The Evolutionary Void (89 page)

“You have nothing to fear from those I travel with, including the city,”
Edeard assured it. “They are my companions as I seek fulfillment.”

“I know this city now,” the Skylord replied. “Its kind brought ruin to
this universe. We have found no minds since they threw the planets of life down
into the stars they orbited. None have emerged here other than your own
species.”

“That time is over now. You know more of my species are already here.
Minds are emerging again.”

“As is the
other
who kills.”

“That is why I wish to reach the Heart. I will carry the warning to it. I
believe I am fulfilled. I believe the Heart will accept me. Is this right?”

The Skylord took a long time to answer. “You are fulfilled,” it
acknowledged. “I will guide your essence to the Heart.”

“Guide me to the Heart as I am. This ship will take me. We will follow
you.”

“It is the essence of every mind, my kindred guide.”

“Guide me to the Heart. It will decide if it accepts me as I am or if I
abandon my body and become pure mind.”

“I will guide you.”

“Thank you.”

Beyond the crystal dome, the stars began to chase short arcs across space
as Makkathran turned to follow the Skylord. Then they started to accelerate
again. Edeard experienced a long moment of dizziness. When he looked straight
up again, he could see a small clump of stars directly above the apex of the
dome. They’d all become bright blue-white. The rest of the universe around them
was black.

“That’s not fast enough,” Gore said. “Ilanthe has a week of Void time on
you. Christ knows how close she is now.”

“We know this is as fast as the Skylords can travel,” Justine said.

“Yeah, but they’re not exactly swinging from the top of the IQ tree, now,
are they? Ask Makkathran. It’s had millions of years to figure out what passes
for spacetime in the Void.”

Justine gave Edeard a questioning look.

“I’ll ask,” he said.

“Faster?” Makkathran queried; its thoughts intimated curiosity. “We were
designed for every conceivable quantum state except of course this one. Here
the mind is paramount, helping to seduce so many inferior mentalities. Long
ago, I observed the fundamental connections between rationality and the
multidimensional lattice which incorporates this universe’s functionality.
Speed is an aspect of temporal flow, which in turn is determined by thought. It
is the application pattern which is the key, and those are actually quite
simple to determine.”

Outside the dome, light exploded out of the emptiness. Stars began to
streak past like rigid lightning bolts. Glaring nebula clouds formed hurricane
curlicues, spiraling around and around as they streamed away in a resplendent
blaze of color.

“I think that was a yes,” an awestruck Oscar mumbled as multicolored
ripples of light flowed across his upturned face.

“So are we going fast or is the Void slowing down?” Corrie-Lyn asked
tentatively.

“That’s not strictly relevant in here,” Inigo said. “All that matters is
the end result.”

In parallel to his conversation with the Delivery Man, Gore was
monitoring the data the infiltration software was surreptitiously accumulating.
The elevation mechanism had started running internal scans as the filaments
continued their invasion into its structure. He released the first batch of
packages, a low-level torrent that swiftly insinuated itself into the scan
interpretation routines, falsifying the results so the elevation mechanism
would find nothing wrong with itself at a molecular level.

Dream—Makkathran went FTL amid a spectacular light storm.

Visual observation—Tyzak was bouncing its way over the plaza, taking care
not to step on the glistening black webbing that was humming gently.

That’s all I need
, a higher secondary segment
of Gore’s mind thought. The Anomine translation routine in a storage lacuna
went active.

“Others have come,” Tyzak said.

“From your village?” Gore warbled and whistled back.

“No. Others. Star travelers who are similar to you but very different. I
do not know of their story.”

“Show me, please.”

Tyzak traced his way back across the plaza. One of his limbs extended,
pointing down a broad street.

There were eight of them standing across the road a hundred meters short
of the plaza. Pastel light from the buildings on either side glittered across
their extravagant jeweled longcoats. One of them raised a long white spear and
bowed slightly.

“Silfen,” Gore sighed, resisting the urge to give them the finger in
return. Instead he inclined his head. “Just ignore them. They’re the galaxy’s
greatest voyeurs.”

“Why should they come here?”

“To observe me.”

The infiltration packages flashed up a problem with the analysis routines
they were trying to modify. There must have been hidden sentinels, because the
analysis routines were resisting any attempt to subvert them. They had begun
reformatting themselves with alarming frequency. It meant the packages couldn’t
establish themselves; there was no stable configuration to match. And the
sentinels were routing more advanced routines to the scans, examining why the
resistance algorithms were being triggered. That might well alert the elevation
mechanism’s principal consciousness.

Gore pressed his golden lips together. “Oh, shit; here we go.”

Hanging in transdimensional suspension two million kilometers above the
Anomine star, Marius had directed his starship’s sensor readings to a
constellation of semiautonomous secondary routines. Although the Delivery Man’s
ship had performed a truly astounding feat by flying into the star’s convection
layer, it wasn’t his main concern. He simply didn’t understand Justine’s dream.

That Gore had somehow maneuvered Inigo and Araminta-two into the Void was
seriously impressive. But then the notion faltered. To rationalize with the
Heart, as Gore claimed was their ultimate purpose, must be a misdirection. He
was sure of it.

Then the Waterwalker was resurrected. “Remarkable,” Marius admitted. That
was nothing compared with Makkathran awakening and lifting itself out of the
gargantuan lava-filled impact crater it had created when it crashed there in
the aftermath of the armada’s invasion.

And Gore announced they had to beat Ilanthe to the Heart. Makkathran
performed the impossible and went FTL inside the Void.

“No,” Marius said in alarm. Whatever scheme Gore had for when they were
inside the Heart, he could not permit it. The risk was infinitesimal, but
nonetheless it existed.

His mind moved the dream to secondary routines for monitoring and brought
the sensor readings back to his full attention. The Delivery Man’s starship
hadn’t moved. It was still attached to the shielded circular object inside the convection
zone. Whatever connection Gore envisaged between that and Makkathran was beyond
understanding, but there was purpose to it. No one expended that much effort
without a reason.

His quandary was that he didn’t know if Gore was on board the starship or
back on the planet. Therefore, the process of elimination would have to be both
literal and simple. Ship first. If the dream continued, Gore was on the Anomine
homeworld.

Marius ordered the smartcore to drop them out of stealth. Active sensors
came on line and performed a more detailed scan of the ship inside the
convection zone. For all that it incorporated Stardiver shielding to deal with
the heat, its layered force fields had received only about twenty percent
strengthening. They remained vulnerable to combat strikes. The only real
problem Marius had was choosing a weapon that would be able to reach it within
such a radical environment. He started to activate the possibles.

They waited for the moment on the Sampalok square, just outside the mansion’s
entrance. Inigo and Corrie-Lyn were holding hands and sharing thoughts
privately. Araminta-two was never far from Oscar, the two of them providing
each other with a strange variety of support and comfort. The three Knights
Guardian were in a tight group, keen and nervy. Justine and Gore stood side by
side, proud and defiant, their determination shining as bright as any of the
weird stars flashing past outside. That, oddly enough, left Edeard gravitating
toward Troblum, who was waiting with a sulky, nearly childlike pout.

The cascade of opalescent light drained away as quickly as it had
arrived. Edeard gazed up at the dome, thunderstruck by the sight beyond the
crystal. Makkathran was gliding through space above the center of Odin’s Sea.
Directly above the apex of the dome a ruffled lake of aquamarine dust glimmered
with a steady lambency, alive with deep currents and the flaring nimbi of
protostars. Around its shores the scarlet reefs extended out for light-years,
slender twined braids of fluorescence that swelled at their tips to form silken
veils around the stars they incarcerated.

“Sweet Lady, I never thought to see such a sight,” Edeard moaned
incredulously. Finally his mind heard the siren call; it wasn’t a song but the
sense of uncountable minds blending in peace and friendship, secure in their
totality. Together they were whole and had combined with the Void’s fabric at
some ultimate level of existence. The promise of belonging to such an
affiliation filled him with joy; the weariness and strife of a physical life
would end, and he would be a part of the greater existence that reached for
perfection. The urge to join them, to contribute his nature, was so strong that
if his third hand could have elevated him up from the square and through the
crystal, he would have flown into the Heart there and then for the final
consummation. It was nothing like the foolishly imagined nearly physical heaven
he had expected, where souls clung to their old form and lived in splendor in a
city of golden towers. That kind of life was actually achievable back on
Querencia if you tried hard enough and often enough, revisiting your own past
until you finally eliminated all your failures and disappointments. No, the
Heart looked to the future and a fate that was fresh and different from
anything that had gone before. He would be a part of creating that.

“This hippie-dippy shit is what everyone praises?” Gore snapped. “Jeezus
wept.”

Edeard struggled to keep his temper in check in the face of such
blasphemous provocation. “It is a glorious reward for a life lived true to
oneself.”

“Uh huh. Well, let’s not forget why we’re here. We need to get inside.”

“There is no physical location,” Makkathran told them when Edeard asked
to move closer. “At least, not in relation to the Void fabric at this level.
The Heart lies beyond rather than behind. That is the final barrier, the one
which defeated us before.”

“Ask it to admit us,” Oscar said.

Edeard nodded slowly, reluctant at the last to begin the event that could
lead to the demise of the entire Void.
What if they have
lied?
Which he knew to be a foolish insecurity.
Good
old Ashwell optimism, even here. Inigo does not lie, not to me
. “How can
something this splendid be so flawed as to threaten life everywhere?”