The Timeweb Chronicles: Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (40 page)

Still, a citizen could disobey an order if he found it unconscionable.

Chapter Eighty-One

Sentience [one of 56 definitions]: A thinking creature with the ability to deceive another of its kind.

—Thinker, Reserve Data Bank

As days passed and Subi failed to return, Noah asked constant questions, so many that the others could not maintain the lie. “We were concerned about you and sent him for a bone specialist,” Tesh finally admitted.

The two of them sat in a small lunchroom that the robots had built in the main cavern, using scrap parts from the damaged hulks of Digger machines. Adjacent to that structure, the robots had also constructed sleeping quarters for the Humans and for Eshaz, who still had not returned from his visit to the Tulyan Starcloud.

“Another doctor?” Noah exclaimed. “I ordered you to keep my condition a secret!”

“You’ve been behaving so strangely,” Tesh said. “We’re worried about you.”

“And where is Subi now?” Noah demanded.

“We don’t know,” Tesh said. She stirred a bowl of soup with her spoon, didn’t taste it.

“And those young men—Dux and Acey—any sign of them yet?”

She shook her head. “People think they ran off to space again. They probably stowed away on a ship, looking for a new adventure.”

“Maybe not. I wonder if they’re with Subi instead, wherever he is,” Noah said.

“Doubtful.”

“I wish you’d gone instead of Subi,” Noah said. He glared at her. “I hold you personally responsible for anything that happens to him.”

“You’ve never liked me, have you?”

Noah continued glaring, didn’t respond. Then he lunged to his feet and stomped away.

* * * * *

Weeks passed, still with no sign of Subi Danvar.

During that period, several of Thinker’s robots were able to blend in with other sentient machines in the cities, and used their new contacts to obtain food, construction materials, and various supplies needed by the Guardians. The robots paid for the articles with earnings from the lucrative Inn of the White Sun, and from the popular computer chips that Thinker manufactured for resale. The robots also obtained intelligence reports on the movement of Red Beret and CorpOne troops.

While Noah felt deep sadness at the loss of his loyal adjutant, he was heartened when Human Guardians in dirty, ragged uniforms began to filter back into his ranks. Some had escaped from the space station, while others had been in hiding in the woods and hills surrounding his commandeered ecology compound.

He sent out Human agents in plain clothes, along with robots, to look for Subi, but nothing turned up. Not a clue or any sign of him. Noah tried to hold onto slender strands of hope, but felt his grip slipping. There was no sign of the missing teenagers, either, and no word on their whereabouts. Maybe they ran away to space, as people were suggesting. Worrying that the location of his underground headquarters might be compromised because of the missing Guardians, Noah ordered the implementation of even more security measures, developed by Thinker. Primarily this involved additional covert patrols and hardening of the entrances to the tunnels and chambers. He also reviewed a report that Subi had given him before leaving, concerning unknown improvements that the Doge was making to the planet’s surveillance grid system, and how this made air travel riskier than normal for Noah’s and his forces.

Each day Noah went for walks around the perimeter of the cavern, past piles of scrap metal that the robots had scavenged and organized. He was walking normally or running now, without any pain. The regeneration of his foot was a minor miracle, and so was his recovery from the self-inflicted knife wound to the heart. He had even given himself a poisonous bioshot, and had survived. He had confirmed his own immortality.

Despite his astounding new physical powers, Noah found the expansion of his mental resources even more remarkable. At will, he could go in and out of the alternate, extrasensory realm and journey across the galaxy in his mind—without having to undergo the oddly disconcerting double visions he’d experienced earlier, which seemed to have only been a transitional phase. Now he just had to close his eyes and focus, and his thoughts vaulted into the cosmos … a dimension and reality that allowed him to see his own physical form as a tiny mote in a vast galactic sea.

The physical is part of the ethereal,
he thought in an epiphany.
My body is an aspect of something far greater.

All sorts of possibilities occurred to him. While he could journey in his mind, the excursions didn’t always provide him with answers, at least not those that were of huge importance to him, and which should matter to all sentient creatures. He felt like a tourist in the galaxy, seeing and experiencing things on a limited basis, while not learning much about what lay deeper. There were gaps in his abilities: places he could not go and places he could not see.

So many twists and turns
, he thought,
trying to unravel the mysteries of existence. The meaning of life.

Abruptly, he reeled his far-reaching thoughts back, like a fisherman about to head home for the day. ‘The meaning of life.’ Such a cliché, but that did not make it an insignificant line of inquiry.

In the caverns, the Master of the Guardians stood watching robots construct more of their kind from scrap parts. Near him, Thinker was in his folded-shut mode, as if he, too, had been contemplating matters of great import.

Noah was making no further attempts to pilot the podship that had become so familiar to him. For the moment, Canopa was where he wanted to be physically, and he didn’t want to get lost out in the ethereal realm or realms, and find himself unable to return. He came to the realization that he had been holding something back in his cosmic journeys; Noah feared getting lost out there and finding himself unable to return to consciousness, to his familiar corporal form and all of its traditional links.

As just one example, he could have made attempts to commandeer podships as he saw them flying by on the web, but had not, and had no intention of doing so. He did not want to interfere or inflict himself on anything, did not want to cause harm to the galactic environment.

Even so, this did not prevent Noah Watanabe’s mind from taking fantastic, dreamlike journeys each night as he slept.

* * * * *

Upon awaking one morning and looking out into the cavern, Noah saw the robots moving around, as they did constantly to complete their myriad tasks. For several minutes, he stood at the window of the improvised structure, watching them. He wore shorts and a tee-shirt.

To his amazement, he suddenly saw Subi Danvar limp into the cavern, carrying a large black bag. Thinker and another robot hurried to the man’s assistance, while Noah ran out of the small sleeping structure, still dressed in his night clothes.

“Subi!” he shouted. “I thought I’d never see you again!”

The adjutant hung his head. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry, but I tried to get you … “ His right leg was bandaged, with the trousers cut away. He had shadows under his eyes, matted hair, and a stubble of beard.

“I already know about that, and I forgive you.”

“Your loving sister and the Doge have turned the top level of our administration building into a prison and torture chamber,” Subi said. “They put me in there, but I escaped. No one knew who I was; they thought I was just another Guardian.”

Noah nodded, knowing that Subi had always maintained a low profile, so that the background information on him was limited. “I assume you checked for tracking devices before coming back here?”

In a perturbed tone Subi said, “You don’t even need to ask.”

“Don’t take offense, old friend.”

“All right. Guess I’m just tired and irritable.”

“So the rumors are true about our old headquarters.” Noah shook his head sadly. “Did they torture you?”

“I decided to cancel the appointment they had scheduled for me.” Subi grinned. “This leg is nothing, just a minor injury I got when they captured me. It took six of them to take me down.”

“You’ve lost a little weight,” Noah observed.

“Yeah. I didn’t like the chef.” The big man scowled. “Some of our guys are still in there.”

“Are those teenage boys there, Dux and Acey?”

“No. They’re not here?”

“They disappeared shortly after you left.”

“I hope they’re OK,” Subi said.

“We’ll get even for this,” Noah vowed. “Already we’ve found thousands of our Guardians who were living off the land, and we have Thinker’s loyal robots. I promise you, my friend, we’ll get justice.”

“Maybe this will help,” Subi said. He zipped open the large bag and brought out a black-and-tan machine that was perhaps a meter and a half tall, which he placed on the dirt floor of the cavern. “This makes my whole trip worthwhile. I borrowed it from our friend the Doge.”

Crouching, Noah looked the machine over. It had what looked like a hopper on top, and a chute on one side that could be pulled out to make it longer. On the side opposite the chute were control toggles, buttons, and what looked like a voice-activation speaker.

Tesh and Anton joined them, and greeted their comrade. “What have you got there?” she asked.

“It’s a hibbamatic,” Subi said, “a popular diversion in royal courts around the MPA, this one can create any number of small devices. Larger models are also available.”

Nearby, Thinker made a hissing sound. He stared with the metal-lidded eyes on his face plate.

Retrieving several small pieces of metal and plax from a nearby pile, Subi stuffed them in the hopper, then made settings and spoke into the voice-activator. “Salducian dagger,” he said.

The machine whirred on, and the raw materials were sucked noisily down into the hopper. Moments later, an object clanked through the chute and landed in Subi’s waiting hand, a dagger in a red plax sheath. He slid the shiny silver weapon out and showed it off. The handle was made of the same material as the sheath.

Subi continued to demonstrate his new treasure, making progressively more complex objects: a pair of night-vision goggles, a projectile gun, and a heat-and-motion sensor that he said could fly around, watching for intruders.

“Most impressive,” Noah said.

“I beg to differ,” Thinker interjected. “It is just a novelty item.” The hissing noise increased, and he spoke over it. “Hibbil products have become increasingly inferior. Their new robots are always breaking down, whereas old models like myself—with minor tune-ups, of course—are much more reliable.”

“Very well,” Noah said. “As commander of my machines, you are in charge of this one, too.”

“Is that wise?” Subi asked. “We could get a lot of use out of this thing.”

“The hibbamatic is not even sentient,” Thinker scoffed. The hiss stopped, and he added, “All right, I will agree that it is an interesting product, and of potential use. But the units require constant maintenance by Hibbil technicians. This one appears to be out of adjustment.”

Thinker retrieved the dagger from the ground where Subi had left it, and smacked the blade against a piece of scrap metal. “Look at that,” the intelligent robot said, holding the blade up afterward. “It chipped.”

“Can you get the machine working properly?” Subi asked.

“Perhaps, but we might not be able to manufacture more of them. Hibbamatics contain materials that are not easily obtainable, especially rare Ilkian fiber optics.” Orange lights around his face plate glowed. “Of course, the hibbamatics can’t make anything that we can’t make ourselves, assuming we can locate the necessary raw materials.”

Noah watched as Subi nodded reluctantly. Obviously, he had gone to a lot of trouble to obtain this device, adding to the peril of his escape.

Emitting a little click, Thinker sent an electronic signal to a robot that stood nearby, and the subordinate took the hibbamatic away.

* * * * *

In ensuing weeks, Subi and Thinker supervised the training of the Human and robot Guardians, turning them into a cohesive fighting force. On one training exercise, they located two non-functioning Digger machines inside a deep tunnel, units that had gotten into trouble on their own or been decommissioned by Noah’s commandos.

Hearing of this, Noah went to investigate. The silvery machines appeared to be intact, although some of the drill bits studding their hulking bodies were broken or chipped.

“I think we should reactivate them,” Thinker suggested, standing at Noah’s side. “They could be programmed to do beneficial work.”

“What about their tendency to go off on rampages of destruction?” Noah asked.

Abruptly, Thinker closed in a clatter of metal so that he could consider the matter in absolute darkness and silence. In less than a minute he opened back up and announced, confidently, “It’s nothing a good programmer can’t straighten out.”

“Do it, then,” Noah ordered.

“Very well. Oops.” Thinker’s internal programming whirred and made a little popping sound. On the robot’s chest, a screen flashed on with an image of Noah and the tunnel surroundings. Their entire conversation was played back, sounding somewhat tinny. At the end, as before, the recorded Noah said, “Do it, then.”

“You’ve been recording all of my words?” Noah asked.

“Not just yours. I absorb data from all directions. That’s why I’m so smart. I used to travel around the galaxy collecting data and storing it away. Now I’m too busy for that.”

Opening a panel below the screen, the robot tinkered with the controls, then slammed the cover shut and said, “Sorry about the little glitch. If you ever want me to play anything back, just let me know.”

“I don’t know how I feel about being recorded,” Noah said, scratching his freckled forehead.

“Would you like me to disconnect it whenever you and I talk?” Thinker inquired.

“No. I hereby designate you our official historian, along with your other duties.”

* * * * *

Soon the restored Diggers began to excavate large underground living chambers out of rocky areas, upgrading the previous barrack arrangements. They also made improvements to the labyrinthine tunnel system beneath the woods and hills outside his former compound, and even explored existing tunnels that were directly under the old administration buildings. At Thinker’s command, Giovanni Nehr supervised much of the work, improving upon the original subterranean map that Anton and Tesh drew up.