Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

A gaggle of Novices and Mothers were clustered around the entrance to the stairs, each of them openly anxious to see the Waterwalker as he was settled onto a pile of comfortable cushions. They had escorted the others who sought guidance, of whom there were fifty on the platform. Most of them were resting on similar cushions, though a few were stubbornly insisting on standing to face the Skylord’s arrival.

“About time you turned up,” Macsen said.

Edeard tipped two fingers to his old friend. Even as he did, he wondered how on Querencia the Mothers and Novices had ever gotten the enormous master of Sampalok up the tight stairwell. Macsen seemed to be almost globular these days; he hadn’t managed to get out of bed unaided for over four years.

Edeard looked around at his friends, humbled and delighted that they would all be traveling together. Kanseen on a bed of cushions next to Macsen, her terribly frail frame struggling to breathe. Dinlay, standing, of course, gaunt yet with a straight back, his Chief Constable’s uniform immaculate, dignified at the last. He was by himself; to everyone’s amazement, his last marriage had lasted thirty-two years (a record) and remained current, but his wife was eighty-seven years younger.

“Everyone together,” Edeard said.

“No matter what,” they all chorused.

The Pythia bowed to Edeard. “Waterwalker, may the Lady Herself bless your journey. She will greet you soon, I’m sure. What you have done for this world is beyond praise. The Heart awaits you with eagerness, as do your friends who dwell there now. You go there with the undying thanks of all of us who live on Querencia, whose fulfillment you have worked so hard toward.”

Edeard looked up into her face, kind and stern, as all the Pythias seemed to be, but radiant with concern. A concern that extended a great deal further than the tower. Should I tell her? Somehow, he couldn’t risk the woman’s disapproval, so all he said was: “Thank you.”

The Novices and Mothers began their walk back down the tower’s spiral stair.

Macsen let out a comfortable groan as he slumped back onto the cushions. “Right, then we’ve got a minute. Anyone bring some booze?”

“I think you’ve had enough now, dear,” Kanseen longtalked quietly. Watching her juddering breaths, Edeard knew it was willpower alone that kept her body alive. Dinlay came over and perched beside Edeard. The lenses in his glasses were like balls of glass, they were so thick. Edeard knew very well he was virtually blind; it was only his farsight that allowed him to move around these days.

“Do you think Boyd got there?” Dinlay asked.

Edeard smiled wistfully. “If he didn’t, we’ll have to organize a search of the Void for him.”

“I’m sure a Skylord would help,” Kanseen longtalked. “He deserves his place in the Heart.”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” Kristabel said. “A voyage across the universe, a bigger version of our trip around the world.”

“Yes, my love, it would be quite something.”

He saw her head turn to stare at him, eyes narrowing in that oh so beautifully familiar expression. “Is there something wrong?”

“Not wrong, no. But tell me this, all of you: If there was something you knew, an ability you had which could change everything, the way you lived, your beliefs, the way you thought, even, would you keep it to yourself?”

“What ability?” Macsen asked keenly. “The way you talk to the city?”

“No, something much greater than that.”

“Would it change things for the better?” Kristabel asked.

“It just brings change. How it is applied, for better or worse, depends on the user.”

“You cannot judge people,” Dinlay said. “Not even you, Waterwalker, have that right. We have our courts of law to maintain order, but to decide the nature of a person’s soul is not something we are worthy of. The Heart alone decides.”

“If the ability exists, it exists for a reason,” Kanseen longtalked.

“I thought so,” Edeard said.

Down below, the city gasped and then cheered as the Skylord rose above the horizon. The tremendous flood of rapturous blessings directed from Makkathran’s crowds rose to a crescendo. It was enough to bestow Edeard’s body with a final surge of strength. He reached out with his third hand and drew his friends to him. They held hands as the Skylord swept in across the Lyot Sea. Wind rushed on in front of it, causing their robes to flap about. All around them, the spires of the tower began to glow, a vivid corona of light that spilled out across the platform, filling the air with sparks, as if the stars themselves were raining down.

“Will you accept us?” Edeard asked of the Skylord. “Will you guide us to the Heart?”

“Yes,” the giant creature replied benevolently.

Tears of gratitude seeped down Edeard’s cheeks as the light grew stronger and the shadow of the Skylord slid across Eyrie. This was his last chance.

The light flared, overwhelming his eyes. He sensed his body starting to dissolve into whatever force the towers unleashed. Yet his mind remained intact. If anything, it grew stronger, his thoughts clearer than they had been in decades. His perception expanded, taking in the whole of the city.

“I have one last gift for you,” he said to the glittering enraptured minds below. “Use it well.” And he showed them how to travel back through their own lives to begin again where they chose.

“That’s how we always won?” a laughing Macsen asked.

Edeard’s soul shone with happiness. Rising beside him into the giant fluctuations of light that ran through the Skylord’s body, Macsen’s spectral form had returned to his handsome adolescent self.

“Not always,” he promised his friends. “And not for two hundred years. I swear upon the Lady that your achievements here are your own.”

“Whatever will they do with it?” Dinlay asked, looking down at the world shrinking away below the glare of their disintegrating bodies.

“The best they can, of course,” Kanseen said.

“You did the right thing,” Kristabel told him.

Edeard cast his perception up, growing aware of the songs calling down from the nebulae. They seemed to speak directly to him, a promise of such glory that he was filled with wonder and anticipation. “They’re so beautiful,” he exclaimed. “And we’ll soon be there.”

OSCAR MUNCHED AWAY absentmindedly on his chocolate twister as he reviewed the astrogration charts his u-shadow was extracting from various files. On the other side of the exovision displays Liatris McPeierl was running through an energetic exercise routine, stripped to the waist to show off perfectly proportioned chest muscles that were gleaming rather nicely with sweat. A sight that was not a little distracting; Oscar found it hard to concentrate on transgalactic navigation with all that joyous hunk flesh flexing lithely just a couple of meters away.

Liatris finished his routine and reached languidly for a towel. “I’m for a shower,” he announced, and twitched his bum in Oscar’s direction as teasingly bogus thoughts of lust burst out into the gaiafield.

Oscar bit firmly down into a big chunk of his pastry, inhaling a lot of the dusty icing sugar it was coated with, which made him cough, which made him look really stupid. He took a drink of tea to clear his throat. When he’d finished, Liatris was gone and Beckia was giving him a pitying smile from the other side of the starship’s main cabin.

“What?” he grumbled.

“Liatris is spoken for back home,” she said.