Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

“Yeah, yeah,” Edeard agreed, too happy to care about the needling. Natran, who captained the Lady’s Light , had been promising sight of the eastern isles for five weeks now. People were getting anxious about his navigational skills, though the captains of the other ships concurred with him. Jiska had spent that time supporting her husband’s ability. After a four-year voyage, people were starting to get understandably fretful.

Kristabel came up beside Edeard, her contentment merging with his. He smiled back at her as they linked arms, and together they made their way up to the prow. It was getting quite cluttered on the middeck now, which Natran was generally unhappy over. As well as the coils of rope and ship’s lockers, a number of wicker cages were lashed to the decking, each containing some new animal they’d discovered on their various landings. Not all had survived the long voyage home. Taralee’s cabin was full of large glass jars where their bodies were preserved in foul-smelling fluid. She and the other doctors and botanists had probably gained the most from their expedition, cataloging hundreds of new species and plants.

But no new people , Edeard thought.

“What’s the matter?” Kristabel asked.

A few of the crew glanced over in his direction, catching his sadness. He gave them all an apologetic shrug.

“We really are alone on this world,” he explained to Kristabel. “Now that we’re coming home, we know that for certain.”

“Never certainty,” she said, smiling as she pushed some of her thick hair from her eyes. It was getting long again. They’d been eight days out from Makkathran when Kristabel simply sat down in the main cabin and got one of the other women to cut her already short hair right back, leaving just a few curly inches.

“It’s practical,” she’d explained calmly to an aghast Edeard. “You can’t seriously expect me to fight off my hair on top of everything else storms will throw at us, now, can you? It’s been bad enough for a week in this mild weather.”

But you managed with a plait , he managed to avoid saying out loud. Kristabel without her long hair was … just plain wrong somehow.

Edeard could laugh at that now-besides, she was still rather cute with short hair, and elegant with it. It was the least of the changes and accommodations that they’d collectively made. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen a woman in a skirt aside from the formal dinner parties held every month without fail. With the exception of the flotilla’s Mother, who’d maintained her traditional decorum at all times, they wore trousers, shorts in the summer. The small revolution meant they were able to help with the rigging and a dozen other shipboard tasks that were usually the exclusive province of sailors. Indeed, there had been a lot of grumbling from the Mariners Guild at the very thought of women going on such a voyage, whereas the general Makkathran population had been mildly incredulous-the male population in any case. Edeard had received a huge amount of support from the city’s womenfolk.

Skepticism about taking women, shaken heads over the prospect of repeating Captain Allard’s grand failure, more consternation from Kristabel’s endless flock of relatives concerning the cost of five such vast vessels. At times it had seemed like the only ones in favor were the Guild of Shipwrights and a horde of merchants eager to supply the flotilla. Such a dour atmosphere had lurked across Makkathran’s streets and canals from the time he announced his intention until that day three years later when the ships had been completed. Then, with the five vessels anchored outside the city, attitudes finally began to mellow into admiration and excitement. There wasn’t a quay large enough or a Port district channel deep enough to handle the Lady’s Light and her sister ships, adding to their allure. Trips around the anchored flotilla in small sailing boats were a huge and profitable venture for the city’s mariners. To lay down the keels, Edeard had even gone to the same narrow cove half a mile south of the city that Allard had used a thousand years ago to build the Majestic Marie . It all fostered a great deal of interest and civic pride. This time the circumnavigation will be a success, people believed. This is our time, our ships, our talent, and we have the Waterwalker. It probably helped that Edeard announced his intention the week after the first Skylord arrived to guide Finitan’s soul to the Heart.

Edeard prided himself that he’d held out that long. He never wanted to go back so far into his own past again. Querencia might have been saved from the nest, but the personal consequences had been too great. It had been a terrible burden to live through every day again, watching the same mistakes and failings and wasteful accidents and petty arguments and wretched politics play out once more when he already knew the solution to everything from his previous trip through the same years. Time and again he was tempted to intervene, to make things easier for everyone. But if he began, he knew there was no limit to what he could and should do once that moral constraint was broken. There would be no end to intervention; constant assistance would become meddling in the eyes of those he sought to help.

Besides, those repeated events he endured weren’t so bad for everyone else, especially since the nest hadn’t arisen this time around. People had to learn things for themselves to give them the confidence to live a better life in their own fashion. And ultimately … where would he draw the line? Stop a child from falling over and breaking an arm wouldn’t teach the child to be more careful next time, and that was a lesson that needed to be learned. Without caution, what stupidity would they do the next day?

So with the exception of preventing several murders he recalled, he restrained himself admirably. That was why he was so desperate to build the ships and sail away on a voyage that would last for years. As well as satisfying his curiosity about the unknown continents and islands of Querencia, he would be doing something different, something new and fresh.

And it had worked; the last four years had been the happiest time he’d known since he’d come back to eliminate Tathal. Kristabel had gladly responded to that, even relishing being free of the Upper Council and its endless bickering politics. They were as close now as they had been on their wedding day.

Back on the middeck Natran was the center of an excited crowd, receiving their congratulations and thanks with good-humored restraint. His little son, Kiranan, was sitting happily on his shoulders. Born on board three years ago, the lad was naturally curious about living in the big city the way Edeard and Kristabel described it to him. In total twelve children had been born on the Lady’s Light during the epic voyage, with another thirty on the other four ships. That was where things had finally, wonderfully, begun to change. Rolar and Wenalee had stayed behind to manage the Culverit estate and take Kristabel’s seat on the Upper Council; Marakas and Dylorn had also chosen to remain in Makkathran. His other children had all joined the flotilla. Jiska and Natran were married, which they hadn’t been this year before. Taralee had formed a close attachment to Colyn, a journeyman from the horticultural association who might well qualify for guild status after this voyage. But it was Marilee and Analee who had surprised and delighted him the most. He’d simply assumed the twins would stay behind and carry on partying. Instead, they’d insisted on coming. Of course, they just carried on in their own way through shipboard life, almost oblivious to the routines and conventions around them. Not long out of port, they’d claimed Marvane as their lover, a delighted, infatuated, dazed junior lieutenant, and enticed him down to their cabin each night. (Not that they needed to try very hard; his envious friends amid the flotilla swiftly named him Luckiest Man on Querencia.) It was a relationship that lasted a lot longer than their usual, for he was actually a decent, worthy man.