Webdancers (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

The ultimate crisis can bring out the best in a galactic race … or lead to its complete extinction.

—Woldn, in his darkest hour

The Eye of the Swarm clustered in the midst of the surviving members of his race, in what he thought must be the darkest, coldest region of the universe. All hope seemed to be lost. He felt the collective loss of body heat in his race, sensed the slowly fading members around him.

Focus
, he thought,
I must focus and find a way
.

The Parviis had their secret treasures, going back for millions and millions of years, to the very beginnings of their collective consciousness. It comprised a vault of arcane information that had worked well for them in bygone days to establish their position in the cosmos, but which had not been needed in later times. Or so it had seemed to a long succession of leaders. But Woldn was questioning the old ways.

As the Eye, I did as my predecessors did.

But Woldn didn’t want to make excuses for the extreme difficulties in which he now found himself, because leaders were supposed to lead and show strength. He wondered when the changes began, the slippages in ways of doing things, the entombment of important knowledge. At various points along the course of history, Parvii leaders had decided not to continue the old ways, and in the process important concepts and activities had piled up on intellectual dust heaps. He may even have contributed to the steady decline himself, in some barely perceptible manner. Admittedly, he had not made the decision to resurrect the old knowledge soon enough.

In his great despair, Woldn realized that he had lost touch with the ancient truths and principles of his race, the roots of what it meant to be a Parvii.

We have drifted.

And in drifting, the Parvii race had lost its compass. How fitting that he would make this analogy now, when he and the surviving members of the once vast swarms were huddled in an uncharted region, probably in another galaxy entirely.

But all living Parviis are not here,
he thought.
Tesh has joined our ancient enemy, has thrown in her lot with the Tulyans.

Woldn lamented over how many Parvii secrets she might have revealed to them. Some, perhaps, like the location of the Parvii Fold. But not all of them, certainly. The traitorous female had never gone through the rituals and training required to become a Parvii Eye of the Swarm. Thus, she could not possibly know certain things.

Secrets within secrets.

But she did have important contacts, like Noah Watanabe. If the rumors about him were true, if he was the first Human in history who could access Timeweb and utilize its vast powers, he was a dangerous wild card. He might even be able to peer into the secret treasure vaults of the Parvii race. The reputed “galactic ecologist,” combined with Tesh’s betrayal, could be why Woldn found himself where he was now.

Cast off, floundering, and sinking into oblivion.

To his dismay he noticed that some of the Parviis who had been clustered around the latents had died, but remained in place even in death. Through his morphic field, he counted them telepathically. Eight hundred and thirteen. Just then, another passed on, right in front of his mind. Eight hundred and fourteen brave souls so far, and surely more would follow. He appreciated their contributions, their loyalty.

Something spiked in his consciousness. Telepathic waves coming from the center of the cluster, from one of the war priests. This one had a name now, resurrected from ancient times. Yurtii. As moments passed, Woldn sensed Yurtii drawing closer to him. The name was unfamiliar,, so he must not have been one of the most famous of the ancients.

Like a chick hatching from an egg, Yurtii shoved several of the dead Parviis aside and emerged in the physical form of a boy, then pushed his way out into space. Woldn followed him. Entirely hairless and without clothing, the boy flew to Woldn and hovered near him, making a buzzing noise that the Parvii leader could hear, despite the absence of atmosphere.

The Eye of the Swarm felt his spirits lift, but he could not put the sensation into words for anyone to hear, did not even know if the feeling was justified, or if it was foolish.

“What was old is new again,” Yurtii said.

In the war priest’s presence, confronted by the potent ancient mind that had regrown in a child’s consciousness, Woldn felt grossly inadequate. Though he had known war priests before, his initial probings of Yurtii indicated that they were only faint shadows of this one. Woldn had never been in the presence of a war priest of such talent.

“I am no longer qualified to command the swarm,” Woldn said, his voice weak. “Perhaps I should pass the mantle on to you.”

Yurtii’s bright blue eyes flashed from depths that seemed far beyond his corporal form, like twin stars in the alternate galaxy. “It is in the specialty of a war priest that I can do the most for our race.” The hovering youth bowed his head. “I defer to you.”

“Very well.” Falling silent, Woldn closed his eyes and probed Yurtii’s reawakened mind even more. In the process, he learned interesting things about this war priest’s past successes. It gave Woldn hope for the future, especially if the other latents were on the level of this one. But Yurtii had faced opposition from other war priests of his era, and the historical record had not been as kind to him as it might have been. His military successes, while numerous and important, had been downplayed by those who served after him. A cesspool of politics.

Reopening his eyes and staring at the war priest, Woldn said, “Long ago, our race had many masters of illusion. I wish to restore what is good about the old days.”

Simultaneously, Woldn and Yurtii focused their gazes on the tiny timehole through which their small swarm had escaped. As seconds passed, a telepathic bubble emanated from the two linked minds, an invisible enclosure that passed through empty to the other side, unseen and undetectable by the guardian ships of the enemy. The swarm could enter it and travel undetected, concealed from view.

With new excitement, the Eye of the Swarm led the way through, into the safety of the bubble. Then, filled with Parviis, the invisible bubble floated away, to a remote corner of the Parvii Fold. Behind, the timehole appeared to seal over, so that it no longer seemed to exist.

Under Woldn’s leadership the tiny creatures were coming back to awareness. They were angry and single-minded, and wanted to regain control of the podships. They saw this as their only purpose in life, their sacred and eternal destiny. But their numbers were far too small to even consider resurrecting the ancient glories, at least not yet. All of them were feeling better physically and mentally, but most of the individuals no longer had the effective neurotoxin stingers that were needed to capture and control podships.

Still, inside the Parviis’ invisible bubble lay potential salvation, because it offered the means of escape, a tiny pocket within the traditional galactic fold that had always been their sacred place. It was warmer inside the bubble, much better for breeding than out in space.

But the five latent breeding specialists had not yet returned to consciousness. And without their guidance, the Parviis could not breed at all. They could only die.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Timeweb holds this galaxy together. But there are galaxies on top of galaxies in this vast universe. Are they also linked to the cosmic web that we know, or are their structures entirely different and unimaginable to us?

—Tulyan report to the Council of Elders

In times long past, so many years ago that Eshaz could hardly remember them, he had been a skilled podship pilot for the Tulyans, transporting web caretaker teams around the galaxy. After the insidious, selfish Parviis took away control of the podship fleet, Eshaz—having lost the means of performing his specialty—had been forced to adapt. As a consequence, he had perfected other skills authorized by the Council, among them the ability to timesee. In addition, he had become a web caretaker himself, performing occasional timehole repair duties in the limited travels that became available to him.

Eventually he’d met Noah Watanabe, the first Human to ever grasp the concept of galaxy-wide ecological interdependence. Joining Noah’s idealistic team of “eco-warriors,” Eshaz and scores of other Tulyans engaged in ecological monitoring operations, and—in secrecy—they occasionally used ancient Tulyan methods to complete timehole repairs.

In recent years, Eshaz had seen conditions worsening, but he had been unable to do much about it until now. With more than ninety-six thousand podships dedicated to their tasks, the Tulyans were mounting the most massive ecological recovery operation in history. After assembling reports from web caretakers, the Elders were looking at the vast galaxy as if it were a battlefield, with wounded soldiers lying all over it. In their way of prioritizing, each of the timeholes became like an injured person, and the Tulyan leaders were using a triage method to determine which wounds needed attention first.

At long last, the Tulyans—who had always considered themselves a peaceful people—were going to war, in a very aggressive, organized fashion.

As the leader of one of the repair divisions, Eshaz stood with a throng of other Tulyans on a space platform while the craft floated past the immense fleet of rescued, moored podships. Presently the glax-enclosed platform came to a stop and rocked gently in the vacuum, an optimal moorage basin at the stationary center of the planets of the Tulyan Starcloud. In recent months, Eshaz had been resurrecting his old piloting skills, having gone on a hunt for wild podships and having piloted one of the sentient vessels in the Liberator Fleet.

Now the Tulyan portion of the Liberator Fleet was embarking on an even greater, task. In a sense it was linked to the military operations of the Humans and Mutatis in their efforts to save their planets and stop HibAdu lab-pods from damaging the podways—but this was a far more delicate and wide-scale operation. Everything had to be done perfectly. The fate of the galaxy rested on their skills.

For some time the Tulyans had been re-training themselves, updating their old aptitudes and methods. Because they led exceedingly long lives, hundreds of thousands and even millions of years, many living Tulyans recalled the old days. But after so long, memories had a way of slipping in the clutter of events, and some of Eshaz’s race were better at recalling details than others. There had been numerous arguments about the proper methods to use, but the proof had been in the tests they had performed. Handling a few wild pods—which Tulyans had continued to do for centuries—was not the same as organizing and coordinating the actions of thousands of them. Large numbers of Aopoddae behaved quite differently from smaller numbers, and needed specialized techniques to manage them. Determining which methods to use was like a filtering process, eliminating the ideas that didn’t work and implementing those that did.

Just getting the podships here from the Parvii Fold had involved much of that, perfecting ways of piloting the vessels in large formations to selected destinations. Now the ships no longer had gun ports on their hulls, for their passengers had different requirements, and the sentient spacecraft had made adjustments. Their passenger compartments and cargo holds were filled with ecological repair teams, with all of the equipment and esoteric equipment needed for that purpose. The articles taken along weren’t things that could be manufactured in a conventional factory. Rather, they were thorn vines, pouches of green dust, and books of incantations that would be needed to ward off the evil spirits of the undergalaxy.

To an extent the Tulyans understood what they were up against: Galara, the powerful evil spirit of the undergalaxy, was punching holes in the Known Galaxy, penetrating the protective membrane at numerous points in order to undermine and conquer. For millions of years the malevolent one had been working at this, and finally, with the momentum of the decay Galara had set in motion, the adverse conditions were accelerating. Long ago, the Tulyans had an easier task, because they could respond quickly whenever timeholes appeared, and could seal them quickly. But with all the years of decline the job was much bigger now, and the prospects were uncertain at best. Certainly, all of these thousands of podships and teams of Tulyans were a formidable force to save the galaxy. But was it too late? Could they make enough of a difference to reverse an immense-scale decline?

Just as Tulyans knew that there were ancient enemies among the galactic races, so too they believed there were competing spirits and gods of the various galaxies. Just as people wanted to dominate one another, so too was it in higher orders of existence, where the stakes were much greater.

Eshaz bowed his bronze head in reverence to Ubuqqo, the Sublime Creator, and whispered a prayer for the salvation of the galaxy.
“Ubuqqo, anret pir huyyil.”

A benign spirit seemed to encompass the reptilian man now, and he felt supremely comforted in its presence. Closing his slitted eyes, Eshaz murmured an incantation to beckon a nearby, familiar podship in the ancient way, commanding it to come closer:
“Aopoddae, eyamo ippaq azii … Aopoddae, eyamo ippaq azii … “

When Eshaz opened his eyes moments later, the large gray-and-black pod was bumping up against the platform, and an open access hatch was open on the hull. The ship drifted back just a little, but remained close. With a rush of excitement, Eshaz leaped off the platform into space. Like an eager lover, the podship scooped him up, and he found himself inside.

Once more it was like old times, when Eshaz had been a caretaker-team pilot. He placed his hands on a warm interior wall and felt the pulsing consciousness of the ancient creature, and repeated its name, which he knew well. In the times of lore, this had been one of the podships he had piloted across vast distances.

Agryt
.

Walking down the corridor, Eshaz reached the sectoid chamber, and found the access hatch open as expected, revealing a glowing green enclosure beyond. The podship awaited his commands.

Eshaz took a deep, satisfied breath and stepped across the threshold into the core of the vessel. The access hatch closed behind him, bathing him in green luminescence, but he was not afraid. In the age-old way of his people, the Tulyan touched the glowing flesh and merged into it.

On the prow of the podship, Eshaz’s face appeared, very large now in his metamorphosed state. He felt euphoric, like a reborn creature ready to leap and frolic across vast expanses of the heavens. But he knew he could not do that, could not do anything trivial or selfish with this critically important assignment that had been entrusted to him.

Instead, as the leader of a five-hundred-ship ecological repair team, Eshaz guided Agryt around the other vessels assigned to him, signaling to them telepathically, as they had practiced. Tulyan faces appeared on the prows of ship after ship, and the vessels fell into formation behind him, their countenances rigid and expressionless.

The Tulyan caretaker had many things on his mind, the concerns of the day. And of all those matters, one surfaced above others. Noah had been telling everyone that he sensed a “terrible danger” out in the cosmos, beyond anything they already knew. Eshaz wondered if his friend could possibly be right, and if so, what it might conceivably be. Something to do with Galara that was even worse?

A chill ran down his spine. In this galaxy, anything seemed possible.