Edeard looked around at his friends, humbled and delighted that they would all be traveling together. Kanseen on a bed of cushions next to Macsen, her terribly frail frame struggling to breathe. Dinlay, standing, of course, gaunt yet with a straight back, his Chief Constable"s uniform immaculate, dignified at the last. He was by himself; to everyone"s amazement, his last marriage had lasted thirty-two years (a record) and remained current, but his wife was eighty-seven years younger.

"Everyone together," Edeard said.

"No matter what," they all chorused.

The Pythia bowed to Edeard. "Waterwalker, may the Lady Herself bless your journey. She will greet you soon, I"m sure. What you have done for this world is beyond praise. The Heart awaits you with eagerness, as do your friends who dwell there now. You go there with the undying thanks of all of us who live on Querencia, whose fulfillment you have worked so hard toward."

Edeard looked up into her face, kind and stern, as all the Pythias seemed to be, but radiant with concern. A concern that extended a great deal further than the tower. Should I tell her? Should I tell her? Somehow, he couldn"t risk the woman"s disapproval, so all he said was: "Thank you." Somehow, he couldn"t risk the woman"s disapproval, so all he said was: "Thank you."

The Novices and Mothers began their walk back down the tower"s spiral stair.

Macsen let out a comfortable groan as he slumped back onto the cushions. "Right, then we"ve got a minute. Anyone bring some booze?"

"I think you"ve had enough now, dear," Kanseen longtalked quietly. Watching her juddering breaths, Edeard knew it was willpower alone that kept her body alive. Dinlay came over and perched beside Edeard. The lenses in his gla.s.ses were like b.a.l.l.s of gla.s.s, they were so thick. Edeard knew very well he was virtually blind; it was only his farsight that allowed him to move around these days.

"Do you think Boyd got there?" Dinlay asked.

Edeard smiled wistfully. "If he didn"t, we"ll have to organize a search of the Void for him."

"I"m sure a Skylord would help," Kanseen longtalked. "He deserves his place in the Heart."

"Wouldn"t that be something?" Kristabel said. "A voyage across the universe, a bigger version of our trip around the world."

"Yes, my love, it would be quite something."

He saw her head turn to stare at him, eyes narrowing in that oh so beautifully familiar expression. "Is there something wrong?"

"Not wrong, no. But tell me this, all of you: If there was something you knew, an ability you had which could change everything, the way you lived, your beliefs, the way you thought, even, would you keep it to yourself?"

"What ability?" Macsen asked keenly. "The way you talk to the city?"

"No, something much greater than that."

"Would it change things for the better?" Kristabel asked.

"It just brings change. How it is applied, for better or worse, depends on the user."

"You cannot judge people," Dinlay said. "Not even you, Waterwalker, have that right. We have our courts of law to maintain order, but to decide the nature of a person"s soul is not something we are worthy of. The Heart alone decides."

"If the ability exists, it exists for a reason," Kanseen longtalked.

"I thought so," Edeard said.

Down below, the city gasped and then cheered as the Skylord rose above the horizon. The tremendous flood of rapturous blessings directed from Makkathran"s crowds rose to a crescendo. It was enough to bestow Edeard"s body with a final surge of strength. He reached out with his third hand and drew his friends to him. They held hands as the Skylord swept in across the Lyot Sea. Wind rushed on in front of it, causing their robes to flap about. All around them, the spires of the tower began to glow, a vivid corona of light that spilled out across the platform, filling the air with sparks, as if the stars themselves were raining down.

"Will you accept us?" Edeard asked of the Skylord. "Will you guide us to the Heart?"

"Yes," the giant creature replied benevolently.

Tears of grat.i.tude seeped down Edeard"s cheeks as the light grew stronger and the shadow of the Skylord slid across Eyrie. This was his last chance.

The light flared, overwhelming his eyes. He sensed his body starting to dissolve into whatever force the towers unleashed. Yet his mind remained intact. If anything, it grew stronger, his thoughts clearer than they had been in decades. His perception expanded, taking in the whole of the city.

"I have one last gift for you," he said to the glittering enraptured minds below. "Use it well." And he showed them how to travel back through their own lives to begin again where they chose.

"That"s how we always won?" a laughing Macsen asked.

Edeard"s soul shone with happiness. Rising beside him into the giant fluctuations of light that ran through the Skylord"s body, Macsen"s spectral form had returned to his handsome adolescent self.

"Not always," he promised his friends. "And not for two hundred years. I swear upon the Lady that your achievements here are your own."

"Whatever will they do with it?" Dinlay asked, looking down at the world shrinking away below the glare of their disintegrating bodies.

"The best they can, of course," Kanseen said.

"You did the right thing," Kristabel told him.

Edeard cast his perception up, growing aware of the songs calling down from the nebulae. They seemed to speak directly to him, a promise of such glory that he was filled with wonder and antic.i.p.ation. "They"re so beautiful," he exclaimed. "And we"ll soon be there."

EIGHT.

OSCAR MUNCHED AWAY absentmindedly on his chocolate twister as he reviewed the astrogration charts his u-shadow was extracting from various files. On the other side of the exovision displays Liatris McPeierl was running through an energetic exercise routine, stripped to the waist to show off perfectly proportioned chest muscles that were gleaming rather nicely with sweat. A sight that was not a little distracting; Oscar found it hard to concentrate on transgalactic navigation with all that joyous hunk flesh flexing lithely just a couple of meters away.

Liatris finished his routine and reached languidly for a towel. "I"m for a shower," he announced, and twitched his b.u.m in Oscar"s direction as teasingly bogus thoughts of l.u.s.t burst out into the gaiafield.

Oscar bit firmly down into a big chunk of his pastry, inhaling a lot of the dusty icing sugar it was coated with, which made him cough, which made him look really stupid. He took a drink of tea to clear his throat. When he"d finished, Liatris was gone and Beckia was giving him a pitying smile from the other side of the starship"s main cabin.

"What?" he grumbled.

"Liatris is spoken for back home," she said.

"Back home is a long way away."

"You"re a wicked old Punk Skunk."

"And proud of it. Wanna take a look at my scorecard?"

"You just have no dignity at all, do you?"

He flashed her a lecherous grin and ordered his u-shadow to pull files from the unisphere on all previous known and rumored transgalactic flights. "Part of what makes me lovable."

"Part of you is lovable?"

Tomansio and Cheriton rose up through the airlock chamber into the center of the cabin. Both of them were wearing toga suits with quite flamboyant iridescent surface shimmers and gaiamote emissions toned down to zero. They were letting everyone know they were staunch Viotia citizens and had nothing to do with Living Dream in any respect.

"It"s not getting any better out there," Cheriton complained.

For a couple of weeks now the team had been accessing and experiencing the attempts of Viotia"s government as it tried to reestablish normal services and deal with the damage caused by the invasion, an operation not helped by the lynching of their prime minister two days after the Ellezelin troops had withdrawn from the capital, Ludor. It had been a messy affair with a mob storming into the National Parliament Building while the guards had been content to stand back and let natural justice take its place. The rest of the cabinet, fearful for their own bodyloss, had been reluctant to stand up and issue instructions. Relief was being coordinated mainly by local authorities while tempers were given time to cool.

Given that Colwyn City had sustained by far the worst damage, its infrastructure was still limping along as repairs and replacement operations were implemented. Bots and civil engineering crews were hard at work, aided by equipment delivered by starships flying in from across the Commonwealth. But commerce was sluggish, and a surprising number of businesses still hadn"t reopened despite the urging of the city council.

"I think they"ve done well, considering the general apathy," Tomansio said. "It"s going to take a couple of years before everything gets back to preinvasion levels. It doesn"t help that Likan"s company is currently shut down; it was a huge part of the planetary economy. The treasury will have to step in and refloat its finances. And the cabinet isn"t strong enough to orchestrate that right now. There"ll have to be an election to restore public confidence in government."

"Which is the main problem," Oscar said. "What"s the point? Our gloriously idiotic Dreamer is going to launch the Pilgrimage fleet in seven hours. You"re not going to get an election if there"s nothing left of the galaxy to hold an election in."

"So remind me why we"re still here," Tomansio said.

Oscar was going to launch into his usual impa.s.sioned plea for hope and faith based on that five seconds of raw face-to-face impression he"d gained of Araminta back in Bodant Park. He had been so utterly certain that she was playing Living Dream somehow. But the team had heard it all so many times from him, and now here he was examining ways to flee from the galaxy in one of the finest starships ANA had ever constructed. "I don"t know," he said, surprised by how hard the admission was. It meant that the mission was over, that they could do nothing, that there was no future.

He wondered what Dushiku and Anja and dear mercurial Jesaral would say when he landed outside their house in a stealthed ultradrive starship and told them they"d have to flee the galaxy. It had been so long since he"d spoken to them, they were actually starting to drift away from his consideration. That wasn"t good. He really could survive without them. Especially now that I"m living life properly again Especially now that I"m living life properly again.

A dismayed groan escaped his lips. Oh, you treacherous, treacherous man. Beckia is right; I have no dignity Oh, you treacherous, treacherous man. Beckia is right; I have no dignity.

Cheriton, Tomansio, and Beckia exchanged mildly confused glances as the rush of conflicting emotions spilled out of Oscar"s gaiamotes.

"What will you do when the expansion starts?" he asked them.

"The Knights Guardian will survive," Tomansio said. "I expect we will relocate to a new world in a fresh galaxy."

"You"d need to find such a world," Oscar said cautiously. "For that you"ll need a good scoutship. An ultradrive would be perfect."

"It would. And we would be honored for you to join us."

"This is difficult," Oscar said miserably. "To acknowledge we have failed so completely, not just the five of us but our entire species."

"Justine is still inside the Void," Beckia said. "Gore may yet triumph. He clearly intends something."

"Clutching at straws," Oscar told her. "That"s not strong."

"No, but part of what I believe in is having the strength to admit when you"ve been defeated. We didn"t secure Araminta, and she"s made her own choice, despicable b.i.t.c.h that she is. Our part in this is over."

"Yeah," he acknowledged. He still wasn"t sure how his life partners would react to all this. Not that he was so shallow that he"d fly off without making the offer to take them. But they all had family, which made an exodus complicated. Whereas he was truly alone. Probably the closest connection he had to anyone alive today was with Paula Myo, a notion that made him smile.

Every one of Oscar"s exovision displays was abruptly blanked out by a priority protocol as his u-shadow reported that someone was activating a link from an ultrasecure onetime contact code.

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l!" he blurted.

"h.e.l.lo, Oscar," Araminta said. "I believe you told me to call."

Even with a combination of smartcores and modern cybernetics and replicator factories and a legion of bots and effectively bottomless government resources, not to mention the loving devotion of every single project worker, building the twelve giant Pilgrimage ships was a phenomenal achievement by any standards. But for all that, the prodigious amount of processing power and human thought that had been utilized to manage the project was focused primarily on planning and facilitating the fabrication itself. It was unfortunate, therefore, that a proportional amount of consideration hadn"t been given to working out the embarkation procedure for the lucky twenty-four million.

Mareble had been reduced to tears when she and Da.n.a.l had received confirmation that they"d been allocated a place on board the Macsen"s Dream Macsen"s Dream. She actually sank to her knees in the hotel room and sent the strongest prayer of thanks into the gaiafield, wishing it toward the Dreamer Araminta for the kindness she"d shown toward them yet again. For days afterward she"d gone through life in a daze of happiness. Her brain was stuck in the most amazing fantasies of what she would do when she walked the streets of Makkathran itself that it was a miracle she even remembered to eat. Then her wonder and excitement were channeled into preparation; she was one of the chosen ones, an opportunity she must never waste. She and Da.n.a.l spent hours reviewing the kinds of supplies they wanted to take. Allocation was strictly limited to one cubic meter per person, with the strong advice not to bring any advanced technological items.

It was her deepest wish that she could somehow become an Eggshaper like the Waterwalker himself. For years she"d studied the techniques he"d employed in those first dreams; she was sure she could emulate the ability if she could just get into proximity with a pregnant default genistar. Once the basic clothes and utensils and tools were packed, she set about filling the precious remaining s.p.a.ce with the kinds of tough coats and jeans and boots that were essential to any branch of animal husbandry, with practical veterinary instruments occupying the last remaining cubic centimeters. Da.n.a.l filled his container with some luxury food packets and a range of seeds, but mostly his allowance was taken up by old-fashioned books printed on superstrong paper by a small specialist replicator unit he bought for the occasion. He wanted to be a teacher, he told her, which was why he also took pencils and pens and all the paraphernalia necessary to make ink.

Embarkation began three days after the drives and force fields arrived. Before she"d met the Dreamer Araminta, the unsavory origin of the technology would have troubled Mareble. But now that she"d witnessed Dreamer Araminta confront the disquieting Ilanthe-thing, she had confidence that their Pilgrimage wasn"t being perverted for a faction"s sinister agenda. Araminta was quite right: The Void would prevail over any wickedness. When their capsule arrived at the construction yard, she was carefree and dizzy with the prospect of the flight itself. Everything her life had been devoted to was about to be consummated.

The capsule had to wait outside the yard"s force field dome for seven hours, stacked three hundred meters above the ground in a matrix resembling a metallic locust swarm, all of them awaiting landing clearance. When they finally did get down outside one of the materiel egress facilities, bots loaded their containers on a trolley that quickly slipped away through the air. Mareble and Da.n.a.l had to walk through the facility past an array of scanners and sensor fields before they were finally out under the domes that cloaked the evening sky in a pale purple nimbus. Long braids of trolleys buzzed high through the air, forking and flowing like a dark river tributary network as they glided to their designated ship to off-load. Staring up at the appallingly complex, fast-moving streams, Mareble glumly resigned herself to never seeing her personal container again.

Below the trolleys, a stratum of solido signs hovered above the wide avenues between the starships, carrying directions and stabbing out flashing arrows. To complement that, her u-shadow received a series of guidance instructions that would take her to entrance ramp 13 of the Macsen"s Dream Macsen"s Dream. She and two million others. What those instructions amounted to was: Join the three-hundred-meter-wide queue filling the avenue and shuffle along for five hours.

With darkness falling, the hulls of the giant ships curving away above her created an unavoidable impression of being trapped in a metallic canyon with no end. The regrav fields supporting the ships pulsed oddly, creating unpleasant effects in her stomach. There were no toilets, nothing to eat or drink, nowhere to rest. The noise of everyone talking and complaining together along with crying distressed children was unnerving and depressing. Only the gaiafield with its shared sensation of antic.i.p.ation kept her spirits up.

Five hours pressed up next to a band of boisterous women who boasted about their genetic reprofiling to amazonian twenty-year-olds. They wore T-shirts with embroidered slogans: "Dinlay"s Lurve Squad." "Badder Than Hilitte." "I"m Gonna Get DinLAYd."

Mareble and Da.n.a.l exchanged a sardonic look and closed their ears to the bawdy talk and dirty laughter. It was amazing how some people interpreted the fulfillment the Pilgrimage was bringing them to.

Eventually, after far too long in a Honious-like limbo, they arrived at the base of ramp 13. After the chaos she"d endured, she let out a quiet sob of relief.

"It"s real," she whispered to Da.n.a.l as they began the slow walk up the slope. The Dinlay girls followed them up, but the crowd here wasn"t so bad. Thousands more were still trudging slowly along the avenue behind and below her. She was rising above them now in every sense.

He gripped her hand and squeezed tight as his mind let out a surge of grat.i.tude. "Thank you," he told her. "I would never have made it without you."

For one brief instant she thought of Cheriton and the short, hot comforting time she"d spent with him after Da.n.a.l"s arrest, how in turn he"d given her the fort.i.tude to get through that period of misery and disorientation. Somehow she didn"t let the pang of guilt out. After all, even the Waterwalker had lapsed when he tried to bind the world to his faulty notion of unity. From that he had emerged triumphant.

"We made it, though," she said. "I love you. And we"re going to wake up in Makkathran itself."

"Och, that"s very sweet," a loud amused voice said.

Mareble fixed on a blank smile and turned around. The man behind her on the ramp wasn"t quite what she was expecting. Not that she had any preconceptions, but ...

He was taller than Da.n.a.l, dressed in a kilt and very bright scarlet waistcoat with gold b.u.t.tons. Not something she ever remembered anyone on Querencia wearing. She was about to say something when a flicker of silver and gold light shone through his thick flop of brown hair, distracting her.

"They call me the Lionwalker," he said. "But I got that label a long time before our very own Waterwalker came along, so that"s okay, then. Pleased to meet you."

"Likewise," Da.n.a.l said stiffly as he introduced himself.

"So are you two lovebirds going to get hitched in the Lady"s church?" Lionwalker asked.

"Mareble is my wife," Da.n.a.l said with such pride that she ignored how rude the stranger was being and smiled up adoringly at her husband as his arm tightened around her.

"Aye, well, yes, but a marriage blessed in that church would be a blessing indeed, now, wouldn"t it? And take it from a man who"s seen more than his fair share of every kind of bride and groom there is, a marriage needs every bit of help it can get." Lionwalker pushed his hand up in salute, showing off an antique silver hip flask. "Cheers and bon voyage to the pair of you." He took a long nip. "Aaah, that"ll keep the cold off my toes on the voyage."

"We don"t need extra help," Mareble sputtered.

"If you say so. Mind, it"s a particular person who needs no advice in life."

"I"ll thank you to keep your homilies to yourself," Da.n.a.l told him. "Our guidance comes from the Waterwalker himself."

They"d reached the top of the ramp, which frankly Mareble had wanted to achieve in slightly more dignified circ.u.mstances. The Lionwalker took another nip, winked lecherously at her, and sauntered into the Macsen"s Dream Macsen"s Dream as if he owned the starship. as if he owned the starship.

"Well!" Da.n.a.l grunted indignantly. "Some of us clearly have a lot longer to go before reaching fulfillment than others."