“Do you seek to destroy us?” the Firstlife asked.
“We require you to end your absorption of this galaxy and the threat of extinction it brings to all life,” Makkathran said. “If you will not undertake this freely, we have the right to stop you.”
“You don’t have to stop,” Ilanthe said. “Inversion circumvents everything. All of us will achieve the promise of our evolution. Give me your governing parameters.”
“Wait!” Gore demanded. “I think my alternative just became available.” He lifted his golden head and gave Ilanthe a sweetly evil grin. “And guess who made that happen.” And he dreamed of his life back outside the Void.
The Delivery Man watched in horror as the twin quantum signatures expanded at hyperluminal velocity. Marius had fired novabombs into the star. He couldn’t believe it. This was genocide.
Diverted energy functions absorbed the energy liberated from the first activation pulse, modifying it to expand the annihilation effect. A volume of the star’s interior the size of a super-Jovian gas giant converted directly into energy. The convection zone bulged around the periphery. It was the first act in a sequence that would see the star’s core squeezed beyond stability.
Monstrous shock waves raced toward the Last Throw at close to lightspeed. “Ozziefuckit!”
By the time he’d said it, his accelerated thoughts had ordered the smartcore to trigger the ultradrive. It was never designed to operate within a stellar gravity field, but he was dead, anyway.
The universe clearly hated such an aberration, sending a vengeful force to tear savagely at the perpetrator. Finally the cabin was alive with noise and shaking and alarms just as he’d thought he wanted. Bulkheads split, hundreds of tiny cracks ripping open. Sparks and sprays of gooey fluid shot through the air, churned by a cyclone of gravity waves that pulled the Delivery Man violently in every direction. He screamed in terror—
Two seconds. The time it took the ultradrive to claw the Last Throw out of the star’s stupendous gravity gradient. The time in which an astonishing amount of pain went surging along the Delivery Man’s nervous system. The time the ship’s overstressed components had to hold together. Most of them did.
The Delivery Man’s world steadied. Gravity stopped its wild fluctuations. The vibrations beating the starship’s fuselage faded away. His screaming dribbled off to a whimper.
And far away in a dream Ilanthe was entreating the Firstlife to give her the key to the Void’s nature.
“Gore!” he called.
“What’s happening?” the golden man asked. “There’s a power surge from the siphon.”
“Hell, you mean it’s survived that?”
“Survived what?”
“Marius! Sweet Ozzie, he used novabombs. Gore, the star is going nova. It’s already begun. That fucking deranged maniac has killed everything in the system. Tyzak! Warn Tyzak. I’m coming to get you.” Already the Last Throw was approaching the Anomine homeworld. The Delivery Man was designating a vector to take him around to the city where he’d left Gore.
“They know,” Gore said.
The Third Dreamer had abandoned Makkathran to dream of the Anomine city. The fantastical lights within the empty buildings were blazing with solar glory now. In its last minutes the city was waking defiantly to face its doom. Gore turned to Tyzak, who was staring straight up at the few quiet stars still visible directly above the plaza. The small remaining patch of dark sky was fading away as the light of the buildings grew ever stronger. Finally the old alien’s thoughts were slipping through whatever variant of the gaiafield was establishing itself around the planet. Every system and device the ancient Anomine had left behind was coming alive. Thousands of borderguards were materializing into orbit.
The Delivery Man knew it was all useless. Nothing could save the planet now.
“It was us,” Gore told Tyzak. “Humans. We did this. I’m so sorry.”
“You did not,” Tyzak replied. “Your song remains pure.”
“I have failed so many times today.”
“I believe you are to have your greatest success. They seem to think so.”
Gore saw that the plaza was now lined with hundreds of Silfen, all of them keeping back from the rim of the elevation mechanism.
“This is the fate our planet has brought us to,” Tyzak said. “I did not expect this, but what is, is. And perhaps the planet knew all along what it would be called upon to do. I will depart believing this one thing.”
Anomine began teleporting in, appearing all across the plaza. Hundreds, then thousands. Youngsters were agitated, squeaking loudly. It was happening in every city on the planet.
“Gore?” the Delivery Man asked. “What’s happening?”
Gore smiled at Tyzak even as he was being jostled by Anomine who were crowding in. “Go home,” he told the Delivery Man. “You deserve it.”
“Gore—?”
Gore shut down the TD link. He folded all his secondary routines back into his mind. There was only one consciousness now, making him as close to human as he’d been for many a century. His dream showed him Justine with an expression of alarm spreading over her beautiful face. She knew.
Tyzak called for the elevation mechanism.
“I feel you,” the elevation mechanism said. “You are Tyzak.”
“I am.”
“Do you wish to attain transcendence from your physical existence?”
“Yes.”
“Dad?” Justine asked.
Gore’s thoughts had calmed. He brought his arms out and glided gently across the square to the waiting Firstlife. “This is evolution,” he told the giant alien. “The omega you have sought for so long.”
“No, Dad, you can’t. You’re not Anomine.” Justine started to run. Edeard’s third hand caught her.
“Today I am,” Gore said benignly.
“No!” she sobbed. “Dad, please.”
Far outside the Void’s boundary the elevation mechanisms on the Anomine homeworld absorbed the power thundering out of the escalating nova. They adapted it and offered it up to the remainder of their species and one other who waited with them.
Gore felt his mind began to change, to rise. His perspective of the universe grew elegant.
“This is how it is done,” he told the Firstlife as they grew apart, gathering up everything the elevation mechanism was performing, the method and the outcome he now rushed toward. The union was so tenuous now, infused with the poignancy of Justine’s grief as she stretched herself between the two. “This is what you can become. This is destiny. Leave your past behind and reclaim the dream you started with. Like so …” He gifted the whole experience of his elevation to the Firstlife, who in turn shared it with the Heart. And after a while he was gone.
Edeard stood at the head of the group, facing up to the Firstlife. “You must choose,” he said to the daunting alien, aware of the Heart focusing on him. And Ilanthe.
“We do,” the Firstlife replied. “We choose evolution. It is why we created this place; it is what we aspired to so long ago. Anything else would betray all we were, all we aspired to. It could never be any other way.”
“Thank you.”
“It is the wrong choice,” Ilanthe declared.
“You should go with the Heart,” Inigo told her in disgust. “There is no place for you in this universe. You wanted to be a god; this is your chance. If it will take you.”
“You many come with us,” the Firstlife told the inversion core. “We offer to take all of you.”
“Naaah,” Oscar told it. “Not me. I’m not quite ready for that yet.”
Inigo gave the Firstlife a thoughtful look.
“No,” Corrie-Lyn entreated. She took his hands and pressed herself against him. “Don’t. I can’t become that, nor can I lose you again.”
“There’s going to be Honious to pay when we get home.”
“I’ll face it with you.”
“All right.” He reached out a hand to Edeard. “And you?”
> “I have to see the worlds you gave me a glimpse of. And …” Edeard grinned sheepishly. “And there are many things I would like to do.”
“Anyone else?” Inigo inquired.
“Justine?” Corrie-Lyn said uncertainly.
Justine rubbed the moisture from her eyes. “No. It’s over. Let’s go home.”
The Wall stars now shone with a brilliance equal to the rest of the galaxy, a blue-white collar shackling the Gulf. Inside, the containment shell was almost complete. The bands of dark force produced by the Raiel defenses had merged together. Only a few gaps remained, and they were reducing fast.
Within the dark shell, automated Raiel monitors continued their observation of the Void boundary as they had done for the last million years. It had remained quiescent since the Pilgrimage fleet had passed through.
“It begins,” Qatux whispered.
Paula tried to get a grip on her dazed thoughts. Gore’s dream had left her reeling, delighted and awestruck. For an instant she wanted to be there, standing in Sampalok with the Firstlife, telling the Heart she would join it. Thank you, she told the aching absence in the gaiafield where the Third Dreamer once had been. Despite everything, you deserve to be the first of our species to achieve transcendence. I just hope it’s not too lonely out there.
She drew a deep breath and focused on the display that dominated Qatux’s private chamber. The surface of the Void boundary was changing. A thin ridge rose out of the equator, extending all the way out to the glowing loop. As before, the dying mass of broken stars fell into the event horizon.
“This time it will be different,” Paula promised. “This time it will absorb the energy to power evolution.”
“I feel you are right,” Qatux said.
The entirety of the loop was taken, absorbed below the boundary. The ridge began to retreat. Then the Void itself was shrinking. Gravity, the boundary’s primary enforcer, lessened. The impenetrable cloak that had defeated nature for so long fell away, and the Void lay naked at the core of the galaxy.
“Oh, my,” Paula said in wonder.
The Void reached transcendence.
After it was gone, after normal spacetime reclaimed all it had lost, the vast warships of the warrior Raiel flew in to examine the darkness their great enemy had left behind. Virtually no matter existed in the Gulf now, no radiation, no light. No nebulae.
Right at the center they found a single star shining bright, with a lone H-congruous planet in orbit. And one of their own.
The Raiel warship slipped out into spacetime above Icalanise, dwarfing the High Angel five hundred kilometers away. Qatux and Paula teleported over, materializing in a circular compartment over a hundred meters wide. Like the Raiel quarters on the High Angel, the ceiling was hidden from sight, giving the impression the compartment extended upward forever.
Paula regarded the waiting warrior Raiel with interest. She’d assumed they’d be bigger than Qatux. Instead they were only two-thirds his size, but where his hide was leathery, theirs was made up of hard neutral blue-gray segments. Small lights twinkled under the surface, making her think it was artificial armor. Or perhaps by now it was sequenced in like macrocellular clusters in humans.
Neskia stood between them. Her neck waved fractionally from side to side like a snake rising vertically, its casing of gold rings sliding over one another without revealing any human flesh. The metallic-gray surface shimmer of her skin was subdued. Big round eyes blinked once as Paula appeared. That might have reflected puzzlement; Paula wasn’t sure. She had certainly been startled by the news that the Accelerator agent had surrendered herself to the warrior Raiel without any fuss.
“You were complicit in the establishment of the Sol barrier,” Paula said.
Neskia said nothing.
“I would like the deactivation code now, please.”
“And then what?”
“You will face an inquiry into your actions.”
“By ANA itself. So there’s really not much of an incentive to hand over the code, is there?”
“A memory read is never pleasant.”
“A mild discomfort. But you would never be able to extract the code. I have several self-destruct routines embedded in my biononics.”
“So you are in an invincible position. Congratulations. Curious, then, that you allowed yourself to be intercepted. Your ship has a superb stealth capability, yet you chose not to use it. Why?”
Neskia’s neck became rigidly straight. “I have nowhere to go.”
“She didn’t take you with her.”
“Obviously.”
“But then, ascension to postphysical status through Fusion was never her aim.”
“I am aware of that now.”
“What deal are you looking for?”
“Total immunity. The right to settle on whatever world I select. And I retain ownership of the ship.”
“No to the ship. You are forbidden from taking part in any subversive activity ever again. You will permit removal of all combat-enabled biononics. You will not reinstate them or any further weapons enrichments. You will report any contact by criminal or proscribed organizations to my office immediately.”
“Free political association is the fundamental right of the Greater Commonwealth.”
“Without ANA, the Commonwealth as we know it cannot exist. I fully intend to protect it from extreme ideologues.”
“Will it ban the Accelerators?”
“I suspect those members involved with illegal activities will be suspended. The rest will be free to pursue and continue lobbying for what they believe in. As is their right.”
“Very well. I agree.” Neskia’s u-shadow sent the code to Paula, along with instructions for applying it to a specific coordinate outside the Sol system.
“Thank you,” Paula said. “So you’re pissed at her, then?”
“To put it mildly. I risked everything, devoted my life to the cause, and now I find it never actually existed.”
“What will you do?”
“I will found the real Accelerator faction. I still believe in human evolutionary destiny.”
“Of course you do.”
The Elvin’s Payback sank down out of the low gray clouds that were drizzling steadily across the rumpled verdant countryside. Oscar directed it to land on the grass next to the spinney of gangling rancata trees. He floated down out of the airlock and looked around contentedly. Seeing the raised circular house just as it always was kindled an unexpected bout of homesickness. While he’d been away, he’d thought of it and Jesaral and Dushiku and Anja less and less, so much so that he’d started to believe he didn’t care about any of them anymore. Now he was here, and he didn’t want to leave again.
Wild emotions of surprise and trepidation burst into the gaiafield. Oscar grinned wryly as Jesaral charged down the spiral stairs in the house’s central pillar and ran across the lawn.
“You’re back,” Jesaral yelled. He flung his arms around Oscar and began kissing him with youthful eagerness; rampantly erotic thoughts came percolating out through his gaiamotes. “Oh, Ozzie, I missed you.”
“Good to be home,” Oscar admitted.
Dushiku and Anja hurried up.
“I couldn’t believe it when you showed up in Gore’s dream,” Dushiku murmured as he hugged Oscar tight. “You were in the Void! That was you in Makkathran right at the end.”
“Yeah, that was me,” he admitted. It actually felt good to boast about it for once.
Anja finally got her moment with him. “So this is what you really are? Some kind of galactic superagent?”
“Some of the time,” he admitted. “Not very often, thankfully.”
The other starship dropped through the clouds and came in to land next to the Elvin’s Payback.
“Who’s this?” Dushiku asked in a resigned tone.
“And why does a starship need wings?” Jesaral asked.
“They’re not wings, they’re heat dissipaters, and this is my new partner.”
“Business partner,” Oscar assured them hurriedly.
The Mellanie’s Redemption landed smoothly The airlock opened, and a set of aluminum stairs slid out.
Jesaral gave Dushiku a meaningful glance that ended as a pout. Oscar put his arms around both of them, enjoying the flashes of jealousy.
The aluminum steps bowed as Troblum came down, raindrops trickling quickly down the worn fabric of his old toga suit. He gave Oscar’s startled life partners a brisk nod and quickly looked away.
“What sort of business?” Anja asked curiously.
“Exploration,” Oscar said contentedly. “The Commonwealth has sent out a lot of colony ships over the centuries. We thought it was about time we found out what happened to some of them. And who knows what else is on the other side of the galaxy? Wilson never did have a proper look.”
Anja raised her eyes skyward and produced a sigh of disapproval in that way only she could. However, she stepped forward and held her hand out to Troblum. “Good to meet you.”
“Uh, thank you.” He gave her hand a frightened look. By then it didn’t matter; Anja was looking up at the second figure to appear at the top of the stairs. She was so surprised, she forgot to prevent the emotion from revealing itself through her gaiamotes.
“This is my fiancé,” Troblum announced.
“Pleased to meet you,” Catriona Saleeb said. She smiled nervously as she came down the stairs and fumbled for Troblum’s hand.
Oscar knew he was leaking out all the wrong thoughts, but he just couldn’t help it. He’d been the first to support Troblum when Catriona was made real. Troblum had seen that one last slender chance in the time after the Heart had decided to follow Gore and before the moment when it elevated itself. He hadn’t analyzed it or paused for doubt; he’d simply gone for it, using the Void’s creation layer to turn his solido into flesh and blood, an act that was perhaps the most human thing Troblum had done in his life.
The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle Page 219