The Web and the Stars (39 page)

Chapter Eighty-Two

It should not be possible for a vast connective tissue to exist, touching every celestial body in the heavens, but this is, nonetheless, the galactic design. How do planets orbit suns when the webbing is intact, and fall out of orbit in sectors where the webbing has decayed? To comprehend, it is necessary to expand your mind, and when you believe comprehension is reached you must suspend it, because the true answer comes from a different portion of your brain.

—Noah Watanabe

Disembarking from the grid-plane, Noah led Anton and Subi along an electronic-camouflaged path to the main entrance of the subterranean headquarters. It was early evening, with stars twinkling faintly against a charcoal-gray backdrop. They walked inside a moving infrared bubble, which permitted them to see through the darkness in all directions.

“Are you taking me to the podship?” Anton asked. “Is that where Tesh is?” “Possibly, but we don’t want to alarm her by going directly there. It is best to act more casual, and broach the matter with her in my office, or over a meal.” “You’re right. I’m just impatient to get on with it.” “So am I, but we need to be careful what we say to her.”

“You mean, what / say to her,” Anton said. “I have to convince her on my own, remember?” Noah shot him a rueful smile, and considered the situation. Despite the electronic camouflage, certain realities were apparent. Anton’s father—Lorenzo del Velli—already knew the location of the facility, so Noah saw no point in concealing it from the young Doge. The information was out anyway, and besides, there was a cease-fire and Noah needed to work with Anton closely if the Human race—and every other race, for that matter—had any chance of surviving the growing galactic cataclysm. He even wished the Mutatis well, as long as it didn’t come at the expense of humankind.

Though Noah had been indoctrinated from an early age to despise all Mutatis, he had never really understood the historical underpinnings of the conflict, and now he could not bring himself to wish extinction on them. There must be good and bad Mutatis, just as there were good and bad Humans.

Maybe Princess Meghina was one of the good shapeshifters. After all, she had tried to prevent Francella from shooting him on the Canopa pod station. Meghina was known as a courtesan, but she also had a reputation for being compassionate, and for donating funds to animal-welfare groups as well as to impoverished people on various MPA planets, especially those living in the back country of her own homeworld, Siriki. She had even been kind to Noah’s father, Prince Saito Watanabe, caring for the old man more than any courtesan should.

In the red darkness, Noah saw a wide stone that marked one of the secondary entrances to the headquarters. Touching a button on his belt, the stone slid aside, revealing a metalloy door. From another control on his belt, Noah sent coded signals. The door did not open.

“I just changed the codes,” Subi said.

“Yeah, I know,” Noah said, “but I thought you programmed the new ones into my belt.”

“I did.”

“Don’t worry,” Noah said, as he transmitted more signals. “I still have other ways of getting in, an access override.”

“We shouldn’t have to use the overrides,” Subi said, watching as Noah transmitted an alternate code. “Okay, there it goes.”

The large door irised open, revealing a dark tunnel beyond. Subi led his companions inside, and closed the entrance behind them. Lights flashed on in the tunnel, and they hurried through it.

“In all the excitement,” Anton said, walking beside Noah, “I forgot that I need to maintain contact with my own office, or they will worry about me. Can you get a message to them, under my seal?”

“Of course.”

“You want to help with my diplomatic mission?” Tesh asked, staring at Doge Anton. Glancing over at Noah, she said, “Did you tell him everything?”

“Yes.” Noah sat beside the merchant prince leader, sipping a glass of redicio wine. They were inside a large subterranean cafeteria, serviced by robot waiters. Noah saw Tesh’s green eyes flash at him, and he felt the emotional charge between himself and her. He also noticed the interaction between her and Anton, the remnants of what once had been an intimate relationship.

“But how can you trust this man?” she demanded. “He’s the Doge now, the leader of the Merchant Prince Alliance. Your enemies! How could you do such a thing?”

“You trusted me once,” Anton said. On the tabletop, he touched her hand.

She pulled away.

“I want you to take me to the Tulyan Starcloud,” Anton said. “It’s essential to begin the diplomatic mission there. Your idea about going to the Parviis is a fine one, but it can’t be done casually, not the way you did it the first time. No, I’m going to advocate that it must be a full-fledged mission, led by the finest diplomats, both Human and Tulyan.”

Glaring at Doge Anton, she kept her thoughts to herself.

“For something this important, I need to go myself,” Anton said, as if anticipating a question she might have.

“And your entourage?” she said.

“Not needed for this initial trip. Though the Tulyans respect Noah, they do not generally trust Humans. I must take this gradually.” He smiled stiffly at his former girlfriend.

Tesh swished the wine in her glass, didn’t drink it. “Something doesn’t feel right here,” she said. Looking at Noah, she asked, “What do you have to say about this?”

“I’m outranked by my nephew. He’s doing the talking.”

“Are you being deceptive? I’m sensing something else going on here.”

“This is an important matter with far-reaching consequences,” Anton said. “We don’t have time
for feelings.”

Wrong way to put it,
Noah thought, shaking his head.

Flashing an angry look at Anton, Tesh rose. “You’re in no position to be condescending.” She walked away.

“Tesh, wait,” Anton said.

But she kept going, and didn’t look back.

“That went well,” Noah said to Anton, when she was out of earshot. “She’s not stupid, you know.”

“I remember,” Anton said. “She always was difficult for me to handle, and that hasn’t changed. What do we do now?”

“Wait for her to cool off,” Noah said.

After reducing herself in size, Tesh entered the sectoid chamber of the podship. Scurrying up a wall, she attached herself to the green flesh, where she felt the gentle, soothing pulse of the creature. Bathed in the lambent green light, she heard the faint background hum that had historically linked all of these creatures in the galaxy. Holding on to the thick flesh was no effort for Tesh at all. Through the connection, she peered through the eyes of the podship into the darkness, and up to the vault of stars.

Closing her eyes, she let her mind drift.

It was so peaceful here, and seemed to Tesh like the safest place in the universe, where she could gather her thoughts and sort through problems. Since landing near the Guardian headquarters, Tesh went to the sentient spaceship a couple of times a day, just to be by herself. Now she pressed her tiny face against the flesh, and felt the creature’s warmth, and the subtle changes in its pulse. Each day that she was with the alien organism she felt closer to it … as if it was becoming part of her, and she was becoming part of it.

“I dub thee Webdancer,” she whispered, on impulse.

It was an appellation that brought to her mind romantic images of podships skittering along the web, from star to star. She sometimes wondered if these simple, beautiful creatures should be left free and wild, to roam the galaxy on their own.

It had agitated her seeing Anton again, since it reminded her of some of the arguments they’d had after she met Noah, when Anton accused her falsely of not being faithful to him. She’d been with possessive men before, and had never liked it. Anton had taken it relatively well when she broke up with him, though he had seemed genuinely sad.

Sifting through her thoughts, she realized that she felt gloomy just sitting at the same table with him. Once there had been strong feelings between them, almost love, and she still cared about him. She also knew him well enough to sense when he was not telling the truth, or when he was concealing something from her.

But what could it be?

Anton wanted to travel to the Tulyan Starcloud very badly, to see the Council of Elders. Supposedly to make sure they performed caretaking operations for MP A sectors. In truth, that might be part of it.

Or …

She didn’t want to think about the alternative.

Abruptly, Tesh detected an increasingly strong tugging at her mind, something trying to break her mental and physical link with the podship, trying to take Webdancer away from her.

Her serenity broken, Tesh came to sharp awareness and fought back.

Deeply fatigued, Noah had been drifting off to sleep, just beginning to peer into a dream world of alpine lakes and canopa fir trees, with gnarled rocks above … formations that looked like living, fairy tale creatures. The rocks moved slightly, as if they were talking to each other, but they did not seem threatening to him. They were like sentinels, protecting the realm of his reverie.

But an odd, intrusive sensation began to come over Noah, as if two dimensions were rubbing together, grating on the tranquility of his dream. In a violent jerk, he had suddenly been ripped away from slumber and thrust out into the cosmos.

He found himself spinning along the vast, curving strands of the web. From what he’d heard, he’d expected to see only a few podships out there, occasional wild ones. But there were hundreds of gray creatures flying one direction and another, maybe more of them than that, taking courses that seemed different from those he had seen before. These ships were going slower, skipping along the web for a distance, slipping off, and getting back on again. Still, they were making their way across the galaxy at much higher speeds than conventional solar sailers or vacuum rockets.

To his dismay, Noah noticed great rips in sections of the web, ragged holes in the fabric of the galaxy and regions where planets and stars slid and tumbled out of orbit, with no web tissue connecting them at all. The podships went around those problem sectors, but even where the web looked normal the sentient vessels could not go as fast or as efficiently as the podships he had seen previously.

These vessels were most peculiar. Stretching his mind and peering into them, he saw that they were piloted by Hibbils, sitting inside navigation units that were unlike anything he had seen before. Surrounding the furry little men were arrays of computers and servo machines, blinking lights and panels. He saw no Parviis on board any of the ships. And in the cargo holds he found something very troubling, transport ships full of Adurian and Hibbil soldiers.

What does this mean?

With each podship that he viewed, he sensed increasing agitation, as if the creatures were sending signals to each other, warning one another about him. Gradually he felt his connection to the podships slipping, and the interiors began to flicker in and out of view. Soon he could not view the interiors at all, and the sentient spacefarers began to veer away from him, like frightened fish in a cosmic sea. Focusing his energy, Noah tried to take command of one podship, and then another, but to no avail. They sped away from him, in all directions.

As I suspected, they fear me,
he thought.
They know about the sensor-guns I recommended.

Their continuing reaction against Noah suggested to him that they had a means of sensing danger, but only at a primitive level. If they had been more intelligent, they would realize that he had actually saved many more of their kind than he killed by preventing the Mutatis from using their planet-buster weapons … weapons that destroyed podships as well as merchant prince worlds.

Breaking away, Noah found that he could expand his mind again. With a rediscovered measure of control, he tried to locate the Parvii Fold where Tesh said one hundred thousand podships were, and where he presumed that the Parviis were attempting to recover. But he could not locate the region, not in any of the sectors in the galaxy. She had told him it was in the most out of the way place, so perhaps he just needed to look harder. Discontinuing the effort for a moment, he tried to see another assemblage of podships, at the Tulyan Starcloud. He made out the milky star system, but could not get close to it, could not penetrate the powerful mindlink security veil of the Tulyans.

His mind arced involuntarily, and he sped across the galaxy, back to Canopa. To his surprise, he surged into the podship and saw Tesh inside the sectoid chamber. Somehow he had gotten past the defenses of the creature. Was that because he had been more closely associated with this one in the past than with any other? Did it trust him more?

Almost immediately, Noah sensed the uneasiness of the creature, but his own mind pressed forward, trying to overcome the resistance. He had not intended to fight her for control of the vessel, but found himself doing so anyway, without his volition. He struggled to break away and leave Tesh and the podship alone, but the more he tried, the harder another side of his psyche fought for dominance … over him, and over them.

Against the powerful mental onslaught, Tesh lost her hold and tumbled to the floor of the sectoid chamber. But she fought back ferociously, aided by the podship, and Noah was glad they did, because it seemed to him that Tesh had more of a right to control this creature than he did.

Gradually Noah found himself losing the battle, and presently he peered into the alpine dream world again, as he drifted off to slumber. The sentinel rocks were larger now, and more powerful.

They set up a defensive perimeter, letting him sleep.

As he continued dreaming, Noah found himself viewing the interior of the podship, but his hold was tenuous, with only flickering images coming to him. Tesh had just emerged from the sectoid chamber, and had switched on her magnification system. The images shifted, and abruptly Noah stood with her inside the passenger compartment, gazing at her while she glared at him. Looking down, Noah saw that his feet seemed to float in space, with swirling nebulas and speeding comets below him. He sensed the uneasiness of the podship around him, and saw the interior skin of the vessel trembling.