The Timeweb Chronicles: Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus

by Brian Herbert

  He sent an electronic signal to his companions, cocked his own rifle. Around him, he heard the faint buzzing of their activated weapons.

  The robots fired in synchronization, lighting the shrubbery on fire with powerful blasts, making flares out of all of the bushes around the perimeter of the courtyard. Simultaneously, half of the robot force surged into the courtyard from the lower level.

  Men shouted and scattered on the flagstones. The fighting eagles got loose, but with their cropped wings they could only fly a few feet off the ground before crashing into someone and flopping onto the courtyard. Blood and feathers filled the air.

  In the melee, four hooded, black figures emerged from their hiding places and tried to flee, firing handguns at robots that pursued them. But the robots were not deterred, and knocked them onto the flagstones, then snapped restraint cables on them.

  Jimu hurried down to the courtyard, which was illuminated by the crackling, burning bushes. The palace staff rushed forward to douse water on the flames, keeping them from catching the buildings on fire. Under Jimu’s watchful gaze, the robots removed hoods from the captives. He recognized one of them, and so did the noblemen gathering around.

  “You!” Doge Lorenzo shouted. “General Sajak, why are you dressed like that?”

  “Some things are best not delegated,” Sajak said, with a sneer. “I wanted to do this job myself.”

  Dragging the small, slender man to his feet, Jimu said, “He intended to assassinate you.”

  “Is that true?” Lorenzo asked.

  The General smiled. His eyes burned with hatred.

  Searching his data banks, Jimu said, “He doesn’t like your politics, Doge Lorenzo, and feels that only noble-born princes should hold high office—not entrepreneurs and inventors.”

  Moments later, Lorenzo was surrounded by his special police, the Red Berets. They were heavily armed men in red uniforms and floppy caps.

  “And where were you when I needed you?” the Doge asked, of the squad leader.

  The uniformed man looked embarrassed.

  “These robots saved my hide,” Lorenzo said, patting Jimu on his metal backside. “Maybe you should give them your uniforms.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the squad leader said. “We didn’t expect any problems from your royal court, and General Sajak must have used his security clearance to get through. This was totally unexpected.”

  “Then why were these robots on alert? Are they smarter than you?”

  “I’m sorry, Doge Lorenzo. It won’t happen again.”

  “With all due respect, Sire,” Jimu said, “Your household security could use considerable improvement.” He told how he had waylaid a household robot and reprogrammed it to allow him to gain access to the palazzo, and how he had originally learned of the assassination plot at the lava lake on one of the moons of Timian One. He provided as many names as he knew, including that of Prince Giancarlo Paggatini, the nobleman who organized the secret meetings of General Sajak and his conspirators.

  “The way you got in here is very interesting,” Lorenzo said. “And quite disturbing. Fortunately for me, you’re not one of their agents.”

  With a gesture at the Red Beret squad leader, the Doge barked, “Go! Get out of my sight, all of you! Take Sajak and his goons with you. The arrogant fool! He wanted to kill me himself. You are to interrogate them, and I mean interrogate. Find out everything. See who’s involved in the conspiracy. I want every name.”

  “It will be done, sir.”

  Like whipped daggs, the Red Berets left, handling the men in black roughly. Despite their shortcomings, Jimu knew that the special police were a fierce bunch, highly motivated and dedicated in their own way. An ancient law enforcement group, they had their own secret rituals, language, and symbols. If anyone could get the answers Lorenzo wanted, they could.

  “Come with me, robots,” Lorenzo said. “I’m going to show you how to bet on an eagle fight.” With that, he put his arm around Jimu’s rounded shoulders, and led him back to the bubble enclosure. Fresh eagles were brought in, and the entertainment resumed.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Infinity beckons.

  —Parvii Inspiration

  Perched inside the core of the most unusual biological organism in the galaxy, the tiny man noticed a hesitation in the sentient spacecraft. He had just established a course, but the podship had not yet responded.

  Seconds passed. This had never happened to him before. By now, they should be speeding along the podways, racing past star systems, bound for the farthest regions of the galaxy.

  The diminutive Parvii pilot required no food or water for sustenance, and none of the other nutrients commonly needed by the galactic races. And, while the various chambers of the large podship contained an ample supply of oxygen, the pilot didn’t require any. He could fly free in the vacuum of space, and in a swarm with other members of his race could reach tremendous speeds.

  Until moments ago, Woldn had been in total control of the podship, having captured and tamed it with millions of his miniature followers, who subsequently departed for other duties. They were like wranglers of wild tigerhorses, and Woldn was the most skilled of them all. He was the Eye of the Swarm, commanding decillions of Parviis, an entire galactic race. Now he was performing a task he normally delegated, in order to keep his piloting and navigation skills sharp.

  Finally, Woldn felt the great ship shudder into motion and accelerate.

  In its wordless way, the podship was communicating with him, sending a stream of messages that filled Woldn’s brain. Through the sentient creature’s far-reaching eyes—indiscernible cells all over the outside of its body—Woldn peered deep with the podship, into the curving green webs of time and space.

  Way off in the distance and directly ahead, an orange light flashed.

  The blimp-shaped podship—carrying a variety of galactic races in its passenger compartment and cargo hold—accelerated onto the web on a new course, wrenching command away from the Parvii leader, though he struggled mightily, invoking the most severe guidance-and-control words in his repertoire. Mysteriously, his efforts were to no avail.

  Within minutes, the spacecraft slowed near a debris field and circled it at a safe distance. Through the mind he shared with the pod, Woldn felt a tremendous sense of loss because a podship had just died here, along with its Parvii pilot.

  Most unusual, a Parvii death here, and he’d received no signal of distress along the telepathic connections he maintained with all of his people, stretching across the entire galaxy. This suggested to him that there had either been a psychic breakdown, which occurred occasionally, or that the violent event had been so sudden and unexpected that the pilot had not had time to send a signal.

  Woldn got his bearings and figured out where he was … and what was missing. A planet had exploded, a world the Humans called Mars. Within moments, he saw other podships approach and circle nearby, with Parviis inside their sectoid control chambers, helpless to control the spacecraft, trying to comprehend. This was the same solar system where an earlier explosion had occurred, the one that took Earth with it.

  Both planets and their inhabitants had been dispatched to oblivion, their remnants scattered in space.

  Was something wrong in this sector, causing a natural disaster—or could there be another explanation? Woldn would return to his people, and order a full investigation.…

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Our young must always learn the most important lessons of life firsthand. It has been this way since time immemorial, and always will be.

  —Mutati Observation

  Two of the passengers on board Woldn’s podship were Acey Zelk and Dux Hannah, the teenage Humans who had escaped from Timian One. Crowded with others at the membranous portholes, they saw a large debris field outside.

  “Where are we?” Acey asked, as he and Dux tried to maintain their spot by a porthole, while an assortment of creatures pushed for better views.

  “I have
no idea,” Dux said.

  With difficulty the boys held their position. Only a small percentage of the passengers were Human, or even humanoid. In close proximity to so many different races, Dux picked up odors he’d never experienced before. Not all of the smells were unpleasant, though some certainly were. He also picked up a musk odor from the skin of the podship.

  A pale-skinned Kichi woman beside them gasped as body parts floated by, most of them Human … arms, legs, and heads with crusts of blood frozen on them. One completely intact body drifted into view, a young woman fully clothed in layers of unsoiled skirts, her face frozen in a broad smile, as if someone had pulled her picture out of a photo album and put a three-dimensional form to it. She showed no signs of trauma, which seemed remarkable to Dux in view of the obvious violence that had occurred here. He wondered what could possibly have caused such a catastrophe.

  “Might have been a merchant prince planet,” a man said.

  “It was,” another said. Dux saw a Jimlat man standing taller than the throng, his blockish head shaved. Blinking his tiny gray eyes, the Jimlat studied a brassplax instrument. “They called it Mars.”

  “Mars?” Dux said. “Then it’s completely gone, destroyed?”

  “That’d be my bet. Course, some of it remains.” With a facetious smile, he nodded toward the nearest porthole. “Out there.”

  “Maybe you’d like me to climb up there are rearrange your ugly face,” Acey said, making a move toward him.

  Dux grabbed his cousin’s arm to restrain him. “What are his fighting capabilities?” Dux asked in a low tone.

  “If you let go of me, I’ll find out.”

  “Don’t chance it. We don’t need to look for trouble.” He looked around, at the hostile gazes of some of the aliens, and their gleaming eyes. Obviously, they wanted to see a fight, and probably didn’t care if Acey got hurt … or worse. A number of races around the galaxy resented Humans for the financial and military successes of the merchant princes, so the young men had to be on constant alert for potential trouble. Acey lost his temper too much, didn’t always think through the consequences of his actions.

  Hearing a thump beside him, Dux looked at the porthole, and recoiled in horror. A little Huluvian girl screamed, and was consoled by her mother. The bloody face of a man bobbed against the outside of the window, seeming to stare into the passenger compartment. The face, and its torn body, drifted away.

  The podship, still moving slowly, proceeded through the shocking milieu, passing floating fragments of what had once been a vibrant world on one of the main merchant prince trading routes. Machine parts, building fragments, and many shredded body parts, some of them so small that they must have belonged to children. Dux could hardly bear to look any more but did nonetheless, in horrified fascination. Around him, hardly anyone spoke anymore. Most of the noises were sobbing sounds, and whimpering cries of disbelief, even from non-Humans. An alien in a business suit said the planet must have been hit by a meteor, and several onlookers agreed.

  After only a few minutes that seemed like an eternity, the podship changed course. It headed away from the debris field and picked up speed. Soon they flashed by star systems, spiral nebulas, and glowing asteroid belts. For a fraction of a second, a comet seemed to try to keep up with them, then fell back.

  The podship resumed a normal route, making its regular stops, as shown on route boards at both ends of the passenger compartment. Some of the passengers moved away from the windows, but many remained standing, numb with shock. Along the way, the various races disembarked, and others got aboard. Odors changed. Dialects drifted through the cabin. New passengers heard the terrible news about Mars, and no one understood what could have happened.

  Finally the boys disembarked at Nui-Lin in a remote sector of the galaxy, an exotic world they had heard about in their travels, where they hoped to secure jobs. They had with them the address of a residential construction project where the pay was said to be excellent, and the name of a man who had put out a call for workers.

  The shuttle was unlike any they had seen before, resembling a broad green leaf with a tiny bubble of a cabin on the underside. The craft descended, and when it reached the atmosphere the engines shut off and it drifted down, landing gently on the black pavement of a spaceport.

  The terminal building abutted a thick jungle, draped with vines. They caught a jitney driven by a long-eared Cogg, one of the natives of this world. They told him where they wanted to go, as did many the other passengers as they boarded, and he promised to let the new riders know when he reached their various destinations.

  He was not a very good driver, though, or didn’t seem able to talk and drive at the same time, as he insisted on delivering a monologue about the various types of flora and fauna as he sped past them. Some of them he scraped with the vehicle, and once he very nearly drove off a precipice into a tree-choked crevasse. Those passengers who were Coggs didn’t show any fear, but other races were on the edges of their seats, and some demanded to get off. Ignoring their pleas, the driver refused to stop. In some places a thick canopy of trees overhung the road, creating a tunnel effect that required him to turn on a bright headlamp.

  They passed through a town that looked like a village in a fairy tale, with narrow cobblestone streets and quaint homes that were not constructed entirely straight, or which had fallen into a pattern of leaning to one side or the other for what might have been centuries. The majority of the Coggs and the most fearful foreigners got out in the town, and then the jitney continued on its way, along a narrow highway that skirted a silvery sea. Immense birds soared out over the water, with sunlight glinting off their golden wings, making the birds look as if they were really built out of gold, and should be too heavy to fly.

  The driver kept chattering, babbling like a tour guide. Then he began talking about galactic politics, and his comments about the Merchant Prince Alliance were less than complimentary. This surprised Dux, since Coggs were supposedly neutral. He shrugged. This must be an oddball, an eccentric fellow who was out of step with his people.

  “This is it,” the driver announced, as he pulled levers on the dashboard to squeak the bus to a stop. Carrying their bags, Acey and Dux stepped off at a narrow path, which the driver told them to take. “The construction site is just a short distance,” he said, pointing toward a cluster of one-story buildings in a clearing.

  The boys found signs written in the common galactic language of Galeng, telling them where to report to apply for work. Inside a large, open-walled hut, they located the very Cogg whose name they had been given far across the galaxy, Bibby Greer. As the long-eared work supervisor introduced himself to them and shook their hands, he smiled in such a friendly fashion that Dux thought he would be the best boss they ever had. He could not have been more wrong. The experience would, in fact, be exactly the opposite.

  Suddenly the tentacles of a plant darted in through the open walls and wrapped themselves around the boys, so that they could not escape. Before their eyes, the Cogg metamorphosed into a tremulous mound of fat, with a tiny head and oversized eyes. A Mutati!

  Dux felt a sinking sensation.

  “Welcome to our fly trap,” Bibby Greer announced with a nasty grin.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  It as if the entire galaxy is being sucked downward, into the black void of the undergalaxy. Is there life in that Stygian realm? I shudder to imagine it.

  —Eshaz, Remarks to the Council

  The green-and-brown groundjet sped across a broad meadow of flowers, passing over the plants like a windless whisper, not disturbing them at all. This was a specially modified craft that Noah had ordered, with hover capabilities that could be activated when going over sensitive environmental areas.

  “It is good to see you back,” Noah said to Eshaz, who sat beside him in the passenger seat, his large body overflowing the chair and draping off the sides. Noah piloted the machine. “I trust you had a pleasant visit with your Elders?”

  “Oh
, the Tulyan Starcloud is the most wondrous place in all of creation,” he replied, “and my people are the most pleasant to be around. No offense to present company, of course.”

  “I understand. There’s no place like home, the old saying goes.”

  “How true it is.”

  “Your people are pacifists, aren’t they?”

  “We pride ourselves on non-violence, but I would not go so far as to say that we are complete pacifists. We do not claim to be perfect, only that we strive to be so. We are not political in any way. Tulyans try to go about their daily lives peacefully while contributing to their environs, instead of detracting from them.”

  “The peaceful nature of Tulyans explains why it must be so nice to be with them on the Starcloud. I can’t visualize a single argument there. It must be total bliss, almost a fantasy land.”

  “Well, we do have rather heated discussions, but for the most part you’re not far off.” Eshaz smiled, but to Noah it seemed forced.

  Noah steered toward a maintenance building at the southwest corner of his compound. Diggers had torn through the floor of the building, creating a lot of damage. Subi Danvar and the commando team he had organized were using this as a staging area to launch extermination efforts, and over the weeks they had experienced some success against the renegade machines.

  “I would like to see the Tulyan Starcloud someday,” Noah said, as he had on occasion before. “I know, you said how rare it is for outsiders to be permitted there, but perhaps you could mention my name to the Elders as a possibility.”

  “I already have,” Eshaz said with a decidedly pained expression. “Perhaps someday we can do it, my friend.”

  It seemed to Noah that his trusted companion was sadder than he should be, that his demeanor did not match his words. Perhaps he was just tired. This Tulyan was quite an old fellow, after all. Noah wasn’t certain exactly how old, and Eshaz always shunted such questions aside, but he thought it might be around a hundred or more standard years of age. With no idea how much of a colossal underestimation this was, Noah worried about the health of the old fellow.