The Dreaming Void (4 page)

“Well, now that you are Conservator, you can authorize a more detailed monitoring of the gaiafield's confluence nests, track down the origin that way.”

“Is that possible? I thought the gaiafield was beyond our direct influence.”

“The dream masters claim they can do this, yes. Certain modifications can be made to the nests. It won't be cheap.”

Ethan sighed. The conclave had been mentally exhausting, and that had been just the beginning. “So many things. All at once.”

“I'll help you. You know that.”

“I do. And I thank you, my friend. One day we'll stand in the real Makkathran. One day we will make our lives perfect.”

“Soon.”

“For Ozzie's sake, I hope so. Now, ask Marius in, please.” Ethan stood courteously to receive his guest. That it should be the ANA faction representative he saw first was a telling point. He did not relish the way he and Phelim had relied on Marius during his campaign to be elected Conservator. In an ideal universe they would have needed no outside aid, certainly not one with so many potentially worrying strings attached. Not that there was ever any suggestion of a quid pro quo from Marius. None of the factions inside the near-postphysical intelligence of Earth's Advanced Neural Activity system would ever be so blunt.

The representative smiled courteously as he was shown in. Of average height, he had a round face with sharp green eyes emphasized by wide irises. His thick auburn hair was flecked with gold, no doubt the outcome of some Advancer ancestor's vanity. There was nothing to indicate his Higher functions. Ethan was using his internal enrichments to run a passive scan, and if any of the representative's field functions were active, they were too sophisticated to perceive. He wouldn't be surprised by that; Marius would be enriched with the most advanced biononics in existence. The representative's long black toga suit generated its own surface haze, which flowed about him like a slim layer of mist, the faintest tendrils slithering behind him as he walked.

“Your Eminence,” Marius said, and bowed formally. “My most sincere congratulations on your election.”

Ethan smiled. It was all he could do not to shudder. Every deep-honed primitive instinct he possessed had picked up on how dangerous the representative was. “Thank you.”

“I'm here to assure you we will continue our support of your goals.”

“So you're not concerned about the media's reaction to my announcement—that our Pilgrimage is going to trigger the end of the galaxy?” What he desperately wanted to ask was: Who is
we
? But there were so many factions inside ANA constantly making and breaking alliances that it was virtually a null question. It was enough that the faction Marius represented wanted the Pilgrimage to go ahead. Ethan no longer cared that their reasons were probably the antithesis of his own or whether they regarded him as a simple political tool, not that he would ever know. Pilgrimage was what mattered, delivering the faithful to their promised universe—all that mattered, in fact. He did not care if he assisted someone else's political goal as long as it did not interfere with his own.

“Of course not.” Marius grinned as if they were sharing a private joke about how stupid the rest of humanity was compared with themselves. “If that was the case, then those already in the Void would have triggered that event.”

“People need to be educated. I would appreciate your help with that.”

“We will do what we can, of course. However, we are both working against a considerable amount of mental inertia, not to mention prejudice.”

“I am very conscious of that. The Pilgrimage will polarize opinion across the Greater Commonwealth.”

“Not just that of humans. There are a number of species who are showing an interest in this development.”

“The Ocisen Empire.” Ethan spit it out with as much contempt as possible.

“Not to be entirely underestimated,” Marius said. It wasn't quite chiding.

“The only ones I concern myself with are the Raiel. They have publicly stated their opposition to anyone trying to enter the Void.”

“Which is of course where our assistance will be most beneficial to you. Our original offer still stands; we will supply ultradrives for your Pilgrimage ships.”

Ethan, a scholar of ancient history, guessed this was what the old religious icon Adam had felt when offered the apple. “And in return?”

“The status quo which currently reigns in the Greater Commonwealth will be over.”

“And that benefits you how?”

“Species survival. Evolution requires progression or extinction.”

“I thought you would be aiming for transcendence,” Phelim said flatly.

Marius did not look in his direction; his eyes remained fixed on Ethan. “And that isn't evolution?”

“It's a very drastic evolution,” Ethan said.

“Not unlike your hopes of Pilgrimage.”

“So why not join us?”

Marius answered with a mirthless smile. “Join
us,
Conservator.”

Ethan sighed. “We've dreamed what awaits us.”

“Ah, so it boils down to the old human problem. Risk the unknown or go with the comfortable.”

“I think the phrase you want is ‘better the devil you know.' ”

“Whatever. Your Eminence, we still offer you the ultradrive.”

“Which no one has ever really seen. You just hint at it.”

“ANA tends to be somewhat protective toward its advanced technologies. However, I assure you it is real. Ultradrive is at least equal to the drive used by the Raiel, if not superior.”

Ethan tried not to smile at the arrogance.

“Oh, I assure you, Conservator,” Marius said. “ANA does not make that boast lightly.”

“I'm sure it doesn't. So when can you supply them?”

“When your Pilgrimage ships are ready, the drives will be here.”

“And the rest of ANA—the factions which don't agree with you—they'll just stand by and quietly let you hand over this supertechnology?”

“Effectively, yes. Do not concern yourself with our internal debates.”

“Very well, I accept your most generous offer. Please don't be offended, but we will also be building our own more mundane drive units for the ships just in case.”

“We expected nothing else.” Marius bowed again and left the room.

Phelim let out a soft whistle of relief. “So that's it; we're just a trigger factor in their political wars.”

Ethan tried to sound blasé. “If it gets us what we want, I can live with it.”

“I think you are wise not to rely on them exclusively. We must include our own drives in the construction program.”

“Yes. The design teams have worked on that premise from the beginning.” His secondary routines started to pull files from the storage lacunae in his macrocellular clusters. “In the meantime, let us begin with some simple appointments, shall we?”

Aaron walked across the red marble bridge that arched over Sisterhood Canal, which linked Golden Park with the Low Moat district. It contained a strip of simple paddock land that had no city buildings, only stockades for commercial animals and a couple of archaic markets. He strode along the meandering paths illuminated by small oil lanterns hanging from posts and on into the Ogden district. This was also grassland, but it contained the majority of the city's wooden-built stables where the aristocracy kept their horses and carriages. It was where the main city gate had been cut into the wall.

The gates were open wide when he went through, mingling with little groups of stragglers heading back to the urban expanse outside. Makkathran2 was surrounded by a two-mile-wide strip of parkland separating it from the vast modern metropolis that had sprung up around it over the last two centuries. Greater Makkathran2 now sprawled over four hundred square miles, an urban grid that contained sixteen million people, ninety-nine percent of whom were devout Living Dream followers. It was now the capital of Ellezelin, taking over from the original capital city of Riasi after the 3379 election had returned a Living Dream majority to the planetary senate.

There was no powered transport across the park: no ground taxis or underground train or even pedwalk strips. Of course, no capsule was allowed into Makkathran2's airspace. Inigo's thinking had been simple enough: The faithful would never mind walking the distance; that was what everyone did on Querencia. He wanted authenticity to be the governing factor in his movement's citadel. Riding across the park was permissible; Querencia had horses. Aaron smiled at that notion as he set off past the gates. Then an elusive memory flickered like a dying hologram. There was a time when he had clung to the neck of some giant horse as they galloped across an undulating terrain. The movement was powerful and rhythmic yet strangely leisurely. It was as if the horse were gliding rather than galloping, bounding forward. He knew exactly how to flow with it, grinning wildly as they raced onward, air blasting against his face, hair wild. An astonishingly deep sapphire sky was bright and warm above. The horse had a small, tough-looking horn at the top of its forehead, tipped with the traditional black metal spike.

Aaron grunted dismissively. It must have been some sensory immersion drama he had accessed on the unisphere. Not real.

The midpoint of the park was a uniform ridge. When Aaron reached the crest, it was as though he were stepping across a rift in time. Behind him the quaintly archaic profile of Makkathran2 bathed in its alien orange glow; in front were the modernistic block towers and neat district grids, producing a multicolored haze that stretched over the horizon. Regrav capsules slipped effortlessly through the air above it in strictly maintained traffic streams, long horizontal bands of fast motion winding up at cycloidal junctions that knitted the city together in a pulsing kinetic dance. In the southeastern sky he could see the brighter lights of starships as they slipped in and out of the atmosphere far above the spaceport. A never-ending procession of big cargo craft provided the city with economic bonds to planets outside the reach of the official Free Market Zone wormholes.

When he reached the outer rim of the park, he told his u-shadow to call a taxi. A glossy jade-colored regrav capsule dropped silently out of the traffic swarm above and dilated its door. Aaron settled on the front bench, where he had a good view through the one-way fuselage.

“Hotel Buckingham.”

He frowned as the capsule dived back up into the broad stream circling around the dark expanse of park. Had that instruction come from him or his u-shadow?

At the first junction they whipped around and headed deeper into the urban grid. The tree-lined boulevards a regulation hundred meters below actually had a few ground cars driving along the concrete. People rode horses among them. Bicycles were popular. He shook his head in bemusement.

The Hotel Buckingham was a thirty-story pentagon ribbed with balconies, sharp pinnacles soaring up out of each corner. It glowed a lambent pearl-white except for its hundreds of windows, which were black recesses. The roof was a small strip of lush jungle. Tiny lights glimmered among the foliage as patrons dined and danced in the open air.

Aaron's taxi dropped him at the arrivals pad in the center. He had a credit coin in his pocket that activated to his DNA and paid for the ride. There was a credit code loaded in a macrocellular storage lacuna that he could have used, but the coin made the ride harder to trace. Not impossible by any means, just out of reach of the ordinary citizen. As the taxi took off, he glanced up at the tall monochromatic walls fencing him in, feeling unnervingly exposed.

“Am I registered here?” he asked his u-shadow.

“Yes. Room 3088. A penthouse suite.”

“I see.” He turned and looked directly at the penthouse's balcony. He'd known its location automatically. “And can I afford that?”

“Yes. The penthouse costs fifteen hundred Ellezelin pounds per night. Your credit coin has a limit of five million Ellezelin pounds a month.”

“A month?”

“Yes.”

“Paid by whom?”

“The coin is supported by a Central Augusta Bank account. The account details are secure.”

“And my personal credit code?”

“The same.”

Aaron walked into the lobby. “Nice to be rich,” he told himself.

The penthouse had five rooms and a small private swimming pool. As soon as Aaron walked into the main lounge, he checked himself out in the mirror. He had a face older than the norm, approaching thirty, possessing short black hair and, oddly, eyes with a hint of purple in their gray irises. Slightly Oriental features, but with skin that was rough and a dark stubble shadow.

Yep, that's me.

The instinctive response was reassuring but still did not give any clues to his identity.

He settled into a broad armchair that faced an external window and turned down the opacity to stare out across the nighttime city toward the invisible heart Inigo had built. There was a lot of information in those mock-alien structures that would help him find his quarry. It was not the kind of data stored in electronic files; if it were that easy, Inigo would have been found by now. No, the information he needed was personal; which brought some unique access problems for someone like him, an unbeliever.