The Evolutionary Void (84 page)

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.