It took forty minutes to vaporize the entire machine. When it was over, the quantum black hole at the center of the Hawking m-sink had absorbed three hundred twenty-seven tons of matter, putting the regrav sled close to its weight lift limit as it edged back into the starship’s hold. The Delivery Man requested flight clearance from the starport, and the Jomo lifted into Arevalo’s warm summer skies.
Justine watched it go from the safety of her own ship, which was parked on a pad eight hangars down the row.
Twilight was bathing Hawksbill Bay with a rich gold hue that was so mild that strange constellations could twinkle merrily across the cloudless sky. The only sound around the pavilion’s swimming pool came from the waves breaking around the rocks of the headland below.
“An FTL engine that shifts planets,” Nelson said. “Got to admire them. They don’t think small.”
“They don’t think, period,” Gore grunted. “ANA is embedded in the local quantum fields. You can’t just rip it out and fling it across the galaxy on a blind date with the Void.”
“They obviously believe it. Troblum’s EMA came through one of their front committees. He built the engine for the Accelerators.”
“Don’t believe it,” Gore said, shaking his head. “He even made a presentation to the navy about the Anomine using something like this to haul the Dyson barrier generators into place. Asked Kazimir to fund a fucking search for them, for Christ’s sake. Why would Ilanthe allow him to go public with the idea? They’d atomize him before he even put in a call for a meeting with the navy. No, we haven’t got enough information yet.”
“Makes sense if it’s a diversion,” Nelson said reluctantly. “They wouldn’t build anything so critical to their plans on a Higher world. We don’t.”
“And he’s taken years to get it built on a fairly pitiful budget. Wrong priority level. We need to find Troblum and ask nicely what he’s really been doing for the Accelerators.”
“He left Arevalo a while back. Filed a flight plan to Lutain. Never showed up there or any other Commonwealth world, Central or External.”
“We need to find him,” Gore repeated firmly.
“That’s not going to happen. Either the Accelerators have him or he’s hiding, or more likely he’s plain and simple dead.”
“Then we find out which one it is.”
Justine stood in the middle of the weirdly empty hangar and called Paula.
“There’s something seriously wrong here.”
“In what way?” Paula asked.
“I think the Delivery Man just cleared the whole place out.” Justine slowly looked around the big empty space, opening her optical vision to Paula. “See that? There was something in here. My field scan shows those power cables were cut by a disruption effect; same goes for the support girders. Whatever it was, it was sizable and used up a great deal of power. But the Jomo is no bigger than my ship. Which only leaves one option for how he did it.”
“I thought the Hawking m-sink was even more secure than ultradrive technology. It would seem I’m wrong, which is disturbing.”
“Kazimir will have to be told,” Justine said. “If there are starships flying around the Commonwealth equipped with that kind of weapon, the navy should know about it. The factions don’t use the most principled people as their representatives.”
“I’ll leave that to you.”
“Great. Thank you. He’s still human enough to blame the messenger.”
“He’s a professional. You’ll be all right. Do you know where the Delivery Man is heading?”
“His direction indicated Earth when he left my sensor range. I imagine he’ll want to dump the mass stored in the Hawking m-sink first, and he’ll do that deep in interstellar space. Expelling it will produce a colossal gamma burst.”
“Leave him alone for now. The focus is shifting back to Living Dream.”
“Why?”
“Our sources in the movement are reporting an alarming development,” Paula said. “Living Dream is readying all the civil security forces on all the core worlds of the Free Market Zone. Leave has been canceled, and they’re undergoing martial law enforcement training.”
“Martial law? Where is that applied in the Free Market Zone?”
“It isn’t—yet. But if they were to annex Viotia, they would probably need that many police troopers to keep the populace under control.”
“Jesus! Are they planning that?”
“Ethan is becoming desperate to gain control over the Second Dreamer. Whoever that is, he’s the one person who could still stop this whole Pilgrimage in its tracks.”
“And everyone believes he’s on Viotia,” Justine said, appalled. “Dear heavens, an interstellar invasion. In this day and age it’s unthinkable. It’s left over from the Starflyer War.”
“Start thinking it. I made a mistake not giving this a higher priority. We really need to offer ANA: Governance’s protection to the Second Dreamer. That way no one will be able to pressure him into either helping or hindering the Pilgrimage.”
“But first we have to find him. How long before you can get your agent working on this?”
“Very soon now. I’m on my way to see him with one slight detour.”
Justine eyed the hangar’s inner office suspiciously. There was an empty space that three communications conduits led into, their ends cut off clean. “Whatever they were building here was clearly important, and the Delivery Man took quite a risk covering it up. I don’t think we have a lot of time left.”
“The Pilgrimage ships won’t be ready to fly until September.”
“And the Ocisen Empire fleet will be here in late August, which is less than three months away. I’d like to suggest a lead no one else seems to be following.”
“What’s that?”
“Inigo started to dream when he was at Centurion Station. Did anyone else?”
“If they did, we’d know about it.”
“That’s the point: Would we? Suppose the contact was a weak one that was never fully established. Or the recipient didn’t want any part of Inigo’s religion. A reluctant person just like the Second Dreamer has turned out to be.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this or, rather, intend to go.”
“I want to check out the confluence nest on Centurion Station, see if it has any memory of Void dreams or fragments of them. Maybe the Second Dreamer started his connection with the Skylord when he was there, just like Inigo.”
“You’re right. No one else has covered that angle.”
“If I leave now, my ship can get me there in five hundred hours.”
“You’re going to fly there? Why not use the navy’s relay link?”
“Too much chance of it being intercepted.”
“If you do find anything, it’ll take you another five hundred hours to get back. It’ll probably all be over by then.”
“If I find anything important, I’ll use the relay link to send you the name in the heaviest encryption we have.”
“Okay. Good luck.”
Troblum woke up slumped in the chair he had sat in reviewing various schematics all day. His exovision displays had paused at the point where he had fallen asleep. Colorful profiles of exotic mass density modulators floated like mechanical ghosts around him, each one beleaguered by shoals of blue and green analytical displays. Supposedly, those components would perform their designated function without any trouble; the designers simply had scaled up from existing ultradrives. Except nobody had ever built them that size before, which left Troblum with a mountain of problems when it came to the kind of precise power control they needed. And they hadn’t even gotten to the fabrication stage yet.
He stretched as best his thick limbs would allow and tried to get out of the chair. After two attempts that made him look like an overturned glagwi struggling to right itself, his u-shadow ordered the station to reduce the local gravity field. Now, when he pushed with his legs and back, he gave his body an impetus that propelled him right out of th
e clingy cushions. Gravity returned slowly, giving him time to straighten his legs before his feet touched the decking. He let out a wet belch as the falling sensation ended. His stomach still was churning, and his legs felt weak and stiff. He had a headache, too. The medical display in his exovision showed him that his sugar levels were all over the place. There was a load of crap about toxins and blood oxygen levels, too, which he canceled just as the nutrition and exercise recommendations came up. Stupid anachronism in the age of biononics.
He set off to the saloon that the ultradrive team used as its social and business center. It had the best culinary units on the station. When he arrived, several of the tables along the curving wall were occupied by groups of people discussing various aspects of the project. He saw Neskia with a couple of technicians he recognized from the team handling the drive’s hyperspace fluidity systems. They all stared at him as he sat down in the spare seat, wincing as his knees creaked. Both technicians registered mild disapproval. Neskia’s long metallized neck curved sinuously so that her flat face was aligned perfectly on him. “Thank you,” she said to the technicians. “We’ll go with that.”
They nodded thanks and left.
“Was there something you wanted?” she asked Troblum in a level voice.
“I need to change the design for the mass density modulator,” he said. A maidbot slid over with a tray of food his u-shadow had ordered from the culinary units. He started unloading the plates.
Neskia’s face tipped down; her large circular eyes regarded the food without any trace of emotion. “I see. Do you have the proposed new design?”
“No,” he mumbled around a mouthful of spaghetti. “I want you to okay the change before I waste a week on it.”
“What’s wrong with the existing modulator?”
“It’s a pile of crap. Doesn’t work. Your idiots didn’t take the power control requirements into account.”
“Do you have an analysis of the problem?”
Troblum could only nod as he chewed his hot floratts bread with mozzarella and herbs. His u-shadow sent the file over.
“Thank you. The review team will examine this. You will have a reply in an hour. That is the procedure.”
“Sure. Good.” He sighed. It was great that the tech problem had been sorted out, but the spaghetti with its balls of jolmeat and attrato sauce could have done with more black pepper. He reached for his tankard, only to find Neskia’s hand on top of his, preventing him from lifting the beer. Her skin shimmered between white and silver. He could not sense any temperature from her fingers, hot or cold. “What?”
Her eyes blinked slowly, turning the irises from black to deep indigo. “In future. In public. While you are here in my station. Please ensure that your social interaction program is running and that you follow its advice.”
“Oh. Okay.” He dipped his head toward the tankard.
“Thank you, Troblum.” She lifted her hand. “Was there anything else? The project seems to be absorbing most of your time.”
“Yeah, it’s interesting. I might get some crossover into one of my own projects. Ultradrive is a fascinating reworking of quantum dimensional theory. Who came up with it?”
“I believe it was ANA: Governance. Is it important?”
“No.” He pushed the spaghetti plate aside and started on the rack of lamb.
Neskia had not stopped looking at him. She was about to speak again when two people came over to stand beside their table. Troblum finished chewing before he glanced up; he knew that was the kind of thing the social program counseled. Marius was looking down at him with his usual rarefied contempt, but it was his companion who turned Troblum immobile. His limbs would not move. Thankfully, neither did his mouth, which stopped him from opening his jaw and grunting in shock. He could not breathe, either, as something like frost ripped down through his lungs.
“I’d introduce you,” Marius said coldly. “But of all the people on this station, Troblum, you are the one who doesn’t need it, now, do you?”
“Really,” the Cat said, and grinned. “Why’s that?”
Troblum’s very dark fascination kept his muscles locked tight. She was not easy to recognize; she did not have that trademark spiked hair out of all her history files. It was still short and dark, but today she wore it in a smooth swept-back style with a pair of slim copper shades perched above her forehead. She was dressed in a chic modern suit rather than the leather trousers and tight vest she used to favor. But that darkish complexion and wide amused grin veering on the crazy … There was no mistake. She was so much smaller than he imagined, it was confusing; she barely came up to his shoulders, yet he’d always visualized her as an Amazon.
“Troblum has a penchant for history,” Marius said. “He knows all sorts of odd facts.”
“What’s my favorite food?” the Cat asked.
“Lemon risotto with asparagus,” Troblum stammered. “It was the specialty dish at the restaurant you waitressed in when you were fifteen.”
The Cat’s grin sharpened. “What the fuck is he?” She turned to Marius for an explanation.
“An idiot savant with a fetish about the Starflyer War. He’s useful to us.”
“Whatever turns you on.”
“You’re in suspension,” Troblum said flatly; he couldn’t help the words coming out even though he was afraid of her. “It was a five-thousand-year sentence.”
“Aww. He’s quite sweet, actually,” the Cat told Marius. She gave Troblum a lewd wink. “I’ll finish it one day. Promise.”
“If you have a moment, please,” Marius said to Neskia. “We need to sort a proper ship out for our guest.”
“Of course.” She stood up.
“Oh yes,” Marius added, as though it were of no consequence. “Is Troblum behaving himself?”
Neskia looked from Marius to Troblum. “So far, so good. He’s been quite helpful.”
“Keep it up,” Marius said. He was not smiling.
Troblum bowed his head, unable to look at any of them. Too many people. Too close. Too intrusive. And one of them is the Cat! He wasn’t prepared for that kind of encounter today—or any day. But she was out of suspension somehow, walking around. She’s in this station!
His medical display flashed blue symbols down the side of his exovision, telling him his biononics were engaging, reanimating his chest muscles, calming them into a steady rhythm. It hadn’t registered with him the way he had started to suck his breath down as if his throat were constricted. A small cocktail of drugs was flushed out of macrocellular glands, bringing down his heart rate.
Troblum risked a glance up, his face pulled into a horrendously guilty expression. The three of them were gone, out of sight, out of the saloon. He was gathering an excessive number of curious looks from his colleagues who were still seated. He wanted to tell them, to shout: It’s not me you should be staring at.
Instead he felt the trembling start deep in his torso. He stood up fast, which made his head spin. Biononics reinforced his leg muscles, allowing him to hurry out of the saloon. In the corridor, his u-shadow diverted a trolleybot for him to sit on. It carried him all the way back to his quarters, where he flopped onto the bed. He loaded a nine-level certificate into the lock even though he knew how useless that was.
The Cat!
He lay on the bed with the cabin heating up, feeling the shock slowly ebbing. Release from the physical symptoms did nothing to alleviate the dread. Of all the megalomaniacs and psychopaths in history, the Accelerators had chosen to bring her back. Troblum lay in the warm darkness for hours, wondering what they were facing that was so terrible that they had no choice but to use her. He’d always been behind the whole Accelerator movement because it was such a logical one. They were nurturing an evolutionary lineage that had started with single-cell amoebas and would end with elevation to postphysical status—a necessity that could not be disputed. The other factions were wrong; it was that obvious—to him. Accelerator philosophy appealed to his physicist nature. That hu
rtful vicious bastard Marius was right: There was very little else in the way of personality.
Forget that. It’s not relevant.
Because anything that has to use the Cat to make it work can’t be right. It just can’t.
Inigo’s Fifth Dream
“… Thus, because the city is deemed to be a sole entity in its own right, no human can ‘own’ their residence in the traditional legal sense. However, in the fifteenth year after Rah’s arrival, the newly formed Upper Council passed the first Act of Registry. Essentially that means that any human can claim a residence within the city wall for their own usage. In order to register you simply have to find a house or maisonette or room which is unoccupied, stay in it for two days and two nights, then register your claim with the Board of Occupancy. This claim, once notarized, will allow you and your descendants to live there until such time as they choose to relinquish it. As there are no new buildings, and can never be, the most desirable and largest homes were claimed within ten years of Rah opening the first gate. These are now the palaces of our most ancient families, the District Masters, and as such can have up to five generations living in them, all of them first sons waiting to inherit the estate and seat on the Upper Council. The remaining available accommodation in the city today is small and badly configured for human occupation, and even this is diminishing rapidly. Thus, while districts such as Eyrie are basically uninhabitable …”
The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle Page 45