The Evolutionary Void

“So he hasn’t succeeded, then?”

“Not that we know of.”

“Then how can he help?”

“I haven’t got a clue. But don’t forget, he is an absolute genius, which is a term applied far too liberally in history. In his case it’s real. I suspect that whatever plan is loaded into Aaron’s subconscious expects Ozzie and me to team up to defeat the Void.”

“That’s a huge gamble.”

“We’re long past the time for careful certainty.”

“Do you have any idea how to stop the Void?”

“No. Not a single glimmer of a notion, even.”

“But you were an astrophysicist to begin with.”

“Yes, but my knowledge base is centuries out of date.”

“Oh.” She pushed the empty coffee mug to one side with a glum expression.

“Hey.” His hand stroked the side of her face. “I’m sure Ozzie and I will give it our best shot.”

She nodded, closing her eyes as she leaned into his touch. “Don’t leave me again.”

“We’ll see this through together. I promise.”

“The Waterwalker never quit.”

Inigo kissed her. It was just the same as it had been all those decades ago, which was a treacherous memory. A lot of very strong emotions were bundled up with the time he and Corrie-Lyn had been together, most of them good. “I’m not as strong as the Waterwalker.”

“You are,” she breathed. “That’s why you found each other. That’s why you co

“I’ll do my best,” he promised, nuzzling her chin. His hands went down to the hem of the big loose shirt. “But he never faced a situation like this.”

“The voyage of the Lady’s Light.” She began to tug at the seam on his one-piece.

“Hardly the same.”

“He didn’t know what he was coming home to.”

“Okay.” He pulled back and stared at her wide eyes. “Let’s just find our own way here, shall we?”

“What about …?”

“Screw him.”

Corrie-Lyn’s tongue licked playfully around her lips. “Me first. I’ve been waiting a very long time.”

Inigo’s Twenty-ninth Dream

“LAND AHOY,” came the cry from the lookout.

Edeard craned his neck back to see the crewman perched atop the main mast of Lady’s Light. It was Manel, gri

“Manel!” came a collective sigh.

His amusement poured across the ship, and he shifted his balance on the precarious platform to hold the telescope up again. Despite regular cleaning, the lenses in the brass tube were scuffed and grubby after four years of daily use at sea, but the image was clear enough. A dark speck spiked up out of the blue-on-blue horizon.

Edeard started clapping at the sight of it, his good cheer swelling out to join the collective thoughts of those on the other four ships that made up the explorer flotilla. Everyone was delighted. The distant pi

“How about that,” Jiska exclaimed. “He did get it right.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Edeard agreed, too happy to care about the needling. Natran, who captained the Lady’s Light, had been promising sight of the eastern isles for five weeks now. People were getting anxious about his navigational skills, though the captains of the other ships concurred with him. Jiska had spent that time supporting her husband’s ability. After a four-year voyage, people were starting to get understandably fretful.

Kristabel came up beside Edeard, her contentment merging with his. He smiled back at her as they linked arms, and together they made their way up to the prow. It was getting quite cluttered on the middeck now, which Natran was generally unhappy over. As well as the coils of rope and ship’s lockers, a number of wicker cages were lashed to the decking, each containing some new animal they’d discovered on their various landings. Not all had survived the long voyage home. Taralee’s cabin was full of large glass jars where their bodies were preserved in foul-smelling fluid. She and the other doctors and botanists had probably gained the most from their expedition, cataloging hundreds of new species and plants.

But no new people, Edeard thought.

“What’s the matter?” Kristabel asked.

A few of the crew glanced over in his direction, catching his sadness. He gave them all an apologetic shrug.

“We really are alone on this world,” he explained to Kristabel. “Now that we’re coming home, we know that for certain.”

“Never certainty,” she said, smiling as she pushed some of her thick hair from her eyes. It was getting long again. They’d been eight days out from Makkathran when Kristabel simply sat down in the main cabin and got one of the other women to cut her already short hair right back, leaving just a few curly inches.

“It’s practical,” she’d explained calmly to an aghast Edeard. “You can’t seriously expect me to fight off my hair on top of everything else storms will throw at us, now, can you? It’s been bad enough for a week in this mild weather.”

But you managed with a plait, he managed to avoid saying out loud. Kristabel without her long hair was … just plain wrong somehow.

Edeard could laugh at that now-besides, she was still rather cute with short hair, and elegant with it. It was the least of the changes and accommodations that they’d collectively made. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen a woman in a skirt aside from the formal di

Skepticism about taking women, shaken heads over the prospect of repeating Captain Allard’s grand failure, more consternation from Kristabel’s endless flock of relatives concerning the cost of five such vast vessels. At times it had seemed like the only ones in favor were the Guild of Shipwrights and a horde of merchants eager to supply the flotilla. Such a dour atmosphere had lurked across Makkathran’s streets and canals from the time he a

Edeard prided himself that he’d held out that long. He never wanted to go back so far into his own past again. Querencia might have been saved from the nest, but the personal consequences had been too great. It had been a terrible burden to live through every day again, watching the same mistakes and failings and wasteful accidents and petty arguments and wretched politics play out once more when he already knew the solution to everything from his previous trip through the same years. Time and again he was tempted to intervene, to make things easier for everyone. But if he began, he knew there was no limit to what he could and should do once that moral constraint was broken. There would be no end to intervention; constant assistance would become meddling in the eyes of those he sought to help.