The Timeweb Chronicles: Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (32 page)

Chapter Sixty-Six

How do we measure the accomplishments of our lives? By this do we measure our happiness, or our despair.

—Anton Glavine
, Reflections

The crew of the
Avelo
, following one of Captain Yuell’s rare and prized treasure maps, made several passes around Wuxx Reef, in a blue binary star system. The yellowing parchment, which he had spread open on the bridge of the ship, described fully laden merchant prince schooners that were missing in that sector, but without precise information on the exact location of the wrecks.

In only a few hours, the adventurers struck pay dirt, locating a spice schooner that had crashed into a cave within the floating rock formation, so that it was not visible from the outside. They only found it by sending a scouting party into the cave in a speedplane, with the red-sashed captain at the controls.

The wreck contained a cargo of exotic Old Earth spices, in sealed, largely undamaged containers. Captain Yuell, with a wide-ranging knowledge of commodities and values, said that he would investigate before selling the salvaged goods, since some of the spices might be irreplaceable, now that Earth was destroyed.

“This cargo might even be needed by scientists to regenerate seeds,” he theorized as Acey, Dux, and other crewmen loaded bags, chests, and barrels into the
Avelo
. “In fact, even without knowing what we can get for the haul, I’m going to award all of you a bonus. We’re overdue for a celebration.”

When the loading was completed, he patted Acey on the back, and added, “You and your cousin have done fine work for our little enterprise, and now you’ll learn how we let our hair down.” Ever since helping with the repair of the hydion engine, Acey had become one of his favorites, almost like a son.…

The following day, Captain Yuell took his treasure ship crew to the dusty planet of Adurian for a celebration. As the men strutted into a dimly-lit saloon they wore their finest clothes, with eye patches, bandanas, baggy trousers, and gleaming knives at their waists. Captain Yuell and the little Hibbil Mac Golden wore ceremonial swords.

“Stick with me, lads,” the captain said to Acey and Dux, “and I’ll teach you how to have a good time.”

Most of the patrons in the crowded tavern were Adurians, looking like humanoids with small, antlike heads and bulbous, oversized eyes. But there were a handful of other races as well, chubby Kichis, tall Vandurians, and bearded Ordians. As the treasure crew entered, conversation halted, but resumed soon afterward when the visitors glared around.

“They don’t want trouble with us,” Mac Golden said, keeping his hand near his sword.

A curvaceous Jimlat woman, with a pretty but blockish face, smiled at Dux, causing the young man to blush.

“You like that one?” Yuell asked.

“Uh, I have a girlfriend waiting for me at home,” Dux said, lying.

“Well, this is where we keep ourselves tuned up in the love department,” Yuell said, with a wide grin. “Don’t want to get rusty on these long voyages.” He and the men laughed.

Like ancient Earth cowboys after a cattle drive, the crew drank heavily and gambled in the smoky main room. More Jimlat women emerged from back rooms, and mingled with the men. Even Acey had one on his lap, but Dux, being more shy, kept his distance. For a while, Dux even tried to avoid gambling, since he and Acey had already lost so much. But after a couple of “high-du” drink injections, he joined his friends in a card game.

By the time Dux slipped into one of the high-backed chairs, the game was getting boisterous, with the participants shouting at each other, and not always good-naturedly. As Mac Golden explained in his squeaky little voice, this was Endo, the favorite pastime of the hairless, homopod Adurians—a fast moving competition in which electronic cards changed their faces and numbers in the blink of an eye, reducing or increasing their values.

Each player had an electronic screen on the table in front of him, with cards flashing across the surface. If certain card combinations showed up, the player had to press a button quickly to select it, or lose the hand. Acey had the best luck with the cards that came up, and the quickest reactions of anyone at the table. No one, not even Dux , could even come close.

“Time to quit!” Captain Yuell exclaimed finally, as he rose to his feet. “We better get Acey out of here before he ruins the whole Adurian economy.”

But just as he said this, Dux got his own winning hand on the screen, and he pressed the button. The screen locked in place, showing the faces of six Adurian women, side by side, each of them wearing matching sunbonnets. The word “WINNER” appeared on his screen in Galeng.

“Hey, look at this!” one of the treasure hunters exclaimed. “We’ve got another big winner here!”

But before Dux could celebrate, the faces on his screen changed, to pictures of Acey Zelk and Dux Hannah at the center, along with four blank faces, two on each side.

“What the.…” Unable to comprehend what he was seeing, Dux leaned close to the screen, and blinked his eyes in disbelief. The blank cards changed, to four uniformed men wearing hats marked “POLICE.”

Dux’s companions all said they had the same screens.

“Let’s get outta here,” Captain Yuell said, leading the way to the exit.

Just then, the front door of the saloon burst open, and white-uniformed Adurian police officers swarmed in. Yuell and Golden charged into their midst with swords drawn, scattering the officers with the aggressive attack. The rest of the treasure ship crew waded in behind them, swinging chairs, clubs, bottles, and anything else they could get their hands on. Acey got on top of the bar and leaped down on two officers, smashing both of them to the floor hard. This knocked one unconscious, and Acey head-butted the other one into a similar state, then jumped over the motionless Adurians and attacked others.

Dux did what he could himself, but he wasn’t the fighter the others were. An Adurian officer hit him in the side of the face with a stun club, sending him reeling and tumbling back under a table. Dux tried to sit up, but felt a little dizzy. Nonetheless, he climbed out and hurtled himself against the police, swinging his fists and screaming obscenities at them.

The police officers had apparently expected their numerical superiority to be enough to take the motley treasure ship crew into custody, but soon discovered how wrong they were. The Adurians tried to draw their pistols from holsters, but only one of them pulled a gun free, and he didn’t get an opportunity to use it, because Mac Golden severed his arm at the elbow with a swish of his sword. The injured Adurian ran from the saloon into the street, screaming and spurting gouts of blood. Other officers ran after him in terror, and most of those remaining in the saloon were on the floor, either unconscious or dead.

Just as Dux was fighting another, having punched him in the face, he heard someone shout, “Duck, Dux!”

Without delaying to consider why, Dux did as he was told. A fraction of a second later Captain Yuell fired one of the officers’ own guns, a thunderous blast that blew the alien’s head off only inches away from a startled Dux.

The captain then led a retreat. They made it to a shuttle and lifted off just before the shuttleport filled with police vehicles. As they rocketed upward, Dux saw police aircraft arrive and circle the landing field below.

“I didn’t see any other shuttles down there,” Mac Golden said, as he wiped his bloody sword on a cloth. “It’ll take ‘em awhile to mount a pursuit, and by then we should be long gone.”

“But they can still catch us at the pod station,” Acey said, “while we’re waiting for a podship.”

“Not so,” the Hibbil said. “I checked the glyphreader before we went down to the surface. We’ll have a wait of maybe fifteen minutes after arriving at the station, and then we’re off on our next adventure.”

The furry little Hibbil, who prided himself on keeping track of important matters for the captain, proved to be correct.

* * * * *

When the entire crew was safely in outer space aboard their treasure ship, everyone surrounded Dux and Acey. “What did you do to the Adurians?” Captain Yuell asked. “You guys are on their most wanted list.”

“We didn’t do much,” Acey said.

“Aw, come on,” Yuell said. “They had pictures of both of you.”

“Well,” Dux said, looking at Acey and then the captain, “maybe we should have told you this before, but we didn’t think you would care.”

“This sounds serious,” Mac Golden said, moving close and staring up at Dux.

The teenagers went on to describe how they had destroyed the Mutati manufacturing facility on Dij, and how they had barely escaped with their lives.

“You should have told us that earlier,” Captain Yuell said, scowling. “You put my entire crew at peril.”

“We didn’t think it would hurt going to an Adurian world,” Acey said.

“Oh you didn’t, did you?” Mac Golden said. The little Hibbil stomped his foot angrily. “Don’t you boys know anything about politics?”

“Uh, we grew up in the backwoods of Siriki,” Dux said. “We don’t know much about stuff like that.”

“Don’t you know that the Mutatis and Adurians are allies?” Golden shouted.

Dux felt a flush of hotness in his face, and caught the nervous gaze of Acey. The two of them shrugged.…

Captain Yuell did not kick the boys off the ship. He said that they had learned their lesson, but obtained their promises not to keep any more important secrets from their crewmates. “We’re your family now,” he said. “I’m your Dad and Golden here is your Mom.”

“Hey!” the Hibbil said. “I don’t like the sound of that.” He and the captain sparred playfully with swords, while the boys and the rest of the crew laughed and shouted insults.…

But none of them, with the exception of Mac Golden, knew that the Hibbils and Adurians were secretly allied with each other, and intended to destroy both the Humans and the Mutatis. The HibAdu Coalition had placed sleeper agents all over the galaxy, with standing orders to await further instructions. Golden was one of those agents himself, but he had recently decided not to follow activation orders, if he ever got them.

Like Acey and Dux, the furry little Hibbil had found a new family. He liked these Humans, and would never consider betraying them. But he fell short of revealing what he knew about the HibAdu Coalition’s scheme, and the danger it presented to the entire Human race.

Golden didn’t want to think about all of that, and hoped the whole situation would just go away, without harming any of the people who had grown close to him.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

No one can ever see all of the interesting places in this galaxy. At least, I used to think that way.

—Noah Watanabe

His friends who attended to him would have confirmed that Noah did not leave the deck of the grid-plane, where he lay in deep sleep, not having awakened or even moved for days. Untended, his reddish beard had been growing. But his mind was more active than ever, and—unknown to the Guardians around him—he was about to take a fantastic mental journey.

Sitting on the carpeted deck beside Noah’s supine form, Eshaz talked soothingly to him, massaging the man’s forehead as gently as he could with one scaly hand.

On the surface of his consciousness, Noah was aware of his alien friend, and of a mysterious healing treatment he had administered. But Noah made no effort to respond to the Tulyan, or to communicate with him in any manner. His attentions were focused elsewhere.

He heard Tesh say, excitedly, “Look, his eyelids are fluttering!”

And he heard a murmuring of conversation around him, as the others came over to see if Noah was coming back to consciousness. It almost seemed to him that he could if he really wanted to, but something much more important drew him away from them … and he felt his mind expanding, questing outward.

Noah felt drawn by something momentous he needed to discover. Instinct told him it would most certainly be dangerous, and that if he went too deeply into his subconscious, he might never be able to wake up. The experience might kill him, but he to take it anyway.

He felt a beckoning, something tugging at his mind, teasing it, promising unknown delights. In his mind’s eye, he saw a dark cloud in space, with a faint illumination beyond, delineating the shape of the mass. Every few seconds, something flashed behind the cloud, making its outline sharper. It was like a lightning storm, but that did not seem possible, since he was in deep space, far beyond any atmospheric envelope.

Earlier, Noah had heard Tesh and Eshaz discussing the explosion of Plevin Four, and it occurred to him now that a chunk of atmosphere might have lifted into space, sealed inexplicably, and that it was beyond a cloud of space dust now, flashing. The wild beauty could be like a last hurrah before the pocket of air disappeared forever, along with the planet.

Of course, none of that seemed possible. But still, he wondered. The visual effect was compelling.

As if released from his body, Noah’s mind felt like it was floating in space, similar to the atmosphere that appeared to have broken away from the dead planet. His consciousness drifted on an empyrean current, taking him past blindingly spectacular sights. A massive yellow sun went nova in an awe-inspiring burst of destructive beauty, and in the next star system an even larger sun, a red giant, dropped into a black hole and then faded abruptly, like a dramatic sunset with all of its light suddenly sucked away.

He felt a mental click, and the scene before his inner eye shifted. Noah was no longer floating, no longer just observing. He found himself spread-eagled, connected to an immense gossamer web, but he was not a prisoner of it. It was the most marvelous sensation!

To his astonishment he was able to flip from one section of the pale green web to another—left, right, up, down, forward, and backward. Awkwardly, he went in several directions, one after the other, and then found he could gain better control over his movements. On impulse, he accelerated into deep space and spun into the cosmos, passing by asteroids, worlds, star systems, and even passing completely
through
other ghostly, acrobatic figures like him, of various recognizable races.

But there were other phantom creatures out there as well, some spinning, some darting, and others seeming to run in space, their appendages dancing along the webbing. Some were humanoid, while others looked like mythological animals, such as he had never seen before.

One with a lion head and serpentine body approached and kept pace beside him, staring at him as if trying to decide whether to devour him or not. Concerned, Noah tried to go faster than before, but the ghostly creature stayed with him.

Unable to get away, Noah wanted to cry out in terror, but knew his voice would make no sound in the airless void of space. Like a man in the wilderness facing a ferocious beast, he attempted to show no fear, and made a defiant, aggressive face at the would-be predator, along with wildly dramatic hand gestures.

Finally, apparently bored, the beast drifted off into the tail of a passing comet, and disappeared entirely.

Noah went on to cartwheel across the galaxy, a cosmic voyager in a realm he had never known existed. He was a mote in the heavens. With surprising ease, he gained new skills flying in this realm, and was able to increase his speed and maneuverability. He kept up with other creatures, following them for a while and then breaking off to go his own way. There seemed no limit to the places he could go, but none of them seemed tangible. It was all dreamlike, as if he was peering into a dimension that did not really exist.

And a disturbing thought intruded:
The Doge tried to kill me, and my sister put him up to it. Has she succeeded? Am I dead, or dying? Is that true of the others out here, too?

He thought back on the near-death stories he had heard—of a person’s life flashing in front of his eyes in seconds or fractions of seconds, and of a light at the end of a tunnel, beckoning him to go through and discover the light, beckoning him to.…

For the first time, Noah wasn’t certain if passing through meant dying or living. In the past he’d always thought if he went to the other side of the tunnel he would die, and that the light was heaven, drawing him like a magnet. But now he wasn’t so certain. Couldn’t the light represent life instead, pulling him out of the darkness of death?

He saw no tunnel at all now, though it seemed appropriate to him that he should. After all, wasn’t he on the brink of death? Hadn’t he chosen not to swim to the top of his consciousness where his friends were? Instead, he’d gone in a different, very dangerous direction. But a fascinating direction, where he had so much to learn, so much to experience.

Somehow, through everything, his personal fate seemed of little importance.

He was out in the middle of the vast galaxy where the lifetime of a human being was so infinitesimal in the scale of time that it hardly mattered at all. But could a life form only alive briefly still accomplish something meaningful? The common fruit fly lived but a few hours, and some organisms even less than that. Could the death of that fly affect events on the other side of the universe?

Noah thought it was possible, an extrapolation of a “butterfly flapping its wings” theory his mother had once told him, how that seemingly inconsequential occurrence could affect events on the other side of a planet.

He thought of the theories of relativity, of quantum mechanics, and of macro systems—of worlds orbiting stars, of entire galaxies hurtling through the cosmos, and of the all-encompassing universe expanding, fleeing from the singularity where the Big Bang was supposed to have occurred.

But his lingering physical reality interfered rudely with the serenity of such ruminations.

My sister tried to kill me!

The galactic images faded, and his eyes fluttered open. For an instant, he saw the scaly, reptilian face of Eshaz and his gray-slitted alien eyes, peering hard at him. A universe of caring in those eyes. The Tulyan had always been a giver, quick to do whatever he could for his friends, and for the environment.

But those eyes harbored a universe of secrets.

Abruptly, of his own volition, Noah found himself back in the strange cosmic realm again, spread-eagled on the gossamer web, spinning, cartwheeling across the galaxy. He peered into places where Humans could not look, and not knowing what he saw, he failed to comprehend.

Noah’s mind filled to bursting. He wanted to come back again some other time and re-experience this … if the opportunity ever presented itself to him. Logically, it seemed to him that he must be going stark, raving mad, but he felt the opposite, that he was more focused than ever before in his life. In the spaceship of his mind he journeyed far from anyplace he had ever been before, on an expedition that his physical body, subject to its corporeal limitations, could not possibly undertake.

With his new awareness, he didn’t see how the concept of a physical form fit into a realm that seemed to be constructed of something else entirely, and where the spiritual meant more than anything he could touch. His eyes were transmitting extraordinary images to him.

The faint green webbing curved and stretched off into infinity, surrounding and penetrating him, connecting him with all that had ever been and all that ever would be. He could not comprehend how he knew this, only that he did, and that he had always known it, and always would, since he would never die as long as he remained connected to this marvelous galactic structure. He felt it giving him life, renewed energy, and that this was one of the secrets in Eshaz’s eyes.

But there were more, many more.

As Noah spun away into this alternate dimension, he saw his friend’s eyes superimposed over the cosmic tableau, and felt the Tulyan’s presence with him, sharing the connection the two of them had with the webbing. Eshaz was making this experience available for him; Eshaz was saving his life by showing him … what? Heaven?

Most astonishing. The slenderest threads connected Noah to a hidden network that spanned everything in existence, a godlike web that gave life and took it away. Despite the guidance of his friend, Noah feared that he would lose contact and never find his way back to this realm again. What a tragedy that would be, what a fathomless loss. He realized with a start that he hadn’t been moving at all, that he had been connected to one strand, and that the web had been folding and refolding and unfolding around him, in a magical display of empyrean origami.

Such beauty he had never before beheld or even imagined possible, as he saw sunlight glistening off the green webbing in star system after star system. Exquisitely perfect in its design, this galactic mesh appeared to be an extrapolation of elegant patterns seen on planets … of the designs in spider webs, leaves, and seashells. It all seemed linked to him, and all of it had to be the achievement of a remarkable higher power.

There could be no other possible explanation.

For a moment his vision shifted, and he saw green-and-brown skymining ships floating over the surface of a planet, scooping air and processing important elements out of it. On a plateau below the ships he saw his company’s base of operations for that world, which he recognized as Jaggem. It gave him reassurance to see the important work continuing, despite his own absence. He had left good people in charge.

Then he saw a contingent of red-uniformed men supervising the operations, and his spirits dropped. The Doge’s Red Berets.

Presently the images faded, replaced by the twinkling void of deep space and the pale green filigree. Ahead, he saw chunks of matter hurtling through the cosmos, some pieces without apparent direction, while others …
podships!
… were racing along the gossamer web strands. Appearing Lilliputian in comparison with the immensity of his own form, they sped right through him without apparent harm. Such a peculiar sensation. He felt as if he was stretched across a vast distance. A mental stretch, he believed, and not a physical one, but the mind had brought along an enlarged ghost of its body.

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.”