The Temporal Void

by Peter F. Hamilton

  As soon as they came back out on to Doulon Lane, the squad went their various ways, calling goodnight to each other. There were very few people on the street at this late hour. Edeard buttoned up his cloak again before putting his arm around Kristabel. She leant in against him, her mind showing him complete contentment. They walked back towards the pool at the end of Garden Canal with the nebulas painting pale colours against the night sky. It might have been the residue of kestric but they seemed to have a lustrous sparkle as Edeard gazed up at them. Honious particularly tonight was beset by internal shimmering.

  ‘You often do that,’ Kristabel said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look at the nebulas.’

  ‘Do I? I suppose I just wonder how much we really do know about them.’

  ‘I can name most of them.’

  ‘Ah yes, but that’s not knowing, is it? What are they really? Do you think our souls are destined to drift among them?’

  ‘The Lady says that’s what befalls us if we don’t lead a life that holds us true to ourselves.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said grumpily as he thought back to those interminable Sunday mornings as a small boy at the back of Ashwell’s church, with Mother Lorellan reading from the Lady’s scriptures in a drab monotone. And who decides what true is?

  Kristabel just pressed harder against him, humouring the strange doubts flecking his thoughts.

  Her private gondola was moored at a platform on the edge of the pool, with a lamp swinging from the frame of the little canvas cabin. There wasn’t much room inside. Edeard and Kristabel had to snuggle up close on the bench. She pulled a fur rug up round their legs. As the gondolier set off up Garden Canal, they began to kiss. He ran his hand through her abundant hair, tasting her lips, then her cheeks, her neck, returning to her mouth. She moaned excitably, her mind enraptured. Even their thoughts seemed to merge.

  Eventually she pulled back, giving him the most tender smile he’d ever seen on her delicate face.

  ‘What?’ he asked. There was no way he could possibly have misunderstood her feelings. Few of the girls he’d know had ever been as open as Kristabel.

  ‘I’m ready for this,’ she murmured sensually. ‘And I know you are.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he assured her.

  ‘It’s just—’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘No, Daddy actually approves of you. He’s not quite as traditional as he comes across.’

  Edeard couldn’t help the grin of disbelief creeping across his face. ‘I know.’

  ‘I think we both know this isn’t going to be some casual affair.’

  ‘Yes.’ There was some echo of what she said that tickled at his subconscious, which he dismissed.

  ‘So I want this to be right.’

  ‘It will be.’

  She kissed him lightly. ‘It’s very late. We’ve both been partying. You have patrol duty at seven tomorrow. None of that is good.’

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘I know you had a bad experience with Ranalee, but the family has a beach lodge outside the city. It’s really lovely. I would like us to go there. Just you and me. For a week.’

  He was incredibly sensitive to the feel of her pressed up against him. Her whispered yearnings and the candid desire in her mind were affecting him with the same potency as any of the illicit fires Ranalee’s dominance had kindled. ‘Yes,’ he breathed harshly.

  ‘Would you like that?’

  ‘Yes.’ His throat was so tight he could barely get the word out. ‘Yes, I would like that.’

  ‘I don’t want to pressure you into a week with me. I will go back to your maisonette with you now if you’d prefer.’

  ‘No. The beach lodge sounds wonderful.’

  ‘Really?’ Her cheek rubbed up against him. ‘Thank you. Thank you for giving us this chance.’

  The gondola turned along Flight Canal, and headed down towards High Pool. They didn’t even kiss any more. Their faces rested against each other while they smiled. Edeard looked straight into her eyes and mind, relishing everything he saw. The eagerness, the physical yearning, the excitement that twinned anticipation. The adoration. It was all mirrored, he knew; exactly what she could sense in his own mind. The openness was . . . sweet.

  Homelt was standing on the ziggurat mansion’s landing platform. He grinned as Kristabel climbed out of the gondola.

  ‘Good morning, Mistress. Did you have a nice time?’

  She flashed him a warm smile. ‘Yes, thank you, a very nice time.’

  Homelt looked down at Edeard, who tried to keep a straight face and failed dismally. He nodded briskly.

  ‘Is my father still up?’

  ‘No, Mistress, he went to bed several hours ago. There’s only myself and the night-guards awake now.’

  ‘I see. Well, good night, Waterwalker.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mistress.’

  Homelt gave them a surprised look, then escorted Kristabel up the wooden stairs into the mansion.

  ‘Can you be ready for next Tuesday?’ Kristabel’s longtalk asked.

  Edeard didn’t even think of the mountain of work and schedules he’d have to reorganize. And a week from Tuesday was the graduation ceremony, which he could not miss. It would be tight. ‘I will be. Whatever it takes.’

  ‘I’ll hold you to that.’

  He caught one last glimpse of her atop the stairs. Smiling in expectation. It was, he reflected, an enchanting smile. Macsen had been right about her beauty after all.

  The gondolier simply took him over to the other side of Flight Canal where he could walk home through Silvarum into Jeavons. There were two exceptionally bored and sleepy constables standing guard on the bridge over Arrival Canal. Both were startled to see Edeard at that time in the morning, but he stopped for a moment to speak with them. The correct thing to do politically, as Finitan had drilled him, create goodwill and support at every opportunity for you never know when you might need it.

  Politics, as he had learned, could never be ignored in Makkathran, not at any level. It was Finitan’s clever play which had exploited the kidnapping to get the result they needed in the Grand Council following the Festival of Guidance. It was also politics which had prevented the Gondoliers from going on strike as they’d threatened, for that would have made it look as if they were siding with the kidnappers. For now, the city remained on his side. He knew it wouldn’t last, that there would be other attempts to subvert the Council, to turn his supporters away from the exclusion warrants. In all probability, those efforts would never end. He had to remain vigilant, which he was trying his hardest to do.

  Kristabel, though, seemed to be filling his mind these days. He thought of her when he should be concentrating on duty rotas or meetings with District Masters or sniffing out the gang masters. He thought of her when he got up. He thought of her when he was out on patrol, remembering her laugh, the way she looked, her scent, the trivial things of which they spoke. And when he finally did get a few free hours at the end of each day and could be with her, she simply filled his whole world.

  Now this. They were finally to become lovers in the truest sense.

  When he eventually got back to his maisonette and lay on the bed there were only a few hours until dawn when he was supposed to lead a patrol through Jeavons and round Tycho. Rather than sleeping as he should, his mind was awhirl with how to rearrange duty periods so he could spend next week away. That and how she’d felt pressed against him in the gondola. Her smile. The promise. It would be difficult for the squad to cover for him; though he no longer cared. Makkathran could fall into oblivion now. He and Kristabel were to be lovers. It was hard to believe; he’d never been so happy before.

  In one respect, Kristabel and Ranalee were very similar; their notion of ‘just us’ was one which could only ever apply to a daughter from a Grand Family. Admittedly, Kristabel only brought three of her personal staff, not five, but the wagon which accompanied their carriage was heavily laden with luggage cases and hampers of food. And of co
urse there was the team of coachmen, and the wagon drivers, each with their own apprentices. In addition there were the ge-wolf handlers, which Homelt had assigned to them for the road.

  He wouldn’t have minded that so much if they’d simply been able to go. But first there were all her (rather too giggly, he felt) girl friends they simply had to say goodbye to as they left the Culverit mansion. Poor Mirnatha was distraught that her sister and the Waterwalker were leaving her behind, acting as if the separation was forever – so she had to be promised presents and treats on their return. He also had to shake hands with her father and swear no harm would befall his precious daughter; and that was while Lorin was watching impassively from a balcony above.

  Edeard had arrived at the mansion with his one bag shortly after breakfast. The coach didn’t pull out of the family stables in Tycho until just before midday. Kristabel sat straight-backed on the cushioned bench opposite him, her hair woven into a broad beret with little corkscrew curls dangling down. Simply sitting quietly she carried herself with the kind of imperious nature that Ranalee forever sought yet would never be able to achieve.

  ‘You were impatient,’ she said loftily. ‘I had to rush my leave-taking, it was almost rude. Was there some reason you wished to hurry?’

  He just managed to maintain his composure. ‘No, Mistress.’

  ‘Really? I will enjoy testing the limit of your anticipation this evening.’

  ‘Even your cruelty is a joy, Mistress.’

  Kristabel managed to keep a straight face for another few seconds, then she was laughing wildly. ‘Oh Lady, I thought they were never going to let us get away!’ She launched herself at him, and they spent the rest of the journey cuddled together.

  The south road out of the city was as well maintained as all the roads across the Iguru. Twice they passed militia patrols, which had recently been increased to compensate for the growing numbers of highwaymen waylaying travellers. Edeard suspected such incidents were due to the way his own exclusion campaign was squeezing the gangs out of city districts. A number of those named in the warrants had simply left. Apart from that, their trip along the coastal route was without incident. The tall palms lining the road had survived the winter, and were now shedding their scarlet fronds to make way for the new season’s emerald growth. Fields on either side were being readied for the summer crops, with large teams of ge-monkeys preparing the vines and citrus groves and fruit gardens, while ge-horses pulled heavy ploughs. This time of year always cheered Edeard up, reminding him of more carefree times during his childhood. Everyone’s mood improved with the onset of spring.

  He hadn’t known what to expect when they reached the beach lodge. Best guess was a pavilion like the one Ranalee’s family owned. He only started to suspect something different when Kristabel opened the carriage windows, and watched him with mischievous intent. They were no longer riding through fields. The land outside had transformed to gritty hummocks smothered by long reedy grass with shrivelled wind-bowed trees huddled in the lees. Ahead of them the track wound down into a modest cove, with promontories of dark rock. A small stream gurgled alongside. Then he saw it, standing back from the white beach, just behind the crumbling sandy bluff.

  ‘Oh, my Lady,’ he gasped in delight. Kristabel squeezed his hand in shared glee. ‘I always loved this place,’ she sighed wistfully.

  The lodge was a half-living sculpture. Five ancient muroaks had been planted in a circle, then pruned and guided for decades. Their first boughs were three yards above the ground, woven into a platform and reinforced with sturdy planks to form a level floor. But it was the wall which fascinated Edeard. Above the floor, the trunks had been allowed to fork, then fork again. As they’d done so, master gardeners had trained them into tall arches, before bending them back towards the apex when they’d all been twisted together into a final whorl of bark and branches that opened out to shade the lodge from the summer sun. It would need that shade, he realized, for the wall arches were filled with glass. A slender open deck encircled the entire lodge.

  The coach stopped outside, and Kristabel led Edeard up the curving wooden stairs to the door where the lodge keeper was waiting for them. The old man bowed deeply, welcoming Kristabel as if she were his own family.

  Edeard examined the wall’s thick archway pillars, marvelling at the buds of green leaves that were starting to open amid the wrinkles of grey bark, seeing how the stubby twigs were meticulously pruned every autumn. In another month, the entire lodge would appear to be lead-framed panes of glass supported by lines of verdant leaves.

  ‘It’s astonishing,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know people could create something like this.’ He couldn’t imagine anything like it in Ashwell, nor any of the towns he’d passed through on his way to the city.

  ‘Two hundred and eighty years in the growing,’ the lodge keeper said proudly. ‘It was my great-grandfather who originally planted the trees. Our family have tended them for the Culverits ever since; and my son will take over when I pass on.’

  ‘Two hundred and eighty years to grow,’ Edeard repeated, impressed.

  ‘Makkathran makes us lazy,’ Kristabel said. ‘It provides us with so much. We can get things right by ourselves.’

  Inside, the lodge was divided up into seven rooms by ancient wooden panelling. The central room, under the knot of trunks, was the bedroom, with a big circular bed in the middle. An ingenious array of pulleys and twine allowed slatted blinds to be opened or closed against the overhead windows. A thick slab of stone in the living room acted as a hearth for a tall brazier. It already had a fire crackling away, its smoke slithering up through an iron chimney cone.

  Edeard and Kristabel sat on the long settee, staring out at the sea a couple of hundred yards away. He wished it was slightly later in the year, when it would be warm enough to swim. A big twin-masted trading ship sailed slowly past, en route to the ports in the south. The servants and ge-monkeys bustled round, setting out their luggage while the lodge keeper lit the iron stove in the kitchen to boil some tea. Kristabel’s fingers laced through Edeard’s. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said dryly. ‘They’ll all stay in the cottages behind the bluff. Out of farsight range. I wouldn’t want to shock them tonight; some have been with the family for decades.’

  Edeard grinned, remembering Ranalee saying more or less the same thing. He turned back to the sea.

  By coincidence, the Culverit family’s beach lodge was only a couple of miles south of the cove where Ivarl’s body had washed up. Edeard remembered that morning quite clearly. A week after the Festival of Guidance he’d received the message from the coastal warden asking him to identify the body. He borrowed a terrestrial horse from the militia stables, and rode out through the south gate.

  The sea and the rocks had not been kind to Ivarl. Edeard had never seen what water did to a corpse before. The bloating surprised him, as did the sallow colour of the skin. Even so, there was no doubt it was the gang lord.

  ‘Never seen anything like this,’ the old coastal warden said.

  Edeard’s farsight probed at the cords which still bound Ivarl’s wrists and ankles. There was something appallingly elegant about the perfectly wound cords, the complicated knots – so inconsistent with the ugliness of death, especially this one. He’d counted nine deep puncture wounds before giving up. Ivarl had not been allowed to die quickly or peacefully.

  His adversary’s killing bothered Edeard a great deal more than the kidnapping did. If for no other reason than it demonstrated there was some kind of organization stirring in the city of which he had no clear understanding. Despite investigating Ivarl’s closest lieutenants, they’d never managed to determine who’d killed him. Then again, Edeard found himself wondering about Ivarl’s soul. Had it fled the body in the same fashion he’d sensed down in the cellar when Mirnatha’s kidnapper had died? That souls were real disturbed him more than he cared to consciously admit.

  That night Kristabel banished all his doubts and concerns.

  The family serv
ants might have been outside farsight range, but he was convinced they’d be woken by his cries of joy.

  In the morning they dressed in plain white robes and ate breakfast on the little deck which ringed the main lodge. A warm breeze swirled around them, making Kristabel’s wild hair sway about. After she’d finished her bluegrape segments, she called her maid over to brush the tangles out and arrange it for the day. Edeard settled back as the girl began her task, and told the ge-chimps to clear his plates. Out to sea, three sets of sails were passing between the rock wings of the cove. He envied the sailors their freedom. ‘I’d like to do that one day,’ he declared. ‘When the gangs are no more, and the bandits have vanished back into the wilderness, we should take a ship and sail around the world.’

  ‘Nobody has ever found a way through the southern ice flows.’

  ‘Then we go north.’

  ‘Through the atolls of the Auguste Sea? Lady, Edeard, they have reefs which stretch for hundreds of miles. The whole sea is a treacherous maze that can rip the hull off any unfortunate ship that drifts too close to the coral.’

  ‘Then we use a strong third hand to break the reef; or farsight and ge-eagles to find a way out of the maze. That’s my point, no one has ever really tried. We don’t know what else is on this world other than bandits. What if other ships fell here on a different continent or island? What if they kept the science which built those ships?’

  ‘Then they would have probably found us by now,’ she said as her maid finished applying jewelled clips.

  ‘Oh. Yes. But still, what fun it would be to explore properly.’

  ‘I suppose it would be. I never really have time to think such things.’

  ‘I can’t believe no one in Makkathran has attempted to do this. The families have such money as could build the most wonderful ships, and there are so many bored sons. Don’t any of them look beyond the horizon?’

  ‘Many do, but all they’re looking for are girls with suitable dowries. Nobody thinks in those terms, Edeard, not any more. The last person to attempt such a voyage was Captain Allard, and that was over a thousand years ago. He was the Havane family’s second son, who built exactly the kind of ship you talk about, the Majestic Marie. Makkathran had never seen its like before, nor have we since. It was a real galleon, over two hundred feet long, and had three masts. Eighty men set sail on her, all of them experienced sailors, with the best equipment Makkathran’s Guilds could produce. They never came back. Allard’s wife went on to live past her two hundredth birthday; every day she went down to the docks to ask the newly arrived ships if they’d seen her husband. The watching widow, they called her. They say her soul still haunts the docks even today.’