Webdancers (3 page)

Chapter Five

All of us are prisoners of something, and ultimately of our own mortality.

—Ancient Saying

Visibly upset, three Hibbils marched through the factory, looking at all of the assembly lines that had been shut down by the disturbance. In an unprecedented event, the entire sentient machine work crew had rebelled against their robotic supervisor, smashing him into useless metal and killing the Human factory owner.

“This shouldn’t have happened,” said one of the Hibbils, his red eyes glowing angrily. He had flecks of gray fur and a thick, salt-and-pepper beard. On either side of him a furry little companion grunted, and their red eyes glowed nearly as brightly as his.

Pimyt watched as the two others inspected several robots, inserting interface probes into their control boxes and reading the results.

“Doesn’t look good,” one of them said. Squat and overweight, Rennov took his job seriously.

“I don’t see how this happened,” the other said. This one was younger, a Hibbil with glistening, golden-brown fur.

The two of them kept using probes to check the sentient machines.

Overseeing the procedures, Pimyt was unhappy on multiple levels. He and the division managers with him didn’t like to see the factory operation interrupted, since the new robots and other machine components produced there—especially the control panels—were needed for the war effort of the HibAdu Coalition, the union of Hibadus and Adurians. In addition, the last thing he had wanted was for Jacopo Nehr to die, since that eliminated any potential leverage with the human’s powerful daughter, Nirella del Velli. So far, it had been a stand-off with her. She’d accused Pimyt of blackmailing her father and had even threatened to torture him into talking. Not backing down, Pimyt had threatened to release technical information about the workings of the nehrcom instantaneous cross-space communication system—revealing how simple its operation really was. It would be a scandal that would ruin her father’s reputation as a famous inventor, and destroy the Nehr company. Hearing this, she had stormed off.

Shortly after that, Nirella’s husband, Doge Anton, had ordered Pimyt and the former Doge Lorenzo taken into “protective custody.” Enfuriated, Pimyt was ready to make good on his threat, but he and Lorenzo had been placed into solitary confinement at a prison on Canopa, with no one to talk to except for uncooperative guards. And Pimyt had not yet set up a mechanism to release the information if certain things happened to him.

While the two of them were so rudely confined, Doge Anton, General Nirella, and Noah Watanabe had departed on their foolish military venture to the Parvii Fold, an operation Pimyt had learned about just before being taken into custody. Then, from his cell Pimyt had hoped the Parviis would succeed in wiping out all of them with the powerful telepathic weapons they were said to have.

Three days had passed. Finally, one morning the glowing electronic confinement bars on the cells went dark, and the guards said the pair was free to leave. No explanation. Lorenzo had returned to the Pleasure Palace, his opulent gambling facility orbiting Canopa. Pimyt had considered getting even with Nirella—assuming she had a part in his incarceration—but had decided to think it over first. Nirella (or whomever she left in charge) had the power to confine him at any time, for any reason. Perhaps the three-day confinement had been her way of telling him exactly that.

Considering his options (which Pimyt often did), he had slipped away to rejoin his HibAdu conspirators, and resumed his involvement in facilitating the downfall of both the Merchant Prince Alliance and the Mutati Kingdom. This had brought him, on a secret lab-pod flight made easier by the diminishment of MPA military forces, to the Hibbil Cluster Worlds.…

Even now, through all of his intelligence sources, Pimyt didn’t know what was happening at the Parvii Fold. It did amuse him that the Humans—reportedly with Tulyan allies—were spending so much time and effort going after Parviis. The HibAdus, learning of the military operation from Pimyt, had seen it as an opportunity to strike merchant prince planets that were left inadequately defended, because of the diversion of ships and armaments to a foolish, distant operation. In addition, HibAdu leadership—while Pimyt had never met any of them personally—had sent a message agreeing with his assessment. The Parviis, even if they failed to completely destroy the attacking force, were sure to damage it seriously.

Now the scheming, highly organized HibAdus were almost ready to launch their simultaneous surprise attacks on key planets. Just a few essential details remained to be completed, with this additional complication. The robot uprising would have been just an annoying nuisance, if not for Jacopo’s death..

The division managers completed their inspection, spot-checking robots throughout the factory. Finally, Rennov announced, “Every workbot in the factory will have to be reprogrammed.”

“Get started, then,” Pimyt ordered.

* * * * *

Ipsy, with the weight of industrial scrap on top of him, burrowed his smashed and broken body into a cavity in the pile and began to rebuild himself, converting the junked parts he found around him. He took on an even smaller body form this time, using microcircuit boards and fiber optics that he salvaged from the scrap heap, after testing each of them. His arms and legs were essentially the same, but he was considerably thinner now, and even shorter than before.

Then, as he connected a small, silver and green panel to his brain, he fell backward, his limbs freezing into immobility. The panel had a defect that he had not noticed.

While he lay there, looking upward and trying to repair the problem internally, Hibbil workers started dismantling the scrap pile with a mechanical, remote-controlled arm and claw, intending to melt the metals down and recycle them. Ipsy saw patches of daylight as pieces above him were removed. He noticed a zoomeye on the mechanical arm, and the claw hesitated over him for an instant—bathing him in orange light—before going on to other, larger pieces. But Ipsy knew it would be back.

The little robot was like a paralyzed man, unable to move.

Chapter Six

Once, the number of Parviis in the galaxy was far beyond our capability to measure. Now the Eye of the Swarm is in a desperate situation, fleeing with what little he has left. This is not a time for us to gloat. It is a time to be wary. Like a cornered animal, he may be at his most dangerous.

—Tulyan report to the Council of Elders

After all the eons of Parvii glory, the successes that went back farther than anyone could remember, Woldn couldn’t understand how things had gone so terribly wrong. Certainly, it was not due to any errors of leadership he had committed. He was far too careful for that, always using the resources of his people—and the podships under their control—prudently.

At the moment, he and his drastically diminished swarm huddled in the darkness of an unknown place. The hole through which they had escaped had not been there previously, or it would have been noticed by his people, who had been constantly checking every square centimeter of the Parvii Fold, making certain it was absolutely safe. They had all been taught from an early age that this was their sacred nest in a dangerous galaxy, one they had to protect it at all costs. Never before had holes appeared in the fabric of the fold. It seemed an impossibility, because the immense protective pocket was at the farthest end of the known galaxy. They’d always thought that nothing lay beyond the gray-green membrane, that it marked the edge of existence.

And yet, he and his remaining followers had gone through. Less than two hundred thousand individuals.

Now Woldn reached telepathically into his morphic field, and opened up some of his own thoughts for his followers to read. In the process he felt the Parviis flowing to him and probing him, reading the particular thoughts he had opened up to them. In turn, all of the Parviis made the totality of their own thoughts more easily accessible to the Eye of the Swarm, so that he could read them at will himself. He did so selectively, a few at a time.

Where are we?
Woldn wondered. No one seemed to know.

He and his swarm remained close to the tiny hole through which they had come, as if gaining some reassurance from its proximity. At least it gave them their bearings. They were very close to their beloved Parvii Fold, and yet so far from it. The galactic membrane separating them from the fold had not proven to be very thick, but it may as well have been the entire width of the universe. Woldn had stationed alternating sentries at the hole, peering through one at a time to the other side, and they continued to report extensive military activity in the fold.

Will we ever return
? Woldn thought,
or are we doomed to remain here forever?

One of his followers transmitted weakly:
I think we’re in the undergalaxy
.

Then another, equally diminished Parvii thought reached him:
I agree
.

But throughout the rest of the swarm, no others ventured opinions. They shivered and huddled, and flew nearby, ever alert to dangers.

A shudder passed through Woldn as he remembered the Tulyan legend of an “undergalaxy.” Parviis had always dismissed such a concept as just one of the harebrained ideas that their rivals, the Tulyans, had. Since their fall from glory long ago, when Parviis had taken control of podships away from them, the Tulyans had descended into superstition and stories of how things used to be. They were an odd race. Oh, they had their uses. On occasion Woldn and other Parvii leaders had used them for their timeseeing abilities, for that peculiar way they had of looking through what Tulyans called the “lens of time.” Bordering on the supernatural, the ability seemed to work. But not consistently.

Woldn wondered now if their stories of the undergalaxy could possibly contain a grain of truth. Or more than that.

Is that where we are? The undergalaxy?

Gazing past an opening in the huddled swarm, some of the darkness seemed to melt away, enabling him to barely make out faint and unknown star systems that seemed oddly configured. In happier times, he had led his swarms to every corner of the known galaxy, and this was not anyplace he’d ever seen before. Had he overlooked a portion of the galaxy, or could this actually be an entirely different place?

He strongly suspected the latter.

Woldn was terrified, but concealed it from his followers, and steeled himself. Two hundred thousand survivors didn’t amount to much, but they would have to form the nucleus of Parvii recovery. He was determined to not only survive as a galactic race, but to rise once more in power so that Parviis regained their former glory.

According to Tulyan legend, a dark terror resided in this nether galaxy, but details were murky. Woldn did not reveal it to anyone, but he began to wonder if this legend of his enemy could possibly be true, and if Parviis had ever been to such a stygian realm. Perhaps the horrors of the undergalaxy were buried in the collective unconscious of the Parvii race, and could only be brought out in a laboratory.

Telepathically, he probed the minds of the seven latents, and absorbed their thoughts. At the most protected center of the tiny swarm, with their brethren clustered around them to preserve their body heat, these latents—two potential war priests and five potential breeding specialists—represented the future or doom of all Parviis. Seeds of the past grew in their physical bodies, which were of varying ages. Woldn probed deeply into the minds of the seven, into their memories and racial past. Into the long tunnels of their minds he went, probing, searching for facts. The paths joined, and continued back in time. From the embryonic war priests he found circumstantial evidence that an undergalaxy really existed.

But there were barriers to more information, to meaningful details. He found no personal accounts of the other dimension, so the two young men did not have those particulars yet. Even so, Woldn was beginning to suspect that his people had been to this place at one time, but the memories were too horrible and had been collectively repressed by his race.

Leading the paltry swarm, Woldn skirted the edge of the undergalaxy and circled back to the tiny bolt hole, hoping that the awful danger on this side—what could it possibly be?—did not sense their presence. When things quieted down on the other side, he intended to lead the way back through, to the Parvii Fold. Then he would take precautions to seal the area off so that no intruders could ever get back in.

But his medical personnel and his own telepathic probes were revealing disturbing information about the condition of the swarm of survivors around him. Only a small percentage of them (including Woldn) had effective neurotoxin stingers in their bodies, which explained why most of them had little effect on the podships of the military attack force.

We are far, far from home, with no way to retake it.

It was a private, very lonely thought.

Chapter Seven

“I don’t see what’s still holding this galaxy together.”

—First Elder Kre’n, comment to her Council

While the fleet was being consolidated and organized at the Parvii Fold, Noah inspected the area. He and Eshaz rode in the flagship while Tesh piloted it around the immense galactic pocket, alternately speeding up and slowing down as Noah required. By touching the skin of the sentient vessel, Eshaz was able to link with its consciousness, a variation on the truthing touch. In turn, this connected the Tulyan with Tesh, who clung in her tiny humanoid form to a wall of the sectoid chamber, guiding the craft. Thus, Tesh and Eshaz could communicate directly—transmitting to each other through the podship’s flesh.

“She is describing details of the fold,” Eshaz said to Noah. The reptilian man held one hand against the rough, gray podship skin on the interior of the passenger compartment. “Every crease and basin in the fold has a name, a purpose, and a history behind it.” He pointed out the window. The Parviis say that the long scar on that membrane is where the Universal Creator put the finishing touches on the galaxy and stitched everything together.”

“Interesting,” Noah said. “How does the Parvii concept of a Universal Creator compare with your Sublime Creator, and with our Supreme Being?”

“Some of my people would be surprised to hear you ask such a question,” Eshaz said with a toothy smile. “They believe you are a messiah.”

“So, you think I should know all the answers?”

“I wasn’t necessarily speaking for myself. Tell me, my friend. Are you saying, then, that you are not a messiah?”

“If I am one, I have a lot to learn.” Noah paused. “I don’t know what I am, or why special things have happened to me. My life changed dramatically after you healed me the way you did, touching my skin to the web, causing its nutrients to flow into my wound.”

“Do you regret any of it?”

Noah hesitated. “No. I don’t think I do.” He stared at the place on the wall where Eshaz continued to touch the podship.

“Try connecting with Tesh yourself,” Eshaz said. “You’ve had a special relationship with podships, and with her. Touch the skin and communicate with her, as I am doing.”

“I don’t know. My … I hesitate to call them powers … come and go. I never know when I’m going to be able journey through the web, and when it will keep me at bay.”

“Give it a try now.”

Instead, Noah looked out the window. The podship had come to a stop very close to the gray-green membrane of the fold, near the long scar that Tesh had spoken of. The sentient craft nudged against the membrane, like a ship bumping up against a dock.

Over the last four days, Noah, Anton, and the Tulyans had been consolidating the immense podship fleet at the Parvii Fold. Instead of nine hundred ships in the Liberator fleet, they now had a vastly larger number of vessels—and all of them had morphed to produce gun port feature on their hulls, controllable by the various pilots in the battle group.

With their increased assets, the Liberators had a new mission: Use the podships to transport Tulyan teams all over the galaxy, so that they could perform the infrastructure repairs on an emergency basis, staving off the damage that was occurring to the fabric of the universe.…

* * * * *

But before leaving, Tulyan hunting crews needed to round up all of the podships that had drifted around inside the Parvii Fold, away from the moorage basin. Acey Zelk, always anxious to pilot the arcane vessels, had been permitted to join one of the crews. Already they had found more ships than the one hundred thousand Tulyan pilots they had brought with them, so the Liberators would need to send some of their original fleet back to their starcloud to pick up thousands of more pilots. The exact number was unclear, because they kept finding more podships, in hidden places.

“A nice problem to have,” Doge Anton had said that morning, when he and the others began to realize the enormity of the prize they had captured from the Parviis.

Through the web, Eshaz had sent a message back to the Tulyan Starcloud, notifying the Council of the logistical challenge. They made arrangements to send four hundred podships from the original Liberator fleet back to the starcloud, to get thousands of more Tulyans. They needed enough pilots to transport the rest of the huge fleet of recovered vessels, and none of the new ships could be moved yet.

This was because the Tulyan pilots and web maintenance crews needed time to familiarize themselves with the new podships, and to practice operations with them. Since time immemorial, there had always been a methodical breaking-in process in which the various personalities and talents—Tulyan and Aopoddae—were sorted out and meshed properly. If this was not done correctly, the ancient legends held that there could be extremely adverse results, even disasters in which podships rebelled and caused destructive havoc. Thus, it was worth taking the extra time to ensure safety, and—to the extent possible—to enhance predictability.

In addition, the Liberators were setting up defenses, securing the galactic fold militarily to prevent Parviis from returning and regaining multiswarm strength there. General Nirella had set up a guard post near the tiny bolt hole where the Parviis had disappeared, and made plans to leave a guard force of one hundred podships and military personnel in other key areas of the fold, including the entranceway to the Asteroid Funnel.…

* * * * *

Continuing the inspection tour on a prearranged route, Tesh caused
Webdancer
to hover over the bolt hole. Using a magnaviewer aboard the flagship, Noah saw the barely-perceptible opening through which the Parviis had escaped. Inside the hole, he saw something move, and identified it as a solitary Parvii. A sentry, Noah surmised.

Noah set the viewer aside, and said, “We must guard this area well.”

“Where there’s one hole, there may be others,” Eshaz said.

Both of them knew Tulyan teams were looking, but so far nothing had turned up.

Once more the podship nudged up against the membrane, this time near the bolt hole. Inside the passenger compartment, Noah touched the skin of the vessel, but unlike the experience of Eshaz, Noah did not link with Tesh. The skin trembled, as if in fear of Noah. Then it calmed, and abruptly his vision shifted, flooding his consciousness with a wash of gray-green. Presently it focused, and one star seemed to twinkle in the broad field of view, but for only a moment before turning the blackest black.

With his mind, Noah Watanabe—this most unusual of all men—peered into Timeweb and absorbed the entire vast enclosure of his own galaxy, including the decaying infrastructure and this remote, intricately folded section of membrane that had once protected the Parviis.

The opening through which they had fled was a tiny point of blackness in the midst of the gray-green membrane. With his inner eye, Noah peered through the hole into another galaxy, and saw distant, twinkling star systems, nebulas, and belts of undefined, streaking color.

He then experienced an even more peculiar sensation, and felt his consciousness shifting, spinning, making him dizzy. Presently he regained his internal balance, and found that his mind was now
inside
the alternate galaxy, experiencing it paranormally. From this new vantage point, he saw the small Parvii swarm near the other side of the bolt hole.

They’re in the undergalaxy
, he thought, feeling both a rush of excitement and deep trepidation.

Oddly, Noah could not see very far in this realm, and he wondered if his own anxiety had something to do with that. In his own galaxy, he had learned to overcome physical fear, for he was as close to immortal in that realm as any person could be. But in the undergalaxy, he sensed the rules of physics and laws of nature were entirely different. Nothing was as it seemed there, and he curbed his own curiosity, didn’t really want to venture further. Everything he had been through in his own galaxy was more than enough for him, and he couldn’t afford to lose focus, couldn’t afford to leave his duties and spin off into the unknown.

But Noah also sensed very strongly that something in the undergalaxy was causing the decline of Timeweb, or at least contributing to it. He could not escape considering the ramifications of this second galaxy. His entire concept of galactic ecology had potentially been broadened by a great deal, and beyond that the implications were exponential. A universe of them.

Seeing the vastly diminished Parvii swarm hovering by the bolt hole, Noah had mixed feelings—an urge to destroy them and feelings of pity. Tesh was one of that devilish breed, and he thought he might even love her, and that he might do virtually anything for her if he ever managed to fulfill the galactic duties that seemed to have been thrust upon him by fate.

I am not a god or a messiah.

He did not want to even consider such possibilities. It could only cause harm to his focus, to his intentions. He felt an innate sense of rightness about the course he had followed with his life thus far, about the choices he had made. But he hesitated to believe that he might be anything more than an enhanced form of a human being. Eshaz, in his zeal to heal Noah, had pressed his wounded flesh against the infrastructure of Timeweb, but the strange and powerful nutrients of the infrastructure could never alter certain basic truths.

I was born of a Human mother and father. There is nothing miraculous or particularly heroic about that.

Despite all he told himself, and his sense that he was highly ethical, part of Noah wanted to eliminate this Parvii swarm violently, leaving Tesh Kori as the only survivor of her demented race. In the undergalaxy, the troubled Noah stirred his mind, and felt a cosmic storm forming. Was he causing it? He felt uncertainty about this. But then, as if caught in a great wind, he saw the Parvii swarm buffeted, so that they flitted about in confusion and fear. Some scattered into the distance, and did not return.

The swarm grew even smaller, and Noah felt pity for the terrified creatures.

Wondering what had just occurred, he struggled to extract himself from the peculiar visions. Finally he succeeded in withdrawing, and returned to his physical self, in the passenger compartment of
Webdancer
.

Conflicting emotions raged in his mind, giving him an intense headache.

Eshaz looked at him with concern in his large eyes. “You saw something, didn’t you?” the Tulyan asked.

Noah nodded, but for several moments found himself unable to organize his thoughts or form them into words.