Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

The Delivery Man knew it was all useless. Nothing could save the planet now.

“It was us,” Gore told Tyzak. “Humans. We did this. I’m so sorry.”

“You did not,” Tyzak replied. “Your song remains pure.”

“I have failed so many times today.”

“I believe you are to have your greatest success. They seem to think so.”

Gore saw that the plaza was now lined with hundreds of Silfen, all of them keeping back from the rim of the elevation mechanism.

“This is the fate our planet has brought us to,” Tyzak said. “I did not expect this, but what is, is. And perhaps the planet knew all along what it would be called upon to do. I will depart believing this one thing.”

Anomine began teleporting in, appearing all across the plaza. Hundreds, then thousands. Youngsters were agitated, squeaking loudly. It was happening in every city on the planet.

“Gore?” the Delivery Man asked. “What’s happening?”

Gore smiled at Tyzak even as he was being jostled by Anomine who were crowding in. “Go home,” he told the Delivery Man. “You deserve it.”

“Gore-?”

Gore shut down the TD link. He folded all his secondary routines back into his mind. There was only one consciousness now, making him as close to human as he’d been for many a century. His dream showed him Justine with an expression of alarm spreading over her beautiful face. She knew.

Tyzak called for the elevation mechanism.

“I feel you,” the elevation mechanism said. “You are Tyzak.”

“I am.”

“Do you wish to attain transcendence from your physical existence?”

“Yes.”

“Dad?” Justine asked.

Gore’s thoughts had calmed. He brought his arms out and glided gently across the square to the waiting Firstlife. “This is evolution,” he told the giant alien. “The omega you have sought for so long.”

“No, Dad, you can’t. You’re not Anomine.” Justine started to run. Edeard’s third hand caught her.

“Today I am,” Gore said benignly.

“No!” she sobbed. “Dad, please.”

Far outside the Void’s boundary the elevation mechanisms on the Anomine homeworld absorbed the power thundering out of the escalating nova. They adapted it and offered it up to the remainder of their species and one other who waited with them.

Gore felt his mind began to change, to rise. His perspective of the universe grew elegant.

“This is how it is done,” he told the Firstlife as they grew apart, gathering up everything the elevation mechanism was performing, the method and the outcome he now rushed toward. The union was so tenuous now, infused with the poignancy of Justine’s grief as she stretched herself between the two. “This is what you can become. This is destiny. Leave your past behind and reclaim the dream you started with. Like so …” He gifted the whole experience of his elevation to the Firstlife, who in turn shared it with the Heart. And after a while he was gone.

Edeard stood at the head of the group, facing up to the Firstlife. “You must choose,” he said to the daunting alien, aware of the Heart focusing on him. And Ilanthe.

“We do,” the Firstlife replied. “We choose evolution. It is why we created this place; it is what we aspired to so long ago. Anything else would betray all we were, all we aspired to. It could never be any other way.”

“Thank you.”

“It is the wrong choice,” Ilanthe declared.

“You should go with the Heart,” Inigo told her in disgust. “There is no place for you in this universe. You wanted to be a god; this is your chance. If it will take you.”

“You many come with us,” the Firstlife told the inversion core. “We offer to take all of you.”

“Naaah,” Oscar told it. “Not me. I’m not quite ready for that yet.”

Inigo gave the Firstlife a thoughtful look.

“No,” Corrie-Lyn entreated. She took his hands and pressed herself against him. “Don’t. I can’t become that, nor can I lose you again.”

“There’s going to be Honious to pay when we get home.”

“I’ll face it with you.”

“All right.” He reached out a hand to Edeard. “And you?”

“I have to see the worlds you gave me a glimpse of. And …” Edeard grinned sheepishly. “And there are many things I would like to do.”

“Anyone else?” Inigo inquired.

“Justine?” Corrie-Lyn said uncertainly.

Justine rubbed the moisture from her eyes. “No. It’s over. Let’s go home.”

The Wall stars now shone with a brilliance equal to the rest of the galaxy, a blue-white collar shackling the Gulf. Inside, the containment shell was almost complete. The bands of dark force produced by the Raiel defenses had merged together. Only a few gaps remained, and they were reducing fast.

Within the dark shell, automated Raiel monitors continued their observation of the Void boundary as they had done for the last million years. It had remained quiescent since the Pilgrimage fleet had passed through.

“It begins,” Qatux whispered.

Paula tried to get a grip on her dazed thoughts. Gore’s dream had left her reeling, delighted and awestruck. For an instant she wanted to be there, standing in Sampalok with the Firstlife, telling the Heart she would join it. Thank you , she told the aching absence in the gaiafield where the Third Dreamer once had been. Despite everything, you deserve to be the first of our species to achieve transcendence. I just hope it’s not too lonely out there .

She drew a deep breath and focused on the display that dominated Qatux’s private chamber. The surface of the Void boundary was changing. A thin ridge rose out of the equator, extending all the way out to the glowing loop. As before, the dying mass of broken stars fell into the event horizon.

“This time it will be different,” Paula promised. “This time it will absorb the energy to power evolution.”

“I feel you are right,” Qatux said.

The entirety of the loop was taken, absorbed below the boundary. The ridge began to retreat. Then the Void itself was shrinking. Gravity, the boundary’s primary enforcer, lessened. The impenetrable cloak that had defeated nature for so long fell away, and the Void lay naked at the core of the galaxy.

“Oh, my,” Paula said in wonder.

The Void reached transcendence.

After it was gone, after normal spacetime reclaimed all it had lost, the vast warships of the warrior Raiel flew in to examine the darkness their great enemy had left behind. Virtually no matter existed in the Gulf now, no radiation, no light. No nebulae.

Right at the center they found a single star shining bright, with a lone H-congruous planet in orbit. And one of their own.

THE RAIEL WARSHIP slipped out into spacetime above Icalanise, dwarfing the High Angel five hundred kilometers away. Qatux and Paula teleported over, materializing in a circular compartment over a hundred meters wide. Like the Raiel quarters on the High Angel , the ceiling was hidden from sight, giving the impression the compartment extended upward forever.

Paula regarded the waiting warrior Raiel with interest. She’d assumed they’d be bigger than Qatux. Instead they were only two-thirds his size, but where his hide was leathery, theirs was made up of hard neutral blue-gray segments. Small lights twinkled under the surface, making her think it was artificial armor. Or perhaps by now it was sequenced in like macrocellular clusters in humans.