The Abyss Beyond Dreams (18 page)

‘I would like to hire you.’

She pursed her lips coyly. ‘Are you sure you can afford me?’

‘On a consultancy basis. There’s something I personally have to do, and I need your expertise to pull it off.’

‘All right, I am officially intrigued. What expertise?’

‘I need to know how to commit a perfect crime.’

Golden Park was massive. Paula hadn’t quite appreciated how big Makkathran2 was until she walked the mile and a half over the greensward which surrounded it. Because
there were no capsules on Querencia where the original was sited, Inigo had imposed a no-overflight law which extended for ten miles around his city, which she thought was taking realism a step too
far. The only way into the construction site, which was the full-scale replica of the city on Querencia, was in a ground vehicle, or on foot. She and Nigel had arrived at the project’s
landing field in a scheduled commercial capsule, then taken a bus to the greensward – actually a misnomer; the ground that would one day mimic the forests and meadows outside the Void’s
Makkathran was currently a muddy swathe of freshly ploughed and planted earth. From there they’d walked, as all the Living Dream followers did the first time, emulating Edeard who came to the
city as a traveller with the Barkus caravan.

Two thousand square miles of empty government land on the eastern coast of the Sinkang continent had been signed over to Inigo by the Ellezelin government eighteen months ago. Paula suspected a
great many election campaign donations (among other payments) to local and national politicians by Inigo’s wealthier backers had secured it. The official explanation was that the
quasi-religious movement would bring a huge influx of followers, who would boost the planet’s economy. Ellezelin had been founded as a capitalist Advancer culture and was quite devout in the
pursuit of money.

They trudged in through the North Gate (just as Edeard had) – although this gate was less impressive than the one cut through the wall by Rah. The wall of golden crystal around the real
Makkathran was nothing more than a three-metre-high mesh fence here – so far. Inside it, the High Moat was another strip of flat grassland. Then came the North Curve Canal – two
parallel trenches with slim trickles of brown water along the bottom marking where the excavation was scheduled to be. There was a bridge over the unborn waterway, leading to the Ilongo district.
In Edeard’s city, it had small boxy buildings with walls that leaned at precarious angles. Here it was like a refugee camp of plyplastic tents and malmetal cabins. The tracks between them
were laid with a mesh of carbon fibre through which mud was oozing. The long sections were being slowly tramped down by the sheer amount of foot traffic. It was like being in some pre-Commonwealth
bazaar, appropriately enough.

Three hundred metres above her, a realistic semiorganic ge-eagle was keeping pace with them, scanning the neighbourhood. Paula controlled it through a heavily shielded link. Several of the
impressive-looking birds soared on the thermals above the proto-city; Inigo’s followers had resequenced them from terrestrial avian DNA, duplicating the birds that so many Makkathran citizens
possessed. They competed for airspace with Ellezelin’s native seabirds. It wouldn’t be long before other replica Void creatures appeared.

‘I didn’t realize there were this many ardent followers,’ Paula said quietly as they stood back to allow a young goatherd to lead his animals past them. The other thing
she’d noticed was the way people dressed. It was all natural cloth in old styles, some amazingly elaborate, like a costume convention; there was no semiorganic fabric or modern garments to be
seen. For herself she’d chosen a simple green cotton skirt, a white blouse and a leather jacket with a satchel slung over her shoulder. Nigel had gone all out in the tunic of an Eggshaper
Guild master, complete with fur-lined robe.

He was gazing to the east. ‘They’re doing that wrong,’ he muttered.

‘What?’ Paula followed his gaze, seeing a tall tower surrounded by scaffolding that swarmed with constructionbots. The ge-eagle performed a fast scan of the incomplete structure.
‘That’s Blue Tower, the Eggshaper Guild headquarters. I recognize it from the Fourth Dream. It looks pretty accurate to me.’

‘The tower is fine,’ Nigel said as they started walking along the twisting tracks. ‘What I mean is, when you’ve got a project like this, you complete the drudgework
first, then build the landmarks. That’s how you make sure the donations keep coming in.’

Paula had her gaiamotes open, receiving the emotional wash of the eager followers and the general emissions of the city’s confluence nests. The gaiafield was an excellent simulacrum of
Makkathran’s telepathic buzz, reproducing the same sensations of busyness and determination that Edeard experienced. ‘I don’t feel there’s going to be any shortage of
donations.’ A couple of days previously, they had run a sweep through Living Dream’s official accounts. The figures involved had surprised her. Some seriously wealthy individuals had
made large donations. Living Dream had refined its recruitment techniques to a degree which put most External world cults to shame. She’d almost assumed a degree of illegal coercion, maybe
some advanced version of the old narcomemes, except for the sheer number of mid- and small-level devotees also handing over money – in some cases, everything they owned. It wasn’t
entirely limited to Advancers and Naturals either: a significant percentage of Living Dream was made up from Highers.

That level of universal commitment couldn’t be written down to fraud and dirty practices. Edeard’s life held genuine appeal, and from the four dreams she’d witnessed, she could
actually sympathize with that. It helped that Inigo was now releasing the Fifth Dream, slowly unveiling it a few minutes each night.

And that was what made her extremely suspicious. Those perfectly self-contained sequences were being offered up a little bit too neatly for a mythical vision which was supposedly gifted, and
over which he had no control. It was one of the reasons she’d agreed to help Nigel. That and the whole mystery of Makkathran being a warrior Raiel armada ship – a puzzle she just
couldn’t resist.

They walked from Ilongo over into Isadi, across a hologram of the Pink Canal – a wide ribbon of blue light stretching across the ground. Then Ysidro district, where the first phase of
genuine Makkathran buildings were being laid out. The ge-eagle looked down on foundations of enzyme-bonded concrete forming an intriguing jumble of shapes in the raw earth. There were as many
constructionbots as there were people working on the site. Large trucks were being driven at speed along makeshift roads, shifting subsoil out and material in.

‘Those aren’t automated,’ a surprised Nigel protested as they had to scuttle quickly across one of the roads to dodge a ten-wheel digger. The driver gave them a long angry
blast on the horn as he thundered by.

‘You have to admit, Inigo’s going for authenticity.’

‘No he’s not. Makkathran is actually a technology even we haven’t mastered.’

Paula shook her head wryly. ‘Yeah, but he doesn’t know that. Or at least, if he does, he’s not admitting it yet.’

Upper Grove Canal, which marked the boundary between Ysidro and Golden Park, was a giant gash in the ground six metres deep. Extruderbots were working their way slowly along the floor and walls,
chewing up a thick stratum of the earth, and squeezing out a seamless sheet of enzyme-bonded concrete behind them. The ge-eagle showed her that the Zelda district was covered in big biovats
breeding enzymes; Living Dream was going to need an awful lot of it to complete this remarkable homage, she thought.

They made their way over a rickety temporary bridge and into the featureless expanse that was Golden Park. Holograms of the white pillars that lined the real thing appeared insubstantial under
Ellezelin’s hot late-afternoon sunlight, flickering into translucency every now and then. Over on the other side of the park, the Outer Circle Canal had been completed and filled. The
intersecting roofs of the Orchard Palace rose up beyond it like a giant primitive crustacean left behind by a treacherous tide, engulfing most of the Anemone district. Insect-like bots crawled over
the curving edifice, dismantling the scaffolding.

‘Now what?’ Nigel asked.

‘We wait.’

Long open-sided marquees had been set up along the side of Outer Circle Canal, protecting tables from the elements. As the sun went down, people started to congregate there. Some tents were
kitchens, others served drinks. A few had stages where acoustic bands started to play. The gaiafield was conducting some very mellow emotions.

Paula sent the ge-eagle over to Orchard Palace as they found themselves a bench under one of the marquees. It circled low over the steep domes and dispensed several batches of tiny semiorganic
microdrones. Modelled on
Tetranychidae
mites, they began to invade the massive headquarters of Living Dream, penetrating deeper and deeper into the maze of rooms. A three-dimensional map
began to build up in her exovision.

‘These can’t be the actual rooms,’ she murmured. ‘It’s just a grid of cubes made from lokfix panels. Standard cheap throw-it-up construction material. Nothing
fanciful here.’

‘I guess we’ll see the interior in one of the dreams eventually,’ Nigel said. ‘In the meantime, something that can be changed easily makes sense.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ She sent the ge-eagle back for another pass, scattering more of the microdrones.

The cube rooms formed a stack of offices, living quarters for the senior disciples of Living Dream, kitchens, lounges, some labs where confluence nest technology was expanded, kilometres of
identical corridors, store rooms, small replicators, a well-equipped clinic . . . It was like a government administration complex on a frontier planet. Every amenity present and correct, but
basic.

‘Ah, the man himself,’ Paula muttered.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, Inigo had appeared at the marquee next to the one they were using – a tall ginger-haired man with pale skin and a lot of freckles. He had the
appearance of a fit Natural Faction human in his mid-thirties, with an easy, sincere smile.

People were rising from their meal to greet him. He was polite and welcoming, working the crowd like a professional politician. When Paula checked his gaiafield emissions, he seemed genuinely to
appreciate the attention – an emotion mixed in with just the right humility.
I am not the chosen one, just the humble messenger.

‘He’s good,’ she admitted.

Nigel had turned to look. It wasn’t something he had to be circumspect about. Everyone in their marquee was craning for a glimpse of the man who offered them a vision of a different
existence. ‘How old is he?’

‘Seventy,’ Paula said.

‘Then he’s got some excellent Advancer genes to look that good at seventy.’

‘He’s not Higher,’ Paula said, ‘so maybe he had a quiet rejuve. People like their leaders to have youthful vigour.’

‘Yes, you truly are a professional cynic.’

‘Why else would I be here?’ she countered. ‘We both know that this is all too good to be true.’

‘Yeah.’

They watched Inigo for several minutes until he finally accepted an invitation to sit with a group of people, most of them female and dressed like the daughters of Makkathran’s nobility,
all low tops and skirts fluffed out by petticoats.

‘Let’s go try the local food,’ Nigel said.

One of the kitchen tents was doing a hog roast. They queued up and collected their paper plate, piled high with meat and apple sauce and a wedge-chunk of bread. Both of them chose a fruit juice.
Nigel paid with a gold coin, stamped with the Eggshaper Guild crest: egg-in-a-twisted-circle. When they’d bought a supply of the coins at the landing field, the exchange rate had proved
exorbitant.

‘They must have a big problem with forgery,’ Nigel decided as they sat back down again. He held up some of the brass and copper coins he’d been given as change. ‘Any old
fabricator could churn these out. Hell, even an old-style printer could manage it.’

‘I expect they’ll enrich them eventually. Right now, why would youwant to come here and cheat people?’

‘Good point.’

Paula stabbed a slice of meat with a wooden prong she’d been given in the kitchen. ‘I’m more worried about the lack of vegetables. I know they had them in Makkathran. The whole
Iguru Plain was a giant fruit and vegetable nursery.’

‘Did you get any crackling? I didn’t get any crackling.’

‘You’d think after two thousand years they’d have a better diet.’

Nigel gave her a curious look. ‘Would you really turn down the chance to join a colony?’

Paula chewed on the meat, which she had to admit was rather good. ‘You’re not exasperated with the Commonwealth. It’s your greatest triumph to date. It’s a spectacular
triumph for our whole species, actually. But you are flawed by your insatiable drive. People think I’m obsessive, but I’m an amateur compared to you. Founding a whole new society is a
challenge that’s just about worthy of you. Plus there’s the opportunity to explore a new galaxy – I assume that’s where you are heading?’

He tipped his head. ‘Of course.’

‘And then there’s this ego trip.’

‘This?’

‘The Raiel, guardians of the galaxy – a race so advanced they probably know more than a post-physical species – flummoxed by the Void. And who do they turn to for help? Yeah,
you could turn
that
request down so easily.’

‘Just like you could.’

‘Granted.’ She closed her eyes to study her exovision map closely. ‘Ah, interesting. There’s a very secure room right behind Inigo’s private chambers. It has a lot
of shielding.’ She studied the telemetry from the microdrones which were starting to cluster around the room, combining their fieldscan. The room’s shielding was high-level, brought in
from the Central worlds, but Paula’s microdrones were custom made by the Serious Crime Directorate’s technical division based on ANA’s designs. ‘It’s got a confluence
nest inside,’ she reported.