Behind them the bulk of the crowd buzzed about discussing their favourite candidate. If Aaron was judging the mood correctly, then just about ninety-five per cent of them were rooting for Ethan. They wanted him because they were done with waiting, with patience, with the status quo preached by all the other lacklustre caretakers since the Dreamer himself, Inigo, had slipped away from public life. They wanted someone who would bring their whole movement to that blissful moment of fulfilment they’d been promised from the moment they’d tasted Inigo’s first dream.
Some time in the afternoon Aaron realized the woman was watching him. Nothing obvious, she wasn’t staring or following him about. Instinct smoothly clicked his awareness to her location—which was an interesting trait to know he had. From then on he was conscious of where she would casually wander in order to keep an easy distance between them, how she would never have her eyes in his direction when he glanced at her. She wore a simple short-sleeved rusty-orange top and knee-length blue trousers of some modern fabric. A little different to the faithful who tended to wear the more primitive rustic clothes of wool, cotton, and leather which were favoured by Makkathran’s citizens, but not contemporary enough to be obvious. Nor did her looks make her stand out. She had a flattish face and a cute-ish button nose; some of the time her slim copper shades were across her eyes, while often she had them perched up in her short dark hair. Her age was unknowable, like everyone in the Greater Commonwealth her appearance was locked into biological mid twenties. He was certain she was well past her first couple of centuries. Again, no tangible proof.
After they’d played the orbiting satellites game for forty minutes he walked over, keeping his smile pleasant. There were no pings coming off her that his macrocellular clusters could detect, no active links to the Unisphere, nor any active sensor activity. Electronically, she was as Stone Age as the city.
“Hello,” he said.
She pushed her shades up with the tip of a finger and gave him a playful grin. “Hello yourself. So what brings you here?”
“This is a historic event.”
“Quite.”
“Do I know you?” His instinct had been right, he saw; she was nothing like the placid faithful shuffling round them, her body language was all wrong; she could keep tight control of herself, enough to fool anyone without his training—training?—but he could sense the attitude coiled up inside.
“Should you know me?”
He hesitated. There was something familiar about her face, something he should know about her. He couldn’t think what, for the simple reason that he didn’t have any memories to pull up and examine. Not of anything, now he thought about it, certainly he didn’t seem to have had a life prior to today. He knew that was all wrong, yet that didn’t bother him either. “I don’t recall.”
“How curious. What’s your name?”
“Aaron.”
Her laughter surprised him. “What?” he asked.
“Number one, eh? How lovely.”
Aaron’s answering grin was forced. “I don’t understand.”
“If you wanted to list terrestrial animals where would you start?”
“Now you’ve really lost me.”
“You’d start with the aardvark. Double A, it’s top of the list.”
“Oh,” he mumbled. “Yeah, I get it.”
“Aaron,” she chuckled. “Someone had a sense of humour when they sent you here.”
“Nobody sent me.”
“Really?” She arched a thick eyebrow. “So you just sort of found yourself at this historic event, did you?”
“That’s about it, yes.”
She dropped the copper band back down over her eyes, and shook her head in mock-dismay. “There are several of us here, you know. I don’t believe that’s an accident, do you?”
“Us?”
Her hand gestured round at the crowd. “You don’t count yourself as one of these sheep, do you? A believer? Someone who thinks they can find a life at the end of these dreams Inigo so generously gifted to the Commonwealth?”
“I suppose not, no.”
“There’s a lot of people watching what happens here. It’s important, after all, and not just for the Greater Commonwealth. If there’s a Pilgrimage into the Void some species claim it could trigger a devourment phase which will bring about the end of the galaxy. Would you want that to happen, Aaron?”
She was giving him a very intent stare. “That would be a bad thing,” he temporized. “Obviously.” In truth he had no opinion. It wasn’t something he thought about.
“Obvious to some, an opportunity to others.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” She licked her lips with mischievous amusement. “So, are you going to try for my Unisphere code? Ask me out for a drink?”
“Not today.”
She pouted fulsomely. “How about unconditional sex, then, any way you like it?”
“I’ll bank that one, too, thanks,” he laughed.
“You do that.” Her shoulders moved up in a slight shrug. “Goodbye, Aaron.”
“Wait,” he said as she turned away.
“What’s your name?”
“You don’t want to know me,” she called out. “I’m bad news.”
“Goodbye, Bad News.”
There was a genuine smile on her face as she looked back at him. A finger wagged. “That’s what I remember best,” she said, and was gone.
He smiled at the rear of her rapidly departing head. She vanished quickly enough amid the throng; after a minute even he couldn’t spot her. He’d seen her originally because she wanted him too, he realized.
Us, she’d said, there are a lot like us here. That didn’t make a lot of sense. But then she’d stirred up a lot of questions. Why am I here? he wondered. There was no solid answer in his mind other than it was the right place for him to be, he wanted to see who was elected. And the memories, why don’t I have any memories of anything else? It ought to bother him, he knew, memories were the fundamental core of human identity, yet even that emotion was lacking. Strange. Humans were emotionally complex entities, yet he didn’t appear to be; but he could live with it, something deep inside him was sure he’d solve the mystery of himself eventually. There was no hurry.
Towards late afternoon the crowd began to thin out as the announcement remained obstinately unforthcoming. Aaron could see disappointment on the faces moving past him on their way home, a sentiment echoed by the whispers of emotion within the local gaiafield. He opened his mind to the thoughts surrounding him, allowing them to wash in through the gateway which the gaiamotes had germinated inside his cerebellum. It was like walking through a fine mist of spectres, bestowing the plaza with flickers of unreal colour, images of times long gone yet remembered fondly; sounds muffled, as experienced through fog. His recollection of when he’d joined the gaiafield community was as hazy as the rest of his time before today, it didn’t seem like the kind of thing he would do, too whimsical. Gaiafield was for adolescents who considered the multisharing of dreams and emotions to be deep and profound, or fanatics like Living Dream. But he was proficient enough with the concept of voluntarily shared thoughts and memories to grasp a coherent sensation from his exposure to the raw minds in the plaza. Of course, if it could be done anywhere it would be here in Makkathran2, which Living Dream had made the capital of the Greater Commonwealth’s gaiafield—with all the contradictions that threw up. To the faithful, the gaiafield was almost identical to the genuine telepathy which the citizens of the real Makkathran possessed.
Aaron felt their sorrow first hand as the day began to wind down, with several stronger undercurrents of anger directed at the Cleric Council. In a society where you shared thoughts and feelings, so the consensus went, an election really shouldn’t be so difficult. He also perceived their subliminal wish slithering through the gaiafield: Pilgrimage. The one true hope of the whole movement.
Despite the regret now gusting around him, Aaron stayed where he was. He didn’t have
anything else to do. The sun had almost fallen to the horizon when there was some movement on the broad balcony along the front of the Orchard Palace. All across the plaza, people suddenly smiled and pointed. There was a gentle yet urgent movement towards the Outer Circle Canal. Security force fields along the side of the water expanded, cushioning those shoved up against the railings as the pressure of bodies increased behind them. Various news company camera pods zoomed through the air like glitter-black festival balloons, adding to the thrill. Within seconds the mood in the plaza had lifted to fiery anticipation; the gaiafield suddenly crackled with excitement, its intensity rising until Aaron had to withdraw slightly to avoid being deluged by the clashing storms of colour and ethereal shouts.
The Cleric Council marched solemnly out on to the balcony, fifteen figures wearing full length scarlet and black robes. And in their centre was a lone figure whose robe was a dazzling white, edged in gold, the hood pulled forward to obscure the face inside. The dying sun glowed against the, soft cloth, creating a nimbus around him. A huge cheer went up from the crowd. Camera pods edged in as close to the balcony as their operators dared; Palace force fields rippled in warning, keeping them back. As one, the Cleric Council reached out into the gaiafield with their minds; Unisphere access followed swiftly, making the grand announcement available right across the Greater Commonwealth to followers and nullifidians alike.
In the middle of the balcony, the white-robed figure reached up and slowly pushed back the hood. Ethan smiled beatifically out across the city and its adulating faithful. There was a kindness about his thin solemn face which suggested he was attuned to all their fears; he sympathized and understood. Everyone could see the dark bags under his eyes which could only come from the burden of accepting such a terrible high office, of carrying the expectations of every Dreamer. As his face was exposed to the rich sunlight so the cheering down in the plaza had increased. Now the other members of the Cleric Council turned towards the new Cleric Conservator, and applauded contentedly.
Without conscious intervention, the ancillary thought routines operating inside Aaron’s macrocellular clusters animated his ocular zoom. He scanned along the faces of the Cleric Council, designating each image with an integral code as the ancillary routines slotted them into macrocellular storage lacunas ready for instant recall. Later he would study them for any betraying emotion, an indicator of how they had argued and voted.
He hadn’t known he had the zoom function, which piqued his curiosity. At his request the secondary thought routines ran a systems check through the macrocellular clusters enriching his nervous system. Exoimages and mental icons unfolded from neutral status to standby in his peripheral vision, lines of shifting iridescence bracketing his natural sight. The exoimages were all default symbols generated by his u-shadow, the personal interface with the Unisphere which would instantly connect him to any of its massive data, communication, entertainment, and commerce functions. All standard stuff.
However, the mental icons he examined represented a great deal more than the standard physiological enrichments which Advancer DNA placed at the disposal of a human body; if he was reading their summaries correctly he was enriched with some extremely lethal biononic field function weaponry.
I know something else about me, he thought, I have an Advancer heritage. It was hardly a revelation, eighty per cent of Greater Commonwealth citizens had similar modifications sequenced into their DNA thanks to the old fanatic genetic visionaries on Far Away. But having biononics as well narrowed the scope fractionally, putting Aaron closer to his true origin.
Ethan raised his hands in an appeal for silence. The plaza fell quiet as the faithful held their breath, even the babble from the media pack was stilled. A sensation of serenity coupled with steely resolution issued out of the new Cleric Conservator into the gaiafield. Ethan was a man who was sure of his purpose.
“I thank my fellow Councillors for this magnificent honour,” Ethan said. “As I begin my tenure I will do what I believe our Dreamer wanted. He showed us the way—nobody can deny that. He showed us where life can be lived and changed until it is perfect however you chose to define that as an individual. I believe he showed us this for a reason. This city he built. The devotion he engendered. It was for one purpose. To live the Dream. That is what we will now do.”
There was cheering out on the plaza.
“The Second Dream has begun! We have known it in our hearts. You have known it. I have known it. We have been shown inside the Void again. We have soared with the Skylord.”
Aaron scanned the Council again. He no longer needed to review and analyse their faces for later. Five of them already looked deeply uncomfortable. Around him the cheering was building to an inevitable climax, as was the speech.
“The Skylord awaits us. It will guide us to our destiny. We will Pilgrimage!”
Cheering turned to a naked, violent roar of adulation. Inside the gaiafield, it was as though someone was setting off fireworks fuelled by pleasure narcotics. The burst of euphoria surging through the artificial neural universe was awesome in its brightness.
Ethan waved victoriously to the faithful, then gave a last smile and went back inside the Orchard Palace.
Aaron waited as the crowd wound down. So many cried with joy as they departed he had to shake his head in dismay at their simplicity. Happiness here was universal, obligatory. The sun crept down behind the horizon, revealing a city where every window glowed with warm tangerine light—just as they did in the real one. Songs drifted along the canals as the gondoliers gave voice to their delight in traditional fashion. Eventually even the reporters began to drift away, chattering among themselves; those with doubts were keeping their voices low. Out in the Unisphere, news anchors and political commentators on hundreds of worlds were beginning their sombre doomsday predictions.
None of it bothered Aaron. He was still standing in the plaza as the civic bots emerged into the starlight and began clearing away the rubbish which the excitable crowd had left behind. He now knew what he had to do next; the certainty had struck him as soon as he heard Ethan speak. Find Inigo. That’s why he was here.
Aaron smiled contentedly around the dark plaza, but there was no sign of the woman. “Now who’s bad news?” he asked, and walked back into the jubilant city.
***
Looking out from the balcony along the front of the Orchard Palace, Ethan watched the last rays of the sun slide over the crowd like a translucent gold veneer. Their cries of near-religious approval echoed off the thick walls of the Palace, he could even feel the vibration in the stone balustrade in front of him. Not that there had even been any inner doubts for him during his long difficult progress, but the response of the faithful was profoundly comforting. He knew he was right to push for his own vision, to haul the whole movement out of its slothful complacency. That was evolution’s message: go forward or die. The reason for the Void’s existence.
Ethan closed his mind to the gaiafield and strode off the balcony as the sun finally sank below the horizon. The others of the council followed respectfully, their scarlet cloaks fluttering in agitation as they hurried to keep up.
His personal secretary, Chief Cleric Phelim, was waiting at the top of the broad ebony stairs which curved down to the cavernous Malfit Hall on the ground level. The man was in the grey and blue robes which indicated a rank just below that of a full Councillor—a status which Ethan was going to elevate in the next couple of days. His hood was hanging down his back, allowing the soft orange lighting to glimmer off the black skin of his shaven scalp. It gave him a formidable skeletal appearance unusual amid Living Dream members who followed the fashion of long hair that was prevalent in Makkathran. When he fell in beside Ethan he was almost a head taller. That height along with a face that could remain unnervingly impassive had been useful for unsettling a great many people; he could talk to anyone with his mind fully open to the gaiafield, and yet his emotional tone was completely beyond reach. Again, not something the politely pa
ssive community of Living Dream were accustomed to. To the Council hierarchy, Phelim and his mannerisms were an uncomfortable intruder. Privately, Ethan rather enjoyed the consternation his utterly loyal deputy generated.
The giant Malfit Hall was full of Clerics who began applauding as soon as Ethan reached the bottom of the stairs. He took the time to bow at them as he made his way across the sheer black floor, smiling thanks and occasionally nodding in recognition. The images on the arching ceiling overhead mimicked the sky of Querencia; Malfit Hall was perpetually locked in dawn, producing a clear turquoise vault, with the ochre globe of the solid world Nikran circling gently around the edge, magnified to an extent where mountain ranges and a few scudding clouds were visible. Ethan’s procession moved on into the Liliala Hall, where the ceiling hosted a perpetual storm, with its seething mantle of glowing clouds haloed in vivid purple lightning. Intermittent gaps allowed glimpses of the Mars Twins belonging to the Gicon’s Bracelet formation, small featureless planets with a deep, dense red atmosphere that guarded whatever surface they might have from any enquiry. Senior Clerics were gathered beneath the flashing clouds. Ethan took longer here, muttering several words of thanks to those he knew, allowing his mind to radiate a gentle pride into the gaiafield.
At the arching door into the suite of rooms which the Mayor of Makkathran used to hold office, Ethan turned to the Councillors. “I thank you once more for you confidence in me. Those who were reluctant in their endorsement, I promise to double my efforts to gain your support and trust in the years ahead.”