The Web and the Stars

by Brian Herbert

  Anton was astounded at what he heard, but did not question it. For several long minutes after Noah stopped talking, the younger man just sat there, absorbing the fantastic details. Presently he said, “It is common knowledge that podships are mysterious space travelers, and your account fills in missing elements. But tiny creatures piloting podships? If that is the case, why have the Parviis maintained podship service for so long throughout the galaxy, without ever charging for it?”

  “They do not value money, in any form. Their entire existence is centered around controlling the sentient spaceships. It’s all they want to do, all they have ever wanted to do, all they have known. The problem is enormous. I’m sure they are planning to do something big with those podships—more than a hundred thousand of them—and it might not be the resumption of podship routes.”

  “What do you think they’ll do?”

  “A surprisingly powerful Tulyan attack drove the Parviis into a frenzy and killed many of them. I have a Parvii friend, a female, and her guess is that they plan to get revenge on a genocidal scale. They’re weakened now, but she doesn’t think it is the end for them, since they are survivors. Their swarms may be able to regenerate powerful telepathic weapons that have not been used since ancient wars.”

  “And your Parvii friend has the podship you mentioned in one of your messages?”

  “That’s right.” He hesitated. “You know her.”

  “Eh?”

  “The Parvii female. Tesh Kori.”

  Anton’s jaw dropped. “What?”

  Noah went on to tell him about the magnification capabilities of her people, and how her amplified skin not only looked real, but seemed real to the touch.

  Looking at his uncle in astonishment, Anton said, “I feel like my head is going to explode with all of this new information.”

  “Every word of it is true.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I’ve never doubted anything about you, Noah. But why are you telling me all of this?”

  “Because we need to work together, with all of our followers, instead of at cross purposes. Tesh came to me, asking for my help with a diplomatic mission to the Parvii Fold. She already went there on her own, trying to convince Parvii leadership to allow all of their podships to be used for web caretaking duties. They turned her down, declared her an outcast. I’m willing to help Tesh, but the diplomatic mission must go first to the Tulyans, to convince them to join the effort. The Tulyans have captured almost four hundred wild podships in deep space, but they need more vessels for all the web repair work that is needed.”

  “They have that many ships?”

  “It’s a pittance, compared to what the Parviis control.”

  “But four hundred ships! We could fill them with military equipment and troops, and attack the Parviis in their nest!”

  “Tesh would never consent to that.”

  “If only we had a way of getting around her.”

  “She has the only podship at our disposal and she knows how to seal its operations against intrusion. We have no choice. She’s the only way we can get to the Tulyan Starcloud.”

  “So we tell her a few lies.”

  Noah scowled, shook his head. “I don’t want any part of that.”

  “I’m afraid you’re being nai’ve, Uncle.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, but let’s rethink this. There must be another way.”

  “As Doge, I shall take the responsibility. I like your suggestion that we work together, but I shall have to consider how best to accomplish that. Aside from how to handle Tesh, there are certain political hurdles to leap. My mother has many important allies, and they will be watching me closely.”

  “This is a matter of utmost urgency.”

  “I realize that.”

  “And Lorenzo? You can keep him from attacking me again?”

  “Only if you discontinue all guerrilla attacks against corporate assets. I know, both my mother and father have caused you a lot of grief, but you need to be the good guy here. If you can do that, I can lean hard on Lorenzo. He’s upset that I intervened to stop his attack against your headquarters, and I pulled every political string I have to do it. So far it’s holding, but you need to keep your end of the bargain.”

  Noah nodded, and smiled. “You have my promise. Well, aren’t you the master diplomat now.”

  As they sat there, Anton described the difficulties he had experienced in adjusting to his new position as leader of the Merchant Prince Alliance, and his frustration at trying to rule a fragmented, barely connected domain. He also admitted that his mother would continue to impede any alliance he might want with Noah—but she had been counseled by high officials that the MPA needed this cease-fire so that they could focus their assets on larger, galactic-scale matters.

  Noah scowled. “Francella’s concerns are petty and self-centered, but for the sake of larger issues I will try to overlook the enmity we have always felt for one another.” He cleared his throat. “Sometimes I sense forces working to keep the entire galaxy in disarray. Why do Humans and Mutatis hate each other, anyway? Does anyone know?”

  With a shrug, Anton said, “I only know that the mutual animosity goes back for thousands of years.”

  “And look how many competing camps we have on Canopa,” Noah said, “at the heart of merchant prince rule. Your forces, mine, Francella’s, and Lorenzo’s, all splintered to one degree or another. Look at all of the corporate security forces on Canopa alone. I know for a fact that they’ve never been adequately coordinated with MPA forces, and this is true on other worlds as well. With greedy individuals and corporations looking out for their own interests, we’re in no shape to fight anyone except ourselves.”

  A cold wind picked up as the sun disappeared behind clouds. “We’d better get going,” Anton said, rising to his feet.

  In deference, Noah rose afterward, and as they walked back toward the aircraft, he marveled at how Anton was already showing leadership skills, including the way he led Noah around at their meeting place, deciding when to leave.

  As they approached the landing sites, they heard excited shouts ahead, from their companions. Running in that direction, Noah and Anton saw a large, ragged rift along the river shore, with the Red Beret soldiers clinging to the edge of the hole, yelling for help. Noah’s robots were setting up rescue equipment, but the hole widened and all of Anton’s people disappeared in a great thunder of earth and rock, along with his grid-plane.

  “My God!” Anton exclaimed.

  While Noah hurried Anton aboard his own aircraft, along with Subi and the robots, the hole went in and out of focus, glowing red around the edges. A portion closed over, leaving a scabrous covering of ground and rock, but he saw more of the hole ripping the gorge open in the other direction.

  Moments later the grid-plane lifted off, and rose above the danger area.

  “Tesh told me there were strange things occurring on planetary surfaces,” Noah said, looking back at the long rip in the planet as they cleared the tops of the cliff faces. “She and Eshaz talked for a long time about things that have been concealed from most galactic races for too long. Apparently the Tulyans call that a timehole, a rip in the fabric of time.”

  “No one can hope to stop such forces,” Anton lamented. He sat with his head in his hands, almost unable to cope with the immensity of the crisis and all of the information that had been thrust into his young mind.

  “Maybe not, but we have to try. We need to ensure that the Tulyans are dispersed as much as possible, to perform their ancient healing procedures.”

  Anton did not respond.

  Looking back at the ragged, growing timehole, Noah shuddered. This one was much larger than anything the Tulyan had described to Tesh.

  Aboard the space station, Pimyt received a coded nehrcom message, relayed to him from the receiving station on Canopa. According to the urgent transmittal, the HibAdu Coalition had noticed unusual geological activities on a number of planets around the galaxy. It was an unexplaine
d, simultaneous phenomenon, which their scientists were investigating.

  On Bilwer, one of the Mutati worlds, an entire battalion of Coalition soldiers had been landed secretly—but the ground opened up beneath them and took almost all of them, closing afterward like the mouth of a dragon swallowing a meal.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Every moment is fresh and new, like the first breath of a child.

  —Ancient Saying

  What looked like a large hawk flew over the sparse, northern forest of Dij, extending its wings and soaring upward on the cool air currents and then drifting back down. It landed high in a tree at the edge of the janda woods, and gazed across the broken landscape, which sloped upward into the foothills of the mountains.

  The aeromutati Parais d’Olor enjoyed long flights by herself to explore remote regions, looking for new places to take her lover, the Emir Hari’Adab. In the distance, she saw the high, craggy mountains of the Kindu Range, where Mutati religious hermits were said to live. She had seen pictures of the elusive people in the pages of holobooks, and had always found them intriguing. She wouldn’t think of disturbing them in their retreats, however, for that would be like fouling the rugged beauty of the planet itself.

  Over the peaks, an immense podship emerged from space in a flash of green light and approached, surprising her. It floated down like a dirigible and landed in the clearing. Wondering how this could possibly happen—since she thought podships could only dock at pod stations—she flew closer, and perched on top of a rock formation.

  A hatch yawned open on the side of the mottled gray-and-black vessel, and uniformed soldiers marched down a ramp. They did not, however, wear the gold attire with black trim of the Mutati Kingdom. Instead it was a uniform she had never seen before—orange and gray—and this troubled her. Some of the soldiers were hairless Adurians, while others were short, bearlike Hibbils. They began setting up camp structures.

  What are they doing here? she wondered, and why are the two races mixing? This was most unusual, and disturbing. The Adurians were Mutati allies, but not the Hibbils, who were instead aligned with the merchant princes.

  A short time later, a second podship split the sky and drifted down to the ground. More alien soldiers streamed out. There were thousands of them, an army of Adurians and Hibbils.

  Even more unusual, Parais saw what looked like gun ports open on one of the vessels. Hibbils brought in a portable scaffold, and raised it to the level of the ports. Zooming her vision, she saw that they were cannons, and the furry little soldiers were making adjustments or repairs to them.

  Weapons on a podship? Parais had never heard of anything like that. Podships had only been known to transport the smaller vessels of the various galactic races. Never anything like this.

  Deeply concerned, she flew away, to tell the Emir Hari’Adab what she had seen.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  “There can be no more lofty goal in life than the search for truth. It is the essence of nobility. It is the only air I want you to breathe.”

  —Eunicia Watanabe, to her son Noah on the boy’s ninth birthday

  In the grid-plane, Noah and Anton sat at a table, engaged in animated conversation. They were covering a lot of important ground, going over the galactic web and podship crises, the suspended war, and what actions they might take together.

  Since the Parviis were incapacitated, they agreed it might be possible for the entire Tulyan podship fleet—almost four hundred vessels, plus any additional ones they might have captured—to venture out onto the podways. Noah and Anton wondered if the Council of Elders had already decided to do that, as in the old days, filling the vessels with Tulyan web caretakers.

  The proper course of action seemed clear, if only the Tulyans could be convinced of it… and Tesh, who had the only podship available to Noah. Based upon what he had learned about the Parviis and the remarkable things that his journeys into Timeweb had revealed to him, Noah didn’t think Tesh’s idea of diplomacy would work, since the Parviis were too entrenched in their ancient ways and peculiar power structure. Instead, a more drastic course of action was required: Using the Tulyan fleet, Humans and Tulyans needed to make a military assault on the Parvii Fold and take control of every podship the Parviis had. After that, a massive web repair operation could be undertaken for the entire galaxy … if it was not too late.

  They had to move quickly or risk complete galactic disaster, a collapse of the infrastructure in all sectors. There was also the problem of the Parviis. If they recovered, which could happen at any moment, they would surely swarm the pods and take them back, just as they had done for millions of years.

  On every one of those points, Noah and Anton concurred wholeheartedly. But they had run into a stumbling block—whether or not to lie to Tesh—and for the past ten minutes their conversation had heated up, with neither one of them backing down. For Noah it was a matter of principle, while Anton was looking at a larger picture. All the while Noah saw the weakness in his own argument, and struggled to find a way to deal with the problem.

  Subi landed the grid-plane near Anton’s villa, overlooking the industrial centers and offices of the Valley of the Princes. It was sunset, with a violent splash of color across the western sky.

  “We’re there,” the big man said.

  Only half hearing him, Noah didn’t move. He saw the anger on Anton’s face and heard it in his voice.

  “Clearly, we need to have Tesh take us to the Tulyan Starcloud for a meeting with the Elders,” Anton said, “and it’s imperative that we leave right away.” He slammed his fist on the table. “But think man! We’re talking about a military strike against her own people, so we can’t let her in on it, especially not before getting her to take us to the starcloud.”

  “I won’t deceive her,” Noah insisted. “She deserves better.”

  “And what if she doesn’t like our plan—which seems obvious—and won’t take us to the starcloud?”

  Hesitation. Then: “I might be able to take control of the ship away from her.”

  “And you might not. Isn’t that right? The podships fear you, and you’re still having trouble getting into Timeweb, right?”

  “No one can carry on a conversation with a podship, and it doesn’t help that I recommended the pod-killer sensor-guns, but I only did what was necessary to protect the galaxy, and humankind.” He sighed. “You’re right. There are complications.”

  Noah hung his head, knowing he could not win this argument, and that Anton was right. Too much was at stake for Noah to hang on a point of personal honor between him and Tesh. This was a matter affecting huge populations and countless star systems.

  “Which means you can’t pilot the ship telepathically,” he said. “It sounds to me like your odds of wresting control away from her are slim.”

  “True, but I won’t lie to her. There must be another way.”

  “Not that I can see. Think it over, and let me know what our options are.”

  That very day, Noah had again tried to gain access to the galactic web, but had failed. And even if he ever made it in, with circumstances being what they were, he wasn’t at all certain if he could hold the connection. The galaxy was in a state of increasing chaos. It seemed safer for Tesh to pilot the podship by entering the sectoid chamber and taking direct control of it.

  “I have a solution,” Noah said, with a thin smile. “You ‘re going to have to convince her … in your own way. I won’t contribute one word to your argument.”

  “No problem,” Anton said. “Let’s get over there now.”

  Noah gave new flight instructions to Subi, and they lifted off.

  Many changes were occurring in Nirella del Velli’s life.

  She had only been married to Doge Anton for a short time, and for an even shorter time she had been the Supreme General of the Merchant Prince Armed Forces, succeeding her father. Events were going by her so rapidly that she could hardly figure out what to do. It was like trying to grab hold o
f the tail of a comet. But she was in a leadership position, and people needed to follow her direction.

  But if they only knew how afraid she was, how unsure of herself. And if Anton only knew. Still, she didn’t want to add to his burdens by saying anything to him. He already had too many problems to handle, and she didn’t want to add to them.

  Now another situation had surfaced. An anonymous telebeam message had arrived in the past hour, and she had been pacing her office ever since.

  It was a tip that her father was being blackmailed by Lorenzo’s attaché, Pimyt. She was not provided with any other details. Her own father. What could it possibly involve? As far as she knew, Jacopo Nehr had led an exemplary life, with only the one justifiable incident where he lost control and destroyed government assets. But if that event was already public, and he had lost his job over it, what more could there be?

  Upset and confused, she decided to find her father and discuss it with him personally.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Love comes in all variations. Ironically, it is as unpredictable as its opposite—war—never the same each time it is played out.

  —Naj Nairb, a philosopher of Lost Earth

  The Emir Hari’Adab always felt out of balance when his beautiful aeromutati girlfriend was out flying alone on one of her wilderness explorations. Parais loved those trips, connecting with remote and pristine beauty. He would never think of denying them to her, would never ask her not to go, or tell her how low and out of sorts it made him feel whenever she was away. If he decided to say anything to her about his innermost feelings, if he clipped the wings of his pretty bird, he knew she would remain at his side and try to be cheerful about it, but she would not be the same person. A part of her would be wounded, and it would make him feel even worse than he did at the moment.