Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (21 page)

“What evidence do you have of Lorenzo’s involvement?” one of the princes wanted to know.

“The very scale of the debacle proves it, you dolt! We had a perfect mission plan. It couldn’t fail. This had to come from the very top.”

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Sajak resumed his seat. He grabbed the blue glass of aperitif in front of him and quaffed the syrupy sweet drink. Thoughtfully, he placed the glass back on the table, while considering how to phrase his comments. “What I am about to propose is risky,” he said. “I won’t deny that. But I must remind you of the vows we took as members of the Society of Princes, this most secret of organizations.”

“Honor to the death!” the men shouted, in unison.

“Every one of us could die for the cause,” Sajak said. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but I’m afraid it’s time for us to move against the Doge and his political appointees. Such drastic action has not been necessary for more than a thousand years, so I do not propose it lightly. Lorenzo’s attitude, however, leaves us no choice. Each day that we delay, our position erodes.”

As he spoke, images appeared on a wall screen behind him. For several moments the nobles watched the Doge at some of his public and private appearances. In each instance he was accompanied by Princess Meghina, or, when she wasn’t around, by other women.

“Lorenzo has an open marriage,” the officer said. “They both sleep with other people.”

“That’s nothing new,” Santino Aggi said, putting on his monocle. He reached across the table, snared one of the remaining glasses of aperitif in front of the General and sipped it. “I’ve enjoyed the pleasures of the courtesan myself.”

“Don’t you see?” Sajak said. “This sort of behavior is a sign of moral decay. It is unseemly for our Doge and his wife to behave as they do, or for us to condone it.”

Many of the princes nodded their heads in agreement, and whispered among themselves. Others sat motionless.

The images on the screen shifted, to a scrolling list of names and dates.

“This is the family pedigree claimed by Princess Meghina,” the General said, “purportedly all the way back to Ilrac the Conqueror. A close examination of her documentation, however, reveals significant irregularities. We’ll have to research it more, including the source of her dowry, but take a look at what I have learned so far.…”

For the rest of the evening, as the dinner boat plied the flowing, molten lake, the intense General Sajak presented his information to the assembled lords, and outlined his plan to discredit, and assassinate, the Doge Lorenzo del Velli.

But unknown to any of the noblemen, the robot lying on the floor had not been completely deactivated. Despite his rather rough appearance, Jimu was a sophisticated machine, with a number of customized internal features installed by his Hibbil builders. Silently, his backup brain core heard everything that was said in the dining salon, and recorded it.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Oh, the challenges of leadership! Can I achieve what God-On-High expects of me?This I vow: I shall never stop trying.

—Citadel Journals

His Exalted Magnificence the Zultan Abal Meshdi received many messages and reports—from around his realm and from his allies—but never anything like this. With all he had put into the Demolio project—the funds, the manpower, the time, and the angst—this was the most anticipated communication he had ever received.

Everything rode upon the precious research project that he had commissioned.

The shapeshifter stared at a purple-and-gold pyramid in the hands of the young royal messenger who fluttered in front of him in the audience hall, his tiny feet not touching the mosaic floor. The slender youth, an aeromutati who had ridden a podship from the Adurian Republic to Paradij, could fly with his short white wings, but not through space. After arriving at the orbital pod station above Paradij, he had taken a shuttle to the ground depot, and from there had flown to the Citadel overlooking the city.

The messenger shivered slightly, perhaps from the chilly air outside, but more likely from fear.

Hesitating, the Zultan did not reach out to accept the communication pyramid. He wondered if there had been unforeseen problems with the Demolio program, or—as he hoped and prayed—had the final testing gone smoothly?

Suddenly, Meshdi grabbed for the pyramid with his middle arm, startling the bearer and causing him to drop it on the hard tile floor with a loud clatter.

Apologizing profusely, the functionary retrieved it. As he fumbled with the device, however, the seal mechanism released and the sides of the pyramid lit up, casting bright light around it.

Disgusted with the ineptitude, the Zultan hand-signaled to a black-uniformed guard in the doorway. The rotund Mutati guard opened fire with his jolong rifle, shooting high-speed projectiles that smashed the aeromutati back against a wall, leaving him a blood-purple mass of torn flesh and broken wings. He slumped to the floor, dead.

As the guard rushed toward the body, the Zultan shouted, “I meant for you to remove him from my sight. It was not necessary to kill him.”

“Sorry, Sire. I thought you … uh, I … misinterpreted your signal.”

Abal Meshdi realized that he had himself sent the wrong hand signal. No matter. He would have the guard put to death anyway. The Zultan did not tolerate mistakes. Except his own, of course.

Glaring in feigned disapproval, Meshdi retrieved the communication pyramid and activated it. Through a magnification mechanism on one of the faces of the device, he peered into a deep space sector that he did not recognize … a small blue sun, a pink planet, high meteor activity. Something streaked toward the planet from space, and moments later the world detonated, hurtling chunks of debris into the cosmos.

The pyramid glowed brightly for a moment, then went dark.

The audience hall was full of armed guards now, chattering nervously and searching for threats. Calmly, the Zultan again pressed the activation button of the pyramid. The same scene repeated itself, an unknown planet destroyed. No written communication accompanied the display, but under the circumstances he did not need one.

Gazing calmly at the guard who had fired his weapon, Meshdi said sternly, “Beaustan, with your long family history of service to this throne, you should know that it is never good form to kill the bearer of
good
news.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” the black-uniformed Mutati said. He looked confused, and terrified.

Noting a pool of perspiration forming on the floor beneath his guard, the Zultan smiled. “Well, we can always get new messengers.”
And new guards
, he thought. The Zultan pointed a long, bony finger. “Remove the body and bring contractors to repair the damage.”

“Immediately, Sire.”

As the men worked, Meshdi stood and watched. This was excellent news indeed, and he had worried unnecessarily.

But isn’t that the job of a Zultan
, he mused,
to worry
? He found himself in a rare, giddy mood.

His secret research program, which had lasted for decades, was about to pay dividends. Finally, Adurian scientists, funded and supervised by Mutatis, had perfected the doomsday weapon. The planet he had just seen explode on the screen had been an uninhabited backwater world, a test case … blasted into space trash.

He absolutely
loved
the extrapolation: the entire Merchant Prince Alliance blown to bits and drifting through space like garbage.

Humans are garbage
.

Just to play it safe, the detonation of the planet—and its aftermath—were camouflaged behind a veiling spectral field that made it look as if nothing had occurred at all. It had been an insignificant world in an immense galaxy, but the Zultan did not like to take chances.

Two guards carried the broken body of the royal messenger past him, while others cleaned up blood and feathers from the spot where he fell. A team of contractors—four Mutati females wearing tight coveralls over their lumpy bodies—hurried into the hall carrying tools and equipment.

Now the Zultan of the Mutati Kingdom had only to fund the training of an elite corps of “Mutati outriders” and manufacture enough Demolios to keep them busy—the high-powered torpedo-bombs that were capable of causing so much destruction. Any one of the projectiles could split through the crust and mantle of a planet and penetrate to the molten core within seconds. There it would go nuclear, with catastrophic results.

In this manner, the gleeful Mutati leader would destroy every merchant prince world. Then, to completely eradicate Humans, he would proceed to wipe out even planets that were capable of sustaining their form of life—those having water, the proper atmospheric conditions, and circular orbits that provided them with the most stable environments. By contrast, Mutatis could live on worlds their enemy would find intolerable, where conditions were too hot or too cold, or with atmospheres that were too thin or too thick, and even with gravities that were too heavy or too light. Mutatis—life forms based upon carbon-crystal combinations—were one of the most highly adaptable races in the galaxy. Hence, they could live in many places.

Meshdi, however, had decided to draw a line in space. After having been driven from planet to planet by the aggressive Humans, he would not be pushed back any further. The successful defense of Paradij had been a warning shot fired across their bow.

The Zultan intended to commence his extermination program with Human fringe worlds, where habitation was low and military defenses were weak, or even nonexistent. Ultimately he planned to strike the key merchant prince planets where hundreds of billions lived, but that would be far more difficult, and would require meticulous planning. Those worlds were on the main podways, and Human agents constantly boarded vessels along the way, searching for dangers with highly effective Mutati detection equipment.

If he focused on less guarded worlds it would provide the advantage of cutting off escape routes from the more populated planets, leaving the Humans no place to run.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Sometimes a storm of the heart is more uncomfortable than any other kind.

—Mutati Saying

On a rocky promontory, Noah and Eshaz peered through thin plates of binocular glax that floated in front of their eyes. Automatically, the respective focal points shifted to accommodate their vision, and presently Noah made out the details of an encampment in the canopa pine woods below them. It was early morning on a cloudy day, and thirty Humans were arising in the camp, crawling out of their lean-tos and lighting a community fire to cook breakfast. It had rained heavily the night before, and those who had not constructed adequate shelters looked wet and miserable.

“Anton and the girl are on the right side of the clearing,” Noah said, pointing. He had a reddish stubble of beard.

“I see them.”

Noah watched as Tesh stood in front of the foliage-roofed, blue-bark structure that she shared with Anton. He was sitting inside on his sleeping mat of soft jalapo leaves, stretching and yawning. He looked dry. Outside, Tesh pulled on a coat and blew on her hands to warm them. Up on the promontory, Noah was cold himself. If he hadn’t known it was midsummer, he might have thought snow was coming.

The rock outcropping on which he stood was five kilometers from his administration building but still on the grounds of the Ecological Demonstration Project. He and Eshaz had flown a grid-plane there, an aircraft that was parked on a flat area just above them.

Anton and Tesh lived in the primitive encampment with other Guardian trainees, and every day they had to trek back to the administration-education complex for classes. In the evenings they studied under dim lantern lights in their simple structures—a battery of classes that included Outdoor Survival, Cellular Mathematics, and Planetary Ecology. It was a challenging life, a test of the students’ endurance and ability to live in harmony with nature. They were provided with only a limited quantity of packaged foods (such as capuchee jerky and puya coffee), and had to forage and hunt for the rest … according to instructions they received in class.

So as not to interfere with important ecological relationships, they could only kill certain animals (such as claymoles and abundant birds), and only for food. With respect to the flora, they were also restricted. Monitors in the woods graded their performance.

Through his floating binocular glax Noah saw Tesh carrying a covered bowl over to contribute to the community breakfast. Based upon a report Noah had seen, she planned to prepare a protein paste from wild ingredients: kanoberries, ground grub worms and red ants, and honey. Anton was nursing several bee stings from going after the honey the day before. Tesh had been with him, but according to the report the bees had not bothered her at all.

Now she was urging Anton to get up; he appeared groggy, and kept trying to lie back down. She wouldn’t let him, and finally dragged him out of the shelter, half-dressed. Other campers gathered around to watch, and were obviously enjoying the show. Even at this distance Noah could hear them laughing and clapping. But around the perimeter of the group, some people were looking up at the sky instead, which Noah did as well. The clouds were an ominous shade of dark gray, as if they were about to disgorge their heavy, wet contents on the land.

In a few minutes Anton was up and moving around, carrying a big coffee cup. He seemed to have as much energy as most people in the class … but nowhere near as much as Tesh. A Human dynamo, she seemed able to call upon some inner reservoir of vitality.

Tesh had a bucket now, and carried it down a steep path to a nearby creek, for water. Noah followed her movements, watching her closely.

“She
is
strikingly beautiful, isn’t she?” Eshaz said.

“What?” Noah felt his face flush hot.

“I’m referring to Queen Zilaranda of the Vippandry Protectorate.”

“Huh?”

“Just kidding. I mean Tesh Kori.”

“Anton’s girlfriend? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Is that so? Then I must have mistaken that gleam in your eyes, my friend.”