Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (160 page)

Looking in the reflective glass, Noah saw that his original facial and muscular features were identifiable—he still had a strong chin, aquiline nose, and wide-spaced hazel eyes—but the skin was gray, with streaks of black throughout. It had a rough texture like that of a podship, and portions of it pulsed on the surface. His curly red hair was gone, having been replaced by a clump of reddish flesh on top of his head, in the approximate shape of his former hairstyle. Fine lines in it looked like strands of red hair, but weren’t. They were veins.

“My face looks like the prow of a podship, with its pilot immersed into the flesh. The question is, can I fly?”

“You are not a flying craft,” Thinker said. “There is no doubt about that. I have seen no undercarriage, no place or way for you to engage with the strands of the podways. No, you are something else entirely. A
podman
, for want of a better word.”

“The question is, what comes with my new appearance?”

“That is one of many questions.”

“Do you think people will fear me when they see what I look like?”

“They already fear you, Master Noah, in varying degrees. Even Tesh, who cares deeply about you. She’s been asking to see you. In fact, she’s demanding it now, and says you can’t keep ignoring her. She is in a shuttle that is in comlink contact with us at this very moment. I am linked to the comstation by remote. Would you like to hear her, or reply to her?”

“I wonder if she will still consider me attractive,” Noah mused. “Of course, she is much older than I am—though she doesn’t look it—and she has had past relationships with a variety of galactic races. She told me so. She also said she’d never met anyone like me before.”

“An understatement, I’m sure. Especially now.”

Noah chuckled. “I see you’ve developed a sense of humor. I don’t recall one when I first met you, but lately you’ve been different. Did somebody program it into you?”

“Subi Danvar and some of the others thought I was too stiff and intellectual, so they tweaked my operating systems a bit. I asked them to make certain I would never be inappropriately funny, because I don’t wish to irritate you Humans. Therefore, you should find my humor somewhat subdued.”

“So far, you’re doing fine, my metal friend.” Looking at both of them in the mirror, he added, “We’re quite an odd pair, aren’t we?”

The orange lights around Thinker’s faceplate glowed, then went out. “Shall we send for the lady, sir?”

“I wonder if she knows a female robot to bring along. Then we could have a double date.”

“You are much funnier than I am, Master Noah. I interpret that as a possible yes?”

“Send for her, then. I’ll receive her in the module where I used to have a dining hall for my students. You know where that is?”

“Of course. You’ve had robots move furnishings and gambling tables out of the way in there.”

“Yes, they’ve set up a smaller dining table for me in there, with chairs and vending machines. Later I want to get the habitat enclosures installed around the eating area again, the miniature forest of dwarf oak and blue-bark canopa pines, along with the birds and other organisms.”

“That will be delightful.”

“One day, Thinker, this will be a School of Galactic Ecology again, and much more. I have grand plans for EcoStation.”

“I will help you with them.”

“Give me thirty minutes before letting Tesh in. I want to spruce myself up.”

The robot rattled away, chuckling.

* * * * *

High Ruler Coreq stood on the bridge of his flagship, gazing at the vast armada gathered around him, as the ships moved gracefully in concert, flowing and shifting through the Kandor Section of space like dancers following his choreography. They were practicing battle maneuvers.

He slammed a fist against the thick glax window, and made a vow.

Things would be far different in the next military encounter with the enemy, not like the debacle from which he had been fortunate to escape with his life and a portion of his force. Inexplicably, galactic conditions had interfered, just as he’d been about to split space and emerge over the target world of Canopa. Something bad had happened, and suddenly he’d found himself far away, in a region of unknown coordinates. Holes and traps in the infrastructure had nearly spelled the end of him, but he suspected that the enemy must be having as much trouble with it as he was. They’d just been able to take advantage of him that time. The perilous galactic conditions could not possibly be a weapon of theirs; no one could have a power that immense and far-reaching.

After the incident, Coreq had sent a report back to the Adurian homeworld by courier, providing Premier Enver and Warlord Tarix with as many details as he could—and urging them to step up the production of laboratory-bred podships even more. In addition, he had ordered the bulk of his occupying forces to depart from Human and Mutati worlds and join him here for a final thrust against the so-called Liberators.…

* * * * *

Left alone in the corridor, Noah stared in the mirror again, at the rough alien flesh covering his face. He focused on the lump of reddish flesh where his hair used to be, and on the fine veins in the lump. Something shifted in the mass, and he was able to separate out a single strand of curly red hair at the front. Then he separated another, and then hundreds of them, and finally his entire head. With his mind, he commanded how he wanted the hair to be arranged, and it cooperated, down to the last follicle.

However, looking at himself now, with his humanoid face and normal hair, it did not look right at all. He looked like an alien clown.

So he focused on his face, and as moments passed he saw the alien skin fade away, from the forehead down, until the normal Noah looked back at him, the one everyone expected to see. He did the same with his hands and forearms, completing the visible areas.

Now I’ve spruced myself up
, he thought. And he made his way to the dining hall.

He was not there long when Tesh strode in, with a determined look on her face, as if she had finally caught the person she had been chasing. She wore a green skirt and white blouse, which he presumed were projections from her energy field, instead of real apparel. Walking right up to him, Tesh looked closely at his face, and showed confusion on her own.

“Thinker said something to you, didn’t he?” Noah asked.

“He told me not to be shocked by your appearance, that’s all.”

“No details?”

She shook her head, causing her black hair to brush over her shoulders.

Noah frowned. “Shall I put it into words or show you? Mmmm. Words are inadequate, so here goes.”

In the blink of an eye, Noah assumed the alien “podman” appearance, including the reddish lump instead of hair.

She gasped and took a step backward. Then, cautiously, she reached out and touched the streaky, gray-black skin on his cheek. “I, I … Once, I felt roughness on your forearm, under your shirt. This has been happening gradually?”

He nodded. “Now I seem able to control it at will, though.”

“Like a shapeshifter?”

“To an extent. On the surface of my skin, at least.”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “There are many forms of shapeshifters in this galaxy: Mutatis, Aopoddae, Parviis. And you are yet another, it seems. I believe you are the first of your kind.”

“Oddly, I feel more comfortable this way. The old Noah is gone now.”

“But I miss the
old
Noah,” she said. “Just when I thought I was getting to know him and care about him, he changed.”

“You don’t need to fear me,” Noah said. “I see in your eyes that you do.”

He watched her take a deep, shuddering breath. The emerald green eyes flashed, and she said, “My reasons are more complicated than you assume. There is something important I need to discuss with you.”

“I get the feeling I’m not going to like this.”

She smiled, but it had a hard edge to it. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On what sort of a …
man
… you are.” She grasped one of his alien hands and said, “Noah, I’m pregnant with your child.”

“From the one time when you said we really had sex, when I thought I only imagined it?”

“It was real, and so is our baby.”

He jerked his head back. “But you told me once that the galactic races could not interbreed.”

To this, she wagged a finger at him like a schoolteacher and said, “As I told you before, Parviis and Humans were once the same race, until they branched off. Technically, they are not entirely separate galactic races. I have in fact heard of a very small number of cases in which children have been born. The odds of conceiving a child, however, are so low as to be non-existent.”

“Mmmm, I’m sure you omitted some of those details from me earlier.”

“Or, you might not have been listening carefully.” She looked at him apprehensively, seemed to be gauging his reactions.

“I guess we’re lucky, huh?” He grinned, but wasn’t sure how he felt about her condition. He didn’t want to make her feel he was not pleased. And even if he wasn’t, he promised himself that he would take steps to protect Tesh from now on, and their child. He didn’t even consider asking her to terminate the pregnancy. That was out of the question.

“We are lucky.” A cast to her eyes revealed to him that she had not yet revealed certain things, but he decided not to press her.

Instead, Noah asked, “Am I really Human? Was I ever really Human?”

“I think you were when we conceived the child, though I’m not so sure what you have become since then.”

“But I was already different then, when we conceived. Eshaz had already healed my injuries by connecting my injured body to the galactic webbing, allowing its nutrients to flow into me. You saw how I could recover afterward from virtually anything.”

“Yes, you were different, but apparently not different enough.” She patted her belly, but he couldn’t see any difference in it. He didn’t doubt her pregnancy, though.

“When will you give birth?”

“In a cross-racial situation, that can vary. Anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. I think I will get a sense of it as our child grows in my womb.” Her eyes sparkled, and he could tell that she was happy about what was happening inside her body.

Noah held her tightly, and kissed her. She melted into his arms.

When they separated, Noah looked at her and marveled about what an incredible creature
she
was. He had heard somewhere that the Human woman was much more complex than the male, and he thought this Parvii female must be even more complicated than that. At the moment, the pretty brunette looked like a normal-sized Human woman, but that was only because of her magnification system. It was a remarkable technology, one that made her projected skin feel normal to him, even though it was actually an energy field. She told him once that the force field around her made physical acts seem as if her body was really much larger. Apparently this included the process of fertilization.

“What size will our child will be?” he asked.

“That is determined by the natural size of the woman, by the dimensions of the womb and birth canal. If I were, instead, a Parvii man and you were a Human woman, the child would be what you would consider normal size.”

Wrinkling his forehead, trying to comprehend, Noah did not know how to respond. He was having trouble envisioning a son or daughter that he could hold in the palm of his hand, or which he could carry about in a pocket.

Placing her hands on her hips, she said, “Are you happy with the news?”

“Of course! It just takes some getting used to.”

“I know how you feel, then.” She ran her fingers over the alien skin and the Human contours of his face. “Your lips are a bit rough now, dear,” she said, “so you’ll have to be gentle when you kiss me.”

“Can’t you adjust your magnification system?”

“I could. But I would rather see you show consideration by making your own alterations occasionally, somewhat like shaving off bristle. A woman always likes a man to be considerate. Perhaps you can do it without altering your appearance. I think you’re very handsome now.”

He smiled. “I really am happy about the news,” he said.

“I know you are.”

In all of the past and future paths that Noah had envisioned via his connection with the cocoon, he had not foreseen any of this. But he knew with certainty—an instinctual feeling—that their child would be important.

Chapter Sixty-Three

The Sublime Creator designed life and death to go in a circle, a never-ending dance of birth and death. But something has interrupted the sacred process. None of the races—not even Tulyans—are supposed to be completely immortal.

—Report to the Council of Elders

He lived in a universe of strange, mind stretching possibilities.

Master Noah entered a large chamber of the orbiter, a room that had once been Lorenzo’s Grand Ballroom, a separate, private area of the Pleasure Palace Casino. Now it was a shambles, with wrecked furnishings and shattered plax on the floor, crunching under his feet. A broken mirror showed a distortion of his half-Human form as he walked by.

Almost a year ago, Eshaz had healed Noah by connecting his injured flesh to a defect in the galactic webbing, at a point where a timehole was just beginning to form. Afterward, Noah had displayed miraculous physical capabilities, an ability to recover from traumatic, even grisly, injuries by regenerating the cells of his body. Since then, more things had happened that were even more remarkable. Thinking back now, Noah was coming to believe that he had visualized healing himself, and that it had happened. Somehow, in his intense pain—especially from being hacked up by his sister—he had seen his way through a narrow, treacherous path, and had survived.

It had been a learning experience on an extrasensory journey.

But had he actually risen from the dead, like Lazarus of Lost Earth? He was not sure, but knew that stories about him had gotten out, and had contributed to the fear and awe with which many people looked at him, especially those who didn’t actually know him personally. It would be even worse from now on because of Noah’s appearance, though he knew he could modify his skin to make it look Human. He could visualize it, and it would happen.