Webdancers

by Brian Herbert

  “I see. A member of the defeated race. I have heard of you. Not exactly shapeshifters, from what I hear. Some sort of magnification system, I am told.”

  “Your reports are accurate,” Tesh said. “Science or magic? Where does one end and the other begin?”

  “Where, indeed?” Hari said. We’re going to need a lot of both if our races are to survive the present catastrophe.”

  “You refer to the HibAdu matter, of course,” First Elder Kre’n said, from the bench. “But there are other, even more pressing matters that you might not be aware of.” She looked at the two other Elders with her, at Eshaz, and then at Noah Watanabe.

  “Something worse than the HibAdus?” Hari said. “But how can that be?”

  “The galaxy, we’re sad to inform you, is crumbling. We took a huge podship fleet away from the Parviis in order to set up a massive galactic repair program. When there is more time, we will tell you more. But suffice to tell you now that in ancient times the Sublime Creator of the galaxy assigned an important duty to the Tulyan race. We were the caretakers of the weblike galactic infrastructure, with jurisdiction over all podships, for the purpose of performing our important work.”

  Hari struggled to keep up with the new information, but decided not to ask questions. He and the others here knew there had been a feeling-out process among those present as they got to know one another, and that the apparent small talk had not been that at all. It had been important to get the relationships sorted out among themselves. It still was.

  “I want to work with you in any way possible,” Hari said. “The last I checked, much of my most elite military force remained intact, holding out against the attackers at Dij.”

  He formed a frown on his fleshy face, and his snout twitched as he turned his gaze on Doge Anton. Then the shapeshifter leader asked, “I assume you are going to assign podship assets to the defense of the Merchant Prince Alliance?”

  “We’re working through those details now,” the youthful doge said.

  “Assuming you send some military assets to the MPA, might I ask that some be assigned to assist the Mutati Kingdom as well?”

  “It is possible,” First Elder Kre’n said. “Now, we must move quickly. Far beyond Human and Mutati domains, the entire galaxy is a battlefield, and we must triage it, assigning our assets on a priority basis.”

  The Tulyan leader looked around at the small assemblage, and announced, “You have all come to me, my Human and Mutati friends—and my one Parvii friend, of course—and all of us should consider ourselves caretakers of the galactic web. It is a shared responsibility among races, at a time of crisis like none other in the annals of history.”

  Doors opened around the chamber, and robed Tulyan dignitaries marched in, from several directions. They took seats at the remaining council chairs on the curved bench. The Tulyan Elders—twenty of them now—all conferred for several minutes in a language that Hari could not understand.

  Then Kre’n leaned forward and announced, “Eighty percent of our podships will be assigned to galactic recovery operations, and twenty percent to Human and Mutati military operations. Doge Anton, you shall have the authority to work out the proper allocation of those assets.”

  Anton and Noah nodded in deference to the Council leader. Then the young doge said, “I concur fully. The welfare of the entire galaxy must take precedence over the military threats.”

  “We would prefer to allocate fewer ships to the HibAdu matter, but our technicians are studying the two laboratory-bred podships that the Emir brought with him—and they’ve already determined that such vessels cause damage to the podways on which they travel. Tiny green fibers of the Timeweb infrastructure have been found in the undercarriage tracks of the lab-pods.” Kre’n scowled. “Those ships are burning up the podways. As you can see, Doge Anton, your duties coincide with our own ecological recovery operations.”

  “I understand,” Anton said.

  Kre’n continued in a solemn tone. “When you succeed in your military operations—and I have every confidence that you will—we shall expect to reassign your podships to galactic restoration projects. Your primary responsibilities are to remove the artificial podships from service, and to save Human and Mutati worlds.”

  “It will be done,” Anton said. “We’ll hit the HibAdus with everything we have, starting from the three planetary fronts.”

  With a sense of urgency in the air, the Council of Elders adjourned the meeting, and called for new ones to begin in different portions of the large chamber—to deal with the galactic ecology and HibAdu crises. Decisions had to be made quickly, so that the ships and crews could be dispatched where they were most needed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Noah is a composite man, a puzzle person forged in a galactic crucible. I can’t help being drawn to him.

  —Tesh Kori, private notes

  In only a short time, Doge Anton del Velli made the most important decision of his brief political career. After consulting with the robot leader Thinker, as well as with his other top advisers, Anton divided the twenty-four thousand podships under his control into three task forces. Anton and Nirella would take twelve thousand of them to the merchant prince homeworld of Canopa, while Noah would lead six thousand in the Siriki mission. Another six thousand podships would be assigned to the military needs of the Mutati planet of Dij.

  As the meetings and submeetings formed, military officers and Tulyan caretakers flowed into the large chamber and headed for their various sessions. To accommodate the acoustic needs of the groups, the Elders used shimmering energy fields to separate the sections.

  In nine hours, all of the plans were essentially complete, and the various groups began to break up. The ecological recovery operations would follow ancient patterns. On the military side, the tactics for the rescue of each of the three planets had to proceed with caution, because of the lack of clear intelligence from the field.

  As Anton concluded his Canopa meeting, Tesh and he talked with the largest Tulyan Elder, Dabiggio. The stern Elder looked down at Tesh and said to her, “Before you depart, I must comment on your own pod, the one you call Webdancer. Prior to your involvement with the vessel, it was marooned on Plevin Four for a long time.”

  “That is correct.” She felt perplexed.

  “I must tell you that the podship had a different appellation in ancient times—Clegg. It was one of the strongest and fastest ships, high-spirited but unproved, and only known to the Tulyans for a short while before the entire race of podships was swarmed and taken by the Parviis. You didn’t know that, did you?”

  “I know some things about Webdancer, but the vessels are enigmatic, as you know.”

  “So, you didn’t know what I told you?”

  She smiled. “I didn’t say that.”

  “And how did it get marooned?” Anton asked.

  Dabiggio hesitated, appeared to calm himself with a heave of his wide shoulders. Then: “We have learned from a variation of the truthing touch that the vessel rebelled against its Parvii masters and fled into space. For hundreds of thousands of years it roamed the cosmos, and no one could capture it. The rest of its story remains, thus far, unrevealed to us.”

  “My podship has a rather independent personality,” Tesh said, giving the Tulyan a gentle smile. “Perhaps it will reveal its full story to me one day.”

  He stared at her rigidly. “Unlikely. Parviis do not have the telepathic skills of Tulyans, so you would have difficulty conversing with him.”

  “But we do have some of those skills, as you know.”

  “True enough, but beside the point. Here’s what I want to tell you. By tradition, the names of podships have always remained unchanged. Once Clegg, always Clegg.”

  The remark hit Tesh hard, and took something personal away from her. She looked at the clearglax floor and the starcloud mists visible beyond.

  “Do you understand what I am saying to you?” Dabiggio asked in a gruff tone.

  “You want me
to change the name back?”

  “Exactly. It is not good luck to do otherwise.”

  “Nonsense,” First Elder Kre’n interjecting as she came over to them. “Tell her what we decided as a Council, not what you believe independently.”

  Dabiggio wrinkled his reptilian face in displeasure. He said nothing.

  “I’ll tell her, then,” Kre’n said. She looked at the Parvii woman and said, “Tesh Kori, you are admired by the Council of Elders, and there is widespread recognition of your contributions to the success of the Liberators. Even Dabiggio—who tries to argue with everything—cannot really dispute this. In honor of your service to the cause, we have decided that you may continue to use the appellation Webdancer for the pod.”

  “That pleases me very much,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

  As Anton and she left the chamber together, he said, “I would have allowed you to keep the name, anyway. Those old Elders can’t tell us everything to do, even though they might think they can.”

  “Would that really have been a battle you should have picked?” she asked, remembering for a moment how close the two of them had once been.

  Darkness came over his features. “Maybe I’m a bit of a rebel myself. Now, let’s move on to the battles that really matter.”

  * * * * *

  Tulyan wranglers separated twenty-four thousand podships from the main fleet, and further divided the smaller portion into three even smaller fleets, earmarked for Canopa, Siriki, and Dij.

  For the Sirikan rescue mission, Noah Watanabe controlled six thousand sentient warships, which he quickly calculated to be five percent of the entire Liberator fleet. After receiving the ships, he and Subi Danvar supervised the details of their military assault force, passing instructions on to their subordinates about how they wanted personnel and equipment loaded into the podships.

  All the while, the wranglers and other Tulyan specialists coordinated and synchronized the various vessels in each of the military fleets. Anton’s portion, the largest, would get underway first, in part because of the already proven leadership qualities of the flagship, Webdancer. But there were larger reasons. Canopa was unarguably the most important of the surviving planets, and Noah had reported to Anton his troubling vision in which the planet—and Noah’s former EcoStation orbiting it—appeared to be drifting toward a dangerous timehole. Noah had also arranged with the Elders to have a Tulyan repair team sent there.

  Discussing that in the Tulyan Council Chamber, Anton had said, “I know what you’re thinking, Noah, that you would prefer to go on the Canopa mission. But I need you to head up the Sirikan operation for me. I’m weighing all the factors, and that is my decision.”

  Noah had nodded, but recalled chewing the inside of his own mouth to the point of rawness, as he resisted arguing with his superior … a wound that still hurt a little.

  “A timehole,” Anton had said. “If that additional element is indeed added to the already ongoing military operations there, I’m not certain what any of us can do to keep the planet and the orbiter from vanishing into the cosmic whirlpool. I only know that I have to be there firsthand, to do whatever I can.”

  It was the mission that Anton wanted, so he would have it.

  Noah’s smaller fleet, and the one of matching size assigned to the Mutati rescue mission, would have individual flagships, thus requiring more preparations and coordination—work that was not commenced until after the Tulyan Elders decided on the allocation of the vessels.

  Finally, having rushed around tending to numerous important matters involving his task force, Noah sent an aide to summon Subi Danvar for a brief, final meeting. While waiting, Noah settled into a deep-cushion chair in his onboard office. Subi would arrive any moment, so Noah closed his eyes, just for a few seconds.

  As he sank into the fleshy podship cushion, Noah sighed, and a deep sense of calm came over him. Minutes passed, only a few, and he felt himself sinking into the most restful state of relaxation he could imagine.

  Subi seemed to be taking a long time to arrive. Not wanting to fall asleep, Noah decided to open his eyes. As he did so, however, he experienced a sensation like opening an unusual circular door, one that irised open with shocking suddenness. Abruptly, he felt himself catapulted through an amorphous opening, and he hurtled and spun out into the starry, eternal night of space.

  He was back in Timeweb, via a slightly different entry point.

  A rush of excitement passed through Noah, tempered by the realization that he could not remain there long, that he needed to go back and get his podship fleet underway. But at the same time, he couldn’t pass up this opportunity either.…

  Chapter Twenty

  War has a way of shortening some men’s lives, and lengthening others.

  —Doge Anton del Velli

  “Only twelve thousand ships,” Doge Anton said. “Only a small portion of the fleet we brought back from the Parvii Fold.”

  He and the cerebral robot Thinker stood on the command bridge of the flagship Webdancer. Tesh was still at the controls, but the podship had metamorphosed internally to create new military-purpose rooms, and had grown even larger than before, so that it now appeared to be at least twice the size of any other vessel in the fleet. Anton didn’t know how the ship changed (or the impetus for the alterations), but he rather liked the new internal arrangement, which included a spacious dome on top of the vessel where they stood now—with wide viewing areas in all directions, through filmy windows.

  “I appreciate you coming with me,” Anton said.

  “You are the commander-in-chief. I follow your bidding. Everyone interpreted your ‘request’ for my assistance as considerably more than that.”

  Anton smiled gently as he looked back to see other vessels behind picking up speed to keep pace with the flagship, cutting through the milky mists of the starcloud. “Somehow,” he said, “I’ve always thought of you as a strong and independent personality, more impressive than any other machine and more than most men.”

  “You are too kind, my Lord. I only hope to be of service on this, the most important of the three military missions. I must say, Sire, you were wise to allocate your ships the way you did. Canopa merits the most consideration, and the most firepower.”

  Anton nodded. In the ongoing, mounting crisis he had made quick decisions, after receiving advice from his wife Nirella, from this robot, and from the other top minds in the new alliance, including Noah and his strategy-wise adjutant, Subi Danvar.

  Webdancer accelerated onto a main podway, bound for Canopa. It would take longer than in the old days. Supreme General Nirella rode in another ship with the main navigation team of the Humans, and they had made predictions and projections of the route the ships would probably take. For all practical purposes, the fleet would select its own course, following the lead of Tesh when she—enmeshed with Webdancer in the Parvii way—got a good view of space and determined the best route.

  With all he had been through, and the tremendous burden of responsibility on his shoulders, Anton felt like a man in his middle age. But as he reviewed the actual mileposts of his life, the chronology only added up to twenty-one years.

  As stars blurred past, he realized that he seemed to have lived two entire lifetimes. In the first, comprising a bit over twenty years, he had been the rather ordinary Anton Glavine, a mere caretaker and maintenance man. For a while he had been close to the exciting Tesh Kori, and they had been lovers. But they’d never connected in a deeper sense, and their relationship had ended when Anton and Noah were taken prisoner by Lorenzo. The two had escaped, but by the time Anton saw Tesh again, she had already drifted toward Noah.

  During his so-called “second lifetime,” Anton was the fledgling Doge of the Merchant Prince Alliance, and he’d been forced to learn on the job, facing the challenges of managing the various competing powers in the realm. Not the least of the problems he’d faced had been his late mother Francella Watanabe, but he had found ways to sidestep even her. As for his
father, the former Doge Lorenzo, Anton had not had much to do with him at all, other than making certain he didn’t interfere in merchant prince affairs.

  Now, as he embarked for Canopa at the head of twelve thousand armed podships, Anton felt yet another lifetime beginning. Only a few hours ago he had met Hari’Adab, and now—at breakneck pace—the three portions of Anton’s fleet were speeding toward different destinations.

  But significant restrictions had been placed on the Mutati Emir and his mission to Dij. After conferring with his advisers, Anton had sent what Nirella called “military chaperones” to monitor him. Ostensibly, they were following Hari’Adab’s commands, and to an extent they would do that. But—despite the Tulyan lie detection tests Hari and all of his Mutati followers had passed—Anton’s Human officers were alert for tricks and traps, and on a moment’s notice they were prepared to take control of the Dij-bound fleet. Robotic troops had also been sent with that rescue force, led by the loyal robot Jimu.

  In yet another precautionary measure, Anton had ordered that the Emir’s lady friend, Parais d’Olor, be separated from him and placed with Noah’s forces on the Siriki mission—for at least the duration of the three initial military campaigns. Both Hari and Parais had objected to this, but the young doge had insisted upon it. The more indignant they were—and they showed considerable vehemence—the more certain he became that it was the right thing to do. Obviously Hari cared deeply for this aeromutati, so Anton had gained some leverage over him by keeping them apart. How much, though, he was not certain.

  Now, as he thought back on these things, and on his own place in the critical events unfolding around him, Anton murmured, “ ‘Trust but verify.’ “

  “What did you say, sir?” Thinker asked.

  Anton repeated it, louder this time. Then: “It’s a saying of Lost Earth. I don’t know where I picked it up.”

  Thinker whirred. “I have it in my data banks. It was a Russian adage, one of the major nations on the doomed planet.”

  “I wonder how much of the MPA we can save,” Anton said.