The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Oscar was laughing helplessly as the ground shook furiously, triggering massive landslides over in the distant Donsori Mountains. It was the kind of semihysteria that was contagious. Edeard found himself grinning wildly in sympathy as he was toppled to his knees. Waves chased along the canals, sloshing over the edges as the earthquake’s power built. He could see the tips of the Eyrie towers rocking from side to side. Agitated air was slapping clouds against the outside of the dome.

  “Glad we brought you back now?” Oscar called tauntingly above the roar.

  The Iguru plain and the uncovered seabed had shattered down to a single level zone of undulating rubble. All the odd little volcanoes juddered about like disintegrating icebergs as their mass dissolved down into the churning debris. The city gave a sudden lurch, thrusting a hundred meters straight up as the land’s grip was finally broken. Edeard yelled in delirious shock along with everyone else as the impetus knocked him flat. He gave Oscar a crazy thumbs-up. “Oh, Lady, am I ever,” he longspoke above the tremendous din that was penetrating the protective crystal. What the devastation must be like outside was something he couldn’t conceive.

  Frenzied clouds slid down the sides of the curving crystal as the domed city began to rise farther. That was just the apex of the immense warship.

  Makkathran, last survivor of the Raiel armada, soared back up into the sky it had fallen from a million years ago and headed for the clean emptiness of space.

  Gore Burnelli didn’t often admit admiration for other people, least of all meat humans. But he had to acknowledge that Araminta had done a fine job living in two different time flows. Even though he’d been one of the pioneers of enhanced mentality, he was finding the going a little tough.

  The segment of his mind designated to maintain the connection to Justine was racing on ahead, looking back at the ponderous events on the Anomine homeworld with something approaching contempt. It would be very easy to divest himself of his sluggish flesh and live fast and free in the Void. He had to focus hard on the other aspects of his mind and the requirements they served to dismiss the notion. The temptation was pulling with unrelenting tidal force.

  For a heartbeat he watched from the entranceway of the Lady’s church as Makkathran flew clear of Querencia’s atmosphere and then accelerated after the Skylord that had brought the Mellanie’s Redemption just a few hours earlier.

  Exoimage displays surrounded him, tracing the progress of the infiltrator filaments as they slithered through the molecular structure of the elevation mechanism, chasing down the network pathways and penetrating delicate junctions. Primary attention switch—to the massed ranks of code awaiting initialization so the packages could slide into alien software, mimicking the routines in order to subvert them. His accelerated mind watched the symbology flip around at a speed he could actually follow as they analyzed the first impulses flashing through the junctions.

  Incoming call—which he answered with another segment operating within his meat skull.

  “We’re in,” the Delivery Man said. “I’m establishing control over all major siphon systems. The override is disengaged. Full wormhole initialization sequence is running. Power generation is increasing. I need to take that slow; there’s nowhere to send it yet.”

  “Well done.”

  “I never knew Makkathran was a Raiel ship.”

  “What else could it be? Haven’t you ever visited High Angel?”

  “No, actually.”

  “Oh. Well, those domes are the real giveaway. They’re identical.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Any sign of Marius?”

  “I haven’t got a decent sensor that can function down here in the innermost circle. Hysradar works, but it’s useless. He must be in stealth mode, still.”

  “Keep watching. When he finally figures out we can stop his precious Ilanthe, he won’t take it well.”

  “Oh, crap. All right.”

  Makkathran caught up with the Skylord just before it crossed Nikran’s orbit, barely two million miles from the desert planet. Edeard stood in the square at the center of Sampalok, staring at the small brown orb that appeared to be hanging just above the mansion. It was kindling a surprising amount of nostalgia. He could just make out some of the surface features as he’d done that other day, now lost in the broken past, when he’d sat in the Malfit Hall waiting to be called before the Mayor and handed his bronze epaulets. His squadmates had teased him for his questions about other people living on Nikran. They never knew as he did that humans lived on hundreds of worlds. And now they never would.

  Or maybe they do. Who knows what they see from the Heart?

  Of all the revelations Inigo had brought, knowing that the Void was a danger to life everywhere was the hardest to accept.

  “I always hated that Ladydamned thing,” Inigo said, glaring at the six-sided mansion.

  “The mansion?” Corrie-Lyn asked in surprise.

  “No, the arcology in Kuhmo. It dominated every day of my life while I was growing up. That’s one of the reasons I offered the town council all that money to demolish the monstrosity, so kids wouldn’t be so blighted in future.”

  “It did fill your mind,” Edeard confirmed. “I wasn’t really sure what genuine human architecture looked like, and I was in a hurry that day. It was the obvious choice.

  “Thank the Lady you didn’t build it full size.”

  “I saw the fane you replaced it with,” Corrie-Lyn said drily. “It wasn’t a whole lot better.”

  Inigo grinned back at her. “There’s gratitude.”

  Edeard sensed concern growing in Justine’s mind. He glanced over to see her standing close to Gore, whose golden face had hardened with worry.

  “What?”

  “Some events are outside our control,” Justine said. “I think you need to ask the Skylord now.”

  The creature they were pursuing was still half a million kilometers away, a shimmering patch to one side of Nikran. Edeard eyed it reluctantly. If it declared he wasn’t fulfilled, Inigo would have to delve down into the memory layer and bring out a version of himself who was. There were few enough certainties for him right now, but encountering his future self was something he knew he didn’t want to endure. “I’ll try.” He felt for the Skylord, finding it on the edge of perception. Usually their thoughts were composed and content. He’d never known one to host such confusion before. It was grieving for its kindred that had succumbed to Ilanthe, and the colossal warship racing after it was also unsettling. There were ancient ancestral memories about such things: the time of chaos.

  “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 con
summation. 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?”

  “Because it doesn’t know it’s a danger,” Gore said.

  “How can that be?” he cried. “It is awesome; it is the accumulation of billions upon billions of minds. How can you possibly be so arrogant to try and change its path?”

  “Those lives it has consumed are doing nothing but dreaming their existence away. The souls who were guided here have been betrayed. The wisdom they brought, the continued life they were promised, it’s all being wasted.”