Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (103 page)

The sales and research program became like a lottery, with the prize going to only a few. But what a prize it was! The winners emerged under widespread publicity and then tried to continue their lives and vocations, envied by all who knew them.

One of the lucky winners was Princess Meghina, the infamous Mutati who wanted to be Human, and who had remained in that shape for so long that she could not change back. She lived in her own private apartments on Lorenzo’s orbital Pleasure Palace.

Far across the galaxy, at the Tulyan Starcloud, Eshaz was summoned to the private office of the First Elder. As Eshaz entered, he saw Kre’n standing at her central work table, with Dabiggio sitting in a sling chair on one side. Uncharacteristically, the big Tulyan Elder had a smile on his bronze-scaled face, which surprised Eshaz.

“And where is your Parvii friend and her vast fleet of podships?” Dabiggio asked.

“She’ll be back,” Eshaz said.

“With the ships?” Dabiggio’s large body caused the sling chair to sag low, just above the floor.

“If anyone can do it, she can.”

“So, she’s a super Parvii, just as Noah Watanabe is a super-Human. Is that it? My, you certainly have influential friends. But has she even sent a message? Any word at all?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Eshaz admitted.

“We should never have let her go,” Dabiggio said. He hefted himself out of the chair and stood by Eshaz, at least a head taller than him. “She admitted having information beyond the reach of our truthing touch … all that stuff about breedmasters, war priests, and unstoppable telepathic weapons. She was probably a spy, and has given military intelligence about us to the Parviis.”

“After millions of years, the Parviis have a lot of dirty tricks,” another Elder said, a thin male who was one of the followers of Dabiggio. “The way they magnify themselves should tell us something. They never are what they appear to be. How do we know they even resemble Humans in their appearance? Maybe they’re something else entirely, something they don’t want us to know about. Think about the way their swarms move, too, defying physics and even the imagination. They breathe without air? What are we to believe about such a race?”

“Even if Tesh Kori brings the ships,” Dabiggio said, “we shouldn’t let her back into the starcloud. I say we keep the mindlink barrier up and strike the fleet the way we hit the swarms.”

“If she brings the ships, we’re going to let her in,” Kre’n said, interrupting the exchange between the Elders. “Bringing them here would be a feat never seen in the annals of history.”

“And you would sacrifice our race just to see it?” Dabiggio asked. “There is no limit to the tricks they could pull on us if we let them in. These are
Parviis
we’re dealing with, remember, not innocent children.”

“We’re all in trouble anyway,” Kre’n said. “Even if she brings us half that many, or a hundredth, we have to take the chance.”

“OK,” Dabiggio said, grudgingly. “But if she doesn’t get back soon we need to embark on repair missions with what we have, making a last-ditch effort to save what’s left of the galaxy.”

“Agreed,” Kre’n said.

“She’ll be back,” Eshaz repeated. “I know she will.”

At that moment, thousands and thousands of Tulyan repair teams were being assembled on the three worlds of the starcloud, along with the potions and other supplies they needed for their work. As it looked now, there would be many more teams than ships, a reality that would restrict the efforts considerably.

To deal with this serious limitation, the Elders were assembling reports from all of their web
caretakers. The trouble spots were being prioritized on a triage basis, like injuries on an immense galactic battlefield.

Chapter Seventy

We have discovered six immortals—the Mutati princess, four Humans, and a Salducian diplomat. It is not too early to declare all of them immortal. Their cellular structures have changed dramatically, with the addition of what we are calling ‘warrior antibodies’—proteins in their bodies that annihilate all disease pathogens, both overt and latent. As stipulated in the contracts they have signed, we are now drawing their blood and flash freezing it. This offers the potential that much more of the elixir can be produced, and that we will not need to worry so much about using up the plasma of Noah Watanabe.

—Dr. Hurk Bichette, report to Francella Watanabe

Whenever Lorenzo gambled in his magnificent orbital casino, he did not relax, not even when he was winning, which was virtually all of the time, due to the unregulated programming of the games and machines. He always had a lot on his mind, and as the revenues poured in, he was not much happier than Francella.

One glittering evening he stood in front of his elegantly dressed patrons to promote his newest game, which featured a smiling Mutati simulation. Behind him an oversized mechanical creature changed smoothly into a variety of alien and animal shapes, while the patrons oohed, aahed, and hissed good-naturedly.

“The players sit at those stations,” Lorenzo said, pointing to chairs and screens that ringed the faux Mutati, which continued to metamorphose. “When the bell rings, you have one minute to place your bets and select from the shapes on the screen, as you guess which shape the monster will take when it stops.”

“Like a roulette wheel?” a woman asked.

Lorenzo laughed. “Certainly not. It’s like
a Mutati!
Can’t you see that?”

The crowd laughed, and people moved forward to take seats at the play stations.

At a gesture from Lorenzo, the large mechanical creature stopped metamorphosing, and became what looked like a flesh-fat Mutati, in its hideous natural state.

Leering at the creature, a drunken nobleman asked loudly, “Is that what Princess Meghina looks like when she takes off her makeup?”

Some people laughed nervously, while others gasped in shock, since it was known that Lorenzo had stood steadfastly by his courtesan wife, and had even given her private apartments on the orbiter.

“I shall consider that the liquor talking,” Lorenzo said with a hard stare. “Otherwise, I would have to create a new game just for you, based upon the torture chambers in the Gaol of Brimrock.”

This elicited hearty laughter among the nobles and ladies.

“It’s nice to see all of you enjoying yourselves,” Lorenzo said, “but keep this in mind. My lovely wife will get the last laugh on all of us. She has not only changed her appearance to that of a Human, but she may have become immortal, enabling her to dance on our graves.”

This dampened the amusement somewhat, but Lorenzo knew these foolish people would soon be back at the games, transferring their assets to him. He only had to make their losses amusing, and even verbal jousts served that purpose. The gamblers would keep coming back.

In the midst of the throng, Lorenzo recognized a tall, sharp-featured man and nodded to him. It was Jacopo Nehr’s younger brother, Giovanni. Lorenzo heard he had been traveling, so he must have made it back to Canopa just before the cessation of podship travel.

As the Mutati game got underway, Lorenzo slipped into an office to discuss the events of the day with his attaché, Pimyt. The Doge Emeritus greatly appreciated the loyalty of this aging Hibbil, and had raised his salary to even more than he had earned as a government employee.

“What are you doing with all of your money?” Lorenzo asked. He and his aide sat at a table where cups of steaming mocaba juice had just been set out for them.

“Hiring bounty hunters,” the Hibbil said, as he took a sip of the beverage without waiting for it to cool. High temperatures never seemed to bother him, though this was not reportedly a Hibbil characteristic.

“Eh?”

“To bring Noah in.” Pimyt had wet fur on his upper lip, from the drink.

“Oh, but you don’t have to pay for that personally. Just pay it out of my accounts.”

“I’d like to bring Number One in with my own money. Somehow, it sounds more special.”

“Ah, nice idea. I’ll raise your salary to make up for the payments. Come to think of it, maybe I’ll pay for some bounty hunters myself, making it like one of my gambling ventures. I am a lucky man, you know. Despite my recent political challenges.”

“You are, indeed. Now, onto business. So far, even with the help of our powerful corporate friends on Canopa, we cannot locate Noah’s hidden headquarters. We could use help from the new Doge, but to get to your son we have to go through Francella, and she’s gone into seclusion.”

“So much for her promises of access to Anton. Well, we’ll have to get Noah without him. I want him more than anything.”

“We’ll get him anyway. I have a devious move in mind. Since Anton’s ascension to power, Noah has gone to ground and is no longer attacking government facilities, perhaps under some secret arrangement that we don’t know about. Even so, we can make it look like he’s still operating.”

Pimyt laid out an intriguing plan, causing Lorenzo’s eyes to narrow in concern.

“We can penetrate some of the corporate guard forces on Canopa and destroy assets, making it look like the Guardians did it.”

“Which corporate assets?”

“NehrGem. They have a jewelry-manufacturing operation in the Valley of the Princes.”

“But Jacopo Nehr is one of our friends.”

“And he hasn’t been helping enough, not as much as some of our other friends. I have incontrovertible evidence, if you want to review it.”

“No, that’s your job. I trust you.”

“Thank you. Maybe Jacopo has been distracted by his military duties, but—as you know—we don’t accept excuses.”

Lorenzo nodded.

“We won’t do major damage to his facility,” Pimyt said, “only wrecking a small percentage of it. Just enough to anger Jacopo and get him working harder to find our bad guy. We’ll use some of your backup Red Berets, the ones stationed down on Canopa.”

“Go ahead and set it up.”

The little Hibbil nodded. “One more thing, Your Magnificence. This just came in from the government.” He activated a telebeam unit on the table, causing a black-and-white message to flash on, floating in the air. The words were backwards to Lorenzo, so he touched a pad to spin it around his way.

“Interesting, wouldn’t you say?” Pimyt said.

“To say the least.”

Truly, this was startling news, and Lorenzo was not sure what to make of it. The shutdown of podships had enlarged. No longer confined to Human and Mutati worlds, it now encompassed the entire galaxy … and neither he nor Pimyt could imagine why.

Chapter Seventy-One

Princess Meghina is expressing a desire to come out of seclusion and mingle with the patrons of the orbital casino. Polls show that much of the public is willing to assume the best about her, asserting that she should never have been born a Mutati in the first place.

—Telebeam report to Francella Watanabe, read just before one of her ranting tirades

Ostensibly, the damage to NehrGem’s industrial complex appeared minor, as only a small section of one jewelry-manufacturing building had been destroyed by the remote-guided rocket, and fire suppression systems had prevented further damage. But that section had contained the rarest gemstones in Jacopo Nehr’s collection, garnered from mining operations around the galaxy. If podship travel did not resume, he could not hope to replace these losses. Even some piezoelectric emeralds of the type used in nehrcom transceivers had been destroyed, making it an Alliance security matter and a subject of utmost military importance.

In a matter of hours, forensic evidence revealed that the perpetrators had been Noah Watanabe’s Guardians, based upon tracking records that turned up on fragments of the rocket. And, with a brashness that made Jacopo’s blood boil, Noah even sent a telebeam message to Jacopo’s offices afterward, claiming full responsibility for the attack.

Feverish with anger, Jacopo ordered immediate retaliation, and he began searching for a place to strike. This proved to be a challenge, since the perpetrators could not be located. They were like wisps of wind, gusting up here and there and then disappearing into thin air. As a consequence, the targets were limited … but not non-existent.

Within two days he set his sights on a warehouse and storage yard where the confiscated assets of Noah Watanabe were held under government seal. These were items that had been removed from the Ecological Demonstration Project and from the orbital EcoStation.

Seeking no approval from Doge Anton or the Hall of Princes, Jacopo launched a full-scale bombing attack on the warehouse and storage yard, using one of the merchant prince aerial squadrons. Not surprisingly, since there were no defensive weapons at the facility, he succeeded in completely destroying the target.

That evening, he was confronted at his office by one of Doge Anton’s Red Beret officers, Lieutenant Colonel Erry Pont. Sputtering in protestation while the officer read a list of charges against him, Jacopo summoned his own security personnel to prevent the man from arresting him. Six uniformed NehrCorp guards rushed into the office and surrounded the red-uniformed officer.

“You cannot hope to resist the power of the Doge,” the officer said calmly. Jacopo recognized him as the son of Gilforth Pont, one of the leading noble-born princes. In an obviously intended slight, Lieutenant Colonel Pont had not removed his red cap, and gazed at Jacopo with an arrogant expression.

“Take off your hat in my presence,” Nehr demanded.

The officer glanced around, then did so. But his arrogant expression did not change and he said, “In your vengeful zeal, General Nehr, you overlooked some rather important legal details, which I would be happy to explain while I take you into custody.”

“I will
not
be taken into custody!”

“Even though you are in command of the Merchant Prince Armed Forces,” Pont explained, “you carried out an unauthorized and illegal course of action. Those were no longer Guardian assets you destroyed. They were the assets of the Merchant Prince Alliance, since they had been officially confiscated and placed under seal.”

“Mere technicalities. I’ll explain it all to Doge Anton myself.”