The Temporal Void (49 page)

All the time he kept his eye on the wire and wood bridge which led over to the Palace’s main entrance. It was the one Marius had walked over not an hour before. Remote sensors secreted around the canal watched the other bridges for him. Infiltrating systems inside the Palace itself was difficult. Living Dream employed some extremely sophisticated shielding and counter-intruder systems, though a number of stealthed microbots were currently inching their way inwards. Even if they managed to get past the great halls and into the Mayor’s suite of chambers, they’d be too late.

The Delivery Man’s biononic field scan function detected a familiar biononic signature ten metres away. He let out a resigned sigh, and turned to see Marius standing waiting. He was getting a lot of disapproving stares as his dark toga suit refracted the bright sunlight in abnormal undulations. But his implacable demeanour was enough to keep them away.

‘Gotcha,’ Marius said.

The Delivery Man nodded. ‘Yes. Congratulations.’

‘Fancy a drink?’

‘Why not?’

Marius glide-walked his way across Golden Park, and over the ginger sandstone bridge into Ysidro. The Delivery Man narrowed his eyes as he took in the circular three-storey building with an improbable hexagonal rustication pattern on the walls. Tall lancet windows gave the appearance of some ancient human castle tower.

‘Isn’t this the one where—’ he began.

‘Yes,’ Marius said.

They went into the tavern, and managed to find a quiet table by one of the windows. A waitress took their order, and quickly returned with a hot orange chocolate with marshmallows for the Delivery Man and a peppermint tea for Marius. Once she’d gone, they wove their screening shields together, creating an almost invisible yet secure bubble around the table.

‘The game is changing,’ Marius said.

‘The game is the same, the stakes are rising,’ The Delivery Man countered.

‘Fair enough. I don’t like you because you symbolize what we’re attempting to leave behind. But I respect you; you play by the rules. There are some people in our line of work who no longer do that.’

‘We didn’t wreck Hanko.’

‘Hanko?’

‘Please! One of you fired a Hawking m-sink into it.’

‘Did we?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Don’t do that. Don’t call me in for a drink and play the subversion recruiting routine. I chose my Faction because of my beliefs, just like you.’

Marius raised his cup in salute. ‘My apologies. My point is that you and I are both nearing the end of our usefulness to our respective Factions.’

‘No. If
we
hold things together you and I will continue in our current form. Only if you get to enact your particular Armageddon does everything alter.’

‘You don’t have a clue what we’re doing.’

‘Fusion is not a pretty concept. It assumes elevation to perpetual godhood. The conflict here at this table is enough to convince me that should not be allowed to happen; and we both know there are Factions a lot more radical than us.’

‘My apologies again. You have all the answers.’

‘Of course, you could choose to come over to us. That would undoubtedly mean the end of your Faction. Problem solved for everyone.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I had to ask.’

‘I know.’

The Delivery Man tried to sip his chocolate through the cap of semi-molten marshmallows. ‘So now what?’

‘As I said, the game is changing. We are entering the last stages of an operation which has been centuries in the planning. As such, it is no longer a game. Please do not think we will tolerate any interference.’

‘The human race for all our facets and our institutional stupidity is something I believe in. I admire our diversity, our stubbornness. The dynamic of conflict is one of our greatest traits.’

‘Please don’t give me the “we’re at our greatest when our backs are against the wall” speech.’

‘I can’t because you seem to want to eliminate our conflict, our differences, to rebuild us in your image. I will not allow that to happen. My Faction will not permit that.’

‘Which is my point. You no longer have that luxury of choice, it was taken from you decades ago when we succeeded. This, today, this is just the result of our actions.’

‘You cannot believe that morally you have the right to elevate everyone to post-physical status whether they want that or not.’

‘We won’t be taking everyone.’

‘Then stop trying to manipulate everyone.’

‘You seem determined to remain in the past. Is that your wife’s influence?’

The Delivery Man placed the chocolate cup on the table, it was all he could do not to shatter the china his grip had tightened so. ‘Be very careful.’

‘We have the right to evolve.’

‘You do. You do not have the right to evolve the rest of us, nor ruin what we have built in the process.’

‘Much good your ANA:Governance has done you. It is the most conservative Faction of all.’

‘It made you possible.’

‘Exactly. And now, like an enfeebled parent jealous of our youth and vision, it strives to hold us back.’

‘It neither encourages nor refuses your ambitions, it is neutral as always. We, on the other hand, are not. Find a way of doing what you want without harming others, without endangering the entire galaxy.’

‘We do neither. You cannot stop us elevating ourselves into something glorious. Do not try. That is what I am saying to you. We have come to the end of this tedious routine, you and I. Next time we meet it will not be sitting in a tavern over a friendly drink.’

‘If that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is.’ The Delivery Man watched Marius give him a sad little smile, then glide out of the tavern. Only then did he exhale a very shaky breath. ‘Oh dear Ozzie,’ he hissed. ‘I can’t do this any more.’

*

The storm had been rising steadily for three hours now. A continual cloud of miniature ice daggers were hurtling horizontally through the air, smashing into the ground crawler at close to a hundred miles an hour. The noise was astonishing, as if they were buffeting their way forwards through a jungle of glass.

As before, the land shifted without warning, sending the ground crawler rocking violently. Corrie-Lyn gripped her seat tighter. It was the fifth mini-quake in the last hour. And they were coming closer together.

‘I’m sorry,’ Corrie-Lyn said. She was sitting beside Inigo as he attempted to steer them across hilly land locked into shape by the permafrost. All the loose snow that had accumulated in dunes and crevices was slowly and methodically being swept up by the wind, hardening further as it took to the air to join the atmospheric bedlam. They could see nothing through the narrow windscreen now, even the powerful headlight beams created little more than a dusky glow in the merciless blizzard. The ground-crawler’s sensors could only scan a derisory fifteen to twenty yards ahead. His biononic field scan function merely supplemented the perception.

‘Nothing to be sorry for,’ Inigo told her. He reached out and gripped her hand. Corrie-Lyn leaned in towards him.

‘If I hadn’t come, none of this would have happened. The restoration team would still be alive. You could have carried on rescuing people.’

‘The universe doesn’t work like that. They would have found me, one way or another. I’m glad it was you.’

‘I’ve killed you.’ The tears were running freely down her freckled cheeks.

Inigo stopped the ground crawler and put his arms round her. ‘That’s just fright you’re feeling. You must not blame anyone, least of all yourself.’

‘How can you be so calm?’

‘All I have seen, all Edeard showed me, it gives me hope. Hope doesn’t die just because a life is lost, nor even a million lives. The human race carries on. We have before, many times, we will again.’

‘As stupid as ever,’ she grumbled, wiping at the tears.

He caught her hand, and brought it to his own face, then slowly licked the moisture from her fingers. ‘That’s my Corrie-Lyn.’

She nestled up against him. ‘I still think it’s my fault. I should never have let that psychopath talk me into this.’

‘From what you’ve told me you didn’t have a lot of choice.’

‘I could have been bolder. I could have thrown him off a cliff like you did.’

‘Well, in the end that hasn’t made a lot of difference, has it?’

‘I’d prefer not to spend my last moments with him, thank you.’

‘We’re not dead yet.’ Inigo let go of her, and turned back to the console. ‘Only another two hundred kilometres to my star-ship.’

‘You really have one?’

‘I really have one. Smart man, that Aaron, working that out.’

The ground crawler lurched forwards again. Corrie-Lyn came over from her seat to stand behind Inigo. Her hands massaged his shoulders.

‘How far have we come?’

‘About eighty kilometres in the last seventeen hours.’ He nodded at the windscreen. ‘It’s getting worse out there. I’m guessing the quakes are the start of the implosion. No wonder the atmosphere is kicking up.’

‘We’re not going to make it, are we?’

‘No.’

She bent down and nipped his ear. ‘Hey, you’re a messiah. You’re supposed to inspire your flock.’

‘Would the flock settle for certainty?’

‘I thought there were no absolutes.’

‘I can see you’re going to be a difficult convert.’

The ground crawler juddered alarmingly as the landscape outside heaved. Corrie-Lyn’s grip tightened as she struggled against being thrown to the metal decking.

‘Lady,’ Inigo grunted. The portal projecting the sensor images showed a crack in the ground running almost parallel to the ground crawler, in some places it was over two metres wide. It hadn’t been there before the quake.

Inigo upped the speed of the tracks, sending them wobbling away from the crack.

‘Why did you leave us?’ Corrie-Lyn asked.

‘No great revelation,’ he said. ‘I was tired. Tired of the expectations. Tired of the Council. Tired of the adulation.’

‘And me?’

‘No, never you. I wouldn’t have stayed as long as I did if it hadn’t been for you.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

Inigo laughed. ‘If you’re not an absolute, you’re definitely a constant. Why don’t you believe me?’

‘Because I know you, or I did back then. You believed in the dreams, in the life the Waterwalker showed us, the life we could live in the Void. You never tired, not of that, not of being our Dreamer. What happened?’

‘Maybe I shouldn’t have left. Lady, look what’s happened because I did. Ethan as Conservator! He was never elevated to Council for a reason, you know. Why did the conclave vote for him? What were you thinking of?’

‘Change,’ she snapped at him. ‘Pilgrimage. The Second Dreamer made it possible, or at least believable. But that’s not relevant, that’s today, not seventy years ago. Why, Inigo? Don’t you at least owe me that?’

‘There was a dream,’ he whispered. His mind released a deluge of sadness through his gaiamotes, strong enough to make her shudder in dismay.

‘The Last Dream?’ she gasped. ‘It’s real?’

‘Not in the way rumour had it.’

‘But the Waterwalker died. That was his victory, he’d finally lived every life. The Skylords guided his soul to Odin’s Sea. I was there,’ she growled. ‘I lived that dream, the dream you gave us. I lay back on the pyre atop the tallest tower in Eyrie and watched the Skylords return to fill the sky above Makkathran. I rose with him while the whole city sang their hymn of farewell. I received his final gifting to the world. He went to the Heart of the Void! It was so beautiful, and I believed it. I believed in
you
.’ Corrie-Lyn shoved her way along the side of Inigo’s chair, and knelt down, putting her face inches from his. ‘That is the dream I recall so few times because it is so powerful I weep each time at what those of us trapped outside the Void never had. That is the dream that counts. That is the reason I am a member of Living Dream,
your
movement. And it is why I always will be no matter who is in charge or what ridiculous petty politics affect the Clerics. You gave us that. You made
us
dream.’

Inigo stared at the sensor projection of the treacherous ground, refusing to meet her eye. His gaiamotes closed up, shutting off his emotions.

‘Tell me,’ she demanded, so frightened she was trembling. ‘Tell me what dream you had.’

‘It’s just me,’ he said. ‘That’s all. It was just my reaction. There’s nothing to stop the Pilgrimage, nothing to prevent the faithful from achieving their perfect lives. It just affected me.’

‘What is it?
Please
, Inigo?’

‘I had one more dream,’ he said, still watching the display. ‘I saw what happened to Querencia afterwards. After the Waterwalker died. It was the life of one of his descendants living in Makkathran.’

‘What did they do?’ she asked. ‘Did they misuse the gift?’

The ground quaked again.

‘No,’ Inigo said, with a faint smile. ‘They used it perfectly.’

Corrie-Lyn grimaced in annoyance as the quake got worse. She clutched at the back of Inigo’s seat. Both of them looked at each other as the crawler began to tip over. The sensor display showed the ground lifting and splitting.

Inigo loaded a quick sequence into the ground crawler’s small smartnet. Anchors fired out of the lower fuselage, drilling long spikes deep into the frigid soil. Superstrength cables rewound, the tension tightening the heavy machine’s grip on the anchors.

‘Inigo,’ Corrie-Lyn wailed.

He gripped her hand. ‘We’re together,’ he promised, and opened his mind to her again.

The ground beneath the crawler heaved with a profound roaring. All six anchor spikes came flying back out of the disintegrating soil, crashing into the side of the vehicle with an almighty
clang
.

‘Together.’

The ground crawler started to roll. Corrie-Lyn yelled in panic as she was thrown into the side of the cabin, then the walls carried on moving. Inigo was hanging upside down in his seat as the safety webbing held him in place. Corrie-Lyn tumbled down towards the back of the cabin as the angle shifted. The ground crawler was skidding along on its roof. Another judder from the ground pushed it up on its nose and twisted. Several storage locker doors popped open, releasing a clutch of clothes and crockery and food packets that pelted through the interior, bounding about dangerously.