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Category: Romance/Science Fiction
Description: The price of a world without war is too high. A veteran of WWI, the French Foreign Legion, WWII and Korea, Peter knew the price of Liberty. Yet, he believed freedom of an environmentally sustainable world where war was unthinkable was priced too high. Setting out to change it by guile, he founded an immortal dynasty with Dael, who chose to become a flesh-and-blood woman, and gave it a mission to free humanity. Excerpt: The beginning had been easy. He woke in this strange place and, understanding none of the rules, had created things haphazardly, just as he thought of them. Arriving with an ill-defined wish for a world without war and ecological disaster, his mind had translated it into the gentle tyranny of Dael's people with their total control of human development and the immortality to cherish sustainability. This world was paying for those early mistakes, but he'd grown more careful since. He could still do anything he chose, but thinking a thing into existence brought consequences as the implied logic extended itself to touch everything. He had to correct those early mistakes, but remained bound by them as firmly as the rest of his creation. The wrongness that triggered Dael's expulsion had come from his passing thought that her race could easily die of boredom. He'd no sooner thought it than the dying started. Both races must be given the liberties he'd spent his whole life defending. Dael was his chance to make that happen.
eBook Publisher: Eternal Press/Damnation Books LLC/Eternal Press, 2010 2010
eBookwise Release Date: February 2011

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [535 KB]
Words: 109887
Reading time: 313-439 min.

Chapter One

The Senior Councilor's voice droned, the other councilors' heads nodded soporifically in time to his catalogue of events since their last meeting, and Samara, Dael's host, was tired.

Her menstrual cycle was approaching fruition and the released hormones were having their effect--one reason why Dael's race rarely used female hosts. But several thousand female hostings had acclimatized Dael, until she thought herself female and felt uncomfortable in a male host. Her Hive Master, Belen, believed she'd "gone native," banishing her to administering this remote archipelago on the northern edge of the land mass circling the equator and the Group Mind sometimes monitored her activities. She could feel something now...

"Mistress?"

Recalled from her thoughts, Dael turned to the speaker. "Yes, Senior Councilor?" She limited the response to speech. Like half the council, the Senior Councilor was one of Belen's former hosts and uncomfortable with the intimacy of full mind contact with a woman.

"We need your approval before we proceed..." Fear added a quaver to his voice.

"You have it. I'm pleased with your efforts." She wasn't, but he needed to be calmed. All Belen's ex-hosts were skittish, easily panicked, difficult to calm and a burden on the rest of the Hive. Belen administered no physical territory for himself, only for the Hive generally, yet his Elite must have their promised reward, or the system failed.

"Immortality provides no guarantee against error."

The thought came into her mind, not as a deliberate communication, because it had no source, but more as a wry observation, carrying the shadow of amusement, an echo from the Group Mind perhaps...

The emboldened Senior Councilor returned to the detailed recitation of his activities and Dael's attention wandered out the stern windows of her official yacht's great cabin. She watched two trading schooners tack their way along the curved entrance channel, weathered brown sails contrasted against the green of the forested northern arm of the harbor. Just beyond lay Samara's home.

Dael had grown fond of her host over the last twelve years. Gentle manipulation had cleansed Samara of inherited disease, toned her muscles, and enhanced her natural beauty until no one could doubt her status as a Chosen. Even her mind had learned discipline and no longer battled for control. Dael scanned Samara's dreaming state and approved. The woman would make a useful Elite five years from now, probably here in Kyos, close to her home.

A part of Dael's mind monitored the flow of primitive thought in her companions. Like all non-telepaths, their need for a language limited them. They called her race many names, none of them capturing more than a tiny fragment of its complexity. Group Mind, Hive, and Hive Master were all approximations. Even her personal name was beyond them, shortened to a meaningless sound, another frustration of dealing with indigenous people.

Yet her race needed them. Unable to survive without physical hosts, they had tailored the rewards of hosting to ensure a constant supply of volunteers from the Commoners. Many people were willing to exchange seventeen years of their lives for a healthy body, doubled life span and elevation to the wealth and power of the bureaucrats of Dael's world, called the Elite. Both races had prospered...until recent times.

"Mistress?"