Webdancers (6 page)

Chapter Twelve

We wear our mortal skins like cloaks, protecting us until the fabric rots away. Then at last we are left naked, exposed to the entropy of the universe.

—A saying of Lost Earth

Princess Meghina of Siriki had led an interesting life.

One of the most beautiful women in the galaxy, she had married the Doge Lorenzo del Velli twenty-two years ago, when she was only fourteen. As her loveliness became renowned throughout the realm, she had—with her husband’s concurrence—become a courtesan to other powerful noblemen in the Merchant Prince Alliance. An independent woman, she had lived separately in a marvelous palace on the planet Siriki, and ostensibly bore seven daughters for Lorenzo. Afterward, having escaped the destruction of her homeworld by Mutati military forces, she had moved to the orbital gambling facility over Canopa, to live with her husband.

There, her darkest secrets had been revealed. Through intrigues by Francella Watanabe, she had been exposed as a Mutati, but one who had always wanted to be Human, and whose shapeshifting cellular structure had locked into Human form. Her daughters, it turned out, had all been fake pregnancies. She had never given birth to any of them. The MPA public, and Lorenzo himself, had ultimately been sympathetic to her, despite the deceit.

Living with her husband on the orbital gambling facility for some time now, she had become a mysterious, glamorous figure, occasionally seen out on the gaming floor, but more often she frequented the back corridors and glittering chambers of the facility, where she spent time with a most unusual group of friends.…

One evening, Lorenzo invited Meghina and these friends to dinner in his elegant dining hall. Months earlier, he had been forced to abdicate as doge, in part because of the revelations about Meghina, which his political enemies used to their advantage. Now the nobleman was essentially an outcast on the orbiter, living in a velvet-lined cocoon.

At the appointed hour, Princess Meghina sat on one end of the gleaming wooden banquet table, opposite Lorenzo on the other. With her golden hair secured by a jeweled headband, she wore a long black velveen dress, trimmed in precious gemstones. She smiled down the long table at her husband, and sipped from a large silver goblet of red wine, a fine Canopan vintage.

Along the sides sat her five extraordinary companions—three men on one side and two women on the other. They formed an exclusive little club, often getting together socially in Meghina’s royal apartments on the Pleasure Palace orbiter. All the while, the six of them were under continuing medical supervision.

This was because they had apparently become immortal.

Under a research program established by the medical division of CorpOne, a remarkable elixir had been developed from the DNA of the purportedly indestructible Noah Watanabe. The new solution (dubbed the Elixir of Life) had been injected into two hundred thousand persons from all of the galactic races, and had resulted in immortality for a scant six of them, including Meghina. It had been like winning a lottery, and initially they had all considered themselves lucky.

Then they had heard that Noah’s insane sister had injected herself with the elixir, and had suffered a rapid cellular decline—an artificial form of progeria that caused the rapid aging of her cells, and her premature death. There had even been rumors that Francella, shortly before dying, had injected her own tainted blood back into her brother, trying to harm him. The attempt had apparently been unsuccessful, because he didn’t seem to have experienced any associated medical problems.

So far, neither had Princess Meghina or the other Elixir of Life “winners.”

* * * * *

In a chair on Meghina’s immediate left sat a small black-and-tan pet that she had recently taken a liking to, a rare Bernjack dagg from her private animal collection. Once it had been owned by a very old woman, but she had gone into a rest home and had been unable to care for the dagg any longer. The shaggy animal was very special to Meghina now, and she called it Orga, because the old lady had been Mrs. Orga. Using the solitary bulbous eye above its snout, it peered around the shaggy fur overhanging its face.

At the other end of the table, on Lorenzo’s right, sat what looked like another pet but really wasn’t. Rather, it was her husband’s furry little attaché, the feisty Hibbil, Pimyt. Meghina had never liked the graying, black-and-white alien, but had gracefully concealed her feelings from him.

Raising his own goblet, Lorenzo said, “A toast to the good life.”

He and his guests quaffed their drinks, then set the goblets down with thumps that were almost in synchronization.

Just then, the dagg leaned its long snout over the table, and gripped its water bowl in its mouth. Lifting the bowl high, the animal leaned back and slurped from it, before losing its grip. The bowl crashed to the floor, shattering and spilling the water.

Several guests tittered, but Lorenzo scowled at the animal, as he often did. He only tolerated the dagg. A servant hurried over to clean up the mess.

“Perhaps we should put wine in Orga’s bowl!” suggested one of the guests, a ruddy, aging man named Dougal Netzer. Once an impoverished portrait painter, he now earned large sums for his work. More than any of his cellular peers, he had been able to capitalize financially on his overnight fame as an immortal.

Servants brought in platters heaped with steaming game hens, cooked in a dark, aromatic sauce. At Meghina’s order, they even had a plate of boned meat for the dagg. The moment it was placed in front of him, Orga tried to grab a piece of meat. But Meghina waggled a finger near the plate, causing the animal to let go of the food and pull his head back—awaiting permission to eat.

“As my lovely wife has probably told you,” Lorenzo said, “I am in
de facto
exile on this orbital facility, with little opportunity to get away from it.” He paused. “Tell me about events on the surface of Canopa—news, gossip, bits of information. Pimyt doesn’t have the connections he enjoyed while working for me on-planet. I’ve been feeling isolated.”

Pimyt shot him a hard stare, but for only a moment. Two of the female guests and one of the men provided the former doge with details, how Doge Anton, Noah Watanabe, and others had formed a military expedition and departed in a big hurry.

When Lorenzo had heard enough, he permitted the table to fall into witty, light-hearted conversation, much of it about the immortality of Meghina and her friends.

At first, Pimyt said very little. Finally, he asked the woman seated next to him, “What do you intend to do with your own extended life?”

“I have so much time now to consider such matters,” she said. A robust, big-chested woman in a blue tunic, she smiled. Since gaining immortality she had abandoned her original name, and for unexplained reasons now called herself Paltrow.

“And the answer is, after all the time you’ve taken to consider it?” the Hibbil asked.

“I have put off such matters, such
worries
, really. I’ve hardly thought about them at all.”

“A nice luxury to have.” The little Hibbil tugged at the salt-and-pepper fur on his chin. It was a nervous mannerism that Meghina had noticed previously.

“I’m sorry,” Paltrow said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I honestly haven’t given it much thought.”

Most of those at the table had paused to listen to the exchange.

“Perhaps our additional time is not so important as you might think,” Meghina suggested. “What, exactly, does living forever mean? Living forever in relation to what?”

“Intriguing observation,” Dougal Netzer said.

The guests began to pitch in. Finally Paltrow asked, “Is a million years in our galaxy only a moment, or a mere fraction of a moment?”

Theories and more questions went around the table in rapid succession, and it developed into a game in which several people tried to ask the most clever question, some of them rhetorical.

The repartee intensified, and Lorenzo seemed to enjoy it. Meghina couldn’t help noticing, however, that Pimyt appeared to be somewhere else in his mind, perhaps far across the galaxy on his alien homeworld.

Chapter Thirteen

Each moment is slightly different from the one preceding it.

—Parvii Inspiration

In the alternate realm, the cosmic storm subsided, and the huddled swarm of Parviis stopped being buffeted around. But to the Eye of the Swarm, this provided little comfort.

Drifting in the airless darkness with the remnants of his once-mighty race, Woldn felt dismal. He had always been a leader who visualized things and made them happen. For him, that was a key aspect of command, envisioning things that others could not, and making them come to pass. But in his wildest imaginings, from his first recollections of life more than two thousand years ago, he’d never thought it possible that he could fall to this level, soundly defeated and relegated to hiding in an unknown galactic region, perhaps even in another galaxy altogether.

More than anything, Woldn wanted to fight back, to stream back through the bolt hole into the Parvii Fold and dispatch his enemies with raw violence, killing and scattering them, chasing them to the ends of the universe and wiping out all remnants of them. But he didn’t have the power to do that. Not even close.

Even worse, troublesome thoughts had been creeping into his consciousness like vermin infesting his mind, and he could not avoid asking himself,
Have I done anything to cause this?

The Eye of the Swarm wondered if he might … or
should
… have done anything differently. And yet, he had only done things the way every Parvii ruler had done them since time immemorial. He had followed the ancient traditions, the proven ways.

A sense of deep gloom and foreboding came over him now, as something new occurred to him. He realized that he had in effect been following a template, that his leadership methods had been inherited … and hardly modified at all. Methods that did not contemplate the modern challenges confronting him. Never before had a leader faced such immense trials and tribulations: the decline of the galactic infrastructure on which podships traveled, and the enemies of the Parvii race who wanted to destroy them. But he realized this was no excuse. Millions of years of relative sameness in the galaxy had lulled him and predecessors into a false sense of security.

We didn’t adapt to changing conditions
. I
didn’t adapt. My people followed me off the edge of a cliff.

He shivered in the dim void. Though his people hardly ever felt the frigid extremes of temperature in deep space, for some reason it seemed much colder to him here. But how could that be? It probably wasn’t the case, not according to the laws of physics and the galactic principles that had been around since the beginning of time. Perhaps extreme stress was affecting him, compromising his Parvii bodily functions.

And … this might be another galaxy, one that really is colder.

He drifted toward the tiny bolt hole, and telepathically commanded the sentry at the opening to make way for him. That one hurried out of his way, back into the alternate realm.

Woldn entered. The hole was actually a tunnel, though only a few hundred meters in length—tunnel through the membrane that defined and protected a large portion of the sacred Parvii Fold. In a matter of seconds, he reached the other end, but stopped just before emerging.

Then, ever so cautiously, he pushed his head out of the opening on the other side and peered into the fold. Not far away, he saw a few dozen podships that looked as if they had been stationed to guard the hole. Extending his range of vision (as only the Eye of the Swarm could do), he made out additional sentient vessels in the distance, engaged in what appeared to be practice maneuvers, and other podships that he thought were on patrol.

Scanning around the fold, he didn’t see that many vessels. Then, at the entrance to the Asteroid Funnel, he saw podships going through, departing. Looking farther, he saw to his vexation that they were making their way expertly past the tumbling, luminous white stones and out into deep space.

They’re stealing my fleet, damn them!

Right there, as never before, Woldn vowed revenge. Even if it required every ounce of his remaining strength, to the very last breath he took he would make the effort. And so would every one of his followers. If any of them didn’t show enough commitment, he would kill them. For a matter involving stakes this high, he could do no less, could expect no less.

Chapter Fourteen

Many people want to predict the future, so that they can be ready and position themselves most advantageously—protecting themselves and those close to them. Every organism has an innate need to survive, but I have no curiosity about the moment and method of my own death. Rather, I choose to observe larger issues that effect all living organisms, so that I might contribute to the whole. If we do not take the long view as a species, the short view that happens to each of us no longer matters.

—Master Noah Watanabe, classroom instruction

On board the flagship, while the pilot searched for safe podway routes along a decaying infrastructure, Noah had additional concerns. Layers of trouble seeped through his thoughts as he paced back and forth across an anteroom. It was one of several that the sentient vessel had formed around the perimeter of the main passenger compartment, using its mysterious manner of extrusion and changing shape, and of changing size. Now she was easily the largest vessel in the fleet, with the most complex arrangement of interior rooms.

She
, Noah thought.
Yes, assuming Webdancer has a gender, it seems female to me.

Through an open doorway, he heard the voices of Doge Anton, General Nirella, and Subi Danvar coming from a room across the corridor. He’d been in there with them earlier, telling them about the paranormal image of a timehole he’d seen near Canopa and EcoStation, and how real it had seemed to him. Now he tuned out the voices in the other room, didn’t try to listen in on their words.

His main concern was much closer to him. Noah’s body had been changing for some time now, though it remained to be seen if it was a bizarre evolutionary process, an uncharted disease, or something he had not yet considered.

I may be immortal, but what am I becoming?

He felt vibration in the floor as they passed over a rough section of podway. It grew worse for perhaps a minute, then gradually smoothed out.

During the past year, Noah had taken a number of fantastic mental excursions through Timeweb, and he had peered into what seemed to be an entirely different galaxy, where a small swarm of Parvii survivors had fled. While held prisoner by his own sister, Noah had survived her vicious butchery, and had even regrown severed limbs and other body parts like a lizard. Now, in recent weeks, the skin on his torso and arms was becoming different, morphing into something unfamiliar. He’d been able to conceal the changes beneath his clothing so far, but he didn’t know how much longer he could do that.

Am I turning into an alien … no longer Human?

His mental incongruities seemed to have come first, followed by the physical. But he had no way of studying the history of his own cellular structure to confirm that, so the physical changes might have actually started the process. Most perplexing. Perhaps it all had been occurring simultaneously. Certainly both the cerebral and the corporal were apparent now, and they had not locked into any semblance of stability. He was in a constant state of flux, leaving him with infinite questions and no good answers.

Terror washed through him, but abated in a few moments when he realized that part of him actually
wanted
the changes to continue. On many occasions he had tried to enter the Timeweb realm of his own volition, but for the most part he had been unable to do so. And even when he had been able to go into the web at all, it seemed to be through a back or side door, one that the gods of the realm had only left ajar accidentally. Perhaps it was a symptom of the declining infrastructure, the strange and baffling ecological malaise that was spreading through the galaxy. Without warning, as if sensing his presence where he was not supposed to be, the rulers of the realm kept locating him and throwing him out summarily.

The podship vibrated again, and slowed. Through a porthole Noah saw a flickering blue sun and a system of ringed planets. Then the podway improved once more, and they sped past the system, through the heart of a purple nebula.

In the end Noah realized that it didn’t matter what he wanted himself. All of the bizarre things that were happening to him were far beyond his personal control. His tormented sister Francella had complicated any hope he ever had of figuring the transformation out, stabbing that dermex of her own poisoned blood deep into him.

Now he lifted his tunic and stared at his muscular abdomen, the place where she had struck. The vein of his morphing, gray-and-black skin had started on his chest, but not at that spot beside his belly button. Even so, there might be a time correlation. The physical changes had begun a short while
after
her attack, and now included the place she had stabbed him, a small oblong area that was darker than the rest of the altered skin.

He paused and fixed his gaze on the open doorway, the gray-green natural light out in the corridor, and the mottled gray skin of the podship. Just focusing on various sections of the sentient vessel seemed to have a strange fascination for him, reminding him of how he felt as a small boy when he stared transfixed into pools of water, hypnotized by the changes in light and ripples of liquid motion. The interior of each Aopoddae vessel was like that in a sense, as he detected tiny shiftings in the illumination and skin surfaces all the time, subtle differences in hue and texture that he didn’t think the other passengers noticed.

Perhaps Tesh, as the Parvii pilot, could see such things. It might be possible.
Beautiful Tesh
. His thoughts drifted toward her, and then away again.

Abruptly, he found himself plunging outward, beyond the confines of the podship and into space. As he hurtled into the frozen void he saw
Webdancer
and the rest of the huge fleet behind him, with porthole lights visible along their hulls. Quickly, the fleet vanished from view, and a new awareness came over him.

Noah’s motion stabilized, and he found himself standing motionless inside the sectoid chamber of yet another podship, piloting it in the Tulyan manner along the decaying infrastructure at much higher speeds than
Webdancer
had ever been able to attain. He changed course repeatedly, finding optimum strands for the ship to utilize. In a state of hyper awareness, Noah realized that it was not his Human body in the sectoid chamber. Rather, he had become a metallic green mist within an amorphous, unidentifiable shape, perhaps the form he had been evolving into before this happened.

But, as if in contradiction of that, on the prow of the vessel he saw—somehow—his own Human face in an enlarged form, suggesting that he had discovered a modified Tulyan method of piloting the craft. Did the form of the pilot lose its separate features inside the sectoid chamber when its energy merged into the podship flesh?

Another question without an answer.

Far off in the distance, he recognized some of the major planetary systems of the Merchant Prince Alliance, and as he flew on he made out the galactic sectors of other races. He made his way toward some of the regions that he recognized. But soon he found, strangely, that he was flying right through them as if they were no more than holo images. On previous excursions into Timeweb he had been able to see activity in the galaxy, particularly other ships as they negotiated the podways. Now it was different. He could not make out details such as that, only increasingly blurry views as he neared and passed through the systems.

And he sensed—but could not see—a great but undefined danger out in the galaxy, beyond the crumbling infrastructure that everyone knew about. As he turned around and went back in the direction he had come, he wondered what the feeling meant.

On the way Noah recalled an earlier venture into the paranormal realm in which he saw Hibbil and Adurian soldiers inside strange podships that were piloted by Hibbils using computerized navigation units. It had been peculiar and unexplained, and he had reported it to Tesh Kori and Doge Anton.

Alas, with no way of reentering the web at will, and no way of verifying what he had seen, Noah never could tell if that startling vision had been real or not. It had not made any sense at all, since Hibbils were aligned with Humans, and Adurians were the long-time allies of Mutatis. Since then, there had been no other sightings of the odd soldiers or the highly unusual ships, so nothing could be done about it.

Might that be the additional menace he sensed now? He let the question sink in. No, he decided. The threat came from something else.

Just ahead he saw the rear of the podship fleet. The larger and more impressive
Webdancer
was out in front, leading the others. At the immense rate of speed that Noah had attained, the fleet seemed to be traveling slowly through space, and he caught up with it easily. None of the vessels noticed him, and as he neared he found himself hurtling out of the sectoid chamber toward
Webdancer
, and back into the anteroom he’d been in before embarking on this strange journey.

Moments later he was standing in that room, staring through the doorway into a gray-green wash of light.

And abruptly, as if emerging from a trance, Noah jerked to awareness and hurried across the corridor, to the room occupied by Anton, Nirella, and Subi. The three of them sat at a table, engaged in intense conversation. At first they didn’t notice him enter. Then Subi called attention to him, and they all looked at Noah in a similarly odd manner, leaning close and squinting their eyes. Under their intense scrutiny Noah felt warm. Drops of perspiration formed on his brow.

“I sense a terrible danger out there,” Noah said, at last. He could hardly get the words out.

“Are you feeling all right?” Nirella asked. She wore a red uniform with gold braids and insignia, designating her rank as Supreme General of the MPA armed forces. But now she conducted herself more like a caring woman than a military commander, looking at him with concern and urging him to sit down.

He resisted her efforts and pulled his arm away from her grasp. “I’m fine. Listen to me. I sense an additional threat, more powerful than anything else we’ve ever seen or discussed.”

“But what?”

“I can’t say, but it’s out there, and seems like even more than the disintegration of the galactic infrastructure.”

“It can’t be military,” Nirella said. “We’ve defeated the Parviis, and the Mutatis don’t have anywhere near the power we have now. We control all the podships, so we can go and attack their planets at anytime.”

“It’s not Parviis or Mutatis,” Noah said. “Or any other galactic race. It’s something else entirely. I think … I
fear
… that it’s beyond anything we’re able to comprehend.”

“For hours we’ve been in range of deep-space nehrcom relay stations,” Anton said, “and the reports from our planets are all good. Nothing significant is happening in our sector, or anywhere near it.”

“Maybe it’s only the infrastructure after all,” Noah said. He slumped into a comfortable chair that the podship had created, off to one side. He smiled grimly. “
Only
the infrastructure. As if that isn’t enough.”

“The repair and restoration of the galactic network needs to be our top priority,” the young doge insisted.

“I don’t dispute that,” Noah said. “I just wish we’d get to the starcloud faster so we can get on with it.”

But no one in the room had any idea what was really occurring. Or the fact that HibAdu conspirators were using their own technology to relay false nehrcom messages. In actuality, a terrible thing
had
happened, which Noah and his companions would soon discover.…