The Timeweb Chronicles: Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (21 page)

Chapter Forty-Two

Infinity beckons.

—Parvii Inspiration

Perched inside the core of the most unusual biological organism in the galaxy, the tiny man noticed a hesitation in the sentient spacecraft. He had just established a course, but the podship had not yet responded.

Seconds passed. This had never happened to him before. By now, they should be speeding along the podways, racing past star systems, bound for the farthest regions of the galaxy.

The diminutive Parvii pilot required no food or water for sustenance, and none of the other nutrients commonly needed by the galactic races. And, while the various chambers of the large podship contained an ample supply of oxygen, the pilot didn’t require any. He could fly free in the vacuum of space, and in a swarm with other members of his race could reach tremendous speeds.

Until moments ago, Woldn had been in total control of the podship, having captured and tamed it with millions of his miniature followers, who subsequently departed for other duties. They were like wranglers of wild tigerhorses, and Woldn was the most skilled of them all. He was the Eye of the Swarm, commanding decillions of Parviis, an entire galactic race. Now he was performing a task he normally delegated, in order to keep his piloting and navigation skills sharp.

Finally, Woldn felt the great ship shudder into motion and accelerate.

In its wordless way, the podship was communicating with him, sending a stream of messages that filled Woldn’s brain. Through the sentient creature’s far-reaching eyes—indiscernible cells all over the outside of its body—Woldn peered deep with the podship, into the curving green webs of time and space.

Way off in the distance and directly ahead, an orange light flashed.

The blimp-shaped podship—carrying a variety of galactic races in its passenger compartment and cargo hold—accelerated onto the web on a new course, wrenching command away from the Parvii leader, though he struggled mightily, invoking the most severe guidance-and-control words in his repertoire. Mysteriously, his efforts were to no avail.

Within minutes, the spacecraft slowed near a debris field and circled it at a safe distance. Through the mind he shared with the pod, Woldn felt a tremendous sense of loss because a podship had just died here, along with its Parvii pilot.

Most unusual, a Parvii death here, and he’d received no signal of distress along the telepathic connections he maintained with all of his people, stretching across the entire galaxy. This suggested to him that there had either been a psychic breakdown, which occurred occasionally, or that the violent event had been so sudden and unexpected that the pilot had not had time to send a signal.

Woldn got his bearings and figured out where he was … and what was missing. A planet had exploded, a world the Humans called Mars. Within moments, he saw other podships approach and circle nearby, with Parviis inside their sectoid control chambers, helpless to control the spacecraft, trying to comprehend. This was the same solar system where an earlier explosion had occurred, the one that took Earth with it.

Both planets and their inhabitants had been dispatched to oblivion, their remnants scattered in space.

Was something wrong in this sector, causing a natural disaster—or could there be another explanation? Woldn would return to his people, and order a full investigation.…

Chapter Forty-Three

Our young must always learn the most important lessons of life firsthand. It has been this way since time immemorial, and always will be.

—Mutati Observation

Two of the passengers on board Woldn’s podship were Acey Zelk and Dux Hannah, the teenage Humans who had escaped from Timian One. Crowded with others at the membranous portholes, they saw a large debris field outside.

“Where are we?” Acey asked, as he and Dux tried to maintain their spot by a porthole, while an assortment of creatures pushed for better views.

“I have no idea,” Dux said.

With difficulty the boys held their position. Only a small percentage of the passengers were Human, or even humanoid. In close proximity to so many different races, Dux picked up odors he’d never experienced before. Not all of the smells were unpleasant, though some certainly were. He also picked up a musk odor from the skin of the podship.

A pale-skinned Kichi woman beside them gasped as body parts floated by, most of them Human … arms, legs, and heads with crusts of blood frozen on them. One completely intact body drifted into view, a young woman fully clothed in layers of unsoiled skirts, her face frozen in a broad smile, as if someone had pulled her picture out of a photo album and put a three-dimensional form to it. She showed no signs of trauma, which seemed remarkable to Dux in view of the obvious violence that had occurred here. He wondered what could possibly have caused such a catastrophe.

“Might have been a merchant prince planet,” a man said.

“It was,” another said. Dux saw a Jimlat man standing taller than the throng, his blockish head shaved. Blinking his tiny gray eyes, the Jimlat studied a brassplax instrument. “They called it Mars.”

“Mars?” Dux said. “Then it’s completely gone, destroyed?”

“That’d be my bet. Course, some of it remains.” With a facetious smile, he nodded toward the nearest porthole. “Out there.”

“Maybe you’d like me to climb up there are rearrange your ugly face,” Acey said, making a move toward him.

Dux grabbed his cousin’s arm to restrain him. “What are his fighting capabilities?” Dux asked in a low tone.

“If you let go of me, I’ll find out.”

“Don’t chance it. We don’t need to look for trouble.” He looked around, at the hostile gazes of some of the aliens, and their gleaming eyes. Obviously, they wanted to see a fight, and probably didn’t care if Acey got hurt … or worse. A number of races around the galaxy resented Humans for the financial and military successes of the merchant princes, so the young men had to be on constant alert for potential trouble. Acey lost his temper too much, didn’t always think through the consequences of his actions.

Hearing a thump beside him, Dux looked at the porthole, and recoiled in horror. A little Huluvian girl screamed, and was consoled by her mother. The bloody face of a man bobbed against the outside of the window, seeming to stare into the passenger compartment. The face, and its torn body, drifted away.

The podship, still moving slowly, proceeded through the shocking milieu, passing floating fragments of what had once been a vibrant world on one of the main merchant prince trading routes. Machine parts, building fragments, and many shredded body parts, some of them so small that they must have belonged to children. Dux could hardly bear to look any more but did nonetheless, in horrified fascination. Around him, hardly anyone spoke anymore. Most of the noises were sobbing sounds, and whimpering cries of disbelief, even from non-Humans. An alien in a business suit said the planet must have been hit by a meteor, and several onlookers agreed.

After only a few minutes that seemed like an eternity, the podship changed course. It headed away from the debris field and picked up speed. Soon they flashed by star systems, spiral nebulas, and glowing asteroid belts. For a fraction of a second, a comet seemed to try to keep up with them, then fell back.

The podship resumed a normal route, making its regular stops, as shown on route boards at both ends of the passenger compartment. Some of the passengers moved away from the windows, but many remained standing, numb with shock. Along the way, the various races disembarked, and others got aboard. Odors changed. Dialects drifted through the cabin. New passengers heard the terrible news about Mars, and no one understood what could have happened.

Finally the boys disembarked at Nui-Lin in a remote sector of the galaxy, an exotic world they had heard about in their travels, where they hoped to secure jobs. They had with them the address of a residential construction project where the pay was said to be excellent, and the name of a man who had put out a call for workers.

The shuttle was unlike any they had seen before, resembling a broad green leaf with a tiny bubble of a cabin on the underside. The craft descended, and when it reached the atmosphere the engines shut off and it drifted down, landing gently on the black pavement of a spaceport.

The terminal building abutted a thick jungle, draped with vines. They caught a jitney driven by a long-eared Cogg, one of the natives of this world. They told him where they wanted to go, as did many the other passengers as they boarded, and he promised to let the new riders know when he reached their various destinations.

He was not a very good driver, though, or didn’t seem able to talk and drive at the same time, as he insisted on delivering a monologue about the various types of flora and fauna as he sped past them. Some of them he scraped with the vehicle, and once he very nearly drove off a precipice into a tree-choked crevasse. Those passengers who were Coggs didn’t show any fear, but other races were on the edges of their seats, and some demanded to get off. Ignoring their pleas, the driver refused to stop. In some places a thick canopy of trees overhung the road, creating a tunnel effect that required him to turn on a bright headlamp.

They passed through a town that looked like a village in a fairy tale, with narrow cobblestone streets and quaint homes that were not constructed entirely straight, or which had fallen into a pattern of leaning to one side or the other for what might have been centuries. The majority of the Coggs and the most fearful foreigners got out in the town, and then the jitney continued on its way, along a narrow highway that skirted a silvery sea. Immense birds soared out over the water, with sunlight glinting off their golden wings, making the birds look as if they were really built out of gold, and should be too heavy to fly.

The driver kept chattering, babbling like a tour guide. Then he began talking about galactic politics, and his comments about the Merchant Prince Alliance were less than complimentary. This surprised Dux, since Coggs were supposedly neutral. He shrugged. This must be an oddball, an eccentric fellow who was out of step with his people.

“This is it,” the driver announced, as he pulled levers on the dashboard to squeak the bus to a stop. Carrying their bags, Acey and Dux stepped off at a narrow path, which the driver told them to take. “The construction site is just a short distance,” he said, pointing toward a cluster of one-story buildings in a clearing.

The boys found signs written in the common galactic language of Galeng, telling them where to report to apply for work. Inside a large, open-walled hut, they located the very Cogg whose name they had been given far across the galaxy, Bibby Greer. As the long-eared work supervisor introduced himself to them and shook their hands, he smiled in such a friendly fashion that Dux thought he would be the best boss they ever had. He could not have been more wrong. The experience would, in fact, be exactly the opposite.

Suddenly the tentacles of a plant darted in through the open walls and wrapped themselves around the boys, so that they could not escape. Before their eyes, the Cogg metamorphosed into a tremulous mound of fat, with a tiny head and oversized eyes. A Mutati!

Dux felt a sinking sensation.

“Welcome to our fly trap,” Bibby Greer announced with a nasty grin.

Chapter Forty-Four

It as if the entire galaxy is being sucked downward, into the black void of the undergalaxy. Is there life in that Stygian realm? I shudder to imagine it.

—Eshaz, Remarks to the Council

The green-and-brown groundjet sped across a broad meadow of flowers, passing over the plants like a windless whisper, not disturbing them at all. This was a specially modified craft that Noah had ordered, with hover capabilities that could be activated when going over sensitive environmental areas.

“It is good to see you back,” Noah said to Eshaz, who sat beside him in the passenger seat, his large body overflowing the chair and draping off the sides. Noah piloted the machine. “I trust you had a pleasant visit with your Elders?”

“Oh, the Tulyan Starcloud is the most wondrous place in all of creation,” he replied, “and my people are the most pleasant to be around. No offense to present company, of course.”

“I understand. There’s no place like home, the old saying goes.”

“How true it is.”

“Your people are pacifists, aren’t they?”

“We pride ourselves on non-violence, but I would not go so far as to say that we are complete pacifists. We do not claim to be perfect, only that we strive to be so. We are not political in any way. Tulyans try to go about their daily lives peacefully while contributing to their environs, instead of detracting from them.”

“The peaceful nature of Tulyans explains why it must be so nice to be with them on the Starcloud. I can’t visualize a single argument there. It must be total bliss, almost a fantasy land.”

“Well, we do have rather heated discussions, but for the most part you’re not far off.” Eshaz smiled, but to Noah it seemed forced.

Noah steered toward a maintenance building at the southwest corner of his compound. Diggers had torn through the floor of the building, creating a lot of damage. Subi Danvar and the commando team he had organized were using this as a staging area to launch extermination efforts, and over the weeks they had experienced some success against the renegade machines.

“I would like to see the Tulyan Starcloud someday,” Noah said, as he had on occasion before. “I know, you said how rare it is for outsiders to be permitted there, but perhaps you could mention my name to the Elders as a possibility.”

“I already have,” Eshaz said with a decidedly pained expression. “Perhaps someday we can do it, my friend.”

It seemed to Noah that his trusted companion was sadder than he should be, that his demeanor did not match his words. Perhaps he was just tired. This Tulyan was quite an old fellow, after all. Noah wasn’t certain exactly how old, and Eshaz always shunted such questions aside, but he thought it might be around a hundred or more standard years of age. With no idea how much of a colossal underestimation this was, Noah worried about the health of the old fellow.

Eshaz was a valued contributor to the Ecological Demonstration Project on Canopa and had helped with a number of planetary recovery operations around the galaxy. He always seemed to know more about local environments than anyone, and gave advice about exactly what would work best—from flora to fauna to geology. But he was also a man of secrets, as were the other Tulyans who worked for Noah. They liked to spend a lot of time by themselves, wandering around planets and communing with nature in their arcane ways.

As Noah drew near the maintenance building, he noticed new holes in the ground beyond the structure, gaping excavations that he was certain his own people had not made. “Looks like more trouble here,” he said, as he brought the groundjet to a stop near a team of his uniformed Guardians. He recognized Subi Danvar, Tesh Kori, and Anton Glavine.

“There is trouble everywhere,” Eshaz said.

With a nod, but not totally understanding what he meant, Noah stepped out. The two of them went their separate ways.

* * * * *

Taking a walk through the nearby woods, Eshaz contemplated the troubles he had seen, and the troubles that he saw coming.

The meeting with the Council of Elders had gone much more poorly than he had anticipated, even considering the bad news that he brought to them. As it turned out, he was not the only caretaker of Timeweb to report an acceleration of problems they had noticed earlier, an increasingly serious deterioration of the vital strands holding the galaxy together. The situation had, in fact, reached crisis proportions.

Upon entering the inverted dome of the Council Chamber for the regularly scheduled meeting, Eshaz had found himself in a raucous throng of his peers, all clamoring to tell their stories. While he had observed serious damage himself, the most grave report of all came from Ildawk, who described a complete web collapse in the Huluvian Sector, and the disappearance of two entire solar systems with it, decimating the Huluvian race.

Listening solemnly, the Elders had absorbed the information and conferred among themselves. First Elder Kre’n, a broad-necked female who was the head of the Council, then made a solemn pronouncement:

“All of you must redouble your efforts, or soon the galaxy will reach a state of critical mass, where the deterioration cannot be reversed.”

Turning to Eshaz, who stood at the front of the throng of caretakers, Kre’n then said, “Tell us what you see.”

Most Tulyans were prescient, with an ability to peer into paranormal realms, even into other time periods—and Eshaz was among the best with this ability. It gave him special value, but he didn’t like to use the talent. Often, it upset him too much.

Feeling exasperated, he closed his heavy-lidded eyes and peered into the time continuum of the cosmos, but saw nothing this time, not even a flicker of activity. Was that a foretelling in itself, an indication of what was to come? Utter, motionless blackness?

With a shudder, Eshaz opened his eyes. Standing before his superiors, he shook his bronze-scaled head and said, “I see nothing, First Elder. There is too much disturbance in the galaxy. It is blocking me.”

In a sense, this excuse was true, but not completely. He strongly suspected something else was interfering, a personal failure.

Kre’n nodded. “So it is. So it must be.”

The other Elders nodded, and whispered among themselves. Normally stoic, they were showing signs of emotion this time. He heard a sad edge to Kre’n’s voice, as if in realization that the end of the galaxy might be approaching. He saw worried glints in the eyes of these ancients, slight frowns on their faces.

In the past Eshaz had predicted the emergence of black holes, of suns going nova, and of gas giant planets erupting. Now, however, he felt useless, and angry with himself. He was beginning to wonder if it was not a cosmic disturbance at all, but was instead his own increasing stress, causing him to lose his timeseeing ability at a moment when he—and his people—most needed it. He felt as if he was letting them down, as if he was letting all of the galactic races down. Life … so fragile, and his own abilities were disintegrating. Almost everywhere, Timeweb was crumbling.

A possibility occurred to him. There had been no signs of web deterioration anywhere near his beloved Tulyan Starcloud, so he wondered if that sector of the galaxy could possibly be spared.

What will become of my people?
he wondered,
if our sector is spared and we have nothing left to
caretake?

The twenty old women and men of the Council were the foremost web masters in the galaxy, Tulyans who were ancient and sagacious when Eshaz was born almost a million standard years ago. The Elders knew so much more than he did about the galaxy—it was like his own knowledge in comparison with that of the most enlightened Human … Noah Watanabe, for example. The differences were so great that there was no fair comparison, and in his own limited state Eshaz could only defer to these ancient Tulyans, and hope he would himself become as wise and revered one day.

For that to happen, though, the galaxy needed to survive. And at the moment, the prospects for that did not look good at all.…

Having made his report to the wise old Tulyans, Eshaz was back on Canopa now, working with Noah and his Guardians. The Council of Elders had ordered Eshaz and all other web caretakers to amplify their ecological preservation efforts, and now they were to report more frequently than before. Because of the ominous signs noted by Eshaz and his peers in the field, the Council had also decided to dispatch more caretaker observers around the galaxy. They would serve under various guises, because Tulyans were not permitted to tell other races what they were doing, not even ecologically conscious individuals such as Noah Watanabe. No one but a Tulyan could possibly understand the enormity of the responsibilities they had.

“We are a race of givers,” Kre’n said once, “while the other races are takers, users, destroyers.”

It was true, so tragically true. And now all of the abuses of civilization were taking their terrible toll.

To aid in their caretaking efforts, the Tulyans did have a few podships that had been captured in the wild reaches of space, from intercepting the ancient migration routes of the creatures. But the pods had to be hidden carefully in order to avoid having them taken by Parvii swarms … or by the ravenous demons of the undergalaxy. With only limited resources, the dedicated Tulyans could not do much … nowhere near what they achieved in ancient, bygone times.

Emerging from his walk in the woods, Eshaz stared for a long while at the Humans bustling around the new Digger holes. The exterminators were dropping probes into the openings, to search for the malfunctioning machines.

Eshaz rather liked these Humans, especially Noah, who had more upstanding qualities than any other alien he’d ever encountered. In his long life, Eshaz had known many persons of various races, and some of them were extraordinary historical figures, males and females who were much honored by their people. Always, though, the Tulyan had tried to maintain his distance from aliens he admired. In large part this was to preserve his own emotional balance, since it was too difficult to get attached to sentients who had such short life spans in comparison with his own.

But now, for the first time, Eshaz was breaking that hard-and-fast rule. No matter how much he had tried to avoid it, he could not help feeling tremendous esteem for Noah Watanabe … and a strong bond of affection. While some of the reasons for this were obvious to Eshaz, he also felt something ineffable toward the Human, an almost instinctual sensation that was as inexplicable to him as his inability to peer through the veils of time.