"Is this your home?" the Delivery Man asked. He knew the Burnelli family was phenomenally rich, but the cost of constructing this artificial worldlet would have been unimaginable, especially as he suspected it dated back to the first-era Commonwealth, long before EMAs and replicator technology.

"f.u.c.k no," Gore grunted. "I"m just house-sitting for an old friend."

"Were you ever in ANA?"

"Yes." Gore dropped down into a big wooden slat chair with plump white cushions. He gestured to one opposite. "I"ve only been out a few days. I"d forgotten how f.u.c.king useless meat bodies are. There"s barely enough neurons to run a walking routine, let alone something complicated like tying your shoelaces. I"ve had to run an expanded mentality in the habitat"s RI (restricted intelligence) systems just to keep thinking properly, and that hardware isn"t exactly young and frisky anymore."

The Delivery Man sat down cautiously. "Did you come out for Justine?"

Gore ran a hand back through his fair curly hair. "Takes you a while, doesn"t it? Of course it was for Justine. How else could I dream for her? I"ve got five giant confluence nests...o...b..ting the asteroid a million klicks out. The gaiafield they"ve meshed together acts like a giant dream catcher net. Literally."

"But how did you know you"d dream her dreams, even with that much help?"

"We"re family. It"s the only connection theory anyone"s ever come up with."

"So you just tried it?" The Delivery Man knew there was too much incredulity in his voice, yet the notion was such a gamble.

Gore"s golden face gave him a hard stare. "You have to speculate to acc.u.mulate, boy," he grunted. "d.a.m.n, what have we done with Higher culture? You never strive for anything; it"s truly f.u.c.king pitiful to behold."

"I wouldn"t say that of Ilanthe," the Delivery Man shot back. "Would you?"

"Ah, so you do have some fire, after all. Good. I was worried I"d be dealing with another ball-less wonder who"s got to have all his forms filled in before he can take a c.r.a.p."

"Thank you. So you"re another Conservative Faction supporter?"

Gore chuckled delightedly. "If that"s how you want to read it, then yes."

"Well, what else is there?"

"I wasn"t d.i.c.king you around, sonny. I am the faction executive. Have been for centuries. See, that"s the thing with political movements; the leaders carry them along, and if they"re doing their job properly, all the members follow like good little sheep. After all, whoever said this was a democracy?"

"But ..." The Delivery Man was aghast at the idea. "It has to be a democracy; all ANA"s factions are democratic."

"If it was set up as a democracy, then it is, and lots of the others are. Were you there at the first Conservative Faction committee meeting when I wrote the charter in line with the accord based on our ideals? No. And you know why? Because there was no meeting, there is no charter; you all just do what I tell you. The Conservative Faction is just a notion you cling to. And it was a popular one. We don"t need policies and discussion and s.h.i.t like that. If any of the other factions do something to upset or subvert ANA or the Commonwealth, I use our faction as the mechanism to slap them down hard. What, did you think the Protectorate sprung up naturally to defend the External worlds from the Radical Highers? How did they start, who paid for them, who revealed the extent of the threat? Come to that, how did the Radical Highers ever get born? It"s hardly a natural extension of Higher philosophy, is it?"

"Oh, Ozzie," the Delivery Man groaned.

"So don"t worry, the Conservative Faction is alive and kicking. Just like the Accelerators are under Ilanthe"s enlightened leadership. Or did you think they all voted to entomb themselves while she flies off to the Void to get happy ever after?"

"s.h.i.t." The knowledge, so simple and obvious now, should have come as a relief; instead, the Delivery Man felt bitter. Bitter at the manipulation. Bitter at the grand lie. Bitter and shamed that he"d fallen for it. That so many had. "What now?" he asked resentfully. "You said you had a plan."

"What did you name it?" Gore asked as they both slid up into the ultradrive"s cabin.

"Huh?" the Delivery Man grunted. The smartcore wasn"t responding to his command codes.

"The ship, what"s it called?"

"Nothing; I never named it. Uh, the smartcore"s malfunctioning."

"No malfunction," Gore said as a sh.e.l.l-shaped chair swelled up out of the floor; its surface quickly morphed to a rusty orange with a texture of spongy hessian. Around it, the cabin walls brightened to a sky-blue. Black lines chased around the wall"s curvature, weaving an elegant pattern. Crystalline lights distended down from the apex. The floor turned to oak boards. "It is my ship, after all, designed and built by the Conservative Faction. In the old days I would have said paid for it, too."

"Then ..." The Delivery Man nearly said, What use am I? What use am I? But that would have been too pitiful. But that would have been too pitiful.

"Son, if you want to sit this one out or go chasing Accelerator agents, then go right ahead. I"ll understand. This asteroid has a wormhole generator that can take you to most of the Inner worlds. I can even set you up with some real bada.s.s hardware and a few other agents spoiling for a fight. But I believe what I"m doing is the best shot our species has got. And I might just need some help. Down to you."

The Delivery Man sat down in his chair, which had turned a gaudy purple. "Okay, then. I"m with you."

"Good man. I named this ship Last Throw Last Throw. Kinda got a ring to it, ironic yet still proud, right?"

"If you say so."

The asteroid had come as a complete surprise to Marius. As it was hollow, it clearly wasn"t a Raiel ship. However, there was no record of anything like it in any Commonwealth database, and Marius could access just about every memory kube and deep cache within the unisphere. His initial thought that it must be a clandestine Conservative Faction base was easily dismissed. The effort of constructing something on such a scale was colossal, an impossible feat to accomplish in secret so close to Augusta. That suggested it was old.

"It must belong to Nigel or Ozzie," Ilanthe decided. "The proximity to Augusta makes that a logical conclusion."

"Gore is from the same era as them," Marius said. "It makes a perfect refuge if he"s returned to a physical body."

"He has. This is the confirmation. The landscape geometry of the dream can"t belong to anywhere else. It"s unique. I have to admit I wasn"t expecting this. He should have been neutralized behind the Sol barrier."

"He has a single ultradrive ship and the Delivery Man as a sidekick. That can"t present any kind of threat to us. We already know there are no weapons which can endanger the ship the ship."

"And yet here he is. Still free, the Third Dreamer with his daughter already inside the Void and ready to do whatever he wants, while Araminta has vanished down the Silfen paths, leaving us locked outside."

Marius examined the image of the asteroid supplied by his exovision, a dark speck half a million kilometers away, its surface shimmering a weak maroon in the light from the Twins. "I can destroy it now. There is no force field."

"But there was a T-sphere. We have no idea of its capabilities, and as it has remained hidden for a thousand years, you can be a.s.sured it has defenses. If the attack fails, our advantage would be lost. Until we recover Araminta, I need to know Gore"s abilities and who his allies are."

Icons flashed up in Marius"s exovision. A wormhole was opening nearby. Sensors showed him the exotic structure reaching out from the asteroid to a point a million kilometers away. It vanished almost at once, then reappeared, with its terminus in a different place but also a million kilometers from the asteroid.

"He"s picking something up from those points," Marius said. Now he had the orbital parameters the ship"s pa.s.sive sensors scanned around the million-kilometer orbital band. It detected three more satellites. The wormhole reached out and plucked them away one by one. Then the T-sphere expanded again, and the Delivery Man"s ship materialized outside the asteroid. It immediately dropped into hypers.p.a.ce.

"Follow it," Ilanthe ordered. "Find out what he"s doing."

As soon as the five confluence nest satellites filled the forward cargo hold, Gore teleported the Last Throw Last Throw outside the asteroid. The Delivery Man held his breath, waiting to see how the other ship would react. outside the asteroid. The Delivery Man held his breath, waiting to see how the other ship would react.

"It"s got to be Marius," he said.

"More than likely," Gore agreed. "But that means Ilanthe knows I"m back in the game. She"ll be desperate to know what I"m doing. He"s not going to try anything yet. And by the time they do figure it out, it"ll be too late."

"What exactly is your plan?"

"My original plan was a good one; I just needed Inigo to get into the Void for me. Now that that"s suffered G.o.d"s own cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k, I"m having to do a lot of improvising to st.i.tch things back together."

"You"re not going to fly us into the Void, are you?" the Delivery Man asked in alarm. He realized that Justine could probably get the Skylord to open the boundary for Gore.

"No. We"re going in the other direction. What the galaxy depends on now is us eliminating the Void once and for all."

"Us?"

"You and me, sonny boy. There"s no one else. We"ve already had our chat about depending on politicians, now, haven"t we?"

"How in Ozzie"s name can we do that? The Raiel couldn"t close it down with an armada, and a million years ago they already had warships that make our navy look like a fleet of nineteenth-century sailing boats." He was starting to wonder if coming out of ANA had damaged Gore"s basic thought routines.

"I didn"t say close it down, I said eliminate it. You can"t do that with force, so we have to give it an alternative."

"Give what an alternative?"

"The Void."

"An alternative to what?"

"Its current existence, to being itself."

"How?" He was trying not to shout.

"It"s stalled. Whatever it was originally meant to do hasn"t worked. It hasn"t progressed for millions, possibly billions, of years. It just sits there absorbing minds and matter; it"s become pointless and very dangerous. We need to kick-start its evolutionary process again, whether it likes that or not."

"I thought that"s what Ilanthe and the Accelerators were proposing."

"Look, kid, I know you mean well and you"re upset over your family and everything, but don"t smart-mouth me. I"ve been fighting that b.i.t.c.h for over two centuries now. I don"t know what her f.u.c.king inversion core is, but trust me when I say the one thing it"s not going to do is fuse the Accelerator Faction with the nucleus so they can bootstrap themselves up to postphysical status. This is her own private bid to achieve G.o.dhood, and that"s not going to be good for anyone."

"You don"t know that."

"I do, because if all you really want to do is achieve postphysical status, there are better and simpler ways of doing it than this lunacy."

"Like what?"

"If you"re not ripe enough to figure elevation out for yourself, then use the mechanisms that other races have used to elevate themselves with. In the majority of the postphysical elevation cases we"re aware of, the physical mechanism survived the act. So you just plug it back in, reboot, and press go. Bang, you"re an instant demiG.o.d."

"But would ANA allow that? And what about the postphysicals?"

"It"s got f.u.c.k-all to do with ANA. If you take a starship and leave Commonwealth s.p.a.ce, its jurisdiction and responsibility end there. Technically, anyway; this whole Pilgrimage s.h.i.t really screwed things up. The argument about interference was getting very noisy inside before I left."

"So why hasn"t anyone done it?"

"What makes you think they haven"t? That"s the point. Postphysicals don"t hang around afterward. Not that we know of. Oh, it"s going to take a s.h.i.tload of effort, and you"d probably spend a century repairing the gizmo, but it can be done. But that"s nothing like the effort involved in manipulating Living Dream, imprisoning ANA, and creating an inversion core."

"So what is Ilanthe doing?"

Gore spread his palms out and shrugged. "Million-dollar question, sonny."

"Oh, f.u.c.k."

"Welcome to the paranoia club; cheapest fees in the universe and membership lasts forever."

"So where are we going?"

"The Anomine homeworld."

"Why?"

"Because they successfully went postphysical, and they left their elevation mechanism behind."

Inigos"s Twenty-first Dream EDEARD WALKED OUT of the Mayor"s sanctum, hoping none of his annoyance was showing. Even after all these decades in Makkathran, he was still less adept at veiling his emotions than other citizens were. It had been a petty argument, of course, which just made it worse. But Mayor Trahaval was most adamant: Livestock ownership certificates would not be extended to sheep and pigs. For centuries they had been required only for cattle, the Mayor insisted, and that tradition was more than adequate. If there had been an increase in rustling out in the countryside, it was not the city"s job to interfere, certainly not to impose additional paperwork on the provinces. Let the governors increase the sheriff patrols and have the market marshals keep a more watchful eye.

The doors closed behind Edeard, and he took a calming breath. A powerful farsight drifted across him, raising goose b.u.mps on his arms. As always, it was gone in a moment; certainly the watcher hadn"t lingered long enough for him to use his own farsight to ascertain where they were.

Whoever they were, they"d been checking up on him for a couple of years now and growing bolder of late. The snooping was coming almost weekly now. It irritated him that there was almost nothing he could do about it short of being fast enough to catch the secret watcher at his or her own game. So far he hadn"t managed that, though he suspected it was some disaffected youth making sure he wasn"t around while they set about their nefarious business. Certainly Argian hadn"t heard anything from his contacts about a youngster with exceptional psychic powers, at least not one who hired out his talent. So Edeard was content to play a waiting game; one day they"d make a mistake, and then they"d find out just why he was called the Waterwalker.

On the Liliala Hall"s ceiling above him, the storm clouds swirled ferociously, blocking out all sight of Gicon"s Bracelet. Three weeks, that"s all; just three weeks to the next elections Three weeks, that"s all; just three weeks to the next elections. Not that he expected Trahaval to be voted out or even wanted him to be. Life was good in Makkathran and the provinces, in no small part due to Trahaval, who was a solid reliable Mayor, consolidating everything Finitan had achieved over his unprecedented six terms. It was just that he lacked any real vision of his own. Hence the refusal to expand the livestock registry. Farmers had been complaining about rustling for years, and it was definitely on the increase. Merchants and abattoirs in the city weren"t too choosy about who they bought their beasts from, a moral flexibility followed by all the big towns and provincial capitals. An expanded certificate scheme would help, especially given how difficult it was to settle such disputes. As always, pressure was put on the constables and sheriffs to sort the mess out and come down hard on the rustlers. Such expectations were a sign of the times, Edeard reflected wryly. Twenty years ago people were concerned about thugs and robberies and securing the roads against highwaymen; nowadays it was missing sheep.

But in three weeks" time, if all went well, he might finally get out of the special Grand Council committee on organized crime that Mayor Finitan had created. After two and a half decades it had accomplished everything Edeard had ever wanted it to. The committee had begun by weeding out the leftover street gang members, of whom there were still hundreds. They"d fallen back into their old ways with the greatest of ease, as if Finitan"s election and the ma.s.s banishment had meant nothing. They weren"t organized anymore, not as they had been under Buate and Ivarl, though Ra.n.a.lee and her ilk certainly exerted enough malign influence. Because they were all independent of their old gangs, the constables had to go after them one at a time, catching them in the act of some petty criminal endeavor. Then came the court case, which inevitably fined them rather than jailed them because the offenses were so petty; or if they were jailed, it was only for a few months, which solved nothing.

Edeard and Finitan had introduced a rehabilitation scheme as an alternative to fines and jail and banishment, making convicts undertake public works alongside genistar teams. It had to be done, they were determined about that; some attempt had to be made to break the cycle of crime and poverty. The cost of the scheme had kicked off a huge political struggle in the Council, absorbing all Finitan"s efforts for his entire second term. Guilds had been coerced to train the milder recidivists, taking them on as probationary apprentices so that they were offered some kind of prospects at least. Slowly and surely, the level of physical crime in the city had fallen.

That left other levels of disruption and discontent. Edeard had gone after the remaining One Nation followers, which had been far more difficult. They could never be brought before a court of law and sanctioned before undergoing rehabilitation. Instead, he applied pressure in other areas of their lives. Their businesses suffered, no bank would loan them money, their status-so important to the Grand Families-withered away as whispered rumors multiplied, and they were blackballed from clubs and events. Finally, should those methods fail to move them, there was always the formal tax investigation of their estates. Over the years they simply had packed up and left Makkathran. Edeard made sure they dispersed evenly across the provinces so that given the distances involved, they slowly fell out of contact with one another.

That just left the Grand Families, which-strictly speaking-didn"t fall under the remit of the committee. Their power came from their wealth, which was jealously and adroitly guarded. Finitan quietly had increased the number of tax clerks while Edeard removed the more corrupt members of that guild. The city"s tax revenue increased accordingly. But bringing full accountability to the Grand Families and merchant cla.s.ses was a process of democratization that would probably outlast his lifetime, though the worst excesses had already been curbed.

Now, in three weeks" time Makkathran would vote on Edeard"s candidature for Chief Constable. Please, Lady! Please, Lady! Everyone, especially the Grand Families, saw each new crime in Makkathran as part of some vast subversive semirevolutionary network of evil. It was an inevitable result of the success that the constables and his own committee had secured over the years in cutting the overall level of crime in the city and out on the Iguru so spectacularly. Consequently, any crime that was committed these days became noteworthy, from missing crates of vegetables to the theft of cloaks from the Opera House. The perpetrators had to be Everyone, especially the Grand Families, saw each new crime in Makkathran as part of some vast subversive semirevolutionary network of evil. It was an inevitable result of the success that the constables and his own committee had secured over the years in cutting the overall level of crime in the city and out on the Iguru so spectacularly. Consequently, any crime that was committed these days became noteworthy, from missing crates of vegetables to the theft of cloaks from the Opera House. The perpetrators had to be organized organized and therefore required the immediate appointment of the Waterwalker himself to head up the investigation. and therefore required the immediate appointment of the Waterwalker himself to head up the investigation.

Three weeks, he thought as he walked across the Liliala Hall. That"s all I"ve got to put up with this Lady-d.a.m.ned rubbish for. Three weeks. And if I lose, they might even expect me to resign That"s all I"ve got to put up with this Lady-d.a.m.ned rubbish for. Three weeks. And if I lose, they might even expect me to resign. It wasn"t a thought he"d shared with anyone, not even Kristabel, but it was one he"d considered a few times of late. Certainly there was precious little for the special Grand Council committee to do these days. The number of constables a.s.signed to the committee was barely a quarter of what it had been fifteen years ago, and most of those remaining were on loan to provincial capitals or winding up cases that had dragged on for years.

One way or another, it needs to close down. I need to do something else.

Above him, a vigorous hurricane knot at the ceiling"s apex spun faster and faster. The racing bands of cloud grew darker as they thickened. At first he didn"t really notice the center; it was just another patch of darkness. Then a star shimmered within it, and he stopped and stared up. The center of the storm whorl was clearing, expanding to show the night sky beyond. He"d never seen the ceiling do that before, not in all the years he"d walked beneath it. Clouds were draining away rapidly now, abandoning the ceiling to leave a starscape in which the Void"s nebulae glimmered with robust phosph.o.r.escence. Then Gicon"s Bracelet appeared, each of the five small planets s.p.a.ced neatly around the ceiling and shining with unwavering intensity, so much larger than he"d ever seen them before. The Mars Twins, both angry gleaming orbs of carmine light, still devoid of any features. Vili, the brightest of the five, with an unbroken mantle of ice reflecting sunlight right back through its thin cloudless atmosphere. Alakkad, its dead black rock threaded with beautiful orange lines of lava, pulsing like veins. And finally, Rurt, an airless gray-white desert battered by comets and asteroids since the day it formed to produce a terrain of a million jagged craters.

Edeard gaped in delight at the celestial panorama that the ceiling had so unexpectedly delivered in such wondrous detail. He took his time, familiarizing himself with each of the Gicon worldlets. It had been a long time since he"d bothered to look through a telescope-decades, back before he ever set foot in Makkathran. As he went around the sedate quintet formation, he realized that something new had appeared amid them. A patch of pale iridescent light was shimmering beside Alakkad. "What is that?" he murmured in puzzlement. It couldn"t be a nebula; it was too small, too steady. Besides, the ceiling was showing him the entire bracelet, which meant the patch was close to Querencia. There was no tail, so it wasn"t a comet. Which meant ...

Edeard dropped to his knees as if in prayer, staring up in awe at the little glowing patch. "Oh, dear Lady!" He"d never seen one, never imagined what one would look like. But even so he knew exactly what he was looking at.

Edeard put his eye to the end of the telescope again, making sure the alignment was right. Why the lens stuck out vertically halfway along the big bra.s.s tube was a mystery to him. The astronomer he"d bought it from had launched into some long explanation about focal length. It made no sense to Edeard; that the contraption worked was all he required. He"d spent most of the afternoon setting it up on the hortus outside the study where Kristabel kept her desk and all the paperwork she used to manage the estate. By now the ziggurat all the way down to the third floor knew of the Waterwalker"s new interest, not to mention every astronomer in Makkathran, gossipy clique that they were. It wouldn"t take long before the entire city was aware. Then life might get interesting again.

And that"s my real problem with this world. Too d.a.m.n neat and tidy.

He stood up, arching his back to get the kinks out. His farsight swept out across the gloaming-cloaked city. Someone was observing him. Not the secretive newcomer; his knew this mental signature only too well. His farsight stretched all the way down to Myco and that that four-story building fronting Upper Tail Ca.n.a.l, the one with a faint violet glow escaping from its upper windows. four-story building fronting Upper Tail Ca.n.a.l, the one with a faint violet glow escaping from its upper windows.

"h.e.l.lo, Edeard," Ra.n.a.lee longtalked. She was standing in the office that had belonged to Bute and Ivarl before her. When he employed the city"s own senses to look into the room, he saw she was dressed in a long silk evening gown with flared arms. Large jewels sparkled in her hair and around her neck. Two girls were in attendance. They looked like junior daughters from some Grand Family, the kind she usually ensnared in her various dynastic breeding schemes; their robes were certainly more expensive than those of the courtesans on the lower floors, and their admiration for Ra.n.a.lee was painfully obvious. A lad was also in there with them, a dark-haired youth in his late teens, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. Edeard guessed he was of the aristocracy; his self-confidence incriminated him. For him to be there was somewhat unusual for Ra.n.a.lee but hardly unique.

Edeard sighed at finding the trio, but then, charging into the House of Blue Petals with a squad of constables to rescue innocents from her clutches didn"t work. He"d made that mistake before. Once it had been so bad, he"d gone back in time to make sure it never happened.

There was only one way to rid Makkathran of Ra.n.a.lee, and he wouldn"t do it. As she so often said, that would make him one of her own. So he endured and did what he could to thwart her legitimately.

To add to the ignominy, she"d aged extremely well, presumably thanks to some deal made in Honious, he told himself sullenly. Her skin remained firm and wrinkle-free, and she managed to maintain an impressive figure even after four children. You had to get right up next to her and look into those hypnotic eyes to know the true age and calculating ingenuity that the body contained, a position he tried to avoid as much as possible.

"Good evening," he replied equitably.

"Interesting new toy you"ve got there."