The Web and the Stars (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I think about my sister often. Sometimes I imagine that I already know her better than I know myself.

—Noah Watanabe

Like a fetus to an umbilical cord, Noah had remained linked to Timeweb during the intense ordeal of his physical restoration, as he returned to life, defying all odds. He had, in a very real sense, gone through a remarkable process of rebirth, on a scale beyond that of any other creature who had ever walked the worlds of the universe, or moved from star system to star system.

The drugs administered to Noah had caused his mind to release its tensions, which should have enabled him to drift into peaceful, restful slumber. But the act of letting go had resulted in an unexpected consequence. Through a veil of consciousness, he saw his sister in her private office, removing a dermex unit from her arm. With a satisfied smile on her face, she leaned back on her chair and closed her eyes.

Noah felt himself forming into a mist as he had done before. Looking down, he saw that it had again taken the shape of his physical form. It floated around the room, even touching Francella briefly when he passed close. The moment the mist came into contact with her, she opened her eyes and sat straight up.

Since he was her twin, Noah sensed how deeply troubled she was, and he knew that virtually all of the hatred she could muster—a considerable amount, indeed—was focused on him, even though she did not know he was there with her. He realized as well that there was nothing he could do about it. She would always feel that way, to the last breath she took. Her wide-open eyes reflected the internal sea of her madness.

He saw her shiver and shudder. She grabbed a coat, hurried to the door, and rushed out into the corridor.

Noah followed, a mist in her wake that clung to her like a shadow.

“You sense I’m here, don’t you?” he shouted.

Nervously, she looked behind her, and almost tripped as she picked up her pace and left the building. He heard the noises she was making, but didn’t know if she could hear him. Just another oddity added to the long list he was accumulating in his mind.

A limocar took her home, and Noah stayed with her all the way, riding invisibly on the seat beside her. She kept twitching, looking around, talking to herself and scrunching in a corner, trying to assure herself that she was not crazy, that she just needed some rest. “I’ve been working too hard,” she said.

He was enjoying this, making her nervous, lingering where she couldn’t do anything about it.

Once, just before they got out of the limocar at her palatial home, she passed her hand through the air where Noah sat in his misty form, but her expression was perplexed and she said nothing about him, didn’t use his name.

The vehicle was coming to a stop, still rolling slowly, when she leapt out, ran inside the main entrance of her home and locked the door behind her. Francella then instructed her personal servants to lock all doors and windows, and to draw the shades in every room.

As the attendants scurried about their business, Noah stuck to her, trying to scuff against the skin of her arms and face whenever he could, which had the effect of further agitating her. She went straight to bed, fully clothed, and pulled the covers over her head.

Noah took that as a barrier. Even in this circumstance, where he was functioning outside of his corporal form, he didn’t want any hint of incest. Instead, he would wait for her to awaken, and would resume the torment.

He realized as he did these things that he had stooped low (though nowhere near to her level), and he felt shame, but only a modicum of it. His rage gave him righteousness, and more than anything he wanted to see her dead.

Now he felt full shame. This was not like him, not at all. As he watched her sleep—the lump under the covers—he felt his resolve weakening. At the same time his connection to the ethereal realm seemed to slip. The images in her bedroom grew more faint. He heard Francella snoring, and felt himself floating involuntarily back to the locked room in the laboratory where they kept him.…

* * * * *

When Francella awoke the following morning, troubling thoughts of the incident still clung to her like raindrops from a storm. But she reminded herself that she had been fatigued when the strange energy seemed to chase her out of the office, and she ascribed it to her own imagination.

She hoped it was that, wanted to think it was, and that it had nothing to do with the blood she had injected.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

There are many forms of children. They do not always need a physical form in order to breathe.

—Saying of the Sirikan Hill People

For weeks, Princess Meghina had been making clandestine visits to a man, always in the middle of the night. Wearing a dark, hooded cloak, she moved silently down a rock-walled corridor, clinging to pockets of darkness.

As a renowned courtesan, this was not particularly unusual behavior on her part. She liked to be discreet. Her customary appointments, however, were with princes and other refined noblemen, from the best families in the galaxy. The man she was seeing now had noble blood, but only on his paternal side. He didn’t live in a magnificent palace or a castle on a hill. The object of her affection was a prisoner in the Doge’s prison, but not a lowly detainee. This one had status.

She had paid off the right guards with Sirikan gemstones, and thus far her secret remained intact. Since first laying eyes on Anton Glavine at the pod station where he was arrested, Meghina had felt an instant attraction. It was always like that with the men in her life, an immediate connection that soon became physical.

But to test herself, she always liked to go through a selection process with her potential paramours. Anton was far more handsome than most of them, but that had little to do with it, as far as she was concerned. Of utmost importance, each of her lovers needed to occupy a special and unique niche in the galaxy; they must not be cut from cookie-cutter molds.

Her dear Prince Saito Watanabe had qualified with flying colors. The self-made tycoon, born into relative obscurity, had raised himself by his own hard labors and force of personality. As for the Doge Lorenzo del Velli, he had his own individuality, particularly his forward-thinking way of elevating commoners to nobility based upon their accomplishments in life. He had done exactly that with Saito, with Jacopo Nehr, and with others. It took courage for him to take those actions, bucking thousands of years of noble tradition. The hardships that her prospective lover, Anton Glavine, was going through now would ultimately build his character. She liked that in a man.

As Princess Meghina hurried down the corridor, she reminded herself that she also had an important humanitarian purpose in mind. It was obvious to her that the mysterious young man had not been treated in a manner befitting his station. He was, after all, the son of Doge Lorenzo, and could even become the ruler of the Merchant Prince Alliance one day, given the right political winds. But she didn’t care about the politics.

It struck her with some excitement that she had never done anything quite like this before, grooming a relationship to this extent, and she laughed a bit at herself. Perhaps she was going a bit “rock happy,” losing some of her senses from being confined to one planet, albeit a large and wealthy one. For much of her life she had flitted between glittering worlds, and her restriction to this one made her feel dismal much of the time.

This nocturnal adventure lifted her spirits; each day that she had an appointment she looked forward to it, even though the two of them had only held hands so far. She hadn’t pushed for more, not even a kiss. She hadn’t told him of her attraction for him, though she could tell that he knew it anyway. Thus far she had only confided that she was interested in his well-being, and would tell him no more. To her credit, she pulled it all off with an air of mystery.

At first the young man had seemed confused by her attentions, and then grateful. In return for her payoffs to the guards, she had obtained better treatment for him. So far he had been spared intensive interrogations or torture, but one of the guards told her he didn’t know if he could promise that for much longer.

Though she had given him no name, Anton had recognized her, and had told her so. Once when he started to utter her name, she’d pressed a hand against his mouth. “Shhh,” she had said. “We don’t want the wrong people to find out I’m helping you.”

Some of the guards had recognized her, despite her efforts to remain cloaked and to conceal her features as much as possible. In delivering her payments to the guards, Meghina’s intermediary had commanded them to look away whenever “the lady” came to visit. Most of the guards had done so, but she had seen a couple of them peeking, trying to get a glimpse of her. One of them might have seen her full face a couple of weeks ago, when her hood slipped off as she was leaving.

Tonight, as she moved stealthily down the corridor, she was surprised to see another female visitor, already with Anton in his cell, speaking to him in low tones. The princess recognized Francella Watanabe immediately, unmistakable with her high forehead and shaved eyebrows. She wore a long black coat.

Slipping into a darkened alcove only a few meters away from the orange bars of the cell’s containment field, Meghina eavesdropped on the conversation.

“Are you well, my son?” Francella asked. She stood inside the cell, while he remained seated on the lower bed of his bunk.

Looking away from her, he said, “I’ve told you before. I have no feelings for you, so we have nothing to discuss. Why do you keep coming back?”

“Because I neglected you for too long. I beg you to forgive me, my son. Am I not worthy of your slightest sympathy?”

“You are only worthy of my contempt.”

“At least you have
some
feelings for me,” she said, with an emotional edge to her voice. She looked down, then said, “I could help you more, if you’d give me a chance. Already I have prevented them from torturing you.”

Anton didn’t respond, but it occurred to Meghina that he had at least two female protectors now. Undoubtedly the guards were playing both of the women to maximize their payoffs, saying to each that they didn’t know how much longer they could continue to protect the prisoner.

Moments later, Francella used a transmitter to release the containment field, stepped out, and then reactivated it. Without another word she swept down the corridor, while Princess Meghina remained in the shadows. In his cell, Anton threw something metal that clanked on the rock floor.

Stepping out of the alcove, Meghina said, “You’re popular tonight.”

He looked at her, his face filled with tragedy. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t a good time. Can you come back another day? I appreciate what you’re doing for me, but I just don’t.…” He seemed at a loss for words.

“You don’t need to explain,” she said, softly. “I understand.”

As Meghina left the prison the same way she had entered, she felt no sympathy for Francella; the selfish woman gave up her maternal rights when she abandoned him as a baby. Of that she was certain.

But the Sirikan princess was not sure what to make of Francella Watanabe’s involvement now … this adversary she loathed so much, who competed with her for the affections of Meghina’s own husband, Doge Lorenzo. Admittedly, the courtesan and the Doge had reached an understanding between them, an open marriage. But she wished he had better taste in some of the other women he saw.

* * * * *

It arrived, like so much information, as an unconfirmed rumor, a horrific story of butchery committed against Noah by his own sister. A new Guardian recruit, a young woman, came to Subi and Thinker with the dreadful tale.

“Everyone’s talking about it,” she said. “I don’t know who said it first, or where it came from.”

“His own sister, eh?” Subi said, seething.

“That’s what they saying.”

Subi sent out investigators to scour Rainbow City and the Valley of the Princes, seeking hard information. Finally it arrived, late that night. One of the investigators had spoken with a medical researcher who claimed to have actually seen the carnage.

Under cover of darkness, Subi led a commando squad himself. In a frenzy, the Guardians stormed CorpOne’s headquarters complex, the inverted pyramid and surrounding buildings. Quickly, they took control of the complex and killed or captured all of the guards.

Feeling a rush of adrenaline, Subi then ordered his squad to aim incendiary rockets at the headquarters building. He hesitated before giving the order to fire. This was the most famous of Prince Saito Watanabe’s buildings, and the most architecturally interesting. The late prince had been Noah’s father, and as such he deserved respect. Especially since Noah came to feel that the two of them might have been close, if not for the vindictive interference of his own sister.

Francella.

But rage suffused Subi as he envisioned her face, and her terrible acts, not only against Noah but against her own father. Over a megaphone, he shouted: “Everyone in the building, you have five minutes to get out.”

Some of the offices had lights on, while most were dark. He saw movement up on one of the top three floors that had been leased to Doge Lorenzo.

Within minutes, a dozen people rushed out of the building on the ground level, and were taken into custody. No one important; just mid-level office staffers and janitorial workers.

Subi made a chopping motion with his right arm, a gesture he selected intentionally, as a visual reminder of Francella’s terrible crime against Noah.

A volley of incendiary rockets struck the building’s top levels exactly where Thinker had told him to hit, causing the entire structure to collapse and burn. It burned like a torch, lighting up the Valley of the Princes.

Chapter Forty

“There are new experiences, and then again there are new experiences! This blows the top off my skull!”

—Acey Zelk, comment to Dux Hannah

Early in the morning, according to the artificial diurnal time established by the hunters, their mottled gray-and-black podship proceeded slowly through the Hibbil Sector, taking a roundabout, seemingly wayward course. In this manner they hoped to avoid alerting their prey.…

Inside the low light of the passenger compartment, Eshaz opened the large shipping cases and brought out a protective suit like the one he had worn on Tarbu. After putting it on, he removed the contents of the other cases, and arranged various items on the deck and on top of a bulkhead table.

These included thorn vines in varying colors, all carefully wrapped in broad leaf packages. Each parcel was marked in a Tulyan dialect that Dux could not read, labels that Eshaz said identified the toxins and drugs in the vines, along with the sizes of the clippings. Other cases held vials of liquid and powder, small bowls, fire cylinders, herbs, music spheres, pigment rings, a big alloy cauldron, and an intricately folded, gilded harness that was decorated with mythological animals. Cheerily, Eshaz described some of the items as he brought them out.

In complete fascination, the boys watched as he mixed liquids, powders, and herbs in the bowls, took scrapings from the thorn vines, and combined everything in the cauldron, which he heated by inserting the fire cylinders into receptacles around the bottom of the thick alloy casting.

“I’ll let this cook for a while,” he said.

“Sort of a witch’s brew?” Acey asked.

“Your terminology limits comprehension,” Eshaz retorted. “A common Human frailty. When roaming the galaxy, you must avoid thinking in preconceived terms.”

Acey nodded, but he looked puzzled.

Dux took a deep breath, and tried to keep his own mind open.

Presently Eshaz murmured incantations and tossed the music spheres overhead, which played monastic-sounding chants and polyphonies and then floated down into the boiling cauldron, melted into the liquid, and were silenced.

“It’s time,” Eshaz said, looking around.

“What?” Acey said.

“Tesh is coming to a stop.”

Running to a porthole, Dux and Acey looked out into a region of space that was oddly illuminated by a pale bluish-gray light that had no discernible source. Acey went to another porthole. “I don’t see any wild podships,” he said.

“Nonetheless, we are in the right place.”

Now, using long spoons, Eshaz dipped solution out of the cauldron and poured it into silver vials, which he sealed with sharp-pointed tops and placed into a bag. Then, removing the protective suit and his other clothing, he smeared iridescent pigment rings on his body, changing the scaly bronze surfaces of his skin to a network of intricate, colorful designs.

His slitted eyes were glazed over now, and he seemed to take no notice of Dux or Acey. Invoking new incantations, he handled the thorn vines without protective clothing, and wrapped a selection of them around his waist, then used straps to secure the bag of vials to his chest. He placed a bright red vine on his head, wearing it like a crown, and murmured what Dux imagined might be a Tulyan blessing.

As the boys watched, spellbound, Eshaz grabbed the gilded harness, which was still folded. Opening a hatch, he leapt out into the eerily illuminated vacuum of space, and quickly closed the door behind him. Through the mysterious workings of the podship, there was no explosive decompression that might have been caused by the inrushing vacuum of space. Instinctively, the boys held their breaths, then began breathing a few moments later, uneasily at first but with more comfort as the cabin oxygen level replenished quickly.

“Look!” Acey said, pointing upward.

A filmy window began to form on the top of the passenger compartment, and the teenagers saw Eshaz harnessed to the top of the podship, leaning forward.

* * * * *

The Tulyan felt the craft accelerate along a course that he had specified for Tesh. Squinting to peer ahead, he made out a herd of podships there, moving in their typical vee-formation away from him. As he neared them at a higher rate of speed, he saw that they were one of the largest wild-pod herds he had ever seen, with at least seventy individuals.

“Ubuqqo, atra mii, “
he murmured in his ancient tongue. “Thanks be to the Sublime Creator.” In the time-honored way of his people, Eshaz held two silver vials—one in each hand, pointed toward the podship formation. At his mental command, the vials shot out of his hands, faster than any projectile weapon. Grabbing more vials from the bag, he released one after another, and all hit their targets, sedating the podships one by one from the rear of the formation—though they continued to fly with their visual sensors looking forward, and did not send warnings to the leader.

Gradually the entire formation slowed down—with the exception of the alpha pod—and came to a dead stop in space.

* * * * *

Inside the passenger cabin beneath Eshaz, the teenage boys pressed their faces against portholes, staring out. Limited by his Human sensations, Dux had not felt the accelerations, decelerations, or turns of the podship in which he rode. Now, as if experiencing a dream, he saw a herd of podships come into his view. Most of them appeared to be drifting.

Their own podship, still under the guidance of Tesh, floated slowly past the sedated creatures.…

* * * * *

When he was just behind the lead podship, which remained unaware of the flurry of silent activity behind it, Eshaz reached deep into his mind, and focused all of his energy. He must be especially precise now, capturing the alpha pod and taking full control of it. It could not be sedated like the others or permitted to escape, or it would react by reviving them and leading all of them to commit suicide.

At the last possible moment, just as the alpha pod seemed to sense something, Eshaz made a floating, zero-g leap onto the creature’s back, connected his harness, and dug thorn vines into its sides.

The podship was a big one, with ragged scars on its sides, perhaps marking prior attempts to capture it. The creature squealed out, an ancient protest that Eshaz heard despite the vacuum, and he held on.

Like a wild stallion of Lost Earth, the creature bucked, spun, whirled, and tried to throw off its rider. With expert precision, Eshaz brought out more vines and dug the sharp thorns into the creature’s hide, injecting toxins. Finally the podship settled down.

On top of the pod, Eshaz lay flat, facing downward. Spreading his hands out, he felt the creature tremble, as it sensed what was about to occur. The Tulyan felt himself dropping slowly, like sinking into a thick bog. He merged into the flesh, and into the creature’s primitive brain.

The podship altered appearance. Eshaz’s face and eyes formed on the front, on a scale equal to the much larger size of the creature, and its skin became scaly, a gray-bronze hue that combined the two races. Immersed in every cell of the Aopoddae, Eshaz changed the direction of the vessel, causing it to veer off to the right. The other wild pods followed.

Exhilarated, Eshaz accelerated onto a podway, with the entire formation following, and Tesh’s pod just behind them.

* * * * *

From the sectoid chamber, Tesh heard Acey and Dux hooting with excitement inside the passenger compartment. Then, as the podships reached open space, beyond the protection of the Wild Pod Zone, she saw a small contingent of Parvii scouts on one side, keeping pace with them. Her emotions warred with one another.

Eshaz, leading the pack of sentient spaceships, must have seen them, too, because he urged the alpha pod—with its hybrid, reptilian face—to greater speed. The unpiloted podships accelerated, keeping up.

But the Lilliputian scouts kept pace, too.

Tesh knew they were communicating with others within telepathic range, summoning a full swarm … enough to take control of the wild podships. She and Eshaz had discussed this possibility, and knew they wouldn’t have much time to escape. In one sense she felt like a traitor to her race, but she knew her actions were absolutely necessary.