“All right.” Edeard reached out for the Heart. I am here, he told it. I am ready. I am fulfilled. Bring me to you. He held his breath. Nothing happened. I am here, he repeated.
“Now what?” Tomansio asked.
“Stop trying,” Oscar said. “Just let the urge take you. Chill down and surrender to it.”
“You’re already in there,” Corrie-Lyn said. “Listen for yourself.”
“Very well,” Edeard said. It sounded stupid, but he closed his eyes, then withdrew his farsight, allowing the presence of the Heart to seep into him. He listened for himself. In truth, there were others he wanted to hear, to join: Kristabel. Macsen. Dinlay. Kanseen. Akeem! Was he waiting? Had he found his way? Finitan surely would be there. And Rolar, and Jiska, and the twins, and Dylorn, and Marakas, and sweet Taralee. Perhaps even Salrana, who might have finally made her peace with him—he could never forget that night he discovered the true nature of the Void. In the pavilion, after her death, her soul had panicked, realizing she had strayed. Perhaps …
“The barrier falls,” Makkathran said.
Edeard opened his eyes in time to see Odin’s Sea fading away. The light simply vanished, and they were surrounded by nothing. A perfect uniform blackness.
The Heart’s thoughts grew more powerful. Edeard found himself strengthening his shield. His mind seemed to be expanding, moving to embrace the Heart, flowing out to join it.
“Edeard!” Inigo shouted.
His brother’s fright was strong. He hesitated.
“Edeard, come back.” Inigo was compelling him, infusing their bond with love.
He opened his eyes again. This time the sturdy Sampalok mansion seemed faint. When he lifted up his hand, it was growing translucent.
“It’s absorbing him,” Gore said. Worry was flooding from the golden man’s mind. “Edeard, you’ve got to hold on.”
“Without you we will be rejected,” Makkathran warned.
“Edeard, is there anything you can sense in there that’ll talk to us?” Gore asked. “A single coherent mind?”
Edeard had to laugh. “The Heart is bigger than worlds. It is universal; it lies behind everywhere in the Void. And still it grows.”
“Fuck it,” Gore snarled. “It’s grown so big, it’s lost cohesion. All right, Edeard, it wasn’t always like this. I need you to go back to when it was smaller.”
“What?”
“Get into the memory layer, trace it down to the origin. Come on, son, you can do it.”
“Lean on me,” Inigo said. He gripped Edeard’s hand, suffusing him with strength and love. “I will help you.”
“And me, Waterwalker,” Corrie-Lyn said. Her firmness and fortitude made Edeard smile in gratitude.
Oscar came over, as did the Knights Guardian. “Whatever you need,” Tomansio promised sincerely, which made Edeard regret he hadn’t known the warrior longer. Justine, smiling and determined, added her essence, buoying him along. Even Troblum was there, dependable and resolute.
There was a memory layer in this place, wherever they were, and that surprised Edeard more than anything. Strangely uncluttered, it was easy to perceive, to follow back. He plunged into the past, saddened by how little had changed. Then abruptly the Heart wasn’t quite so large. This was the time before humans. He carried on back through it, pushing harder and harder.
There were many changes, coming eons apart, then further. Each alien species that had come to the Void had contributed to the expansion in its own fashion. None had brought true cohesion. He found that wrong somehow, that the amalgamation always acted in the contrary direction to the Heart’s purpose.
At the end he could think only of flying through the travel tunnels, soaring on into the unknown, content simply in the act of voyaging. He was quite surprised when it did finish. The memory layer grew thinner somehow, less cluttered. And there, right at the beginning of the Void, when the Heart was forming, were millions of connections to individual minds. They could communicate with the Heart. They were the link, the way in. He chased after one and embraced it, offering it up to the creation layer, perceiving the entity take form again.
Edeard drew a startled breath, shaking himself free of the memory layer and the intimacy of his new friends. Right in front of him, standing in the entrance to Zulmal Street, an alien twenty feet tall was unfolding its disturbingly sinuous limbs as its thoughts churned with surprise and suspicion.
“Oh, wow,” Oscar groaned, and took a step back. Even so, he was grinning effusively.
“A Firstlife,” Edeard announced simply. He had to own up to being intimidated by so many curving, pointed teeth at the top of its fat central trunk as it opened the glistening mouth membranes to whistle at a painful volume.
Then something moved in the nothingness outside the dome. A dark sphere beset with deep purple scintillations slipped smoothly overhead.
“What are you doing?” Ilanthe asked.
Marius had been fascinated by the Heart and the notions it sang of. There really was no other way to describe it. In a way he was relieved that it was so vast, so aloof. Gore’s stupid plan to talk to it, to make it see what he considered reason, would never transpire in such a milieu. The golden man was pissing in the wind.
Then he stood in Sampalok’s central square, observing through Justine as Gore told the Waterwalker to search back through the memory layer for a younger, more accessible Heart.
“No no no,” he chanted in dismay. His exovision brought up the starship’s weapons. He selected a couple of diverted energy function quantumbusters. They would activate in the photosphere, sending a huge exotic energy distortion wave smashing against the Delivery Man’s ship. Its Stardiver shielding would never survive such an impact. Whatever part of Gore’s scheme was being enacted down there in the convection zone would be obliterated. That would give Ilanthe the window of opportunity to enact Fusion.
The two missiles shot away, accelerating at one hundred fifty gees. His exovision display threw up a sensor image, showing a hyperspace anomaly erupting fifty thousand kilometers away from his own location. One of the huge borderguards materialized out of the spatial deformation. Its concentric shells of elliptical strands were ablaze with aggravated neon light. The outermost strands darkened from a lurid jade down to an irradiated carmine. Marius’s sensors showed the energy spectrum raging inside the borderguard leaping almost off the scale. It fired on the quantumbuster missiles, which burst into a dynamic vapor plume.
“Shit!” Marius discarded the dream altogether and sent his starship hurtling toward the borderguard at thirty-seven gees. Weapons locked onto the garish nimbus. He opened fire.
No matter how hard he cursed, how fast his expanded mind activated infiltration packages, Gore knew it was coming. There was nothing he could do about it. His wild boast about Commonwealth webheads had proved vain and hollow, and everything in the galaxy was going to die because of it.
Unless—
“Shit. Go for it,” he ordered the Delivery Man. “Initialize the wormhole. Shove some fucking power my way. Do it. Do it now.”
He ordered the packages to activate, to grab control.
Too late. Out of the city’s subdued background murmurings Gore perceived that cool consciousness rising once again. It observed its environment with a host of strange senses.
“This is an act of hostility,” the elevation mechanism said. “You are trying to steal my fundamental nature. It is not for you and your kind, and with good reason.”
“Yeah. So you said. And as I told you, the Void is about to expand and wipe this star system from existence.” The dream showed him the big Firstlife in Sampalok, shaking its thick beefy body furiously as it tried to orient itself. Then Ilanthe appeared overhead. “Oh, God-fuck, no!” Gore entreated. “No, not her, not now.” The defeat was as strong as any physical blow, striking him to his knees in the middle of the plaza. All around him the glistening black strands of the infiltration web began to smolder, filling the air with thin acrid smoke. “You
’re killing us,” he screamed into the night. “All I needed to do was show the Heart, that’s all, just show the fucker there’s an alternative, prove it can evolve.”
Tyzak was approaching him cautiously, stepping gingerly over the sputtering web.
“Got it,” the Delivery Man called. “Siphon’s activated. Wormhole established. We did it!”
“Leave,” Gore told him flatly. “Fly to a fresh galaxy, one that isn’t cursed like this one. Don’t let the universe forget us.”
The third borderguard imploded amid a searing flare of violet Cherenkov radiation. Broken strands from the concentric shells twirled away, venting thick sparkling gases at high velocity. Marius detected another five materializing out of their distinctive hyperspatial rents. He brought the ship about in a fast curve, chasing the debris that was expanding out of the last implosion. The trouble with combat this close to the star was the lack of mass for quantumbusters to work with.
Sensors tracked the three largest chunks of the shells, and he launched missiles at each of them. Diverted energy function quantumbusters activated, converting the tumbling mass to energy. Exotic distortions slammed into two of the borderguards as they were still exiting hyperspace, wrenching at the exotic pseudofabric. Unbearable contortions crushed the borderguards down to neutronium density. The wreckage immediately detonated out of its impossible compression state, saturating local spacetime with an inordinately hard neutron storm.
Seven energy beams burned across the force fields protecting Marius’s starship. His exovision brought up severe overload warnings. He fired another nine Hawking M-sinks, which the surviving bodyguards had no defense against. So far. He watched in fury as the attackers opened up small wormholes, which swallowed five of the M-sinks. Another barrage of energy beams found his starship. Missiles were heading in toward him at ninety gees, and he still hadn’t managed to knock out the Delivery Man’s ship.
Sensors reported a zero-width wormhole establishing itself between the star and the Anomine homeworld. The smartcore dismissed it as a weapon. Marius ordered an urgent review. The wormhole was originating from the mysterious object with which the Delivery Man’s ship had rendezvoused.
It had to be some kind of power system—whatever needed that level of power? The elevation mechanism! Marius knew it with absolute certainty. Gore had found some way to switch it on. He was going postphysical. It was the only thing left that could threaten Fusion.
Marius activated the ship’s ultradrive and flashed in toward the star. He emerged just above the swirling streamers of the photosphere, where energized atoms from a multitude of spots and flares simmered away into solar wind. Every force field warning turned critical as the starship received the full blast of the star’s radiation and heat. Marius fired two novabombs straight down, then jumped back into hyperspace.
Behind him the borderguards were massing above the photosphere. Eighteen of the giant machines had rushed out of hyperspace, firing enough weapons down after the novabombs to break open a moon. None of it was any use. The novabombs were designed to function amid the outer fringes of a star, whereas the borderguards’ weapons were just uselessly pumping more energy into the rampant solar furnace.
Thirty seconds before they detonated, Marius was already outside the Anomine system. The nova would eliminate the power station, then go on to wipe out the Anomine homeworld minutes later. Gore would never reach postphysical status now. The Accelerator objective was safe.
Edeard didn’t know who to give his attention to or even that it would do any good if he could decide. The astounding Firstlife was straightening itself, turning several small black membranes at the top of its trunk toward the humans as well as directing a formidable farsight at them.
Above the dome the Ilanthe thing was also observing them. It scared him how nonhuman it was. His farsight couldn’t begin to uncover its secrets, but the power it contained was evident. Whatever the Heart was, it seemed to be bending around Ilanthe’s glossy surface.
But it was Gore who now concerned him the most. The golden man was stumbling, dropping to his knees. The anguished keening his mind emitted was dreadful, as if his soul itself were being violated.
“Dad,” Justine was yelling frantically. “Dad, what is it? What’s happening?”
“It caught me,” Gore told her weakly. “The motherfucker found the infiltrator packages.”
“I could have told you the Anomine mechanism was obdurate,” Ilanthe said complacently.
The Firstlife took a step toward the humans, three of its feet slamming down on the surface of the square with a slap that Edeard could feel in his leg bones. “What is this place?” the Firstlife’s longtalk demanded. “What are you? You are not us.”
Inigo squared up to the imposing creature. “This is your future. You were re-created from the Void’s memory.”
The Firstlife’s farsight probed around again, its extraordinary reach allowing it to scan the city and delve down into a fair percentage of the warship’s main body. It also attempted to examine Ilanthe, who deflected it effortlessly.
“You are the omega?” it asked in surprise.
“No,” Inigo said. “We originated outside the Void.”
“How can that be? There is nothing outside, only dead matter.”
“Are you the creators? Did your species build this?”
“Yes.”
“We and many others have been pulled inside so you could exploit our rationality.”
“That is not so. You cannot exist unless the omega formed you.”
“We do exist, and the Void did not make us. The Void is killing us.”
“You do not understand your purpose. This is why I was brought back.” The Firstlife was uncertain.
“No. You can communicate with the Heart, the mind that envelops us. This is why—”
“Wait,” Troblum said. He ignored the looks everyone gave him. “In your time, were there any other sentient species in the galaxy?”
“There is only us. We are first, and when we achieve omega, we will be last.”
“First life,” Oscar said in wonder. “The first race to evolve in the galaxy. How old is this thing?”
“Ancient,” Justine muttered. “More ancient than we ever thought possible.”
“Since your time, countless species have evolved right across the galaxy,” Inigo said. “You were first, but you are no longer alone.”
The Firstlife’s thoughts reeled in astonishment. “You are not us? You are original?”
“We are.”
The black membranes flapped about in agitation. Glistening honey-like droplets appeared on their tips. “Why are you here?”
“This thing you built, this Void, now threatens the entire galaxy,” Gore said, climbing to his feet again. “I understand why you built it, to evolve into something new, something exquisite. You haven’t. Instead it has absorbed thousands of other types of minds which have pulled it in every direction. It cannot evolve, not in this state.”
“Exactly,” Ilanthe said. “Ask these creatures what they would have you do. They want you to stop; they want all you have achieved on the way to your omega to wither away and die. They have nothing else to offer you. I do.”
“Is this why you brought me back?” the Firstlife asked. “To end our evolution?”
“It cannot continue in its current form,” Inigo said. “It is consuming the mass of the galaxy in order to power its existence. Every star will ultimately be devoured, and the species they have birthed will die with them.”
“Unless you act now,” Ilanthe said. “Communicate with the amalgamated mind; tell it to adopt my inversion.”
“What is your inversion?”
“I will take the composition of the Void and implant it within the quantum fields which structure the universe outside. This core will ignite the chain reaction which will disseminate change across the entirety of spacetime. Entropy will be eliminated. Mind will become paramount. Every sentient entity will be given the opportuni
ty to reach its own omega as you anticipated for yourselves. Your legacy will be the birth of a new reality.”
“You have got to be fucking joking,” Gore gasped. “Any quantum field transform wave will simply reverse once it expands past its initial energy input zone. All you’ll be left with is a collapsing microverse that seals itself off from reality as soon as the implosion is complete.”
“Not if entropy is eliminated.”
“You can’t eliminate entropy across infinity. That’s the fucking point of infinity. It’s forever and always.”
“Ask the amalgamated mind to give me the Void’s governing parameters,” Ilanthe said to the Firstlife.
“Do not!” Gore shouted, thrusting his arm out at the Firstlife. “Do not even think it. You will destroy this entire supercluster with her insanity.”
“And what do you offer?” Ilanthe mocked. “The end of their journey to omega?”
“Since you built the Void, hundreds of species have evolved to postphysical status, what you call omega,” Gore said. “It can be done, but not like this. I’m sorry, but you have made a mistake by building the Void. You have to get the Heart to stop the boundary’s mass devourment, suspend the Void’s functions, become stable. We’ll show you how to achieve true evolution in a different way.”
“You can’t,” Ilanthe said. “Every species has to find its own way.”
The Firstlife didn’t reply. A whistling sound was coming from the thin fronds around its mouth as air gusted in and out past the teeth. Edeard was aware of its thoughts pulsing out to be absorbed by the Heart. It wasn’t anything he could copy; he knew he could never communicate with the Heart directly.
“Darkness eclipses us,” it said eventually. “Something is growing outside our frontier, a shroud which would deny us the universe.”
“The warrior Raiel,” Ilanthe said. “Sworn to destroy you. Ask this wretched remnant of their invasion if you require confirmation. They seek to cut you off from your source of energy, to starve you to death. They will be rendered irrelevant by the change I can instigate. In time, in the new universe, they will learn to celebrate your liberation.”
The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle Page 218