The Web and the Stars Read online

  Behind her, she heard the scorn of the palace full of Parviis, with Woldn’s voice rising above the others, and telepathic winds buffeted her. She hurried into the sectoid chamber, and got underway.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Does my brother think I am a monster, with no feelings? He has never understood me. To be accurate, I have feelings for him. I hate him with every fiber of my being.

  —Francella Watanabe

  “You don’t seem to realize it,” Francella said, “but I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.” In her black underclothes, she sat on an immense, disheveled bed, beneath a gilded headboard that bore the golden tigerhorse crest of the Doge’s royal house.

  “And I haven’t?” Lorenzo snapped, as he dressed to leave. “Where do you think I’m going now? I have an important military meeting.”

  “So like a man,” she said, “acting like a woman’s concerns are nothing. Sometimes you make me feel invisible. Am I no more than a sexual partner to you?”

  At her own villa, they were in the large top-floor suite that she had leased to Lorenzo. The morning sunlight was too bright for Francella. At a snap of her fingers, she lowered the automatic shades.

  Clearly agitated, Lorenzo had difficulty buttoning his dark-blue tunic. “What is it this time? It’s always something, isn’t it?”

  “Lorenzo,” she said, in her firmest tone, “I want you to sit down and listen to me.” She only began sentences with his given name when she wanted him to feel like he’d done something wrong.

  From their long relationship, he understood the code between them. With a long, annoyed sigh, he sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her, leaving his tunic unbuttoned.

  “You’ve been a bad little boy,” she said with a smile, “and I think you need a spanking.”

  He fought back a smile. “After the meeting, OK? Please hurry and tell me. What do you need?”

  Her eyelids fluttered. “Not so much. I just want to know what you’re going to do with my troublesome brother.”

  “You know we’ve been questioning him, and performing medical tests to find out why he recovered so easily from the wound you gave him. My experts tell me they still have a great deal of work to do.”

  “I’m his sister, remember? Perhaps I can figure out what your experts cannot. They are taking a long time, too long. Having trouble, aren’t they?”

  “Well, yes, but Noah is an unprecedented case.”

  “As his twin, I might have certain insights.”

  The Doge arched his gray eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you have the same ability?”

  “No, nothing of the kind. But I do know more about him than anyone else. I grew up with him in the same household. If anyone can get through the barriers he has set up, it is me.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

  “Let me supervise the research; put me in charge of Noah. As the owner of CorpOne, I have the finest medical laboratories on Canopa, but you haven’t even used them. Your investigators seem to be protecting their own turf. But they’re not making any progress, and it’s time for a change.”

  “You want to keep Noah’s fate in the Watanabe family?”

  “You could put it that way.”

  He scowled. “I find it ironic that you would ask this of me, when you kept me from deciding about the fate of my own son. For more than twenty years, I didn’t even know Anton existed.”

  “We’ve already been over that, and it is beside the point.” She slid over by him and nibbled at his ear. “Besides, I already apologized for that, many times. Would you like me to do so again?”

  He smiled, but looked troubled. “Not now. I have too much on my mind.”

  “You’re not going off to that big important meeting with this unresolved, are you? It will just block your reasoning powers. You need to clear this up first, and then your mind will be clear and sharp for the meeting.”

  Looking exasperated, he shook his head, but smiled. “All right,” he said. “You’re in charge of Noah from now on. Make the necessary decisions, and find out how he healed himself from a puissant-gun wound that should have killed him.”

  “Oh, I will,” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

  Quickly, the stocky, gray-haired nobleman resumed dressing. “One proviso,” he said.

  Alarmed, she asked what he meant.

  “I’ll decide what to do about our son … without consulting with you.”

  “Agreed,” she said, not showing any hesitation. Though she felt some belated motherly concern for Anton, Francella didn’t have the time or adequate inclination to follow through with it. Another matter was far more important.

  She needed to unravel Noah’s secrets.

  * * * * *

  Later that day, Francella sent Noah, under heavy guard, to one of her laboratories to have him analyzed. There, she and her chief scientists met with Dr. Hurk Bichette, who was the newly installed director of CorpOne’s Medical Research Division. The doctor had an interesting biography. He had held this position previously, but his career had been interrupted when Guardians kidnapped him and forced him to tend to Noah, who was gravely wounded when the Doge’s Red Berets attacked the orbital EcoStation.

  Bichette’s time with the Guardians had been most peculiar, and intriguing to her. Having resurfaced right after the podship crisis, he told her he recalled being forced to undergo an electronic procedure by a sentient robot in the employ of the Guardians, and afterward his memories had been sketchy. He’d been left with a general knowledge that he’d been with the rebel group and that he had tended to Noah himself, but without important details. He knew that Noah had recovered from his injuries, possibly due to Bichette’s own medical skills, but little more.

  Most importantly, he had no memory of where he had been with the rebels and where they were hiding now. When he came back to CorpOne, Francella’s people performed a battery of lie-detection tests on him, along with stringent loyalty tests, before permitting him to return to her Medical Research Division.

  He had passed them all with flying colors.…

  Noah awoke to find himself on a hover stretcher, looking to one side at a window and a wall. His muscles felt sluggish and heavy, and his eyes became sore whenever he moved them too much. Even so, his thoughts seemed clear, making him wonder if he could vault out of there mentally the moment he felt like doing so. That might be the best sedative for him of all. But he didn’t make the attempt, at least not yet, since he wanted to see what they were going to do to him.

  For the moment, he didn’t see or hear anyone in the room with him, though he heard distant, muffled voices.

  He thought of Tesh, and the paranormal kiss he gave her, reaching across the cosmos. Not a real kiss; they’d never had one. Envisioning her classically beautiful face and bright, emerald eyes, he felt a tug of emotion. So unfortunate that the two of them ever had conflicts, but Noah realized now that he was responsible for much of the acrimony himself, since he hadn’t wanted to intrude on Anton’s romantic interests. But Noah had noticed the way she looked at him, and recalled the secret way he felt for her whenever they were together.

  “Ah,” Dr. Bichette said in his basso voice, as attendants guided a hover stretcher into the laboratory. Noah realized that he was unable to move, because electronic restraints held him down. “I’ve been looking forward to this!” The doctor’s eyes were filled with wild fascination. Three men in white biocoats and gloves looked on, scientists who were dressed as their superior was.

  Noah thought back. This was the first time he had been aware of the doctor since Francella shot Noah in the chest and he recovered afterward miraculously, in only a few remarkable moments.

  As Noah listened, Francella filled the director in on the security measures that would be followed. Armed guards would always be present in the laboratory, and for even greater security Noah had been fitted with an electronic restraint system that could be customized for the movements he was permitted to make, and would stun him
if he tried to do anything without authorization.

  “So,” Bichette said, when he finally had a chance to examine Noah, “you claim to be immortal, eh?”

  Noah glared up at him. “Let’s put it this way. I have no need of your medical services.”

  With a tight smile, the doctor removed all of Noah’s clothing except for his underwear. Then, with Francella looking on, he proceeded to look at the skin on Noah’s chest with a high-powered magnifying glass. “Remarkable,” he said, looking away from the eyepiece of the instrument. “I see the faintest evidence of a large wound—directly over the heart—but it is completely healed. This is not possible.”

  Running a scanner over Noah, he next examined the internal organs. “Incredible, incredible,” he said. “I don’t believe it. They’ve all regrown. There is evidence of massive new cellular growth.”

  Going back to the magnifying glass, Bichette continued to go over the skin of Noah’s entire body, centimeter by centimeter. At the left ankle, he said he found a very faint line all the way around. “Like an amputation mark,” he said.

  Noah muttered an insult under his breath, and smiled to himself when he noticed that Francella could not make out the words.

  Performing an interior body scan, Bichette exclaimed, “Yes! This entire foot was amputated! Then … then … it grew back. I see new bones, muscles, tissue. This is unbelievable.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” Noah said. “You cut the foot off yourself, said you had to do it or I would have lost my leg, or my life. You were also there when the foot regrew.”

  Bichette looked at him blankly.

  “He doesn’t remember any of that, dear brother,” Francella said. “One of your robots zapped his brain.”

  Not even looking in her direction, Noah considered what must have happened to the doctor. Subi Danvar or Thinker must have instituted a security measure, sometime after the Doge put Noah under arrest.

  “Like a lizard,” one of the scientists remarked. “This guy grows body parts back like a lizard.”

  “Yes,” Francella said in a wary voice, “but lizards can be killed.”

  Maybe not this one, Noah thought. And a shudder ran down his spine, as he considered the horrors that this woman might inflict on him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Racial extinction is always closer than anyone realizes.

  —Parvii Inspiration

  The armored man watched as a long silver machine dug a new chamber, throwing dirt and bits of rock around, making so much noise that he had to wear high-decibel ear protection. Giovanni Nehr stood back at a safe distance to avoid the debris cast by the machine, which rolled forward on treads and had spinning drill bits on its body. Soon, new barracks would be constructed here, but not for Humans. As the Digger proceeded, it illuminated the work area in high-powered beams of light.

  With the burgeoning number of robots under Guardian command, owing to Thinker’s ambitious manufacturing program, additional quarters were needed. Sentient machines could live in tighter quarters than Humans, with their metal bodies stacked higher and packed tighter; they had to be kept somewhere, couldn’t be left to wander around the subterranean tunnels and caverns of the compound.

  There were also more Humans wearing Guardian uniforms, from Subi’s clandestine recruitment program around Canopa. He and Thinker had initiated strict security controls, developing a comprehensive electronic interview method and even a selective memory erasure procedure—such as the one they had used on Dr. Bichette before releasing him. In addition, the two of them had set up an electronic barricade across all tunnel openings, so that no one could pass in or out without setting off alarms.

  One of the young female recruits had dated a Guardian, and he had given her an interesting gift, a nearly extinct little alien creature named “Lumey.” The amorphous creature, which she afterward took along with her to the underground hideout, had once been Noah’s pet—but had been left behind in the rushed escape from EcoStation when the Doge’s forces attacked the orbital facility.

  As the machine proceeded now, digging deeper and wider, mechanical scoopers and dumpers scurried about, gathering debris and carting it away. They would dispose of it in a series of deep, vertical tunnels that had been dug by rampant machines in the past, when they were the mechanical pests of Canopa. The current debris removal system had been developed by Thinker and Gio. No one knew how they disposed of excess material in the past, but Thinker theorized it might have been in underground fissures and caverns. Occasionally, piles of dirt and rock had been found on the surface of the planet, but only on a remarkably few occasions, considering the extent of excavation that the machines had been doing.

  Without warning, the Digger accelerated and increased the speed of its drill bits. It crashed into a wall and began boring through, where it wasn’t supposed to go. It made fast progress, creating a new tunnel. Gio ran after the errant machine, with guards behind him and alarm klaxons sounding.

  Reaching for his belt, Gio pressed a transmitter, sending an electronic signal to the computers controlling the machine. Abruptly, the Digger shut down all systems, including its lights. For several moments, Gio found himself in darkness, down the escape tunnel the machine had dug.

  Then he saw lights coming from behind. Moments later, Thinker reached him, clanking and whirring. “I was afraid this would happen,” the robot said.

  “It’s a good thing we were ready,” Gio said.

  Thinker led a robotic team to inspect the Digger. They disassembled the internal workings of the machine’s computer. Presently, Thinker went back to Gio and said, “Just as I suspected, it has an override system, so cleverly concealed that we didn’t see it before. The unit found a way to supersede your commands, but we had our own ace in the hole.”

  “I assume you disabled the mechanism?”

  “Oh yes. But before we use this Digger again we’ll need to reprogram your disabling transmitter and the receiver on the machine.”

  “The old signal won’t stop it next time?”

  “Better not try it. There could be more tricks in this Digger, more than we’ve discovered so far. Even if we successfully disable its present override system, it could have another, and another. We must be on constant alert.”

  “Why haven’t our other two Digger machines done this?”

  “Maybe this one is testing us, and somehow they’re communicating with one another. They are sentient, after all. Maybe they’re smarter than we assumed, with hidden intelligence.”

  “Kind of a game, isn’t it?” Gio said, in an edgy tone.

  “Not the way I look at it,” Thinker said. “Machines are my life.”

  * * * * *

  Subi Danvar, as acting head of the Guardians in Noah’s absence, received reports from Giovanni Nehr and from Thinker on the episode with the Digger. He also heard from Gio that he’d grown tired of supervising the necessary construction activities, which kept enlarging with the increasing forces and supplies. The man wanted even more important duties.

  Impressed with Gio’s ambition and desire to contribute, Subi assigned him to work more closely with the machines that had brought him here and with the newly manufactured robots, to form them all into an efficient fighting force.

  “But I have no real military experience,” Gio admitted.

  “You have an inventive mind, don’t you? Doesn’t it run in the family?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I do have a lot of ideas.”

  “Some of the men said you had ideas about military formations and training. Comments you made over beers.”

  “Well, that’s true.”

  “They passed a few of your ideas on to me. My boy, if you can think that well when you’re drinking, I’d like to see what you can do when you’re completely sober.”

  The two men laughed, and clasped hands to mark the new relationship between them.

  * * * * *

  A couple of days later, Gio and Thinker reported to Subi that disturbing news had
just come in: The best machine fighters—led by Jimu—had left the Inn of the White Sun some time ago and joined the Red Berets. Even worse, they had initiated a large-scale robot manufacturing program, and with access to more raw materials theirs far outpaced the program that Thinker had established for the Guardians.

  It was indeed troubling news. After considering the situation for a moment, Subi said, “We need Noah back more than ever. He’d know what to do.”

  “We’ve already discussed that,” Thinker said, his mechanical voice weary. “From our reconnaissance missions and other reports, I’ve assembled all available data, and Noah is nowhere to be found. Since his captors have no podships to take him off planet, we know he’s on Canopa. Hopefully alive. The Doge’s people have set up an elaborate disinformation campaign about his whereabouts, with tens of thousands of Noah sightings reported all over the planet. Too many for us to investigate with our limited resources. We can’t mount a rescue effort until we have some idea of where he is. Why, he might not even be in one of their government prisons. In fact, I suspect he isn’t.”

  “That’s your analysis, is it?” Subi said.

  “It is. Absolutely.”

  “And didn’t you also analyze the Diggers some time ago, without finding their override system?”

  “Yes.”

  “That proves that there are possibilities beyond your intellect. There is a way to find Noah and break him out—I’m convinced of it—and we need to find out what it is.”

  “You’ll never outthink a machine,” Gio said, as he listened in.

  Ignoring the comment, Subi said, “It must be a perfect plan, against superior forces. Nothing is more important.” With that, he stalked away, followed by Thinker, who continued to argue with him.…

  For days afterward, Gio began to think about this at length. If he could pull off a rescue of Noah, or at least get credit for it, he would be rewarded extremely well. Thinker, however, remained obstinate against sending out any rescue missions until they had more data. He and Subi could frequently be heard in loud exchanges.