Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (39 page)

That may, in fact, have been a blessing to him.

By virtue of his own ingenuity and perseverance, Thinker had developed a considerable degree of independence from Humans. Certainly, he did not serve them on a daily basis anymore, and saw far fewer of them than he used to. In addition, he had discovered new abilities that he didn’t know he had, and which he didn’t think had ever been programmed into him.

He had thought up the idea of creating a machine army out of discarded robots, and for more than a year they had been training down on the surface of Ignem. Not so long ago, Jimu led a squad of his soldiers on a mission to save Doge Lorenzo from an assassination attempt, and they were so gloriously successful that the Doge had invited them to join his special force, the prestigious Red Berets.

Sensing something, Thinker unfolded himself into the familiar form of a flat-bodied robot, the way he had looked when Humans first designed him, before he later added the folding feature himself.

Out in space not far from the inn, he saw a burst of green luminescence as a podship arrived, seeming to pop out of another dimension into this one. The gray-and-black vessel, making one of the stops on its route, proceeded to the pod station.

Thinker hurried to the lobby of the inn, to see if there were any guest arrivals. He was not the innkeeper; other robots did that for him. But as one of the machines who founded the inn, he liked to break his intense contemplation routines on occasion to see the colorful galactic races and robots that stopped off here on their various personal, business, and government missions.

Ten minutes later, only one passenger stepped into the lobby of the machine-run lodge in the orbital ring, having taken a shuttle from the pod station. Carrying no luggage, he strode to the registration desk, and spoke to the robot clerk. Curious, Thinker eavesdropped from a short distance away.

“My name is Giovanni Nehr,” the man said. “I’m on my way to Timian One, but first I need a little R and R.”

Searching his data banks, Thinker found entries about this tall, sharp-featured man, and visuals to confirm the identity. This was the younger brother of the famous nehrcom inventor, Jacopo Nehr. He had a healing pad on his left arm, over the bicep.

“Seven nights, please,” the visitor said. Reaching into his pocket, he dumped a handful of lira chips into a hopper. The alloy pieces rattled around, and the machine dropped his change into a tray. Nehr stuffed the smaller denominations into his pocket.

“I see you are hurt,” Thinker said, stepping closer with a clatter.

After looking him over, Nehr said, “It’s nothing. Just a nick.”

“Would you like us to look at it?”

“No, thank you.” The smile was stiff, making Thinker suspicious, as if he might be hiding something.

“That looks like a Mutati healing pad,” the robot observed. “It has a distinctive fold and color.”

“Oh? I wasn’t aware of that. A passenger on the podship handed it to me.”

“A
Mutati
passenger?”

The man reddened. “If so, I wasn’t aware of it. He looked Human to me. He seemed kind enough, and wouldn’t have cared about me if he really was a Mutati. Would he?”

“You wouldn’t think so. Unless he was trying to get information out of you. Did he ask a lot of questions?”

“Like you, you mean?” Nehr smiled stiffly.

“Yes.”

“Well, come to think of it, he was rather curious.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“Mmmm, not much. The cross-space journey was brief, only a few minutes.”

“Forgive my questions, but we are very security conscious here, and our data banks require information.”

“I am quite tired,” Nehr said, “so if you will forgive me, I’d like to go to my room now.”

But Thinker took a step closer, and his voice intensified, since he always worried about what Mutatis were up to, and the harm they constantly inflicted on Humans. “Did you see any Mutatis that were recognizable?”

“By name, you mean? I’m not personally acquainted with their kind.”

“By
race
, Mr. Nehr. Did you see any shapeshifters in their natural, fleshy form, perhaps in the neutral confines of the podship?”

“Yes. They travel, as all of the races do.”

“I’m sensing something more. Forgive me, Mr. Nehr, but I am very perceptive. I have developed my mind and senses to very high levels. Sometimes I wonder if I have what you Humans refer to as a sixth sense. Am I mistaken about you?”

Chewing at the inside of his mouth, Nehr said, “Not exactly.” He paused, and leaned back against the registration desk. “I went to a planet called Nui-Lin for a vacation, and found out it was a Mutati front. They took me prisoner and put me on a prison moon. I barely escaped with my life.” He touched his injured arm.

Thinker detected a mélange of truth and fiction, but didn’t press any more, and bade the man good day. As Nehr followed a bellhop robot to his room, Thinker sorted through what he had just heard, and combined it with what he had been learning from other travelers. The Mutatis were more active along the space corridors than they had been in many years. Historically, this meant they were up to something big, perhaps a surprise military attack. They were a race of devious tricksters, able to assume many guises and sneak behind enemy lines to learn information.

Quickly, Thinker dictated a letter into his internal word processor and transferred it to a disk cylinder, for delivery to the Doge Lorenzo del Velli. With no nehrcom transmitter available at the Inn of the White Sun, the missive would go out on the next podship, carried to the merchant prince capital by Agar, a repaired messenger robot.

Unfortunately, due to a programming glitch, Agar would become lost in deep space and never make it to his destination. No one ever would ever hear from him again.

Chapter Fifty-Six

Dreams are the products of imagination, and the fuel of civilization.

—Chia, a merchant prince poet

Back when they were small boys, Dux Hannah and his cousin Acey Zelk used to dream of running away to space together and sharing grand adventures, of meeting beautiful girls and getting richer than the grandest princes in the realm.

Living in the wild back country of Siriki, their plans had been vague in those days, more the fantasies of fanciful children than reality. Then they were enslaved, first by merchant princes and later by Mutatis, before using their wiles to escape from both. Thus, before their seventeenth birthdays, they had been abused by both sides of the ongoing galactic war. This might have left them feeling put upon and filled with hatred toward their captors, but it had done nothing of the kind. On the contrary, they remained upbeat, and harkened back to the “old days” when they planned to share fabulous journeys together.

Through all that they had shared, the boys had forged a bond between them, a friendship that extended far beyond the familial blood they shared. Their camaraderie had been forged in a crucible of perilous escapades, when any moment might have been their last. But they persevered through what they called “misadventures,” and lived to look back on the experiences, and even to laugh about them.

After escaping from the Mutati prison moon, Dux and Acey stowed away on conventional spacecraft and podships, vagabonding from one star system to another, from one pod station to another. If a place interested them, perhaps after talking with strangers along the way, they went down to the planet and investigated it.

Now they were on the third such world they had visited in the past few weeks, each time having to panhandle for shuttle fares, since they had no money. While podship trips were free of charge—traveling routes developed by the mysterious, sentient pods—shuttle trips usually were not. This could have left them stranded in space if they had not been able to figure out ways to get down to the planets.

It was risky leaving the pod stations and venturing down, so before venturing to the surface, they developed the habit of asking as many questions as they could. If they didn’t like the answers, or if they could not get enough information to make them feel comfortable, they remained in space and caught the next podship, bound for unknown sectors. This caused them to avoid both MPA and Mutati worlds, and to shun planets controlled by the allies of both sides as well, principally those of the Hibbils and the Adurians.

Such caution did not restrict their movements that much. The galaxy was a vast place, filled with colorful races and exotic worlds. In spite of their youth, Dux and Acey became good judges of character. That didn’t mean someone couldn’t slip something by them, but they did work hard at it, and they were both quite intelligent, despite having no formal education.…

On Vippandry, their shuttle descended past the Floating Airgardens, one of the Wonders of the Galaxy. The gardens, circular tiers of flowers and lawns that floated in the lower atmosphere, rose more than seven kilometers into the air and covered many cubic meters. They looked to the naked eye like holo projections, but were real, kept aloft by exotic, lighter-than-air plants from all over the galaxy, selected by master gardeners.

The shuttle pilot, a Vippandry with billowing white hair, acted like a tour guide for the trip down from the pod station. “You’re lucky,” he said. “The gardeners are at work now.” He laughed. “I should have charged you more.”

The passengers—an assortment of shapes and races—thronged to the windows, pushing for better views. They oohed and awed in their native languages, while gardeners wearing jet packs pruned the plants and added aerosol nutrients to the lighter-than-air soils. Dux thought they looked like bees or hummingbirds tending flowers, nurturing them.

At the Airgarden Gift Shop, Dux and Acey read a computerized bulletin board, looking for jobs. They paused to peruse enlistment ads for Noah Watanabe’s Guardians, and learned of the ecological engineering work they performed on several planets. The work sounded interesting to the boys, and they liked a good cause, but they had something more adventurous in mind.

They spent more than a day panhandling around the shuttleport, and on the narrow, cobblestone streets of the nearby old city. The following day they made it back to the orbital pod station.

While waiting for the next podship into space, they wandered along the sealed walkways of the station. Looking through plax viewing windows at the ships out in the zero-g docking bays, they watched the crews as they performed various tasks or just stood around chatting. One mixed group of aliens and Humans had a mechanical problem with their spaceclipper. Wearing breather suits, they had one of the engine compartments open, with parts scattered on the adhesive surface of a work platform. An old vessel, it had maroon-and-vermillion swirls on the sides, and the graceful structural lines of a bygone era. Somehow its crew had managed to keep it going this long, but to Dux it looked like the end of the line. The name of the vessel was emblazoned on its side in golden letters, “
Avelo
.”

As the two teenagers looked on, a Hibbil crewman stepped through an airlock and approached them, a rugged-looking little fellow dressed in black. He wore an eye patch, and a sword in a scabbard.

“Where you boys headed?” he asked in a squeaky voice.

“Deep space,” Acey said.

“That covers a lot of territory, doesn’t it?” He rubbed his furry chin. “No place in particular?”

They shook their heads.

“We’re a treasure ship,” the Hibbil said, gripping the handle of his sword. “I’m Mac Golden, official purser on the ship. I keep track of everything important for the captain.” The little fellow beamed proudly. “He considers me the most trustworthy person on the crew.”

“Your ship is full of treasure?”

“Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. On this run, we’ve had a streak of bad luck, more trouble than you could.…” He paused, and stared at a podship as it entered the docking bay. Simultaneously, the crew of the treasure ship stopped working, to look.

The podship swung wildly and bumped into the Hibbil’s vessel, almost jerking it free of its moorings. Then the podship continued on its way, to the main docking bay at the center of the pod station. When it was safe, the crew returned to their work on the engine.

“That’s the third time one of those pods has nudged us,” Mac Golden said. “They seem impatient with us, but we can’t leave yet.”

“C’mon,” Dux said to Acey. “Let’s go catch our ride.”

But Acey hesitated. He watched the crew at work, then went over and spoke to them through a wall speaker. “These hydion drives can be temperamental, eh?” Acey said.

“You know anything about them?” one of the crew asked from out in the docking bay, a tall, black-bearded Ordian.

“Yeah, a little.”

A short while later the podship left, again bumping into the
Avelo
, and then continuing on its way.

Saying he might be able to help, Acey talked them into loaning him a breather suit. He went out and immersed himself in the engine work, examining the pieces carefully, discussing them with the crew, asking questions like a doctor diagnosing the symptoms of a patient. One of the men took an interest in Acey, a gray-beard who wore a dirty white shirt and a red sash around his waist.

“That’s Wimm Yuell,” Mac said. “Our captain.”

Dux nodded. A while later, a dark-skinned alien—small and swarthy, with a pointed snout—emerged from the ship and passed food bars around to the crew as they worked. He didn’t wear a breather, making Dux wonder where he was from. Dux got one of the bars from Mac. He found it delicious, but with fruity flavors that he couldn’t identify.

Acey kept working with the captain and the others, and they seemed to be following his advice. The crew was putting the engine back together, while Acey used diagnostic devices to test the components.

Bored and wanting to leave, Dux strolled down the walkway. He learned from a glyphreader panel hanging from the ceiling that the next podship wasn’t due for a couple of days.

Dux took his time, exploring the walkways and the waiting room, looking at reading material that had been left behind. He spent some time chatting with an old man who called himself the manager of the pod station, though Dux didn’t think any such position existed. He seemed a little touched in the head, but harmless enough.