“Enjoy your victory,” Inigo said softly. “The Void is not our salvation. I was wrong to hold it out as a symbol of attainable Nirvana, of a life that can be perfect. It is none of those things. I. Was. Wrong.”

“Crap,” Ozzie muttered. It wasn’t often he was rendered speechless, but a messiah renouncing his life’s work, well, that would just do it every time. “I’ll make that a big pot of coffee. You’d better all join me for breakfast.”

“We all understand the Void threat well enough,” Aaron said as the maidbots slid around the table in the kitchen, delivering plates and cups. “I’m interested in your take on whatever Ilanthe has become. That could be a big factor in the expansion.”

“She was the leader of the Accelerator Faction,” Ozzie said as he accepted his glass of chilled orange juice from the maidbot. “The original idea was that they elevate themselves up to postphysical status courtesy of the Void. Thing is”-he scratched at his hair-“the Accelerator Faction is trapped behind the Sol barrier along with the rest of ANA, so they can’t pull off their whole Fusion concept. And the Silfen Motherholme is worried about her, which is new to me. Nothing gets that placid goddess riled. Nothing. Till now. Draw yourself a map.”

“The Silfen Motherholme?” Corrie-Lyn asked cautiously.

“Sure, babe. I’m a Silfen Friend.” He tried not to sound too smug, settling for merely superior. “I know what’s going down across the galaxy.”

“Ozzie is the father of our species’ mind,” Myraian announced; her skinlight glowed a proud mauve.

There was a polite silence for a moment.

“Of everything that’s happened, I find her involvement the most disturbing,” Inigo said. “It was inevitable Living Dream would be corrupted and manipulated after I turned it over to the Cleric Council-that was the point of me abandoning it as I did. But I never envisaged anything like this. Ultradrives, unbreakable force fields … this was not meant to be.”

Aaron turned to Ozzie. “Do you know anything about these technologies?”

“Not really my field,” Ozzie said quietly. He waited.

“It used to be,” an omnidirectional voice spoke up. Ozzie let out an exasperated breath. It was his own voice. “Just shut the fuck up,” he told it.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Nobody can run from their past. Not forever, dooode.”

“What is this?” Aaron asked.

“I told you, dude,” Ozzie said with an edge. “I’m ancient. Human bodies aren’t designed with this kind of life span in mind. Grab the ‘in mind’ bit there? Back in the first-era Commonwealth when all we had was rejuve, we used to edit memories and store the ones that weren’t important. Then there was memorycells and neural augmentation chips. Biononics added a whole load of new memory capacity. And there’s always an expanded mentality network.” He raised his head and glared at a random point on the ceiling. “That’s if you want to carry all that junk around, contaminating your body. I didn’t. Not anymore.”

“So he dumped me,” the voice said. “Literally. I’m Ozzie. The real Ozzie.”

“You’re a goddamn me-brain-in-a-jar, and don’t you forget it,” Ozzie told it crossly.

“Seriously,” the voice said. “I’m one and a half thousand years of memories, while you’re what? Twenty years’ worth? Who’s the most real of them all?”

“Only one of us got to keep the personality, man,” Ozzie shouted back. “I’m the biochemical, hormonal, awkward, sonofabitch soul of a human. You’re the hardwired copy that’s frozen in the past.”

“You can mouth off all you like, but I’m the one with the knowledge and talent that these fine and sincerely desperate people need. You got rid of all the serious physics and math and shit clogging up your little meat brain. Admit it, tell them. Be a man. As much as you can be with so much missing.”

“Ozzie lacks nothing,” Myraian said calmly. “He has purged himself at a spiritual level to make himself complete again. You are the contamination that was holding him back, preventing the angel within from spreading his wings. He’s been clean for decades now and has grown because of it.” She smiled widely.

Ozzie caught the narrowing of Aaron’s eyes as he noticed the tiny fangs that that otherwise blissful smile revealed.

Aaron blinked and put his hands down on the table. “Okay. Please tell me you can access and assimilate whatever knowledge you need from … you?”

“From the me-brain-in-a-jar? Sure. I retained autonomous integration for the smartcores I stuffed it into-me into.”

Inigo gave Ozzie a bemused grin; there was respect in there, too. “I’m sure you can. But let’s face it: There’s you, me, and him.” He jabbed a thumb at Aaron. “A smart-ass smartcore and a reasonably good replicator. Doesn’t matter how good we all are in combination, we’re not going to bootstrap ourselves a superweapon to smash open the Sol barrier or an even faster ultradrive that’ll get us to the Void before Araminta charges in. And that’s not even talking about the Ilanthe-thing.”

“Yeah,” Ozzie admitted. “But man, on the plus side, I can get us out of here safely. Qatux owes me. The High Angel will stop by and collect us on its way to Andromeda or wherever the hell it’s going.”

“No,” Aaron said. “You’re not abandoning hope after half an hour. And I don’t believe I even have to threaten anyone or anything to make that come about, now, do I?”

“No,” Inigo sighed.

“Our goal is to connect you somehow to the Void Heart,” Aaron said. “Now, I’m not the greatest self-thinker anymore, but you’re the smartest guys I know with the weirdest of blessings. You’ll come up with something.”

“Fair enough,” Inigo said. “What about your telepathy effect, Ozzie? Can we talk to the Void that way?”

Ozzie shoved the empty glass away and reached for the plate of toast. “Okay, this is how it works. The gaiafield is a broadcast medium. You transmit your thoughts out through the motes, and they zip across space to connect with everyone else’s motes. Confluence nests are just powerful amplifiers and relay stations; they’re what turn it into a ‘field.’ Admittedly, it’s a big field, but step outside the Commonwealth and you’re on your own. Now, there are other, similar fields out there, with the Silfen communion the biggest of them all. It’s truly galaxy-spanning, dude. I know, I’m tuned in. But it’s not so dense as the gaiafield. That’s because of species psychology; the superelves don’t have the same urge to carry every piece of boring stream-of-consciousness drivel that humans crave.”

“So?” Aaron asked.

“We can’t use the gaiafield. It can’t extend to the center of the galaxy.”

“Not quite right,” Corrie-Lyn said. “The Pilgrimage fleet will be dropping a series of confluence nests en route. That was always the plan, and Ethan won’t change that aspect. They’ll do for the gaiafield the same as the navy TD relays did for Centurion Station. The idea is to open a permanent dream channel to the Void so the faithful who weren’t in the fleet can witness everyone reaching fulfillment and rush to follow them.”

“And the instant we try using that, Ethan will shut it down,” Inigo said.

“Last resort,” Corrie-Lyn said. “The hack might last long enough, especially as it’s you, the true original Dreamer. You still have more clout than anyone else in the movement.”

“I doubt that now that Araminta has appeared,” Inigo said.

“Yeah, useful to know,” Ozzie agreed. “Okay, mindspace. Now, that’s something different. I rearranged spacetime’s quantum structure so that it becomes a conductor for thought, same as air conducts sound. Admittedly, it works best for human thoughts; that’s what I worked with to synchronize it with at the beginning. Aliens are aware of it, but for them it’s like the Silfen communion is for humans: vague. Unless you’re the goddamned Chikoya, then you think it’s a doorway into the thoughts of your ancestors. What is it about avian culture that makes them worship their ancestors like that? It’s got to be a hundred thousand years since their wings were big enough to actually carry them, yet every space habitat they ever built is zero-gee so they can flap about with all the grace of a chicken falling off a wall. Even here they’re in a lograv compartment.”