The Temporal Void

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘My dear Conservator, if ANA uses the defence systems our ship was carrying as an excuse to curtail our involvement with your Pilgrimage, there will not be any Pilgrimage. And that is exactly the kind of pseudo-legal argument that so many people will seize upon.’

  ‘But I can’t do anything. We can hardly attack that ship.’

  ‘A friend of mine will be in touch within the hour. She can explain to your wormhole technicians how they can assist our cause.’ Marius closed the link.

  ‘Dear Lady,’ Ethan put his head in his hands. Events were becoming too powerful, building their own inertia. He tried to remember why he’d agreed to the representative’s help in the first place. Ultradrive was turning into the ultimate poisoned chalice. But even if he reverted to equipping the Pilgrimage ships with an ordinary hyperdrive they’d still need help to get past the warrior Raiel in the Gulf. There was nothing he could do but try and ride the crisis out.

  If we just had the Second Dreamer we’d be in a much stronger position. She’s the key to success. We have to acquire her. We have to, no matter what the cost.

  *

  The ExoProtectorate Council watched the new squadron of Capital-class ships matching superluminal flight vectors with the Ocisen Empire fleet. Five of the Navy ships were concentrating their sensors on a single Prime warship, preparing to pull it out of hyperspace.

  ‘This habit is turning into a vulgar repetition,’ Ilanthe said, her voice silky with distain.

  Kazimir hadn’t realized before now how much he missed Gore at the council; his grandfather was a perfect balance against the Accelerator advocate. More accurately, Gore wouldn’t put up with her bullshit point scoring and needling.

  Crispen gave her a small grin. ‘Ever wondered what kind of effect these snatch raids are having on the Ocisens? I mean, their most powerful allies are being pulled out of space and shot without any warning. Can’t be good for morale.’

  ‘Don’t compare the Ocisen psychology to ours,’ Creewan warned. ‘Obedience to the nest father is their paramount concern, in fact it’s their only concern. They don’t question and worry away at issues like we do.’

  ‘Which makes this interception even more pointless,’ Ilanthe said. ‘They can’t be rattled. They’re not going to turn round even if we eliminate every Prime ship there is.’

  ‘I’m not eliminating them,’ Kazimir said levelly. ‘I want a living immotile.’

  ‘What?’ John Thelwell demanded. ‘I thought this was the final, final warning, not some capture mission.’

  Kazimir met Ilanthe’s gaze across the conference table. The lightning outside the big curving window stroked their faces with sharp slivers of flickering light. ‘It is the final warning.’ To her credit she didn’t flinch, but then he didn’t expect her to. Less than an hour ago, Paula had reported in that the ice moon Accelerator station had been destroyed by a quantumbuster. Kazimir was mildly surprised Ilanthe had turned up to the ExoProtetorate Council at all. She must know the indomitable investigator was getting close to the kind of evidence ANA needed to suspend the Accelerators.

  ‘What in heaven’s name do you want with an immotile?’ Creewan asked.

  ‘Intelligence,’ Kazimir said. ‘We need to know where they come from, which planet or planets they’ve colonized. Ship numbers. Technology level. Once the Ocisens are eliminated by the deterrence fleet they will be the Navy’s next target.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ John Thelwell said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kazimir. ‘It will be interesting to find out how they avoided the Firewall.’ He still didn’t get a reaction from Ilanthe.

  The Navy ships yanked a single Prime warship out of hyperspace. Kazimir followed the engagement closely. He couldn’t fault the captains, their strategy was flawless, subjecting the warship’s force field to inexorable stress. When the force field finally collapsed, weapons fire against the hull was minimal. They went for electronic warfare, scrambling electronics and knocking out power circuits with quantum magnetic pulses. All at a level that wouldn’t interfere with Prime nervous systems. Even with life support equipment knocked out, there was enough air and warmth for the living Primes to survive until they were captured.

  Ten marine assault teams got ready to jump across.

  The Prime warship exploded.

  ‘Shit,’ Kazimir grunted.

  ‘I trust this charade is concluded to your satisfaction,’ Ilanthe said. ‘Admiral, will you now be launching the deterrence fleet in compliance with the Senate Executive Security Commission resolution?’

  Creewan and John Thelwell watched closely.

  ‘Yes,’ Kazimir said. ‘I will order the launch of the deterrence fleet immediately.’ And what have you put out there to snare it? What are you up to?

  Ilanthe’s female persona translocated out of the old-fashioned perceptual reality of the conference room. She reformed herself in a completely different zone of ANA, the Accelerator compilation, that manifested as an inverted world of dark primary colours. She walked across a verdure sky as a heliotrope ocean rippled above her. Airborne wisps of kingfisher-blue light slithered around her, winking in complex sequences designating their sentience level: mirrored personality repositories performing designated secondary tasks while the primary mentality operated on an upper hierarchal level. Her body characteristics morphed away to a simple flawless silver skin, and her own repositories fluttered in, perching themselves on her shoulders and arms like birds of prey. Information squeezed in through the data porous boundary skin.

  First analysis was of the Ellezelin interception. Every surviving physical section of Chatfield’s starship was encapsulated by trajectory algorithms extrapolated and refined from Ellezelin’s monstrously crude orbital sensor arrays. The flight of the eighty thousand scraps of matter were defined in a four-dimensional projection resembling a particularly beautiful scarlet firework scintillation bloom.

  Origin point analysis designated the critical segments of the equipment Chatfield had been carrying. Exotic matter fragments were already decaying as their cohesion integrity was broken. But sufficient pieces survived; it would be possible to determine the interstice folds contained within them before their decay sequence fizzled to extinction. ANA might be capable of retro-profiling the nature of the equipment, and that would ruin everything.

  Two more blank humanoid shapes walked across the sky. Fellow Accelerators, Colabal and Atha. Ilanthe transferred the trajectory construct to them. ‘Supervise the wormhole interception yourself,’ she told Atha. ‘It will need to be speedy, the ANA agent will see what’s happening and instigate a hyperspacial distortion. You will need to collect seven thousand fragments.’

  ‘Confirmed,’ Atha said. The figure reversed its dimensions to zero and translocated.

  ‘Is the replica functioning?’ Ilanthe asked Colabal.

  ‘Yes.’ The sky beneath their feet began to undulate, its tempo increasing rapidly as if thin stormclouds were speeding past. A section glowed with a pale amber hue. Ilanthe immersed herself into it.

  One of the accelerator agents that Colabal ran had collected a sample of Araminta’s DNA from the Colwyn City apartment block. The sequencing had provided the Accelerators with enough information to formulate Araminta’s neural structure. Every scrap of information on her background had been transformed into simulated memories and loaded in. They were woefully inadequate, Ilanthe acknowledged, but the personality that knitted together was the closest thing they could produce to the actual Second Dreamer herself. Puzzlingly, there were no gaiamotes; how she connected to the gaiafield was a complete mystery.

  Ilanthe hung in the middle of the simulacrum, and meshed herself with the mind that flowed within. Emerald threads of neurological emulates blended into her own primary mentality. Ilanthe allowed herself to see the block of flats beside Bodant Park go up in flame, fed in the shock pulse that Araminta had released into the gaiafield. Feelings raged around her, connecting to memories with erratic volatile associations, triggering irrational em
otional responses.

  Ilanthe disconnected herself. ‘Laril,’ she said. ‘She will turn to her ex-husband for help.’ This disconcerting meat-based memory fluttered through her thoughts, illogical and shaky. ‘He represents a stability she has not known before or since. It is not a pleasant refuge for her, but a dependable one. She lacks that above all else.’

  ‘He’s migrating inwards,’ Colabal said. ‘That makes him susceptible. And his reputation is established. We can make cooperation worth his while. He is also weak. He will capitulate to threats.’

  ‘Proceed,’ Ilanthe said. She opened a secure link to Neskia. ‘Marius made a huge mistake bringing Chatfield into operation this early,’ she told the station chief. ‘And using the Cat against Paula was another blunder, he should have known better than to exploit personal animosity. His stupidity has exposed us to an unacceptable level of risk. Consequently, I’m restructuring our event sequence. Please take immediate command of the swarm, and bring it to Sol.’

  ‘I’ll fly to it now,’ Neskia said. ‘Do you want me to eliminate Marius?’

  ‘Not yet. I will restrict his initiative freedoms. It should act as a suitable caution. Clipping the wings of those who fly highest is always a profound disciplinary action upon them.’

  ‘I always found him unreliable.’

  ‘I know. His temperament suited the majority of tasks he was assigned to. He may have come to enjoy the game so much he has lost sight of the goal. A common enough occurrence.’

  ‘Well I certainly haven’t.’

  ‘I will rendezvous with you at the agreed point. If all goes well. And it should. Kazimir is authorizing the deployment of the deterrence fleet.’

  ‘Finally! I wonder what it is.’

  ‘We’ll know soon enough.’ Ilanthe ended the connection to the agent. Above her a black globe slipped out from the languid mirror-purple waves, no more than twice her height. She rose to greet it, slipping through the formless surface.

  Ilanthe emerged through the side of a chamber measuring an apparent half a million kilometres across. The citadel of Accelerator ethos. Like an ancient godling she took flight, chasing through the chains of translucent planet-sized globes that spun idly through the immense formatted interstice. Flocks of fellow Accelerators flashed past her, calling out in welcome to their leader. They trailed long potentialities behind them, fragments of nonreality that struggled for existence then dissipated into little more than dreams. All of them, all of her kind, strove to imprint themselves on the modified space-time of their artificial environment, to bend reality to their wishes. Just as the Void achieved so effortlessly. Every second of existence was devoted to extrapolating the structure that would achieve the ultimate post-physical manifestation.

  Up ahead, the inversion core glimmered with suppressed power, ready for her. Ready to break free and carry human evolution to heights not even ANA could envisage. Ready to change the nature of the universe forever.

  The Wurung Transport cab reached the end of the metro line sometime in the early hours. Araminta was not quite dozing when it came to a gentle halt in the middle of the Francola district. She’d never visited before, never even considered any of the properties which came up for sale here. In economic terms the area was as run down as the Salisbury district, but this decay was subtle, verging on genteel, as if the district had fallen into a cosy slumber, a retirement village content with its lot. The buildings here were mostly housing. Large and expensive when they were built, many had been subdivided into apartments. Sprawling gardens had matured, the trees growing up taller than roofs, casting long shadows during the day. Fallen leaves formed a dry mantle across the road, stirring briefly as the cab swished past.

  Araminta opened the door and climbed out. Her boots crunched on the crisp brown leaves as she looked round, getting her bearings. About a mile away, behind the houses directly ahead of her, the city’s force field was a near-vertical wall of shimmering air. She craned her neck, following the insubstantial barrier as it curved overhead to cover the entirety of Colwyn City. A flat layer of starlit clouds parted to slither around it, while the stars themselves were distorted smears of light speckling the apex high above the river in the middle of the city. She brought her head down again, almost dizzy.

  ‘Go back to the nearest public slot and wait for me there,’ she told the cab. Not that she expected to come back, not for a while anyway; but living with paranoia for the last few days had switched her brain to a very cautious mode of thinking.

  The door closed up, and it hummed away down the rail. Araminta knew which way to go, it was instinctive; beyond the houses, where the streets ended and a strip of big native dapol trees acted as a buffer between the buildings and the force field. There was a warmth to be had there, her mind sensed, a calmness that was almost the opposite of the gaiafield’s exuberant emotive bustle.

  She walked along the pavement, heading down the gentle slope and occasionally shying away from the hedges that had grown up to lean across the cracked mossy concrete. Little nocturnal rodents scurried about in the undergrowth, and she heard cats yowling somewhere, a cry that carried a long way in the still air.

  The last house at the end of the cul-de-sac had almost been swamped by vegetation from its own garden, which had been untended for years. Trees from the backdrop of woods were slowly reclaiming the land that had once been cleared for lawns and ornamental beds, advancing the forest in a tide of luxuriant growth, with fresh saplings shooting up closer and closer to the house’s moss encrusted walls.

  She could just make out the bottom of the force field now, suspended twenty metres from the ground. From her angle it looked as though the spiky treetops were holding it up. Cressida had said the gap was guarded, though not how. Araminta had no intention of finding out; she certainly couldn’t see any Ellezelin capsules, not even using her nightsight function. Unfortunately, her Advancer heritage wasn’t up to supplying her with infrared. Lack of knowing what was lurking among the trees made her very conscious of what could be watching her with enriched senses, laughing quietly as she blundered about.

  Crumbling enzyme-bonded concrete beneath her feet gave way to grass and the wide indigo fans of whiplit ferns. Araminta pushed her way forward into the dark spaces between the dapol trees. There were no thoughts impinging on the local gaiafield, no human ones anyway. The gentle thoughts of the Silfen Motherholm were somehow stronger. More so in one direction. She turned towards it, and pushed sharp branches out of her way. Dense whiplit fronds pressed against her legs, their curly strands damp from the night, making progress difficult.

  She caught a glimpse of blue and red laser fans sweeping through the tangle of trees and froze. She was all too familiar with the strobes on Ellezelin support capsules by now. This one was just outside the force field, flying slowly along a shallow curve. Some patrol scanning for citizens seeking escape from the invasion.

  The minds of the crew and paramilitary squad inside emitted a dull glow of thoughts into the gaiafield. All of them were tired, emotionally and physically, and they hated Colwyn City and its resentful inhabitants.

  Araminta kept still until the capsule had glided away. She was close to the force field now, maybe just a couple of hundred yards away, but the trees must have shielded her from the capsule’s sensors. Her legs were soaking from the moisture on the whiplit fronds. Hands and cheeks had been scratched by dead twigs. And she was beginning to feel somewhat foolish floundering round in a forest at night, looking for a path that was actually some kind of alien wormhole which she was supposed to be able to sense because her ancestor was a friend of elves and the magic passed through the female bloodline.

  ‘Makes perfect sense to me,’ she muttered to herself. I wonder what the me of a week ago would make of all this?

  Thankfully, she stumbled out into a narrow animal track, and started along it. The fronds didn’t accost her so much, though she still had to ward off the branches.

  Dear Ozzie, was it really only a week ago I was livin
g a perfectly ordinary life? And I haven’t called Bovey for days. He must be worried sick. Cressida will be worried too, and cross that I haven’t confirmed my ticket offplanet.

  The trees were spaced further apart now, the path easier to perceive. She couldn’t tell if that was because of a weak dawn light starting to rise, or if her mind was illuminating the compressed trail of loamy soil that had borne so many feet before hers. But she did know she was walking the right way, a knowledge that came in the form of cold relief. That newfound buoyancy faltered after only a few yards as she instinctively accepted the path was truly taking her away from her homeworld.

  I’m being forced out, she thought bitterly. I haven’t even said goodbye to all the people I love. Not that there are many of them, but I should be allowed that. Even though she was more confident about using the gaiafield, she still didn’t dare access the unisphere. That would be the first thing she would have to fix when she reached whatever world she was heading for. Araminta wanted to know who the hell Oscar Monroe was, and why he would help her. If he was telling the truth about working for ANA, and ANA wanted her to be free, there might be hope yet.

  It was definitely getting lighter, even though Araminta knew it was still a couple of hours before dawn. She didn’t recognize most of the trees she was walking through now, either, the old familiar dapol trees were becoming few and far between. The newcomers were taller and thinner, with slimmer branches and silver-green leaves. Strange lavender star-flowers peeped up through the wiry yellow-tinged grass as the ground started to tip down. There was no sight of the force field through the upper branches of the new trees. And the gaiafield was fading out, allowing her tense thoughts to expand, calming the deep worry contaminating her body. Somewhere the Silfen Mother-holm smiled in compassion for her.

  The trees were thinning out, and Araminta shivered in the cold air gusting past the white and green striped trunks, rubbing her hands along her arms and pulling up the front of her fleece. Then she walked out of the treeline and stopped dead.