The Timeweb Chronicles: Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (41 page)

Noah came to rely on the new armored Guardian, although Gio seemed somewhat vain and self absorbed, constantly admiring his shiny armor in any mirror he passed. But little did Noah know that Gio was also a shameless opportunist, intent on watching for the perfect time to take advantage of his surroundings … like waiting for fruit to ripen on someone else’s tree.

It must be noted however, that Giovanni Nehr’s feelings were not simplistic by any means. While he looked out for his own interests above all others, he was still a long-time admirer of Noah Watanabe. The discontented son of an industrialist, Noah had tweaked the noses of the merchant princes on more than one occasion—including Gio’s own famous, insufferable brother Jacopo. So, Gio was loyal to the man the Guardians called “Master,” but only as much as an egocentric man like him could be.…

Noah had a mission in mind, and not necessarily the obvious one of retaking control of his Ecological Demonstration Project and orbital EcoStation, at least not right away. First he intended to lead his Guardians in guerrilla raids against industrial polluters, with the hope of making Francella, Doge Lorenzo, and their allies suffer.

Chapter Eighty-Two

Even after seeing all of the evidence, it remains difficult for me to believe, and brings tears to my eyes. But the truth is that my brother attacked CorpOne headquarters and mortally wounded our father. One of the great merchant princes and industrial geniuses, Saito Watanabe, is gone forever because of Noah’s treachery. I promise you this: his crime will not go unpunished.

—Francella Watanabe, speech to CorpOne employees

Despite his paranormal abilities, Noah Watanabe still had significant blind spots.

One morning he explored the subterranean tunnels and caverns, probing ahead with a flashbeam visor, and did not notice Tesh—tiny and silent—following him everywhere, watching everything he did, listening to everything he said. Noah had dual realities, an ability to venture into two dimensions, realms that at times overlapped and folded over one another in ways that he had not yet fully sorted out. He was in the physical reality now, running at a good clip over dirt and rock, rebuilding his strength.

Earlier, after taking control of the podship away from Tesh, he had secretly watched her in her tiny form as she tried to regain control of the vessel, but found herself unable to reenter the navigation chamber that he had sealed. Now, though he remained alert and looked around, he did not see her at all. She wasn’t invisible, but she could move so quickly that she approached invisibility in this dimension.

Deep underground, Noah slowed and walked through one of the older burrows that the rampant Diggers had excavated. He was taking the time to wander, but not aimlessly; he had a purpose in mind. Through an internal survival mechanism that had surfaced recently, he found that he could not get lost, at least not physically. No matter how far off the subterranean map he ventured, he always seemed able to find his way back to the main cavern and his companions.

This gave him increasing comfort, and he was thinking about reentering a podship and taking control of it to surge out into the vast reaches of the galaxy, where the power of his mind controlled his reality. In that mystical realm, he could stretch into the cosmos mentally, or he could take his body along, and not just as an afterthought. There actually was a physical aspect where podships traveled and carried their passengers to fantastic places.

But the domain of podships, while astounding and intriguing, gave him considerable pause. It was so infinitely beautiful out there, so alluring and yet so dangerous.

As he wandered the tunnels now, he recognized that the scene before him was not entirely corporeal. He only saw it, felt it, smelled it, and heard it because his mind permitted him to do so … and his mind could change focus. He wondered how many other realities remained unexplored. The possibilities enticed him.

Previously when he piloted a podship, he had done so by extrasensory means, while inside the cargo hold. From there, he had mentally projected himself into the navigation chamber and caused the vessel to lurch into motion, taking him physically and cerebrally across space.

Now it was different. He was not inside any portion of the podship, but he wondered if he could still reach out with his thoughts, if he could still seep like a mist into the operational core of the spacecraft and take control of it, if he could still guide it across space.

But even if he could do that, Noah remained cautious. If he piloted a podship again, and tried to get lost, would his internal compass continue to function, always permitting him to return?

Moments passed, as temptation and curiosity buffeted him. He could not avoid thoughts that drifted in and out of his conscious mind. Now that he’d had the paranormal experiences, he needed to experience them again.

Summoning his courage, he dipped into the ethereal web, and on the internal screen of his mind he saw the faint green cosmic filigree stretching into infinity, wavering ever so slightly, as if from a gentle breeze. Focusing closer, he again saw flickering images of the podship he had left at the Canopa pod station, with Red Beret officers and scientists continuing to crawl over it, still not finding the secret passageways or the navigation chamber.

But as Noah seeped into the podship now, the interior was a little out of focus. Like a phantom, he floated silently through a wide corridor, then darted into a narrow one that the Red Berets had not been able to enter, or even see. Just ahead, Noah made out the entrance to the navigation chamber that he had previously sealed, to keep Tesh and any other intruders out.

Mentally, he gave the instruction to unseal it, so that he could pass through the flesh of the podship, into its most sacred and sheltered chamber, the heart and mind of the creature. Cautiously, Noah’s ghost-self moved forward, and pressed itself against the entryway.

He entered the navigation chamber.

But something was happening back in the tunnel, where his physical form remained.…

Shifting his focus, Noah felt something cold and hard against his jugular.

“I should cut your throat,” a woman’s voice whispered. “But would you die?”

With a quick movement, Noah grabbed the knife by its razor-sharp blade, cutting deeply into his hand. Despite the blood and pain, he tried to pull the weapon from her grip, but could not. She was extremely strong. Blood spurted from the hand as he pulled it away, but within seconds it coagulated. In the low light, he watched with her as the skin healed. The searing pain stopped.

She withdrew the knife from his neck. “Talk,” Tesh demanded, glaring at him.

“I am indestructible. You cannot kill me. I cannot even commit suicide. I’ve been doing little tests lately, self-inflicted stab wounds, even injected poison into my arm. I always heal perfectly. Do you know why this is happening to me?”

“I don’t know
what
you are,” she responded.

I don’t know what you are, either
, Noah thought, as he remembered seeing Tesh in her tiny, secret form, trying to gain entrance to the navigation chamber. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said. “We need to talk.”

She sheathed the knife at her waist, and followed his lead.

* * * * *

The two of them trekked upward along a circuitous route of tunnels to the main cavern, crossed it and went out through the camouflaged main entrance, after using Noah’s security alarm code. It was much warmer outside, with the foliage and ground baked by a late afternoon sun. They climbed to a knoll and sat on it, gazing out across the countryside toward the southern edge of his former ecological demonstration compound.

From this vantage, Noah could not see any of the buildings, only the familiar sloping hills and dark green trees of his beloved land. He longed to have it back, to free himself from the yoke of the misfortunes that had befallen him. If only he and his father had not become estranged, perhaps this whole unfortunate chain of events would never have occurred.

“I have something to tell you,” Tesh said. Sunlight sparkled on her long black hair, and her emerald eyes were filled with concern.

“And I have a lot of questions,” he said.

They talked well past sunset, when a cool night breeze began to pick up, rustling the nearby shrubs and canopa trees. Noah offered her his coat in case she was cold. She accepted, and he sat there shivering without it, while trying to keep his mind on other things. High overhead, the moon peeked around from behind a cloud, casting low illumination on the landscape, creating strange shadows around them.

She revealed to him that she was a Parvii, a major—but clandestine—galactic race that had held dominion over another race, the Aopoddae, since ancient times. Tesh spoke of her magnification system, and demonstrated it as they spoke, but Noah did not admit having previously seen her in her natural state.

“We Parviis do not confide in other races,” she said as she switched the magnification system back on. “But in view of my unparalleled experiences with you, and the unfortunate condition of the galaxy … I must trust you. Please understand, it is not easy for me.”

Pausing, Tesh looked at him. He saw her eyes glint in the low light. The wind blew her hair forward, and with one hand she brushed it out of her eyes, and continued.

“In part from time dilation during space travel, my people live for centuries. Before dying, our oldest person attained the age of three thousand and eighty-eight standard years, while I am more than seven hundred myself. Even so, we can still die of diseases and injuries.”

“My story is not so clear,” he said. “You and I seem to have shared a paranormal experience in which we fought for control of a podship. I suspect that each of us has information … and abilities … that the other does not.”

“I agree,” she said. “It’s all part of a vast galactic puzzle, and we must solve it together.” She paused. Then: “You are … or
were
… a primitive Human on the evolutionary scale, but Eshaz altered that with one brash act.”

Even when he’d seen Tesh in her tiny size, she’d looked Human to Noah. Was that the future of humanity—to get smaller and live longer?

“Eshaz should never have granted you access to Timeweb,” she said, “which he did when he healed you. He committed a terrible, dangerous act, and will surely pay the price for it. His action is unprecedented, and so, to my knowledge, are you. I do not believe that you are immortal, however. Our leader, Woldn, has always told us that there are no deathless creatures in the universe. Some are just harder to kill than others, that’s all.”

Noah actually did feel immortal, but said only, “Well, I’m definitely hard to kill. Anyway, I didn’t try to do anything wrong, so don’t be angry with me. I still don’t understand what happened to me, or … you called it Timeweb?”

She nodded. “It’s a vast web that holds the entire cosmos together, but it’s extremely fragile. Think of an immense ecosystem, with planetary and other organisms intricately woven together and utterly dependent upon each other … a large-scale version of what it is like on each world. Your concept of galactic ecology is very close to the truth.”

He struggled to comprehend. “But it sounds more complicated than anything I imagined.”

“The old ways of the galaxy are in chaos, and this may have permitted you to gain unprecedented access to the web. I cannot say, but I do know this. You and I must journey into Timeweb in a podship … together.”

“With you?” He wasn’t sure how he felt about that idea.

“I sense great danger, and we must move quickly. Do you know that our podship has been sitting at the pod station, exactly where we … where you … left it?”

He nodded. “I, too, sense peril, but have not known how to deal with it, or if I am the right one to deal with it.”

“We might be able figure it out as a team. Something is afoot in the galaxy, and we must discover what it is.”

Noah considered her proposal, wondering if it might be a trick, so that she could take control of the sentient spacecraft away from him. In the moonlight, he stared at the knife that she had sheathed.

As if to answer his unspoken concerns, she smiled gently and said, “You are, as we have learned from our podship experience, stronger than I am in Timeweb.”

“But you know your way around better than I do.”

“Perhaps I only know different aspects of it than you do.”

He told her about the fantastic vision in which he journeyed in his mind across space, and saw Francella and the Doge Lorenzo del Velli in a podship, and overheard her saying she wanted Noah killed. Noah also told of seeing Thinker and his small army of robots in another podship, and of seeing Mutatis at the controls of ten schooners that were painted with merchant prince colors, all with unidentifiable tube mechanisms built into their hulls.

“The Mutatis were in orbit over their own planets,” Noah said. “Some sort of defensive operation, I guess, maybe listening posts. But why are they using merchant ships?”

“They probably stole them,” Tesh suggested. “But with that devious race, nothing is as it seems. Woldn has long warned of Mutati treachery, saying they are a danger to the entire galaxy, and not just to Humans.”

“Sometimes I wonder if the galaxy would be better off without Mutatis or Humans,” Noah said.

“Don’t say that. You know the goodness of humankind.”

“And the evils.”

“We’d better get out there and see what the Mutatis are up to,” she said, pressing.

He didn’t respond, and didn’t tell her he had been conducting a remote experiment when she interrupted him, to see if he could get into the core while not physically on board the podship. He’d proven to himself he could, and had no doubt that he could also pilot the ship remotely. But the less she knew about his powers the better—this Parvii female probably had more tricks than he could imagine.

“Will you go with me to the podship?” she asked.

“You could shrink yourself and sneak past the guards at the ship,” he said.

“That wouldn’t do me any good. You sealed the navigation chamber, and I can’t get in without you.”

“So it seems.” Looking into her seductive, moonlit eyes, Noah wondered if he could ever trust her. “I need time to process all of this,” he said.

“When will you have an answer?” Her voice sounded anxious.

“I’ll let you know. You can’t get into the navigation chamber without my help.”

“So it seems.” She touched his hand. He felt warmth from her, which was remarkable considering her magnification system.

Gently, Noah pushed her hand away. He gazed into the night sky, scanning the twinkling, distant stars. Doubts about her assailed him. She was using her physical beauty and charm to get what she wanted, obviously a method she was accustomed to using.

She pulled his face to hers, and their lips met—or seemed to—but for only a fraction of a second. Quickly, Noah pulled away. The more attraction he felt for her, the more it worried him.

Tesh tried again, and this time Noah was more forceful in response. “I will make my decision logically,” he snapped, “not emotionally.”

And he stalked off.

* * * * *

Alone in the darkness of his room, Noah probed the vast cosmic domain, his thoughts skipping along the faint green filigree of Timeweb. He needed to conduct an experiment to discover if he really could pilot a podship by remote control, but he decided it would be best to try other sentient vessels, not the one at the Canopa pod station. He didn’t want to disturb that one now, not until he determined how best to put it to use. Aside from his concern about keeping information from Tesh, he was afraid that something might go wrong in a remote takeover attempt, preventing him from ever controlling that ship.