The Evolutionary Void v-3

by Peter Hamilton

  “Yeah, I see that.”

  “Actually, we’re heading directly for you. That can’t be coincidence.”

  “Sonny, I’ve given up on being surprised by anything this planet pitches at us.”

  It took them another hour to navigate the city’s broad streets. Tyzak walked on unhesitatingly, though toward the end the big alien did seem to be laboring to bounce forward with the vitality he’d possessed that morning. Even the Delivery Man’s biononic-aided muscles were starting to feel the strain. They’d been walking for fifteen hours with only a few short breaks.

  But with the stars barely visible through the cloying light haze cast by the buildings, they finally came out into the open plaza. It was a broad empty circle seven hundred meters in diameter, with long garden segments of dense green-gray shrub trees ringing the outside. Towers and elongated globes over a kilometer high stood around the edge, something about their height and proximity giving the impression that they were leaning in protectively.

  It was a slightly incongruous setting for the Last Throw, but Gore had brought the starship down on one side of the plaza, close to a swollen cylindrical tower with a blunt dark apex. The gold man was already striding over the plaza to greet them, casting a range of pale harlequin shadows in all directions that shifted like petals as he approached. He stopped in the middle of the plaza and bowed gracefully to the old Anomine.

  “Tyzak, I am honored that you should spend time telling us the story of your ancestors’ departure.”

  The Delivery Man raised his eyebrow as he realized that the sharp chittering sounds of Anomine language were coming directly from Gore’s throat.

  “It is a joy to do so,” Tyzak replied. “Your coloration is different. Are you more advanced than your species colleague?”

  “In this form, I am not, no. My body is from a time long past. Circumstances required me to adopt it once more.”

  “I am glad you have. You are interesting.”

  “Thank you. Can you tell us where your most sophisticated ancestors departed this world from?”

  The Delivery Man almost winced at the bluntness.

  “Right here,” Tyzak said.

  Gore pointed a golden forefinger at the matte glass surface of the plaza. “Here?”

  “Yes.”

  Gore turned full circle, almost glaring at the shiny surface of the broad plaza. “So we’re actually standing on the machine which changed them into their final form?”

  “Yes.”

  The Delivery Man’s biononics performed a deep field function scan on the substance below his feet. Gore was doing exactly the same thing. The plaza was actually a solid cylinder extending nearly five hundred meters down into the city’s bedrock. Its nuclear structure was strange, with strands and sheets of enhanced long-chain molecules twisting and coiling around and through one another like smoke tormented by a hurricane. They were all cold and inert. But they did seem to be affecting the underlying quantum fields to a minute degree, an effect so small that it barely registered.

  He’d never seen anything like it before. The smartcore certainly couldn’t identify it or any of the functions the weird molecular arrangements would produce if they went active. When he opened his gaiamotes, he could just sense the elevation mechanism’s soft thoughts, even more abstract than those of the city’s mind. With a despondent curse he knew there was never going to be any possible connection between it and a human. It would take Tyzak or his kind to coax it back to awareness and functionality.

  “They really didn’t want anyone to follow them, did they?” Gore said pensively.

  “Looks that way.”

  “Huh. Then along came me. Right, then.” His hands went onto his hips as he looked up at Tyzak. “Will you ask the machine to switch on for me, please.”

  “The machine which separated our ancestors from us is not a part of my life. It has discharged its purpose. The planet has destined us for something different.”

  “That’s it? That’s your last word on this?”

  “How could it be other?”

  “The galaxy may be destroyed if we don’t establish how your ancestors left this universe.”

  “That is a story which I would not repeat at any gathering. It lacks foundation in our world.”

  “And if I could prove it was true?”

  “If that is what awaits this planet, then it is what awaits us also. The planet carries us.”

  “Goddamn fatalists,” Gore muttered.

  “Now what?” the Delivery Man asked. It was hard to keep a tone of defeat from his voice.

  “Stop complaining, start thinking. We’ll just have to hack into it, is all.”

  “Hack into it?”

  “The control net, not the actual machine. Once you’ve got control of the power switch, you’re in charge, period.”

  “But we’re hardly talking about a management processor. This thing is a cross between a confluence nest and metacube network. You can’t subvert it. The bloody thing’s sentient, half-alive.”

  “Then we physically chop the connections and insert our own command circuitry into the mechanism itself. Now shut up. Have you run a comparison review of the other fifty-three zero-width wormholes we found?”

  “What? I-No.”

  “Stay current. Every one of them is right next to an open space like this plaza. In other words, there are at least fifty-four elevation mechanisms on the planet. Makes sense, really. There were too many high-level Anomine for a single gathering point, especially if they really did all come back from their colony worlds. The upgrade to postphysical must have gone on for a long time.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it must.”

  “Good. So how did they power it? If you’re bootstrapping yourself up to archangel status, that’s going to take a lot of energy, especially when you’re using a machine that’s nearly half a cubic kilometer of solid-state systems.” He turned to stare at the bulging tower that backdropped the Last Throw and wagged an accusatory gold finger at it. “But if you’ve got a cable that plugs directly into the nearest star, power is the least of your worries.”

  “Ah, the wormhole doesn’t carry information …”

  “No way. They’ve got some kind of energy siphon swimming about in the photosphere or maybe deeper. It sends all the power they need back along the zero-width wormhole. Okay, that works for me. We’d best go see if the siphon’s still there.”

  For a moment, words refused to come out of the Delivery Man’s mouth. “Why?”

  “What part of ‘I don’t give up easy’ is hard for you?”

  “The wormhole isn’t extended. Everything is managed by machines that have their own psychology, and it’s anti-us psychology.”

  “One step at a time. First we check it all out. If everything is still there in standby mode just like they left it, then we start an infiltration strategy. Human-derived software is the most devious in the galaxy. Our e-head nerds have had a thousand years to perfect their glorious trade, God bless ’em, and I’d stack them up against anyone. Certainly a race as sweet and noble as this lot.”

  “But we don’t have any with-” The Delivery Man caught the expression on Gore’s golden face and groaned as comprehension kicked in.

  “And if I can’t reestablish something as fucking simple as a de-energized wormhole, then I’m already dead and this is hell taunting me. Now come on.” Gore started marching across the plaza to the Last Throw.

  “Are you leaving?” Tyzak asked.

  “For a short while only,” the Delivery Man assured the old Anomine. “We have to fly to check on something. It should take less than a day. Will you stay here?”

  “I wish to hear the end of your story. I will remain for a while.”

  The Delivery Man resisted the urge to spill out an apology and hurried after Gore.

  In the time it took to dive into hyperspace and reemerge three million kilometers out from the star’s photosphere the culinary unit had produced a batch of lemon risotto with diced and
fried vegetables. Lizzie used to make it, standing over a big pan on the cooker, sipping wine and stirring in stock for half an hour while the two of them chatted away at the end of the day. The Delivery Man instructed the unit to produce a side plate of garlic bread and started grating extra Parmesan cheese over the streaming rice. Lizzie always objected to that, saying it dulled the flavor of the vegetables. Gore shook his head at the offer of a bowl.

  “You’re still worrying about Justine, aren’t you?” the Delivery Man said.

  “No, I am not worried about Justine,” Gore growled out. “We’re still well inside the time effect it should take her to reach Querencia.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Even if something has happened, it’s not as if we can launch a rescue mission.”

  “Unless that witch Araminta persuades the Skylord to abandon the Silverbird, I don’t see anything which could interrupt her flight.”

  “That wouldn’t stop my Justine. Maybe slow her down some but nothing worse. You have no idea how stubborn she can be.”

  “Where does she get that from? I wonder.”

  Gore gave him a small grin. “Her mother.”

  “Really?”

  “No idea. That is one memory I made sure I junked a thousand years ago.”

  The Delivery Man put a slice of the garlic bread into his mouth and ended up sucking down air to cool it. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Son, I’m not a fucking soap opera. I can’t afford to be; my emotional baggage level is zero. I haven’t had anything to do with that woman since Nigel watched Dylan Lewis take his epic step.”

  “What?”

  “Kids today! The Mars landing.”

  “Ah, right.”

  Gore sighed in exasperation.

  The Delivery Man wasn’t sure just how much of that attitude was for his benefit. As he forked up more risotto, the Last Throw emerged back into spacetime. Warning icons immediately popped up in his exovision, along with a series of external sensor feeds. A quick status review showed the force fields could cope with the current exposure level of radiation and heat. Hysradar return of the corona and photosphere was fuzzy, distorted by the massive star’s gravity. Even the quantum field resonance was degraded.

  “We need to get closer,” Gore announced.

  The Delivery Man knew better than to argue as they began to accelerate in toward the star at ten gees. He just hoped that Gore wouldn’t try to tough out the heat. The way the gold man was wired, it was a distinct possibility.

  There were no borderguards within ten million kilometers of the star, and the few that did cover that section of the Anomine solar system showed no interest in their flight. Nor were there any other kind of stations, only a host of asteroidal junk and burned-out comet heads. The closest large object was the innermost planet at seventeen million kilometers out, a baked rock with a day three and a half times the length of its year, allowing its surface to become semimolten at high noon. It was only the starship that had followed them from the Leo Twins that showed any interest in their exploratory flight, remaining five million kilometers away and still keeping itself stealthed.

  The Last Throw’s safe deflection capacity limit was reached at approximately a million kilometers above the fluctuating plasma of the photosphere, leaving them swimming through the thin, ultravolatile corona. Giant streamers of plasma arched up from the terrible nuclear maelstrom below, threatening to engulf the little ship as they expanded into frayed particle typhoons rushing along the flux lines.

  Sensors probed down into the inferno, seeking out any anomaly amid the superheated hydrogen. The starship completed an equatorial orbit and shifted inclination slightly, scanning a new section of the star’s surface. Eight orbits later they found it.

  A lenticular force field two thousand kilometers below the surface of the convection zone. Hysradar revealed it to be fifty kilometers wide. Intense gravatonic manipulation was keeping it in place against the force of the hydrogen currents that otherwise would have expelled it up into the photosphere at a respectable percentage of lightspeed.

  “That’s definitely our power siphon,” Gore said. Hysradar showed them the flux lines swirling around the disc in odd patterns. The force field appeared to be slightly porous, allowing matter to leak inward at the edge.

  “Why not just use a mass energy converter?” the Delivery Man mused.

  “Check the neutrino emissions; only a mass-energy converter will give those kinds of readings,” Gore said. “And look at it. All it’s doing now is holding position, and see how much mass it’s converting just to do that, because sure as commies complain about fairness, that intake ain’t flowing out anywhere afterward. This is the mother of all turbo-drive converters.”

  “Okay, so we’ve proved it’s there and still functioning. Now what?”

  “Our force fields wouldn’t get us halfway, but the only way we can access it and infiltrate is to go down and rendezvous-possibly even dock, or at least cling on and start drilling into the thing’s brain.”

  The Delivery Man gave him a frankly scared look. “You’re shitting me.”

  “Wish I were, son. Don’t panic. The replicator we have on board is high-order. We’ll have to churn out some advanced force field generators to upgrade the Last Throw’s defenses. Once they’re beefed up to Stardiver standard, we’ll drop into the convection zone and switch the power back on to the elevation mechanism. Well … when I say us, I mean you.”

  “It looks impressive,” Catriona Saleeb said.

  “Yes.” For once Troblum felt content. He looked at the featureless suit of matte gray armor standing in the middle of the cabin with its round helmet almost touching the ceiling. It was big, adding about twenty-five percent to his existing bulk. That didn’t matter; the electromuscle bands could move it around easily enough. Walking would be effortless. As would flying, thanks to the little regrav unit he’d incorporated. There were no weapons, of course; he couldn’t even think along those lines. But the defenses … He would be safe anywhere. In other words, he could even face the Cat and not piss himself as he had on Sholapur.

  I should have built one of these a long time ago.

  At his order the two small assemblybots crawled down the suit like oversize spiders and scuttled away. He reached out to the table where his snack rested and picked up a wedge of the club sandwich.

  His exovision display showed him the Spike, now a mere three light-years away. Its anchor mechanism was creating a huge distortion that extended out from spacetime to warp the surrounding quantum fields. He found the effect fascinating; it was nothing like a human hyperdrive. Unfortunately, the Mellanie’s Redemption lacked the kind of sensors that could run a truly comprehensive scan.

  Troblum finished the snack, washed it down with some Dutch lager, and started putting on the armor suit. By the time he was comfortably ensconced, the starship had dropped out of hyperspace two thousand kilometers out from the Spike’s sunward side. Visual sensors showed him the fantastic curving triangle of metallic chambers glistening in the bright sunlight like silver bubbles. Dark tubes wove between them in complex convolutions. He immediately understood why the crew of the navy ship that had discovered it believed they’d found the galaxy’s biggest starship; the shape was intrinsically aerodynamic. Space on either side of the giant alien habitat was filled with the dull glimmer of the Hot Ring arching away to infinity, bolstering the notion that it was frozen in midemergence.

  He flew the starship across the sunward surface, accelerating to match the structure’s unnatural orbital vector. Bright flashes of blue-white sunlight burst from the mirror facets of the sail shape as Mellanie’s Redemption moved above the uneven segments. Sensors scanned landing pads dotted all along the winding H-congruous transport tubes, searching out a specific profile. The Mellanie’s Redemption certainly hadn’t been able to track their target in stealth mode during the flight; he was just hoping they’d arrived in time.

  “There they are,” he said finally.
/>   “Oscar’s ship?” Catriona asked.

  “Yeah. They’ve landed close to Octoron. That figures; it’s the largest human settlement.” He ordered the smartcore to put them down on an empty pad two kilometers from Oscar’s ship. A weak localized gravity field came on as soon as they touched down, but Troblum kept the ultradrive powered up just in case. The smartcore aimed a communication laser at the starship he’d followed from the Greater Commonwealth. “I’d like to speak to Oscar Monroe, please,” he said when his u-shadow told him a connection had been accepted.

  “And you must be Troblum,” Oscar said.

  The burst of fright that came from hearing his name made him twitch. Electromuscle amplified the motion. His armor helmet hit the cabin ceiling. Secondary thought routines immediately brought up the command for Mellanie’s Redemption to power straight into hyperspace and flee. A single thought was all it would take to trigger it. “How did you know my name?”

  “Paula Myo said you might make contact.”

  “How did she know?” Even as he asked, he knew the SI had told her, had betrayed him.

  “Damned if I know,” Oscar said. “She scares the shit out of me, and we go way back. Then again, how did you know I was on board the Elvin’s Payback?”

  “Is that the name of your ship? What was he like?”

  “Adam? Like me, misguided in that way only the truly young can be. Is that what you wanted to ask?”

  “No. I may be able to help.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I know about the Swarm. I helped build it. Ozzie, Araminta, and Inigo might find that useful.”

  There was a long pause. “I’m sure they would. We’ve already made contact with Ozzie. There’s a capsule coming to collect us from our airlock in ten minutes. Why don’t we fly over to yours straight after.”

  “Okay. I’ll wait for you.”

  Afterward he stood on a vast snow-swept tundra, completely naked yet feeling no pain. Somewhere in the distance tall mountains with fearsome rocky pinnacles guarded the edge of the rough icy country, a geological wall between civilization and the wild where he had come from. He wasn’t cold despite the harsh wind and flurries of snow brushing against him. This was home, after all, his one refuge against the rest of his life and all the anguish it brought whenever he lived it.