The Dreaming Void

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Now here she was, at her destination, and all she could think about was the identical, boring trip back. I must have been crazy to do this.

  The Silverbird touched down on the lava field which acted as a spaceport for the human section of the Centurion Station. Five other starships were sitting there, all of them bigger than hers. The smartcore reported several discreet sensor scans probing at the ship. The tall Ethox tower was the worst offender, using quite aggressive quantum signature detectors. More subtle scans came from the dour domes of the Forleene. There was even one quick burst of investigative activity from the observatory facilities in the human section. She smiled at that as her thin spacesuit squeezed up against her body, expelling all the air pockets to form an outer protective skin. She locked the helmet on.

  It was a short walk over the sandy lava to the main airlock. Justine needed it for the sense of space and normality it gave her. She couldn’t believe how much she felt reassured by the sight of a planetary horizon, even one as drab as this. When she stopped to look up, angry ion storms fluoresced the sky for lightyears in every direction. Pale mockeries of the nebulas inside the Void.

  Director Lehr Trachtenberg was waiting for her in the reception hall beyond the airlock. A formidably sized man who reminded her of Ramon, one of her old husbands. Standing in front of him, shaking his hand in greeting, and tipping her head back just to see his face was another reminder of how negligible her physical body was. Of course, that Ramon connection did shunt her mind back to the possibility of sex.

  ‘This is a considerable honour,’ Lehr Trachtenberg was saying. ‘ANA has never sent a representative here before.’

  ‘Given the political circumstances back in the Commonwealth, it was deemed appropriate to examine the data from the Void first-hand.’

  The director licked his lips slowly. ‘Distance makes no difference to data, Justine. We do send the entire range of our findings directly back to the Navy’s exploration division, and the Raiel.’

  ‘Nonetheless, I’d like the opportunity to review your operation.’

  ‘I wasn’t about to refuse you anything. Especially not after the trip you’ve just made. To my knowledge no one has ever travelled so far by themselves. How did you stand the isolation?’

  She suspected that he suspected the Silverbird had an ultradrive, but chose to gloss over the actual journey time. ‘With difficulty and a lot of sensory dramas.’

  ‘I can imagine.’ He gestured at the five-seater cab which was waiting at the end of the reception hall. ‘I’ve assigned you a suite in the Mexico accommodation block.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m also throwing a welcome party for you in three hours. Everyone is very keen to meet you.’

  ‘I suppose they are,’ she said. ‘Fine, I’ll be there. I could do with some company after that trip.’

  They climbed into the little cab together, which immediately shot into the transport tunnel. ‘I should warn you that nearly a third of our observation staff are Living Dream followers,’ the director said.

  ‘I reviewed personnel files before I came.’

  ‘As long as you know.’

  ‘Is it a problem?’

  ‘Hopefully not. But, as you implied, it’s a volatile situation right now.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I can do diplomatic when I have to.’

  Her suite was equal to any luxury hotel she’d stayed in. The only thing missing was human staff, but the number of modern bots more than made up for it. The Navy had clearly spared no effort in making the station as cosy as possible for the scientists. The main room even had a long window looking out over the alien sections of the station. Justine stared at them for a while, then opaqued the glass. Her u-shadow established itself in the room’s net. ‘No visitors or calls,’ she told it.

  Justine settled back on the bed, and opened her mind to the local gaiafield. The darkened room filled with phantoms, colours glinted amid the deeper shadows. Voices whispered. There was laughter. She felt drawn to various emotional states which promised to immerse her in their enticing soulful sensations.

  Resisting temptation, she focused her attention on the nucleus of the whimsy, the confluence nest itself. A quasi-biological neural module which simultaneously stored and emitted every thought released into its field. It had memories like a human brain, only with a much, much larger capacity. Justine formed her own images, offering them up to the nest. It responded with association. Naturally, it contained every one of Inigo’s dreams; Living Dream had made sure of that. She ignored the vivid spectacle of the Waterwalker’s life, brushing those memories aside as she refined her own fancy for a different recollection of life inside the Void. The nest was full of enigmas, the mental poetry left behind by observers baffled by the terrible dark heart of the galaxy. There were compositions of how a life might be lived for anyone fortunate to pass inside; wish fulfilment, easily discernible from the real thing. The promise-prayers which Living Dream’s followers made every night to their mystic goal. All were imprinted on the nest. But nothing else. No other glimpse into another life lived on Querencia. No grand mellow thoughts originating from a Skylord.

  The garden dome at the middle of the human section boasted trees over two hundred and fifty years old. Oaks with thick trunks sent out thick crinkled boughs, acting as lush canopies above the tables where the station staff were gathering. Up on a rustic tree-house platform, an enthusiastic amateur band were playing songs from different eras stretching back across several centuries, and were keen for requests. It was dusk inside, allowing the sharp violet light of the Wall stars to dominate the sky overhead.

  Justine admired the broad patch of eye-searing scintillations with the kind of weariness she reserved for dangerous animals. Her arrival in the garden dome had created quite a ripple of interest. She liked to think that was at least partly due to the little black cocktail dress she’d chosen. It certainly seemed to have the required effect on Director Trachtenberg, who was becoming quite flirtatious as he fussed round, offering her various drinks and selections of the finger food.

  Everyone she was introduced to was keen to know exactly what ANA’s interest was in them at this time. She repeated the official line a dozen times that she was just visiting to ascertain the current status of the observation.

  ‘Unchanged,’ complained Graffal Ehasz, the observation department chief. ‘We don’t learn anything these days apart from ion storm patterns in the Gulf on the other side of the Wall stars. That tells us nothing about the nature of the beast. We should be trying to send probes inside.’

  ‘I thought nothing could get through the barrier,’ she said.

  ‘Which is why we need a much more detailed study. You can’t do that with remote probes fifty lightyears away.’

  ‘The Raiel don’t like us getting closer,’ Trachtenberg said.

  ‘When you get home, you might like to ask ANA why we still need their permission just to fart around here,’ Ehasz said. ‘It’s fucking insulting.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ Justine said. The party was only twenty minutes old; she wondered how many aerosols Ehasz had already inhaled.

  The director took her by the arm and politely guided her away.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘There’s not a lot of opportunity to blow off steam around here. I run a pretty tight schedule. This is an expensive installation, and phenomenally important. We need to extract the best information we can with what we’ve got.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘It’s Ehasz’s third stint out here. He tends to get frustrated by the lack of progress. I’ve seen it before. First time, you’re all swept along by the wonder of it all. Then when that fades away you begin to realize how passive the observation actually is.’

  ‘How many times have you been here?’

  He grinned. ‘This is my seventh. But then I’m a lot older and wiser than Ehasz.’

  ‘So would you like to join the Pilgrimage?’

  ‘Not really. As far
as three hundred years of direct observation has shown us, you touch the barrier, you die. Actually, you die a long time before you reach the barrier. I just don’t see how they hope to get through.’

  ‘Somebody did, once.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s the really annoying part.’

  ‘So what do—’ Justine stopped as the ground heaved, almost knocking her feet out from under her. She tensed, dropping to a crouch like just about everyone else. Her integral force field came on. The local net was shrieking out all sorts of alarms. The huge oak boughs creaked dangerously; their leaves rustling as if tickled by a gust of wind.

  ‘Hoshit,’ Trachtenberg yelped.

  Justine’s u-shadow established a link to the Silverbird’s smartcore. ‘Stand by,’ she told it. ‘Keep a fix on my position.’ When she scanned round the dome it was still intact. Then she looked at the horizon, which appeared to be perfectly level. She’d been expecting big cracks to be splitting the lava plain open at the very least. The ground tilted again. Nothing moved! ‘What is happening?’ she demanded. Some kind of quake? But this planet was a dead husk, completely inactive in any respect.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ The director waved an annoyed hand to shush her.

  The band were clambering down out of the tree-house as fast as they could go, jumping the last metre off the wooden steps. They’d abandoned their instruments. Justine stared at the drink in her hand as the ground shifted again. The wine sloshed from one side of the glass to the other, yet she was holding it perfectly still.

  ‘Holy Ozzie,’ Trachtenberg exclaimed. ‘It’s gravity.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Gravity waves. Fucking colossal ones.’

  Ehasz hurried over to them, swaying badly as the ground seemed to tilt again. ‘Are you accessing the long-range sensors?’ he yelled at Trachtenberg.

  ‘What have they got?’

  ‘The boundary! There are distortion ripples lightyears long moving across it. And the damn thing is growing. The sensors in the Gulf can actually see it move. Do you realize what that means? The expansion is superluminal. This is an Ozziefucking devourment phase.’

  The ground quivered badly. Water running along the little streams sloshed about, shooting up small jets of spray. For a moment, Justine actually felt her weight reduce. Then it came back, and the neat stacks of crockery and glasses on the tables crashed on to the grass. She stumbled away from the oak tree as it emitted a nasty splintering sound. Emergency force fields were coming on, reinforcing the dome. Around the rim, safety bunker doors rippled open.

  ‘I want everyone to move to evacuation stage one,’ Trachtenberg announced. ‘Navy personnel report direct to your ships. Observation team, I need a precise picture of what is happening out there. We probably don’t have much time, so we must do as much as we can before we’re forced off.’ He flinched as another gravity wave crossed the station. This time the upward force was so strong Justine felt as though she was going to lift off.

  ‘Is that gravity coming from the Void?’ she asked. The prospect was terrifying, they were hundreds of lightyears away.

  ‘No,’ Ehasz cried. ‘This is something local.’ He looked upwards, studying the intricate luminescent sky above the dome. ‘There!’

  Justine watched two azure moons traverse the sparkling smear of Wall stars. They were in very strange orbits. And moving impossibly fast – actually accelerating. ‘Oh my God,’ she gasped. The Raiel’s planet-sized DF machines were flying into new positions.

  ‘The Raiel are getting ready for the last fight,’ Ehasz said numbly. ‘If they lose, that monster will consume the whole galaxy.’

  This can’t be happening, Justine thought. Living Dream hasn’t even begun their Pilgrimage yet. ‘You can’t!’ she shouted up at the ancient invisible enemy as human hormones and feelings took complete control of her body and mind. ‘This isn’t fair. It’s not fair!’

  *

  A mere five hours after the new dream had flooded into the gaiafield, over fifty thousand of the devout had already gathered in Golden Park, seeking guidance from the Cleric Conservator. They exerted their wish through their gaia-motes. The unanimous desire of fifty thousand people was an astonishing force.

  Ethan was only too aware of it as Councillor Phelim supported him on the long painful walk out of the Mayor’s offices where the doctors had set up an intensive care bay. He limped across the floor of Liliala Hall while the ceiling displayed surges of thick cumulus arrayed in mares’ tails and clad in shimmering strands of lightning. Even though he’d closed himself to the gaiafield, the power of the crowd’s craving was leaking into his bruised brain.

  Phelim continued to support him as they crossed the smaller Toral Hall. Its midnight ceiling showed the Ku nebula with its twinkling gold sparks swimming within fat undulating jade and sapphire nimbi.

  ‘You should have called them to your bed,’ Phelim said.

  ‘No,’ Ethan grunted. For this occasion he would not, could not, show weakness.

  They went through the carved doors to the Orchard Palace’s Upper Council chamber. Its cross-vault ceiling was supported by broad fan pillars. Dominating the apex of the central segment a fuzzy copper star shone brightly, its light shimmering off a slowly rotating accretion disc. Moon-sized fireball comets circled the outer band in high-inclination orbits. None of Makkathran’s enthusiastic astronomers had ever spied its location in the Void.

  The Cleric Council waited for him in their scarlet and black robes, standing silently at the long table which ran across the middle of the chamber. Phelim stayed by Ethan’s side until they reached the dais, then Ethan insisted on walking to his gold-embossed throne by himself. He eased himself on to the thin cushions with a grimace. The pain in his head nearly made him cry out as he sank down. He took a moment to recover as his body shuddered. Ever since he’d regained consciousness any sudden movement was agony.

  The Councillors sat, trying to avert their eyes from the liver-like semi-organic nodules affixed to his skull, only half-hidden by his white robe’s voluminous hood.

  ‘Thank you for attending,’ Ethan said to them.

  ‘We are relieved to see you recovered, Cleric Conservator,’ Rincenso said formally.

  Ethan knew the contempt of the other Councillors towards his supporter without needing the gaiafield. He felt it himself. ‘Not quite recovered yet,’ he said, and tapped one of the glistening nodules. ‘But my neural structure should be fully re-established in another week. Until then the auxiliaries will suffice.’

  ‘How could such a thing happen?’ Councillor DeLouis asked. ‘Gaiamotes have been perfectly safe for centuries.’

  ‘It wasn’t the gaiamotes,’ Phelim said. ‘The Dream Masters who set up the interception believe the Second Dreamer’s panic triggered a neural spasm within the Cleric Conservator’s brain. They were attuned to a degree rarely achieved outside a couple’s most intimate dreamsharing. The circumstances will not arise again.’

  ‘The gaiafield and the unisphere are rife with rumours that the Second Dreamer is a genuine telepath, that he can kill with a single thought.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Phelim said. His skeletal face turned to De-Louis. For an instant a dangerous anger could be glimpsed in his mind.

  DeLouis couldn’t meet his stare.

  ‘In any case it is irrelevant,’ Ethan said. ‘The Dream Masters assure me that such a backlash can be nullified now they understand its nature. Any future contact with the Second Dreamer will be conducted with,’ he smiled grimly, ‘a safety cut-out, as they call it.’

  ‘You’re going to talk to him again?’ Councillor Falven asked.

  ‘I believe the situation requires it,’ Ethan said. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes, but …’

  ‘I received his latest dream along with the rest of you. It was strong, at least as clear as those of the Dreamer Inigo himself. However, the crucial change within this dream was the conversation the Second Dreamer had with the Sky-lord.’ The communication had shocked Ethan
more than the pristine clarity of the new dream.

  ‘I come to find you,’ the Skylord had replied to the Second Dreamer’s greetings.

  ‘We are far beyond the edge of your universe.’

  ‘Yet I felt your longing. You wish to join with us.’

  ‘Not I. But other do, yes.’

  ‘All are welcome.’

  ‘We can’t get in. It’s very dangerous.’

  ‘I can greet you. I can guide you. It is my purpose.’

  ‘No.’

  And with that finality the dream had ended. Before it faded completely, there was a hint of agitation from the Skylord’s mind. It clearly hadn’t expected rejection.

  And it’s hardly alone in that.

  ‘The Skylord believes it can bring us to Querencia,’ Ethan said. ‘That is the final testimony we have been waiting and praying for. Our Pilgrimage will be blessed with success.’

  ‘Not without the Second Dreamer,’ Councillor Tosyne said. ‘Your pardon, Conservator, but he is not willing to lead us into the Void. Without him there can be no Pilgrimage.’

  ‘He is distressed,’ Ethan replied. ‘Until now he didn’t even know he was the Second Dreamer. To discover you are the hope of billions is not an easy thing. Ultimately, Inigo himself found it too great to bear. So we can forgive the Second Dreamer his frailty, and offer support and guidance.’

  ‘He might realize who and what he is now,’ Councillor Tosyne said. ‘But we don’t even know where he is.’

  ‘Actually, we do,’ Phelim announced. ‘Colwyn City on Viotia.’

  ‘Excellent news,’ Ethan said in a predatory fashion. He watched in amusement as the protest in Tosyne’s mind withered away. ‘We should welcome him, and thank Viotia for the gift it has brought us.’ His gaze turned expectantly on Rincenso.

  ‘I would like to propose bringing Viotia fully into the Free Trade Zone,’ Rincenso said. ‘And promote it to core planet status.’

  ‘Seconded,’ Falven said.

  The rest of the Cleric Council responded with bemuse-ment.