The Evolutionary Void

  Aaron smiled. ‘Then I kill you.’

  The cabin Corrie-Lyn and Inigo were sharing was small. It was meant for five crew, but in theory the Navy duty rota they followed should mean that only two would ever be using it at the same time, with changeovers every few hours. Inigo reckoned they’d all have to be very intimate with each other. The bunks were both fully extended, and locked at a ten-degree angle with the edges curling up as if they were heat-damaged. All of which left little space to edge along between them. And they were useless for sleeping in. Instead, Inigo had just piled all the quilts onto the floor to make a cosy nest.

  When he came back in after breakfast, Corrie-Lyn was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the crumpled fabric, drinking a mug of black coffee. An empty ready-pak was on the floor beside her.

  ‘Taste good?’ he asked.

  She held the foil ready-pak up. ‘The deSavoel estate’s finest mountain bean. It doesn’t come much better.’

  ‘That should help the hangover.’ He perched awkwardly on the edge of a bunk, feeling it give slightly beneath him. It shouldn’t do that.

  ‘It does,’ she grunted.

  ‘I wonder if we can find a bean to help with the attitude.’

  ‘Don’t start.’

  ‘What in Honious happened to you?’

  Corrie-Lyn’s dainty freckled face abruptly turned livid. ‘Somebody left. Not just me, they left the whole fucking movement. They got up and walked out without a word, a hint of why they were going. Everything I loved, everything I believed in was gone, ripped away from me. I’d given decades of my life to you and the dream you promised us. And as if that wasn’t enough, I didn’t know! I didn’t know why you’d left. Ladyfuckit, I didn’t even know if you were alive. I didn’t know if you’d given up on us, if it was all wrong, if you’d lost hope. I. Didn’t. Know! Nothing, that’s what you left me with. From everything – a fabulous life with hope and happiness and love, to nothing in a single second. Do you have any idea what that’s like? You don’t, clearly you don’t, because you wouldn’t be sitting there asking the stupidest question in the universe if you did. What happened? Bastard. You can go straight to Honious for all I care.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, crestfallen. ‘It’s . . . that final dream I had. It was too much. We weren’t leading anyone to salvation. Makkathran, Edeard, that whole civilization was a fluke, a glorious one-off that I caught at just the right time. It can never be repeated, not now, not now we know the Void’s ability. The Raiel were right, the Void is a monster. It should be destroyed.’

  ‘Why?’ she implored. ‘What is that Last Dream?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he whispered. ‘It showed that even dreams all turn to dust in the end.’

  ‘Then why didn’t—’

  ‘I tell you?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Because something as big, as powerful, as Living Dream can’t be finished overnight. There were over ten billion followers when I left. Ten Billion! I can’t just turn round to them and say: Ooops, sorry, I was wrong. Go home and get on with your lives, forget all about the Waterwalker and Querencia.’

  ‘The Inigo I knew would have done that,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘The Inigo I knew had courage and integrity.’

  ‘I let it die, or so I thought. It was the kindest thing. Ethan was the finest example of that, a politician not a follower. After him would have come dozens of similar leaders, all of them concerned with position and maintaining the ancient blind dogma. Living Dream would have turned into an old-style religion, always preaching the promise of salvation, never producing the realization. Not without me. I was the one who might have been able to pass through the barrier. You know I was going to try, really I was. Go out there in a fast starship and see if I could make it, just like the original old ship did. That’s before we knew about the warrior Raiel, of course. But once I had that dream I knew the ideal was over. Ethan and all the others who should have come after him would have killed off Living Dream in a couple of centuries.’

  ‘Then along came the Second Dreamer,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah. I guess I should have realized the Void would never let us alone. It feeds off minds like ours. Once it had that first taste, it was bound to find another way of pulling us in.’

  ‘You mean it’s evil?’ she asked in surprise.

  ‘No. That kind of term doesn’t apply. It has purpose, that’s all. Unfortunately, that purpose will bring untold damage to the galaxy.’

  ‘Then,’ she glanced at the closed door, ‘what are we going to do about it?’

  ‘We?’

  She nodded modestly. ‘I believe in you, I always have. If you say we have to stop the Void then I’ll follow you into Honious itself to bring that off.’

  Inigo smiled as he looked down at her. She was wearing a crewman’s shirt that was several sizes too large, which made it kind of sexy as it shifted around, tracing the shape of her body. He’d watched her yesterday with considerable physical interest, the simple sight of her teasing out a great many pleasurable memories of the time they had spent as lovers. But she’d been drunk and spitting venom about Aaron and their situation and who was to blame for the state of the universe. Now though, as he slipped off the bunk to kneel beside her, there was a look of hope kindled in her eyes. ‘Really?’ he asked uncertainly. ‘After all I’ve put you through?’

  ‘It would be a start to your penance,’ she replied.

  ‘True.’

  ‘But . . .’ She waved a hand at the door. ‘What about him? We don’t know if his masters want you to help the Pilgrimage or ruin it.’

  ‘First off, he’s undoubtedly listening to every word we’re saying.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Secondly, the clue is in who we’re going to see.’

  ‘Ozzie?’

  ‘Yes, which is why I haven’t tried anything like the glacier again.’ Inigo grinned up at the ceiling. ‘Yet.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like Ozzie?’

  ‘No. Ozzie doesn’t like me. He was completely opposed to Living Dream, so I can only conclude that Aaron’s masters are also among those who don’t want the Pilgrimage to go ahead.’

  Corrie-Lyn shrugged, and pushed some of her thick red hair away from her eyes. Intent and interested now, she fixed him with a curious look. ‘Why didn’t Ozzie like you?’

  ‘He gave humanity the gaiafield so that we could share our emotions, which he felt was a way of letting everyone communicate on a much higher level. If we could look into the hearts of people we feared or disliked we should be able to see that deep down they were human too – according to his theory. Such knowledge would bring us closer together as a species. Damn, it was almost worth building a Faction round the notion, but the idea was too subtle for that. Ozzie wanted us to become accustomed to it, to use it openly and honestly. Only when we’d incorporated it into our lives would we realize the effect it’d had on our society.’

  ‘We have.’

  ‘Not really. You see, I perverted the whole gaiafield to build a religion on. That wasn’t supposed to happen. As he told me, and I quote: The gaiafield was to help people to understand and appreciate life, the universe and everything, so they don’t get fooled by idiot messiahs and corrupt politicians. So I’d gone and wrecked his dream by spreading Edeard’s dreams. Quite ironic really, from my point of view. Ozzie didn’t see that. Turns out he doesn’t have half the sense of humour everyone says he has. He went off to the Spike in a huge sulk to build a “galactic dream”, as a counter to my disgraceful subversion.’

  ‘So he hasn’t succeeded, then?’

  ‘Not that we know of.’

  ‘Then how can he help?’

  ‘I haven’t got a clue. But don’t forget, he is an absolute genius, which is a term applied far too liberally in history. In his case it’s real. I suspect that whatever plan is loaded into Aaron’s subconscious expects Ozzie and me to team up to defeat the Void.’

  ‘That’s a huge gamble.’

  ?
??We’re long past the time for careful certainty.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how to stop the Void?’

  ‘No. Not a single glimmer of a notion, even.’

  ‘But you were an astrophysicist to begin with.’

  ‘Yes, but my knowledge base is centuries out of date.’

  ‘Oh.’ She pushed the empty coffee mug to one side with a glum expression.

  ‘Hey,’ his hand stroked the side of her face. ‘I’m sure Ozzie and I will give it our best shot.’

  She nodded, closing her eyes as she leant into his touch. ‘Don’t leave me again.’

  ‘We’ll see this through together. I promise.’

  ‘The Waterwalker never quit.’

  Inigo kissed her. It was just the same as it had been all those decades ago, which was a treacherous memory. A lot of very strong emotions were bundled up with the time he and Corrie-Lyn had been together. Most of them good. ‘I’m not as strong as the Waterwalker.’

  ‘You are,’ she breathed. ‘That’s why you found each other. That’s why you connected.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ he promised, nuzzling her chin. His hands went down to the hem of the big loose shirt. ‘But he never faced a situation like this.’

  ‘The voyage of the Lady’s Light.’ She began to tug at the seam on his one-piece.

  ‘Hardly the same.’

  ‘He didn’t know what he was coming home to.’

  ‘Okay.’ He pulled back and stared at her wide eyes. ‘Let’s just find our own way here, shall we?’

  ‘What about . . . ?’

  ‘Screw him.’

  Corrie-Lyn’s tongue licked playfully round her lips. ‘Me first. I’ve been waiting a very long time.’

  Inigo’s Twenty-Ninth Dream

  ‘Land ahoy,’ came the cry from the lookout.

  Edeard craned his neck back to see the crewman perched atop the main mast of Lady’s Light. It was Manel, grinning wildly as he waved down at everyone on the deck. The young man’s mind was unshielded as he gifted everyone his sight. Which right now was looking down on their upturned faces.

  ‘Manel!’ came a collective sigh.

  His amusement poured across the ship, and he shifted his balance on the precarious platform to hold the telescope up again. Despite regular cleaning, the lenses in the brass tube were scuffed and grubby after four years of daily use at sea, but the image was clear enough. A dark speck spiked up out of the blue on blue horizon.

  Edeard started clapping at the sight of it, his good cheer swelling out to join the collective thoughts of those on the other four ships which made up the explorer flotilla. Everyone was delighted. The distant pinnacle of land could only be one of the eastern isles, which meant Makkathran was no more than a month’s sailing away.

  ‘How about that,’ Jiska exclaimed. ‘He did get it right.’

  ‘Yeah yeah,’ Edeard agreed, too happy to care about the needling. Natran, who captained the Lady’s Light, had been promising sight of the eastern isles for five weeks now. People were getting anxious about his navigational skills, though the captains of the other ships concurred with him. Jiska had spent that time supporting her husband’s ability. After a four-year voyage, people were starting to get understandably fretful.

  Kristabel came up beside Edeard, her contentment merging with his. He smiled back at her as they linked arms, and together they made their way up to the prow. It was getting quite cluttered on the middeck now, which Natran was generally unhappy over. As well as the coils of rope and ship’s lockers, a number of wicker cages were lashed to the decking, each containing some new animal they’d discovered on their various landings. Not all had survived the long voyage home. Taralee’s cabin was full of large glass jars where their bodies were preserved in foul-smelling fluid. She and the other doctors and botanists had probably gained the most from their expedition, cataloguing hundreds of new species and plants.

  But no new people, Edeard thought.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Kristabel asked.

  A few of the crew glanced over in his direction, catching his sadness. He gave them all an apologetic shrug.

  ‘We really are alone on this world,’ he explained to Kristabel. ‘Now we’re coming home we know that for certain.’

  ‘Never certainty,’ she said, smiling as she pushed some of her thick hair from her eyes. It was getting long again. They’d been eight days out from Makkathran when Kristabel simply sat down in the main cabin and got one of the other women to cut her already short (by Makkathran standards) hair right back, leaving just a few curly inches.

  ‘It’s practical,’ she’d explained calmly to an aghast Edeard. ‘You can’t seriously expect me to fight off my hair on top of everything else storms will throw at us, now can you? It’s been bad enough for a week in this mild weather.’

  But you managed with a plait, he managed to avoid saying out loud. Kristabel without her long hair was . . . just plain wrong somehow.

  Edeard could laugh at that now. Besides, she was still rather cute with short hair, and elegant with it. It was the least of the changes and accommodations that they’d collectively made. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen a woman in a skirt aside from the formal dinner parties held every month without fail. They just wore trousers – and shorts in summer – with the exception of the flotilla’s Mother, who’d maintained her traditional decorum at all times. The small revolution meant they were able to help with the rigging and a dozen other shipboard tasks that were usually the exclusive province of sailors. Indeed there had been a lot of grumbling from the Mariners Guild at the very thought of women going on such a voyage; while the general Makkathran population had been mildly incredulous – the male population in any case. Edeard had received a huge amount of support from the city’s womenfolk.

  Scepticism about taking women, shaken heads over the prospect of repeating Captain Allard’s grand failure, more consternation from Kristabel’s endless flock of relatives concerning the cost of five such vast vessels. At times it had seemed like the only ones in favour were the Guild of Shipwrights and a horde of merchants eager to supply the flotilla. Such a dour atmosphere had lurked across Makkathran’s streets and canals from the time he announced his intention until that day three years later when the ships had been completed. Then, with the five vessels anchored outside the city, attitudes finally began to mellow into admiration and excitement. There wasn’t a quay large enough or a port district channel deep enough to handle the Lady’s Light and her sister ships, adding to their allure. Trips around the anchored flotilla in small sailing boats were a huge and profitable venture for the city’s mariners. To lay down the keels, Edeard had even gone to the same narrow cove half a mile south of the city that Allard had used a thousand years ago to build the Majestic Marie. It all fostered a great deal of interest and civic pride. This time the circumnavigation will be a success, people believed. This is our time, our ships, our talent, and we have the Waterwalker. It probably helped that Edeard announced his intention the week after the first Skylord arrived to guide Finitan’s soul to the Heart.

  Edeard prided himself he’d held out that long. He never wanted to go back so far into his own past again. Querencia might have been saved from the nest, but the personal consequences were too high. It was a terrible burden to live through every day again, watching the same mistakes and failings and wasteful accidents and petty arguments and wretched politics play out once more when he already knew the solution to everything from his previous trip through the same years. Time and again he was tempted to intervene, to make things easier for everyone. But if he began he knew there was no limit to what he could and should do once that moral constraint was broken; there would be no end to intervention, constant assistance would become meddling in the eyes of those he sought to help.

  Besides, those repeated events he endured weren’t so bad for everyone else – especially now the nest hadn’t arisen this time around. People had to learn things for themselves to give
them the confidence to live a better life in their own fashion. And ultimately . . . where would he draw the line? Stopping a child falling over and breaking an arm wouldn’t teach the child to be more careful next time, and that was a lesson that needed to be learned. Without caution, what stupidity would they do the next day?

  So with the exception of preventing several murders he recalled, he restrained himself admirably. Which was why he was so desperate to build the ships and sail away on a voyage that would last for years. As well as satisfying his curiosity about the unknown continents and islands of Querencia, he would be doing something different, something new and fresh.

  And it had worked; the last four years had been the happiest time he’d known since he’d come back to eliminate Tathal. Kristabel had gladly responded to that, even relishing being free of the Upper Council and its endless bickering politics. They were as close now as they had been on their wedding day.

  Back on the middeck Natran was the centre of an excited crowd, receiving their congratulations and thanks with good-humoured restraint. His little son, Kiranan, was sitting happily on his shoulders. Born on board three years ago, the lad was naturally curious about living in the big city the way Edeard and Kristabel described it to him. In total, twelve children had been born on the Lady’s Light during the epic voyage, with another thirty on the other four ships. Which is where things had, finally, wonderfully, begun to change. Rolar and Wenalee had stayed behind to manage the Culverit estate and take Kristabel’s seat on the Upper Council; Marakas and Dylorn had also chosen to remain in Makkathran. His other children had all joined the flotilla. Jiska and Natran were married, which they hadn’t been in this year before. Taralee had formed a close attachment to Colyn, a journeyman from the horticultural association (which might well qualify for guild status after this voyage). But it was Marilee and Analee who had surprised and delighted him the most. He’d simply assumed the twins would stay behind and carry on partying. Instead they’d insisted on coming. Of course, they just carried on in their own way through shipboard life, almost oblivious to the routines and conventions around them. Not long out of port, they’d claimed Marvane as their lover, a delighted, infatuated, dazed, junior lieutenant, and enticed him down to their cabin each night. (Not that they needed to try very hard; his envious friends amid the flotilla swiftly named him Luckiest Man On Querencia.) It was a relationship which lasted a lot longer than their usual, for he was actually a decent worthy man.