The Temporal Void (71 page)

So now her dreams granted her those two days again. She looked into his worshipful face once more as he was seduced and taught the miracle their bodies could achieve together. She knew what it was like to be held in his arms again. She laughed with him in the glade on the hillside where the bright sunlight shone out of Far Away’s gorgeous sapphire sky. Caught him giving her longing glances across the bonfire they lit outside the tent at night. Watched him sleeping. Talked to him about her life. Listened to his stories of growing up in the mountains and deserts in fear of the great enemy.

Two days that showed her what a paradise her life could have been if she’d just had the strength to cast off her own conventions. Two days that made her weep with joy simply because they existed. Two days that stretched on and on and on . . . granted by a dream that was impossible to have. Because you couldn’t dream in suspension.

Night closed in and she lost him. The bonfire must have gone out, leaving her world claustrophobically dark. The air was dryer that it had been on the mountainside.

Lights resolved in the darkness. Strange colourful constellations that her drowsy mind slowly began to comprehend. Exoimage medical icons told her she was recovering.

‘Oh shit,’ she groaned. The medical chamber lid peeled back, and she looked round the
Silverbird
’s cabin again. It had just been a dream. She sat up and wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘Status?’ she asked the smartcore. A fresh level of exoimage icons and displays sprang up.

She’d been in suspension for three years; the target star was about a lightyear away. And the
Silverbird
was decelerating hard. Something was approaching.

‘Holy crap,’ she muttered as the sensors swept across the visitor. It was big – mountain sized. That was just the core. It was surrounded by weird sheets of gossamer matter that fluctuated like a gas.

A Skylord with its vacuum wings fully extended.

Justine showered and ordered up a decent meal as the
Silverbird
and the Skylord rendezvoused. It took the best part of a day, but they were finally sliding through space a thousand miles apart. With the sensors able to penetrate the haze of the vacuum wings, the Skylord was the same as Inigo’s dreams had shown them. A long ovoid but not solid, it was as if vast sheets of crystalline fabric had been folded into a Calabi-Yau manifold topology, with looping curves intersecting each other in eye-twisting complexity. The warped surfaces shimmered with long diffraction patterns that always flowed inward. She could never be certain if the structure itself was stable or constantly fluctuating there was so much surface movement.

Settling back on the longest couch in the cabin’s repertoire she let her mind reach for the immense creature. It glowed on the edge of her farsight, a glow not dissimilar to the gaiafield. Tenuous and full of emotion.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘You are most welcome,’ the Skylord said.

‘Did you let me into this universe?’

‘My kindred knew of your arrival. The nucleus drew you in.’

‘You know then it is my wish to speak with this nucleus, the Heart where you guide human souls. Can you guide me there?’

‘Your mind is not like the others of your species which used to dwell here. You lack the maturity of the elder years, yet your resolution is formidable. There is something about your vessel which magnifies your thoughts, but not rightly so.’

The confluence nest
, Justine realized. ‘The amplifier is an instrument constructed on my homeworld to emulate your communications here. That is how you found us beyond your border.’

‘Along with my kindred, I guide those who have accomplished fulfilment to the nucleus. That is my fulfilment. There will come a time when I will not return from the nucleus.’

‘That’s why I have come here. Others of my kind are trying to reach your universe. Their arrival will be a disaster. I must explain this to the Heart.’

‘Existence is achieving fulfilment. All must strive for that moment.’

‘In here, yes. But outside is a universe very different to this one. Did you know you are damaging us, destroying our stars and worlds?’

‘There is only here, the universe and the nucleus.’

‘Then where did I come from?’

‘The nucleus knows.’

‘Then guide me there, please.’

‘This cannot be done, it is against what is. I mourn your loss. Once you reach fulfilment I will guide you.’

Justine’s teeth began to press together. She made a very strong effort to make sure her frustration didn’t contaminate her longtalk with the vast creature. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying to you? This existence you enjoy in here is killing living entities outside, you are preventing an entire galaxy from ever reaching fulfilment.’

‘To achieve fulfilment your species must come to the solid worlds scattered throughout this universe.’

‘Your kind of fulfilment. Not ours.’

‘I will guide you when your mind reaches fulfilment. You strive for it so hard, the fabric is deeply affected by your wishes. It will not be long.’

‘Help me,
please
. You are killing people.’

‘To ascend into the fabric in any fashion is wonderful. Even the quietest minds are a part of what is.’

‘No, no, death outside this universe is final. It ends all form of existence.’

‘How hard for your species. You adapt easily and mature within this universe. We welcome you all. That is the reason for our existence.’

‘I have to get to the Heart. Do you remember others like me you guided there?’

‘There were many. They were joyful to reach the nucleus.’

‘I am glad to hear that. Where are they now? Where is the nucleus?’

‘The nucleus is the centre of everywhere and everywhen. It is that which all came from, and all return to change and live among change.’

‘Is it here? Are we in the nucleus right now?’

‘You cannot be in the nucleus. You have not reached fulfilment.’

‘I would like to talk with those of my kind who are already there. I could learn so much from them, it would help me reach fulfilment.’

‘Fulfilment comes from within.’

‘Fulfilment is achieved from experience. I am alone here. I need to commune with my own kind if I am to mature.’

‘My kindred are not aware of any thoughts from minds akin to your species. None are left.’

‘None?’ she asked in shock. ‘But there was a whole world of us, maybe more.’

‘All were guided to the nucleus. That world awaits the arrival of others. As do my kindred.’

‘Then take me to some world where you can feel living minds.’

‘My flock searches this universe always. There is no world I can feel where minds live thiswhen.’

‘Jesus fuck it!’ Justine couldn’t help it, but the frustration was finally getting to her. The Ocisens were less stubborn than this creature. She took a breath.
It’s not stubborn, these are its thought routines, perfectly adapted to its life and purpose. Why should it understand my motivations and problems?

‘You are sorrowful,’ the Skylord said. ‘When you are ready to be guided, I will guide you. Know this and hope.’

Something changed among the patterns shimmering within the Skylord’s curving crystalline sheets. It moved, shrinking away at an incredible velocity. Within seconds it had vanished from the
Silverbird
’s sensors.

‘Ye Gods,’ Justine muttered. The Second Dreamer’s views of Skylords always showed them drifting along sedately. Whereas the acceleration she’d just witnessed would have been close to five hundred gees.
If it was acceleration. This is a strange old place.

She spent the next few hours running over her conversation again and again. In the end she acknowledged she couldn’t have achieved any other outcome. The Skylord simply didn’t have the psychology to help her reach the Heart. It was too alien.

For all its size and ability she wasn’t strictly sure it qualified as sentient. Most intelligences had the ability to learn and reason, these creatures seemed incapable of interpreting anything outside their original parameters.

Not that the analysis helped her.

When she ran through the starship’s log she was pleased with the way
Silverbird
had remained functional. For some reason the glitches had been minimal while she’d been in suspension. Now all she had to do was decide what to do next.

At a lightyear distant the visual sensors could just make out some kind of accretion disc surrounding the star she was heading for. She examined the tenuous imagery with growing dismay. Any star whose planets were still forming wasn’t going to have a habitable world for her to establish herself on. Or at least, it wouldn’t out there in the real universe.

Justine mulled the problem over while she had another gourmet meal of lamb shanks cooked in toblaris wine and herb rosties, then pigged out on chocolates. She’d come this far, and it was only another one and a half years in suspension. She still didn’t have enough information to make a decision, any kind of decision. She was simply heading for the star as a comfort measure. That was something she needed more than ever now.
No other planetary species in this whole universe!

Silverbird
began accelerating back up to point seven lightspeed as the medical chamber’s lid flowed shut above her.

It was an ordinary house in an ordinary street. At least as far as Ganthia was concerned. A planet that became Higher soon after it was settled, its various political committees had quickly evolved a policy of sustainable organic construction. Native flora lent itself easily to the concept, trees in the temperate zones were hardwoods with an internal honeycomb structure. A few genetic tweaks make them quite suitable for creative shaping. Like the aircoral developed during the first Commonwealth era, Ganthia’s modified trees could be guided over frameworks to form hollow bulbous chambers. Better yet, they were amenable to grafting, so while each room was an individual tree, a house was the merger of many.

Navy Captain, retired, Donald Chatfield, lived in the middle of what from the air resembled a good-sized forest. It fact it was Persain City, spreading out over the side of several mountains just above the shoreline. Twelve trees provided him five first-floor rooms whose curving walls sprouted stunted branches with shell-pink leaves. Five long trunks grew up through the gaps between the lower rooms, before bulging out into the second floor of smaller compartments; each frosted with copper leaves. The remaining two trees were hollow pipes, twisting round the curvature of the lower rooms to provide stairwells between the two levels.

Paula’s taxi capsule skimmed along what appeared to be a wide greenway through the forest city. It settled silently on the wild lawn outside Chatfield’s home and she climbed out, sniffing the unusually spicy air. House clusters stretched away in every direction, some extending three or four floors high, their marvellously convoluted trunks forming a knotted support maze. Sunlight shone through the overhead branches creating a sharp dapple around her. In the distance, some kids were playing in an open area. The whole scene was remarkably rustic. Only the capsules flitting along the grid of greenways betrayed the planet’s true cultural base.

She walked up the short wooden steps to the porch platform formed from a miniature tree crafted to a flat mushroom shape. Donald Chatfield greeted her at the wonderfully old-fashioned green-painted front door. A tall youthful-looking man with an easy smile. His neat dark hair was starting to grey in contrast to firm features and a healthy tan. She couldn’t work out if those light strands were a fashion statement or an imperative genetic quirk his biononics couldn’t adjust. He was three hundred and fifty years old, after all.

‘Thank you for agreeing to see me,’ she said as he led her into the sitting room. Three big circles had been sawn out of the bulging walls, to be filled with perfectly clear crystal that overlooked his back garden. No attempt had been made to paint or cover the bare wood, though walls and ceiling had been polished to show off the dark timber’s turquoise grain flecks. Even the furniture was carved from large sections of tree trunks, softened by a few scattered cushions.

‘Your reputation precedes you, Investigator,’ he said as he waved her into one of the big chairs. ‘I didn’t even have to consult a reference file. But then I have served on ships around Dyson Alpha. It was a long time ago, but the crews tend to assimilate the War period’s history in more detail than the average citizen, it helps us understand the mission.’

‘Interesting,’ she said as she settled back. ‘That’s actually why I’m here.’

He raised an eyebrow in an almost dismissive expression. ‘Good heavens. Even I’m history in that respect.’

‘Not quite. I’d like to ask you about your third mission there, you captained the
Poix
.’

‘Yes. What’s the problem?’

‘No problem. I need some information on one of your crew: Kent Vernon.’

‘Oh him.’

‘That doesn’t sound good.’

Donald gave her a roguish grin. ‘Navy service sounds very grand, but I was actually in the Exploration Division. We fly science missions, not combat. That allows a – ’ he paused ‘ –
broader
range of characters than the regular Navy. Vernon might have been helpful analysing the generator lattice shells, but he certainly wouldn’t have been any use in a regular Navy position. He wasn’t the most popular person on board the dear old
Poix
.’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t get me wrong. He performed some valuable work. However, his social skills were somewhat lacking. Quite surprisingly so given he was Higher. It rather shocked some of the crew, they weren’t used to making allowances like that.’

‘If he was that disruptive how did he get a commission?’

‘It was a science commission, he wasn’t strictly Navy at all. Specialists are given temporary commissions for the duration of their missions. I was warned about his nature while the mission was drawn up.’

‘Yet you allowed him to take part.’