The Web and the Stars (37 page)

“My God!” Anton exclaimed.

While Noah hurried Anton aboard his own aircraft, along with Subi and the robots, the hole went in and out of focus, glowing red around the edges. A portion closed over, leaving a scabrous covering of ground and rock, but he saw more of the hole ripping the gorge open in the other direction.

Moments later the grid-plane lifted off, and rose above the danger area.

“Tesh told me there were strange things occurring on planetary surfaces,” Noah said, looking back at the long rip in the planet as they cleared the tops of the cliff faces. “She and Eshaz talked for a long time about things that have been concealed from most galactic races for too long. Apparently the Tulyans call that a timehole, a rip in the fabric of time.”

“No one can hope to stop such forces,” Anton lamented. He sat with his head in his hands, almost unable to cope with the immensity of the crisis and all of the information that had been thrust into his young mind.

“Maybe not, but we have to try. We need to ensure that the Tulyans are dispersed as much as possible, to perform their ancient healing procedures.”

Anton did not respond.

Looking back at the ragged, growing timehole, Noah shuddered. This one was much larger than anything the Tulyan had described to Tesh.

Aboard the space station, Pimyt received a coded nehrcom message, relayed to him from the receiving station on Canopa. According to the urgent transmittal, the HibAdu Coalition had noticed unusual geological activities on a number of planets around the galaxy. It was an unexplained, simultaneous phenomenon, which their scientists were investigating.

On Bilwer, one of the Mutati worlds, an entire battalion of Coalition soldiers had been landed secretly—but the ground opened up beneath them and took almost all of them, closing afterward like the mouth of a dragon swallowing a meal.

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Every moment is fresh and new, like the first breath of a child.

—Ancient Saying

What looked like a large hawk flew over the sparse, northern forest of Dij, extending its wings and soaring upward on the cool air currents and then drifting back down. It landed high in a tree at the edge of the janda woods, and gazed across the broken landscape, which sloped upward into the foothills of the mountains.

The aeromutati Parais d’Olor enjoyed long flights by herself to explore remote regions, looking for new places to take her lover, the Emir Hari’Adab. In the distance, she saw the high, craggy mountains of the Kindu Range, where Mutati religious hermits were said to live. She had seen pictures of the elusive people in the pages of holobooks, and had always found them intriguing. She wouldn’t think of disturbing them in their retreats, however, for that would be like fouling the rugged beauty of the planet itself.

Over the peaks, an immense podship emerged from space in a flash of green light and approached, surprising her. It floated down like a dirigible and landed in the clearing. Wondering how this could possibly happen—since she thought podships could only dock at pod stations—she flew closer, and perched on top of a rock formation.

A hatch yawned open on the side of the mottled gray-and-black vessel, and uniformed soldiers marched down a ramp. They did not, however, wear the gold attire with black trim of the Mutati Kingdom. Instead it was a uniform she had never seen before—orange and gray—and this troubled her. Some of the soldiers were hairless Adurians, while others were short, bearlike Hibbils. They began setting up camp structures.

What are they doing here?
she wondered,
and why are the two races mixing?
This was most unusual, and disturbing. The Adurians were Mutati allies, but not the Hibbils, who were instead aligned with the merchant princes.

A short time later, a second podship split the sky and drifted down to the ground. More alien soldiers streamed out. There were thousands of them, an army of Adurians and Hibbils.

Even more unusual, Parais saw what looked like gun ports open on one of the vessels. Hibbils brought in a portable scaffold, and raised it to the level of the ports. Zooming her vision, she saw that they were cannons, and the furry little soldiers were making adjustments or repairs to them.

Weapons on a podship? Parais had never heard of anything like that. Podships had only been known to transport the smaller vessels of the various galactic races. Never anything like this.

Deeply concerned, she flew away, to tell the Emir Hari’Adab what she had seen.

Chapter Seventy-Eight

“There can be no more lofty goal in life than the search for truth. It is the essence of nobility. It is the only air I want you to breathe.”

—Eunicia Watanabe, to her son Noah on the boy’s ninth birthday

In the grid-plane, Noah and Anton sat at a table, engaged in animated conversation. They were covering a lot of important ground, going over the galactic web and podship crises, the suspended war, and what actions they might take together.

Since the Parviis were incapacitated, they agreed it might be possible for the entire Tulyan podship fleet—almost four hundred vessels, plus any additional ones they might have captured—to venture out onto the podways. Noah and Anton wondered if the Council of Elders had already decided to do that, as in the old days, filling the vessels with Tulyan web caretakers.

The proper course of action seemed clear, if only the Tulyans could be convinced of it… and Tesh, who had the only podship available to Noah. Based upon what he had learned about the Parviis and the remarkable things that his journeys into Timeweb had revealed to him, Noah didn’t think Tesh’s idea of diplomacy would work, since the Parviis were too entrenched in their ancient ways and peculiar power structure. Instead, a more drastic course of action was required: Using the Tulyan fleet, Humans and Tulyans needed to make a military assault on the Parvii Fold and take control of every podship the Parviis had. After that, a massive web repair operation could be undertaken for the entire galaxy … if it was not too late.

They had to move quickly or risk complete galactic disaster, a collapse of the infrastructure in all sectors. There was also the problem of the Parviis. If they recovered, which could happen at any moment, they would surely swarm the pods and take them back, just as they had done for millions of years.

On every one of those points, Noah and Anton concurred wholeheartedly. But they had run into a stumbling block—whether or not to lie to Tesh—and for the past ten minutes their conversation had heated up, with neither one of them backing down. For Noah it was a matter of principle, while Anton was looking at a larger picture. All the while Noah saw the weakness in his own argument, and struggled to find a way to deal with the problem.

Subi landed the grid-plane near Anton’s villa, overlooking the industrial centers and offices of the Valley of the Princes. It was sunset, with a violent splash of color across the western sky.

“We’re there,” the big man said.

Only half hearing him, Noah didn’t move. He saw the anger on Anton’s face and heard it in his voice.

“Clearly, we need to have Tesh take us to the Tulyan Starcloud for a meeting with the Elders,” Anton said, “and it’s imperative that we leave right away.” He slammed his fist on the table. “But think man! We’re talking about a military strike against her own people, so we can’t let her in on it, especially not before getting her to take us to the starcloud.”

“I won’t deceive her,” Noah insisted. “She deserves better.”

“And what if she doesn’t like our plan—which seems obvious—and won’t take us to the starcloud?”

Hesitation. Then: “I might be able to take control of the ship away from her.”

“And you might not. Isn’t that right? The podships fear you, and you’re still having trouble getting into Timeweb, right?”

“No one can carry on a conversation with a podship, and it doesn’t help that I recommended the pod-killer sensor-guns, but I only did what was necessary to protect the galaxy, and humankind.” He sighed. “You’re right. There are complications.”

Noah hung his head, knowing he could not win this argument, and that Anton was right. Too much was at stake for Noah to hang on a point of personal honor between him and Tesh. This was a matter affecting huge populations and countless star systems.

“Which means you can’t pilot the ship telepathically,” he said. “It sounds to me like your odds of wresting control away from her are slim.”

“True, but I won’t lie to her. There must be another way.”

“Not that I can see. Think it over, and let me know what our options are.”

That very day, Noah had again tried to gain access to the galactic web, but had failed. And even if he ever made it in, with circumstances being what they were, he wasn’t at all certain if he could hold the connection. The galaxy was in a state of increasing chaos. It seemed safer for Tesh to pilot the podship by entering the sectoid chamber and taking direct control of it.

“I have a solution,” Noah said, with a thin smile.
“You ‘re
going to have to convince her … in your own way. I won’t contribute one word to your argument.”

“No problem,” Anton said. “Let’s get over there now.”

Noah gave new flight instructions to Subi, and they lifted off.

Many changes were occurring in Nirella del Velli’s life.

She had only been married to Doge Anton for a short time, and for an even shorter time she had been the Supreme General of the Merchant Prince Armed Forces, succeeding her father. Events were going by her so rapidly that she could hardly figure out what to do. It was like trying to grab hold of the tail of a comet. But she was in a leadership position, and people needed to follow her direction.

But if they only knew how afraid she was, how unsure of herself. And if Anton only knew. Still, she didn’t want to add to his burdens by saying anything to him. He already had too many problems to handle, and she didn’t want to add to them.

Now another situation had surfaced. An anonymous telebeam message had arrived in the past hour, and she had been pacing her office ever since.

It was a tip that her father was being blackmailed by Lorenzo’s attaché, Pimyt. She was not provided with any other details.
Her own father.
What could it possibly involve? As far as she knew, Jacopo Nehr had led an exemplary life, with only the one justifiable incident where he lost control and destroyed government assets. But if that event was already public, and he had lost his job over it, what more could there be?

Upset and confused, she decided to find her father and discuss it with him personally.

Chapter Seventy-Nine

Love comes in all variations. Ironically, it is as unpredictable as its opposite—war—never the same each time it is played out.

—Naj Nairb, a philosopher of Lost Earth

The Emir Hari’Adab always felt out of balance when his beautiful aeromutati girlfriend was out flying alone on one of her wilderness explorations. Parais loved those trips, connecting with remote and pristine beauty. He would never think of denying them to her, would never ask her not to go, or tell her how low and out of sorts it made him feel whenever she was away. If he decided to say anything to her about his innermost feelings, if he clipped the wings of his pretty bird, he knew she would remain at his side and try to be cheerful about it, but she would not be the same person. A part of her would be wounded, and it would make him feel even worse than he did at the moment.

So, he suffered through his quiet misery.

As the ruler of Dij, with the concomitant duties his father had assigned to him, Hari had countless matters on his mind. He remained busy when Parais was away, filling each day with work to keep from having to deal too much with his emotions. But these days, ever since the Zultan had started his psychotic Demolio program, Hari was having trouble focusing on much else.

While the young Emir had taken no part in leading his people into the mass insanity, which ran rampant on every Mutati planet except Dij, each day that passed without him rectifying the situation made him feel more and more culpable. He was, after all, the eldest son and heir of the Zultan of the Mutati Kingdom.

As the designated ruler of the planet Dij, he ran it like a fiefdom, deriving a substantial income for himself and sending taxes to his father on the capital world of Paradij. Bucking pressure from the Zultan, Hari had steadfastly refused to use Adurian gyrodomes or portable gyros, and had issued edicts on Dij making them off-limits to his subjects as well. Even though the Adurians were military allies, he had never trusted them, believing they were too smooth and always had answers that sounded as if they have been coached.

Now, after long contemplation and soul searching, Hari had decided upon a radical course of action. /
am a sane person, but I must do an insane thing,
he thought.

His plan would require the ultimate in security precautions as he dealt secretly with a brilliant Mutati scientist named Zad Qato. Ideally, Hari would have liked to have gotten together personally with Qato … which would have meant having the Paradijan take a solar sailer to Dij, since Hari could not go to him without calling unwanted attention to himself. Unfortunately Qato was under close scrutiny himself, and could not go flitting around the solar system on long journeys that took weeks in each direction.

Qato did, however, have the highest level of military security clearance in the Mutati Kingdom, which gave him access to the Mutati variation of nehrcom communication. It was by this method that the two sent coded messages back and forth. The quality of the transmissions was poor, since the Mutatis had not solved all of the problems of the system. But it did work, and they sent instantaneous transmittals to one another at prearranged times.

Zad Qato, long in years and wisdom, shared Hari’s aversion to Adurian gyro units, and to the entire Demolio program that the Zultan had forced on his people. At Hari’s urging, Qato had performed careful calculations of trajectory for the Demolio torpedoes, and had adjusted the projected route of a particular shot.

Only the two of them knew this, and Hari prayed that they would not be discovered before they could put their ambitious plan into effect. Everything had to go just right, and the guidance problems had proven to be very difficult. But for the particular target they had in mind, it just might be possible.…