Edeard knelt on the ground, still looking at Makkathran. ‘I can’t do this. It’s over.’
‘We understand,’ Kristabel said. ‘This is what makes you you. This is what I loved.’
‘We’ll be together,’ he promised her. His farsight sensed the first squad reaching the final slope up to the summit. All of them were readying their rapid-fire guns. ‘We will reach the Heart and live there for eternity.’
‘Together,’ Kristabel agreed.
Edeard drew in a deep breath. He looked out one last time across the Iguru Plain, his thoughts serene as he stopped shielding himself. Makkathran’s thoughts brushed against his mind, as slow and content as always. Dreaming in another realm.
‘Thank you for all your help,’ he told it, and poured his gratitude out to the city.
For the first time he sensed a change. The giant mind began to quicken. Stronger, more concise thoughts began to rise, like some massive creature coming up from the depths of the sea. Makkathran was waking.
Edeard swayed back, astounded by the reaction he’d kindled. He’d tried innumerable times to make himself understood to the city, never receiving any reply. It did his bidding for simple things like altering the buildings, or sending him along the travel tunnels. But he’d assumed any true connection was beyond him.
‘You heard me,’ he longtalked in astonishment.
The answer was still slow, measured and considered as he expected it to be. Solemn: as was fitting for such a magnificent creation. ‘I felt sorrow,’ Makkathran said. ‘You are in pain. I have not felt pain like that for such a time.’
‘I . . . I have lost. That was the pain you felt. I apologize. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I simply wished to thank you for all you’ve done.’
‘Loss? I remember loss. Once there were many, now I am alone.’
‘There were others like you?’ Edeard asked.
‘Once. No more. Not even here. To revisit that time would be useless.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Can I help? I’m about to go to the Heart of the Void. Will your kind be there?’
‘No. None would submit to absorption. That is not what we are.’
‘What are you?’
‘The failed past.’
‘You haven’t failed us. You gave us shelter, refuge.’
‘I am glad. Do you accept the Void’s purpose? Is that why you go to its Heart?’
‘What purpose?’
‘To become one with this universe. It seeks all rationality.’
‘That’s . . . No. I go because I have lost my life.’
‘How can you lose your life in the Void?’
He gave Kristabel and the others a puzzled look, very conscious of the armed men slinking up the slope towards him. ‘I don’t understand.’
Something like a gust of emotion swept out of the city. Reluctance. Acceptance. Pity. ‘The Void allows you to find your perfect life,’ Makkathran said. ‘It is the way it brings you to fulfilment, to reach your personal evolution and achieve contentment with what you are.’
‘What do you mean?’ Edeard started to harden his shield again as he heard a number of safety catches clicked off.
‘All of those who come from outside strive for this state, that is why the Void welcomes them. This universe had no other purpose, not now. That is its beauty for those inside, and tragedy for those without, for they will ultimately pay the price.’
‘I can’t achieve a perfect life. My life is over.’
‘Reach into the Void. Search out where you wish to be, and begin again. It is simple. Once you adapt to the Void it provides you with whatever you want. Every species that ever arrived here was drawn into that evolution. You will be no different, I suspect. There is no harm in that. I wish you well on your journey.’
The city’s thoughts began to slow again. Withdrawing back into slumber.
‘No,’ Edeard said. ‘No wait. Tell me how.’ He turned to the souls. ‘What did it mean?’
‘I sense patterns around me,’ Kristabel said. ‘Just as Boyd told you. The universe remembers what happened everywhere. Our whole life is visible there in the past.’
‘Can you show me?’ Edeard asked.
‘See with me,’ she said. Edeard tried to sense her thoughts, the gift of her perception. It was a strange union, a dimension of farsight he’d never known of before. As he followed his wife’s observation into the fabric of reality, he saw for himself. Saw himself stretched out down the slope, a million, a billion, images of himself leading back; they encapsulated every instant of the climb, every step, every breath, every heartbeat. Every thought. It was as if he was looking into an infinity mirror. Makkathran was right, his essence had been captured by the Void. Every moment of his existence had been remembered.
Edeard regarded himself, the one of five minutes ago, studying how real the vision was. He appeared frozen. Awaiting the breath to fill his lungs in order to become real.
‘Oh, my Lady,’ he gasped. ‘I think I understand. But . . . no. That would mean.’ He leapt to his feet. ‘Kristabel?’
‘Do it,’ she entreated. ‘Edeard, if there’s even a chance—’
‘Yes.’ He flung his arms out, unleashing his third hand. The squad members were hurled into the air, an expanding bracelet of struggling figures arching up and out, away from the ground. Screaming as they began their plummet hundreds of feet to the wider slope below.
Free of any immediate danger, Edeard concentrated again on the images. Minutes ago was useless to him. He began to push on past the memories of himself walking up to the summit. Delving deep. He knew himself lying on the bed in the pavilion while Salrana longtalked Owain. Further. His own memory came into play, knowing a vivid moment from a few days ago. Twinning it with the Void’s recollection. The technique was almost instinctive. The moment was there, shimmering elusively in front of him. His mind reached for it, finding it beyond his grasp. He tried again, harder this time, channelling his colossal telekinetic strength into the stretch. Mental fingers scrabbled desperately to close around the moment, to make it real. He groaned with the effort. Forcing the universe to link the moments.
Somewhere, allwhere, the universe began to shift. The present slipped backwards, slowly at first. That long linear image of him walking up the slope unwound, taking him down. Above him, the stars crawled the wrong way through the firmament. Encouraged, Edeard threw his entire strength into achieving the union across time. The impossibly weird motion began to accelerate. Edeard’s past rushed past. The precise, wonderfully clear moment he wanted hurtled towards him—
—Edeard woke screaming. The yell of shock and disbelief rang round the woodland camp, he couldn’t stop blasting air from his lungs. Morning light shone down on him.
Morning!
Dinlay was a few yards away, immobile in the action of hopping about while he held his boot high. He was giving Edeard a dumbfounded look.
Edeard managed to stop his scream. He looked round wildly, then jumped as he saw Macsen sitting on an old fallen tree trunk.
‘I didn’t put anything in your boot,’ Macsen protested in a reasonable voice.
‘You’re alive!’ Edeard bellowed.
‘What in Honious is going on?’ Topar asked. He had risen from his blanket, his pistol held ready. Boloton, Fresage, Verini, and Larby were scrambling round, trying to find the source of the commotion.
‘Nothing!’ Edeard said breathlessly. An explosion of pure joy inside his head threatened to overwhelm him. ‘Everything! I did it! I’m here. It’s real. You’re real. And you’re all alive.’
Dinlay let out an exasperated sigh. ‘What is the matter with you?’ He squinted into his boot. ‘Ah ha!’ His third hand scraped out the remains of a utog beetle. He gave Macsen a suspicious glance.
‘Edeard?’ Topar asked cautiously.
‘It’s fine,’ Edeard held up a hand in reassurance, then laughed. He was feeling giddy now. The world was whirling round unsteadily. He sat down hard. ‘No, wait.’ He held up his hands, fing
ers out to count. ‘The ambush is in two days’ time. Er . . . then another day and a half to ride back. Lady – damnit, if I start now I might not make it. I’ve got to go further back.’
Dinlay shoved his foot into the boot and walked over. ‘Bad dream?’
Edeard grinned. ‘The worst there has ever been.’
‘Ah. Would you like some tea? You’ve still got some of those linen packets left,’ Dinlay added hopefully.
‘No.’ Edeard stood up fast. Before Dinlay knew what was happening, Edeard kissed him.
‘Fuck the Lady,’ Dinlay exclaimed, juddering back out of reach.
Edeard laughed delightedly. ‘I can’t stay. I’m sorry. But by the Lady it is so good to see you all alive again. And the girls, our wives. Macsen, you’re going to be a father. I promise. I swear on the Lady herself.’
‘What in Honious did you drink last night?’ Macsen demanded.
‘I drank . . . I drank everything there is to drink.’
‘I think you’d better sit down,’ Topar said levelly.
‘No time,’ Edeard said, enjoying how manic he must be appearing to the others. ‘Well, actually, that’s not true.’ He giggled. ‘Do you remember the first day on the road.’ His fingers clicked urgently. ‘We stopped and made camp just outside that farm. Oh, where was it?’
‘Stibbington,’ Dinlay grunted.
‘That’s right. That’s the place, and it’s in time. Plenty of time. Barely a day’s gallop back from there. Macsen, do you remember, you were so saddle sore you claimed you couldn’t walk.’
‘I remember.’
‘Yeah, me too.’ Edeard reached for the moment—
Justine: Year Four
Dreaming still. Mellow images of her true love. His scent. His laughter. His pleasure. Those two days kept stretching out and out—
Justine sat up in the medical chamber and glanced round the Silverbird’s cabin. Everything was exactly the same as when she went into suspension. No alarms sounding this time. They’d reached the star system, and the starship’s log reported a thoroughly uneventful voyage. The Silverbird was already decelerating.
She swung her legs out, wincing at the stiffness in her limbs. Neck muscles were knotted and tight. What she needed was a good massage. Maybe at the Hulluba resort on Fasal Island. Yes, she could certainly picture herself lying on a bed on the spa veranda, overlooking the white beaches and absurdly clear turquoise water. The spa had some very handsome masseurs, talented fit young men who knew how to knead her muscles and tendons into complete submission. Very handsome. And the drinks they served in long glasses full of crushed ice, with exotic fruits – delicious. Hot blue-white star a pinprick of intense light atop the indigo sky. Handsome and eager.
Lordie, this is what dreaming about those two days does to me. Hulluba was a thousand years ago.
Justine sighed in regret and her third hand pulled a robe out of the replicator module. The culinary unit produced a big glass of carrot juice with vitamin supplements. It brought a grimace to her face as she dutifully swallowed it all down.
Maybe there’ll be some beaches on a planet here somewhere.
She sat on the floor and started stretching exercises. Already she was looking forward to a very hot shower with powerful jets, a forcefully applied heat that would rid her neck of those abysmal kinks.
‘What have we got outside?’ she asked the smartcore.
The star appeared in her exovision. Justine frowned. ‘I know this.’ It was the star system which was projected on to the ceiling of the Orchard Palace’s Upper Council chamber. A copper star that shone warmly at the centre of an accretion disc. Comets with moon-sized nuclei prowled the outer edges of the disc in high-inclination orbits, their tails streaming out for millions of kilometres, fluorescing a glorious scarlet. But what she was seeing outside now was older, the accretion disc had thinned out from the time of Edeard’s tenure. Nine distinct bands had formed within it, each one shepherded by dense curlicues of asteroids as proto-planets started to congeal. The tails of the fireball comets were smaller, less volatile than before. Long braids of white vapour corrupted their once-pure scarlet efflux.
Translucent data displays overlaid the astronomy image. Justine’s secondary thought routines sampled the information, compiling summaries, and her focus immediately shifted to a tiny white crescent that circled the tenuous rim of the disc. ‘No way!’ It was an H-congruent planet.
The Silverbird was still seven AUs out from the star. It gave her plenty of time to observe the planet as they approached. In the real universe outside the Void it wouldn’t exist. Even if the accretion disc had produced an amalgamation of rock and minerals that built up to planet size, there wouldn’t have been time for life to evolve. The Silverbird’s spectral analysis filters identified water and chlorophyll, along with a lot of nitrogen in the atmosphere. Wherever the world had come from, it had oceans and recognizable plant life covering the landmasses.
One AU out. It was small for an H-congruent planet; Mars size. The atmosphere was thick, at the surface it would be a standard pressure. Temperature was typical. A magnetic field warped solar wind into characteristic Van Allen belts around it. There were no electromagnetic emissions. But she kept checking for that the whole way in.
An implausible world in an impossible place. Only in the Void. She knew full well the amount of mass energy the boundary had consumed during that short dreadful expansion phase was enough to create a thousand solar systems, let alone one small planet. I shouldn’t be surprised at anything here. Edeard only scratched the surface of the Void’s potential, as Living Dream keep emphasizing.
Ten million kilometres out, and the Silverbird was decelerating at five gees, shedding the last of the colossal velocity that had carried her across three lightyears. Five gees was the best it could reliably maintain. The glitches were back with a vengeance. Sensor degradation was acute on some of the higher function scans. But simple optical lenses were showing continents and ice caps. Whorl patterns in the clouds were becoming apparent. She saw one hurricane that was somehow splitting in two as it hit the coast, its leading edge separating as if a knife was cutting it. A very big knife. The phenomena triggered some uncertainty deep in her subconscious – an ancient memory that struggled to resolve. What cuts a storm in half?
Then she had more to worry about as cabin gravity started to fluctuate. Secondary systems were dropping out as fluctuations beset the power network. Back-up supplies didn’t always compensate properly. She ordered the cabin to return to a neutral status, retracting everything except for her acceleration couch. At least her biononics remained fully functional. She activated her integral force field as the Silverbird flew across the remaining million kilometres. Ahead of her, the planet’s upper atmosphere sparked constantly with contrails as meteorites from the fringe of the accretion disc impacted on the ionosphere. The Silverbird’s force fields reported a build-up of micro-particle strikes. Dust density outside was thickening rapidly.
Justine went and put her armour suit on.
Ingrav efficiency was twenty per cent down, and becoming erratic. Justine had already abandoned any idea of breaking into orbit. They were going to have to head for a direct landing. Hopefully the regrav drives would kick in once they were inside the planet’s gravity field. Judging by the way the rest of the systems were behaving she wasn’t placing any bets.
A thousand kilometres above the ionosphere and the smart-core began shutting down peripheral routines in order to concentrate on core functions. The ship curved round the bulk of the planet. Regrav was becoming active – just. They would make it down okay. Probably.
That was when the three gigantic rocky cones sticking up through the atmosphere slipped into view. Silverbird was heading straight for them, trajectory projections giving their landing site just beyond.
Shock set in as she focused the cameras on the astonishingly familiar profile of the three volcanoes. ‘You have got to be fucking kidding me,’ she said out loud.
The Silverbird was approaching near-perfect replicas of Far Away’s Grand Triad at mach thirty. She fought to quash her surprise. It can happen. Here in the Void, it can happen.
Terminating a voyage three lightyears long at the exact point corresponding to her hyperglider landing twelve hundred years ago was not random chance. It was purpose.
The dream. Oh my God, the dream.
Which left a possibility that was almost too much to contemplate.
No. That cannot happen.
The Silverbird hit the atmosphere. Tenuous air molecules screamed as it hurtled downwards, soaring round the side of the tallest volcano with its flat summit and dead twin calderas. Churning superheated air blazed in the starship’s wake. Regrav units applied what force they could muster.
Acceleration pushed Justine down into the couch. Her chest was compressed as her weight quadrupled. Biononics reinforced her body, enabling her to breathe normally. The regrav wouldn’t alter the starship’s vector. Her landing point was predetermined.
Ordained?
The Silverbird plunged down through a light cirrus layer, its speed dropping to subsonic. The volcano’s mid-slopes were beneath her, rocky crags and cliffs strewn with patches of lichen and moss, streaked with snow. Then she was flying over the volcano’s upper meadows, undulating grassland that formed a wide verdant belt just above the treeline. Icy waterfalls tumbled down rocky outcrops, birthing a lacework of silver streams.
Another mind impinged on the starship’s gaiafield. The person’s thoughts curious and enthusiastic.
‘Oh, no. No, no, no. He can’t be here. You can’t do this to me.’
A long glade opened up in the forest below. Silverbird descended fast. Its landing struts bulged out of the fuselage. Justine gritted her teeth. The bump wasn’t too bad. The cabin shook and a crunching sound tremored through the superstructure. Gravity fell below a standard one gee. Some of the ship status icons turned amber briefly, then flicked back to green. Whole sections faded to neutral as the drive units ceased to operate. The starship wasn’t going to be flying anywhere soon.
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