Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

“I should have told you. Warned you. I left because I didn’t want you to get involved, to get hurt.”

Neither of hims could avoid looking at the corpse. “It’s okay. You came back; that’s all that matters.”

“It is not okay. They killed one of you.” A pulse of regret and guilt in his mind alerted her. “No, it’s not just one, is it? How many?”

He took a step back from her, though his hands were still gripping her shoulders.

“Tell me,” she demanded.

“Five,” he said, as if ashamed.

“Bastards!”

“It doesn’t matter.” His grin was rueful. “That’s the point of being mes; bodyloss is irrelevant. Some of mes are scattered all across this city, and nobody knows how many there are; certainly not those thugs. I’m safe. Safer than you.”

“This is my fault. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have come to you, not before it’s all over.”

“I’m glad you did,” he said earnestly. “Really, I am. Just seeing you, knowing you’re okay, makes this all worthwhile.” Both of hims looked back across the empty garden toward the Cairns, whose muddy waters flowed past the bank at the bottom of the lawn. “How did you get here? Everyone thinks you’re on Chobamba.”

“Long story.”

A sound similar to faint thunder rolled across the house. Araminta turned to the source, seeing energy weapons flash just below the curving force field dome. She didn’t need any kind of program to tell her it was the Francola district.

“Not again,” Bovey groaned. “Enough!”

“It’s me,” she said impassively. “They’re fighting because they think I’m there.”

“Araminta.” It came out of both of hims, a distraught desperate voice.

“I can’t stay. They’ll find me eventually.”

“Run, then. I’ll come with you. We’ll just keep on running. The navy can probably help.”

“No. I can’t do that. ANA has gone. Nobody is going to help us; nobody can stop Living Dream and the Accelerators. It’s down to me now.”

“You?”

“I’m not running, not hiding. Not anymore. I know I have no right to ask this, because I didn’t have the courage to tell you about myself before.”

“I understand.”

“You’re sweet, too sweet. After this is over, I want us to be together. I really do. That’s why I’m here, so you know that.”

He hugged her tight again. “It’ll happen,” he whispered fiercely. “It will.”

“There are things I have to do,” she said. “Things I don’t want to, but I can’t see any other way. I have an idea, but I’m going to need your help to make it work.”

IN ALL THE YEARS Edeard had lived in Makkathran, he’d never bothered drawing up a proper map of the deep tunnels. He knew there were five large concentric circles forming the main routes, with curving links between them. He also instinctively knew their position in relation to the streets and districts above. Beyond the outermost circle were the longer branches driving out under the Iguru plain apparently at random. One day he would fly along each of those brightly lit white tubes to find exactly where they emerged. One day when he had the time.

For now he was simply glad that the outermost circular tunnel carried him close to Grinal Street in Bellis district, where Marcol was having difficulty subduing an exceptionally strong psychic. Edeard hadn’t used a deep tunnel for months, if not longer; such excursions were becoming a rare event. For several years now he’d had no reason to rush anywhere, especially on constable business. But now, as he hurtled along somewhere deep underneath Lisieux Park, the sheer exhilaration made him curse his middle-aged timidity. His cloak was almost tearing off his shoulders from the ferocity of the wind. He stretched his hands out ahead, as if he were diving. Then he rolled. It was a ridiculously pleasurable sensation, making the blood pump wildly along his veins. He yelled out for the sheer joy of living once more. And rolled again and again. A side tunnel flashed past, then another. He was almost at his destination in Bellis. There was an urge to simply go around again. Marcol and his squad can handle it, surely .

Something was suddenly hurtling around the tunnel’s shallow curve directly ahead. Edeard never bothered using his farsight in the intense white light of the tubes, so he was taken completely by surprise. He just had time to harden his third hand into a bodyshield as they flashed past. Two people clinging together. Teenagers, whooping madly. No clothes on as they coupled furiously in the buffeting wind. There was a quick glance of their startled, ecstatic faces, and then they were gone, their joyful cries lost amid the churning slipstream. Edeard threw his farsight after them, but the tunnel had separated them too quickly; already they were lost around the curve behind him.

His shocked thoughts managed to calm, and he asked the city to take him the other way to chase the intruders and catch up. He slowed as always, skidding to a halt on the tunnel floor. Then the force that carried him reversed, and he began flying back the way he’d just come.

This time he sent his farsight ranging out ahead. Perception through the tunnel walls was difficult, even for him. He could just sense the city a couple of hundred yards above him, but that was mainly due to the layout of the canals impinging on his perception. Actually sensing anything along the tunnel was extremely difficult.

For a moment he thought he’d caught a trace of them a few hundred yards ahead, but then he lost them again. When he reached the spot, it was a side tunnel branch, and he didn’t know which way to go. He skidded and stumbled to a halt in front of the fork, standing on the bright glowing floor, looking first one way and then another, as if hunting a trace. Then he tried delving into the tunnel wall structure for its memory. The city always recalled decades of localized events.

That was the second surprise of the day. There wasn’t one memory of the teenage couple. He could sense the tunnel’s recollection of himself flashing past barely a minute before, but of them there was nothing.

“How in the Lady’s name did they …” His voice echoed off down the tunnel as he frowned at the shining junction. For a moment he thought he might have heard laughter whispering along the main tunnel. But by then he knew he was grasping at phantoms. “Honious!” he grunted, and asked the city to take him back to Bellis.

Grinal Street was a pleasant enough boulevard, winding its way across the south side of the Bellis district from the Emerald Canal to the top of Oak Canal. A mixture of buildings stood along it, from typanum-gabled mansions to bloated hemispheres with narrow arches that made perfect boutiques, leading onto a line of houses with blended triple-cylinder walls whose overhanging roofs made them resemble knobbly stone mushrooms. Sergeant Marcol had been dealing with an incident in Five Fountain Plaza close to Oak Canal. The plaza was enclosed by a terrace with a concave outer wall and an internal honeycomb configuration of small cell-rooms connected via short tubes without any apparent logic to the layout, as if the whole structure had been hollowed out by giant insects long ago. This hivelike topography made it ideal for merchants and traders dealing in small high-value items. Few people lived in it, but many thrived and bustled around inside.

Edeard arrived at a squat archway in one corner and automatically ducked his head as he went inside. There was a lot of hostility and bad temper radiating out from the gloomy interior. As he crossed the threshold, he was instantly aware of a strong farsight examining him. His inquisitor, somewhere over in Zelda, withdrew farsight as Edeard attempted to backtrack it.