The Evolutionary Void

NINE

DAWN ARRIVED as the Last Throw lifted silently back into the chill air above the Delivery Man. Ahead of him the sun was rising, a sliver of rose-gold incandescence emerging above the mountains on the horizon. He could feel the weak heat on his face as he started to walk down the slope. Thin strands of mist were stirring above the tiny coils of grass-equivalent, filling the folds in the land to form wraithlike streams. Local birds were already calling out in their guttural warbles, taking flight from the black trees as the light grew stronger.

The Delivery Man watched them lumber upward, amused by the sight. It looked like evolution hadn’t gotten it quite right on this world; what they lacked in grace, they made up for in bulk.

A sleeping herd of quadruped beasts grunted and shook themselves, greeting the new day in their own laborious way: ponderous creatures the size of a terrestrial rhino and imbued with almost the same temper. Their heavily creased hide was a dapple of rust-brown and gray, and legs as thick as the Delivery Man’s torso could plod onward all day with prodigious stamina. These were the animals the Anomine kept to pull their plows and wagons.

The Delivery Man skirted the herd before they noticed that something strange walked among them. It would hardly do to stampede the animals before he’d had a chance to greet the natives.

He could smell smoke upon the breeze as he neared the village. Fires that had blazed throughout the night were finally dying down to embers now that they had performed their task and warned off the wilder animals during the long hours of darkness.

The Last Throw’s sensors had run a passive scan across the village as they came down to land, revealing a broad semicircular sprawl of buildings along the banks of a small river. There was little evidence of stonework aside from a few low circular walls that appeared to be grain silos. The buildings all employed wooden construction. Retinal enrichments gave him a good look at them as he covered the last half mile to the village. The houses stood on thick legs a couple of meters above the dusty ground. Roofs were tightly packed dried reeds overhanging bowed walls made from curving ovals of polished wooden frames that held some kind of hardened translucent membrane. He could just make out shadows moving within the houses he was approaching.

A couple of Anomine tending one of the village’s five fire pits stopped moving and twitched their antennae. They were elderly; he could tell that from the dark lavender color of their limbs and the way their lower legs curved back, reducing their height. Youngsters were a nearly uniform copper color, whereas the adults in their prime had a jade hue. These ones were also larger around the trunk section. Weight gain clearly didn’t affect only humans as they got older.

He walked into the village as his u-shadow ran one last check through the translator unit hanging around his neck on a gold chain. It was a palm-size rectangle, capable of producing the higher-frequency sounds employed in the Anomine language. Navy cultural anthropologists had resequenced their vocal chords so they could speak with the Anomine directly, but it hadn’t been an unqualified success. The effort had been appreciated, though; the Anomine really didn’t like machines more advanced than a wheel.

The Delivery Man studied the etiquette profile file displayed by his exovision. “I greet you this fine morning,” he said, which immediately came out as a series of squeaks and whistles similar to dolphin chatter. “I have traveled from another world to visit you. I would ask you to share stories of your ancestors.” He bowed slightly, which was probably a gesture wasted on the aliens.

They were taller than he by nearly a meter, especially when they stood up straight, which they did to walk. Their tapering midsections were nearly always bent forward, and the upper knee joints of the triple-segment legs folded the limbs back to balance.

The one whose limbs were shading from purple toward black replied. “I greet you this morning, star traveler. I am Tyzak. I am an old-father to the village. I can spare some time to exchange stories with you.”

“I thank you for showing me such a kindness,” the Delivery Man said. If there was excitement or curiosity in Tyzak’s posture, he couldn’t gauge it. Unlike the weight issue, there was no human-parallel body language, no jittering about or understandable agitation. It would have been hard, he admitted to himself. Their skin was almost like scales, making subtle muscle motion impossible. As for the classic darting eyes, their twin antennae were a uniform slime-gray of photosensitive receptor cells waving up from the small knobbly head that was mostly mouth, giving them a visual interpretation of their world wholly different from that of a human. The brain was a third of the way down inside the torso, between the small midarms and larger main upper arms.

“Your true voice is silent,” Tyzak said.

“Yes. I cannot make the correct sounds to speak to you directly. I apologize for the machine which translates.”

“No apology is required.”

“I was told you do not approve of machines.”

The two Anomine touched the small claws of their midarms. “Someone has been less than truthful with you,” Tyzak said. “I am grateful you have come to our village that we might speak the truth with you.”

“It was my own kind who informed me of your aversion to machinery. We visited a long time ago.”

“Then your kind’s memory has faded over time. We do not dislike machines; we simply choose not to use them.”

“May I ask why?”

Tyzak’s middle and upper knees bent, lowering him into a squatting position. The other Anomine walked away. “We have a life path laid out by this world which formed us,” Tyzak said. “We know what happened to us when we chose a life path centered around machines and technology. Our ancestors achieved greatness, as great as you, even.”

“Your ancestors reached farther than we have in so many ways,” the Delivery Man said. “Our debt to them is enormous. They safeguarded so many stars from an aggressive race, for which we are forever grateful.”

“You speak of the oneness which lives around two stars. It sought to devour all other life.”

“You know of them?”

“Our life path is separate from our great ancestors, for which we feel sorrow, but we rejoice in their achievements. They went on to become something other, something magnificent.”

“Yet you didn’t follow them. Why was that?”

“This planet created us. It should choose the nature of our final days.”

“Sounds like another goddamn religion to me,” Gore said over the secure link.

“More like our factions,” the Delivery Man countered. “Their version of the Accelerators went off and elevated, while the Natural Darwinists wanted to see what nature intended for them.”

More Anomine were coming down from their houses, jumping easily onto the ground from thin doorways several meters above the ground. Once they were on the ground, they moved surprisingly swiftly. Long legs carried them forward in a fast loping gait, with each stride almost a bounce. As they moved, they bobbed forward at a precarious angle.

Their balance was much better than a human’s, the Delivery Man decided, even though the motion sparked an inappropriate comparison to a pigeon walk.

A group of younger ones bounded over. He was soon surrounded by Anomine children who simply couldn’t keep still. They bopped up and down as they chattered loudly among themselves, discussing him, the strange creature with its odd body and clothes and weak-looking pincers and fur on top. The noise level was almost painful to his ears.

He heard Tyzak explaining what he was.

“Where do you come from?” one of the children asked. It was taller than its fellows, getting on toward the Delivery Man’s height, and its apricot skin was darkening to a light shade of green.

“A planet called Earth, which is light-years from here.”

“Why are you here?”

“I search out wisdom. Your ancestors knew so much.”

The children’s high-pitched calls increased. The translator caught it as a round of self-reinforcing: “Yes. Yes, they did.”

“I eat now,” Tyzak said. “Will you join me?”

“That would please me,” the Delivery Man assured him.

Tyzak stood swiftly, scattering several of the children, who bounded about in circles. He started walking toward one of the nearby houses, moving fast. His lower curving legs seemed almost to roll off the ground. The Delivery Man jogged alongside, keeping pace. “I should tell you, I may not be physically able to eat most of your food.”

“I understand. It is unlikely your biochemistry is compatible with our plants.”

“You understand the concept of biochemistry?”

“We are not ignorant, star traveler. We simply do not apply our knowledge as you do.”

“I understand.”

Tyzak reached his house and jumped up to a small platform outside the door. The Delivery Man took a fast look at the thick posts the house stood on and swarmed up the one below the platform.

“You are different,” Tyzak announced, and went inside.

The membrane windows allowed a lot of light to filter through. Now that he was inside, the Delivery Man could see oil-rainbow patterns on the taut surface, which he thought must be some kind of skin or bark that had been cured. Inside, Tyzak’s house was divided into three rooms. There wasn’t much furniture in the largest one where they entered. Some plain chests were lined up along an inner wall. There were three curious cradle contraptions that the Delivery Man guessed were chairs and five benches arranged in a central pentagon, all of which were covered by fat earthenware pots.

His first impression was that half of them were boiling their contents. Bubbles fizzed away in their open tops. And the air was so pungent, it made his eyes water. He recognized the scent of rotting or fermenting fruit, but so much stronger than he’d ever smelled before.

After a moment he realized there was no heater or fire in the room even though the air was a lot warmer than outside. The pots really were fermenting-vigorously. When he took a peek in one, the sticky mass it held reminded him of jam, but before the fruit was properly pulped.

Tyzak pulled one of the pots toward him and bent over it, opening his clam mouth wide enough to cover the top. The Delivery Man had a brief glimpse of hundreds of little tooth mandibles wiggling before the Anomine closed his mouth and sucked the contents down in a few quick gulps.

“Would you like to sample some of my ›no direct translation: cold-cook conserve/soup‹?” Tyzak asked. “I know the sharing of food ritual has significance to your kind. There must be one here harmless enough for you to ingest.”

“No, thank you. So you do remember members of my species visiting this world before?”

“We hold the stories dear.” Tyzak picked up another pot and closed his mouth around it.

“No one else seems interested in me except for the younger villagers.”

“I will tell the story of you at our gathering. The story will spread from village to village as we cogather. Within twenty years the world will know your story. From that moment on you will be told and retold to the new generations. You will never be lost to us, star traveler.”

“That is gratifying to know. You must know a lot of stories, Tyzak.”

“I do. I am old enough to have heard many. So many that they now begin to fade from me. This is why I tell them again and again, so they are not lost.”

“Stupid,” Gore observed. “They’re going to lose a lot of information like that. We know they used to have a culture of writing; you can’t develop technology without basic symbology, especially math. Why dump that? Their history is going to get badly distorted this way; that’s before it dies out altogether.”

“Don’t worry,” the Delivery Man told him. “What we need is too big to be lost forever; they’ve certainly still got that.”

“Yeah, sure; the suspense is killing me.”

“I would hear stories of your ancestors,” the Delivery Man said to Tyzak. “I would like to know how it was that they left this world, this universe.”

“All who visit us upon this world wish this story above everything else. I have many other stories to tell. There is one of Gazuk, whose bravery saved five youngsters from drowning when a bridge fell. I listened to Razul tell her own story of holding a flock of ›no direct translation: wolf-equivalent‹ at bay while her sisters birthed. Razul was old when I attended that cogathering, but his words remain true. There are stories of when Fozif flew from this world atop a machine of flame to walk upon Ithal, our neighboring planet, the first of our kind ever to do such a thing. That is our oldest story; from that grows all stories of our kind thereafter.”

“Which do you want to tell me?”

“Every story of our beautiful world. That is what we live for. So that everything may be known to all of us.”

“But isn’t that contrary to what you are? Knowledge lies in the other direction, the technology and science you have turned from.”

“That is the story of machines. That story has been told. It is finished. We tell the stories of ourselves now.”

“I think I understand. It is not what was achieved by your ancestors but the individuals who achieved it.”

“You grow close to our story, to living with us. To hear the story of what we are today, you must hear all our stories.”

“I regret that my time on your world is short. I would be grateful for any story you can tell me about your ancestors and the way they left this universe behind. Do you know where this great event took place?”

Tyzak gulped down another pot. He went over to the chests and opened the hinged lids. Small, bulging cloth sacks were taken out and carried over to the benches. “There is a story that tells of the great parting which will never fade from me. It is most important to us, for that is how our kind was split. Those who left and those who proclaimed their allegiance to our planet and the destiny it had birthed us for. To this time we regret the separation, for we will never now be rejoined.”

“My people are also divided into many types,” the Delivery Man said as he watched Tyzak open the sacks. Various fruits and roots were taken out and dropped into pots. Water from a large urn at the center of the benches was added. Finally, the alien sprinkled in some blue-white powder from a small sachet. The contents of the pots began to bubble.

“I will listen to your stories of division,” Tyzak said. “They connect to me.”

“Thank you. And the story of the place where your ancestors left? I would very much like to know it, to visit the site itself.”

“We will go there.”

That wasn’t quite the reply the Delivery Man was expecting. “That is good news. Shall I call for my ship? It can take us anywhere on this world.”

“I understand your offer is intended to be kindness. However, I do not wish to travel on your ship. I will walk to the place of separation.”

“Oh, crap,” Gore said. “This could take months, years. Just try and get the damn monster to tell you where it is. Tell him you’ll meet him there if necessary.”

“I regret I am not able to walk very far on your world,” the Delivery Man said. “I need my own kind of food. Perhaps we could meet at the place.”

“It is barely two days away,” Tyzak said. “Can you not travel that far?”

“Yes, I can travel that far.”

“Hot damn,” Gore was saying. “Your new friend must mean the city at the far end of the valley. There’s nowhere else it can be.”

The Delivery Man’s secondary routines were pulling files out of his lacuna and splashing them across his exovision. “We checked a building there four days ago, right next to a big plaza on the west side. You went in. There was an exotic matter formation, some kind of small wormhole stabilizer. Nonoperational. We assumed it was connected to an orbital station or something that doesn’t exist anymore.”

“That just shows you how stupid it is to assume anything about aliens,” Gore said. “We’ve found fifty-three exactly like it and dismissed them all.”

“They were all in different cities,” the Delivery Man said, reviewing a planetary map in his exovision. “Well distributed geographically. I suppose they could be an abandoned transport network like the old Trans-Earth-Loop.”

“Yeah, that was before your time, but I used it often enough. Whatever, I’m on my way to the city now. I’m going to scan and analyze that mother down to its last negative atom. I’ll find out what the hell it does before you’ve had lunch.”

Tyzak walked through into one of the back rooms. The Delivery Man considered it a minor miracle the old alien didn’t bash its antennae on the ceiling. But each movement was deft, and it ducked under the doorway without pausing.

“Lucky we picked a village close to the actual elevation mechanism,” the Delivery Man responded. He couldn’t believe it himself. Probability was stacked way too high against such a thing.

“About time we got a break,” Gore replied.

The Delivery Man knew damn well he didn’t believe it, either. Perhaps Tyzak is just going to use the wormhole to take us to the elevation mechanism. Maybe that’s what the transport mechanism is for. No, that’s stupid. If he won’t use a starship to fly to the city, he’s not going to use a wormhole. Damn!

The Anomine came back into the main room dressed in what resembled loops of thick cloth dyed in bright colors and embellished with stone beads. It was actually an elaborate garment, the Delivery Man acknowledged, covering the long tapering abdomen while allowing the legs and arms complete freedom of movement.

They set off straightaway, walking down the slope through the village, then crossing the river on an arched stone bridge that was old enough for the outer stone to be flaking away.

“How long has your village been here?” the Delivery Man asked.

“Seven hundred years.”

The fields and orchards on the other side of the water were neatly tended. Anomine adults moved along the rows of trees, reaching up to snip the fruit stems with their strong upper arm pincer claws. They were mostly the mothers, the Delivery Man guessed from their coloration. The Anomine life cycle followed a simple progression from neutral youngsters to adult female to elder male, with each stage lasting about twenty-five years. It was very unusual for an adult to live past eighty.

That he simply could not get his head around. He knew they’d had complete mastery of genetic manipulation in the past, giving them the ability to extend their lives. That, too, had been rejected and neutralized so that they could follow their original evolutionary path. There was no human faction that would ever follow such a tenet; even the Naturals went in for good old-fashioned rejuvenation every thirty years. The desire to cling to life was screwed into the human psyche deep beyond any psychoneural profiling to remove.

Like hope, he thought. I’m carrying on this ridiculous charade of Gore’s because it gives me hope. It’s the only way I know that might possibly deliver me back to Lizzie and the kids. Ozzie alone knows what madness Ilanthe has planned when she reaches the Void, but no one else has any idea how to stop her. If only this wasn’t so … frail. If only I could bring myself to believe in what I’m doing.

The Delivery Man raised his head. High above, the ancient orbital debris band shimmered faintly through breaks in the cloud, like a motionless strand of silver cirrus. He sighed at the sight. Signs and portents in the sky, that’s what I’m searching for now. How pathetic is that? And I think the Anomine are weak and strange because they reembrace their primitive life. A life that doesn’t threaten the galaxy. A life which doesn’t tear fathers from their families.

He opened the link to Gore. “What are you going to do after? If we win?”

“Get back out of this goddamn meat animal for a start, back into ANA, where I can think properly again.”

“But isn’t that the problem? Look what our evolutionary drive has pushed us to.”

“You think we’re suffering overreach, sonny? You think arrogance is the root of all this?”

“In a way, yes.”

“Ha, in a way: for fucking certain. That’s why we need to keep going, keep pushing the human development boundary. All of us need to boost our responsibility and rationality genes to the maximum. It’s the only way to survive peacefully in a galaxy as dangerous as this one.”

“That’s an old argument.”

“And completely valid. Maybe the one argument that has remained relevant for our entire history. Without education and understanding, the barbarians would have outnumbered us and swarmed the city gates a long time ago.”

“She’s making a pretty good go of it right now, isn’t she?”

“Ilanthe? Typical case, educated way, way beyond her IQ, with ambition stronger than ability. She’s just another cause fascist, son, and that’s the worst kind; they always know they’re right. Anyone who dissents for whatever reason is evil and an enemy, existing only to be crushed.”

He wouldn’t have believed it could happen, but the Delivery Man actually felt himself smile as he walked on through the alien groves and meadows. “So very different from your liberalism, huh?”

“You got it, sonny.”

Before long the cultivated fields gave way to the valley’s tangled grassland. Tyzak chose a small path that curved around to run parallel with the major river several miles away. That put the Delivery Man facing the giant empty city that straddled the mouth of the valley; its grandiose towers and arresting domes were barely visible through the late-morning haze.

That vision. The clean air. The bright sunlight. Walking to a definite goal. Whatever the reason, he actually began to feel a sense of purpose again. Not confidence exactly, but it would do for a start.

“I can go faster,” he told Tyzak.

The big alien started to lengthen its stride, bouncing along in an effortless rhythm. The Delivery Man matched it, relishing the urgency their speed brought. I’m doing it, he told Lizzie and the kids silently. I’m coming for you, I promise.

Ozzie didn’t let anything slip about his opinion. Myraian smiled in that dreamy way of hers and said: “Sweet.” Then she relived Ingo’s Last Dream again.

Corrie-Lyn was the most affected. She knelt in front of Inigo and looked up, as if pleading for it not to be true. “They had it all,” she entreated. “They succeeded. Their minds were beautiful.”

“And it is worthless,” he told her in turn. “They are no longer human. They have anything they want, which takes away any dignity and purpose they might have had. Their lives are day after day of ennui. All that concerns them is the past. Visiting places because they have already been discovered. That’s not gaining experience; that’s a dismal nostalgia trip. They no longer contribute because there’s nothing to contribute to.”

“They reached fulfillment,” she said. “Their minds were so strong. Inigo, they flew!”

“But where did they fly to? What did they use such a gift for? To please themselves. Querencia became a playground for characterless godlings.”

“They succeeded in throwing off the kind of mundane physical shackles that grind our lives down. This is what the Waterwalker gave them. They lived in splendor without having to exploit anyone, without damaging anything. They understood and loved each other.”

“Because they were all the same. It was self-love.”

“No.” Corrie-Lyn shook her head and walked out onto the veranda. A few moments later Ozzie heard the sound of her shoes on the creaky old wooden steps down to the garden.

A dismayed Inigo rose to follow her.

“Don’t do it, dude,” Ozzie said. “Let her work it out for herself. It’s the only true route to understanding.”

For a long moment Inigo hesitated; then he slowly sank back into the tall-backed chair at the kitchen table. “Damnit,” he grunted.

“So that was it, huh?” Ozzie said. “Bummer.”

Inigo shot him a thoroughly disgusted look.

“I don’t get it,” Aaron said. “They achieved something approaching the classical heaven on Earth.”

“Fatal, man,” Ozzie said. “I’ve been there myself. Trust me: plutocrat with a decent brain and the finest rep available during the first-era Commonwealth. Wine, women, and song all the way; I had it so totally better than those guys. Well … except for the flying bit. I gotta admit that was way cool. I always wondered why Edeard couldn’t do that. Man, if I ever got into the Void, I’d be trying from dusk till dawn. Oldest human wish fulfillment there is.”

“I don’t understand,” Aaron said. “They had reached fulfillment. All of them. That is admirable. It was the final validation of the entire Living Dream movement.”

“A dung beetle that gets its turd home is fulfilled. We’re talking levels here, dude. Am I right, Inigo?”

“You’re right.”

“See, be careful what you wish for. Utopia at our biological level just doesn’t work out. Once you’ve achieved everything, there is nothing left. You take out the core of being human: the striving. Edeard’s descendants had reached a state where fulfillment was inevitable. You didn’t have to work for it. That’s less than human; they were starting to un evolve. And in their own way they knew it. Their population was way down on Edeard’s time and still shrinking. There was no point in having children, because there was nothing new for them. They wouldn’t be able to contribute anything relevant, let alone profound, to the Heart.”

“In which case this Last Dream doesn’t help our situation in any way I can fathom,” Aaron said.

“Not your mission, no,” Ozzie told him, curious how that would affect the man’s strange mentality. “But I guess if we release the Last Dream, it might cause the rise of a few doubters in Living Dream. Mind, they’d be the smart ones, and face it, they’re in a minority in that religion.”

“Too late,” Inigo said. “Even if the majority acknowledged that the result of a Pilgrimage into the Void is ultimately a lost, sterile generation, it won’t affect the Pilgrimage itself. And you saw Corrie-Lyn’s reaction. She doesn’t believe the Last Dream is an indication of failure. If I can’t convince her …”

“Throwing your belief is always hard, man. Look at you.”

Inigo rubbed his hands wearily across his face as he slumped down in the chair. “Yeah, look at me.”

“I’m sorry about that, man. No, really I am. That was one tough mother of a fall. How long have you bottled that Last Dream up?”

“About seventy years.”

“No shit. That’s gotta be good to let it out finally. Tell you what, tonight you and me are going to get major-league hammered together. It’s the only way to put shit like that behind you. And if anyone’s going to understand a colossus of a disaster, it’s yours truly.”

“That’s almost tempting,” Inigo admitted.

“You can do that afterward,” Aaron announced. “Now that we’ve determined the Last Dream is not relevant to us, I need you both to focus on what is achievable.”

“Man, you never give up, do you?”

“Did you give up when the Dreamer emerged and subverted your gaiafield?”

“Please, don’t try that motivational psychology bullshit on me. Whatever you are, you’re not up to that. Trust me, stick with the psycho threats.”

“As you wish. Stick your pleasantries and stay with me now. Our task is to get the Dreamer into the Void.”

“It may not be,” Inigo said. “I actually think Araminta’s faith in the Void isn’t entirely misplaced. The Heart will be able to defeat Ilanthe.”

“You’re right about that,” Ozzie said. “The Silfen believe in Araminta. I can feel it, man. It’s their strongest hope right now.”

“Again, irrelevant,” Aaron said.

“No, it’s not,” Inigo said stubbornly. “The Ilanthe side of the problem didn’t emerge until well after your mission was started. Given how big a factor she is, we have to start taking her into consideration. It would be irrational to do anything else.”

“Our mission is to get you, Dreamer, into the Void.”

“No. Kills me to say it,” Ozzie admitted, “but Inigo is right. Ilanthe is clearly part of the original problem, even though your boss didn’t take that into account when he preloaded all that mission crap in your brain. You’ve got to start thinking about her, man. Come on, there must be some room to maneuver in that metal skull of yours.”

“Fair enough. I can see she is a factor in the ultimate outcome. But if we’re not in the Void, we can’t confront her, now, can we? So will you two please start putting your genius brains together and solve this problem of how to get Inigo inside.”

“Can’t be done,” Inigo said. “Even if you still had that ultradrive ship you lost on Hanko, it couldn’t get us to the Void boundary before the Pilgrimage. Basically, whoever gets inside first wins.”

“Don’t big it up like that, dude,” Ozzie said. “If you’d gotten there first, you might have stood a chance of a win. But nothing is certain, especially not in there. Now that you can’t get in, we all need to start thinking about a dignified yet fast exit.”

“That is not permissible thinking, and I’m getting mighty tired of telling you,” Aaron said. “Don’t make me ram the point home, because I’m through talking metaphors. Now, how do we get the Dreamer into the Void?”

Ozzie hunched his shoulders. The agent was starting to annoy him, which wasn’t good. He knew he wouldn’t be able to resist pushing Aaron to the limit just to find out what the limit was. Just like the Chikova at Octoron. “So can we still plan for that emergency telepathic linkup if everything else fails?” he asked innocently.

Aaron’s arm came off the table. Weapon enrichments bulged up out of the wrist skin. “Don’t.”

Myraian’s eyes fluttered open. She smiled up from the depths of some narcotic state. “Bad boys. You won’t get any supper.”

“I want my supper,” Ozzie said.

Aaron gave him a long warning glance, then the enrichments sank back down. “Okay, then, let’s examine this in a sweet progressive fashion. We’re now a little more than eight thousand light-years behind the Pilgrimage ships; the Lindau is terminally screwed. So we need something faster than the Commonwealth’s ever produced. What’s available on the Spike?”

Ozzie let out a sigh. “Hey, you heard the man, me-brain-in-a-jar. What have we got out there?”

“The Spike’s AI is currently registering three hundred and eighty-two alien starships docked,” the smartcores replied. “None are known to be faster than a Commonwealth hyperdrive. The fastest local sensors have observed is the Ilodi ships, which can reach twenty-two light-years per hour.”

“No use to us,” Inigo said.

“You two could steal one and get back to the Commonwealth,” Ozzie suggested. “If Inigo publicly reappeared, maybe your boss would get in touch and tell you what the hell to do next.”

“That would be a last resort if even a telepathic link to the Heart failed,” Aaron said. “You said that the High Angel would pick you up if the expansion phase begins.”

Ozzie suddenly wished he hadn’t shot his mouth off earlier. This line of thought could only go one way. And Aaron wasn’t about to drop it, not him, not ever. “It might. Depends on how busy it is.”

“Your precise words were: ‘Qatux owes me. The High Angel will stop by and collect us on its way to Andromeda or wherever the hell it’s going.’ That means you can call the High Angel here.”

“Dude, I could ask. There’s no guarantee …”

“Ask.”

“What’s the point? You want to get inside the Void. Qatux is heading in the opposite direction. A long, long way in the opposite direction.”

“The Raiel are the only known species able to break through the Void boundary. They can get us inside.”

“Can but won’t. Don’t even have to ask.”

“Humor me.”

Ozzie gave Inigo a frozen help-me-out smile. The ex-messiah just shrugged his shoulders and said: “Welcome to my world.”

“It’s not easy to make contact,” Ozzie said. It was lame. This was a losing battle, and he knew it.

“For someone with his own private TD channel to the Commonwealth?” Aaron queried lightly.

“Ain’t going to work,” Ozzie said.

“I’m almighty pleased for you about that. You deserve a moral victory over me around about now. Maybe I’ll shut up and leave you alone afterward.”

Ozzie gave him an evil stare and told his u-shadow to open a link to the High Angel.

“Expand this end of the link to include us, please,” Aaron told him.

Ozzie couldn’t remember being quite this pissed off for some centuries. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help get Inigo inside the Void. But that he might have to actually accompany him was deeply worrying, and Qatux might not agree to lend them the High Angel unless he came along. Ozzie did not want to go into the Void for the simple reason that no one had ever been known to get out.

The link was accepted by High Angel.

“Ozzie,” Qatux said. “It has been many years.”

“Yeah. Listen, we’ll do the old buddy-buddy catch-up crap later; I’ve got a couple of people here on my end of the link who need to get into the Void before the Pilgrimage. Any chance you or your species can make that happen?”

“Ozzie, as always you are never what I expect. This is why I always delight in knowing you. Is Aaron with you?”

“I am here,” Aaron said. “How did you know that?”

“This link stretches over seven thousand light-years; it also passes through many nodes within the unisphere. I do not believe it to be totally secure. Please remember that. However, I am glad you have survived. Our mutual friend Paula Myo has been keeping me informed of your travels.”

“Ah. Right.”

“And the other person with you; this is the man you were searching for when we met?”

“Yes.”

“That is excellent news.”

“I’m glad you think so. I hope you understand that this third person may be able to neutralize this whole situation if you can get them into the Void ahead of the Pilgrimage. Can you or the warrior Raiel do that?”

“No.”

“I am making a sincere offer. What harm will it do getting us through the boundary? Two people, when there are now twenty-four million en route.”

“I regret we are not able to help. It is a physical impossibility. Even our ships do not have the speed to perform such a task. However, I do have an alternative for you to consider.”

“Yes?”

“Someone else is on their way to meet Ozzie. Someone who is possibly more important than the person already with you. They will be with you in three days. I urge you to wait for them.”

“I’m not sure I can do that. I have a mission.”

“That is a great shame.”

“I’ll wait for them,” Ozzie said.

“Thank you, Ozzie. They are accompanied by an old friend of mine, Oscar Monroe. He will act as guarantor for what you will hear.”

“Holy shit. Oscar? Really? Is he out of the slammer already? Damn, I so lose track of time.”

“He is very much out. I hope that together you will be able to find a solution to this terrible situation. Please convince Aaron’s companion to wait.”

“Do my best, dude.”

The link closed. Ozzie gave Inigo a pensive grin. “Someone more important than you, huh? Now who could that be?” He couldn’t figure it out for himself, which was hugely annoying. Qatux wouldn’t lie, so … someone more important than the Dreamer with regard to the Void. There wasn’t even a list.

“We have been compromised,” Aaron said. He stood up and activated a low-level integral force field, creating a tiny purple nimbus around his stolen navy tunic.

Ozzie chuckled. “Something you need to know about Paula Myo. Apart from being able to freeze your balls off at ten paces with a single look, that chick seriously rocks. Wouldn’t be surprised if she’s your secretive boss. She’s done groovier things in her time.”

“I cannot allow my mission to be terminated.”

“Relax. If Paula wanted you stopped, you wouldn’t be here. Qatux was telling me to chill. The old big-Q, he’s not stupid. We need to wait for Oscar. Man, fancy him still kicking around. Tell you, my confidence just went up like ten notches.”

“Who in Honious is Oscar Monroe?” Inigo asked.

“Oscar the Martyr,” Aaron said quietly. “He sacrificed himself so Wilson Kime could steer the Planet’s Revenge and save the human race from corruption and extinction. If it truly is Oscar coming here …” He hesitated, which was something Ozzie hadn’t seen him do before.

“So I guess we wait, then?” Ozzie said, curious to see what reaction that would trigger. For someone who didn’t have many memories, it was strange in the extreme that Aaron (or his boss) had room to include a fact that obscure. Yet knowing Oscar was on his way actually seemed able to divert his otherwise rigid fixation on the mission.

There was a noticeable pause before Aaron said: “We must continue to consider methods of getting Inigo into the Void. That cannot stop.”

“But we can do that sitting here, right?” Ozzie insisted.

Again Aaron hesitated. “That is permissible.”

“Cool. But you can forget getting inside the Void. If the Raiel can’t get here, pick you up, then overtake the Pilgrimage fleet, no one can.”

“Qatux said the link was suspect.”

“Dude! There’s caution and there’s paranoia. I think we all know which road you walk down.”

“All right.” Aaron turned to Inigo. “Ethan told Araminta that Living Dream hoped the Void would open a gateway within the Commonwealth for the rest of the followers.”

“It was an idea we were kicking around before I left, certainly,” Inigo replied. “I never gave it a lot of credit.”

“If you can contact a Skylord, you must ask it to reach for you.”

“Oh, Lady, come on …”

“Every option must be examined. If physical flight to the boundary is now denied us, then we must try this method or at the very least see if it is possible. You have to dream the Void again. How could it possibly make the situation worse?”

Corrie-Lyn appeared in the kitchen doorway. Ozzie was fairly sure she’d been hovering outside for some time.

“I will be with you if you try that,” she said to Inigo, and walked over to embrace him. “For now and evermore.”

He rested his head on her shoulder. “Thank you. For everything. For understanding.”

“You were right. Their lives were futile, worthless. They were blessed beyond our wildest aspirations, yet they never thought to look outward. Their bodies flew, but their souls were moribund. That’s so sad. We can’t let such a fate befall our followers. They will be lost, and the galaxy will fall.” She took his hands in her own. “Lead us away from that, Dreamer. Don’t allow the Void to destroy our spirit.”

“My love.” Inigo gave her a tender kiss.

It was so intimate, Ozzie was almost embarrassed to be a witness. Almost. The two lovers were staring longingly at each other, smiling with happiness and relief. No one else existed.

“Dude?”

Inigo’s smile widened. Corrie-Lyn laughed.

“Yes, Ozzie?”

“Just a suggestion: Give your followers the Last Dream.”

“What?”

“Corrie-Lyn’s right; you’ve got to start fighting back. So do it; show them how their dream of the Void is going to go horribly wrong, that they’re going to condemn their children to emptiness and extinction. What is it your guy was always saying? Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to do the right? It’ll devastate all your loyal followers; they may understand, they may not. Who gives a shit, man? You were never going to get them all back on your side, anyway. At the very least you’ll give Ethan and Ilanthe a seriously bad day. And if you’re lucky, you might even spark a mutiny amid the fleet.”

“Yes,” Corrie-Lyn said, suddenly animated. “They deserve to know. They have waited so long to know you again. Give them their true hope back. It is what Edeard would have wanted.”

“Yes.” Inigo rose to his feet. His gaiamotes opened, and the Dreamer gifted his thoughts once more. All of them.

If Tyzak had been human, he and the Delivery Man would have been best friends by the time they reached the abandoned city at the end of the valley. Two days hiking together through the countryside was a superb bonding opportunity. The well-tended fields and pastures clustered around the village had given way to wild meadowland after the first three hours. With few animals grazing, the coiling grass-equivalent grew thick and tall, curling blades tangling to produce a difficult carpet to traverse. Tough plants as tall as a human knee were common, their spiky leaves containing a mild toxin that made Tyzak steer well clear. That made their path less straight than the Delivery Man wanted. He stuck with it, telling Tyzak about his life, his family.

“It sounds as if your kind are diverging as our ancestors once did,” the old Anomine said.

“Our story has similarities with yours, certainly. From what we know of your story, you were a lot less antagonistic. That is admirable. I wish we would strive for that.”

“There are stories that tell of conflict among our ancestors. Some believe they have lost their power as they are told with a grudging voice. It would be strange indeed if our past was completely without strife.”

“That may also be common ground. So many of us like to talk about the good old days from a thousand years ago. Those I’ve met who actually lived through such times say the years between always distort reality.”

“Who would wish disdain upon their ancestors? They did deliver us to the present day.”

As well as the stinging plants, the streams caused an irritating degree of diversion. Tyzak weighed a great deal more than a human. He had to be careful of the mud; many an incautious traveler had been trapped in some treacherous patch of marshland, he explained as they tramped along a gurgling rivulet, searching for a stony stretch to cross.

In return for his selectively edited life story, the Delivery Man was finally told the tale of Gazuk on the collapsing bridge, and Razul and Dozul and Fazku, and a dozen other terrifically boring incidents all too characteristic of a pastoral society. Finally the story of Fozif was forthcoming, which was a great deal more lyrical than the others. The Delivery Man was amused that the first rocket flight to another world remained so revered, whereas all the Anomine had accomplished afterward as a starfaring race was delivered in a few short sentences. But it did allow him to respond appropriately with the story of the Cold War space program and Neil Armstrong, which kept Tyzak quiet for a good forty minutes.

That first night they made camp on the edge of a small forest of tall trees with broad weeping branches. The Delivery Man took a hand-size cylindrical condenser unit from his belt, which whirred quietly as it propelled air along its short length. Its water sac slowly expanded out from one end like a sallow tumor as it extracted moisture from the air. When it was full, he pumped the clean water into flat packets of food concentrate. It didn’t taste too bad, though he would have preferred something hot. Tyzak just gulped down a couple more potfuls of the cold gloop he’d carried in a backpack.

As the dark fell, night animals began their calls. The Delivery Man expanded his tent up and out from a square of plastic. Tyzak thanked him for the offer of sharing the tough little shelter but refused, saying he preferred to rest outdoors. The Anomine didn’t sleep as deeply as humans; instead, they spent the night in a mild doze. They certainly didn’t dream.

Secondary routines woke the Delivery Man a little after midnight local time. His biononic field scan had detected three largish animals approaching. Outside, the city at the end of the valley glimmered with a vivid iridescence, as if the buildings were now made from stained glass wrapped around a fissure of daylight. It was a stark contrast to the black cliff of the forest beside him, animated with rustling wind and sharp warbles. He faced the trees and reconfigured his biononics to produce a complex low-level energy pulse. The approaching animals chittered frantically when he fired it at them, thrashing about in the darkness before rushing off, snapping low branches and tearing up the grass in their hurry to flee. He had no idea what Tyzak felt about killing local creatures, so the shot would have been the equivalent of giving them a damn good smack on the nose, with a modest electric shock thrown in to emphasize the point.

“I thank you,” Tyzak said, rising from the grass where he’d lain. “Three ›no direct translation: night beasts‹ would have presented even me with a problem defending us.”

“You see, machines can be useful occasionally.”

“I have my ›no direct translation: cudgel ax‹ to aid me,” the Anomine said, holding up a length of wood with a couple of spiral carvings along its length and a wicked curved spike on the top. “It has never failed me yet.”

The Delivery Man turned back to the radiant city and opened a link to Gore. “Have you figured it out yet?”

“Partly. The damn thing is stabilizing a zero-width wormhole, but it’s currently not extended. The Last Throw’s sensors are starting to examine its quantum composition, but that’s not easy in a collapsed state. I should have an idea where the wormhole used to lead in a few hours or so.”

“So it’s not the elevation mechanism, then?”

“Not unless it leads directly to Anomine heaven, no.”

“If it is zero-width, then nothing physical travels along it.”

“I know. But it’s early days. I’m probably overlooking something. How are you doing?”

“Oh, great. I’m in the middle of a boy’s own wilderness adventure. Should be with you in another day.” With that he bid Tyzak good night and went back to the wonderfully soft mattress in the tent.

They started off again soon after first light. Thin tendrils of mist slithered along the floor of the valley, mirroring the river course in the early light until the sun cleared the hills and burned it off. A constant wind blew in over the city, which now gleamed in the morning light.

It was a long way, but the Delivery Man was confident they’d make it before nightfall.

“Do you have a story which tells where the planet will take your kind?” he asked the old Anomine.

“We still live within the story. From there the ending cannot be seen.”

“Surely you have some notion. It must be a powerful belief which caused you to stay behind when your ancestors left to become something else.”

“There were many stories of hope told at the parting that will endure forever. Some believe that we will eventually sink back to the more simple-minded creatures which we evolved out of and the planet will bring another mind forward.”

“Isn’t that the opposite of evolution?”

“Only from a single-species perspective. A planet’s life is paramount. It is such a fragile rare event, it should be treasured and nurtured for the potential it brings forth. If that means abdicating our physical dominance for our successors, then that is what we will accept. Such a time is a long way in our future. In terms of evolution, we have only just begun such a journey.”

“How do you know if you’ve reached your pinnacle? That you should already be making way?”

“We don’t. I live in the time of waiting. We expect it to last for several tens of thousands of years. It may be that we will finally understand ourselves through our stories. Many think that once such comprehension is reached, we will simply cease to be. Then there are also those who expect us to carry on in harmony with the planet until the sun itself grows cold and all life is ended. Whatever our fate, I will never know. I am a simple custodian of our life and essence for a short period. That is my purpose. I am content with that and the wondrous stories I will hear in my short time. Can you say the same with your life?”

“How well you know me already, Tyzak. No, my life lacks the surety and tranquillity of yours. Perhaps if I am successful in knowing what I wish to know of your ancestors, things will get better for me.”

“I have sorrow for you. I will do what I can to help your story finish well.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s the local star,” Gore announced in midafternoon.

The Delivery Man glanced up through the canopy of furry branches overhead. He and Tyzak were tramping through a forest where the hot air was still and humid, heavy with a pepper-spice pollen. He squinted against the sharp slivers of sunlight slicing down past the lacework of dangling blue and green leaves. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing. The zero-width wormhole used to extend a hundred and eighty million clicks. That’s how far we are from the primary. There’s nothing else at that distance. The Last Throw ran a sweep.”

“That’s a huge volume of space to cover with one sensor sweep. It could easily have missed something, especially if it was stealthed. Or maybe the station changed orbit.”

“You’re thinking like a human. Stop it. The Anomine didn’t have anything to hide.”

The Delivery Man gave a loud laugh, which startled several of the big clumsy birds from the treetops. “They hid the elevation mechanism well enough, didn’t they?”

“It’s not hidden. We just don’t know how to look for it through their perception.”

“That sounds like the argument of a desperate man.” Or worse, a crazy obsessive.

“Son, you’re following a monster through a forest on an alien planet, hoping it’ll ultimately take you back to your family. Please don’t talk to me about desperate, okay?”

“All right, but answer me this: Why would you want to open a wormhole into the middle of a star? You’d kill the planet on the other end.”

“It’s a zero-width wormhole; nothing physical passes down it.”

The Delivery Man could picture Gore’s face perfectly, gold skin at the side of his eyes creased slightly as he frowned in annoyed perplexity. “Okay, so what information can it gather from a star?”

“Not the star directly. There must be some kind of sensor bobbing about under the corona. Or maybe deeper. We know they love their research experiments.”

“We do, but we need the end result, remember?” He took a guess what Gore’s next question was going to be; the impatience was obvious.

“How long until you get here?” Gore asked.

The Delivery Man smiled at the forest. “Give us another five hours.”

“For Christ’s sake!”

“We’re making good time,” he objected. “Tyzak isn’t exactly the youngest Anomine in his village.”

“All right. I’ll be waiting.”

The Delivery Man thought it best not to point out that five hours would only bring them to the edge of the city.

Dusk had already drained the sky of vitality when they began traversing the flat grassland that skirted the Anomine city. It was a curiously unnerving walk. Unlike a human city, there was no gradual buildup of the urban zone; here it was clearly defined. One minute the suspiciously level and uniform grass was underfoot, the next the Delivery Man was treading on a concrete-equivalent street with a bulbous skyscraper rising high into the ash-gray sky in front of him. Lights were starting to come on inside every building. There didn’t seem to be windows in the human architecture mode; these massive structures had a skin that was partially translucent. Staring at it hard, the Delivery Man thought he saw some kind of movement in the faint moire threads that suffused the substance, as if it were a very slowly moving liquid. That was when he realized it was the high-technology version of the membranes in the village houses.

The deeper they walked into the city, the darker the sky above became. It was mere minutes before the Delivery Man was completely surrounded by the hulking buildings. He’d been in enough Anomine cities since they’d arrived in the system not to be perturbed by the layout and profiles, but something about being with Tyzak made this experience different. It seemed … not as deserted as it appeared. Warm soft light illuminated the streets, creating a blend of multicolored shadows playing across each surface. More than once he thought he caught them fluttering from the corner of his eye. The sensation of being watched was so great that he finally gave in and ordered his biononics to run a fast field scan.

Obviously there was nothing. But that cold logic did nothing to dispel the haunting sensation.

“Do you have stories of ghosts?” he asked Tyzak.

“Your translation machine is struggling with the word. Do you mean an essence which lingers after the living body has died?”

“Yes.”

“There are stories of our ancestors who transferred their thoughts into machines so they might continue after their biological bodies failed.”

“Yes, humans do that, but that’s not quite what I mean. It would be an existence without physical form.”

“That is where they went after the separation. This is the method which you seek.”

“No. Not quite. This is something from our legends, stories that may be fiction. It is nonsense, but it persists.”

“We have no stories of such a thing.”

“I see. Thank you.”

Tyzak continued along the street in his long, fast bobbing motion, not even turning to focus on the Delivery Man. “But the city does speak to me with the smallest stories.”

“It does?”

“Not a sound. But a voice nonetheless.”

“That’s interesting. What story is it telling you?”

“Where my ancestors left this place. This is how we will find it.”

The Delivery Man wanted to say: But you don’t use machines. He knew that was what the communication must be, a download into the Anomine equivalent of human macrocellular clusters, a little genetic modification that the remaining Anomine hadn’t purged from themselves, after all.

“We made assumptions again,” Gore said. “We thought Tyzak was familiar with the elevation mechanism. But he’s got to ask the surviving AIs.”

“No,” the Delivery Man said. “That’s not what he’d do; I know him well enough by now. He’d rather risk getting torn apart by wild animals at night than use a decent weapon to defend himself with. This is something else.” He ran a more comprehensive field scan. “Nothing is being transmitted, at least that I can detect. Yet I’m still getting the creeps about this place. You’ve been here two days. Has it bothered you?”

“Ghosts and goblins? No.”

Typical, the Delivery Man thought. But he was still disquieted by the city, and Tyzak was receiving information of some kind, which was impacting in a fashion his biononics couldn’t detect. He ran another scan. Sonic. Chemical. Electromagnetic. Visual/subliminal. Microbial. Surface vibration. Anything known to discomfort a human body.

The city wasn’t active in any way. Yet when he’d walked through previous Anomine cities without Tyzak, he’d felt none of this. So if the effect isn’t impacting from the outside … The Delivery Man opened his gaiamotes fully and searched amid his own thoughts.

It was there, hovering out of reach like a foreign dream on the fringes of the gaiafield generated by the nests they’d left orbiting above. A mind, but woven from notions very different from those human sentience was composed of. Colors, smells, sounds, emotions-they were all amiss, out of phase with what he perceived as correct.

“Hello?” he said to it.

There was a reaction, he was sure of that. A tiny stratum of the strange thoughts twisted and turned. There was even a weak sensation, not a thought or memory but an impression: an animal curled up sleeping, contracting further as something poked its skin.

So we can understand each other. Except the city didn’t want to, because he was not part of the city, not part of the world. He didn’t belong, didn’t connect. He was alien. There was no regret or even hostility within the somnolent mind. The city didn’t hold opinions on him; it simply knew he wasn’t a part of itself or its purpose.

“The AI is neural-based,” he told Gore. “I can sense it within the gaiafield. It’s semiactive but only responds to an Anomine’s mind. We’re never going to get any information out of it.”

“Shit.”

“How ironic is that? One wish, one thought from a native, and the whole city will revive itself to provide them a life they can’t even imagine anymore. Yet they’re happy with the whole been-there-done-that philosophy.”

They were trotting down a long boulevard that led up a steepening slope. Slim arches linked the buildings on either side, each one glowing with a uniform color, as if the bands of a rainbow had been split apart and then twisted around. His exovision was displaying a map. “You know, we’re heading your way.”

“Yeah, I see that.”

“Actually, we’re heading directly for you. That can’t be coincidence.”

“Sonny, I’ve given up on being surprised by anything this planet pitches at us.”

It took them another hour to navigate the city’s broad streets. Tyzak walked on unhesitatingly, though toward the end the big alien did seem to be laboring to bounce forward with the vitality he’d possessed that morning. Even the Delivery Man’s biononic-aided muscles were starting to feel the strain. They’d been walking for fifteen hours with only a few short breaks.

But with the stars barely visible through the cloying light haze cast by the buildings, they finally came out into the open plaza. It was a broad empty circle seven hundred meters in diameter, with long garden segments of dense green-gray shrub trees ringing the outside. Towers and elongated globes over a kilometer high stood around the edge, something about their height and proximity giving the impression that they were leaning in protectively.

It was a slightly incongruous setting for the Last Throw, but Gore had brought the starship down on one side of the plaza, close to a swollen cylindrical tower with a blunt dark apex. The gold man was already striding over the plaza to greet them, casting a range of pale harlequin shadows in all directions that shifted like petals as he approached. He stopped in the middle of the plaza and bowed gracefully to the old Anomine.

“Tyzak, I am honored that you should spend time telling us the story of your ancestors’ departure.”

The Delivery Man raised his eyebrow as he realized that the sharp chittering sounds of Anomine language were coming directly from Gore’s throat.

“It is a joy to do so,” Tyzak replied. “Your coloration is different. Are you more advanced than your species colleague?”

“In this form, I am not, no. My body is from a time long past. Circumstances required me to adopt it once more.”

“I am glad you have. You are interesting.”

“Thank you. Can you tell us where your most sophisticated ancestors departed this world from?”

The Delivery Man almost winced at the bluntness.

“Right here,” Tyzak said.

Gore pointed a golden forefinger at the matte glass surface of the plaza. “Here?”

“Yes.”

Gore turned full circle, almost glaring at the shiny surface of the broad plaza. “So we’re actually standing on the machine which changed them into their final form?”

“Yes.”

The Delivery Man’s biononics performed a deep field function scan on the substance below his feet. Gore was doing exactly the same thing. The plaza was actually a solid cylinder extending nearly five hundred meters down into the city’s bedrock. Its nuclear structure was strange, with strands and sheets of enhanced long-chain molecules twisting and coiling around and through one another like smoke tormented by a hurricane. They were all cold and inert. But they did seem to be affecting the underlying quantum fields to a minute degree, an effect so small that it barely registered.

He’d never seen anything like it before. The smartcore certainly couldn’t identify it or any of the functions the weird molecular arrangements would produce if they went active. When he opened his gaiamotes, he could just sense the elevation mechanism’s soft thoughts, even more abstract than those of the city’s mind. With a despondent curse he knew there was never going to be any possible connection between it and a human. It would take Tyzak or his kind to coax it back to awareness and functionality.

“They really didn’t want anyone to follow them, did they?” Gore said pensively.

“Looks that way.”

“Huh. Then along came me. Right, then.” His hands went onto his hips as he looked up at Tyzak. “Will you ask the machine to switch on for me, please.”

“The machine which separated our ancestors from us is not a part of my life. It has discharged its purpose. The planet has destined us for something different.”

“That’s it? That’s your last word on this?”

“How could it be other?”

“The galaxy may be destroyed if we don’t establish how your ancestors left this universe.”

“That is a story which I would not repeat at any gathering. It lacks foundation in our world.”

“And if I could prove it was true?”

“If that is what awaits this planet, then it is what awaits us also. The planet carries us.”

“Goddamn fatalists,” Gore muttered.

“Now what?” the Delivery Man asked. It was hard to keep a tone of defeat from his voice.

“Stop complaining, start thinking. We’ll just have to hack into it, is all.”

“Hack into it?”

“The control net, not the actual machine. Once you’ve got control of the power switch, you’re in charge, period.”

“But we’re hardly talking about a management processor. This thing is a cross between a confluence nest and metacube network. You can’t subvert it. The bloody thing’s sentient, half-alive.”

“Then we physically chop the connections and insert our own command circuitry into the mechanism itself. Now shut up. Have you run a comparison review of the other fifty-three zero-width wormholes we found?”

“What? I-No.”

“Stay current. Every one of them is right next to an open space like this plaza. In other words, there are at least fifty-four elevation mechanisms on the planet. Makes sense, really. There were too many high-level Anomine for a single gathering point, especially if they really did all come back from their colony worlds. The upgrade to postphysical must have gone on for a long time.”

“Yes, I’m sure it must.”

“Good. So how did they power it? If you’re bootstrapping yourself up to archangel status, that’s going to take a lot of energy, especially when you’re using a machine that’s nearly half a cubic kilometer of solid-state systems.” He turned to stare at the bulging tower that backdropped the Last Throw and wagged an accusatory gold finger at it. “But if you’ve got a cable that plugs directly into the nearest star, power is the least of your worries.”

“Ah, the wormhole doesn’t carry information …”

“No way. They’ve got some kind of energy siphon swimming about in the photosphere or maybe deeper. It sends all the power they need back along the zero-width wormhole. Okay, that works for me. We’d best go see if the siphon’s still there.”

For a moment, words refused to come out of the Delivery Man’s mouth. “Why?”

“What part of ‘I don’t give up easy’ is hard for you?”

“The wormhole isn’t extended. Everything is managed by machines that have their own psychology, and it’s anti-us psychology.”

“One step at a time. First we check it all out. If everything is still there in standby mode just like they left it, then we start an infiltration strategy. Human-derived software is the most devious in the galaxy. Our e-head nerds have had a thousand years to perfect their glorious trade, God bless ’em, and I’d stack them up against anyone. Certainly a race as sweet and noble as this lot.”

“But we don’t have any with-” The Delivery Man caught the expression on Gore’s golden face and groaned as comprehension kicked in.

“And if I can’t reestablish something as fucking simple as a de-energized wormhole, then I’m already dead and this is hell taunting me. Now come on.” Gore started marching across the plaza to the Last Throw.

“Are you leaving?” Tyzak asked.

“For a short while only,” the Delivery Man assured the old Anomine. “We have to fly to check on something. It should take less than a day. Will you stay here?”

“I wish to hear the end of your story. I will remain for a while.”

The Delivery Man resisted the urge to spill out an apology and hurried after Gore.

In the time it took to dive into hyperspace and reemerge three million kilometers out from the star’s photosphere the culinary unit had produced a batch of lemon risotto with diced and fried vegetables. Lizzie used to make it, standing over a big pan on the cooker, sipping wine and stirring in stock for half an hour while the two of them chatted away at the end of the day. The Delivery Man instructed the unit to produce a side plate of garlic bread and started grating extra Parmesan cheese over the streaming rice. Lizzie always objected to that, saying it dulled the flavor of the vegetables. Gore shook his head at the offer of a bowl.

“You’re still worrying about Justine, aren’t you?” the Delivery Man said.

“No, I am not worried about Justine,” Gore growled out. “We’re still well inside the time effect it should take her to reach Querencia.”

“Okay, then.”

“Even if something has happened, it’s not as if we can launch a rescue mission.”

“Unless that witch Araminta persuades the Skylord to abandon the Silverbird, I don’t see anything which could interrupt her flight.”

“That wouldn’t stop my Justine. Maybe slow her down some but nothing worse. You have no idea how stubborn she can be.”

“Where does she get that from? I wonder.”

Gore gave him a small grin. “Her mother.”

“Really?”

“No idea. That is one memory I made sure I junked a thousand years ago.”

The Delivery Man put a slice of the garlic bread into his mouth and ended up sucking down air to cool it. “I don’t believe that.”

“Son, I’m not a fucking soap opera. I can’t afford to be; my emotional baggage level is zero. I haven’t had anything to do with that woman since Nigel watched Dylan Lewis take his epic step.”

“What?”

“Kids today! The Mars landing.”

“Ah, right.”

Gore sighed in exasperation.

The Delivery Man wasn’t sure just how much of that attitude was for his benefit. As he forked up more risotto, the Last Throw emerged back into spacetime. Warning icons immediately popped up in his exovision, along with a series of external sensor feeds. A quick status review showed the force fields could cope with the current exposure level of radiation and heat. Hysradar return of the corona and photosphere was fuzzy, distorted by the massive star’s gravity. Even the quantum field resonance was degraded.

“We need to get closer,” Gore announced.

The Delivery Man knew better than to argue as they began to accelerate in toward the star at ten gees. He just hoped that Gore wouldn’t try to tough out the heat. The way the gold man was wired, it was a distinct possibility.

There were no borderguards within ten million kilometers of the star, and the few that did cover that section of the Anomine solar system showed no interest in their flight. Nor were there any other kind of stations, only a host of asteroidal junk and burned-out comet heads. The closest large object was the innermost planet at seventeen million kilometers out, a baked rock with a day three and a half times the length of its year, allowing its surface to become semimolten at high noon. It was only the starship that had followed them from the Leo Twins that showed any interest in their exploratory flight, remaining five million kilometers away and still keeping itself stealthed.

The Last Throw’s safe deflection capacity limit was reached at approximately a million kilometers above the fluctuating plasma of the photosphere, leaving them swimming through the thin, ultravolatile corona. Giant streamers of plasma arched up from the terrible nuclear maelstrom below, threatening to engulf the little ship as they expanded into frayed particle typhoons rushing along the flux lines.

Sensors probed down into the inferno, seeking out any anomaly amid the superheated hydrogen. The starship completed an equatorial orbit and shifted inclination slightly, scanning a new section of the star’s surface. Eight orbits later they found it.

A lenticular force field two thousand kilometers below the surface of the convection zone. Hysradar revealed it to be fifty kilometers wide. Intense gravatonic manipulation was keeping it in place against the force of the hydrogen currents that otherwise would have expelled it up into the photosphere at a respectable percentage of lightspeed.

“That’s definitely our power siphon,” Gore said. Hysradar showed them the flux lines swirling around the disc in odd patterns. The force field appeared to be slightly porous, allowing matter to leak inward at the edge.

“Why not just use a mass energy converter?” the Delivery Man mused.

“Check the neutrino emissions; only a mass-energy converter will give those kinds of readings,” Gore said. “And look at it. All it’s doing now is holding position, and see how much mass it’s converting just to do that, because sure as commies complain about fairness, that intake ain’t flowing out anywhere afterward. This is the mother of all turbo-drive converters.”

“Okay, so we’ve proved it’s there and still functioning. Now what?”

“Our force fields wouldn’t get us halfway, but the only way we can access it and infiltrate is to go down and rendezvous-possibly even dock, or at least cling on and start drilling into the thing’s brain.”

The Delivery Man gave him a frankly scared look. “You’re shitting me.”

“Wish I were, son. Don’t panic. The replicator we have on board is high-order. We’ll have to churn out some advanced force field generators to upgrade the Last Throw’s defenses. Once they’re beefed up to Stardiver standard, we’ll drop into the convection zone and switch the power back on to the elevation mechanism. Well … when I say us, I mean you.”

“It looks impressive,” Catriona Saleeb said.

“Yes.” For once Troblum felt content. He looked at the featureless suit of matte gray armor standing in the middle of the cabin with its round helmet almost touching the ceiling. It was big, adding about twenty-five percent to his existing bulk. That didn’t matter; the electromuscle bands could move it around easily enough. Walking would be effortless. As would flying, thanks to the little regrav unit he’d incorporated. There were no weapons, of course; he couldn’t even think along those lines. But the defenses … He would be safe anywhere. In other words, he could even face the Cat and not piss himself as he had on Sholapur.

I should have built one of these a long time ago.

At his order the two small assemblybots crawled down the suit like oversize spiders and scuttled away. He reached out to the table where his snack rested and picked up a wedge of the club sandwich.

His exovision display showed him the Spike, now a mere three light-years away. Its anchor mechanism was creating a huge distortion that extended out from spacetime to warp the surrounding quantum fields. He found the effect fascinating; it was nothing like a human hyperdrive. Unfortunately, the Mellanie’s Redemption lacked the kind of sensors that could run a truly comprehensive scan.

Troblum finished the snack, washed it down with some Dutch lager, and started putting on the armor suit. By the time he was comfortably ensconced, the starship had dropped out of hyperspace two thousand kilometers out from the Spike’s sunward side. Visual sensors showed him the fantastic curving triangle of metallic chambers glistening in the bright sunlight like silver bubbles. Dark tubes wove between them in complex convolutions. He immediately understood why the crew of the navy ship that had discovered it believed they’d found the galaxy’s biggest starship; the shape was intrinsically aerodynamic. Space on either side of the giant alien habitat was filled with the dull glimmer of the Hot Ring arching away to infinity, bolstering the notion that it was frozen in midemergence.

He flew the starship across the sunward surface, accelerating to match the structure’s unnatural orbital vector. Bright flashes of blue-white sunlight burst from the mirror facets of the sail shape as Mellanie’s Redemption moved above the uneven segments. Sensors scanned landing pads dotted all along the winding H-congruous transport tubes, searching out a specific profile. The Mellanie’s Redemption certainly hadn’t been able to track their target in stealth mode during the flight; he was just hoping they’d arrived in time.

“There they are,” he said finally.

“Oscar’s ship?” Catriona asked.

“Yeah. They’ve landed close to Octoron. That figures; it’s the largest human settlement.” He ordered the smartcore to put them down on an empty pad two kilometers from Oscar’s ship. A weak localized gravity field came on as soon as they touched down, but Troblum kept the ultradrive powered up just in case. The smartcore aimed a communication laser at the starship he’d followed from the Greater Commonwealth. “I’d like to speak to Oscar Monroe, please,” he said when his u-shadow told him a connection had been accepted.

“And you must be Troblum,” Oscar said.

The burst of fright that came from hearing his name made him twitch. Electromuscle amplified the motion. His armor helmet hit the cabin ceiling. Secondary thought routines immediately brought up the command for Mellanie’s Redemption to power straight into hyperspace and flee. A single thought was all it would take to trigger it. “How did you know my name?”

“Paula Myo said you might make contact.”

“How did she know?” Even as he asked, he knew the SI had told her, had betrayed him.

“Damned if I know,” Oscar said. “She scares the shit out of me, and we go way back. Then again, how did you know I was on board the Elvin’s Payback?”

“Is that the name of your ship? What was he like?”

“Adam? Like me, misguided in that way only the truly young can be. Is that what you wanted to ask?”

“No. I may be able to help.”

“How’s that?”

“I know about the Swarm. I helped build it. Ozzie, Araminta, and Inigo might find that useful.”

There was a long pause. “I’m sure they would. We’ve already made contact with Ozzie. There’s a capsule coming to collect us from our airlock in ten minutes. Why don’t we fly over to yours straight after.”

“Okay. I’ll wait for you.”

Afterward he stood on a vast snow-swept tundra, completely naked yet feeling no pain. Somewhere in the distance tall mountains with fearsome rocky pinnacles guarded the edge of the rough icy country, a geological wall between civilization and the wild where he had come from. He wasn’t cold despite the harsh wind and flurries of snow brushing against him. This was home, after all, his one refuge against the rest of his life and all the anguish it brought whenever he lived it.

It was daytime, yet the sun was invisible behind the low gray clouds that filled the sky. He walked across the frozen ground, his feet leaving crisp indentations in the firmly packed snow. From somewhere out amid the rolling folds of this austere landscape he could hear the snorting and stamping of horses. Then a wild herd of the giant animals charged over a distant crest, tossing their mighty heads, horns slashing at the frosty air. He smiled in delight, remembering times when he’d ridden the breed for no reason other than enjoyment, taking trips to other villages, meeting friends, practicing his saddle skills, the formalized ancient fighting techniques that all the youngsters sought to master. Back before-

It wasn’t snow brushing against his skin anymore. He plucked one of the slowly drifting particles out of the air only for it to disintegrate between his fingers. Ash. Powder puffed up from beneath the soles of his feet as each footfall became soft. Ash covered the land, choking grass and tree alike, ruining the rich living terrain. The blanket of ash blew away from a high mound ahead of him, revealing it to be the corpse of a huge winged creature. Feathers fell like autumn leaves to expose dry skin pulled tight over a sturdy skeleton.

“No,” he exclaimed. The king eagles were the most magnificent of Far Away’s creatures. Countless times he had sat astride one and soared through the splendid sapphire sky.

Orange light shimmered across the desolate landscape. He spun around to see the mountains erupting, their sharp pinnacles disintegrating as lava gushed upward. Massive explosion plumes clotted the sky, surging outward.

There were footfalls in the ash carpet behind him. The stench of burning flesh grew and grew until he thought he would choke on the cloying fumes.

“This is not your sanctuary,” she said. “This is where I nurtured you. This is where your heart belongs. This is mine. You are mine.”

He couldn’t turn around. Couldn’t face her. To do so would be to lose, to be consumed by pain and diseased love.

Gold sunlight speared through the suffocating shroud of ash, a single incandescent ray falling across him. He shielded his eyes from it, cowering.

“Come on, son,” a kindly voice said. “This is the way. This is your future. This is your redemption.”

Ash clouds boiled high and fast, towering above him, taking form. The beautiful golden light held. He stretched his arms out, reaching for-

“Wooah!” Aaron woke and sat up fast, arms windmilling against the thin sheet that was wrapped around him. “Shitfuck!” His body was sweating profusely, making the silk sticky against him.

The room was on the first floor of Ozzie’s house, with a single bed in the middle, some crude wooden furniture, and a window with the big shutters firmly closed. Nonetheless, light was stealing around the edges. Allowing him to see-“Shit!” he yelped.

Myraian was sitting on the end of the bed, her legs folded neatly as she regarded him thoughtfully. Today her hair was green and blue. Purple skinlight shone through a loose white lace top.

“You’re losing,” she said with a sweet smile.

He gave those fangs of hers another mistrustful look. Even though he’d been sleeping, there was no way she should have been able to creep up on him; bionomics should have detected her approaching. Tactical secondary routines were supposed to inform him of any proximity violation, bestowing an instinctive knowledge when he awoke. Hell, even natural instincts should have kicked in. He hadn’t been this surprised for a long time. That’s bad. “Losing what?” he asked sourly. Biononics scanned around, making sure there were no other surprises, such as a fully armored Chikoya waiting for breakfast downstairs.

“Your mind.”

He grunted and rolled off the bed, finally freeing himself from the sheet. “It’ll be joining yours, then.”

“You dreamed of home when she came for you. You can’t retreat much further. Your childhood will be an even worse defense. No child could withstand her.”

Aaron paused as he was reaching for trousers that Ozzie’s replicator had fashioned for him. “Her who?”

She giggled shrilly. “If you don’t know, I can’t.”

“Sure.” He was trying to ignore the dream. But it was more than a dream, and they both knew it. Besides, it was worrying him at a fundamental level. Something deep in his mind was wrong. It wasn’t a war he understood, and there was certainly no tactical withdrawal.

Unless I go basic again.

But today was going to require patience and diplomacy. Not his best features even with full faculties engaged.

Myraian skipped off the bed and stretched her arms behind her back, linking her fingers. Her head rocked from side to side in time with an unheard beat. Aaron was unimpressed by the whole fairy princess routine, suspecting she was covering up something.

“So are you a physicist?” he asked.

“I’m just good for my Ozzie,” she said in her silly light voice.

“Okay.” He pulled on a black T-shirt.

“You should have someone for yourself. Everyone should. This is not a universe to be lonely in, Aaron. Besides, you need help to hold her back.”

“I’ll think about that.” He put his feet into his boots, allowing the semiorganic uppers to flow over his ankles, then grip.

“They’re here.”

“Huh?”

“The starship. Oscar called eleven minutes ago.”

A message his u-shadow should have monitored and told him about. He started to get concerned about the string of tactical failures. They couldn’t all be coincidence. “Great. Did he say who he’d brought with him?”

“No, but I’m going to fetch them now. I’ll be back soon.”

He wanted to go with her and greet the arriving starship himself, but he couldn’t abandon Inigo. Taking him along would increase exposure risk. No choice. He had to wait and rely on Myraian. Which is pretty much an oxymoron.

Downstairs, Ozzie and Inigo were sitting at the big table in the kitchen. Dirty plates and cutlery had been pushed to one side. Ozzie was drinking coffee, and Inigo had a pot of hot chocolate. Corrie-Lyn was slumped in the fat old sofa at the far end of the room, looking incredibly bored.

“A great-grandfather on my mother’s side was allegedly a Brandt,” Inigo was saying. “My mother was always telling me that her grandmother had some kind of trust fund when the family lived on Hanko. I don’t know how much that was a fable about the old homeworld and how much better life had been back then. If the money ever existed, then it got lost in the Starflyer War and the move to Anagaska. All anyone brought through the temporal wormhole was what they could physically carry with them. We certainly didn’t have much money when I was growing up. If we were Brandts, the hard core left us to sink or swim by ourselves.”

“Sounds like a dynasty, okay,” Ozzie said.

“But you covered up your family history,” Aaron said as he made his way over to the culinary unit. “I was at the Inigo museum in Kuhmo. There’s nothing about any connection to a dynasty.”

“You know why I did that,” Inigo said. “I was born Higher. My mother was basically raped by one of the radical angels, my aunt, too. You think I want the Greater Commonwealth drooling over that piece of personal history? And they would; my opponents would have loved that.”

“Sure, I dig that. But even if that Brandt lineage gives you a family connection to a colony ship, that doesn’t explain how the ship got inside the Void in the first place.”

“Same way as Justine, I suppose.”

“No. She was close to the boundary. This has to be something else, a long-distance teleport.”

“The dynasty colony ship could have gotten up close if they were trying a quick route to the other side of the galaxy.”

“Not a chance. The Raiel have been acting as traffic cops ever since their invasion failed. They turn everyone around before they reach the Gulf, starting with Wilson on the Endeavor.”

“I’m not disputing that,” Inigo said. “But equally indisputable, a human ship got inside. That was the foundation of our hope the Void would be able to open some kind of portal to the Commonwealth.”

“See, this is where theory just collapses with a big sigh of bad air. How did the Void know the colony ship was there? It seems to have a lot of trouble with the whole ‘outside’ concept.”

“The Skylords do. You can’t claim the same for the Heart. It has to be a lot smarter.”

“But that implies a perception that can reach just about anywhere. If it wanted minds, why not just teleport each sentient species off its homeworld as soon as they developed a coherent thought?”

“It doesn’t have to be perception. Araminta dreamed a Skylord. Other connections are available to it.”

“Not its own. They piggybacked the Silfen Motherholme presence to get Araminta’s attention.”

“That doesn’t disqualify-”

Aaron collected his bacon roll and a mug of tea from the culinary unit and went to sit next to Corrie-Lyn. “Still at it, then?”

“Oh, yeah,” she grunted.

Five days solid now. Inigo would try to dream a Skylord, an endeavor that so far had proved fruitless. Between his attempts, he and Ozzie would argue about the nature of the Void and try to conjure up possible methods of getting through the boundary. That was exactly what Aaron wanted. He just wasn’t quite prepared for how mind-breakingly dull their conversations would be. Every minute, an irrelevant concept was dragged out and discussed at extreme length. They didn’t seem to develop ideas so much as entire wishful philosophies. In other words, after four days neither one of them had produced a single helpful notion.

“Have you talked to Myraian at all?” he asked.

Corrie-Lyn gave the briefest shrug. “She talks? Sense?”

“Yeah, got a point there.”

“I have been watching the Greater Commonwealth through the unisphere.”

“And?”

“The Last Dream; it’s not popular. Living Dream’s new Cleric Council denounced it as a fake, but everyone knows Inigo’s thoughts. There’s some hefty infighting breaking out among the faithful. More than I expected have said they’re worried by the outcome of traveling into the Void.”

“But everyone on the Pilgrimage fleet is in suspension.”

“Yes. So it was too little, too late. It’s confirmed what all the non-followers believed about us, but they’re irrelevant as always. None of the crews on the Pilgrimage ships are showing any sign of rebellion.”

“Ah, well, at least we can all die with a clear conscience.” He bit into the bacon roll. There was far too much butter; it dribbled down his fingers.

Corrie-Lyn gave him a strange look, crinkling her cute nose. “That’s a first.”

“What is?”

“You mentioning the possibility of defeat. Even if it was a joke. I didn’t know you could think like that.”

“Just trying to appear human, put you at your ease. Standard tactics.”

“Your dreams are getting worse again, aren’t they?”

“Sleep is not my high point right now, I’ll admit. Or is that too much weakness as well?”

“Defensiveness now? Gosh, we’ll break through that conditioning yet.”

Something will, he thought bleakly. It had taken several minutes for his fear to sink away after he’d woken. That was a first, having the dread follow him out of the nightmares into the waking world. Another aspect of her growing strength. “Pray you don’t,” he muttered, and glanced back at the table.

“I could find out eventually, I suppose,” Ozzie said. “I still have clout with what remains of the Brandt Dynasty, but your heritage will only ever be a footnote. Even if you’re a long-lost Brandt, that doesn’t explain how the colony ship got inside in the first place. Besides, think how many other Brandts there are left in the Commonwealth. What makes you special?”

“Is there a list of how many Brandts had a tour of duty at Centurion Station?”

“Irrelevant. Your talent doesn’t allow you to talk to a Skylord, which is what we need right now.”

“Knowledge is not irrelevant. Any theory has to be built on a foundation of fact.”

“Sure, man, but that’s the wrong foundation.”

“All information about the Void is what we need to determine-”

Aaron wolfed down the remnants of the roll. “I’m going outside to wait for them.”

“Don’t blame you,” Corrie-Lyn said.

He stood on the veranda, facing the daunting alien city across the still water of the bay. The dreams he was cursed with and whatever was struggling to rise from his subconscious were troubling him. He deflected the worry with a diagnostic review of his biononics and tactical routines, the ones that had failed him this morning. There was no clear answer to how Myraian had crept into his bedroom. The field scan had registered a movement, but it wasn’t sufficient to trigger the beta-grade alert routines. And by sitting on the end of the bed she’d been ten centimeters from triggering an alpha-grade alert. Was that distance a coincidence? If so, they were mounting up.

But at least his u-shadow determined why it hadn’t intercepted Oscar’s call to Ozzie. The house’s smartcores had shielded it with some very sophisticated software. So Ozzie hasn’t quite rolled over. Figures.

The capsule appeared against the strong sheen of the Spike compartment’s translucent crown. Biononics filtered his retinas so he could maintain visual acquisition. His field function scan swept through it. There were seven people inside. Myraian, of course; three men and a woman with biononics configured to low-level defense, allowing him little acuity-however, they weren’t weapons-active; that left an ordinary human male with no biononics and a very large human in an armor suit with a force field already powered up. That alone made Aaron bring several weapon enrichments to active status.

He sent a identity ping into the capsule, which was returned by everyone except the ordinary human. He took a guess that he was the important one Oscar was escorting to meet Ozzie.

The old capsule settled on the swath of purple and green grass between the lake and the house. Its door opened, and the passengers started to clamber out. Myraian was first, waving gaily, which Aaron ignored. Beckia and Tomansio ran a quick field scan across the area, but not Oscar, which was interesting. Only then was the Natural human allowed out. He was slightly older than Commonwealth standard and quite dignified-looking. The armored figure of Troblum was last, having to squirm about to get through the door.

Ozzie, Inigo, and Corrie-Lyn came up behind Aaron to watch the visitors approach. Ozzie was grinning. “Holy crap, it really is Oscar.” He raised his voice. “Yo, dude, been a while there.”

Oscar tipped his forefinger to Ozzie, smiling sheepishly.

But it was Tomansio’s reaction that held Aaron. He was staring right at him, a look of incredulity on his handsome face. “You!” Tomansio gasped. “You’re alive.”

“Never better, man,” Ozzie said cheerfully. He turned to Inigo. “See, legendary genius trumps messiah every time.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Inigo told him.

“I don’t think-” Corrie-Lyn began as she looked from Tomansio to Aaron.

“The Mutineer,” Tomansio whispered. He still hadn’t taken his gaze from Aaron.

A brief memory flickered into Aaron’s mind as if tearing silently through some vital membrane. Her face smiling coyly at him as she lay on the bed beside him. The same woman he’d encountered back in Golden Park the day Ethan had been selected as Cleric Conservator. Different hair but still her. Bad news. “What?” he croaked. “What did you call me?”

Ozzie and Inigo were both frowning now, glancing over at Aaron.

“The Mutineer. It is you. It is!”

“No,” Beckia exclaimed. “It can’t be.”

“Who?” a puzzled Oscar asked.

“Lennox. Lennox McFoster. How can this be?” Tomansio demanded angrily. “How can you be here?”

“The Knights Guardian spent centuries searching for you,” Cheriton said. “Where have you been?”

“Sorry,” Aaron said. “But I really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Even after ten minutes, the Natural man still hadn’t been introduced and Troblum had been completely silent. The Knights Guardian were astounded by Aaron’s existence and quite forceful in insisting he was who they believed him to be. The son of Bruce McFoster, another old legend who had been captured and subverted by the Starflyer and subsequently killed by Gore Burnelli. Lennox had been an infant at the time, they said, brought up by his mother, Samantha, as a Guardian. He’d been one of the first converts to the Cat’s vision, desperate to find a new role for the Guardians of Selfhood as they teetered on the verge of self-destruction.

Their talk made Aaron nervous. Names and events were certainly registering somewhere in his mind, just not in the conscious section. He didn’t doubt that he could originally have been one of the Knights Guardian; theirs was the kind of ability he had in abundance. That made the rest uncomfortably plausible …

“What kind of mutiny did I lead?” he asked curiously. It was a question he shouldn’t have asked. It was irrelevant.

“Pantar Cathedral,” Troblum said in a strangely neutral tone. “It’s on Narrogin. The Knights Guardian were brought in to help one of the local political movements achieve dominance over their rivals. The Cat herself took command in the field. There was a hostage situation. Demands were made with a deadline. Then she started slaughtering them, anyway. Including their children. You stopped her. You stood up to the Cat.”

“That’s when our whole movement changed,” Beckia said. “We finally acknowledged the Cat’s flaws. After that, we rejected her leadership. But not yours.”

“The majority of us rejected her,” Cheriton said slightly awkwardly. “There was something of a schism; after all, she was our founder, bringing us out of the wilderness following the Starflyer War and uniting us with the Barsoomians. Though legend says that part was your idea.”

Aaron knew he had to get the mission back on track; he should find out who the Natural human was, make everyone talk to Ozzie and Inigo. Get Inigo into the Void. That was the universe-all that mattered. But for once the compulsion was weak. Her smile lurked behind his thoughts now. Sometimes he could see it without having to close his eyes.

Bad news.

She hadn’t been kidding, apparently.

“Did I save them?” he asked faintly.

“Who?”

“The children. You said she was killing children when I stopped her.”

Tomansio and Beckia shared an uncomfortable look, which was an eloquent enough answer.

“Do you remember anything since then?” Cheriton asked.

Aaron shrugged. “I don’t even remember that. There’s … nothing,” he lied as the vision of a vast crystalline ceiling shimmered like flame somewhere in his mind.

“You were never caught,” Tomansio said. “Never stood trial. Nobody knew what happened to you.”

“Including me, it appears,” Aaron said. It actually appealed to his sense of irony.

“Somebody did this to you,” Beckia said tightly. A great deal of anger was leaking out of her gaiamotes. “Somebody gave you the galaxy’s biggest mindfuck.”

“Could it have been her?” Tomansio mused.

“No,” Aaron said, not knowing where certainty came from but knowing it anyway. “It is my choice to be as I am. And I will retain this personality despite what you believe me to be.”

“But you’re not working too good, are you?” Corrie-Lyn said. “Your conditioning is breaking down.”

“I’ll survive,” he said grimly. “I have a mission to complete.”

“Which is?” Oscar asked.

Aaron pointed at Inigo. “The Dreamer must be taken to Makkathran inside the Void. Or at least establish contact with the Heart.”

As one, Oscar and the three Knights Guardian looked at the Natural man. He stepped forward and put his hand out to Inigo. “Dreamer,” he said. “I’m Araminta-two.” His gaiamotes released a flood of thoughts and emotions, including the gifting from the observation deck on the Lady’s Light.

“Great Lady,” Inigo grunted.

“Oh, yeah.” Ozzie grinned. “That is so cool, man.”

“I’m here to help,” Araminta-two said. “The Pilgrimage has to be stopped.”

“Now tell them who suggested you team up with Ozzie,” Oscar said smugly.

At least it got them all talking, Aaron admitted, even though it was little more than “gosh” and “wow” as various stories unfolded. But they sat around Ozzie’s kitchen table, testing snacks and drinks from the culinary unit. All except Troblum, who stood at the head of the table, refusing to come out of his armor suit.

“I met the Cat” was all he’d say on the subject. Everyone accepted that that was a pretty good excuse for extreme paranoia.

The only other thing Troblum said was: “Ozzie, it’s a great honor to meet you; I am a descendant of Mark Vernon.”

“Yeah? That’s nice, dude,” Ozzie said, and turned back to Araminta-two. “We’ve been trying to figure out if the Void can bring people inside like some kind of teleport effect,” he said. “Can you ask the Skylord that?”

“I can ask,” Araminta-two said.

Aaron kept watching Troblum. The big man had rocked back a fraction as Ozzie had dismissed him. There was no hint of a gaiafield emission. In fact, there was no way of telling exactly what was in that suit.

According to Oscar, Troblum had helped build the Swarm-again something both Ozzie and Inigo seemed completely disinterested in. Aaron was interested but only in that such information might break Earth out of its prison. But right now that was a long way down any list of possible actions to take to get Inigo into the Void. Besides, given that the Raiel couldn’t break through the Sol barrier, he suspected that it might take even longer than accomplishing his primary mission.

“Is there any way you or the Heart can reach out and bring me into your universe?” Araminta-two asked the Skylord.

Aaron glimpsed an amazing golden web of nebula dust fluorescing from dozens of dim glimmer points within as stars contracted to their ignition points. Skylords shone against the drifting eddies, their vacuum wings fully extended.

“You approach,” the Skylord said. “I feel you growing. Soon you will be here. Soon you will reach fulfillment.”

“I will be with you sooner if you could reach for me.”

“The Heart reaches for all. The Heart welcomes all.”

“I am still outside your universe. I fear I cannot reach you. Can you reach out for me as you once did for others of my race?”

“Those of your kind grew here upon the solid worlds. My kindred will take you there.”

“But first we have to get to you. Can you make that happen?”

“I feel you growing. It will not be long now.”

“How did those of the first of my kind arrive in your universe?”

“They emerged, as do all.”

“Did the Heart help them emerge?”

“The Heart welcomes all who emerge here.”

“I can no longer reach you. My voyage to your universe is over unless the Heart helps me. Ask it to reach for me, please. I wish to visit the world where my kind dwelled before.”

“You will come.”

Araminta-two’s thoughts hardened. “I will not.”

“You continue to grow closer. Your voyage is unbroken. We will welcome you. We will guide you.”

Araminta-two growled and shook his head as the Skylord’s presence dwindled to a background murmur at the very brink of perception. “Ozziedamnit.”

“I will if you want me to, man, but I doubt it’ll do much good,” Ozzie said.

Araminta-two gave him an abashed look. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

“It hardly matters,” said Inigo. “Ever since you started talking to the Skylords, it’s been obvious they simply don’t comprehend the concept of ‘outside.’ Their thoughts aren’t configured for that.”

“But the Heart or nucleus or whatever’s running the place does,” said Oscar. “It listened to you when you asked it to take Justine inside. That was quite a night.”

“It was still relayed through the Skylord,” Ozzie said. “And that request was a lot easier to comprehend.”

“So we have to work out how to make the message simpler,” Inigo said. “All we have to do is establish some kind of conduit to the Heart. It will understand exactly what we want.”

“Dude, you can’t get a message more simple,” Ozzie protested. “It’s convincing the Skylord to talk for us, which is difficult.”

“Suspiciously so,” Inigo said. “I find it hard to believe something that can manipulate the Void fabric as the Skylords can do is genuinely unable to grasp new concepts.”

“The control processes seem instinctive,” Inigo countered. “Direct willpower is the driving force for any modification within the Void itself.”

“Yes, but-”

Aaron felt a sigh building in his chest as they started to argue again. Her smile became mocking.

“I can get you there in time,” Troblum said.

Everyone turned to the giant dull gray figure looming over them. Myraian let out the faintest giggle.

Ozzie pushed a big frond of floppy hair back from his forehead. “Dude, how are you going to do that?”

“I have the Anomine planetary FTL engine in my starship.”

Silence again.

“The what?” Oscar asked.

“The Anomine didn’t build the Dyson Pair force field generators; they acquired them from the Raiel. To get them into position, they used an FTL system big enough to move a planet. I have it. Or a copy of it. Actually, it’s a copy of what I believe they built.”

Aaron didn’t care how uncertain the others were. “Is it faster than an ultradrive?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s effectively instantaneous. It’s a wormhole.”

“A wormhole big enough to shove a planet through?” Ozzie’s voice had risen a notch with incredulity.

“Yes.”

“Not possible.”

“Actually, it’s perfectly possible,” the house smartcores announced.

Ozzie growled and shot the ceiling a furious look.

“Wormhole structure is dependent on the power source,” the smartcores said. “The greater the available power, the bigger the size you can achieve-theoretically.”

“That’s right,” Troblum said.

“Okay,” Ozzie said. “So what do you use to power the mother of all wormholes?”

“A nova. Nothing else approaches the required output peak.”

“Well, that’s handy, dude. We’ll just hang around and see if one happens.”

“You don’t need to,” the smartcores said in the same voice, but with a gloating edge.

“Ah.” Aaron smiled. “Novabomb.”

“Yes,” Troblum said. “With a diverted energy function.”

“Clever,” Inigo said.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Ozzie yelled.

“I think it will work,” Troblum said.

“You mean you haven’t tried it?” Tomansio asked.

Myraian started giggling again, louder this time.

“No. Not yet.”

“And it can get us to the galactic core ahead of the Pilgrimage fleet?” Aaron persisted.

“It should. I envisaged transporting a Saturn-sized planet five hundred light-years as a test. But there are variables. If we make the wormhole diameter smaller-”

“You can increase the reach,” Inigo finished. “So for something the size of a starship …”

“I estimate we can extend the wormhole approximately twenty-five to thirty thousand light-years. If we trigger it today, it will put us ahead of the Pilgrimage fleet.”

Ozzie stood up. “Okay, then. My work is done. Good luck to all of you.”

“You’re not coming?” Inigo asked.

“Hey, dude, I’m an aging irrelevancy with only half a brain, remember. And then there’s-” He frowned expressively, clicking his fingers. “What was it? Oh, yeah: I want to stay alive!”

“Ozzie, you’d be a valuable member of any team working to prevent the expansion phase,” Corrie-Lyn said.

“No, he wouldn’t,” Myraian said. She smiled sweetly at Corrie-Lyn. “Ozzie stays here, where I can cuddle him safe.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Ozzie said triumphantly.

Aaron was beginning to question exactly what Myraian was. He’d assumed she was just some worshipful groupie with a dipsy habit. But now that he’d been here a few days, he was realizing she actually had quite a say in the relationship. No doubt it was a strange relationship, but then, that was Ozzie for you. Even with his reduced memories, Aaron knew Ozzie could be extremely quirky, and those memories were a couple of centuries out of date. “All right, then. Ozzie isn’t essential. Inigo is, and Araminta-two. I have to go. So how many more can your starship hold, Troblum?”

“Hey!” Corrie-Lyn snapped.

“I’m dealing in practicalities,” Aaron explained patiently. “There are minimum requirements for mission success. The Dreamer and Second Dreamer are the absolute priority for this flight.”

“Who the fuck put you in charge?” Tomansio asked.

“Do you have a viable plan for shutting down the Void? I’m sure we’d all like to hear it if you do.”

“By all accounts, you haven’t got much of one yourself. You know more about who you are than what you’re doing.”

“But I do have a plan. And I’m the Mutineer, remember? The one Knight Guardian you can rely on above all the others. Even yourself.”

“You might have been the Mutineer, but I’m damned if I know what you are now. And you certainly don’t.”

They all turned to look at Ozzie, who was laughing boisterously.

“What?” Tomansio asked.

“Seriously? Have you dudes even been listening to yourselves? The Dreamer. The Martyr. The Second Dreamer. The Mutineer. Jesus H, all you need is masks and some spandex capes and we’d have us a regular superhero convention going. At least Troblum’s got himself a costume already. Good one, too, big man, by the way.”

“Are you saying we shouldn’t go?” Tomansio asked.

“By all the rules of probability and statistics you shouldn’t even have made it this far, not any of you, because you are seriously fucking clueless. But you have gotten here, and someone knows what they’re doing loading whatever plan they have into the Mutineer’s brain. So grab this. As far as I can make out, you guys are the last chance we’ve got to stop Ilanthe and the Void itself. I don’t know what Aaron’s boss has got in mind for when you get to Makkathran, but … Tomansio, he’s right; unless you’ve got an idea, then this is the one you bust your balls to make sure it works. Tell the kids how it is, Oscar. You and I have gone face-to-face against odds like this once before. You know when something is real.”

“Yeah,” Oscar said grudgingly. “Ozzie’s right. This is looking like our one shot. Both Dreamers together? If anyone can stop this, it’s going to be them. Somehow.”

Tomansio shrugged. “Okay. I’m just saying we don’t know which side the Mutineer is on.”

“Logically, it’s a faction opposing the Accelerators,” Inigo said. “I’ve been through all this. I actually do trust him.”

“Ha!” Corrie-Lyn said.

“All right, so Troblum, how many of us can your starship hold?” Cheriton asked. “And does it really have wings?”

“Life support will sustain fifteen people, but that’s cramped. And they’re thermal dissipater fins,” Troblum said.

“There’s only ten of us,” Oscar said. “We can all fit in easy, then.”

Ozzie cleared his throat. “You’re still not thinking. How long did it take Justine to reach the fake Far Away?”

“Oh, crap,” Aaron said. “Void time.”

“That’s right, man. So your actual question is, How many medical chambers has Troblum got on board? Because you’re going to need suspension once you make it past the boundary.”

“One,” said Troblum.

“There are five in the Elvin’s Payback,” Oscar said. “They were installed in case we got simultaneous casualties.”

“You always did lack real faith in us.” Tomansio grinned. “We need four more, then. Are any available in this compartment, Ozzie?”

“Not right now,” Ozzie said in a suspiciously neutral voice. “They’re all very busy for the first time in decades. Don’t worry. My replicator can put some together for you.” He raised his voice. “Is that right, me-brain-in-a-jar?”

“Already started,” the house smartcores replied.

“I suppose our replicator can produce them as well,” Oscar said. “That should shrink our departure time.”

Troblum still wouldn’t take his armor suit off. Oscar didn’t quite know what to make of that. Paula’s u-shadow had sent him a largish file on the ex-Accelerator agent, but that just kicked up a whole load of additional questions.

Tomansio had been right to question Aaron, but Oscar was a lot more concerned about the strange big man with enough personality flaws to fill entire psychology texts. And an FTL system big enough to shift entire planets? Gas giant planets? Come on.

Then again, it was all past worrying about. They were committed now. If everything worked and Aaron’s unknown boss got to talk with the Heart, the entire Void/Pilgrimage nightmare could be over within a week.

Yeah, that’s going to happen.

Ozzie was right, though. That was all they had left. So he sat at the kitchen table without complaining or analyzing, eating some of the bagels and salmon Ozzie’s culinary unit had provided for their brunch. It would have been nice to chat with Ozzie, he reflected; not that they’d ever been close, but they certainly had a lot of shared history. It wasn’t to be. Ozzie and Inigo seemed to spend the entire time arguing with each other. And in the short intervals when they had to take a breath, Tomansio was busy interrogating Aaron.

The house smartcores (and that was pretty weird even by Ozzie standards) and Liatris said the new medical chambers would be fabricated within the hour. That just left installing them on the Mellanie’s Redemption. Another blast-from-the-past name Oscar could have done without. But then, when you’re as old as me, I guess everything is connected.

“I hope you never restart mindspace,” Inigo said heatedly. The voice was getting loud; they all had to drop their conversations and listen in. “It’s the end of humanity, sending the mind down a rotten branch of evolution.”

“Psychology is an evolutionary trend?” Ozzie grunted back. “Gimme a break.”

“You’re compelling it upon every sentient. At least the gaiafield had a provision for individuals to withdraw. This doesn’t. Its mental fascism, and the worst of it is you think it’s benevolent, for our own good. Blanket the galaxy with mindspace and you’ll turn us into the kind of society I found in the Last Dream. Don’t you get it? Utopia is boring; ennui is our true enemy. You and the Void both have to be stopped. You were wrong about sharing thoughts just like Edeard in his dark phase. Both of you were seduced by the Heart’s version of perfection, which is nothing more than taming and enslaving the human soul.”

Aaron sat down next to Oscar, holding a plate of waffles. Oscar leaned over and whispered. “Liatris says the replicator will be finished in eighteen minutes.”

“Maybe there’s something to be said for the Void’s time acceleration, after all,” Aaron muttered back.

“Have they been like this all the time?”

“Five days, nonstop. I encouraged them to explore options.”

“So what do you make of our big silent friend?” Oscar nodded gently at the hulking armor suit.

“Neutral for the moment. I can accept his concern about the Cat. If he keeps it on inside his own starship, then I’ll have to make some decisions.”

“Yeah. And you really don’t know what’s going to happen once we reach Makkathran?”

“No. But I like your optimism.”

Oscar gave him another look. He liked to think he could tell. But Aaron had this human shell wrapped over something very odd indeed-almost a void in itself. He mimicked personality rather than possessing one of his own. And Corrie-Lyn hadn’t been subtle about the near breakdowns.

“Individuality cannot stand as it has always done,” Ozzie protested. “The human race has to become collective. For fuck’s sake, we have novabombs, M-sinks, quantumbusters, enough weapons to smash the galaxy to shit without the Void even having to wake up. That power has to be restrained. Ask the Mutineer over there. Don’t you ever stop and think what’ll happen if someone like the Cat gets hold of them and goes on a rampage? For fun! There has to be an inbuilt protection mechanism in a society as technologically sophisticated as ours. And that is trust, man. It’s all it ever can be. Mindspace will make trust inevitable. You really will be able to love your neighbor.”

“Mindspace is exactly the same as giving a psychopath a Commonwealth Navy warship. There are aliens out there who have thought processes so utterly different from ours, they’ll think you’re trying to take them over or evangelize and alter their culture.”

“That is a serious bunch of crap. What do you know about-”

A red exovision tactical warning sprang up over Ozzie and Inigo; secondary thought routines supplied Oscar’s mind with a definition of the problem. A T-sphere was establishing itself all around Ozzie’s house. “Shit!”

His integral force field came on. As it did, he saw Troblum’s suit blacken to deepest night. Son of a bitch, that’s Sol barrier technology.

Full field function scan showed seventeen Chikoya teleporting onto the grassy slope just above the lakeshore. A quick follow-up scan revealed they were heavily armored, weapons active.

“Liatris, come get us. Now.”

“On my way,” Liatris replied.

Another twenty-three Chikoya teleported in, completing their encirclement of the house. A six-strong squad charged forward across the front lawn. Oscar was about to ask Tomansio what attack formation he wanted to use when his field scan reported something very odd happening to Ozzie’s quantum structure. Accelerant-flooded nerves reacted fast, spinning him around, and targeting graphics swept across the abnormality zone, focusing on Ozzie, who was already becoming transparent as his body’s molecules changed, attenuating. There was just enough of him left to reveal an apologetic expression on his spectral face. He raised a hand in a halfhearted wave.

“Wait!” Oscar yelled. “You’re leaving?” It came out as sheer disbelief.

“This kinda thing really isn’t me anymore,” Ozzie replied faintly.

“Yes, it is! You’re Ozzie. Help us.”

“You dudes have it pretty much covered. But hey, one day I might join in again. Don’t hold your breath.” And with that his outline vanished. Some kind of disturbance stirred the underlying quantum fields, something way beyond Oscar’s field function scan to analyze.

“Fuck me!” Beckia gasped. “Where’s he gone?”

“Irrelevant,” Tomansio said. “Mutineer, you safeguard the Dreamers. Everyone else, let’s meet and greet. Compass point deployment, beat them back from the house.”

Oscar crunched his way straight through the kitchen wall and leaped from the veranda, flying a good fifteen meters over the dark grass. He landed on the lawn that sloped down to the lake. Tomansio was on his right, heading for the spinney that bordered the garden. Beckia was on his left, where the land started to curve upward before breaking into rough terrain. Oscar was gratified to see how well he fit into the team, knowing at an automatic level how to position himself.

He’d never seen a Chikoya before, never mind six at once. It was a shock, but all he was concerned about was a tactical analysis of the armor, weapons, and maneuverability. A small traitor section of his mind wondered what Dushiku or Jesaral would make of something that big in knobbly black armor rampaging toward them with husky weapons swinging around to shoot. All he saw was the exovision targeting structure, with secondary routines coordinating fire control for his enrichments. Electronic warfare emissions hammered the Chikoya suit circuits, hashing and confusing their sensors. Energy beams and distortion pulses blasted through the air. Two Chikoya went tumbling backward, their armor smoldering, spraying jets of dark purple blood from gaping wounds. The others went for cover, firing as they went.

Masers slashed across Oscar’s integral force field, which deflected them easily. Then his macrocellular clusters warned him of a targeting scan, and he jumped again as an electron laser detonated the ground where he’d been standing half a second before. He somersaulted at the top of his jump trajectory, twisting left, landing at a crouch and sending a massive distortion pulse at the Chikoya who was hefting the enormous beam gun.

On either side of him the Knights Guardian were hopping between cover points, their speed amplified by accelerants and biononic muscle reinforcement. A range of suppression fire lashed out, forcing the Chikoya back from the house.

Oscar was sprinting along the scorched grass as one of the aliens followed his movement with some kind of neutron beam that was gouging through the soil and stone, creating a fantail of lava and flame in his wake. He dispensed a hail of micromissiles at the origin. Something exploded. The shock wave buffeted him. There was no more neutron beam.

“Anyone know what they want?” Beckia asked as she rolled over a clump of boulders. A flight of smartmines arched out to bombard the Chikoya squad slithering through the boulders on the slope above her.

“The Dreamer,” Aaron told her.

“Why?” Oscar asked. Two Chikoya were charging right at him, masers and machine guns firing enhanced explosive grenades, pummeling the ground and air all around as he dodged along a narrow drainage gully that led down to the lake. He sprang up and got a clean electron laser shot at the magazine on an opponent’s underbelly. The explosion shredded most of the alien. Steaming lumps of gore and fragments of armor rained down.

“Never quite got that far into the conversation,” Aaron said.

A tactical display showed Oscar how the Knights Guardian were pressing the Chikoya away from the house in a rough expanding circle. However, some were still close to the other side of the house, creeping forward. Cheriton was having a hard time prizing them free from their cover on the steep forested slope. “Liatris, where are you?”

“Two minutes,” Liatris promised.

The Chikoya were starting to regroup along the shoreline ahead of Oscar. Several of them splashed through the shallows. Oscar began to designate targets for his smartseeker munitions. Then his field scan showed him Myraian dancing across the smoking remains of the lawn toward them. He risked sticking his head out from the gully to watch her. She was skipping and twirling as if she were in some elaborate ballet performance. Her gauzy blouse with its wing sleeves spun around her as she waved her arms, creating serpentine loops in the air. Chikoya targeting lasers converged on her.

“What the fuck-” Oscar grunted. His field scan couldn’t detect any kind of integral force field. “Get down!” he screamed at her. The crazy woman must be doped up on something; she seemed totally unaware of what was going on.

Myraian sang as she danced, the kind of warbling verse Oscar would’ve expected to hear from a Silfen, not a human. The ground around her feet rippled as tatters of loam and gravel were churned up by the storm of kinetic projectiles missing her. And they kept on missing her. The Chikoya simply couldn’t get anything to hit. The armored aliens began to fall back as she approached. Their weapons fire stopped. Myraian finished her madcap dance directly in front of one of the massive aliens. She giggled and swept her arms out wide to bow gracefully, bodylight glowing an exotic orange through her flimsy clothes. The Chikoya didn’t move; its extended suit sensors tracked her carefully. Then she raised herself on her tiptoes, looking pitifully small and weak compared with the armored monster towering above her. She kissed the alien on the tip of its helmet.

The Chikoya collapsed on the ground. Dead.

Myraian pirouetted away as the rest of the Chikoya squad opened fire. Again they couldn’t get a fix. She was almost invisible behind a blaze cloud of grenade detonations and stark purple ionization contrails.

Oscar realized he needed to breathe again.

“Let’s give her some support,” Tomansio ordered.

A cascade of smart weapons fell on the Chikoya squad. They broke and ran, leaving the shore strewn with fatalities. Myraian skipped gaily through the shallows, following them like some demented pixie storm trooper, kicking at the spume as she went. Her fluffy plimsolls were stained gray-blue with alien blood.

Oscar jumped up out of the long drainage gully and stared in disbelief. Two of the Chikoya being chased by Myraian teleported out. “Holy crap,” he murmured. What is she? Exact definitions didn’t really concern him at that moment; he was just relieved she was on their side.

Five kilometers overhead, the Elvin’s Payback arrived in a burst of sharp violet light as it decelerated hard. Above it, Oscar could just make out a ragged black hole punched through the compartment’s dome; crumpled metallic shards tumbled silently through the tortured air on their long fall to the ground. Thin strands of mist grew in density around the rent, stretching and curving up to pour out into the vacuum beyond. The glowing cometary sphere suddenly flared, shoving out eight vivid pseudopods of dazzling flame. They separated from the starship and accelerated downward toward the beleaguered house. His biononics felt the combatbots’ first sensor sweep.

The Chikoya must have known what was coming. Another three teleported out.

“Ozziedamned monsters,” Cheriton exclaimed. Seven of them on higher ground were targeting him with a barrage of energy beams and a ferocious kinetic broadside, pushing his integral force field dangerously close to its limit.

“Priority target,” Tomansio ordered Liatris. “Take out the hostiles surrounding Cheriton.”

A massive spear of incandescence lanced down out of the turbulent sky to strike the incline behind the house. Parts of Chikoya spewed upward. Aggressive flames swirled over the trees and bushes populating the slope. Cheriton was still being targeted by four Chikoya.

Oscar’s scan showed him a T-sphere locus establishing itself around his teammate. “Counterprogram,” he yelled.

“Can’t,” Cheriton replied.

Oscar, Tomansio, and Beckia immediately launched a volley of smartmissiles over the roof of the house. While he was fending off such an intense attack, Cheriton’s biononics wouldn’t be able to counterprogram the T-sphere as well as maintain his integral force field. The combatbots fired again, eliminating more Chikoya. This time the energy impact kicked up a long wildfire line across the forest, the formidable heat igniting whole trees. Thick smoke billowed up, cutting off all visual observation. But Oscar’s field function scan could still slice clean through. He watched his exovision display showing Cheriton being teleported away.

“Fuck it! Liatris, where did they take him?” Oscar demanded. “Where’s the T-sphere center?”

The combatbots were barely five hundred meters overhead. They fired down continuously, adding to the conflagration now burning around half the house. The surviving Chikoya were teleporting out as fast as they could.

“It’s centered in the Farloy compartment, about twelve hundred kilometers along the Spike. That’s one of the major Chikoya settlements.”

“Are you getting any kind of signal from him?” Tomansio asked.

“Negative. Shall I fly over there and run a detailed sensor sweep?”

“No,” Tomansio said.

Oscar eyed the wall of fire that was creeping down the slope to consume the trees closest to the house. Thermal imaging was showing him some alarming temperatures blossoming across the walls. The T-sphere shrank to zero. He admitted Tomansio was right. Not that it was easy.

“Land by the house,” he told Liatris. “I need the Dreamers safe on board before we get an entire Chikoya army teleporting in. Aaron, bring them out, please.”

“Confirm,” Aaron said.

Oscar turned around and ran a sweep along the shoreline. There were nine dead Chikoya scattered across the blackened lawn and two of them lying in the water. His biononics couldn’t find any trace of Myraian. He shook his head in bemusement at the fantastical woman. In a strange way he was rather glad she’d disappeared; it meant he didn’t have to think about her.

Elvin’s Payback thumped down out of the sky, sending out a shock wave that shattered the house’s remaining windows and brought roof slates skittering down. It hovered five meters above the ruined garden. Oscar and the remaining Knights Guardian closed in, ready to provide cover as Aaron led the two Dreamers, Corrie-Lyn, and Troblum out across the veranda and underneath the starship. Its airlock bulged upward, and Inigo rose into it. Corrie-Lyn was next.

A couple of large trolleybots floated out of the house, each one carrying a medical chamber. Flames were flickering along the roof, gaining hold on the rafters. Smoke curled out of the gaping first-floor windows.

“What do we do?” Oscar asked Tomansio as they backed toward the starship. “Do we go after him?”

“No. He’s true Knights Guardian; he’s not expecting us to. That would jeopardize the mission.”

“Jesus. What will they do to him?”

“If I was a Chikoya, I’d worry about what he’ll do to them. Human biononics are a damn site meaner than anything they’ve ever built.”

The medical chambers were lifted smoothly up into the starship. It was just Oscar, Tomansio, and Beckia left. The starship’s force fields came on around them.

“But they targeted him,” Oscar said; even inside the protective shields he couldn’t relax. “It was deliberate. They must have known he wasn’t a Dreamer.”

“Maybe they thought he was me,” Aaron told them. “I had quite a run-in with the Chikoya before you arrived.”

“Irrelevant,” Tomansio said. He gestured at Oscar to step under the open airlock. “We have a job to do.”

“Not irrelevant,” Oscar insisted as he began to float up into the fuselage. He knew he was missing something, and it was making him very cross. “Surely he can get some kind of signal out. Liatris, are you seeing any sign of a firefight in the Farloy compartment?”

“No. Nothing registering.”

Oscar slid up into the cabin to find the Dreamers and a miserable, shaking Corrie-Lyn giving him an anxious look. Troblum’s helmet almost touched the ceiling. His armor had reverted to shabby gray again. He still hadn’t opened it up.

Beckia arrived, swiftly followed by Tomansio. The cabin was feeling quite cramped even with the furniture withdrawn.

“Up and out,” Tomansio said. “Come on, Oscar, let’s go.”

Oscar bit back any immediate comment and told the smartcore to take them back through the hole Liatris had created in the dome above. “We could make one flyover,” he said.

“They could have teleported him to any compartment on the Spike by now,” Beckia said sadly. “Or even into a starship. He could already be FTL.”

“No, he’s not,” Oscar said, reviewing the sensor records as they passed through the minihurricane surrounding the hole and emerged back into space. “Nothing’s gone FTL in the last ten minutes.”

“Oscar, drop it,” Tomansio said. “He’s gone, and hopefully he took a whole bunch of the Chikoya bastards with him. When we get back to Far Away, you’re welcome to attend the ceremony of renewal. We’ll grow him a new body and download his secure memory store into it. He’ll spend the whole evening teasing you about worrying.”

Oscar wanted to hit something. “All right.” But I know something is wrong. He concentrated on the starship’s sensors. The Mellanie’s Redemption had left its landing pad at the same time as the Elvin’s Payback. Now it was holding station five thousand kilometers on the Spike’s dark side. He told the smartcore to rendezvous with it.

“Troblum, we’re safe now.”

“Good,” the armored figure said.

“You can take your helmet off.”

There was a long pause while the big figure did nothing. Then horizontal lines of malmetal on the helmet flowed apart, leaving three segments on each side. They swung open.

Oscar tried to be neutral. Troblum’s face was fat and heavy, his skin an unhealthy pallor and dribbling with sweat. Patchy stubble coated his cheeks and chins. “Hello,” he said sheepishly to his audience. He couldn’t meet anyone’s gaze.

“Thank you for offering your help,” Inigo said. “We appreciate it.”

Troblum gave a rough nod but didn’t say anything.

Oscar didn’t like the idea of relying on him one bit; there didn’t seem to be any empathy. Troblum was not a likable person, and he’d decided that from just the half dozen sentences the man had spoken. Not that there was anything they could do about it. I’m committed. Again. Let’s hope I don’t have to die this time.

“So how did the Chikoya find you?” Liatris asked Inigo.

“Plenty of people in Octoron would know where Ozzie lives,” Aaron said. “I’m surprised it took them this long, actually.”

“I’m just glad you arrived before they did,” Corrie-Lyn said. She was still trembling, even though she’d gotten a chair to extend and was sitting all hunched up. “We wouldn’t have stood a chance otherwise.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Beckia said. “Whatever that Myraian had was more than they could deal with.”

“Is she a Silfen?” Tomansio asked.

“No,” Araminta-two said. “I would have known that. She was human.”

“I think ‘was’ is right,” Oscar said. “She’s not postphysical, but she’s certainly more than Higher.”

“Speaking of not being physical,” Aaron said. “Ozzie?”

“Lady alone knows,” Inigo said. “My physics is centuries out of date, but whatever he did was seriously advanced.”

“He transmuted his quantum state,” Troblum said. “Somehow he went outside spacetime.”

“Personal FTL?” Corrie-Lyn asked incredulously.

“Probably not. You have to time-phase to do that.”

“So is he postphysical?” Oscar asked.

“I’d say not in the classical sense, but I don’t have any empirical evidence,” Inigo said. “Normally, postphysicals don’t hang around afterward. And he was dedicated to helping the human race in many ways. I know; we discussed it at length.”

“Certainly did,” Aaron murmured.

The Elvin’s Payback drew alongside Mellanie’s Redemption. The two starships maneuvered for a few seconds before their airlocks touched and sealed. Troblum was the first through, moving surprisingly quickly. The others let him go without comment, though Oscar knew they were all a little perplexed by the enigmatic Higher.

He followed Troblum through the airlocks, emerging into a cabin that was almost the same size as the one he’d just left. A very attractive girl was waiting there, dressed in old-fashioned clothes; her hands pressed anxiously against the chest of Troblum’s armor as she asked if he was all right. Oscar frowned at the sight; there’d been no mention of a companion. And with the best will in the universe, he couldn’t imagine a girl like that partnered with Troblum. Perhaps she was his daughter. But there’d been no reference to a family in his file.

The others were crowding into the cabin; they all shared an identical mildly surprised expression as they saw the girl. Gaiamote emissions were hurriedly reduced.

“This is Catriona,” Troblum mumbled.

“Hello.” She smiled shyly.

Oscar saw Tomansio staring at an electronic device on the cabin’s lone extended table. It looked vaguely familiar. Secondary routines ran a comparison search through his storage lacunae. “Oh,” he said softly. His retinas switched to infrared, which confirmed it. Catriona was a solido projection.

Then a trolleybot glided in carrying a medical chamber, and everyone was suddenly busy making room. The next trolleybot appeared, and Oscar started to think some of them were going to have to go into suspension before they reached the Void. And given that I’m just about redundant now …

Troblum opened a low hatch into a companionway. “We can stack some of the medical chambers here.”

“Is this all the space there is?” Inigo asked dubiously.

“Once the planetary FTL has launched, we can use the forward cargo hold. Until then, we’ll just have to squeeze in.”

The medical chambers kept coming. Two were fitted into the narrow companionway. Troblum got the cabin bulkhead to extrude thin shelves. There was just enough height for the big dark sarcophagi to be stacked three high. That left everyone else with standing room only and pressed uncomfortably close.

“I’ll join you later,” Catriona said, and faded away. Troblum pretended not to notice. His armor suit opened up, and he stowed it in a broad luggage cylinder that telescoped up out of the decking. The toga suit he wore was about the shabbiest Oscar had ever seen.

“Are there any sleep cubicles?” Beckia asked.

“Three,” Troblum told her.

“One for me,” she said quickly. Corrie-Lyn claimed the second. Somehow no one asked to use Troblum’s personal cubicle.

It was still cramped in the cabin as the last medical capsule was secured and the airlock flowed shut.

“So how does this work?” Tomansio asked.

“We need an uninhabited star system,” Troblum explained. “Also, the radiation from a nova can sterilize neighboring star systems. So we really need a star that’s fifteen light-years away from any H-congruous planet to be safe. There are three candidates within fifty light-years, an hour’s flight time.”

“Closest one, then,” Inigo said.

“That’s the one farthest from the Void.”

“Oh. Well, how far to-” He stopped in surprise.

Oscar was suddenly aware of a personal gaiafield emission. The emotional content alone was enough for him to identify Cheriton. A sensation of panicky urgency made his heart flutter in sympathy. The emission strengthened into a gifting.

“Hello,” Cheriton’s thoughts said softly. The need for reassurance was overwhelming.

Inigo and Araminta-two exchanged a meaningful look. “We’re here,” their minds chorused.

“No!” Aaron yelled. He raised his fists in silent exasperation and glared at the two Dreamers.

The gifting had no sight or sound or scent, just Cheriton’s small befuddled thoughts. He was alone, unable to sense anything from his body. Only training and excellent self-control were keeping the fear at bay.

“Ah,” another mind spoke with unnerving serenity. “I hadn’t thought of a gaiafield connection. I see you have an unusual number of gaiamotes, with some interesting little tweaks to their structure.”

Oscar thought the newcomer might not even be human. There wasn’t the slightest timbre of emotion to be found anywhere.

“Go FTL,” Tomansio told Troblum. The big man had a scared look on his face; he was trembling. Catriona rematerialized in the cabin and hugged him tightly.

The gifting expanded as Cheriton’s eyes opened. He was staring up at a dark gray ceiling. A head appeared above him, badly blurred. Focus was gradual as his sluggish eyes responded to the pale oval shape. It was a woman’s face, framed by short dark hair, smiling benevolently.

“Oh, bollocks,” Oscar groaned.

“Hello, boys and girls,” said the Cat. “I can feel you out there. How lovely that you care so much about your friend.”

“I can’t move,” Cheriton reported. His self-control was starting to crack. Little bursts of fear were interrupting the gift as if it were conveying electric shocks.

“Sorry about that,” the Cat said. One hand lifted up into view; it was drenched with blood. Drops splashed down off each fingertip. “But I couldn’t have you running away, now, could I?”

“Cheriton,” Tomansio said very calmly. “You have to trigger your biononic overload. I’m so sorry. We’ll hold the ceremony of renewal when we return home. I swear it.”

“I can’t,” Cheriton’s wretched thought came back. “I can’t.”

“We have your secure store. You will lose nothing.”

“I can’t.”

A sleep cubicle door expanded. Corrie-Lyn ran out and clung to Inigo. She was fighting back tears.

“Cheriton,” Tomansio continued, his thoughts becoming stern. “You have to do this. She’ll infiltrate. The mission will be compromised.”

“Help me.”

“Oh, my dears.” The Cat’s smile hung above them, exuding an icy presence into the cabin even though she was nowhere close. Her lips widened into a mournful smile. “The poor boy is telling the truth. He can’t suicide. That’s a weakness, and we all know what I think about being strong, now, don’t we? So I’m helping him. I took a nice big pair of scissors to his biononic connections.” She looked at her glistening scarlet hand, as if puzzled by the color. “I seem to have accidentally cut through a few nerves, too. Well, when I say cut, I mean hacked. But on the positive side, nothing will hurt now, so that was kind of me, wasn’t it?”

“Devil whore,” Tomansio sent. “When this is over, I will find you.”

The Cat laughed. “Better than you have tried. But I’m curious. Exactly what is ‘this’? It’s all very exciting, this gathering of yours. I’d like to be a part of it.”

“Go FTL,” Aaron said sharply. “We have to get a head start. She will find out.”

“Yes,” the Cat agreed. “Leave him. Leave him with me. All alone. We’ll have such a party together.”

“Go,” Cheriton said. “Just go. It will be over quickly. I won’t survive what she’s done to me.”

“Oh, now, my dear, that’s just a big bad lie. I have a medical capsule, and I’m not afraid to use it. The two of us will spend what seems like an eternity together. I might even make you Aaron’s replacement. How lucky can you get?”

“Never.”

“How lovely. You believe you are strong.”

The gifting was suddenly flooded by a sharply defined image surging up out of Cheriton’s memories. A startled Cheriton found himself seven years old and sitting at the table eating a meal with his parents and two sisters. It was a pleasant time, with his mother and father talking to their children, interested in their day, encouraging questions. A delightful period of his life, suffused by happiness.

Then his father stood up. “Come here,” he beckoned to Cheriton. As the young boy got to his feet, his father activated several weapons enrichments.

“No!” Cheriton’s frantic thoughts pleaded. “No, no, this is me, this is my life.”

“It was boring, my dear. It makes you weak, and that’s no use to me. I’m going to make it so much more interesting and a little bit dirtier.”

“Stop this,” Aaron said.

“Or what?” the Cat asked over the sound of young Cheriton’s distraught sobbing. The sizzle of weapons fire was deafening, blotting out the screams of his sisters. The stench made Oscar want to throw up.

“Now they don’t exist anymore, so let’s edit them out of the rest of your life, shall we,” the Cat said. “And while I’m doing that, I’ll have a think about what I can replace them all with. Something yummy, I feel. Something that is going to make you love me.”

“They are real,” Tomansio sent with a surge of conviction. “Believe it, Cheriton. Know the truth. They did not die like that.”

The gifting degenerated into a chaotic swirl of images and sounds and sensations. Flashes of Cheriton’s family slipped past them, draining to gray nothingness.

“Bring them back!” Cheriton wailed.

“Troblum,” Tomansio said. “Get us out of here.”

Troblum only tightened his hold around Catriona. “It’s me she wants. She’ll never stop, not ever. She never does. I know her. I studied what she is. Ask him.” He pointed at Aaron.

“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “This is what was done to me.”

“Bring who back?” the Cat asked lightly, her mind radiating gentle concern. “Who, my dear?”

“What?” Cheriton’s thoughts were confused.

“If she does want you, there’s only one place you can go to be safe,” Oscar said urgently to Troblum, worried by how distraught the big man seemed to be. He clearly wasn’t thinking logically. “Take us there,” he urged.

“Oh, look,” the Cat said enthusiastically.

Another memory was jerked out of Cheriton’s brain. This time Oscar found himself on a picnic by a small stream; now Cheriton was the father. His wife and small son were with him.

A deep disquiet bubbled up into Cheriton’s thoughts. This was a lovely time, yet he instinctively knew something was wrong.

“Stop this,” Tomansio said. “You can extract what you need easily enough.”

“But this way I get to play first,” the Cat said. “If my Cheriton is to belong to me, he can’t have affections for anyone else, now, can he?”

“Don’t!”

“Troblum,” Aaron said with a menacing insistence. “Get us out of here.”

“Please,” Araminta-two whispered. Her emotional output was rising to a fearsome level as she responded to Cheriton’s terrible degradation. Oscar found the tears welling up in his own eyes at her distress.

“Like father, like son,” the Cat said.

Cheriton looked down to find himself holding a pump-action shotgun. “No!” he screamed. “No no no no. Stop her; in Ozzie’s name, don’t let her do this.”

“We can’t leave him,” Corrie-Lyn sobbed. “Not with her. Nobody can face this alone. It’s inhuman.”

A ruby targeting laser stabbed out of Aaron’s fist. It splashed on the solido projector. “Now!” he hissed.

“Troblum!” Catriona wailed.

Cheriton’s finger pulled the shotgun’s safety off. It produced a nasty snick that echoed around the starship’s cabin.

“It’s not real,” Inigo vowed. “Know this, Cheriton, and remember.”

“Oh, dear Jesus,” Oscar moaned.

“Do it, you motherfucker,” Aaron yelled.

The Mellanie’s Redemption flashed into hyperspace.