Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

“Thank you. Admiral, do we have any other fields of progress? Can the navy eliminate the ship that picked up the inversion core?”

“Unknown, sir. It was a large, powerful ship of a marque we’ve never seen before. And we’d have to find it first.”

“Ilanthe will want the same thing as the rest of us,” Paula said. “The Second Dreamer. She’s probably heading for Chobamba now.”

“Very well,” the President said. “Admiral, put together a task force of Capital ships and dispatch them to Chobamba. I want that ship destroyed.”

“There wasn’t much information from the Sol system before the barrier went up,” the Admiral said. “But the ship did appear to have a force field based on Dark Fortress technology. We’re assuming the Accelerators are going to use it to get past the Raiel in the Gulf.”

“Sweet Ozzie,” the President said. “Do you mean you can’t intercept it?”

“We can probably find it; our sensors are good enough to penetrate most stealth systems. But I doubt we can ever catch it, not with the kind of speed it was last confirmed traveling at. And yes, if we did corner it on Chobamba, our weapons would probably not get through its defenses.”

“Crap. So it really does all come down to Araminta?”

“It looks that way, sir.”

Paula held her own opinion in check; the few comments she might have made weren’t based on fact. “I’d advise getting in touch with the High Angel directly, Mr. President,” she said. “If anyone can get through a barrier produced by Dark Fortress technology, it will be the Raiel.”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s my next call. I will inform you of the outcome.”

The secure link closed. Paula ordered the smartcore to plot a course to Chobamba. The bright green line hung in her exovision as it awaited implementation, slicing through the astrogration display. Something made her hold off. She was sure that even if she got there in ten hours’ time, it would all be over. By now, everyone with a team chasing Araminta would know her new location. As soon as Living Dream pinned down her exact geographical coordinate, there would be a scramble to deliver local representatives into the area. Either the team guarding her would evacuate her again, or she’d leave with the strongest raider team.

The whole situation made little sense. It was obvious to any professional that Living Dream would refine its search techniques after Bodant Park. Whoever it was who’d flown her to Chobamba must have known that, even if they didn’t know how good Ethan’s dream masters were. Keeping Araminta out of sight once she was secure was the most basic rule.

So who took her there?

Half the factions chasing her would have killed her to prevent the Accelerators from gaining any advantage. Most of the others, those which had goals or ambitions similar to the Accelerators’, would have offered a deal. Yet here Araminta was, going through Inigo’s dreams, seemingly without a care in the universe.

Paula drew a sharp breath. Of course, the simplest explanation is always the most likely. She really isn’t aware of the danger, so she isn’t under the protection of any professional team. Then how in God’s name did she get to Chobamba?

She launched her u-shadow on a mission to gather every scrap of data on Araminta. Everything Liatris McPeierl had put together, the files from Colwyn City’s civic database, records from Langham on her family and its agriculture cybernetics business, financial records, medical records (very few; she had an excellent Advancer heritage), legal records-mostly her messy divorce handled by her cousin’s law firm. All of it was resolutely average; none of it made her any different from billions of other External world citizens.

But she is different. She’s a Dreamer. Something makes her incredibly special. What? Gore has become one, and that’s outrageous; there’s nobody rooted in the practical more than Gore. Yet he worked out the secret. The only theory there’s ever been about why Inigo dreamed of Edeard is because they were somehow related: family . Paula’s heart jumped in excitement. As are Gore and Justine. Shit! But Araminta dreamed of a Skylord … She growled in frustration, slapping her hands against her temples. “Come on, think!” Ignore the Skylord thing. Go for the family angle … Her u-shadow zipped through Araminta’s ancestry, correlating birth records and registered partnerships, tracking back through the generations.

A small file flashed across her exovision, part of the family tree.

“Holy crap,” she yelped. There it was, plain and beautifully simple, five generations down the line. The name simply lifted itself out of the list and shone at Paula without any help from secondary routines.

“Mellanie Rescorai,” she whispered in amazed delight. “Oh, yes. Over a thousand years, and she’s still nothing but trouble.” Even better, Mellanie was named a Silfen Friend like her first husband, Orion. Paula remembered an encounter over eight hundred years ago, when Mellanie was paying one of her visits to the Commonwealth again. They’d both been invited to some high-powered political event; it might even have been a presidential inauguration ball. Dear old Mellanie had positively gloated about being named a Friend; it put her one up on everyone else in the room that evening, Paula especially. That was Mellanie for you: sweetly savage.

“Mellanie!” Paula was chuckling now. However it worked, however a Dreamer connected to someone inside the Void, that was the root of it: the Silfen magic, actually the most advanced weird technology in the galaxy. Ozzie had developed the gaiafield out of his friendship gift from the Silfen, and that was the whole medium for dreams. Araminta was descended from a Silfen Friend. And Inigo … well, who knew?

The paths! Paula’s u-shadow ran another search. Sure enough, there was rumor of a path on Chobamba, in the middle of its desert continent. And one at Francola Wood, right on the edge of Colwyn City. She didn’t join up with any faction; she didn’t fly to Chobamba. She walked!

That meant Araminta was still surviving on luck and smarts, just as Oscar had said, and therefore had no idea Living Dream had found her. She had to be warned, which wasn’t going to be easy given that she’d cut herself off from the unisphere.

Paula’s macrocellular clusters linked her directly to the starship’s network. There was a memory kube on board that was heavily encrypted, very heavily; she needed all five keys and a neural pathway verification to access it. Stored within were programs that had been accumulated over fifteen hundred years of investigations: programs of last resort, custom-written for the top ranks of criminals, arms dealers, politicians … Simply knowing about some of them was a crime. None of their creators would be coming out of suspension for centuries. The Paula of twelve hundred years ago would have been mortified that her future self hoarded such things. But on several occasions they’d proved rather useful. Paula activated one; it wasn’t even on the lethal list.

Kristabel’s kiss was gentle yet so intense, so rich with desire and love. “That’s why I love you,” she whispered. There could be no doubt how sincere she was. A boundless love that promised a lifetime of happiness. And Edeard finally knew he’d done the right thing.

Araminta sighed in perfect contentment, blinking as the chalet’s ceiling took shape above her. Tears were trailing out from the corners of her eyes as she came down off the emotional high. “Great Ozzie,” she murmured, still dazed by the dream. Now she understood why Living Dream had so many adherents, why they were all desperate to live in the Void. Time travel. Except it wasn’t. It was resetting the universe around yourself, the ultimate solipsism. How many times had she said to herself: If I only knew then what I know now . With that ability she could go back to the moment she met Laril and laugh off his charm and seductive promises. She could refuse Likan and never visit his mansion for the weekend. Go back into her teens and tolerate her parents, knowing that life offered so much more than the farm, not worrying that she’d be condemned to the family business for centuries, yet at the same time enjoying her youth. The way it should be enjoyed. And then growing up truly free of regrets. Meet Mr. Bovey in a Commonwealth that had never heard of the Second Dreamer.