The Evolutionary Void v-3

by Peter Hamilton

  Troblum wiped his sleeve across his eyes, getting rid of the moisture. “Right,” he acknowledged. The Mellanie’s Redemption slipped forward, accelerating hard as it passed into the wormhole’s haze.

  – -

  The Cat’s exovision showed her the eight quantumbusters activating fifty kilometers below the surface of the compressed-hydrocarbon ocean. Their titanic pressure waves inflated, merging.

  Hysradar scanned incessantly, trying to discern the Alexis Denken amid the turmoil. But hydrocarbon fluid at that density was strange stuff, and the massive energy deformation didn’t help. If Paula didn’t make a dash for freedom up to the hydrogen layer, she’d be dead. No starship could withstand the kind of force currently cascading through the hydrocarbon.

  Still nothing.

  The smog rippled apart as the hydrocarbon eruption began. It was like seeing a perfectly round volcano erupt. The cone kept rising-five, ten, twenty kilometers high. As it lifted up into the hydrogen zone where the pressure was far lower, it began to boil violently, spewing out great columns of spray like rocket exhausts that just kept thundering upward. Within seconds the hydrogen zone for hundreds of kilometers was clotted by the weird chemical fug. Optical band imagery was reduced to zero as the greasy vapor surged around her starship. Regrav units strained to hold position as the gales rushed past.

  “So fuck you, then,” the Cat told Paula’s cold, gigantic funeral pyre.

  Sensors showed her that the upsurge was still growing, which was surprising but hardly threatening. The crest reached a full hundred kilometers, drawing down a barrage of almighty lightning strikes from the belly of the cloud layer far above.

  Mountainous waves began to gush ponderously down the eruption’s flanks to the ocean below. The Cat still couldn’t see anything, but the starship’s sensors provided her an excellent graphics-profile image. The hydrocarbon was draining away from something solid, something vast that was still impossibly rising upward.

  “What the-” she sputtered. Then the profile began to resolve. Fourteen mushroom shapes were shrugging off their cloak of glutinous liquid and filthy gas to expose the crystalline domes that roofed them. They were attached to the main bulk of the thing, which measured just over sixty kilometers long.

  High Angel cleared the unstable cleft in the hydrocarbon ocean, shedding a tempest of seething smog.

  A communication channel opened without any authorization from the Cat’s u-shadow. “Hello, Catherine Stewart,” Qatux said.

  “Fuck.” She sent her starship into a seventy-gee climb, not even able to scream against the abysmal force crushing her body. Bones snapped; flesh and membranes tore.

  “You don’t remember my wife, do you?” Qatux asked.

  “Your wife? No!”

  “Nor will you ever.”

  Exovision showed the Cat an energy pulse blasting straight up from the High Angel. It struck her starship-

  The shot was powerful enough to warp spacetime in a very specific fashion, so that although the starship was blown apart in milliseconds, time within the explosion stretched on and on and on … To the Cat the utterly excruciating instant of her death lasted for hour after long terrible hour. Though she never realized it, it was exactly the same amount of time it had taken Tiger Pansy to die one thousand one hundred ninety-nine years ago.

  Nine thousand light-years from the boundary of the Void and five light-years from the closest star, a wormhole terminus swirled open, spilling its gentle indigo light out into interstellar space. Thirty seconds later the streamlined shape of the Mellanie’s Redemption flew out.

  “FucktheLady,” Corrie-Lyn exclaimed. “We made it.” She smiled incredulously and kissed Troblum before he could stop her.

  Behind them, the weak light faded away as the wormhole closed, leaving them as isolated and alone as any humans had ever been. Comprehension of their status quickly spread through the cabin, amplified and reinforced by the tiny self-generated gaiafield. It drained away any sense of elation.

  Inigo gave Corrie-Lyn a quick hug in the uncomfortable silence that followed.

  “What do you think happened?” Araminta-two asked.

  “The important thing is that deranged bitch didn’t follow us,” Oscar said.

  “And Paula?”

  Oscar had to grin at that. “Trust me, if anyone in this universe can take care of herself, it’s Paula Myo.”

  “So what do we do now?” Inigo asked.

  “There is no question,” Aaron said. “We go into the Void.”

  “I meant, what do we do about the warrior Raiel?”

  “Two options,” Oscar said. “If Paula survived, we might already have a clear passage confirmed. If not, we really do try what Troblum suggested and ask nicely.”

  “We got this far,” Corrie-Lyn said.

  “That’s the kind of mad optimism I like,” Oscar said. “Troblum, let’s go.”

  “We need to start installing the medical chambers,” Tomansio said.

  Oscar grinned. “Another optimist.”

  “Just being practical.” Tomansio patted one of the capsules stacked up against the bulkhead. He didn’t have to move his arm far.

  “So next question,” Liatris said. “Who gets to sleep off the next part of the voyage?”

  “Me, happily,” Oscar said. “So long as you bring me out when we go through the boundary. That I have to see.”

  “We’re going FTL,” Troblum announced. “I’ll get the bots to prepare the forward hold.”

  “How long to the Wall stars?” Aaron asked.

  “A hundred and sixty hours.”

  Paula teleported into Qatux’s private chamber, for which she was grateful. She certainly couldn’t have walked. There was a fat warming sheath around her left leg. Twelve semiorganic nodules were stuck over various parts of her torso, their slender filaments weaving through her skin to combine with biononic systems deeper inside her body, helping to repair the damaged cells. She wore a loose robe over all the systems and limped along as if she were an old woman, which was appropriate enough, she acknowledged grimly.

  A human-shaped chair rose silently out of the light blue floor, and she eased herself into it. Directly ahead the silver-gray wall continued its gentle liquid rippling. Tiger Pansy’s face smiled back gleefully at her through the odd twisting motions.

  You can rest easy now, Paula thought. Wherever you are.

  The wall parted, and Qatux walked in. One of his medium-size tentacles stretched out, and its paddle tip touched Paula on the cheek. There was a phantom sensation of warmth that lingered after the touch ended, perhaps a sensation of sympathy and concern, too.

  “Are you badly damaged?” Qatux whispered.

  “Only my pride.”

  “Ahhh,” the Raiel sighed. “The old ones are the best ones.”

  “Thank you for your help.”

  “And yet her real self lies dormant in Paris.”

  “Where it should be. Not resurrected to act as some human political movement’s agitator. Not that she ever did as she was told in whatever incarnation.”

  A couple of tentacles waved about in what could have been agitation. “As you said, the universe needs to be rid of her.”

  “I was sure if anything could make her termination definite, it would be High Angel. Navy ships have the firepower, but she’d detect them.”

  “Not quite what my race intended this arkship should be used for, but we live in extraordinary times.”

  “I hope I haven’t gotten you into trouble, Qatux.”

  “No. We Raiel do not lack for empathy. However, I believe some of the humans in residence are slightly shocked by events. Not to mention the Naozun.”

  Paula couldn’t remember any race called the Naozun. “Good. It’s about time we stirred things up.”

  “We have grown, you and I, Paula.”

  “I should certainly hope so. We’ve had long enough.”

  Air whistled softly out of Qatux’s mouth. “Indeed.”

  “Did
the wormhole open as Troblum predicted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Finally! Something went right for us. Whatever the hell that something is. I just hope Aaron’s controller knows what they’re doing. On which note, I have yet another favor to ask.”

  “Yes.”

  “The Mellanie’s Redemption needs to get into the Void. Can you get the warrior Raiel to let it through the Gulf unharmed? I genuinely believe it might be our only chance to prevent a catastrophic expansion phase.”

  “I will explain why they should. I can do no more.”

  “Thank you.” She rubbed at the sheath on her leg, knowing that was never going to get rid of the itch. “Where are we going now?”

  “Back to the Commonwealth.”

  “Not out of the galaxy, then?” Paula was faintly relieved: The Raiel obviously still had hope.

  “No. That time is not yet here. As you said, there is little which prevents it.”

  “What about the Dark Fortress spheres? Are they capable of stopping the Void?”

  “We don’t know. But understand this, Paula: The warrior Raiel will attempt to stop the Pilgrimage fleet. They do not indulge in sentiment about that many lives when the very galaxy is threatened by their actions.”

  “I understand, and I do not hold you to account. We have to be responsible for ourselves. If that many humans want to try to endanger all life in this galaxy, they must not be surprised if others attempt to prevent them.”

  “Yet your own kind did not.”

  Paula hung her head, mainly in shame, but there was frustration there, too. “I know. Those of us who were free to do so did what we could. The level of the conspiracy took us by surprise. In that, we failed so many.”

  The Raiel touched her cheek again. “I do not hold you to account, Paula.”

  “Thank you,” she managed to say.

  “I do have some privileges as captain of an arkship. We are in communication with the warrior Raiel. Would you like to see the galactic core defenses in action? I imagine the last stand of our species will make quite a spectacle.”

  The Delivery Man waited patiently while the trolley glided across the plaza and rose up to the Last Throw’s midsection hatchway. The chunk of equipment it was carrying only just fit through the opening, but it managed to get inside. The assemblybots that the replicator had produced a couple of days earlier started to ease the equipment off the trolley. Once they began the integration process, he’d go up and inspect.

  He was useful again, which lifted his spirits considerably. His physics and engineering knowledge was hardly up there at Ozzie and Nigel levels, but his recent cover job analyzing technology levels made him competent enough to oversee the integration. The systems the replicator was producing were all geared toward giving the Last Throw additional strength. Strong enough to ward off a star’s energy from zero range. It was a very special kind of crazy who contemplated such a procedure. The design in the smartcore memory had been developed by the Greater Commonwealth Astronomical Agency for its Stardiver program. None of the probes they’d dispatched had ever carried human passengers.

  The Delivery Man glanced across the plaza to where Gore was talking to Tyzak. It was like observing a devoted priest and a confirmed atheist locking horns. Their conversation, or argument, or discussion-whatever-had been going on for days now. There’d even been pictures for emphasis. Gore had brought a holographic portal down from the Last Throw, showing Tyzak various images of the Void, the Gulf, the Wall stars, DF spheres, even views of Makkathran, Skylords, and the Void nebulae taken from Inigo’s dreams.

  Not once in all that time had he let up in his efforts to persuade the Anomine to talk to the elevation mechanism. Then they received Justine’s dream of landing at Makkathran, and Gore’s determination went off the chart. The Delivery Man found it hard to believe that the Gore he knew had so much patience. But then, even he’d punched the air when the Silverbird touched down in Golden Park. It was quite a moment.

  Tyzak was interested; some parts of the story he found fascinating. But none of it inclined him to help ward off the end of everything. The old Anomine insisted that the future, specifically his race’s future, could be determined only by the planet itself. That prohibited the use of relics from the past.

  “But it’s not your future that will be affected in any way,” Gore was saying. “All I need is a little help from a machine which you don’t even use anymore. Do your beliefs prohibit charity?”

  “I understand your problem, but you are asking me to abandon my entire philosophy, my reason for existence, and delve back into the past we have completely rejected.”

  “You would be knocking on the door. I would be the one passing through.”

  “You are attempting to differentiate the entire act into degrees. That is not applicable. Any act of renunciation is ultimate.”

  “How can helping others be renunciation of yourself?”

  “It is the method, as you very well know, friend Gore.”

  “How do you think your ancestors would respond to this request? Their generosity helped other species before, when you isolated the Prime aliens.”

  “I cannot know, but I suspect they would reanimate the machine for you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But they are gone. And they were an aberration in our true line of evolution.”

  “Your inaction means you’d be killing trillions of living things. Doesn’t that bother you in the slightest?”

  “It is a cause for concern.”

  The Delivery Man stiffened. That was the first time the slightest concession had been made to reasonableness on Tyzak’s part. Reasonableness on human terms, anyway.

  “The space fortresses that guard your solar system, the cities that never decay, this machine beneath our feet which slumbers, all these things were left behind by the ancestors you dismiss. They wanted you to have options; that is why they bequeathed them to you. So much of what they had is now dust.” Gore’s hand waved loosely up at the lustrous band of debris orbiting the planet. “But these specific artifacts remain because they knew that one day you might need them. Without the fortresses many species would be here plundering the riches your ancestors left behind. A large part of evolution is interaction. Isolation is not evolution; it is stagnation.”

  “We are not isolated,” Tyzak answered. “We live within the planet’s will; our every second is determined by the planet. It will deliver us to our destiny.”

  “But I’ve shown you what will happen to your planet if the Void’s final expansion phase begins. It will be destroyed, and you with it. That is not natural; that is an external event of pure malice, the cessation of evolution not just here but on every star system in the galaxy. Such a thing cannot be factored into your belief of planetary-guided evolution, for it is not inborn. If you truly wish to continue your evolution on this world, you have to protect it. Your ancestors left you the ability to do that, to ward off the unnatural. You don’t have to do anything other than ask the machine to awake. It and I will do everything else.”

  The Delivery Man held his breath.

  “Very well,” Tyzak said. “I will ask.”

  Gore tipped his head back to look the old Anomine directly in the eye and sighed. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

  The Delivery Man hurried over to the two of them. Dusk had fallen now, its fading light bathing the plaza in a cool gray illumination. All around them the imposing city buildings were responding to oncoming night with their own internal radiance. Pale colorful streaks shimmered over an igloo-style shelter they’d expanded close to the parked starship where the replicator had been set up. The second, smaller shelter housed the intrusion apparatus Gore had created in case the elevation mechanism proved reluctant.

  Last Throw’s smartcore reported that it was initiating a deep field function scan of the elevation mechanism, mapping out functions and control pathways. The Delivery Man couldn’t help the ridiculous burst of optimism lightening his
heart as he drew close to the two figures profiled by the harlequin glow of a deep city canyon on the other side of the plaza. It was almost symbolic of the moment, he thought, the two wildly different species finally coming together in the face of adversity. If only I wasn’t such a cynic.

  Just as he reached them, he saw something move down the glimmering canyon beyond. Retinal inserts provided a clearer resolution. “No bloody way,” he grunted. It was a Silfen, riding some huge quadruped animal with thick scarlet fur. The Silfen himself was clad in a long, magnificently gaudy honey-colored coat decorated with thousands of jewels that sparkled energetically in the city’s luminosity.

  “Gore!”

  Gore turned around. “What?”

  But it was too late. The Silfen had ridden off down an intersection. “Doesn’t matter.”

  Tyzak had become very still. When the Delivery Man concentrated on his own diminutive awareness of the city’s thoughts, he could just make out another stream of consciousness out there somewhere. Like the city’s, these were precise and cool. Not quite aloof, though, for there was definite interest in why they had been roused.

  “I feel you,” the elevation mechanism said. “You are Tyzak.”

  “I am.”

  “Do you wish to attain transcendence from your physical existence?”

  “No.”

  “I exist for that purpose.”

  “I wish to transcend,” Gore told the mechanism.

  “You are alien. I cannot help you.”

  “Why not?”

  “You are alien. I exist to lift Anomine to their next stage of life.”

  “Our biochemistry is essentially the same. I am sentient. It would not be difficult for you.”

  “No. Only Anomine may lift themselves through me.”

  “Are you sentient?”

  “I am aware.”

  “There is a possibility that an event at the heart of the galaxy may destroy this planet and with it all the surviving Anomine. If I am elevated to the next stage of life, I will be able to prevent this from happening.”

  “Should such an event occur, the remaining Anomine will be assisted to transcend if that is what they wish to become.”