The Web and the Stars (4 page)

Chapter Eight

There is great skill in concealing your feelings of antipathy from someone you must deal with on a regular basis.

—Jacopo Nehr, confidential remarks

Throughout the Merchant Prince Alliance—on the seven hundred ninety-two surviving planets—there had been no appearances of podships whatsoever. On every one of those pod stations, sensor-guns were ready to fire, but they remained silent. People expected something to change at any moment, something big to happen. Time went by slowly and painfully for everyone, as if the clock of the universe had a sticky mechanism.

On every planet the citizens felt isolated, that they would never see distant loved ones again, and would never again be able to journey to their favorite places around the galaxy. It was like a cruel, galactic-scale version of an old party game. Wherever a person happened to be when the podships stopped was where they remained, perhaps for the rest of their lives.

When podships first appeared long ago, Humans and other galactic races had been hesitant to trust alien craft that they could not control, especially since they had no idea how they worked and couldn’t gain access to their inner workings without causing violent reactions. But as decades and centuries passed, and podships (left to their own devices) kept transporting the various races safely to far destinations, the races had come to trust them. The sentient spacefarers became familiar to everyone, as their regular appearance at pod stations became a fact a life and of the heavens … like the sun seeming to rise in the sky each morning.

For a long time there had been talk of improving other space-travel technology, and recently there had been a rumor that Doge Lorenzo was calling for a massive research and development program to do so. Even barring that, it was still possible for people to travel on factory-made ships. But the hydion drive engines transported them so slowly in comparison to podships that it wasn’t even worth comparison. It might be decades, if ever, before engineers came up with comparably fast vessels.

At least the Mutatis, with their solar sailers, were even farther behind. That provided some measure of comfort.

And, though Jacopo Nehr could not go directly to Doge Lorenzo with his startling discovery, at the risk of agitating Pimyt, he had decided to take another course of action. One that would not subject him to court martial and execution for hiding important military information during a time of war. As the Supreme General of all merchant prince military units, he had to walk a tightrope.

He was convinced that Doge Lorenzo could not be kept in the dark about this, but there were necessary channels to go through, to protect himself.

With a recording device hidden on his person, Nehr located Pimyt in the Royal Attaché’s private exercise room, in the basement of the administration building. It was certainly the most unusual workout facility that Nehr had ever seen, and after passing through security he saw Pimyt on a machine that was a prime example of this.

The furry little Hibbil was on a stretching rack, resembling a torture machine of medieval Earth, except that this one stretched the body sideways, not head to foot, and there was no “victim.” Pimyt, connected to straps on the machine, operated the controls with a brass-colored, handheld transmitter.

Nehr knew why. The Royal Attaché was one of a small number of Hibbils who had a chronic disease known as LCS—lateral contraction syndrome. Hibbils had a secondary vestigial spine that was no longer of any use, and in some members of their race, this spine had a tendency to compress in width, drawing other bones inward and causing the body to narrow, sometimes to such dangerous proportions that organs were crushed and death resulted. Some victims survived, but were crippled, no longer able to walk or use their arms.

For LCS sufferers, it was important to go through regular, rigorous physical therapy, as Pimyt did several times a week. It seemed like a primitive way of treating the condition, but reportedly it worked better than drugs or other methods.

When Jacopo Nehr approached Pimyt, the Hibbil was grimacing in pain as the machine pulled him from his left and right sides. His eyes watered.

“I need to talk with you,” the general said. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but it’s urgent.”

“Well, what is it?” Pimyt pressed a button on the transmitter to increase the tension, and the pain.

“It’s something the Doge needs to know, and it involves the internal workings of nehrcoms. You cautioned me not to discuss … certain things … with him, so I thought it best to come to you instead.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

The chisel-featured man cleared his throat. “As you know, I keep a mobile nehrcom transceiver with me at all times. This morning I heard voices on it in an alien language. Tracing the transmission, I found it was going back and forth between the planets of Uhadeen and Paradij, in the Mutati Kingdom.”

“What?”

“Toward the end of the transmission I identified an additional voice, speaking Galeng in an Adurian accent.”

He brought the shiny black transceiver out of his pocket, and switched on a playback mechanism. Alien voices spoke for several minutes, followed by the Adurian-accented Galeng.

After listening, Pimyt said, “What’s the significance of this?”

“There shouldn’t be transmissions in the Mutati Kingdom at all, and the Adurian-accented voice is of additional concern. The Adurians are allies of the Mutatis, as you know.”

“This is very strange.” The Hibbil looked up at him with watery red eyes. “You must be mistaken.”

“No mistake. I checked and rechecked. It came from the Mutati Sector.”

“They stole some of the units?”

He shook his head. “Not possible, due to the detonators I rigged at every transmitting station. No, the Mutatis must have built their own transceivers. The transmission quality was fuzzy, but clear enough for us to understand what the Adurian said. You heard him. He spoke of the Mutatis no longer being able to employ Demolios—whatever they are—against merchant prince planets, since they could no longer use podships.”

Pimyt glared up at him. “Are you accusing me of leaking the technology?”

Nehr’s eyes widened in anger. “No, of course not.”

“Because if you are, I can still let the details of your nehrcom secret out and ruin you when your business competitors find out how simple the transceivers are and start manufacturing their own.”

“Not without piezoelectric emeralds, they won’t. Those stones aren’t easy to get anymore, not without podship travel.”

Pimyt tightened the tension on the stretching machine again, pulling his body even more. He set the control device on a table, and said, “Maybe so, but it would still ruin your reputation as a
genius
inventor.” Despite his pain, Pimyt laughed. “The great inventor Jacopo Nehr! A child could have put together what you did. No wonder you concealed the secret for so long.”

“A child could not have cut the piezo emeralds with the necessary precision,” Nehr huffed.

“Nonetheless, my point is well taken. It is a comparatively simple system, easily understood by a layman.”

“Even so, the nehrcom system is one of our critical technologies, a military secret. You don’t want to compromise that.”

“What difference does it make now, if—as you said—the Mutatis already have it anyway?”

“Look, I don’t want to argue with you. I know you’re just making your own profits off this war, and that’s fine with me. It doesn’t mean you aren’t a patriot at heart. We’re both on the same side with the highest level of security clearance, and we have an understanding between us. As you instructed, I sent your communiqués to all merchant prince planets, and in turn you’re protecting my business secrets. The Mutatis must have come up with the system on their own, and they haven’t perfected it yet.”

Pimyt pursed his lips, thinking. He looked agitated. His dark-eyed gaze darted around the room.

Nehr felt a mixture of fear and rage, and intense loathing for this Hibbil. But he concealed his feelings, not letting the furry little bastard see anything in his expression. Still, the inventor imagined grabbing the control for the stretching machine and torturing Pimyt until he was torn apart.

As Nehr savored the idea, Pimyt grabbed the control unit. “You are wise to come to me,” he said. “I will discuss this with Doge Lorenzo, and we will order an investigation immediately. Do you think it could be a defect with your mobile transceiver? Could it have picked up freak radio signals?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Nonetheless, you will give me your transceiver, since we will need it for the investigation.”

“But I am the only one capable of working on the system, along with my daughter, Nirella.”

“Don’t be absurd. A child could work on nehrcoms, and you know it. I have people I trust to do the work … under strict security clearance, of course.”

“Uh, well, I don’t know if.…” He wilted under the Hibbil’s red-eyed glare, and added quickly, “All right.” Reluctantly, Nehr brought the mobile unit out of his jacket pocket and set it on the table.

Pimyt disconnected himself from the stretching rack and swung his short legs onto the floor. He walked around stiffly, then said, “As a reward and a token of our friendship, General Nehr, I am in a position to obtain additional tax benefits and other cost-saving arrangements for your manufacturing facilities on the Hibbil Cluster Worlds.” His face darkened. “I am also in a position to do the opposite, if I wish.”

Nehr stared at the floor. “With podship travel cut off, I’m not sure if I’ll ever see those tax advantages.”

“Then we’ll come up with something else.”

“I would appreciate that.”

Without another word, the Royal Attache took the nehrcom transceiver and left through a side door. The meeting was over.

* * * * *

When he was alone, Pimyt listened to the Adurian voice on the recording again, confirming his own first impression. It was, without a doubt, VV Uncel, the Adurian Ambassador to the Mutati Kingdom.

He was a friend of Pimyt’s … but not of the Mutatis. Uncel must have gone to Paradij on business for the clandestine HibAdu Coalition, which was working to overthrow both humankind and the shapeshifters, and he’d been stuck there by the podship crisis.

The Hibbil scowled for a moment as he wondered if Jacopo Nehr could upset his carefully laid plans. But the thought passed. Nehr was like an insect trapped in a narrow tube, with only one way to go.

Chapter Nine

We are receiving sporadic reports of nehrcom transmission glitches, of inexplicably weak and even lost transmissions. The problems seem to have nothing to do with our transmitting stations around the galaxy, since service personnel have checked and rechecked every one of them. The failures are few and far between, but remain troubling, since nothing like this has ever occurred in the past. In their first decades of use, nehrcoms earned a reputation for perfect reliability and strong signal quality.

—Confidential internal document, Nehrcom Industries

Early one morning, Noah awoke to the noise of men arguing, in the corridor outside his cell. He tried to see them, but could not get an angle to see more than shadows against a rock wall.

“I received no notification of this,” a voice said. “I will have to check with Warden Escobar.”

“He won’t be in for hours,” a man said in a high-pitched, irritated whine. “We can’t wait that long, and I have an authorization that supersedes him anyway. Now, open the damned cells!”

“Well, I don’t know.…”

“Do you want to answer to the Doge’s office for your stupidity? They will not be kind to you, and could put you in one of these cells. If you are allowed to live. I am here on a Priority One assignment. Look at the authorization, you fool. If you can read.”

“I can read, I can read.” Noah heard papers rustling.

“Gad, you’re an idiot. The authorization allows me to take any and all prisoners, as needed, for work details. With the cessation of podship travel, there is a shortage of slaves and imported robots to perform menial tasks on Canopa. Thus we are forced to draw work crews from Human and non-Mutati alien prisoners. Do you understand?”

Finally the guard said, “OK, I guess this is in order, but if there’s any flak over putting Watanabe on work detail, you’re taking it, not me.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

A loud click ensued, and then a slight dimming of the electronic containment barrier around Noah. The glowing orange bars disappeared.

“All right!” the high-pitched voice said, as the man pounded something metal against a wall. “Everybody out. It’s time to go to work!”

The man turned out to be a work crew boss, with a squad of armed guards. They herded Noah and other prisoners out a side entrance. On the paved street, Noah encountered Anton in the midst of the prisoners. Approaching the younger man, Noah saw that he had a bright red mark on one side of his face.

“What happened to you?” Noah asked.

Looking around warily, Anton whispered, “They burned me with a laser on a low setting, threatened to blind me if I didn’t confess.”

“Confess to what?”

“To trying to assassinate the Doge. I told them that was preposterous. I only followed you to the pod station to make certain Tesh was safe. She was my only concern. I had no idea the Doge or Francella would be there, or that we would be arrested.”

“No, of course not.” Noah didn’t comment, but remembered noticing signs of Anton’s jealousy concerning his own relationship with the pretty young woman who had once been Anton’s girlfriend. While Noah had reached an understanding with her over the control of a podship, he’d never had romantic intentions toward her.

“There’s something I want to discuss with you,” Anton said. “I’ve been having memory problems, an ability to remember some things, while other details fade away whenever I try to recover them. It’s like … like my mind is playing tricks on me.”

“They tortured you,” Noah said angrily.

“Yes, but I started having this problem right after they took us into custody on the pod station. I recall trying to go to sleep in my cell that first night, with thoughts churning in my mind, but my brain wouldn’t work, at least not completely. I sensed things slipping away.”

“I’m no doctor, but it sounds stress-induced,” Noah said.

“We sure have a lot of that,” Anton said.

A guard pushed them apart with an electronic prod and shouting threats.

All of the prisoners were loaded on a groundbus, and whisked away to a walled compound just outside the industrial metropolis of Rainbow City. Noah recognized the area. He’d been there many times, under better circumstances. As the gates opened and the bus surged through, he saw a high, round tower ahead, which he knew to be one of the nehrcom transmitting stations for sending high-speed messages across the galaxy.

The work crew spent the rest of the morning performing landscape work and spraying poisons outside the transmitting station. Supposedly, this was to keep insects, small animals and plants away from the highly sensitive facility, which required an almost antiseptic environment. Noah had heard about this procedure, and had always wondered if it was one of many ruses employed by Jacopo Nehr to throw anyone off track who might be trying to figure his transceiver out.

As Noah sprayed a canopa oak, he forgot where he was for a moment and smiled at Jacopo’s eccentricities. Now the famous inventor was Supreme General of all Merchant Prince Armed Forces. Noah wondered how he was doing at that, and which planet he had ended up on when the podships stopped.

Preoccupied, Noah didn’t notice a black robot watching him intensely. The robot moved closer…

* * * * *

Moments before, Jimu had come out of the nehrcom building, having sent a cross-space message on behalf of the Red Berets. He had no idea what the message was, only that it was high priority. By definition, anything sent by this means fell into that category. Afterward, he paused to watch the work crew around the building.

It was almost midday, with low gray clouds that threatened to dump their moisture on the land.

Thinking he saw a familiar face in the crew of prisoners, Jimu had paused to search his internal data banks. Now he brought up the information: Noah Watanabe, along with a summary of his biography and the charges against him.

The blond, mustachioed man working near him also looked familiar. Moments later, Jimu had his name, Anton Glavine, and all of the particulars on him, including his parentage: Doge Lorenzo del Velli and Francella Watanabe.

Concerned about finding such high-security prisoners on the work crew, Jimu did rapid scans on the others. None of them were anywhere near the caliber of these two.

The robot was deeply concerned. This was important work at the nehrcom station, but he didn’t think that such high-priority prisoners should be included in the assignment. It must be some sort of a mistake.

He activated weapons systems on his torso, and took custody of the two men. “You will come with me,” he said, in an officious tone.

Three guards approached, weapons drawn. Jimu had the prisoners behind him inside a crackling energy field, a small electronic containment area.

As he argued with the guards, Jimu opened a comlink to his superior officer in the Red Berets, and notified her of what he had discovered. “I thought it best to protect the prisoners, and then ask for instructions,” he reported.

While the dedicated, loyal robot awaited further instructions, more guards appeared and surrounded him. None of them were robots, and he knew he had the weapons systems to blast through if necessary. But he maintained his mechanical composure. A standoff.

Twenty minutes passed.

Finally, Jimu’s superior officer in the Red Berets appeared, a self-important woman named Meg Kwaid. She marched up to him sternly, followed by half a dozen uniformed soldiers. A tall woman with curly black hair, she smiled and said, “That was quick thinking, Jimu. This will look good in your personnel file.”

She ordered Jimu to release the two prisoners, and when he did, she assumed custody over them. “This pair is going back to prison,” Kwaid said.

Just before departing, she took a third man into custody … the work crew boss who had removed them from the prison in the first place.

“No one told me they were high-value prisoners,” the man protested. “I was only ordered to get the work done, and I didn’t have the manpower.”

His protests were to no avail. The man was put in a cell just down the corridor from Noah Watanabe.

Jimu returned to his own assignment, with his career path enhanced.

* * * * *

Among the Red Berets, Jimu’s machines were unusual: they were “breeding machines” that could locate the necessary raw materials and construct replicas of themselves. Since joining the force, Jimu had been supervising the construction of additional fighting units, more than quadrupling the number of machines he originally brought with him from the Inn of the White Sun. All of Jimu’s machines serviced themselves, and made their own energy pellets from raw materials, including carbon and mineral deposits.

Now, with the high demand for laborers, he was ordered to increase his production rate, adding a new type of machine—a worker-variant—to the fighting units he had been manufacturing. As with everything he did, Jimu completed this assignment with utmost efficiency. In short order, he had full production lines operational, producing both types of machines.

For this, and for his quick thinking in the Watanabe and Glavine extractions, he was promoted to a fourth-level Red Beret. This gave him access to more of the secret rituals, language, and symbols of the military society. Jimu just memorized them; he didn’t really understand why people were so fascinated with such matters.

But Jimu had a continuing problem.

The sentient machines under his command were being mistreated, jeered at and kicked by many of the Red Beret soldiers, especially whenever the Human men drank. Too often, alcohol was thrown at the robots to see if they would short out—a bitter, sticky drink called nopal that the men favored.

Through it all, the machines still remained loyal to their Human masters, and so did Jimu. Their internal programming did not permit them to do otherwise, and they had fail-safe mechanisms to make sure nothing went wrong.