The Evolutionary Void (76 page)

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

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

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

“Oh, bollocks,” Oscar groaned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I can’t.”

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

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

“Help me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Never.”

“How lovely. You believe you are strong.”

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

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

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

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

“Stop this,” Aaron said.

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

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

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

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

“Bring them back!” Cheriton wailed.

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

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

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

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

“What?” Cheriton’s thoughts were confused.

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

“Oh, look,” the Cat said enthusiastically.

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

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

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

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

“Don’t!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Troblum!” Catriona wailed.

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

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

“Oh, dear Jesus,” Oscar moaned.

“Do it, you motherfucker,” Aaron yelled.

The
Mellanie’s Redemption
flashed into
hyperspace.

J
USTINE EASED HERSELF
up into a sitting
position, for once feeling every year of her age. Suspension over such a long
time was a killer. Every muscle ached. She swore she could hear her joints
creak as she moved them. Hunger pangs battled against nausea.

Secondary routines told her it was fifteen years since she’d last been
out of the medical capsule for a brief inspection of the
Silverbird
.
Exovision displays and secondary routines gave her a fast review of the
starship’s current status. Most onboard systems were functioning within
acceptable parameters, though the degradation over the last forty years was
noticeable.

Her u-shadow ordered the culinary unit to produce a banana-based protein
drink. She grabbed the plastic cup with her third hand and hauled it across the
cabin. A couple of minutes after she finished the gooey stuff, she actually
began to feel a bit better. Her muscles still ached, but with biononic support
it was relatively easy to clamber out of the chamber. She wobbled her way over
to the bathroom cubicle and ordered the cabin to extrude a shower compartment.
Not a spore shower but a decent original deluge of hot water that she could
stand under and feel pounding on her skin. The heat soaked into her flesh,
defeating the toxic stiffness that had built up during suspension. Then she
rubbed on the gel, relishing the cleansing sensation, as if she really were
washing away lethargy. Her skin began to tingle pleasurably. It was only after
a while that she realized she was probably broadcasting the whole
soaped-up-girl-in-a-shower scene to most of the human race.
Through Dad!

“Aw crap!”

A quick sluice of cold water promptly blew away any possible sense of
erotica. She stepped out and picked up a thick towel. This whole sharing the
body thing was going to take some getting used to. Not that she was
particularly prudish, but still,
every
sensation …

Dried and dressed in a decent semiorganic blouse and trouser set, she
settled back into her favorite chair and reviewed the external sensor images.
They were still traveling at point nine lightspeed, streaking through a star
system. Two light-hours ahead of them was the unnaturally vivid blue and white
speck of an H-congruous world. She began to smile as the sensors found the
desert planet Nikran, orbiting thirty million miles closer to the star, while
Gicon’s Bracelet was almost on the opposite side of the star, showing as a
bright cluster of light points. No doubt about it; the Skylord was taking her
directly toward Querencia.

Across the surrounding starfield the nebulae familiar from so many of
Inigo’s dreams were visible: the spectacular blue and green smear of Odin’s
Sea, crowned by its scarlet reefs; Buluku, the twisting river of violet
stardust beset with impossible lightning storms up to half a light-year long;
and of course the glowing entwined folds of topaz and crimson that were Honious
in all its dire glory.

Now that she was actually there, Justine experienced something weirdly
close to déjà vu. It was as if she had suddenly found out that a childhood
fable was true and the colorful monsters she’d read about were finally emerging
from the pages of the book. It wasn’t scary but profoundly exciting; this was
true pioneering.
Or maybe archaeology is closer to it
.

Her longtalk reached out for the Skylord. “I thank you for bringing me to
this world. My ship can fly and land by itself now.”

“I can take you closer,” it replied magnanimously.

“I would feel happier if my ship landed by itself. I am here now. I am
content, for which I thank you.”

“As you wish,” the Skylord said.

Justine braced herself. Not that it did any good. The
Silverbird
once again was gripped by strange acceleration
forces as the Skylord exerted its temporal manipulation ability. The star ahead
transformed back to a yellow radiance as they slowed drastically. Redshifted
stars behind grew in magnitude and intensity. Querencia’s clouds and ice caps
darkened as its oceans fell to a deep sapphire. Iridescent colors swirled
around the
Silverbird
’s fuselage as the Skylord’s
vacuum wings swept past it. Then they were separating swiftly.

“Watch for my kind; they will be here soon,” Justine sent, receiving a
serene flicker of acknowledgment in return.

Justine concentrated on the planet ahead. The Skylord had left her one
hundred fifty thousand kilometers out and approaching fast. She ordered the
smartcore to produce a vector that would put her into a twenty-degree
inclination orbit a thousand kilometers out. From memory, Makkathran had been
on the edge of the temperate zone. That orbit should allow her to see it visually.
Somehow she couldn’t imagine it had gone. Makkathran was a constant, whatever
it was, acting as a refuge for whatever race had the misfortune to stumble into
the Void. It had been there for a long time before humans arrived; she was sure
it would remain even today.

As soon as the
Silverbird
began its
fifteen-gee deceleration, she switched the confluence nest back on. It wasn’t a
memory she loaded in, more a belief, hopefully verging on obsession, that
everything on board the starship would work.
Even if it’s
no more than a pathetic wish, it might be enough to keep the systems functional
long enough to give me a proper landing
.

With that in mind, she started thinking about practical items she might
need after she arrived. The replicator was soon humming away, producing a wide
range of clothes for every season. Food followed: fruit preserves and dried or
cured meats, half-baked bread in sealed sheaths, basic packaged microbe-free
meals that would take a long time to go moldy or putrefy, juices and the odd bottle
of wine. To cook it all she had the replicator fabricate a small barbecue grill
with bags of charcoal. After that she dragged up truly ancient memories of
camping back in high school, when she’d been equipped with relatively simple
tools such as compass and fire lighters, pots, plates, cups, cutlery.
Washing-up liquid. Soap. Shampoo! Several decent pairs of boots. Knives of
various sizes, including the fattest Swiss army type she could pull from the
smartcore’s memory that would virtually build her another starship if she could
just figure out how to work the gadgets it contained. Rope. An old-fashioned
tent. It seemed an endless list, which kept her absorbed right up to the moment
when the
Silverbird
curved around into its
designated orbit. After that she sat in the chair watching high-resolution
projections of the world as it rolled past below.

The smartcore had done a reasonable job of mapping the planet’s basic
geography during the approach phase, capturing about two-thirds of the
continental outlines. Despite that, she couldn’t really correlate what she was
seeing with any of Edeard’s landscapes. The shorelines, which should have given
her the greatest clues, were unfamiliar from an orbital vantage point. It was
five orbits before she started to fly over mountains that could well be the
Ulfsen range, which Edeard had first traversed with the Barkus caravan on his
journey to Makkathran.
With Salrana
, she thought
sadly. Their tragic, doomed romance had never meant much to her before, but now
that she was here where it had played out, she felt a surprising emotional
resonance stirring her.
Stupid meat body
, she
cursed, and concentrated on the projected image.

No doubt about it, the Donsori Mountains were next. The Iguru plain swept
into view, a vast lush green expanse with those strange little volcanic cones.
Then there it was, straddling the coastline: Makkathran.

She stared at the big urban circle, marveling at the familiar shapes of
its districts as delineated by the dark curving canals. Sunlight glimmered off
the crystal wall, revealing it as a thin line encircling the city, dipping down
into the sparkling Lyot Sea at the Port district with its distinctive fishtail
profile.

Under her direction the smartcore ran a final check on all drive systems.
With the exception of the ultradrive, they were all working at above eighty
percent efficiency; glitches were minimal.

“Take us down,” Justine told the smartcore. The starship began its final
deceleration phase. That left her just one thing to decide, a decision she’d
admittedly been putting off since arriving in orbit.
Do I
take a weapon?
She was reasonably confident she
could ward off any animal with her third hand, but what if a whole pack of dogs
or fastfoxes rushed at her? So much time had passed that the dogs would have
lost any trace of domesticity. And it wasn’t just animals. She had no idea who
was going to arrive at Makkathran over the next few weeks, or years, or
decades—however long she was going to have to spend there before Gore’s plan
became apparent.

Files of schematics flowed across her exovision. She chose one and
shunted the blueprints into the replicator. Two minutes later out slid a
semiautomatic pistol with a guaranteed jam-free mechanism. Next came five
replacement magazines and five boxes of bullets, which really should be enough.

Ingrav had killed the
Silverbird
’s orbital
velocity, allowing it to drop vertically. The starship hit the upper
atmosphere, whose thin molecules started a faint scream from the buffeting
impact. A long wavering trail of lambent ions stretched out behind the craft as
it fell deeper and deeper.

Amber exovision alerts began to appear, warning Justine the force fields
were edging close to overload. She shared her desperate desire that their
generators would hold with the confluence nest, willing them to succeed. The
amber alerts blinked off.

Regrav took over at fifteen kilometers of altitude, slowing the descent.
She began to study the city as the visual images built up. Deeper sensor scans
were hazed as they began to probe the surrounding rock, denying her a clear
picture of whatever lay beneath Makkathran, though she could just make out the
faint threads of several travel tunnels radiating out through the ancient lava
field that was the Iguru plain.

So I still don’t know what it is
, she thought
in mild annoyance. But anything that could manipulate gravity, as it used to do
to propel Edeard along the tunnels, had to be a high-technology intruder into
this universe. The city’s thoughts had admitted as much to Edeard when it told
him about the Void’s reset ability.
The night Salrana
betrayed him
, she remembered, wishing the thwarted lovers didn’t bother
her quite so much.
Come on, girl, it was thousands of years
ago. Their bodies are dust, and their souls are partying in the Heart
.

Again, not the most comforting of thoughts.
If I die
here, I’ll either wither away wandering through space or be absorbed by the
Heart. Or Honious
.

Cross with herself for showing such weaknesses, she concentrated on the
city that was expanding across the projections. A landing site was her priority
now. There were so many places she wanted to see. And she would, but they were
all in built-up areas. She could make out the larger buildings now, the domes
of the Orchard Palace in Anemone, the odd twisting towers of Eyrie standing
guard around the Lady’s church. Her eyes darted toward Sampalok, and sure
enough, there in the central square was the six-sided building Edeard had
created out of the ruins of Bise’s mansion.

“Oh, holy crap,” she muttered. “It
is
real.”

Fright or determination, she didn’t know which, made her concentrate
properly now. The thick band of meadowland between the crystal wall and the
outer ring of canals that made up High Moat, Low Moat, Tycho, and Andromeda was
a likely candidate, though it was terribly overgrown. She could see clumps of
trees down there that certainly hadn’t been growing in Edeard’s time. According
to the radar sweep and mass scans, what looked like grass from altitude was
mostly bushes and vines.

Golden Park, then. The old flat fields within the pristine white pillars
were as shaggy as the meadows outside and the original avenues of huge martoz
trees had multiplied and grown wild, but radar showed there were plenty of
relatively level patches.

Silverbird
continued its descent, twisting
slightly to align itself over the westernmost part of the park, between the
curves of Upper Grove Canal and Champ Canal.

Two warning icons appeared, telling her the regrav units were having to
draw extra power to maintain a steady rate of descent. It was as if gravity was
increasing, pulling the starship down.

And how do you wish gravity was less?

More warnings began to appear, reporting glitches in secondary systems.
She felt a faint vibration starting to build up and ordered her chair to grip
her tightly. It responded sluggishly.

“Oh, crap, here we go,” she groaned.

The starship was only a kilometer above the city as its started to pick
up speed.
Nothing fatal
, she told herself.
Not yet
. The landing legs bulged out of the fuselage.
So something wants me to land okay
. Velocity was
increasing more than she was comfortable with. She sent a series of
instructions into the smartcore, composing her own procedures for a Void-style
landing.

Five hundred meters and the
Silverbird
was ass
down as it should be, with the nose tracing a slight arc in the sky as it
wobbled. The exact landing spot she’d picked received a final radar sweep,
confirming it was solid and stable.

Her thoughts slammed into the confluence nest,
demanding
normality. Power from the reserve D-sinks was channeled into the regrav units,
pushing them up to their safety margins. She saw the towers of Eyrie come level
with the starship, and beyond them, over in Tosella, the tip of the Blue Tower
was now higher than she was.