Finisterre universe
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 Rider at the Gate (U.S. paperback edition) |
|
| Author | C. J. Cherryh |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science Fiction |
| Publisher | Warner Books |
| Released | August 1995 |
| Pages | 437 (Hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-446-51781-X |
| Preceded by | none |
| Followed by | Cloud's Rider |
 Cloud's Rider (U.S. paperback edition) |
|
| Author | C. J. Cherryh |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science Fiction |
| Publisher | Warner Books |
| Released | September 1996 |
| Pages | 373 (Hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-446-51910-3 |
| Preceded by | Rider at the Gate |
| Followed by | none |
The Finisterre universe is a fictional universe created by American science fiction and fantasy author C. J. Cherryh. Currently, it comprises a series of two science fiction / horror novels written by Cherryh, Rider at the Gate (1995) and Cloud's Rider (1996), also known as The Rider series. They were published by Warner Books in the US and Hodder & Stoughton in the UK. The series is about the descendants of lost colonists stranded many generations ago on the hostile planet of Finisterre. For continuity, the two novels should be read in publication sequence.
Contents |
[edit] Background
Finisterre ("End of the Earth") is an Earth-like planet targeted for colonisation, but the colonists soon discover that what they thought was a hospitable world is not suitable for humans at all because the local fauna is telepathic. These creatures send and receive images to and from the ambient, which the unwary humans intercepted, resulting in a mind-clouding "noise" that distressed many of the settlers and even drove some of them mad. To make matters worse, the mothership that delivered the colonists to the planet never returned. Underscoring the colonists' difficult situation, Cherryh has described Anne McCaffrey's Pern and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover worlds as having the same underlying characteristic as Finisterre in terms of being "a bad real estate deal." [1]
With nowhere to go, Finisterre's colonists therefore built and retreated into encampments surrounded by wooden palisade walls, and hid behind religious dogma based on fear and ignorance. The "beasts" on the planet and the "noise" they made terrified the humans. The preachers referred to these beasts as the work of the Devil and condemned any contact with them. Typical refrains from the church were:
- Harken not to the beasts.
- Death and damnation to the followers of the beasts!
- Pray for your children, that they follow not the beasts.
But a group of men and women known as riders turned their back on the church and partnered up with some of the planet's nighthorses, alien horse-like animals. The riders became a necessary evil to keep the fragile human settlements alive: they supplied and protected the villages and towns. The preachers continued their rhetoric and conveniently forgot that while a rider can survive without a village, a village cannot survive without riders.
[edit] Finisterre
Finisterre is Earth-like in many respects with ore-rich mountains, large forests, fertile land and plenty of water. But the comparison ends there: the native fauna, from tiny wally-boos and willy-wisps, to large goblin cats, spook bears and nighthorses are telepathic. The animals project into the surrounding ambient what it is they see and feel. These "sendings" are picked up by other animals in the vicinity, alerting them to the presence of friend or foe before they come into view. The animals "see" around themselves by monitoring the ambient. But some of the creatures are smart and can camouflage themselves in the ambient. Predatory goblin cats can project themselves, for example, as small willy-wisps. Others can hide by sending images of themselves being somewhere else. Spook bears can send out any image they have ever received and make you believe it is real and happening right now. Finisterre was a frightening place for the early settlers.
The colonists encountered many different types of creatures on Finisterre, but the small ones were often too numerous and dangerous to catalogue and were referred to generically as "ghosties" or "spooks".
[edit] Nighthorses
Nighthorses (so-called because of their jet-black coats) are the largest and most intelligent animals the colonists discovered. They are similar in stature to Earth horses, but are omnivorous, have three-toed hooves, are more intelligent than their Earth counterparts and are telepathic. Nighthorses will eat most things they can catch and kill, but failing that, grass and other vegetation.
When humans first arrived on the planet, the wild nighthorses were immediately drawn to them because of the humans' unconscious sendings that were rich in images and emotion. Once a nighthorse has experienced such sendings, it becomes addicted to them and will not leave humans alone. Sifting through these human emotions, a nighthorse will eventually select the human whose sendings it likes best and will adopt him or her as its companion. It will follow this person around, and if he or she is in a village or town, it will remain close to the walls and "call" by flooding the person with images of itself for days and weeks on end until either that person relents and goes to the horse, or withdraws to the centre of the town (if this is possible) where sendings from the Wild generally do not reach.
Those who answer a nighthorse's "call" become riders. Over a short period of time a relationship is formed that is mutually beneficial to both nighthorse and rider: the rider has transport and protection in the Wild (a nighthorse will protect its rider to the death), and the nighthorse receives the comforts of the rider camps in the villages, food (including their favourite, bacon!), the rich emotional human sendings it craves, and "memory". On its own, a nighthorse does not have a good memory, but with a rider the ambient is filled with memories and the nighthorse can remember things!
The role of the nighthorse on Finisterre is pivotal: without them there would be no riders and without riders the human settlements would vanish.
The range of a typical Finisterre creature's sending is "a stone's throw", but a "rogue" can send much further. A rogue is an animal that is sick or injured and pollutes the ambient with images of its distress. A nighthorse can also go rogue when it loses its rider and sends out desperate longings for companionship. Rogue nighthorses are a serious problem to humans on Finisterre because they can send their distress over entire valleys and this often spreads to other creatures like a contagion, making their behaviour unpredictable and dangerous. Humans are not immune to rogue sendings either. Riders and truck drivers have gone over cliff edges because a rogue horse has tricked them into seeing things that are not there. Rogue nighthorses have to be tracked down and destroyed.
[edit] Riders
A rider does not pick a name for the nighthorse that has adopted him. All nighthorses have an image of how they see themselves and that is the image they will respond to. The rider quickly identifies that image and will always use it to communicate with the horse. Danny Fisher referred to his nighthorse as "Cloud" because it saw itself as a cloud drifting peacefully across the sky.
Riders and nighthorses communicate with each other, consciously or unconsciously, by sending images. In the novels Cherryh depicts such "sendings" as text enclosed in "< >". For example, <Cloud running> is an image sent out by Fisher to his nighthorse Cloud persuading him to run. A nighthorse anticipating a snow storm may send <cold, frosty breaths, feet crunching snow> to her rider, who in turn will try to calm her horse by sending an image of <melting drops on green needles, sun shining, road free and clear>.
But riders have to be wary of unconscious sendings. Almost all thoughts, emotions and anxieties a rider experiences are translated into images and sent to the ambient. Nighthorses are easily "spooked" and careless human emotion can be destructive. Riders therefore have to control their emotions in the presence of nighthorses. In addition, nighthorses generally cannot distinguish between past, present and future: they interpret and act on whatever they pickup literally. So a rider recalling an accident that happened last week will be seen by his horse as happening right now and will take evasive action. Riders quickly learn to quieten their minds so as to not excite their horses. Riders have to be particularly careful of rogue nighthorses. Wanting something intently, for example, a rider-shelter in a storm, can be picked by a rogue and sent back to you, making you believe, sometimes to your peril, that a shelter is right in front of you.
Riders don't have complete control over their nighthorses and often have to negotiate with them to get them to do what they want. Riders don't saddle or rein their nighthorses (they will not tolerate that). Instead, when riding, they will hold onto the horse's mane and, when necessary, clench their knees against the horse's sides.
In the Wild a rider is totally dependent on his or her nighthorse for protection against predators and scavengers. Riders quickly learn to trust their horse because the horse always knows the Wild better than even the most experienced rider. Very few animals will approach a nighthorse, and if they do it will broadcast <fierce nighthorse, angry, mayhem> as a warning before attacking. A rider's loyalties are therefore always to his horse first, then his partner, and then his partner's horse.
Riders, of course, cannot read each other's thoughts and emotions directly, but they can indirectly if a nighthorse is present. The "mechanics" of sendings to and from the ambient on Finisterre work as follows:
- Nighthorses and other local fauna send telepathic images to the ambient.
- Humans send non-telepathic images to the ambient.
- Nighthorses and other local fauna can receive both telepathic and non-telepathic images from the ambient.
- Humans can only receive telepathic images from the ambient.
Nighthorses generally relay what they receive from the ambient back to the ambient, giving riders in the vicinity access to what other riders are thinking or feeling. While this is useful as it enables riders to communicate quickly with each other without the need for words, it can be problematic when a rider does not want his feelings to be known to others. Riders quickly learn how to make themselves "invisible" to the ambient by sending images like <wind in the grass, wind bending the stalks, gently waving grass>.
All riders start out as junior riders and their first jobs are often simple tasks like watching over livestock in pastures outside the town walls. Senior riders take on more dangerous assignments in the Wild, such as escorting truck convoys between towns and villages, and protecting road repair crews. Borderers, or border riders, are rider-guides who are born to live in the Wild and only come into the villages and towns during the winter months when the mountain passes are closed.
[edit] Settlements
The colonists explored and settled in a tract of lowland west of an inland sea and up the east face of the Firgeberg, a steep mountain range. Three large towns were established in the lowlands: Shamesey in east, the largest with over 50,000 people; Anveney in the north, an industrial town that refines and processes raw materials; and Malvey in the south, another industrial town that drills for natural gas and oil. Smaller villages and settlements in the highlands, such as Tarmin village, on Tarmin Height, and Evergreen village, halfway up Rogers Peak, were created for mining and logging activities. Evergreen sat at the edge of the known world; the other side of the mountain had never been visited.
Every town and village has a rider camp inside its walls for the riders and their nighthorses. Generally the rider camp sits between the outer walls of the town and the inner walls surrounding the town proper. Large towns like Shamesey split the town proper into an outer ring that borders the rider camp for the workers, and an inner ring for the wealthy merchants. These merchants are thus shielded not only from sendings from the Wild, but also from sendings from the nighthorses in the rider camps. One notable exception is the industrial town of Anveney. It has no a rider camp and no protection from riders. The reason for this is that Anveney and the surrounding areas are so polluted that no local fauna venture near it.
During the winter months contact between the towns and villages is limited. The winters on Finisterre are severe with heavy snow falls making the mountain passes impassable. Telephone lines do link the towns and villages, but they are often down due to storm damage. Radio communication is not used except in extreme emergencies as it attracts predators and scavengers.
[edit] Main characters
[edit] Humans
- Danny Fisher – junior rider from Shamesey town, 17-years old
- Guil Stuart – border rider working out of Malvey town
- Aby Dale – senior rider and Stuart's partner
- Tara Chang – senior rider from Tarmin village
- Brionne Goss – Tarmin village blacksmith's daughter, 13-years old
- Carlo Goss – Tarmin village blacksmith's son, 16-years old
- Randy Goss – Tarmin village blacksmith's son, 14-years old
- Ridley Vincint – senior rider and rider camp boss at Evergreen village
- Callie – senior rider at Evergreen village and Ridley's partner 1
- Jennie – Ridley and Callie's daughter at Evergreen village, 8-years old 2
- Darcey Schaffer – Evergreen village doctor
- Van Mackey – Evergreen village blacksmith
- Rick Mackey – Evergreen village blacksmith's son
1 Callie's surname is not revealed
2 Jennie's surname is not revealed
[edit] Nighthorses
- Cloud – Danny Fisher's young horse
- Burn – Guil Stuart's horse
- Flicker – Tara Chang's horse
- Moon – Aby Dale's horse
- Slip – Ridley Vincint's horse
- Shimmer – Callie's horse
- Rain – Shimmer's 2-year old colt
- Spook – Ancel Harper's horse 3
3 Spook is only a nickname, Harper never revealed the name of his horse
[edit] Plot summaries
[edit] Rider at the Gate
Three riders arrive at the Shamesey town gates to inform border rider Guil Stuart that his partner, Aby Dale and her nighthorse Moon, were killed in a truck convoy accident on Tarmin Height. The accident, they say, was caused by a rogue nighthorse. Stuart heads up the mountain to hunt down and kill the rogue. Danny Fisher, a junior rider and friend of Stuart, follows him. Another rider, Ancel Harper, who blames Stuart for the earlier death of his brother, also pursues Stuart. With winter approaching, journeys up the mountain at this time of the year are ill-advised and dangerous.
Stuart first goes to Anveney where he meets businessman Lew Cassivey. Dale had been working for Cassivey, and her last job, escorting the truck convoy down the mountain, included delivering a shipment of gold to him. The truck that crashed had the gold in it, and Cassivey wants Stuart to retrieve it and pays him in advance.
In Tarmin village, 13-year old Brionne Goss responds to the <call> of a nighthorse in the Wild by going out the village gates on her own. It is a rogue nighthorse and it finds and adopts Brionne. During her absence, riders go out looking for her, and her older bothers, Carlo and Randy, are arrested in the village for shooting and killing their father, the blacksmith. Brionne and the rogue return to the village and her mother insists that the gates be opened to let her daughter in. Tarmin is then overrun by swarms of predators and scavengers and everyone in the village is killed, except for Tara Chang, a rider out of the village at the time, and the Goss brothers who are locked in jail.
Fisher arrives at Tarmin to find the gates wide open! The village is decimated, but Fisher finds and frees the Goss brothers. Stuart reaches Tarmin's gates (now closed) where he is shot at by Harper who is waiting near the gates to ambush him. Stuart retreats to a rider shelter and is later joined by Chang who is lost after the fall of Tarmin. Then the rogue with Brionne on its back arrives at the shelter. The rogue, whom Stuart recognises as Dale's horse Moon, has found Stuart in the ambient, recognising him as Dale's partner. Stuart tricks Moon by approaching her as a friend and then shoots her dead. He rescues Brionne, but she slips into a coma.
Stuart realises that Moon could not have died with Dale and went rogue only after her rider fell off the cliff. Moon must have sent images to the ambient of Moon and Dale together in the gorge below because that is what Moon would have wanted. What the other riders saw and reported were Moon's sendings.
Then Harper arrives at the shelter and shoots and wounds Stuart. Chang responds by shooting and killing Harper, and Harper's nighthorse runs away, riderless and another potential rogue. Fisher finds Stuart at the shelter, and because of the need to get Brionne and her brothers to another village, Fisher agrees to escort the children further up the mountain. Stuart and Chang remain behind in the rider shelter because Stuart cannot ride and needs to recover from his injury.
[edit] Cloud's Rider
Fisher and Cloud escort the Goss children up the mountain to Evergreen village with Harper's riderless nighthorse, Spook, in pursuit. Fisher tells the local riders about the fall of Tarmin village and the presence of Spook, but does not reveal the arrest of the Goss brothers nor the role Brionne played in Tarmin's demise. Fisher is lodged in the rider camp, the unconscious Brionne with Darcey Schaffer, the village doctor, and Carlo and Randy with Van Mackey, the village blacksmith. The news of Tarmin's fall is devastating to Evergreen because all its supplies come from there, but many of the villagers see the disaster as an opportunity to seize and occupy the vacant property in Tarmin village in the spring.
One night Spook enters the ambient and disturbs the horses and riders in the rider camp. Fisher knows that Brionne has woken up and is <calling>. The next morning Ridley takes Fisher out the gates to find Spook, but when they are some distance from the village, Ridley points his rifle at Fisher and demands the truth. Fisher is relieved to be able to finally unburden himself and tells Ridley everything he knows.
Earnest Rigs, a miner, arrives at the doctor's house for treatment and sees and is entranced by Brionne. That night Schaffer and Brionne are awoken by a noise on the roof and a banging at the door. The next day, Schaffer finds blood splattered outside, and Rigs missing. A crowd gathers, including the Goss boys and the village marshal. Carlo is accused of murdering Rigs and, scared that his arrest in Tarmin will become known, runs away. The marshal orders that Carlo be stopped, and a group of miners pursue him. When Carlo reaches the village gate, his only escape is out the village.
Spook finds Carlo in the Wild and immediately adopts him. Fisher and Cloud begin searching for Carlo and see him riding Spook. Suspecting that Spook may have gone rogue, Fisher pursues them. When he catches up with them he sees a threatening shadow in the trees above them and shoots it. At the same time, Stuart and Chang, out looking for Fisher and the Goss children, find Fisher and Carlo. They search for the creature Fisher shot but find instead a large nest in which appear to be human bones. No creature of this size and ability had ever been encountered before, and they conclude that it must have come from the unexplored side of the mountain, probably attracted by the noise in the ambient from the swarm that overran Tarmin. Then the riders hear Evergreen's bells, and set off for the village.
In Evergreen, the breakthrough bells are ringing and the riders enter the village to investigate. They find the gate man ripped to shreds in his watch tower and track the intruder to the houses. When the riders hear Brionne <calling> they realise that she is controlling the beast. They go Schaffer's house where, through the door, they try to persuade the doctor to drug the girl. Inside Brionne opens the underground passage door to reveal a huge ape-like creature. It picks up Brionne and when Schaffer tries to intervene, it hurls the doctor against the wall, killing her. Like a rider and a nighthorse, Brionne and the beast connect. They climb to the roof and disappear over the wall.
All the riders spend the rest of the winter in the rider camp and discuss their plans for the spring. Stuart reveals the presence of the gold in the crashed truck, and Fisher and Carlo agree to go to Anveney to request supplies from Cassivey to retrieve the gold. Stuart and Chang take on the responsibility of escorting villagers down to Tarmin. Of Brionne and the beast there is no sign, not even in the ambient. Clearly they have returned to the other side of the mountain.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Rider at the Gate, C. J. Cherryh, Hodder & Stoughton, first British edition, 1995.
- Cloud's Rider, C. J. Cherryh, Hodder & Stoughton, first British edition, 1997.
Science Fiction Novels: Gate of Ivrel (1976) • Brothers of Earth (1976) • Hunter of Worlds (1977) • The Faded Sun: Kesrith (1978) • The Faded Sun: Shon'jir (1978) • Well of Shiuan (1978) • The Faded Sun: Kutath (1979) • Fires of Azeroth (1979) • Hestia (1979) • Serpent's Reach (1980) • Wave Without a Shore (1981) • Downbelow Station (1981) • The Pride of Chanur (1981) • Merchanter's Luck (1982) • Port Eternity (1982) • Forty Thousand in Gehenna (1983) • Chanur's Venture (1984) • Voyager in Night (1984) • Angel With the Sword (1985) • Cuckoo's Egg (1985) • The Kif Strike Back (1985) • Chanur's Homecoming (1986) • Cyteen (1988) • Exile's Gate (1988) • Rimrunners (1989) • Heavy Time (1991) • Chanur's Legacy (1992) • Hellburner (1992) • Foreigner (1994) • Tripoint (1994) • Invader (1995) • Rider at the Gate (1995) • Cloud's Rider (1996) • Inheritor (1996) • Finity's End (1997) • Precursor (1999) • Defender (2001) • Hammerfall (2001) • Explorer (2003) • Forge of Heaven (2004) • Destroyer (2005) • Pretender (2006) • Deliverer (2007)
Fantasy Novels: The Dreamstone (1983) • The Tree of Swords and Jewels (1983) • The Gates of Hell (1986) • Kings in Hell (1987) • Legions of Hell (1987) • The Paladin (1988) • Rusalka (1989) • Chernevog (1990) • Yvgenie (1991) • The Goblin Mirror (1992) • Faery in Shadow (1993) • Fortress in the Eye of Time (1995) • Lois & Clark: A Superman Novel (1996) • Fortress of Eagles (1998) • Fortress of Owls (1999) • Fortress of Dragons (2000) • Fortress of Ice (2006)
Short Story Collections: Sunfall (1981) • Visible Light (1986) • Glass and Amber (1987) • The Collected Short Fiction of C. J. Cherryh (2004)
