Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (89 page)

Was this better than the nightmare his mind had displayed? Both scenarios were dismal, and offered him no respite. Not even death.

Chapter Fifty

“Every time you make a decision you are taking a gamble. In fact, the apparent act of not making a decision is really a decision per se, and is thus inherently a gamble. Since there is no way to escape risk, the only course is to embrace it.”

—Remarks of Lorenzo del Velli, Grand Opening of The Pleasure Palace

“Even from captivity, he has made a fool of you,” Francella said. She sat with Lorenzo in the dining hall of the space station, surrounded by the miniature forest of dwarf oak and blue-bark canopa pines that her brother had planted. “His Guardians attack us at will, then go into hiding. They’re causing a lot of damage, ruining industrial facilities and other key assets.”

“A classic guerrilla war,” Lorenzo observed. “Not easy for a military power to fight. It can go on for years.”

Leaning close to a cup of iced mocaba juice, the Doge inhaled, causing a narrow stream of brown liquid to rise from the cup through a narrow, invisible energy tube. A decadent manner of drinking, requiring hardly any effort, but he seemed to find it amusing.

“If you would stop playing with your gadgets,” she huffed, “we might make progress in this little war.” With a sneer, Francella lifted her own cup of mocaba and drank it in the conventional fashion after deactivating the energy tube. She tasted the sharp, cold flavor.

Something caught her eye in the woods, a movement that seemed unusual. Not birds or the small forest creatures that had been transplanted to the orbital enclave. A faint mist drifting in the air? She rubbed her eyes. When she looked in that direction again, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary.

“I do not
play
at war,” he said, a hurt and angry expression on his face.

“But it goes on for too long. If you dedicated more effort to rooting out the evil, it would end. Why do you go easy on your enemies?” Beyond the Doge, she saw small, speedy birds flitting from branch to branch, kept separate from the dining hall by an invisible electronic barrier.

“You are mistaken. I want nothing more than to end this nuisance, this swatting of gnats. But your brother’s forces—led by his adjutant—are a crafty lot, and have their own robotic forces.”

Pausing, Lorenzo looked at her closely, an inquisitive expression on his face. “You do not look well, my dear.”

That morning, she’d had makeup applied artfully by a personal servant, but obviously it was not enough to conceal the ravages of her ailment. Rage seeped into every cell and atom of her body. Somehow her brother had lured her into his spider web, and caused her to take the blood that would kill her. A deadly trick, and he had the immortal gift of being able to regrow his body, a gift that had undoubtedly been denied to her.

Thoughts of revenge filled her. If she could not kill him, she wanted to destroy everything he had built in his lifetime, all of his plans, his hopes, and his dreams, turning them into a nightmarish charnel pile. Everything would die that he had worked for, and he would be left a broken shell, never able to escape his eternal confinement.

“I want the Guardians annihilated,” she demanded. “They killed my father and destroyed CorpOne headquarters.”

“It will be done,” the merchant prince leader promised.

“Immediately!”

“Of course. Now I want you to see a doctor.”

“All right,” she said. But she did not see what good it would do.…

In ensuing weeks the Red Berets, and especially Jimu’s machine forces, stepped up their activities. All over Canopa, people were arrested and brutally interrogated. It was something Jimu did well.

Having been banished to the Inn of the White Sun by the machine officers on Ignem, the feisty little robot Ipsy pressed on. Despite the large amount of money he had garnered from his clever business operations, the officers had been paying little attention to him, and had rejected his offers of financial assistance to build a bigger army. He could not understand why, as military robots, they cared nothing for increasing the power and might of their forces. Without Thinker to guide them, they were only stupid machines, with no direction or sense of purpose. They just marched around down on the surface of the planet and engaged in foolish skirmishes.

Yet, through hard work and an aggressive marketing strategy, Ipsy impressed the civilian leadership of the Inn. As a consequence, they promoted him to the directorship of the Inn of the White Sun. Very quickly, the little machine grew increasingly officious and ordered much larger civilian robots around in a gruff tone, demanding excellence from them. Under his management, the Inn was becoming more popular than ever, even though few Human or Mutati travelers journeyed there anymore, because of the limitations on space travel.

Chapter Fifty-One

Consider sight. No matter what you gaze upon, there is always something beyond, something unseen. Consider the other senses as well, and every thought, and you will see it is true for them as well.

—Noah Watanabe

Now that Francella Watanabe knew she was dying, her surroundings took on an entirely different cast… more harsh and glaring, with hardly any noticeable loveliness or color. She could not imagine ever enjoying anything again, the beauty of music, the taste of fine wine, or laughter among friends.

She felt that way about the soft dawn pastels that flooded across the sky now, which provided her with little enjoyment at all, certainly not enough to divert her from her bleak emotions. Essentially numb to her surroundings, Francella tried to walk up a walkway toward CorpOne’s largest medical laboratory building, but her steps were arthritic and painful. Every joint and muscle in her body ached. Even at this early hour, Dr. Bichette had better be there, as she had demanded. She had telebeamed him in the middle of the night with her orders, but he had sounded remote and peculiar, not his usual cooperative, obedient self.

All the pleasures of life seemed to have been taken from her prematurely, and it did not seem fair to her. Francella was not dead yet, and by rights such things should not be taken from her until the very last moment of her existence, and her last gasp of breath, which should have been many years from now.

On a deep level, she knew that she had been dying ever since she took her first lungful of air, more than thirty-eight years ago. Every mortal in the galaxy was given a death sentence at birth. The only question was when they would succumb to the frailties of the flesh, and under what circumstances. It was all so uneven, and so cruelly unpredictable within a predictable framework, the distinct limitations of the bodily container.

She wanted to lash out at everything and everyone, to be even harder on people than she had been before, but somehow that seemed purposeless to her at the moment, and might even increase her unhappiness. Perhaps if she had been a more pleasant person, it occurred to her now, the Supreme Being might have blessed her with a less demanding, far happier life. But the difficulties she had experienced since her childhood had made her the way she was today, had molded the hard edges of her personality. She had only reacted to challenging situations, the primary of which had been the curse of having a brother like Noah. From the beginning, their father had favored her fraternal twin over her, giving him a charmed life while cruelly shunting her aside. As a result she had been forced to assert herself and develop a strong personality, one that could not be trampled upon.

Nonetheless, deep in her soul she had a sensitive side. And with death staring her in the face, she was terrified.

Francella limped into the laboratory’s coffee shop, where she had told Bichette to meet her. To her relief the doctor was there, accepting a large cup of mocaba from a machine. In a slow, sleepy voice, he said, “This is already my second cup, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much good.”

“Huh.” She stared at him, didn’t get anything for herself. He drank nervously, and seemed to be avoiding eye contact with her, as if afraid to anger her by focusing on the obvious—that she appeared to have aged ten years in only a few weeks. She hadn’t bothered to wear makeup today, and knew the effect must be startling to him. The muscles in her legs ached from the walk.

Finally, he glanced at her and asked, “Are you ready?”

“That’s why I’m here.” Her voice creaked and she felt tired, overburdened with her problems.

“Of course.”

They walked side by side down the corridor, saying nothing, encountering no one at this hour except for one of the maintenance men, wearing coveralls and a tool belt. The man looked at her oddly as she hobbled along painfully, and she stared him down.

The examination went much as she had anticipated, a numbing blur of probing instruments and medical j argon coming from Bichette’s mouth. Essentially, she was taking this man into her confidence in revealing her physical debility to him. But she had no one else to turn to on this important health matter, no one else to give her advice. Though she had never admitted as much to him, she considered Bichette something akin to a friend. For years he had served her father and CorpOne well, as more than a mere doctor or the director of CorpOne’s Medical Research Division. But friendships were not something Francella had cultivated in her life. There had been no time. Other matters had been more pressing, more immediate, and she’d had to put certain things on the shelf of someday.

Now she felt the loss, and very much alone.

After checking her blood, cellular activity, and vital signs, and comparing them with earlier readings, Dr. Bichette gave her the bad news, which was not unexpected: “You are the same blood type as your brother, but for some reason the injection of his blood is causing you to age prematurely, like a progerian. Your cells are breaking down too quickly.”

“Is there an antidote?” she asked, weakly.

“None that I know of. It would be nice if we could reverse the procedure you did, removing your brother’s blood and all of its effects from your body, but I know of no way to accomplish that.”

“You would like to lecture me for my impulsiveness,” she said with a menacing glare, “but
don’t.
”

He nodded.

“Come with me,” she ordered. Limping, she led the way to Noah’s quarters, which were an entire section of the laboratory. By the time they got there, lab technicians were arriving, beginning to check equipment and charts, laying out the tests and procedures they would conduct on him today.

Francella saw her brother sitting in a comfortable chair, calmly reading a holobook that floated in front of his eyes. He looked fully recovered now, even completely unscarred, and this infuriated her.

Feeling increasingly frustrated, she wanted to do him serious harm, in any way she could. Across a speaker system, she spoke to him, in a voice cracking with emotion. “You tricked me, didn’t you? I did exactly what you expected, taking your blood, and you knew what would happen to me. I’m dying. Does that make you happy?”

He shoved the holo book to one side (where it continued to float in the air) and then stared at her, his face emotionless. “Listen to me carefully,” he said. “You have everything to do with your problems, and I have nothing to do with them. Just because you have always resented me, and you have always distrusted me, does not make your feelings rational. I have never done anything to you.”

“You always got the best from Daddy, and I got the dregs.”

“You’re blaming me for
his
actions?”

“I blame you for taking what he gave you when we were growing up, and enjoying it, without once thinking of me.”

The remark struck home. She saw him flinch, and think about it.

On a rack by him, she saw some of Noah’s severed body parts in cryogen tubes, awaiting further tests. She had cut all that skin and bone off him, but had been unable to finish him off. Like a lizard with a bottomless reservoir of regenerative matter, he kept growing everything back.

Turning to Dr. Bichette, who stood at her side, she ordered him to take a vial of blood from her and inject it in Noah. A bit of revenge. As she gave the command, she made sure the speaker system remained on, and watched her brother for a reaction. But he went back to reading his holobook, looking entirely relaxed.

She tried to control her anger.

Shaking his head, the doctor said, “Noah is a medical miracle, unlike any case ever recorded. You should not interfere with his cellular functions.”

“I already did, when I cut him up. This is just a different procedure.”

He looked alarmed. “You are not qualified to make medical decisions.”

“In case you haven’t been paying attention, Doctor, my family corporation owns this medical laboratory and everything that’s in it, including you … and Noah.”

She had used the term “family corporation,” and this gave her pause. It was owned by a family of
one
now … Francella herself.

Summoning a medical technician, Francella repeated the command to her, to make the blood transfer. The aide looked at Dr. Bichette. Reluctantly, he nodded. They all went inside the room with Noah, where the aide took three vials of blood from Francella.

Her brother showed no reaction whatsoever when a technician made the first dermex injection in his forearm. Within seconds, his arm turned dark red, then black. Noah looked totally unconcerned. In five minutes, the arm fell away, a gory mass on the floor. He hardly looked at it. On his body, the limb began to regrow.

In fascination, the doctor and his staff watched, along with Francella.

“The rest of his body is rejecting the injection,” Bichette said, “keeping the poison away.”

“Poison?”
Francella snapped.

He leaned close to her and whispered, “No offense intended, but your blood is tainted. You know that.”

Struggling to retain her composure, Francella ordered additional injections on different parts of Noah’s body. In a flurry, trying to please her, the staff did as she wished.

But each time it was exactly the same. Portions of her brother’s flesh changed color and fell away, but soon began to regrow, replacing lost mass mysteriously.