"It will bring such change to our lives," Edeard said quietly. "I think I know how to moderate any difficulties. But I don't know everything, I truly don't. I will need help. It will not be easy."

"I'm here," she said with a soft rea.s.suring hug. "As are all your friends, and together we will live through this. So just banish that horrible old Ashwell optimism, Edeard Waterwalker. This is the life you were made for."

"Yes." And this is the last one; whatever happens, this is what I will live with. Sweet Lady, please, in your infinite wisdom, give me the strength to get it right And this is the last one; whatever happens, this is what I will live with. Sweet Lady, please, in your infinite wisdom, give me the strength to get it right.

SEVEN.

THE CAPSULE CAME DOWN close to the center of Octoron's little township. Acrid smoke layered the air. Several of the buildings surrounding Entranceway Plaza were damaged; energy weapons had briefly turned the iron structures molten, causing them to sag and twist as they started to lean over. The wreckage of crashed capsules was sticking out of the ruins. Heat from the impact in combination with all the munitions had ignited a great many fires, which the chamber's drones were only just extinguishing. They'd used a lot of crystalfoam, covering vast swaths of the plaza in blue-green mush that was still emitting sulfurous belches.

Human paramedics were scuttling around, performing triage. Serious cases were carried to waiting capsules to be ferried off to the hospital on the edge of town. Thirty heavily armored and badly p.i.s.sed Chikoya were strutting around, getting in the way of the human emergency teams. Resentment was starting to rise on both sides. There'd be another clash if tempers didn't start cooling quickly.

The capsule's door dilated, and he stepped out. It wasn't a bad entrance, he felt; he was wearing some really quite stylish mauve shorts and a loose-fitting shirt of semiorganic white silk open down the front, like the top half of a robe. Top-grade Advancer-heritage genetic sequences and a decent diet had toned him up, and his slightly elevated position gave him that commanding full-of-confidence appearance, as if he'd arrived ready to take charge and everyone else could now relax. The frayed leather flip-flops admittedly detracted from the image, but he'd been in a hurry, so nothing he could do about that now. In any case, no one was looking at his feet; they were all looking up at him. Except the fifteen armored Chikoya who had swung their weapons around to splash their targeting lasers across his pristine shirt.

"Well, this sucks," Ozzie said.

He trotted down the capsule's three stairs to the ground and gave the big aliens his best untroubled grin. The Chikoya resembled medium-sized dinosaurs with vestigial dragon wings. Beefed up with armor that resembled black metallic crocodile skin, they were imposing demonic creatures. And really very p.i.s.sed, Ozzie decided as their minds radiated the paranoia and aggression that only their species could produce in such quant.i.ties.

"So what's up?" he asked.

"You are Ozzie?" the lead one asked. Its thick neck curved down, putting its helmet tip inches from Ozzie's nose.

"Sure thing, dude."

Three mirrored lenses in the helmet's center swiveled slightly to focus on Ozzie's head. "Where is the human messiah?"

"I don't know. I like just got here. Right?"

"You are the one who broke through into the realm of the all-perception. You can use it at the highest level. You must know where he is."

Ozzie took a sad moment to reflect how semantics always betrayed the universe-view of each sentient species. "I don't know," he said patiently, pushing an intense feeling of benevolence out into minds.p.a.ce. "The messiah is powerful. He has mysterious ways of camouflaging himself from the rest of us." That was a slight exaggeration. Ozzie was sorely puzzled how Inigo had actually managed to conceal himself. One moment he'd been there, his raging thoughts glaring out into minds.p.a.ce, and the next he'd gone, vanished, the mind extinguished. It was as if he'd died, which, judging by the amount of carnage let loose in the plaza, was a high probability. Except there had been others with him, a woman and some kind of psychotic special forces bodyguard who also, oddly, didn't register in minds.p.a.ce. For all three to vanish without leaving a visible corpse between them just wasn't going to wash. Either they'd teleported out somehow, which he didn't believe because the AI was showing the damaged navy scout ship still sitting on the pad, or they knew a way to circ.u.mvent minds.p.a.ce, which he wouldn't put past that slippery, gloating little s.h.i.t Inigo.

"Why is he here?" the Chikoya demanded. Oval vents at the front of its helmet clunked open, allowing a misty stream of phlegm to come spitting out.

Ozzie dodged gracefully, managing to clamp down on his feelings about that particular Chikoya body function. "As I haven't met him, I don't know."

"He is a danger to all living things on the Spike. The Void may know of his presence here. It will seek us out. We will be the first to be devoured."

"I know. Real crock of s.h.i.t, huh? When I find him, I'm going to kick his a.s.s right off the Spike. I'm going to be hunting hard."

"We will locate the messiah. We will make him stop the Void."

"That's wonderful. We both want the same thing. But dude, you just gotta make sure to let me know when you find him, please. I got me special supersecret weapons that will cut the b.a.s.t.a.r.d to shreds no matter what kind of force fields and military protection he's brought with him."

"You have weapons?" Sensor clumps mounted on the Chikoya's armor rose up like time-lapse mushrooms to scan over Ozzie as another jet of phlegm spit out.

"Hey ho, I used to be one of the Commonwealth's rulers, you know. Check your database to confirm. That means I had full access to its pre-postphysical technology. Of course Of course I have superweapons with me, dude." He pushed a starburst of sincerity and determination into his mind and held it there. "I don't want any more of your herd to be hurt or killed by his soldiers, so please, if you find him, please call me. I can squash him like a Kantr under a Folippian." I have superweapons with me, dude." He pushed a starburst of sincerity and determination into his mind and held it there. "I don't want any more of your herd to be hurt or killed by his soldiers, so please, if you find him, please call me. I can squash him like a Kantr under a Folippian." Whatever they are Whatever they are.

"We will inform you if he is troublesome."

"Thank you. That's very kind." Ozzie smiled again at the monster's helmet and walked around it into the plaza. The other Chikoya let him pa.s.s. His macrocellular cl.u.s.ters reported a quick surge in encrypted data between the big aliens. They began to holster their weapons.

Oh, yeah. Still the man.

That was exactly what he'd come to the Spike to get away from. He went over to one of the triage teams. "Hi, Max."

"Uh? Oh, hi, Ozzie," the medic replied. He was kneeling beside an unconscious woman who'd suffered a lot of burns.

"So what happened?"

"The guy was a f.u.c.king lunatic. He took on a whole army of Chikoya by himself."

"Did you see it?" Ozzie asked.

"Just the end." Max applied some pale-green derm3 to the woman's black and red legs. The jelly spread out evenly over the terrible damage and began to bubble like sluggish champagne. "And I had to wait until that was over before I landed. Anything moving down here got trashed. I guess weapon enrichments have come on some since I left the Commonwealth."

"Yeah, looks like it." Ozzie's field scan told him the Chikoya were starting to teleport out.

Coleen, the medic working with Max, broke off from implementing the stem support module she'd applied to the woman's throat. "What the h.e.l.l is Inigo doing coming here?"

"Sounds like he wants to talk to me," Ozzie admitted.

"Why?"

"Don't know for sure, but just a wild guess here: the Void."

Max had cut away the smoldering fabric of the woman's dress and started applying the derm3 to the side of her abdomen. "Can you stop it?"

Ozzie gave him a bitter laugh. "No. I wouldn't know where to begin."

"Then why-"

"Dunno, man." Ozzie spread his arms wide in surrender. "She going to be all right?"

"She's not Higher," Coleen said. "But she should be able to avoid re-life. I think she's stable enough to make the trip to the hospital now."

"I'll take her," Max said.

"How many hurt?" Ozzie asked. He didn't want to know, but his conscience was prodding him. That was something that hadn't happened in a long time. And it shouldn't be happening now, d.a.m.nit And it shouldn't be happening now, d.a.m.nit.

"Eleven got bodylossed," Coleen said. "We've shipped eight live criticals back to the hospital, and there's another five bad ones waiting. Maybe two dozen more with minor injuries."

Ozzie gave a tight nod. "Could have been worse."

"The Chikoya aren't going to get over this in a hurry," she said.

"I know."

"They think the Spike belongs to them."

"It doesn't."

"But this ..."

"They'll get over it. We've all got to get along."

"So you keep saying," she said.

Ozzie was disappointed by the amount of bitterness and resentment in her mind, even though Coleen was good at toning down her feelings.

"I'll sort this out," he a.s.sured her.

"Good." She hurried off to another victim, her boots squelching through the crystalfoam.

Max gave Ozzie a sympathetic look. "I don't blame you."

"Very big."

"But it's Inigo Inigo, Ozzie! The Dreamer himself. Things have to be bad if he's come to you."

"I know."

"And that bodyguard-"

Ozzie held his hand up, palms outward. "I'm on it, man." He turned and walked slowly back to the capsule, stopping briefly to study the broken buildings. No doubt about it, they were going to have to rebuild the whole center of town. "Connect me to him," he told his u-shadow.

The code embedded in the general message made a connection instantly. "This is Ozzie."

"You are the eighth person to claim this."

"That's gotta be a b.u.mmer for you. And what if I've cloned myself? Would any of us brothers do, or did you want the original?" He waited for a reply, slightly mystified by the delay.

"I need the original."

"Then this is your lucky day, pal." Ozzie's u-shadow informed him that a very sophisticated infiltrator was trying to take over the capsule's smartnet. "Let it in," he told the u-shadow. "But if we land in deep s.h.i.t, I want to be able to wipe it."

"Confirmed," his u-shadow reported. An exovision display showed him the infiltrator's progress.

"I will require DNA verification that you are Oswald Fernandez Isaacs."

"n.o.body calls me that."

"That is your name."

"It was my name." Even after all the re-life procedures and biononic regenerations he'd undergone in the last fifteen hundred years, with all their a.s.sociated memory edits, he'd never quite let go of the childhood persecution that name had brought down upon him. "Now I'm just Ozzie; always have been, always will be."

"Very well, Ozzie, I am loading a coordinate into your capsule. Please do not attempt to deviate from the route."

"Dude, wouldn't dream of it."

A map of Octoron compartment flipped up, with his u-shadow showing him the route the infiltrator was preparing to fly. Ozzie studied it, but the destination was a nowhere, a remote stretch of land past one of the water columns, about thirty kilometers away. Just the kind of nowhere outlaws would choose to lie low in, in a decent Western.

The capsule lifted silently and curved around over the town. Ozzie watched the buildings shrink away while the resentment built in his mind. The Spike was his escape from the s.h.i.tty vibes of life in the Greater Commonwealth, and Inigo was the one man who'd subverted and ruined his hopes for the gaiafield.

Nigel Sheldon had offered Ozzie another way out, a berth on the Sheldon family armada of colony starships. They weren't just going to the other side of the galaxy to set up a new society. Oh, no, not Nigel; he was off to a whole new galaxy to begin again. A n.o.ble quest, restarting human civilization in a fresh part of the universe. Then in another thousand years a new generation of colony ships might spread to further galaxies. After all, as he'd pointed out, this one is ultimately doomed with the Void at the center, so we need somewhere that's got a long-term future. Ozzie grabbed the logic even as he argued back that humans would have gone postphysical long before the Void would ever present a tangible threat.

Ha! Yeah, right. G.o.dd.a.m.n Nigel, always gets the last laugh.

The Spike had been a kind of compromise for Ozzie. A withdrawal from Commonwealth life for sure but not a complete retreat the way Nigel had chosen-not that he saw it as a retreat. He did it because there was a slight chance he could still turn things around and reclaim the dream that he'd lost to Inigo, Edeard, and the insidious Void.

He had intended the gaiafield to allow humans and aliens to understand each other better, eliminating conflict and confusion across the galaxy. The oldest liberal dream of all: If we just keep talking If we just keep talking ... And now the gaiafield could back up the talk with sincerity and understanding. Except, as always, the human race had found a way to f.u.c.k it up and turn it into the carrier wave of the latest and stupidest of all religions. So he came to the Spike with an idea of how to make something bigger than the gaiafield and commune with the Silfen Motherholme, a wonderful union of the mind that couldn't be subverted by selective, edited thoughts like Inigo's seditious dreams with their sole purpose of entrapping people. ... And now the gaiafield could back up the talk with sincerity and understanding. Except, as always, the human race had found a way to f.u.c.k it up and turn it into the carrier wave of the latest and stupidest of all religions. So he came to the Spike with an idea of how to make something bigger than the gaiafield and commune with the Silfen Motherholme, a wonderful union of the mind that couldn't be subverted by selective, edited thoughts like Inigo's seditious dreams with their sole purpose of entrapping people.

Minds.p.a.ce was a good start, except it worked better with human thoughts than with anyone else's, especially the ratty little Ilodi. But the Chikoya were coming around to accepting the state, even though the stupid monsters were hanging on it a whole load of religious connotations of the "all-perception realm," which had sparked some old dumba.s.s racial lore.

A little bit of fine-tuning was all it would take. Something he'd been a.n.a.lyzing and rationalizing-well, sort of-for the last forty years. Then every sentient species in the galaxy would be aware of every other species, which would be truly wonderful. Unless there was something else like the Prime out there. And prescience/rationality species would probably think their G.o.ds were calling. Oh, and greedy little psychopaths like the Ocisen Empire would use it as a map of worlds to conquer.

Yeah, fine-tuning. That's all.

Which he would have gotten around to. Eventually. Except now the Commonwealth and its incredible idiocies and factions and violence had followed him to the Spike. His basic instinct was to just cut and run again. But Inigo's boneheaded stupidity was finally paying off, with the Void going apes.h.i.t and everyone desperate for a solution. To what Ozzie wasn't sure. But sure as bears s.h.i.t in the woods, they came searching him out for it, treating him like the ultimate guru.

So once again, here he was doing the right thing right thing, which would have appalled the him of centuries past. Today, he just figured that this was the quickest way to get them the f.u.c.k off the Spike.

The capsule approached the water column, one of twelve ma.s.sive support structures that stretched from the chamber's landscape right up to the opaque roof forty kilometers above. They always reminded Ozzie of giant c.o.c.ktail swizzle sticks, huge narrow cylinders with ridges that spiraled the entire length. It was part of the chamber's irrigation system; water flowed constantly down them, racing around and around in a white-foam cascade. The top third of the twists had sharp angled kinks that sent thundering bursts of spume swirling off in long clouds that traced huge arcs as they fell downward and outward until they'd evolved into ordinary stratus scudding through the air before eventually drizzling on the ground far below.

He flew directly underneath one of the churning ribbons of thick white mist and began a steep descent. A broad expanse of Octoron's purple and green gra.s.s lay below, with a herd of sprightly tra.n.a.lin racing away from the lake at the base of the water column. Ozzie expanded his biononic field scan function and probed the ground directly below. Three human figures were waiting for him, which was odd because he couldn't perceive any incursion of thoughts within minds.p.a.ce. He frowned and refined the scan. One was standing waiting, integral force field active; the other two were lying on the gra.s.s, unconscious.

"Ah," he grunted as realization dawned. "Clever."

The capsule touched down, and he emerged to face the standing man. No doubt he was the bodyguard type who'd unleashed h.e.l.l back in the town. The man's biological appearance was mid-thirties, which was slightly older than Highers usually maintained their physical looks. Ozzie was drawn to his eyes, which were gray with weird flecks of purple. His Commonwealth Navy tunic was simple gray-blue semiorganic, with several burn scars where energy weapons had fired out from subdermal enrichments. But it was the expression, or rather lack of it, that was most intriguing. He didn't express a single flicker of emotion. Whatever thoughts were animating the body were extraordinarily simple, like those of a small animal. Ozzie had to get within ten meters before he could even sense them.

"Yo, dude, you hurt a lot of people back there. Some are going to have to be re-lifed, and that hospital doesn't have a whole lot of medical capsules." He had to raise his voice above the crashing white water waves of the column as they poured into the lake behind him. Very humid air was surging out. His semiorganic shirt hardened slightly to become water resilient, but he could feel it starting to saturate his Afro hairstyle.

The man put his hand out. Ozzie raised an eyebrow.

"I need to confirm your DNA," the man said.

"Ho, brother." Ozzie touched his palm to the one offered, allowing the biononic filaments to sample his dermal layer cells.

"You are Ozzie," the man declared.

"Really? I thought I was just fooling myself." In itself the confirmation was interesting; that particular datum was extremely hard to get hold of in the Commonwealth. Ozzie had made sure of that before he left, and ANA enforced the proscription on access. You'd need to be quite the player to get hold of it.

"No, you are not. Please turn off the telepathy effect."