The Dreaming Void

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The waitress brought over the tray of beer Macsen had ordered. Dinlay immediately reached for his tankard. Edeard fumbled with the money pouch in his pocket.

  ‘Oh no, my round,’ Macsen said. His third hand deposited some coins on the empty tray. ‘Thank you,’ he said sincerely. The waitress smiled. Evala and Nicolar pressed in closer.

  Edeard sighed. He’s always so polite, as well. Is that what does it?

  ‘Boyd,’ Macsen called out loudly. ‘Close your mouth, man, you’re drooling.’

  Boyd snapped his jaw shut and glared at Macsen. A bright flush crept up his face.

  ‘You pay him no heed,’ Clemensa said. She brought a hand up to Boyd’s cheek, turned his head and kissed him. ‘A girl likes it when a man pays attention.’

  Edeard thought Boyd might faint with happiness.

  ‘Got to go,’ Dinlay muttered. ‘Back in a minute.’ He stood up and swayed unsteadily, then headed for the archway at the back of the saloon where the washrooms were.

  The fact that there were toilets on an upper floor was one of the many revelations about city buildings which had taken Edeard a time to get used to. But then a tavern which sprawled over many floors was also a novelty. As was the pale-orange light radiating out of the ceiling that was nearly as bright as daylight. The first night they’d visited the Olovan’s Eagle he’d wondered why there was no straw on the floor. Life in the city was so civilized. Sitting here in the warmth, with a window showing him the lights outside stretching all the way to the Lyot Sea, good beer, comfortable with his friends, he found it hard to fit this with the crime and gangs who cast such a shadow over the streets outside.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Kanseen hissed at Macsen. ‘He’s had too much to drink, already.’

  ‘Best thing for him. He’s not a fighting drunk. Another couple of pints and he’ll fall asleep. Next thing he’ll know it’s tomorrow and we’ll be so busy he won’t have time to brood. Tonight’s what we need to get him through.’

  Kanseen looked like she wanted to protest but couldn’t think how. She looked at Edeard.

  ‘Makes sense,’ he admitted.

  Macsen placed another order with the waitress.

  ‘My liver has to sacrifice its life so we can get Dinlay through graduation,’ Kanseen complained.

  ‘In the constables we stick together,’ Edeard said and raised his tankard. ‘To the memory of our livers. Who needs ’em?’

  They drank to that.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Macsen said. ‘I’ve made arrangements. Our beer is watered. Dinlay’s has two shots of vodka in each pint.’

  Even Kanseen had to laugh. She tipped her tankard to Macsen. ‘You’re so …’

  ‘Beautifully evil?’ Edeard suggested, giving his tankard a mortified stare. This is watered? I couldn’t tell; it tastes the same.

  ‘Spot on,’ she said.

  ‘I thank you.’ Macsen put his arms round the shoulders of the girls and pulled them in; kissing Evala first, then Nicolar.

  ‘Not just tonight we’ve got to worry about,’ Boyd said.

  ‘Does our Boyd need to worry about tonight?’ Macsen asked Clemensa.

  She gave Boyd a hungry look. ‘He certainly doesn’t. After what you did today, you’re all heroes in my book. That needs a lot of rewarding.’

  ‘He’s going to want to prove himself,’ Boyd said. ‘Nothing the sergeant said is going to hold him back. Next time we come across a fight or a robbery, Dinlay will be at the front and aching to take on the bad guy.’

  ‘I figured that too,’ Edeard said.

  ‘We’ll have to be ready,’ Kanseen said. ‘We can’t hold him back, that would make it worse. But we can be up there with him.’

  ‘Everyone together,’ Macsen said. He raised his tankard. ‘No matter what.’

  ‘No matter what,’ they toasted with a roar.

  Edeard still couldn’t taste the water.

  The four ge-monkeys from Jeavons constable station walked slowly along the street, looking like pallbearers as they carried a comatose Dinlay home to his dormitory bed.

  Kanseen kept looking back to check. ‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’

  ‘Not really,’ Edeard said. ‘If Macsen was serious about the vodka, he’s going to have the hangover from Honious tomorrow morning.’ He turned to inspect the ge-monkeys himself. Using them wasn’t the ideal solution, but it was better than him and Kanseen hauling Dinlay along. Boyd and Macsen had stayed on at the tavern with the girls. There were private rooms upstairs which they’d no doubt be using that night. Edeard was trying to keep his envy in check.

  ‘Macsen!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘He’s not so bad. Actually, I’d rather have him by my side than Dinlay.’

  ‘Some choice.’

  ‘And you’re preferable to all of them.’ All that beer and now the balmy night air were making him light-headed. That must have been why he said it.

  Kanseen said nothing for a while as they walked back along the long, nearly deserted street. ‘I’m not looking for anyone right now,’ she said solemnly. ‘I just broke up with a man. We were engaged. It … ended badly. He wanted a nice traditional girl, one who knew her place.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But I have to say it’s his loss.’

  ‘Thank you, Edeard.’

  They walked on a while more, shadows shifting as they passed under the bright orange light patches on the outside of the buildings.

  ‘I don’t know what it is about you,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m not just talking about how strong your third hand is. You stand out. You’re what I imagine the sons of noble families are supposed to be like, or were like before they got so rich and fat.’

  ‘Nothing noble about me.’

  ‘Nobility doesn’t come from a bloodline, Edeard, it comes from within. Where was your village?’

  ‘Ashwell, in the Rulan province.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean anything, I’m afraid. I don’t know any geography beyond the Iguru Plain.’

  ‘Ashwell was a long way past there, right on the edge of the wild lands. I’ll show you on a map if I can find one. It took a year for us to travel here.’

  ‘Gift me.’

  ‘What? Oh.’ Edeard concentrated, trying to find a recollection that would do his home justice. Spring, he decided, when the trees were bursting into life, and the sky was bright, and the winds warm. He and some other children had gone outside the rampart walls and taken the long route round to the top of the cliffs where they looked down on the cosy buildings sheltering below.

  He heard a soft pull of breath, and realized how heavily involved in the memory he’d become, lacing it with melancholy.

  ‘Oh, Edeard, it’s so beautiful. What happened? Why did you leave?’

  ‘It was attacked by bandits,’ he said stiffly. In all the time he’d spent in the station dormitory he’d never told his new friends the truth about Ashwell. All they knew was that he’d lost his family to bandits.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. For once she dropped the veil round her thoughts, allowing him to sense the sympathy. ‘Was it very bad?’

  ‘Salrana and I survived. And five others.’

  ‘Oh, Lady! Edeard.’ Her hand held his arm.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve come to terms with it. Except for losing my Master, Akeem. I still miss him.’ The emotional currents welling up in his thoughts were both unexpected and alarmingly strong. He truly thought he’d put all this sentiment and mourning behind him. Now all he’d done was picture his old home, and the feelings were rushing back as strong as the day it had happened.

  ‘You should talk to one of the Lady’s Mothers. They give excellent council.’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe.’ He made his legs work again. ‘Come on, I have a notion Chae isn’t going to be too gentle with us tomorrow.’

  The ge-monkeys laid Dinlay out on his mattress and pulled a thin blanket over him. He never woke, just groaned and shuffled round a bit. Edeard couldn’t be bothered to take his friend’s boots off, he was
suddenly incredibly tired himself. He barely managed to remove his own boots and trousers. The dormitory’s ge-chimps scampered about, collecting his clothes for the laundry.

  Of course, now he was actually lying down, his mind was too restless to deliver the sleep his body craved. He sent a thought to the main ceiling’s rosette pattern of illumination, and it dimmed to a nebula-glow. That was about the only reaction the city buildings ever did have to human thought. The ge-chimps quietened down. Faint sounds from downstairs whispered through the big empty room, the usual comings and goings of the night shift officers. Edeard had never really got used to the way walls in the city curved. Back in Ashwell, walls were laid out in straight lines; the nine sides of his old Guild courtyard were considered pretty adventurous architecture. Here in the dormitory, the oval bed alcoves were almost rooms in their own right, with arching entrances twice Edeard’s height. He liked to imagine the dormitory was actually some kind of aristocratic bedroom, and that maybe the race which created Makkathran had more than two genders. Hence the six beds. That would make the station an important building. He couldn’t quite assign a use for the honeycomb warren of little rooms below ground which were used as prisoner cells and store rooms. As he thought about it, he let his farsight drift down through the translucent grey panorama of the station’s structure. The image was such that it seemed to surround him, engulf him. Gravity pulled at his mind, and he sank ghost-like through the floor of the basement. There were fissures in the ground beneath, smooth fissures that looped and bent as they wound deeper and deeper. Some were no wider than his fingers, while others were broad enough to walk through. They branched and intersected, forming a convoluted filigree that, to his quixotic thoughts, resembled the veins within a human body. He felt water pulsing through several of them, while strong winds blew along others. Several of the smaller fissures contained threads of violet light which appeared to burn without ever consuming the fissure walls. He tried to touch them with his third hand, only for it to slide through as if he were grasping at a mirage.

  His farsight expanded, becoming tenuous. The fissures spread away from the station, burrowing under the street outside, knitting with other extensive hollow filigrees which supported the surrounding buildings. Edeard gasped in wonder as his farsight grew and grew; the more he relaxed the more he could perceive. Slivers of colour shone through his mind, as if this shadow world was growing in texture. He couldn’t even sense the dormitory any more. The station was a small glowing jewel embedded in a vast whorl of similar multichromic sparks.

  Makkathran.

  Edeard experienced the wonder of its thoughts. Immersing himself in a melody where a single beat lasted for years, chords so grand they could shake the very ground apart if they ever gained substance. The city slept the long sleep of all giants; untainted by the pitiful frantic tempo of parasitic humans crawling through its physical extremities.

  It was content.

  Edeard bathed in its ancient serenity, and slowly fell into a dreamless sleep.

  6

  ‘How long?’ Corrie-Lyn asked.

  Aaron growled again and ignored her. He was inside a gym cage that the starship’s cabin had extruded; testing the flexibility and strength of his restored upper torso. Pulling weight, pushing weight, bending, twisting. Working up a sweat as endurance was evaluated, measuring the oxygen consumption of the new flesh, blood flow rate, nerve speed .

  ‘You knew Qatux could do it,’ she whined. ‘So you must know how long it’ll take.’

  Aaron gritted his teeth as gravity shifted off vertical and increased, forcing him to pull the handle he was gripping while stretching at the same time. Biononics reported the tendons were approaching their tear limit.

  His patience was also undergoing a strenuous work-out. They’d been back in the Artful Dodger for fifteen hours, a time which Corrie-Lyn had devoted to drinking and moaning. She now considered handing over Inigo’s memories to be a terrible betrayal, not to mention a bad idea. A really bad idea. Stupid actually. As she kept saying.

  ‘So it’ll have like a mini-Inigo hanging round inside its own brain?’

  Aaron took a look at the oxygen usage in his shoulder muscles. The levels were only a couple of points off the original muscle. Not bad for a couple of days. Drugs and biononics had done what they could, the rest of it was down to good old-fashioned exercise. A decent callisthenics program should see the levels equalize over the next week or so. He shut the gym down.

  ‘Something like that,’ he said.

  Corrie-Lyn blinked at the unexpected answer. She rolled over on the couch and reached for the pitcher of tasimion margarita. ‘So you ask the mini-Inigo a question …’

  ‘And Qatux answers it for us. Yes.’

  ‘What a load of bullshit.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ He slipped his T-shirt off, and examined his torso. The membrane was starting to peel off. Underneath, the new skin was tender, but at last the colour was deepening to the same shade as the rest of him. ‘I’m going to take a shower,’ he said.

  ‘You’re shaping up good,’ she giggled. ‘Need a hand in there?’

  Aaron rolled his eyes. ‘No thanks.’ He now had a strong theory of his own why Inigo had run away from Living Dream, and it wasn’t anything to do with Last Dreams or the pressure of being idolized by billions. Maybe she only turned into this after he left?

  The gym sank into the wall, and there was a moment’s pause before the shower cubicle extended out from the same section. He slipped his shorts off and stepped in as Corrie-Lyn let out a wolf-whistle. He must be recuperating, his cock was stirring. But if Qatux did come up with a notion of where the reluctant messiah was hiding out, she’d be more necessary than ever. So he turned the spore temperature down about as low as it would go, and thought of other things. Unfortunately, with a memory that didn’t reach back past Ethan’s appointment he didn’t have much to mull over. Except his odd dreams. That horse ride … he’d been young. So it must have been his childhood. Seemed pleasant enough.

  After he’d showered, they carried on their research into the odd Raiel who’d agreed to help them. Clued in by what it had said they’d sent their u-shadows out into the unisphere to search for files on the history of Far Away during the Starflyer War. The first surprise was to find just over a million files on the period available. It took eight hours for them to filter it down to relevant and useful information. Even then, there was no direct evidence Qatux had been there.

  There were endless documents on Bradley Johansson’s team of Guardians chasing the Starflyer back to its lair, and how they joined up with an odd security team that Nigel Sheldon assigned to help them. Admiral Kime was one of them, of course; that was a common history text. His audacious hyperglider flight over Mount Herculaneum, and subsequent rescue by Nigel himself. Anna the Judas. Oscar the martyr. Paula Myo and the Navy interdiction squad, Cat’s Claws.

  ‘I didn’t know it was Nigel who originally sent the Cat to Far Away,’ Corrie-Lyn exclaimed. ‘What was he thinking of?’ She was sober again after a meal and a couple of alcohol-binder aerosols. Aspects of the search seemed to genuinely interest her.

  ‘Be fair, he couldn’t see the future.’

  There were some appendices that claimed the pursuit was aided by an alien. But the context was strange. The

  Bose motile was known to be part of Nigel’s secret clique at the time. There were no references to a Raiel. One file said the Barsoomian group helped Johansson because he’d brought their genetic holy grail to Far Away. Again, nothing as to what that grail actually was.

  ‘Let’s try another angle,’ Aaron said. He told his u-shadow to find all files relating to a Commonwealth citizen called Tiger Pansy around the time of the Starflyer War.

  The cabin’s portal projected a rather startling image.

  ‘No way,’ Corrie-Lyn said.

  Aaron stared at the woman in equal disbelief. She was a complete mess. Terrible hair; bad facial reprofiling ruining the symmetry of her eyes, nose,
and lips, appalling cosmetics making them appear worse; ridiculous breast enlargements; tight, short clothes that no girl over twenty could ever get away with wearing, let alone this one, who must have been close to rejuvenation time again.

  ‘Signed to the Wayside Production company on Oak-tier,’ Corrie-Lyn read off her exovision. ‘Appeared in a large number of their, aha, productions. Left them in the last year of the Starflyer War. No subsequent information. Nothing; no residency listing on any planetary cybersphere, no records of rejuvenation treatment, no bodyloss certificate. She simply dropped out of sight.’

  Aaron shook himself and cancelled the projection. ‘Easy enough at the time. There was a mass migration from the Lost23 worlds which the Primes had invaded. After that, it got even more chaotic.’

  ‘Coincidence?’

  ‘The Raiel are not known for their lies. Maybe Qatux did marry her. She certainly looks the emotional type.’

  ‘That’s not quite how I’d describe her,’ Corrie-Lyn muttered. ‘And how did she get to Far Away? The planet was virtually cut off for decades until the starlines started flying there.’

  ‘She must have been with the Johansson team. I don’t think it’s relevant.’

  ‘No, but it’s interesting. Why would a Raiel go there?’

  ‘You want to ask?’

  She shook her head. ‘Naa, too intimidated.’

  ‘I’ll ask for you.’

  ‘No. Let’s just drop it.’

  ‘You’re right though. It is interesting. I was obviously given the correct information. Qatux helps humans.’