Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

“Don’t ever do anything as stupid as that again.”

Laril scowled at the investigator’s image.

“Thanks for exiting him,” Paula said. “My own people would have been noisy.”

“Not a problem.”

“It won’t take Valean long to determine your location. She’ll visit.”

“She’s not as stupid as Laril, surely.”

“No,” Paula agreed as Laril bridled silently. “But she has a mission, and Ilanthe won’t give her a choice.”

“Poor her.”

“Quite. Give me its access code, please.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Paul. We don’t have the time.”

Paul gave her projected image a martyred look. “Connecting you directly.”

Paula’s image winked off.

“Who’s she talking to?” Laril asked.

“Next best thing now that ANA’s unavailable,” Paul said, sounding indifferent.

“So … I’m sorry, I still don’t get who you are.”

“Just a bloke who has been around for a long while. That gives me a certain perspective on life. I know my own mind, and I don’t like what the Accelerators are doing. Which is why I helped you out.”

One of the silver globes floated over to Laril, who sat down gingerly. Once the surface had bowed around him, it was actually rather comfortable. “So how old are you?”

“Put it this way: When I grew up, no one had traveled farther than the moon. And half the planet thought that was a hoax. Dickheads.”

“The moon? Earth’s moon?”

“Yeah. There’s only one: the moon.”

“Great Ozzie, that makes you over a thousand.”

“Thousand and a half.”

“So why haven’t you migrated inward?”

“You speak like that’s inevitable. Not everyone accepts that biononics and downloading into ANA is the path forward. There are still a few of us independents left. Admittedly, we do tend to be quite old. And stubborn.”

“So what are you trying to achieve?”

“Self-sufficiency. Liberty. Individualism. Neutrality. That kind of thing.”

“But doesn’t Higher culture give …” Laril trailed off as Paul raised his eyebrow again.

“And you were acting on which committee’s authority this morning?” Paul asked mildly.

“Okay. I’m having trouble accepting Higher life. I just don’t see what else there is.”

“Get your biononics. Work out how to use them properly-I mean that in your case. Get yourself a stash of EMAs and strike out for whatever you want.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Actually it’s a bitch. And I still haven’t got a clue how I’m going to finish up. Postphysical, presumably. But when I do, it’ll be on my terms, not something imposed on me.”

“You know, that’s the way I like to think.”

“I’m flattered. Ah, looks like Valean has found us.”

Laril gave the windows an anxious look. There was the unmistakable high-pitched whistling of a capsule descending fast outside. When he squinted through the windows looking out across the long garden, he saw two chrome-yellow ovoids come to a halt above the freshly mown grass. The skeletal woman stepped out of the first. Laril’s heart started to speed up at the sight of her. Those strange carmine streamers swam along behind her as she advanced on the bungalow. Six weapons-enriched agents followed her, various hardware units emerging from their skin to poke aggressive nozzles at the bungalow.

“Do we need to, uh, maybe get to safety?” Laril stammered. His biononics reported that a sophisticated field scan was sweeping through the bungalow. He brought his integral force field up to full strength.

Paul sat even farther back in his silver chair, putting his hands behind his head to regard the approaching Accelerator team nonchalantly. “You can’t get anywhere safer in the Commonwealth.”

“Oh, shit,” Laril moaned. He desperately wanted to ask: How safe, really? If Paul had really good defenses, why hadn’t he shot the capsules out of the sky or teleported out or called up his own team of enriched bodyguards? Just … do something!

Valean walked up to a window. She reached out and touched it with her index finger. The window turned to liquid and splashed down into the lounge, running across the floorboards.

Laril sat up straight, his back rigid as fear locked his muscles. Valean stepped through the open archway, gently pushing the gauzy curtains apart. Her glowing pink eyes searched around the room.

“Paul Cramley, I believe,” she said with a half smile.

“Correct,” Paul said. “I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave now. Laril is my guest.”

“He must come with me.”

“No.”

Laril’s exovision showed him those weird quantum spikes again. A pale green phosphorescent glow enveloped Valean and her team.

“I’m afraid your T-sphere won’t work,” she said. “We’re counter-programmed.”

Paul cocked his head to one side, long hair flopping down his cheek. “Really? How about I use irony instead?”

Valean opened her mouth to speak. Then she frowned. Her arms moved. Fast. They became a blur, her emerald aurora brightening in the wake of the motion, leaving a broad photonic contrail through the air. Then she turned, which was also incredibly fast. Laril had to close his eyes as the haze around her grew dazzling. His biononics threw up retinal filters, allowing him to glance at the Accelerator team again. They’d turned into cocoons of brilliant lime green. He could just discern outlines of their bodies thrashing about inside each tiny illuminated prison, moving hundreds of times faster than normal. Fists were raised to hammer at the border, striking it at incredible speed and frequency. It was as if they’d turned to solid smudges of light. Valean’s red streamers swirled about in agitation as the color drained out of them. They turned black, then stiffened and began to crumble into small flakes that drifted down like a drizzle of ash.

Inside the green prisons the team members had stopped moving, making it easier to see them. He watched Valean as her legs gave way. A fast smear of green light followed her to the ground. For a second her body remained there on hands and knees before another flash of light chased her to a prone position. The green glow faded to an almost invisible coating. Laril watched her odd skin darken; then its shimmer died to reveal a leatherlike hide. It began to constrict even further around her skeleton. Cracks split open, and thick juices oozed out, solidifying into stain puddles on the floorboards.

“Oh, Ozzie!” Laril covered his mouth as he started to gag and looked away quickly. Each member of the Accelerator team had suffered the same fate. “What happened?”

“Age,” Paul said. “Gets us all in the end-unless you’re careful, of course.” He climbed down off the chair and walked over to Valean’s desiccated corpse. The green hue finally vanished, replaced by a glimmering force field. I accelerated her inside an exotic effect zone, like a miniature wormhole. Normally it’s used to suspend temporal flow, but the opposite effect is just as easy to engineer; it simply requires a larger energy input. Sort of like the Void, really.”

Laril almost didn’t want to ask. He couldn’t help thinking what it must have been like for Valean and her agents, imprisoned inside a tiny envelope of exotic force, enduring utter solitude for days on end as the outside world stood still. “How long?”

“About two years. She had very powerful biononics, but even they couldn’t sustain her indefinitely. Ordinarily the biononic organelles feed off cellular protein and all the other gunk floating around inside the membrane, which is constantly resupplied by the body. But in the temporal field she wasn’t getting any fresh nutrients. Her biononics ran out of cellular molecules eventually. In the end they were like a supercancer eating her from the inside, enhancing the starvation and dehydration.”