The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle Page 4

  “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.�
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  “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.

  He ordered room service. The hotel was pretentious enough to employ human chefs. When the food arrived, he could appreciate the subtleties of its preparation; there was a definite difference from culinary unit produce. He sat in the big chair, watching the city as he ate. Any route to the senior Clerics and Councillors would not be easy, he realized. But then, this Pilgrimage had presented him with a unique opportunity. If they were going to fly into the Void, they would need ships. That gave him an easy enough cover. It left just the problem of who to try to cultivate.

  His u-shadow produced an extensive list of senior Clerics, providing him with gossip about who was allied with Ethan and who, post-election, was going to be scrubbing Council toilets for the next few decades.

  It took him half the night, but the name was there. It was even featured on the city news web as Ethan began reorganizing Living Dream’s hierarchy to suit his own policy. Not obvious, but it had a lot of potential: Corrie-Lyn.

  The courier case arrived at Troblum’s apartment an hour before he was due to make his presentation to the navy review panel. He wrapped a cloak around himself and walked out to the glass elevator in the lobby as the emerald fabric adjusted itself to his bulk. Ancient mechanical systems whirred and clanked as the elevator slid smoothly downward. They were not totally original, of course; technically, the whole building dated back over 1,350 years. During that time there had been a lot of refurbishment and restoration work. Then, five hundred years ago, a stabilizer field generator had been installed, which maintained the molecular bonds inside all the antique bricks, girders, and composite sheets comprising the main body of the building. Essentially, as long as there was power for the generator, entropy was held at arm’s length.

  Troblum had managed to acquire custodianship over a hundred years earlier, following a somewhat obsessional twenty-seven-year campaign. Nobody owned property on Arevalo anymore; it was a Higher world, part of the Central Commonwealth—back when the building had been put up, they had called it phase one space. Persuading the previous tenants to leave had taken all his energy and mass allocation for years, as well as his meager social skills. He had used mediator Councillors, lawyers, and historical restitution experts, even launching an appeal against the Daroca City Council, which managed the stabilizer generator. During the campaign he had acquired an unexpected ally that probably had helped swing the whole thing in his favor. Whatever the means, the outcome was that he now had undisputed occupancy rights for the whole building. No one else lived in it, and very few had been invited in.

  The elevator stopped at the entrance hall. Troblum walked past the empty concierge desk to the tall door made of stained glass. Outside, the courier case was hovering a meter and a half above the pavement, a dull metal box with transport certificates glowing pink on one end, shielded against field scans. His u-shadow confirmed the contents and directed it into the hall, where it landed on his cart. The base opened and deposited the package: a fat silvered cylinder half a meter long. Troblum kept the door open until the case departed, then closed it. Privacy shielding came up around the entrance hall, and he walked back into the elevator. The cart followed obediently.

  Originally, the building had been a factory, and each of the five floors had a very tall ceiling. Then, as was the way of things in those early days of the Commonwealth, the city had expanded and prospered, pushing industry out of the old center. The factory had been converted into high-class apartments. One of the two penthouse loft apartments that took up the entire fifth floor had been purchased by the Halgarth Dynasty as part of its massive property portfolio on Arevalo. The other apartments had all been restored to a reasonable approximation of their 2380 layout and decor, but Troblum had concentrated his formidable energies on the Halgarth one, where he now lived.

  In order to get it as near perfect as possible he had extracted both architect and interior designer plans from the city’s deep archive. Those plans had been complemented by some equally ancient visual recordings from the Michelangelo news show of that era. But his main source of detail had been the forensic scans from the Serious Crimes Directorate that he had obtained directly from ANA. After combining the data, he had spent five years painstakingly recrafting the extravagant vintage decor, the end result of which had given him three en suite bedrooms and a large open-plan lounge that was separated from a kitchen section by a marble-topped breakfast bar. A window wall had a balcony on the other side, providing a grand view out across the Caspe River.

  When the City Council’s historical maintenance officer made her final review of the project, she was delighted with the outcome, but the reason for Troblum’s dedication completely eluded her. He had expected nothing else; her field was the building itself. What had gone on inside at the time of the Starflyer War was his area of expertise. He would never use the word “obsession,” but that whole episode had become a lot more than a hobby to him. He was determined that one day he would publish the definitive history of the war.

  The penthouse door opened for him. Solidos of the three girls were sitting on the blue leather settee by the window wall. Catriona Saleeb was dressed in a red and gold robe, its belt tied loosely so that her silk underwear was visible. Long curly black hair tumbled chaotically over her shoulders as she tossed her head. She was the smallest of the three, the solido’s animation software holding her image as that of a bubbly twenty-one-year-old, carefree and eager. Leaning up against her, sipping tea from a big cup, was Trisha Marina Halgarth. Her dark heart-shaped face had small dark green butterfly wing OC-tattoos flowing back from each hazel eye, the antique technology undulating slowly in response to each facial motion. Sitting just apart from the other two was Isabella Halgarth. She was a tall blonde, with long straight hair gathered into a single tail. The fluffy white sweater she wore was a great deal more tantalizing that it strictly ought to have been, riding high above her midriff, and her jeans were little more than an outer layer of blue skin running down long athletic legs. Her face had high cheekbones, giving her an aristocratic appearance that was backed up with an attitude of cool disdain. While her two friends called out eager hellos to Troblum, she merely acknowledged him with a simple nod.

  With a regretful sigh, Troblum told his u-shadow to isolate the girls. They had been his companions for fifty years, and he enjoyed their company a great deal more than that of any real human. And they helped anchor him in the era he so loved. Unfortunately, he could not afford distractions right now, however delightful. It had taken him decades to refine the animation programs and bestow a valid I-sentient personality on each solido. The three of them had shared the apartment during the Starflyer War, becoming involved in a famous disinformation sting run by the Starfl
yer. Isabella herself had been one of the alien’s most effective agents inside the Commonwealth, seducing high-ranking politicians and officials and subtly manipulating them. For a while after the war, to be “Isabella-ed” was a Commonwealth-wide phrase meaning to be screwed over, but that infamy had faded eventually. Even among people who routinely lived for over five hundred years, events lost their potency and relevance. Today the Starflyer War was simply one of those formative incidents at the start of the Commonwealth, like Ozzie and Nigel, the Hive, the Endeavor’s circumnavigation, and cracking the Planters’ nanotech. When he was younger, Troblum certainly had not been interested; then, purely by chance, he had discovered that he was descended from someone called Mark Vernon who apparently had played a vital role in the war. He had started to research his ancestor casually, wanting nothing more than a few details, to learn a little chunk of family background. That was a hundred eighty years ago, and he was as fascinated by the whole Starflyer War now as he had been when he had opened those first files on the period.

  The girls turned away from Troblum and the cart that had followed him in, chattering brightly among themselves. He looked down at the cylinder as it turned transparent. Inside, it contained a strut of metal a hundred fifteen centimeters long; at one end there was a node of plastic where the frayed ends of fiber-optic cable stuck out like a straggly tail. The surface was tarnished and pocked; it was also kinked in the middle, as if something had struck it. Troblum unlocked the end of the cylinder, ignoring the hiss of gas as the protective argon spilled out. There was nothing he could do to stop his hands from trembling as he slid the strut out, nor was there anything to be done about his throat muscles tightening. Then he was holding the strut up, actually witnessing the texture of its worn surface against his skin. He smiled down on it the way a Natural man would regard his newborn child. Subcutaneous sensors enriching his fingers combined with his Higher field scan function to run a detailed analysis. The strut was an aluminium-titanium alloy with a specific hydrocarbon chain reinforcement; it was also 2,400 years old. He was holding in his own hands a piece of the Marie Celeste, the Starflyer’s ship.