Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (46 page)

The folding images seemed to fade now, although Noah beheld a curvature of webbing stretched to infinity, faintly fluttering on a cosmic wind. Again he had the illusion of whirling and spinning along the strands himself, and he saw once more that the web was really doing tricks around him, creating the most wondrous of all illusions.

On impulse, Noah thought of grabbing the podships as they sped around him and through him. How incredible that would be, if he could only stop one and examine it closely, without harming anything. But as he considered this more it didn’t seem wise, even if he could accomplish it. Noah did not want to interfere in natural processes, didn’t want to disturb the exquisite perfection of the heavens. He didn’t think it was possible anyway; it would be like trying to reach from one dimension into another one.

Again, his brain clicked, and the focus of his inner eye shifted.

* * * * *

Eshaz felt Noah pulling away from him, and he tried to prevent it. But this Human had grown too strong for even a large Tulyan to keep under control. He pushed Eshaz away with surprising strength, and the bronze-scaled creature tumbled backward, onto the deck of the grid-plane.

Timeweb’s healing powers had worked. But spiders of worry scuttled through the Tulyan’s thoughts.

What have I done?

* * * * *

As the podships continued to speed by, Noah discovered that he could make mental linkages with them one at a time, only for a few moments in each case, but enough for him to obtain information. He saw inside the living, spacefaring vessels and understood how they operated. Everyone knew that the podships were living organisms, but their inner workings had always been mysterious. He learned for the first time that they were piloted by tiny humanoid creatures, who guided the ships across the far reaches of space. Two very different organisms were working together … perhaps the strangest of all symbiotic relationships, it seemed to Noah.

The images were clear at times but kept slipping in and out of focus and blurring.

Some podships carried a number of merchant ships in their cargo holds—typically fifteen or twenty—while others had a wild assortment of passengers on board: Humans, Mutatis, machines, various aliens. One pod was transporting the Doge Lorenzo del Velli and Noah’s twin sister toward Canopa. He heard them in the grand salon of their private yacht, talking about most of Noah’s Guardians having scattered into the woods and hills, where they were living off the land.

“They’re not worth going after,” Francella said to the Doge in an eerie, distant voice. “We need to focus our forces on finding Noah and killing him. Only then will I be satisfied.”

Lorenzo nodded, and said something unintelligible. He seemed to be in acquiescence.

From afar, Noah felt a chill as he stared at his fraternal twin’s hardened face, with her treacherous dark eyes and bald eyebrows. She had become his bête noire, or perhaps she always had been, and he hadn’t paid enough attention to the danger. Her image grew fuzzy and then sharpened again.

First she kills our father and cleverly blames me. Now she seeks to assassinate me, and the manipulated Doge thinks she is justified.

Noah tried not to hate her, didn’t want to carry such a burden in his heart. But it was not easy to fight the strong feelings.

Abruptly and without his impetus, the images of Francella and Lorenzo, and of the podship carrying their yacht, vanished.

Inside the cargo hold of another sentient pod, a motley assortment of sentient machines from the White Sun star system were aboard at least a dozen battered transport ships, also bound for Canopa. While most of the robots were silent and packed in close quarters, Noah determined their origin and destination from a conversation their leader, a flat-bodied machine, was having with a subordinate. But the cosmic eavesdropper could not determine why they were en route.

In the hold of yet another podship, he saw a peculiar pilot at the controls of a spacecraft that looked exactly like a merchant prince schooner, including the red-and-gold colors on the hull. Visible through the thick plax of the front window, the pilot had shapeshifted to make himself look Human. But Noah—he wasn’t sure how—could tell that he wasn’t Human at all.

What is a Mutati doing with one of our ships?

Our
ships? The thought stuck in his throat, because he and Doge Lorenzo were mortal enemies now. Noah wasn’t certain where his own home was any more, but his allegiance to humankind had never faltered.

Gazing past the Mutati, he scanned the schooner’s interior and saw a strange array of gleaming tubes built into the hull, an arrangement he could not identify. He tried to see more, but the image faded and disappeared. Moments later it flickered back, and he saw the podship arrive at the orbital station over Ilbao, one of the Mutati worlds. The pilot offloaded his schooner and took it out into orbital space, perhaps fifty kilometers away. There, he held a geostationary position.

With new eyes, Noah scanned the podways. Images blurred and clarified, shifted out of focus and grew sharper. Floating near various pod stations around the galaxy, he saw a total of ten matching schooners, each with a solitary Mutati aboard, and each with the odd, unidentifiable tubes inside the vessels. It was extremely peculiar, but undoubtedly the Merchant Prince Alliance had already sighted the vessels, and would take action against them.

Or had they? Looking back, he realized that all of the strange schooners were stationed over Mutati worlds, inside enemy territory. Perhaps they were listening posts, part of a defensive network. But why were they all merchant prince schooners, or made to look like them? Most perplexing.

His focus shifted, and Noah saw something he hadn’t noticed before. A podship lay motionless in space, and he sensed difficulty there, that the spacecraft was marooned and in need of assistance. If he could help, it would not be interfering; he would be going to the aid of a stranded traveler.

But can I do anything?

Zooming in, he absorbed a vision of the vessel into his mind, and saw a green-and-brown grid-plane in the cargo hold, and—to his amazement—his own Human form lying comatose inside the plane, with Eshaz tending to him.

We’re on board a podship? But how?
The answer eluded him.

Letting his mind permeate the rest of the podship, Noah focused on a green, glowing chamber at the core, and he seeped inside. Touching the core with his probing thoughts, he suddenly felt the craft lurch into motion, which at first surprised him. Then, as he thought about it, the experience seemed oddly familiar, though he could not determine why. He only knew one thing for certain, that the sentient podship was responding to his mental commands, leaping onto a different cosmic strand than the one it had been on before, a different podway headed in a different direction.

Gaining control was a fantastic sensation, and Noah Watanabe had a destination in mind.

Canopa.

He had decided to return home, and saw clearly how to get there. He gave instructions to the podship, through the mental linkage they shared.

Then Noah sensed another entity in the navigation chamber with him, and saw a tiny, barely discernible creature clinging to one of the walls. Incredibly, it was struggling to take command of the pod away from him.…

Chapter Sixty-Eight

We are taught from birth to never let our guard down, and how to protect ourselves against mortal enemies. But this aggression, I never anticipated.

—Tesh Kori

Tesh had been stunned to find another entity—one she saw as a looming, shadowy form—take control of the podship away from her and send it in wild, spinning dives through space, finally locking onto a course for Canopa. It had been a surprise takeover.

Now Tesh went through the ritualistic steps involved with occupying this sacred chamber, this womb within a womb, and she uttered a litany of ancient
benedictios
, the guidance-and-control phrases her people had employed for millions of years.

The podship quivered, and started to respond to her commands, but only for a few seconds before it stopped, as the intruder fought for control.

This was unlike any battle Tesh had ever experienced, as she faced a specter that kept coming at her and neutralizing her strength. She never felt her foe touch her, only the numbing effects of its ghostly power.

Normally, when a Parvii entered a sectoid chamber, that was enough to control the creature. If they used ancient words and a gentle touch anyplace on a sectoid wall, the commands were understood. Now, however, the podship was confused, as it was receiving conflicting orders from different entities, different galactic races. Her opponent was not a Parvii. She knew that for certain, but little else. She didn’t think it was a Tulyan, either, for she had never known them to behave this way.

The powerful phantom stood inside the sectoid chamber, but details of its body were not discernible. Only a distorted shadow of whatever it was. It almost looked Human in shape, but with gross distortions on the head and appendages, as if something had pulled it, stretching it out.

Scurrying along the wall in front of the shadow, Tesh gained access to the core of the creature’s body by pressing her hands hard on a small, bright green wall section of the sectoid chamber, which was the nerve center of the creature. This technique, known as the “Parvii Hold,” was used by the wranglers of wild pods out in the galaxy, to tame particularly rebellious pods. She’d learned it from an old veteran. On the downside, the trick would only work for a few minutes before the pod shifted the location of its nerve center, moving the bright patch of color to another place.

But that might just be enough time.

As she pressed against the tough flesh with both hands, pushing this way and that to steer and send acceleration signals, the pod finally began to follow her commands.

Tesh needed to focus all of her considerable powers, not letting up for even a fraction of a second. By means of her connection, she saw through the visual sensors of the pod creature. Ahead, the faint green strands of the web seemed limitless, although an ancient legend said they did stop somewhere, at the end of the galaxy.

She saw the intruder’s shadow move. Focusing, she tried again to see bodily and facial features, but none were apparent. Her adversary—she couldn’t determine the gender—seemed much larger than she was, but she could not even tell if it had a face, in the common sense. From the humanoid shadow, she wondered if it might be a rogue Parvii using some sort of modified magnification mechanism. Looking around carefully, she saw no evidence of this. But her opponent continued to cause her trouble.

Receiving mental impulses from Tesh’s mysterious opponent, the pod began to slow. She pressed even harder on the green nerve center, which had not shifted position yet. The podship shuddered, and resumed the speed she wanted.

Tesh felt no more opposition, and she saw no sign of the shadowy form. She hoped it was gone, but kept her guard up. It took only a few minutes for her to cross space, but seemed like much longer.

Feeling uneasy, she guided the craft to a remote pod station, not on the busiest podways. As she pulled into the main docking bay of the station, she saw no other spacecraft at all, exactly as she had anticipated. Tesh needed to keep control of this pod, and did not want any distractions.

The podship seemed edgy. It didn’t shift its nerve center, but if it did she vowed to locate it again, doing whatever was necessary to maintain the upper hand.

The pod station orbited over a world that had not been inhabited for more than three hundred years. It no longer had shuttle service, so anyone wishing to go down to the surface needed to bring their own landing craft, which she didn’t have. She just wanted to focus on the podship, keeping it from breaking free of her, or from falling under the control of her unseen competitor.

Where was that shadowy form now? She saw no sign of it. Perhaps on the journey across space it had fallen away, and would no longer be any trouble to her. Either that, or it had died in the struggle to oppose her superior powers.

Looking through the visual sensors of the agitated podship, Tesh saw that the station was as she recalled it from earlier in her life, an unadorned structure orbiting over the tundra of a small, icy planet.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Each life is a journey, from birth to death, from wake to slumber.

—Parvii Inspiration

After searching the sectoid chamber carefully and finding nothing out of the ordinary, Tesh became convinced that her mysterious adversary had departed. It had been the strangest experience of her life.

Playing it safe, upon leaving the core chamber she sealed it with her own private command signal to the podship, making it impossible for anyone to gain access without her permission. No one, not even Woldn himself, the Eye of the Swarm, could override a Parvii command signal to a podship. The bond between pilot and beast was too strong.

In a shadowy corridor of the spacecraft, Tesh then enlarged herself by switching on her personal magnification system. She felt the energy field crackle on the surface of her skin.

After waiting a few seconds for the familiar but uncomfortable sensation to pass, she hurried back through the maze of passageways. Rounding a turn, she encountered a worried Anton Glavine.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she said with an enigmatic smile.

“Try me.”

“Perhaps another time.”

Though he tried to block her way while demanding answers, she pushed past him and climbed the short stairway into the passenger cabin of the grid-plane, which was still inside the podship’s cargo hold.

There she saw Noah lying comatose on the deck, as before, with a blanket over him and the healing pad bulging on one side of his head. His body jerked and he flailed his arms for several seconds, before going motionless again.

Dr. Bichette sat on a pillow beside him, tending to him, while Eshaz loomed over both of them, looking on.…