‘Would you have to arrest yourself?’
‘We’re on a legitimate intelligence-gathering operation, so no. But it would be damn embarrassing.’
‘Enough to make you leave the Commonwealth?’
‘Nigel!’
They walked unseen through the Orchard Palace, going up two floors and approaching Inigo’s private suite of rooms from the back. Paula unlocked a room which wasn’t used for anything. Once they were inside, they shimmered back into view. She went over to the rear wall and took a couple of small plastic rectangles from her satchel. She placed them on the wall, above conduits that ran inside the composite. The modules sent active fibres worming their way through the composite to penetrate the conduits; tips insinuated themselves into the delicate optical data cables.
‘Good protection,’ she murmured as she read the alarm schematics building up in her exovision. A batch of subversive routines were dispatched, neutralizing the various sensor webs that covered the private room. ‘Here we go.’
She stood next to the wall and ordered her biononics to produce a valency disrupter effect, focusing the energy flow into a neat ring on the composite. Behind her, Nigel started humming cheerfully.
‘What the hell? Nigel!’
He gave her a roguish smile. ‘Sorry. It’s the theme tune from Mission: Impossible. It just seemed appropriate.’
‘What?’
‘Way before your time. It’s only us true oldies that—’
‘Nigel. Either behave or go wait outside.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
She let out another exasperated sigh, and concentrated on the disrupter effect. A two-metre circle of wall came loose. She caught it and rolled it to one side.
Inigo’s private vault didn’t contain much. An old wooden chest, which a quick fieldscan revealed contained clothes along with a lot of infusers loaded with various semi-legal sensory booster drugs, and some old-style memory kubes. The confluence nest sat in the middle of the room, a plain burnished aluminium cylinder a metre and a half high, and sixty centimetres in diameter.
‘Are you going to cut that open as well?’ Nigel asked.
‘No.’ Her u-shadow broke the service lock, and the top of the cylinder rose up silently.
The confluence nest was mostly biotech, consisting of eight long segments like desiccated muscle tissue connected with a tangle of small tubes and fibres. Its routines remained closed to every stimulus Paula directed at it from her gaiamotes. So she took the syphon from her satchel. It looked like a liver, with a slick glistening dark-red surface that pulsated slowly. She stuck it on one of the nest’s segments. Its cells began to bond with the artificial neurones of the nest segment, leaching out the contents directly.
‘I didn’t even know that was possible,’ Nigel said.
‘I thought you were the great techno-nerd.’
‘I do theories and strategy. I don’t get down and dirty with actual hardware.’
Paula grinned. ‘Devil in the detail, huh?’
Nigel was glancing round the vault. His gaze finished on the door, which was perfectly ordinary. ‘Is his bedroom on the other side? I swear I can hear giggling.’
‘So he’s taken his pants off, then.’
‘Ouch, you are one cruel lady.’
‘Getting some data from the nest.’ She ordered the syphon to run pattern recognition. ‘Well, what do you know? We were right. There’s more than four dreams stored here. Inigo has had a whole load of visions he hasn’t released yet.’
‘Of course he has. You don’t pull a con like this without being completely sure you can see it through. And Living Dream has got to be one of the biggest cons ever.’
‘We’ll soon find out. I’m copying the contents.’
May 29th 3326
Inigo’s Forty-Seventh Dream concluded and Nigel lay on the couch in the lake house’s lounge, unmoving as he abandoned the thoughts and sights and feelings of Edeard for the very last time. He stared up at the white arching ceiling, blinking away the haunting mental afterimages of the Void’s nebulas.
‘Ho-lee crap!’ Nigel didn’t want the dream to end. He wanted to return to Makkathran, to stand with Edeard atop the tower in Eyrie as the Skylord came to carry his soul away into the Heart of the Void. He wanted a life that was as fulfilled as Edeard’s had been. Enemies and wickedness defeated, decency and hope flourishing across the whole world. And the Heart of the Void: welcoming the incorporeal souls of anyone who had lived a fulfilled life, guided there by the amazing Skylords.
It took a long while for the daze of otherness to diminish and for him to find the strength to move again. He looked across the lounge to where Paula lay on another couch, staring ahead blankly. There were tears in her eyes.
‘He did it,’ she said. ‘He gave them his gift in the end. What a life!’
‘The entrapment potential of Edeard’s life is undeniably intense,’ Vallar said in a strong whisper. ‘I experienced appreciation for the desire myself. Fortunately, the Raiel are immune to such emotional triggers.’
‘Lucky you.’ Nigel grunted and swung his legs round to a sitting position. He tried to shake off the sensation of being bereft.
Paula exhaled loudly as she massaged her temples. ‘That was a mistake.’
‘You mean Edeard shouldn’t have told people about the Void’s time travel ability?’
‘No. I mean accessing all forty-seven dreams one after the other like this. It’s too much. I’ve lived someone else’s life, centuries of it, in one week. No wonder I’m totally sympathetic to what he underwent. Vallar is right; Inigo’s dreams are a narcomeme, the best there’s ever been. Anyone who undergoes that is going to want to be a part of Edeard’s existence. Inigo understands that perfectly. That’s why he’s building Makkathran2, to deliver what the faithful desperately need: to live that life, to immerse themselves in it, to believe that they will be rewarded with guidance to the Heart if they fulfil themselves.’
Nigel shook his head, amazed by Paula’s ability to be so analytical in the face of the overwhelming emotional journey of Edeard’s life which they’d just undergone. ‘Are you saying what Edeard achieved is irrelevant?’
‘No. It was astonishing. What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t fall into the trap of trying to follow or emulate him. Those circumstances were unique, and they are not our circumstances. We shouldn’t try to attain them.’
‘Right.’ Nigel could see her logic, but right now he didn’t like it. What he wanted was to go back to the first dream and live them all again in sequence. ‘Living Dream is going to be trouble for the Commonwealth,’ he said quietly. ‘Inigo has millions of devotees right now with just four dreams released. When people have experienced all of them, he’s going to have billions of followers wanting to belong.’
‘Is that all of the dreams?’ Vallar asked.
‘Yes,’ Paula said. ‘There was nothing else in his private confluence nest.’
‘So Edeard hasn’t sent anything from beyond the Heart,’ Nigel said. ‘It’s over.’
Paula sat up and took a mug of hot chocolate from a maidbot. ‘So what do we know that’s going to help find out what happened to Makkathran and the others?’
‘Time is strange in the Void,’ Vallar said. ‘The human ships arrived there two hundred years ago, and yet inside the Void two thousand years had passed before Edeard was born.’
‘No,’ Nigel countered, making an effort to focus on the project, to analyse what he’d witnessed. This part felt almost as good as living Edeard’s life. ‘Go back a stage to what the Void actually is.’
‘The end purpose is to devour human minds,’ Paula said slowly, ‘once they’ve reached a certain level of rational development, or fulfilment. The environment they experience is designed to achieve that – a forced evolution if you will. Then they are taken to the Heart.’
‘So it absorbs minds, and then . . . what?’ Nigel said. ‘Physically it expands, consuming more stars?’
‘More mass,’ Vallar corrected. ‘
Presumably to power its internal continuum.’
‘It consumes mass, it consumes minds,’ Paula said with a shudder. ‘Your warrior cousins are right to guard the galaxy from it, Vallar. The Void is the greatest evil possible. It seeks to dominate the universe. Why? Why would such a thing be built in the first place? I don’t understand.’
Nigel gave her a slightly surprised look. ‘Let’s consider this logically. It has layers. ‘There’s the physical Voidspace itself where the planets and nebulas exist. But there’s also a layer which reacts to thought, that empowers the telepathy and telekinesis.’
‘And a memory layer,’ Paula said. ‘Remember when Edeard travelled back in time to correct his mistakes? He could see the past; the Void had stored it somehow.’
‘You can’t actually travel backwards through time,’ Nigel said. He raised an eyebrow at Vallar. ‘Can you?’
‘No. It is a fundamental of the universe that time flows one way.’
‘So how does Edeard’s time travel work, then?’ Paula asked.
‘There’s another layer, a creation layer,’ Nigel decided. ‘Edeard’s ESP, his farsight, could perceive the whole of his life if he concentrated hard enough. And when he saw the moment he wanted to go back to, the creation layer recreated the whole Void again at that specific instant. Only he knew it was the past, because he was the one who travelled there. It’s like the ultimate solipsism. Sonofabitch, no wonder the Void wants to consume the galaxy. The energy that must take . . .’
‘This is like a post-physical entity,’ Paula said.
‘Yet it remains resolutely physical,’ Nigel said. He gave her a humourless smile. ‘Which is a problem. You’re good at them.’
Paula took another drink of her hot chocolate, and steepled her fingers. ‘Inigo served six months at the Centurion Station science base observing the Void. That’s only just outside the Wall stars, so we can surmise all his dreams were received there.’
‘Yes,’ Nigel agreed.
‘The dreams themselves are now irrelevant; Inigo is simply using them to promote and develop his Living Dream cult. Who knows, he might even believe in the Void’s Heart as a solution for where the human race goes next.’
‘Most likely,’ Vallar said. ‘Before our invasion and blockade, we heard of entire species descending into the Void; there were many rumours among the sentient races in the galaxy that it contained a spiritual resolution for biological entities. This lure it exerts was one of the reasons we built the armada.’
‘So we’re not going to get any more dreams,’ Paula said. ‘Edeard and whatever weird ethereal connection he had to Inigo is gone. It died with Edeard’s body.’ Her gaze flicked to the Raiel. ‘You were correct, Vallar. If we want to find out how humans were taken into the Void we have to go in to find out.’
‘The Void is hostile to Raiel,’ Vallar replied. ‘Humans appear to thrive there.’
Nigel looked at Paula again.
She pulled a face. ‘So who do we get to go in?’ she asked.
‘Someone who’s been prewarned about the Void’s nature. Someone who’s smart enough to ask the right questions. You would be perfect.’
‘As would you. But I’m not going to flip you for it. In the Starflyer War, we took criminals out of suspension and offered them the opportunity to serve the Commonwealth in return for a reduced sentence.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Nigel said, surprised she’d even mentioned that. ‘Psychopaths and loons are just the kind of people we should be sending into that environment.’
‘Ask Living Dream followers. Every one of them would happily volunteer.’
‘Again, a great choice to represent us. We both know I’m the one that’s going to have to go in.’
‘I thought you were leaving the Commonwealth.’
‘I am. But dear old Vincent Hal Acraman has shown us how we get round that little problem, hasn’t he?’
July 9th 3326
The chrome-blue capsule descended out of the glaring Augusta sky to touch down on the lake house’s lawn. Nigel Sheldon walked out and immediately put on a pair of sunglasses. In this new body, everything seemed brighter and louder. That or his old thought routines were simply jaded and faded, unused to perceiving the universe through sharp eyes. It was a better theory; those old routines were having trouble controlling this body with its increased strength and reaction times. He had to concentrate hard just to walk. This body’s muscles were strong enough to lift him off the ground at each step, as if he was in lunar gravity, not Augusta’s point-nine-three Earth standard.
He stood on the lawn and took a long deep breath. The El Iopi wind was blowing strongly today, bringing the continent’s heat with it. Inside his grey-green onepiece coverall, he started sweating. His original came out of the capsule behind him, wearing a purple silk suit. He slipped a pair of mirrorshades on with exactly the same gesture Nigel had just used.
Paula Myo was standing on the lake house’s veranda, along with Vallar. She gave him and the original Nigel a sardonic grin. Nigel licked his lips and walked over.
‘Welcome to the world,’ Paula said directly to him.
Nigel guessed it was the hair which separated them. His original still needed a haircut, while his had barely grown more than a short frizz. ‘Did he tattoo the number two on my forehead?’ he asked.
Her mouth twitched. ‘Do you remember me?’
Nigel took both her hands in his, and gave her a fulsome grin. ‘Nothing could banish you from my mind.’
‘That’s very sweet.’
‘So I was thinking, as the chances of me coming back are about a million below zero, how about you and I spend the last few days I have in this universe together? Condemned man, and all that.’
She opened her eyes wide with mock adoration. ‘The night you come back,’ she breathed huskily, ‘I’ll fling myself at you like Ranalee on Edeard.’
‘Ah, dammit. They used to say it was impossible for you to lie,’ he said, remembering the young Paula who had caused such a stir when she started working for the Commonwealth Serious Crime Directorate all those centuries ago.
‘Come back and find out,’ she told him.
‘Thank you, but I remember what fate Ranalee had in mind for Edeard.’
‘Yeah, but what a way to go.’
The original Nigel cleared his throat, his expression mildly disapproving. ‘If you two have quite finished . . .’
They all went into the lounge, and the window wall glass swept shut behind them. Nigel sat next to Paula on one of the wide grey couches, while his original sat opposite them – like some kind of nineteenth-century chaperone. Vallar stood in the middle of the room.
‘How do you feel?’ Paula asked.
Nigel gave his original a smug look. ‘Better, stronger, faster than before. I should have downloaded into a re-life clone centuries ago.’
‘And how fortunate: you managed to keep your ego intact, too,’ she said drily. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’
Nigel laughed. ‘So how have you three done while I was being grown?’ he asked. ‘My memory stops five weeks ago, just after we’d gone through Inigo’s dreams and decided on this – me.’ He cocked his head to glance at his original. ‘And the Dynasty’s network is sealed against me.’
‘You wouldn’t find what we’re doing on the Dynasty’s network anyway,’ his original replied. ‘This is a very private operation.’
‘The ship is ready,’ Paula told him.
‘How biological is it?’ Nigel asked.
‘About seventy per cent,’ his original said. ‘We’ve even managed to construct some ultradrive systems out of semiorganics.’ A slight pause. ‘Mark Vernon is in charge of construction.’
Nigel smiled in delight. ‘Wow, we’re really reverting to the good old days. What did Mark have to say about being brought in?’
‘He’s loving it, of course,’ his original said. ‘Between moaning like hell. But there really is no one better for integrating odd systems like this.’
> ‘Excellent.’ Before Nigel’s new body had been fast-grown in a vat at the Dynasty’s private clinic, his original had agreed with Paula and Vallar that organic systems were the most likely to retain functionality in the Void. Something in that weird continuum seemed innately hostile to most technology. ‘Anything new come up?’
He watched his original and Paula exchange a glance.
‘Not really,’ Paula said.
‘But . . .’ he prompted.
‘We’ve been trying to understand the Skylords. They seem to be independent; they’re certainly sentient in a savant fashion. But at the same time they only exist to guide souls, or fulfilled minds, to the Heart. That’s a little puzzling.’
‘Paradoxical,’ his original said.
‘So?’ Nigel asked.
‘We’re uncertain if you can rely on them,’ Paula told him. ‘They don’t seem to be antagonistic, more like aloof, which again is contrary, given the function they perform.’
‘I’m not sure something like that can evolve naturally,’ the original Nigel said. ‘They were probably created by the Void Heart or its controlling mechanism, whatever that is. But they do seem a little odd.’
‘Unlike the rest of the Void,’ Nigel observed.
‘The Void is odd, granted, but it’s all integral, and even has a kind of internal logic.’
‘You said it,’ Nigel said. ‘They serve a function, guiding fulfilled souls to the Heart.’
‘It just doesn’t quite seem right,’ Paula said.
‘You can’t seriously think the Skylords evolved outside and then fell into the Void like other species,’ Nigel countered. ‘That’s even more illogical.’
‘Our neural bioware is artificial,’ Paula said. ‘It is technically machinery, yet it can hold sentience. And we’ve seen AIs become sentient.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ Nigel muttered.
‘So they might be external artificial organisms, AI starships or an alien variant of ANA, which have adapted to the Void,’ the original Nigel said.
Nigel looked over at Vallar. ‘Is that what Makkathran has become?’
‘Makkathran sleeps. That is all we have seen. It seems to respond to Edeard at some autonomic level. We have composed a stimulant that you may download into it. We hope this will trigger its awakening.’