Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (58 page)

Despite being under the influence of Adurian gyros, the Zultan had still dispatched an outrider to attack and destroy Timian One, the wealthiest of all merchant prince worlds. This was a big potential setback for the HibAdu Coalition, a planet-busting torpedo that could not be called back. Meshdi was supposed to send it against another fringe planet, not the MPA capital world!

Across much of the Mutati Kingdom, the Adurians had used gyro-manipulation to twist the thoughts of the Zultan and his minions, causing them to overlook certain military anomalies, such as the preponderance of Adurian officers in leadership positions. Gyro-manipulation had also been used to establish and carry out the essentially futile Demolio torpedo program, which had diverted Mutati military assets into dead ends and permitted the shapeshifters to destroy three Human fringe worlds that were of little value—Earth, Mars, and Plevin Four.

Now came this unexpected problem involving Timian One, which should never have happened, since the HibAdu Coalition wanted to preserve that valuable planet and others for their own uses after their great victory. Many of those worlds had important assets that the wealthy merchant princes had set up, and some had untapped natural resources, minerals that were only valuable to the Hibbils and the Adurians. They were supposed to be spoils of war.

To prevent further undesirable losses, the Adurians were making emergency adjustments to the signals being transmitted to Mutatis who used gyrodomes and portable gyros for decision-making. Pimyt hoped it worked.

* * * * *

Upon returning to the underground encampment, Noah found Tesh waiting for him, just inside the entrance. She rose from a rock where she had been sitting and said to him, “Well? Do you have an answer for me yet?”

“As a matter of fact I do,” Noah replied. “My friend and I had some business to take care of first.”

“I’m not asking where you were,” she said in an impertinent tone.

He looked at her calmly, while Thinker stood beside him.

“Your answer is no, isn’t it?” Tesh said.

“My answer may not be what you expect.” Noah smiled stiffly, then brushed by her and went toward the cafeteria.

“That’s all you have to say?” she yelled after him.

“Be ready to leave first thing in the morning,” Noah shouted.

“Did he say what I think he said?” Tesh asked, looking wide-eyed at Thinker.

“He answered yes,” the robot said. “I see no other alternative, even though I do not know the question. Perhaps you asked him to marry you, which is something Humans are known to do.”

“We’re not quite ready for that,” Tesh said.

Chapter Eighty-Five

The future is a tapestry woven with disappearing threads. Sometimes it seems to come into view, but only ephemerally, providing titillating but confusing glimpses of what is to come.

—From a Parvii Legend

Disguised as ordinary travelers, Tesh and Noah took a crowded city shuttle up to the orbital pod station, ostensibly to await the next podship from deep space.

In reality, they were looking for the one that still sat in its docking berth, where they had left it. Uniformed Red Berets and technicians were poring over the craft, searching for answers. Never before had a sentient spacecraft remained in place for so long.

As they approached the vessel, Tesh reduced her pace and touched Noah’s arm, causing him to slow as well. The two of them were dressed in black robes, like the garb of a religious sect.

“What is it?” he asked in a low tone.

“Nothing, nothing,” she said, lying. They proceeded together, more slowly. The walkway was crowded with passengers and Red Beret soldiers.

She couldn’t tell him what she was feeling. Despite the fact that she had invited Noah to accompany her into space, it troubled her that this sacred spacefaring vessel was being violated by so many nosy, meddling Humans. She hoped they had not been able to gain access to the innermost secrets of the creature, its sectoid chamber and other workings that she knew so well as a Parvii.

In the past, whenever podships were abused by Humans, Vandurians, and certain other races, the sentient vessels reacted, sealing themselves up and closing off all sections to intruders, suffocating anyone aboard and then speeding off into space. Now, however, this creature was behaving differently, and Tesh didn’t know why.

Throughout history there had been examples of Parvii pilots taking heroic actions to save their vessels. In his younger years the Eye of the Swarm, Woldn, had done so himself, saving an entire herd of rampaging, panicked podships.

Tesh wondered if the battle she and Noah had fought for control of this vessel had confused or traumatized it. Perhaps it would take the two of them to restore balance to the creature, or the harm might be irreversible. She hoped not, prayed that it was not too late.

* * * * *

Unknown to either her or Noah, Anton Glavine had followed them in a separate shuttle, and now he was mingling into the crowd at the pod station. In a dark blue cape and liripipe hat, the typical garb of a nobleman, Anton watched with considerable interest as Noah and Tesh found a place off to one side of the walkway and conversed in low tones.

The young man was no longer jealous, and had all but given up any hope of having a close relationship with Tesh again. But he was seriously concerned about her, and wanted to make absolutely certain she was safe. It was more than concern, he admitted to himself now. He loved her. And he only wanted the best for her, even if that meant giving her up entirely.

* * * * *

Perhaps twenty meters from the podship, Tesh and Noah were keeping an eye on activity around the vessel, watching for the first opportunity to slip on board.

Tesh had her own complex feelings, but they were for the man beside her. She cared deeply for Noah with an unrequited passion, but he was an interloper in Timeweb and had control of a podship that should be hers. It made for an internal tug of war between her personal and professional needs.

The two of them had not spoken much that morning, with tension still lingering. Now they exchanged only terse comments about the movements of the investigators and soldiers who were going in and out of the passenger compartment and cargo hold of the podship.

They fell silent for several long moments. Then she said, “We Parviis express ourselves differently than our larger Human cousins, a race we call ‘humanus ordinaire.’ When we find a person we like, we are quite aggressive. If I have offended you I am sorry, but that is our way.”

He glared down at her with hardness in his hazel eyes.

Seemingly unperturbed, she explained with surprising frankness how Parviis and Humans—she kept calling them “humanus ordinaire”—could have sex together, and that it was potentially quite pleasurable. They could not, however, conceive children … even though the Human race was a genetic Mutation of the Parviis, a split that occurred millions of years ago. Now they were two of the major galactic races, none of which could interbreed.

“I’m trying to figure out where a galactic playgirl fits into all of this,” he said, “scattering hearts across the cosmos.”

“That might have been a fair comment about me once,” she admitted, “but not anymore. Not since I met you.”

He looked at her skeptically.

As she continued to speak to him, he said little in response. In his sparse words and demeanor he appeared to be trying to maintain his emotional distance from her, but in his eyes she detected his difficulty doing that. Periodically, he locked gazes with her, and seemed to soften. Then he would stiffen and pull away.

From a personal standpoint, these were good signs to her. It was only a matter of time.

* * * * *

When the technicians and soldiers wrapped up their work for the day, two black-robed figures took advantage of a lapse in security. Slipping through the airlock, they sneaked aboard the disabled podship. In a shadowy corner of the passenger compartment, Noah pressed a hand against the interior wall, touching the rough, leathery skin of the sentient spacecraft. It felt unusually cool, but he sensed life.

The faint pulse quickened, and he withdrew his hand. But as he did so, he still felt the pulse.

“Follow me to the navigation chamber,” he said. But he did not move physically.

Closing his eyes, Noah watched while Tesh became small and ran behind his own ghostlike form as it entered a passageway that led to the core of the podship. He was making her think he had to be in physical contact with the ship before being able to get into the navigation chamber, still not revealing his earlier remote entry.

At the end of the passage, he hesitated, then seeped through the wall of the central chamber, leaving her behind. Seconds passed, and he sensed her impatience growing.

Then he released the seal on the entrance and let her in.…

* * * * *

Outside, Anton Glavine approached the podship, but was noticed by a Red Beret guard who had just gone on duty. “Stay back,” the soldier commanded tersely. “This vessel is out of service.”

Obediently, Anton backed up. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought this was my ship.”

“Read the destination boards and pay attention to berth numbers, you idiot.”

“Yes sir.” Anton blended back into the walking, milling traffic.

* * * * *

In the soft green glow of the navigation chamber, at the nerve center of the podship, Noah concentrated the power of his mind, and felt the ship pulse into motion.

Just inside the enclosure, Tesh stood motionless, not challenging him.

Under Noah’s direction, the vessel proceeded slowly through the docking bay. From the walkway, Red Beret soldiers fired puissant rifles at the craft, but to no effect. Some of the uniformed men scrambled into a pursuit ship and fired up the engine, making a flash of orange in the exhaust tubes.

But the podship surged away from the orbital station and leapt onto the podways with surprising vigor, then accelerated out into the frigid void, leaving the Red Berets far behind.

From the passenger compartment, Noah shared the joy of the creature.

And he felt the podship still under his control, turning this way and that along the cosmic filigree. Presently, he brought the vessel to a complete halt in outer space, and as he did so he sensed the creature come to a new awareness, watching warily with its visual sensors, looking for the approach of other podships.

Noah commanded the sentient vessel to disengage, and it floated free of the cosmic web, into the vacuum of space. He felt the creature grow calmer.

Keeping his eyes closed, Noah gazed telepathically into the boundless galaxy. He was startled to behold a sea of shimmering suns in much better focus than before.

“It’s so clear this time. I can’t believe it.”

His mind soared, and he began to see other podships speeding along the pale green webbing. As before, he could only probe one of the sentient vessels at a time, so he telescoped in on several in succession. Again he saw their passengers and heard them speaking, but in much sharper visual and auditory clarity than previously. Now he could hold the links more strongly, as if his mind had suddenly grown talons and he was digging them in deeply. But the conversations were innocuous, and of no interest to him.

Instead, he let the podship connections go, and zoomed in on one of the red-and-gold merchant schooners he had seen earlier, the one that had gone into geostationary orbit over the Mutati world of Ilbao. Inside the vessel, he again saw the Mutati pilot, and once more Noah scanned the interior of the hull, where the peculiar array of gleaming alloy tubes remained.

This time, the tubes looked far more sinister. Able to probe deeper into the tubes themselves, he saw even more tubes inside. These were smaller, filled with dry chemical powders that were interspersed with unknown, solid elements and liquid-filled capsules, all connected to multiple warheads and trigger devices.

The schooners were not listening posts at all. They were warships, mobile bombs.

Agitated, Noah stretched his mental power and searched the other Mutati worlds where he had seen the strange vessels. Previously, there had been ten. Now he saw hundreds of them around the Mutati Kingdom, each orbiting a different planet. Expanding his search radius, he found more of the schooners in other star systems. In all cases, the vessels were near pod stations.

Another even more disturbing pattern became apparent to him: Mutati warships were surrounding the Merchant Prince Alliance.

In a frenzy, Noah zoomed one by one to the Earth, Mars, and Plevin Four debris fields, where worlds had exploded under mysterious circumstances. It was all becoming clear to him. The Mutatis intended to stage a huge attack against every Human-ruled planet, striking from all directions!

A woman’s voice came to him from afar. Tesh. “Terrible weapons!” she exclaimed.

“You can see this?” Noah asked.

“I’ve been with you all the way, by touching the nerve center of the podship.”

With his voice drifting across the cosmos, Noah told her how he had seen only a few of the schooners earlier, and how there were many more now. “They’re getting ready to do something big,” he said. “Each ship seems to have enough explosive power to destroy a planet, taking everything in the vicinity with it … podships and pod stations have been wiped out, too.”

“That’s why you examined the three debris fields,” she said.

“Exactly. Those planets may have been destroyed in a weapons testing program. But why are you seeing this with me? Previously, I was able to take a mental journey through the galaxy on my own. And why is my vision so much clearer now?”

“I’m not sure, but maybe I’m boosting your power. During my career piloting podships, I have occasionally had paranormal experiences caused by my mental linkages to the creatures. From what we call sectoid chambers—and which you have been referring to as navigation chambers—we Parvii pilots gaze out at the galaxy through the eyes of the creatures. Usually, we see visions of deep space, the galactic webbing on which we travel and the like. But occasionally the podships seem to peer into alternate dimensions for brief moments, and we are taken along with them.”