The Evolutionary Void Part 24

Sensors showed several team members stepping out of their apartments in full armor. They began to sprint over the long gardens that led down to Francola Wood.

Beckia walked up beside him, her helmet sealing up. Oscar's visor closed as his integral force field established itself. He ran a check on his heavy-caliber weapons. Accelerants flooded into his bloodstream as biononics complemented his muscles. "Here we go again," he said in complete dismay. A low-power disrupter pulse shattered the lounge's big window wall, and they ran out onto the lawn.

Mellanie's Redemption hung in transdimensional suspension a hundred thousand kilometers above Viotia. Pa.s.sive sensors absorbed what information they could, revealing that s.p.a.ce around the planet was empty apart from a single Dunbavend Line starship in a thousand-kilometer orbit. For a pa.s.senger ship it seemed to have an awful lot of weapons systems, several of which were active. hung in transdimensional suspension a hundred thousand kilometers above Viotia. Pa.s.sive sensors absorbed what information they could, revealing that s.p.a.ce around the planet was empty apart from a single Dunbavend Line starship in a thousand-kilometer orbit. For a pa.s.senger ship it seemed to have an awful lot of weapons systems, several of which were active.

A secure TD link routed Troblum's u-shadow to the planetary cybersphere, allowing him to monitor events. The u-shadow also kept watch for the SI. So far it hadn't intercepted his connection, but Troblum was convinced it would be watching the data flowing along the link.

"Why are we here?" Catriona Saleeb asked. She was sitting on a simple stool beside the cabin wall, which had pushed out a small wooden bar. Appropriately, she was dressed for an evening out on the town, wearing a slinky blue snakeskin dress, her hair spiraling in an elaborate style and sparkling with small red gems.

"It was the course I'd designated before the Swarm went active," Troblum said gruffly. "And we had to test the hyperdrive."

Catriona glanced at the big image of Viotia that a portal was projecting into the middle of the cabin. "Are you going to call him?"

"Who?"

"Oscar Monroe."

"No." He brought some performance tables into his exovision and studied them, checking through the hyperdrive's functions. Peripheral displays showed the violence playing out across the planet as residents took their revenge on Living Dream members.

"If you help them, they'll take care of the Cat," she said.

His u-shadow slid the performance tables to one side. He gave her an angry stare. "They'll do that anyway. Paula knows she's been taken out of suspension; she won't rest until the Cat is back where she belongs. It's over. Do you understand that? Now I'm going to review the hyperdrive. Once I'm satisfied it's working correctly, we'll leave."

"I just want you to be safe; you know that." Catriona picked up a long-stemmed c.o.c.ktail gla.s.s and drained its sticky red liquid. She swirled the ice cubes around the bottom. "And I know you need closure on the Cat. If you run now, you'll never know what happened. You won't be able to live with that. You'll spend the rest of your life seeing her everywhere; you'll panic at every strange noise in the wind."

"I'm not that weak."

"If you're not afraid, then call Oscar."

"That's machine logic."

Her lips pouted, their glossy scales darkening down to purple. "For someone who cares about no one, you can be a real b.a.s.t.a.r.d at times."

"Shut the f.u.c.k up. I mean it." He brought his exovision intensity up. On a street in Colwyn City a family of Living Dream followers was being chased by a mob armed with power tools and thick clubs. Their clothes had betrayed them, made from simple cloth in old styles. Two adults were dragging along three terrified crying children, the oldest no more than eleven. It was a residential street, houses and apartment blocks packed tight. The father found one he obviously recognized and dashed up to the front door, pounding away, yelling furiously. The mob slowed and surrounded them in an eerily quiet, efficient maneuver, some primeval hunter knowledge governing their movements. They closed in. The father kept hitting the door with his fist while the weeping mother pleaded for her children to be let through. As if knowing how futile it was, she put her arms around them, clutching them to her as she started screaming. The news show's reporter was good, focusing perfectly on the makeshift clubs as they rose.

Troblum actually turned his head away as his u-shadow canceled the news show; it was all too vivid.

"Do you want to be human?" Troblum asked. "Did you think I would grow you a clone body and transfer your personality in?"

"Excuse me?"

"Is that what you were hoping for?"

"No," Catriona said, sounding quite shocked.

"I won't do that. Not ever. The universe doesn't need more humans. We have nothing to offer the universe. We need to leave our original form behind. It does nothing but generate misery and suffering. The External worlds are full of animals. They can't be cla.s.sified as true humans. They don't think; they just act. Animals, that's all they are-animals."

"So how do you define real humans? People like yourself?"

"A real person would want independence. If you were real, you'd want a body. Did you talk about it with Trisha and Isabella and Howard?"

"Troblum?" She sounded troubled. "Don't."

"Was Howard a part of it, too? Were you going to put pressure on me to make it happen?"

"No."

"Did you tell the Cat about me?" he yelled.

"Stop this!"

"I don't need you."

"But I need you. I love you."

"Don't be stupid."

She climbed off the stool and knelt at his feet. "I only exist because of you. How could I not love you for that? I would not betray you. I cannot. You know this."

Troblum flinched. His hand hovered above her thick, tightly wound hair.

"Please," she said. There were tears in her eyes as she looked up at him. "Please, Troblum. Don't do this to yourself."

He sighed, lowering his palm onto her head, feeling the springy strands of hair against his skin. Then her hand closed around his, letting him know her warmth, her light touch. She kissed his fingers one at a time. Troblum groaned, half-ashamed, half-delighted. She's not real. She's an I-sentient. Does that make her the perfect human for me? She's not real. She's an I-sentient. Does that make her the perfect human for me? His whole mind was in chaos. His whole mind was in chaos.

"You'd change," he whispered. "If I gave you a meat body, you'd change. Your routines would be running in neural paths that are never fixed. I don't want you to change."

"I don't want a meat body. I just want you. Always. And I need you to be safe and happy for that to happen. Do you understand that, Troblum?"

"Yeah," he said. "I get it."

The starship's sensors reported energy weapon discharges above Colwyn City. Troblum frowned. "What's that?" he queried. His u-shadow started refining the scan.

It had been a while since Araminta had used the melange program. Nothing wrong with the program; it was its a.s.sociation with Likan that made her all squirmy and uncomfortable. That was stupid. She certainly couldn't afford that kind of weakness now.

As she walked beside the little brook, she sent her perception seeping out ahead of her, experiencing it flowing along the path. Far away she could feel the Silfen Motherholme, sympathetic and imposing. There was the human gaiafield, fizzing with agitation and excitement. On the other side of her mind was the Skylord-she recoiled from that right away. Her feet kept on walking. All around her the trees were growing higher, muddling those on the world she walked among with those of Francola Wood. She knew now where the path would take her into Francola Wood, smelling the scent of the whiplit fronds. Her mind found a host of people lurking in the undergrowth, cleverly concealed by their gadgetry while their steely thoughts filled with expectation. They were waiting for her.

Yet even as it swept her along to its ending, she knew the path was fluid, simply anch.o.r.ed in place by past wishes, directions sung to it by Silfen millennia ago. She tried to make her own wishes known. Somehow they weren't clear enough, and the path remained obdurately in place. So she summoned up the melange and felt the calmness sinking through her body, centering her, enabling her to concentrate on every sensation she was receiving.

The tunes imprinted on the path's structure were easier to trace, to comprehend. With that knowledge she began to form the new tunes that her thoughts spun out. Wishes amplified by a fond nostalgia and the most fragile of hopes.

Onward her feet fell, pressing down on damp gra.s.s as the melody permeated her whole existence. She swayed in time to the gentle undulations she had set free, finally happy that the end of the path was moving with her, carrying her onward to the place she so urgently sought. There, ahead of her, the thoughts she knew so well radiated out from his home.

Araminta opened her eyes to look across the lawn toward the big old house. Her initial smile faded from her face. There had been a fire. Long black smoke marks contaminated the white walls above three of the big ground-floor arches. Two of the balconies were smashed. There was a hole in the roof, which looked melted.

"Oh, great Ozzie," she moaned. The dismay was kept in place by the melange, occupying a single stream in her mind, an emotion that neither colored nor determined her behavior. "Bovey!" she called as she ran for the house. "Bovey!"

Two of hims were outside by the swimming pool. They turned around at her voice. The gaiafield revealed his burst of astonishment.

"You're okay," she gasped as she came to a halt a few meters short of hims. One was the Bovey she'd been on their first date with, the body she truly identified as him him; the other was the tall blond youngster. At their feet was another body, inert, covered in a beach towel.

"Oh, no," she said. "Not one of you."

"Hey," the older of hims said, and threw his arms around her. "It's okay."

Some small part of herself marveled at how calm she was, channeling all the emotion away so she could remain perfectly rational and controlled. She knew what she should say, even if her voice lacked the appropriate intensity. "I'm so sorry. This is all my fault."

"No, no," he soothed.

"I should have told you. Warned you. I left because I didn't want you to get involved, to get hurt."

Neither of hims could avoid looking at the corpse. "It's okay. You came back; that's all that matters."

"It is not okay. They killed one of you." A pulse of regret and guilt in his mind alerted her. "No, it's not just one, is it? How many?"

He took a step back from her, though his hands were still gripping her shoulders.

"Tell me," she demanded.

"Five," he said, as if ashamed.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"

"It doesn't matter." His grin was rueful. "That's the point of being mes; bodyloss is irrelevant. Some of mes are scattered all across this city, and n.o.body knows how many there are; certainly not those thugs. I'm safe. Safer than you."

"This is my fault. I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't have come to you, not before it's all over."

"I'm glad you did," he said earnestly. "Really, I am. Just seeing you, knowing you're okay, makes this all worthwhile." Both of hims looked back across the empty garden toward the Cairns, whose muddy waters flowed past the bank at the bottom of the lawn. "How did you get here? Everyone thinks you're on Chobamba."

"Long story."

A sound similar to faint thunder rolled across the house. Araminta turned to the source, seeing energy weapons flash just below the curving force field dome. She didn't need any kind of program to tell her it was the Francola district.

"Not again," Bovey groaned. "Enough!"

"It's me," she said impa.s.sively. "They're fighting because they think I'm there."

"Araminta." It came out of both of hims, a distraught desperate voice.

"I can't stay. They'll find me eventually."

"Run, then. I'll come with you. We'll just keep on running. The navy can probably help."

"No. I can't do that. ANA has gone. n.o.body is going to help us; n.o.body can stop Living Dream and the Accelerators. It's down to me now."

"You?"

"I'm not running, not hiding. Not anymore. I know I have no right to ask this, because I didn't have the courage to tell you about myself before."

"I understand."

"You're sweet, too sweet. After this is over, I want us to be together. I really do. That's why I'm here, so you know that."

He hugged her tight again. "It'll happen," he whispered fiercely. "It will."

"There are things I have to do," she said. "Things I don't want to, but I can't see any other way. I have an idea, but I'm going to need your help to make it work."

Inigo's Twenty-sixth Dream IN ALL THE YEARS Edeard had lived in Makkathran, he'd never bothered drawing up a proper map of the deep tunnels. He knew there were five large concentric circles forming the main routes, with curving links between them. He also instinctively knew their position in relation to the streets and districts above. Beyond the outermost circle were the longer branches driving out under the Iguru plain apparently at random. One day he would fly along each of those brightly lit white tubes to find exactly where they emerged. One day when he had the time.

For now he was simply glad that the outermost circular tunnel carried him close to Grinal Street in Bellis district, where Marcol was having difficulty subduing an exceptionally strong psychic. Edeard hadn't used a deep tunnel for months, if not longer; such excursions were becoming a rare event. For several years now he'd had no reason to rush anywhere, especially on constable business. But now, as he hurtled along somewhere deep underneath Lisieux Park, the sheer exhilaration made him curse his middle-aged timidity. His cloak was almost tearing off his shoulders from the ferocity of the wind. He stretched his hands out ahead, as if he were diving. Then he rolled. It was a ridiculously pleasurable sensation, making the blood pump wildly along his veins. He yelled out for the sheer joy of living once more. And rolled again and again. A side tunnel flashed past, then another. He was almost at his destination in Bellis. There was an urge to simply go around again. Marcol and his squad can handle it, surely Marcol and his squad can handle it, surely.

Something was suddenly hurtling around the tunnel's shallow curve directly ahead. Edeard never bothered using his farsight in the intense white light of the tubes, so he was taken completely by surprise. He just had time to harden his third hand into a bodyshield as they flashed past. Two people clinging together. Teenagers, whooping madly. No clothes on as they coupled furiously in the buffeting wind. There was a quick glance of their startled, ecstatic faces, and then they were gone, their joyful cries lost amid the churning slipstream. Edeard threw his farsight after them, but the tunnel had separated them too quickly; already they were lost around the curve behind him.

His shocked thoughts managed to calm, and he asked the city to take him the other way to chase the intruders and catch up. He slowed as always, skidding to a halt on the tunnel floor. Then the force that carried him reversed, and he began flying back the way he'd just come.

This time he sent his farsight ranging out ahead. Perception through the tunnel walls was difficult, even for him. He could just sense the city a couple of hundred yards above him, but that was mainly due to the layout of the ca.n.a.ls impinging on his perception. Actually sensing anything along the tunnel was extremely difficult.

For a moment he thought he'd caught a trace of them a few hundred yards ahead, but then he lost them again. When he reached the spot, it was a side tunnel branch, and he didn't know which way to go. He skidded and stumbled to a halt in front of the fork, standing on the bright glowing floor, looking first one way and then another, as if hunting a trace. Then he tried delving into the tunnel wall structure for its memory. The city always recalled decades of localized events.

That was the second surprise of the day. There wasn't one memory of the teenage couple. He could sense the tunnel's recollection of himself flashing past barely a minute before, but of them there was nothing.

"How in the Lady's name did they ..." His voice echoed off down the tunnel as he frowned at the shining junction. For a moment he thought he might have heard laughter whispering along the main tunnel. But by then he knew he was grasping at phantoms. "Honious!" he grunted, and asked the city to take him back to Bellis.

Grinal Street was a pleasant enough boulevard, winding its way across the south side of the Bellis district from the Emerald Ca.n.a.l to the top of Oak Ca.n.a.l. A mixture of buildings stood along it, from typanum-gabled mansions to bloated hemispheres with narrow arches that made perfect boutiques, leading onto a line of houses with blended triple-cylinder walls whose overhanging roofs made them resemble k.n.o.bbly stone mushrooms. Sergeant Marcol had been dealing with an incident in Five Fountain Plaza close to Oak Ca.n.a.l. The plaza was enclosed by a terrace with a concave outer wall and an internal honeycomb configuration of small cell-rooms connected via short tubes without any apparent logic to the layout, as if the whole structure had been hollowed out by giant insects long ago. This hivelike topography made it ideal for merchants and traders dealing in small high-value items. Few people lived in it, but many thrived and bustled around inside.

Edeard arrived at a squat archway in one corner and automatically ducked his head as he went inside. There was a lot of hostility and bad temper radiating out from the gloomy interior. As he crossed the threshold, he was instantly aware of a strong farsight examining him. His inquisitor, somewhere over in Zelda, withdrew farsight as Edeard attempted to backtrack it.

He paused, pursing his lips with interest. That That hadn't happened for quite a few years, either. Whoever had taken such an interest in him before the Skylords returned had been ignoring him ever since. He didn't think their reemergence today was a coincidence. hadn't happened for quite a few years, either. Whoever had taken such an interest in him before the Skylords returned had been ignoring him ever since. He didn't think their reemergence today was a coincidence.

Marcol was waiting for him in the herbalist emporium, a room on the second floor reached by a spiraling tube and several interconnected cell-rooms. Its walls were completely covered in rugs woven with intricate geometric designs. Lanterns hung on long bra.s.s chains, burning jamolar oil to cast a thick yellow light. There were other scents in the air, a melange of spice and alcohol so potent that that Edeard half expected to see it as a vapor. The cell-room was fitted out with row upon row of small shelves lined with kestric pipes of various sizes and lengths. Several were lying broken on the floor. Hundreds of the narcotic plant's long tapering leaves hung from racks, drying in the hot air. There were bundles of other stems, seed pods, and leaves that Edeard didn't recognize. Again, many of them had been torn down and trampled underfoot.

As soon as he'd pushed aside the bead curtains, he immediately knew who the protagonists were: two men on opposite sides of the room, still glaring at each other, minds reeking of animosity. One was old and quite large, dressed in an expensive matching jacket and trousers colorfully embroidered with small birds in the same style as the hanging rugs. Edeard immediately tagged him as the herbal emporium's owner.

The other man was considerably younger, under thirty, and Edeard knew his type only too well. Yet another Grand Family son a long way down the ent.i.tlement list, as arrogant as he was handsome and living well beyond his allowance thanks to extended merchants' credit. Edeard immediately suspected the owner was one such creditor. The two constables under Marcol's charge had gotten cuffs on him, rumpling up the sleeves of his dark red velvet jacket. Looking around, Edeard didn't quite know why he was there. Then he studied the younger man's face closely, taking in the high cheekbones, the dark floppy hair, the unbreakable defiance in those light brown eyes.

I've seen him before. But where? He was younger. Honious d.a.m.n my memory.

"What's the problem?" he asked lightly.

"Colfal called us," Marcol said, indicating the owner. "Alleging psychic a.s.sault. When we turned up, Tathal resisted arrest." His thumb jerked toward the youthful aristocrat, who responded with a dismissive smile. "He's a difficult one."

"I did no such thing," Tathal said. It was a polite tone, and the accent wasn't immediately indicative of Makkathran's finest. Edeard thought he might be from the southern provinces.

Holding up a finger to Tathal for silence, Edeard turned to Colfal. "Why did Tathal a.s.sault you?"