‘Why aren’t you a princess any more?’ Octavio asked insistently.
‘I grew up, darling. Everybody grew up.’
Which wasn’t true, she knew. So many of those faces that danced and laughed for eternity in her mind had gone. She let them brush against her, those dizzy ghosts, Shasta, Matiff, Housden . . . such beautiful people ruled by their spent, empty existence. Some redeemed, saved, others lost. And more, those desperately intense souls that shone so bright as they traversed spacetime in their own determined fashion: dear sweet Elston, Ravi, Coniff, Karizma, lovely Paresh, even wonderful old Sid . . . everybody she’d slowly lost down the centuries, flittering past unseen yet smiling as she held her arms wide and twirled like a fey dancer. Happy in their own way now. Angela wished them all well wherever they were. This was the one place where it was fitting for her to say goodbye to them, to cast off any lingering sorrows.
‘Come along,’ she said with a radiant smile, pleased to have shown off the place where it all began to the lovely scamps she was proud to have as descendants. ‘We’d better get back, or we’ll be in big trouble.’
The Nuii-Zanth conglobate awaited them in geosync orbit, a geode of quantum-three-state matter over a hundred miles across, home to eighty thousand entities who were about to adventure into the galactic core for the first time. Captain Lulu MacNamara had indulged Angela’s sentimental diversion for old times’ sake, but she was keen for their grand voyage to begin. It didn’t do to keep her waiting.
[THE END]
By Peter F. Hamilton
The Greg Mandel series
Mindstar Rising
A Quantum Murder
The Nano Flower
The Night’s Dawn trilogy
The Reality Dysfunction
The Neutronium Alchemist
The Naked God
The Confederation Handbook
(a vital guide to the Night’s Dawn trilogy)
Fallen Dragon
Misspent Youth
Great North Road
The Commonwealth Saga
Pandora’s Star
Judas Unchained
The Void trilogy
The Dreaming Void
The Temporal Void
The Evolutionary Void
Short Story Collections
A Second Chance at Eden
Manhattan in Reverse
First published 2012 by Macmillan
This electronic edition published 2012 by Macmillan
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-230-75005-0 EPUB
Copyright © Peter F. Hamilton 2012
The right of Peter F. Hamilton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Macmillan Group has no responsibility for the information provided by any author websites whose address you obtain from this book (‘author websites’). The inclusion of author website addresses in this book does not constitute an endorsement by or association with us of such sites or the content, products, advertising or other materials presented on such sites.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.
Great North Road Page 113
