The Evolutionary Void

SIX

THE DELIVERY MAN spent the flight accessing what information the smartcore had on the Anomine. There wasn’t much. They were an advanced race who had traveled along the standard evolutionary development route for biological species, zipping from agricultural age to industrial age right up to a benign civilization with FTL starflight and a kind of cellular-based replicator technology that meshed with their own forms. That development allowed for a lot of diversification before their various blocs and genealogies eventually reunited and they elevated themselves to postphysical status. From the small snippets of true history the navy expeditions had uncovered, it seemed that the trigger factor for reunification was the threat posed by the Prime.

Sitting in the antique styling of the Last Throw’s cabin with an uncommunicative Gore, the Delivery Man couldn’t help but wonder if the Anomine had found the Prime a little too much like looking into a mirror for comfort. Bodies that had merged into machinery? Albeit the Prime capability was set at a more primitive level. There but for the grace of God go I, grace in this case being the Prime’s biogenetically embedded xenophobia. The Anomine were only too well aware of what would happen if the paranoid, aggressive, and heavily armed Prime ever escaped their home star system, as they were already attempting in slower-than-light starships. Their concerns were vindicated by their observation of the first Prime ships to reach the existing civilization of the closest star system, Dyson Beta. The peaceful aliens of that world never stood a chance.

Within ten years of the genocidal invasion, the Anomine had thrown up force field barriers around the stars humans came to know as the Dyson Pair. Where the Dark Fortress generators had come from-indigenous construction or borrowed from the Raiel-was a point still much argued over by a small specialist section of human academia. But it was that effort which had brought the diverse Anomine back together. Barely a hundred fifty years after the barriers went up, the majority of the Anomine went postphysical.

“There’s nothing about the elevation mechanism,” the Delivery Man said as the Last Throw streaked toward the Anomine star at fifty-five light-years an hour. They were fifteen minutes out, and the starship’s sensors were starting to obtain high-resolution scans of the system with all its planets.

“Classified,” Gore replied smartly. “Some aspects of government never change no matter how benevolent and transparent they strive to be. Secrecy is like oxygen to politicians and defense forces; there’s always got to be some of it to keep them going.”

“But you’ve got the files, right?”

“I’ve accessed the summaries.”

The Delivery Man gave Gore a suspicious look. “I thought you had this all planned out.”

“I do, sonny, so stop with the panicking.”

“Have you got those summaries?”

“Not actually with us here today, no, but I remember most of the critical stuff.”

“But … You do know how to get it working again, don’t you? You said that.”

“I said that we think it’s intact.”

“No!” The Delivery Man sat forward abruptly, almost ready to fly out of the chair and go nose to nose with Gore. “No, no, you said, and I quote, they went postphysical and left their elevation mechanism behind.”

“Well, obviously they didn’t take the fucker with them.” Gore gave a chirpy grin. “If you’re postphysical, you can’t, because the mechanism is physical. We saw that with the Skoloskie; their mechanism was still there rusting away on their abandoned homeworld. Same goes for the Fallror. It’s what happens. Jeezus, relax, will you; you’re acting like a prom virgin who’s made it to the motel room.”

“But. You. The. Oh, shit! Tell me the navy has seen the Anomine mechanism; tell me you know it’s on their homeworld.”

“The navy exploration parties that did manage to get through communicated with the old-style Anomine left on the planet. They had legends of their ancestral cousins leaving. The legends are quite specific about that; they departed the homeworld itself. QED, that’s where the mechanism must be.”

“You don’t know! I trusted you! Ozziedamnit. I could be making progress; I could have opened the Sol barrier by now.”

“Son, Marius would have shredded you like a puppy stuffed into a food blender if I’d let you go off after him. You’re good at what you do, delivering stuff to my agents and the odd bit of observation work. That’s why I recruited you, because everyone knows you’re basically harmless, which puts you above suspicion. Face it, you’ve just not got the killer instinct.”

“My family is trapped back there. I would do anything-”

“Which has made you angry, yes, which is driving you on. But that’s bad for you. It would mean there comes a point where you hesitate or get a nasty dose of doubt and remorse and decency when you were sawing off Marius’s fingers and making him eat them.”

The Delivery Man wrinkled his nose up in revulsion. “I wasn’t going to-”

“Son, you just said you’d do anything. And that would be the least of it. These people don’t roll over because you ask them nice. You’d have to strap Marius down on the dungeon table and make him tell you how to take down the barrier. And I’ll lay you good odds the only person who can actually deactivate the barrier is Ilanthe, and she’s not available. No. The only way for you to achieve anything right now is by helping me. So will you please stop the fuck whining and let me work out how to find the mechanism.”

“Crap!” The Delivery Man slumped back down, furious at being taken in again and even more furious that Gore was right. Somewhere in his mind was an image of himself threatening Marius, maybe firing a jelly gun close to his head, which would make anyone capitulate. Right? He shook his head, feeling foolish. Then he gave Gore a sharp look. “Wait a minute. You said the ones that got through.”

“What?” Gore paid him little attention. His eyes were closed as he lounged back in his orange shell chair, analyzing the smartcore’s data.

“The navy exploration ships that came here. You said some got through?” There was no reply. The Delivery Man requested the raw sensor data, building up a coherent image of what they were approaching. The star’s cometary halo seemed to have active stations of some kind drifting through it, large stations with force fields protecting them from a detailed scan.

“Oh, yeah, them,” Gore said eventually. “The borderguards are a good security team. They’re left over from the last of the high-technology-era Anomine, and they don’t like anyone contaminating the old homeworld.”

“The whats?” It didn’t sound good, not at all. But Gore never had time to answer him. That was when the Last Throw dropped out of ultradrive, and the smartcore was showing him an image of the borderguard not a kilometer away. It measured over five kilometers across, though most of it was empty space. The primary structure was of curving strands arranged in a broad ellipsoid, but they bent around sharply in the thick central section, forming three twisting cavities that intersected in the middle. Each strand appeared to be transparent, filled with a thick gas that hosted a multitude of dazzling green sparks. They swarmed along the strands as if there were a gale blowing inside. Floating in the heart of the cavities was a shape identical to the one formed by the green strands; this one was barely a tenth of the size, filled with a sapphire gas complete with swift sparks. At its center was a crimson shape; inside that was a yellow version that had a lavender speck nestled within. Passive sensors couldn’t make out if there was another miniature version contained by its haze, and a strong force field prevented any active examination.

“Now what?” the Delivery Man whispered.

“We talk very fucking quietly in case they’re listening in,” Gore snapped back.

The Delivery Man actually cringed from the look of contempt Gore gave him. He cleared his throat. “All right. Is it going to shoot at us?”

“I hope not.”

“So what do we do?”

“We ask permission to go through.”

“And if it says no?”

“Pray it doesn’t. We’ll have to kill all seventeen thousand of them.”

“Can this ship actually-” He broke off and kept silent. The smartcore shot a simple communication pulse at the borderguard. Sensors showed another five of the gigantic stations appearing out of odd spatial distortions a few thousand kilometers away.

“Why are you here?” the borderguard asked.

“We are representatives from the human race; two of us are on board.”

“What type?”

“Higher. You have dealt with us before and were favorable. I ask for that consideration to be shown again.”

“Your species has withdrawn all information valid to you from those who stayed behind.”

“I understand. We seek data on those who left. We are a subsect of our species which believes we should try to evolve as the final Anomine did. We seek information on their society.”

“You carry weapons; they are of a sophisticated nature. Those of your species who came before did not carry weapons.”

“There is an active conflict among our species and the Ocisen Empire. Other species are emerging who are hostile. Interstellar travel is a dangerous endeavor right now. We reserve the right to protect ourselves.”

“We have detected no conflict.”

“It is coming. The Void underwent a small expansion recently. Species across the galaxy are becoming alarmed by its behavior.”

“We detected the Void expansion.”

“In which case we would ask that you grant us permission to try and emulate the ultimate success of your species.”

“You may have access to those items left behind by the final Anomine. You may examine them with any means except physical alteration or destruction. You may not remove any item from our ancestral world. All items must be left in place when you leave.”

“We thank you for the generosity you show us.”

The Last Throw fell back into hyperspace and raced in for the Anomine homeworld. The Delivery Man observed its course display with some curiosity as they performed a wide arc around the G3 star. The starship started to drop the confluence nest satellites one at a time. They finished up spaced equidistantly in an orbit two hundred million kilometers out from the primary. Last Throw headed in for the Anomine homeworld.

There was a lot of junk in high orbit out beyond the geosynchronous halo. All of it was ancient, inactive: vast spaceship docks and habitation stations that had slowly been battered by micrometeorites and larger particles, subjected to solar radiation for millennia coincident with thermal extremes. Consequently, they were no more than brittle tissue-thin hulls now, drifting into highly elliptical orbits as their atmosphere leaked out and tanks ruptured. Chunks had broken off, tumbling away into their own orbit, bashing into one another, fracturing again and again. Now millions of them formed a thick gritty gray toroid around the old world.

The Last Throw darted gracefully through the astronautical graveyard and flew down to a standard thousand-kilometer parking orbit above the equator. From there, the starship’s optical sensors showed a planet similar to any H-congruous world, with deep blue oceans and continents graded with green and brown land, depending on the climate. Huge white cloud formations drifted through the clear air, their fat twisted peaks greater than any of the mountain ranges they blanketed.

“So now what?” the Delivery Man asked.

“Find a haystack, then start searching for its needle.”

The Delivery Man deliberately didn’t glare at the gold-faced man sitting in the shell chair opposite him. There was no point. “This planet is bigger than Earth,” he read from his exovision displays. “Surface area nearly eighty million square miles. That’s a lot of land to search with any degree of thoroughness.”

“What makes you think it’s on land?”

“Okay, what makes you think it’s even here? Was that in the summary? The Anomine had settled in eight other star systems that we know of.”

“And they’re all deserted. That’s a goddamn fact. They came back here, every type of them. Another dumbass pilgrimage. This is where they elevated from.”

“Oh, Great Ozzie,” the Delivery Man moaned. “You don’t know, do you? You’ve no bloody idea. You’re hoping. That’s all. Hoping there’s an answer here.”

“I’m applying logic.”

The Delivery Man wanted to beat his fists on the chair. But it wouldn’t be any use, not even as emotional therapy. He’d been committed from the moment he left Gore’s asteroid. “All right. But you must have some idea how to find the damn thing, right?”

“Again, we’re going to apply logic. First we perform a complete low-orbit mapping flight and scan every inch of the place for exotic activity or gravity fluctuations, power generation, quantum anomalies-anything out of the ordinary.”

“But that’ll take …”

“Several days, yes.”

“And if we don’t find anything?”

“Go down and talk to the natives, see what they can tell us.”

“But they’re an agrarian civilization, human equivalent to the mid-nineteenth century. They’re not going to know about machines that can turn you into an angel.”

“They have legends; we know that. They’re proud of their history. The navy cultural anthropology team did some good work. We can even talk to them direct. And they’re more advanced than our nineteenth century-that I do remember from the files. Not that the comparison is entirely valid.”

“Okay. Whatever.”

Gore gave the briefest of nods and issued orders to the smartcore.

“Why did you bring me?” the Delivery Man asked. “You and the ship can handle this.”

“Backup,” Gore said flatly. “I might need help at some point. Who knows?”

“Great.”

“Get yourself some rest, son. You’ve been wired tight for days now.”

The Delivery Man admitted he was too tired and edgy to argue. He went over to his private cubicle and rolled onto the small but luxurious cot that expanded out of the bulkhead. He didn’t expect to sleep. He was still wound up tight about Lizzie and the children. The ship’s TD link to the unisphere remained connected, so he could access all the news from back home.

High Angel had arrived at the Sol system. After six hours Qatux had diplomatically announced to the President that there was nothing the huge arkship could do. The force field the Accelerators’ Swarm had deployed was too strong to break with any weapon they had.

After switching through several ill-informed news shows, the Delivery Man fell into a troubled sleep.

Corrie-Lyn woke up with a start, disoriented and unsure what had hauled her up out of such a deep sleep. She glanced around the small darkened cabin, listening intently, but there was nothing. Sometimes the Lindau’s poor battered systems would produce odd sounds. Pipes gurgled and bubbled, and the servicebots hammered away as they worked through their repair schedule; then there was that one time when she swore she’d heard the hull itself creak. But tonight it was silent aside from the constant hum of power, which was vaguely reassuring even though it shouldn’t be that loud. At least they still had power.

Inigo stirred briefly beside her, and she smiled down gently at him. It was so good to have him back, physically as well as emotionally. Even though he wasn’t quite the messiah of yore, he was still her Inigo, concerned about different things now but still as determined and focused as before. She felt so much happier now that he was here to help, despite still being unable to escape Aaron.

The name acted like some kind of recognition key. He was why she’d woken. Her mind was abruptly aware of the turmoil bubbling out from the agent’s gaiamotes. There were images her own brain instinctively tried to shut out, repulsive sensations of pain-not direct impulses but memories of suffering that verged on nauseous, but worst of all were the emotions of guilt and fear that bridged the gap between them, plunging her into his nightmare of darkness and torment. She was suffocating in some giant cathedral where men and women were being sacrificed on a crude pagan altar. She was standing behind the high priest as the curved dagger was raised again. Screams blasted out from those awaiting an identical fate as the blade flashed down, then rose again, dripping with blood. The figure in the white robe turned, and it wasn’t a male priest. She smiled gleefully, the front of her robe soaked in scarlet blood, making the fabric cling obscenely to her body, emphasizing breasts and hips.

“You don’t leave me,” she explained as the smile widened. Lips parted to reveal fangs that grew and grew as the cathedral faded away. There was only darkness and her. The robe was gone now; blood glistened across her skin. The mouth opened wider, then wider still; there was no face anymore, only teeth and blood. “Come back where you belong.”

He wanted to scream, joining the clamor kicked up by the others lost somewhere out there in the impenetrable blackness. But when he opened his mouth, blood poured in, filling his lungs, drowning him. Every muscle shook in the terrible struggle to be free, to be free of her, of what she’d made him do.

“It’s all right, son,” a new, soothing voice chimed in. “Let me help you.”

A soft irresistible force closed around his body, solidifying, immobilizing him. He stopped gagging for breath as bright red laser fans swept across the darkness, quickly arranging themselves into a spiral web with his head in the center. They contracted sharply, sending light pouring into his brain. Pain soared to unbelievable heights-

“Yech!” Corrie-Lyn shook her head violently, closing off her gaiamotes. The sickening sensations vanished. Now she heard a sound, a muffled yell from the captain’s cabin on the opposite side of the narrow companionway. “Sweet Lady,” she grunted. No mind could survive that kind of psychological torment for long, not and remain sane and functional. She stared at the cabin door, fearful he would come bursting through, his weapon enrichments activated. But he didn’t. There were another couple of defiant cries and then some whimpering like an animal being soothed before silence claimed the starship again.

Corrie-Lyn let out a long breath, seriously alarmed by how great the threat of him going completely insane had become. Her skin was coated in cold sweat. She pulled the tangle of quilts off herself and wriggled over to the ablution alcove. Taking care to be quiet so she didn’t wake Inigo, she slowly sponged herself down with a mild-scented soap. It cooled her skin, leaving her feeling a little better. Nothing she could do about the sensations crawling along the inside of her skin-the residual shock of the dream.

If that’s what it is.

It was all a little too coherent for comfort. Not a brain naturally discharging its accumulated experiences orchestrated by the peaks of lingering emotion, the way humans were designed to cope with everyday experiences. These were like broken memories pushing up from whatever dark zone of the psyche they’d been imprisoned in. “What in Honious did they do to you?” she murmured into the gloomy cabin.

The next morning the servicebots had finished tailoring some of the fresh clothes as she’d instructed. “Not bad,” Inigo said admiringly as she pulled on the navy tunic with shortened sleeves. She grinned as she wiggled into a pair of tunic trousers. They were tight around her hips. “Not bad at all.”

“I need some breakfast first,” she told him with a grin. The one-and only-advantage of their weird imprisonment was the amount of time alone they could spend catching up.

They held hands as they went into the lounge. Inigo of course used the culinary unit to prepare some scrambled eggs and smoked haddock. She delved into the pile of luxury supplies the crew had stored on board. The only thing the unit made that she could force down was the drinks, and that was pretty much limited to tea and tomato juice, neither of which was a firm favorite. She tucked into a mix of toffee banana cake and dried mortaberries, gulping the tea down quickly so she could convince herself the taste was Earl Grey, albeit with milk and strawberry jam.

Aaron came in and helped himself to his usual poached egg and smoked salmon. Without a word, he shuffled himself into his broken chair almost at the other end of the lounge.

“Who is she?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

“Excuse me?”

“The high priestess or whatever she was. The one with all the blood. The one that scares you utterly shitless.”

Aaron stared at her for a long time. For once, Corrie-Lyn wasn’t intimidated. “Well?” she asked. “You shared last night.”

It wasn’t embarrassment-she suspected he was incapable of that-but he did lower his gaze. “I don’t know,” he said eventually.

“Well, you must-” She stopped, took a breath. “Look, I’m actually not trying to needle you. If you must know, I’m worried.”

“About me? Don’t be.”

“Nobody can take that kind of punishment night after night and not have it affect them. I don’t care what you’ve got enriched and improved and sequenced into every cell. That kind of crap is toxic.”

“And yet here I am each morning, functioning perfectly.”

“Seventeen hours ago,” Inigo said.

“What?”

“You were supposed to be on the bridge monitoring the ship. You actually slipped into the reverie. I felt it.”

“My operational ability is unimpaired.”

“It’s being undermined,” Corrie-Lyn said. “Can’t you see that? Or is it that you just can’t admit it?”

“I can help,” Inigo said.

“No.”

“You have instructions for just about every eventuality,” Inigo said. “Is there one for your own breakdown?”

“There is nothing wrong with me a bit of hush in the morning won’t fix. A man likes to break his fast in goodly contemplative silence.”

“Contemplate this: If you go gaga, how are we going to reach Ozzie?”

Aaron grinned contentedly. “You want to?”

“Yes,” Inigo said with great seriousness. “I don’t know who programmed you, but I think they might be right about getting the two of us together.”

“Now, ain’t that something; progress at last.”

“The only thing that can stop us reaching the Spike now is you,” Corrie-Lyn said.

“I imagine that if bits of me start to fall off, I will …” He stopped, the humor fading from his face.

“Suicide?” Inigo supplied.

Aaron was staring at a point on the bulkhead, his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. “No,” he said. “I’d never do such an unrighteous thing. I’m not that weak.” Then he frowned and glanced over at Corrie-Lyn. “What?”

“Oh, Lady,” Inigo grunted.

Corrie-Lyn was fascinated, suspecting that the real Aaron had surfaced, if only for a moment. “You’re not going to make it,” she said flatly.

“We’ve got barely two days to go until we reach the Spike,” Aaron said. “I can hold myself together for that kind of time scale. Trust and believe me on that.”

“Nonetheless, it would be prudent for you to load some kind of emergency routine into the smartcore,” Inigo suggested.

“I can match that; in fact, I can top it in a big way on the survival stakes. I would strongly suggest, now that you’ve figured out I’m not on the side of harming you and that you and the great Ozzie are going to be best buddies standing before the tsunami of evil, you think about how to stop the Void.”

“It can’t be stopped,” Inigo said. “It simply is. This I know. I have observed it from Centurion Station, and I have personally felt the thoughts emanating within. Out of all of humanity, I know this. So believe me when I tell you that if you want to exist in the same universe, you have to find a way around it. Our best bet would be to turn around and ask the High Angel to take us to another galaxy.”

Aaron drank some of his coffee. “Someone thinks differently,” he said, unperturbed. “Someone still believes in you, Dreamer; someone believes you can truly lead us to salvation. How about that? Your real following is down to one: me. And for now I’m the only one that counts.”

They began to feel the Spike’s wierd mental interference while they were still a day and a half out. At first it was nothing but a mild sensation of euphoria, which was why they didn’t notice at first. Corrie-Lyn had cut down on her drinking, but there were still some seriously good bottles cluttering up the crew’s personal stores. Be a shame to waste them. A couple-the Bodlian white and the Guxley Mountain green-were reputed to have aphrodisiac properties. Definitely a shame. Especially as there was nothing else to do on board ship.

So in the afternoon she’d gotten a bot to make up, or rather unmake, a semiorganic shirt so that just a couple of buttons held the front together. Satisfied the end product was suitably naughty, she stripped off and stepped into the ablution alcove. While she was in the shower, the bot also remade a thick wool sweater into a long robe; it was scratchy on her arms, but what the Honious.

She’d left Inigo in the lounge reviewing astronomical data on the Void. Now he hurried to their cabin when she called him, saying something important had happened.

“What is it?” he asked as the door parted. Then he stopped, surprised and then intrigued by the low lighting and the three candles flickering on nearly horizontal surfaces. The culinary unit might be rubbish at food, but it could still manage wax easily enough.

Corrie-Lyn gave him a sultry look and ordered the door to close behind him. He saw the bottle of Bodlian and the two long-stemmed glasses she was holding in one hand.

“Ah.” His gaiamotes emitted a simultaneous burst of nerves and interest.

“I found this,” she told him in the huskiest voice she could manage without giggling. “Shame to waste it.”

“Classic,” he said, and took the proffered bottle. She kissed him before he’d even gotten the cap off, then began to nuzzle his face. He smiled and pressed himself up against her while she toned up the mood her gaiamotes were leaking out. Together they undid the belt of the crude robe. “Oh, dear Lady, yes,” he rumbled as the wool slipped down to reveal what remained of the shirt.

Corrie-Lyn kissed him again, the tip of her tongue licking playfully. “Remember Franlee?” she asked. “Those long winter nights they spent together in Plax.”

“I always preferred Jessile.”

“Oh, yes.” She sipped some of the wine. “She was a bad girl.”

“So are you.” He poured his own glass and ran one hand down her throat, stroking her skin softly until he came to the top button. His finger hooked around it, pulling lightly to measure the strain.

“I can be if you ask properly,” she promised.

Two hours later Aaron fired a disrupter pulse into their locked cabin door. The malmetal shattered instantly, flinging a cloud of glittering dust into the confined space. Corrie-Lyn and Inigo were having a respite, sprawled over the quilts on the floor. Inigo held a glass of the Bodlian in one hand, carefully dripping the wine across Corrie-Lyn’s breasts. Secondary routines in his macrocellular clusters activated his integral force field instantly. Corrie-Lyn screamed, crabbing her way back along the floor until she backed into a bulkhead.

“Turn it off!” Aaron bellowed. His cheeks were flushed as he sucked down air. Jaw muscles worked hard, clamping his teeth together.

Inigo rose to his feet, standing in front of Corrie-Lyn. He expanded the force field to protect her from direct energy shots, knowing it would ultimately be futile against Aaron. “The force field stays on. Now, in the Lady’s name, what’s happened?”

“Not the fucking force field!” Aaron juddered, taking a step back. Weird unpleasant sensations surged out of his gaiamotes, making Inigo flinch. It was a torrent of recall from the strange cathedral with the crystal arches, terrified faces flashing past, weapons fire impossibly loud. Each memory burst triggered a devastating bout of emotion. Even Inigo felt tears trickling down his cheeks as he swung between fright and revulsion, defiance and guilt.

“The mindfuck,” Aaron yelled. “Turn it off or I swear I’ll kill her in front of you.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Inigo yelled back. “What’s happening? What is this?”

Aaron sagged against the side of the ruined door. “Get them out of my head!”

“Deactivate your gaiamotes; that’ll kill the attack.”

“They are off!”

Inigo’s skin turned numb with shock-his own emotion rather than the chaotic barrage coming from Aaron. “They can’t be. I can feel your mind.”

Aaron’s hand punched out, knuckles finishing centimeters from Inigo’s face. Enhancements rippled below his skin, and squat black nozzles slid out of the flesh. “Turn it off.”

“I’m not doing anything!” Inigo yelled back. Ridiculously, he felt exhilarated: This was living, the antithesis of the last few decades. He cursed himself for hiding away rather than facing up to everything the universe could throw at him. Which was stupid …

Four ruby-red laser targeting beams fanned out of Aaron’s enrichments, playing across Inigo’s face. “Switch. It. Off,” the crazed agent growled. Somewhere close by dark wings flapped in pursuit. The edge of the cabin began to shimmer away as if the darkness were claiming it molecule by molecule. Her presence was chilling, seeping through Inigo’s force field to frost his skin.

Aaron flung his head back. “Get away from me, you monster.”

“It’s not me,” Inigo whispered, fearful of whatever stalked them through the gloom that was now busily eating away at the edge of his own vision. He could see her smile now, predatory teeth bared. If she did break through to whatever Aaron believed to be reality, there was no telling what would happen.

The laser beams started to curve through the air, sliding smoothly around Inigo to cage him in red threads. Their tips studded Corrie-Lyn’s naked body.

“I can be as bad as her,” Aaron purred with smooth menace. “After all, she taught me. I can make this last for hours. You will hear Corrie-Lyn plead with you to switch it off. She will beg you to kill her as the only way to stop the pain.”

“Please,” Inigo said. “Listen to me. I’m not doing this to you.”

The arching lasers grew brighter. Corrie-Lyn’s skin sizzled and blackened where the tiny points touched her. She gritted her teeth against the pricks of pain. “Wait,” she gasped. “Where are we?”

Aaron was shuddering as if someone were shoving an electric current through his body. “Location?”

The darkness surrounding the cabin pulsed with a heart’s rhythm, stirring up a gust of air that pushed against them.

“Yes!” Corrie-Lyn demanded. “Our location. Are we near the Spike?”

“It’s two hundred and seventy light-years away.”

“Is that close enough for the dream? Is that what we’re feeling?”

Aaron cocked his head to one side, though his hand remained steady just centimeters in front of Inigo’s face. A drop of saliva dribbled out of his mouth. “Dream? You think this to be a dream? She’s here. She’s walking through the ship. She’s here for me. She never forgets. Never forgives. For that is weakness and we are strength.”

“Not your dream, you fucking moron,” Corrie-Lyn said. “Ozzie’s dream. The galactic dream he left the Commonwealth to build.”

“Ozzie’s dream?” The curving lasers dimmed slightly. Corrie-Lyn wriggled away from their enclosure.

“That’s right,” Inigo cried. “This effect is like an emotion amplifier. I knew the sex was good, but …”

Corrie-Lyn stopped rubbing her burns. “Hey!”

“Don’t you see?” Inigo urged. “He’s heightened our emotional responses through the gaiafield. But with your screwed-up psyche that’s simply helped with the destabilization. Whatever controls your masters installed are starting to crack under the pressure.”

The blackness pulsed again. Inigo swore he could feel the pressure increase on his inner ears.

“My gaiamotes are closed,” Inigo hissed.

“They can’t be! I’m witnessing your dreams.”

“He’s right,” Corrie-Lyn said. “My gaiamotes are shut, too, but this fucking nightmare is terrorizing us all. It’s not the gaiamotes.”

Aaron’s targeting beams snapped off. “What, then?” he demanded. His knees nearly buckled. “I cannot risk my mission failing in this fashion. It leaves you open to capture. We will have to die.” His hand moved to clamp his fingers over Inigo’s face. Inigo’s exovision was suddenly swamped by warning symbols as his force field began to glow a weak violet. “Your memorycell, too,” Aaron said. “Nothing of you must survive to fall into the hands of the enemy, especially her.”

“He’s circumvented it,” Inigo said, trying to keep calm. Violence wasn’t the solution to this; he had to break through Aaron’s neuroses. “This is Ozzie’s dream; it doesn’t need the gaiafield anymore. He’s propagated the feelings through spacetime itself.”

“This is an attack,” Aaron vowed.

“It’s not. I promise. He’s a genius, an authentic off-the-scale live genius. The gaiafield was just a warm-up for him. Don’t you see? He’s created real telepathy. Ozzie has made something that can make mind speak directly to mind just like he always wanted. It’s internal. Do you understand? Your instability is coming from within.”

“No.” Aaron fell to his knees, gasping for breath, pulling Inigo down with him.

“You are the cause of the mission failure. The damage is coming from your own subconscious.”

“No.”

“It is.”

“Make it stop. She can’t get me. I can’t allow that. Not again.”

“There is nobody there. She is just a memory, a screwed-up memory you don’t know how to contain, there’s so much fear embedded with the experience.”

Aaron suddenly let go of Inigo, stumbling around to face the broken door in a martial arts pose. “She’s here.”

“Aaron, listen to me. Ozzie’s dream is corroding your rationality because it was never designed to deal with circumstances like these. You have to let them go; you have to let the real you out of those constraints your boss imposed. You must come forward. This artificial personality can’t cope.”

“Not good enough?”

“The real you is more than adequate. Come out. Come on, it’s the only way you can beat this.”

“Damage control …” Aaron slowly sank to his knees, and then his back curled as he dropped his head between his legs. His breathing started to calm. The eerie semihallucinations around the periphery of the cabin began to melt away.

Inigo and Corrie-Lyn gave each other an anxious look. “Do you think?” she asked.

“The Lady alone knows,” he murmured back.

They stood up. Corrie-Lyn hurriedly pulled her woolen robe back on, then they both approached the crouched figure cautiously. Inigo reached out tentatively but didn’t quite have the courage to touch Aaron. He wondered if that was the dream field-or whatever-amplifying the worry. But it seemed sensible enough. Surely an emotional enhancer would boost his sympathy correspondingly. Maybe that was the way it worked, everything raised equally so that everything stayed in the same balance as before-no alteration to personality, just a greater perception or empathy.

Aaron’s head came up; his biononics performed a thorough field scan of the starship. He stood up and looked at Inigo and Corrie-Lyn. His weapon enrichments sank back down into his hand; ripples of skin closed over them.

“Hello?” Corrie-Lyn said hopefully. “Aaron, is that really you now?”

Inigo wasn’t so sure. There wasn’t a trace of emotion coming from the man. In fact …

“I am Aaron,” he said.

“That’s good,” Corrie-Lyn said hesitantly. “Have the disturbances gone?”

“There are no disturbances in my head. My thought routines have been reduced to minimum functionality requirement. This mission will be completed now. Arrival at the Spike is in eighteen hours. Inigo will accompany me to Oswald Fernandez Isaacs. You will then both be given further instructions.” He turned and walked out the door.

“What in Honious was that?” a startled Corrie-Lyn asked.

“The last fallback mode by the sound of it; probably installed in case his brain got damaged in a firefight. He’s running on minimum neural activity. Whoever rebuilt him must have had a real fetish about redundancy.”

She shivered, clutching at the robe. “He’s even less human than before, isn’t he? And he was never much to begin with.”

“Yeah. Ladydamnit, I thought this was our chance to break his conditioning.”

“Crap.”

“But at least we know I don’t get shot before we meet Ozzie.”

“Oswald? I never knew that was his name.”

“No, me neither.”

She let out a long breath, then narrowed her eyes to stare at him. “The sex wasn’t that good naturally?”

“Ah. I had to say something that would shock him.”

“Really?” She glanced around the cabin. Tiny shards of sharp metal debris glinted on every surface. “Honious, this is a mess.”

“Hey, don’t worry. We’ll get through this.”

“I’m not worried.”

“Yes, you are. I can sense it.”

“What? Oh!” Her eyes widened as she realized she could sense his mind as clearly as if they were fully sharing within the gaiafield.

He smiled weakly. “That Ozzie, he’s really something. Over two hundred and fifty light-years away, and it already affects us. Whatever it really is.”

“Do you think it can be used to connect everyone with the Void?”

“I have no idea. But I suspect we’re going to find out. Maybe that’s why Aaron’s controllers want me there. I have proven access to thoughts from the Void; maybe they want to see if I can connect directly to the Heart.”

“So what can this effect do?” she mused.

– -

They spent the next few hours experimenting. The effect was remarkably like the longtalk they knew so well from the Void. When one of them carefully formed words or phrases, the other could perceive it, though they never worked out anything like the directed longtalk available to the residents of Querencia. But it was the constant awareness of emotion that was the most disquieting. If they hadn’t already been so intimate and adept at using the gaiamotes to connect emotionally, Corrie-Lyn thought they would have had real trouble with guilt and resentment at such openness. As it was, the effect took a long time to accept at an intellectual level. Being so exposed and having no choice in the matter made her apprehensive. She was all right with Inigo, but knowing the machinelike Aaron could perceive her every sentiment was unpleasant at the very least, and as for the prospect of every alien on the Spike being able to see into her mind … She wasn’t sure she could cope with that.

The one time she gave a bottle of Rindhas a longing look, she immediately knew of Inigo’s disapproval, which triggered her own shame to new heights. No wonder the cranky old Aaron had broken down under the mental stress. It was a weird kind of human who could cope with having his heart on his sleeve the entire time.

And yet, she told herself, that’s what we were all wishing to undergo in the Void. Especially the all-inclusive telepathy as it was in the Thirty-seventh Dream. Perhaps it’s just people who are at fault. If I didn’t have so much to hide, I wouldn’t fear this as much. My fault I’m like this.

They went to sleep a few hours later, with Inigo using a low-level field scan to monitor Aaron just in case. They woke in time for a quick breakfast before they reached the Spike.

The Lindau dropped out of hyperspace fifty AUs above the blue-white A-class star’s south pole. The emergence location allowed it an unparalleled view of the star’s extensive ring system. Visual sensors swiftly picked out the Hot Ring with its innermost edge two AUs out from the star and a diameter of half an AU. A hoop of heavy metallic rocks glittering brightly in the harsh light as they tumbled around their timeless orbit. Three AUs farther out, the Dark Ring was a stark contrast, a slender band of carbonaceous particles inclined five degrees out of the ecliptic, so dark that it seemed to suck light out of space. The angle allowed it to produce a faint umbra on the so-called Smog, the third ring, composed of pale silicate dust and light particles combined with a few larger asteroids that created oddly elegant curls and whorls within the bland ocher-tinted haze. Beyond that, at seventeen AUs, was the Band Ring, a thin, very dense loop fixed in place by over a hundred shepherd moonlets. After that there was only the Ice Bracelet, which began at twenty-five AUs and blended into the Oort cloud at the system’s edge.

There were no planets, an idiosyncrasy that sorely puzzled the Commonwealth astronomers. The star was too old for the rings to be categorized as any kind of accretion disc. Most wrote it off as a quirk caused by the Spike, but that had been in place only for at the most fifty thousand years; in astrological time that was nothing. Unless of course it had obliterated the planets when it arrived, which would make it a weapon of extraordinary stature. Again highly unlikely.

From their position poised above the system, Aaron asked for approach and docking permission. It was granted by the Spike’s AI, and they slipped back into hyperspace for the short flight in.

The Spike was in the middle of the Hot Ring. It was an alien artifact whose main structure was a slim triangle that curved gently around its long axis, which measured eleven thousand kilometers from the top to an indeterminate base. There was no way to determine the exact position of the base because that part of the Spike was still buried within some dimensional twist. To the navy exploration vessel that had found it in 3072, it was as if a planet-sized starship had tried to erupt out of hyperspace with only partial success, the nose slicing out cleanly into spacetime while the tail section was still lost amid the intricate folds of the universe’s underlying quantum fields. The only thing that ruined that big-aerodynamic-starship image was the sheer size of the brute. On top of the triangle was a five-kilometer-diameter spire that was a further two thousand kilometers in length-function unknown.

Contrary to all natural orbital mechanics, the Spike remained oriented in one direction, with the tip pointing straight out of the Hot Ring ecliptic. Its concave curve also tracked the star as it traveled along its perfectly circular orbit like some heliotactic sail-shaped flower always following the light. Thus, the anchoring twist that held its base amid the whirling rocky particles was obviously active, although its mechanism was somewhere within the unreachable base. Few people still believed it was a ship, though the notion remained among the romantically inclined elements of the Commonwealth’s scientific community and the more excitable Raiel/Void conspiracy theorists.

Contact with the fourteen known alien species living inside, which was remarkably easy, didn’t advance the exploration starship’s understanding of the Spike’s origin or purpose one byte. All the species who’d found a home among the myriad habitation chambers had arrived there relatively recently, the Chikoya longest ago at four and a half thousand years. They, along with all those who had found a home in the Spike over the millennia, had made their adaptations and alterations to the basic structure to a point where it was difficult to know what was original anymore.

When the Lindau emerged from hyperspace again, they were eight hundred kilometers sunward and level with the top of the Spike, so that the massive spire stabbed up into the southern starfield above them. The smartcore accelerated them in, matching the massive structure’s errant velocity vector. Ahead of them the curved inner surface was segmented by crystalline chambers like a skin of bubbles. The smallest extended over a hundred kilometers wide, while the largest, an Ilodi settlement, stretched out to a full three hundred kilometers in diameter. Eight tubes wove around and through the chambers, each of them a convoluted loop with a diameter of thirty kilometers, acting as the Spike’s internal transport routes. Seven of them had an H-congruous oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere; the eighth supported a high-temperature methane/nitrogen environment.

Aaron directed them into a metal mushroom sprouting from one of the H-congruous tubes. There were hundreds of similar landing pads scattered randomly along all the tubes. Some of them were crude, little more than slabs of metal with a basic airlock tunnel fused onto the tube. When the Lindau settled on it, a localized artificial gravity field took over, holding the starship down at about a tenth of a gee.

Inigo and Corrie-Lyn were standing behind Aaron in the starship’s small bridge compartment, images of the Spike projecting out of a half dozen portals all around them. They could see a lot of movement on the surface. A huge variety of drones were crawling, rolling, sliding, skating, and hopping along the tubes and chambers, performing various repair and maintenance functions. All of them were operated by the controlling AI, itself a patchwork of processor cores that had been grafted onto the original management network by the residents who had come and gone over the millennia.

“The effect’s no stronger here than when it first hit us. It must be uniform,” Corrie-Lyn said wonderingly as she tried to sort through the multitude of foreign sensations that Ozzie’s telepathy effect were allowing to impact on her mind. She could feel Inigo’s mind as before and the odd unemotional threads buzzing through Aaron’s brain, but beyond them was a sensory aurora not too dissimilar to the gaiafield. Human minds were present, though she wasn’t sure how many, probably no more than a few thousand. Alien minds were also intruding that were intriguingly weird, possessing a different intensity and emotions that were subtly different.

“What I’m feeling can’t represent everyone on the Spike,” Inigo said, perceiving her interest. “For a start, there’s over a million of the Ba’rine-sect Chikoya, who settled here after they got kicked off their homeworld. They’re aggressive in their beliefs and not afraid to show it. That level of animosity is absent. Then there’s the Flam-gi and their whole nasty little speciesism superiority-they’re definitely not sharing. And Honious alone knows who or what’s in some of the sealed chambers.”

“So they’re not all part of Ozzie’s dream, then?”

“It would seem not.”

“Why?” Even as she asked it, she could sense his dismissal.

“I don’t know. We’ll just have to ask him. Aaron, do you know where he is?”

“No.” The agent’s head didn’t move; he was studying a projection of the Spike’s entire inner surface. Some kind of mapping program was active, sending flashes of color across sections and down tubes. “The controlling AI has no information on him. U-shadow-based data retrieval routines do not function effectively in the network, and some compartment sections are blocked; I cannot check the data with any accuracy.”

“Reasonable enough,” Inigo said. “There’s no overall government as such. From what I remember, you just turn up and find somewhere that supports your biochemistry and move in.”

“So what now?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

“We will visit the largest human settlement and ask them for Isaacs’s location.”

“And if they don’t know?” Inigo asked.

“He is renowned. Someone will know.”

“But he already knows we’re here,” Inigo said.

Aaron turned to stare at him. “Have you signaled him?”

“No. But this telepathy effect exposes everything to everybody. That’s what he came here to do. Therefore, he is aware of our arrival.”

“Can you determine the source of the effect?”

“No.”

“Very well. Come with me now.” Aaron walked out into the companionway.

Inigo gave Corrie-Lyn a bemused shrug, and the two of them followed meekly behind Aaron as he went into the scoutship’s main airlock.

The landing pad had extruded a malmetal cylinder that was compatible with the starship’s seal. The outer door expanded, showing the cylinder curving down. Aaron stepped through and glided forward in the low gravity. The cylinder bent in a sharp double curve to take them through the tube wall. They passed through a translucent pressure curtain that shivered around them, and then they were inside a small blue metal building with open archways. The temperature and humidity rose sharply to subtropical levels. They walked through the arches onto a broad paved area. The tube’s inner surface was covered in lush pink-tinged grasses and long meandering gray-blue forests. Fifteen kilometers above their heads, a sliver of dazzling white light ran along the axis of the tube, shining through the thick smears of helical cloud that drifted along the interior. As soon as they’d stepped through the pressure curtain, Corrie-Lyn had felt the gravity rise to about two-thirds Earth standard, which gave her the visual impression of standing at the bottom of a cylinder where anything moving on the solid roof above her should fall straight down, though intellectually she knew damn well that every point of the landscape arching above her had the same gravity.

She puffed her cheeks out, partly from the heat and partly from the improbability of the vista. “And this is just the transport route?”

“One of them,” Aaron replied. “There are short-length wormholes and some T-spheres operational within the structure. However, they are under the control of the species which installed them. The tubes provide a general connection between chambers.”

“We walk?” she asked incredulously.

“No.” Aaron looked up.

Corrie-Lyn followed his gaze, seeing a dark triangle descending out of the glaring light straight toward them. As it grew closer, she could see it was some kind of aircraft, maybe twenty meters long and quite fat given its otherwise streamlined appearance. Human lettering was stenciled on the narrow swept tail fin, registration codes that made no sense. Landing legs unfolded neatly fore and aft, and it settled on the tough wiry grass. A door swung open halfway along its bulging belly. No malmetal, then, she mused. She couldn’t see any jet intakes, either. Whatever propelled it had to be similar to ingrav.

The cabin interior was basic and somehow primitive to anyone accustomed to the Commonwealth’s ubiquitous capsules. She sank into a chair that could have been designed only for a human body. The hull wasn’t transparent, either, which disappointed her. Inigo picked up on the feeling. “There’s a sensor feed,” he told her, and gave her u-shadow a little access routine that wasn’t like any program she was familiar with.

“How do you know that?” she asked as the aircraft’s camera views unfolded in her exovision. They were already lifting fast, not that the acceleration was apparent.

“I’m monitoring Aaron’s datatraffic,” he replied levelly.

After it rose above the thick winding clouds, the aircraft shot forward. The speed made Corrie-Lyn blink. “Wow,” she murmured.

“As best I can make out, we’re doing about Mach twenty,” Inigo said. “Even with the way this tube bends about, you can probably get from one end of the Spike to the other in a couple of hours.”

“So what’s the place we’re going to?”

“The chamber has been named Octoron,” Aaron said curtly.

“How far?”

“Flight duration approximately three minutes.”

She rolled her eyes, hoping her mind wasn’t showing just how unnerving she found this machinelike version of Aaron, though presumably he no longer had the thought routines that bothered about such emotional trivia. When she concentrated on the few thought impulses inside his head, they were all calm and cool, so much so that it was hard to sense them at all.

Their little plane looped casually halfway around the axial light, then slowed quickly to begin its vertical decent. They landed close to a broad low dome of some silver-gray fabric that had wide arches around the base. It was obviously a transport hub; several other planes were landing and taking off. People came and went from the cathedral-sized dome, dressed like any citizens of the Outer Commonwealth worlds in a mix of styles from ultramodern toga suits down to the whimsy of centuries past.

Sitting right at the center of the airy dome was a gold-mirrored sphere whose lower quarter was hidden belowground. People were walking in and out of it, pushing through the surface as if it were less substantial than mist. As she walked toward it, Corrie-Lyn was conscious of the suspicion and curiosity starting to emanate from the minds around her. Her consternation that Inigo at least would be recognized was acting as positive feedback. Several people stopped to stare. She felt their astonishment as recognition dawned. It was swiftly tinged by anger and resentment.

Just before they reached the gold surface, Aaron took Inigo’s hand. “Do not attempt to evade me,” he warned.

“I have no intention to,” Inigo told him.

Aaron was still holding him as they all went through the sphere wall. Corrie-Lyn felt the surface flow around her like a pressure curtain. Then she was falling slowly as gravity shrank away again. It was gloomy inside. Her macrocellular clusters ran vision-amplifying routines, enabling her to see the wide shaft she was dropping down. It was a variant on a null-grav chute, about three hundred meters long. Aaron and Inigo were a couple of meters ahead of her.

The descent took barely a minute. Whatever gravity distortion was gripping her, it began to flip her around so that she wound up rising to the far end of the chute. It was covered by a murky barrier identical to the one at the other end of the chute. Her skin tingled as she passed through.

Emergence location: plaza.

Active› Grade three integral force field

Active› Level two biononic field scan. Scan summation: plaza one hundred seventy-eight point three meters major diameter. Three main access roads, five secondary streets. Immediate population eighty-seven adult humans, subdivision fifty-three Higher; nineteen children under twelve. No alien life-forms. Surrounding buildings average height twenty-five meters, facade composition high-purity iron. Domestic power supply one hundred twenty volts; high rate communication net. Visible transport: bicycles. Gravatonic fluctuation indicates seven ingrav drive units operational within three kilometers.

Preliminary assessment: secure environment. No threat to subject alpha. Subject alpha restrained by physical grip; maintain restraint condition.

Primary mission commencement: Determine location of Oswald Fernandez Isaacs.

Four options.

Initiate option one: ask.

“You.”

Octoron citizen one: male, height one point seven two centimeters; biononic functionality moderate: “Yes?”

“Where is Oswald Fernandez Isaacs?”

Octoron citizen one: “Who? Hey, aren’t you Inigo?”

Subject alpha: “Yeah, ’fraid so.”

Octoron citizen one: “You bastard. You stupid selfish bastard. What are you doing here?”

Subject alpha: “Look, I’m sorry. This is complicated. Please answer his question. We need to find Ozzie.”

Octoron citizen one: “Hey, why can’t I sense your thoughts?”

“Irrelevant. Do you know where Isaacs is?”

Octoron citizen one: “You’re with Inigo? Go screw yourself.”

Scan› Octoron citizen one altering biononic field functions. Skin temperature rising, heart rate increasing, muscle contraction, elevated adrenaline. Analysis: possible aggression.

Threat.

Response.

Activate› Biononic weapons field.

Armed› Disrupter pulse. Target: midsection Octoron citizen one. Fire.

External sound level increasing. Human screaming.

Subject beta: “Oh, great Lady! You killed him.”

“I neutralized the threat.”

“Threat? What fucking threat, you monster?”

Primary mission: option one failure. Go to option two.

“You.”

Octoron citizen two: female, one point five eight centimeters, zero biononics, full Advancer macrocellular sequence. Running.

Capture.

“You.”

Octoron citizen two: “What? I haven’t done anything. Let me go. Help! Help!”

Subject beta: “Put her down, you bastard.”

“Is Oswald Fernandez Isaacs resident in the Spike?”

Octoron citizen two, no response.

Option two, second level.

Octoron citizen two: incoherent scream.

“Is Oswald Fernandez Isaacs resident in the Spike?”

Octoron citizen two: “Yes, yes, he’s here. Oh, shit, that hurts. Stop it, please. Please.”

Subject beta: “Let her go.”

Subject alpha: “Stop this now.”

Scan summation: twenty-three Higher humans activating high-level biononic fields.

Approaching. Interperson data exchanges increasing.

Threat imminent.

Response grade one to hostile enclosure situation.

“Halt now or I will kill her.”

Subject beta: “Stay back. Back. The maniac means it. Please, stay back.”

“Where is Oswald Fernandez Isaacs?”

Octoron citizen two: “I don’t know. Please.”

“Who knows where Isaacs is?”

Three Octoron citizens, simultaneously: “Let her go.”

Scan reception› Eight target sensors locking on.

“I will kill her unless he is brought to me.”

Subject alpha: “Stop this. Let me talk to them.”

“No.”

Enclosure threat elevated to grade five.

Response. Random target selection twelve citizens, three buildings.

Armed› Disrupter pulse. Sequential fire pattern.

Armed› Ion beam. Sequential fire pattern.

Scan› Level five› Successful penetration of debris cloud and atmospheric ionization.

Zero immediate threat.

Surrounding sound level high.

Humans in plaza retreating. Casualties fifteen. Fatalities five.

Octoron citizen two struggling. Uncooperative.

Primary mission: option two failure. Go to option three.

U-shadow download general broadcast into local communication net.

“This is an open message for Oswald Fernandez Isaacs. I mean you no harm. It is imperative that you contact me. I have Inigo with me. Together you can resolve the Void catastrophe.”

Subject beta: “Oh, that should do it, you moron dickhead. I’d be rushing to call you if it was me.” Voice level raised/condition hysterical.

“Be silent.”

Subject alpha: “Aaron, this has to stop. Do you understand? You are wrecking your own mission.”

Analysis.

Claim refuted.

“I know what I have to do. Don’t interfere.”

Subject alpha: “You don’t know. You’re dealing with humans; you need an emotional component in your reasoning. And you don’t have that anymore.”

“This environment is hostile to my emotion-based routines; it corrodes my rationality. They cannot be permitted.”

Subject beta: “Oh, shit. Shit, what do we do?”

Subject alpha: “I don’t know.”

Alert› T-sphere establishing across Octoron. Emergence of eleven objects-distance fifty meters. Scan› Level eight› Intruders identified: adult tri-stage Chikoya encased in armor. Multiple weapon hardware attached. Force fields active.

Surrounding sound level increasing-human screaming.

Subject beta: “Great Lady, what are they?”

Chikoya one: “You are the human messiah.”

Analyze: How did they know that and locate subject alpha so quickly? Time elapsed since landing seventeen minutes.

Subject alpha: “I am Inigo, yes.”

Situation analysis. Chikoya engaging deployment maneuver. High tactical advantage in successful encirclement.

Probability of protecting subjects alpha and beta from synchronized Chikoya weapons fire: minimal. Option one: discard subject beta.

Chikoya one: “You have initiated a devourment phase in the Void.”

Subject alpha: “I haven’t been in contact with Edeard for over a century and a half.”

Chikoya one: “You initiated contact. You are responsible. You must stop it.”

“All Void activity will be ended. We will see to it. Now leave Octoron.”

Chikoya one: “Messiah, you will come with us. Your threat to the galaxy must be ended. Come now.”

“Not permissible. Remove yourself and your kind from this place.”

Chikoya one: “Your messiah comes with us.”

“Inigo, raise your integral force field to its highest setting.”

Subject alpha: “What about Corrie-Lyn? Damn you, she’s naked out here.”

Subject beta: “What’s happening? Inigo, don’t go with those things, please. Aaron, you have to-”

Alert› Chikoya weapons activation.

Multiple target acquisition.

Armed› Disrupter pulse. Sequential fire.

Armed› Neutron lasers. Sequential fire.

Electronic countermeasures. Engaged. Full power.

Armed› Microkinetics. Smart acquisition. Free fire authority.

Cease fire.

Scan› Active Chikoya immediate area withdrawal. Redeployment. › Tracking.

Current tactical situation poor. Move. Subject alpha to accompany.

Subject alpha holding subject beta, force field extended to protect her.

“Let go of her.”

Subject alpha: “Fuck you.”

Scan.

Move into Building A. Utilize the cover it provides.

“Come with me.”

Moving. Subject alpha, subject beta, accompanying.

Alert› Multiple target acquisition.

Greatest tactical location: stand in Building A doorway.

Armed› Disrupter pulse. Sequential fire.

Armed› Neutron lasers. Sequential fire.

Armed› Ion beams. Sequential fire.

Armed› Microkinetics. Smart acquisition. Free fire authority.

Armed› Ariel smartseeker stealth mines. Chikoya profile loaded. Dispense.

Alert› Teleport emergence, eighteen armored Chikoya.

“We can’t get away. They know you’re here.”

Cease fire.

Subject alpha (shouting): “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Exit doorway. Weapons fire impact weakening Building A structure.

“This way.”

Enact exit strategy.

Scan› mapping Building A layout. Exit route confirmed. U-shadow established in local communications net, infiltrating adjacent transport capsules.

Alert› Chikoya access of Building A.

Targeting Building B structural load points.

Armed› Disrupter pulse. Fire.

Integral force field strengthened to resist partial Building A collapse. Fire outbreak. Scan through smoke. Three Chikoya disabled.

Subject alpha: “Where do we go?”

“We must leave the immediate area. Switch off your force field.”

Subject alpha: “What? In the Lady’s name, you’ve got to be joking.”

“Negative. They are tracking your presence through the telepathy effect. It is completely pervasive and leaves you exposed wherever you are.”

Subject alpha: “So?”

“Switch off your force field. I will render you unconscious. If you are not thinking, your thoughts cannot betray our location.”

Subject beta: “Inigo! No! He’ll kill us both. He will; it’s what he does.”

“You are no use to me dead.”

Alert› Target acquisition: Building C rooftop.

Armed› Microkinetics suppression barrage. Fire.

Target eliminated.

Subject alpha: “But I can’t stop the Void if I’m unconscious.”

“When I acquire Isaacs, I will insist he switch off the telepathy effect. No one will be able to find you then.”

Subject alpha: “Oh, sweet Lady.”

Subject beta: “No no no.”

Subject alpha: “You look after Corrie-Lyn, too.”

“I will.”

Alert› Nine Chikoya deploying in acquisition formation.

Subject alpha: “Aaron, whatever’s left of the real you in there, I’m holding you to that.”

Exit capsule approaching. Landing zone designated to u-shadow. Three decoy capsules en route-safety limiters disabled.

“You can rely on me.”

Subject alpha: “Very well.”

Subject beta: “No! Inigo, no, please.”

Scan confirmation, subject alpha force field deactivated. Targeting.

Armed› Microkinetics, minimal tissue damage mode selected, neurosedative tip loaded. Fire.

Subject beta: “No! Oh, Lady, you’ve killed him. Get away from me. Get away, you monster.”

Subject beta attempting to run.

Targeting.

Armed› Microkinetic, minimal tissue damage mode selected, neurosedative tip loaded. Fire.

Alert› Five Chikoya approaching, open assault formation.

Multiple target acquisition.

Armed› Disrupter pulse. Maximum power rating. Sequential fire. U-shadow update: landing exit capsule behind Building D.

Armed› Neutron lasers. Maximum power rating. Sequential fire.

U-shadow update: decoy capsules on collision vector. Mach eight. Accelerating.

Armed› Microkinetics. Enhanced explosive warheads. Free fire authority.

Armed› Ariel smartseeker stealth mines. Chikoya profile loaded. Dispense.

Alert› New targets.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

The Delivery Man’s biononics ran a last scan over the weird active-molecular vortex and the way it spun down through the quantum fields. It was an interesting chunk of superphysics technology, certainly. He had no idea what its function might actually be, though he suspected it was an elaborate experiment. Whatever it was, he was fairly sure it wasn’t the elevation mechanism.

His u-shadow opened a link to Gore. “Washout,” he reported.

“Yeah, me, too.”

“I’m coming out.” There was little light in the vast cave, a few cold blue patches up amid the multitude of stalactites eighty meters above his head. The bottom quarter of the cave had been cut smooth and flat, leaving the natural rock formations above. Even two and a half thousand years ago, when the advanced Anomine had set it up, the cave couldn’t have been a terribly practical place. That was the thing with the Anomine; everything had an aesthetic aspect.

Water dripped out of the deep fissures and off the ends of the stalactites, creating long pungent algal ribbons down the rough walls. Drainage channels had clogged, leaving dank puddles spreading across the floor. The vortex carried on regardless; moisture and murky air were never going to affect its composition or function.

As he retraced his steps along the winding passage back out to the surface, the Delivery Man was puzzled by the lack of any communication system connected to the vortex. If it was an experiment, surely they would need to monitor the results; same for a control system. Or maybe I’m missing something, he thought wearily. Maybe there is an ultrasophisticated net covering the whole planet that biononic scans are simply too primitive to discover. He was grasping at straws and knew it. The Last Throw’s sensors were good. They’d detected a hundred twenty-four advanced devices still functional on the planet, of which the vortex was the eleventh they’d examined. If there was some kind of web linking them, Last Throw’s sensors would have revealed it.

A quarter of an hour later, the Delivery Man walked out into the evening sunlight. Tall cumulonimbus scurried through the darkening sky, splashed a pale rose gold by the vanishing sun. From his position high up a plateau wall, the countryside swept away to the southeast, its farthest fringes already turning to black. Several rivers traced bright silver threads across the mauve and jade vegetation. Then there was the city to the east, larger and more imposing than any of Earth’s cities even at the height of the population boom. A forest of tall towers stretched over a mile into the air; elaborate spiked spheres and curving pyramids filled the ground between the soaring spires like foothills. Lights were still shining through windows and open arches as the service machinery maintained the city in perfect readiness for occupation.

It was completely devoid of anyone, which he found strangely sad; it reminded him of a spurned lover. The remaining Anomine chose to live in their farm villages out in the open land. He could even see several of their little settlements amid the darkening land, flickering orange lights growing as the nightly fires were lit. He never did get that philosophy, living in the shadow of a past civilization, knowing that at any time they could simply move into the giant towers and live a life of unrivaled luxury, challenge their minds once again. Yet instead, they rejected any form of technology beyond labor-animal carts and plows, and filled their days tilling the fields and building huts.

The Last Throw came streaking in over the mountains behind him to finish up hovering a few centimeters above the succulent spiral grass-equivalent. He drifted up into the airlock.

“This is getting us nowhere fast,” Gore grumbled as the Delivery Man arrived in the main cabin.

“It’s your procedure. What else have we got? There’re not too many of these things to examine.”

“They’re all small scale. We have to look big.”

“We don’t know that, remember,” the Delivery Man chided as he settled in a broad leather-cushioned scoop chair. “We simply don’t know what it is. That vortex I just examined. It had to be linked with the elevation mechanism.”

“How?” Gore snapped.

“I think it was some kind of experiment, probing the local quantum structure. That kind of knowledge could only help contribute to going postphysical, surely.”

“Don’t call me Shirley.”

“What?”

Gore ran a hand over his forehead. “Yeah. Right. Whatever.”

The Delivery Man was mildly puzzled by Gore’s lack of focus. It wasn’t like him at all. “All right. So what I was thinking is that there has to be some kind of web and database in the cities.”

“There is. You can’t access it.”

“Why not?”

“The AIs are sentient. They won’t allow any information retrieval.”

“That’s stupid.”

“From our point of view, yes, but they’re the same as the borderguards: They maintain the homeworld’s sanctity; the AIs keep the Anomine’s information safe.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what the Anomine do; that’s what they are. They’re entitled to protect what they’ve built, same as anyone.”

“But we’re not damag-”

“I know!” Gore snarled. “I fucking know that, all right. We have to work around this. And listening to you sitting there whining twenty-four seven is no fucking help at all. Jezus, I should have lived a fucking normal twenty-first-century life and died properly. Why the hell do I fucking bother to help you moron supermen? Certainly not the gratitude.”

The Delivery Man only just stopped himself from opening his jaw to gawp at the gold-skinned man sitting in his antique orange shell chair. He was about to ask what the problem was, then realized. “She’ll be out of suspension soon,” he said sympathetically.

Gore grunted, shoving himself farther back in his chair’s cushioning. “She should’ve been there by now.”

“We don’t know. In the Void we just don’t know. Time flow there isn’t uniform.”

“Maybe.”

“The confluence nests are functioning. She will dream Makkathran for you; she’ll be there.”

“It’ll mean crap if we don’t find the mechanism.”

“I know. And we’ve still got Marius to deal with when we do.” The Delivery Man had been perturbed when the sensors showed them that Marius had gotten past the borderguard stations. The Accelerator agent’s ship had immediately dropped back into stealth mode once it was inside the cometary belt. Currently it was lurking amid the orbital debris cloud above the Anomine homeworld, watching them zip over the planet. It wouldn’t take much to work out what they were doing.

“Ha. That dick. We can take him whenever we want.”

“We don’t know that.”

“It takes smarter and tougher than him to catch me with my ass hanging out.”

The Delivery Man shook his head. He couldn’t decide if the machismo was worse than the insecurity. “Well, let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Oh, yeah. Wishful thinking; that’s what keeps the universe ticking.”

The Delivery Man groaned and gave up.

Gore’s golden lips parted in a small smile. “The navy teams didn’t exactly push the AIs.”

“Uh huh,” the Delivery Man said warily.

“We’ve got another hundred or so of these tech high spots left to examine, right? So that’s not going to take more than four or five days if we hustle.”

“That sounds about right.”

“Then we do it. If we draw a blank, we go to plan B.”

“Which is?”

“Did you know I actually knew Ozzie?”

“I didn’t, but it doesn’t surprise me. You were contemporaries.”

“He pulled off two of the greatest thefts in human history.”

“Two? I knew there was some dispute with Nigel about taking the Charybdis.”

“Dispute? Jesus, do they even teach you people history these days? Nigel nearly killed him, and that’s not a metaphor.”

The Delivery Man ignored the “you people” crack. After two weeks cooped up in the Last Throw’s cabin with Gore, it was almost a compliment. “So what was the first crime?”

Gore grinned. “The great wormhole heist. The smart-ass bastard cleaned out the Vegas casinos, and nobody ever knew it was him. Not until after the war and Orion let it slip. Can you imagine that?”

“No, I truly cannot.”

“Well, sonny, you and I are going to steal the knowledge of an entire species. If that’s what it takes to find this goddamn mechanism, then that’s what we’re going to do. Nobody will remember Ozzie’s legend then, so screw him.”

I didn’t know it anyway, the Delivery Man complained silently. He had no idea how Gore was planning to circumvent the Anomine AIs, but he suspected it wouldn’t be a quiet method.