The Web and the Stars (19 page)

Chapter Forty-One

There are countless ways to die, but only those specified in the sacred texts guarantee your entrance into heaven.

—The Holy Writ of the Mutatis

On the Mutati capital world of Paradij, the Zultan Abal Meshdi lounged on oversized pillows in his palace harem, watching as his personal menagerie of shapeshifters danced for him. Fifteen of the most beautiful Mutati women of the three subspecies—terramutati, aero mutati, and hydro mutati—danced on the floor, in the air, and inside a large tank of water. They moved in perfect synchronization, kinetic kilos of undulating flesh, the most graceful he had ever seen. But this evening he did not feel any desire for them. He had too much on his mind, had worked too hard for too long. At last everything was coming together: all of the important pieces were moving into position.

He had never witnessed such a malevolent, misanthropic frenzy all across the planet, and it pleased him immensely. In each city, town, and hamlet, every citizen was contributing mightily to the war effort against humankind, marshaling resources, channeling energy, performing all of the small and large tasks required for the ultimate, grand victory of the Mutati Kingdom.

As the inspirational leader, the Zultan knew he had been the catalyst for this new thrust, but lately the whole thing was taking on a life and energy of its own. Bioengineering laboratories were creating an abundance of lab-pods, while factories were churning out simulated merchant schooners with built-in Demolio torpedoes, and training facilities were preparing the outriders. Buildings everywhere carried giant electronic murals of the Zultan, along with holos of the most popular outrider volunteers, those Mutati men and women who would pilot the planet-busting bombs to their destinations.

Rumors abounded that the Zultan himself would ride one of the deadly Demolios to glory, and he allowed the stories to persist. They did no harm, and actually served to inspire the people even more, by showing that he was willing to give his all for the cause. Privately, he had no intention of getting to heaven that way. His own deeds spoke for themselves; he had already paid for his ticket.

I’ll come up with some good excuse,
he thought, as he watched the bulky beauties perform a shapeshifting dance, contorting their abundant mounds of flesh in provocative ways.
Some delaying tactic to keep others boarding the lab-pods ahead of me.

His thoughts shifted as he watched a lithesome hydromutati slide through the water. He could never marry that subspecies or conceive children with a non-terramutati, but the
Holy Writ
did permit certain dalliances.…

* * * * *

Though Noah’s body looked substantially restored, with all of its exterior parts and appendages, scars remained that were slow to heal, along with faint, pink discolorations on his freckled skin. His internal organs ached, especially his kidneys and lungs. Signals reaching his brain told him the organs were healed and functioning well, but they remained traumatized, like separate, sentient life forms huddling inside his body. The pain had been excruciating. Any other Human would have died under such a violent onslaught, but Noah, with his enhanced life functions, lived through more agony than any other person had ever endured in the entire history of his race. The trauma had gone on and on, without relief—with the exception of intermittent, unpredictable mental excursions that diverted his attentions elsewhere, but for only brief moments. During the worst of it he would have welcomed death, but the Grim Reaper had not awaited him with open arms.

In his continuing suffering, with his paranormal linkage to Timeweb, Noah was in the process of discovering something new and disturbing, over which he had no control.…

* * * * *

Subi Danvar jumped back from the screen on Thinker’s chest, as if he had just seen a ghost. He had been talking with the simulated Noah about the wonderful times they used to have at the Environmental Demonstration Project, and on board the orbital EcoStation.

Suddenly the image of Noah shifted, and a three-dimensional likeness of him seemed to float out of the screen into the underground cavern. At first, Subi thought it was a holo-image, but it didn’t have the same quality of illumination, and he saw no projector. The image floated around the chamber, then landed on its feet a short distance from Subi. It looked diaphanous, like a living mist in Human form.

“Do you see that?” Subi asked Thinker.

“See what?”

“There!”

“The cavern wall, you mean? What?”

“Not the wall! Noah! Don’t you see him?”

“Noah is not there. I’m afraid you’re having an illusion, perhaps initiated by my data screen. I’d better switch it off.” He did so, and closed a panel over the screen.

With trepidation, Subi walked over to the image. Timidly, he extended his hand toward it.

“Don’t try to touch me!” Noah said.

Subi recoiled. Looking back at Thinker he asked, “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what? Poor man, you need to get some rest.”

Stubbornly, Subi reached toward the image, and put his hand through it. As he did so, the apparition faded entirely.

“I told you not to touch me!” Noah yelled, as if from afar. “It’s more than the dimensional stretch can tolerate!” He disappeared entirely, and took his voice with him.

Chapter Forty-Two

Though Lorenzo keeps his business affairs private, it is known that he holds a number of corporate directorships around the galaxy, a network of interactions that form the economic basis of his power.

—Pillars of the Merchant Princes, a holodocumentary

The destruction of the CorpOne headquarters building had forced Lorenzo to relocate his offices and royal residence to the orbiter that had formerly been Noah Watanabe’s prized EcoStation. While the Doge hated to retreat, he had been pleased that he still had this facility solidly under his control, and that the pesky Guardians could not possibly get to him there. The space station, now fully armored and fitted with the most advanced security systems, also had a formidable squadron of government patrol ships constantly on alert.

Deep in thought, the Doge walked through the module containing his new offices, where a construction crew worked at an efficient but inadequate pace. He would order Pimyt to speed them up. Office work still needed to be done, so his staff had been operating out of makeshift quarters nearby.

Proceeding down a long corridor into another module, he entered one of Noah’s former classrooms and waved at Princess Meghina, who was discussing the ongoing work with a contractor. With her good taste and love of exotic projects, she was helping immensely, and Lorenzo had put her in charge of this section.

Originally Lorenzo had been about to make drastic changes to this area, tearing out not only the classrooms but also the connected mini-forest area that Noah’s people had cultivated. It had all looked absurd to him, and he’d wanted to move gambling equipment in for a glitzy new casino. Meghina concurred with the casino idea, but talked him out of changing this particular module, telling him that plants created oxygen, valuable on a space station. She pointed out what a holovideo told her—that the forest ecosystem was a self-sufficient, scaled-down version of life on Canopa, with small birds and other creatures filling ecological niches. She then suggested that they turn the classrooms into an attractive casino dining hall, with the miniature forest surrounding it, separated by the invisible electronic barrier that was already in place. All excellent ideas, he had to admit. The gambling equipment would have to go elsewhere.

Almost oblivious to anyone in the corridors of the orbital station, Lorenzo stalked ahead. Subordinates fell silent as he neared them, and they scurried out of his way. Behind him, four Red Beret guards kept pace, watching out for his safety. He had other things on his mind.

With the Mutati war forced into the background, Lorenzo del Velli still faced tremendous difficulties. In particular, he was concerned about reports of discontent against him among the princes on various planets. His political problems were complex and worrisome, exacerbated by the continuing guerrilla attacks by Guardian forces against government and corporate installations on Canopa. There had even been copycat incidents on other planets, reportedly done by sympathetic groups that were not formally aligned with the Guardians. With no access to nehrcom stations, the Guardians could not possibly be coordinating the attacks, but they were occurring nonetheless, and weakening him.

The underpinnings of opposition against Lorenzo ran deep. For some time, the noble-born princes had been critical of him for stubbornly appointing commoners such as Saito Watanabe and Jacopo Nehr to important government positions. The noble-born princes, descended from aristocratic lineages that went back for thousands of years, were not happy about this at all, but Lorenzo had brought most of them over to his side anyway, by pointing out the necessity of rewarding exceptional skills. None of the nobles could deny the sterling business accomplishments of either Saito or Jacopo. And, while Saito was dead now and his operations were more low-key under his daughter Francella, Jacopo Nehr was still in the limelight, having been promoted the year before to Supreme General of all Merchant Prince Armed Forces.

Rounding a corner forcefully, Lorenzo almost bowled over a little man carrying a briefcase, going the other way. One of the office functionaries. A paper shuffler. The office worker apologized profusely, bowed, and hurried on his way.

The Doge headed for a room at the end of the corridor—his communications center—which he saw through an open doorway. Lights blinked in there and small robots whirred back and forth, performing functions that were even lower than those of the typical office worker.

Lorenzo knew which noble-born princes were closest to him, because they were the ones most vocal in their support. Of course, some of that could be a ruse, and he was alert to that. He remained most concerned and troubled, however, by the ones who were remaining silent and detached from him. Having alerted his own government agents by nehrcom on the various Alliance planets, he had the princes under constant surveillance, thus far without turning up any specific evidence against any of them. It was most perplexing to him, and frustrating. The disloyal princes seemed to have taken a page from the Guardian playbook, lying low and making their own form of guerrilla attacks against him.

As he entered the communications center, Pimyt greeted him. The little Hibbil carried an electronic notebook under one arm. “We are ready to broadcast,” Pimyt said. “Here are the prompter notes.”

“I don’t need notes,” Lorenzo snapped, shoving the furry little man aside. “I know what to say.”

He went to a console, and a technician in a black singlesuit turned on the machine, bathing the Doge in soft white light. Later in the day he would broadcast through nehrcom relay to the people of every planet in the Merchant Prince Alliance, his version of the ages-old fireside chat. It was a recent suggestion from Pimyt, and Lorenzo had taken a liking to the idea, as a way of keeping him in the minds of the people. With the cessation of podship travel and the mutterings of noble-born princes against him, Lorenzo’s task in this regard was proving to be increasingly difficult.

But first he had a more limited broadcast, just for the Canopan people. To show his concern for their security, Lorenzo had been making regular public proclamations on the purported progress his forces were making in rooting out Noah’s forces, the cowards who made guerrilla style attacks against corporate and government facilities where many of the citizens worked.

While Pimyt stood by nervously, holding the electronic notepad, Lorenzo began to talk extemporaneously. In a blatant lie, he told the people to pay no attention to the increasing number of destroyed buildings and other assets on Canopa, that Guardian losses were very high and they didn’t have the resources to go on much longer.

Bolstering the spin he was putting on events, he accompanied his speech with holo-images of Noah in captivity, to prove that the Doge was in control of the situation. In reality they were older pictures of the rebel leader, before Francella hacked him to pieces. The current images of Noah, though his body had regenerated, made him look like a torture victim, with pinkish scars and other wounds that were not healing as rapidly as in the past, when he experienced less grievous injuries.

As Lorenzo completed the address, he stepped away from the white light. The technician transmitted recorded messages, boilerplate material that accompanied every one of the Doge’s pronouncements.

Lorenzo walked away, ignoring Pimyt for the moment, who scuttled along behind him babbling the usual sycophantic nonsense. The merchant prince leader’s new orbital office headquarters would offer him additional security, but he wanted to spend more time down on Canopa as soon as possible, and this made him grumpy whenever he focused on it.

By rights, his offices and his residence should be down there, not up here. His empire seemed to be shrinking around him. Once, he ruled hundreds of wealthy planets of the Merchant Prince Alliance from the glittering capital world of Timian One. Now, with the capital destroyed and Canopa increasingly dangerous for him, he had retreated to a very small place, and only maintained tenuous control over the remaining planets.

He still ventured down to the surface of Canopa on occasion, but only accompanied by a cadre of Red Berets, led by a trusted colonel who had been in his service for almost a decade. These men were the fiercest of Human and machine fighters, trained in the most advanced weaponry and sworn to protect their Doge at all costs.

* * * * *

Ever the optimist, Lorenzo always had interesting operations underway. For some time before the destruction of his Canopan offices, he had been expanding this space station by bringing in new armored modules and floating them into orbit, intending to turn the facility into a gambling resort called The Pleasure Palace. Word of this got out, as he wanted. But it had the unintended result of causing some of the discontented princes to criticize him for it. Still, he thought he could turn the tables on them.

Even with the forced relocation of his offices, he would proceed with the casino plans, and would demonstrate to the Alliance that he could not be intimidated by criticism. Besides, the facility would make a lot of money for him, enabling him to fulfill his love of gambling in a dramatic, very public way. Admittedly the whole enterprise was a risk, but the raw creative excitement energized him, and he felt confident that it would succeed in a big way.