It was daytime, yet the sun was invisible behind the low gray clouds that filled the sky. He walked across the frozen ground, his feet leaving crisp indentations in the firmly packed snow. From somewhere out amid the rolling folds of this austere landscape he could hear the snorting and stamping of horses. Then a wild herd of the giant animals charged over a distant crest, tossing their mighty heads, horns slashing at the frosty air. He smiled in delight, remembering times when he’d ridden the breed for no reason other than enjoyment, taking trips to other villages, meeting friends, practicing his saddle skills, the formalized ancient fighting techniques that all the youngsters sought to master. Back before-
It wasn’t snow brushing against his skin anymore. He plucked one of the slowly drifting particles out of the air only for it to disintegrate between his fingers. Ash. Powder puffed up from beneath the soles of his feet as each footfall became soft. Ash covered the land, choking grass and tree alike, ruining the rich living terrain. The blanket of ash blew away from a high mound ahead of him, revealing it to be the corpse of a huge winged creature. Feathers fell like autumn leaves to expose dry skin pulled tight over a sturdy skeleton.
“No,” he exclaimed. The king eagles were the most magnificent of Far Away’s creatures. Countless times he had sat astride one and soared through the splendid sapphire sky.
Orange light shimmered across the desolate landscape. He spun around to see the mountains erupting, their sharp pinnacles disintegrating as lava gushed upward. Massive explosion plumes clotted the sky, surging outward.
There were footfalls in the ash carpet behind him. The stench of burning flesh grew and grew until he thought he would choke on the cloying fumes.
“This is not your sanctuary,” she said. “This is where I nurtured you. This is where your heart belongs. This is mine. You are mine.”
He couldn’t turn around. Couldn’t face her. To do so would be to lose, to be consumed by pain and diseased love.
Gold sunlight speared through the suffocating shroud of ash, a single incandescent ray falling across him. He shielded his eyes from it, cowering.
“Come on, son,” a kindly voice said. “This is the way. This is your future. This is your redemption.”
Ash clouds boiled high and fast, towering above him, taking form. The beautiful golden light held. He stretched his arms out, reaching for-
“Wooah!” Aaron woke and sat up fast, arms windmilling against the thin sheet that was wrapped around him. “Shitfuck!” His body was sweating profusely, making the silk sticky against him.
The room was on the first floor of Ozzie’s house, with a single bed in the middle, some crude wooden furniture, and a window with the big shutters firmly closed. Nonetheless, light was stealing around the edges. Allowing him to see-“Shit!” he yelped.
Myraian was sitting on the end of the bed, her legs folded neatly as she regarded him thoughtfully. Today her hair was green and blue. Purple skinlight shone through a loose white lace top.
“You’re losing,” she said with a sweet smile.
He gave those fangs of hers another mistrustful look. Even though he’d been sleeping, there was no way she should have been able to creep up on him; bionomics should have detected her approaching. Tactical secondary routines were supposed to inform him of any proximity violation, bestowing an instinctive knowledge when he awoke. Hell, even natural instincts should have kicked in. He hadn’t been this surprised for a long time. That’s bad. “Losing what?” he asked sourly. Biononics scanned around, making sure there were no other surprises, such as a fully armored Chikoya waiting for breakfast downstairs.
“Your mind.”
He grunted and rolled off the bed, finally freeing himself from the sheet. “It’ll be joining yours, then.”
“You dreamed of home when she came for you. You can’t retreat much further. Your childhood will be an even worse defense. No child could withstand her.”
Aaron paused as he was reaching for trousers that Ozzie’s replicator had fashioned for him. “Her who?”
She giggled shrilly. “If you don’t know, I can’t.”
“Sure.” He was trying to ignore the dream. But it was more than a dream, and they both knew it. Besides, it was worrying him at a fundamental level. Something deep in his mind was wrong. It wasn’t a war he understood, and there was certainly no tactical withdrawal.
Unless I go basic again.
But today was going to require patience and diplomacy. Not his best features even with full faculties engaged.
Myraian skipped off the bed and stretched her arms behind her back, linking her fingers. Her head rocked from side to side in time with an unheard beat. Aaron was unimpressed by the whole fairy princess routine, suspecting she was covering up something.
“So are you a physicist?” he asked.
“I’m just good for my Ozzie,” she said in her silly light voice.
“Okay.” He pulled on a black T-shirt.
“You should have someone for yourself. Everyone should. This is not a universe to be lonely in, Aaron. Besides, you need help to hold her back.”
“I’ll think about that.” He put his feet into his boots, allowing the semiorganic uppers to flow over his ankles, then grip.
“They’re here.”
“Huh?”
“The starship. Oscar called eleven minutes ago.”
A message his u-shadow should have monitored and told him about. He started to get concerned about the string of tactical failures. They couldn’t all be coincidence. “Great. Did he say who he’d brought with him?”
“No, but I’m going to fetch them now. I’ll be back soon.”
He wanted to go with her and greet the arriving starship himself, but he couldn’t abandon Inigo. Taking him along would increase exposure risk. No choice. He had to wait and rely on Myraian. Which is pretty much an oxymoron.
Downstairs, Ozzie and Inigo were sitting at the big table in the kitchen. Dirty plates and cutlery had been pushed to one side. Ozzie was drinking coffee, and Inigo had a pot of hot chocolate. Corrie-Lyn was slumped in the fat old sofa at the far end of the room, looking incredibly bored.
“A great-grandfather on my mother’s side was allegedly a Brandt,” Inigo was saying. “My mother was always telling me that her grandmother had some kind of trust fund when the family lived on Hanko. I don’t know how much that was a fable about the old homeworld and how much better life had been back then. If the money ever existed, then it got lost in the Starflyer War and the move to Anagaska. All anyone brought through the temporal wormhole was what they could physically carry with them. We certainly didn’t have much money when I was growing up. If we were Brandts, the hard core left us to sink or swim by ourselves.”
“Sounds like a dynasty, okay,” Ozzie said.
“But you covered up your family history,” Aaron said as he made his way over to the culinary unit. “I was at the Inigo museum in Kuhmo. There’s nothing about any connection to a dynasty.”
“You know why I did that,” Inigo said. “I was born Higher. My mother was basically raped by one of the radical angels, my aunt, too. You think I want the Greater Commonwealth drooling over that piece of personal history? And they would; my opponents would have loved that.”
“Sure, I dig that. But even if that Brandt lineage gives you a family connection to a colony ship, that doesn’t explain how the ship got inside the Void in the first place.”
“Same way as Justine, I suppose.”
“No. She was close to the boundary. This has to be something else, a long-distance teleport.”
“The dynasty colony ship could have gotten up close if they were trying a quick route to the other side of the galaxy.”
“Not a chance. The Raiel have been acting as traffic cops ever since their invasion failed. They turn everyone around before they reach the Gulf, starting with Wilson on the Endeavor.”
“I’m not disputing that,” Inigo said. “But equally indisputable, a human ship got inside. That was the
foundation of our hope the Void would be able to open some kind of portal to the Commonwealth.”
“See, this is where theory just collapses with a big sigh of bad air. How did the Void know the colony ship was there? It seems to have a lot of trouble with the whole ‘outside’ concept.”
“The Skylords do. You can’t claim the same for the Heart. It has to be a lot smarter.”
“But that implies a perception that can reach just about anywhere. If it wanted minds, why not just teleport each sentient species off its homeworld as soon as they developed a coherent thought?”
“It doesn’t have to be perception. Araminta dreamed a Skylord. Other connections are available to it.”
“Not its own. They piggybacked the Silfen Motherholme presence to get Araminta’s attention.”
“That doesn’t disqualify-”
Aaron collected his bacon roll and a mug of tea from the culinary unit and went to sit next to Corrie-Lyn. “Still at it, then?”
“Oh, yeah,” she grunted.
Five days solid now. Inigo would try to dream a Skylord, an endeavor that so far had proved fruitless. Between his attempts, he and Ozzie would argue about the nature of the Void and try to conjure up possible methods of getting through the boundary. That was exactly what Aaron wanted. He just wasn’t quite prepared for how mind-breakingly dull their conversations would be. Every minute, an irrelevant concept was dragged out and discussed at extreme length. They didn’t seem to develop ideas so much as entire wishful philosophies. In other words, after four days neither one of them had produced a single helpful notion.
“Have you talked to Myraian at all?” he asked.
Corrie-Lyn gave the briefest shrug. “She talks? Sense?”
“Yeah, got a point there.”
“I have been watching the Greater Commonwealth through the unisphere.”
“And?”
“The Last Dream; it’s not popular. Living Dream’s new Cleric Council denounced it as a fake, but everyone knows Inigo’s thoughts. There’s some hefty infighting breaking out among the faithful. More than I expected have said they’re worried by the outcome of traveling into the Void.”
“But everyone on the Pilgrimage fleet is in suspension.”
“Yes. So it was too little, too late. It’s confirmed what all the non-followers believed about us, but they’re irrelevant as always. None of the crews on the Pilgrimage ships are showing any sign of rebellion.”
“Ah, well, at least we can all die with a clear conscience.” He bit into the bacon roll. There was far too much butter; it dribbled down his fingers.
Corrie-Lyn gave him a strange look, crinkling her cute nose. “That’s a first.”
“What is?”
“You mentioning the possibility of defeat. Even if it was a joke. I didn’t know you could think like that.”
“Just trying to appear human, put you at your ease. Standard tactics.”
“Your dreams are getting worse again, aren’t they?”
“Sleep is not my high point right now, I’ll admit. Or is that too much weakness as well?”
“Defensiveness now? Gosh, we’ll break through that conditioning yet.”
Something will, he thought bleakly. It had taken several minutes for his fear to sink away after he’d woken. That was a first, having the dread follow him out of the nightmares into the waking world. Another aspect of her growing strength. “Pray you don’t,” he muttered, and glanced back at the table.
“I could find out eventually, I suppose,” Ozzie said. “I still have clout with what remains of the Brandt Dynasty, but your heritage will only ever be a footnote. Even if you’re a long-lost Brandt, that doesn’t explain how the colony ship got inside in the first place. Besides, think how many other Brandts there are left in the Commonwealth. What makes you special?”
“Is there a list of how many Brandts had a tour of duty at Centurion Station?”
“Irrelevant. Your talent doesn’t allow you to talk to a Skylord, which is what we need right now.”
“Knowledge is not irrelevant. Any theory has to be built on a foundation of fact.”
“Sure, man, but that’s the wrong foundation.”
“All information about the Void is what we need to determine-”
Aaron wolfed down the remnants of the roll. “I’m going outside to wait for them.”
“Don’t blame you,” Corrie-Lyn said.
He stood on the veranda, facing the daunting alien city across the still water of the bay. The dreams he was cursed with and whatever was struggling to rise from his subconscious were troubling him. He deflected the worry with a diagnostic review of his biononics and tactical routines, the ones that had failed him this morning. There was no clear answer to how Myraian had crept into his bedroom. The field scan had registered a movement, but it wasn’t sufficient to trigger the beta-grade alert routines. And by sitting on the end of the bed she’d been ten centimeters from triggering an alpha-grade alert. Was that distance a coincidence? If so, they were mounting up.
But at least his u-shadow determined why it hadn’t intercepted Oscar’s call to Ozzie. The house’s smartcores had shielded it with some very sophisticated software. So Ozzie hasn’t quite rolled over. Figures.
The capsule appeared against the strong sheen of the Spike compartment’s translucent crown. Biononics filtered his retinas so he could maintain visual acquisition. His field function scan swept through it. There were seven people inside. Myraian, of course; three men and a woman with biononics configured to low-level defense, allowing him little acuity-however, they weren’t weapons-active; that left an ordinary human male with no biononics and a very large human in an armor suit with a force field already powered up. That alone made Aaron bring several weapon enrichments to active status.
He sent a identity ping into the capsule, which was returned by everyone except the ordinary human. He took a guess that he was the important one Oscar was escorting to meet Ozzie.
The old capsule settled on the swath of purple and green grass between the lake and the house. Its door opened, and the passengers started to clamber out. Myraian was first, waving gaily, which Aaron ignored. Beckia and Tomansio ran a quick field scan across the area, but not Oscar, which was interesting. Only then was the Natural human allowed out. He was slightly older than Commonwealth standard and quite dignified-looking. The armored figure of Troblum was last, having to squirm about to get through the door.
Ozzie, Inigo, and Corrie-Lyn came up behind Aaron to watch the visitors approach. Ozzie was grinning. “Holy crap, it really is Oscar.” He raised his voice. “Yo, dude, been a while there.”
Oscar tipped his forefinger to Ozzie, smiling sheepishly.
But it was Tomansio’s reaction that held Aaron. He was staring right at him, a look of incredulity on his handsome face. “You!” Tomansio gasped. “You’re alive.”
“Never better, man,” Ozzie said cheerfully. He turned to Inigo. “See, legendary genius trumps messiah every time.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Inigo told him.
“I don’t think-” Corrie-Lyn began as she looked from Tomansio to Aaron.
“The Mutineer,” Tomansio whispered. He still hadn’t taken his gaze from Aaron.
A brief memory flickered into Aaron’s mind as if tearing silently through some vital membrane. Her face smiling coyly at him as she lay on the bed beside him. The same woman he’d encountered back in Golden Park the day Ethan had been selected as Cleric Conservator. Different hair but still her. Bad news. “What?” he croaked. “What did you call me?”
Ozzie and Inigo were both frowning now, glancing over at Aaron.
“The Mutineer. It is you. It is!”
“No,” Beckia exclaimed. “It can’t be.”
“Who?” a puzzled Oscar asked.
“Lennox. Lennox McFoster. How can this be?” Tomansio demanded angrily. “How can you be here?”
“The Knights Guardian spent centuries searching for you,” Cheriton said. “Where h
ave you been?”
“Sorry,” Aaron said. “But I really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Even after ten minutes, the Natural man still hadn’t been introduced and Troblum had been completely silent. The Knights Guardian were astounded by Aaron’s existence and quite forceful in insisting he was who they believed him to be. The son of Bruce McFoster, another old legend who had been captured and subverted by the Starflyer and subsequently killed by Gore Burnelli. Lennox had been an infant at the time, they said, brought up by his mother, Samantha, as a Guardian. He’d been one of the first converts to the Cat’s vision, desperate to find a new role for the Guardians of Selfhood as they teetered on the verge of self-destruction.
Their talk made Aaron nervous. Names and events were certainly registering somewhere in his mind, just not in the conscious section. He didn’t doubt that he could originally have been one of the Knights Guardian; theirs was the kind of ability he had in abundance. That made the rest uncomfortably plausible …
“What kind of mutiny did I lead?” he asked curiously. It was a question he shouldn’t have asked. It was irrelevant.
“Pantar Cathedral,” Troblum said in a strangely neutral tone. “It’s on Narrogin. The Knights Guardian were brought in to help one of the local political movements achieve dominance over their rivals. The Cat herself took command in the field. There was a hostage situation. Demands were made with a deadline. Then she started slaughtering them, anyway. Including their children. You stopped her. You stood up to the Cat.”
“That’s when our whole movement changed,” Beckia said. “We finally acknowledged the Cat’s flaws. After that, we rejected her leadership. But not yours.”
“The majority of us rejected her,” Cheriton said slightly awkwardly. “There was something of a schism; after all, she was our founder, bringing us out of the wilderness following the Starflyer War and uniting us with the Barsoomians. Though legend says that part was your idea.”
The Evolutionary Void v-3 Page 58
