Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

It responded with a pulse of nearly human happiness.

Exoimage displays showed her the starship’s hysradar return. The Void boundary was rippling, distending upward at hyperluminal speed. Reaching for the Pilgrimage fleet. For her. Its summit opened.

A soft gale of nebula light swept over the twelve Pilgrimage ships.

Hysradar detected another ship emerging from stealth mode, tiny beside the waiting Goliaths but with an impenetrable force field.

“I wondered where you were,” Araminta said.

“You knew,” Ilanthe replied equitably.

Ethan’s delight chilled rapidly at the reminder of the cost of his victory. “What now?” he asked.

“We go in,” Araminta told him. “Together. Correct?”

“Correct,” Ilanthe said.

“Taranse,” Araminta said. “Take us through.”

He gave a dreamy nod. The Lady’s Light accelerated forward, with the other ships matching its course.

“My Lord,” Ethan’s mind cried, his thoughts amplified by the three confluence nests on board, then reinforced by those on the remainder of the fleet. “Please take us to the solid world which used to be inhabited by those of our species.”

Shit! Araminta shot him a furious glare. He returned a satisfied sneer. “Did you overlook that part of the request, Dreamer?” he asked mockingly.

Araminta watched the tortured red glare fade from the edge of the transparency as the glow of the nebulae strengthened. Somewhere behind them, the boundary was closing again. For the first time in days the infestation of nausea and confusion from living at two speeds abated. Her thoughts cleared.

“And your uniqueness would appear to be at an end,” Ethan continued. Araminta’s farsight showed her his thoughts, the malice that festered there, naked to taste as he slowly realized the abilities of the Void and recalled the techniques Edeard had applied. Farsight also showed her what he was hiding within the copious folds of his robe.

“True,” she said. “But that leaves us leading the real life of the Void.”

Ethan reached for the old-fashioned pistol he’d concealed. Araminta’s third hand picked him up and threw him across the observation chamber. He screamed as much from shock as from fright as he flew through the air, a cry that was cut off as he thudded face-first into the bulkhead. He crashed awkwardly to the floor, whimpering in pain from the broken bones. Blood was dripping from his mouth and nose.

“When Rah and the Lady came to Makkathran, they had only politics and brute force to enforce their rule,” Araminta said lightly as she walked toward Ethan, who was trying to scramble away. “How fitting that such gifts are also what we will be starting out with.”

Ethan went for a heartsqueeze. Araminta warded it off easily. She held out a hand, palm upward, raising it. Ethan was abruptly tugged off the floor. A finger beckoned. He was drawn toward her.

“You were right,” she said to Aaron. “I did need to practice. He’s a sneaky little shit.”

Taranse, Darraklan, and Rincenso were very still, all of them hurrying to establish their own mental shields lest the Dreamer should read their thoughts.

“You don’t believe,” Ethan hissed through bloody lips. “You never did.”

“But you believe in me, don’t you?” she urged huskily, recalling Tathal’s dreadful compulsive domination during the Twenty-sixth dream, applying the ability against the squirming mind before her. “It was me who brought you to the barrier. Me who called to the Skylord. Me who is bringing you to Querencia. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes,” Ethan gurgled.

“And you are grateful for such an act of selfless generosity, are you not?”

“Yes.”

“How could you do anything but love the person who made it possible to finally live the dream?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Do you love me, Ethan? Do you trust me?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“Thank you, Ethan, from the bottom of my heart.” She lowered him carefully to the decking and smiled gently at her aghast audience. “The ex-Conservator seems to have tripped in all the excitement. Please take him to the sick bay.”

Taranse nodded nervously and knelt down to help Ethan. With Darraklan’s assistance, they managed to pull him up between them.

Because she could show no weakness, Araminta watched them with a passive smile. Over in the Mellanie’s Redemption , Araminta-two was puking his guts up at the atrocity he’d just committed.

“Dreamer, look,” Rincenso said in wonder. He was pointing at the front of the observation deck. On the other side of the transparent bulkhead, a flock of Skylords were approaching the pilgrimage fleet. For all she feared and resented the creatures, they looked glorious as they swam out of the sparse starscape.

As soon as the boundary closed behind them, Ilanthe ordered the ship to open its cargo bay doors. She could sense the abilities intrinsic to the Void’s fabric pervade the inversion core. What the animal humans of Querencia crudely described as farsight allowed her mind to examine the fabric directly, plotting the effect her own thoughts had on it, the alterations and reactions they propagated. The symbiosis was fascinating; already she’d learned more than she had from a century of remote analysis of Inigo’s stupid dreams. The Void’s quantum architecture was completely different from the universe outside. But it was tragically flawed, requiring extrinsic energy to sustain itself even in its base state. When the functions enfolded within its extraordinary intricate quantum fields were activated, the power levels they consumed were far greater than she’d expected.

“The doomsayers were right,” she told Neskia. “The pilgrimage animals would have wiped out the galaxy with their reset demands.”

“Will you prevent that?” Neskia asked.

Ilanthe regarded the concern swirling within her otherwise faithful operative’s mind with detached interest. Even a Higher as progressive and complex as Neskia was betrayed by residual animal emotion. “My success will render the question irrelevant.”

Ilanthe observed the flock of Skylords closing in. With their opalescent vacuum wings extended wide, the mountain-size creatures were expanding quickly across the thin scattering of stars as they accelerated toward the fleet. The lambent twisted strands of the nebulae were distorted through the weird lensing effect of the wings, causing them to flicker and shift like celestial flames. Ilanthe examined the true functionality of the wings, how they rooted down into the Void fabric, manipulating localized gravity and temporal flow. A process of propulsion so much more sophisticated than the crude “telekinetic” ability of manipulating mass location. Less energy-demanding, too, she noted approvingly.

When her thoughts tried to replicate the same interaction with the Void fabric, there was some aspect missing. Instead she simply wished herself elevating out into space, employing some of the technique Edeard’s descendant had employed in the Last Dream. The inversion core immediately flew clear of the ship . The method worked, which was gratifying, but it lacked the elegance and capability of the Skylords.

Ilanthe felt the perception of the Skylords concentrate on the inversion core, seeking understanding of what she was. Her thoughts established a perfect shield around the shell of the inversion core, blocking their probes.

“Greetings,” she told the closest Skylord neutrally, and began to accelerate toward it. Her own perception ability listened to Araminta and several others from the Pilgrimage fleet frantically warning the Skylords to be careful, claiming she was dangerous. Their responses were interesting, revealing their complete lack of rational intellect. They almost evaded the topic; certainly, they didn’t seem to comprehend the meaning behind the concepts. It wasn’t part of their world; therefore, their mental vocabulary didn’t accommodate it. Either they were artificial constructs designated by the nucleus with the specific task of gathering up mature minds, or they had once been fully sentient spaceborne entities who had de-evolved throughout the countless millennia since their imprisonment. With nothing new to experience inside the Void, no challenges to struggle with, their minds had atrophied down to instinct-based responses.