“You’ve been unkind to her,” Inigo said accusingly. “Small wonder she hates you.”

“I found you for her. She’s just ungrateful, that’s all. That or she doesn’t want to admit to herself how willing she was to pay the price.”

“What price is that?”

“Betrayal. That’s what it took to trace you.”

“Hmm. Interesting analysis. All of which brings us back to our current situation. So you’re taking me to the Spike to see Ozzie. What then?”

“Don’t know.”

“Your unknown employer must have given you some hint, some rough outline. To be an effective field agent you have to constantly reevaluate your alternatives. What if the Lindau was knocked out by the opposition, whoever they are? What if I’m taken away?”

Aaron smiled. “Then I kill you.”

The cabin Corrie-Lyn and Inigo were sharing was small. It was meant for five crew members but in theory the navy duty rota they followed should mean that only two would ever be using it at the same time, with changeovers every few hours. Inigo reckoned they’d all have to be very intimate with one another. The bunks were both fully extended, locked at a ten-degree angle with the edges curling up as if they were heat-damaged. All of which left little space to edge along between them. And they were useless for sleeping in. Instead, Inigo had just piled all the quilts onto the floor to make a cozy nest.

When he came back in after breakfast, Corrie-Lyn was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the crumpled fabric, drinking a mug of black coffee. An empty ready-pak was on the floor beside her.

“Taste good?” he asked.

She held up the foil ready-pak. “The deSavoel estate’s finest mountain bean. It doesn’t come much better.”

“That should help the hangover.” He perched awkwardly on the edge of a bunk, feeling it give slightly beneath him. It shouldn’t have done that.

“It does,” she grunted.

“I wonder if we can find a bean to help with the attitude.”

“Don’t start.”

“What in Honious happened to you?”

Corrie-Lyn’s dainty freckled face abruptly turned livid. “Somebody left. Not just me; they left the whole fucking movement. They got up and walked out without a hint of why they were going. Everything I loved, everything I believed in, was gone, ripped away from me. I’d given decades of my life to you and the dream you promised us. And as if that wasn’t enough, I didn’t know! I didn’t know why you’d left. Ladyfuckit, I didn’t even know if you were alive. I didn’t know if you’d given up on us, if it was all wrong, if you’d lost hope. I. Didn’t. Know! Nothing, that’s what you left me with. From everything-a fabulous life with hope and happiness and love-to nothing in a single second. Do you have any idea what that’s like? You don’t, clearly you don’t, because you wouldn’t be sitting there asking the stupidest question in the universe if you did. What happened? Bastard. You can go straight to Honious for all I care.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, crestfallen. “It’s … that final dream I had. It was too much. We weren’t leading anyone to salvation. Makkathran, Edeard; that whole civilization was a fluke, a glorious one-off that I caught at just the right time. It can never be repeated, not now, not now that we know the Void’s ability. The Raiel were right; the Void is a monster. It should be destroyed.”

“Why?” she implored. “What is that Last Dream?”

“Nothing,” he whispered. “It showed that even dreams all turn to dust in the end.”

“Then why didn’t-”

“I tell you?”

“Yes!”

“Because something that big, that powerful as Living Dream can’t be finished overnight. There were over ten billion followers when I left. Ten billion! I can’t just turn around to them and say: Oops, sorry, I was wrong. Go home and get on with your lives, forget all about the Waterwalker and Querencia.”

“The Inigo I knew would have done that,” she said through gritted teeth. “The Inigo I knew had courage and integrity.”

“I let it die, or so I thought. It was the kindest thing. Ethan was the finest example of that, a politician, not a follower. After him would have come dozens of similar leaders, all of them concerned with position and maintaining the ancient blind dogma. Living Dream would have turned into an old-style religion, always preaching the promise of salvation yet never producing the realization. Not without me. I was the one who might have been able to pass through the barrier. You know I was going to try, really I was. Go out there in a fast starship and see if I could make it, just like the original old ship did. That was before we knew about the warrior Raiel, of course. But once I had that dream, I knew the ideal was over. Ethan and all the others who should have come after him would have killed off Living Dream in a couple of centuries.”

“Then along came the Second Dreamer,” she said.

“Yeah. I guess I should have realized the Void would never let us alone. It feeds off minds like ours. Once it had that first taste, it was bound to find another way of pulling us in.”

“You mean it’s evil?” she asked in surprise.

“No. That kind of term doesn’t apply. It has purpose, that’s all. Unfortunately, that purpose will bring untold damage to the galaxy.”

“Then”-she glanced at the closed door-“what are we going to do about it?”

“We?”

She nodded modestly. “I believe in you; I always have. If you say we have to stop the Void, then I’ll follow you into Honious itself to bring that off.”

Inigo smiled as he looked down at her. She was wearing a crewman’s shirt several sizes too large, which made it kind of sexy as it shifted around, tracing the shape of her body. He’d watched her yesterday with considerable physical interest, the simple sight of her teasing out a great many pleasurable memories of the time they had spent as lovers. But she’d been drunk and spitting venom about Aaron and their situation and who was to blame for the state of the universe. Now, though, as he slipped off the bunk to kneel beside her, there was a look of hope kindled in her eyes. “Really?” he asked uncertainly. “After all I’ve put you through?”

“It would be a start to your penance,” she replied.

“True.”

“But …” She waved a hand at the door. “What about him? We don’t know if his masters want you to help the Pilgrimage or ruin it.”

“First off, he’s undoubtedly listening to every word we’re saying.”

“Oh.”

“Second, the clue is in who we’re going to see.”

“Ozzie?”

“Yes, which is why I haven’t tried anything like the glacier again.” Inigo grinned up at the ceiling. “Yet.”

“I thought you didn’t like Ozzie.”

“No. Ozzie doesn’t like me. He was completely opposed to Living Dream, so I can only conclude that Aaron’s masters are also among those who don’t want the Pilgrimage to go ahead.”

Corrie-Lyn shrugged and pushed some of her thick red hair away from her eyes. Intent and interested now, she fixed him with a curious look. “Why didn’t Ozzie like you?”

“He gave humanity the gaiafield so that we could share our emotions, which he felt was a way of letting everyone communicate on a much higher level. If we could look into the hearts of people we feared or disliked, we should be able to see that deep down they were human, too-according to his theory. Such knowledge would bring us closer together as a species. Damn, it was almost worth building a faction around the notion, but the idea was too subtle for that. Ozzie wanted us to become accustomed to it, to use it openly and honestly, and only when we’d incorporated it into our lives would we realize the effect it’d had on our society.”

“It has.”

“Not really. You see, I perverted the whole gaiafield to build a religion on. That wasn’t supposed to happen. As he told me, and I quote. ‘The gaiafield was to help people understand and appreciate life, the universe, and everything so they don’t get fooled by idiot messiahs and corrupt politicians.’ So I’d gone and wrecked his dream by spreading Edeard’s dreams. Quite ironic, really, from my point of view. Ozzie didn’t see that. Turns out he doesn’t have half the sense of humor everyone says he has. He went off to the Spike in a huge sulk to build a ‘galactic dream’ as a counter to my disgraceful subversion.”