Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (18 page)

The two men walked through a dimly-illuminated corridor. This was a section that had been added to the complex recently. EcoStation, always in geostationary orbit directly above Noah’s wildlife preserve and farm, had originally been designed with modular elements. Hence it was easily enlarged with the addition of more units, an ongoing process as the need for more laboratory and classroom space constantly increased. Aside from the benefit of an uncontaminated, off-planet facility for genetic studies on exotic plants and animals, he liked the isolation that the orbiter provided for students, so that they could maximize the learning process. The students lived in dormitories on board.

Soon Noah heard the chattering and giggling of young voices, just ahead. Moments later he and his companion entered the classroom. The students, all new to the school, grew silent.

While the adjutant introduced Noah to thirty men and women dressed in unisex green smocks and trousers, Noah found himself impressed by their erect posture and bright, attentive expressions. They seemed eager to learn and become full-fledged Guardians, and he was just as eager to teach them.

The classroom was surrounded by dwarf oak and blue-bark canopa pines, simulating a forest environment. Birds and small woodland creatures flitted from branch to branch, kept separate from the classroom by an invisible electronic barrier. It was an entirely self-sufficient, small scale environment. Noah had designed it himself, and others that were similar. They doubled as air cleaning facilities for surrounding rooms.

“All of you are volunteers,” Noah began, from the lectern, “and you are to be commended for not going to work in a polluting industry, and for instead committing yourselves to the preservation of the galactic environment. The term I have just used—‘galactic environment’—is not easily defined, so I will take several moments to explain certain basic concepts to you.… “

He gestured with his hands as he spoke, and for almost an hour he went on uninterrupted, while the students listened in fascination, hardly stirring from their seats.

Then he rolled forth a large clearplax box on a cart, and explained that it contained a living organism he had saved from the planet Jaggem while performing ecological recovery operations there. The box held what looked like an amorphous hunk of dark brown flesh, writhing slowly, throbbing and pulsing. But Noah knew it was a lot more than that.

“Meet my friend Lumey,” he said. “I named him that because he glows luminescent white when digesting his food.”

Noah invited the students to gather around.

“As far as we can tell,” he said, “Lumey belongs to a nearly extinct galactic race, and may be the last of his kind. We keep him in a sealed environment, and he might live there for a long time. Or, sadly, he might die before your very eyes. One thing is certain: We could not leave the little fellow on Jaggem, since industrial polluters there destroyed his entire food chain.”

“How does he see?” one of the female students asked. “Where are his eyes?”

“According to my biologists, he doesn’t have eyes, ears, or a sense of smell. Nonetheless, he uses other senses to get around, and has an innate ability to sense danger, and to survive.”

“Is that a face?” one of the young men asked. “He keeps turning a portion of his body toward us.” He pointed at a light brown area of flesh. “See. Just a small section that is different in color, and more smoothly textured than the rest of his body.”

“Good observation,” Noah said. “That seems to be a sensor pad, although we’re still not sure what he detects with it. When we found the poor creature in a pile of industrial slag, he was living off his own residual body cells, withering away. We have created a mini environment here where he lives quite well on his own recycled air, and reprocessed waste as well, which exits his body in a mineral-rich condensation and is then scooped up by one of our inventions from eco-recovery. In this case it’s a small-scale skyminer, which salvages important elements from the mini-atmosphere and converts them to food for Lumey.”

As Noah spoke, he pointed to a miniature skyminer hovering inside the container, and a food processor on one wall. He was about to explain more, when suddenly he stopped in mid-sentence. Startling him, a nehrcom screen on the back wall—which previously had been as black as space—came to life, showing the fuzzy image of a large terramutati. Turning their heads to look back, several students cried out or screamed in horror.

The Mutati was, in its natural state, an almost incomprehensible amalgam of fatty tissue, with bony extrusions for its numerous arms and legs. A tiny head with oversized eyes was barely visible atop folds of fat, like the head of a turtle poking out of its shell. The creature had no mouth, but words came forth in synchronization, as its body quivered and pulsed like gelatin.

“Your security is rather feeble and easy to penetrate,” the Mutati said in a crackling, eerie voice. The image on the screen and accompanying sounds, while weak, were the normal quality of a nehrcom transmission that had been relayed from the Canopa ground station. He saw what looked like nehrcom equipment in the background.

“Find out where this is coming from!” Noah barked to Subi. “And evacuate the classroom!” The adjutant ran out into the corridor and shouted for guards. A number of students followed him, but others tarried, staring with transfixed expressions at the screen.

“Get out of here!” Noah shouted at them. “All of you!” He gripped the lectern, and it rocked.

“Out there orbiting Canopa,” the electronic intruder said in an irritating, calm tone, “you are not exactly at the center of the galaxy, are you? So I will tell you what has occurred today. A merchant prince assault fleet, sent to Paradij by devious design, has been demolished.”

As if to emphasize what the Mutati had just said, a loud static pop sounded, and the last word echoed in the room: “ … demolished … demolished … demolished.… “

Stunned by the assertion, Noah was not certain if he should believe it. He had heard nothing of a military venture against Paradij. But could this possibly be true?

* * * * *

On the wall screen the Mutati sneezed, coughed, and twitched. The shapeshifter had sneaked onto Timian One, having assumed the identity of a Human and gained access to a nehrcom station while its electronic surveillance system was under repair.

As one of the Mutatis who did not normally show allergic reactions in the proximity of Humans, he had, for a time, experienced no adverse reactions. But eventually the allergies had surfaced and now they were now hitting him full force. Even the implanted allergy protector he had as a backup did not work.

* * * * *

As Noah watched the screen, he heard a static hiss, and then saw a gray fog surround the Mutati. Previously Noah had seen captive shapeshifters do this when under stress.

Out of the fog came words. “Abal Meshdi, his Eminence the Zultan of the Mutati Kingdom, has instructed me to present a generous offer to you. We would like to join forces with your Guardians against the evil industrial polluters of the Merchant Prince Alliance. We can provide you with technical advice, even highly portable military hardware to use against the corporations. We have a common enemy.”

Unnoticed by Noah, he had been joined in the classroom by two people who entered from a side door, and stood beside him.

“Interesting proposition,” one of them said.

Startled, Noah glanced to his left. “Anton!”

“You gave me some kind of high priority clearance to come aboard. Hey, I must be pretty important to you, huh?” He nodded toward his companion. “Meet Tesh Kori.”

Noah nodded toward her, but only briefly.

“You’re not going to accept that creep’s proposal, are you?” Anton asked.

“Of course not. I’d never sell out to the Mutatis.”

“I didn’t think so.” The blond young man looked up at the screen and shouted at it. “He says no! Do you understand?”

“Too bad,” the Mutati said. He produced a shiny, metallic device, which he held in front of his face. “I was prepared to offer this to you and your Guardians.” Tiny wings popped out of the side of the apparatus. “Stealth bomb. It’s undetectable, can fly past any security system and blow up an entire factory. Just think of how much that would help the environment.”

“You heard what my friend said,” Noah responded.

“Is that your final decision?”

“It is!”

“In that case,” the Mutati said, “we wouldn’t want this to go to waste.” The flying bomb glowed red, and exploded. The transmission flashed bright red and orange, then went dark abruptly, leaving the wall screen black again.

“Did you hear him talking about a Mutati military victory against merchant prince forces?” Noah asked.

“No,” Anton said.

Noah went on to relate what he had been told, then said, “Let’s hope it isn’t true.” He paused. “What do you want to see me about?”

“We came to help,” Anton replied. “And it looks like you can use it.” He put his arm around Tesh. “We want to become Guardians.”

“This is not a good time. I thought you were here because of my father’s injury.”

Anton’s face darkened. “I’m sorry that happened, and I hope he gets better. Look, I always told you I wanted to join the Guardians someday, but you gave me a bunch of excuses. You’re not going to do that again, are you?”

Noah hesitated. He did not want Anton to do anything dangerous, and was considering how to respond. For years, Noah had concealed from Anton the true identity of the young man’s parents … that his mother was Noah’s sister Francella, making Noah his uncle. The identity of the father was even more shocking.

At that moment, two security men burst into the classroom, apologizing profusely. Seeing the screen dark, one of them said, “We don’t know how he got through, sir, but it won’t happen again. We’ll make sure of it.”

Noah didn’t see how they would accomplish that if they didn’t know what had happened in the first place. He told the men to have their commander submit a full report to Subi Danver within the hour. Nervously, the pair saluted and hurried away.

Refocusing, Noah saw his nephew standing with Tesh Kori, waiting for a response. He met their hopeful gazes, then looked away for a moment.

Francella had become pregnant after one of her trysts with the Doge Lorenzo himself and had kept the information from him—for reasons that she never revealed. After she gave birth, Noah learned about her indiscretion and insisted upon making certain that the child was cared for properly. Reluctantly, she had given Noah the responsibility of maintaining contact with her son, while she paid the bills for the child’s support. It was one of the few things on which she and Noah had ever agreed.

Knowing what he did about his sister’s nature, however—her cruelties and selfishness—Noah always wondered why she had not just aborted the fetus. It had given him some hope that she might have a modicum of humanity after all. But Francella always had a way of dashing such sentiments.

Out of concern for the safety of his nephew, Noah had discouraged him from joining the Guardians, and now it was more dangerous than ever. Still, the organization was in desperate need of good people, and Anton certainly qualified. He was a hard worker, honest, and resourceful.

During several moments when Tesh Kori was looking in another direction, Noah studied her exquisite profile, the way she stood tall and proud and beautiful. She glanced at him before he could look away, and he felt drawn into her hypnotic, emerald green eyes.

Finally he looked at Anton, and met the young man’s anxious gaze. With a smile, Noah shook his hand briskly and said, “Welcome to the Guardians.” He then shook Tesh’s hand. “Both of you. It won’t be easy. You’ll have to undergo a rigorous training process. Some make it, and some don’t.”

“We will,” Anton said, in a determined voice.

Chapter Twenty-Two

How many aspects of love are there? How many people have ever lived? These are the questions, and the answers.

—Princess Meghina of Siriki,
Critiques of a Courtesan

Princess Meghina hardly thought of her magnificent Golden Palace on far-away Siriki. Instead, she spent sixteen hours a day at Prince Saito’s bedside in his villa, and took surreptitious steps to obtain the best medical care for him. Inside the elegant, mural-walled reception room that had been converted to a hospital room, two doctors stood behind her, looking at the patient through a clearplax life-support dome and whispering between themselves. In order to avoid a confrontation with Dr. Bichette and Francella, she had identified them as friends, and they were dressed in common daysuits. Now they were alone in the room with Meghina and the ailing Prince.

On the staff of the renowned Nottàmbulo Hospital of Meghina’s homeworld, these men were specialists in comas induced by head injuries. The Sirikans had studied the Prince’s medical charts that Meghina obtained secretly, and had told her that Bichette, despite bringing in high-priced specialists, had not selected the best people.

One of the Sirikans, Dr. Woods Masin, was a tall black man with a square jaw and gray hair. His companion, Dr. Kydav Uleed, had primitive, rough-boned features like those of a back country Human, with a high, sloping forehead and large, protruding cheekbones.

Unable to hear everything they were whispering behind her, the blonde noblewoman stared sadly at the simoil murals on the walls, depicting the fascinating life of the man she loved. A breeze rustled the curtains by an open window, and out beyond the high cliff she saw one of the Prince’s flying yachts anchored in the air.

Meghina shifted uneasily on her feet. She wished she had met this great man earlier, and that they might have married. Instead she had been required—for political reasons—to become the wife of Doge Lorenzo del Velli. Her dual life, as royal spouse and courtesan to many of the leading nobles of the realm, was not easy for her. It also made her husband a cuckold, but he didn’t seem to mind. He had his own stable of women to satisfy his physical needs, and sometimes he even dangled Meghina’s favors in front of influential princes in order to obtain what he wanted from them. It was one of the most unusual marriages anyone had ever heard of, and was conducted without any pretenses.