The Evolutionary Void

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Araminta-two inhaled sharply, his hand pressing flat on his chest.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Oscar asked him.

  ‘It’s very weird, like I’m being torn in two. You seem fast, yet I’m not slow, or part of me is. The Pilgrimage fleet is hardly moving until I concentrate on it. Arrrgh. Ozziedamn, this is so strange.’

  ‘Temporal rate difference,’ Troblum said. ‘You are conscious on both sides of the Void boundary, which means you’re living at two different speeds. It will be hard to reconcile.’

  ‘You’d better go into suspension,’ Tomansio said.

  ‘No!’

  The spike of alarm from Araminta-two’s mind was enough to still them all.

  ‘Sorry, but no,’ he said. ‘I – this body – has to live through this. If this me goes into suspension, that means it’ll be just her left, I’ll be out there all alone. If they come for me with those brain infiltrator things, I won’t have any refuge.’

  Tomansio nodded in understanding. ‘How far are we from Querencia?’ he asked Troblum.

  ‘We’re heading for a star system about three lightmonths away,’ Troblum said. ‘I guess it’s Querencia.’

  ‘Three months. Well, I suppose it’s better than three years.’

  ‘Or thirty,’ Oscar said. He was leaking sympathy and concern.

  Araminta-two fumbled for his hand. ‘Thank you, Oscar.’

  Now embarrassment was added to the emotional blend he was betraying. ‘I think I’d better head straight back into suspension,’ Oscar said. ‘Who else?’

  ‘Us as well,’ Tomansio said.

  Inigo and Corrie-Lyn consulted on some unknown level. ‘We’ll sleep it out,’ Inigo said. ‘There’s nothing for me to do until we reach Makkathran. Is there?’

  ‘No,’ Aaron confirmed. ‘How about you?’ he asked Troblum.

  ‘Me what?’

  ‘Okay then. That’s myself, Araminta-two and Troblum staying up for the rest of the flight.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll all be very happy together,’ Corrie-Lyn said. Her mental shield allowed no feeling to show through.

  It didn’t matter. Aaron knew how much she was laughing inside.

  *

  Everyone in the Commonwealth was desperate to know what the hell that confrontation between Araminta and Ethan had been about. She was many? Like a multiple? But she wasn’t. So was she referring to the other Dreamers? She claimed to be with Inigo. And why had he chosen now to release the Last Dream? Had Araminta asked him to?

  Nobody knew. And for all her apparent devotion to Living Dream, Araminta resolutely refused to enlighten her desperate followers back in the Commonwealth, or her equally vociferous opponents. Strangely, Ethan gave nothing away either.

  So the Pilgrimage fleet flew on at fifty-six lightyears an hour towards the Void for day after day with no change. It was apparent now that nothing could stop it apart from the warrior Raiel.

  Or perhaps Justine and the Third Dreamer, some suggested. Gore certainly had some kind of idea. He, too, proved elusive.

  They were odd days that marked the flight of the Pilgrimage fleet. The whole Commonwealth knew that if it was successful then that was the end of everything. That if they were lucky the Heart would become aware of them, and bring their stars and planets unharmed through the Void’s boundary as it swept out to engulf the galaxy. Devoid of ANA’s guidance, Higher worlds were turning their replicator systems to producing armadas of starships in preparation to flee the galaxy. On the Outer Worlds, anyone lucky enough to own a starship was busy modifying it to make an inter-galactic trip. While the Greater Commonwealth government contingency was to have everyone update their secure memory store, which would then be carried by Navy ships to whatever cluster of stars was selected to establish the New Commonwealth, a plan of action invoking the spirit of the New47 Worlds of a millennium ago. Knowing your new self would be resurrected in an alien galaxy at some unknown time in the future wasn’t quite as reassuring as it should have been, not when that meant you’d have to watch your immediate doom smashing down out of the sky.

  Odd days. And that was without the declaration of absolute war by the Ocisen Empire. Further threats of hostile action from eight of the sentient species the Commonwealth had contact with. Appeals for technological help and starships from another three races including the Hancher.

  Odd days, confused even more when the High Angel reappeared back in Icalanise orbit, and its human inhabitants started broadcasting their sojourn in a gas giant’s atmosphere, complete with the brief conflict they’d witnessed through the smog. A conflict High Angel refused to comment on.

  Odd days, where those who instigated the crisis in the first place started to falter. The followers of Living Dream left behind began to question their commitment in the light of the Last Dream; to such an extent that the preparation for the second Pilgrimage fleet was openly challenged. A great many argued that the new ships would be better used fleeing the expanding boundary rather than seeking refuge within, where their ultimate future was now less than certain.

  Days where even the sudden surge of fortitude and determination was still tempered by so many who insisted on immersing themselves in Araminta’s gifting. Hour after hour the Pilgrimage fleet faithfully dropped relay stations as they went, providing a straight electronic channel back to Ellezelin and the unisphere as well as stretching the gaiafield contact across the galaxy.

  Araminta saw only the scattering of turquoise glimmer-points flowing past on the other side of the observation deck. Hysradar revealed the crowded band of globular clusters which comprised the Wall growing closer and closer. Then came the definitive quantum signature of ftl ships approaching from the centre of the galaxy. Over fifty of them. Even that didn’t stir the Dreamer’s cool composure as she led her followers onward to their promised destiny.

  Unisphere access to the sensor feeds rose sharply as the entire Greater Commonwealth sought to witness the outcome. Gaiamotes were opened wide to receive Araminta’s gifting.

  The imagery and sensations ended without warning. Two hundred lightyears behind the Pilgrimage fleet, eight relay stations failed simultaneously. Nobody knew what was happening.

  Paula did. She was sitting in Qatux’s private chamber, watching a display similar to a holographic portal projection. The warrior Raiel had taken out Living Dream’s relays. Now the main attack force was converging on the twelve giant ships.

  Over the next nine hours eighteen gas giants were obliterated, their dying mass converted to exotic energy. Some resulted in omnidirectional distortion waves slicing through hyperspace. Others were subject to incredibly complex formatting architecture, producing coherent beams targeting specific Pilgrimage ships.

  The Sol-barrier force fields protecting the ships resisted every attack tactic, every weapon the warrior Raiel had. As well they might. They were the best it was possible to create. If anything, the Accelerators had improved the design they’d reverse-engineered from the Dyson Alpha generator.

  When the Pilgrimage fleet was halfway across the Gulf, the warrior Raiel withdrew, allowing the fleet to continue unimpeded.

  ‘I feel shame this day,’ Qatux said.

  ‘I feel anger,’ Paula told him. She rubbed her hand across her face, unpleasantly weary from watching the aborted interception. ‘Did they find any trace of Ilanthe?’

  ‘Regrettably not. If it is there, it is exceptionally well stealthed.’

  ‘Crap! We know the ship that picked it up was equipped with high-level stealth. But I never expected it to elude your warrior class.’

  ‘Even if they had detected the ship, there would be nothing they could do about it. The force fields the Accelerators built were flawless.’

  ‘There’s nothing else left then?’

  ‘Our warships are abandoning the Gulf where they have patrolled for these past million years. Now there is only one option remaining: the containment.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Qatux waved one of his two large te
ntacles at the glowing images which floated across the chamber. ‘See. It begins.’

  Ever since their invasion armada failed to defeat or even return from the Void, the Raiel had been preparing for what they regarded as the inevitable catastrophic expansion phase. The strategy was centred around the largest machines the Raiel ever constructed. Humans called them DF spheres, which they first encountered at Dyson Alpha generating the shield which imprisoned the entire Prime solar system. The second encounter was at Centurion Station, which indicated they had more than one function.

  Once the Raiel had established their production facilities in a dozen star systems the gas-giant-sized spheres were distributed throughout the Wall. Over ten million of them had been made over the course of a hundred thousand years, of which only seven had ever been diverted to deal with other problems: two were loaned to the Anomine, three to species who faced similar difficulties, and two to imprison stars that were going nova in order to protect nearby pre-starflight civilizations that would have been eradicated by the radiation.

  Now, courtesy of Qatux’s status, Paula was observing the overview of their activation. During the Void’s last brief expansion when Araminta had denied the Skylord, the DF spheres had all moved in to a close orbit around the stars they were orbiting in preparation for their final phase. Now they began to exert colossal gravity fields, increasing the gravity gradient within their host stars, accelerating the fusion rate.

  Throughout the Wall, supergiant stars started to brighten, chasing up through the spectrum to attain the blue-white pinnacle.

  ‘Their raised power levels will be consumed by our defence systems to produce bands of dark force much like the force fields your Accelerators learned how to create,’ Qatux explained. ‘They will link up into a bracelet, and ultimately expand into a sphere which englobes the entire Gulf.’

  ‘The containment,’ Paula murmured in amazement. The Raiel had conceived a true marvel, an endeavour that until today she’d have said could only possibly belong to a post-physical. It almost made her feel sorry for the Raiel: to have devoted their entire race to such a feat meant they had nothing else. Their commitment to overcome the Void had imprisoned them as surely as if they were inside it.

  After a few hours the glittering band of stars circling the chamber was showing a filigree of black lines multiplying along its inner edge, slowly coalescing into a wide bracelet.

  ‘Will it hold the Void?’ she asked as she watched the slow progress of the lines.

  ‘We don’t know. We have never dared use it before. Our hope is that it can last long enough so the Void consumes all the mass left within the Gulf as it actualizes the reset dreams of everyone inside. Once its fuel is exhausted it will collapse. If the Void is able to break through, the resultant surge may well be so fast as to overwhelm any starships seeking to leave the galaxy.’

  ‘So if it works, everyone inside the Void will die?’

  ‘And the galaxy will live.’

  Justine: Year Forty-Five

  Day Thirty-One

  Justine woke as dawn sent gold-tinged sunlight streaming in through the bedroom’s big window. She groaned at the intrusion, and rolled over in her sleeping bag. Underneath her, the spongy mattress rippled gently with the motion. Edeard had got that particular piece of furniture absolutely perfect, she thought drowsily. The thick beam of sunlight slid slowly across the floor, advancing inexorably towards her. She watched its progress idly, knowing she ought to be getting up. But early rising had never been her strongest personality trait. Those first thirty years living the East Coast party scene had established a habit that nearly a thousand subsequent years spent living in a meat body had never quite managed to break.

  Eventually she unzipped the sleeping bag and stretched, yawning widely, before finally rolling off the bed. It was a large bed, fusing seamlessly into the floor. But then it was a large bedroom, as was appropriate for the Master and Mistress of Sampalok.

  Justine padded barefoot across the floor to the panoramic window, and looked down on the district’s central square. The expanse was remarkably clean, something she’d noticed throughout her exploration of the city. Dirt and leaves certainly started to pile up along the edges of buildings and in various clefts and narrow gaps. But it never got to the stage where weeds would take root. She supposed the city absorbed any large accumulation of muck. Back in Edeard’s time teams of genistar chimps had cleaned up the rubbish produced by the human inhabitants.

  As she watched the small fountains playing, she could see several animals slinking about around the edges of the square as they began their day’s foraging or hunting. She’d been right about the dogs: there were several nasty packs thriving in Makkathran. Native animals were also nesting in the empty buildings. The city seemed to tolerate them.

  Justine slipped on her denim shorts and a clean tangerine T-shirt, then went into the lounge she was using as her base. Most of her equipment was set up, including a simple camp chair which the ship’s replicator had managed to produce after the landing during one of its infrequent functional periods. The one remaining chair in Makkathran, she told herself in amusement. She picked a quarter-litre self-heating coffee canister from the food stack and settled into the simple canvas and aluminium frame. The coffee started steaming half a minute after she pulled the tab, and she sipped appreciatively while she peeled the foil off a buttered almond croissant. There was jam, but she couldn’t be bothered to fetch that. The daily routine was a quick breakfast, a packed lunch, then in the evening she took the time to light the barbecue charcoal and cook herself something more elaborate – which helped pass the time. Despite the city’s pervasive orange light, she didn’t venture out at night.

  After half an hour she began getting ready. A small backpack carried her food and waterproofs, along with some simple tools and a powerful torch. She hung a knife on her belt, along with the semi-automatic pistol and a spare magazine. Before she clipped the cattle-prod on she gave it a quick test, satisfied with the crackling spark that arced between the prongs. Along with the torch, it was one of the few electrical devices that worked reliably.

  Ready to face the new day, Justine walked down the four flights of broad stairs to the entrance hall. The wooden doors of the arching doorway were long gone, rotted away centuries ago. However, the decorative outside gates which closed across them remained. Their intricate gurkvine lattice must have been made from a very pure iron, Justine decided. Rust was minimal, and most of the ornamental leaves were intact. They were robust enough to stop any large animal getting in at night – one of the big contributing factors for choosing the Sampalok mansion.

  She’d been curious why they were still in place. After all, every other human artefact attached to a wall was rejected and expelled after just a few years. But when she examined them in detail she found the city’s substance had actually been fashioned into the thick hinge pins which the gates were hung on. It had taken all of her telekinetic strength and some liberal applications of oil, but eventually she’d managed to prise the gates open.

  Now they swung aside easily as her third hand pushed them. She walked into the square. The hot humid air constricted around her, bringing perspiration to her brow. It was midsummer, with a correspondingly intense sun sliding up over the city’s minarets and towers and domes. Justine put her sunglasses on as she sent her farsight searching round. There was nothing threatening nearby. A couple of fil-rats and some terrestrial cats scurried away. Seabirds circled overhead, their high-pitched calls echoing through the empty squares and alleys. She carefully closed the gates behind her, and set off down one of the wide streets which led away from the square, heading for Mid Pool.

  None of the signs were up on the walls any more, so it had taken her a while to place the original names to various streets and alleys. She soon realized she’d never be able to name more than a fraction – not even the dreams had fully portrayed the sheer complexity and numbers of the passages and lanes and streets that made up Makkathran’s
districts. The closest Inigo’s dreams had ever come to conveying the bewilderment of the urban maze she’d felt for the first couple of weeks after her landing was the day Edeard and Salrana arrived and walked through Ilongo and Tosella.

  Now she strode along the twisting length of Zulmal Street, which would take her to the concourse around Mid Pool. The width of the street varied almost with every step. For the most part it had been shops here, she recalled. Which fitted the wide bulging windows on the ground floor of most buildings. There were no doors any more. They had all vanished ages ago; as had all the interior fittings. At first she’d been curious about the general lack of debris until she realized the city absorbed fragments that threatened to clog its drains and produce soil mounds where grass and moss could flourish. But as she wandered in and out of buildings she found some remains. Metal items were the most prevalent: most homes had some cutlery and the odd piece of jewellery scattered across the floor, the sole testimony to the inhabitants who had left them behind so long ago. The items of precious metal held their shape best; the iron stoves which most households possessed were rusting and flaking down to unrecognizable sagging lumps. She’d also learned to be careful of the long, sharp fragments of crockery and glass that were lying about, making her glad her boots had thick soles. It was strange that these tarnished, almost unrecognizable trinkets were the only proof that an entire civilization of humans had once inhabited this world. If she wasn’t careful, melancholia could shade over into loneliness and apprehension. From there it was only a short step to true dread, the kind that would send her hurrying back to the Silverbird and suspension – assuming the medical cabinet would function adequately. The Void’s prohibition of technology seemed to be gaining ground against the little starship sitting in Golden Park. Even the confluence nest had erratic days. She was fairly certain the only way she’d ever get back into space now would be to once again reset the Void to a time before she landed.