The Evolutionary Void

ELEVEN

THE THIN SLEET OF BLUE SPARKS cascading through hyperspace’s pseudofabric faded away as power was withdrawn from the ultradrive engines of the Lady’s Light, and the ship dropped back into spacetime. Blackness pressed in against the vast transparent wall at the front of the observation deck. Radiation from the glowing loop of interstellar detritus behind them struck the ordinary force field that was protecting them from the hostility of the Gulf, creating a disagreeable claret glow around the edges of the transparency. Araminta put on a pair of sunglasses and stared through the polarized lenses at the greater darkness four light-years ahead.

Ethan stood beside her, immaculate in his Cleric robes, leaking awe and expectation into the gaiafield. Taranse, Darraklan, and Rincenso waited loyally behind their Dreamer, also subdued at the sight of the barrier they had doubted they would ever witness for themselves.

“We’re here,” Araminta told the Skylord. “Ask the Heart to reach for us, please.”

It responded with a pulse of nearly human happiness.

Exoimage displays showed her the starship’s hysradar return. The Void boundary was rippling, distending upward at hyperluminal speed. Reaching for the Pilgrimage fleet. For her. Its summit opened.

A soft gale of nebula light swept over the twelve Pilgrimage ships.

Hysradar detected another ship emerging from stealth mode, tiny beside the waiting Goliaths but with an impenetrable force field.

“I wondered where you were,” Araminta said.

“You knew,” Ilanthe replied equitably.

Ethan’s delight chilled rapidly at the reminder of the cost of his victory. “What now?” he asked.

“We go in,” Araminta told him. “Together. Correct?”

“Correct,” Ilanthe said.

“Taranse,” Araminta said. “Take us through.”

He gave a dreamy nod. The Lady’s Light accelerated forward, with the other ships matching its course.

“My Lord,” Ethan’s mind cried, his thoughts amplified by the three confluence nests on board, then reinforced by those on the remainder of the fleet. “Please take us to the solid world which used to be inhabited by those of our species.”

Shit! Araminta shot him a furious glare. He returned a satisfied sneer. “Did you overlook that part of the request, Dreamer?” he asked mockingly.

Araminta watched the tortured red glare fade from the edge of the transparency as the glow of the nebulae strengthened. Somewhere behind them, the boundary was closing again. For the first time in days the infestation of nausea and confusion from living at two speeds abated. Her thoughts cleared.

“And your uniqueness would appear to be at an end,” Ethan continued. Araminta’s farsight showed her his thoughts, the malice that festered there, naked to taste as he slowly realized the abilities of the Void and recalled the techniques Edeard had applied. Farsight also showed her what he was hiding within the copious folds of his robe.

“True,” she said. “But that leaves us leading the real life of the Void.”

Ethan reached for the old-fashioned pistol he’d concealed. Araminta’s third hand picked him up and threw him across the observation chamber. He screamed as much from shock as from fright as he flew through the air, a cry that was cut off as he thudded face-first into the bulkhead. He crashed awkwardly to the floor, whimpering in pain from the broken bones. Blood was dripping from his mouth and nose.

“When Rah and the Lady came to Makkathran, they had only politics and brute force to enforce their rule,” Araminta said lightly as she walked toward Ethan, who was trying to scramble away. “How fitting that such gifts are also what we will be starting out with.”

Ethan went for a heartsqueeze. Araminta warded it off easily. She held out a hand, palm upward, raising it. Ethan was abruptly tugged off the floor. A finger beckoned. He was drawn toward her.

“You were right,” she said to Aaron. “I did need to practice. He’s a sneaky little shit.”

Taranse, Darraklan, and Rincenso were very still, all of them hurrying to establish their own mental shields lest the Dreamer should read their thoughts.

“You don’t believe,” Ethan hissed through bloody lips. “You never did.”

“But you believe in me, don’t you?” she urged huskily, recalling Tathal’s dreadful compulsive domination during the Twenty-sixth dream, applying the ability against the squirming mind before her. “It was me who brought you to the barrier. Me who called to the Skylord. Me who is bringing you to Querencia. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes,” Ethan gurgled.

“And you are grateful for such an act of selfless generosity, are you not?”

“Yes.”

“How could you do anything but love the person who made it possible to finally live the dream?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Do you love me, Ethan? Do you trust me?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“Thank you, Ethan, from the bottom of my heart.” She lowered him carefully to the decking and smiled gently at her aghast audience. “The ex-Conservator seems to have tripped in all the excitement. Please take him to the sick bay.”

Taranse nodded nervously and knelt down to help Ethan. With Darraklan’s assistance, they managed to pull him up between them.

Because she could show no weakness, Araminta watched them with a passive smile. Over in the Mellanie’s Redemption, Araminta-two was puking his guts up at the atrocity he’d just committed.

“Dreamer, look,” Rincenso said in wonder. He was pointing at the front of the observation deck. On the other side of the transparent bulkhead, a flock of Skylords were approaching the pilgrimage fleet. For all she feared and resented the creatures, they looked glorious as they swam out of the sparse starscape.

As soon as the boundary closed behind them, Ilanthe ordered the ship to open its cargo bay doors. She could sense the abilities intrinsic to the Void’s fabric pervade the inversion core. What the animal humans of Querencia crudely described as farsight allowed her mind to examine the fabric directly, plotting the effect her own thoughts had on it, the alterations and reactions they propagated. The symbiosis was fascinating; already she’d learned more than she had from a century of remote analysis of Inigo’s stupid dreams. The Void’s quantum architecture was completely different from the universe outside. But it was tragically flawed, requiring extrinsic energy to sustain itself even in its base state. When the functions enfolded within its extraordinary intricate quantum fields were activated, the power levels they consumed were far greater than she’d expected.

“The doomsayers were right,” she told Neskia. “The pilgrimage animals would have wiped out the galaxy with their reset demands.”

“Will you prevent that?” Neskia asked.

Ilanthe regarded the concern swirling within her otherwise faithful operative’s mind with detached interest. Even a Higher as progressive and complex as Neskia was betrayed by residual animal emotion. “My success will render the question irrelevant.”

Ilanthe observed the flock of Skylords closing in. With their opalescent vacuum wings extended wide, the mountain-size creatures were expanding quickly across the thin scattering of stars as they accelerated toward the fleet. The lambent twisted strands of the nebulae were distorted through the weird lensing effect of the wings, causing them to flicker and shift like celestial flames. Ilanthe examined the true functionality of the wings, how they rooted down into the Void fabric, manipulating localized gravity and temporal flow. A process of propulsion so much more sophisticated than the crude “telekinetic” ability of manipulating mass location. Less energy-demanding, too, she noted approvingly.

When her thoughts tried to replicate the same interaction with the Void fabric, there was some aspect missing. Instead she simply wished herself elevating out into space, employing some of the technique Edeard’s descendant had employed in the Last Dream. The inversion core immediately flew clear of the ship. The method worked, which was gratifying, but it lacked the elegance and capability of the Skylords.

Ilanthe felt the perception of the Skylords concentrate on the inversion core, seeking understanding of what she was. Her thoughts established a perfect shield around the shell of the inversion core, blocking their probes.

“Greetings,” she told the closest Skylord neutrally, and began to accelerate toward it. Her own perception ability listened to Araminta and several others from the Pilgrimage fleet frantically warning the Skylords to be careful, claiming she was dangerous. Their responses were interesting, revealing their complete lack of rational intellect. They almost evaded the topic; certainly, they didn’t seem to comprehend the meaning behind the concepts. It wasn’t part of their world; therefore, their mental vocabulary didn’t accommodate it. Either they were artificial constructs designated by the nucleus with the specific task of gathering up mature minds, or they had once been fully sentient spaceborne entities who had de-evolved throughout the countless millennia since their imprisonment. With nothing new to experience inside the Void, no challenges to struggle with, their minds had atrophied down to instinct-based responses.

“I am fulfilled,” Ilanthe told the Skylord as she approached it. “Please take me to the Heart.”

“I do not know if you are fulfilled,” the Skylord responded. “You are closed to me. Open yourself.”

The tentative wisps of the colorful vacuum wings flowed around the inversion core as it glided in toward the Skylord’s glimmering crystalline body. Ilanthe could perceive the texture of its oddly distorted geometry, a kind of honeycomb of ordinary matter and something similar to an exotic force; the two were in constant flux, which bestowed that distinctive surface instability. The composition was intriguing. But despite its subtle complexity, the thoughts that animated it lacked potency. Her own determination, amplified by the neural pathways available within the inversion core, was a lot stronger. “I would be grateful if you would open yourself to me,” she told it.

“I withhold nothing.”

“Oh, but you do.” And she reached for the Skylord, inserting her hardened, purposeful thoughts amid its clean and simple routines. Lovingly entwining them. Taking hold.

“What are you doing?” the Skylord asked.

She suppressed the rising incomprehension, stilling its deep instincts to facilitate applications that would take it far from this place.

“Your intrusion is preventing me from functioning. Parts of me are failing. Withdraw yourself.”

“I am helping you to become so much more. Together we are synergistic,” she promised. “I will guide you to the pinnacle of fulfillment.” Then the feast began.

“I am ending,” the Skylord declared.

“Stop!” Araminta cried. “You’re killing it.”

“Have you learned nothing about the Void?” Ilanthe retorted.

Dark specters began to slither through the cheerful sparkles of the Skylord’s vacuum wings, proliferating and expanding. The tenuous cloud of molecules that formed the physical aspect of the wings burst apart, dark frosty motes dissipating through space like a black snowstorm. Now the dark flames were shivering across the intricate optical quivering of the Skylord’s surface, biting inward.

Everything it was poured across the gap to the inversion core, an extirpation that allowed the abilities and knowledge of its kind to flow into Ilanthe.

At that point she almost regretted no longer having a human face. How she would be smiling now. Engorged and enriched by the Skylord’s essence, her mastery of this strange continuum was rising toward absolute. Function manipulation began to integrate with her personality at an instinctive level. She heard the call of the nebulae, the transdimensional sink points of rationality twisting out through the Void’s quantum fields, keening for intelligence with the promise of escalation to something greater, as yet unglimpsed. They must lead to the paramount consciousness, she knew. The Heart itself. From that nucleus everything could be controlled.

Local space was awash with despair and revulsion at the Skylord’s demise. “You will thank me soon enough,” she informed the insignificant human minds. One was different from the rest. A small part of her acknowledged the Dreamer Araminta, whose thoughts stretched away somehow, a method that didn’t utilize the Void fabric. It wasn’t relevant.

Once more Ilanthe’s thoughts flowed into the pattern to manipulate the Void’s temporal and gravatonic functions, this time correctly. A wide area around the inversion core began to sparkle as the surrounding dust was caught up in the effect, drifting into chiaroscuro spirals. Ilanthe accelerated hard, simultaneously negating the temporal flow around the inversion core’s shell. The Pilgrimage fleet dwindled away to nothing in seconds as it achieved point nine lightspeed. Far ahead, the siren melody from the nebula that Querencia humans had named Odin’s Sea grew perceptibly stronger.

Araminta hadn’t moved throughout the atrocity. It had happened not ten kilometers directly ahead of the Lady’s Light, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. She’d seen the Skylord’s vacuum wings dim to a frail gray travesty of their former grandeur, and then even that feeble light had been smothered. All the while her mind echoed with the Skylord’s pitiable incomprehension.

It was too much. Tears leaked out from behind her sunglasses. “I did this, I’m responsible, I brought that monster here.”

“No,” Aaron assured her. “You were manipulated by Ilanthe, as were all of us. You have no guilt.”

“But I do,” Araminta whispered.

“Dreamer,” Darraklan said earnestly. “This is not your fault. Ethan was the one who fell to that thing’s sweet promises. It subverted him. You are blameless. You simply fulfilled your destiny.”

Out beyond the observation deck, the remaining Skylords were slowly circling around the cold husk of their dead kindred. She could feel their mournful thoughts as they scoured space for its soul. But of course Ilanthe had absorbed every aspect, leaving nothing.

“I’m so sorry,” she told the distraught Skylords.

“It is gone,” came the chorus of grief. “Our kindred is gone. It did not go to the Heart. The other ended it. Why?”

“The other is unfulfilled and evil,” Araminta told them. “This is what we bring wherever we go.”

The Skylords recoiled.

“We need them,” Rincenso said in alarm. “Dreamer, please. The fleet needs guidance more than ever now.”

“It’s over,” she said brokenly. “Ethan was right: I don’t believe. Besides, it doesn’t matter anymore. Inigo will end this as he began it. At least I think that’s right.”

When Araminta-two looked at Aaron for confirmation, he shook his head angrily.

“What?” Araminta-two protested. “That’s the great and wonderful plan, isn’t it?”

“The fleet is not part of the plan,” Aaron said.

“I got it safely through the barrier. That’s it. That’s all I ever said I’d do.”

“Get the Skylords to help,” Aaron ordered. “Come on, don’t wilt on us now.”

“Help do what?” Araminta-two asked. “We’re almost at Querencia. Nothing else matters. You don’t need me now, and I never needed the fleet.”

“You talked about responsibility,” Aaron said. “Those millions of dumb Living Dream followers placed their lives in your hands.”

“Waiting in space isn’t going to hurt them. It won’t be long. After all, this is about to end.”

“And if it doesn’t end in our favor?”

From the other side of the cramped cabin of the Mellanie’s Redemption, Araminta-two gave him a curious glance. “You? You have doubts?”

“I’ve always known what I have to do even though I don’t know why. It’s comfortable that way.” His face twisted in anguish. “I’ve remembered too much of her now, and it’s eating me alive. Memories of night and desolation are breaking loose. She thrives on them. I have to unknow again. I have to be free; I have to be clean. That or death. I would welcome death at this point. You, Corrie-Lyn, Inigo, the others, you all claimed that I needed to find myself, to be true to me. I don’t. I cannot be. I need to be what I was granted in return for my new life. That is me. And none of you accept that.”

“But-”

“Things go wrong!” Aaron almost shouted.

It was the thing Araminta had feared ever since Corrie-Lyn had told her about Aaron’s nearly total collapse in mindspace. He was the one who’d brought them all together, who’d relentlessly pushed them into the Void because of some plan his masters had conceived. He knew what to do. Even though his faith in that task was totally artificial, it had swept them all along. And now here they were, almost within reach of whatever goal they had to attain, and he was falling apart because of his past and the doubts it was inflicting.

“I’ll talk to the Skylords,” Araminta-two said earnestly. “I’ll fix this. The pilgrimage fleet will land on Querencia. They’ll be safe.”

He nodded, grimacing. “Thank you.”

Darraklan was giving Araminta a curious look as agitation built amid his thoughts. She realized that some suggestion of Aaron might have escaped from her shield.

“Dreamer?” It was almost a plea. Like all of them, he’d invested everything he had in her.

“It’s all right,” Araminta said, and held out her hand for him to touch. “I will talk to the Skylords. I will get us to Makkathran.” She faced the front of the observation deck again, focusing on the bereaved Skylords. “We seek fulfillment,” she told them calmly. “We seek guidance.”

Everything was calm. That wasn’t good.

The Delivery Man wanted some kind of evidence of the unimaginable nuclear hell that raged barely twenty meters from where he was sitting in the Last Throw’s cabin.

“This is really disturbing you, isn’t it?” Gore said over the TD channel. “Your emotions are hyping up the gaiafield. Why don’t you play some soothing music.”

“FUCK OFF.”

And still the Last Throw remained perfectly still. The Delivery Man desperately needed proof that he was actually descending through the photosphere of a midrange star, not that size truly mattered given the circumstances. Some shaking would be nice. Maybe the odd creak of the stress structure. And heat. There really, really ought to be an unpleasant amount of heat in the cabin.

There wasn’t a chance of that. The super-reinforced force fields cocooning the starship would work or they wouldn’t. There was no little margin for error that he could get through by gritting his teeth and heroically enduring some hardship. For all the difference it would make, he could quite easily be taking a comforting spore shower or maybe a little snooze in his sleep compartment. Oh, yes, that’s really going to happen.

The Last Throw was navigating by hysradar alone. None of its other sensors would be of the slightest use. They couldn’t even protrude through the ultrasilver one-hundred-percent-reflective surface of the outermost force field. Nothing material could survive the photosphere plasma.

So … hysradar it was. The exovision display showed the macrohurricanes of the photosphere rampaging around him, particle gales so large and fearsome that their size actually made their surges and twists predictable. The smartcore could track and predict the impact vectors of the magnetosphere squalls and granulation eruptions braking around them, allowing the ingrav and regrav units to compensate, keeping them on course.

They were driving down vertically, forcing through the barrage of escaping plasma toward the siphon-now three thousand kilometers below Last Throw, submerged within the convection zone, where the temperature spiked up past two million degrees Celsius, with a density just over ten percent that of water. And life was going to get extremely dangerous, because as Gore had gleefully remarked, the photosphere was just the warm-up. The Delivery Man still didn’t know what to make of that sense of humor.

His one talisman was the Stardiver program, which had notched up some success over the centuries. Not that Stardiver probes were the most regular missions launched by the Greater Commonwealth Astronomical Agency. The hyperspace-spliced shielding perfected for them over eight hundred years hardly guaranteed success once the convection zone was entered.

The Delivery Man would have liked a few test flights first, each one dipping a little deeper, scientifically analyzing the results, seeing how the modified and expanded force field generators performed. Power consumption. Energy tolerance. Pressure resistance. Hyperspace shunts. But no …

“It either works or it doesn’t,” Gore had said. “There’s no halfway here.”

That didn’t mean one couldn’t be prudent. It wasn’t an argument the Delivery Man even bothered with. Besides, even he acknowledged that it wouldn’t do to pique the curiosity of the ship that had followed them. No Accelerator agent would ever permit any endeavor that might halt Ilanthe’s attempt to Fuse with the Void.

Two and a half thousand kilometers.

The Delivery Man had launched five hours after Justine’s last dream, and he hadn’t worked out what was so incredibly funny about the Lady’s statue. Gore-naturally!-had smirked and gone: “Well, who’d have guessed?” So they both knew who she was, some figure from ancient history, no doubt.

“How’s your infiltration going?” the Delivery Man asked.

“Everything’s in position,” Gore replied. “I won’t be starting the actual physical process until you’ve established command over the siphon.”

“What does Tyzak make of it all?”

“It’s just another sensor system to him.”

“We could maybe tell him the truth.”

“Sonny, we’re doing what we have to so we can protect our species-and his. He does what he has to do to guarantee his way of life. This is not a diplomatic negotiation so that we can find common ground. Both of us are genetically wired to be what we are. And right now there is no common purpose. That’s a fucking great shame, but it’s the way it is.”

“I know. I suppose I was hoping that meeting Justine might make him change his mind. If he could just understand what it is we’re all facing.”

“That’s the thing; he does understand. But that doesn’t mean he can change, not to the degree we need and certainly not in the time frame we have.”

“I know. Are you really not going to tell me who the Lady is?”

“It’s a complete irrelevance to this situation; besides, it keeps you distracted.”

“Yeah, right.” The Last Throw was now three hundred kilometers above the surface of the convection zone. Energy usage was growing as the drives fought to keep the ship stable against the monstrous tides of plasma streaking along the quivering flux lines. There was also the problem of the star’s own gravity. Five additional ingrav units had been included in the modification whose sole purpose was to negate that awesome crushing force. They were operating right at their maximum loading. If one of them glitched for even a second, he’d be squashed into a molecule-thick puddle of blood and flesh across the decking.

“Here it comes.” The Delivery Man braced himself as Last Throw approached the convection zone. There was no clean defining edge between the two. The photosphere simply grew hotter, with a corresponding shift in density.

The Last Throw’s ultradrive came on as the temperature rose from the relative cool of the photosphere shunting excess energy from the force fields away into hyperspace, a flow rate that was increasing at a nearly exponential rate. The Stardiver project engineers had soon learned that combining the force field energy dissipation function with an exotic component was the only way to deal with such extraordinary temperature loading.

“It’s holding,” the Delivery Man said in surprise as the starship began to descend through the convection zone. Now the biggest danger lay with the bubblelike granulations that bloomed thousands of kilometers across almost without warning and raced for the photosphere. One of the primary mission objectives for Stardiver probes was to study the factors that contributed to their gestation. Even now, with centuries of research and observation, that prediction was a very inexact science.

“Good man,” Gore replied levelly. “Keep it coming.”

“Right.” The Delivery Man was shaking now. He wiped a hand across his forehead, dismayed to find out how much sweat was forming there, then ordered his biononics to initiate an adrenaline suppressor. He had to keep a clear head, and fear was degrading his ability to think straight. Yeah, as if staying sober and alert is going to help. One flaw in a system, one dodgy component, a single poorly written line of code, and it would be over in microseconds. At least I’ll never know. Until I get re-lifed. Except I won’t get re-lifed because according to Gore, this is the galaxy’s last chance. Oh, shit. I miss the kids.

This time the moisture staining his cheeks wasn’t coming from his brow.

“So when do you think Inigo is going to get to Makkathran?” he asked to distract himself from death, which was surely going to hit at any moment. He was still amazed at Paula Myo calling to tell Gore that Inigo, a weird duo-multiple Araminta, and a team of her agents had somehow raced Troblum’s starship ahead of the Pilgrimage fleet.

“It really shouldn’t be long, son. You’ll be out of there and back with your girls before you know it.”

“Yeah, sure.” His one remaining satisfaction was knowing that he was doing something to help Lizzie and the girls. By contrast, it would have been awful to be stuck inside the Sol barrier with them, not knowing what was happening outside, whether there was any hope. Not much, but enough, he promised his family. Given the not so small miracle Gore had worked in getting Inigo to help, he’d convinced himself there was a chance. A very small one, but it was real. All he had to do now was rendezvous with the siphon.

It took another fifty minutes to maneuver through the macrosurges of the convection zone’s deathly environment before the fifty-kilometer circle of the siphon force field was directly underneath Last Throw. Hysradar showed the torrent of two-million-degree hydrogen streaming in through the rim. The Delivery Man guided the starship across the curving upper surface of the giant lens shape and then slowly down until it was nose-on to the edge.

“That’s the weak part,” Gore said. “Show me what you can do.”

The Last Throw eased forward until its force field actually touched the protective shield around the siphon. That was when the Delivery Man finally got to feel some physical aspect of the flight. A low thrumming reverberated through the cabin as the starship was caught between the force field and the plasma hurtling past. He could feel the decking vibrate and grinned weakly. Maybe tranquillity was preferable, after all.

Sensors could just manage to scan through the semipermeable segment of the force field it was pressed against. The smartcore began to probe what it could of the siphon’s quantum signature, tracing ghostly outlines of the gigantic generator sheltered inside the force field. The map of its structure built slowly. Eventually there was enough for the Delivery Man to begin the second stage.

The Last Throw activated several TD channels, which were directed with impressive accuracy at the siphon’s control network. Low-level connections were created, and a software analysis was initiated.

“It’s not the same kind of semisentient that controls the elevation mechanism,” the Delivery Man reported. “More like a distributed AI routine, although the parallels with Commonwealth genetic software are minimal.”

“Can it be hacked?”

“There are a lot of safeguards, including an external override which will have to be neutralized, but the smartcore says we have several infiltrator packages which should work.”

“Launch them.”

It’s Gore. That was the thought Oscar awoke to. The medical capsule’s cover withdrew, showing a blurred figure peering down at him in the cargo hold’s dim green-tinged light. Gore is expecting someone to join Justine, and that’s what Aaron was committed to. Gore is Aaron’s controller.

The face above him resolved into Araminta-two, whose mind was badly agitated.

“It’s Gore,” Oscar croaked. Suspension had left him with stiff muscles everywhere and an embarrassingly full bladder.

“What is?” Araminta-two asked.

“The person behind Aaron, or at least one of them.”

“Oh. You mean because he’s directing everyone to Makkathran? Yeah, I figured that one out a few months back. Even Aaron agreed.”

“Ah. Right. Need to pee.” Oscar levered himself upright on his elbows and nearly banged his head on the ceiling of the forward cargo hold. There wasn’t much room between the bulky medical cabinets. He saw that three of them were already empty.

I thought I was supposed to be first out. “Everything okay?”

“Just about,” Araminta-two answered with a whole load of glumness. Oscar gave him a good look; the Dreamer was wearing a baggy blue T-shirt and gray-green trousers that had a lot of spare fabric. For a moment Oscar thought he was dressing in Troblum’s old clothes before acknowledging the style was deliberately feminine. “What’s up? Have we arrived?”

“Our Skylord is decelerating us into Querencia orbit. Troblum has already detected the Silverbird’s beacon, so we know where Makkathran is. No need for observational orbits.”

“That’s good.” He really needed to pee.

“It’s been touch and go with Aaron,” Araminta-two blurted.

“Why?”

“His memories of the Cat are breaking through. He spends longer and longer asleep, wrestling with his nightmares. Yesterday he was only awake for five hours. And his body’s having some kind of psychosomatic reaction, I think enhanced by his psychic ability.”

“Oh, crap.” Oscar hunched down and made his way along the companionway to the main cabin. His u-shadow connected him to the smartcore, and an exoimage display showed him the planet ahead, expanding quite rapidly as they decelerated into orbit. “Seventy-three minutes out? And we spent three and a half months traveling. Not bad.” He made it into the cabin to find Inigo, Corrie-Lyn, and Tomansio waiting for him. “Gotta go.” He pointed urgently at the washroom cubicle. They all waved him on, offering sympathetic thoughts.

He was just sealing his fly when the deluge of senses hit him hard, foreign thoughts slicing clean through his basic mental shield, bringing vertiginous light, sensation, sound, taste, along with a primeval fear that numbed his hands as he tumbled down into someone else’s life.

It had been a fabulous holiday. When evening came, they’d taken one of the hundreds of tourist boats that nosed around the piers of Tridelta City and headed up the Dongara River for a night of partying and native spectacle. The planet’s native bioluminescent vegetation didn’t disappoint, glowing vividly against the dark skies. And the lounges on the boat provided a lot of wild fun, impressing even the most jaded passenger.

They disembarked at dawn and went back to their hotel on the top of the old Kinoki Tower three kilometers above the muddy waters of the rivers that shimmied around the city groynes. Daytime was spent eating, sleeping, and having furious sex. The Cat had no inhibitions, which was yet another reason he loved her so. Provocative and daring, she exhausted him and still wanted more, telling him what she expected his poor old flesh to perform.

“Let me have just one break.” He laughed, reaching for some of the chilled wine. But the bottle was lying on its side where it’d been kicked. He gave it a depressed stare and told his u-shadow to connect to-

The Cat rolled him onto his back and straddled him. A delightful victorious smile lit up her cute face. “Wrong answer,” she said, grinning. Her hand closed around his wrist, and the skin burned beneath her fingers. He screamed as the charred flesh welded itself onto the mattress. She gripped the other hand and seared that down, too. “Nobody denies me,” she told him.

He screamed again as she began on his ankles, spread-eagling him so he was held immobile by the stringy remains of his own smoldering flesh. Then her hands stroked nimbly along his chest. She stiffened her fingers and powered them down like a knife. Bones cracked, and blood welled up in deep punctures. “With your body gone, I will take your mind and finally your soul,” she promised. He screamed and screamed and twisted with all his strength to escape, prizing himself free-

“Shit!” Oscar juddered back, cracking the side of his head on the bulkhead of the tiny compartment. “Ow!” He pressed his hand to the rising bruise as biononics hurried to ease the damaged flesh. That was when he saw the red markings around his wrist. He stared at them in shock. They were an identical shape to the injury the Cat had inflicted on Aaron in the dream. “Bloody hell.” He stumbled out into the main cabin, holding up both arms incredulously to show his colleagues the sores.

“Yeah!” Tomansio said heartlessly. “You have to guard yourself against that. He got me half an hour ago. I just hope to Ozzie they’re not genuine memories.”

A muffled scream sounded across the cabin. Everyone looked at the sealed door of the sleeping cubicle where Aaron was brawling with his own mind. “Can’t we wake him up?” Oscar’s shield was as strong as he could make it, and he could still sense the nightmare flooding out of the sleeping man’s mind.

“Troblum and I tried that once,” Araminta-two said. “Won’t be doing that again. Thankfully, my third hand is stronger than his.” He gave a nervous smile. “Actually, Aaron was the one who’s been making me practice and develop my abilities.”

“We’re losing him,” Inigo said. “And if we lose him …”

“No,” Corrie-Lyn said. “We won’t lose him, not to her. Not before we reach Makkathran. He’s stronger than that. I know.”

“Yeah, but this?” Tomansio gestured at the sleeping cubicle.

“Less than two hours,” Corrie-Lyn said. “And we’ll be walking though Makkathran’s streets. His subconscious knows that.”

“His subconscious is the problem,” Oscar muttered dourly. “Where’s Troblum?”

“Where he’s been for most of the flight,” Araminta-two said archly. “In his sleeping cubicle.”

“Has he got problems, too?” It came out before Oscar really thought about what he was asking.

A mildly guilty flash of amusement shimmered across the cabin, a brief intimate connection shared by everyone equally.

“Okay,” Oscar said, desperate not to let any thoughts wander in the direction of the big man’s cubicle. “Why?”

“Wouldn’t like to guess, but his solido projector is in there with him.”

“Wow, this must have been a great trip for you.”

“Wonderful,” Araminta-two admitted. “Being on the Lady’s Light was just about preferable.”

“Did the Pilgrimage fleet make it through?”

“Yes. About a week ago. I had a spot of trouble with Ethan afterward, but that’s settled now.”

Oscar was curious, but instinct made him hold back from asking for details. “And Ilanthe?”

“Oh, yes, it’s here. It killed a Skylord and consumed its abilities.”

“Christ. So where is it now?”

“The other Skylords say it’s on its way to the Heart.”

Oscar almost wished they’d left him in suspension. “Let’s wake up the others,” he said.

Aaron emerged from his sleep cubicle just as Beckia was taken out of her medical cabinet. Oscar took one look at him and drew in a sharp breath. Aaron was in a bad way. His face looked as if he’d had some kind of capsule smash, with scars and bruising contaminating his skin. Eyes bloodshot.

“Good to see you,” Oscar lied.

Aaron gave him a sour glance. “Where’s Troblum?” Without waiting for an answer, he thumped his fist on Troblum’s door. Oscar saw that each fingernail was black and bleeding.

Troblum emerged, his mind spilling resentment into the cabin. He gave everyone a sullen glance and dropped his gaze to the decking like a censured teenager.

“Land us,” Aaron said. “Come on, we don’t have time for your personal crap; you need to focus on this. Justine encountered some difficulties on the way down.”

“I’m ready,” Troblum replied sullenly.

Acceleration couches rose up out of the floor.

“Talking of personal crap,” Tomansio said levelly. “Have you considered what you’ve been spilling into the Void?”

“What?” Aaron snapped.

“Well, let’s just hope your ex-girlfriend hasn’t been replicated like Kazimir was. I’d hate to bump into her down there.”

Oscar gripped the sides of his couch. The first amber warnings flickered into his exovision. Several systems were glitching. He wished they’d left him in suspension until they were down and this particular hell was over.

It was late afternoon in the Anomine city, and the air was already starting to cool. Gore pulled on a black cashmere sweater as he moved along the intrusion systems lying like a giant spiderweb across the plaza. The strands were sticky, glistening black in the rose-gold sun. His field function analysis of the individual strands was showing up few imperfections amid the long-chain molecules that were twined together around their active penetration filaments. Production quality had been high, which was impressive given that the replicator had never been designed with anything quite like this in mind.

He gave Tyzak an unobtrusive look. The big old Anomine was squatting on his hind legs on the other side of the plaza, close to Gore’s little camp. It still had no true idea of the web’s actual purpose.

I guess mistrust and suspicion are greater in humans than Anomine. Shame, but there you go, it gives us an edge. And yet … they went postphysical. Though not this variety. It’s almost as if they bred two strains of themselves, the go-getters and the naive.

A theory as good as any. Somehow he couldn’t imagine Tyzak and his kind achieving postphysical status.

Maybe that’s true biological evolution. Achieve the pinnacle and decline back into peaceful extinction, irrelevant once your true achievement has elevated itself out of this universe. Perhaps spacetime has no other purpose than to be an embryo for sentience.

He tried to recall how many species the navy exploration ships had found that had backed away from the apex of science and intellect without achieving the leap to postphysical. The statistics eluded him, but he didn’t think there were many.

Something ripped noisily through the clean air above the city, bringing a wave of joy and relief. Tyzak hadn’t heard it; therefore-

Gore smiled contentedly to himself. He felt surprising calm for a mere meat body as his u-shadow opened a link to the Delivery Man. “How’s it going?”

“Well, amazingly, I’m still alive. No change up here. The incursion package is loaded. I’m just waiting for you to say go to activate it.”

“Go.”

“What?”

“Initiate the wormhole and start the siphon power-up sequence. We’re going to need that energy soon.”

“Oh, crap. Okay, I’ll try.”

“Thanks. For everything.” Gore closed his eyes, opened his mind, and watched the sky.

The sonic boom crashed across Makkathran without warning, sending the local birds wheeling through the sky, their wings pumping in alarm. Panicked animals across the city started an ugly bawling. Justine looked up and smiled widely in utter relief. She wanted Dad to know this, a wish that surged out of her, as strong as any Void-derived psychic ability. It took a moment, then she found the pure white contrail sketching a beautifully straight line high across the turquoise sky. The dark tip was already out across the Lyot Sea. It started to curve back around again.

“Finally!”

The starship vanished from sight behind the high wall surrounding the little courtyard garden at the back of the Sampalok mansion. Justine told the two ge-chimps to carry on raking the new section of the vegetable patch she was preparing. The funny little creatures swished the crude tools back and forth across the soil as she directed. Sculpting them had been one of the most satisfying moments she’d had in ages, even though the first had one arm longer than the other and the second seemed to have a hearing difficulty.

Justine hurried out into the central square and stood on the specific spot she’d been using for the last seven weeks. “Take me down,” she asked the city. The ground beneath her feet changed, and she fell through the city substance to the travel tunnel underneath. And that was the single most satisfying achievement just about ever. She still hadn’t talked to or even sensed the city’s primary mind, buried heaven only knew how many kilometers below the buildings and canals. But she had finally managed to impress her thoughts on the more simple routines that regulated the fundamental aspects of the city structure. Whatever Makkathran actually was, its management network was a homogenized one. Farsight had showed her that electricity powered the lights and some of the pump systems. Gravity was manipulated to make the travel tunnels work. All of that confirmed everyone’s original belief that the city had come from outside the Void. But it still didn’t tell her anything she wanted to know.

She descended into the dazzling illumination of the travel tunnel and pushed her sunglasses firmly back on her nose before asking the city to take her to Golden Park. Gravity began to shift, and she made sure she was leaning forward as it altered. She’d made the mistake of falling feetfirst once and didn’t want to repeat that. Flying headfirst, now, that was another matter. It was more exhilarating than Inigo’s dreams had ever conveyed. She punched her fists out in front and whooped joyously as she performed her first corkscrew roll.

Justine rose up into Golden Park beside one of the white pillars along the Outer Circle Canal. The melded domes of the Orchard Palace gleamed with a burnished sheen behind her as she waited. After all the weeks of anticipation, half convincing herself that she might have decades to wait, she was finally giving in to her body’s hormonal rush of anxiety as she watched the starship appear above the Port district. It was flying a lot slower now, though its wingtips were still trailing faint vapor trails across Makkathran’s cloudless sky. Wait-wings?

The starship circled around over Ysidro district and began a steep descent. It was suffering the same way Silverbird had, Justine decided. The flight wasn’t as stable or as slow as it ought to be; the Void was glitching its drive units. Once or twice she sucked down a sharp breath as it wobbled in the air. Then long landing struts popped out, and it dropped the last ten meters out of the sky to skid a way along the thick tangle of grass before coming to a halt not a hundred meters from the Silverbird.

A circular airlock opened in the starship’s midsection, and some old-fashioned aluminum stairs slid out. People trotted down, radiating a mixture of joy and disbelief that Justine’s farsight recognized easily. It was identical to her own.

There were nine of them standing together on the grass as she approached, a surprising number for a ship that size even if they’d used suspension. Then their farsights perceived her, and they turned to greet her as she jogged over.

Shouts of welcome reached her when she was still twenty meters away. Several were waving jubilantly. A couple of them even started to run toward her. They all seemed to be smiling wildly.

Not true, she corrected herself, and pushed her sunglasses up.

The big man standing at the back with a formidable shield around his thoughts-he wasn’t smiling. Nor was the one who looked as if he’d been in a bad street fight and lost. But the others were all genuinely happy to see her, which was good enough.

The one who was in the lead flung his arms wide and gave her an effusive hug. Something oddly familiar about his face-

“Justine Burnelli,” he exclaimed. “It’s been awhile.”

And that smile was so sinfully teasing, she couldn’t help but grin back. “Sorry. Who …?”

“We met at the Second Chance departure party,” he said wickedly. “Oscar Monroe, remember.”

“Oh. My. God. Oscar? Is that you? I thought you were still … I mean.” She shrugged awkwardly.

“Yeah, they let me out eighty years back. I didn’t make a fuss about it.”

“Good to see you, Oscar,” she said sincerely. “Gotta admit, I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Nobody does. I think that’s the point of being me these days.”

She laughed, then glanced over his shoulder at the others. “Inigo, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Inigo didn’t go for the whole hugging scene. He stuck his hand out formally. That was when Justine realized she might be slightly overdoing the whole Queen of the Wild City act. All she wore was boots, a small black bikini top, and some denim shorts with the cattle prod, a pistol, and a machete hanging off her belt. The sun had tanned her skin a deep honey brown at the same time it’d bleached her hair almost white, and that hadn’t been styled since she arrived; these days she just tied it back with some straps in a loose tail. Quite a change for someone who back at the start of the twenty-first century used to spend over a hundred thousand dollars a year on personal grooming, and that was before her clothes bill. All in all, she must’ve been quite a fright sight.

Slightly more self-consciously now, she allowed Oscar to introduce everyone else. Araminta-two-two!-was interesting, the Knights Guardian were about what she expected, Troblum she didn’t know what to make of, Corrie-Lyn she took an instant mild dislike to, and Aaron just plain scared her. She wasn’t alone in that, judging by the way everyone else reacted to him.

“All right,” Corrie-Lyn said to Aaron. “We made it. We’re here. Now for the love of the Lady, will you tell us why we’re here?”

Justine was expecting Aaron to smile wisely at least, as any normal human would. Instead he turned his bruised eyes to Inigo. “We’re here so that you can bring Him forth,” he said hoarsely.

“What?” a startled Inigo asked. “Oh, sweet Lady! You are joking.”

“No. He’s the only one who can help us now. And you’re the one who has his true memory; you are connected with him. Especially here. You can reach into the Void’s memory layer where he was. You don’t even have to reset the Void anymore, which was the original intention. We know that now; Justine showed us this with Kazimir.”

Corrie-Lyn went to Inigo and took both of his hands in hers. “Do it,” she whispered fiercely.

“The Waterwalker is gone,” Inigo said with infinite sorrow. “He is a dream now. Nothing more.”

“You can bring him back,” Aaron said. “You have to.”

– to land on the ground at the foot of the Eyrie tower. His ankles gave way, and he stumbled, falling forward. Strong third hands reached out to steady him. But there was no crowd as there always was, as there should have been. No family. No Kristabel.

“Honious! I am wrong,” Edeard stammered miserably. In his haste to escape the horror of the hospital in Half Bracelet Lane, he had somehow misjudged the twisting passage through the Void’s memory and finished up … He looked at the small group of people staring at him; they were dressed so strangely-yet not. His farsight swept out. Finitan was not atop the tower. He scoured the buildings in Haxpen and Fiacre to find them empty. The city was silent, devoid of its eternal telepathic chatter. He couldn’t sense a single mind anywhere save the nine directly in front of him. “No!” He spun around to face the ziggurat, farsight frantically probing every room on the tenth floor. They were empty of people, furniture …

“Where are they?” he bellowed. “Where is my family? Kristabel!” His third hand drew back, ready to strike instantly.

One of the peculiar group walked forward, his thoughts calm, welcoming, reassuring. A tall man with a handsome face-a known face, though it was darker than it had been before, and the hair was brown instead of light ginger as it ought to be. Such trivia was irrelevant, for this was a face that could not possibly be here, not in the real world.

Edeard’s third hand withered away. “No,” he whispered. “This cannot be. You are a dream.”

The man smiled. There were tears in his eyes. “As are you.”

“Inigo?”

“Edeard!”

“My brother.” They embraced, Edeard hugging the man as if his life depended on it. Inigo was the only thing that made sense in the world right now; he was the anchor. “Hold me,” Edeard begged. “Do not let me go. The world is falling apart.”

“It’s not, I promise. I am here to get you through this.”

Edeard’s thoughts were awhirl, panicked, dazed. “The life you lived,” he choked out.

“Nothing compared to yours,” Inigo assured him.

“But … those worlds you showed me, the wonders that dwell there. It’s all real?”

“Yes. It’s all real. That is the universe outside the Void. The place where the ships that brought Rah and the Lady came from.”

“Oh, dear Lady.”

“I know this is a shock. I’m sorry for that. There is no way I could have warned you.”

Edeard nodded slowly and moved back to gaze incredulously at the one person he’d believed was forever beyond reach. “I thought you were someone the Lady had sent to comfort me as I slept. You showed me what kind of life could be built if only we tried. And I have tried so hard-” His voice broke. He was close to weeping.

“You did more than that, Waterwalker, so much more,” a young woman said. She had dark red hair and a pretty freckled face, and she looked at him so worshipfully, he was astounded. “You succeeded.”

Edeard glanced shamefacedly at Inigo. “You know what I have done, what I am fleeing from.”

“We all know your life. That is why we are here.”

“You can help me? Is that why you have come?”

“You don’t need our help,” Inigo said. “Your triumph was magnificent. Whole planets marvel at your achievements here in Makkathran.”

“I don’t understand. I’ve screwed this up just as Owain and Buate and their ilk always claimed I would. I became what they were, Honious take me.”

“No, you didn’t,” the woman said earnestly. “Edeard, listen to me. After the unity attempt failed, your next effort to bring peace and fulfillment to Querencia worked. You never reset the Void again; you never needed to. You and Kristabel and your friends all accepted guidance to the Heart in old age. It was beautiful to behold.”

“You speak as if this has already happened.” Edeard gave the woman a curious look as some very uncomfortable thoughts began to gather in his mind.

“Edeard.” Inigo put a steadying hand on his shoulder. “We’ve only just arrived in the Void. In here time flows much quicker than it does outside. Which is why only a few hundred years have gone by out there compared to the millennia here. You are our past. I brought you out of the Void’s memory.”

“Are you saying I have already lived my life? All of my life?”

“Yes.”

“But …” His farsight swept out again, desperate to find anyone else. “Where is everybody? If I succeeded the way you claim, what happened to the people I tried to help? Their grandchildren should still be here. Did they desert the city?”

Inigo appeared embarrassed. “You created a society where it was possible for everyone to achieve fulfillment. Eventually, all the humans here accepted guidance. The last one left for the Heart several thousand years ago.”

“Gone?” He couldn’t believe it. “All of them gone? There were millions of us living on Querencia.”

“I know.”

“Why did you bring me back?” Edeard asked bitterly.

“We need your help.”

“Ha! Then Honious knows you picked the wrong man; Finitan is more worthy than me, or even Dinlay. And even if you had no choice, you should have brought back this future Edeard you spoke of, the one who is triumphant.”

“I chose you very carefully. You are exactly the Edeard I need.”

“Why?”

“Determination,” Inigo said simply. “This is the you who resolved never to let anything beat him no matter what. You, the you of this day, are the best Waterwalker there ever was. This is the moment your triumph was built upon.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Edeard said weakly.

“I’m truly sorry this was how we had to meet. But we really do need your help.”

“How? How in the Lady’s name can I possibly help people who have the power to travel between universes?” He was watching Inigo gathering himself to reply, when the really strange one with the battered face and tormented thoughts stepped forward.

“I am Aaron, and I have come here to ask you to take us to the Heart.”

Edeard almost laughed at him, but the man was in so much suffering and so fired up with desperation, he was clearly speaking the truth. “Why?”

“Because that has to be what controls the Void. I must speak with it, or Inigo must, or even you. Whichever of us it will listen to.”

“What would you say to it?”

“You’re killing us. Switch off.”

Inigo’s arm went around Edeard’s shoulder again. “This is going to take a while to explain,” he said gently.

The bright sun was well on its way to the western horizon, coating the edges of Eyrie’s towers in a familiar cerise haze. And yet not familiar, Edeard thought sadly. This Makkathran he found himself in was a sorrowful one indeed. The buildings were exactly as they should be-oh, but the rest of the districts and canals. It didn’t suffer decay-the fabulous city would never fall to that-but it had become shabby. Without its citizens, it was a poor specter of itself in its glory days. And there was so little left of the people who lived here, nothing more than blemished trinkets and stubborn dust. That they should have vanished with so little to show for their achievements was infinitely depressing. As was knowing he was forever separate from them all now. Though he supposed he could reset the Void once more, somehow he didn’t have the appetite to plunge back in to what had been. Besides, according to Corrie-Lyn, he had already won his life’s battle. And if he understood what his mind-brother Inigo was saying, he was responsible for unleashing devastation upon the true universe outside.

“More ships are coming?” he asked.

“Yes,” Inigo admitted. “My fault. I was besotted with your life.”

They were sitting on the steps outside the Lady’s central church, each of the visitors doing what he or she could to help him comprehend Inigo’s story of what was happening in the galaxy outside and what the Void actually was. It had taken hours.

“You showed people my life,” Edeard said, not quite accusing, but …

“I did. You never told anyone of mine.”

“They would have thought me mad, even Kristabel. Flying carriages. People who live forever. Hundreds of inhabited worlds. Machine servants instead of genistars. Cities where Makkathran would be naught but a small district. A civilization where justice was available to all. Aliens. More stars in the sky than it is possible to count. No, such marvels of my fevered imagination were best kept inside my skull. Except it wasn’t my imagination; it was all you.”

“I hope I was of some help, some comfort.”

“You were.” Edeard finally gathered the courage he’d so far lacked and asked the question: “This future I lived, the one where I finally achieved guidance to the Heart … was Burlal part of it?”

“No. I’m sorry, Edeard. He was only ever here that one time.”

“I see. Thank you for your honesty.”

“Waterwalker,” Aaron said. “Can you take us to the Heart, please.”

The edge in his voice, the way his raging thoughts threatened to burst out of his head-it made Edeard nervous. “I understand the need for the Void to be contained. If I could do so, I would.”

“There is a way to speak with it,” Aaron said through clenched teeth. “Once we get there, I know there is.”

“How?”

Aaron slammed his hands onto his face. Once, twice, three times. Blood trickled out of his nose where he’d hit it. “She won’t tell me!” he yelled furiously. “I can’t find it anymore.”

Edeard’s third hand gripped Aaron’s arms, forcing them down.

“This is my mission! I am the mission. I have an objective. I must be strong. She likes that. She loves me.”

Tomansio stood next to the stricken agent. “Hey, it’s okay.” He reached out. “We have two starships and the Waterwalker. We can take-”

Aaron’s muscles went slack, and Tomansio caught him as he pitched forward, unconscious.

“How did you do that?” Edeard asked.

“Very basic tranquilizer. Lucky our biononics are degraded here. Would have been quite a scrap otherwise.”

“I see.” Which he didn’t quite. But these warriors from the outside universe were formidable. And they had honor. Somehow he was reminded of Colonel Larose from the Makkathran militia.

“Now what?” Corrie-Lyn asked with a sigh. “Our pet psycho is going to go quantumbusting when he wakes up.”

“I’d hate to try a neural infiltration in this environment,” Tomansio said. “The first glitch and we’d probably rip his brain apart. Besides, I think the way his mind was reconfigured implies it was resistant to that kind of inquisition. The information is hidden in the subconscious.”

“We do have the two ships,” Oscar said. “And we know we have to fly to the Heart. Our problem is always going to be guidance.” He grinned at Edeard. “I guess that’s where you come in.”

“It comes down to fulfillment,” Inigo said. “If the Skylord believes Edeard to be fulfilled, it will guide him.”

“His soul,” Corrie-Lyn said sharply.

“We don’t know that,” Inigo said. “Humans have never been able to fly around inside the Void before. Maybe it’ll show a living body the way.”

“I’ll ask,” Araminta-two said.

His thoughts were gifted in a fashion Edeard was unaccustomed to; the clarity he was given exceeded any he’d known before. It was hard to throw off the sensation that he was actually in Araminta-two’s body, breathing together, feeling together. And there was the shadow perception distracting him, standing in a giant room of metal and glass, watching the nebulae outside. A flock of Skylords guiding the incredible starships. That mind’s perception shimmered underneath the connection Araminta had with the Skylord leading the fleet and its awareness of the Void.

“Do I have to abandon my body to be guided to the Heart?” she asked.

“You have to be fulfilled,” the Skylord replied lovingly. “Then I will guide you. Soon, I feel. Your mind is strong; you believe you know your way. You understand yourself. You lack only surety.”

“If I have that, if I gain what I need for fulfillment, would you take me, the living me, in this ship?”

“I would do that.”

Edeard shivered as the outlandish gifting ended. It was as if a gust of winter air had squalled around the church. He gave Araminta-two a curious look. “You can longtalk across the Void?” Such strength of mind was incredible.

“Not really. That was my other body. And as for the Skylord, we are joined as you and Inigo once were.”

“I see,” he lied. My other body! He’d said it so casually. How he wished for Macsen at this time-Macsen, who would make light of such confusion with a quip and a laugh, and the world would be right again.

“So now we find out if this Edeard is fulfilled,” Oscar said. “And if he is, you fly him to the Heart.”

“It would seem that way,” Inigo agreed.

“Not yet,” Justine said. She stood up. “This is too important for maybes. We need a very clear understanding of what we’re supposed to achieve here. Follow me.” And she walked up the steps toward the church’s open entrance.

Edeard observed everyone producing puzzled looks behind the blonde girl. A few shrugs were exchanged, but they all trooped dutifully after her. Justine’s tone had been commanding.

When they’d been introduced, Edeard had been dismissive of the sultry girl, weary, even. Because of her crude clothing and wild hair, she reminded him of the real bandits who lived in the wilds beyond Rulan province. But as the afternoon wore on, he’d revised his opinion. For a start, she was one of the Commonwealth eternals. She might look as if she was barely out of her teens, but he knew she was older than anyone who’d ever lived in Makkathran. And despite her lack of clothing, she had a dignity and poise that would’ve intimidated Mistress Florrel. He also strongly suspected she was tough enough to rip Ranalee to shreds in any kind of fight, fair or otherwise.

The air inside the church was cooler than outside. Seeing the interior bare apart from the big statue of the Lady was odd, emphasizing how cut off and alone he was now. A mere day ago in his own time he’d been Mayor, and the city bent to his will. These people meant well, he knew, but he couldn’t help the resentment at the way they’d summoned him out of his true life. If it had been anyone but Inigo-but then, only Inigo could do such a thing.

Stranger than the naked church was the golden man standing in the middle, waiting for them. He was visible only because of some strangely pervasive gifting from Justine that he couldn’t quite shield himself from, yet his farsight found nothing where the man stood, not at first. “A soul,” Edeard exclaimed when he intensified his perception.

“A dream, actually. I’m Gore. Pleased to finally meet you, Waterwalker. You’re a very impressive man.”

“Gore is the one who guided us all here,” Inigo explained lightly. “By various methods. Not all of them pleasant.”

“Just making sure you don’t run out on your responsibilities, sonny.”

“My father,” Justine said proudly.

“You need to keep Aaron under,” Gore told Tomansio. “His neural reconditioning was never going to be strong enough to withstand an encounter with the Cat. I wasn’t expecting that. Goddamn Ilanthe.”

“Lennox,” Tomansio said coldly. “His name is Lennox. One of our founders. As such, very important to all Knights Guardian. What have you done to him?”

“Exactly what he asked,” Gore said. “Christ knows what kind of number the Cat worked on him, but he was a nearly total basket case when my people recovered him. We erased what we could of that old personality, but the damage had seeped down into his subconscious. That can normally be suppressed, providing it doesn’t receive too many associative triggers. But as for an out-and-out cure, forget it. I did what I could. I patched him back up and sent him out doing what he loved, what he was born to do. He runs every dirty covert mission the Conservative Faction needs to keep the good old Greater Commonwealth on the straight and narrow. I’m not his boss; I’m his partner, for Christ’s sake.”

“Dad, the Heart?”

“Yeah, right.” Gore glanced around at all of them. “It’s a simple enough plan. Like Aaron said, you go in and engage the damn thing, reason with it. It has to be made to understand it’s committing galactic genocide.”

“That’s it?” Oscar asked.

“You got anything better?”

“Well … no.”

“Then that’s it. One minor upgrade. I’m coming with you. I might have found something to persuade it.”

“What?”

“A new beginning. But we’re going to have to be quick. Fuck knows what Ilanthe’s up to in there.”

“All right, Dad. The Skylord will guide Edeard’s body, assuming he’s fulfilled.”

“That was the original idea.” Gore shot a meaningful glance at Inigo. “We do need someone we know is fulfilled.”

“I understand.”

“I’ll take the Waterwalker and Inigo in the Silverbird,” Justine said. “It’s in better shape than the Mellanie’s Redemption. I think it will launch again. If not, we can reset to a few days before I land here.”

“No,” Gore said. “Take this ship. Its fully acclimatized to the Void now, so functionality shouldn’t be a problem anymore. And we’re probably going to need some serious badass firepower if we run into Ilanthe.”

“This ship?”

Gore gave her a pitying look. “What do you think you’re standing on?”

Standing atop the sweeping steps of the Lady’s church with the others gathering around him, Edeard finally felt as if he was coming alive again. This whole time had seemed bizarre, like some kestric-fueled dream. There was nothing for him to grasp, nothing to assure him he was living. Even encountering Inigo was something he imagined might eventually befall him in the Heart, which contributed to the sense of unreality.

But now …

Raw excitement accelerated his heart, sending hot blood pounding through his body. He was smiling as he sent his farsight racing down below the streets, past the travel tunnels, winding through the strange conduits and glowing lines of energy that pervaded the structure all the way down and down-Makkathran’s mind slumbered on still, as unchanged as the buildings and canals, those giant thoughts pulsing in their slow somber beat.

The Waterwalker’s thoughts lifted rapturously as he gifted his perception to his new friends, welcoming the sheer flamboyance, the audacity of the moment. How Kristabel and Macsen would have loved this, and as for the twins … “I know what you are now,” he told the great sleeper, pouring sincerity, sheer belief into what he was saying. Sharing himself utterly. “I know why you came to this universe. And you should know, others have followed you in. We think we can end this now. You can finish what you started.”

The vast thoughts began to quicken, their wide strands of gentle musings coming together into a cohesive whole. Makkathran’s consciousness arose. “You? I remember you. I thought you had gone, along with the rest of your kind.”

“I was brought back. I believe I am your way into the Heart.”

“You have forgotten much. I am content to end here.”

Edeard felt his soul brother grip his hand. Inigo’s confidence, his surety, was astounding.

“We do not go there to submit to absorption,” Inigo told Makkathran unwaveringly. “We are here to finish this. The time you feared has arrived. Millions of my species are on their way to this world. They know its secret, and all of them are intent on resetting the Void to their own whim. The ensuing devourment phase will consume the galaxy.”

“It cannot be stopped,” Makkathran said. “The Void is what it is.”

“There is a chance. I believe we can still reason with it.”

“The Void does not listen. We tried. I watched my kind die in the tens of thousands as they attempted to pass through the final barrier. It was all for nothing. The flames of their death outshone the nebulae that day.”

“An entity has arrived in the Void who may make things worse. The devourment phase is beginning. And finally we have the smallest, most fragile opportunity to speak with the nucleus, the primary sentience. It will accept one of us if a Skylord guides him to the Heart. Help us. Please. Your species is still out there on the other side of the barrier, doing what they can. In all the eons since you came, they have never faltered. We owe them so much; we owe them this last attempt.”

“My kind still live?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. I thought I heard one once, not so long ago. I called out, but it was your race who came instead.”

“Please,” Edeard said. “I was guided to the Heart once before. Whatever sacrifice I have to make to be guided again, I will do so, I swear upon the Lady.”

Makkathran’s thoughts fluctuated, dousing them all in a wave of ancient sorrow. Edeard was humbled by everything the city had endured, its terrible loss.

“I did not expect change to befall me ever again,” it told them. “I did not expect to be shown hope, however small. I did not expect to do what I was born to do: to fly against the greatest enemy once more. You have brought this to me. For that I should show thanks. If the galaxy is to fall, then it is fitting that I should fall with it. I will take you.”

“Thank you,” Edeard said.

“Thank you,” the others chorused.

They waited bunched together on the broad expanse outside the Lady’s church, farsight probing around, alert for the first change to manifest. They waited with the irrepressible excitement of schoolchildren knowing they were to witness something wholly spectacular.

Justine caught it first. “There,” she cried, her mind urging the others. “There, look, the crystal wall.”

All around the city, the high translucent gold wall that defined the edge was growing upward. It raced into the sky with astounding speed as the city put forth its will. Then they were tilting their heads back to gape in admiration as it curved overhead. Half an hour after the growth began, the last shrinking circle of clear sky vanished as the crystal melded together. The city was encased in a perfect dome.

Makkathran exerted its wishes. A mind larger than mountains engaged the Void’s elementary mass location ability, demanding that matter move in the manner it wanted.

Out beyond the sealed-off Port district, the Lyot Sea parted. Two vast tsunamis of water rushed apart, surging away from the shore, exposing the seabed for tens of miles. Water was the easy part. Makkathran continued its manipulation. The naked seabed cracked open with a howl of destruction that shredded any organic matter within fifty miles. Fissures deepened, slicing down through the ancient lava as they raced inland to splinter the Iguru plain.

Oscar was laughing helplessly as the ground shook furiously, triggering massive landslides over in the distant Donsori Mountains. It was the kind of semihysteria that was contagious. Edeard found himself grinning wildly in sympathy as he was toppled to his knees. Waves chased along the canals, sloshing over the edges as the earthquake’s power built. He could see the tips of the Eyrie towers rocking from side to side. Agitated air was slapping clouds against the outside of the dome.

“Glad we brought you back now?” Oscar called tauntingly above the roar.

The Iguru plain and the uncovered seabed had shattered down to a single level zone of undulating rubble. All the odd little volcanoes juddered about like disintegrating icebergs as their mass dissolved down into the churning debris. The city gave a sudden lurch, thrusting a hundred meters straight up as the land’s grip was finally broken. Edeard yelled in delirious shock along with everyone else as the impetus knocked him flat. He gave Oscar a crazy thumbs-up. “Oh, Lady, am I ever,” he longspoke above the tremendous din that was penetrating the protective crystal. What the devastation must be like outside was something he couldn’t conceive.

Frenzied clouds slid down the sides of the curving crystal as the domed city began to rise farther. That was just the apex of the immense warship.

Makkathran, last survivor of the Raiel armada, soared back up into the sky it had fallen from a million years ago and headed for the clean emptiness of space.

Gore Burnelli didn’t often admit admiration for other people, least of all meat humans. But he had to acknowledge that Araminta had done a fine job living in two different time flows. Even though he’d been one of the pioneers of enhanced mentality, he was finding the going a little tough.

The segment of his mind designated to maintain the connection to Justine was racing on ahead, looking back at the ponderous events on the Anomine homeworld with something approaching contempt. It would be very easy to divest himself of his sluggish flesh and live fast and free in the Void. He had to focus hard on the other aspects of his mind and the requirements they served to dismiss the notion. The temptation was pulling with unrelenting tidal force.

For a heartbeat he watched from the entranceway of the Lady’s church as Makkathran flew clear of Querencia’s atmosphere and then accelerated after the Skylord that had brought the Mellanie’s Redemption just a few hours earlier.

Exoimage displays surrounded him, tracing the progress of the infiltrator filaments as they slithered through the molecular structure of the elevation mechanism, chasing down the network pathways and penetrating delicate junctions. Primary attention switch-to the massed ranks of code awaiting initialization so the packages could slide into alien software, mimicking the routines in order to subvert them. His accelerated mind watched the symbology flip around at a speed he could actually follow as they analyzed the first impulses flashing through the junctions.

Incoming call-which he answered with another segment operating within his meat skull.

“We’re in,” the Delivery Man said. “I’m establishing control over all major siphon systems. The override is disengaged. Full wormhole initialization sequence is running. Power generation is increasing. I need to take that slow; there’s nowhere to send it yet.”

“Well done.”

“I never knew Makkathran was a Raiel ship.”

“What else could it be? Haven’t you ever visited High Angel?”

“No, actually.”

“Oh. Well, those domes are the real giveaway. They’re identical.”

“Obviously.”

“Any sign of Marius?”

“I haven’t got a decent sensor that can function down here in the innermost circle. Hysradar works, but it’s useless. He must be in stealth mode, still.”

“Keep watching. When he finally figures out we can stop his precious Ilanthe, he won’t take it well.”

“Oh, crap. All right.”

Makkathran caught up with the Skylord just before it crossed Nikran’s orbit, barely two million miles from the desert planet. Edeard stood in the square at the center of Sampalok, staring at the small brown orb that appeared to be hanging just above the mansion. It was kindling a surprising amount of nostalgia. He could just make out some of the surface features as he’d done that other day, now lost in the broken past, when he’d sat in the Malfit Hall waiting to be called before the Mayor and handed his bronze epaulets. His squadmates had teased him for his questions about other people living on Nikran. They never knew as he did that humans lived on hundreds of worlds. And now they never would.

Or maybe they do. Who knows what they see from the Heart?

Of all the revelations Inigo had brought, knowing that the Void was a danger to life everywhere was the hardest to accept.

“I always hated that Ladydamned thing,” Inigo said, glaring at the six-sided mansion.

“The mansion?” Corrie-Lyn asked in surprise.

“No, the arcology in Kuhmo. It dominated every day of my life while I was growing up. That’s one of the reasons I offered the town council all that money to demolish the monstrosity, so kids wouldn’t be so blighted in future.”

“It did fill your mind,” Edeard confirmed. “I wasn’t really sure what genuine human architecture looked like, and I was in a hurry that day. It was the obvious choice.

“Thank the Lady you didn’t build it full size.”

“I saw the fane you replaced it with,” Corrie-Lyn said drily. “It wasn’t a whole lot better.”

Inigo grinned back at her. “There’s gratitude.”

Edeard sensed concern growing in Justine’s mind. He glanced over to see her standing close to Gore, whose golden face had hardened with worry.

“What?”

“Some events are outside our control,” Justine said. “I think you need to ask the Skylord now.”

The creature they were pursuing was still half a million kilometers away, a shimmering patch to one side of Nikran. Edeard eyed it reluctantly. If it declared he wasn’t fulfilled, Inigo would have to delve down into the memory layer and bring out a version of himself who was. There were few enough certainties for him right now, but encountering his future self was something he knew he didn’t want to endure. “I’ll try.” He felt for the Skylord, finding it on the edge of perception. Usually their thoughts were composed and content. He’d never known one to host such confusion before. It was grieving for its kindred that had succumbed to Ilanthe, and the colossal warship racing after it was also unsettling. There were ancient ancestral memories about such things: the time of chaos.

“You have nothing to fear from those I travel with, including the city,” Edeard assured it. “They are my companions as I seek fulfillment.”

“I know this city now,” the Skylord replied. “Its kind brought ruin to this universe. We have found no minds since they threw the planets of life down into the stars they orbited. None have emerged here other than your own species.”

“That time is over now. You know more of my species are already here. Minds are emerging again.”

“As is the other who kills.”

“That is why I wish to reach the Heart. I will carry the warning to it. I believe I am fulfilled. I believe the Heart will accept me. Is this right?”

The Skylord took a long time to answer. “You are fulfilled,” it acknowledged. “I will guide your essence to the Heart.”

“Guide me to the Heart as I am. This ship will take me. We will follow you.”

“It is the essence of every mind, my kindred guide.”

“Guide me to the Heart. It will decide if it accepts me as I am or if I abandon my body and become pure mind.”

“I will guide you.”

“Thank you.”

Beyond the crystal dome, the stars began to chase short arcs across space as Makkathran turned to follow the Skylord. Then they started to accelerate again. Edeard experienced a long moment of dizziness. When he looked straight up again, he could see a small clump of stars directly above the apex of the dome. They’d all become bright blue-white. The rest of the universe around them was black.

“That’s not fast enough,” Gore said. “Ilanthe has a week of Void time on you. Christ knows how close she is now.”

“We know this is as fast as the Skylords can travel,” Justine said.

“Yeah, but they’re not exactly swinging from the top of the IQ tree, now, are they? Ask Makkathran. It’s had millions of years to figure out what passes for spacetime in the Void.”

Justine gave Edeard a questioning look.

“I’ll ask,” he said.

“Faster?” Makkathran queried; its thoughts intimated curiosity. “We were designed for every conceivable quantum state except of course this one. Here the mind is paramount, helping to seduce so many inferior mentalities. Long ago, I observed the fundamental connections between rationality and the multidimensional lattice which incorporates this universe’s functionality. Speed is an aspect of temporal flow, which in turn is determined by thought. It is the application pattern which is the key, and those are actually quite simple to determine.”

Outside the dome, light exploded out of the emptiness. Stars began to streak past like rigid lightning bolts. Glaring nebula clouds formed hurricane curlicues, spiraling around and around as they streamed away in a resplendent blaze of color.

“I think that was a yes,” an awestruck Oscar mumbled as multicolored ripples of light flowed across his upturned face.

“So are we going fast or is the Void slowing down?” Corrie-Lyn asked tentatively.

“That’s not strictly relevant in here,” Inigo said. “All that matters is the end result.”

In parallel to his conversation with the Delivery Man, Gore was monitoring the data the infiltration software was surreptitiously accumulating. The elevation mechanism had started running internal scans as the filaments continued their invasion into its structure. He released the first batch of packages, a low-level torrent that swiftly insinuated itself into the scan interpretation routines, falsifying the results so the elevation mechanism would find nothing wrong with itself at a molecular level.

Dream-Makkathran went FTL amid a spectacular light storm.

Visual observation-Tyzak was bouncing its way over the plaza, taking care not to step on the glistening black webbing that was humming gently.

That’s all I need, a higher secondary segment of Gore’s mind thought. The Anomine translation routine in a storage lacuna went active.

“Others have come,” Tyzak said.

“From your village?” Gore warbled and whistled back.

“No. Others. Star travelers who are similar to you but very different. I do not know of their story.”

“Show me, please.”

Tyzak traced his way back across the plaza. One of his limbs extended, pointing down a broad street.

There were eight of them standing across the road a hundred meters short of the plaza. Pastel light from the buildings on either side glittered across their extravagant jeweled longcoats. One of them raised a long white spear and bowed slightly.

“Silfen,” Gore sighed, resisting the urge to give them the finger in return. Instead he inclined his head. “Just ignore them. They’re the galaxy’s greatest voyeurs.”

“Why should they come here?”

“To observe me.”

The infiltration packages flashed up a problem with the analysis routines they were trying to modify. There must have been hidden sentinels, because the analysis routines were resisting any attempt to subvert them. They had begun reformatting themselves with alarming frequency. It meant the packages couldn’t establish themselves; there was no stable configuration to match. And the sentinels were routing more advanced routines to the scans, examining why the resistance algorithms were being triggered. That might well alert the elevation mechanism’s principal consciousness.

Gore pressed his golden lips together. “Oh, shit; here we go.”

Hanging in transdimensional suspension two million kilometers above the Anomine star, Marius had directed his starship’s sensor readings to a constellation of semiautonomous secondary routines. Although the Delivery Man’s ship had performed a truly astounding feat by flying into the star’s convection layer, it wasn’t his main concern. He simply didn’t understand Justine’s dream.

That Gore had somehow maneuvered Inigo and Araminta-two into the Void was seriously impressive. But then the notion faltered. To rationalize with the Heart, as Gore claimed was their ultimate purpose, must be a misdirection. He was sure of it.

Then the Waterwalker was resurrected. “Remarkable,” Marius admitted. That was nothing compared with Makkathran awakening and lifting itself out of the gargantuan lava-filled impact crater it had created when it crashed there in the aftermath of the armada’s invasion.

And Gore announced they had to beat Ilanthe to the Heart. Makkathran performed the impossible and went FTL inside the Void.

“No,” Marius said in alarm. Whatever scheme Gore had for when they were inside the Heart, he could not permit it. The risk was infinitesimal, but nonetheless it existed.

His mind moved the dream to secondary routines for monitoring and brought the sensor readings back to his full attention. The Delivery Man’s starship hadn’t moved. It was still attached to the shielded circular object inside the convection zone. Whatever connection Gore envisaged between that and Makkathran was beyond understanding, but there was purpose to it. No one expended that much effort without a reason.

His quandary was that he didn’t know if Gore was on board the starship or back on the planet. Therefore, the process of elimination would have to be both literal and simple. Ship first. If the dream continued, Gore was on the Anomine homeworld.

Marius ordered the smartcore to drop them out of stealth. Active sensors came on line and performed a more detailed scan of the ship inside the convection zone. For all that it incorporated Stardiver shielding to deal with the heat, its layered force fields had received only about twenty percent strengthening. They remained vulnerable to combat strikes. The only real problem Marius had was choosing a weapon that would be able to reach it within such a radical environment. He started to activate the possibles.

They waited for the moment on the Sampalok square, just outside the mansion’s entrance. Inigo and Corrie-Lyn were holding hands and sharing thoughts privately. Araminta-two was never far from Oscar, the two of them providing each other with a strange variety of support and comfort. The three Knights Guardian were in a tight group, keen and nervy. Justine and Gore stood side by side, proud and defiant, their determination shining as bright as any of the weird stars flashing past outside. That, oddly enough, left Edeard gravitating toward Troblum, who was waiting with a sulky, nearly childlike pout.

The cascade of opalescent light drained away as quickly as it had arrived. Edeard gazed up at the dome, thunderstruck by the sight beyond the crystal. Makkathran was gliding through space above the center of Odin’s Sea. Directly above the apex of the dome a ruffled lake of aquamarine dust glimmered with a steady lambency, alive with deep currents and the flaring nimbi of protostars. Around its shores the scarlet reefs extended out for light-years, slender twined braids of fluorescence that swelled at their tips to form silken veils around the stars they incarcerated.

“Sweet Lady, I never thought to see such a sight,” Edeard moaned incredulously. Finally his mind heard the siren call; it wasn’t a song but the sense of uncountable minds blending in peace and friendship, secure in their totality. Together they were whole and had combined with the Void’s fabric at some ultimate level of existence. The promise of belonging to such an affiliation filled him with joy; the weariness and strife of a physical life would end, and he would be a part of the greater existence that reached for perfection. The urge to join them, to contribute his nature, was so strong that if his third hand could have elevated him up from the square and through the crystal, he would have flown into the Heart there and then for the final consummation. It was nothing like the foolishly imagined nearly physical heaven he had expected, where souls clung to their old form and lived in splendor in a city of golden towers. That kind of life was actually achievable back on Querencia if you tried hard enough and often enough, revisiting your own past until you finally eliminated all your failures and disappointments. No, the Heart looked to the future and a fate that was fresh and different from anything that had gone before. He would be a part of creating that.

“This hippie-dippy shit is what everyone praises?” Gore snapped. “Jeezus wept.”

Edeard struggled to keep his temper in check in the face of such blasphemous provocation. “It is a glorious reward for a life lived true to oneself.”

“Uh huh. Well, let’s not forget why we’re here. We need to get inside.”

“There is no physical location,” Makkathran told them when Edeard asked to move closer. “At least, not in relation to the Void fabric at this level. The Heart lies beyond rather than behind. That is the final barrier, the one which defeated us before.”

“Ask it to admit us,” Oscar said.

Edeard nodded slowly, reluctant at the last to begin the event that could lead to the demise of the entire Void. What if they have lied? Which he knew to be a foolish insecurity. Good old Ashwell optimism, even here. Inigo does not lie, not to me. “How can something this splendid be so flawed as to threaten life everywhere?”

“Because it doesn’t know it’s a danger,” Gore said.

“How can that be?” he cried. “It is awesome; it is the accumulation of billions upon billions of minds. How can you possibly be so arrogant to try and change its path?”

“Those lives it has consumed are doing nothing but dreaming their existence away. The souls who were guided here have been betrayed. The wisdom they brought, the continued life they were promised, it’s all being wasted.”

“All right.” Edeard reached out for the Heart. I am here, he told it. I am ready. I am fulfilled. Bring me to you. He held his breath. Nothing happened. I am here, he repeated.

“Now what?” Tomansio asked.

“Stop trying,” Oscar said. “Just let the urge take you. Chill down and surrender to it.”

“You’re already in there,” Corrie-Lyn said. “Listen for yourself.”

“Very well,” Edeard said. It sounded stupid, but he closed his eyes, then withdrew his farsight, allowing the presence of the Heart to seep into him. He listened for himself. In truth, there were others he wanted to hear, to join: Kristabel. Macsen. Dinlay. Kanseen. Akeem! Was he waiting? Had he found his way? Finitan surely would be there. And Rolar, and Jiska, and the twins, and Dylorn, and Marakas, and sweet Taralee. Perhaps even Salrana, who might have finally made her peace with him-he could never forget that night he discovered the true nature of the Void. In the pavilion, after her death, her soul had panicked, realizing she had strayed. Perhaps …

“The barrier falls,” Makkathran said.

Edeard opened his eyes in time to see Odin’s Sea fading away. The light simply vanished, and they were surrounded by nothing. A perfect uniform blackness.

The Heart’s thoughts grew more powerful. Edeard found himself strengthening his shield. His mind seemed to be expanding, moving to embrace the Heart, flowing out to join it.

“Edeard!” Inigo shouted.

His brother’s fright was strong. He hesitated.

“Edeard, come back.” Inigo was compelling him, infusing their bond with love.

He opened his eyes again. This time the sturdy Sampalok mansion seemed faint. When he lifted up his hand, it was growing translucent.

“It’s absorbing him,” Gore said. Worry was flooding from the golden man’s mind. “Edeard, you’ve got to hold on.”

“Without you we will be rejected,” Makkathran warned.

“Edeard, is there anything you can sense in there that’ll talk to us?” Gore asked. “A single coherent mind?”

Edeard had to laugh. “The Heart is bigger than worlds. It is universal; it lies behind everywhere in the Void. And still it grows.”

“Fuck it,” Gore snarled. “It’s grown so big, it’s lost cohesion. All right, Edeard, it wasn’t always like this. I need you to go back to when it was smaller.”

“What?”

“Get into the memory layer, trace it down to the origin. Come on, son, you can do it.”

“Lean on me,” Inigo said. He gripped Edeard’s hand, suffusing him with strength and love. “I will help you.”

“And me, Waterwalker,” Corrie-Lyn said. Her firmness and fortitude made Edeard smile in gratitude.

Oscar came over, as did the Knights Guardian. “Whatever you need,” Tomansio promised sincerely, which made Edeard regret he hadn’t known the warrior longer. Justine, smiling and determined, added her essence, buoying him along. Even Troblum was there, dependable and resolute.

There was a memory layer in this place, wherever they were, and that surprised Edeard more than anything. Strangely uncluttered, it was easy to perceive, to follow back. He plunged into the past, saddened by how little had changed. Then abruptly the Heart wasn’t quite so large. This was the time before humans. He carried on back through it, pushing harder and harder.

There were many changes, coming eons apart, then further. Each alien species that had come to the Void had contributed to the expansion in its own fashion. None had brought true cohesion. He found that wrong somehow, that the amalgamation always acted in the contrary direction to the Heart’s purpose.

At the end he could think only of flying through the travel tunnels, soaring on into the unknown, content simply in the act of voyaging. He was quite surprised when it did finish. The memory layer grew thinner somehow, less cluttered. And there, right at the beginning of the Void, when the Heart was forming, were millions of connections to individual minds. They could communicate with the Heart. They were the link, the way in. He chased after one and embraced it, offering it up to the creation layer, perceiving the entity take form again.

Edeard drew a startled breath, shaking himself free of the memory layer and the intimacy of his new friends. Right in front of him, standing in the entrance to Zulmal Street, an alien twenty feet tall was unfolding its disturbingly sinuous limbs as its thoughts churned with surprise and suspicion.

“Oh, wow,” Oscar groaned, and took a step back. Even so, he was grinning effusively.

“A Firstlife,” Edeard announced simply. He had to own up to being intimidated by so many curving, pointed teeth at the top of its fat central trunk as it opened the glistening mouth membranes to whistle at a painful volume.

Then something moved in the nothingness outside the dome. A dark sphere beset with deep purple scintillations slipped smoothly overhead.

“What are you doing?” Ilanthe asked.

Marius had been fascinated by the Heart and the notions it sang of. There really was no other way to describe it. In a way he was relieved that it was so vast, so aloof. Gore’s stupid plan to talk to it, to make it see what he considered reason, would never transpire in such a milieu. The golden man was pissing in the wind.

Then he stood in Sampalok’s central square, observing through Justine as Gore told the Waterwalker to search back through the memory layer for a younger, more accessible Heart.

“No no no,” he chanted in dismay. His exovision brought up the starship’s weapons. He selected a couple of diverted energy function quantumbusters. They would activate in the photosphere, sending a huge exotic energy distortion wave smashing against the Delivery Man’s ship. Its Stardiver shielding would never survive such an impact. Whatever part of Gore’s scheme was being enacted down there in the convection zone would be obliterated. That would give Ilanthe the window of opportunity to enact Fusion.

The two missiles shot away, accelerating at one hundred fifty gees. His exovision display threw up a sensor image, showing a hyperspace anomaly erupting fifty thousand kilometers away from his own location. One of the huge borderguards materialized out of the spatial deformation. Its concentric shells of elliptical strands were ablaze with aggravated neon light. The outermost strands darkened from a lurid jade down to an irradiated carmine. Marius’s sensors showed the energy spectrum raging inside the borderguard leaping almost off the scale. It fired on the quantumbuster missiles, which burst into a dynamic vapor plume.

“Shit!” Marius discarded the dream altogether and sent his starship hurtling toward the borderguard at thirty-seven gees. Weapons locked onto the garish nimbus. He opened fire.

No matter how hard he cursed, how fast his expanded mind activated infiltration packages, Gore knew it was coming. There was nothing he could do about it. His wild boast about Commonwealth webheads had proved vain and hollow, and everything in the galaxy was going to die because of it.

Unless-

“Shit. Go for it,” he ordered the Delivery Man. “Initialize the wormhole. Shove some fucking power my way. Do it. Do it now.”

He ordered the packages to activate, to grab control.

Too late. Out of the city’s subdued background murmurings Gore perceived that cool consciousness rising once again. It observed its environment with a host of strange senses.

“This is an act of hostility,” the elevation mechanism said. “You are trying to steal my fundamental nature. It is not for you and your kind, and with good reason.”

“Yeah. So you said. And as I told you, the Void is about to expand and wipe this star system from existence.” The dream showed him the big Firstlife in Sampalok, shaking its thick beefy body furiously as it tried to orient itself. Then Ilanthe appeared overhead. “Oh, God-fuck, no!” Gore entreated. “No, not her, not now.” The defeat was as strong as any physical blow, striking him to his knees in the middle of the plaza. All around him the glistening black strands of the infiltration web began to smolder, filling the air with thin acrid smoke. “You’re killing us,” he screamed into the night. “All I needed to do was show the Heart, that’s all, just show the fucker there’s an alternative, prove it can evolve.”

Tyzak was approaching him cautiously, stepping gingerly over the sputtering web.

“Got it,” the Delivery Man called. “Siphon’s activated. Wormhole established. We did it!”

“Leave,” Gore told him flatly. “Fly to a fresh galaxy, one that isn’t cursed like this one. Don’t let the universe forget us.”

The third borderguard imploded amid a searing flare of violet Cherenkov radiation. Broken strands from the concentric shells twirled away, venting thick sparkling gases at high velocity. Marius detected another five materializing out of their distinctive hyperspatial rents. He brought the ship about in a fast curve, chasing the debris that was expanding out of the last implosion. The trouble with combat this close to the star was the lack of mass for quantumbusters to work with.

Sensors tracked the three largest chunks of the shells, and he launched missiles at each of them. Diverted energy function quantumbusters activated, converting the tumbling mass to energy. Exotic distortions slammed into two of the borderguards as they were still exiting hyperspace, wrenching at the exotic pseudofabric. Unbearable contortions crushed the borderguards down to neutronium density. The wreckage immediately detonated out of its impossible compression state, saturating local spacetime with an inordinately hard neutron storm.

Seven energy beams burned across the force fields protecting Marius’s starship. His exovision brought up severe overload warnings. He fired another nine Hawking M-sinks, which the surviving bodyguards had no defense against. So far. He watched in fury as the attackers opened up small wormholes, which swallowed five of the M-sinks. Another barrage of energy beams found his starship. Missiles were heading in toward him at ninety gees, and he still hadn’t managed to knock out the Delivery Man’s ship.

Sensors reported a zero-width wormhole establishing itself between the star and the Anomine homeworld. The smartcore dismissed it as a weapon. Marius ordered an urgent review. The wormhole was originating from the mysterious object with which the Delivery Man’s ship had rendezvoused.

It had to be some kind of power system-whatever needed that level of power? The elevation mechanism! Marius knew it with absolute certainty. Gore had found some way to switch it on. He was going postphysical. It was the only thing left that could threaten Fusion.

Marius activated the ship’s ultradrive and flashed in toward the star. He emerged just above the swirling streamers of the photosphere, where energized atoms from a multitude of spots and flares simmered away into solar wind. Every force field warning turned critical as the starship received the full blast of the star’s radiation and heat. Marius fired two novabombs straight down, then jumped back into hyperspace.

Behind him the borderguards were massing above the photosphere. Eighteen of the giant machines had rushed out of hyperspace, firing enough weapons down after the novabombs to break open a moon. None of it was any use. The novabombs were designed to function amid the outer fringes of a star, whereas the borderguards’ weapons were just uselessly pumping more energy into the rampant solar furnace.

Thirty seconds before they detonated, Marius was already outside the Anomine system. The nova would eliminate the power station, then go on to wipe out the Anomine homeworld minutes later. Gore would never reach postphysical status now. The Accelerator objective was safe.

Edeard didn’t know who to give his attention to or even that it would do any good if he could decide. The astounding Firstlife was straightening itself, turning several small black membranes at the top of its trunk toward the humans as well as directing a formidable farsight at them.

Above the dome the Ilanthe thing was also observing them. It scared him how nonhuman it was. His farsight couldn’t begin to uncover its secrets, but the power it contained was evident. Whatever the Heart was, it seemed to be bending around Ilanthe’s glossy surface.

But it was Gore who now concerned him the most. The golden man was stumbling, dropping to his knees. The anguished keening his mind emitted was dreadful, as if his soul itself were being violated.

“Dad,” Justine was yelling frantically. “Dad, what is it? What’s happening?”

“It caught me,” Gore told her weakly. “The motherfucker found the infiltrator packages.”

“I could have told you the Anomine mechanism was obdurate,” Ilanthe said complacently.

The Firstlife took a step toward the humans, three of its feet slamming down on the surface of the square with a slap that Edeard could feel in his leg bones. “What is this place?” the Firstlife’s longtalk demanded. “What are you? You are not us.”

Inigo squared up to the imposing creature. “This is your future. You were re-created from the Void’s memory.”

The Firstlife’s farsight probed around again, its extraordinary reach allowing it to scan the city and delve down into a fair percentage of the warship’s main body. It also attempted to examine Ilanthe, who deflected it effortlessly.

“You are the omega?” it asked in surprise.

“No,” Inigo said. “We originated outside the Void.”

“How can that be? There is nothing outside, only dead matter.”

“Are you the creators? Did your species build this?”

“Yes.”

“We and many others have been pulled inside so you could exploit our rationality.”

“That is not so. You cannot exist unless the omega formed you.”

“We do exist, and the Void did not make us. The Void is killing us.”

“You do not understand your purpose. This is why I was brought back.” The Firstlife was uncertain.

“No. You can communicate with the Heart, the mind that envelops us. This is why-”

“Wait,” Troblum said. He ignored the looks everyone gave him. “In your time, were there any other sentient species in the galaxy?”

“There is only us. We are first, and when we achieve omega, we will be last.”

“First life,” Oscar said in wonder. “The first race to evolve in the galaxy. How old is this thing?”

“Ancient,” Justine muttered. “More ancient than we ever thought possible.”

“Since your time, countless species have evolved right across the galaxy,” Inigo said. “You were first, but you are no longer alone.”

The Firstlife’s thoughts reeled in astonishment. “You are not us? You are original?”

“We are.”

The black membranes flapped about in agitation. Glistening honey-like droplets appeared on their tips. “Why are you here?”

“This thing you built, this Void, now threatens the entire galaxy,” Gore said, climbing to his feet again. “I understand why you built it, to evolve into something new, something exquisite. You haven’t. Instead it has absorbed thousands of other types of minds which have pulled it in every direction. It cannot evolve, not in this state.”

“Exactly,” Ilanthe said. “Ask these creatures what they would have you do. They want you to stop; they want all you have achieved on the way to your omega to wither away and die. They have nothing else to offer you. I do.”

“Is this why you brought me back?” the Firstlife asked. “To end our evolution?”

“It cannot continue in its current form,” Inigo said. “It is consuming the mass of the galaxy in order to power its existence. Every star will ultimately be devoured, and the species they have birthed will die with them.”

“Unless you act now,” Ilanthe said. “Communicate with the amalgamated mind; tell it to adopt my inversion.”

“What is your inversion?”

“I will take the composition of the Void and implant it within the quantum fields which structure the universe outside. This core will ignite the chain reaction which will disseminate change across the entirety of spacetime. Entropy will be eliminated. Mind will become paramount. Every sentient entity will be given the opportunity to reach its own omega as you anticipated for yourselves. Your legacy will be the birth of a new reality.”

“You have got to be fucking joking,” Gore gasped. “Any quantum field transform wave will simply reverse once it expands past its initial energy input zone. All you’ll be left with is a collapsing microverse that seals itself off from reality as soon as the implosion is complete.”

“Not if entropy is eliminated.”

“You can’t eliminate entropy across infinity. That’s the fucking point of infinity. It’s forever and always.”

“Ask the amalgamated mind to give me the Void’s governing parameters,” Ilanthe said to the Firstlife.

“Do not!” Gore shouted, thrusting his arm out at the Firstlife. “Do not even think it. You will destroy this entire supercluster with her insanity.”

“And what do you offer?” Ilanthe mocked. “The end of their journey to omega?”

“Since you built the Void, hundreds of species have evolved to postphysical status, what you call omega,” Gore said. “It can be done, but not like this. I’m sorry, but you have made a mistake by building the Void. You have to get the Heart to stop the boundary’s mass devourment, suspend the Void’s functions, become stable. We’ll show you how to achieve true evolution in a different way.”

“You can’t,” Ilanthe said. “Every species has to find its own way.”

The Firstlife didn’t reply. A whistling sound was coming from the thin fronds around its mouth as air gusted in and out past the teeth. Edeard was aware of its thoughts pulsing out to be absorbed by the Heart. It wasn’t anything he could copy; he knew he could never communicate with the Heart directly.

“Darkness eclipses us,” it said eventually. “Something is growing outside our frontier, a shroud which would deny us the universe.”

“The warrior Raiel,” Ilanthe said. “Sworn to destroy you. Ask this wretched remnant of their invasion if you require confirmation. They seek to cut you off from your source of energy, to starve you to death. They will be rendered irrelevant by the change I can instigate. In time, in the new universe, they will learn to celebrate your liberation.”

“Do you seek to destroy us?” the Firstlife asked.

“We require you to end your absorption of this galaxy and the threat of extinction it brings to all life,” Makkathran said. “If you will not undertake this freely, we have the right to stop you.”

“You don’t have to stop,” Ilanthe said. “Inversion circumvents everything. All of us will achieve the promise of our evolution. Give me your governing parameters.”

“Wait!” Gore demanded. “I think my alternative just became available.” He lifted his golden head and gave Ilanthe a sweetly evil grin. “And guess who made that happen.” And he dreamed of his life back outside the Void.

The Delivery Man watched in horror as the twin quantum signatures expanded at hyperluminal velocity. Marius had fired novabombs into the star. He couldn’t believe it. This was genocide.

Diverted energy functions absorbed the energy liberated from the first activation pulse, modifying it to expand the annihilation effect. A volume of the star’s interior the size of a super-Jovian gas giant converted directly into energy. The convection zone bulged around the periphery. It was the first act in a sequence that would see the star’s core squeezed beyond stability.

Monstrous shock waves raced toward the Last Throw at close to lightspeed. “Ozziefuckit!”

By the time he’d said it, his accelerated thoughts had ordered the smartcore to trigger the ultradrive. It was never designed to operate within a stellar gravity field, but he was dead, anyway.

The universe clearly hated such an aberration, sending a vengeful force to tear savagely at the perpetrator. Finally the cabin was alive with noise and shaking and alarms just as he’d thought he wanted. Bulkheads split, hundreds of tiny cracks ripping open. Sparks and sprays of gooey fluid shot through the air, churned by a cyclone of gravity waves that pulled the Delivery Man violently in every direction. He screamed in terror-

Two seconds. The time it took the ultradrive to claw the Last Throw out of the star’s stupendous gravity gradient. The time in which an astonishing amount of pain went surging along the Delivery Man’s nervous system. The time the ship’s overstressed components had to hold together. Most of them did.

The Delivery Man’s world steadied. Gravity stopped its wild fluctuations. The vibrations beating the starship’s fuselage faded away. His screaming dribbled off to a whimper.

And far away in a dream Ilanthe was entreating the Firstlife to give her the key to the Void’s nature.

“Gore!” he called.

“What’s happening?” the golden man asked. “There’s a power surge from the siphon.”

“Hell, you mean it’s survived that?”

“Survived what?”

“Marius! Sweet Ozzie, he used novabombs. Gore, the star is going nova. It’s already begun. That fucking deranged maniac has killed everything in the system. Tyzak! Warn Tyzak. I’m coming to get you.” Already the Last Throw was approaching the Anomine homeworld. The Delivery Man was designating a vector to take him around to the city where he’d left Gore.

“They know,” Gore said.

The Third Dreamer had abandoned Makkathran to dream of the Anomine city. The fantastical lights within the empty buildings were blazing with solar glory now. In its last minutes the city was waking defiantly to face its doom. Gore turned to Tyzak, who was staring straight up at the few quiet stars still visible directly above the plaza. The small remaining patch of dark sky was fading away as the light of the buildings grew ever stronger. Finally the old alien’s thoughts were slipping through whatever variant of the gaiafield was establishing itself around the planet. Every system and device the ancient Anomine had left behind was coming alive. Thousands of borderguards were materializing into orbit.

The Delivery Man knew it was all useless. Nothing could save the planet now.

“It was us,” Gore told Tyzak. “Humans. We did this. I’m so sorry.”

“You did not,” Tyzak replied. “Your song remains pure.”

“I have failed so many times today.”

“I believe you are to have your greatest success. They seem to think so.”

Gore saw that the plaza was now lined with hundreds of Silfen, all of them keeping back from the rim of the elevation mechanism.

“This is the fate our planet has brought us to,” Tyzak said. “I did not expect this, but what is, is. And perhaps the planet knew all along what it would be called upon to do. I will depart believing this one thing.”

Anomine began teleporting in, appearing all across the plaza. Hundreds, then thousands. Youngsters were agitated, squeaking loudly. It was happening in every city on the planet.

“Gore?” the Delivery Man asked. “What’s happening?”

Gore smiled at Tyzak even as he was being jostled by Anomine who were crowding in. “Go home,” he told the Delivery Man. “You deserve it.”

“Gore-?”

Gore shut down the TD link. He folded all his secondary routines back into his mind. There was only one consciousness now, making him as close to human as he’d been for many a century. His dream showed him Justine with an expression of alarm spreading over her beautiful face. She knew.

Tyzak called for the elevation mechanism.

“I feel you,” the elevation mechanism said. “You are Tyzak.”

“I am.”

“Do you wish to attain transcendence from your physical existence?”

“Yes.”

“Dad?” Justine asked.

Gore’s thoughts had calmed. He brought his arms out and glided gently across the square to the waiting Firstlife. “This is evolution,” he told the giant alien. “The omega you have sought for so long.”

“No, Dad, you can’t. You’re not Anomine.” Justine started to run. Edeard’s third hand caught her.

“Today I am,” Gore said benignly.

“No!” she sobbed. “Dad, please.”

Far outside the Void’s boundary the elevation mechanisms on the Anomine homeworld absorbed the power thundering out of the escalating nova. They adapted it and offered it up to the remainder of their species and one other who waited with them.

Gore felt his mind began to change, to rise. His perspective of the universe grew elegant.

“This is how it is done,” he told the Firstlife as they grew apart, gathering up everything the elevation mechanism was performing, the method and the outcome he now rushed toward. The union was so tenuous now, infused with the poignancy of Justine’s grief as she stretched herself between the two. “This is what you can become. This is destiny. Leave your past behind and reclaim the dream you started with. Like so …” He gifted the whole experience of his elevation to the Firstlife, who in turn shared it with the Heart. And after a while he was gone.

Edeard stood at the head of the group, facing up to the Firstlife. “You must choose,” he said to the daunting alien, aware of the Heart focusing on him. And Ilanthe.

“We do,” the Firstlife replied. “We choose evolution. It is why we created this place; it is what we aspired to so long ago. Anything else would betray all we were, all we aspired to. It could never be any other way.”

“Thank you.”

“It is the wrong choice,” Ilanthe declared.

“You should go with the Heart,” Inigo told her in disgust. “There is no place for you in this universe. You wanted to be a god; this is your chance. If it will take you.”

“You many come with us,” the Firstlife told the inversion core. “We offer to take all of you.”

“Naaah,” Oscar told it. “Not me. I’m not quite ready for that yet.”

Inigo gave the Firstlife a thoughtful look.

“No,” Corrie-Lyn entreated. She took his hands and pressed herself against him. “Don’t. I can’t become that, nor can I lose you again.”

“There’s going to be Honious to pay when we get home.”

“I’ll face it with you.”

“All right.” He reached out a hand to Edeard. “And you?”

“I have to see the worlds you gave me a glimpse of. And …” Edeard grinned sheepishly. “And there are many things I would like to do.”

“Anyone else?” Inigo inquired.

“Justine?” Corrie-Lyn said uncertainly.

Justine rubbed the moisture from her eyes. “No. It’s over. Let’s go home.”

The Wall stars now shone with a brilliance equal to the rest of the galaxy, a blue-white collar shackling the Gulf. Inside, the containment shell was almost complete. The bands of dark force produced by the Raiel defenses had merged together. Only a few gaps remained, and they were reducing fast.

Within the dark shell, automated Raiel monitors continued their observation of the Void boundary as they had done for the last million years. It had remained quiescent since the Pilgrimage fleet had passed through.

“It begins,” Qatux whispered.

Paula tried to get a grip on her dazed thoughts. Gore’s dream had left her reeling, delighted and awestruck. For an instant she wanted to be there, standing in Sampalok with the Firstlife, telling the Heart she would join it. Thank you, she told the aching absence in the gaiafield where the Third Dreamer once had been. Despite everything, you deserve to be the first of our species to achieve transcendence. I just hope it’s not too lonely out there.

She drew a deep breath and focused on the display that dominated Qatux’s private chamber. The surface of the Void boundary was changing. A thin ridge rose out of the equator, extending all the way out to the glowing loop. As before, the dying mass of broken stars fell into the event horizon.

“This time it will be different,” Paula promised. “This time it will absorb the energy to power evolution.”

“I feel you are right,” Qatux said.

The entirety of the loop was taken, absorbed below the boundary. The ridge began to retreat. Then the Void itself was shrinking. Gravity, the boundary’s primary enforcer, lessened. The impenetrable cloak that had defeated nature for so long fell away, and the Void lay naked at the core of the galaxy.

“Oh, my,” Paula said in wonder.

The Void reached transcendence.

After it was gone, after normal spacetime reclaimed all it had lost, the vast warships of the warrior Raiel flew in to examine the darkness their great enemy had left behind. Virtually no matter existed in the Gulf now, no radiation, no light. No nebulae.

Right at the center they found a single star shining bright, with a lone H-congruous planet in orbit. And one of their own.