe, a picturesque town of 300,000 surrounded by rolling hills and meadows full of green grass and light forests.

From Laura's veranda there was a wonderful vista across the town and a small space port in the far distance.

Laura was dating a local Manure management engineer and had serious plans to marry and get kids.

Gretel was still a girl when Laura left and like everyone else in her family thought Laura was dead or working for another Clan family.

At first everything was frightening to Gretel, the trip with the space bus, the scrutiny of Union Officers checking her out as she was classified as a Non Citizen and finally seeing her sister that looked more alien to her than the Non Humanoids she had seen in the space bus.

Laura did not wear braids but a modern hair cut and instead of linen dress, apron and bare feet. She wore a pantsuit and had her own flyer.

All this happened almost a year ago. Gretel too had changed since then, she had gained weight from all the good and seemingly unlimited food and after she was introduced to Virtu Reality she was almost addicted to it.

Laura tried to get her into Union School and a young adult class, but Gretel did not like school. Se didn't really like anyone telling her to do things.

It was a Wednesday and almost exactly a year since she had arrived and she had herself hooked into Dream Maker and enjoyed the carefree, life of a simulated princess. Just as she wanted to join her Avatar friends at a party. The virtual world flickered out of existence and she found herself on the Dream maker couch and her sister standing by the GalNet terminal. Laura's finger still resting on the shut down sensor. "Gretel, we need to talk."

Gretel blinked. "Could that not wait till later? I was invited to a Bubble tree party."

"No it can't wait. Because I know the horrors and conditions back at Nilfeheim, I let you do whatever you like, but I can't have yo stay in Virtu for the rest of your life. I see you didn't go to school again. How do you plan to become a Union Citizen and get work?"

Gretel sat up and glared at her sister. "I don't want to learn useless things about other planets."

"This is not Nilfeheim, Gretel. The Union will provide you with any opportunity and with endless chances to become whatever you want to be, but the Assembly decided long ago that every individual has to work for it. Free loading is simply unfair to all the others that do work."

Gretel clenched her fist. "All I want is revenge and kill Volund, kill that blonde Ragnarsson bitch and make every Olafson pay for what they have done to father and the others and for every Hemstaad who had to work like a slave. I want to be Isegrims's wife and become a Lady of the Clan and make them all do whatever I say. That is what I want, not learn useless things and become the low man slave for another Clan, you call employer."

Laura slowly nodded. "I understand that better than you think,little sister, I too had dreams of revenge, but here I am free. I am a woman and equal to men. All this I have earned on my own. I need not to ask anyone for anything. This freedom and my new life is more important to me than to brood over revenge. Revenge I have to carry back to that cold world of ours with little chance of success." Laura sighed. "You chose whatever destiny and path you want. I gave you a chance to do the same as I did. Now I am going to sell this house. I have signed a marriage contract with Heinz, my fiancee and we move together. I want kids now and a family of my own.

You may change your mind and get on the track of becoming a citizen and a way to support yourself and I will help you with that, or by Sunday you need to find your own way and do what ever you like."

"I will return to Nilfeheim, but not before showing you how grateful I am for what you have done. Let me show you what the Union Post office delivered this morning. You see I did not reject all schooling and learned quite a lot from my GalNet shows." Gretel revealed a thin spray bottle and released a tiny cloud of liquid right into her sisters face. "It's quite illegal so I was told and the Shaill call it Will Bender. It was quite expensive and I had to use much of your Credit savings, but it is the next best thing to those fabled Psionics and just as effective."

Gretel laughed as she stared in the suddenly blank expression of her sisters face. "This stuff will make me the queen of Nilfeheim."

-""-