Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (69 page)

Woldn fell silent for a long time. Inside the palace, his swarms stopped flying and alighted wherever they were, on their densely grouped companions who were shaped in the architectural components of the structure.

On the way there, Tesh had resolved to express her dissent against Woldn for dumping podship passengers into space, and she wanted to make a salvage claim on the podship. Locking gazes briefly with the Eye of the Swarm, she felt him receive this information telepathically. She would feel better speaking it, but under the circumstances—with a Tulyan present—this would have to do.

But Tesh had momentarily forgotten an important detail, the fact that she was touching the skin of the Tulyan. She felt him absorb information from her, but she remained where she was anyway. Both she and Eshaz were Guardians, and she felt safe with him.

“Guardians,” Woldn said, in a sharp and sarcastic tone. He lifted off and flew around angrily. “Both of you have sworn allegiance to the strange Human, Noah Watanabe, haven’t you? Eshaz, you continue to deceive me. Is there no honor left in your people? And Tesh, you continue to disappoint me.”

Neither of them responded.

“I have decided on punishments for both of you. Tesh, you are banished for the rest of your days. I officially declare you an outcast, never to return to the Parvii Fold or associate with any member of this race. You are to take that unreliable podship with you, and Eshaz as well to avoid a ‘diplomatic incident,’ as he calls it. I won’t transport him, not after his complete failure—whether through deception or ineptitude, it really doesn’t matter. As for the podship, we can swarm and take it back whenever we please. There are ways to overcome your hold on it. Now, go!”

The two of them boarded the podship, but as Tesh hovered in the air in front of Eshaz, she had an empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. In the background of her consciousness, she only half heard Eshaz tell her that he had important ecological work to do, and that he urgently needed her assistance in transporting him to the Tulyan Starcloud.

“What?” She hesitated inside the passenger compartment.

He repeated himself.

“For what purpose?” she asked.

“My position is sensitive. I cannot confide in you without permission from the Council of Elders. Do you think a Parvii such as yourself could ever trust a Tulyan? We both work for Noah Watanabe and admire him, so our goals must be similar. At the moment, I’m in a hurry, and I must place myself at your mercy.”

“We each have secrets,” she said. “Woldn concealed the location of the Parvii Fold from you, one of our racial necessities.”

“That is true. I was blindfolded in a sense, unable to determine where we were going. Presumably you would do the same on the return trip.”

She nodded.

It occurred to her that he might try to steal her podship at the first opportunity, or might lure her into a Tulyan trap where others did so, but she dismissed the thought. This was a trusted friend of Noah Watanabe, and she did not think he would harm a fellow Guardian. As she hovered in front of Eshaz with a slight buzz, she wondered if the Tulyans and Parviis could ever reconcile their differences. Maybe this would be a step in that direction, even if it involved only two people. She vowed to give it a try.

Behind her, she heard the scorn of the palace full of Parviis, with Woldn’s voice rising above the others, and telepathic winds buffeted her. She hurried into the sectoid chamber, and got underway.

Chapter Sixteen

Does my brother think I am a monster, with no feelings? He has never understood me. To be accurate, I have feelings for him. I hate him with every fiber of my being.

—Francella Watanabe

“You don’t seem to realize it,” Francella said, “but I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.” In her black underclothes, she sat on an immense, disheveled bed, beneath a gilded headboard that bore the golden tigerhorse crest of the Doge’s royal house.

“And I haven’t?” Lorenzo snapped, as he dressed to leave. “Where do you think I’m going now? I have an important military meeting.”

“So like a man,” she said, “acting like a woman’s concerns are nothing. Sometimes you make me feel invisible. Am I no more than a sexual partner to you?”

At her own villa, they were in the large top-floor suite that she had leased to Lorenzo. The morning sunlight was too bright for Francella. At a snap of her fingers, she lowered the automatic shades.

Clearly agitated, Lorenzo had difficulty buttoning his dark-blue tunic. “What is it this time? It’s always something, isn’t it?”

“Lorenzo,” she said, in her firmest tone, “I want you to sit down and listen to me.” She only began sentences with his given name when she wanted him to feel like he’d done something wrong.

From their long relationship, he understood the code between them. With a long, annoyed sigh, he sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her, leaving his tunic unbuttoned.

“You’ve been a bad little boy,” she said with a smile, “and I think you need a spanking.”

He fought back a smile. “After the meeting, OK? Please hurry and tell me. What do you need?”

Her eyelids fluttered. “Not so much. I just want to know what you’re going to do with my troublesome brother.”

“You know we’ve been questioning him, and performing medical tests to find out why he recovered so easily from the wound you gave him. My experts tell me they still have a great deal of work to do.”

“I’m his sister, remember? Perhaps I can figure out what your experts cannot. They are taking a long time, too long. Having trouble, aren’t they?”

“Well, yes, but Noah is an unprecedented case.”

“As his twin, I might have certain insights.”

The Doge arched his gray eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you have the same ability?”

“No, nothing of the kind. But I do know more about him than anyone else. I grew up with him in the same household. If anyone can get through the barriers he has set up, it is me.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“Let me supervise the research; put me in charge of Noah. As the owner of CorpOne, I have the finest medical laboratories on Canopa, but you haven’t even used them. Your investigators seem to be protecting their own turf. But they’re not making any progress, and it’s time for a change.”

“You want to keep Noah’s fate in the Watanabe family?”

“You could put it that way.”

He scowled. “I find it ironic that you would ask this of me, when you kept me from deciding about the fate of my own son. For more than twenty years, I didn’t even know Anton existed.”

“We’ve already been over that, and it is beside the point.” She slid over by him and nibbled at his ear. “Besides, I already apologized for that, many times. Would you like me to do so again?”

He smiled, but looked troubled. “Not now. I have too much on my mind.”

“You’re not going off to that big important meeting with this unresolved, are you? It will just block your reasoning powers. You need to clear this up first, and then your mind will be clear and sharp for the meeting.”

Looking exasperated, he shook his head, but smiled. “All right,” he said. “You’re in charge of Noah from now on. Make the necessary decisions, and find out how he healed himself from a puissant-gun wound that should have killed him.”

“Oh, I will,” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

Quickly, the stocky, gray-haired nobleman resumed dressing. “One proviso,” he said.

Alarmed, she asked what he meant.

“I’ll decide what to do about our son … without consulting with you.”

“Agreed,” she said, not showing any hesitation. Though she felt some belated motherly concern for Anton, Francella didn’t have the time or adequate inclination to follow through with it. Another matter was far more important.

She needed to unravel Noah’s secrets.

* * * * *

Later that day, Francella sent Noah, under heavy guard, to one of her laboratories to have him analyzed. There, she and her chief scientists met with Dr. Hurk Bichette, who was the newly installed director of CorpOne’s Medical Research Division. The doctor had an interesting biography. He had held this position previously, but his career had been interrupted when Guardians kidnapped him and forced him to tend to Noah, who was gravely wounded when the Doge’s Red Berets attacked the orbital EcoStation.

Bichette’s time with the Guardians had been most peculiar, and intriguing to her. Having resurfaced right after the podship crisis, he told her he recalled being forced to undergo an electronic procedure by a sentient robot in the employ of the Guardians, and afterward his memories had been sketchy. He’d been left with a general knowledge that he’d been with the rebel group and that he had tended to Noah himself, but without important details. He knew that Noah had recovered from his injuries, possibly due to Bichette’s own medical skills, but little more.

Most importantly, he had no memory of where he had been with the rebels and where they were hiding now. When he came back to CorpOne, Francella’s people performed a battery of lie-detection tests on him, along with stringent loyalty tests, before permitting him to return to her Medical Research Division.

He had passed them all with flying colors.…

Noah awoke to find himself on a hover stretcher, looking to one side at a window and a wall. His muscles felt sluggish and heavy, and his eyes became sore whenever he moved them too much. Even so, his thoughts seemed clear, making him wonder if he could vault out of there mentally the moment he felt like doing so. That might be the best sedative for him of all. But he didn’t make the attempt, at least not yet, since he wanted to see what they were going to do to him.

For the moment, he didn’t see or hear anyone in the room with him, though he heard distant, muffled voices.

He thought of Tesh, and the paranormal kiss he gave her, reaching across the cosmos. Not a real kiss; they’d never had one. Envisioning her classically beautiful face and bright, emerald eyes, he felt a tug of emotion. So unfortunate that the two of them ever had conflicts, but Noah realized now that he was responsible for much of the acrimony himself, since he hadn’t wanted to intrude on Anton’s romantic interests. But Noah had noticed the way she looked at him, and recalled the secret way he felt for her whenever they were together.

“Ah,” Dr. Bichette said in his basso voice, as attendants guided a hover stretcher into the laboratory. Noah realized that he was unable to move, because electronic restraints held him down. “I’ve been looking forward to this!” The doctor’s eyes were filled with wild fascination. Three men in white biocoats and gloves looked on, scientists who were dressed as their superior was.

Noah thought back. This was the first time he had been aware of the doctor since Francella shot Noah in the chest and he recovered afterward miraculously, in only a few remarkable moments.

As Noah listened, Francella filled the director in on the security measures that would be followed. Armed guards would always be present in the laboratory, and for even greater security Noah had been fitted with an electronic restraint system that could be customized for the movements he was permitted to make, and would stun him if he tried to do anything without authorization.

“So,” Bichette said, when he finally had a chance to examine Noah, “you claim to be immortal, eh?”

Noah glared up at him. “Let’s put it this way. I have no need of your medical services.”

With a tight smile, the doctor removed all of Noah’s clothing except for his underwear. Then, with Francella looking on, he proceeded to look at the skin on Noah’s chest with a high-powered magnifying glass. “Remarkable,” he said, looking away from the eyepiece of the instrument. “I see the faintest evidence of a large wound—directly over the heart—but it is completely healed. This is not possible.”

Running a scanner over Noah, he next examined the internal organs. “Incredible, incredible,” he said. “I don’t believe it. They’ve all regrown. There is evidence of massive new cellular growth.”

Going back to the magnifying glass, Bichette continued to go over the skin of Noah’s entire body, centimeter by centimeter. At the left ankle, he said he found a very faint line all the way around. “Like an amputation mark,” he said.

Noah muttered an insult under his breath, and smiled to himself when he noticed that Francella could not make out the words.

Performing an interior body scan, Bichette exclaimed, “Yes! This entire foot was amputated! Then … then … it
grew
back. I see new bones, muscles, tissue. This is unbelievable.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Noah said. “You cut the foot off yourself, said you had to do it or I would have lost my leg, or my life. You were also there when the foot regrew.”

Bichette looked at him blankly.

“He doesn’t remember any of that, dear brother,” Francella said. “One of your robots zapped his brain.”

Not even looking in her direction, Noah considered what must have happened to the doctor. Subi Danvar or Thinker must have instituted a security measure, sometime after the Doge put Noah under arrest.

“Like a lizard,” one of the scientists remarked. “This guy grows body parts back like a lizard.”

“Yes,” Francella said in a wary voice, “but lizards can be killed.”

Maybe not this one,
Noah thought. And a shudder ran down his spine, as he considered the horrors that this woman might inflict on him.

Chapter Seventeen

Racial extinction is always closer than anyone realizes.

—Parvii Inspiration

The armored man watched as a long silver machine dug a new chamber, throwing dirt and bits of rock around, making so much noise that he had to wear high-decibel ear protection. Giovanni Nehr stood back at a safe distance to avoid the debris cast by the machine, which rolled forward on treads and had spinning drill bits on its body. Soon, new barracks would be constructed here, but not for Humans. As the Digger proceeded, it illuminated the work area in high-powered beams of light.

With the burgeoning number of robots under Guardian command, owing to Thinker’s ambitious manufacturing program, additional quarters were needed. Sentient machines could live in tighter quarters than Humans, with their metal bodies stacked higher and packed tighter; they had to be kept somewhere, couldn’t be left to wander around the subterranean tunnels and caverns of the compound.