The Evolutionary Void (2 page)

The problem, inevitably, was who to trust with such an enormous array of
firepower. The more crew involved, the greater the chance of misuse or leakage
to a faction. Ironically, the technology itself provided the answer. It
required only a single controlling consciousness. ANA declined to assume
command on ethical grounds, refusing to ascend to essential omnipotence.
Therefore, the task always fell upon the Chief Admiral.

The forces within the base swarmed around him, rushing in like a tidal
wave, reading him at a quantum level and then converting the memory. Kazimir
transformed: His purely physical structure shifted to an equivalent energy
function encapsulated within a single point that intruded into spacetime. His
“bulk,” the energy signature he had become, was folded deep within the quantum
fields, utilizing a construction principle similar to that of ANA itself. It
contained his mind and memories, along with some basic manipulator and sensory
abilities, and unlike ANA, it wasn’t a fixed point.

Kazimir used his new sensory inputs to examine the intraspacial lattice
immediately surrounding him, reviewing the waiting array of transformed
functions stored inside the dome’s complex exotic matter mechanisms. He started
to select the ones he might need for the mission, incorporating them to his own
signature; it was a process he always equated to some primitive soldier walking
through an armory, pulling weapons and shields off the shelves.

Ultimately he incorporated eight hundred seventeen functions into his
primary signature. Function twenty-seven was an FTL (faster than light)
ability, allowing him to shift his entire energy signature through hyperspace.
As he no longer retained any mass, the velocity he could achieve was orders of
magnitude above an ultradrive.

Kazimir launched from the unnamed planet, heading for the Ocisen fleet at
a hundred light-years an hour. Then he accelerated.

The Delivery Man smiled at the steward who came down the cabin collecting
drinks from the passengers as the starship prepared to enter the planet’s
atmosphere. It was a job much better suited to a bot or some inbuilt waste
chute. Yet starliner companies always maintained a human crew. The vast majority
of humans (non-Higher, anyway) relished that little personal contact during the
voyage. Besides, human staff added a touch of refinement, the elegance of a
bygone age.

He accessed the ship’s sensors as the atmosphere built up around them. It
was raining on Fanallisto’s second largest southern continent. A huge
gunmetal-gray mass of clouds powered their way inland, driven by winds that had
built to an alarming velocity across the empty wastes of the Antarctic Ocean.
Cities were activating their weather dome force fields, the rain was so heavy.
Flood warnings were going out to the burgeoning agricultural zones.

Fanallisto was in its second century of development. A pleasant enough
world, unremarkable in the firmament of External worlds, it had a population of
tens of millions occupying relatively bland urban zones. Each had a Living
Dream thane and a respectable number of followers. The prospect of Pilgrimage
was creating a lot of tension and strife among the population, a situation that
hadn’t been helped by recent events on Viotia. Acts of violence against the
thanes had increased with each passing day of the crisis.

In itself that was nothing special; such conflicts were on the rise
across the Greater Commonwealth. However, on Fanallisto, several instances of
violence had been countered by people enriched by biononics. The Conservative
Faction was keen to discover what was so special about Fanallisto that it
needed support and protection from suspected Accelerator agents.

As he’d made quite clear to the faction, the Delivery Man didn’t care.
However, a Conservative Faction agent was now on Fanallisto, and standard
operating procedure for field deployment was to provide independent fallback
support, which was why the Delivery Man hadn’t gone straight back to London
from Purlap spaceport. Instead he’d taken a flight to Trangor and caught the
next starship to Fanallisto. At least he wasn’t part of the active operation.
The other agent didn’t even know he was there.

The commercial starship fell through the sodden atmosphere to land at
Rapall spaceport. The Delivery Man disembarked along with all the other
passengers, then rendezvoused with his luggage in the terminal building. The
two medium-size cases drifted after him on regrav and parked themselves in a
cab’s cargo hold. He ordered the cab to the commercial section of town, a short
trip in the little regrav capsule as it flitted around beneath the force field
dome. From there he walked around to another cab pad and flew over to the
Foxglove Hotel on the east side of town, using a different identity.

He booked in to room 225, using a third identity certificate and an
untraceable cash coin to prepay for a ten-day stay. It took four minutes to
infiltrate the room’s cybersphere node, where he installed various routines to
make it appear as though the room were occupied. A nice professional touch, he
felt. The small culinary unit would produce meals, which the maidbot would then
empty down the toilet in the morning when it made the daily housekeeping visit.
The spore shower would be used, as would various other gadgets and fittings;
the air-conditioning temperature would be changed, and the node would place a
few calls across the unisphere. Power consumption would vary.

He slid both cases into the solitary closet just for the sake of
appearance and activated their defense mechanisms. Whatever was inside them, he
didn’t want to know, though he guessed at some pretty aggressive hardware. Once
he’d confirmed that they were operating properly, he left the room and called a
cab down to the front of the hotel’s lobby. It wouldn’t be he who came back to
collect the cases—that would set a pattern. He was grateful for that
operational protocol. After Justine’s last dream, all he wanted to do was get
back to his family. He’d already decided he would be turning down any more
Conservative Faction requests over the next couple of weeks, no matter how much
warning they gave him and how politely they asked. Events were building to a
climax, and there was only one place a true father should be.

The lobby’s glass curtain doors parted to let him through. The taxicab
hovered a couple of centimeters above the concrete pad outside, waiting for
him. He hadn’t quite reached it when the Conservative Faction called.

I’m going to tell them no
, he promised
himself.
Whatever it is
.

He settled in the cab’s curving seat, told its smartnet to take him to
the downtown area, and then accepted the call. “Yes?”

“The deterrence fleet is being deployed,” the Conservative Faction said.

“I’m surprised it took this long. People are getting nervous about the
Ocisens, and they don’t even know about the Primes yet.”

“We believe the whole deployment was orchestrated by the Accelerators.”

“Why? What could they possibly gain from that?”

“They would finally know the nature of the deterrence fleet.”

“Okay, so how does that help them?”

“We don’t know. But it has to be crucial to their plans; they have risked
almost everything on manipulating this one event.”

“The game is changing,” the Delivery Man said faintly. “That’s what
Marius told me: The game is changing. I thought he was talking about Hanko.”

“Apparently not.”

“So we really are entering a critical phase, then.”

“It would seem so.”

Immediately suspicious, he said, “I’m not undertaking anything else for
you. Not now.”

“We know. That is why we called. We thought you deserved to know. We
understand how much your family means to you and that you want to be with
them.”

“Ah. Thank you.”

“If you do wish to return to a more active status—”

“I’ll let you know. Has my replacement taken over following Marius?”

“Operational information is kept isolated.”

“Of course, sorry.”

“Thank you again for your assistance.”

The Delivery Man sat upright as the call ended. “Damnit.”
The deterrence fleet!
This was getting serious, not to
mention potentially lethal. He ordered the cab to fly direct to the spaceport,
and to hell with procedure. The flight he was booked to depart on wasn’t due to
leave for another two hours. His u-shadow immediately tracked down the first
ship bound for a Central world: a PanCephei Line flight to Gralmond, leaving in
thirty-five minutes. It managed to reserve him a seat, paying a huge premium to
secure the last first class lounge cubicle, but the flight would take twenty
hours. Add another twenty minutes to that to reach Earth through the connecting
wormholes, and he’d be back in London in just over twenty-one hours.

That’ll be enough time. Surely?

Araminta had been so desperate to get the hell away from Colwyn City, she
hadn’t really given any thought to the practical aspect of walking the Silfen
paths between worlds. Ambling through mysterious woods dotted with sunny glades
was a lovely romantic concept, as well as being a decent finger gesture to
Living Dream and Cleric Conservator bastard Ethan. However, a moment’s thought
might have made her consider what she was wearing a little more carefully, and
she’d definitely have found some tougher boots. There was also the question of
food.

None of that registered for the first fifty minutes as she strolled airily
down from the small spinney where the path from Francola Wood had emerged. She
simply marveled at her own fortune, the way she’d finally managed to turn her
predicament around.

Figure out what you want, Laril had told her.

Well, now I’ve started to do just that. I’m taking
charge of my life again
.

Then the quartet of moons sank behind the horizon. She smiled at their
departure, wondering how long it would take before they reappeared again. It
had been a fast traverse of the sky, so they must orbit this world several
times a day. When she turned to check the opposite horizon, her smile faded at
the thick bank of unpleasantly dark clouds that were massing above the lofty
hills that made up the valley wall. Ten minutes later the rain reached her, an
unrelenting torrent that left her drenched in seconds. Her comfy old fleece was
resistant to a mild drizzle, but it was never intended for a downpour that
verged on a monsoon. Nonetheless, she scraped the rat-tail strings of hair from
her eyes and plodded on resolutely, unable to see more than a hundred meters in
front of her. Boots with too-thin soles slipped on the now dangerously slimy
grass equivalent. As the slope took her down to the valley floor, she spent
more than half her time leaning forward in a gorilla-style crouch to scramble
her way slowly onward. That was the first three hours.

She kept walking for the rest of the day, traversing the wide empty
valley as the clouds rumbled away. The orange-tinted sunlight helped dry her
fleece and trousers, but her underclothes took a long time. They soon started
to chafe. Then she reached the wide meandering river.

The bank on her side of the valley was disturbingly boggy. Apparently the
Silfen didn’t use boats. Nor was there any sign of ford or even stepping-stones.
In any case, she didn’t like the look of how fast the smooth water was flowing.
Gritting her teeth, she set off downriver. After half an hour she conceded
there was no natural crossing point. There was nothing for it; she would have
to wade.

Araminta stripped off her fleece and trousers and blouse, bundling them
together with her trusty tool belt—there was no way she was leaving that
behind, even though it was far too heavy should she have to swim for it. She
waded in, carrying the weighty roll above her head. The bottom of the river was
slippery, the water icy enough to make it difficult to breathe, and the flow so
harsh as to be a constant fear. In the middle the water came up almost to her
collarbones, but she gritted her teeth and kept going.