Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (31 page)

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.”