“We will inform you if he is troublesome.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind.” Ozzie smiled again at the monster’s helmet and walked around it into the plaza. The other Chikoya let him pass. His macrocellular clusters reported a quick surge in encrypted data between the big aliens. They began to holster their weapons.
Oh, yeah. Still the man.
That was exactly what he’d come to the Spike to get away from. He went over to one of the triage teams. “Hi, Max.”
“Uh? Oh, hi, Ozzie,” the medic replied. He was kneeling beside an unconscious woman who’d suffered a lot of burns.
“So what happened?”
“The guy was a fucking lunatic. He took on a whole army of Chikoya by himself.”
“Did you see it?” Ozzie asked.
“Just the end.” Max applied some pale-green derm3 to the woman’s black and red legs. The jelly spread out evenly over the terrible damage and began to bubble like sluggish champagne. “And I had to wait until that was over before I landed. Anything moving down here got trashed. I guess weapon enrichments have come on some since I left the Commonwealth.”
“Yeah, looks like it.” Ozzie’s field scan told him the Chikoya were starting to teleport out.
Coleen, the medic working with Max, broke off from implementing the stem support module she’d applied to the woman’s throat. “What the hell is Inigo doing coming here?”
“Sounds like he wants to talk to me,” Ozzie admitted.
“Why?”
“Don’t know for sure, but just a wild guess here: the Void.”
Max had cut away the smoldering fabric of the woman’s dress and started applying the derm3 to the side of her abdomen. “Can you stop it?”
Ozzie gave him a bitter laugh. “No. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Then why-”
“Dunno, man.” Ozzie spread his arms wide in surrender. “She going to be all right?”
“She’s not Higher,” Coleen said. “But she should be able to avoid re-life. I think she’s stable enough to make the trip to the hospital now.”
“I’ll take her,” Max said.
“How many hurt?” Ozzie asked. He didn’t want to know, but his conscience was prodding him. That was something that hadn’t happened in a long time. And it shouldn’t be happening now, damnit.
“Eleven got bodylossed,” Coleen said. “We’ve shipped eight live criticals back to the hospital, and there’s another five bad ones waiting. Maybe two dozen more with minor injuries.”
Ozzie gave a tight nod. “Could have been worse.”
“The Chikoya aren’t going to get over this in a hurry,” she said.
“I know.”
“They think the Spike belongs to them.”
“It doesn’t.”
“But this …”
“They’ll get over it. We’ve all got to get along.”
“So you keep saying,” she said.
Ozzie was disappointed by the amount of bitterness and resentment in her mind, even though Coleen was good at toning down her feelings.
“I’ll sort this out,” he assured her.
“Good.” She hurried off to another victim, her boots squelching through the crystalfoam.
Max gave Ozzie a sympathetic look. “I don’t blame you.”
“Very big.”
“But it’s Inigo, Ozzie! The Dreamer himself. Things have to be bad if he’s come to you.”
“I know.”
“And that bodyguard-”
Ozzie held his hand up, palms outward. “I’m on it, man.” He turned and walked slowly back to the capsule, stopping briefly to study the broken buildings. No doubt about it, they were going to have to rebuild the whole center of town. “Connect me to him,” he told his u-shadow.
The code embedded in the general message made a connection instantly. “This is Ozzie.”
“You are the eighth person to claim this.”
“That’s gotta be a bummer for you. And what if I’ve cloned myself? Would any of us brothers do, or did you want the original?” He waited for a reply, slightly mystified by the delay.
“I need the original.”
“Then this is your lucky day, pal.” Ozzie’s u-shadow informed him that a very sophisticated infiltrator was trying to take over the capsule’s smartnet. “Let it in,” he told the u-shadow. “But if we land in deep shit, I want to be able to wipe it.”
“Confirmed,” his u-shadow reported. An exovision display showed him the infiltrator’s progress.
“I will require DNA verification that you are Oswald Fernandez Isaacs.”
“Nobody calls me that.”
“That is your name.”
“It was my name.” Even after all the re-life procedures and biononic regenerations he’d undergone in the last fifteen hundred years, with all their associated memory edits, he’d never quite let go of the childhood persecution that name had brought down upon him. “Now I’m just Ozzie; always have been, always will be.”
“Very well, Ozzie, I am loading a coordinate into your capsule. Please do not attempt to deviate from the route.”
“Dude, wouldn’t dream of it.”
A map of Octoron compartment flipped up, with his u-shadow showing him the route the infiltrator was preparing to fly. Ozzie studied it, but the destination was a nowhere, a remote stretch of land past one of the water columns, about thirty kilometers away. Just the kind of nowhere outlaws would choose to lie low in, in a decent Western.
The capsule lifted silently and curved around over the town. Ozzie watched the buildings shrink away while the resentment built in his mind. The Spike was his escape from the shitty vibes of life in the Greater Commonwealth, and Inigo was the one man who’d subverted and ruined his hopes for the gaiafield.
Nigel Sheldon had offered Ozzie another way out, a berth on the Sheldon family armada of colony starships. They weren’t just going to the other side of the galaxy to set up a new society. Oh, no, not Nigel; he was off to a whole new galaxy to begin again. A noble quest, restarting human civilization in a fresh part of the universe. Then in another thousand years a new generation of colony ships might spread to further galaxies. After all, as he’d pointed out, this one is ultimately doomed with the Void at the center, so we need somewhere that’s got a long-term future. Ozzie grabbed the logic even as he argued back that humans would have gone postphysical long before the Void would ever present a tangible threat.
Ha! Yeah, right. Goddamn Nigel, always gets the last laugh.
The Spike had been a kind of compromise for Ozzie. A withdrawal from Commonwealth life for sure but not a complete retreat the way Nigel had chosen-not that he saw it as a retreat. He did it because there was a slight chance he could still turn things around and reclaim the dream that he’d lost to Inigo, Edeard, and the insidious Void.
He had intended the gaiafield to allow humans and aliens to understand each other better, eliminating conflict and confusion across the galaxy. The oldest liberal dream of all: If we just keep talking … And now the gaiafield could back up the talk with sincerity and understanding. Except, as always, the human race had found a way to fuck it up and turn it into the carrier wave of the latest and stupidest of all religions. So he came to the Spike with an idea of how to make something bigger than the gaiafield and commune with the Silfen Motherholme, a wonderful union of the mind that couldn’t be subverted by selective, edited thoughts like Inigo’s seditious dreams with their sole purpose of entrapping people.
Mindspace was a good start, except it worked better with human thoughts than with anyone else’s, especially the ratty little Ilodi. But the Chikoya were coming around to accepting the state, even though the stupid monsters were hanging on it a whole load of religious connotations of the “all-perception realm,” which had sparked some old dumbass racial lore.
A little bit of fine-tuning was all it would take. Something he’d been analyzing and rationalizing-well, sort of-for the last forty years. Then every sentie
nt species in the galaxy would be aware of every other species, which would be truly wonderful. Unless there was something else like the Prime out there. And prescience/rationality species would probably think their gods were calling. Oh, and greedy little psychopaths like the Ocisen Empire would use it as a map of worlds to conquer.
Yeah, fine-tuning. That’s all.
Which he would have gotten around to. Eventually. Except now the Commonwealth and its incredible idiocies and factions and violence had followed him to the Spike. His basic instinct was to just cut and run again. But Inigo’s boneheaded stupidity was finally paying off, with the Void going apeshit and everyone desperate for a solution. To what Ozzie wasn’t sure. But sure as bears shit in the woods, they came searching him out for it, treating him like the ultimate guru.
So once again, here he was doing the right thing, which would have appalled the him of centuries past. Today, he just figured that this was the quickest way to get them the fuck off the Spike.
The capsule approached the water column, one of twelve massive support structures that stretched from the chamber’s landscape right up to the opaque roof forty kilometers above. They always reminded Ozzie of giant cocktail swizzle sticks, huge narrow cylinders with ridges that spiraled the entire length. It was part of the chamber’s irrigation system; water flowed constantly down them, racing around and around in a white-foam cascade. The top third of the twists had sharp angled kinks that sent thundering bursts of spume swirling off in long clouds that traced huge arcs as they fell downward and outward until they’d evolved into ordinary stratus scudding through the air before eventually drizzling on the ground far below.
He flew directly underneath one of the churning ribbons of thick white mist and began a steep descent. A broad expanse of Octoron’s purple and green grass lay below, with a herd of sprightly tranalin racing away from the lake at the base of the water column. Ozzie expanded his biononic field scan function and probed the ground directly below. Three human figures were waiting for him, which was odd because he couldn’t perceive any incursion of thoughts within mindspace. He frowned and refined the scan. One was standing waiting, integral force field active; the other two were lying on the grass, unconscious.
“Ah,” he grunted as realization dawned. “Clever.”
The capsule touched down, and he emerged to face the standing man. No doubt he was the bodyguard type who’d unleashed hell back in the town. The man’s biological appearance was mid-thirties, which was slightly older than Highers usually maintained their physical looks. Ozzie was drawn to his eyes, which were gray with weird flecks of purple. His Commonwealth Navy tunic was simple gray-blue semiorganic, with several burn scars where energy weapons had fired out from subdermal enrichments. But it was the expression, or rather lack of it, that was most intriguing. He didn’t express a single flicker of emotion. Whatever thoughts were animating the body were extraordinarily simple, like those of a small animal. Ozzie had to get within ten meters before he could even sense them.
“Yo, dude, you hurt a lot of people back there. Some are going to have to be re-lifed, and that hospital doesn’t have a whole lot of medical capsules.” He had to raise his voice above the crashing white water waves of the column as they poured into the lake behind him. Very humid air was surging out. His semiorganic shirt hardened slightly to become water resilient, but he could feel it starting to saturate his Afro hairstyle.
The man put his hand out. Ozzie raised an eyebrow.
“I need to confirm your DNA,” the man said.
“Ho, brother.” Ozzie touched his palm to the one offered, allowing the biononic filaments to sample his dermal layer cells.
“You are Ozzie,” the man declared.
“Really? I thought I was just fooling myself.” In itself the confirmation was interesting; that particular datum was extremely hard to get hold of in the Commonwealth. Ozzie had made sure of that before he left, and ANA enforced the proscription on access. You’d need to be quite the player to get hold of it.
“No, you are not. Please turn off the telepathy effect.”
“Say what?”
“Turn off the telepathy effect. It allows the Chikoya to track Inigo.”
“Ah, I get it. Smart. No.”
“I have brought Inigo to you. You cannot function effectively together if we are constantly interrupted by hostile elements.”
“Man, I don’t want to function effectively or any other way with that little turd.”
“You have to.”
“No, dude, I don’t.”
“I will exterminate the woman if you do not switch it off.”
“Jesus fuck! Why? Who is she?”
“Corrie-Lyn. A past member of the Living Dream Cleric Council and Inigo’s lover.”
“So why kill her?” Ozzie was getting a bad feeling about the way the man’s thoughts functioned. In fact, he was beginning to wonder just what kind of biology was nestling inside the human skull. And who it belonged to.
“She is my leverage. If you do not comply, I will find others to kill until you do.”
“Okay. I’ll accept that threat is real for the moment. What does Inigo want with me?”
“He doesn’t know yet. I am following orders from another source to bring you both together.”
“Shit. Who wants that to happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on! Seriously, dude?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. So what do you expect us to do when we’re up and talking?”
“I do not know. Those operational instructions will not activate until that stage of the mission has reached active status.”
“You’re not human.”
“I was.”
Yep, very bad feeling. “I know of this kind of conditioning. The last time it was used on humans was by the Starflyer. And I’m pretty sure we got rid of that bastard.” Ozzie grinned evilly. “But you never know, do you?”
“I do not know who I work for.”
“So I have to take a chance, huh?”
“Yes. And spare Corrie-Lyn’s life.”
“Hmm. I guess the only reason your boss would get me and the dickhead messiah here together is if he or she or it thinks we can do something about the Void. And for that reason, and that alone, I’ll switch it off. I’m curious to see what you think I can do.” He directed his u-shadow to deactivate the device. “This will take a while.”
“How long?”
“I have no idea. Maybe half an hour. It’s never been switched off before.”
“I will wait.”
Ozzie watched him. The man wasn’t kidding. What followed was no vaguely awkward interval where they occasionally made eye contact and hurriedly looked away, nor was there any attempt to talk. He just stood there, his field scan sweeping around; otherwise he had no interest in anything. That wasn’t human. His thought routines, such as they were, resembled machine code in their simplicity. In one respect that was a relief; Starflyer conditioning was different.
After a while Ozzie felt mindspace withdrawing, collapsing in on itself. It was akin to closing down his gaiamotes. The minds glimmering all around him faded away, most of them expressing sorrow and alarm as they felt mindspace fading. The loss was more profound than he was expecting, even though he knew it was temporary. But he’d lived with and embraced mindspace for so long now that it was a part of his existence.
“It’s done,” he said grimly, and pushed his hair back off his forehead. It had absorbed so much of the vapor thrown out by the water column, it had begun to sag and tangle in unpleasant rattails.
A tic started on the man’s left cheek. Expression slowly emerged on his face, like color filling a penciled-in outline. He let out a long sigh, the kind a witness to something awful would make. “Okay, then, that’s good.”
A thoroughly fascinated Ozzie gave him a very curious look. “What’s happening?” He had a strong urge to switch mindspace back on and feel the man’s thoughts again. But it would take da
ys for the device to reestablish that state.
“My normal thought routines are back.” The man gave Corrie-Lyn’s unconscious form a quizzical glance. “That ought to go down well in some parts.”
“So what was firing away in your brain before?”
“It’s a kind of minimal function mode, in case of neural injury.”
“Uh huh.”
“In my profession there’s a big chance my neural structure will suffer physical damage during a mission. This allows me to remain functional in adverse circumstances.”
“Cool reboot. Uh, what adverse circumstances hit you here?”
“The telepathy effect was affecting me in an unfortunate way.”
“Right,” Ozzie drawled. “So who the hell are you, dude?”
“Aaron.”
“Okay. Top of the list, huh?”
Aaron grinned. “Yes. And thank you for agreeing to meet with me. My minimal version doesn’t have a lot of tact.”
“Man, that’s the biggest understatement I’ve heard in a century. But you said you’ve no idea why you’re here.”
“Partially true. When Inigo wakes up, I’ll know what I have to ask the pair of you to do. I’m expecting it’ll be to stop the Void’s devourment phase.”
“Oh, sure. I’ve got time before lunch. Shall I tell my superwarship crew to get ready to fly? Or are we going to sneak in through the back gate and steal the bad guys’ unguarded power supply?”
Aaron smiled like a particularly tolerant parent. “Is that the back gate on the Dark Fortress?”
“Man, I don’t like you.”
“I appreciate that this isn’t easy.”
“You have no idea.”
Some mornings after she’d woken, Araminta would walk out onto the balcony overlooking the vast expanse of Golden Park to watch the sunrise, enjoying the first rays as they touched the tips of the white pillars along Upper Grove Canal. Over a thousand people were usually there to greet her with waves and cheers and thoughts of thanks directed through the gaiafield. They camped there overnight, much to the annoyance of the city authorities. But Araminta had told the Clerics to grant them permission to stay, knowing that the more people who were watching her, the less anyone could do anything about her. She still gifted everything she saw and heard and felt to the gaiafield, which had led to a storm of embarrassment the first few days as she used the toilet; she soon learned to stop gifting anything but sight at those times and was careful where she looked. She really didn’t want to think about what it was going to be like when it was her time of the month. Mercifully, it was a kind of mutual embarrassment, and no one who came into contact with her was crass enough to mention it.
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