"Faster?" Makkathran queried; its thoughts intimated curiosity. "We were designed for every conceivable quantum state except of course this one. Here the mind is paramount, helping to seduce so many inferior mentalities. Long ago, I observed the fundamental connections between rationality and the multidimensional lattice which incorporates this universe's functionality. Speed is an aspect of temporal flow, which in turn is determined by thought. It is the application pattern which is the key, and those are actually quite simple to determine."

Outside the dome, light exploded out of the emptiness. Stars began to streak past like rigid lightning bolts. Glaring nebula clouds formed hurricane curlicues, spiraling around and around as they streamed away in a resplendent blaze of color.

"I think that was a yes," an awestruck Oscar mumbled as multicolored ripples of light flowed across his upturned face.

"So are we going fast or is the Void slowing down?" Corrie-Lyn asked tentatively.

"That's not strictly relevant in here," Inigo said. "All that matters is the end result."

In parallel to his conversation with the Delivery Man, Gore was monitoring the data the infiltration software was surrept.i.tiously acc.u.mulating. The elevation mechanism had started running internal scans as the filaments continued their invasion into its structure. He released the first batch of packages, a low-level torrent that swiftly insinuated itself into the scan interpretation routines, falsifying the results so the elevation mechanism would find nothing wrong with itself at a molecular level.

Dream-Makkathran went FTL amid a spectacular light storm.

Visual observation-Tyzak was bouncing its way over the plaza, taking care not to step on the glistening black webbing that was humming gently.

That's all I need, a higher secondary segment of Gore's mind thought. The Anomine translation routine in a storage lacuna went active.

"Others have come," Tyzak said.

"From your village?" Gore warbled and whistled back.

"No. Others. Star travelers who are similar to you but very different. I do not know of their story."

"Show me, please."

Tyzak traced his way back across the plaza. One of his limbs extended, pointing down a broad street.

There were eight of them standing across the road a hundred meters short of the plaza. Pastel light from the buildings on either side glittered across their extravagant jeweled longcoats. One of them raised a long white spear and bowed slightly.

"Silfen," Gore sighed, resisting the urge to give them the finger in return. Instead he inclined his head. "Just ignore them. They're the galaxy's greatest voyeurs."

"Why should they come here?"

"To observe me."

The infiltration packages flashed up a problem with the a.n.a.lysis routines they were trying to modify. There must have been hidden sentinels, because the a.n.a.lysis routines were resisting any attempt to subvert them. They had begun reformatting themselves with alarming frequency. It meant the packages couldn't establish themselves; there was no stable configuration to match. And the sentinels were routing more advanced routines to the scans, examining why the resistance algorithms were being triggered. That might well alert the elevation mechanism's princ.i.p.al consciousness.

Gore pressed his golden lips together. "Oh, s.h.i.t; here we go."

Hanging in transdimensional suspension two million kilometers above the Anomine star, Marius had directed his starship's sensor readings to a constellation of semiautonomous secondary routines. Although the Delivery Man's ship had performed a truly astounding feat by flying into the star's convection layer, it wasn't his main concern. He simply didn't understand Justine's dream.

That Gore had somehow maneuvered Inigo and Araminta-two into the Void was seriously impressive. But then the notion faltered. To rationalize with the Heart, as Gore claimed was their ultimate purpose, must be a misdirection. He was sure of it.

Then the Waterwalker was resurrected. "Remarkable," Marius admitted. That was nothing compared with Makkathran awakening and lifting itself out of the gargantuan lava-filled impact crater it had created when it crashed there in the aftermath of the armada's invasion.

And Gore announced they had to beat Ilanthe to the Heart. Makkathran performed the impossible and went FTL inside the Void.

"No," Marius said in alarm. Whatever scheme Gore had for when they were inside the Heart, he could not permit it. The risk was infinitesimal, but nonetheless it existed.

His mind moved the dream to secondary routines for monitoring and brought the sensor readings back to his full attention. The Delivery Man's starship hadn't moved. It was still attached to the shielded circular object inside the convection zone. Whatever connection Gore envisaged between that and Makkathran was beyond understanding, but there was purpose to it. No one expended that much effort without a reason.

His quandary was that he didn't know if Gore was on board the starship or back on the planet. Therefore, the process of elimination would have to be both literal and simple. Ship first. If the dream continued, Gore was on the Anomine homeworld.

Marius ordered the smartcore to drop them out of stealth. Active sensors came on line and performed a more detailed scan of the ship inside the convection zone. For all that it incorporated Stardiver shielding to deal with the heat, its layered force fields had received only about twenty percent strengthening. They remained vulnerable to combat strikes. The only real problem Marius had was choosing a weapon that would be able to reach it within such a radical environment. He started to activate the possibles.

They waited for the moment on the Sampalok square, just outside the mansion's entrance. Inigo and Corrie-Lyn were holding hands and sharing thoughts privately. Araminta-two was never far from Oscar, the two of them providing each other with a strange variety of support and comfort. The three Knights Guardian were in a tight group, keen and nervy. Justine and Gore stood side by side, proud and defiant, their determination shining as bright as any of the weird stars flashing past outside. That, oddly enough, left Edeard gravitating toward Troblum, who was waiting with a sulky, nearly childlike pout.

The cascade of opalescent light drained away as quickly as it had arrived. Edeard gazed up at the dome, thunderstruck by the sight beyond the crystal. Makkathran was gliding through s.p.a.ce above the center of Odin's Sea. Directly above the apex of the dome a ruffled lake of aquamarine dust glimmered with a steady lambency, alive with deep currents and the flaring nimbi of protostars. Around its sh.o.r.es the scarlet reefs extended out for light-years, slender twined braids of fluorescence that swelled at their tips to form silken veils around the stars they incarcerated.

"Sweet Lady, I never thought to see such a sight," Edeard moaned incredulously. Finally his mind heard the siren call; it wasn't a song but the sense of uncountable minds blending in peace and friendship, secure in their totality. Together they were whole and had combined with the Void's fabric at some ultimate level of existence. The promise of belonging to such an affiliation filled him with joy; the weariness and strife of a physical life would end, and he would be a part of the greater existence that reached for perfection. The urge to join them, to contribute his nature, was so strong that if his third hand could have elevated him up from the square and through the crystal, he would have flown into the Heart there and then for the final consummation. It was nothing like the foolishly imagined nearly physical heaven he had expected, where souls clung to their old form and lived in splendor in a city of golden towers. That kind of life was actually achievable back on Querencia if you tried hard enough and often enough, revisiting your own past until you finally eliminated all your failures and disappointments. No, the Heart looked to the future and a fate that was fresh and different from anything that had gone before. He would be a part of creating that.

"This hippie-dippy s.h.i.t is what everyone praises?" Gore snapped. "Jeezus wept."

Edeard struggled to keep his temper in check in the face of such blasphemous provocation. "It is a glorious reward for a life lived true to oneself."

"Uh huh. Well, let's not forget why we're here. We need to get inside."

"There is no physical location," Makkathran told them when Edeard asked to move closer. "At least, not in relation to the Void fabric at this level. The Heart lies beyond rather than behind. That is the final barrier, the one which defeated us before."

"Ask it to admit us," Oscar said.

Edeard nodded slowly, reluctant at the last to begin the event that could lead to the demise of the entire Void. What if they have lied? What if they have lied? Which he knew to be a foolish insecurity. Which he knew to be a foolish insecurity. Good old Ashwell optimism, even here. Inigo does not lie, not to me Good old Ashwell optimism, even here. Inigo does not lie, not to me. "How can something this splendid be so flawed as to threaten life everywhere?"

"Because it doesn't know it's a danger," Gore said.

"How can that be?" he cried. "It is awesome; it is the acc.u.mulation of billions upon billions of minds. How can you possibly be so arrogant to try and change its path?"

"Those lives it has consumed are doing nothing but dreaming their existence away. The souls who were guided here have been betrayed. The wisdom they brought, the continued life they were promised, it's all being wasted."

"All right." Edeard reached out for the Heart. I am here I am here, he told it. I am ready. I am fulfilled. Bring me to you I am ready. I am fulfilled. Bring me to you. He held his breath. Nothing happened. I am here I am here, he repeated.

"Now what?" Tomansio asked.

"Stop trying," Oscar said. "Just let the urge take you. Chill down and surrender to it."

"You're already in there," Corrie-Lyn said. "Listen for yourself."

"Very well," Edeard said. It sounded stupid, but he closed his eyes, then withdrew his farsight, allowing the presence of the Heart to seep into him. He listened for himself. In truth, there were others he wanted to hear, to join: Kristabel. Macsen. Dinlay. Kanseen. Akeem! Was he waiting? Had he found his way? Finitan surely would be there. And Rolar, and Jiska, and the twins, and Dylorn, and Marakas, and sweet Taralee. Perhaps even Salrana, who might have finally made her peace with him-he could never forget that night he discovered the true nature of the Void. In the pavilion, after her death, her soul had panicked, realizing she had strayed. Perhaps ...

"The barrier falls," Makkathran said.

Edeard opened his eyes in time to see Odin's Sea fading away. The light simply vanished, and they were surrounded by nothing. A perfect uniform blackness.

The Heart's thoughts grew more powerful. Edeard found himself strengthening his shield. His mind seemed to be expanding, moving to embrace the Heart, flowing out to join it.

"Edeard!" Inigo shouted.

His brother's fright was strong. He hesitated.

"Edeard, come back." Inigo was compelling him, infusing their bond with love.

He opened his eyes again. This time the st.u.r.dy Sampalok mansion seemed faint. When he lifted up his hand, it was growing translucent.

"It's absorbing him," Gore said. Worry was flooding from the golden man's mind. "Edeard, you've got to hold on."

"Without you we will be rejected," Makkathran warned.

"Edeard, is there anything you can sense in there that'll talk to us?" Gore asked. "A single coherent mind?"

Edeard had to laugh. "The Heart is bigger than worlds. It is universal; it lies behind everywhere in the Void. And still it grows."

"f.u.c.k it," Gore snarled. "It's grown so big, it's lost cohesion. All right, Edeard, it wasn't always like this. I need you to go back to when it was smaller."

"What?"

"Get into the memory layer, trace it down to the origin. Come on, son, you can do it."

"Lean on me," Inigo said. He gripped Edeard's hand, suffusing him with strength and love. "I will help you."

"And me, Waterwalker," Corrie-Lyn said. Her firmness and fort.i.tude made Edeard smile in grat.i.tude.

Oscar came over, as did the Knights Guardian. "Whatever you need," Tomansio promised sincerely, which made Edeard regret he hadn't known the warrior longer. Justine, smiling and determined, added her essence, buoying him along. Even Troblum was there, dependable and resolute.

There was a memory layer in this place, wherever they were, and that surprised Edeard more than anything. Strangely uncluttered, it was easy to perceive, to follow back. He plunged into the past, saddened by how little had changed. Then abruptly the Heart wasn't quite so large. This was the time before humans. He carried on back through it, pushing harder and harder.

There were many changes, coming eons apart, then further. Each alien species that had come to the Void had contributed to the expansion in its own fashion. None had brought true cohesion. He found that wrong somehow, that the amalgamation always acted in the contrary direction to the Heart's purpose.

At the end he could think only of flying through the travel tunnels, soaring on into the unknown, content simply in the act of voyaging. He was quite surprised when it did finish. The memory layer grew thinner somehow, less cluttered. And there, right at the beginning of the Void, when the Heart was forming, were millions of connections to individual minds. They could communicate with the Heart. They were the link, the way in. He chased after one and embraced it, offering it up to the creation layer, perceiving the ent.i.ty take form again.

Edeard drew a startled breath, shaking himself free of the memory layer and the intimacy of his new friends. Right in front of him, standing in the entrance to Zulmal Street, an alien twenty feet tall was unfolding its disturbingly sinuous limbs as its thoughts churned with surprise and suspicion.

"Oh, wow," Oscar groaned, and took a step back. Even so, he was grinning effusively.

"A Firstlife," Edeard announced simply. He had to own up to being intimidated by so many curving, pointed teeth at the top of its fat central trunk as it opened the glistening mouth membranes to whistle at a painful volume.

Then something moved in the nothingness outside the dome. A dark sphere beset with deep purple scintillations slipped smoothly overhead.

"What are you doing?" Ilanthe asked.

Marius had been fascinated by the Heart and the notions it sang of. There really was no other way to describe it. In a way he was relieved that it was so vast, so aloof. Gore's stupid plan to talk to it, to make it see what he considered reason, would never transpire in such a milieu. The golden man was p.i.s.sing in the wind.

Then he stood in Sampalok's central square, observing through Justine as Gore told the Waterwalker to search back through the memory layer for a younger, more accessible Heart.

"No no no," he chanted in dismay. His exovision brought up the starship's weapons. He selected a couple of diverted energy function quantumbusters. They would activate in the photosphere, sending a huge exotic energy distortion wave smashing against the Delivery Man's ship. Its Stardiver shielding would never survive such an impact. Whatever part of Gore's scheme was being enacted down there in the convection zone would be obliterated. That would give Ilanthe the window of opportunity to enact Fusion.

The two missiles shot away, accelerating at one hundred fifty gees. His exovision display threw up a sensor image, showing a hypers.p.a.ce anomaly erupting fifty thousand kilometers away from his own location. One of the huge borderguards materialized out of the spatial deformation. Its concentric sh.e.l.ls of elliptical strands were ablaze with aggravated neon light. The outermost strands darkened from a lurid jade down to an irradiated carmine. Marius's sensors showed the energy spectrum raging inside the borderguard leaping almost off the scale. It fired on the quantumbuster missiles, which burst into a dynamic vapor plume.

"s.h.i.t!" Marius discarded the dream altogether and sent his starship hurtling toward the borderguard at thirty-seven gees. Weapons locked onto the garish nimbus. He opened fire.

No matter how hard he cursed, how fast his expanded mind activated infiltration packages, Gore knew it was coming. There was nothing he could do about it. His wild boast about Commonwealth webheads had proved vain and hollow, and everything in the galaxy was going to die because of it.

Unless- "s.h.i.t. Go for it," he ordered the Delivery Man. "Initialize the wormhole. Shove some f.u.c.king power my way. Do it. Do it now."

He ordered the packages to activate, to grab control.

Too late. Out of the city's subdued background murmurings Gore perceived that cool consciousness rising once again. It observed its environment with a host of strange senses.

"This is an act of hostility," the elevation mechanism said. "You are trying to steal my fundamental nature. It is not for you and your kind, and with good reason."

"Yeah. So you said. And as I told you, the Void is about to expand and wipe this star system from existence." The dream showed him the big Firstlife in Sampalok, shaking its thick beefy body furiously as it tried to orient itself. Then Ilanthe appeared overhead. "Oh, G.o.d-f.u.c.k, no!" Gore entreated. "No, not her, not now." The defeat was as strong as any physical blow, striking him to his knees in the middle of the plaza. All around him the glistening black strands of the infiltration web began to smolder, filling the air with thin acrid smoke. "You're killing us," he screamed into the night. "All I needed to do was show the Heart, that's all, just show the f.u.c.ker there's an alternative, prove it can evolve."

Tyzak was approaching him cautiously, stepping gingerly over the sputtering web.

"Got it," the Delivery Man called. "Siphon's activated. Wormhole established. We did it!"

"Leave," Gore told him flatly. "Fly to a fresh galaxy, one that isn't cursed like this one. Don't let the universe forget us."

The third borderguard imploded amid a searing flare of violet Cherenkov radiation. Broken strands from the concentric sh.e.l.ls twirled away, venting thick sparkling gases at high velocity. Marius detected another five materializing out of their distinctive hyperspatial rents. He brought the ship about in a fast curve, chasing the debris that was expanding out of the last implosion. The trouble with combat this close to the star was the lack of ma.s.s for quantumbusters to work with.

Sensors tracked the three largest chunks of the sh.e.l.ls, and he launched missiles at each of them. Diverted energy function quantumbusters activated, converting the tumbling ma.s.s to energy. Exotic distortions slammed into two of the borderguards as they were still exiting hypers.p.a.ce, wrenching at the exotic pseudofabric. Unbearable contortions crushed the borderguards down to neutronium density. The wreckage immediately detonated out of its impossible compression state, saturating local s.p.a.cetime with an inordinately hard neutron storm.

Seven energy beams burned across the force fields protecting Marius's starship. His exovision brought up severe overload warnings. He fired another nine Hawking M-sinks, which the surviving bodyguards had no defense against. So far So far. He watched in fury as the attackers opened up small wormholes, which swallowed five of the M-sinks. Another barrage of energy beams found his starship. Missiles were heading in toward him at ninety gees, and he still hadn't managed to knock out the Delivery Man's ship.

Sensors reported a zero-width wormhole establishing itself between the star and the Anomine homeworld. The smartcore dismissed it as a weapon. Marius ordered an urgent review. The wormhole was originating from the mysterious object with which the Delivery Man's ship had rendezvoused.

It had to be some kind of power system-whatever needed that level of power? The elevation mechanism! The elevation mechanism! Marius knew it with absolute certainty. Gore had found some way to switch it on. He was going postphysical. It was the only thing left that could threaten Fusion. Marius knew it with absolute certainty. Gore had found some way to switch it on. He was going postphysical. It was the only thing left that could threaten Fusion.

Marius activated the ship's ultradrive and flashed in toward the star. He emerged just above the swirling streamers of the photosphere, where energized atoms from a mult.i.tude of spots and flares simmered away into solar wind. Every force field warning turned critical as the starship received the full blast of the star's radiation and heat. Marius fired two novabombs straight down, then jumped back into hypers.p.a.ce.

Behind him the borderguards were ma.s.sing above the photosphere. Eighteen of the giant machines had rushed out of hypers.p.a.ce, firing enough weapons down after the novabombs to break open a moon. None of it was any use. The novabombs were designed to function amid the outer fringes of a star, whereas the borderguards' weapons were just uselessly pumping more energy into the rampant solar furnace.

Thirty seconds before they detonated, Marius was already outside the Anomine system. The nova would eliminate the power station, then go on to wipe out the Anomine homeworld minutes later. Gore would never reach postphysical status now. The Accelerator objective was safe.

Edeard didn't know who to give his attention to or even that it would do any good if he could decide. The astounding Firstlife was straightening itself, turning several small black membranes at the top of its trunk toward the humans as well as directing a formidable farsight at them.

Above the dome the Ilanthe thing was also observing them. It scared him how nonhuman it was. His farsight couldn't begin to uncover its secrets, but the power it contained was evident. Whatever the Heart was, it seemed to be bending around Ilanthe's glossy surface.

But it was Gore who now concerned him the most. The golden man was stumbling, dropping to his knees. The anguished keening his mind emitted was dreadful, as if his soul itself were being violated.

"Dad," Justine was yelling frantically. "Dad, what is it? What's happening?"

"It caught me," Gore told her weakly. "The motherf.u.c.ker found the infiltrator packages."

"I could have told you the Anomine mechanism was obdurate," Ilanthe said complacently.

The Firstlife took a step toward the humans, three of its feet slamming down on the surface of the square with a slap that Edeard could feel in his leg bones. "What is this place?" the Firstlife's longtalk demanded. "What are you? You are not us."

Inigo squared up to the imposing creature. "This is your future. You were re-created from the Void's memory."