The Web and the Stars

by Brian Herbert

  Now she felt the loss, and very much alone.

  After checking her blood, cellular activity, and vital signs, and comparing them with earlier readings, Dr. Bichette gave her the bad news, which was not unexpected: “You are the same blood type as your brother, but for some reason the injection of his blood is causing you to age prematurely, like a progerian. Your cells are breaking down too quickly.”

  “Is there an antidote?” she asked, weakly.

  “None that I know of. It would be nice if we could reverse the procedure you did, removing your brother’s blood and all of its effects from your body, but I know of no way to accomplish that.”

  “You would like to lecture me for my impulsiveness,” she said with a menacing glare, “but don’t.”

  He nodded.

  “Come with me,” she ordered. Limping, she led the way to Noah’s quarters, which were an entire section of the laboratory. By the time they got there, lab technicians were arriving, beginning to check equipment and charts, laying out the tests and procedures they would conduct on him today.

  Francella saw her brother sitting in a comfortable chair, calmly reading a holobook that floated in front of his eyes. He looked fully recovered now, even completely unscarred, and this infuriated her.

  Feeling increasingly frustrated, she wanted to do him serious harm, in any way she could. Across a speaker system, she spoke to him, in a voice cracking with emotion. “You tricked me, didn’t you? I did exactly what you expected, taking your blood, and you knew what would happen to me. I’m dying. Does that make you happy?”

  He shoved the holo book to one side (where it continued to float in the air) and then stared at her, his face emotionless. “Listen to me carefully,” he said. “You have everything to do with your problems, and I have nothing to do with them. Just because you have always resented me, and you have always distrusted me, does not make your feelings rational. I have never done anything to you.”

  “You always got the best from Daddy, and I got the dregs.”

  “You’re blaming me for his actions?”

  “I blame you for taking what he gave you when we were growing up, and enjoying it, without once thinking of me.”

  The remark struck home. She saw him flinch, and think about it.

  On a rack by him, she saw some of Noah’s severed body parts in cryogen tubes, awaiting further tests. She had cut all that skin and bone off him, but had been unable to finish him off. Like a lizard with a bottomless reservoir of regenerative matter, he kept growing everything back.

  Turning to Dr. Bichette, who stood at her side, she ordered him to take a vial of blood from her and inject it in Noah. A bit of revenge. As she gave the command, she made sure the speaker system remained on, and watched her brother for a reaction. But he went back to reading his holobook, looking entirely relaxed.

  She tried to control her anger.

  Shaking his head, the doctor said, “Noah is a medical miracle, unlike any case ever recorded. You should not interfere with his cellular functions.”

  “I already did, when I cut him up. This is just a different procedure.”

  He looked alarmed. “You are not qualified to make medical decisions.”

  “In case you haven’t been paying attention, Doctor, my family corporation owns this medical laboratory and everything that’s in it, including you … and Noah.”

  She had used the term “family corporation,” and this gave her pause. It was owned by a family of one now … Francella herself.

  Summoning a medical technician, Francella repeated the command to her, to make the blood transfer. The aide looked at Dr. Bichette. Reluctantly, he nodded. They all went inside the room with Noah, where the aide took three vials of blood from Francella.

  Her brother showed no reaction whatsoever when a technician made the first dermex injection in his forearm. Within seconds, his arm turned dark red, then black. Noah looked totally unconcerned. In five minutes, the arm fell away, a gory mass on the floor. He hardly looked at it. On his body, the limb began to regrow.

  In fascination, the doctor and his staff watched, along with Francella.

  “The rest of his body is rejecting the injection,” Bichette said, “keeping the poison away.”

  “Poison?” Francella snapped.

  He leaned close to her and whispered, “No offense intended, but your blood is tainted. You know that.”

  Struggling to retain her composure, Francella ordered additional injections on different parts of Noah’s body. In a flurry, trying to please her, the staff did as she wished.

  But each time it was exactly the same. Portions of her brother’s flesh changed color and fell away, but soon began to regrow, replacing lost mass mysteriously.

  “Sorcery,” Francella said.

  “You cannot harm him,” Bichette said at last. He watched her warily, maintaining his distance from her.

  “I can keep him locked up for the rest of his life.”

  “You mean for the rest of our lives. He is likely to outlive his jailers.” The doctor looked at her oddly, in a way that Francella did not like, as if measuring the remainder of her lifespan.

  While Francella considered the situation, it occurred to her what a curious pair of twins she and her brother were, with her aging rapidly and him reconstituting himself at an incredible pace, growing new cells even as hers were decaying.

  “Your life may be shorter than mine, Doctor,” Francella said in a menacing, creaking tone, “if you don’t find a cure for me.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Beginnings and endings: we pay so much attention to them, and yet, we do not really see. It is said that even gods must begin someplace, and end as well. But such reference points are not the sharp demarcations we think they are; they only seem to occur when we notice them. Before that, and afterward, there is a continuous flow of one thing leading to another, and back around again. It is the flow of time and space and wonder. It is the flow of joy and sadness.

  —Noah Watanabe, Drifting in the Ether (unpublished notes)

  As his name suggested, Thinker had spent much of his life in contemplation, and was not known as a robot of action.

  There had been exceptions, such as the times he had led his robot troops in practice battle maneuvers on Ignem, but that had not been his forte. Rather, he had a proven knack for gathering information and organizing it in his ever-expanding data banks. For some time now, he had been searching unsuccessfully for facts about the whereabouts of Noah Watanabe, but most of it had been rumors. In the robot’s own data banks, he had the earlier download of the contents of Noah’s brain, but that was of little help in determining where others were hiding him.

  He also kept running through details of the strange experience in which Noah had seemed to come to life in the simulation that Thinker carried with him in his robot torso. Most peculiar, and most unexplainable, except he kept coming back to the probability that said it had something to do with the cosmic infrastructure that spanned space and time.

  Thinker’s information on that paranormal realm was sketchy at best, but it seemed clear that Noah Watanabe had a connection with it—or thought he did—that enabled him to enter and leave it on both a physical and ethereal basis. The robot had a difficult time comprehending anything that was not entirely tangible, but supposedly Master Noah could project his mind out into the far galaxy. Unfortunately, the Guardian leader might only be imagining that, from a unique form of Human insanity. One thing was certain. The whole concept of Timeweb was most peculiar, indeed.

  Concerning Master Noah’s location, the robot had other sources of information. The day before, he received a reported sighting of Noah as a passenger under restraint in a blue-and-silver security vehicle, the colors of Corp One. He had already added this to all of the other information on the Guardian leader in his robotic data banks. This, when added to the earlier information, enabled Thinker to run a decent probability program. He had done this once before on Noah, before the two of them e
ver met. At the time, Thinker had been searching the galaxy to find him and the Guardians, so that the cerebral robot and his followers could join the group of eco-warriors. Now the search area was much smaller—Canopa and nearby planets—but the situation was far more urgent. Master Noah was in danger.

  The new probability program pinpointed Noah. He had to be in the CorpOne medical laboratory complex.

  Now he opened up Noah’s simulation, causing his image to appear on the robot’s torso screen.

  Glancing down at the screen, though he could “see” the image without doing so, Thinker said, “Greetings, Master Noah. You will be pleased to learn that we know where you are now, and that we have set in motion a plan for your rescue.”

  “A good plan, I hope,” the simulation said.

  “Even better. An excellent one. We embark tonight.”

  “I am pleased to hear that.”

  “One thing, though, Master Noah. I have burned through my circuitry trying to understand the unusual properties of the realm you call Timeweb.”

  “Au contraire, my metal friend. / did not make up that name. It is already long-established.”

  “Of course. I was only using what you Humans call a figure of speech. It has occurred to me that I should perhaps make a further effort to comprehend Timeweb before we make the rescue attempt. After all, you seem to have both physical and mental properties that are extraordinary, and the more data we have the better. I am running through more programs as we speak.”

  “And you expect me to give you something new? But you know I can only reveal what I knew when you used the organic interface to download the contents of my mind.”

  “Logically, that is so. But there was a recent episode when you—the simulation—seemed to come to life. Subi and I saw a strange mist dart into your image and disappear. At that very moment, your eyes and face seemed to become more animated. I have confirmed that this occurred, Master Noah, but there is no explanation for it… and you spoke words that were not in my operating circuits.”

  “Am I speaking such words now?”

  “No. I know what you are going to say a fraction of a second ahead of time.”

  “So, it is as if you are talking to yourself?”

  “That statement has no relevance in a mind of my caliber and complexity. Many times, one portion of my circuitry will ‘talk’ with another portion—or portions—of it. There is no Human correlation that you would be likely to understand.”

  “With the exception of insanity. From your probes, I see that you have investigated that with respect to my mind.”

  “As I should. Just one of the possibilities that I must explore.”

  “And your conclusion?”

  “I do not have enough information about Timeweb to offer a conclusion, but all indications are that the ethereal realm does in fact exist. It could be true that the realm exists but you are still—pardon me for saying so—mentally unbalanced. Sanity is not an exact science with Human beings. It is more a matter of coping and balance. All of you seem to have aberrations.”

  “No argument about that.”

  I will leave your simulation operable for a while, but you do not look animated, as you were before.”

  “Are you going to leave me on during the rescue, too? That would be odd, me rescuing myself.”

  “My analysis tells me to shut off your programming before we leave, to keep things less confusing. We don’t want a circumstance where you think you must take charge of the operation. No, Master Noah, in this instance I must override you.”

  “For my own good.”

  “Exactly.”

  “See you soon, then. Good luck.”

  “And good luck to you, Master.”

  That evening, Thinker and a small band of robotic commandos waited in the darkness outside the largest laboratory building. Transmitting an electronic signal, Thinker read the security code, disabled it and hurried through, ahead of the others.

  Scanning forward, the robots disabled the motion and sound detectors and all pressure pads in the corridor, then surged onward, making surprisingly little noise for mechanical men. Thinker had designed this squad for stealth, and had fitted everyone with sound-softening mechanisms for their moving parts. Two Human guards were struck with stun darts, and slumped at their posts as the robots hurried past them.

  Through the glax wall of a room, Thinker saw the Guardian leader lying on a bed, in low light. As if sensing something, Noah opened his eyes, even though the commandos made virtually no noise.

  The robots had no way of knowing it, but Noah had been lying awake in his cell with his eyes closed, feeling trapped and dismal. Moments before the arrival of the commandos, he had been engaged in a mental struggle, and had succeeded in entering the paranormal realm of Timeweb. But as he vaulted into the heavens and tried to connect with podships, they had scattered away from him yet again, fleeing into space. Wherever he went, however he tried, it was the same. The podships avoided him like a dread disease.

  At one time Noah’s sojourns into the cosmic domain had been welcome respites for him, an exhilarating means of refreshing his mind. He had piloted podships by remote control, but he couldn’t do that anymore. Not even close. The glorious experiences were gone, lingering only in his memory.

  Then, sensing something, Noah opened his eyes just as the commandos burst into his room.

  Another form of escape had become available to him.

  Accompanied by the robots, Noah hurried into the corridor, in bare feet and pajamas. “Let’s go!” he said.

  The squad ran down the corridor with him in their midst, forming a protective metal cocoon around him.

  Just before exiting the building, Thinker placed an incendiary bomb, and set the timer.

  Francella’s villa overlooking the Valley of the Princes had several interesting features, one of which she had discovered only recently. Accessed through a hidden doorway, she’d found a large sealed chamber cut into the cliffside beneath the villa, a sparse room with a hundred comfortable chairs fronting a podium and a transceiver box hanging from the ceiling. Documents left in the room said it was a nehrcom relay station her father had set up for corporate reasons, to keep critical business operations secret, and he had paid the Nehrs handsomely for it. The facility came with Jacopo Nehr’s impregnable, built-in security system.

  To her delight she’d discovered that the equipment was still operational, so she had arranged for a virtual conference that was about to begin. At her invitation half a dozen noblemen sat in chairs fronting the podium, wearing elegant surcoats and leggings.

  Switching on the system from the podium, Francella saw holo projections fill the rest of the room, additional chairs with noblemen from all over the galaxy either in them, or taking their seats. In addition to these projected nobles were the ones from Canopa who actually sat in front of her.

  As the meeting progressed, Francella noted that the video clarity was even worse than usual, as it flickered on and off. The audio quality—always crystal clear before—was poor as well, with bursts of static and brief, irritating periods of dead silence. All of the attendees were noble-born princes, some of whom were openly critical of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s governmental policies.

  Over the nehrcom transmission the dignitaries voiced several complaints about this. Then a plump man in their midst, Prince Giancarlo Paggatini, said from his projected image, “Some nobles believe in you, Francella, while others are only here on fact-finding missions, to see what you’re all about. I’m one of the latter.”

  “Please believe me,” she said. “I want to see a reversion to old ways, before the Doge began appointing princes without regard to their ancestry. He has forsaken the tried and true ways, abandoning the traditions that have always formed the cornerstones of our civilization.”

  “But you are a commoner yourself,” Paggatini said. “Your father was one of Lorenzo’s appointees, and you’ve always been … close … to the Doge. Why should we believe you?”
>
  “Because I no longer believe in Lorenzo. He must have known that Princess Meghina was a Mutati and concealed it, the liar. It’s a scandal! He denies knowing, but how can anyone trust him after this? And after what he’s done to all of you, denying you your birthrights.”

  The conference participants conversed back and forth across the galactic link, discussing all the reasons they despised Doge Lorenzo. In loud, angry voices they complained that he was awarding appointments that belonged to princes, and hiding a Mutati. In addition, he was focusing too much of his efforts on his luxurious orbital casino, The Pleasure Palace, while neglecting important matters in the Merchant Prince Alliance.

  “It’s more like the Plunder Palace,” a tall prince with a monocle quipped, eliciting the laughter of his companions. “He’s profiting at our expense.” This was Santino Aggi, a notorious drinker who slurred his words now, as he often did.

  “It’s his fault the nehrcom isn’t working right, too,” another nobleman said.

  As the conference nehrcom continued far into the night, Francella and the princes discussed options for dealing with Doge Lorenzo. Ultimately the conversation turned to getting rid of him, one way or another.

  “There is one more thing to discuss,” Francella said, having waited for just the right moment to bring it up. “Some of you have heard about what happened at the pod station, when I shot Noah and he healed, right in front of our eyes. Just before that, a young man shouted at me to stop. He called me ‘Mother.’ We had him arrested, and he is still locked up.”

  “Anton Glavine,” Giancarlo Paggatini said.

  “That’s right. He really is my son, and Lorenzo is his father. The implications are clear. We have the next Doge, the one who is entitled to the position by his bloodline.”

  “The princes are not obligated to choose a Doge’s son,” Paggatini said, his cheeks reddening. “If Lorenzo abdicates … or dies … we can elect someone else.”

  “But we’re here to uphold tradition, aren’t we?” she said. “And primogeniture is one of the oldest traditions in the Alliance, the eldest son taking over the duties of his father. Anton deserves the chance. Anton del Velli.”