* * * * *
Subi Danvar jumped back from the screen on Thinker’s chest, as if he had just seen a ghost. He had been talking with the simulated Noah about the wonderful times they used to have at the Environmental Demonstration Project, and on board the orbital EcoStation.
Suddenly the image of Noah shifted, and a three-dimensional likeness of him seemed to float out of the screen into the underground cavern. At first, Subi thought it was a holo-image, but it didn’t have the same quality of illumination, and he saw no projector. The image floated around the chamber, then landed on its feet a short distance from Subi. It looked diaphanous, like a living mist in Human form.
“Do you see that?” Subi asked Thinker.
“See what?”
“There!”
“The cavern wall, you mean? What?”
“Not the wall! Noah! Don’t you see him?”
“Noah is not there. I’m afraid you’re having an illusion, perhaps initiated by my data screen. I’d better switch it off.” He did so, and closed a panel over the screen.
With trepidation, Subi walked over to the image. Timidly, he extended his hand toward it.
“Don’t try to touch me!” Noah said.
Subi recoiled. Looking back at Thinker he asked, “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what? Poor man, you need to get some rest.”
Stubbornly, Subi reached toward the image, and put his hand through it. As he did so, the apparition faded entirely.
“I told you not to touch me!” Noah yelled, as if from afar. “It’s more than the dimensional stretch can tolerate!” He disappeared entirely, and took his voice with him.
Chapter Forty-Two
Though Lorenzo keeps his business affairs private, it is known that he holds a number of corporate directorships around the galaxy, a network of interactions that form the economic basis of his power.
—Pillars of the Merchant Princes, a holodocumentary
The destruction of the CorpOne headquarters building had forced Lorenzo to relocate his offices and royal residence to the orbiter that had formerly been Noah Watanabe’s prized EcoStation. While the Doge hated to retreat, he had been pleased that he still had this facility solidly under his control, and that the pesky Guardians could not possibly get to him there. The space station, now fully armored and fitted with the most advanced security systems, also had a formidable squadron of government patrol ships constantly on alert.
Deep in thought, the Doge walked through the module containing his new offices, where a construction crew worked at an efficient but inadequate pace. He would order Pimyt to speed them up. Office work still needed to be done, so his staff had been operating out of makeshift quarters nearby.
Proceeding down a long corridor into another module, he entered one of Noah’s former classrooms and waved at Princess Meghina, who was discussing the ongoing work with a contractor. With her good taste and love of exotic projects, she was helping immensely, and Lorenzo had put her in charge of this section.
Originally Lorenzo had been about to make drastic changes to this area, tearing out not only the classrooms but also the connected mini-forest area that Noah’s people had cultivated. It had all looked absurd to him, and he’d wanted to move gambling equipment in for a glitzy new casino. Meghina concurred with the casino idea, but talked him out of changing this particular module, telling him that plants created oxygen, valuable on a space station. She pointed out what a holovideo told her—that the forest ecosystem was a self-sufficient, scaled-down version of life on Canopa, with small birds and other creatures filling ecological niches. She then suggested that they turn the classrooms into an attractive casino dining hall, with the miniature forest surrounding it, separated by the invisible electronic barrier that was already in place. All excellent ideas, he had to admit. The gambling equipment would have to go elsewhere.
Almost oblivious to anyone in the corridors of the orbital station, Lorenzo stalked ahead. Subordinates fell silent as he neared them, and they scurried out of his way. Behind him, four Red Beret guards kept pace, watching out for his safety. He had other things on his mind.
With the Mutati war forced into the background, Lorenzo del Velli still faced tremendous difficulties. In particular, he was concerned about reports of discontent against him among the princes on various planets. His political problems were complex and worrisome, exacerbated by the continuing guerrilla attacks by Guardian forces against government and corporate installations on Canopa. There had even been copycat incidents on other planets, reportedly done by sympathetic groups that were not formally aligned with the Guardians. With no access to nehrcom stations, the Guardians could not possibly be coordinating the attacks, but they were occurring nonetheless, and weakening him.
The underpinnings of opposition against Lorenzo ran deep. For some time, the noble-born princes had been critical of him for stubbornly appointing commoners such as Saito Watanabe and Jacopo Nehr to important government positions. The noble-born princes, descended from aristocratic lineages that went back for thousands of years, were not happy about this at all, but Lorenzo had brought most of them over to his side anyway, by pointing out the necessity of rewarding exceptional skills. None of the nobles could deny the sterling business accomplishments of either Saito or Jacopo. And, while Saito was dead now and his operations were more low-key under his daughter Francella, Jacopo Nehr was still in the limelight, having been promoted the year before to Supreme General of all Merchant Prince Armed Forces.
Rounding a corner forcefully, Lorenzo almost bowled over a little man carrying a briefcase, going the other way. One of the office functionaries. A paper shuffler. The office worker apologized profusely, bowed, and hurried on his way.
The Doge headed for a room at the end of the corridor—his communications center—which he saw through an open doorway. Lights blinked in there and small robots whirred back and forth, performing functions that were even lower than those of the typical office worker.
Lorenzo knew which noble-born princes were closest to him, because they were the ones most vocal in their support. Of course, some of that could be a ruse, and he was alert to that. He remained most concerned and troubled, however, by the ones who were remaining silent and detached from him. Having alerted his own government agents by nehrcom on the various Alliance planets, he had the princes under constant surveillance, thus far without turning up any specific evidence against any of them. It was most perplexing to him, and frustrating. The disloyal princes seemed to have taken a page from the Guardian playbook, lying low and making their own form of guerrilla attacks against him.
As he entered the communications center, Pimyt greeted him. The little Hibbil carried an electronic notebook under one arm. “We are ready to broadcast,” Pimyt said. “Here are the prompter notes.”
“I don’t need notes,” Lorenzo snapped, shoving the furry little man aside. “I know what to say.”
He went to a console, and a technician in a black singlesuit turned on the machine, bathing the Doge in soft white light. Later in the day he would broadcast through nehrcom relay to the people of every planet in the Merchant Prince Alliance, his version of the ages-old fireside chat. It was a recent suggestion from Pimyt, and Lorenzo had taken a liking to the idea, as a way of keeping him in the minds of the people. With the cessation of podship travel and the mutterings of noble-born princes against him, Lorenzo’s task in this regard was proving to be increasingly difficult.
But first he had a more limited broadcast, just for the Canopan people. To show his concern for their security, Lorenzo had been making regular public proclamations on the purported progress his forces were making in rooting out Noah’s forces, the cowards who made guerrilla style attacks against corporate and government facilities where many of the citizens worked.
While Pimyt stood by nervously, holding the electronic notepad, Lorenzo began to talk extemporaneously. In a blatant lie, he told the people to pay no attention to the increasing number of destroyed
buildings and other assets on Canopa, that Guardian losses were very high and they didn’t have the resources to go on much longer.
Bolstering the spin he was putting on events, he accompanied his speech with holo-images of Noah in captivity, to prove that the Doge was in control of the situation. In reality they were older pictures of the rebel leader, before Francella hacked him to pieces. The current images of Noah, though his body had regenerated, made him look like a torture victim, with pinkish scars and other wounds that were not healing as rapidly as in the past, when he experienced less grievous injuries.
As Lorenzo completed the address, he stepped away from the white light. The technician transmitted recorded messages, boilerplate material that accompanied every one of the Doge’s pronouncements.
Lorenzo walked away, ignoring Pimyt for the moment, who scuttled along behind him babbling the usual sycophantic nonsense. The merchant prince leader’s new orbital office headquarters would offer him additional security, but he wanted to spend more time down on Canopa as soon as possible, and this made him grumpy whenever he focused on it.
By rights, his offices and his residence should be down there, not up here. His empire seemed to be shrinking around him. Once, he ruled hundreds of wealthy planets of the Merchant Prince Alliance from the glittering capital world of Timian One. Now, with the capital destroyed and Canopa increasingly dangerous for him, he had retreated to a very small place, and only maintained tenuous control over the remaining planets.
He still ventured down to the surface of Canopa on occasion, but only accompanied by a cadre of Red Berets, led by a trusted colonel who had been in his service for almost a decade. These men were the fiercest of Human and machine fighters, trained in the most advanced weaponry and sworn to protect their Doge at all costs.
* * * * *
Ever the optimist, Lorenzo always had interesting operations underway. For some time before the destruction of his Canopan offices, he had been expanding this space station by bringing in new armored modules and floating them into orbit, intending to turn the facility into a gambling resort called The Pleasure Palace. Word of this got out, as he wanted. But it had the unintended result of causing some of the discontented princes to criticize him for it. Still, he thought he could turn the tables on them.
Even with the forced relocation of his offices, he would proceed with the casino plans, and would demonstrate to the Alliance that he could not be intimidated by criticism. Besides, the facility would make a lot of money for him, enabling him to fulfill his love of gambling in a dramatic, very public way. Admittedly the whole enterprise was a risk, but the raw creative excitement energized him, and he felt confident that it would succeed in a big way.
Chapter Forty-Three
A thought can be the most beautiful thing in all of existence … Or the most malignant.
—Fragment from the teachings of Lost Earth
Even though Francella’s Corp One headquarters building no longer existed, Doge Lorenzo was still obligated to make ten years of exorbitant lease payments to her. The same held true for the opulent cliffside villa that he had vacated. Both properties were part of the same ironclad contract, drawn up by her attentive lawyers. The merchant prince leader had hardly bothered to look before signing, bless his foolish heart. Francella so loved to manipulate him.
Now as she supervised the movement of her furnishings back into the villa, Francella glanced in a mirror that two men had just hung in the parlor. Moving close to the glax she looked at her forehead above the shaved eyebrows, and at the skin beneath her eyes. She thought her face was smoother than before, that faint lines had vanished, and she looked younger than her thirty-eight years.
Excitement infused her. The injection of Noah’s blood was beginning to take effect! She felt exuberant.
With a new quickness in her step, Francella took a break and wandered along the loggia, past the open-air gallery of imperial statues. Across the Valley of the Princes, she saw Rainbow City clinging to the sheer walls of an iridescent cliff, with midday sunlight glinting off the jewel-like buildings.
At the end of the loggia, she entered a large room that had once been piled high with her father’s most special treasures, and which now stood empty. She remembered going there as a child and admiring the priceless jewels and artworks, which the tycoon had collected during a lifetime of travels around the galaxy. Thinking back as she strolled around the empty room, she noted scratches on the marble floor and the walls that needed to be repaired.
But just for a moment, as if she were a small girl again, she plopped herself on the floor in one corner, on the exact spot where she used to sit. The plush handmade carpet was gone now and the floor was very hard, but she felt calmer with each passing moment.
Francella was about to get up when she noticed something on the wall. A display case had been there for years, and now, just above floor level she saw a vertical line on the wall, perhaps a third of a centimeter in height. Dropping to her knees, she examined it.
When she touched the wall it sprang outward, revealing a compartment beyond.
Her heart raced. Could a treasure be inside? She thought she had placed all of the valuables in safekeeping before the Doge moved in, but what if her father had hidden something here, perhaps the most precious of his possessions?
Reaching inside, she thought at first that the hiding place was empty. Then her fingers tightened around a small, hard object, the shape of a coin. Bringing it out into the light, she saw that it was not that at all, but was instead an old-style computer disk, the retro-though-dependable type her father had preferred to use.
She might have held this very one in her hand, years ago. Once, as a four-year old, she’d seen a pile of them on a table and had placed them in a pocket of her dress, thinking they were coins and she could buy candy with them. Finding the disks in her pocket, a maid had scolded her and put them back without ever telling her father.
Francella sighed. In many ways she missed the innocence of her childhood, before the desolate realities of life began to embitter her. In her own way, she had always loved her family, and even Noah, despite the enmity they held for one another. She had also loved their father, the old prince, dearly, but had found it necessary to get rid of him and blame the death on her brother. Under different circumstances, if she had only been treated as an equal with Noah—without all the favoritism that Prince Saito showed toward him—things might have been entirely different.
I am not a monster, she thought. / only do what I have to do.
But she would not let sadness intrude on her fine mood. This computer disk could be something valuable. Francella took it into her study, where a technician was setting her equipment up.
“Can you read what’s on this disk?” she asked.
He whistled. “That’s an oldie. Should be able to, though. I’ve got a converter in my bag.” He set up the converter, then made several equipment adjustments and tossed the disk into a hopper. Seconds later a copy—one of the modern data shards embedded in a clearplax ball—rattled out into a tray, along with the old disk. He handed both of them to her.
In privacy, Francella activated a palm-sized computer, and watched the holo screen appear in front of her eyes. The writing on the screen had been encrypted, but she ran through the codes her father used and saw the words shift into Galeng. This was Prince Saito’s electronic journal. Feeling a rush of excitement she scrolled and found references to herself and to Noah, with the old man wishing the two of them would stop quarreling.
Then she caught her breath.
“The love of my life is Princess Meghina,” he wrote. “But she is secretly a Mutati who cannot shapeshift back. She is more Human than anyone I know, more filled with love and loyalty and compassion and a passion for life. I love her dearly, and can never turn her in. This is a secret I shall carry to my grave.”
But the harlot is Lorenzo’s wife, Francella thought. He must know, too.
Reading on, she discovered otherwise.
“I am the only Human who knows this explosive secret. So skillful is her deception that the Doge has no idea of her true identity. Nor can he ever know. I am confident that history will sort this matter out for the best, but to protect Meghina during her lifetime I have taken steps to prevent release of the information for many years, until long after the participants in this little drama are gone.”
* * * * *
Ecstatic, Francella saw an opportunity to accomplish two important goals at once.
Formulating her plan more that afternoon, she began to think about how best to spread rumors—through channels to protect her own identity—about Princess Meghina’s scandalous secret. Along with that bombshell, she would add a twist of her own, the assertion that Doge Lorenzo had known about it all along.
When released—it would take a little time to get everything set up—the story and all of its related suspicions would spread like fire on dry grass. Had the Royal Consort avoided medical examinations, or had her records been falsified? Who was covering up for her, the Doge Lorenzo himself?
Yes, the puzzle pieces would fit together nicely, enabling Francella to get rid of that loathsome woman once and for all. And eliminate the Doge at the same time, thus advancing the cause of her allies, the noble-born princes who wanted to bring Lorenzo down and replace him with a leader sympathetic to their cause.
My son Anton would fill the bill nicely, she thought as she dispatched three messengers from her study.
But Francella knew this was just wishful thinking. Anton hated her so much that he would hardly speak to her. And she knew very little about his politics … except his affinity for her despicable brother, and his refusal to reveal the location of Guardian headquarters. Such a disingenuous story Anton was telling, that he’d been experiencing memory gaps.
She sighed with resignation, knowing that she could not force all of the puzzle pieces into place. At least she had recognized an opportunity and was about to jump on it. Not a bad day’s work, after all.
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