The Evolutionary Void (17 page)

“Laril!” she gasped.

The static swirled, then formed bright green letters: Araminta, please
access this.

She scuttled backward across the floor. “No,” she gasped. “No, what is
this? What’s happening?”

“Araminta,” the node’s speaker said. It was a female voice, composed and
authoritative. “This is a shotgun message into Chobamba’s cybersphere. All
nodes will receive it and broadcast it to every address code; it will also be
held in storage until purged, which should take a while. Hopefully that gives
it long enough to reach you somehow. I am not aiming it at you directly,
because I don’t know precisely where you are. Living Dream has discovered you
are on Chobamba, but they haven’t yet determined your exact position. Don’t use
the gaiafield again; they have very sophisticated tracking routines in the
confluence nests. Several teams of combat-enriched operatives are working on
finding you, the same type of people responsible for the Bodant Park massacre.
You must leave immediately. I’d advise you to use the route you took to get
there. It is relatively safe. Do not hesitate. Time is now a critical factor.
Please know, there are people working to help you. The Commonwealth Navy is
capable of protecting you. Ask for their aid. Go now.”

Araminta stared at the node in disbelief; the green lettering remained on
the screen, casting a pale glow across the darkened chalet. “Oh, sweet Ozzie!”
It came out in a pitiful squeal.
They know I’m here.
Everyone knows I’m here
. The woman was right; she had to leave. But it
would take hours to reach the start of the path out in the desert. She looked
around the chalet as her initial panic tipped over into desperation, seeing
everything she’d bought, the gear that was essential for a trek along the paths
between worlds. It was heavy. She could hardly run carrying it all with her,
certainly not that far. Then she glanced at the Smoky James wrappers, which she
hadn’t got around to putting in the trash chute, and an idea formed.

Smoky James was good. Araminta had to admit that. It was three o’clock in
the morning, and they took only twenty minutes to deliver the pizza and fries
with a flask of coffee. The contraption Ranto was riding as he pulled up in
front of Araminta’s chalet was something she’d never seen before—an absurdly
primitive three-wheeled bike of some kind, presumably the
great-great-granddaddy of a modern trike pod. It didn’t look safe, with a
leather saddle seat slung in the center of an open black carbon frame that had
its fair share of repair patches, like epoxy bandages swelling the struts. The
axle-drive wheels were connected to the frame on long magnetic suspension
dampers, which didn’t quite seem to match. Ranto was steering it manually with
a set of chrome-orange handlebars. With a sinking heart, Araminta guessed this
was necessity rather than preference. It wasn’t going to have any kind of smart
technology ready to assume the driving and navigation functions.

He clambered off and pulled the pizza carton out of a big pannier behind
the saddle.

Finally
, she thought,
a
plus point. That’ll hold all my gear
.

“Here you go,” he said with the kind of miserabalist cheer exclusive to
night-shift workers on very basic pay.

Araminta was fairly sure Ranto didn’t have an Advancer heritage. Too many
spots on his glum teenage face, his long nose made sure he wasn’t handsome, and
even though he was already tall, he was still growing, producing long gangling
arms and legs from a torso that seemed oddly thin. From her point of view that
was good; he wouldn’t have macrocellular clusters. He couldn’t connect directly
to the unisphere.

Araminta took the carton from him. “Thanks.” She held up her cash coin.
“How much for the bike-thing?”

Ranto’s slightly awkward smile turned to incredulity. “What?”

“How much?”

“It’s my bike,” he protested.

“I know that. I need it.”

“Why?”

“That’s not important. I just need it. Now.”

“I can’t sell my bike! I fixed it up myself.”

“It’s yours, so you can sell it. And it’s a seller’s market. You’ll never
get another chance like this.”

He looked from her to the bike, then back again. Araminta was sure she
could hear his brain working, little cogs clicking around under unaccustomed
stress. His cheeks colored.

“You could buy a new one,” she said with gentle encouragement. For a
moment she visualized Ranto riding around on some massive glowing scarlet
sports bike with floating wheels.
Come on, focus!
If
he didn’t want to part with it, there were unarmed combat routines in her
lacuna she could use, loaded a long time ago when the whole divorce mess
started and she had to go into districts of Colwyn City that had a bad rep. She
really didn’t want to. For a start, she didn’t quite trust them, or herself.
Besides, hitting someone like Ranto was just naked cruelty.
But I will. If I have to. This is far more important than his
pride
. She brought the lacuna index up into her exovision, ready to
access the routine.

“Five thousand Chobamba francs,” Ranto announced nervously. “I couldn’t
let it go for anything less.”

“Deal.” Araminta shoved her cash card toward him.

“Really?” Her immediate agreement startled him.

“Yes.” She authorized the money.

Ranto blinked in surprise as his own card registered the transfer. Then
he grinned. It made him look quite endearing.

Araminta slung her backpack into the open pannier and turned back to the
dazed teenager. “How do I drive it?” she asked.

It took a couple of minutes on the broad road outside the StarSide Motel,
with Ranto running about after her shouting instructions as his long arms waved
frantically, but Araminta soon got the hang of it. The handlebars had a manual
throttle and brake activator. She really had to concentrate on using the brake;
all her life she’d driven vehicles with automatic braking. After the first
couple of semi-disasters she began to overcompensate, which nearly flung her
forward out of the saddle.

“Doesn’t it have any safety systems?” she yelled at Ranto as she curved
around again.

He shrugged. “Drive safe,” he suggested.

After another three practice circuits on the street she did just that and
set off for the one road out of Miledeep Water. Ranto waved goodbye. She could
see that in the little mirrors sticking up from the handlebars. There was no
three-sixty sensor coverage—actually, there were no sensors. His lanky frame
was backdropped by the green-lit motel reception building, one hand held up and
an expression of mild regret on his face.

Araminta concentrated on the route out of Miledeep Water, retracing her
walk in not a day before. The bike’s headlight produced a wide fan of
pink-tinged light across the road ahead. It was okayish, but she couldn’t see
much outside of its beam, and the streetlights grew farther apart as the road
climbed the crater wall. She quickly activated every biononic optical
enrichment she had, bringing analysis and image resolution programs on line to
help. The resulting vision was a lot better, taking away her total dependence
on the headlight.

Once the last building was behind her, and she hadn’t fallen off or
crashed, and nothing mechanically disastrous had happened, she eased the
throttle up, and her speed increased. The axle motors were quite smooth, and
the suspension kept her a lot more stable than she’d expected. It was just the
wind that was a problem, flapping her fleece about and stinging her eyes. She
really should have worn glasses of some kind. There was a pair of big shades in
her backpack, but somehow she preferred the discomfort to stopping and fishing
them out. The unknown woman’s blanket warning on the unisphere had unnerved
her.

Five minutes after leaving the motel behind, she reached the crest of the
crater. The last streetlight stood on the side of the road, not far from where
she’d dumped her flagon harness. She was almost tempted to pick it up again,
but sentiment at this point translated to blatant stupidity. Araminta gunned
the throttle and zoomed off down the slope into the desert.

As soon as she was past the field of illumination thrown out from the
streetlight, she switched the bike’s headlight off. Her image resolution
routines produced a reasonable gray-green view of the long straight road ahead,
enough to give her the confidence to keep going at the same speed. After all,
there was nothing else traveling along it. She could see all the way to the
horizon, where the intensifiers showed the stars burning brightly behind a
wavering curtain of warm desert air.

It was a six-minute ride to the bottom of the crater wall. By the time
she reached the desert floor, the bike’s tiny display panel told her she was
doing close to a hundred kilometers an hour. It felt more like five hundred.
The wind was a constant blast in her face, and her clothes felt like they were
being pulled out behind her. She bared her teeth into the airstream, actually
starting to enjoy the experience.

Did Ranto and his friends come out here in the evenings and race along
the empty road? She knew if she and her friends had had these kind of machines
when she was growing up on the farm, she would have had a whole lot more fun.

And I can have them. In the Void
.

She grimaced.
Actually, no, I can’t. Stop thinking
like this. It’s weak, and anyway, the Void won’t allow technology
.

Not that she really counted this bike as technology. The battery under
the saddle actually hummed as the axle motors drew power. Something in the left
rear wheel clicked as it spun around (which should be impossible with
frictionless bearings). And the tires made a low growling sound as they charged
along the gritty concrete.
Maybe it’ll actually work on the
Silfen paths
.

There were no landmarks out on the desert road, nothing distinctive on
the side of the road. She wasn’t sure where the side track was. Not that it had
been much of a track, just a couple of tire ruts across the hard ground. Even
with the headlights she wasn’t going to see those in the night. Instead she
reached for it with her mind, nervous that spreading her thoughts in such a
fashion might allow Living Dream to find her once again. But the difference
between the gaiafield and the Silfen community was clear enough to her,
allowing her to avoid the former studiously.

The Silfen path felt her as much as she felt it. And somewhere up ahead
and to the side of the road it opened fully like a flower whose time had come
to bloom. Araminta slowed the bike and gingerly turned off the road. The uneven
desert was littered with small stones. Their impact kept shunting her front
tire off the track, leaving her to wrestle the handlebars back. It was
difficult, taking her full strength. Her arms were soon aching from the
constant struggle. Sweat built up on her shoulders and forehead.

That was when she heard the hypersonic booms rolling in through the clear
desert air, thunderous cracks that hurt her eardrums. Her head swung around,
searching anxiously. Behind her, the top of the crater containing Miledeep
Water glowed with the haze of the town’s street lighting, creating a mellow
nimbus that caressed the dark night sky. She saw bright glimmers of purple
light streaking across the foreign constellations, curving down toward the
lonely town. There must have been six or seven of them.

“Oh, crap,” she grunted, and gunned the throttle hard. “Here we go
again.” The bike started to buck about as it jolted its way over the coarse
ground. Dry bushes snapped as she rode right over them, spiky twigs snaring in
the hub spokes to thrash around and around, their tips whipping her boots.
Holding a straight line was a huge effort with the bike fighting every motion.

A couple more booms announced the arrival of more capsules at high
velocity. Any second now Araminta expected the sky to light with laserfire in a
repeat of Bodant Park. The bike was bouncing wildly; she could actually hear
the axle drives whining. She fought to keep it straight as the front wheel
shook from side to side. There was nothing for it but to slow down, though by
now she could feel the start of the path lapping toward her like the advancing
waves of an incoming tide.

The bike’s power fell off, then surged, ebbed again–Little amber lights
winked on across the handlebars. She had no idea what they meant. She throttled
back, and the outlandish machine freewheeled on forward. They were on a shallow
incline now, leading down to an ancient winding streambed, so all she did was
steer, keeping away from the larger stones and boulders.

By the time she jerked down onto the softer sand of the streambed, there
was no power left and the bike rolled to an easy halt. Nothing worked. The
screen was blank, the amber lights had gone out, and no matter how she squeezed
the throttle, the axle motors didn’t engage.

Araminta sat there on the saddle for a long minute, letting the cramps
and tension ease out of her shoulders and arms. Her bum was sore from the
saddle, which plainly needed a lot more padding. Nonetheless, she grinned
fondly at the bike.

I made it. The stupid thing got me out
.

There was no doubt about it; she wasn’t on Chobamba anymore.

She climbed off slowly and pressed her fists into the small of her back,
groaning as her spine creaked. The skin on her face was raw from the wind’s
buffeting. It didn’t matter. She felt ridiculously pleased with herself for
eluding her pursuers yet again, which was stupid, she knew. It had been due
mainly to luck, though she had to give herself some credit. She’d responded to
the situation well enough after she got the warning.

And what that woman did proves there are still people
trying to help me, and not just her; there was Oscar back at Bodnant Park, too
.
A development that gave her a lot of hope. One thing she did know: Her decision
meant that her time of running was over. There were no easy options ahead now,
no waiting for someone else to do something.
It’s down to
me now
. There was a lot of trepidation accompanying that thought, and
maybe a tinge of fear, too, but there was also a degree of satisfaction.
All I have to do now is find the people opposed to the Pilgrimage
and take a stand with them
.