Read Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus Online

Authors: Brian Herbert,Brian Herbert

Tags: #Brian Herbert, Timeweb, omnibus, The Web and the Stars, Webdancers, science fiction, sci fi

Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (88 page)

He focused on Pimyt’s latest communiqués. One was to the Human-ruled planet of Renfa, ordering the disbanding of a squadron of attack spacecraft. In recent months Jacopo had been the conduit for other military and business messages from the attaché, and the general had assumed that Pimyt and his Hibbil friends were engaged in war profiteering, controlling contracts for the construction of new military bases and for the manufacturing of war materials, making exorbitant profits in the bargain. He assumed they might even be stealing weapons and selling them to neutral parties—not imagining that they would sell to anyone remotely associated with the Mutatis.

“You will take care of these for me,” Pimyt repeated. “Do it tomorrow.”

Jacopo nodded, then spun his chair and gazed out into the starry night sky. He heard the door slide open behind him, and the Hibbil muttering as he left.

Just then Jacopo heard the voice of his own daughter, Nirella, who entered the office. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

He went to greet the stocky, middle-aged woman. “Nothing, nothing. Just the usual.” He had to keep the shameful secret to himself, that he was being blackmailed.

“I wish you wouldn’t work so late,” she said. “I worry about you.”

“Don’t,” he said, mustering a reassuring tone. He ushered her to the door. “I don’t have that much more to do tonight.”

“All right, Daddy,” she said. Giving him a peck on the cheek, she departed, leaving him to his troubled thoughts. Staring off into space, he felt dismal, with very few connections to anything that made him happy. His daughter was one of the few remaining links to his earlier celebrated life.

In her early forties and unmarried, Nirella admired her father and worked closely with him. Few people knew that she co-discovered the nehrcom transceiver with him almost twenty years earlier. The two of them had been on a business trip to one of the Inner Planets, setting up distributors for Jacopo’s precious-stone export business, one of his enterprises at the time. In that operation he had specialized in selling exotic, priceless gems. Following a long day of fruitless negotiations with the Wygeros who controlled that sector, Jacopo and Nirella had been going over their business plan in their spacetel suite. Suddenly they had stopped, as static and loud voices filled the air.

Close examination of the suite had revealed that they were, in fact, alone. But crawling around on the floor, Jacopo found the source of the noise, a tiny piece of translucent green stone that had lodged in the sole of one of his shoes. As he pulled the fragment free and held it up to the light, the fuzzy, staticky sounds had still come from it. Nirella had started to say something, but had fallen silent. Wisely, it turned out.

Both of them had recognized the green rock fragment as a substance their miners had only recently discovered on a remote planet … a deep-shaft emerald brought up by a drilling machine from more than fifty kilometers beneath the surface. Preliminary reports—made at their Canopa laboratory just before they departed for the Inner Planets—indicated it was harder than any known substance in the galaxy, with a crystalline, piezoelectric atomic structure. The voices they had been hearing in the spacetel room were those of their own company gemologists in the corporate laboratory far across space, talking about how rare the green stones were. The gemologists were speculating on what the market value of the newly discovered stones might be, and revealed a skimming operation they had been conducting, stealing precious gems from the corporation.

Kneeling beside her father, Nirella had exchanged startled glances with him, and neither of them had spoken while the static and voices continued. There were several things going on at once. Dishonest employees in sensitive positions were pilfering company assets, and somehow their duplicity was being communicated across more than a hundred light years of distance. Based upon outside events referred to in the distant conversations, it seemed to be
instantaneous
communication, too.

Simultaneously, Jacopo and his daughter had realized the immensity of what was occurring.

Without any doubt, instantaneous cross-space communication would be one of the most astounding, valuable discoveries in the history of the galaxy. But looking at his daughter, Jacopo realized that he was not alone in the knowledge. As he considered the immensity of this secret, the twenty-four-year-old woman unsheathed a stiletto from her waist and handed it to him. “Slit my throat quickly if you must,” she said. “Do it the way I taught you.”

Having developed potent fighting skills from an early age and honed them over the years, Nirella had been a reserve Red Beret captain at the time. She was his bodyguard as well as his business associate. He trusted her implicitly, but both of them knew that a secret of such magnitude was mind-boggling. Refusing to accept the weapon from her, he looked deep into her almond-shaped eyes, trying to see her soul, the part of her that would remain faithful through all temptations … or would betray him. Such a secret went beyond family blood.
Way beyond it.

And he had told her to put the knife away.…

Citing a “personal emergency,” Jacopo had subsequently canceled all further negotiations with the Wygeros and had caught the first outbound podship, accompanied by his daughter. Transferring twice en route, they reached Canopa in short order, and strode into the laboratory, surprising the gemologists. Nirella did her job well, cutting their throats without spilling any blood on the interesting new stones.

In ensuing weeks, Jacopo and his daughter performed their own experiments in secrecy, with each of them on a different planet, transmitting back and forth. In this manner, the optimum cuts and configurations of the emeralds were developed for perfect sound quality. Subsequently, Jacopo’s miners found the special emeralds deep beneath the surface of other planets around the galaxy, and after testing them he took steps to provide security over all of the resources.

But even with all of the research they conducted, Jacopo and his daughter never figured out
how
the gems transmitted across such vast distances … only that they did. Ever since then, Jacopo had paid Nirella more than she had ever imagined it possible to earn. She became his equal partner in the enterprise, even though he took all of the credit for it in public, and strutted about like a great inventor.

She never seemed to mind, and for that, he loved her even more.

Chapter Forty-Nine

If you consider any question and its apparent answer, you will come to realize that you still have a lot more to think about. Profundity is only a function of the power of the mind.

—The Tulyan Conundrum

The Tulyan Starcloud was a planetary system at the edge of the galaxy, surrounded by weak suns. Concealed from them by mists during their previous stay in the orbiting Visitor’s Center, Dux and Acey had only imagined what was down there, based on descriptions provided by the staff of the spacetel. But those words had been grossly inadequate for the wonders they beheld now as they returned from deep space, not coming close to what they were meant to describe.

The beauty made Dux gasp and stare in speechless wonder. It was an otherworldly place that no one could tell him and his cousin about; they had to see and experience it for themselves.

While Tulyan handlers took control of the podship herd, Eshaz said he would take the boys and Tesh on a tour around the starcloud. Tesh had refused to give up control of her podship, and had instead sealed the sectoid chamber in the way of her people and left the pod tethered to other vessels, floating in secure space, protected by the powerful energy shield of the strongest Tulyan mindlink ever conceived. Eshaz explained to his guests that Parviis had previously penetrated their security system, but that would not happen again. Every Tulyan on the starcloud was focused on this important assignment, and had created the most dense and unbreakable telepathic field in their history. It should be more than enough, Eshaz promised.

Following Eshaz onto a wingless, pencil-shaped vessel, Dux noticed a circle design etched into the hull, which the Tulyan said was the sacred sigil of his people. After seating his guests in the cabin,

Eshaz activated the computerized pilot system, and the small ship took off. It made hardly any noise as it flew. Presently, they were flying between the three planets in the unusual solar system.

The legendary starcloud was unlike any place Dux and Acey had seen before, in all the travels they had made around the galaxy, on their vagabond adventures. The Tulyan lands over which they flew were pristine, a fairy tale realm of lovely meadows, sapphire-blue lakes, tall forests, and craggy, snow-clad mountains.

“Each night the skies are filled with comets and meteor showers,” Eshaz said, “a truly remarkable ethereal display. Some of the heavenly travelers can be seen in the daytime as well, moving and flashing across the milky white backdrop of the starcloud.”

“Sounds eerily beautiful,” Dux said.

“It has that quality,” the big Tulyan agreed. “We have a defensive system called the Tulyan mindlink, and it is said that some of our most powerful Elders actually hitch telepathic rides on comets and meteors, and ride them into space.”

“Wow,” Acey said. “Wish I could do that.”

“You’re probably not smart enough, cousin,” Dux said. “And neither am I.”

“Nor I,” Eshaz said. “This universe is full of wondrous things you can never do, no matter how long your life is.” He looked sadly at the boys, as if thinking of something he didn’t want to say to them.

While the pencil-shaped vessel flew on, going in and out of the mists, Eshaz said his people did not live in cities. Rather, the four million inhabitants were widely separated in small settlements on the three gravitationally linked planets of the system. Tulyans lived quite simply, and one of the few examples of advanced technology they had was the starcloud transportation system they were using now.

“The sigil of your people, the circle design on the hull of this ship,” Dux said. “What does it mean?”

“Everything in life goes in a circle,” the Tulyan responded, “from life to death, from happiness to sadness, from beauty to chaos. We are all eternal beings , and yet we are not. Riddles and circles mirroring each other, truths and deeper truths, layers and layers of reality, all returning to a cosmic speck of singularity, a starting and ending point. That is what existence is all about, as my people have determined, with all of their collected wisdom.”

Pausing, Eshaz added, “We Tulyans are a very ancient race, perhaps the first in the entire galaxy. We go far back, through the mists and veils of time.”

Presently he brought the pencil ship down in a field of red and yellow flowers on the largest world of Tuly. Disembarking, he led them along a path to a knoll where he lived, a black, glassy structure overlooking an alpine lake that was surrounded by gnarled little trees.

“This is the finest spot in the entire universe,” he announced, as he swung open a heavy door and went inside. “I am very fortunate, indeed.”

The walls of his home, both inside and out, were of a deep black obsidian-like material. When sunlight glinted on it the hard surface became translucent and revealed glittering points of light deep in the surface. For Dux, it was like peering into the universe itself.

After dinner that evening they went outside, where fiery comets and meteors swept through the mists of the starcloud, seeming to put on a show just for them.

Far across the galaxy, Noah remained imprisoned at the CorpOne medical facility on Canopa. He had made numerous efforts to escape from the facility, and when the physical attempts had failed, he had resorted to mental excursions, using his powers in Timeweb. But those powers were nowhere near what they had once been, back in the days when he had been able to make mental leaps across space and pilot podships by remote telepathy … in the days before he advised Doge Lorenzo to set up sensor-guns at pod stations around the galaxy, to prevent deadly Mutati military ventures. The shapeshifters had been using a terrible weapon they transported in schooners aboard podships. Entire merchant prince planets had been blown to oblivion, scattered into space dust. Drastic measures had been required, and Noah had been at the center of the effort.

As a result, several podships had been destroyed by sensor-guns. Circumstantial evidence suggested to him that the sentient spaceships had detected his culpability in the matter, and had taken steps to block his access to the cosmic web. Such efforts (if they occurred) had not been entirely successful, since Noah had still been able to burst out into the cosmos, for paranormal journeys. But his efforts had been erratic, unpredictable, and very frustrating.

Now, after exhausting himself for hours in such efforts, he lay on a cot in his locked room, and found that he was caught in yet another locked room, a nightmare of the mind. In the dream he was trapped in a deep hole, with a huge Digger machine towering over him, piling dirt on top of him. Tesh Kori was at the controls of the machine, laughing fiendishly as she buried him.

Noah screamed, but to no avail as she piled more dirt on. Somehow, even with the scooping activity he could still see her, and still retained a glimmer of life. He howled at her in protest, “How can you do this to me? Don’t you know I love you?”

The roar of machinery drowned out his words, and then he heard only the ominous sound of dirt being piled on top of him. Darkness flooded him. He was completely buried. Moments of horror passed, in which he wished he could die, but somehow he did not. Then he sensed something opening up beneath him. The planetary crust cracked, and he tumbled into a deep, Stygian void, a frozen vault of time.

He remembered hearing legends of another galaxy beneath his own, and as he tumbled into the unknown he felt chilled to the very depths of his soul. Various races called it the “undergalaxy,” the place of eternal damnation.

Struggling with every last ounce of strength that he possessed, Noah flailed his arms and slammed into something. He woke up, and in the low light he saw that he was back in the Corp One room again. His left arm throbbed where he had struck a side table, knocking it over.

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