Webdancers (32 page)

“As usual, your wisdom is impeccable, my friend.”

Rising to his feet, Noah looked down at his hands again.
Podship skin.
In a reflected metal surface of the chamber he saw the like changed in his face. He still saw the old Noah in the features, but they were distorted, an amalgam of his Human past and his evolving future.

I am unlike any other creature in the history of the galaxy
, he thought.

It was a portion of the Aopoddae data that he had understood, and had retained in his mind. People had thought this before about him, and so had Noah. But none of them had anticipated the degree or scale of the phenomenon, and the continuing changes Noah was undergoing. He suspected that he had not yet reached his final stage of evolution, and that he might continue to metamorphose over the course of an eternal lifetime, without ever reaching stasis.

He found it fantastically exciting, and terrifying at the same time.

Chapter Sixty-One

Each life form in this universe—even those that seem most injurious to others—appears for a purpose. It may not always be easy to ascertain that purpose, but if you really search for it—if you drill down—you will find it.

—Master Noah Watanabe, early notes on ecology

The planet was giving birth, but not to its own kind.

Billions of tiny creatures flowed out of lava tubes and swarmed as thick as locusts over Ignem, covering the glassy surface of the world so that it absorbed hardly any light at all. It took on a dull, lifeless appearance, but would recover its jewel-like glitter soon. Woldn did not intend to remain there for long.

Now he led the newborns in maneuvers over the remote planetscape, training and molding them telepathically so that they learned to function under the collective mind of one: that of The Eye of the Swarm. These were simple, preliminary exercises, which most of the Parviis picked up quickly. Some of the individuals straggled as they learned a little slower than the bulk of the others, but within an hour Woldn had them in line, as well.

Utilizing secret methods they had stolen from the Adurian laboratories, Woldn’s breeding specialists had instituted the most massive reproduction program in the long history of the Parvii race. The gestation period in the lava tubes was comparable to the traditional method, but the warmth in the tubes and other conditions enabled the breeding specialists to generate exponentially more individuals from the same batch of raw genetic material.

This was a dramatic change from the old days and methods, where there had been distinct limitations. That had not mattered so much in the past, though, because the swarm had always maintained its population equilibrium, and the intermittent infusion of relatively small number of births had been adequate. In those days, only Parvii leaders and specialists had known the number of their brethren, but it had been vast. Now his race was on the road to recovery. In this batch alone, he counted more than eight hundred and fifty billion individuals. More than enough for what he had in mind.

In the new method, the maturation period following birth would be the same: only a matter of weeks to reach adulthood. During that time, they would be trained here and out in space, building up to increasingly complex maneuvers and techniques. For the next stage, he summoned the war priests.

Vorlik and Yurtii arrived in a matter of moments, having already been with the breeding specialists on Ignem, where they had been watching the progress of the breeding program. Man and boy respectively, they wore the black robes of their cult, raiments that were actually projections around their bodies.

Flying beside Woldn, Vorlik down on the hovering, waiting swarm. “The breeding specialists report that some of our youngsters already have potent neurotoxin stingers and show excellent potential for working with each other to fire telepathic weapons. They also appear to fly well for their age.”

“Yes,” Woldn said. “I am always wary of anything new, however. In due course, we will take them out into space and assess their capabilities in capturing podships. I’m worried about training them properly. Natural podships and the artificial lab-pods created by the Adurians could present different challenges.”

“But it is especially important for us to test our young swarms in combat. The stresses of warfare will sort the weak from the strong. With our new breeding process, we can replace the losses quickly.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Woldn said.

“I disagree,” the hairless Yurtii said. “I am worried about the capabilities of these swarms. Especially considering how these individuals were bred. It occurs to me now that we might have been lured into the Adurian laboratory so that we would adopt their breeding methods and create Parviis that would one day turn against us.”

“Too bad you didn’t think of that earlier,” Vorlik said with a scowl.

Below them, the naked individuals clustered in groups according to their skin tones, forming divisions in which they were more comfortable. For the time being, Woldn permitted it, because he knew they were still insecure in their extreme youth. But as they grew, he would separate them more and more, so that color tones would no longer matter to them at all.

“If need be, I could put all of these to death in an instant,” Woldn said. “But I have probed them myself—individually and collectively—and there is nothing to raise any alarm signals.” He looked at Yurtii and smiled stiffly. “
So far
, that is. You are right to raise a voice of caution, but I agree with Vorlik that we must test the swarms in combat as soon as possible.”

“In war it is necessary to take chances,” Vorlik said. “That is how wars are won.”

“And lost,” Yurtii said.

Vorlik frowned. “I’m talking about
calculated
risks, professionally assessed. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I mean, Yurtii. In your time, you took chances, and achieved military victories. You could have been even greater, though, if you had been more bold and daring.”

“Like yourself?”

“Of course.” The mature, stocky man beamed proudly, and Woldn knew he had every right to do so.

But Yurtii still had points to make. “Admittedly, your historical achievements were greater than mine, because you were largely responsible for defeating the Tulyans and taking the podships away from them. However, your quick, glamorous victories in the Tulyan War cannot be compared with the obstacles I had to overcome. My later war in the Far Sector involved complexities that you did not face. We each faced different times, differing challenges and conditions. In retrospect, I came to the opinion that I should have proceeded even more carefully than I did on some of my military campaigns. The enemy was resourceful, laid traps for me. I still defeated them, but it was not easy.”

“We are an apple and an orange, you and I,” Vorlik said. “To borrow a Human phrase.”

“No,” Woldn said. “You are each of the same ilk, but display different aspects of it from your particular experiences. This is a good balance. I will listen to both of you equally, and render my decisions.”

“As you wish,” Vorlik said, though he did not look entirely pleased. Given enough provocation, he might even kill Yurtii. But with his own telepathic control over both of them, Woldn knew that should not happen. And even on the remote chance that it did, Vorlik would never get away with it. Already, the breeding specialists had discovered new war-priest latents, and nascent breeding specialists.

Everyone can be replaced and will be replaced if necessary
, Woldn thought.
Even me.

He dispatched the two war priests to perform their training-instruction duties, and notified the swarm to follow them. Then he watched as Vorlik and Yurtii divided the swarm into ten divisions and caused their bodies to change color, so that all of them appeared to wear pale blue uniforms. Soon the war priests were leading the first two divisions in basic war maneuvers, swoops and streaks of pale blue that went this way and that over the planet, sometimes blocking the sun, and sometimes allowing it to glint off Ignem’s glassy surface.

In a short time, many of the trainees changed in color to purple, proof that they had perfected the first phase of their studies. He saw the light blue swarms shift increasingly in hue as the most advanced individuals contributed to the whole and melded themselves into it in the Parvii way. Soon there were two purple divisions, and the war priests began to work with the other divisions, bringing them up to the same standard.

It was still early in their training. Purple would not be their ultimate color. That would be a bright red, suitable for a military force since it was the most common color of blood among the galactic races. Already the young Parviis were displaying significant improvements in style and technique, and soon they could constitute a formidable fighting force.

Wave after wave of them surging into battle, annihilating all enemies in their path.…

Chapter Sixty-Two

In the vast majority of races, the female of the species is more complex than the male—physically and psychologically. Thus, the female should be considered more valuable. But that is not always the case.

—Excerpt, Jimlat report on the galactic races

Noah could walk independently throughout the large, empty space station and its Aopoddae outer layer. He moved with the normal gait of a human being, but knew he must look like a monster, as if some diabolical alien creature had invaded his cellular structure and taken over.

“Just a minute,” he said to Thinker, who rattled along beside him. Something in the flat-bodied robot’s body had come loose, but he had been so preoccupied with other matters that he had neglected to diagnose and repair it. He had been sorting and resorting the Aopoddae data in his data banks and in his reserve memory cores, but so far very little of it was decipherable.

Now the two of them stood in front of an ornate corridor mirror that somehow had escaped the destruction wreaked upon most of the orbiter. It was one of the gaudy decorations that Lorenzo had installed when he had the facility converted to a gambling casino. Lights were on in the corridor. Thinker had figured out how to get them working.

Looking in the reflective glass, Noah saw that his original facial and muscular features were identifiable—he still had a strong chin, aquiline nose, and wide-spaced hazel eyes—but the skin was gray, with streaks of black throughout. It had a rough texture like that of a podship, and portions of it pulsed on the surface. His curly red hair was gone, having been replaced by a clump of reddish flesh on top of his head, in the approximate shape of his former hairstyle. Fine lines in it looked like strands of red hair, but weren’t. They were veins.

“My face looks like the prow of a podship, with its pilot immersed into the flesh. The question is, can I fly?”

“You are not a flying craft,” Thinker said. “There is no doubt about that. I have seen no undercarriage, no place or way for you to engage with the strands of the podways. No, you are something else entirely. A
podman
, for want of a better word.”

“The question is, what comes with my new appearance?”

“That is one of many questions.”

“Do you think people will fear me when they see what I look like?”

“They already fear you, Master Noah, in varying degrees. Even Tesh, who cares deeply about you. She’s been asking to see you. In fact, she’s demanding it now, and says you can’t keep ignoring her. She is in a shuttle that is in comlink contact with us at this very moment. I am linked to the comstation by remote. Would you like to hear her, or reply to her?”

“I wonder if she will still consider me attractive,” Noah mused. “Of course, she is much older than I am—though she doesn’t look it—and she has had past relationships with a variety of galactic races. She told me so. She also said she’d never met anyone like me before.”

“An understatement, I’m sure. Especially now.”

Noah chuckled. “I see you’ve developed a sense of humor. I don’t recall one when I first met you, but lately you’ve been different. Did somebody program it into you?”

“Subi Danvar and some of the others thought I was too stiff and intellectual, so they tweaked my operating systems a bit. I asked them to make certain I would never be inappropriately funny, because I don’t wish to irritate you Humans. Therefore, you should find my humor somewhat subdued.”

“So far, you’re doing fine, my metal friend.” Looking at both of them in the mirror, he added, “We’re quite an odd pair, aren’t we?”

The orange lights around Thinker’s faceplate glowed, then went out. “Shall we send for the lady, sir?”

“I wonder if she knows a female robot to bring along. Then we could have a double date.”

“You are much funnier than I am, Master Noah. I interpret that as a possible yes?”

“Send for her, then. I’ll receive her in the module where I used to have a dining hall for my students. You know where that is?”

“Of course. You’ve had robots move furnishings and gambling tables out of the way in there.”

“Yes, they’ve set up a smaller dining table for me in there, with chairs and vending machines. Later I want to get the habitat enclosures installed around the eating area again, the miniature forest of dwarf oak and blue-bark canopa pines, along with the birds and other organisms.”

“That will be delightful.”

“One day, Thinker, this will be a School of Galactic Ecology again, and much more. I have grand plans for EcoStation.”

“I will help you with them.”

“Give me thirty minutes before letting Tesh in. I want to spruce myself up.”

The robot rattled away, chuckling.

* * * * *

High Ruler Coreq stood on the bridge of his flagship, gazing at the vast armada gathered around him, as the ships moved gracefully in concert, flowing and shifting through the Kandor Section of space like dancers following his choreography. They were practicing battle maneuvers.

He slammed a fist against the thick glax window, and made a vow.

Things would be far different in the next military encounter with the enemy, not like the debacle from which he had been fortunate to escape with his life and a portion of his force. Inexplicably, galactic conditions had interfered, just as he’d been about to split space and emerge over the target world of Canopa. Something bad had happened, and suddenly he’d found himself far away, in a region of unknown coordinates. Holes and traps in the infrastructure had nearly spelled the end of him, but he suspected that the enemy must be having as much trouble with it as he was. They’d just been able to take advantage of him that time. The perilous galactic conditions could not possibly be a weapon of theirs; no one could have a power that immense and far-reaching.

After the incident, Coreq had sent a report back to the Adurian homeworld by courier, providing Premier Enver and Warlord Tarix with as many details as he could—and urging them to step up the production of laboratory-bred podships even more. In addition, he had ordered the bulk of his occupying forces to depart from Human and Mutati worlds and join him here for a final thrust against the so-called Liberators.…

* * * * *

Left alone in the corridor, Noah stared in the mirror again, at the rough alien flesh covering his face. He focused on the lump of reddish flesh where his hair used to be, and on the fine veins in the lump. Something shifted in the mass, and he was able to separate out a single strand of curly red hair at the front. Then he separated another, and then hundreds of them, and finally his entire head. With his mind, he commanded how he wanted the hair to be arranged, and it cooperated, down to the last follicle.

However, looking at himself now, with his humanoid face and normal hair, it did not look right at all. He looked like an alien clown.

So he focused on his face, and as moments passed he saw the alien skin fade away, from the forehead down, until the normal Noah looked back at him, the one everyone expected to see. He did the same with his hands and forearms, completing the visible areas.

Now I’ve spruced myself up
, he thought. And he made his way to the dining hall.

He was not there long when Tesh strode in, with a determined look on her face, as if she had finally caught the person she had been chasing. She wore a green skirt and white blouse, which he presumed were projections from her energy field, instead of real apparel. Walking right up to him, Tesh looked closely at his face, and showed confusion on her own.

“Thinker said something to you, didn’t he?” Noah asked.

“He told me not to be shocked by your appearance, that’s all.”

“No details?”

She shook her head, causing her black hair to brush over her shoulders.

Noah frowned. “Shall I put it into words or show you? Mmmm. Words are inadequate, so here goes.”

In the blink of an eye, Noah assumed the alien “podman” appearance, including the reddish lump instead of hair.

She gasped and took a step backward. Then, cautiously, she reached out and touched the streaky, gray-black skin on his cheek. “I, I … Once, I felt roughness on your forearm, under your shirt. This has been happening gradually?”

He nodded. “Now I seem able to control it at will, though.”

“Like a shapeshifter?”

“To an extent. On the surface of my skin, at least.”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “There are many forms of shapeshifters in this galaxy: Mutatis, Aopoddae, Parviis. And you are yet another, it seems. I believe you are the first of your kind.”

“Oddly, I feel more comfortable this way. The old Noah is gone now.”

“But I miss the
old
Noah,” she said. “Just when I thought I was getting to know him and care about him, he changed.”

“You don’t need to fear me,” Noah said. “I see in your eyes that you do.”

He watched her take a deep, shuddering breath. The emerald green eyes flashed, and she said, “My reasons are more complicated than you assume. There is something important I need to discuss with you.”

“I get the feeling I’m not going to like this.”

She smiled, but it had a hard edge to it. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On what sort of a …
man
… you are.” She grasped one of his alien hands and said, “Noah, I’m pregnant with your child.”

“From the one time when you said we really had sex, when I thought I only imagined it?”

“It was real, and so is our baby.”

He jerked his head back. “But you told me once that the galactic races could not interbreed.”

To this, she wagged a finger at him like a schoolteacher and said, “As I told you before, Parviis and Humans were once the same race, until they branched off. Technically, they are not entirely separate galactic races. I have in fact heard of a very small number of cases in which children have been born. The odds of conceiving a child, however, are so low as to be non-existent.”

“Mmmm, I’m sure you omitted some of those details from me earlier.”

“Or, you might not have been listening carefully.” She looked at him apprehensively, seemed to be gauging his reactions.

“I guess we’re lucky, huh?” He grinned, but wasn’t sure how he felt about her condition. He didn’t want to make her feel he was not pleased. And even if he wasn’t, he promised himself that he would take steps to protect Tesh from now on, and their child. He didn’t even consider asking her to terminate the pregnancy. That was out of the question.

“We are lucky.” A cast to her eyes revealed to him that she had not yet revealed certain things, but he decided not to press her.

Instead, Noah asked, “Am I really Human? Was I ever really Human?”

“I think you were when we conceived the child, though I’m not so sure what you have become since then.”

“But I was already different then, when we conceived. Eshaz had already healed my injuries by connecting my injured body to the galactic webbing, allowing its nutrients to flow into me. You saw how I could recover afterward from virtually anything.”

“Yes, you were different, but apparently not different enough.” She patted her belly, but he couldn’t see any difference in it. He didn’t doubt her pregnancy, though.

“When will you give birth?”

“In a cross-racial situation, that can vary. Anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. I think I will get a sense of it as our child grows in my womb.” Her eyes sparkled, and he could tell that she was happy about what was happening inside her body.

Noah held her tightly, and kissed her. She melted into his arms.

When they separated, Noah looked at her and marveled about what an incredible creature
she
was. He had heard somewhere that the Human woman was much more complex than the male, and he thought this Parvii female must be even more complicated than that. At the moment, the pretty brunette looked like a normal-sized Human woman, but that was only because of her magnification system. It was a remarkable technology, one that made her projected skin feel normal to him, even though it was actually an energy field. She told him once that the force field around her made physical acts seem as if her body was really much larger. Apparently this included the process of fertilization.

“What size will our child will be?” he asked.

“That is determined by the natural size of the woman, by the dimensions of the womb and birth canal. If I were, instead, a Parvii man and you were a Human woman, the child would be what you would consider normal size.”

Wrinkling his forehead, trying to comprehend, Noah did not know how to respond. He was having trouble envisioning a son or daughter that he could hold in the palm of his hand, or which he could carry about in a pocket.

Placing her hands on her hips, she said, “Are you happy with the news?”

“Of course! It just takes some getting used to.”

“I know how you feel, then.” She ran her fingers over the alien skin and the Human contours of his face. “Your lips are a bit rough now, dear,” she said, “so you’ll have to be gentle when you kiss me.”

“Can’t you adjust your magnification system?”

“I could. But I would rather see you show consideration by making your own alterations occasionally, somewhat like shaving off bristle. A woman always likes a man to be considerate. Perhaps you can do it without altering your appearance. I think you’re very handsome now.”

He smiled. “I really am happy about the news,” he said.

“I know you are.”

In all of the past and future paths that Noah had envisioned via his connection with the cocoon, he had not foreseen any of this. But he knew with certainty—an instinctual feeling—that their child would be important.