The Evolutionary Void

Onward her feet fell, pressing down on damp grass as the melody permeated her whole existence. She swayed in time to the gentle undulations she had set free, finally happy that the end of the path was moving with her, carrying her onward to the place she so urgently sought. There, ahead of her, the thoughts she knew so well radiated out from his home.

Araminta opened her eyes to look across the lawn toward the big old house. Her initial smile faded from her face. There had been a fire. Long black smoke marks contaminated the white walls above three of the big ground-floor arches. Two of the balconies were smashed. There was a hole in the roof, which looked melted.

“Oh, great Ozzie,” she moaned. The dismay was kept in place by the melange, occupying a single stream in her mind, an emotion that neither colored nor determined her behavior. “Bovey!” she called as she ran for the house. “Bovey!”

Two of hims were outside by the swimming pool. They turned around at her voice. The gaiafield revealed his burst of astonishment.

“You’re okay,” she gasped as she came to a halt a few meters short of hims. One was the Bovey she’d been on their first date with, the body she truly identified as him; the other was the tall blond youngster. At their feet was another body, inert, covered in a beach towel.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Not one of you.”

“Hey,” the older of hims said, and threw his arms around her. “It’s okay.”

Some small part of herself marveled at how calm she was, cha

“No, no,” he soothed.

“I should have told you. Warned you. I left because I didn’t want you to get involved, to get hurt.”

Neither of hims could avoid looking at the corpse. “It’s okay. You came back; that’s all that matters.”

“It is not okay. They killed one of you.” A pulse of regret and guilt in his mind alerted her. “No, it’s not just one, is it? How many?”

He took a step back from her, though his hands were still gripping her shoulders.

“Tell me,” she demanded.

“Five,” he said, as if ashamed.

“Bastards!”

“It doesn’t matter.” His grin was rueful. “That’s the point of being mes; bodyloss is irrelevant. Some of mes are scattered all across this city, and nobody knows how many there are; certainly not those thugs. I’m safe. Safer than you.”

“This is my fault. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have come to you, not before it’s all over.”

“I’m glad you did,” he said earnestly. “Really, I am. Just seeing you, knowing you’re okay, makes this all worthwhile.” Both of hims looked back across the empty garden toward the Cairns, whose muddy waters flowed past the bank at the bottom of the lawn. “How did you get here? Everyone thinks you’re on Chobamba.”

“Long story.”

A sound similar to faint thunder rolled across the house. Araminta turned to the source, seeing energy weapons flash just below the curving force field dome. She didn’t need any kind of program to tell her it was the Francola district.

“Not again,” Bovey groaned. “Enough!”

“It’s me,” she said impassively. “They’re fighting because they think I’m there.”

“Araminta.” It came out of both of hims, a distraught desperate voice.

“I can’t stay. They’ll find me eventually.”

“Run, then. I’ll come with you. We’ll just keep on ru

“No. I can’t do that. ANA has gone. Nobody is going to help us; nobody can stop Living Dream and the Accelerators. It’s down to me now.”

“You?”

“I’m not ru

“I understand.”

“You’re sweet, too sweet. After this is over, I want us to be together. I really do. That’s why I’m here, so you know that.”

He hugged her tight again. “It’ll happen,” he whispered fiercely. “It will.”

“There are things I have to do,” she said. “Things I don’t want to, but I can’t see any other way. I have an idea, but I’m going to need your help to make it work.”

Inigo’s Twenty-sixth Dream

IN ALL THE YEARS Edeard had lived in Makkathran, he’d never bothered drawing up a proper map of the deep tu

For now he was simply glad that the outermost circular tu

Something was suddenly hurtling around the tu

His shocked thoughts managed to calm, and he asked the city to take him the other way to chase the intruders and catch up. He slowed as always, skidding to a halt on the tu

This time he sent his farsight ranging out ahead. Perception through the tu

For a moment he thought he’d caught a trace of them a few hundred yards ahead, but then he lost them again. When he reached the spot, it was a side tu

That was the second surprise of the day. There wasn’t one memory of the teenage couple. He could sense the tu