Justine settled back on the bed, and opened her mind to the local gaiafield. The darkened room filled with phantoms, colours glinted amid the deeper shadows. Voices whispered. There was laughter. She felt drawn to various emotional states which promised to immerse her in their enticing soulful sensations.
Resisting temptation, she focused her attention on the nucleus of the whimsy, the confluence nest itself. A quasi-biological neural module which simultaneously stored and emitted every thought released into its field. It had memories like a human brain, only with a much, much larger capacity. Justine formed her own images, offering them up to the nest. It responded with association. Naturally, it contained every one of Inigo’s dreams; Living Dream had made sure of that. She ignored the vivid spectacle of the Waterwalker’s life, brushing those memories aside as she refined her own fancy for a different recollection of life inside the Void. The nest was full of enigmas, the mental poetry left behind by observers baffled by the terrible dark heart of the galaxy. There were compositions of how a life might be lived for anyone fortunate to pass inside; wish fulfilment, easily discernible from the real thing. The promise-prayers which Living Dream’s followers made every night to their mystic goal. All were imprinted on the nest. But nothing else. No other glimpse into another life lived on Querencia. No grand mellow thoughts originating from a Skylord.
***
The garden dome at the middle of the human section boasted trees over two hundred and fifty years old. Oaks with thick trunks sent out thick crinkled boughs, acting as lush canopies above the tables where the station staff were gathering. Up on a rustic tree house platform, an enthusiastic amateur band were playing songs from different eras stretching back across several centuries, and were keen for requests. It was dusk inside, allowing the sharp violet light of the Wall stars to dominate the sky overhead.
Justine admired the broad patch of eye-searing scintillations with the kind of weariness she reserved for dangerous animals. Her arrival in the garden dome had created quite a ripple of interest. She liked to think that was at least partly due to the little black cocktail dress she’d chosen. It certainly seemed to have the required effect on Director Trachtenberg, who was becoming quite flirtatious as he fussed round, offering her various drinks and selections of the finger food.
Everyone she was introduced to was keen to know exactly what ANA’s interest was in them at this time. She repeated the official line a dozen times that she was just visiting to ascertain the current status of the observation.
“Unchanged,” complained Graffal Ehasz, the observation department chief. “We don’t learn anything these days apart from ion storm patterns in the Gulf on the other side of the Wall stars. That tells us nothing about the nature of the beast. We should be trying to send probes inside.”
“I thought nothing could get through the barrier,” she said.
“Which is why we need a much more detailed study. You can’t do that with remote probes fifty lightyears away.”
“The Raiel don’t like us getting closer,” Trachtenberg said.
“When you get home, you might like to ask ANA why we still need their permission just to fart around here,” Ehasz said. “It’s fucking insulting.”
“I’ll remember,” Justine said. The party was only twenty minutes old; she wondered how many aerosols Ehasz had already inhaled.
The director took her by the arm and politely guided her away.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “There’s not a lot of opportunity to blow off steam around here. I run a pretty tight schedule. This is an expensive installation, and phenomenally important. We need to extract the best information we can with what we’ve got.”
“I understand.”
“It’s Ehasz’s third stint out here. He tends to get frustrated by the lack of progress. I’ve seen it before. First time, you’re all swept along by the wonder of it all. Then when that fades away you begin to realize how passive the observation actually is.”
“How many times have you been here?”
He grinned. “This is my seventh. But then I’m a lot older and wiser than Ehasz.”
“So would you like to join the Pilgrimage?”
“Not really. As far as three hundred years of direct observation has shown us, you touch the barrier, you die. Actually, you die a long time before you reach the barrier. I just don’t see how they hope to get through.”
“Somebody did, once.”
“Yeah, that’s the really annoying part.”
“So what do—” Justine stopped as the ground heaved, almost knocking her feet out from under her. She tensed, dropping to a crouch like just about everyone else. Her integral force field came on. The local net was shrieking out all sort of alarms. The huge oak boughs creaked dangerously; their leaves rustling as if tickled by a gust of wind.
“Hoshit,” Trachtenberg yelped.
Justine’s u-shadow established a link to the Silverbird’s smart-core. “Stand by,” she told it. “Keep a fix on my position.” When she scanned round the dome it was still intact. Then she looked at the horizon, which appeared to be perfectly level. She’d been expecting big cracks to be splitting the lava plain open at the very least. The ground tilted again. Nothing moved! “What is happening?” she demanded. Some kind of quake? But this planet was a dead husk, completely inactive in any respect.
“I’m not sure.” The director waved an annoyed hand to shush her.
The band were clambering down out of the tree-house as fast as they could go, jumping the last metre off the wooden steps.
They’d abandoned their instruments. Justine stared at the drink in her hand as the ground shifted again. The wine sloshed from one side of the glass to the other, yet she was holding it perfectly still.
“Holy Ozzie,” Trachtenberg exclaimed. “It’s gravity.”
“What?”
“Gravity waves. Fucking colossal ones.”
Ehasz hurried over to them, swaying badly as the ground seemed to tilt again. “Are you accessing the long-range sensors?” he yelled at Trachtenberg.
“What have they got?”
“The boundary! There are distortion ripples lightyears long moving across it. And the damn thing is growing. The sensors in the Gulf can actually see it move. Do you realize what that means? The expansion is superluminal. This is an Ozziefucking devourment phase.”
The ground quivered badly. Water running along the little streams sloshed about, shooting up small jets of spray. For a moment, Justine actually felt her weight reduce. Then it came back, and the neat stacks of crockery and glasses on the tables crashed on to the grass. She stumbled away from the oak tree as it emitted a nasty splintering sound. Emergency force fields were coming on, reinforcing the dome. Around the rim, safety bunker doors rippled open.
“I want everyone to move to evacuation stage one,” Trachtenberg announced. “Navy personnel report direct to your ships. Observation team, I need a precise picture of what is happening out there. We probably don’t have much time, so we must do as much as we can before we’re forced off.” He flinched as another gravity wave crossed the station. This time the upward force was so strong Justine felt as though she was going to lift off.
“Is that gravity coming from the Void?” she asked. The prospect was terrifying, they were hundreds of lightyears away.
“No,” Ehasz cried. “This is something local.” He looked upwards, studying the intricate luminescent sky above the dome. “There!”
Justine watched two azure moons traverse the sparkling smear of Wall stars. They were in very strange orbits. And moving impossibly fast—actually accelerating. “Oh my God,” she gasped. The Raiel’s planet-sized DF machines were flying into new positions.
“The Raiel are getting ready for the last fight,” Ehasz said numbly. “If they lose, that monster will consume the whole galaxy.”
This can’t be happening, Justine thought. Living Dream hasn’t even begun their Pilgrimage yet. “You can’t!” she shouted up at the anci
ent invisible enemy as human hormones and feelings took complete control of her body and mind. “This isn’t fair. It’s not fair!”
***
A mere five hours after the new dream had flooded into the gaiafield, over fifty thousand of the devout had already gathered in Golden Park, seeking guidance from the Cleric Conservator. They exerted their wish through their gaiamotes. The unanimous desire of fifty thousand people was an astonishing force.
Ethan was only too aware of it as Councillor Phelim supported him on the long painful walk out of the Mayor’s offices where the doctors had set up an intensive care bay. He limped across the floor of Liliala Hall while the ceiling displayed surges of thick cumulus arrayed in mare’s tails and clad in shimmering strands of lightning. Even though he’d closed himself to the gaiafield, the power of the crowd’s craving was leaking into his bruised brain.
Phelim continued to support him as they crossed the smaller Toral Flail. Its midnight ceiling showed the Ku nebula with its twinkling gold sparks swimming within fat undulating jade and sapphire nimbi.
“You should have called them to your bed,” Phelim said.
“No,” Ethan grunted. For this occasion he would not, could not, show weakness.
They went through the carved doors to the Orchard Palace’s Upper Council chamber. Its cross vault ceiling was supported by broad fan pillars. Dominating the apex of the central segment a fuzzy copper star shone brightly, its light shimmering off a slowly rotating accretion disc. Moon-sized fireball comets circled the outer band in high-inclination orbits. None of Makkathran’s enthusiastic astronomers had ever spied its location in the Void.
The Cleric Council waited for him in their scarlet and black robes, standing silently at the long table which ran across the middle of the chamber. Phelim stayed by Ethan’s side until they reached the dais, then Ethan insisted on walking to his gold-embossed throne by himself. He eased himself on to the thin cushions with a grimace. The pain in his head nearly made him cry out as he sank down. He took a moment to recover as his body shuddered. Ever since he’d regained consciousness any sudden movement was agony.
The Councillors sat, trying to avert their eyes from the liverlike semi-organic nodules affixed to his skull, only half-hidden by his white robe’s voluminous hood.
“Thank you for attending,” Ethan said to them.
“We are relieved to see you recovered, Cleric Conservator,” Rincenso said formally.
Ethan knew the contempt of the other Councillors towards his supporter without needing the gaiafield. He felt it himself. “Not quite recovered yet,” he said, and tapped one of the glistening nodules. “But my neural structure should be fully re-established in another week. Until then the auxiliaries will suffice.”
“How could such a thing happen?” Councillor DeLouis asked. “Gaiamotes have been perfectly safe for centuries.”
“It wasn’t the gaiamotes,” Phelim said. “The Dream Masters who set up the interception believe the Second Dreamer’s panic triggered a neural spasm within the Cleric Conservator’s brain. They were attuned to a degree rarely achieved outside a couple’s most intimate dreamsharing. The circumstances will not arise again.”
“The gaiafield and the Unisphere are rife with rumours that the Second Dreamer is a genuine telepath, that he can kill with a single thought.”
“Rubbish,” Phelim said. His skeletal face turned to DeLouis. For an instant a dangerous anger could be glimpsed in his mind.
DeLouis couldn’t meet his stare.
“In any case it is irrelevant,” Ethan said. “The Dream Masters assure me that such a backlash can be nullified now they understand its nature. Any future contact with the Second Dreamer will be conducted with,” he smiled grimly, “a safety cutout, as they call it.”
“You’re going to talk to him again?” Councillor Falven asked.
“I believe the situation requires it,” Ethan said. “Don’t you?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“I received his latest dream along with the rest of you. It was strong, at least as clear as those of the Dreamer Inigo himself. However, the crucial change within this dream was the conversation the Second Dreamer had with the Skylord.” The communication had shocked Ethan more than the pristine clarity of the new dream.
“I come to find you,” the Skylord had replied to the Second Dreamer’s greetings.
“We are far beyond the edge of your universe.”
“Yet I felt your longing. You wish to join with us.”
“Not I. But other do, yes.”
“All are welcome.”
“We can’t get in. It’s very dangerous.”
“I can greet you. I can guide you. It is my purpose.”
“No.”
And with that finality the dream had ended. Before it faded completely, there was a hint of agitation from the Skylord’s mind. It clearly hadn’t expected rejection.
And it’s hardly alone in that.
“The Skylord believes it can bring us to Querencia,” Ethan said. “That is the final testimony we have been waiting and praying for. Our Pilgrimage will be blessed with success.”
“Not without the Second Dreamer,” Councillor Tosyne said. “Your pardon, Conservator, but he is not willing to lead us into the Void. Without him there can be no Pilgrimage.”
“He is distressed,” Ethan replied. “Until now he didn’t even know he was the Second Dreamer. To discover you are the hope of billions is not an easy thing. Ultimately, Inigo himself found it too great to bear. So we can forgive the Second Dreamer his frailty, and offer support and guidance.”
“He might realize who and what he is now,” Councillor Tosyne said. “But we don’t even know where he is.”
“Actually, we do,” Phelim announced. “Colwyn City on Viotia.”
“Excellent news,” Ethan said in a predatory fashion. He watched in amusement as the protest in Tosyne’s mind withered away. “We should welcome him, and thank Viotia for the gift it has brought us.” His gaze turned expectantly on Rincenso.
“I would like to propose bringing Viotia fully into the Free Trade Zone,” Rincenso said. “And promote it to core planet status.”
“Seconded,” Falven said.
The rest of the Cleric Council responded with bemusement.
“You can’t do that,” Tosyne said. “They’ll resist, the Commonwealth Senate will move to censure us. We’ll lose every diplomatic advantage we have.” He glanced round the table, seeking support.
“It’s not just our ambition,” Phelim said. He gestured at the empty end of the table, opposite Ethan’s dais. His u-shadow established the ultra-secure link, and a portal projected an image of Likan standing just beyond the table.
Likan bowed politely. “Conservator, I am honoured.”
“Thank you,” Ethan said. “I believe you are acting as an unofficial emissary for your government.”
“Yes, sir. I have just finished talking with our Prime Minister. It is her wish to accept Ellezelin’s generous offer to elevate us to core world status within the Free Trade Zone.”
“That’s wonderful news. I will inform Ellezelin’s cabinet of your decision.”
“The acceptance comes with the understanding that a zero tariff regime will be part of the accord,” Likan said.
“Of course. Full trade will commence as soon as the Second Dreamer joins us here in Makkathran2.”
“Understood. The Prime Minister will award the treaty her certificate of office as soon as it is sent.” Likan’s image vanished.
“I believe,” Ethan said into the startled silence, “that we were about to take a vote. Those in favour?” He watched the hands being raised. It was unanimous. In moments such as this he almost missed Corrie-Lyn’s presence on the Council; she would never have left such a Soviet outcome go unchallenged. “Thank you. I find your support of my policies to be humbling. There is no further business.”
Phelim remained seating as the others filed out. Flecks of light slid across his ex
pressionless face as the comets orbited ceaselessly overhead.
“That was easy,” Ethan remarked.
“They don’t know what to do,” Phelim said. “They’re just the same as the devout gathering outside: bewildered and hurt that the Second Dreamer would reject the Skylord. They’re in need of strong, positive leadership. You provide that. You have the solution. Naturally they turn to you.”
“When can we open the wormhole?”
“I’ll have your government office send the treaty to Viotia’s Prime Minister immediately. If Likan doesn’t let us down, it’ll come straight back. The wormhole can be opened within two hours. We’d prepared a number of sites for it to emerge.”
“I hope Colwyn City was one of them.”
“Yes. It has a dock complex that will serve us very nicely.”
“And our police forces?”
“Forty thousand ready for immediate dispatch, along with transport and riot suppression equipment. We can push them through within six hours of opening the wormhole. Another quarter of a million will follow over the next four days.”
“Excellent.”
“I hoped you’d approve,” Phelim hesitated. “We never planned on the Second Dreamer becoming aware of his ability in quite this fashion. It’ll take us a day to get our Dream Masters into position across Colwyn.”
“But you can shut down all capsule and starship traffic before then?”
“Yes. That’s our highest priority. We want to confine him within the city boundary.” Again the uncharacteristic hesitation. “But in order to locate him, he has to dream again. After tonight, he might not.”
Ethan closed his eyes and sank down into the throne, enervated by his exertion. “He will. He doesn’t know what he’s done yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“An hour ago I received a call from Director Trachtenberg at the Centurion Station. He considered it important enough to reveal his affiliation to us and use the Navy’s relay posts. Just after the Second Dreamer ended his contact with the Skylord, the Void began a devourment phase. That is not coincidence. It would seem the Skylord doesn’t take rejection lightly. Our reclusive friend will have to placate it, or we’ll all wind up being consumed by the boundary. Quite an incentive, really.”