Ozzie didn’t let anything slip about his opinion. Myraian smiled in that dreamy way of hers and said: “Sweet.” Then she relived Ingo’s Last Dream again.

Corrie-Lyn was the most affected. She knelt in front of Inigo and looked up, as if pleading for it not to be true. “They had it all,” she entreated. “They succeeded. Their minds were beautiful.”

“And it is worthless,” he told her in turn. “They are no longer human. They have anything they want, which takes away any dignity and purpose they might have had. Their lives are day after day of ennui. All that concerns them is the past. Visiting places because they have already been discovered. That’s not gaining experience; that’s a dismal nostalgia trip. They no longer contribute because there’s nothing to contribute to.”

“They reached fulfillment,” she said. “Their minds were so strong. Inigo, they flew!”

“But where did they fly to? What did they use such a gift for? To please themselves. Querencia became a playground for characterless godlings.”

“They succeeded in throwing off the kind of mundane physical shackles that grind our lives down. This is what the Waterwalker gave them. They lived in splendor without having to exploit anyone, without damaging anything. They understood and loved each other.”

“Because they were all the same. It was self-love.”

“No.” Corrie-Lyn shook her head and walked out onto the veranda. A few moments later Ozzie heard the sound of her shoes on the creaky old wooden steps down to the garden.

A dismayed Inigo rose to follow her.

“Don’t do it, dude,” Ozzie said. “Let her work it out for herself. It’s the only true route to understanding.”

For a long moment Inigo hesitated; then he slowly sank back into the tall-backed chair at the kitchen table. “Damnit,” he grunted.

“So that was it, huh?” Ozzie said. “Bummer.”

Inigo shot him a thoroughly disgusted look.

“I don’t get it,” Aaron said. “They achieved something approaching the classical heaven on Earth.”

“Fatal, man,” Ozzie said. “I’ve been there myself. Trust me: plutocrat with a decent brain and the finest rep available during the first-era Commonwealth. Wine, women, and song all the way; I had it so totally better than those guys. Well … except for the flying bit. I gotta admit that was way cool. I always wondered why Edeard couldn’t do that. Man, if I ever got into the Void, I’d be trying from dusk till dawn. Oldest human wish fulfillment there is.”

“I don’t understand,” Aaron said. “They had reached fulfillment. All of them. That is admirable. It was the final validation of the entire Living Dream movement.”

“A dung beetle that gets its turd home is fulfilled. We’re talking levels here, dude. Am I right, Inigo?”

“You’re right.”

“See, be careful what you wish for. Utopia at our biological level just doesn’t work out. Once you’ve achieved everything, there is nothing left. You take out the core of being human: the striving. Edeard’s descendants had reached a state where fulfillment was inevitable. You didn’t have to work for it. That’s less than human; they were starting to un evolve. And in their own way they knew it. Their population was way down on Edeard’s time and still shrinking. There was no point in having children, because there was nothing new for them. They wouldn’t be able to contribute anything relevant, let alone profound, to the Heart.”

“In which case this Last Dream doesn’t help our situation in any way I can fathom,” Aaron said.

“Not your mission, no,” Ozzie told him, curious how that would affect the man’s strange mentality. “But I guess if we release the Last Dream, it might cause the rise of a few doubters in Living Dream. Mind, they’d be the smart ones, and face it, they’re in a minority in that religion.”

“Too late,” Inigo said. “Even if the majority acknowledged that the result of a Pilgrimage into the Void is ultimately a lost, sterile generation, it won’t affect the Pilgrimage itself. And you saw Corrie-Lyn’s reaction. She doesn’t believe the Last Dream is an indication of failure. If I can’t convince her …”

“Throwing your belief is always hard, man. Look at you.”

Inigo rubbed his hands wearily across his face as he slumped down in the chair. “Yeah, look at me.”

“I’m sorry about that, man. No, really I am. That was one tough mother of a fall. How long have you bottled that Last Dream up?”

“About seventy years.”

“No shit. That’s gotta be good to let it out finally. Tell you what, tonight you and me are going to get major-league hammered together. It’s the only way to put shit like that behind you. And if anyone’s going to understand a colossus of a disaster, it’s yours truly.”

“That’s almost tempting,” Inigo admitted.

“You can do that afterward,” Aaron announced. “Now that we’ve determined the Last Dream is not relevant to us, I need you both to focus on what is achievable.”

“Man, you never give up, do you?”

“Did you give up when the Dreamer emerged and subverted your gaiafield?”

“Please, don’t try that motivational psychology bullshit on me. Whatever you are, you’re not up to that. Trust me, stick with the psycho threats.”

“As you wish. Stick your pleasantries and stay with me now. Our task is to get the Dreamer into the Void.”

“It may not be,” Inigo said. “I actually think Araminta’s faith in the Void isn’t entirely misplaced. The Heart will be able to defeat Ilanthe.”

“You’re right about that,” Ozzie said. “The Silfen believe in Araminta. I can feel it, man. It’s their strongest hope right now.”

“Again, irrelevant,” Aaron said.

“No, it’s not,” Inigo said stubbornly. “The Ilanthe side of the problem didn’t emerge until well after your mission was started. Given how big a factor she is, we have to start taking her into consideration. It would be irrational to do anything else.”

“Our mission is to get you, Dreamer, into the Void.”

“No. Kills me to say it,” Ozzie admitted, “but Inigo is right. Ilanthe is clearly part of the original problem, even though your boss didn’t take that into account when he preloaded all that mission crap in your brain. You’ve got to start thinking about her, man. Come on, there must be some room to maneuver in that metal skull of yours.”

“Fair enough. I can see she is a factor in the ultimate outcome. But if we’re not in the Void, we can’t confront her, now, can we? So will you two please start putting your genius brains together and solve this problem of how to get Inigo inside.”

“Can’t be done,” Inigo said. “Even if you still had that ultradrive ship you lost on Hanko, it couldn’t get us to the Void boundary before the Pilgrimage. Basically, whoever gets inside first wins.”

“Don’t big it up like that, dude,” Ozzie said. “If you’d gotten there first, you might have stood a chance of a win. But nothing is certain, especially not in there. Now that you can’t get in, we all need to start thinking about a dignified yet fast exit.”

“That is not permissible thinking, and I’m getting mighty tired of telling you,” Aaron said. “Don’t make me ram the point home, because I’m through talking metaphors. Now, how do we get the Dreamer into the Void?”

Ozzie hunched his shoulders. The agent was starting to annoy him, which wasn’t good. He knew he wouldn’t be able to resist pushing Aaron to the limit just to find out what the limit was. Just like the Chikova at Octoron. “So can we still plan for that emergency telepathic linkup if everything else fails?” he asked innocently.

Aaron’s arm came off the table. Weapon enrichments bulged up out of the wrist skin. “Don’t.”

Myraian’s eyes fluttered open. She smiled up from the depths of some narcotic state. “Bad boys. You won’t get any supper.”

“I want my supper,” Ozzie said.

Aaron gave him a long warning glance, then the enrichments sank back down. “Okay, then, let’s examine this in a sweet progressive fashion. We’re now a little more than eight thousand light-years behind the Pilgrimage ships; the Lindau is terminally screwed. So we need something faster than the Commonwealth’s ever produced. What’s available on the Spike?”