Nigel exhaled a long breath. ‘And we’re still hoping a gaiafield connection will get that information out?’

‘It did for Inigo and Edeard – somehow,’ the original Nigel said. ‘So it ought to allow me to dream you. The gaiafield function was sequenced into you, every neurone has it. If that doesn’t work, I don’t know what will.’

‘We made you as best as we could to survive the Void environment,’ Paula said. ‘Your brain is faster and smarter than normal. With luck, that should give you a stronger psychic ability than everyone else. You have weaponized biology in case it’s not.’

‘What about my backups?’ Nigel asked. They had all decided he would need help he could trust implicitly.

‘They’re ready,’ the original Nigel said. ‘Modifying a standard ANAdroid was relatively easy, certainly compared to growing you. We managed to build in every ability I thought of. They’re fully feature-morphic. Mentally, they can operate independently, or you can go multiple with them as soon as you activate them; their neural structure is compatible with your routines, and they have gaiafield access capability, too. We don’t think anyone’s ESP can tell the difference between them and a standard human.’

‘Right.’ Nigel looked at Paula. ‘Anything else? You don’t look happy.’

‘I’m confused by the genistar animals,’ she admitted.

‘What about them?’ Nigel recalled how prevalent they were on Querencia. A native species that humans had learned how to shape into various subspecies to help with simple manual labour. It was Edeard’s Eggshaper Guild that was responsible for them. The genistars had several subspecies, which could be telepathically selected just after egg fertilization by someone particularly skilled in the art.

‘How do you evolve that function naturally?’ Paula asked. ‘Granted, it’s a big strange universe out here, but I don’t believe that could ever happen. They have to be artificial, which is slightly contrary, because that ability to manipulate their final shape can only happen in the Void. As they’re not sentient, that has to be performed by someone else, someone with an excellent telepathic ability. Simply put, they were developed as a slave species. And I’m not sure how you’d do that in a technology-free environment like the Void.’

‘That’s a lot of conjecture you’ve come up with, there,’ Nigel said bluntly. ‘I’m not going to prejudge them.’

‘It’s a logical extrapolation. Edeard’s civilization never encountered the slavers themselves. I’m assuming they were the ones who lived in Makkathran before humans, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they all vanished into the Heart. I just want you to be extremely careful around genistars, that’s all.’

‘Got it.’ Nigel looked round the three conspirators, feeling a buzz of excitement he hadn’t known in centuries. ‘So we’re basically ready to go, then?’

‘Indeed,’ his original said.

Nigel regarded Paula slyly. ‘What about my emergency fallback? The fabled plan B?’

She sighed reluctantly. ‘The package is ready. But you have to really need it. If I find out you activated it without any kind of disaster looming . . .’

‘Yeah, I know. And thank you,’ he said sincerely. ‘All right then, I guess I’m ready. Let’s go kick some Void butt.’

‘Oh, I knew it,’ Paula said disapprovingly. ‘Nigel, that’s completely the wrong attitude. This is an information-gathering mission, not a war party.’

‘Hey, you’re getting seriously gloomy; I’m just trying to lighten things up. You know me.’

‘I certainly do. That’s why I came up with plan B.’

‘Have a little faith. This calls for me being smart and sneaky. That I can manage. I won’t call for the intellectual cavalry unless I really need to.’

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ she asked. ‘Really sure?’

Nigel did his best to lower his gaze, but the stare she was giving him seemed to be looking into his mind far more easily than any telepathy. ‘It’s a simple mission,’ he said earnestly. ‘Land as close as I can, try and wake Makkathran. Dream whatever I find back out to you. If the ship still works, try and follow a Skylord to the Heart and dream that back for you as well.’

‘And if it doesn’t work?’ Paula asked.

‘Then I’ll go live a quiet life somewhere in the countryside. Maybe teach them better medicine.’

‘Don’t do anything—’

‘Stupid?’ Nigel asked.

‘I was going to say, dangerous,’ she said. ‘And to that we can add: foolhardy, reckless, irresponsible—’

‘Okay! Hell, I get it, I’ll be good.’

Paula gave him a mournful smile. ‘That would be nice.’

‘Mark has a whole load of instructions for you,’ his original said. ‘Take as long as you want to familiarize yourself with the ship, and after that we’ll leave.’

Paula leaned over and gave him a light kiss. ‘You take care. I mean it. You’ll have me to deal with if you don’t.’

‘I am aware of that.’

She grinned. ‘You have the naming privilege. What are you going to call the ship?’

Nigel grinned back. ‘Skylady, of course. What else?’

July 11th 3326

The Skylady rose silently up into Augusta’s night sky. A fat ellipsoid twenty-five metres long, with rounded delta wings. Her nondescript grey-green fuselage soaked up the starlight, making her very difficult to see.

Umbaratta flew beside her, Nigel Sheldon’s personal starship – a sleek teardrop ultradrive, capable of flying anywhere in the galaxy at fifty-six lightyears an hour. Two thousand kilometres above Augusta, they both rendezvoused with Vallar’s spherical starship, and all three went FTL.

*

Eighteen hours later, a long way outside the Commonwealth, they dropped back into ordinary space. The nearest star was three light-years away.

Sitting in the Umbaratta’s circular cabin, Nigel Sheldon told the smartcore to scan round. The starship’s excellent sensors could detect nothing. He’d been expecting a Raiel starship of some kind to be waiting for them. One of their colossal warships, he’d hoped. They were still over thirty thousand lightyears from the Void, and he was extremely interested in how the Raiel were going to transport them there. The Commonwealth had never managed to produce anything faster than ultradrive.

Vallar opened a link. ‘Stand by,’ she told him.

Nigel opened his gaiamotes, and detected his clone’s thoughts. Like his, they reflected a quiet anticipation.

‘How much faster do you think their ship will be?’ he asked.

‘It won’t be a ship,’ the clone replied.

‘How do you figure?’

His clone’s thoughts turned smug. ‘We only use starships inside the Commonwealth because of politics, and outside because it’s practical. The Raiel are evangelicals devoted to saving the galaxy, and they were more technologically advanced than us a million years ago.’

‘Well argued.’

‘You really do need to get a better brain.’

‘Smartass.’

‘Thankfully, yes.’

They shared a mental smile.

The Umbaratta’s smartcore reported an exotic energy distortion manifesting five hundred kilometres away. Nigel linked in to the external sensors, and his exovision showed him the wormhole opening across the starfield. It was a large one, measuring three hundred metres in diameter.

‘This will take you to your destination,’ Vallar told them. ‘The warrior Raiel are waiting for you. Nigel, I would like to thank you for your help.’

‘Anytime,’ Nigel replied airily. He could feel a spike of irony rising in his clone’s thoughts at the polite response.

Umbaratta and Skylady flew into the wormhole, emerging a second later in a very different part of the galaxy. Hundreds of lightyears away, a shimmering band of giant stars formed a magnificent archway across space. The Wall stars, Umbaratta’s smartcore confirmed, a bracelet of intense blue-white light surrounding the galactic core – not that there was much left of it. The Void was slowly expanding into the massive Gulf which the Wall surrounded, the dangerously radioactive zone of broken stars and seething particle storms. Not far away – in galactic terms – was the loop: a dense halo of supercharged atoms that orbited the Void. It burnt a lethal crimson across the Gulf, though that was only the visible aspect of its electromagnetic emissions; its X-ray glare was powerful enough to be detected clear across the galaxy.