Yet, for all its population was reducing on a daily basis, New Costa was still home to over a hundred million people. The residential districts with smaller mass-grown drycoral homes where all the low-level company workers used to live had been reduced and turned to parkland connected to the synergistic freeways. But the districts with the larger mansions and elegant condos – those round the fringes of the city, away from the worst industrial excesses – still remained. That was where the majority of people lived now.
Nigel had an estate in the heart of the Cromarty Hills, two hundred square miles of manicured gardens and immaculate old-style parkland on the edge of the megacity. The palace in the very middle was a ludicrous anachronism now, effectively a single-building town that had been capable of accommodating his entire household. That was back when he had a vast immediate family and an entourage of managers and lawyers – all of whom had their own staff – who would travel between his lordly residences on many planets, settling for a few months in one then moving on like some royal procession in medieval times. A life lived in a fashion which made the old French Sun King seem cheap and small.
The estate’s smartcore ran a final check on the capsule and its solitary passenger as it decelerated across the threshold. Enlightened he might be – relatively speaking – but Nigel was still quite assiduous about his privacy. Especially on this day.
His u-shadow directed the capsule to land outside the lake house. A lake three miles long and two wide, with islands of rock pinnacles whose crests were covered in a thatch of verdant vegetation. They’d taken years to craft and carve from local rock, and as far as cost was concerned, it was trivial compared to the sum his CST co-owner Ozzie had spent converting an asteroid into his habitat home. The only normal, flattish island was in the middle, with a semi-circular white marble pavilion structure above the shore. Most of the island was well-tended forest, but it had a lush verdant lawn stretching between the water and the building. That was where the capsule came down.
‘Who’s here?’ he asked the smartcore as he stepped out onto the lawn. Weeping willow leaves rustled softly in the warm El Iopi wind that blew out of the heart of the continent. The humidity was as strong as always. He started to perspire almost at once.
‘There are forty-two Dynasty members currently in residence, along with a hundred and seventeen associates and estate personnel. They are occupying twenty-six buildings. As requested, the lake house is empty, as are all buildings around the shore.’
‘Good.’ Nigel put on a pair of mirrorshades and squinted up into the sky. The glare point that was Regulus was poised above the rolling mountain crests and sinking slowly. It would be night in a couple of hours. ‘I will be having a visitor in three hours. Their starship will be diplomatic coded. Let them through the security screen on my authority. Do not inform anyone else of their arrival.’
‘Understood.’
Nigel hurried inside where the aircon would be on and he could get ready.
*
Five hours previously, Nigel had been on Nova Zealand, a Central world that just about qualified as H-congruous. Recella, one of his great-great-great-granddaughters, was getting married for the first time. As Nigel had two hundred and thirty-eight children (that he knew of), it wasn’t exactly a rare event. But her mother, Koloza, was on the Dynasty board and had also signed up for the latest colony project. Family obligation . . .
It wasn’t unknown to receive a call from the High Angel, just extremely rare. CST had discovered the alien arkship in orbit around the gas giant Icalanise back in 2163. It looked like an unusually regular asteroid, except for the twelve giant crystal-roofed domes on stalks sticking out from the rocky surface. Closer inspection of the transparent domes revealed that they contained cities. It was a Raiel ship, though there were other species living in the domes. At the time, the Raiel didn’t reveal what the High Angel’s purpose was; that only became clear four hundred years later, once the Endeavour was turned away from the Wall stars around the Void. The Raiel had built High Angel, and countless other arkships, to evacuate representative populations of sentient species from the galaxy should the Void begin its terminal expansion phase.
Ever since first contact, the Raiel had enjoyed excellent diplomatic relations with the Commonwealth, even propagating New Glasgow, a dome city on High Angel for humans to live in. Then, after the Endeavour encounter, the Navy had been invited to join their observation of the Void. The Raiel didn’t release any of their advanced technology, despite numerous requests, claiming they didn’t want to disrupt the Commonwealth’s natural sociotechnological development. Even with constant contact, they remained an enigma.
‘Accept the call,’ Nigel told his u-shadow. The wedding ceremony itself was over by then, and the relatively modest reception had just begun. Koloza had hired an entire resort village in the Fire Plain, a crater in the arctic surrounded by active volcanoes that heated the land to tropical levels.
‘Thank you for talking to me,’ the High Angel said courteously in a smooth male voice.
Nigel grinned as Recella and her new wife took to the open-air dance floor; both girls looked blissfully happy. Somewhere beyond the resort’s armed perimeter, the cries of mighty dinosaur-equivalent creatures rolled across the swamps. ‘You knew I would. Who refuses a call from you?’
‘Ozzie has been known to.’
‘Of course he has. What can I do for you?’
‘I would like you to meet a Raiel representative. She wishes to discuss an important topic with you.’
‘Interesting. Why didn’t she just call me direct?’
‘Your unisphere is relatively secure. However, I would expect the Commonwealth Navy Intelligence office to monitor all calls originating from me, especially one from a Raiel.’
‘Fair point. All right, I’ll meet her. Where?’
‘We would suggest somewhere that affords some privacy.’
‘I know just the place.’
*
After he’d taken a spore shower, Nigel got dressed in the lake house’s master bedroom, choosing a simple pale brown silk suit with a semiorganic lining that contracted snugly round him. Check the mirrors to see blond hair that was still pleasingly thick, though he could do with a cut. Jaw nicely flat, cheeks not too rounded. His one concession to cosmetic sequencing was green eyes; otherwise he’d kept his own features. Unlike everyone else these days, he didn’t hold his biological appearance in his twenties, preferring mid-thirties to give a touch of maturity. Even today people passed judgement on purely visual clues. It mattered not that his brain was genetically and biononically enhanced beyond anything nature could ever achieve, and the ancillary lacuna now stored every memory from his life; before such advances he’d had to edit entire decades from his mind each time he underwent rejuvenation to avoid the inevitable clutter confusion such an excessive accumulation of experience produced. But today, with secondary routines handling recollection, every day of those thirteen hundred years was instantly available – every mistake, triumph, love, heartbreak, political manoeuvre, discovery, disappointment, wonder and grubby deal that made his personality what it was.
‘The Raiel ship has entered Augusta’s atmosphere,’ the estate’s smartcore told him.
‘Thank you. Let it land, then shield and screen the estate. No exceptions.’
‘Understood.’
The interior of the marble lake house always made Nigel think of some Scandinavian church. It was all down to the high vaulting ceilings and plain lines, complemented by simple curving furniture in white and grey. It was as if the place wasn’t quite finished, but they’d started using it anyway. The principal lounge had a big arched window wall looking out across the dark water beyond the shore. The centre of the glass parted to allow Nigel out onto the lawn.
Trees from Illuminatus had been planted on the rock pinnacle islands; at night, after Regulus had departed the sky, their bioluminescence came alive, crowning the islands in a soft blue and purple phosphorescence. Long ref
lection ribbons shimmered across the water like icy flames, the only visual beacons guiding visitors down.
Nigel’s enriched vision showed him the Raiel craft while it was still fifteen miles high. He fed the estate’s sensor data into his sight, amplifying the image.
The craft was a twenty-metre sphere with a flat base. It was emitting gravitational distortions similar to a Commonwealth regrav drive.
Nigel watched it land in the centre of the lawn. His biononic fieldscan function caught a T-sphere expanding, and a Raiel was teleported onto the grass in front of him.
He arched an eyebrow. Very dramatic. Overuse of technology, though. What’s wrong with a simple malmetal hatch? ‘Welcome to Augusta,’ he said out loud.
The Raiel was larger than a terrestrial elephant, with a tough looking grey-green hide. That was where any equivalence died. For Nigel, standing directly in front of the alien, it was like looking at the crown of an octopus. The wide rounded head was surrounded by tentacles that varied from the pair closest to the ground, which were long and strong, clearly evolved for heavy work, up to clusters of smaller, more agile, appendages. Behind the array of tentacles, odd ropes of flesh dangled down like flaccid feelers, weighted by heavy knobs of technology – or maybe just jewellery, he conceded.
‘Thank you for receiving me,’ the Raiel said from a mouth that was all damp folds. ‘I am Vallar, High Angel’s designated liaison with the warrior Raiel.’
‘Indeed? Please come in. I am delighted to grant you the freedom of my house.’
‘You are most kind.’
Vallar walked over to the lake house. She had eight short legs along each side of her body; devoid of joints, they moved in pairs, tilting up and forwards to move her along in an elegant undulation. Nigel had to lengthen his stride to keep up.
The entrance in the window wall widened further to accommodate Vallar, then closed behind her. Nigel ordered the smartcore to activate another layer of privacy shielding around the building.
‘I hope we are secure enough now?’ Nigel asked. He remained standing. Somehow flopping back into a chair in front of the imposing alien would have seemed vaguely rude.
Her eyes were clusters of five separate small hemispheres that swivelled round in unison to focus on him. ‘Completely. I thank you for the courtesy.’
‘So what can I do for you?’
‘We are extremely interested in the latest development in the Commonwealth concerning the Void.’
‘Ah,’ Nigel murmured, and started to relax. ‘Of course. Inigo.’
Inigo was a human who had allegedly started to have dreams about a life lived by an adolescent named Edeard, living on a planet called Querencia inside the Void. Edeard’s story was of an idealist making his way through some quasi-medieval society but with telepathic powers thrown in. So far Inigo had released four of these astonishingly detailed dreams through the gaiafield and was just starting the fifth. A lot of people thought they were perfect forgeries, fantasy dramas produced by some External world company who were enacting the mother of all product placements. But a lot more people – tens of millions already, and increasing daily – were utterly convinced by the visions Inigo alone had been mystically granted. Living Dream was a growing movement that wanted to live the same life as Edeard, and people flocked to Inigo to await further revelations. He was rapidly turning into the human race’s latest unnervingly plausible messiah, offering a glimpse into a very strange universe indeed, where you lived a simpler, yet very different life.
Nigel looked up at the Raiel’s eyeclusters. ‘I can’t vouch that those dreams are real. Humans are capable of very ingenious deceptions, for a variety of reasons, not all of which make sense.’
‘The fourth dream shows Edeard travelling to the city of Makkathran.’
‘Yes, it does.’ Nigel didn’t quite blush, but he felt a mild embarrassment at admitting he’d accessed all the dreams – a twelve-year-old caught sipping his father’s beer. ‘It was an odd city. Built by aliens.’
‘It is one of ours.’
‘What?’
‘Makkathran is one of the warships that formed our armada. It was part of the invasion we sent into the Void a million years ago.’
‘You’re shitting me!’ Nigel blurted.
‘I am not.’
‘No. Of course. Sorry. But . . . are you sure?’
‘Yes. It is what convinced us that the dreams are genuine, that Inigo is somehow connected to Edeard. And that Edeard himself is real. How else would he know that name? Even we had almost forgotten it. And then there is the shape of the city, as well as its crystal wall.’
Nigel flinched, angry with himself for not seeing the obvious. Makkathran was circular, with a crystal wall running round it. ‘Sonofabitch. It’s perfectly circular, and the city wall is the base of a dome. How obvious. Then the rest of the ship must be buried underneath. I didn’t know you had canals in your cities.’
‘We don’t. Our ships have an integral mattershift ability. Your species witnessed High Angel shape New Glasgow to suit you. This is what has happened here. Some other species lived in Makkathran, and the ship crafted itself to their needs.’
Nigel sat down in one of the lounge’s oversized couches. ‘And then they all got carried off by Skylords to live in the Heart of the Void, isn’t that the local religion?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wow. So that’s what’s inside the Void? A spacetime continuum that permits mental powers? How the hell does it do that?’
‘We do not know. Nigel, this is the first glimpse we have ever been granted into the Void. Our armada failed. No ship ever returned. We thought they were all dead, that the Void had defeated them. Now it seems at least one has survived.’
‘Okay,’ he said, becoming wary. ‘So what do you want?’
‘I have come to you because you are the leader of the Commonwealth.’
Nigel held up a hand, palm outwards. ‘Hardly. I drove a lot of its development and policy at the start, back when wealth mattered. But that was a long time ago. ANA: Governance bosses the Central worlds around now; as for the External worlds, hell, they’ve got political parties to pounce on every grudge. And as a species, we’re prolifically inventive when it comes to grudges.’
Vallar didn’t move. ‘Nonetheless, you remain the single most powerful individual alive in the Commonwealth today.’
‘I have influence outside the norm, yeah.’
‘We need to investigate Inigo’s dreams. It is urgent.’
‘There are certain resources available to me,’ he admitted slowly. ‘But . . . You turn back every ship from the Wall stars. I know this. I accessed the Navy reports on the stealth ships Admiral Kazimir has tried to slip past you. So how did humans wind up in there? And that civilization Edeard lives in is – what, a couple of thousand years old? Was the Void snatching people from Earth back in medieval times? No, wait; don’t Edeard and Salrana talk about ships falling onto Querencia?’
‘We do not know how humans got into the Void. This lack is greatly disturbing to us. However, one of your inter-galactic colony fleets disappeared two hundred years ago.’
‘Disappeared?’ Nigel barked. ‘What do you mean, disappeared? And if you knew that, why haven’t you informed us?’
‘It was the second Brandt fleet, consisting of seven starships. The warrior Raiel who guard the Wall stars monitored it flying past the galactic core at considerable distance. Then they lost track of it. Please understand the monitoring was not constant. The warrior Raiel are only concerned with starships that venture close. It is possible that the fleet changed course, or decided to settle a pleasant world they found in this galaxy – and we are looking for that right now. However, it is equally possible they were somehow taken inside the Void.’
‘If that’s right, then time inside the Void is different – faster,’ he mused. ‘Well, why not? Giving people telepathic powers is a lot weirder. Temporal flow is a much simpler manipulation of spacetime; we’ve done it enough inside wo
rmholes.’
‘The method by which humans got inside the Void is possibly a higher concern to us than even the existence of Makkathran.’
‘How so?’
‘A fleet of starships two hundred years ago, or a pre-technology civilization on Earth. Either would mean the Void has an ability to bring sentient species inside that we did not know about, and cannot detect. Frankly, we are very worried. Our million-year vigil may have been for nothing.’
‘Huh, yeah, I see that.’ Nigel took a breath and stood up again. ‘Vallar, I will be happy to help you investigate Inigo as thoroughly as needed. And you were right to come to me; playing by the rules would mean Inigo could stall any normal government disclosure request for decades in the courts if he wanted.’
‘I thank you. There is another aspect we would also request your assistance with.’
‘Which is?’
‘We would very much like to know how those humans got into the Void. Their arrival myth needs to be determined. Makkathran itself may be able to help.’
Nigel gave the huge Raiel a puzzled look. ‘Yeah, but how can you accomplish that?’
‘Someone has to go inside the Void and ask it.’
May 19th 3326
In all her seventeen years Alicia di Cadi had never seen anything as lovely as the isle of Llyoth. It was one of over a thousand tiny coral islands that made up the Anugu Archipelago, stretching for three hundred miles across Mayaguan’s Sambrero Ocean. The C-shaped ridge of coral was barely a kilometre long. Thanks to Mayaguan’s large close-in moon, low tide pulled the waves back for five hundred metres, exposing a shallow beach of the finest white sand, while on the other side of the isle a circle of low dragonspine polyps produced a shallow lagoon whose water was bath-hot. Native cycads clinging to the slender ground between had saltwater roots, allowing them to produce towering stems with emerald fronds that rolled out like sails every morning.
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