The Temporal Void (ARC)

by Peter F. Hamilton

  'Me too.'

  Rosa tottered in from the conservatory, dressed in a red and black skirt with green stockings. 'Daa da.'

  'Hello poppet.' He scooped her up, and tidied some of her dark red curls.

  'She said bot, today,' Lizzie said.

  'Did you?' the Delivery Man asked. Rosa smiled back, saying nothing.

  'It could have been boot,' Lizzie admitted. 'Can you three do something useful and lay the table, please.'

  The Delivery Man put Rosa down, and helped Tilly and Elsie arrange the knives and forks in the right places.

  'I think I might cut down on investigations,' the Delivery Man said as he found some wine glasses for himself and Lizzie.

  'That's good,' she said.

  'At least the cases furthest away from the Central worlds. That should cut down on my away time considerably.'

  She rewarded the decision with a kiss. 'Thank you.'

  They all sat down together for supper. The housebot put a big casserole pot in the middle of the table, and lifted the lid off.

  The Delivery man poked the serving spoon in, and lifted out some steaming—'What is this?' he asked dubiously.

  'Sausage stew,' Tilly announced proudly. 'I made the sausages at school. We programmed the culinary cabinet down to level three for the ingredients.'

  'I made the tomatoes,' Elsie said.

  'It all looks lovely,' the Delivery Man assured them. He tipped the stew on to the plate, and added some vegetables and potatoes. Lizzie sipped at the wine, and grinned at him over the rim of the glass.

  * * * *

  When they finally got the children to bed, the Delivery Man lit the fire in the lounge. The Georgian townhouse was perfectly insulated against the wintry night, but as Lizzie had educated him, a real fire gave them a reassuring warmth inside. They snuggled up together on the big settee with the rest of the wine.

  'I heard a rumour today,' Lizzie said. 'You know what Jen's husband does?'

  'Er, not sure, really.' For the first time in a long time he was actually relaxing rather than putting on a show of tranquillity.

  'Something to do with the Navy. Anyway, she was telling me the Ocisen fleet might be more powerful than anyone is owning up to.'

  'Really?' He knew it was only ever a matter of time before news of the Yenisey got out.

  'Did you hear anything?'

  'No.' But he did remember Marius's reaction to the news of Hanko. It was odd, as though the Accelerator Faction representative didn't know about the Hawking m-sink being used. Why would he try to bluff on that?

  'And the news from Viotia was horrible. The Unisphere showed some poor woman being grabbed by the paramilitaries. They'd attacked her in the street for no reason.'

  'Terrible.' Unless he genuinely didn't know. And if that's the case, who else would be able to get hold of one?

  'I can see you're really bothered by it.'

  'Sorry.'

  'It's okay.' She wiggled up closer. 'I am glad you're cutting back. You don't mind?'

  'I can pick it up again in twenty years. I just don't want to miss out on the kids growing up. It's a unique time.'

  Lizzie patted his leg as she tipped back some more wine. 'Good man.'

  * * * *

  While the Delivery Man was getting ready for bed that night the Conservative Faction called. 'We need you to deliver a starship to Pulap tomorrow.'

  'No,' he told them. A quick guilty glance through the bathroom door showed Lizzie moving round in the bedroom. He shut the door. 'Not any more.'

  'This will be an entirely passive role for you, exactly as we originally promised. To the best of our knowledge there are no agents of any Faction on Pulap.'

  'If he catches me, you'll need to re-life me. I don't want that.'

  'There is someone else we will be using to monitor Marius from now on. An operative who takes a more active role than you.'

  'Oh.'

  'To reassure you further, Marius has just arrived on Ganthia.'

  'What's on Ganthia?' He immediately cursed himself for asking.

  'We're not sure. However, it is over two hundred light years from Pulap. We would not ask you to make this delivery unless it was urgent.'

  'I don't know.'

  'It will take us time to replace you. There was bound to be some overlap before your successor can be fully initiated.'

  'I didn't say I was going to stop helping you.' He gave his image in the mirror an angry stare, then broke away and stuffed his clothes into the laundry basket. 'All right, I'll deliver the starship; but after this I want at least three days' notice of any assignment.'

  'Thank you.'

  * * * *

  Araminta didn't sleep much. The bed which the couch expanded into was fine, its ageing mattress accommodating and the duvet warm. The twins next door made no noise to bother her. It was all due to worry. Worry that any second the door would come crashing down and the Ellezelin paramilitaries would rampage through the little house to grab her, hurting Tandra and the children in the process.

  I had no right to come here and put them in danger.

  Worry, also, about what to do next. She knew who she wanted to talk to, but the how of it was difficult. In the hours she wasn't actively fretting she went through all the communication technology files stored in her lacuna. There were more than she realized; accumulated so she could hardwire her properties for Unisphere access and integrate domestic systems with the house net. They gave her quite a good base of practical knowledge. All she had to do then was work out how to apply it.

  She kept examining the whole problem like some particularly stupid program. If A doesn't work, try B, then C. She was on Z for about the eighth time when morning light finally started to glow through the cheap paper blinds over the window. But that eighth Z was certainly possible, maybe even quite clever. It also had the big advantage that no one would be able to predict it. That was the crucial part. She wasn't under any illusions now about how desperate Living Dream was to catch her. Every aspect of her life would be analysed for clues. And every one would be pursued.

  Araminta sat up as Tandra tried to tiptoe through the living room to the galley kitchen.

  'Sorry,' Tandra said. 'Did I wake you?'

  'No.'

  Tandra pulled the blinds up. 'Wow, you look terrible.'

  'Didn't sleep much,' Araminta admitted.

  Martyn emerged from the bathroom, dressed in a worn t-shirt and blue shorts. 'Morning,' he mumbled, scratching his hair then moving on to his armpit.

  'Still glad you came?' Tandra asked lightly. She and Araminta started giggling as Martyn frowned at the pair of them. He walked through the archway to the kitchen.

  'Can I steal some of your makeup?' Araminta asked when she heard him banging cups and bowls about.

  'Hell yes, honey,' Tandra said. 'Half the membrane scales are way past their expiry date, but that's all a big con anyway. You use them, I sure don't get much chance to doll up.'

  'Thanks.'

  'You going to see a guy?'

  'Not quite, no.'

  'Okay. You want some coffee?'

  Araminta smiled. The coffee Martyn had produced from the galley kitchen last night had been terrible. 'Lovely, thank you.'

  Breakfast was a messy affair, with the five of them squeezed round the little table in the living room. The twins were playing up, taking forever to scoop down their cereal. Araminta munched on her toast, trying not to laugh as an increasingly exasperated Tandra threatened and pleaded with the children.

  Afterwards, she sat on the bed in Tandra's room, and started applying the makeup scales. Tandra had a surprising number of cosmetic cases from various companies; some had been heavily used, while others were still untouched. Over half an hour Araminta managed to change the appearance of her features, disguising her rounded cheeks in favour of a more angular quality, careful shadowing under her jaw made it appear more prominent and square. Simple lenses changed her eye colour to a deep blue. She sprayed her hair, darkening
it to near-raven; then plaited it in a way she hadn't done since high school.

  Tandra bought her clothes in. 'Clean, and fixed as best as our poor old bot can manage. I must find a better stitching program.' She dropped them on the mattress next to Araminta. 'Now that's different. I barely recognize you.'

  Araminta flashed her friend a grateful smile. 'Thanks.'

  'Don't want to worry you,' Tandra said closing the door. 'But Matthew just called. There have been people in Nik's this morning asking after you. Three lots of people.'

  'Oh Ozzie.' All the fear and panic from yesterday came storming back into lu-r mind.

  Tandra sat beside her. 'Is it bad?'

  'About as bad as it can get. I'm going to leave right now. I should never have come.'

  'That's all right, honey, I could do with my life shaking up a bit.'

  Araminta shook off her borrowed robe, and began pulling her patched trousers on. 'Not like this. Listen, if anyone comes asking for me, you tell them the complete truth. All of it.'

  'What's to tell?'

  'That I was here. Don't deny anything. Don't hold back.'

  'Gee, if you're sure?'

  She pulled on her blouse, marvelling that Tandra's cleaner had managed to get the grass stains out of the elbows. 'Never more so.'

  With the toolbelt round her waist again, and the fleece covering it up she was ready to leave.

  'Thank you again,' she said at the door. Martyn's uncertain grin only made her feel more ashamed.

  'You take care now,' Tandra said, and kissed her goodbye.

  Araminta walked fast for the first twenty minutes, close to a jog, putting as much distance as she could between her and Tandra's family. After that, with sweat soaking into her blouse she slowed a little, puffing away, hoping her flushed cheeks wouldn't dislodge the cosmetic membranes. She couldn't open the fleece to cool off, that would expose her toolbelt.

  * * * *

  It was a long way to her destination, an office over in the Salisbury district, which was on the other side of town from Tandra's place. Quickest route would be straight through the centre, but she avoided that, anxious not to encounter too many people. Besides, there were more street sensors in the centre. So she walked in a long curve away from the river, then back down the slope to the north of the docks.

  Three hours after she started she was in Salisbury. The buildings here were nearly all commercial, interspaced with a few estates of cheaper housing that had been shipped in from the

  Suvorov continent, prefab aluminium brick rooms locked together into bungalows in whatever configuration suited the landlord. Their gardens were marked off with chain link fencing, containing straggly lawns or big areas of gravel chip, with several parked ground vehicles and the odd broken capsule.

  The metro line cut through the centre of the district, with a small number of branch lines splitting off. A few cabs hummed past. Trike pods were the preferred transport, though there weren't many zipping about today. Bicycles outnumbered them nearly two to one. There were enough pedestrians that she didn't feel too conspicuous. Even the Ellezelin capsules didn't use the skies above Salisbury.

  Araminta had never been to the district before, so it took her another hour walking down the main roads checking the signs before she found Harrogate Street. A deserted stub of concrete ending five hundred metres from the intersection in a big field of rubble from some stalled redevelopment project. Amazingly, a metro line ran all the way up to the barrier round the waste ground. The buildings on either side were a mix of offices and industrial units and storage barns.

  Now she was conspicuous, the only person on the pavement where weeds had started to lift the cracked concrete, and compacted rubbish clogged the gutters. A third of the way towards the redevelopment site she found the building she wanted, a medium-sized warehouse of composite panels and cheap solar roofing. The front had a single storey lean-to built on, housing the company offices. The company in question being Genuine Spanish Crepes, as advertised by a small orange sign on the security caged front door. The windows were all boarded up with sheets of armoured carbotanium, and the side walls covered in graffiti scrawls so old their glow had decayed to near invisibility.

  Araminta walked down the side of the warehouse. Right at the end of the wall there was a small door. She pulled her cutter out, and removed the lock with a neat incision.

  Inside the big enclosed space, light shone in through a row of misted glass along tin- roof's apex. There were five loosely piled pyramids of boxes on the bare concrete floor, all with the Spanish Crepes logo on the side. She ignored them and hurried back to the offices at the front. Getting inside was easy enough. The door was locked but not alarmed. Laril was too cheap for that.

  There were three offices, with budget furniture and fittings, looking as if the staff had just left for the day. Araminta hurriedly pulled down the blinds and began to search the offices one by one.

  Spanish Crepes had been another of Laril's rotten companies. It was supposed to be a franchise supplying Colwyn City's larger entertainment venues; with dozens of stalls and swarms of eager staff supplying quality food at reasonable prices, and paying Laril for the privilege As always it had limped along as he battled with licensing authorities, while buying stock from the cheapest suppliers he could find. Then there were subsidiaries dealing in the stalls and culinary units themselves; financed with a buyback scheme based offworld. More interlinked yet unregistered companies provided uniforms and transport. None of it had been declared to the Revenue Service.

  Araminta knew about it all because he'd left a file open one day on their apartment's network. She'd never told him she knew about it; she'd even kept it from Cressida. It was to be her very last bargaining point if all legal means failed.

  A thorough inventory of every desk and cupboard produced very little. Useless hardcopy of confusing receipts and agreements. Sample boxes of exotic crepe fillings. Dead pot plants. Worn culinary unit components. Electronic modules - function unknown. Three cybersphere nodes. Kubes in neat storage cassettes. A box of company aprons in trial colours. A mid-capacity management array with out of date software.

  However, as she sat at what must have been Laril's desk with its ancient console and three portals, she found five cash coins in the bottom draw, underneath some carry-capsule manuals. Difficult to find, but not necessarily suspicious, so they weren't there by accident. Like everything Laril did.

  She held one of the coins up, and smiled at it. Good old Laril, dependably unreliable.

  Thirty minutes spent opening up one of the nodes, using a handheld interface to adapt the software configuration, registering a new company Unisphere account with money from the cash coin, and she had a very basic communication link through the management array that didn't involve her u-shadow or include her identity. No tracer program or scrutineer would be able to place her at the Spanish Crepes office.

  In theory.

  She laboriously typed in the Oaktier code stored in her lacuna. The tiny array screen printed up icons showing the channel being established.

  Please, she prayed, be curious enough to accept the call.

  The portal projected Laril's puzzled face into the air in front of her. She surprised herself by her reaction. But the sight of that awfully familiar thin brown hair, rotund cheeks and excessive stubble brought tears to her eyes. It was just so unbelievably reassuring that he remained exactly the same as always.

  'Araminta? Is that you? Have you reprofiled your face?'

  'Don't go,' she blurted. 'I need help.'

  'Ah. I didn't know you knew about the, er, crepes company.'

  'Forget about that. Can you run a check to see if anyone is eavesdropping this link?'

  His eyes widened in amused surprise. 'Okay. U-shadow analysing the connection route. Ah hah. The channel seems clean, but I'm not a true expert on these things. Are you all right? I've tried to call a couple of times. I was worried when your u-shadow didn't respond.'

  Araminta took a
deep breath. 'Laril, it's me they're after.'

  'You?'

  'I'm the Second Dreamer.'

  'You know the Second Dreamer?'

  'No. I am the Second Dreamer.'

  'You can't be.'

  Araminta scowled at the screen. This was Laril true enough, always the same, and never giving her credit. 'Why not?'

  'For a start, you don't have gaiamotes.'

  'Don't need them.' She explained about her previously unknown ancestry.

  'You're related to Mellanie Rescorai?' was all he asked when she'd finished.

  'You know of her?'

  'Who doesn't? Especially here on Oaktier, this was her birthworld.'

  Definitely Laril, no one else ever irritated her at this level. 'I…' she shut her eyes, drew a breath, and looked directly at his projection. 'I don't know who else to go to.'

  He grinned, a hand reaching up to scratch the top of his right ear. 'Wow. I'm flattered.'

  'You said if there was ever anything…'

  'Yeah. Wasn't quite thinking along these lines, though.'

  'I see.' You can always rely on Laril to let you down. She reached for the keyboard, ready to cut the channel.

  'That doesn't mean I won't help,' he said in that soft caring voice he hadn't used since their first week together.

  'Really?'

  'I loved you then, and I guess I always will.'

  'Thank you.'

  'Sorry, but—You're really the Second Dreamer?'

  She smirked. 'Yeah.'

  'And you told the Skylord to get lost?'

  'I don't want to go into the Void, especially not leading some-crazy Pilgrimage for a bunch of religious nutters.'

  'Succinctly put. Unfortunately there are bigger issues to consider.'

  'I know. For a start, I've got half of Ellezelin's police force in the city looking for me. And Gore said there are others, too.'

  'What can I do?'

  'I don't know. It's just sort of instinct coming to you.'

  'Again: flattering, in a weird kind of way. But let's face it, if anyone can advise you how to stay ahead of officialdom, it's me.'

  'I'm not sure even you can help me on that score. Laril, the whole city is sliding into anarchy. Ellezelin is the only authority here. I don't think I can hide for ever.'