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  This hapless torture victim (captured in a space skirmish between Humans and Mutatis) was still trying to metamorphose his flesh in order to escape, but Sajak handled him deftly with the strong green threads of high-intensity light. As the Mutati assumed different physiques, the laser threads still held onto him, tightening their grip on his cellular structure and causing him to howl in agony and frustration. Exhausted, he reverted to his original fat, fleshy form.

  With a sardonic laugh, the General turned up the pain amplification mechanism to its maximum setting, causing the Mutati to squirm even more frantically. The creature reached the highest note of a blood-curdling scream, and then babbled everything he knew about the military operations of his people. In a cracking voice, he said he was a mid-level officer, a sevencap who had been the adjutant for one of their top admirals.

  “He has told all he knows,” General Sajak announced triumphantly, as the victim slumped on the rack, bleeding purple fluid from his ears and giving off fitful gasps. The small officer stood over him, smiling.…

  One of the noblemen sitting in judgment with Lorenzo was the chisel-featured Jacopo Nehr, inventor of the “nehrcom,” the instantaneous, cross-galactic communication system. Fabulously wealthy, he also manufactured efficient, low-cost robots in leased facilities on the Hibbil Cluster Worlds, and engaged in precious gem mining and distribution.

  The other noble at the Judgment Table was Saito Watanabe of CorpOne, a tall, obese man with jowls that hung loosely on each side of his face. He and Nehr, both born commoners, had been promoted by the Doge to “Princes of the Realm,” in honor of their business successes. Now their companies were affiliated with the all-pervasive Doge Corporation, which received a share of all merchant prince profits.

  Prince Saito did not like these sessions, but attended them out of necessity, in order to maintain the favorable economic position of his own business empire. When the interrogation of a prisoner became most intense, he tried to tune it out discreetly and think of other matters. At the moment, he was remembering back a decade, to a time when his estranged son Noah had been in his late twenties and had worked for him. Once they had been close, though it had developed into a strained relationship, filled with disagreements over environmental issues.

  He wondered if the young man had been right after all.

  Sadness filled the Prince as he recalled their emotion-charged final argument. As the details came back, he felt tears forming in his eyes. With sudden resolve, he fought the emotion and pushed it deep inside, where it would not be noticed by his companions.

  Only hours ago, Prince Saito had sent his son a letter suggesting a meeting. A telebeam response had arrived moments before this interrogation session, as indicated by a change in the color of Saito’s signet ring, from ruby to emerald. He had not been able to look at it yet.

  At long last the victim issued a horrendous, shuddering scream and died. As he did so, the wager box metamorphosed from black to gold, and cast a bright beam of light on the face of the victorious contestant. It was Lorenzo the Magnificent, as usual. He loved to win, and set the machines to make certain that he always did.

  Presently, the Doge and Nehr went out the door, bantering back and forth over the results of the bet, while Saito remained at the table. Men in black hoods swung a hoist mechanism over the corpse of the prisoner. They grunted with exertion as they moved the heavy body onto a sling.

  Prince Watanabe took a deep breath, anticipating a negative response from his proud, willful son. To activate the telebeam projector, he touched the stone of the signet ring. The mechanism identified him from DNA in the oil of his skin and flashed a black-on-white message in front of his eyes, floating in the air.

  He read it, and allowed a tear of joy to fall down his cheek. Given a fresh opportunity, he would listen to his son this time, would do everything humanly possible to bring them back together again.

  Chapter Three

  There is a legend that the Creator of the Galaxy can alter his appearance, like a Mutati.

  —From a Mutati children’s story

  Paradij, the fabled Mutati homeworld.…

  High atop his glittering Citadel overlooking the capital city, the Zultan Abal Meshdi stood on a clearglax floor inside a slowly spinning gyrodome. An immense terramutati who could take on many appearances, he now looked like a golden-maned lionoid in flowing robes and jewels, clinging with the suction of his bare feet to the moist, revolving surface.

  Around the majestic leader spun two other compartments, visible to him through thick, clear plates. One contained waterborne Mutati variations that swam gracefully … while the other enclosure was filled with genetic variations that flew about at hummingbird speed.

  These were the three types of Mutatis—terramutatis, hydromutatis, and aeromutatis—functioning on the ground, in the water, and in the air. Within their own environments, the variations could shapeshift, becoming a panoply of exotic creatures.

  From the gyrodome, Meshdi saw Royal Chancellor Aton Turba in the room outside, pacing back and forth as he awaited the instructions of his superior. A mass of flesh with a small head and centipede legs, Turba had been in this shape for less than a day.

  If a Mutati remained in one form too long, his sensitive cellular structure locked into place, so that he could no longer metamorphose. Normally it was safe to maintain one appearance for weeks, but Turba changed himself on a much more frequent basis, fearful that if he didn’t he might slip into cellular rigidity. And, despite the chancellor’s fluid appearance he remained instantly recognizable to the Zultan, who possessed a rare gift. Meshdi was one of the few Mutatis who could look at another, no matter his appearance, and see beyond the surface to an intricate combination of aural hues and electrical charges that were unique to the individual.

  The Zultan’s gyrodome made a faint squealing noise specially tuned to give pleasure to him, and he smelled the sweetness of santhems, tiny airflowers that glowed faintly mauve in the moist, humid air … a barely visible field of color.

  Abal Meshdi inhaled deeply, absorbing millions of the scented flowerets. A sensation of deep relaxation permeated his entire body, and he sighed with pleasure.

  A wonderful gift from his Adurian allies far across the galaxy, the gyrodome spun faster and faster, raising the pitch of its whine, heightening his pleasure to one of the highest levels he had ever experienced. Everything became a blur around him. The mechanism sent the Zultan into a trance in which all of the problems, decisions, and challenges of his position were aligned, and he could consider them in detail.

  Foremost in his mind: the continued Human threat. Each day he considered what to do with the ones that were captured, assigning the trickle that came in from various sectors of the galaxy to hard labor or execution through horrific, screaming deaths. He enjoyed watching them die, since they suffered so much. Like his counterparts on Timian One, he knew how to heighten the pain of his enemies.

  He also worried what to do with his own son, Hari’Adab, who seemed overly independent, almost rebellious at times. It especially troubled him that Hari had expressed opposition to him privately about the “Demolio” program, a top secret, highly ambitious military weapon that the Mutatis had under development. The Zultan, with no patience for naysayers, had thus far been unable to change the young Mutati’s mind, but had obtained his sacred promise to keep his feelings to himself. And, in an effort to provide Hari with administrative experience for the maturation of his thinking processes, he had assigned him as Emir of another planet, Dij. For some time, however, Hari had not been submitting the required reports to his father. As a result, the Zultan would need to apply stern discipline.

  Gradually the dome slowed, and Abal Meshdi stood upright. The water and air creatures around him had grown quiet, and the Zultan’s head was clear and calm. By the time he emerged from the dome, he had made a decision about his arch enemies. The matter of his errant son would have to wait.

  Aton Turba bowed, then stood submissively
with his three hands clasped in front of his round belly.

  Above all, the Zultan hated Humans. It was an enmity that went back for millennia, to disputes among the distant ancestors of both races. He didn’t remember what started it all, but had an exacting memory of the events that had occurred during his own lifetime. There had been a number of military skirmishes, and in most of them Humans had prevailed. Because of limitations on space travel, however—with faster-than-light speed only achieved by mysterious, sentient podships that operated on their own schedules—neither side had been able to mount a large-scale attack on the other.

  According to Mutati mythology, the galaxy was once pristine, before Humans defiled it tens of thousands of years ago. The Mutatis knew this from an oral tradition that went back to a time before Humans existed, when there were only a handful of galactic races.

  The Zultan scowled at his chancellor and announced, “The gyrodome has just shown me exactly how to use the new weapon my researchers are developing.”

  Turba looked perplexed, for he had not been told anything about this. But he knew better than to ask questions of his superior. As always, the information would flow in due course, and the chancellor would be required to remember every detail.

  “When the device is perfected I will institute a new policy,” the Zultan announced in a pompous voice, “and trillions of Humans will be exterminated, like hordes of insects.”

  Abal Meshdi went on to explain the terrible new doomsday weapon to Turba, and told the astounded chancellor that he would need to tend more carefully to the affairs of the Citadel in the near future, since the Zultan would be occupied with other, more far-reaching, matters.…

  * * * * *

  Within days, an elite corps of “outriders” was selected and trained … Mutatis who were looking for opportunities to attack their enemies with the most frightful weapon of annihilation in the history of galactic warfare.

  Overseeing the operation from his busy War Room in the capital city of Jadeen, the Zultan gazed out on banks of data processors that projected space-simulation images of the merchant prince worlds … and of planets farther out, at the fringe of the enemy realm. A tiny spaceship, represented by a larger-than-scale point of orange light, flew toward one of the outer worlds.

  Abal Meshdi chuckled, and thought, The Humans believe they are such masters of technology, but we have a surprise for them.

  Chapter Four

  Timeweb ensnares the past, the present, and the future. As each moment becomes the past, it folds into the web and seems to disappear without actually doing so. Simultaneously, in a great cosmic balance, the future opens up for us … little by little.

  —Tulyan Imprint

  Seated in the back of a maglev limousine, the man gazed out a tinted window as the car hummed along a mountain track, snaking downhill. Through morning vistas that opened between sun-dappled trees, Noah Watanabe saw immense factories and office complexes below in the Valley of the Princes, facilities that were operated by the titans of industry who controlled the multi-planet Human Empire. For a few seconds, he barely made out the high-walled perimeter of his father’s CorpOne compound, with its radically-shaped structures, an imaginative variety of geometric and artistic combinations.

  On the opposite side of the valley, Rainbow City—the largest industrial metropolis on Canopa—clung to a shimmering, iridescent cliff. Workers occupied homes on the lower levels of the community, while the villas of wealthy noblemen studded the top like a crown of jewels. For decades Prince Saito had owned one of those palatial residences, and Noah recalled some happy times growing up there … but only a few. There had been too many family problems.

  It was early summer now, with the canopa pines and exotic grasses of the valley still bright green, having gorged themselves with moisture in anticipation of the coming dry months. Noah viewed it as a survival mechanism, and thought that plants were just as intelligent as other life forms, but in different ways. This and other controversial beliefs frequently put him at odds with the wealthy industrialists of the Merchant Prince Alliance, including his own father.

  Noah wore a velvis surcoat and a high-collar shirt with a gold chain around the neck. His muscles bulged under the fabric. He was accompanied by six men dressed in the green-and-brown uniforms of the Guardians, his force of environmental activists who were known as “eco-warriors.” The men were armed with high-caliber puissant rifles, as well as sidearms and an arsenal of stun-weapons, poisons, and plax-explosives. They sat silently, staring outside in all directions, ever on the alert for danger. Ahead of the black car and behind it on the maglev track—as arranged by Prince Saito—were nine other identical vehicles, thus preventing potential aggressors from targeting Noah too easily. An air escort of CorpOne attack hellees flew overhead, and the entire area around him had been scanned by infrared and other devices.

  Enemies could still defeat any of these systems. Technology was that way; you could never be certain what your adversary knew, or what he had developed to use against you in the eternal dance of offensive and defensive advancements. People wishing to do Noah harm might still be lurking in the woods or in the air, but he believed in fate; if something was meant to get him, it would.

  This was how he felt about the upcoming meeting with his father, which he had not expected to occur. Upon receiving the message from the old man, Noah had experienced a visceral sensation that a greater power was at work, drawing them together. Perhaps the two of them, who had disagreed so vehemently about industrial and environmental issues in the past, might find some common ground after all. Noah had always held onto a thread of hope that this might happen, but had taken no steps in that direction, until he replied to his father’s recent message.

  Noah’s strong belief in fate did not mean that he just sat around and waited for things to occur. Far from it. The penultimate activist among activists, he was an assertive leader who constantly pushed events, implementing large-scale transformations on the worlds of the Human-controlled Merchant Prince Alliance.

  In the process, Noah had become fabulously wealthy in his own right, so he cared nothing of rumors reaching him that he had been disowned by his father; he really only cared about the loss of a relationship with Prince Saito … the riches of emotion, knowledge, and experience that they were not sharing with each other. Maybe that was about to change.

  The procession of maglev vehicles reached the valley floor, where the single track widened into ten, with a variety of conveyances whirring along on them … luxury cars, truck-trailer rigs, and buses filled with workers. Presently Noah and his entourage passed through a security beam at an ornate gate, and entered the CorpOne compound. A pair of diamonix elephants with red-jeweled eyes stood on either side of a grassy planting area just inside the entry. Ahead, Noah could see the main building. He knew it well, from having worked there with his father at one time, before their blowup.

  A marvel of engineering and aesthetic design, Prince Saito Watanabe’s office headquarters was an inverted pyramid, with the point down. As if by magic, the large structure balanced perfectly in that precarious position, while the foundation—a broad platform that included gardens, flagstones, and ornamental fountains—spun slowly beneath it. But Noah Watanabe (with his scientific knowledge and curiosity) knew how it worked; the structure was held in place by a slender core-pillar of pharium, the strongest metal in the galaxy. Elaborate geomagnetics were involved as well, and as a last recourse, a backup system would shoot stabilizing outriggers into receptacles if the tilt meters indicated trouble.

  Noah’s car hummed up to the edge of the slowly revolving platform and locked into position at the edge of an exotic rose garden. He gazed up at the improbable building above him as it rotated with the platform, and considered the practical benefits of such a design. As the headquarters spun, it gave off electronic pulses that absorbed and processed important data. The system could identify known agitators from all galactic races, profile criminal types, and make highly sophi
sticated statistical predictions.

  Noah wondered what his father wanted; their emotion-charged enmity had lasted for a decade and a half. In memory, he went over the conciliatory message he had received from the old patriarch, reviewing every detail that had been in the telebeam. His father was a precise man, who said exactly what he intended every time he communicated in any form, but Noah suspected hidden meanings:

  In the past we have not understood one another as a father and son should. I blame myself almost entirely, and you not at all. It is my duty to bridge our differences.

  The electronic transmittal had gone on to suggest a time and a place for a meeting. Now, as Noah watched a white-uniformed escort secretary march primly toward the hover-limousine, he recollected his own written response:

  Father: I appreciate your sentiments, and look forward to meeting with you as you have specified

  * * * * *

  From her office inside the inverted pyramid, Francella Watanabe stared in rage and disbelief at a closed-circuit screen that showed the escort secretary leading Noah and his entourage through a wide corridor. At various points along the route, Francella—as Corporate Security Chief—could activate detonations by remote control and kill the entire party. The thought was tempting, but she had something even more devastating in mind.

  With a heavy sigh, she activated a copy of the telebeam messages her father and Noah had exchanged, and continued to seethe over them, as she had done since seeing them for the first time three days before. To the very depths of her soul she loathed her twin brother, resenting the preferential treatment he had always received at her expense. Before the big disagreement between Noah and his father over environmental issues, the young man had been the heir apparent, the favored one. In those days Noah had even dressed like his father, in a cloak, brocaded surcoat and liripipe hat, while she was expected to remain in the shadows and say very little. She was, after all, only a female in an interplanetary society run by men, for the benefit of men.