The Evolutionary Void (86 page)

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.”