Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (135 page)

“Of course,” Subi said. “To avoid calling attention to him, he bears no military markings or indications, but he is in fact a soldier.”

“We can take care of ourselves,” Acey said. “We don’t need a metal bodyguard.”

“To the contrary, we have intelligence information that HibAdu remnants are still on Siriki. They’re hiding out, waiting to be found by their comrades, or waiting to regroup.”

“We can scout around for you, then,” Dux said.

The adjutant nodded. “Right. You’re still on duty. Transmit messages to us through the robot.”

“I am your servant,” Kekur said.

“So we’re spies now,” Dux said.

Acey grunted, a sound that Dux recognized as agreement.

When the robot arrived, Acey flipped open a control panel on its chest. Apparently he had noticed the same potential deficiencies as Dux. Then he said, “Okay, this will give me something to tinker with when I’m bored. I always have a few tools with me.”

“I don’t need any adjustment,” Kekur said. The lights on his faceplate blinked faster, but some of them were still out.

“Everything will be fine as long as you follow our commands,” Acey said.

“I am your servant,” Kekur repeated.

“There are certain things he won’t do,” Subi said.

“Such as?” Dux asked.

“He has one of our enhanced security programs, so he won’t follow risky commands, anything that, in his estimation, could put the two of you in increased danger.”

“What if we want to override him?” Acey asked.

“Not possible,” Kekur said.

“Can we still do what
we
want?” Dux asked Subi.

The robot answered. “As your servant, I would not prevent you from going into danger, but I would warn you before taking countermeasures. Then, if you insist on being foolhardy, I will do whatever I can to protect you.”

“You must do so without trying to block us,” Acey said with a grin.

“Only if possible,” Kekur said. The faceplate lights dimmed, then went off as his transitional programming settled down.

* * * * *

“I guess Noah doesn’t think we can do much to help,” Acey said. Staring out the window of the hoverbus, he brushed a hand through his bristly black hair. “I didn’t think he’d agree to let us go so easily. I mean, if we were key people, he would have begged for us to stay.”

Seated beside him, Dux said, “You’re the one who said we’re just a couple of kids and no one will miss us. Besides, we must have some value, or they wouldn’t have sent Kekur to watch out for us.”

The robot was seated across the aisle from them. A handful of Sirikan citizens sat in other seats, chatting nervously about difficulties they had been experiencing since the HibAdus first attacked.

“Well, cousin,” Dux said, “we are young, and we have been a bit flighty in the past, jumping from one galactic adventure to another.”

“We returned to the Guardians, didn’t we? That means we have some staying power after all.”

Dux smiled. “You surprise me, Acey. You’re talking like I do.” He nudged the shorter, more muscular boy. “Maybe I should play your part from now on—the aggressive one, the one who’s always getting us into trouble. You can be the cerebral one.”

“This time it was your idea, cousin.”

Dux felt a little guilty about making the special request to see their grandmother, since the boys wanted to contribute what they could to the war effort. But they had to find out if she was all right. The old woman lived in the back country, without modern conveniences. They had no way to contact her without going to see her. She was a feisty old bird, though.…

“Say,” Acey said. “What are you smiling about?”

“Was I? Uh, I was just thinking about the time Grandmamá chased us around her yard with a stick.”

“I remember, because we accidentally ran over her vegetable garden with that aircar we stole. Boy, was she mad!”

“
We
stole? You were driving, Acey, and it was your idea to steal it. I was trying to get you to slow down and take it back.”

“Nobody slows me down, buddy.”

“Just wait ‘til Grandmamá gets ahold of you.”

Acey flushed. “You’ve got a point there.”

* * * * *

Noah stood in an opulent library that contained shimmering holobooks on simulated shelves, the personal collection of Princess Meghina. While waiting for Subi Danvar and his top military officers to report for a meeting, he scanned the titles. To his surprise, several of them were about environmental issues, and he recognized a number of the titles. A large number of other books were about animal welfare.

He recalled seeing the famous courtesan more than six months ago on the pod station where he was taken prisoner by Red Berets. Meghina had tried to prevent Francella from shooting him. The few times he had met the Princess, she had always been kind to him. Now, in one of her private rooms, he felt her kindness, her concern for the environment, for animals, and the compassion she had showed toward him.

Only half conscious of what he was doing, Noah rubbed the back of his neck, beneath the collar where his skin had been getting thick and rough. For several days now the areas of coarse skin had slowed their expansion, and thus far they had not appeared anywhere that people could easily notice. Just the day before, he had finally confided in Subi Danvar about his condition, and the adjutant had suggested that he see a doctor. Noah refused, saying he was too busy for that, and swore him to secrecy.…

In the library, time seemed to slow around Noah, and his thoughts drifted. He envisioned himself out in space, at first inside a podship as it sped along a podway, a strand of galactic webbing. Then, as moments passed, he felt the irregular skin seem to cover his entire body. Then his face merged into the flesh of the podship, and appeared on the prow of the vessel. With his own eyes and the optic sensors on the hull of the podship, he saw far into the galaxy. He was back in Timeweb.

This metamorphosis felt supremely comfortable to him, and very familiar. As moments passed, questions seeped into his mind, and he wondered if he had always been this ancient podship. If he was the oldest of spacefaring creatures, perhaps this explained why—even in Human form—he had come up with the concept of galactic ecology, of planets and star systems interconnected in one large environment.

As he surged through space, Noah suddenly felt himself buffeted, so that he could hardly remain on the podway infrastructure. He slowed way down, and then came to a stop in space.

A timestorm is coming
, he thought, with a sudden awareness of information that had not been available to him previously. Timeweb didn’t seem so alien to him anymore. He was part of it, and it was part of him.

Space warped around the podship, an immense flexing back and forth. Noah did all he could to remain on the webbing. Just ahead, a planet came into view, and its name surfaced in his consciousness: Yaree. It was one of the unaligned worlds, where numerous galactic races coexisted.

Beyond the planet, a jagged hole appeared in space, a spot of black-blackness, so intensely dark that it was readily visible to him. Gradually the hole shifted, grew larger, and he saw a bright flash of green light inside it.

As he stared, transfixed, Noah detected an illuminated object coming toward him from the hole in space, going at a very high rate of speed. As it came into his visual range, he realized, in amazement, what it was.

EcoStation!
The orbital facility that had once been his, and which Doge Lorenzo had commandeered for his own purposes.

As if drawn by a magnet, the space station rushed toward Noah at an apparent speed that should have torn it apart. But it held together and drew closer. Entranced, Noah watched it, unable to move.

Just when the space station seemed about to slam into him, it suddenly slowed and floated in space, not far away. The facility, though largely intact, was badly dented, as if it was an ocean-going vessel that had survived a hurricane. Some of its modules had split open, and loose contents and other parts spilled out into the weightless void, along with bodies. Concerned, Noah guided his podship-self in that direction, to do what he could. But something resisted his forward movement and reduced his speed, like a powerful current going against him.

I think the space station was in the undergalaxy and now it’s back
, Noah thought, as he made slow headway.

But he realized that he knew very little about the adjacent galaxy, only that timeholes in the membrane between the two realms provided occasional glimpses. And he recalled an earlier vision, in which he had seen a small Parvii swarm hiding in the other galaxy, near the bolt hole they had used to escape from their sacred fold. Assuming the vision had been accurate, he had always wondered what had happened to them.

Now, as he drew near the space station and its widening debris field, the timehole sealed over behind them, and vanished from view. Then everything became hazy, just a wash of gray-blackness in all directions.

Noah blinked his eyes, and found himself back on Siriki, standing in the private library. He watched as Subi Danvar and other uniformed officers filed into the room for their scheduled meeting.

I’m not going crazy
, Noah told himself. He had been through such paranormal shifts before, and although they never felt entirely comfortable to him, he was getting more used to them.

But he was still left with an uncountable number of unanswered questions.

Chapter Thirty-Three

War is like a lover. It lures you, embraces you, and rejects you. It lifts you up and tears you down—and just when you think you can stand no more of it, you plunge back into the fray.

—General Nirella del Velli, Supreme General of the MPA

Upon arriving at Canopa at the head of a fleet of twelve thousand podships, Doge Anton had seen Lorenzo del Velli’s space station vanish into space, in a bright burst of green. One of the Tulyans with the fleet reported that it went into a timehole.

More than a week had passed since then, during which the unopposed Liberator forces solidified their military hold on the planet. For this critical mission, the young leader had selected the best fighters and warships, and every soldier was anxious to go into battle against the enemy.

“The silence is weird,” Nirella said. She and her husband stood on the bridge of the flagship
Webdancer
, looking out into orbital space and down at the world below. In the time they’d been here, there had been very few HibAdu sightings. Less than a hundred Hibbils and Adurians had been captured, and only a handful of small military aircraft. There had been no sightings of enemy lab-pods at all, though many were reported to have been in the Canopa system before the arrival of Anton’s rescue force.

It was very unsettling to him. The HibAdus had used an immense fleet of podships to attack and conquer almost every Human and Mutati world. But where were all of those vessels now? He had been exchanging urgent messages with Noah at Siriki and with the loyal robot Jimu at Dij—messages that were relayed through Tulyan webtalkers. Aside from a brief battle at Siriki when Noah arrived, the conditions were much the same at all three planets. Very few HibAdus sightings at all, and only a few hundred soldiers captured in all.

At distant Dij, Human military officers and the robot Jimu were keeping a close watch over Hari’Adab, and despite the Mutati troubles on Siriki they reported no reason to suspect the Mutati leader of any form of deception. Without his knowledge, other Mutatis had schemed to assassinate Noah.. Arriving at the only unconquered Mutati world, the Emir had been greeted by his people as a returning hero. They had staged parades and other accolades for him, but in a public broadcast he had asked them not to waste their energies in such frivolous ceremonies.

“We need to remain on constant alert,” Hari’Adab had told them in a speech broadcast to every corner of the planet. “We can never let our guard down again.”

For the moment, the three military forces were in holding patterns, ready to defend each of their remaining worlds, and awaiting further commands from Doge Anton about when to move on to other worlds and attempt to take them back from the Coalition.

Now, as Anton stood with Nirella, she said to him, “You and I are married, but I don’t know if we’ll ever get our lives back, at least not the way they used to be. It’s the same with the MPA and Mutati worlds: even if we get them all back, they can never be what they once were, can never have the peace and serenity they once enjoyed.”

“The enemy is waiting for us out there,” Anton said, as he gazed into space. “But where?”

He noticed a flare of anger on her face, which he knew was because he had not responded to her personal observation. Then she said, “Hard to say. Our scout ships are out, but they haven’t found anything yet.”

“We could be sitting ducks here,” he said. “It hard to know the right thing to do. With the size of their forces, we don’t dare break up our fleet any more. We’re strongest here, and at Siriki, and at Dij. For some reason, the HibAdus couldn’t conquer any of those worlds before, and now—with all the reinforcements we brought in—it will be even harder.”

“You’re being optimistic. They were just spread too thin, and are gathering again. I’m afraid they did this to draw us in. Like a spider with three webs.”

“Could be, but we’ve discussed the possibilities, the odds, the options. I think the HibAdus know we commandeered more than a hundred and twenty thousand podships from the Parviis, and—if the HibAdus are watching all three of these planets—they’re only seeing a total of twenty-four thousand podships. They could be wondering where the other ninety-six thousand are.”

The General half smiled. “I hope you’re right, and they think we’re laying a trap for them, waiting to pounce with a bigger force.”

“So we each wait, and wonder.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Just as our galaxy is linked by an invisible web, so is it with our individual lives. From birth to death, we interact with one another in complex ways, never seeing the intricate strands woven around us.