The Dreaming Void v-1

by Peter Hamilton

  * * * * *

  The Mars Twins were an unusual turgid red as their upper-atmosphere hurricanes swirled and battled along thousand kilometre fronts, obliterating the dark shadows which occasionally hinted at surface features. Their dour ambiance matched Cleric Conservator Ethan's mood as he strode through the Liliala Hall. Above him the storms rampaging across the visionary ceiling flashed purple lightning and pummelled away at each other like waves assaulting a beach. They swirled together, veiling the two small planets. The silent, vivid battle made for an impressive entrance as he swept through the arching door into the Mayor's suite.

  Rincenso and Falven, two of his staunchest supporters on the Council, were waiting for him in the first anteroom; cautious expressions made more sinister by the amber lighting. All they allowed of themselves into the gaiafield was a polite radiance of expectation. Not even Ethan's easily sensed mood could make them waver.

  He beckoned them to follow as he pushed through into the oval sanctum. Strong sunlight shone in through the high Rayon-nant-style windows, illuminating the grand wooden desk identical to the one which the Waterwalker had sat behind when he was Mayor of Makkathran. Five simple chairs were arranged before it. Councillor Phelim stood at the side of one, waiting for Ethan to sit himself behind his desk. He wore the simple everyday blue and green robe of a Councillor. It was meant to testify to an open and approachable person who would take time to solve someone's problem. On Phelim it was off-putting, emphasizing his height and severe facial features.

  'So the Skylord would seem to be on its way to Querencia, Ethan said as he sat down.

  Falven cleared his throat. 'It is heading for some kind of planet. We have to assume it is Querencia. The prospect of another planet housing humans in the Void would open many complications for us.

  'Not so, Rincenso said. 'I don't care how many other H-congruous planets there are, nor who lives on them. We are concerned only with Querencia and the Waterwalker. It is his example we wish to follow.

  'Too many unknowns to pronounce on, Falven said.

  'Not that many, surely, Ethan said. 'We cannot doubt the Second Dreamer is dreaming a Skylord. This creature is aware of the souls and minds of living sentient entities. It and its flock are flying towards a solid planet to collect those souls and carry them to Odin's Sea. This flight fulfils every teaching of the Lady.

  'I wonder what life in Makkathran is like now, Rincenso mused. 'So much time has passed.

  'You'll find out soon enough, Ethan said. 'The hulls of our Pilgrimage ships are being fabricated. We will be ready to launch soon. Phelim?

  'We should have the hulls and internal systems finished by September, Phelim said. 'The cost is colossal, but the Free Market Zone has a considerable manufacturing capacity. Component construction is heavily cybernated: once the templates are loaded in, production is a simple process. And of course, no matter how much criticism we face, External World companies are always eager for our money.

  'September, Rincenso said. 'Dear Ozzie, so close.

  Ethan did not look at Phelim. No one else had been told of the ultradrive engines Marius had promised to deliver. 'The physical aspect goes well, he said. 'That just leaves us with our enigmatic Second Dreamer to deal with. We still don't know why he hasn't revealed himself, but it is significant that his dreams have become so much more substantial as the ships are built.

  'Why does he not come forward? Falven said. The gaiafield revealed the flash of anger in his mind. 'Curse him, are we never to find him?

  'He is on Viotia, Phelim said.

  'Are you sure?

  'Yes. The gaiafield confluence nests on Viotia were the first to receive his last dream. They disseminated it across the Greater Commonwealth gaiafield.

  'Do you know where on Viotia he is?

  'Not yet. But now we have confirmed the planet, our efforts will be concentrated on determining the exact geographical location. Of course, people move about. And if he is actively seeking anonymity he will simply relocate after every dream.

  'Which must be prevented, Ethan said simply.

  'How? Rincenso asked.

  'This is why I have asked you two here today, my dearest friends and allies on the Council. The Second Dreamer is crucial to Pilgrimage. He is the one who must ask the Skylords for guidance through the barrier, and onward to Querencia. In the absence of Inigo, he is the one who will light our way.

  'So what do you want us to do? Falven asked.

  'There are several routes available to us, Ethan said quietly. 'I believe the one we will end up travelling along is to bring Viotia into the Free Market Zone.

  The two Councillors gave each other a puzzled look.

  'It is part of our Free Market Zone, Falven said.

  'By treaty, yes, Ethan said. 'It is not one of our core planets. Yet. We must be prepared to complete the admission process, culminating with Ellezelin opening a wormhole between our two worlds. Following that, Viota's government should adopt a more favourable stance towards Living Dream. Ultimately, I would like to welcome them into our hierocracy.

  Falven sat back, looking startled.

  Rincenso merely smiled in appreciation. 'There are a great many of our followers there already. Enough to tilt the demographic?

  'Possibly, Phelim said.

  'In which case I would be happy to raise the proposal in the Council.

  'I, too, Falven said slowly.

  'There is a degree of hostility and resentment currently being shown to our followers on Viotia, Ethan said. 'If a wormhole were to be opened, binding their economy to ours, that resentment will manifest itself in street violence. We would need to guarantee the security of all Living Dream adherents.

  'Do we have that ability? Falven asked cautiously.

  'There are enough national security forces spread across the core planets of the Free Market Zone to enforce the rule of law on Viotia, Phelim said. 'We have been recruiting additional personnel since Ethan's ascension to Conservator.

  'Enough for this?

  'Yes.

  'Oh. I see.

  'I regret any inconvenience this may cause to Viotia's citizens, Ethan said. 'But we cannot afford to lose the Second Dreamer.

  'If we just knew why he's refusing to reveal himself… Rincenso said acrimoniously.

  'Because he doesn't yet know, Ethan said with a weary sadness.

  'How can he not know?

  'It took several weeks for Inigo to realize what was happening. At first he believed his dreams to be some kind of overspill from a full-sense drama that was leaking into the Centurion Station gaiafield. I believe that confusion is repeating again. To begin with all we had were small fragments, glimpses of the Skylord which we edited together. Now the contact has been established, the length and strength of the dreams are increasing. As they did with Inigo. Soon they will reach a crescendo and the Second Dreamer will realize what he has been chosen to do.

  Falven gave the others in the oval sanctum an uncomfortable look. 'Then why do we need to incorporate Viotia?

  'What if the Second Dreamer isn't an adherent of Living Dream? Ethan asked mildly.

  'But—

  'There's a much worse scenario than that, Phelim said. 'If one of our opponents were to reach him first and use him to sabotage the Pilgrimage.

  'They'll be looking, Rincenso said.

  'Of course they'll be looking, Ethan said. 'But we have a huge advantage with our command of the gaiafield. Not even ANA's despicable Factions can intrude upon that. We must reach him first.

  'And if he refuses to help? Falven enquired.

  'Change his mind, Phelim told them. 'In a very literal sense.

  'I suppose that's necessary, Rincenso said uneasily.

  'I would hope not, Ethan said. 'But we must be prepared for all eventualities.

  'Yes. I understand.

  'What I would like to do first is make a simple appeal to both the Second Dreamer and the Skylord, Ethan said.

  Falven's thoughts rippled with surprise,
which he made no effort to hide. 'A Unisphere declaration?

  'No. A direct intervention into the next dream.

  'How?

  'The Second Dreamer is issuing his dream into the confluence nests in real time, Phelim said. 'Right at the end of the last dream, as it fades away, there is an anomaly, a tiny one. It is extremely hard to spot, we believe it has escaped attention among the majority of our followers. But our Dream Masters have been reviewing those last moments. There is a human emotion intruding into the Skylord's stream of consciousness. A weak sense of pleasure, but one with considerable sexual connotations. In all probability we are witnessing post-coital satisfaction.

  'The Second Dreamer receives the Skylord's dream when he's having sex? Rincenso asked incredulously.

  'The human brain is most receptive when relaxed, Ethan said. 'The period immediately after sex certainly generates that state.

  'Did this happen to Inigo? Falven was almost indignant.

  Ethan's lips twitched in amusement. 'Not that I'm aware of. But Inigo never issued his dreams in real time, so I don't suppose we'll ever know. But this anomaly is the strongest indicator we have that this is real-time dreaming. In which case we should be able to intervene, to converse with both the Second Dreamer and the Skylord. If we can successfully perform the latter intervention we may be able to establish a direct connection without the Second Dreamer. In which case our problems will be solved. Viotia becomes an irrelevance, as does our elusive Second Dreamer. And we will be one step closer to the Void.

  'That would be… wonderful, Falven said.

  'Our Dream Masters are now monitoring Viota's confluence nests for the time the Second Dreamer starts to dream. When it happens we will make the attempt.

  'And if that fails?

  'Then you will bring your proposal to Council.

  * * * * *

  Fourteen hundred years was a long time alive by anyone's standards. However, there were Commonwealth citizens who had remained in their bodies for longer; Paula had even met a few of them. She didn't enjoy their company. Mostly they were Dynasty members who couldn't let go of the old times when their family empires used to run the Commonwealth. After biononics and ANA and Higher culture changed the Central Worlds for ever, they'd grabbed what they could of their ancient wealth and reestablished themselves on External Worlds where they set about recreating their personal golden age.

  They had the money and influence to be bold and build new experimental societies, something different, something exciting; but for all their extraordinarily long life, they'd never experienced another way to live. And the longer they managed to maintain their own little empire around them the more resistant to change they became. Nothing new was attempted, instead they mined history for stability. On one planet in particular their social engineering reached its nadir. Iaioud, where a ruling Halgarth collective had founded and maintained a society that was even less susceptible to change than Huxley's Haven by the simple expedient of prohibiting conception. At the end of a fifty year life every citizen was rejuvenated and memory wiped — except the state knew who they were and what job they did best. On emerging fresh from their clinic treatment they would then be appointed to the same profession again, and spend the next fifty years working as they had done for the last fifty — hundred, three hundred years. It was the ultimate feudalism.

  Three hundred years ago, Paula had led an undercover team of agents there, infiltrating the clinics which performed the rejuvenation treatment and slowly corrupting them. Over the next few years memory wipes became incomplete, allowing people to remember what had gone before. Thousands of women discovered that their revitalized bodies had a functional uterus again. Underground networks were established; first to help the criminal outcasts who had given birth to children, then assuming a greater role in offering political resistance to the Halgarth regime.

  Forty years after Paula and her team finished their mission to sow dissent on Iaioud, a revolution overturned the Halgarth collective using minimal force. It took a further hundred and fifty years for the twisted world to regain its equilibrium and claw its way back up the socioeconomic index to something approaching the average for an External World.

  At the time, Paula had worried she still wasn't ready for that kind of mission. Change was a long time coming within herself. It was one thing to realize intellectually that she had to adapt mentally to keep up with the ever-shifting cultures of the Greater Commonwealth. But unlike everyone else, she had to make a conscious decision to alter herself physically in order for that evolution to manifest. Her carefully designed DNA hardwired her neurones into specific personality traits. In order to survive any kind of phrenic progression she had to first destroy what was. An action which came perilously close to individuality suicide. And in her, as in every human, vanity wasn't something bound to DNA; she considered her existing personality to be more than adequate — in short, she liked being herself.

  But in slow increments, every time she needed to undergo rejuvenation, she modified a little bit more of her psychoneural profiling. At the end of the three-century process, she was still obsessive about a great many things, but now it was through choice rather than a physically ordained compulsion. One time long ago, when she'd tried to mentally overcome her need to apprehend a criminal in order to achieve a greater goal, the effort had put her body into a severe type of shock. By removing the Foundation's physiological constraints her mind could now flourish in ways her long-departed designers never envisaged. She'd been born with the intention of tracking down individual criminals, the kind which might plague the society of Huxley's Haven; but now she had the freedom to take an overview. Yet none of the liberations she selected for herself ever touched the core of her identity, she always retained her intuitive understanding of what was right and wrong. Her soul was untainted.

  Iaioud tested her new, versatile self to the extreme. She accepted that the way in which the Halgarth collective had set up the constitution was intrinsically wrong, oppressing an entire population. In fact she would have probably acknowledged that before. But the whole nature of laioud's rigid society was uncomfortably close to that of Huxley's Haven. After a while she decided that the difference was simple enough. On Iaioud, people were being kept in line by a brutally authoritarian regime misusing Commonwealth medical technology. While on Huxley's Haven, strictures and conformity came from within. Possibly there had been a crime, right back at the founding, when the Human Structure Foundation started birthing an entire population with DNA modified to their grand scheme. The old liberal groups might have been right — a thought which would have finally pleased the radicals who had stolen her as a baby. But however great the sin committed at its genesis, the constraints placed on the population of Huxley's Haven were internal. Its people now couldn't be changed without destroying what they were. By far the bigger crime.

  So she convinced herself, anyway. These days she wrote it off as an argument between philosophies. Interesting, and completely disconnected from real life. The Commonwealth had enough real problems to keep her fully occupied. Though even she had to admit, the whole Pilgrimage issue was throwing up some unique complications.

  For once she couldn't decide if Living Dream had the right to set off on Pilgrimage, and be damned to possible consequences. The dilemma came from the total lack of empirical evidence that the Void would consume the rest of the galaxy. She had to admit that a lot of pro-Pilgrimage Factions and commentators were right to be sceptical. The assumption Living Dream were courting annihilation was all based on information which came from the Raiel. The immense timescale since the last catastrophic macro-expansion phase would distort any information no matter how well stored; throw in aliens with their own agenda and she simply couldn't accept the claim at face value.

  ANA: Governance was also keen to acquire more information on the situation, which gave Paula a useful outlet for her energies, and thankfully little time to brood over the politics involved. Her assignment, as always, was to st
op the Factions from engineering the physical citizens of the Commonwealth into actions they wouldn't otherwise have performed.

  She'd left St Mary's Clinic and returned to her ship, the Alexis Denken, a sleek ultradrive vessel which ANA: Governance had supplied and armed to a degree which would alarm any Navy captain. She left the planet, then hung in transdimensional suspension twenty AUs out from the star. It was a position which allowed her to monitor the ftl traffic within the Anagaska system with astonishing accuracy. Unfortunately, the one thing her ship's sensors couldn't do was locate a cold trail. There was no trace of Aaron's ship. Given the time between the raid on the clinic and her arrival, she suspected he had an ultradrive ship. Marius certainly had one. Her u-shadow monitored him arriving back at the city starport and getting into a private yacht. Alexis Denken's sensors tracked it slipping into hyper-space. For those in the know, the signature was indicative of an ultradrive.

  An hour later, the Delivery Man took off in his own ship which had an equally suspicious drive signature. He flew away in almost exactly the opposite direction to Marius. Ten minutes later another starship dropped out of transdimensional suspension where it had been waiting in the system's cometary halo, and began to fly along the same course as the Delivery Man.

  'Good luck, Paula sent to Justine.

  'Thanks.

  Paula opened an ultra-secure link to ANA: Governance. 'It appears your ultradrive technology is completely compromised, she reported.

  'To be expected, ANA: Governance replied. 'It does not require my full capacity to derive the theory behind it. Most Factions would have the intellectual resources. Once the equations are available, any Higher replicator above level-five could produce the appropriate hardware.

  'I still think you should exert a little more authority. After all, the Factions are all part of you.

  'Factions are how I remain integral. I am plural.

  'The way you say it makes it sound like you have the electronic version of bi-polar disorder.

  'More like multi-billion-polar. But that is what I am. All individuals who join me do so by imprinting their personality routines upon me. I am the collective consciousness of all ANA inhabitants, that is the very basis of my authority. Once that essence is bequeathed they are free to become what they want. I do not take their memories, too, that would be an annexation of individuality.