Dryland's End Read online

  Although not slavishly. One major change I predicated was the switching back – after many thousand years – from the “Sky-God Patriarchy” of our current civilization since around 1000 B.C.E. to a different kind of Matriarchy than we now know obtained among late Stone Age and Bronze Age humans. That used to be an earth-centered Matriarchy, needed for agriculture and the growth of towns and villages. Instead, I forecast a highly mechanized Matriarchy, needed for interstellar agriculture and the interstellar growth of towns and villages (or rather other planets and systems).

  Much as I love Ursula Le Guin as a writer and thinker, the wonderful all natural, organic, woman-centered futures she writes of, while possible on one planet, seem unlikely on a galactic scale – and the fact that women would institute societal changes to valorize themselves would inevitably lead to men becoming second-class citizens, and that would alter life as we know it.

  Including, most immediately, social institutions such as marriage and child rearing, and, secondarily, customs, morals, and then, yes, even Hume – “human” minus the “man” – language. So when you’re reading Dryland’s End, it’s naturally a little bit different from most sci-fi books since it is written in this new language. You’ve got to learn the language and the customs as you go along, as you would, say, in a foreign country. For that reason, the prologue is a little test case. Pass that and the rest of the book comes really easy. Once you do begin reading, I hope the rewards prove far greater than the effort required. One of the most purely “fun” pieces of writing in the book for me to write and others to read is the “oxy/hydro fights” that Commander Lill takes her crack warrior women team to so they can unwind, and it is all but incomprehensible unless you’ve learned the lingo. For example, young, unattached males (who always travel in twos or more to avoid trouble) are “gynos” and overwrought fight fans scream out comments like “He’ll soon be vulva fodder.”

  In the Matriarchal future of Dryland's End, social unions are homosexual and homosociable: usually two women form a basic marriage pod, with a third Hume male along for variety in sex, semen in mating, and to stay home and do housework – or rather make sure the various house-Cybers do the work – or to go out and spend money on frivolities. When a politically important Matriarchal woman leader wants to have a one-on-one, female-to-male relationship, as one character does in this book, it’s with the knowledge that what she’s embarking on is, if not completely taboo, then at least socially frowned upon, since real heterosexuals are deemed “genetic throwbacks.”

  That’s just one of the few social faux pas in this advanced and very affluent Matriarchal society and empire where no one goes hungry ever, where no one ill has to worry about health care, or work unless she or he wants to, where the word work itself does not exist and where, if one wants to keep busy, one has either “voluntary service” to science, medicine, the government and/or military or an “avocation.” As does Ay’r Kerry Sanqq’, the protagonist, whose field of interest is in archaic xeno-anthropology: the study of early Humes and their societies, for example, as seen on Seeded Worlds, i.e., planets that have been “seeded” by intelligent machines, in a time before the advent of quick and easy intergalactic travel.

  That’s another thing. Past interstellar travel in Dryland's End was done by gigantic cruise liners powered by half-lightspeed SLp.G drives. And they are still used for vacations to resort worlds, for colonization, evacuation, etc. The more current, the more advanced interworld transit takes place via small Cyber-vessels known as Fasts, which shrink themselves and their occupants to the size of electrons and are hurled across the galaxy. Being virtually without mass, they thus sidestep Einstein’s mandated inherent problem of light-speed travel.

  Cybers, or machines, do all the real work in this future. And they are also characters in Dryland’s End. Most Cybers do menial chores. Almost all talk in some limited fashion (as do, by the way, Hume pets such as cats and dogs) and have set tasks. But others are necessarily far more intelligent, and these serve as diplomats and intermediaries among and between the Three Species. At least one constructed Cyber, in this novel, has achieved fully integrated self-consciousness, and its “publication” of this remarkable event has led, naturally enough, to a Cyber Consciousness Movement, as other Cybers begin to feel and opine and, yes, even become self-conflicted.

  The Hume Matriarchal government’s absolute refusal to deal with this surprising, growing minority rights movement is the fuel that plots the story of Dryland’s End. So, I’m predicating that, yes, even 5,000 years in the future, even the most intelligent and beneficent possible rulers will still feel threatened by the unknown, and will then act foolishly, even if it means they undo themselves.

  The Matriarchy’s own, unsuspected, and very different future as a result of conflict with the Cybers will derive from several people, including my heroes and heroines, and from two sites in the book, one well-known, one totally unknown.

  The first place is Hesperia, the Hume-constructed so-called “City on a Star,” a free-zone urbs built upon vast girders thrust into the shell of a particular type of star that went nova eons before. Its burned-out core provides the single material that allows travel in Fasts across vast spaces and also instant communication from one edge of the galaxy to the other.

  The idea of a single locus, like my Hesperia, as a powerful countervailing force to a huge expanse of empire, is a solid historical reality. Look at the sea-city of Venice in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, holding the balance between the holy Roman Empire and Islam. Look at Amsterdam, balancing the French, English, and Spanish Empires in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Or today the commercial power of Asian island city-states such as Taiwan and Singapore. Hesperia mines and controls the special Plastro-Beryllium ore everyone wants and is thus staggeringly wealthy, but because it is so rich, it almost has to be equally advanced, open, and democratic. Its Quinx Council is flexible, varying, and rapid acting where the Matriarchal government is rigid, traditional, and, although powerful, a bit slow in coping with significant and dangerous change.

  The second site of power, the unknown, in Dryland’s End is the eponymous continent on the planet Pelagia, a far-distant world in a tiny solar system that has been physically – fundamentally – altered by a nearby supernova. “Seeded” many generations ago during the disaster, the continent of Dryland’s Humes have survived and even flourished, despite the eventual tragic fate of their drowning world, and they have done so without communication with or models from the outside, and thus in an original, utterly different way than their Matriarchal archetypes. And it is to Pelagia that the outlawed followers of heretical geneticist Lydia Relfi have fled. There, not only a new Dryland, but a radically new Three Species dominion will be developed to spread throughout the galaxy. Like an egg that bursts to give birth, so will Dryland’s “end” give birth to a new society.

  And I’m happy to say, in true Arthur C. Clarke fashion, my protagonist is the very first of the “new men” required to renew Humekind, even though he hasn’t a clue of it at first, being an outsider, the exception to all rules. Besides being a funny and cute male who never quite accepts his second-class status in this overwhelmingly female Matriarchy, someone who dotes on ancient objects and sayings from the early space age, Ay’r is both “motherless” and “childless” – and thus, in a Matriarchal culture, doubly cursed. But Ay’r and his companions, Hume and non, have many strange and wonderful adventures, and from being the least important and farthest away, they end up being the most significant and most central people of their time.

  Although first published in 1995, Dryland’s End was completed in 1989 after several years. Thirty-two years later, several aspects of the book that seem contemporary today, were actually pretty prescient for the time. Acceptance of LGBT people, the Women’s #MeToo movement and Female Empowerment. The striking advances of robotics at work and casually in the home, and the growth of A.I. intelligence. Everyday cloning and genetic interference for immune the
rapy. Domestic animals’ and birds’ evolution into recognizable sentience and intelligence. The very existence of a World Wide Net did not exist then; whereas I predicted a Galaxy Wide Net. Experiments in embedding Intel chips into human bodies are ongoing, but commonplace in my new universe.

  I’m delighted that ReQueered Tales has chosen to reprint Dryland's End and hope you enjoy reading or rereading it, and thinking about some of its possibilities and conclusions. Since the last publication I have written stories and novelettes, and novellas set in the “universe” of Dryland’s End and its sequels. Because yes, there are sequels, and their publication will follow this book’s publication in a matter of months.

  Next in line is The Betrothal At Usk, another story set on another remarkable planet, a small, dry “resort world” with two strange suns and gigantic rings of what might be frozen water. The book’s central feature and the site of most of its action is The Great Salt Ocean, which is unlike any other ocean you have encountered. Usk is the tale of another individual like Ay’r – after whom he is named. Circumstances good and bad force this abandoned teen not only to grow up quickly, but to take on responsibilities that will alter his planet and society.

  The third novel is A Bard on Hercular. Like Pelagia, in the first book of the trilogy, Hercular is another distant planet, “seeded” with human life by the expansive Matriarchy. But it is so huge, that it was believed to be six separate worlds, each of a different ecology and so it was seeded six times. How that six-part seeding developed has led to humans who are to us superhuman in some regards, but just like us in many others. Their strengths and weaknesses are tested to the fullest when a Galactic-Wide Singer comes to perform on their planet.

  *

  One ongoing theme of the trilogy is “how to live” and how “to form a good society.” By the end of Hercular, the reader will have been exposed to several wildly different societies, all of them possible and potential, but not all of them equally ethical or responsible. I truly believe any serious writer of speculative fiction must address this issue and present the varieties as well as possible.

  I look forward to reader’s reactions to these three books – and possibly more to come.

  Felice Picano, 2021

  ANNOTATIONS & DIVINATIONS

  upon the Logo-Con-Intellectu-Universalis

  Volume: 1119 File: 31004692Ld

  with special attention to:

  occurrences upon the “Seeded Planet” PELAGIA in the Far Outer Arm, Globular Sinister, Sector Q-X at a galactic ecliptic locus = 6:33'45" in the Sidereal Time Year 3831

  and

  the Pseudo-View-Narrative File titled

  DRYLAND’S END

  by Members of the Hesperian Vir’ism Center

  ENTRY 28976: PVN: PSEUDO-VIEW-NARRATIVE

  – A DECADENT ART FORM

  First developed ca. 2250 STY in the Metropolitan-Terra Area, it spread rapidly throughout nearby systems and reached its first full developmental stasis ca. 2400. A method of total-sensory narrative, PVN relied upon the sequential “following” of a narrative – characters, scene, ambiance, plotting, motivation, etc. – over an extended period of time: each PVN might be experienced for as long as two years.

  The form was revivified significantly ca. 2940, when quintuple life span extension became universally available, thus allowing much greater lengths of leisure time that could be given over to this combination art form and entertainment. The form itself became extended to match such leisure and was deepened significantly with the addition of large quantities of secondary relevant material: scientific, historical, and even philological. Naturally, PVN lent itself primarily to “realistic” modes of narration, especially biography, memoirs, and fiction, previously available in such detail only by “reading.” However, scientific as well as philosophic PVNs soon proved popular, especially those dealing with the exploration of distant and unusual star systems.

  By the beginning of the 3rd Millennium, shorter versions of PVN in “digest” or “magazine” form became widespread and quickly outstripped the longer versions in sales. Their rapid expansion made them a natural outlet for the popularization of important figures of the times: in politics, the arts, sciences, sports, and even—especially upon Hesperia – the elite society of the Beryllium multibillionaires, also known as the “Thwwing Racing Set.”

  The longer PVNs of the middle and late 6th Millennium are considered the most masterful in their development of technique and style. Mostly given over to historical documents and “docudramas” of the period, especially those dealing with the best-known incidents of the War of the Mechanos (The Cybergrammaticon), the Era of the Matriarchies (The Rise and Fall of Wicca Eighth), the Persecution of the Centaurs (EquoHom, Worlds Without Neighs, etc.), and the formation of the 3rd Democratic (or lb’r) Republic, they highlight many of the most colorful figures of their day.

  These, along with the two PVNs universally acknowledged as the supreme masterpieces of the form – Wither-Holme by Ama’trius, and Celestion by Vne’lius, masters of the early 4th Millennium Iridium Age of Communication – not only surpassed all previous genres but added whimsy, fantasy, and poetry for a mixture that may still be enjoyably experienced by even the most sophisticated species.

  Prologue

  “It’s a manchild!” Quorth’s newest-sire exulted. “A manchild! All the Wooden Gods are with me!”

  He held the ceremonial goblet aloft, the faces of two of his many gods carved into its sides, and sipped the malodorous liquid within, then handed it first to Ay’r, and at the same time spoke to the other N’Kiddim males who’d gathered with him during the Awaiting in the gender-specific longhut.

  “This Offworlder has brought fortune into the small-clan of Quorth. A manchild! Those of you who have opposed his presence during the Smalling Rites, calling him Evil-Eye and Malice-Worth, now see their folly.”

  A taller-than-ordinary N’Kiddim male pushed himself up into the closest that he could come to an erect position. Gesturing widely with his long, hirsute arms, he smote his low forehead once, then again.

  “Mitte’s second-eldest admits guilt!” he said. “And atones before the N’Kiddim males.”

  A low sound of clucks and murmurs admired this act of Mitte’s second-eldest and accepted it.

  Quorth’s newest-sire continued, “For this reason, and as newest-sire of the Quorth small-clan, I wish honorary manchild-standing for the Off-worlder.”

  The clucks and murmurs among the others in the longhut seemed to accept his gesture.

  Ay’r pursed his lips into a simulation that would allow his lips to make a similar clucking of assent. Then, dreading the liquid, he sipped at it. It stung his lips, but slid down his throat quickly with his rapid throat pulses, a method taught at the Species Ethnological Institute.

  More N’Kiddim clucks and murmurs at Ay’r’s daring. Those tiny hawkings that now erupted from the two hoariest males signified that a speech was expected of Ay’r.

  Ay’r cleared his throat so he might be able to better approximate the sounds of the N’Kiddim tongue. “Honor is all from Quorth’s small-clan to the Offworlder. Reminder that Offworld means away from N’Kiddim. Suggestion of manchild-standing alternative. Proposal of Mitte’s second-eldest.”

  The duckings were ruminative now. Social politics was new to the N’Kiddim males, Ay’r knew, although their females and especially their third gender, she-males, practiced the art secretly, which he had come to understand was partly responsible for rapid progress in their society within the past few hundred years (Sol Rad.) from a status as Implanted/Indigenous Primitive to one of Im./In. Archaic, thus allowing a Spec. Eth. of Ay’r’s credentials to visit and study their small world.

  It was decided quickly that a she-male might now be granted temporary male status to enter the longhut and make a judgment upon the Off-worlder’s suggestion.

  Taller, shorter-limbed, far less hirsute than the males, and with only a vestigial rather than full third leg, the she-male Shaman
called Nectcy entered the low entrance of the longhut, pretended to listen to Quorth’s newest-sire speak of the situation (although s/he had been outside the thin fiber walls all the while and must have picked it all up before), and remained hunched over demurely so that the now-offending vestige—so valued by N’Kiddim males in sexual intercourse with she-males—dragged as much as possible upon the mats, as a real limb would.

  “Honor to the Offworlder Ay’r.” Nectcy spoke finally. Unlike the males or females, the she-male alone possessed the glottal structure to speak the name Ay’r that so eluded the other N’Kiddim. “The suggestion is good. The proposal of Mitte clan as alternative is wise.”

  Nectcy remained in the longhut watching the males pass around the goblet, certain that s/he would receive a draft of the stuff. Shamans bore insults revengefully, and no male wished to be the insuiter. More important, like all new-sires, Quorth’s newest-sire could not cohabit with any of his females for the next twenty-four larger moonrises: the goodwill of an attractive she-male would be welcome at night.

  “Honor to the N’Kiddim, whose wisdom is unparalleled,” Ay’r now intoned.

  “A manchild’ First-time birthing!” Quorth’s newest-sire mused happily and affectionately wrapped two arms and one of his legs around Ay’r’s waist. Both of them knew the odds had been ten to one that a manchild would be born; for that matter, five to one that a live birth would occur among the N’Kiddim.