The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton Page A

hurried over the cold floor to the small brick-arch fireplace. The embers still were giving off a little heat, warming the clothes he had left on the back of a chair. He dressed hurriedly, pulling up badly worn leather trousers and tucking an equally worn shirt into the waist before struggling into a thick green sweater. As always, the fabric smelled of the stables and their varied occupants, a melange of fur and food and cages, but after six years at the guild he was so used to it that he hardly noticed. He sat back on the cot to pull his boots on; they really were too small for him now. With the last eighteen months seeing more genistars in the stables and Edeard taking on official commission duties, their little branch of the Eggshaper Guild had seen a lot more money coming in. Hardly a fortune, but sufficient to pay for new clothes and boots; it was just that he never had time to visit the cobbler. He winced slightly as he stood up, trying to wriggle his toes, which were squashed together. It was no good; he definitely was going to take an hour out of his busy day to visit the cobbler. He grinned.
But not today.
    Today was when the village’s new well would be finished. It was a project in which the Eggshaper Guild was playing an unusually large part. Better than that: For him it was an innovative part. Edeard knew how many doubters there were in the village: basically everybody. But Master Akeem had quietly persuaded the elder council to give his young apprentice a chance. They had said yes only because they had nothing to lose.
    He made his way downstairs, then hurried across the narrow rear yard to the warmth of the guild dining hall. Like the dormitory, it was a sharp reminder that the Eggshaper Guild had known better times, a lot better. There were still two rows of long bench tables in the big hall, enough to seat fifty shapers and their guests on feast nights. At the far end the huge fireplace had iron baking ovens built into the stonework on either side, and the roasting spit was large enough to handle a whole pig. This morning, the fire was just a small blaze tended by a couple of ge-monkeys. Normally, people did not let the genistars get anywhere near naked flames—they were as skittish as any terrestrial animal—but Edeard’s orders were lucid and embedded deeply enough that the ge-monkeys could manage the routine without panicking.
    Edeard sat at the table closest to the fire. His mind directed a batch of instructions to the ge-monkeys by using simple telepathic longtalk. He used a pidgin version of Querencia’s mental language, visualizing the sequence of events he wanted in conjunction with simple command phrases, making sure that the emotional content was zero (so many people forgot that and then could not understand why the genistars did not obey properly). The ge-monkeys started scurrying around; they were big creatures, easily the weight of a full-gown human male, with six long legs along the lower half of the body and six even longer arms on top, the first two pairs so close together that they seemed to be sharing a shoulder joint, while the third pair was set farther back along a very flexible spine. Their bodies were covered in a wiry white fur, with patches worn away on joints and palms to reveal a leathery cinder-colored hide. The head profile was the same as in all the genistar variants: a plain globe with a snout very close to that of a terrestrial dog; the ears were situated on the lower part of the head back toward the stumpy neck, each one sprouting three petals of long creased skin thin enough to be translucent.
    A big mug of tea was placed in front of Edeard, swiftly followed by thick slices of toast, a bowl of fruit, and a plate of scrambled eggs. He tucked in heartily enough, already running through the critical part of the day’s operation at the bottom of the well. His farsight picked up Akeem when the old man was still in the lodge, the residence for senior shapers