The Timeweb Chronicles: Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (16 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

A secret within a secret. This is the most difficult to unravel.

—Anonymous

At the conclusion of the funeral, the Nehr brothers took a shuttle to the nearest pod station, and from there caught a podship to Timian One, the breathtaking capital world of the Merchant Prince Alliance.

Now, as the pair rode a ground-jet back to the headquarters of Nehrcom Industries, Giovanni Nehr considered how to say something important. He was slumped into one of the soft, deep seats in the passenger cabin, while Jacopo sat across from him, studying an electronic copy of the quasi-religious
Scienscroll.

The Great Inventor
, Gio thought bitterly. It was a title commonly applied to his graying older brother, for developing the nehrcom cross-galaxy transceiver.

His big secret.

Gio touched a combination of toggles on a small vending machine between the seats, causing the Hibbil device to manufacture a pill according to his specifications. A bright red capsule tumbled into a receptacle. With a shaking hand he grabbed the narcotic and gulped it, and seconds later felt it take effect on his mind. He inhaled several deep breaths, and tried to maintain control over his emotions. The drug only helped a little, but he didn’t want to consume more right away, since he had such a sensitive constitution.

For the past two generations, secrets had been the economic life blood of the Nehr family. His parents had made a fortune by sending hunters out into the galaxy to capture Mutatis, which were subsequently used—under extreme secrecy—as biological factories, processing foreign substances in their bodies and metamorphosing them into hallucinogenic drugs.

On Forzin, a remote moon of the Canopa Star System, the family had kept Mutatis penned up like farm animals for the production of the drugs. The prisoners were force fed carefully-selected substances such as ravenflower hips, bacchanal barley, and toxilia, powerful agents that overwhelmed Mutati immune systems and tapped into their shapeshifting cores. In this manner the transformative powers of the Mutatis were rerouted, causing the creatures to change the extrinsic substances into exotic hallucinogens instead of metamorphosing their own flesh.

Each captive Mutati created a different narcotic, which was extracted from his blood. The Nehrs called their products “powerdrugs,” since the procedure always resulted in something highly potent. The wide variation and unpredictability made the substances extremely exciting … and expensive.

The drugs, as individual as each Mutati, all bore letter and numerical code names, from P-1 through P-1725 … meaning that a total of one thousand, seven hundred twenty-five of the creatures had been captured and forced to produce. Some of the narcotics were more popular than others, such as P-918, which simulated Human flight when the user took it. But when the Mutati producing that variation finally died, the drug was gone forever … with the exception of any that might have been stockpiled. Like rare vintages of wine, preferred varieties went up in value, and people could make money by trading them on galactic commodities markets.

The business all came to a sudden, violent end when the last Mutati broke free, killed Gio’s parents, and destroyed the manufactory. Jacopo had been fifteen at the time, and Gio barely three.

As Gio grew up he followed a different course from his famous sibling, and became something of a ne’er-do-well’, failing in a number of risky business ventures. Two years ago, Jacopo rescued him from a bad drug overdose and gave him a job in administration with Nehrcom Industries.

Gio, however, was less than appreciative, as he did not like Jacopo’s condescending attitude toward him. The younger Nehr also felt extreme jealousy toward his brother … and while he fought to suppress it, he rarely succeeded. Like a toxic leak that could not be sealed, the feelings continued to seep into his mind, poisoning it.

Although the pair resembled one another in their chiseled facial features, the similarity ended there. Gio was taller and heavier, with a muscular physique that he had developed with sterisone drugs and regular visits to Hibbil body-enhancement facilities. If he wanted to, he could break his brother’s body in half with his bare hands, and sometimes thought about doing exactly that. Jacopo often wore a reserve military officer’s uniform, but that was just for show; he was not tough at all.

Across the passenger cabin, Jacopo continued to read his electronic copy of the
Scienscroll
.

Gio glared at him and thought, smugly,
I have secrets too, Big Brother. And you’re not going to like them.
He bit his lower lip.
OK, let’s start with this one.

In the most pleasant of tones, Gio announced, “I will be resigning soon.”

The great man looked up from his reading and lifted an eyebrow in surprise, but only a little. “To do what?”

“I don’t know. I need to try something new.”

Jacopo showed little reaction. It was exactly as Gio expected, and made him doubly glad that he was about to steal something important—the secret of his brother’s nehrcom transceiver. For some unknown reason, Jacopo fully trusted only one person, his own daughter Nirella, and had given her responsibility for protecting information about the invention.

But Nirella had made a mistake, and her opportunistic uncle was about to capitalize upon it.

Chapter Thirty-Two

What is the origin of the pods? If we could answer that, it might reveal much about the nature and purpose of our galaxy.

—”Great Questions” (Mutati Royal Astronomical Society)

The podship emerged from space in a burst of green luminescence, having traveled the arcane, faster-than-light pathways known only to these sentient spacecraft. With glowing green particles clinging to the mottled, blimp-shaped hull and dissipating around it, the vessel approached a pod station that flickered in and out of view. The arrival seemed like tens of thousands that had preceded it, and even more that were expected to follow.

The intelligent ship carried a small red-and-gold vessel in its hold, ostensibly one of the Doge’s merchant schooners on a trading mission. Purportedly it was filled with wondrous products from exotic ports near and far, such as Churian teas, Kazupan silkine gowns, Hibbil machines, Adurian organics, glax lenses, and pearlian spices.

But inside the faux schooner sat a Mutati outrider disguised as a Human. In a trance, he quoted aloud from
The Holy Writ
of his people, the purity-extolling religious text that was the doctrinal basis for the annihilation of unclean Humans throughout the galaxy.

The podship docked at a zero-G berth inside the orbital station. Momentarily, without a creak or a squeak, doors opened in the vessel’s gray-and-black, living tissue underbelly.

The disguised Mutati craft inside the cargo hold dropped like a child from a cosmic womb. The engines of the fake schooner surged on, and the pilot guided it past loading docks and walkways. All pod stations were built essentially the same, and so were the interrelated podships, so the pilot—even though he had never been to this particular station before—knew his way around.

As the outrider taxied, he passed a “glyphreader” robot patrolling the sealed walkways, one of the sentient machines that scanned and translated the pinkish-red geometric designs on arriving podships, which indicated their routes. It was one of the few mysteries about podships that the galactic races had been able to figure out—the way the markings changed constantly, like destination screens on jet-buses. The robot had an electronic sign atop its head, a small version of larger display panels that hung from ceilings. All were written in Galeng, the common language of the galactic races.

Smoothly, engines purring, the Mutati guided his little ship out of the station and dropped down into weightless space, with a blue-green planet visible far below. Twin jets of white-hot exhaust shot out of the double tail of the clandestine schooner, and the craft accelerated downward. Within seconds, instruments told the pilot he was inside the atmospheric envelope of the planet, and he saw ionized orange sparks from the friction of the hull as it skimmed the air.

The Mutati, his senses deadened by focal drugs, had no ancillary thoughts in his mind. He recalled nothing of his life or family or career, none of which existed for him anymore. His entire
raison d’être
, everything he had done in his life up to this point, culminated in this one task. The assignment had come directly from the Zultan Abal Meshdi himself.

I cannot fail.

He studied his console of instruments and electronic charts. The globe below had a crust of thirty-three kilometers in thickness, with sedimentary materials and an upper shell of granite. Basalt, gabbro, and other rock types were beneath that … then the mantle, and the molten core.

Switching on a prismatic timer, the outrider set the torpedo, which in reality was his entire schooner. The doomsday device … a Demolio … screamed down toward the ice-covered southern continent of the planet.

Thousands of years ago this had been an important world to the Humans, where billions of people lived. Stripped bare by endless wars and the insatiable appetites of Human industry, it now contained a mere thirty million inhabitants.

“Earth,” the Mutati muttered as his suicide torpedo penetrated the crust. Seconds later, it reached the fiery core and went nuclear. The planet was obliterated in an explosion, so sudden and immense that it consumed the pod station and the podship as well, before it could set course for a new star system.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Reputedly, Doge Lorenzo del Velli is the greatest patron of business and science in history … but this is his own propaganda, cleverly disguised as fact.

—Succession: a Concise History of the Doges
(one of the banned books)

On distant Canopa, Francella Watanabe rode a slideway from a shuttle depot to a white, bubble-shaped nehrcom transmitting station. In a hurry, she wore a simple black dress and no makeup, so that her bald eyebrows and forehead glistened in bright morning sunlight.

The cross-space transmission facility sat in a hollow at the perimeter of the Valley of Princes, and was protected from attack by an implosive energy shield that encircled it, both above and below ground. It was a new structure, replacing one that had been blown up by a Mutati suicide bomber. The landscaping and other finishing touches were still under construction.

As she stepped off the sliding walkway and climbed wide marble steps Francella felt the invisible electronic field all around her, and experienced a shortness of breath from the anxiety this always gave her. The system read her identity at every imaginable level, and she wondered if it would make a mistake and not recognize her. These highly sensitive security units required a great deal of maintenance; they were always breaking down and under repair. During one of the down-times at the former station, a disguised Mutati sneaked in and sent messages, before destroying the facility.

Because of the high degree of concern over security, there were stories of mistaken arrest, and even one instance where a noble-born prince was misidentified and died from the stress of it. Francella felt strong enough to endure any rigid, probing procedures that the mechanism might put her through, but she hated the thought of wasted time. She had so many important things to do, secret things, and hardly enough time to complete them.

The electronic system emitted a friendly beep, allowing her to pass. The rooms inside the building were a brilliant, almost blinding white, with complex geometric ceilings but few furnishings, as if the contents had not arrived yet, or as if the designer expected to receive additional objects at some later date. But she knew the interior was complete. All of the stations were like this.

In an immense room beneath a glax dome stood one of the ultra-secret, platinum-cased nehrcom transceivers, with chromatic surveillance beams darting in all directions around it. For a few seconds, a rainbow of color washed across her, then moved on. Reportedly Jacopo Nehr, ever paranoid about keeping his priceless business secrets, continually rotated his security systems, to keep potential thieves off balance. This particular apparatus looked the same as the last time she had been here, but she suspected subtle differences.

The platform on which the nehrcom sat resembled a religious shrine, and not by accident, some people asserted, considering the reverence with which the instantaneous communication device was held. Arguably the greatest feat of technology ever conceived by the galactic races, it was second in its impact only to a concoction that was generally attributed to the Supreme Being himself … an entire race of sentient podships.

In a new security upgrade, users of the transceiver were not permitted to touch it or even to go near it, and instead had to remain behind a glowing blue railing that encircled the center of the room. Francella stepped up to the electronic barrier and touched one of the buttons on a panel, indicating that she wanted to pick up a message.

Presently a hatch opened in the floor on the other side of the railing and a platform rose, bearing a nehrcom operator dressed in a black robe with a nebula swirl on the chest. When the mechanism came to a rest he stepped off and approached Francella.

“Here is your message, Lady Watanabe,” he said.

As she accepted a folded sheet of brown parchment it irritated her that she had been required to come here personally to pick it up, but the Doge sometimes made this a requirement when he sent transmittals, even the most innocuous of them. As a rule, nehrcoms were entrusted for delivery to
messagèros
, the bonded couriers who worked for the Merchant Prince Alliance.

While the operator waited, Francella read the Doge’s brief communication. He had consented to the audience that she had requested, and told her what time to appear for it.

“Please inform the Doge I will be there,” she said.

The operator nodded.

As she left and descended the steps outside, one of the CorpOne vice-presidents stopped her, a toothy man with a bald head. “Did you hear about the catastrophe?” he asked.

When she gazed at him blankly, he told her that Earth had been destroyed. “It’s gone,” he said, “with only space debris left.”

“What happened?”

“No one knows. A huge comet, maybe.”

“No matter,” Francella said. “It was only a backwater planet, of little concern to the Alliance.”

With that she hurried away, to complete her scheming tasks.