The Timeweb Chronicles: Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (39 page)

Chapter Eighty

Each of us must face a judgment day.

—Ancient Saying

The following afternoon …

After crossing space and arriving at the pod station over the Tulyan Starcloud, Eshaz passed through an airlock. Pausing, he watched four robots loading space-cargo boxes onto a walkway. In other places around the galaxy, especially at merchant prince worlds, this would not have been extraordinary, since products were always being picked up and delivered. But in this remote star system it was highly unusual. Largely self-sufficient, Tulyans did not import very many articles.

Working hurriedly, the robots accidentally dropped one of the large boxes as they were trying to hoist it on top of the others, and it split open. To Eshaz’s shock, two Human bodies tumbled out, along with crates of computer parts, which spilled their contents all over the walkway.

Eshaz saw one of the bodies move, and then the other. He recognized Acey Zelk and Dux Hannah. As they struggled to their feet, the teenagers looked dazed and confused, and had bumps and cuts on their faces.

The robots chattered among themselves, and sent beeping electronic signals back and forth. Then, leaving the mess behind them, they hurried back through the airlock and reboarded the podship. Moments later, the vessel departed.

“You boys all right?’ Eshaz asked.

“I think so,” Dux said, as he looked at his shorter cousin, who was testing a bruise on his forehead.

“I have a terrible headache,” Acey said.

“Me too,” Dux said. “I think we were drugged.”

“I don’t know about that,” Eshaz said, narrowing his already slitted eyes, “but there may have been low oxygen in the cargo hold of the podship. Whatever the cause, this should make you feel better.” Bringing a small bag out of a body pouch in his side, he opened it and scattered green dust on the boys. Within moments their injuries healed, and the teenagers said their headaches were gone, too.

“How did we get in that cargo box?” Dux asked, as he and Acey accompanied the Tulyan along the walkway.

“You didn’t crawl in yourselves?”

“No disrespect intended,” Dux said, “but I wouldn’t have asked the question if we had.”

“Maybe someone doped you and put you in the box,” Eshaz said. “There is a likely candidate, but you should not jump to conclusions.”

“Giovanni Nehr,” Acey said. “I can’t wait to get my hands on him!”

Showing that he was the more introspective of the two, Dux said, “We need to cool off before we deal with him. I don’t think we should go back to Canopa right now, or we might do something we’ll regret.”

With a nod, Eshaz said, “That would be wise. The personal feud between you and the inventor’s brother could be destructive. Keep in mind, too, that Master Noah does not need that sort of conflict around him, not with all the important matters he must attend to.”

Acey sulked as he walked along.

“There is no proof that Gio did it,” Eshaz said, “but perhaps the truth will surface.”

“Where are we?” Dux asked.

Eshaz answered the question, then offered to put the boys under his protection for a while. “I feel responsible for you now,” he said, “and I won’t hear of letting you go off on your own.”

“So we have no choice in the matter?” Acey said.

“Sure you do.” Eshaz stopped on the walkway, and briefly touched the faces of Acey and Dux, one after the other. In this manner, he read their thoughts, and confirmed the story they had told him, that they had not run away from the Guardians. It was one of the abilities that Tulyans had in interacting openly with their own kind, and secretly with other galactic races.

As Eshaz removed his hand from Dux, he noted intelligence and sincerity in the boy’s dark brown eyes.

“I’m going to catch a shuttle now,” Eshaz said, “and you can either go with me or wait for the next podship ride. But you’ll be missing out on a great place if you go. I think I can get you into a fantastic facility that’s usually reserved for visiting dignitaries. At no charge, of course.”

“We qualify as dignitaries,” Dux said with a broad grin.

“I think we should hit the podways,” Acey said.

“Aw, come on,” Dux said, nudging his cousin in the side. “If we don’t like it around here, we’ll go somewhere else.”

Hesitation. Then, “All right.”

“I’ll send a message to Noah,” Eshaz said, “and let him know you’re both safe.”

“It might be better not to,” Dux said. “We don’t want the perpetrator to find out where we are. But if it is Gio, do you think he’s a threat to Noah? Or do we just have a problem with the guy?”

“I will need to give that some thought,” Eshaz said.

* * * * *

Eshaz was not allowed to bring visitors to any of the worlds in the Tulyan Starcloud, so he left the teenagers at the orbital Visitor’s Center, floating in space over the mist-enshrouded starcloud below. The guests were each given an opulent suite, the kind usually reserved for ambassadors and other high government officials. The Tulyan desk clerk and a security officer appeared to be surprised upon seeing the young Humans, but acceded to Eshaz’s wishes, in deference to his position. Eshaz told them he was personally responsible for the boys’ safety, after having rescued them, and that they worked for Noah Watanabe, as he did himself. Then he hurried away by himself, to meet with the Council of Elders.

The Visitor’s Center was globular, like a pod station and around the same size, but the resemblance stopped there. This was a glittering spacetel, not a mottled, gray-and-black docking station. As they followed the bellhop into a room, he explained that the rooms were interconnected in what he called suites; the boys had never heard of anything like this.

The bellhop, a tall Churian with thick, white eyebrows and a guttural voice, said, “This is Mr. Zelk’s suite. Yours is next door, Mr. Hannah.”

The boys exchanged surprised, pleased glances.

The Churian showed them through room after room, in just the first suite. Impressively, each room had a view of the misty Tulyan Starcloud below, which the bellhop explained was a trick of electronics. Dux scratched his head. It looked incredibly realistic, and he couldn’t see how it worked. Soft music played in the background, blending into different tunes in each room.

“This place is bigger than the entire crew quarters on our ship,” Acey said. Leaning over, he touched the plush black carpet in the sitting area, then laid on it and said it was softer than any bed on which he’d ever slept. “I’ll just sleep on the floor tonight. I don’t want to get too comfortable, or I might not be able to go back to my real life.”

Dux laughed, but the Churian, a very proper alien, frowned intensely, causing his bushy eyebrows to cover his eyes. To Dux, this looked very comical, but he tried not to smile, or laugh anymore. It looked like the fellow had hairy eyes. For several moments, the bellhop paced around without crashing into anything, so he must have had some way of seeing where he was going, or perhaps a backup sonrad system.

* * * * *

A lone reptilian figure stood before a bench with twenty robed judges seated at it, gazing down at him sternly. Eshaz had a solid floor beneath him, but could not see it under his feet; he seemed to float on air, with the curvature of the inverted dome visible far below him, and the stars of space twinkling through the ethereal mists beyond.

He knew that the Visitor’s Center staff had probably reported him, so he expected the aged leaders to ask him about the boys. Eshaz had an explanation ready—that he couldn’t just cast them adrift after their narrow escape from death—but he hoped he didn’t have to defend himself on that issue. He was already in enough trouble.

Nervously, the web caretaker gazed from face to face, searching for something in their expressions to tell him what to do. He wanted to spill all of the information he knew but resisted the urge, and instead awaited the comments and commands of his superiors. The council members looked hostile, with downturned mouths and glaring expressions.

“Reports have reached us that give us grave concern about the condition of the web,” First Elder Kre’n said, rubbing her scaly chin. One of the oldest Tulyans, she was reputed to have been the first of her race ever to pilot a podship across the vast reaches of space.

Eshaz steeled himself, waiting for the hammer of authority to smash down on him.

“Truly, this is a dire crisis,” she said. Then she paused and conferred in whispers with the Elders on either side of her.

Eshaz’s mind raced with visions of horrible fates, as he imagined the worst things that could happen to him.

“For hundreds of thousands of years, you have been one of our Web Technicians, responsible for the care of the connective strands, and we can ill afford to lose your services when they are needed so much now.”

She’s regretting what they’re about to do to me,
Eshaz thought. He wished he could be anywhere but here. Even dead.

Kre’n nodded to a towering Tulyan on her left, whom Eshaz recognized as Dabiggio, one of the more severe Elders who had been responsible for strict sentences in the past. Eshaz steeled himself, then jerked in surprise when the robed dignitary said, “You will remain at the Starcloud until further notice.”

Scrunching up his face in confusion, Eshaz said, “But there is no punishment facility here. It’s on Colony L.”

“Who said you were going to a punishment facility?” Dabiggio asked.

“I thought you were going to pronounce sentence on me for something I did wrong. I, uh.…”

“Personally, I do not approve of your behavior,” Dabiggio said. “As a web caretaker, you took a risky, unprecedented action with respect to Noah Watanabe, but you have your supporters on this council.”

“You know what I did, then?”

“I have my sources,” the imposing Elder said.

“But now is not the time for punishment,” Kre’n interjected. She locked gazes with Dabiggio, and Eshaz detected some disagreement between them.

“I was about to transmit my confession to you,” Eshaz said, “when your orders arrived for me to report to the Starcloud. I am prepared to tell all now.” Convinced of the correctness of his actions, Eshaz lifted his chin confidently. “I offer no excuses, only an explanation.”

At a nod from Kre’n, Eshaz went on to describe Noah on the verge of death, and the crisis Eshaz faced, with only one way to save a remarkable man who had come up with his own theory of the interconnectedness of the galaxy. Then he said, “To me, Noah Watanabe has always seemed more Tulyan than Human, he might be the one spoken of in our legends, the … “ He paused, afraid to utter the word.

“A
Human
Savior?” Dabiggio exclaimed. “How utterly revolting and preposterous!”

“With respect sir, our legends say the Savior will appear from an unexpected source. Given the selfish and destructive record of humanity, could there be a more unexpected source?” Eshaz noticed several other Elders, including Kre’n, nodding their heads, just a little. At least they seemed open to the possibility.

“We have already decided to defer the matter of your punishment,” Kre’n announced, with a stiff smile. “Your long and illustrious record has not gone unnoticed by this council, and we are willing to reserve judgment during this time of crisis.”

“I appreciate that very much,” Eshaz said, dipping his head in a slight bow. “One thing more. As you know, I used a web defect to heal Watanabe—an early stage timehole in the vicinity of the destroyed planet. I also found other defects around the site of the explosion, and repaired them.”

“We are aware of that,” Kre’n said. “Your peers found similar web damage around the Earth and Mars debris fields, and they, too, implemented repairs. The question is, did web defects cause the planets to blow up, or was it the reverse?”

“The chicken or the egg,” one of the Elders said.

“And why are merchant prince planets the ones affected?” another asked.

“These are disturbing questions,” Kre’n said, staring at Eshaz. “But now we have another important assignment for you, as a timeseer.”

Eshaz lifted his eyebrows. The last time he had been asked to timesee, he had been blocked—either by chaos in the universe or by his own failing. It disturbed him to look into the future, because he didn’t know what he would see there. Especially now, with the rapid decline of the web, which portended ultimate, if not imminent, disaster on an immense scale.

He heard a drone, and looking toward a side door saw what appeared to be insects flying into the large chamber, a swarm of them in various shades of color. As they drew closer he identified them as Parviis, each dressed in ornate outfits. They looked like tiny flying dolls, and set down on top of the judicial bench. The buzzing sound in his ears was not from wings, because Parviis had none, but from their hyper-accelerated metabolisms, which enabled them to fly in some mysterious fashion.

“I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to do this again,” Eshaz protested.

“Then you should not have demonstrated your talents so well,” one of the Parviis said in a tiny, high-pitched voice.

Eshaz recognized him as Woldn, their leader. He wore a carmine red suit, with billowing sleeves and trousers. The Tulyan felt anger welling up inside, but knew better than to say anything more. This was a political matter, perhaps involving an exchange of his services for Tulyan captives taken by the Parviis in their constant raids around the galaxy. He hated providing such a valuable service to the enemies of his people, but had to do as he was told. The last time he had demonstrated his limited prescience for the Parviis, they had treated it like a carnival side show act, an amusing diversion.

“You will accompany the delegation to an antechamber,” Kre’n said. “And there you will tell them what you see.”

While wishing another Tulyan timeseer had been summoned in his place, Eshaz nonetheless said nothing. Deep in thought, he traipsed toward one of the many smaller chambers ringing the central council room, enclosures that had clear walls, floors, and ceilings, and were only discernible by faint construction outlines around the edges. As before, everything he said would be recorded, so that the Elders would have the information, too. Theoretically, Eshaz’s timeseeing report would not benefit either side. In many ways, however, this seemed worse to him than the most serious punishments he had imagined for his Timeweb infraction. It seemed like treason, even though technically it wasn’t, since he was being ordered by the Elders to do it.