Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (12 page)

He brought the grid-plane as low as he could over the trouble spot, for a better look. Below him was a wide, dry riverbed with a rough, disturbed surface of crystalline soil and black volcanic rock. The disturbed area was pulsing, surging with ground and air action and then diminishing … as if breathing. He had seen this before, and needed to wait for just the right moment.

Most of Eshaz’s people remained back at the Tulyan Starcloud, their home at the edge of the galaxy. In that sacred place they thought of the old days … or tried to forget them. His brethren harbored secrets that could never be discussed with any other race, things known only to the Tulyans since time immemorial, and perhaps even before that. Much of the highly restricted information had to do with Timeweb, the way everything in the galaxy was connected by gossamer threads that were only visible to certain sentients, and then only during heightened states of consciousness.

There had been signs of increasing problems on Canopa and in other sectors of the galaxy, causing the Tulyans great concern. Handling the touch-pad controls of the grid-plane expertly, Eshaz watched the swirls of glassy dust diminish. He would have to move quickly.

Without hesitation he set the aircraft down, off to one side of the broad riverbed, a couple of hundred meters from the debris. He didn’t like to think about what would happen if Timeweb continued to decay.

It would mean the end of everything.

He stepped from the craft and made his way across the rough, rocky terrain. Every few steps Eshaz knelt to examine the ground, touching its disturbed surface, studying stones, small broken plants, and dirt. He moved closer, and confirmed his suspicions. This was no ordinary debris field, nothing that had been caused by the natural geological or weather forces of Canopa itself. He studied a blast-pattern of dirt and fragments that had been broken away from the planetary crust, and shook his head sadly. It was exactly as he had feared, a very serious situation indeed.

He watched as a patch of crystalline soil and debris began to swirl only a few meters from him, then faded from view. Unmistakably, he was looking at the early stage of a timehole, a defect in the cosmos through which matter could slip between the layers of the web and, for all practical purposes, disappear from the space-time continuum.

Bringing forth a sorcerer’s bag that he always carried in a body pouch, Eshaz stepped forward carefully, until he reached the edge of the flickering area. He sprinkled a handful of green dust on it, raised his hands high and uttered the ancient incantation that had always been used to ward off Galara, the evil spirit of the undergalaxy.

“
Galara, ibillunor et typliv unat Ubuqqo!”

Now the Tulyan bowed his scaly bronze head in reverence to Ubuqqo, the Sublime Creator of all that was known and all that was good, and uttered a private prayer for the salvation of the galaxy.

“Ubuqqo, anret pir huyyil.”

This was the strongest form of invocation that he knew, for it did not request anything for himself, and not merely for this small section of Canopan crust, either, only a pinprick in the cosmos. Rather, Eshaz’s prayer stretched and stretched along the cosmic web … the miraculous filament that connected everyone, ultimately, to the Sublime Creator.

But agitated by the Tulyan’s magic, the timehole grew larger, and Eshaz felt the ground crumbling beneath him. Bravely, he held steady and refused to retreat. Each timehole was a little different, and all shared something in common: unpredictability. But this one seemed to be in its beginning stages.

Debris swirled all around him, and he felt a powerful force tugging at him, drawing him toward a realm of existence where he would no longer have thoughts and would no longer experience independent movements. It was not entropy, for that natural force of cosmic decay did not waste matter by discarding it into another realm. Entropy did not waste anything, and instead reused every little bit of matter in some other useful form.

No, this was something else … the eternal, unyielding and opportunistic force of the undergalaxy, working on every weakness, trying to exploit it for its own voracious purposes. He had no doubt that the undergalaxy—like the galaxy that he wanted so desperately to save—was a living entity, with a powerful force that drove it. And this timehole, like so many others, threatened to cast the galaxy into oblivion.

The ground cracked and shook, and the heavy Tulyan fell to one knee. He felt aches and pains in his joints and muscles, something he had never experienced before in his long life.

Timeweb’s pain is my pain
, he thought, since his own condition seemed to run parallel with the recent precipitous decline of the web.

He repeated the invocation.

“
Galara, ibillunor et typliv unat Ubuqqo! … Ubuqqo, anret pir huyyil!”

A rift opened beneath him, as deep as a grave, and he tumbled into it. As he struggled to climb out, the ground rolled and knocked him back in. Swirling dirt piled on top of him, and though Tulyans did not breathe, he knew what might happen next. The hole could open up completely, and send him hurtling through into the stygian oblivion of the undergalaxy. Still, like an insect struggling to make its way through a storm, he fought to stand up and free himself.

Fumbling in his pocket, he located the sorcerer’s pouch, and scattered its entire contents around him. A thunderous noise sounded, followed by a cacophonous grating sound, like huge continents rubbing together. He felt warm air.

Suddenly, with a flash of green light, he was tossed out of the hole and onto the rocky ground. The air was still, and there were no sounds. The rift had disappeared and the land looked almost normal, with hardly any sign of disturbance. Even his grid-plane, which he had parked away from the center of the disruption, appeared unharmed.

Eshaz rubbed a sore shoulder, and felt the pain diminishing already. With his recuperative powers it would not last long. He tested the surface of the ground carefully by putting a scaly foot on it, and then taking a step. It felt solid. Presently he walked on it, toward the waiting aircraft.

As he entered his plane to leave, worries assailed him like a swarm of insects. There had been too many timeholes appearing … and too many missing Tulyans, who presumably were being sucked into the openings. Symptomatic of the heightening crisis, fifteen of his people had disappeared in the past year … and hardly any before that.

The grid-plane lifted off, and he looked out through the window. Amazingly, the ground hardly looked disturbed at all, and even had wildflowers and small succulent plants growing on it. He clutched the empty sorcerer’s pouch in one hand, and wondered if he had actually repaired that timehole, or if it had just shifted position in relation to the strands of Timeweb. He had ways of finding out, and would do so.

Eshaz tapped the touch pads of the instrument panel, causing the aircraft to accelerate along the planetary flight control system. With a little stretch of his imagination he could see similarities between this airgrid, with its unseen web of interlocked electronics, and Timeweb, which encompassed so much more. In each case, ships traveled along strands that guided them safely. Where Timeweb was the work of the Sublime Creator, however, the airgrid networks on various Human planets had been invented and installed by much lesser beings … and the equipment operated on infinitely smaller scales. It could not be overlooked, either, that Timeweb was a
natural
system, while airgrids were not; they were intrusions. Airgrids were, however, ecologically benign, and not known to cause damage to plants, animals, or other aspects of nature.

The Tulyan wished he could do more for the empyrean web, that his people were again in control of podships as they had been in the long-ago days when he had been a pilot himself—before Parvii swarms came and took the pods away. At one time, Tulyans could travel freely around the galaxy, performing their essential work on a much larger scale.

An entire sorcerer’s bag expended for one timehole. It would take him nearly a day to restore the ingredients in the repair kit. For a moment he despaired, as the efforts of the Tulyans seemed so inefficient. But in a few moments the feeling passed, and he vowed to continue his work for as long as possible.

He was fighting more than timeholes, or the inefficiencies of dealing with them. On top of everything else, Eshaz and other Tulyans had been experiencing bodily aches and pains … for the first time in the history of their race. This suggested to them that their bodies might be undergoing a process of disintegration into homogeneous chemical soups and dust piles … along with every other organism in the dying galaxy.

Chapter Fourteen

The Theoscientific Doctrine tells us that our religious and scientific principles are indistinguishable from one another.

—
Scienscroll
, 1 Neb 14-15

After gambling all night in the palazzo casino with members of the royal court, Doge Lorenzo took a ground-jet to the dagg races on the other side of the broad river that bisected the capital city of Elysoo. This was one of his favorite haunts for placing bets.

It was Monday morning, and he should be attending theoscientific services at the Cathedral of the Stars. Right about now, the Moral Instructors—elderly women in silver robes—would be reading passages from the
Scienscroll
, perhaps even admonishing the parishioners about the sins of gambling. He didn’t care. The meddlesome old maids of the Cathedral would not dare to speak directly against him, the powerful leader of the Merchant Prince Alliance. Still, he would not want a confrontation with them; he was a devout believer in the holiest of all writings, the
Scienscroll
. He even knew the most famous verses by heart, such as the one from the Book of Visions:

Know ye the Way of the Princes,

for it is the path to gold and glory.

He liked another passage even more, and frequently quoted it:

May mine enemies tumble into space,

and crumble to dust!

There!
he thought, after murmuring the verses to himself.
I’ve fulfilled my theoscientific obligations for the day.

As usual, he went to the dagg track with no fanfare whatsoever, accompanied by only a handful of plainclothed security guards. His Hibbil attaché, Pimyt, went along as well. Dressed in red-and-brown capes and matching fez hats, the two of them entered the Doge’s private box, which was decorated in wallpaper that featured sports calligraphy and holos of race champions in action.

Lorenzo stood at one of the windows of the enclosure and watched spectators stream into the stands. Out on the track—over slopes and around hairpin turns—daggs made practice runs, dusty brown-and-tan animals that resembled the canines of Earth but had tiny heads … proportionately less than half as large as those of greyhounds. Each dagg had a large, bulbous eye in the center of its face—dominating the front like a headlight—and a snout-mouth beneath the boxlike jaw.

“While we await the first race, I thought you might like to use the time productively,” Pimyt suggested. After removing his cap the furry Hibbil knelt and tried to open the clasps on a shiny black valise that he had brought with him. He pressed on the release buttons, but only two of the four fasteners popped open.

“Must we discuss business here?” Lorenzo protested, watching him with irritation. He heard the crowd roar and looked to see the daggs and their trainers—many of them alien—parade in front of the main viewing stands and private boxes.

“You’ve said yourself that every bit of time is useful, Sire, and you are extremely busy … so there is hardly a moment available to show you the latest in Hibbil technology.” He waved casually at the valise. “Of course, if you would prefer not to see this.…”

The Doge sighed. “You know me too well, my friend. Aside from my weakness for betting, I do have a fondness for gadgets … and for women, lest I forget, and not necessarily in that order.”

With a curt smile, Pimyt struggled to open the lid of his valise. “I think you will like this, Sire.” He slammed a furry fist on the bag, but the last clasp resisted him.

As Doge Lorenzo gazed dispassionately at his attaché, he had a hard time believing that Pimyt had once been the Regent of the Merchant Prince Alliance. A
Hibbil.
Though he hadn’t realized it at the time (and still didn’t), Pimyt had not been given any real power or responsibility during his term in office. It had only been ceremonial, and something of a well-concealed joke, a way of treading water between doge regimes while seeming to show respect for the Hibbil Republic, an important economic ally who provided the best machines available, at reasonable prices. His tenure in office had only lasted for a few months, until the Council of Forty elected a new leader, but it had helped cement relations between the Human and Hibbil societies.

Finally, Pimyt won his argument with the stubborn clasp and swung the lid of the valise open.

Intrigued, Lorenzo leaned closer to look.

“We call this a ‘hibbamatic,’” Pimyt announced proudly, as he brought out several flat, geometric pieces and snapped them together on the floor, forming a box with octagonal sides. He slid open a little door on the structure, permitting Lorenzo to see that it glowed pale orange inside, as if with an internal fire.

“Strange device.” The Doge reached out and placed a finger against one side of the box, which was around a meter in height. It felt cool to the touch.

“This is one of our smaller models, a machine that can be programmed to build a variety of small consumer and military devices out of programmable raw materials” Pimyt had noticeable pride in his voice. “Here, let me show you.”

The Doge squinted as he watched the Hibbil remove a hand-sized cartridge from inside the lid of the valise. The selected cartridge had a keypad on one side, and Pimyt tapped a code into it. He then tossed the cartridge into the geometric structure and slid the door shut. Moments later, a tray opened on the opposite side and a small, red-handled weapon slid out and clattered onto the tray.