The Evolutionary Void v-3

by Peter Hamilton

  “You were right. Their lives were futile, worthless. They were blessed beyond our wildest aspirations, yet they never thought to look outward. Their bodies flew, but their souls were moribund. That’s so sad. We can’t let such a fate befall our followers. They will be lost, and the galaxy will fall.” She took his hands in her own. “Lead us away from that, Dreamer. Don’t allow the Void to destroy our spirit.”

  “My love.” Inigo gave her a tender kiss.

  It was so intimate, Ozzie was almost embarrassed to be a witness. Almost. The two lovers were staring longingly at each other, smiling with happiness and relief. No one else existed.

  “Dude?”

  Inigo’s smile widened. Corrie-Lyn laughed.

  “Yes, Ozzie?”

  “Just a suggestion: Give your followers the Last Dream.”

  “What?”

  “Corrie-Lyn’s right; you’ve got to start fighting back. So do it; show them how their dream of the Void is going to go horribly wrong, that they’re going to condemn their children to emptiness and extinction. What is it your guy was always saying? Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to do the right? It’ll devastate all your loyal followers; they may understand, they may not. Who gives a shit, man? You were never going to get them all back on your side, anyway. At the very least you’ll give Ethan and Ilanthe a seriously bad day. And if you’re lucky, you might even spark a mutiny amid the fleet.”

  “Yes,” Corrie-Lyn said, suddenly animated. “They deserve to know. They have waited so long to know you again. Give them their true hope back. It is what Edeard would have wanted.”

  “Yes.” Inigo rose to his feet. His gaiamotes opened, and the Dreamer gifted his thoughts once more. All of them.

  If Tyzak had been human, he and the Delivery Man would have been best friends by the time they reached the abandoned city at the end of the valley. Two days hiking together through the countryside was a superb bonding opportunity. The well-tended fields and pastures clustered around the village had given way to wild meadowland after the first three hours. With few animals grazing, the coiling grass-equivalent grew thick and tall, curling blades tangling to produce a difficult carpet to traverse. Tough plants as tall as a human knee were common, their spiky leaves containing a mild toxin that made Tyzak steer well clear. That made their path less straight than the Delivery Man wanted. He stuck with it, telling Tyzak about his life, his family.

  “It sounds as if your kind are diverging as our ancestors once did,” the old Anomine said.

  “Our story has similarities with yours, certainly. From what we know of your story, you were a lot less antagonistic. That is admirable. I wish we would strive for that.”

  “There are stories that tell of conflict among our ancestors. Some believe they have lost their power as they are told with a grudging voice. It would be strange indeed if our past was completely without strife.”

  “That may also be common ground. So many of us like to talk about the good old days from a thousand years ago. Those I’ve met who actually lived through such times say the years between always distort reality.”

  “Who would wish disdain upon their ancestors? They did deliver us to the present day.”

  As well as the stinging plants, the streams caused an irritating degree of diversion. Tyzak weighed a great deal more than a human. He had to be careful of the mud; many an incautious traveler had been trapped in some treacherous patch of marshland, he explained as they tramped along a gurgling rivulet, searching for a stony stretch to cross.

  In return for his selectively edited life story, the Delivery Man was finally told the tale of Gazuk on the collapsing bridge, and Razul and Dozul and Fazku, and a dozen other terrifically boring incidents all too characteristic of a pastoral society. Finally the story of Fozif was forthcoming, which was a great deal more lyrical than the others. The Delivery Man was amused that the first rocket flight to another world remained so revered, whereas all the Anomine had accomplished afterward as a starfaring race was delivered in a few short sentences. But it did allow him to respond appropriately with the story of the Cold War space program and Neil Armstrong, which kept Tyzak quiet for a good forty minutes.

  That first night they made camp on the edge of a small forest of tall trees with broad weeping branches. The Delivery Man took a hand-size cylindrical condenser unit from his belt, which whirred quietly as it propelled air along its short length. Its water sac slowly expanded out from one end like a sallow tumor as it extracted moisture from the air. When it was full, he pumped the clean water into flat packets of food concentrate. It didn’t taste too bad, though he would have preferred something hot. Tyzak just gulped down a couple more potfuls of the cold gloop he’d carried in a backpack.

  As the dark fell, night animals began their calls. The Delivery Man expanded his tent up and out from a square of plastic. Tyzak thanked him for the offer of sharing the tough little shelter but refused, saying he preferred to rest outdoors. The Anomine didn’t sleep as deeply as humans; instead, they spent the night in a mild doze. They certainly didn’t dream.

  Secondary routines woke the Delivery Man a little after midnight local time. His biononic field scan had detected three largish animals approaching. Outside, the city at the end of the valley glimmered with a vivid iridescence, as if the buildings were now made from stained glass wrapped around a fissure of daylight. It was a stark contrast to the black cliff of the forest beside him, animated with rustling wind and sharp warbles. He faced the trees and reconfigured his biononics to produce a complex low-level energy pulse. The approaching animals chittered frantically when he fired it at them, thrashing about in the darkness before rushing off, snapping low branches and tearing up the grass in their hurry to flee. He had no idea what Tyzak felt about killing local creatures, so the shot would have been the equivalent of giving them a damn good smack on the nose, with a modest electric shock thrown in to emphasize the point.

  “I thank you,” Tyzak said, rising from the grass where he’d lain. “Three ›no direct translation: night beasts‹ would have presented even me with a problem defending us.”

  “You see, machines can be useful occasionally.”

  “I have my ›no direct translation: cudgel ax‹ to aid me,” the Anomine said, holding up a length of wood with a couple of spiral carvings along its length and a wicked curved spike on the top. “It has never failed me yet.”

  The Delivery Man turned back to the radiant city and opened a link to Gore. “Have you figured it out yet?”

  “Partly. The damn thing is stabilizing a zero-width wormhole, but it’s currently not extended. The Last Throw’s sensors are starting to examine its quantum composition, but that’s not easy in a collapsed state. I should have an idea where the wormhole used to lead in a few hours or so.”

  “So it’s not the elevation mechanism, then?”

  “Not unless it leads directly to Anomine heaven, no.”

  “If it is zero-width, then nothing physical travels along it.”

  “I know. But it’s early days. I’m probably overlooking something. How are you doing?”

  “Oh, great. I’m in the middle of a boy’s own wilderness adventure. Should be with you in another day.” With that he bid Tyzak good night and went back to the wonderfully soft mattress in the tent.

  They started off again soon after first light. Thin tendrils of mist slithered along the floor of the valley, mirroring the river course in the early light until the sun cleared the hills and burned it off. A constant wind blew in over the city, which now gleamed in the morning light.

  It was a long way, but the Delivery Man was confident they’d make it before nightfall.

  “Do you have a story which tells where the planet will take your kind?” he asked the old Anomine.

  “We still live within the story. From there the ending cannot be seen.”

  “Surely you have some notion. It must be a powerful belief which caused you to stay behind when your ancestors left to become something else.
”

  “There were many stories of hope told at the parting that will endure forever. Some believe that we will eventually sink back to the more simple-minded creatures which we evolved out of and the planet will bring another mind forward.”

  “Isn’t that the opposite of evolution?”

  “Only from a single-species perspective. A planet’s life is paramount. It is such a fragile rare event, it should be treasured and nurtured for the potential it brings forth. If that means abdicating our physical dominance for our successors, then that is what we will accept. Such a time is a long way in our future. In terms of evolution, we have only just begun such a journey.”

  “How do you know if you’ve reached your pinnacle? That you should already be making way?”

  “We don’t. I live in the time of waiting. We expect it to last for several tens of thousands of years. It may be that we will finally understand ourselves through our stories. Many think that once such comprehension is reached, we will simply cease to be. Then there are also those who expect us to carry on in harmony with the planet until the sun itself grows cold and all life is ended. Whatever our fate, I will never know. I am a simple custodian of our life and essence for a short period. That is my purpose. I am content with that and the wondrous stories I will hear in my short time. Can you say the same with your life?”

  “How well you know me already, Tyzak. No, my life lacks the surety and tranquillity of yours. Perhaps if I am successful in knowing what I wish to know of your ancestors, things will get better for me.”

  “I have sorrow for you. I will do what I can to help your story finish well.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s the local star,” Gore announced in midafternoon.

  The Delivery Man glanced up through the canopy of furry branches overhead. He and Tyzak were tramping through a forest where the hot air was still and humid, heavy with a pepper-spice pollen. He squinted against the sharp slivers of sunlight slicing down past the lacework of dangling blue and green leaves. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing. The zero-width wormhole used to extend a hundred and eighty million clicks. That’s how far we are from the primary. There’s nothing else at that distance. The Last Throw ran a sweep.”

  “That’s a huge volume of space to cover with one sensor sweep. It could easily have missed something, especially if it was stealthed. Or maybe the station changed orbit.”

  “You’re thinking like a human. Stop it. The Anomine didn’t have anything to hide.”

  The Delivery Man gave a loud laugh, which startled several of the big clumsy birds from the treetops. “They hid the elevation mechanism well enough, didn’t they?”

  “It’s not hidden. We just don’t know how to look for it through their perception.”

  “That sounds like the argument of a desperate man.” Or worse, a crazy obsessive.

  “Son, you’re following a monster through a forest on an alien planet, hoping it’ll ultimately take you back to your family. Please don’t talk to me about desperate, okay?”

  “All right, but answer me this: Why would you want to open a wormhole into the middle of a star? You’d kill the planet on the other end.”

  “It’s a zero-width wormhole; nothing physical passes down it.”

  The Delivery Man could picture Gore’s face perfectly, gold skin at the side of his eyes creased slightly as he frowned in annoyed perplexity. “Okay, so what information can it gather from a star?”

  “Not the star directly. There must be some kind of sensor bobbing about under the corona. Or maybe deeper. We know they love their research experiments.”

  “We do, but we need the end result, remember?” He took a guess what Gore’s next question was going to be; the impatience was obvious.

  “How long until you get here?” Gore asked.

  The Delivery Man smiled at the forest. “Give us another five hours.”

  “For Christ’s sake!”

  “We’re making good time,” he objected. “Tyzak isn’t exactly the youngest Anomine in his village.”

  “All right. I’ll be waiting.”

  The Delivery Man thought it best not to point out that five hours would only bring them to the edge of the city.

  Dusk had already drained the sky of vitality when they began traversing the flat grassland that skirted the Anomine city. It was a curiously unnerving walk. Unlike a human city, there was no gradual buildup of the urban zone; here it was clearly defined. One minute the suspiciously level and uniform grass was underfoot, the next the Delivery Man was treading on a concrete-equivalent street with a bulbous skyscraper rising high into the ash-gray sky in front of him. Lights were starting to come on inside every building. There didn’t seem to be windows in the human architecture mode; these massive structures had a skin that was partially translucent. Staring at it hard, the Delivery Man thought he saw some kind of movement in the faint moire threads that suffused the substance, as if it were a very slowly moving liquid. That was when he realized it was the high-technology version of the membranes in the village houses.

  The deeper they walked into the city, the darker the sky above became. It was mere minutes before the Delivery Man was completely surrounded by the hulking buildings. He’d been in enough Anomine cities since they’d arrived in the system not to be perturbed by the layout and profiles, but something about being with Tyzak made this experience different. It seemed … not as deserted as it appeared. Warm soft light illuminated the streets, creating a blend of multicolored shadows playing across each surface. More than once he thought he caught them fluttering from the corner of his eye. The sensation of being watched was so great that he finally gave in and ordered his biononics to run a fast field scan.

  Obviously there was nothing. But that cold logic did nothing to dispel the haunting sensation.

  “Do you have stories of ghosts?” he asked Tyzak.

  “Your translation machine is struggling with the word. Do you mean an essence which lingers after the living body has died?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are stories of our ancestors who transferred their thoughts into machines so they might continue after their biological bodies failed.”

  “Yes, humans do that, but that’s not quite what I mean. It would be an existence without physical form.”

  “That is where they went after the separation. This is the method which you seek.”

  “No. Not quite. This is something from our legends, stories that may be fiction. It is nonsense, but it persists.”

  “We have no stories of such a thing.”

  “I see. Thank you.”

  Tyzak continued along the street in his long, fast bobbing motion, not even turning to focus on the Delivery Man. “But the city does speak to me with the smallest stories.”

  “It does?”

  “Not a sound. But a voice nonetheless.”

  “That’s interesting. What story is it telling you?”

  “Where my ancestors left this place. This is how we will find it.”

  The Delivery Man wanted to say: But you don’t use machines. He knew that was what the communication must be, a download into the Anomine equivalent of human macrocellular clusters, a little genetic modification that the remaining Anomine hadn’t purged from themselves, after all.

  “We made assumptions again,” Gore said. “We thought Tyzak was familiar with the elevation mechanism. But he’s got to ask the surviving AIs.”

  “No,” the Delivery Man said. “That’s not what he’d do; I know him well enough by now. He’d rather risk getting torn apart by wild animals at night than use a decent weapon to defend himself with. This is something else.” He ran a more comprehensive field scan. “Nothing is being transmitted, at least that I can detect. Yet I’m still getting the creeps about this place. You’ve been here two days. Has it bothered you?”

  “Ghosts and goblins? No.”

  Typical, the Delivery Man thought. But he was still disquieted by the city, and
Tyzak was receiving information of some kind, which was impacting in a fashion his biononics couldn’t detect. He ran another scan. Sonic. Chemical. Electromagnetic. Visual/subliminal. Microbial. Surface vibration. Anything known to discomfort a human body.

  The city wasn’t active in any way. Yet when he’d walked through previous Anomine cities without Tyzak, he’d felt none of this. So if the effect isn’t impacting from the outside … The Delivery Man opened his gaiamotes fully and searched amid his own thoughts.

  It was there, hovering out of reach like a foreign dream on the fringes of the gaiafield generated by the nests they’d left orbiting above. A mind, but woven from notions very different from those human sentience was composed of. Colors, smells, sounds, emotions-they were all amiss, out of phase with what he perceived as correct.

  “Hello?” he said to it.

  There was a reaction, he was sure of that. A tiny stratum of the strange thoughts twisted and turned. There was even a weak sensation, not a thought or memory but an impression: an animal curled up sleeping, contracting further as something poked its skin.

  So we can understand each other. Except the city didn’t want to, because he was not part of the city, not part of the world. He didn’t belong, didn’t connect. He was alien. There was no regret or even hostility within the somnolent mind. The city didn’t hold opinions on him; it simply knew he wasn’t a part of itself or its purpose.

  “The AI is neural-based,” he told Gore. “I can sense it within the gaiafield. It’s semiactive but only responds to an Anomine’s mind. We’re never going to get any information out of it.”

  “Shit.”

  “How ironic is that? One wish, one thought from a native, and the whole city will revive itself to provide them a life they can’t even imagine anymore. Yet they’re happy with the whole been-there-done-that philosophy.”

  They were trotting down a long boulevard that led up a steepening slope. Slim arches linked the buildings on either side, each one glowing with a uniform color, as if the bands of a rainbow had been split apart and then twisted around. His exovision was displaying a map. “You know, we’re heading your way.”