Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (54 page)

“This place is bigger than the entire crew quarters on our ship,” Acey said. Leaning over, he touched the plush black carpet in the sitting area, then laid on it and said it was softer than any bed on which he’d ever slept. “I’ll just sleep on the floor tonight. I don’t want to get too comfortable, or I might not be able to go back to my real life.”

Dux laughed, but the Churian, a very proper alien, frowned intensely, causing his bushy eyebrows to cover his eyes. To Dux, this looked very comical, but he tried not to smile, or laugh anymore. It looked like the fellow had hairy eyes. For several moments, the bellhop paced around without crashing into anything, so he must have had some way of seeing where he was going, or perhaps a backup sonrad system.

* * * * *

A lone reptilian figure stood before a bench with twenty robed judges seated at it, gazing down at him sternly. Eshaz had a solid floor beneath him, but could not see it under his feet; he seemed to float on air, with the curvature of the inverted dome visible far below him, and the stars of space twinkling through the ethereal mists beyond.

He knew that the Visitor’s Center staff had probably reported him, so he expected the aged leaders to ask him about the boys. Eshaz had an explanation ready—that he couldn’t just cast them adrift after their narrow escape from death—but he hoped he didn’t have to defend himself on that issue. He was already in enough trouble.

Nervously, the web caretaker gazed from face to face, searching for something in their expressions to tell him what to do. He wanted to spill all of the information he knew but resisted the urge, and instead awaited the comments and commands of his superiors. The council members looked hostile, with downturned mouths and glaring expressions.

“Reports have reached us that give us grave concern about the condition of the web,” First Elder Kre’n said, rubbing her scaly chin. One of the oldest Tulyans, she was reputed to have been the first of her race ever to pilot a podship across the vast reaches of space.

Eshaz steeled himself, waiting for the hammer of authority to smash down on him.

“Truly, this is a dire crisis,” she said. Then she paused and conferred in whispers with the Elders on either side of her.

Eshaz’s mind raced with visions of horrible fates, as he imagined the worst things that could happen to him.

“For hundreds of thousands of years, you have been one of our Web Technicians, responsible for the care of the connective strands, and we can ill afford to lose your services when they are needed so much now.”

She’s regretting what they’re about to do to me,
Eshaz thought. He wished he could be anywhere but here. Even dead.

Kre’n nodded to a towering Tulyan on her left, whom Eshaz recognized as Dabiggio, one of the more severe Elders who had been responsible for strict sentences in the past. Eshaz steeled himself, then jerked in surprise when the robed dignitary said, “You will remain at the Starcloud until further notice.”

Scrunching up his face in confusion, Eshaz said, “But there is no punishment facility here. It’s on Colony L.”

“Who said you were going to a punishment facility?” Dabiggio asked.

“I thought you were going to pronounce sentence on me for something I did wrong. I, uh.…”

“Personally, I do not approve of your behavior,” Dabiggio said. “As a web caretaker, you took a risky, unprecedented action with respect to Noah Watanabe, but you have your supporters on this council.”

“You know what I did, then?”

“I have my sources,” the imposing Elder said.

“But now is not the time for punishment,” Kre’n interjected. She locked gazes with Dabiggio, and Eshaz detected some disagreement between them.

“I was about to transmit my confession to you,” Eshaz said, “when your orders arrived for me to report to the Starcloud. I am prepared to tell all now.” Convinced of the correctness of his actions, Eshaz lifted his chin confidently. “I offer no excuses, only an explanation.”

At a nod from Kre’n, Eshaz went on to describe Noah on the verge of death, and the crisis Eshaz faced, with only one way to save a remarkable man who had come up with his own theory of the interconnectedness of the galaxy. Then he said, “To me, Noah Watanabe has always seemed more Tulyan than Human, he might be the one spoken of in our legends, the … “ He paused, afraid to utter the word.

“A
Human
Savior?” Dabiggio exclaimed. “How utterly revolting and preposterous!”

“With respect sir, our legends say the Savior will appear from an unexpected source. Given the selfish and destructive record of humanity, could there be a more unexpected source?” Eshaz noticed several other Elders, including Kre’n, nodding their heads, just a little. At least they seemed open to the possibility.

“We have already decided to defer the matter of your punishment,” Kre’n announced, with a stiff smile. “Your long and illustrious record has not gone unnoticed by this council, and we are willing to reserve judgment during this time of crisis.”

“I appreciate that very much,” Eshaz said, dipping his head in a slight bow. “One thing more. As you know, I used a web defect to heal Watanabe—an early stage timehole in the vicinity of the destroyed planet. I also found other defects around the site of the explosion, and repaired them.”

“We are aware of that,” Kre’n said. “Your peers found similar web damage around the Earth and Mars debris fields, and they, too, implemented repairs. The question is, did web defects cause the planets to blow up, or was it the reverse?”

“The chicken or the egg,” one of the Elders said.

“And why are merchant prince planets the ones affected?” another asked.

“These are disturbing questions,” Kre’n said, staring at Eshaz. “But now we have another important assignment for you, as a timeseer.”

Eshaz lifted his eyebrows. The last time he had been asked to timesee, he had been blocked—either by chaos in the universe or by his own failing. It disturbed him to look into the future, because he didn’t know what he would see there. Especially now, with the rapid decline of the web, which portended ultimate, if not imminent, disaster on an immense scale.

He heard a drone, and looking toward a side door saw what appeared to be insects flying into the large chamber, a swarm of them in various shades of color. As they drew closer he identified them as Parviis, each dressed in ornate outfits. They looked like tiny flying dolls, and set down on top of the judicial bench. The buzzing sound in his ears was not from wings, because Parviis had none, but from their hyper-accelerated metabolisms, which enabled them to fly in some mysterious fashion.

“I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to do this again,” Eshaz protested.

“Then you should not have demonstrated your talents so well,” one of the Parviis said in a tiny, high-pitched voice.

Eshaz recognized him as Woldn, their leader. He wore a carmine red suit, with billowing sleeves and trousers. The Tulyan felt anger welling up inside, but knew better than to say anything more. This was a political matter, perhaps involving an exchange of his services for Tulyan captives taken by the Parviis in their constant raids around the galaxy. He hated providing such a valuable service to the enemies of his people, but had to do as he was told. The last time he had demonstrated his limited prescience for the Parviis, they had treated it like a carnival side show act, an amusing diversion.

“You will accompany the delegation to an antechamber,” Kre’n said. “And there you will tell them what you see.”

While wishing another Tulyan timeseer had been summoned in his place, Eshaz nonetheless said nothing. Deep in thought, he traipsed toward one of the many smaller chambers ringing the central council room, enclosures that had clear walls, floors, and ceilings, and were only discernible by faint construction outlines around the edges. As before, everything he said would be recorded, so that the Elders would have the information, too. Theoretically, Eshaz’s timeseeing report would not benefit either side. In many ways, however, this seemed worse to him than the most serious punishments he had imagined for his Timeweb infraction. It seemed like treason, even though technically it wasn’t, since he was being ordered by the Elders to do it.

Still, a citizen could disobey an order if he found it unconscionable.

Chapter Eighty-One

Sentience [one of 56 definitions]: A thinking creature with the ability to deceive another of its kind.

—Thinker, Reserve Data Bank

As days passed and Subi failed to return, Noah asked constant questions, so many that the others could not maintain the lie. “We were concerned about you and sent him for a bone specialist,” Tesh finally admitted.

The two of them sat in a small lunchroom that the robots had built in the main cavern, using scrap parts from the damaged hulks of Digger machines. Adjacent to that structure, the robots had also constructed sleeping quarters for the Humans and for Eshaz, who still had not returned from his visit to the Tulyan Starcloud.

“Another doctor?” Noah exclaimed. “I ordered you to keep my condition a secret!”

“You’ve been behaving so strangely,” Tesh said. “We’re worried about you.”

“And where is Subi now?” Noah demanded.

“We don’t know,” Tesh said. She stirred a bowl of soup with her spoon, didn’t taste it.

“And those young men—Dux and Acey—any sign of them yet?”

She shook her head. “People think they ran off to space again. They probably stowed away on a ship, looking for a new adventure.”

“Maybe not. I wonder if they’re with Subi instead, wherever he is,” Noah said.

“Doubtful.”

“I wish you’d gone instead of Subi,” Noah said. He glared at her. “I hold you personally responsible for anything that happens to him.”

“You’ve never liked me, have you?”

Noah continued glaring, didn’t respond. Then he lunged to his feet and stomped away.

* * * * *

Weeks passed, still with no sign of Subi Danvar.

During that period, several of Thinker’s robots were able to blend in with other sentient machines in the cities, and used their new contacts to obtain food, construction materials, and various supplies needed by the Guardians. The robots paid for the articles with earnings from the lucrative Inn of the White Sun, and from the popular computer chips that Thinker manufactured for resale. The robots also obtained intelligence reports on the movement of Red Beret and CorpOne troops.

While Noah felt deep sadness at the loss of his loyal adjutant, he was heartened when Human Guardians in dirty, ragged uniforms began to filter back into his ranks. Some had escaped from the space station, while others had been in hiding in the woods and hills surrounding his commandeered ecology compound.

He sent out Human agents in plain clothes, along with robots, to look for Subi, but nothing turned up. Not a clue or any sign of him. Noah tried to hold onto slender strands of hope, but felt his grip slipping. There was no sign of the missing teenagers, either, and no word on their whereabouts. Maybe they ran away to space, as people were suggesting. Worrying that the location of his underground headquarters might be compromised because of the missing Guardians, Noah ordered the implementation of even more security measures, developed by Thinker. Primarily this involved additional covert patrols and hardening of the entrances to the tunnels and chambers. He also reviewed a report that Subi had given him before leaving, concerning unknown improvements that the Doge was making to the planet’s surveillance grid system, and how this made air travel riskier than normal for Noah’s and his forces.

Each day Noah went for walks around the perimeter of the cavern, past piles of scrap metal that the robots had scavenged and organized. He was walking normally or running now, without any pain. The regeneration of his foot was a minor miracle, and so was his recovery from the self-inflicted knife wound to the heart. He had even given himself a poisonous bioshot, and had survived. He had confirmed his own immortality.

Despite his astounding new physical powers, Noah found the expansion of his mental resources even more remarkable. At will, he could go in and out of the alternate, extrasensory realm and journey across the galaxy in his mind—without having to undergo the oddly disconcerting double visions he’d experienced earlier, which seemed to have only been a transitional phase. Now he just had to close his eyes and focus, and his thoughts vaulted into the cosmos … a dimension and reality that allowed him to see his own physical form as a tiny mote in a vast galactic sea.

The physical is part of the ethereal,
he thought in an epiphany.
My body is an aspect of something far greater.

All sorts of possibilities occurred to him. While he could journey in his mind, the excursions didn’t always provide him with answers, at least not those that were of huge importance to him, and which should matter to all sentient creatures. He felt like a tourist in the galaxy, seeing and experiencing things on a limited basis, while not learning much about what lay deeper. There were gaps in his abilities: places he could not go and places he could not see.

So many twists and turns
, he thought,
trying to unravel the mysteries of existence. The meaning of life.

Abruptly, he reeled his far-reaching thoughts back, like a fisherman about to head home for the day. ‘The meaning of life.’ Such a cliché, but that did not make it an insignificant line of inquiry.

In the caverns, the Master of the Guardians stood watching robots construct more of their kind from scrap parts. Near him, Thinker was in his folded-shut mode, as if he, too, had been contemplating matters of great import.

Noah was making no further attempts to pilot the podship that had become so familiar to him. For the moment, Canopa was where he wanted to be physically, and he didn’t want to get lost out in the ethereal realm or realms, and find himself unable to return. He came to the realization that he had been holding something back in his cosmic journeys; Noah feared getting lost out there and finding himself unable to return to consciousness, to his familiar corporal form and all of its traditional links.