The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Yeah!” Tomansio said heartlessly. “You have to guard yourself against that. He got me half an hour ago. I just hope to Ozzie they’re not genuine memories.”

  A muffled scream sounded across the cabin. Everyone looked at the sealed door of the sleeping cubicle where Aaron was brawling with his own mind. “Can’t we wake him up?” Oscar’s shield was as strong as he could make it, and he could still sense the nightmare flooding out of the sleeping man’s mind.

  “Troblum and I tried that once,” Araminta-two said. “Won’t be doing that again. Thankfully, my third hand is stronger than his.” He gave a nervous smile. “Actually, Aaron was the one who’s been making me practice and develop my abilities.”

  “We’re losing him,” Inigo said. “And if we lose him …”

  “No,” Corrie-Lyn said. “We won’t lose him, not to her. Not before we reach Makkathran. He’s stronger than that. I know.”

  “Yeah, but this?” Tomansio gestured at the sleeping cubicle.

  “Less than two hours,” Corrie-Lyn said. “And we’ll be walking though Makkathran’s streets. His subconscious knows that.”

  “His subconscious is the problem,” Oscar muttered dourly. “Where’s Troblum?”

  “Where he’s been for most of the flight,” Araminta-two said archly. “In his sleeping cubicle.”

  “Has he got problems, too?” It came out before Oscar really thought about what he was asking.

  A mildly guilty flash of amusement shimmered across the cabin, a brief intimate connection shared by everyone equally.

  “Okay,” Oscar said, desperate not to let any thoughts wander in the direction of the big man’s cubicle. “Why?”

  “Wouldn’t like to guess, but his solido projector is in there with him.”

  “Wow, this must have been a great trip for you.”

  “Wonderful,” Araminta-two admitted. “Being on the Lady’s Light was just about preferable.”

  “Did the Pilgrimage fleet make it through?”

  “Yes. About a week ago. I had a spot of trouble with Ethan afterward, but that’s settled now.”

  Oscar was curious, but instinct made him hold back from asking for details. “And Ilanthe?”

  “Oh, yes, it’s here. It killed a Skylord and consumed its abilities.”

  “Christ. So where is it now?”

  “The other Skylords say it’s on its way to the Heart.”

  Oscar almost wished they’d left him in suspension. “Let’s wake up the others,” he said.

  Aaron emerged from his sleep cubicle just as Beckia was taken out of her medical cabinet. Oscar took one look at him and drew in a sharp breath. Aaron was in a bad way. His face looked as if he’d had some kind of capsule smash, with scars and bruising contaminating his skin. Eyes bloodshot.

  “Good to see you,” Oscar lied.

  Aaron gave him a sour glance. “Where’s Troblum?” Without waiting for an answer, he thumped his fist on Troblum’s door. Oscar saw that each fingernail was black and bleeding.

  Troblum emerged, his mind spilling resentment into the cabin. He gave everyone a sullen glance and dropped his gaze to the decking like a censured teenager.

  “Land us,” Aaron said. “Come on, we don’t have time for your personal crap; you need to focus on this. Justine encountered some difficulties on the way down.”

  “I’m ready,” Troblum replied sullenly.

  Acceleration couches rose up out of the floor.

  “Talking of personal crap,” Tomansio said levelly. “Have you considered what you’ve been spilling into the Void?”

  “What?” Aaron snapped.

  “Well, let’s just hope your ex-girlfriend hasn’t been replicated like Kazimir was. I’d hate to bump into her down there.”

  Oscar gripped the sides of his couch. The first amber warnings flickered into his exovision. Several systems were glitching. He wished they’d left him in suspension until they were down and this particular hell was over.

  It was late afternoon in the Anomine city, and the air was already starting to cool. Gore pulled on a black cashmere sweater as he moved along the intrusion systems lying like a giant spiderweb across the plaza. The strands were sticky, glistening black in the rose-gold sun. His field function analysis of the individual strands was showing up few imperfections amid the long-chain molecules that were twined together around their active penetration filaments. Production quality had been high, which was impressive given that the replicator had never been designed with anything quite like this in mind.

  He gave Tyzak an unobtrusive look. The big old Anomine was squatting on his hind legs on the other side of the plaza, close to Gore’s little camp. It still had no true idea of the web’s actual purpose.

  I guess mistrust and suspicion are greater in humans than Anomine. Shame, but there you go, it gives us an edge. And yet … they went postphysical. Though not this variety. It’s almost as if they bred two strains of themselves, the go-getters and the naive.

  A theory as good as any. Somehow he couldn’t imagine Tyzak and his kind achieving postphysical status.

  Maybe that’s true biological evolution. Achieve the pinnacle and decline back into peaceful extinction, irrelevant once your true achievement has elevated itself out of this universe. Perhaps spacetime has no other purpose than to be an embryo for sentience.

  He tried to recall how many species the navy exploration ships had found that had backed away from the apex of science and intellect without achieving the leap to postphysical. The statistics eluded him, but he didn’t think there were many.

  Something ripped noisily through the clean air above the city, bringing a wave of joy and relief. Tyzak hadn’t heard it; therefore—

  Gore smiled contentedly to himself. He felt surprising calm for a mere meat body as his u-shadow opened a link to the Delivery Man. “How’s it going?”

  “Well, amazingly, I’m still alive. No change up here. The incursion package is loaded. I’m just waiting for you to say go to activate it.”

  “Go.”

  “What?”

  “Initiate the wormhole and start the siphon power-up sequence. We’re going to need that energy soon.”

  “Oh, crap. Okay, I’ll try.”

  “Thanks. For everything.” Gore closed his eyes, opened his mind, and watched the sky.

  The sonic boom crashed across Makkathran without warning, sending the local birds wheeling through the sky, their wings pumping in alarm. Panicked animals across the city started an ugly bawling. Justine looked up and smiled widely in utter relief. She wanted Dad to know this, a wish that surged out of her, as strong as any Void-derived psychic ability. It took a moment, then she found the pure white contrail sketching a beautifully straight line high across the turquoise sky. The dark tip was already out across the Lyot Sea. It started to curve back around again.

  “Finally!”

  The starship vanished from sight behind the high wall surrounding the little courtyard garden at the back of the Sampalok mansion. Justine told the two ge-chimps to carry on raking the new section of the vegetable patch she was preparing. The funny little creatures swished the crude tools back and forth across the soil as she directed. Sculpting them had been one of the most satisfying moments she’d had in ages, even though the first had one arm longer than the other and the second seemed to have a hearing difficulty.

  Justine hurried out into the central square and stood on the specific spot she’d been using for the last seven weeks. “Take me down,” she asked the city. The ground beneath her feet changed, and she fell through the city substance to the travel tunnel underneath. And that was the single most satisfying achievement just about ever. She still hadn’t talked to or even sensed the city’s primary mind, buried heaven only knew how many kilometers below the buildings and canals. But she had finally managed to impress her thoughts on the more simple routines that regulated the fundamental aspects of the city structure. Whatever Makkathran actually was, its management network was a homogenized
one. Farsight had showed her that electricity powered the lights and some of the pump systems. Gravity was manipulated to make the travel tunnels work. All of that confirmed everyone’s original belief that the city had come from outside the Void. But it still didn’t tell her anything she wanted to know.

  She descended into the dazzling illumination of the travel tunnel and pushed her sunglasses firmly back on her nose before asking the city to take her to Golden Park. Gravity began to shift, and she made sure she was leaning forward as it altered. She’d made the mistake of falling feetfirst once and didn’t want to repeat that. Flying headfirst, now, that was another matter. It was more exhilarating than Inigo’s dreams had ever conveyed. She punched her fists out in front and whooped joyously as she performed her first corkscrew roll.

  Justine rose up into Golden Park beside one of the white pillars along the Outer Circle Canal. The melded domes of the Orchard Palace gleamed with a burnished sheen behind her as she waited. After all the weeks of anticipation, half convincing herself that she might have decades to wait, she was finally giving in to her body’s hormonal rush of anxiety as she watched the starship appear above the Port district. It was flying a lot slower now, though its wingtips were still trailing faint vapor trails across Makkathran’s cloudless sky. Wait—wings?

  The starship circled around over Ysidro district and began a steep descent. It was suffering the same way Silverbird had, Justine decided. The flight wasn’t as stable or as slow as it ought to be; the Void was glitching its drive units. Once or twice she sucked down a sharp breath as it wobbled in the air. Then long landing struts popped out, and it dropped the last ten meters out of the sky to skid a way along the thick tangle of grass before coming to a halt not a hundred meters from the Silverbird.

  A circular airlock opened in the starship’s midsection, and some old-fashioned aluminum stairs slid out. People trotted down, radiating a mixture of joy and disbelief that Justine’s farsight recognized easily. It was identical to her own.

  There were nine of them standing together on the grass as she approached, a surprising number for a ship that size even if they’d used suspension. Then their farsights perceived her, and they turned to greet her as she jogged over.

  Shouts of welcome reached her when she was still twenty meters away. Several were waving jubilantly. A couple of them even started to run toward her. They all seemed to be smiling wildly.

  Not true, she corrected herself, and pushed her sunglasses up.

  The big man standing at the back with a formidable shield around his thoughts—he wasn’t smiling. Nor was the one who looked as if he’d been in a bad street fight and lost. But the others were all genuinely happy to see her, which was good enough.

  The one who was in the lead flung his arms wide and gave her an effusive hug. Something oddly familiar about his face—

  “Justine Burnelli,” he exclaimed. “It’s been awhile.”

  And that smile was so sinfully teasing, she couldn’t help but grin back. “Sorry. Who …?”

  “We met at the Second Chance departure party,” he said wickedly. “Oscar Monroe, remember.”

  “Oh. My. God. Oscar? Is that you? I thought you were still … I mean.” She shrugged awkwardly.

  “Yeah, they let me out eighty years back. I didn’t make a fuss about it.”

  “Good to see you, Oscar,” she said sincerely. “Gotta admit, I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Nobody does. I think that’s the point of being me these days.”

  She laughed, then glanced over his shoulder at the others. “Inigo, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Inigo didn’t go for the whole hugging scene. He stuck his hand out formally. That was when Justine realized she might be slightly overdoing the whole Queen of the Wild City act. All she wore was boots, a small black bikini top, and some denim shorts with the cattle prod, a pistol, and a machete hanging off her belt. The sun had tanned her skin a deep honey brown at the same time it’d bleached her hair almost white, and that hadn’t been styled since she arrived; these days she just tied it back with some straps in a loose tail. Quite a change for someone who back at the start of the twenty-first century used to spend over a hundred thousand dollars a year on personal grooming, and that was before her clothes bill. All in all, she must’ve been quite a fright sight.

  Slightly more self-consciously now, she allowed Oscar to introduce everyone else. Araminta-two—two!—was interesting, the Knights Guardian were about what she expected, Troblum she didn’t know what to make of, Corrie-Lyn she took an instant mild dislike to, and Aaron just plain scared her. She wasn’t alone in that, judging by the way everyone else reacted to him.

  “All right,” Corrie-Lyn said to Aaron. “We made it. We’re here. Now for the love of the Lady, will you tell us why we’re here?”

  Justine was expecting Aaron to smile wisely at least, as any normal human would. Instead he turned his bruised eyes to Inigo. “We’re here so that you can bring Him forth,” he said hoarsely.

  “What?” a startled Inigo asked. “Oh, sweet Lady! You are joking.”

  “No. He’s the only one who can help us now. And you’re the one who has his true memory; you are connected with him. Especially here. You can reach into the Void’s memory layer where he was. You don’t even have to reset the Void anymore, which was the original intention. We know that now; Justine showed us this with Kazimir.”

  Corrie-Lyn went to Inigo and took both of his hands in hers. “Do it,” she whispered fiercely.

  “The Waterwalker is gone,” Inigo said with infinite sorrow. “He is a dream now. Nothing more.”

  “You can bring him back,” Aaron said. “You have to.”

  —to land on the ground at the foot of the Eyrie tower. His ankles gave way, and he stumbled, falling forward. Strong third hands reached out to steady him. But there was no crowd as there always was, as there should have been. No family. No Kristabel.

  “Honious! I am wrong,” Edeard stammered miserably. In his haste to escape the horror of the hospital in Half Bracelet Lane, he had somehow misjudged the twisting passage through the Void’s memory and finished up … He looked at the small group of people staring at him; they were dressed so strangely—yet not. His farsight swept out. Finitan was not atop the tower. He scoured the buildings in Haxpen and Fiacre to find them empty. The city was silent, devoid of its eternal telepathic chatter. He couldn’t sense a single mind anywhere save the nine directly in front of him. “No!” He spun around to face the ziggurat, farsight frantically probing every room on the tenth floor. They were empty of people, furniture …

  “Where are they?” he bellowed. “Where is my family? Kristabel!” His third hand drew back, ready to strike instantly.

  One of the peculiar group walked forward, his thoughts calm, welcoming, reassuring. A tall man with a handsome face—a known face, though it was darker than it had been before, and the hair was brown instead of light ginger as it ought to be. Such trivia was irrelevant, for this was a face that could not possibly be here, not in the real world.

  Edeard’s third hand withered away. “No,” he whispered. “This cannot be. You are a dream.”

  The man smiled. There were tears in his eyes. “As are you.”

  “Inigo?”

  “Edeard!”

  “My brother.” They embraced, Edeard hugging the man as if his life depended on it. Inigo was the only thing that made sense in the world right now; he was the anchor. “Hold me,” Edeard begged. “Do not let me go. The world is falling apart.”

  “It’s not, I promise. I am here to get you through this.”

  Edeard’s thoughts were awhirl, panicked, dazed. “The life you lived,” he choked out.

  “Nothing compared to yours,” Inigo assured him.

  “But … those worlds you showed me, the wonders that dwell there. It’s all real?”

  “Yes. It’s all real. That is the universe outside the Void. The place where the ships that brought Rah and the Lady came from.”

&
nbsp; “Oh, dear Lady.”

  “I know this is a shock. I’m sorry for that. There is no way I could have warned you.”

  Edeard nodded slowly and moved back to gaze incredulously at the one person he’d believed was forever beyond reach. “I thought you were someone the Lady had sent to comfort me as I slept. You showed me what kind of life could be built if only we tried. And I have tried so hard—” His voice broke. He was close to weeping.

  “You did more than that, Waterwalker, so much more,” a young woman said. She had dark red hair and a pretty freckled face, and she looked at him so worshipfully, he was astounded. “You succeeded.”

  Edeard glanced shamefacedly at Inigo. “You know what I have done, what I am fleeing from.”

  “We all know your life. That is why we are here.”

  “You can help me? Is that why you have come?”

  “You don’t need our help,” Inigo said. “Your triumph was magnificent. Whole planets marvel at your achievements here in Makkathran.”

  “I don’t understand. I’ve screwed this up just as Owain and Buate and their ilk always claimed I would. I became what they were, Honious take me.”

  “No, you didn’t,” the woman said earnestly. “Edeard, listen to me. After the unity attempt failed, your next effort to bring peace and fulfillment to Querencia worked. You never reset the Void again; you never needed to. You and Kristabel and your friends all accepted guidance to the Heart in old age. It was beautiful to behold.”

  “You speak as if this has already happened.” Edeard gave the woman a curious look as some very uncomfortable thoughts began to gather in his mind.

  “Edeard.” Inigo put a steadying hand on his shoulder. “We’ve only just arrived in the Void. In here time flows much quicker than it does outside. Which is why only a few hundred years have gone by out there compared to the millennia here. You are our past. I brought you out of the Void’s memory.”

  “Are you saying I have already lived my life? All of my life?”