The Night's Dawn Trilogy Read Free Page A

silent voice. If the voidhawk had had lungs, Athene thought it would have sighed at that moment.
    I know, she said wistfully. It had been increasingly obvious during the last few weeks. The once omnipotent energy patterning cells were now struggling to open a wormhole interstice. Where over half a century ago there had been a feeling that a single swallow manoeuvre could span the galaxy, the pair of them now experienced a muted sense of relief if a planned fifteen light-year swallow was accomplished only a light-month short of the required coordinate. Damn the geneticists. Is parity so much to ask for? she demanded.
    One day perhaps they will make ship and captain live as long as each other. But this which we have now, I feel a rightness to it. Someone has to mother our children. You will be as good a mother as you have been a captain. I know this.
    The sudden burst of self-satisfied conviction in themental voice made her grin. Sticky lashes batted some of the moisture away. Raising ten children at my age. Goodness!
    You will do well. They will prosper. I am happy.
    I love you, Iasius . If I was allowed to have my life again, I would never change a second of it.
    I would.
    You would? she asked, startled.
    Yes. I would spend one day as a human. To see what it was like.
    Believe me, both the pleasures and the pain are greatly exaggerated.
    Iasius chuckled. Optically sensitive cells protruding like blisters from its hull located the Romulus habitat, and the starship felt for its mass with a tiny ripple in the spacial distortion field its energy patterning cells were generating. The habitat’s solidity registered in its consciousness, a substantial mote orbiting the outside edge of the F-ring. Substantial but hollow, a bitek polyp cylinder forty-five kilometres long, ten wide; it was one of the two original voidhawk bases germinated by the hundred families back in 2225. There were two hundred and sixty-eight similar habitats orbiting Saturn now, along with their subsidiary industrial stations, their numbers tangible evidence of just how important the bitek starships had become to the whole Edenist economy.
    The starship sent power flashing through its patterning cells, focusing energy towards infinity, the loci distorting space outside the hull, but never enough to open a wormhole interstice. They rode the distortion wave towards the habitat like a surfer racing for the beach, quickly accelerating to three gees. A secondary manipulation of the distortion field generated a counter-acceleration force for the benefit of the crew, providing them an apparent acceleration of one gee. A smooth and comfortable ride, unmatched by Adamist starships with their fusion drives.
    Athene knew she would never be quite so comfortable if she ever took a trip in a voidhawk again. With Iasius she could always feel the nothingness of the vacuum flowing by; a sensation she equated with being in a rowing-boat onsome country river, and letting her hand trail through the calm water. Passengers never received that feeling. Passengers were meat.
    Go on, she told the starship. Call for them.
    All right.
    She smiled for both of them at the eagerness in the tone.
    Iasius called. Opening its affinity full, projecting a wordless shout of joy and sorrow over a spherical zone thirty astronomical units in radius. Calling for mates.
    Like all voidhawks, Iasius was a creature of deep space, unable to operate close to the confines of a strong gravity field. It had a lenticular shape, measuring one hundred and ten metres in diameter, thirty metres deep at the centre. The hull was a tough polyp, midnight blue in colour, its outer layer gradually boiling away in the vacuum, replaced by new cells growing up from the mitosis layer. Internally, twenty per cent of its mass was given over to specialist organs—nutrient reserve bladders, heart pumps supplying the vast capillary network, and neuron cells—all packaged together neatly within a cylindrical