Webdancers (21 page)

Chapter Forty-Four

Each breath we attempt to take is an adventure into the unknown.

—Ancient saying

So much had happened, and of such grave and far-reaching significance, that Princess Meghina had not had time to grieve for her lost dagg, Orga, or for the many citizens of Siriki who had died in the HibAdu onslaught. Many had been her friends and associates. Sadly, she had to face the fact that portions of her past were gone, and irretrievable. Even her once-magnificent Golden Palace was looking worn and tired, from its conversion into a military headquarters for the Liberator forces.

She didn’t object to the use of her opulent home for that noble purpose, so her sadness was tempered by the stark realities that faced everyone now. There were two grave threats—the HibAdus, and the declining infrastructure of the galaxy. She’d even heard rumors that the Tulyans and Noah thought there might be yet another great peril “out there” somewhere, but whenever she had asked any of them about it, she had received only vague responses. Even Noah, who had a reputation for being concise and direct, had evaded her question. She came away with the feeling that the people around her were bordering on paranoia, and perhaps a quiet hysteria, constantly feeling that terrible things were about to happen.

It was mid-afternoon on a cloudy day, and Meghina found herself in an improbable place, standing on the edge of a high cliff with Llew Jarro, Betha Neider, Dougal Netzer, and Paltrow. All of them were the “elixir-immortals,” but missing the Salducian diplomat, who was being transferred as a prisoner to Canopa later that day. The five of them were still on the palace grounds, and had gone up in a tram. The high perch had always been a favorite place for Meghina to go, often by herself, and sometimes with one of her rare pet animals.

“We form an exclusive little club, you know,” said the corpulent Jarro. He stood with his back to the precipice, facing the others. “I thought you might be interested in learning what I have been discovering about our … special condition.”

“Not that we’re afraid of heights or anything,” Paltrow said, with a little snicker. “But I’ll ask again: Why have you brought us to this cliff?”

A thick, buxom woman, Paltrow nonetheless didn’t appear to have an ounce of fat on her. She looked to have trained for sporting activities of some sort in the past, but was close-mouthed about her personal history, except to say that she was only too happy to “leave it in the dust,” including her own birth name. With her immortality, she had not only assumed a new body, but a new name of her choosing. Despite the enigma around the woman, Meghina rather liked her, and didn’t sense anything shadowy about her. Not what the Princess had sensed—accurately, in all likelihood—about Kobi Akar.

“Some things are best demonstrated rather than described,” Jarro said. “I’m about to jump off this cliff. Not to kill myself, of course, because that is an impossibility. I’ve been coming up here on my own, and have gone off several times.”

Meghina glanced over the edge, and felt a little tug at her stomach, a touch of queasiness. It was a long way down. According to Sirikan legend, two star-crossed lovers had committed suicide from this place, long ago. Through a grove of trees, the Princess saw some of the fences and buildings of her private zoo, and beyond that, a meadow that had been converted to a landing field for conventional military aircraft, and for occasional podships.

Jarro took a half step backward, so that he barely maintained his footing. “We’ve all heard of the horrors that Noah Watanabe experienced at the hands of his sister, how she kept hacking him up, and his body kept regenerating. From our experience at Yaree, it is clear that we share some of that remarkable ability. We could fall off here, and eventually recover.”

“That’s true enough,” old Dougal Netzer said. A scowl formed on the artist’s creased, ruddy face. “It wouldn’t be good, though, if we were all trapped in a rock slide. We still have our muscular limitations.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Jarro said, “but the rocks seem stable enough here.”

“You’re not a geologist,” the old man said.

“You’re right.”

“A timehole could open up, too, and start some sort of an upheaval.”

“You do have an imagination,” Jarro said. “But that could happen anywhere, not just here. I guess we could all decide to remain separate if we’re worried about that. However, I think we have more to learn from each other. I’ve jumped off this cliff eight times now, and … “

“You’ve used up your nine lives, then,” Betha Neider quipped, “counting your fall at Yaree.”

“Usually you are a delightful young woman,” Jarro said, “but your inexperience can cause you to be facetious at times. This is one of those occasions. No, Betha, I have many more lives than the proverbial allocation, as do we all. I was about to say, each time I’ve done the jump, I’ve recovered faster than the time before. At first, it was hours before I could get up and walk back to the palace. The last time, it was a matter of minutes.”

“This promises to be a delightful day,” Betha said, undeterred. “You’ll walk back and have dinner, while we lay splattered at the base of the cliff, until we get up in the darkness and stumble around like zombies.”

“I’m talking about self-improvement,” Jarro said, glaring at her. “If any of you prefer, you can ride the tram to the bottom. As for me, I have an alternate means of transportation.” He backed up and leaped off backward, tumbling into the air. “See you at the bottom!”

After a few seconds, Meghina heard the sickening thump of his body when it struck the ground, far below. She looked over the edge, but couldn’t make out where he had hit. A minute later she saw something moving down there, and heard a distant voice that carried all the way up the cliff face: “Come on in! The water’s fine!”

“See you guys in Zombieland,” Betha said, as she leaped off. Paltrow followed her, leaving Meghina and old Dougal on the high perch. “I can’t have girls showing me up,” the artist said, with a shrug. Then he followed the others.

For several moments, the Princess stood on the edge of the precipice, looking down. So far, only one person moved down there, whom she presumed to be Llew Jarro. It seemed most untidy and undignified to her to add herself to the splattered flesh and broken bones at the base of the cliff, and a wayward thought occurred to her: What if animals from the woods came and started eating the bodies? Maybe they wouldn’t finish the bodies off before they started regenerating, not even with the help of carrion birds, but it gave her pause. Besides, she was not in the mood to make herself the subject of a scientific experiment, especially an impromptu one. In the midst of a huge galactic war, with so many concerns on her mind, she could not afford to be foolish or capricious. She shouldn’t even have come up here with the others, not without finding out what Jarro wanted.

And by title, she remained the civilian leader of this planet, requiring that she behave with decorum.

Jarro, and perhaps some of the others, might not agree with her feelings, but that didn’t matter to her. She had heard somewhere that true leadership was not a popularity contest.

Summoning a different sort of courage than her companions had displayed, Princess Meghina boarded the tram, and rode it down. She would send palace guards and doctors to attend to her friends.

* * * * *

That evening, with the necessary transfer documents completed, two MPA marshals escorted their high-security prisoner onto a podship for the flight to Canopa. The electronically-cuffed Salducian was not cooperative, and as they entered the passenger compartment he tried to kick one of the officers—both of whom were burly Human men. They stepped out the way easily, and shoved him roughly onto a bench, then activated a shimmering containment field to keep him there.

“You’ll lose your careers for this!” Kobi Akar shouted, as he struggled unsuccessfully to break free.

“Oh, do you hear that, Iktar? We’re really worried, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” said the other, as the diplomat glared at them. “Maybe we should turn this guy loose, or ‘accidentally’ let him escape. That would really look good in our personnel files, wouldn’t it?”

“Sure would. Our salaries would be doubled right away, and we’d be promoted.”

The one called Iktar sat on a nearby bench, and said, “Too bad we’re having trouble with the restraint controls. I just can’t seem to get them to open up.”

“Yeah, they are temperamental, aren’t they? Like our famous prisoner here.”

Kobi Akar shouted obscenities at them in two languages, until they set the controls to prevent his mouth from moving. After that, he could only grunt—and each time he even did that, he received an electric shock. Soon, glowering crazily, he settled down.

Because of poor podway conditions, the flight took more than an hour and a half. Finally, they reached the pod station over Canopa and docked. The prisoner was transferred to a shuttle.

But as the shuttle descended over Canopa, a glowing green hole suddenly opened in the sky—just large enough to swallow the craft before closing afterward. Witnesses on the ground and in space reported seeing a small timehole for a few seconds before it vanished, taking the ship and passengers with it.

Chapter Forty-Five

We have no superiors—not even those who created us.

—High Ruler Coreq, remarks to the other two
members of the HibAdu triumvirate

He was shorter than the typical Adurian and taller than most Hibbils, with features of each race. His oversized, pale yellow eyes took in everything around him as he passed through security doors and strutted into the laboratory complex. The odors of flesh and strong chemicals permeated the air, as Adurian scientists and research technicians went about their tasks at spotless, gleaming work stations. All of them wore sealed body suits and helmets to prevent contaminating the genetic samples they were handling, while electronic bio-barriers kept any visitor at a safe distance. Complex machines hummed and throbbed. Concise, technical words filled the air as staff members discussed their experiments.

The yellow-suited Adurian workers seemed to hardly give the hybrid any notice as he passed by, but he knew they were watching him peripherally, and fearfully. In the past, some of their predecessors in these labs had even called him a freak and other improper terms, but never to his face. No matter, High Ruler Coreq always found out who they were from cellular-memory readings and had them eliminated. Permanently. Those who were left now seemed to be relatively stable, though they always needed to be monitored, and checked. There was another problem with them at the moment, however. They did not want to perform a particular task that the triumvirate had ordered them to do—the one involving the Parviis.

Coreq considered the Adurians weaklings, only good for limited, assigned functions. When the time was right, he and his triumvirate would orchestrate the breeding of an entirely new hybrid race, one that would kill or enslave all other sentients in the galaxy.

By the standards of most galactic races, the High Ruler was still quite young, having not yet passed his fifteenth birth marker. But that only accounted for his physical self, part Hibbil and part Adurian, bred under optimal laboratory conditions. Inside his mind—the part that mattered much more than the external appearance—he was exceedingly old, because the wisdom and violence of the ancients had been infused into him, but not in any random or cluttered manner. He had their cellular memories, but only those that mattered for the success of the galactic-wide military force that his triumvirate led.

I am first among equals
, he thought, thinking of his two companions.

It was his own observation, but an apt one. The others—Premier Enver and Warlord Tarix—deferred to him on virtually all matters of importance. Sometimes this surprised him whenever they were discussing military or security matters, since Tarix knew considerably more about those subjects than he did. But she always phrased her statements with exquisite care, so that she was the adviser and Coreq the decision maker.

Even so, Coreq didn’t entirely trust her, or Enver, either. He always suspected they were plotting against him, planning to take over at the first opportunity. But the High Ruler was no fool. Wherever he went, he had his personal retinue of elite robot guards close behind, and robotic security agents checking the route ahead. Tiny biomachines tasted his food and beverages for poisons, and even flew in front to test the air he was about to breathe. He’d thought of everything. Some of them hovered above him now, still taking readings and sending audible electronic signals to him, while others went further ahead, to scout where he intended to go.

Presently he left one lab section and entered the large central chamber, where some the most famous experiments were conducted. It always gave him a rush coming in here, because he and his two HibAdu cohorts had been created at these very lab stations, had taken their first breaths here.

Ahead, Coreq saw a flurry of biomachines in the air, like a horde of insects. He heard their high-pitched exchanges and reports as they confirmed the area was safe for the High Ruler to enter. Because of their tiny size, the units reminded him of Parviis, but the comparison did not go much beyond that. Coreq could control these biomachines with an implanted transmitter in his own brain, while Parviis required a different sort of attention.

For the moment, Coreq’s aides had arranged for Woldn and his followers to occupy all of the observation galleries around the central chamber, where they clustered on the other side against the thick glax, and peered into the huge laboratory. Security sensors reported more than one hundred and sixty thousand of the tiny aliens there, packed into the enclosures.

Though the High Ruler had tried to secure the galleries and prevent the escape of the pesky visitors, the tiny humanoids had a form of collective paranoia, in which Woldn kept them in a state of hyper alertness, constantly checking and maintaining routes of escape. Obviously, it was a survival mechanism and Coreq would have found it interesting, had he not wanted to dominate these creatures and take them into custody. But, to keep the situation calm and under control, he had been forced to back off, leaving some escape routes open.

Woldn had presented twenty volunteer Parviis to the Adurian scientists for dissection and detailed analysis. This reflected the purpose of the Parvii leader’s visit: to investigate a possible ancient connection between Adurians and Parviis. Seventeen days ago, upon first hearing this claim from his private box in the assembly hall, Coreq had almost dismissed the notion out of hand, since his enhanced and focused memories carried no reference to such a connection. But—via an intercom that connected the leaders’ private boxes—Warlord Tarix and Premier Enver had convinced him otherwise. Enver said he had a faint but undocumented sensation that the contention might very well be true. While no data actually existed in the Premier’s conscious memory, not even a fragment, he said it was important sometimes to follow through on sensory feelings. He and Tarix had recommended that they look into the matter, so Coreq had agreed.

And, although the Adurian scientists had been reluctant to say much, Coreq knew they were fearful of this line of inquiry. It had to do with an odd psychosis of their tunnel-minded race, in which—despite great successes in genetics and bioengineering—they were afraid of their collective past, and ashamed of it. According to legend, terrible things had happened to them as a race long ago, and their collective humiliation had caused them to stop talking about such matters, and to gradually try to forget them. Even so, fragments of the past remained in their consciousness, of lost wars and planets destroyed. The details were vague, however, , despite the fact that the Adurians had the ability to track genetic memories back for thousands of generations. It seemed logical to Coreq that some Adurians must have gone privately into the cellular archives and learned the full truth, but if so they were not talking about it—and thus far he had been unable to discover anything through the ongoing police methods of reading the cells of citizens.

In the days since Coreq had ordered the new investigation, highly agitated Adurian scientists had been delving further into the genetic memories of their own people, and of the hundred Parviis from the swarm, seeking information, some common ground. The old data did not come through clearly, but clues were surfacing along genetic paths that the researchers followed backward, using complicated techniques. The scientists did this with both races, and as ancient memories came back they were processed, converted to data, and projected onto screens.

Now, on a large wall screen of the central chamber, the lab technicians displayed two side-by-side composite projections, one for the combined memory cells of each race. Images sped up and slowed, as the experts searched for connections, for similarities. As Coreq stood looking up at the screen, the Parvii side showed views of deep space, of suns, planets, and swirling nebulas in a hypnotic array of colors and shapes.

To the left of it, the Adurian side was much more limited in astronomical scope, showing trips through space, but comparatively more images of the Adurian homeworld itself. Coreq recognized his own capital city, always bustling in its various stages of historical development, and he saw yellow-suited scientists that worked long ago, looking very much like their modern counterparts.

Now the laboratory manager—an old Adurian with a pointed chin—pushed back the hood of his suit and joined Coreq. “I wish you had not asked us to research this matter, sir, for it has put my staff on the verge of a nervous breakdown. They are holding together as well as possible, but I am worried about them.”

“Don’t ever come to me with such drivel,” Coreq said. “My time is valuable, and if you’re not careful, your time will be limited.”

“I have already enjoyed a long and productive life, but I do not wish to displease you. In addition, High Ruler, I must admit that I am finding the ancient lab procedures intriguing as they are revealed to us, though many of them would be of little interest to you. There is … Wait! I just saw something.”

Though Coreq normally cared little about names, he had remembered the name of this particular scientist, because he had been on the team that grew the three triumvirate leaders in this very laboratory. He called himself Bashpor, and might need to be dealt with eventually because of his arrogance, even though he had never been proven disloyal. For the moment, at least, he remained useful.

From a high-caste family, Bashpor and his team had initially tried to exert control over the HibAdu triumvirate. That had soon proved impossible, because the hybrids were so dominating and powerful, so the Bashpor group had slipped into what appeared to be a subservient position. And, while they were not entirely pleased with this, Coreq had the surveillance reports to prove that they had formed no conspiracy against the triumvirate, and that they held considerable emotional affection for their three laboratory creations.

Of utmost importance, from all appearances the galactic aims of the top Hibbil and Adurian scientists and of the HibAdu hybrids matched: Eliminate the Merchant Prince Alliance and the Mutati Kingdom. Thus far, the military successes had been gratifying, but a great deal of work remained to be completed, mopping up the remaining—and significant—resistance forces.

With a wave of his hand, Bashpor stopped the Adurian screen images from moving, and backed them up. Then, as the scientist enhanced the image of a table at the rear of the long-ago laboratory, Coreq saw what looked like tiny humanoids inside a clearglax enclosure. It took several seconds, but with more enhancement and enlargement, the images came into focus.

“Parviis?” the High Ruler asked.

“It would appear so, Your Eminence. I’ll do more checking, but it looks to me like we created them in our laboratories.”

Around him, Coreq heard the Parviis clamoring inside the observation galleries. A microphone clicked on, and it was Woldn, “That’s the proof, isn’t it?”

“It is a possible indication,” the lab manager said, transmitting to him. “We shall investigate it further.”

“I was right!” Woldn shouted, with his small voice made large by the lab’s sound amplification system.

* * * * *

Later that day, the HibAdu leaders received a more complete report from the lab manager.

Inside a sleek office suite, High Ruler Coreq sat at a wide, polished desk, with Premier Enver on one side of him, and Warlord Tarix on the other. They stared blankly with their overlarge, pale yellow eyes, and listened.

“An intriguing tableau has emerged,” Bashpor said. “Now that I’ve opened my mind to it, I must admit that it is very interesting.” He paced back and forth in front of the big desk. “In ancient times, we Adurians were even more involved in biotechnology than we are now. Content with our present scientific and societal conditions, we never thought to delve so far back in our genetic history.”

“Not content,” Coreq said. “Fearful is more like it. But continue.”

The old Adurian paused, and looked at the three. “We have always believed that the future is a more interesting domain.”

“Undoubtedly that is one of the reasons that you created us,” Tarix said, her oddly-echoing voice reverberating through the room. Her long white teeth glistened, which she liked to display to throw terror into underlings. At the moment, it had its effect on Bashpor, as he could not hold gazes with her. To avoid that uncomfortable position, he resumed pacing.

“In ancient days, we were engaged in countless wars, some of which did not go well for us. In modern times we knew that had occurred, but only in general. Here’s a specific detail that rises above others: Long ago, we created two galactic races in our laboratories.”

Coreq leaned forward. “
Two?
One was the Parviis, I assume?”

“Correct. The other has no name, but they are even smaller than Parviis, and have a domain that is quite surprising and intriguing. For want of a better term I shall refer to them as sub-biologicals, or sub-bios. Mmmm. They are nano-creatures, so I shall call them Nanos instead. Yes. In the most unlikely of all places, the Nanos live
inside
the galactic webbing, the structure that Tulyans and Parviis call Timeweb.”

“I think we should call them Webbies instead of Nanos,” Enver said. Sometimes he said off-the-wall things, focusing on irrelevant points. Just the same, Coreq thought the name that Enver suggested was preferable, so he nodded.

“Very well,” Bashpor said. “Regarding their exact function, we don’t know how to test any hypothesis, but we think the … Webbies … may explain how Tulyans are said to communicate across vast distances over the galactic infrastructure. If that is the case, the infinitely small creatures might also have something to do with the nehrcom transmission system of the Humans, a system we have replicated, without really understanding how it works. It is believed to operate through some sort of web-related cosmic frequency. I have more to tell you, much more.”

Bashpor increased the speed of his pacing, as if charged with a drug. “Long ago, other galactic races took offense at our laboratory methods, so they went to war with us over them. Among our enemies were the Blippiqs and the Huluvians, and they forced to us to abandon our laboratory attempts to create new races. It seems that we went back to doing the forbidden things anyway, however, when we created you three HibAdus. Of course, that doesn’t amount to an entire race yet, but I know your professed intentions in that regard.”