‘I didn’t even know that was possible,’ Nigel said.

‘I thought you were the great techno-nerd.’

‘I do theories and strategy. I don’t get down and dirty with actual hardware.’

Paula grinned. ‘Devil in the detail, huh?’

Nigel was glancing round the vault. His gaze finished on the door, which was perfectly ordinary. ‘Is his bedroom on the other side? I swear I can hear giggling.’

‘So he’s taken his pants off, then.’

‘Ouch, you are one cruel lady.’

‘Getting some data from the nest.’ She ordered the syphon to run pattern recognition. ‘Well, what do you know? We were right. There’s more than four dreams stored here. Inigo has had a whole load of visions he hasn’t released yet.’

‘Of course he has. You don’t pull a con like this without being completely sure you can see it through. And Living Dream has got to be one of the biggest cons ever.’

‘We’ll soon find out. I’m copying the contents.’

May 29th 3326

Inigo’s Forty-Seventh Dream concluded and Nigel lay on the couch in the lake house’s lounge, unmoving as he abandoned the thoughts and sights and feelings of Edeard for the very last time. He stared up at the white arching ceiling, blinking away the haunting mental afterimages of the Void’s nebulas.

‘Ho-lee crap!’ Nigel didn’t want the dream to end. He wanted to return to Makkathran, to stand with Edeard atop the tower in Eyrie as the Skylord came to carry his soul away into the Heart of the Void. He wanted a life that was as fulfilled as Edeard’s had been. Enemies and wickedness defeated, decency and hope flourishing across the whole world. And the Heart of the Void: welcoming the incorporeal souls of anyone who had lived a fulfilled life, guided there by the amazing Skylords.

It took a long while for the daze of otherness to diminish and for him to find the strength to move again. He looked across the lounge to where Paula lay on another couch, staring ahead blankly. There were tears in her eyes.

‘He did it,’ she said. ‘He gave them his gift in the end. What a life!’

‘The entrapment potential of Edeard’s life is undeniably intense,’ Vallar said in a strong whisper. ‘I experienced appreciation for the desire myself. Fortunately, the Raiel are immune to such emotional triggers.’

‘Lucky you.’ Nigel grunted and swung his legs round to a sitting position. He tried to shake off the sensation of being bereft.

Paula exhaled loudly as she massaged her temples. ‘That was a mistake.’

‘You mean Edeard shouldn’t have told people about the Void’s time travel ability?’

‘No. I mean accessing all forty-seven dreams one after the other like this. It’s too much. I’ve lived someone else’s life, centuries of it, in one week. No wonder I’m totally sympathetic to what he underwent. Vallar is right; Inigo’s dreams are a narcomeme, the best there’s ever been. Anyone who undergoes that is going to want to be a part of Edeard’s existence. Inigo understands that perfectly. That’s why he’s building Makkathran2, to deliver what the faithful desperately need: to live that life, to immerse themselves in it, to believe that they will be rewarded with guidance to the Heart if they fulfil themselves.’

Nigel shook his head, amazed by Paula’s ability to be so analytical in the face of the overwhelming emotional journey of Edeard’s life which they’d just undergone. ‘Are you saying what Edeard achieved is irrelevant?’

‘No. It was astonishing. What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t fall into the trap of trying to follow or emulate him. Those circumstances were unique, and they are not our circumstances. We shouldn’t try to attain them.’

‘Right.’ Nigel could see her logic, but right now he didn’t like it. What he wanted was to go back to the first dream and live them all again in sequence. ‘Living Dream is going to be trouble for the Commonwealth,’ he said quietly. ‘Inigo has millions of devotees right now with just four dreams released. When people have experienced all of them, he’s going to have billions of followers wanting to belong.’

‘Is that all of the dreams?’ Vallar asked.

‘Yes,’ Paula said. ‘There was nothing else in his private confluence nest.’

‘So Edeard hasn’t sent anything from beyond the Heart,’ Nigel said. ‘It’s over.’

Paula sat up and took a mug of hot chocolate from a maidbot. ‘So what do we know that’s going to help find out what happened to Makkathran and the others?’

‘Time is strange in the Void,’ Vallar said. ‘The human ships arrived there two hundred years ago, and yet inside the Void two thousand years had passed before Edeard was born.’

‘No,’ Nigel countered, making an effort to focus on the project, to analyse what he’d witnessed. This part felt almost as good as living Edeard’s life. ‘Go back a stage to what the Void actually is.’

‘The end purpose is to devour human minds,’ Paula said slowly, ‘once they’ve reached a certain level of rational development, or fulfilment. The environment they experience is designed to achieve that – a forced evolution if you will. Then they are taken to the Heart.’

‘So it absorbs minds, and then . . . what?’ Nigel said. ‘Physically it expands, consuming more stars?’

‘More mass,’ Vallar corrected. ‘Presumably to power its internal continuum.’

‘It consumes mass, it consumes minds,’ Paula said with a shudder. ‘Your warrior cousins are right to guard the galaxy from it, Vallar. The Void is the greatest evil possible. It seeks to dominate the universe. Why? Why would such a thing be built in the first place? I don’t understand.’

Nigel gave her a slightly surprised look. ‘Let’s consider this logically. It has layers. ‘There’s the physical Voidspace itself where the planets and nebulas exist. But there’s also a layer which reacts to thought, that empowers the telepathy and telekinesis.’

‘And a memory layer,’ Paula said. ‘Remember when Edeard travelled back in time to correct his mistakes? He could see the past; the Void had stored it somehow.’

‘You can’t actually travel backwards through time,’ Nigel said. He raised an eyebrow at Vallar. ‘Can you?’

‘No. It is a fundamental of the universe that time flows one way.’

‘So how does Edeard’s time travel work, then?’ Paula asked.

‘There’s another layer, a creation layer,’ Nigel decided. ‘Edeard’s ESP, his farsight, could perceive the whole of his life if he concentrated hard enough. And when he saw the moment he wanted to go back to, the creation layer recreated the whole Void again at that specific instant. Only he knew it was the past, because he was the one who travelled there. It’s like the ultimate solipsism. Sonofabitch, no wonder the Void wants to consume the galaxy. The energy that must take . . .’

‘This is like a post-physical entity,’ Paula said.

‘Yet it remains resolutely physical,’ Nigel said. He gave her a humourless smile. ‘Which is a problem. You’re good at them.’

Paula took another drink of her hot chocolate, and steepled her fingers. ‘Inigo served six months at the Centurion Station science base observing the Void. That’s only just outside the Wall stars, so we can surmise all his dreams were received there.’

‘Yes,’ Nigel agreed.

‘The dreams themselves are now irrelevant; Inigo is simply using them to promote and develop his Living Dream cult. Who knows, he might even believe in the Void’s Heart as a solution for where the human race goes next.’

‘Most likely,’ Vallar said. ‘Before our invasion and blockade, we heard of entire species descending into the Void; there were many rumours among the sentient races in the galaxy that it contained a spiritual resolution for biological entities. This lure it exerts was one of the reasons we built the armada.’

‘So we’re not going to get any more dreams,’ Paula said. ‘Edeard and whatever weird ethereal connection he had to Inigo is gone. It died with Edeard’s body.’ Her gaze flicked to the Raiel. ‘You were correct, Vallar. If we want to find out how humans were taken into the Void we have to go in to find out.’