The Web and the Stars

by Brian Herbert

  But he scurried to keep up with her. “You look pale,” he said, “and tired. Have you been getting enough sleep?”

  Francella felt a deep fatigue. None of the stimulants she had taken were helping, and she hadn’t bothered with makeup. “I have an important meeting,” she said, referring to an earnings report she was going to receive from her top executives. “And after that, I’m going up to the orb iter to see the Doge.”

  With a worried expression, the doctor looked at her closely and said, “I want to conduct comprehensive medical tests on you. See me first thing when you get back, all right?”

  “Yes, yes,” she said, and hurried into the conference room. Darkness seemed to be descending around her, but she vowed to keep going until she dropped.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Among the galactic races, we’ve always been the preeminent survivors, able to overcome any obstacle and defeat any challenge. This time, however, facing galactic chaos and determined foes, we must be more resourceful and brutal than ever.

  —Woldn, the Eye of the Swarm

  Before the Parvii scouts had been able to summon their multitudes, Eshaz had accelerated onto a podway, with the Aopoddae herd behind him. Knowing he had only seconds to make good his escape, he pressed the pods to greater and greater speeds, faster than he had ever gone through space in his long lifetime. They did not resist him. By controlling the alpha pod, he gained absolute authority over all of them.

  Taking a web shortcut that Tulyans used in bygone days, Eshaz—having merged his face and form into the flesh of the creature—had led the herd of wild podships directly to the Tulyan Starcloud. With Tesh and the unpiloted pods right behind him, he’d slipped into the protection of the starcloud.

  Now, with Tulyans rushing to take control of the other sentient vessels that he had brought in, Parvii swarms were gathering in space, but kept at a distance by the protective mindlink of the Tulyans, a powerful energy shield that repelled them.

  In the past the Parviis had been able to break through, but this time the Tulyans were much stronger and sent their enemies spinning away in rage and confusion.…

  Inside the inverted Council Chamber a short while later, Eshaz stood with Tesh, facing all twenty Elders. The tribunal of Tulyan leaders sat solemnly at their long bench, as they asked probing questions. Two of the younger Elders on the Council had reddish patches on their skin from what was being called “web disease,” linked to the deterioration of Timeweb, and they looked tired. The tallest Elder, Dabiggio, had previously suffered from this malaise himself, but now he looked much healthier, with most of his skin lesions having healed. Even so, Eshaz knew that this was a matter of utmost concern for the Tulyan people. There were increasing numbers of breakouts of the sickness throughout the starcloud, and—though Tulyans seemed able to overcome the debility—it drained their collective energy, diverting them from the important tasks they needed to perform for the welfare of the galaxy.

  First Elder Kre’n had called this emergency session to deal with the situation of the Parvii swarms. Over the millennia the enemy multitudes had come and gone, and they had been able to find holes in the mindlink to compromise it… until now. The telepathic shield seemed to be a complete wall to them, without weak points.

  But the Elders were not assuming anything, and they would not let their guard down. So far their ancient enemies were being kept at bay, but in the flux state of the galactic ecological crisis and the ongoing hostilities among the races, the Council had vowed not to take any chances.

  As the worried Tulyans met, the swarms kept coming into their galactic sector, in larger numbers than anyone could recall, even the most aged of the Elders.

  Leaning forward and scowling, Dabiggio led the interrogation of Eshaz and Tesh. The towering Elder made pronouncements more often than he asked questions, but Eshaz had come to expect this sort of behavior when dealing with the cantankerous old Tulyan. He seemed to have a deep and permanent scowl etched into his face.

  “You’re in contact with the swarms, aren’t you?” Dabiggio said, his gaze lasering at Tesh. “If we kill you, will they scatter back into space?”

  “I reject my people, since I do not agree with their aims. Unlike Tulyans, the Parviis are a selfish race, concerned only with their own welfare and their own power. As for your questions, if the morphic field still extends to me, I no longer feel it. When Woldn declared me an outcast, I think he totally cut me loose. If you were to kill me, I don’t think the swarms would even know it.”

  “Shall we test your theory?” Dabiggio asked, his voice like a razor.

  “She did not lead the swarms here,” Eshaz said, interjecting, “since Parviis have known for millions of years where we are. She did us no harm, and actually benefited us with the capture of more than seventy podships.”

  “Seventy?” Dabiggio scoffed. “Why, in the old days we used to capture ten times that many on a hunt!”

  “But it’s one of the biggest herds I’ve seen. Over the last nine hundred thousand years, this ranks as a significant capture, much more than the three or four we typically bring back at a time.”

  “They are probably Trojan horses,” Dabiggio grumbled, “filled with Parvii swarms hiding inside, ready to pounce at the most opportune moment.”

  As Eshaz and Dabiggio debated, Tesh became small and flew up onto First Elder Kre’n’s shoulder. “Touch me and know the truth of my words and my actions.”

  With one finger, Kre’n touched the face of the tiny creature, and then smiled gently.

  “What about you, then?” Tesh asked as she made a slight buzzing noise and flew in her wingless way over to Dabiggio, where she landed on the counter in front of him. “Test me yourself,” she offered. “I put my life in your hands.”

  “Your life is already in my hands,” the big Tulyan said. He just stared at her, without even touching her skin against his.

  Showing no fear, she landed on the end of his large snout, so that the unpleasant old Tulyan could not avoid cellular contact. For several moments he just looked at her cross-eyed, in such a comical manner that it made Eshaz smile. Several of the Elders tittered. Finally, Dabiggio waved a hand near her, and she flew back to Eshaz, where she landed on his open palm.

  Dabiggio sat back in his chair, looking very displeased. But he said nothing more, and let others ask their questions. Every Tulyan knew that Dabiggio had long been angry over not being selected by his peers as First Elder. His resentment had gone on for hundreds of thousands of years, as he continued to find himself unable to secure the top job. Even so, he had enough political clout to remain on the Council, as the leader of the minority faction.

  Now he seemed disinterested as the other Elders completed their questioning of Tesh and Eshaz, and dismissed them. Eshaz had long felt sorry for the unhappy Elder, the way he was always so miserable. Of late, though, that sympathy had turned into his own irritation.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  In this universe, it is undeniable that there are secrets within secrets, layered infinitely into Timeweb. As but one example, Jacopo Nehr may not have really discovered the secret of nehrcom transmissions; perhaps he only thought he did. Web-dependent nehrcoms, and web transmissions by other races, may only be the tip of the iceberg, or keys to the outermost layer of a puzzle box. There are intriguing legends that nano-creatures inhabit the web, living inside its strands. Are they yet another, undiscovered, galactic race, and are they responsible for instantaneous, cross-space transmissions?

  —From a Tulyan study of cosmic mysteries

  On board the space station orbiting Canopa, Jacopo Nehr sat in his office, awaiting an appointment with the Doge’s attaché. From this utilitarian work space, provided for him by the government, the Supreme General gazed glumly out on the twinkling nighttime lights of Canopa’s cities, visible through broken cloud formations.

  He heard voices out in the corridor as people walked by. His office, like many of the rooms on the orbiter, had inadequate soundproofin
g, allowing noisy intrusions that irritated him and distracted him from his important work. In another linked module, the former classrooms constructed by Noah Watanabe and his Guardians had been converted into an exotic dining hall with a miniature forest around it. What a waste of space. But because of the insulating quality of the forest and the module itself, Nehr wished his office was in there instead, so that he could enjoy some peace and quiet.

  The orbiter was like an immense child’s toy, a maze of modules and tunnels that had been lifted into orbit and connected, some by the Guardians and many more by the Doge after he took over. Now it featured The Pleasure Palace Casino, a Grand Ballroom, an Audience Chamber, and royal apartments, along with other features … and more construction was ongoing.

  In the public furor over her secret identity, Princess Meghina remained secluded in one of Doge Lorenzo’s apartments, under his protection. After admitting in a brief broadcasted statement that she was in fact a Mutati (a damage control strategy recommended by the Doge’s aides), she no longer appeared in public because of the outrage that would cause. People were evenly divided. A surprising number accepted her claim that she was more Human than Mutati, while others were deeply suspicious of her and critical of her royal protector.

  Since retreating to the orb iter, Doge Lorenzo had become nervous and agitated, making him difficult to be around. Even though his new casino was generating tremendous profits, he kept worrying about more things that might go wrong, and had fallen into the habit of adding to the list of unfavorable possibilities each day and trying to take immediate actions to thwart them. Jacopo Nehr worried about his long-time friend, and felt tremendous loyalty toward him for the favors he had done for him.

  Many of the modules contained thousands of the Doge’s Red Beret troops, his personal contingent of the Merchant Prince Armed Forces. An elite group of Human and machine fighters, they were absolutely devoted to his protection, and remained close to him wherever he went.

  One of the largest modules contained the Royal Court of the Doge, now only a shadow of its former grandeur on Timian One. Despite the proximity of the opulent casino in adjacent modules, it had become an exceedingly sober court, without the gaiety and fanfare of its predecessor, which seemed part of a bygone, halcyon era. Now the vast majority of members (and the patrons of the casino as well) were Human noblemen and ladies from Canopa, no longer such a melting pot with colorful characters from other planets. The only exceptions were a handful of aliens who happened to be on Canopa when podship travel was cut off.

  Just then the door slid open and Pimyt marched in, carrying a valise under his arm. The Royal Attache, with a haughty expression, slapped half a dozen communiqués on the desk, written on the Doge’s parchment stationery. Tired of being a flunky for this furry little master of extortion, Jacopo wanted to refuse further cooperation. But as he looked at the irritatingly smug expression on the Hibbil’s face, Jacopo knew that he had no choice, that he must keep transmitting the messages to other planets … or Pimyt would carry out his threat to reveal Jacopo’s most precious trade secrets and ruin him. It was so difficult to deal with business matters, and so unfair, when he had other important duties to handle as the highest military commander.

  “You will take care of these for me,” Pimyt said.

  The troubled general thumbed through the papers without focusing on them, wishing he could be anywhere else, far from there.

  With podship travel cut off, Jacopo’s financial situation had become precarious. His factories on the Hibbil Cluster Worlds could still export robots and other machine products, but not to the Merchant Prince Alliance … nor to the Mutati Kingdom, though Jacopo never dealt with the vile shapeshifters anyway. Interplanetary financial relationships, and the entire galactic monetary system, were far different now. Keeping him afloat, a number of banks had accepted his promissory notes sent by nehrcom, and he had leveraged himself in order to build new manufacturing facilities on Canopa. Other banks had given him deadlines, saying they would foreclose on properties that were within the reach of their agents, and orders would be sent out by nehrcom.

  How ironic it would be, Jacopo thought, if his assets were seized because of orders sent via his own cross-space transceivers. For business reasons he had established his own nehrcom transmitting stations on Hibbil worlds, all under the strict built-in security system he had established for all installations, a system that would destroy the stations if anyone ever tried to tamper with their inner workings. He knew Pimyt had not learned how nehrcoms worked from any one of those facilities; it was an absolute impossibility. But something else had gone wrong, and the meddlesome little fur ball had learned the details anyway.

  He focused on Pimyt’s latest communiqués. One was to the Human-ruled planet of Renfa, ordering the disbanding of a squadron of attack spacecraft. In recent months Jacopo had been the conduit for other military and business messages from the attaché, and the general had assumed that Pimyt and his Hibbil friends were engaged in war profiteering, controlling contracts for the construction of new military bases and for the manufacturing of war materials, making exorbitant profits in the bargain. He assumed they might even be stealing weapons and selling them to neutral parties—not imagining that they would sell to anyone remotely associated with the Mutatis.

  “You will take care of these for me,” Pimyt repeated. “Do it tomorrow.”

  Jacopo nodded, then spun his chair and gazed out into the starry night sky. He heard the door slide open behind him, and the Hibbil muttering as he left.

  Just then Jacopo heard the voice of his own daughter, Nirella, who entered the office. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He went to greet the stocky, middle-aged woman. “Nothing, nothing. Just the usual.” He had to keep the shameful secret to himself, that he was being blackmailed.

  “I wish you wouldn’t work so late,” she said. “I worry about you.”

  “Don’t,” he said, mustering a reassuring tone. He ushered her to the door. “I don’t have that much more to do tonight.”

  “All right, Daddy,” she said. Giving him a peck on the cheek, she departed, leaving him to his troubled thoughts. Staring off into space, he felt dismal, with very few connections to anything that made him happy. His daughter was one of the few remaining links to his earlier celebrated life.

  In her early forties and unmarried, Nirella admired her father and worked closely with him. Few people knew that she co-discovered the nehrcom transceiver with him almost twenty years earlier. The two of them had been on a business trip to one of the Inner Planets, setting up distributors for Jacopo’s precious-stone export business, one of his enterprises at the time. In that operation he had specialized in selling exotic, priceless gems. Following a long day of fruitless negotiations with the Wygeros who controlled that sector, Jacopo and Nirella had been going over their business plan in their spacetel suite. Suddenly they had stopped, as static and loud voices filled the air.

  Close examination of the suite had revealed that they were, in fact, alone. But crawling around on the floor, Jacopo found the source of the noise, a tiny piece of translucent green stone that had lodged in the sole of one of his shoes. As he pulled the fragment free and held it up to the light, the fuzzy, staticky sounds had still come from it. Nirella had started to say something, but had fallen silent. Wisely, it turned out.

  Both of them had recognized the green rock fragment as a substance their miners had only recently discovered on a remote planet … a deep-shaft emerald brought up by a drilling machine from more than fifty kilometers beneath the surface. Preliminary reports—made at their Canopa laboratory just before they departed for the Inner Planets—indicated it was harder than any known substance in the galaxy, with a crystalline, piezoelectric atomic structure. The voices they had been hearing in the spacetel room were those of their own company gemologists in the corporate laboratory far across space, talking about how rare the green stones were. The gemologists were speculating on what the market value
of the newly discovered stones might be, and revealed a skimming operation they had been conducting, stealing precious gems from the corporation.

  Kneeling beside her father, Nirella had exchanged startled glances with him, and neither of them had spoken while the static and voices continued. There were several things going on at once. Dishonest employees in sensitive positions were pilfering company assets, and somehow their duplicity was being communicated across more than a hundred light years of distance. Based upon outside events referred to in the distant conversations, it seemed to be instantaneous communication, too.

  Simultaneously, Jacopo and his daughter had realized the immensity of what was occurring.

  Without any doubt, instantaneous cross-space communication would be one of the most astounding, valuable discoveries in the history of the galaxy. But looking at his daughter, Jacopo realized that he was not alone in the knowledge. As he considered the immensity of this secret, the twenty-four-year-old woman unsheathed a stiletto from her waist and handed it to him. “Slit my throat quickly if you must,” she said. “Do it the way I taught you.”

  Having developed potent fighting skills from an early age and honed them over the years, Nirella had been a reserve Red Beret captain at the time. She was his bodyguard as well as his business associate. He trusted her implicitly, but both of them knew that a secret of such magnitude was mind-boggling. Refusing to accept the weapon from her, he looked deep into her almond-shaped eyes, trying to see her soul, the part of her that would remain faithful through all temptations … or would betray him. Such a secret went beyond family blood. Way beyond it.

  And he had told her to put the knife away.…

  Citing a “personal emergency,” Jacopo had subsequently canceled all further negotiations with the Wygeros and had caught the first outbound podship, accompanied by his daughter. Transferring twice en route, they reached Canopa in short order, and strode into the laboratory, surprising the gemologists. Nirella did her job well, cutting their throats without spilling any blood on the interesting new stones.