The section which follows was removed from the Temporal Void, leading on directly after Paula found someone had downloaded the Cat's memory from its secure store on Kerensk. Contrary to popular belief, I don't simply try to write the longest story possible. And even as I started writing this section, which was introducing Morton from the Commonwealth Saga to the Void Trilogy, it was obvious to me that it was a plot-line too many. So I cut it. What was due to follow in both Temporal and Evolutionary was Morton and Paula teaming up to track down rogue technology suppliers, which would have led Paula to the secret Accelerator station that built the Swarm and the ultradrive engines for the pilgrimage ships. It might have been an excellent, thrilling ride for the reader, but I still can't convince myself of that. The trilogy is shorter and faster because of its absence, and in my opinion better for it. But I know a number of readers, especially those who use this website, were interested to know what happened to Morton after Judas Unchained. So here in what can now only be described as an event which never happened, is what he did next... Peter F. Hamilton Rutland July 2010 The Alexis Denken flew a fast semi-ballistic trajectory around Kerensk to reach Kaluga. The megacity was actually spread out over thirty-eight islands, linked together by long causeways and bridges. In the old days, they'd been strictly divided into residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. Then came Higher culture, and semi-independence. The most senior members of the Nikolayev Dynasty departed the Commonwealth on colony ships for an unknown destination never to be heard of again. The executive levels that were left gradually moved their wealth and enterprises offplanet to the new External Worlds, while the ancient jaded ones migrated inwards. They abandoned a colossal manufacturing base for technology that found itself increasingly obsolete. However, there were any number of corporate research laboratories that were now unshackled by Commonwealth restrictions. They could never gain a lead in genetics, that field belonged to Far Away, though a great deal of diversity could still be sequenced especially in non-terrestrial DNA. Biononics of course belonged to the Sheldons, then the Central worlds; as did the most sophisticated replicators. However, there were huge grey areas between what was definitely Higher Neumann molecular-level replication and ordinary cybernetics. For a society that specialized in cutting edge products, there was still a lot of opportunity. Internal competition was sharp, market forces strong, and government was a corporate democracy. In that respect little had changed since its time as a Big15, for those with ambition there were no limits and a great many rewards. Paula landed on Sumy spaceport, once island nineteen, which had been a single giant petrochemical refinery. The plant had long-since been dismantled and its metal reprocessed into new products leaving a highly toxic wasteland exposed to the elements. It was covered in a giant sheet of enzyme-bonded concrete, and converted into a spaceport. During the twenty minute flight Paula dressed carefully in a pair of tight black trousers whose surface resembled wet snakeskin. Maybe too tight, she'd thought as the waistband flowed shut, forcing her to breathe in. But what the heck, they were tame compared to most of the clothes in Kaluga. A simple white singlet was covered by a quickgold jacket incorporating a lot of anti-intrusion modules. She thought about styling her hair for a while, but eventually settled for slicking it back with true primitive panache. Her chain belt was active-armour with several weapons built in. She didn't want to advertise the fact she was Higher, not on the street anyway. "When in Rome," she muttered as she floated down out of the airlock. The belt wrapped a filter-field around her as she passed into Kerensk's atmosphere, protecting her from the chemical toxins belching out from factories across the city archipelago. The Alexis Denken's smartcore had negotiated with eight spaceport supply companies for a simple isolation contract. Even that wasn't cheap, but she wasn't going to allow anything made on Kerensk into the starship's tanks. True prejudice, she thought as her feet touched the ground and she put on a pair of antique silver shades. Five taxi capsules were lined up along the perimeter of her landing pad, all with sub-contracts to the service company. Each vehicle completely different, from a huge black armoured craft with shark fin spoilers to a dinky little pink and chrome globe that looked like it had dropped out of some alternative history future. They all pinged her, promising high speed and low prices. She chose Princess Jeallol lines because she just had to ride in the cute little globe, and anyway it looked harmless and touristy. Not that looks meant anything on Kerensk. "Where to, ma'am?" the taxi asked as she sat down on its curving real-leather bench seat. It had a trash-girly voice, the waitress in the coffee shop that never gets any tips. "Island one, Centrika Park." "Yes ma'am. Have you been to Kerensk before?" "Once or twice," she admitted. "That's good." Paula frowned at the retro dashboard console with its five coloured lights around an oval speaker grille. "Who am I talking to?" The taxi went vertical, it was fast but there wasn't a quiver in the gravity field. "Princess Jeallol." "Is this some kind of communication link?" her field function began to scan the cab, revealing systems that were different to anything used in the Commonwealth. "No this is me," the taxi insisted with a hurt tone. "I multiplied myself into all my vehicles. All part of the service. You get the boss each time, because you simply can't get the staff." "Ah, you're an I-sentient personality." "Thank you, ma'am, this is not your Commonwealth. We don't use that dead end crap here. The cab's matrix has DNA-sourced neural algorithms running my thought routines. My brain, my personality." "Sorry." "No offence, especially not from a customer." Paula peered through the side of the globe as they passed over a wide arching causeway. Grey waves churned against the old stone wall on both sides. The water looked cold, which it shouldn't do, they were almost on the equator. But the leaks from the old reactors which used to provide cheap electricity had contaminated half of the planet's oceans. Marine life had suffered badly. There was no seaweed within a thousand miles of Kaluga, nor fish, nor plankton. The water was cloudy with silt and sand churned up from the barren seabed. Beyond the causeway, the islands dominated the sea. All of them were smothered with structures, from simple vast domes to the turrets and spires rising from a single amalgamated sprawl. Island one looked as if it was sinking beneath a foam of giant bubbles. Some were transparent, containing little parks and gardens, some were black metal, others shimmered with refraction rainbows. Several sprouted lethal-looking spines that could impale anything flying too close. Paula saw a few that looked completely biological, with undulating scarlet surfaces and twitching insect-antenna. "That's changed," she said as the cab curved round the shoreline where long chains of smaller bubbles floated with the swell. "When were you here last?" the cab asked. "About a hundred and fifty years ago." "Wow, so did you see the... " "Kingspire? Yes." "I always loved the memories of that. Eleven miles high, and every square inch shining like the sun! My daddy said the view from the top was fan-goddamn-tastic." "It was. But nothing lasts forever." "Too true, ma'am, too true." The cab began to sink towards the crest of the bubbles. The surface of a chrome-pink one turned translucent, and they passed through to be immersed in fizzing liquid. A few seconds later they went through the bottom and began gliding along the fissure-like cavities between the bubbles. Paula couldn't help looking away, it was like being inside a living organism, which made her queasy. After a couple more minutes skimming a long convoluted path they popped through another bubble surface to emerge into Centrika park, a wide open space whose ground was the original island one surface. It was now a jungle parkland with tall alien trees and waterfalls and lakes glowing in a strange phased rouge and jade light. As far as Paula knew it was the largest enclosed area in the Commonwealth, including the High Angel's domes. The cab touched down on a raised landing zone near the edge. "Do you know where to go?" the cab asked. Paula used a credit coin to pay the exorbitant fee. It was loaded with EMAs, though Kaluga citizens would happily take any currency in existence. "I think so." The door popped open. "Thank you for using me. If you need another flight, please call me. I operate right across Kerensk; best rates, fastest response." "I'll remember." Paula went down the steps from the landing pad. The street around the edge of the park followed the irregular bulges in the wall of bubbles that curved away overhead. At ground level the bubbles were encrusted with tall neon-Gothic buildings that extended wide buttresses over the pavement as if they were preparing to walk across the park. The cab rose behind Paula as she reached the pavement and plunged into the fast hustle that was Kaluga. Never give ground was the city's basic maxim. So she walked straight through the zoo of pedestrians, the human, the transformed, and the cybermechs. All the ordinary-looking people were taller than her, and strikingly beautiful. As always she was mindful of classical angels, but without the wings. Over half of them were naked, proudly showing off their flawless bodies. They had a few subtle decorations, muscle lines shaded for emphasis, feathery hair in colours that were just beyond the natural genetic palette. Those in clothes did indeed make hers look bland, their fabrics glowed and sparkled in rich hews, many of them blending seamlessly into the skin producing extravagant works of body art that flowed and surged with each movement. Then there were the mechanicals, or part-mechanicals. Human torsos of every size, mutated with tentacles and wings and tails and pseudopods and biomech appendages, grafted with engineered limbs. Some crawled, some walked, some slid along on tiny regrav drives. Skin could be any colour and was often variegated, sometimes glowing sometimes sucking in light like a shaped event horizon. Mechanical men with cogs and pistons instead of muscle and joints crunched along, with everyone getting out of their way. A troupe of tall silver-white men whose lower legs had been replaced by thick magaxle wheels skated past her with fast grace. Mythology crafting was popular, she saw, both human and alien. She even saw a little glass globe with a head inside, flying along by itself. Then there were the straight cyborgs that came in every geometry possible, also ranging in size from football up to imposing giant. She was scanned, viewed, sonic echoed, query-pinged, resonated, radared, laser swept, gravpulsed, and had her quantum signature taken. From her point of view, the only plus point of Kerensk was that it didn't have a gaiafield. Walking along the pavement she felt ancient and obsolete, resisting a stupid urge to hunch up her shoulders and slink along in shame. This was a technology culture she was glad had never spread itself throughout the Commonwealth at large. Body retroforming had swung in and out of fashion among the trendy and weird and bored rich for over a thousand years, but that was all it was: fashion. Here, function and form played a more integral part of life, not to mention wealth and status. It wasn't for her. The stores in the glitzy parkside buildings noticed her quickly enough: foreign and rich. Their electronics decided she must be here for a reason, and focused their advertising on her. She walked on surrounded by a haze of holograms, her macrocellular clusters warding off a blizzard of pings. They all offered services, nobody here held stock in the back of their store; stock tied up capital. There was no such thing as standardization on Kerensk, every product was custom built, designed and styled to your specification as you waited. So what the stores promised was design style. Even Paula hesitated at some of the clothes the adverts quickly showed off, from classic to gaudy, chic to funky. If ever she wanted to overhaul her style, this would be the place she'd come to, she conceded. Five minutes after she left the cab she reached the building she wanted, a black pyramid sticking out horizontally from a big emerald-chrome bubble. Its apex swept out into a long spire two hundred metres above her, sticking a long way out over the azure and amber grass. She found the entrance at the bottom, an old fashioned revolving door with five sections. It took her into a modern lobby with black and white walls and purple furniture. The wooden reception desk curved round a cyborg that was a three-metre high collection of smooth grey spheres clinging together in a roughly humanoid shape. The head sphere rotated so the tiny eye-globes were pointing down at her. "Yes?" it asked in a deep, resonant bass. "I'm here to see the Chairman of New Gansu." "No one sees the Chairman." "I do. Tell him Paula Myo is here." The eighteen spheres that made up the cyborg's torso straightened up. "The Investigator?" "The Chairman, now, please." "Go through, Investigator." The five globes which made up its arm swept out, gesturing to a door that opened at the back of the lobby. Paula walked into what she thought was a lift, then she saw it was the base of a tube that curved away above her, and groaned. She always hated gravity manipulation. It sucked her up and propelled her along. The tube forked several times. She closed her eyes at the first one, and kept them closed. Secondary thought routines monitored her field scan function just in case, but her mind was removed from the journey. Her feet touched solid ground again, and she opened her eyes. The room was a huge pyramid-shape, with a vertical wall behind her and two perfectly transparent triangular roof sections angled down so their apex intersected the tip of the floor. Large colourful plants and high-tech furniture seemed to be fighting a war for groundspace, it was as if someone had built their living room in an exotic botanical garden. But it did provide a panoramic view out across Centrika Park. Paula realized she must be near the top of the black pyramid, where it emerged from the green bubble. Two people were walking towards her down a path of flowing white mist. She gave a moderately disapproving smile at their features. Morton, of course, hadn't changed at all; still a handsome man with a youthful face and thick chestnut hair. And, yes, he'd tied it back into a ponytail just like that first meeting all those hundreds of years ago. His companion was a perfect replica of the teenage Mellanie Rescorai, even down to the small yellow bikini she'd had on at that same encounter. The only real difference between then and now was their size; in keeping with Kerensk style they were both about ten percent bigger than people back then. "Very impressive," Paula said sardonically as they stood in front of her. She had to tip her head back to meet their gaze. "From anyone else that would be a compliment," Morton said, and leaned forward for a brief air-kiss. Paula almost pulled back, but allowed him the courtesy. "So who are you really?" she asked the Mellanie-alike. "Morty's friend," the girl said impishly. "I reconfigured myself in your honour. Morty's been having fever fits about you for the last couple of hours." "Has he now?" Paula arched an eyebrow to give him an expectant gaze. Morton blushed. "Thanks, Sa-hasha." "So what do you really look like?" Paula asked. The girl shrugged, then became motionless. Her skin shuddered as the muscle bands slowly flexed in reorganization, shifting the epidermal layers into different features. The golden tan paled down to a Nordic-white while her hair turned ginger-red. A wider, freckled face grinned back at Paula. The features weren't that different, Paula thought. There are some things you just never can cure a man of. "Equally pretty," she said lightly. "Why thank you." Sa-hasha gave Morton a kiss. "You two behave now." "I'll try," Morton said. The gravity tube door opened in the wall behind Paula, and the girl hopped in. "So?" Paula said. "So." "Have you reconfigured yourself in my honour?" "No. I always felt my body was a good one. Like you, I hung on to it." "Touche." Morton led her back down the misty path. "Do you like my place?" he asked, gesturing round the huge open space. "The room caters for everything, it morphs itself according to mood and need. Bedroom, bathroom, partyhall... whatever you need." "Grand view," Paula admitted. "You've done well for yourself." Which was being polite; after a thousand years Morton was the biggest corporate shark on the planet, controlling around fifteen per cent of Kerensk's economy. "But no Dynasty, it's just you isn't it?" "Dynasties are so last millennium. Can you believe Sheldon's old management methods are turning into a cult on the External Worlds? I've had kids, quite a lot actually; I wouldn't give up that part of being human for anything. I'm not going to commit myself to dependants; they're still family and a lot of them are doing well for themselves here. But I don't want anything I can't personally control; so New Gansu is all me." "I remember that trait from before, you always had to be in charge." "You say that like it's a bad thing. It helped get both of us here today, didn't it?" They came to a flat patch of tangled tree trunks which immediately slithered round each other to become a long couch. Purple puffball flowers bloomed from the dark-grey bark. Morton sat on one, and grinned at a reluctant Paula. "Reactive organics," he explained. "The base plant comes from a world nine hundred lightyears away. Not quite H-congruent, which always makes for more interesting biologicals. A little bit of sequencing, a few adaptive molecular filament enrichments, and- " he patted the flower cushion " voila." "Very nice," she sat on a flower cushion, feeling the air adjust under her. It was comfortable. "A different way of doing exactly what Commonwealth technology does anyway. Bravo. How much did it cost to develop?" "You never did get our ideology, did you?" "Oh, I get it, I just don't get the need for it." "What use is a baby?" She smiled faintly. "You've known I was here for two hours?" "An ultradrive ship lands at Kingsville, and you think I'm not interested? Hell, a pebble moves there and it grabs my attention. So I'm watching the sensors, and who drops out of the airlock but you. Next thing, the ship bounces over here." "And you show Sa-hasha an old file. How very flattering, you could have erased the memory of me centuries ago." "Learn by your mistakes, and I made some big ones back in the day. As you kindly showed me. It was a valuable lesson, one I don't need to repeat. But don't worry, I'm not obsessional, the level we're interacting on isn't my primary consciousness." "Really? Where is your primary?" He waved a hand languidly. "Out there, in my production systems, and my design arrays and my treasury and my broker boards and my research labs and my civic systems and my architecture and my synthesisers, and so on." "Do you sweep the floors as well?" "Subcontract," he winked. "Some things I have risen above." "I need some help." "I don't come cheap." "I have a currency you might be interested dealing in." "This should be good." "I was at Kingsville to check on the secure vault." Morton took a deep breath. "Who?" "The Cat." "I thought so," he said grudgingly. "It had to be me or her, and I know I've been behaving myself." "They copied her. About a hundred years ago." "Jesus!" he thumped his fist on the bark. "Who the fuck would be that crazy?" She wondered if she'd just captured the attention of his primary consciousness didn't ask. "The Accelerators." "Why?" "They're the ones who helped push Living Dream into the Pilgrimage." "As if the end of the galaxy isn't bad enough, we've got to have that bitch circling round the ruins laughing her ass off. Great. Just the fucking epitaph we deserve." "It gets better." Morton shot her a pained look. "The story about Primes being with the Oscian Empire fleet hit the unisphere an hour ago when Kazimir went to the Senate, please don't tell me the two are connected." "We believe the Accelerators are the ones who engineered the Prime Oscian alliance, and they also supplied the Primes with warships." "Who is we? I thought you worked for ANA?" "I do But ANA: Governance can't suspend the Accelerators without definitive proof." "And you mock us for being stupid on the ideology front! Jesus, you're letting the fate of the galaxy hang on a legal thread? Fuck the legalities; extraordinary times require extraordinary measures." "Yeah, so here I am asking for your help." Morton shook his head in disbelief. "I thought I'd left all this shit behind me. What sort of help?" "Do you know the Strahathen company?" "Yes. Medium scale manufacturing organization, specializes in astroengineering and high-level cybernetics, owned by Marthia Strahathen herself. Just a kid, only four hundred years old, but talented." "Well at least it's not one of your subsidiaries. We couldn't be sure." "Yeah," Morton grinned. "We take corporate core privacy quite seriously around here, as ANA knows. I do business with Marthia." "What kind of business?" "I supply various specialist systems, the odd electronic component. It's not a major tie up." "We believe the Accelerators have bought some cybernetic equipment from her, very specialized systems. Can you find out for me?" "No." "If the Accelerators are suspended their agents will all be exposed. Including The Cat. She'll be back in suspension where she belongs." "You don't get it. That wasn't: no I won't; that was: no I can't. Nobody breaks into our cores. It's a fundamental here." "I do get it, that's why I've come to you. I need the information stored in the Strahathen core. That's a fundamental. If I can prove the Accelerators have been manipulating the Prime that's it: game over." Morton sat up straighter. "Wait a minute, you are proposing an illegal hack?" "What's illegal here?" He laughed softly. "I don't believe this." "Nothing stays the same, Morton, not even me, not over twelve hundred years. Are you the same war hero that walked out of the new desert on Far Away?" "Don't pull this bullshit on me. Adaptivity is our ethos here. I can be whatever I have to be to survive." "So how do you propose to survive the end of the galaxy?" "I don't know, Paula," he growled savagely. "How about I just join the Living Dream Pilgrimage and live the life inside the Void, where I can make my existence perfect. Justine seems to be doing all right in there, and we now know the Skylords won't stop us from coming in, they don't care about the outside universe. Hell, they don't even understand there is an outside universe. Why do you think you're the good guy here? If we truly let evolution take its course, ANA and the Commonwealth will be washed away. The Void wins because it's the strongest. Perhaps it was meant to be." "We won't be washed away, we will die along with trillions of other living entities. And if evolution had taken its course, if the Anomine hadn't intervened and put a barrier around the Dyson Pair, this would be a Prime world by now. Did you fight them for nothing, Morton? I was on the ship that picked you up after we beat the Starflyer, remember? We won! We beat the monster and even got to go home after. I know exactly how that felt to you. Why don't you try honouring that memory?" "You don't change, do you. You really don't." She quirked her lips. "A few modifications here and there down the centuries. So now you've strutted your macho stuff and shown you're no pushover, how do I get to Strahathen's core?" Morton groaned half in anger. "Damnit. You know, that very first time you came to see me back on Oaktier, I knew I was in deep shit. I never did remember killing Tara and Wyobie, but you turning up and questioning me, you triggered something." Paula smiled. "Guilty conscience." "You knew right from the start, didn't you?" "I'd have to access my secure store to answer that for you. I don't carry those memories around with me any more, not in that kind of detail." "Cold and ruthless you called me in court." "What? Takes one to know one?" "Doesn't it just." "How do I get to the Strahathen core?" Paula asked again. "Those of us who count, people like me and Marthia, we keep an eye on each other," Morton said slowly. "Just in case. Contingencies we never are going to use. Nobody's done active interventions since the 3450 bloodbath, not among the real players here. Small fry, they're like fucking animals; you get a body washing up on the beach just about every day. But us, we're more restrained these days. Society needs a level of stability in order to remain functional." "Law and order is a prerequisite for civilization to work. I know it at a genetic level. The Waterwalker knew it instinctively. Welcome to the club. The Strahathen core?" "I came up with a theory last time I reviewed Strahathen's tactical safeguards. There's a way in, a physical loophole. How good is your ship? Does it have stealth?" "It has stealth." "Good. You'll need it." "Sounds interesting." Morton grinned. "You'll need covering fire, too. What the hell, the end of the galaxy's heading this way. There's nothing to lose anymore, right?" "The whole point of this is to make sure there is a tomorrow morning. Don't compromise yourself." "The day I can't handle the heat in this city is the day I quit. Speaking of which, do I need to be getting my starship ready to go trans-galactic?" "A big part of the Accelerator plan is factored around getting past the Raiel defences in the Wall. If they can, and the Pilgrimage gets inside the Void, we'll all be hitching a lift on the High Angel." "Shit. I'd better give you Security. You'll need him. That chink in Strahathen's protection isn't going to be easy to get through no matter how many tricky functions your biononics have; and don't be overconfident, our systems can match yours." Paula's eyes narrowed. "Security?" "You met him downstairs." "The ball cyborg?" "Yeah." "That's his name, Security?" "This is Kerensk. Here, everything does what it says on the box." "I'll review your plan and make a decision." She hesitated. "Did you ever see Mellanie again?" Morton took a deep breath, unable to hide the melancholy expression on his face. "Once or twice; in between those legendary walks of hers. She actually came to Kaluga her last time in the Commonwealth, before she walked back to the Silfen Motherholm. I liked to think it was because of what we used to have, but let's not fool ourselves here. By the end she was more alien than a Hancher. Hardly surprising after everything she'd experienced." "So she definitely went back to the Motherholm?" "She told me that was where she was going, but God knows how long it would take her on the paths. She might still be walking, or she could have got there an hour after leaving here. Why?" "There is a very small connection to Mellanie and these events." "You've got to be joking." "I don't think it's relevant, but I have to consider every possibility." "What's the connection?" he asked heatedly. "I think the Second Dreamer may be descended from her." Morton gave her an amazed stare. "You know who the Second Dreamer is?" "Ninety-nine percent sure, yes." "Of course you do; you're Paula Myo. Well all I can say is heaven help us if this guy's got Mellanie's blood running in him." "It's not a him." "The Second Dreamer is a female descendent of Mellanie's? Oh crap. That's it boys and girls, it's all over, head for the hills, or at least the next galaxy along." Paula gave him an amused glance. "Why do you say that?" "Come on. You met Mellanie, that determination of hers is a genuine irresistible force. You know I almost feel sorry for the Conservator at this point." "He's not worth your sorrow. Pity, perhaps; the same as anyone who's lost control of their life to outside forces." "I'm beginning to remember how that feels," he said drolly. "Yeah, you put up a real fight. Life getting boring here, Morton?" "Not as long as you keep visiting."