The Web and the Stars

by Brian Herbert

  Chapter Forty-Four

  We all gamble anyway, with every breath we take. Why not make it fun?

  —Plaque signed by Lorenzo del Velli, entrance to The Pleasure Palace

  With money from investors and his own sources, Lorenzo completed construction work on The Pleasure Palace in a matter of weeks, along with his connected offices and living quarters. The high class casino-resort had luxury apartments for wealthy customers, which he offered at reasonable rates in order to entice them to the gambling tables. Even in these uncertain times, gamblers flocked there, primarily the nobility and business leaders of Canopa, but also a number of wealthy travelers who had been stranded on the planet when podship travel ceased.

  Each night Lorenzo played the perfect celebrity host for his well-dressed guests, and was often seen in the company of his elegant and mysterious courtesan-wife, the Princess Meghina. Liras poured in, so much wealth that he quickly had to enlarge a high-security vault wing on the orbiter.

  The space station became a most unusual royal residence for the Doge, an orbital wonderland where he could indulge his taste for high living and make a great deal of money in the bargain. To an extent he was pleased with the new setup, but military and political concerns continued to occupy much of his time. Every day before going to the casino, he met with his attaché Pimyt. In particular, they prepared important nehrcom transmissions to every planet in the Merchant Prince Alliance, making certain the defensive positions remained in place on every pod station, and that military forces were as strong and alert as possible.

  * * * * *

  All orders of this type went from Lorenzo to Pimyt, who in turn was supposed to either transmit them himself at the nehrcom station on Canopa or convey them to General Jacopo Nehr.

  As before, the devious Hibbil underhandedly modified some of the messages, causing merchant prince military installations to move or actually reduce strength … adjustments that were accomplished subtly and almost imperceptibly, a little at a time.

  His inside knowledge of the location of Human military forces and their strength was a huge espionage coup for the Hibbils and their secret Adurian allies.

  * * * * *

  As far as Lorenzo knew, his orders were being taken care of properly, but he couldn’t stop worrying. There were still no podships connecting the planets of his Merchant Prince Alliance—or those of the enemy Mutati Kingdom. It was as if the Human and Mutati worlds had been separated from the galaxy and discarded, like rotten apples from a barrel.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Tell me what you actually see in me, and not what my detractors tell you to see.

  —Princess Meghina, private note to Doge Lorenzo

  Lorenzo didn’t like the way Pimyt looked when he entered the royal bathing room, as if he didn’t care enough, or as if it was a matter that was completely out of his hands. How could the little Hibbil act so detached when Lorenzo’s world was crashing around him? Wasn’t it bad enough that he’d had to relocate to the orbiter? And now this? The rumor had hit Lorenzo like a Mutati torpedo, burrowing in and detonating inside his brain.

  “It’s a monstrous lie!” the Doge thundered. Rising naked from an immense bathing pool, he grabbed a robe from one of the two female attendants who had been washing him.

  “Undoubtedly you are right,” Pimyt said. “But we must act quickly to dispel the story before it gains too much traction. Already it is inflaming the populace, causing them to ask questions. They want your response.”

  “The people are demanding that I address them? How absurd. I speak to them whenever I wish, if it pleases me.” He glared at the attendants, and they hurried away.

  “I understand that, of course.” The Hibbil’s red eyes seemed to brighten, like embers that had been fanned. “Is that your response, then, My Doge?”

  “Don’t be an idiot! Obviously, this is an unusual situation, requiring emergency action. Prepare my shuttle immediately, and my escort of Red Berets.”

  The little alien bowed, but maintained his irritatingly detached demeanor. “It will be done.”

  * * * * *

  A short while later the shuttle landed, and the Doge’s elite special police whisked him into a gleaming black groundjet for the ride to Rainbow City, perched on a cliff top. Lorenzo fumed all the way.

  When the groundjet finally came to a stop in front of a large building with white pillars, he didn’t wait for attendants to let him out of the vehicle. While his security forces scrambled to keep up, he marched into the ornate lobby and across it to the high-speed ascensore for the ride to the top floor, the fifty-seventh. He told the guards and Pimyt to remain in the lobby.

  Princess Meghina called these her “royal apartments,” but in reality she had converted an upscale apartment building into a palace. As the Doge stepped out of the ascensore, he hardly noticed the expensive statuary and artwork in the entrance hall, most of which he had paid for himself.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” Meghina said, bowing to him as he marched toward her. Barefooted, she looked tired and bleary-eyed, as if she had been crying. Her long blond hair hung haphazardly about her shoulders, and her saffron daygown was wrinkled.

  “Is it true?” he shouted, standing right in front of her and staring up into her face. Even without shoes, she was slightly taller than he was. He hardly needed to ask the question. He saw the answer in her expression. A mask of sadness.

  “All I can say is it’s not what you think. Yes, I was born a Mutati, but I always hated my own people. I always wanted to be Human. I am not a spy!”

  Stunned, he could not think of anything to say.

  “In my youth I studied Humans and longed to be one of them,” she said tearfully. “My Mutati peers criticized me for that, but I stood up to them, and took a huge risk by intentionally remaining in Human form so long that I could not change back.”

  “And our daughters?”

  “I falsified my pregnancies, all seven of them … even had the genetic records altered. The girls are not related to either of us.”

  Raising a hand to strike her, he hesitated. “I could kill you for this!” he thundered.

  “I almost wish you would,” she said. “I have done you wrong. But please believe me, I did not intend to hurt you.”

  “Oh, you didn’t intend to hurt me! Well, that makes it all right then, doesn’t it?” He lowered his hand. “You are to remain here under house arrest,” he commanded, “until I decide what to do with you.”

  “Yes, of course.” Her voice became very small.

  As he left, Lorenzo didn’t care about any of her excuses. He was only concerned about damage control because of the immense political harm that had just been done to him.

  On the lobby floor, he pushed past his guards. Not seeing Pimyt at first, he knocked the smaller Hibbil down, then stepped on his arm and continued on his way.

  Sirens blaring and horns honking, the merchant prince leader and his military escort sped through the streets of Rainbow City. Presently his black groundjet stopped at the security gate of the CorpOne medical complex, and then proceeded toward the large central building.

  Having already bypassed security, a small squadron of Guardians—men and robots—stood on a rooftop inside the complex. Other Guardians were in position a short distance outside, waiting for the moment to rush in.

  Moments before, Thinker had folded himself shut, saying he had to consider something important. Now Subi and the others waited beside him, looking nervously in all directions. In a bold daylight raid, they had been preparing to move against the central medical laboratory on the other side of the street, where Francella Watanabe had recently been observed by Giovanni Nehr. They had also brought a new weapon with them, for just this purpose.

  But at the eleventh hour Thinker had something more to work out.

  Just then, Subi saw a black groundjet and other vehicles pull up at the main entrance to the big laboratory building. Somebody important. He wondered if it could be the Doge Lore
nzo himself. Nervously, Subi glanced at Thinker.

  Still no movement from the robot.…

  Back in their underground headquarters the day before, after Thinker and Subi had studied Gio’s reconnaissance report, the robot had thought it might be possible to capture Francella and destroy the medical facility.

  “She would be a valuable hostage,” Thinker had said as they stood in Subi’s unadorned office. “So I came up with a little gadget to help out.”

  On his torso screen, the robot had then shown Subi schematics of what he called an “isolation weapon,” which would destroy buildings while providing protective cocoons for people, so that no Human casualties resulted from their attacks. “I came up with it after our strike against the CorpOne headquarters building, when we had to wait for the structure to be evacuated.”

  “That was a major building collapse,” Subi had said. “You mean people could actually survive that?”

  “Absolutely. This new weapon would scatter protective cocoons moments ahead of the destructive explosives, thus protecting everyone.”

  “But wouldn’t rescue parties have to still dig people out of the rubble?”

  “No. The cocoons have mechanisms that will cause them to rise above the explosion, and then float down without harm on the nearest spots away from the rubble.”

  “You’re sure this will work?”

  “Fully tested. Everyone will be perfectly safe.… We can use it to go after Noah’s sister,” Thinker had said.

  “And if Noah is inside, and still alive.…”

  “He will be absolutely safe. I have worked this out with great precision, and the weapons are already constructed. I must inform you, however, that your concerns about his welfare are probably too late. He is very likely dead, wherever he is.”

  “I know,” Subi had said. Rage had infused him with a desire to capture Francella, and he added, “OK. We go tomorrow. Let’s start getting ready. This won’t just be about getting even with her. It will be about weakening our enemies, cutting off the head of the monster.”

  “Mmmm. Francella cut Noah, so we cut her out of her own protective cocoon, separating her from the forces that surround her.…”

  On the rooftop Thinker suddenly opened and said, “I just corrected an inspection malfunction. The isolation weapon’s design was thoroughly tested, but there is a manufacturing defect in this particular unit that needs to be corrected. Otherwise, we will kill everyone in the building.”

  “What?”

  “We must return to headquarters and fix it.”

  Just then, one of the Guardians nudged Subi. Looking to his left, the adjutant saw two men on top of an adjacent building, stepping out of a stairwell onto the roof. “They saw us,” the Guardian said.

  Subi and his companions ran. In less than a minute, leaping down stairs, the squadron reached the alley where they had left two commandeered CorpOne vans. Thinker showed remarkable agility in keeping up. As they tumbled aboard the vehicles, shots rang out, and Subi saw uniformed CorpOne security officers running toward them.

  The vans accelerated and barreled down the alley in the opposite direction. A blast hit the back of the second van, tearing into the torso of Thinker, who had bravely placed his metal body there in order to protect the other passengers. Subi narrowly missed being hit.

  “Thinker!” Subi shouted, as the vans barreled through the entrance gate, then turned onto a main arterial and accelerated. Behind them, other Guardian forces—looking like ordinary Canopans and robots—moved into various positions to block pursuit.

  Inside a robot-assembly area of Guardian headquarters, robotic workers worked feverishly to reactivate Thinker’s central processing box, an armored core that contained the Al-brain and its micro-control systems.

  In a matter of hours Thinker was rebuilt, and soon he was better than ever, with none of the scratches or dents he’d had previously. The first time he folded open, a crowd of Guardians stood watching, including Subi and Gio.

  With a broad smile on his flat metal face, Thinker said, “Did anyone miss me?”

  He tinkered with the screen on his own chest, causing an image of Noah Watanabe to appear, as before. Everyone clapped and cheered, and gathered around to welcome the robot back.

  Then, under Thinker’s direction, he had robots make dents and scratches on his rebuilt body, roughly matching those he’d had before. “I don’t want to look like a green lieutenant,” he said.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Ironically, the crisis in Francella Watanabe’s soul and her morals made her more Human. While her body was degenerating toward its inevitable end, she finally became something that had always eluded her before.

  —Secret notes of Dr. Hurk Bichette

  As days passed, Francella became convinced that the injection of her brother’s blood really was changing her for the better. Moment by moment, she felt more invigorated and thought she looked younger. After a while, she came to realize that she should not examine herself in the mirror so frequently, since it made it hard to notice the changes. Still, she persuaded herself that a metamorphosis was occurring.

  Believing that her brother harbored the secret of eternal life, Francella had taken a big risk in seeking it for herself. But she’d thought through the options beforehand, and determined that she stood to gain more than she might lose. On the plus side, she could attain eternal life, while if something went wrong she would lose only the remaining decades of her short, mortal existence. But the crazed path of reasoning that led her to attack Noah and inject his blood into her own body had not prepared her for the stark reality.

  One morning she finally looked at herself very closely in the mirror, and jumped back in surprise and horror. Then she inched closer. Unmistakably, a cobweb of fine lines covered her forehead and cheeks, with dark blue circles under her eyes. She was changing, but not in the way she had anticipated.

  Behind her, a mist formed, and took the shape of a person. But she didn’t notice, and after a few moments the ghostlike form faded.

  As Noah drifted back into his corporal form in his locked sleeping room at the medical laboratory, he realized more than ever that he did not understand how to use his powers in Timeweb. He wasn’t even certain if he could call them “powers” anymore. Once, when he’d been able to control podships, that might have been an apt description. But so much had happened to him since then, so many complexities within complexities. Podships had every reason to fear and distrust him, due to his part in recommending that Doge Lorenzo install sensor-guns on merchant prince pod stations to prevent Mutati attacks, weapons that were used to destroy several podships. That difficult decision on his part accounted in large part for the aversion of the sentient spacecraft to him, and perhaps for his difficulties in negotiating other aspects of the immense cosmic web.

  He also suspected that the grievous physical injuries inflicted on him by his demented sister might have a bearing on his current difficulties, causing some sort of irreparable brain damage that led to him drifting in and out of Timeweb, with little or no control on his part. Those physical traumas might have interrupted his development in the ethereal realm.

  It was most peculiar, the way he had visited his Guardian followers in this manner, and Francella as well. They were like two ends of his emotional spectrum, from abiding love to intense hatred. The Guardians were his vision for the galaxy, representing the hopes and dreams he had for mankind as the Human race fanned out into the stars. He wanted Humans to behave responsibly in ecological matters, reversing the age-old trend toward rampant consumerism and the galactic-scale dumping of garbage.

  He had recovered physically, but what toll had it taken on who he was, and what he was? He remembered Tesh Kori thinking for a time that he was a monster who needed to be destroyed, after she saw the first episode when his amputated foot regrew, and numerous subsequent episodes when his body accomplished the impossible.

  As Noah lay in his locked room, a shudder of fear ran down his spine. His
access to Timeweb was not necessarily a blessing, not if he couldn’t understand it fully. There had been glimmerings of possibilities revealed to him, amazing things he had seen and experienced. An immense, galactic-scale environment called Timeweb, far beyond anything he had envisioned when he coined the phrase “galactic ecology.” Eshaz had healed him by connecting him to the cosmic filigree, and there had been astounding mental excursions, far beyond anything the Human mind could possibly imagine. So far beyond, in fact, that they had to be true. He had no doubt that these things had really happened to him, and that he had been given a view of something that only the gods should know about.

  One thing seemed very clear to him, and he could do nothing about it. His feelings of frustration and inadequacy were made worse by his own uncertainty, making him like a rudderless ship in a paranormal void. He had seen and experienced too much … and not nearly enough.

  The cruel unfairness shocked and disappointed Francella. How could her brother, with all the privileges and advantages he’d always had over her, get the better of her yet another time? It seemed to be the work of a dark power. She was like a progeria victim, aging at an accelerated rate. A leaden heaviness set in over her and she slumped to the floor, weeping and wailing.

  Servants came to her, but she shouted them away. In her suffering, she didn’t want them around.

  Later that day she had to go to CorpOne’s new temporary headquarters for a meeting, inside a hastily constructed complex of modular buildings. Under high security, a new office structure was under construction nearby, and as she made her way down an interior corridor she heard the drone and clank of machinery.

  Dr. Hurk Bichette approached her, carrying a sheaf of documents. He flipped through them as he walked. Seeing her, he paused and said, “Ms. Watanabe. Are you feeling well?”

  “Get out of my way,” she said, pushing past him.