Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

“This hippie-dippy shit is what everyone praises?” Gore snapped. “Jeezus wept.”

Edeard struggled to keep his temper in check in the face of such blasphemous provocation. “It is a glorious reward for a life lived true to oneself.”

“Uh huh. Well, let’s not forget why we’re here. We need to get inside.”

“There is no physical location,” Makkathran told them when Edeard asked to move closer. “At least, not in relation to the Void fabric at this level. The Heart lies beyond rather than behind. That is the final barrier, the one which defeated us before.”

“Ask it to admit us,” Oscar said.

Edeard nodded slowly, reluctant at the last to begin the event that could lead to the demise of the entire Void. What if they have lied? Which he knew to be a foolish insecurity. Good old Ashwell optimism, even here. Inigo does not lie, not to me . “How can something this splendid be so flawed as to threaten life everywhere?”

“Because it doesn’t know it’s a danger,” Gore said.

“How can that be?” he cried. “It is awesome; it is the accumulation of billions upon billions of minds. How can you possibly be so arrogant to try and change its path?”

“Those lives it has consumed are doing nothing but dreaming their existence away. The souls who were guided here have been betrayed. The wisdom they brought, the continued life they were promised, it’s all being wasted.”

“All right.” Edeard reached out for the Heart. I am here , he told it. I am ready. I am fulfilled. Bring me to you . He held his breath. Nothing happened. I am here , he repeated.

“Now what?” Tomansio asked.

“Stop trying,” Oscar said. “Just let the urge take you. Chill down and surrender to it.”

“You’re already in there,” Corrie-Lyn said. “Listen for yourself.”

“Very well,” Edeard said. It sounded stupid, but he closed his eyes, then withdrew his farsight, allowing the presence of the Heart to seep into him. He listened for himself. In truth, there were others he wanted to hear, to join: Kristabel. Macsen. Dinlay. Kanseen. Akeem! Was he waiting? Had he found his way? Finitan surely would be there. And Rolar, and Jiska, and the twins, and Dylorn, and Marakas, and sweet Taralee. Perhaps even Salrana, who might have finally made her peace with him-he could never forget that night he discovered the true nature of the Void. In the pavilion, after her death, her soul had panicked, realizing she had strayed. Perhaps …

“The barrier falls,” Makkathran said.

Edeard opened his eyes in time to see Odin’s Sea fading away. The light simply vanished, and they were surrounded by nothing. A perfect uniform blackness.

The Heart’s thoughts grew more powerful. Edeard found himself strengthening his shield. His mind seemed to be expanding, moving to embrace the Heart, flowing out to join it.

“Edeard!” Inigo shouted.

His brother’s fright was strong. He hesitated.

“Edeard, come back.” Inigo was compelling him, infusing their bond with love.

He opened his eyes again. This time the sturdy Sampalok mansion seemed faint. When he lifted up his hand, it was growing translucent.

“It’s absorbing him,” Gore said. Worry was flooding from the golden man’s mind. “Edeard, you’ve got to hold on.”

“Without you we will be rejected,” Makkathran warned.

“Edeard, is there anything you can sense in there that’ll talk to us?” Gore asked. “A single coherent mind?”

Edeard had to laugh. “The Heart is bigger than worlds. It is universal; it lies behind everywhere in the Void. And still it grows.”

“Fuck it,” Gore snarled. “It’s grown so big, it’s lost cohesion. All right, Edeard, it wasn’t always like this. I need you to go back to when it was smaller.”

“What?”

“Get into the memory layer, trace it down to the origin. Come on, son, you can do it.”

“Lean on me,” Inigo said. He gripped Edeard’s hand, suffusing him with strength and love. “I will help you.”

“And me, Waterwalker,” Corrie-Lyn said. Her firmness and fortitude made Edeard smile in gratitude.

Oscar came over, as did the Knights Guardian. “Whatever you need,” Tomansio promised sincerely, which made Edeard regret he hadn’t known the warrior longer. Justine, smiling and determined, added her essence, buoying him along. Even Troblum was there, dependable and resolute.

There was a memory layer in this place, wherever they were, and that surprised Edeard more than anything. Strangely uncluttered, it was easy to perceive, to follow back. He plunged into the past, saddened by how little had changed. Then abruptly the Heart wasn’t quite so large. This was the time before humans. He carried on back through it, pushing harder and harder.

There were many changes, coming eons apart, then further. Each alien species that had come to the Void had contributed to the expansion in its own fashion. None had brought true cohesion. He found that wrong somehow, that the amalgamation always acted in the contrary direction to the Heart’s purpose.

At the end he could think only of flying through the travel tunnels, soaring on into the unknown, content simply in the act of voyaging. He was quite surprised when it did finish. The memory layer grew thinner somehow, less cluttered. And there, right at the beginning of the Void, when the Heart was forming, were millions of connections to individual minds. They could communicate with the Heart. They were the link, the way in. He chased after one and embraced it, offering it up to the creation layer, perceiving the entity take form again.

Edeard drew a startled breath, shaking himself free of the memory layer and the intimacy of his new friends. Right in front of him, standing in the entrance to Zulmal Street, an alien twenty feet tall was unfolding its disturbingly sinuous limbs as its thoughts churned with surprise and suspicion.

“Oh, wow,” Oscar groaned, and took a step back. Even so, he was grinning effusively.

“A Firstlife,” Edeard announced simply. He had to own up to being intimidated by so many curving, pointed teeth at the top of its fat central trunk as it opened the glistening mouth membranes to whistle at a painful volume.

Then something moved in the nothingness outside the dome. A dark sphere beset with deep purple scintillations slipped smoothly overhead.

“What are you doing?” Ilanthe asked.

Marius had been fascinated by the Heart and the notions it sang of. There really was no other way to describe it. In a way he was relieved that it was so vast, so aloof. Gore’s stupid plan to talk to it, to make it see what he considered reason, would never transpire in such a milieu. The golden man was pissing in the wind.

Then he stood in Sampalok’s central square, observing through Justine as Gore told the Waterwalker to search back through the memory layer for a younger, more accessible Heart.

“No no no,” he chanted in dismay. His exovision brought up the starship’s weapons. He selected a couple of diverted energy function quantumbusters. They would activate in the photosphere, sending a huge exotic energy distortion wave smashing against the Delivery Man’s ship. Its Stardiver shielding would never survive such an impact. Whatever part of Gore’s scheme was being enacted down there in the convection zone would be obliterated. That would give Ilanthe the window of opportunity to enact Fusion.

The two missiles shot away, accelerating at one hundred fifty gees. His exovision display threw up a sensor image, showing a hyperspace anomaly erupting fifty thousand kilometers away from his own location. One of the huge borderguards materialized out of the spatial deformation. Its concentric shells of elliptical strands were ablaze with aggravated neon light. The outermost strands darkened from a lurid jade down to an irradiated carmine. Marius’s sensors showed the energy spectrum raging inside the borderguard leaping almost off the scale. It fired on the quantumbuster missiles, which burst into a dynamic vapor plume.