Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

Embarkation began three days after the drives and force fields arrived. Before she’d met the Dreamer Araminta, the unsavory origin of the technology would have troubled Mareble. But now that she’d witnessed Dreamer Araminta confront the disquieting Ilanthe-thing, she had confidence that their Pilgrimage wasn’t being perverted for a faction’s sinister agenda. Araminta was quite right: The Void would prevail over any wickedness. When their capsule arrived at the construction yard, she was carefree and dizzy with the prospect of the flight itself. Everything her life had been devoted to was about to be consummated.

The capsule had to wait outside the yard’s force field dome for seven hours, stacked three hundred meters above the ground in a matrix resembling a metallic locust swarm, all of them awaiting landing clearance. When they finally did get down outside one of the materiel egress facilities, bots loaded their containers on a trolley that quickly slipped away through the air. Mareble and Danal had to walk through the facility past an array of scanners and sensor fields before they were finally out under the domes that cloaked the evening sky in a pale purple nimbus. Long braids of trolleys buzzed high through the air, forking and flowing like a dark river tributary network as they glided to their designated ship to off-load. Staring up at the appallingly complex, fast-moving streams, Mareble glumly resigned herself to never seeing her personal container again.

Below the trolleys, a stratum of solido signs hovered above the wide avenues between the starships, carrying directions and stabbing out flashing arrows. To complement that, her u-shadow received a series of guidance instructions that would take her to entrance ramp 13 of the Macsen’s Dream . She and two million others. What those instructions amounted to was: Join the three-hundred-meter-wide queue filling the avenue and shuffle along for five hours.

With darkness falling, the hulls of the giant ships curving away above her created an unavoidable impression of being trapped in a metallic canyon with no end. The regrav fields supporting the ships pulsed oddly, creating unpleasant effects in her stomach. There were no toilets, nothing to eat or drink, nowhere to rest. The noise of everyone talking and complaining together along with crying distressed children was unnerving and depressing. Only the gaiafield with its shared sensation of anticipation kept her spirits up.

Five hours pressed up next to a band of boisterous women who boasted about their genetic reprofiling to amazonian twenty-year-olds. They wore T-shirts with embroidered slogans: “Dinlay’s Lurve Squad.” “Badder Than Hilitte.” “I’m Gonna Get DinLAYd.”

Mareble and Danal exchanged a sardonic look and closed their ears to the bawdy talk and dirty laughter. It was amazing how some people interpreted the fulfillment the Pilgrimage was bringing them to.

Eventually, after far too long in a Honious-like limbo, they arrived at the base of ramp 13. After the chaos she’d endured, she let out a quiet sob of relief.

“It’s real,” she whispered to Danal as they began the slow walk up the slope. The Dinlay girls followed them up, but the crowd here wasn’t so bad. Thousands more were still trudging slowly along the avenue behind and below her. She was rising above them now in every sense.

He gripped her hand and squeezed tight as his mind let out a surge of gratitude. “Thank you,” he told her. “I would never have made it without you.”

For one brief instant she thought of Cheriton and the short, hot comforting time she’d spent with him after Danal’s arrest, how in turn he’d given her the fortitude to get through that period of misery and disorientation. Somehow she didn’t let the pang of guilt out. After all, even the Waterwalker had lapsed when he tried to bind the world to his faulty notion of unity. From that he had emerged triumphant.

“We made it, though,” she said. “I love you. And we’re going to wake up in Makkathran itself.”

“Och, that’s very sweet,” a loud amused voice said.

Mareble fixed on a blank smile and turned around. The man behind her on the ramp wasn’t quite what she was expecting. Not that she had any preconceptions, but …

He was taller than Danal, dressed in a kilt and very bright scarlet waistcoat with gold buttons. Not something she ever remembered anyone on Querencia wearing. She was about to say something when a flicker of silver and gold light shone through his thick flop of brown hair, distracting her.

“They call me the Lionwalker,” he said. “But I got that label a long time before our very own Waterwalker came along, so that’s okay, then. Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Danal said stiffly as he introduced himself.

“So are you two lovebirds going to get hitched in the Lady’s church?” Lionwalker asked.

“Mareble is my wife,” Danal said with such pride that she ignored how rude the stranger was being and smiled up adoringly at her husband as his arm tightened around her.

“Aye, well, yes, but a marriage blessed in that church would be a blessing indeed, now, wouldn’t it? And take it from a man who’s seen more than his fair share of every kind of bride and groom there is, a marriage needs every bit of help it can get.” Lionwalker pushed his hand up in salute, showing off an antique silver hip flask. “Cheers and bon voyage to the pair of you.” He took a long nip. “Aaah, that’ll keep the cold off my toes on the voyage.”

“We don’t need extra help,” Mareble sputtered.

“If you say so. Mind, it’s a particular person who needs no advice in life.”

“I’ll thank you to keep your homilies to yourself,” Danal told him. “Our guidance comes from the Waterwalker himself.”

They’d reached the top of the ramp, which frankly Mareble had wanted to achieve in slightly more dignified circumstances. The Lionwalker took another nip, winked lecherously at her, and sauntered into the Macsen’s Dream as if he owned the starship.

“Well!” Danal grunted indignantly. “Some of us clearly have a lot longer to go before reaching fulfillment than others.”

The chamber behind the airlock was a junction of seven corridors. Small, neat solidos flowed smoothly along the walls, indicating the zone where their assigned medical capsules were located.

“Come on,” Danal said, gripping her hand.

Mareble narrowed her eyes, staring along the corridor down which the Lionwalker had vanished. “I know him,” she said uncertainly. The memory was elusive. But then the squad of Dinlay girls was shrieking wildly and running down their corridor like a football team going onto the pitch, which made her chuckle. She let Danal lead her into the labyrinthine interior of the starship. Instinctively she reached for the Dreamer Araminta’s gift, finding her standing on the observation deck of the Lady’s Light , alone and resolute, staring out through a huge curving transparent section of the forward fuselage.

Reassured her idol was watching out for all of Living Dream, Mareble strode on with renewed confidence.

The SI’s icon appeared in Troblum’s exovision, requesting a connection. At least it was asking, he thought, rather than intruding.

Mellanie’s Redemption was still secreted away in transdimensional suspension above Viotia. Troblum couldn’t quite help that. He had been completely taken by surprise at Araminta’s defection to Living Dream. Given how long she had spent trying to elude them, suddenly turning up and claiming their leadership lacked any kind of logic, at least the kind he understood. He did assume it was some kind of ruse-again, not one he could fathom.