The Evolutionary Void (3 page)

Her skin was completely numb when she finally came staggering out on the
other side. The shakes were so bad, she couldn’t even undo the bundle of
clothes that were now her sole possessions in the universe. She spent a long
time alternating between being hunched up, shivering violently, and trying to
walk while flapping her arms around. Eventually her fingers finally began to
work again. Her skin still had a horrible white pallor when she forced shaking
limbs into her clothes once more.

The walk didn’t warm her up noticeably, nor did she reach the high tree
line on the other side of the valley before night fell. She curled up into a
ball beside a small boulder and shivered her way to a fitful sleep. It rained
twice in the night.

Morning was when she realized she didn’t have anything to eat. Her tummy
was grumbling when she bent over a tiny trickle of water running around the
base of the boulder to lap up the icy liquid. She couldn’t remember ever being
this miserable; not the day she left Laril, not even watching her apartments
going up in flame. This was just wretched. Worse, she’d never felt so alone
before. This wasn’t even a human world. If anything went wrong, anything as
simple as a sprained ankle or gashed knee, there was no emergency service to
call, no help within light-years. She’d just have to lie down here in the
valley and starve to death.

Her limbs started trembling with the thought of it, at the full
realization of the risk she’d taken yesterday wading through the river. Delayed
shock, she decided, from both the river and the terrible fight in Bodant Park.

After that, she was a lot more careful walking up toward the tree line
high above. There was still no sign of anything she could eat. Underfoot was
just the yellowy grass with its speckle of tiny lavender flowers. As she
plodded on gloomily, she tried to remember everything she’d ever heard about
the Silfen paths. It wasn’t much; even the general encyclopedia in her storage
lacuna contained more mythology than fact on the subject. They existed, there was
no such thing as a map, and some medievalist humans set off down them in search
of various personal or irrational goals—few of whom were ever heard of again.
Except for Ozzie, of course. Now that she thought about it, she’d vaguely known
he was a Silfen Friend.
And so was Mellanie, whoever she
used to be
. Araminta could have kicked herself for not running even a
simple search with her u-shadow. It was over a week since Cressida had told her
about her odd ancestry, and she had never bothered to find out, had not asked a
single question.
Stupid
.

The thought of Cressida made her concentrate. Cressida would never give
up or sink into a bout of self-pity.
And I’m related to
her, too
.

She began to sketch out a list of more positive aspects as she drew close
to the woodland where she was sure the next path began. For a start, she could
sense paths, which meant there would be an ending to this trek, a conclusion.
Lack of food was a pig, but she had a strong Advancer heritage, and their ethos
was to equip humans to survive the galaxy over. As she’d learned during her
childhood on the farm, playing nibble dare with her brother and sisters, it was
quite difficult for Advancer humans to poison themselves with alien vegetation.
Her taste buds had a strong sampling ability to determine what was dangerous.
Unless a plant was hugely toxic, her metabolism could probably withstand it.

Even so, she didn’t like the look of the grass on the mountain.

I’ll wait till the next planet before I resort to
that
.

The air was noticeably colder by the time she reached the first of the
moss-cloaked trees. Way down the valley, thick hammerhead clouds were sliding
toward her. Rain at this temperature would wreck what little morale she’d
recovered.

Long honey-brown leaves fluttered on the branches overhead as she moved
deeper into the woods. Little white whorls like tightly wound spider gossamer
peeped up through the grass below her feet. The air became still between the
trunks of the trees as she walked forward. Her confidence grew. Somehow in her
mind she could sense the changes beginning. When she looked up, the slender
glimpses of sky she was afforded through the tangle of branches showed a light
turquoise, which was encouraging. It was certainly brighter and more inviting
than the atmosphere above the mountains.

Deep within the gaiafield or the reverie of the Silfen
Motherholme—whatever realm it was her mind drifted through these days—she could
follow the way space subtly transformed around her. The path was constantly in
motion. It had no fixed beginning or end; it was a way that responded to the
wishes of the traveler. At some incredible distance there was an awareness that
seemed to be observing her. That was when she had a vague notion of just how
many entities were on the paths. Uncountable millions, all wandering where they
might, some with purpose, wishing to know a certain experience, others allowing
the paths to take them at random across the galaxy to find and know whatever
they would.

New trees began to appear amid the moss-clad trunks, their smooth boles a
whitish-green. Lush green leaves overhead reminded her of a deciduous forest in
spring. Then ivies and vines swarmed up the trunks, producing cascades of gray
flowers. On she walked. The path wound along small hills and into narrow valleys.
Streams bubbled along beside her. Once she could hear the pounding thunder of
some great waterfall, but it wasn’t on the path, so she didn’t try to follow
the sound. Red leaves laced through the light brown canopy. Her boots were
treading on small crisp leaves amid the grass. The air grew warm and dry. Hours
after she’d left the rainy valley behind, she heard a quiet madrigal being sung
in an alien tongue. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know the words; the
harmony was exquisite. It even made her stop for a while, allowing herself to
listen. It was the Silfen, she knew, some big party of them trotting merrily on
their way to a new world offering fresh sights and excitements. For a moment
she wanted to run and join them, see what they saw, feel for things the way
they did. But then that image of Cressida, smart, self-reliant, focused,
trickled up into her mind, and she knew sheepishly that traipsing off with a
bunch of alien elves wasn’t the answer. Reluctantly, she set off again.
Somewhere far ahead was a Commonwealth world. She was sure of that, although
the path was little used nowadays. The Silfen didn’t care for planets where
other civilizations arose, at least not above a certain technological level.

Araminta let out a sigh of relief as the trees finally thinned out. It
was white and bright up ahead and getting warmer with every footstep forward.
The trees with the red leaves became the majority. Their light gray branches
were slim, widely separated. When she glanced at them, she could see how fat
and waxy the leaves were. She grinned in delight; there was something utterly
awesome about having paths between worlds.

The path led her to the edge of the waving trees. She stared out at the
vista ahead, blinking against the harsh light. “Oh, Great Ozzie,” she muttered
in dismay. As far as she could see, the land was a flat expanse of white sand.
The world’s hot sun burned high overhead, unencumbered by any cloud. “It’s a
desert!”

When she turned a full circle, she found she’d emerged amid a few paltry clumps
of trees that clung to the edge of a long muddy pool. And somewhere in those
trees the path was dwindling away to nothing. “No,” she told it. “No, wait.
This isn’t right. I don’t want to be here.” But then it was gone. “Oh,
bollocks.”

Araminta might have been generally ignorant about alien planets, but one
thing she knew for certain was that you didn’t start walking across a desert in
the middle of the day, certainly not without any preparation. She took a slow
saunter around the pool, trying to spot any sign that other people were around.
Apart from some very odd imprints in the dry mud, there was no evidence that
anybody used the oasis on any kind of regular basis. With the sun rising
higher, she sat with her back to one of the gray tree trunks, making the most
of the measly shade cast by its chunky leaves.

All the doubt and self-pity she’d managed to throw off on the path
threatened to come swarming back. Maybe the Silfen were more involved with
galactic events than anyone suspected. They could have dumped her here
deliberately so that she could never lead a human Pilgrimage. Just thinking it
through brought up an image of Cressida, her cousin’s eyebrow lifting in that
incredibly scornful way of hers. Araminta cringed just at the memory of it.

Come on, pull yourself together
.

She looked down at the tool belt. There weren’t a lot of tools, and the
power charge on some was well down. But they could be useful.
For what? How do I use them to cross a desert?
She looked
around the silent oasis again, trying to be smart and analytical the way
Cressida would be.
Okay, so I’ve got water. How do I carry
it?
Then she realized that there were several stumps sticking out of the
ground but no fallen trees. She hurried over to one and saw the wood had been
cut clean and level. Someone had sawed it off. She gave the stump a modest
grin; it was a great clue.
So now start thinking how you
can use wood
.

The power saw she carried was small, designed to cut small shaped holes,
not to fell a tree, however spindly. But she cut around a trunk and managed to
topple the tree onto open ground. The black wood under the bark was incredibly
hard. She cut a couple of sections off, producing cylinders half a meter long,
which she rolled into the shade, sitting down beside them. Her drill bored a
hole down the middle. Once she had that, she switched the drill bit to its
expansion mode and started to drill again. It took hours, but eventually she’d
hollowed out each of the cylinders, leaving a shell of wood a couple of
centimeters thick. They made excellent flagons. When she carried them into the
pool to fill them with the clear water in the middle, she felt something give
under her feet. The dark-blue sphere she fished out had a slippery jellylike
shell.
An egg!
Araminta glanced around nervously,
wondering what had laid it, land animal or marine? Perhaps it was a seed.

The flagons were full, and she lugged them out quickly but kept hold of
the flaccid egg. It was the size of her fist, the wet surface giving like
slippery rubber beneath her fingers. Just looking at it made her stomach growl
with hunger. She realized she hadn’t eaten anything since that last breakfast
with Tandra and her family, and that was a long time ago now.

With the egg wedged between some stones, she turned her laser to
low-power wide beam and swept the ruby-red fan forward and backward across the
bendy shell. The color began to darken down to a grubby brown, minute cracks
appearing as it slowly hardened. After a few minutes she took a guess that it
was done and used her screwdriver to tap a hole through it. The smell wasn’t
good, but she cracked a wide hole open and hooked out some of the steaming
greenish gloop inside.

Wrinkling her face in dismay, she touched some of the gloop to the tip of
her tongue. It didn’t taste of much at all, maybe slightly minty jelly.
Secondary routines in her macrocellular clusters interpreted the results firing
down the nerve channels from her taste buds. They couldn’t discern anything
lethal in the hot organic mush; it certainly wouldn’t kill her outright.
Closing her eyes, she swallowed. Her stomach groaned in relief, and she scooped
out a larger portion.

After she finished the first egg (she was still half-convinced it was
some kind of aquatic seed), she went trawling for some more, recovering nine in
total. She cooked another four with the laser, washing down the uninspiring
contents with the water from the flagons. The wood wasn’t leaking, which she
counted as a minor victory. With her stomach finally quiet, she set about
splitting more wood and building a small fire. The flames baked the remaining
eggs, saving power in her laser. She was firmly proud of the innovation, though
she should have thought of it earlier.

As the flames crackled away, she set about stripping the bark of the tree
she’d felled. When it was cut into thin strips, she began to weave a hat. Three
attempts later she had a flattish cone that finally stayed in place on her
head. She began weaving a basket to carry the eggs.

One more fishing expedition in the late afternoon netted a further five
eggs, and then she settled down for a rest before night fell. She’d been
working for hours, and the sun was only just starting to sink down toward the
horizon. The days here were long ones. Logically, then, the nights would be as
well, so she ought to be able to make a decent distance before the sun rose
once more.

She dozed before sunset, dreaming of some tall blonde girl who was also
alone. The dream was a vague one, and the girl was on a mountainside rather
than in a desert. A handsome lad appeared, which set the girl’s heart aflutter,
then she was confronting a man with a gold face.

Araminta woke with a start. The man was Gore Burnelli, which made her
suspect the dream had emerged out of the gaiafield. It was weak here, but she could
still perceive it. Gore had been very angry about something. For a moment
Araminta was tempted to delve back into the gaiafield to see if she could
recapture the dream but decided against it. The last thing she wanted now was
to risk reexposure to Living Dream, though how they would find her here was a
moot point. Besides, she had more immediate problems.

With the small bright sun finally sliding below the horizon, she gathered
up her makeshift desert survival kit. The flagons were filled to the brim and
stoppered with cuts of wood. She hoisted them onto her back with a harness made
from woven bark strips, grimacing at the weight. The baked eggs went into her
basket, which was slung over a shoulder. More strips of bark were hung around
her neck; she couldn’t imagine what she’d need them for, but they were all she
had and were the fruits of her own labor. Thus equipped, she set off.