The Web and the Stars Read online

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tulyans call it the “Visitor’s Center,” a large facility that can accommodate more than thirteen hundred guests at once. And yet, they have used an odd singularity in the title for it, as if the place was only capable of taking one person at a time. They claim to have merely named it that way to make the place seem more personal for each visitor. We suspect that the facility may, in fact, have been built for only one person, and a very important one. Tulyans dismiss our questions about it. On the surface it seems a trivial matter, but we have an idea that it may be one of their secrets.

  —Merchant Prince Diplomatic File #T 16544

  Though Dux had initially enjoyed the luxuries of the Visitor’s Center and Acey had steadfastly resisted them, now both of them loathed the place. Acey had begun calling it a “velvet-lined prison,” and Dux could not help agreeing.

  Worst of all, the teenagers had thought that Eshaz would take them under his wing, but now the big, enigmatic Tulyan had gone off on a mission far across the galaxy. The waitress they’d befriended told them he had gone on a “timeseeing assignment”—whatever that meant—with the leader of the Parvii race. The boys had no idea who Parviis were, and at this point neither of them cared. They just wanted to leave the posh orbiter by any means possible.

  The pair would prefer to go to Canopa or another Human-controlled world to volunteer for military service, but could not reach any of them by podship, and all other means of space travel were too slow to be practical. As a result, when added to the bad news about planetary-scale losses, Acey and Dux were no longer their usual outgoing and fun-loving selves. They had, at very young ages, become quite serious.

  The Human race was in trouble.

  Each day, the boys gazed longingly out at the nearby pod station, a rough gray globular structure that kept pace with the Visitor’s Center, orbiting over the starcloud. The two orbital facilities were only a few kilometers apart.

  “Too bad we can’t get back and help Noah,” Acey said.

  “Maybe that’s not meant for us,” Dux said. He brushed his long blond hair out of his eyes. “Gio Nehr is on Canopa, and could cause us a lot of trouble. We’d probably have to kill him, or vice versa. As for me, I’m not sure I want to go that far, not even with him.”

  “The first step is to get away from here. Agreed?”

  “No question about that,” Dux said. “But how do we get on the shuttle to reach the pod station?”

  A grin split Acey’s wide face. “We don’t. I found what looks like an emergency evacuation system. A series of passenger launchers—individual, man-sized capsules that shoot into orbital space.”

  “Show me.”

  Acey led the way through a narrow servant’s passageway. He had timed it perfectly, having watched for the schedules of the employees. The teenagers slipped into a small chamber, and closed a heavy door behind them.

  “This is one of the emergency-escape launch rooms,” Acey said. “There are hundreds of them around the structure.”

  Dux surveyed the room and saw a number of clearplex tubes, each capable of holding a large person, stacked on racks. It didn’t take him long to figure out how the system worked, and he saw what appeared to be cannon barrels on the outside wall. “This looks like a circus trick,” he said.

  “More sophisticated than that, but you’re not far off.”

  Dux felt hesitant. “It looks dangerous.”

  “Well, if you’d rather stay here and loll around on vacation, that’s fine by me. But I have things to do and places to see. All right?”

  Again wiping hair out of his eyes, Dux said, “We promised to stay together.”

  “Exactly my point. You have to go with me, don’t you see?”

  Shaking his head, Dux stepped toward one of the tubes, and moved it. The container was light. He carried it over to the launcher and slipped it inside, then opened a hatch on one end of the tube and crawled inside. “Now what?” he asked.

  He no sooner had the words out when the launcher shot him into space. Dux felt surprise, but more exhilaration. It was like a super ride an amusement park. In a few moments, he experienced a floating sensation.

  Seconds later, Acey followed him out. Then Dux heard Acey’s voice over a comlink. “Grab the joystick,” he said. “The handle activates directional jets when you move it, taking you in the direction you want to go.”

  Acey roared past him, heading for the pod station.

  But Dux had trouble with the controls, and veered off course. He heard Acey shouting at him over the comline. Finally he figured out the pressure pads and toggles, and made his way toward the pod station.

  As the pair arrived and stepped through an airlock onto a platform, they saw no podship present, and no other vessels docked there. Looking back through a viewport, they saw a shuttle take off from the Visitor’s Center.

  “Not a good sign,” Dux said.

  “I timed this for the arrival of a podship,” Acey said. “While you were swimming and getting massages, I was watching schedules. I thought one would be here now.”

  “What a time for them to change their schedule.”

  “Look!” Acey pointed, and jumped up and down with excitement.

  Dux felt a surge of hope as he saw the telltale green flash of a podship arriving from deep space.

  “Come on! Come on!” Acey said. “Faster!” Looking back, he saw the shuttle enter the pod station first, and make its way toward them.

  Unexpectedly, the podship turned and departed without ever going into the pod station. Apparently, something had startled the creature.

  The boys didn’t even try to get away. Furious, they just waited to be taken into custody.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Human brain is a marvelous, wondrous instrument, with razor-sharp cutting edges that can slice in countless directions. At all times, the user must be careful not to harm himself with such a powerful weapon.

  —Noah Watanabe, Commentary on Captivity

  Noah didn’t like the odors inside the CorpOne medical laboratory, the disturbingly strange chemicals he could not identify. His vivid imagination worked against him now, making him wonder what the doctors and other technicians intended to do with those substances, and with the dangerous-looking array of medical instruments he saw in clearplax cases all around him. In the few days he had been housed in the facility, he had not been able to get used to the underlying sense of evil that permeated the place, and he knew he never would.

  Early each morning, Dr. Bichette’s assistants brought Noah out of his heavily guarded, locked room on the top level and took him down to the laboratory on the main floor, which had an operating theater in its central chamber. The laboratory was metal and plax, gleaming silver and white. Everything was voice-activated. Whenever the doctor wanted a vial or device, he spoke it by name, held his hand out, and waited for the elaborate machinery of the chamber to give it to him. Instantly, conveyors and servos in the ceiling whirred to life, removing items from cases and lowering them to his waiting hand.

  From tiers of seats that circled above central operating station, around twenty people looked on, men and women. On previous days, Noah had noticed his detestable twin sister sitting in one of the front-row viewing seats above him, and he had watched her send messages to the medical personnel down on the central floor. This morning, however, she stood beside the doctor at the examination table and glared at her brother while the assistants activated electronic straps over his wrists and ankles to secure him in place.

  In response, Noah gazed at her with calculated, loveless disdain.

  Under different circumstances he might have been the owner of his father’s corporation and all of its operations, including this one. In an odd image, he tried to imagine what it might be like to be himself, strolling into the laboratory, looking at himself on this examination table. But the hardness of the table against his backside, along with the people looking at him like a bug under a microscope, reminded Noah only too
harshly that he had no degree of control over the situation. Not in a physical sense, anyway.

  But he still had his mind.

  In this facility and in the prison before that, Noah had been forced to undergo rigorous medical examinations, with the doctors paying close attention to the healed gun wound in the center of his chest and his regenerated left foot—wounds that showed no easily visible scars or signs of internal injury. He wondered what was on the agenda for today, and did not have long to wait for his answer.

  Without warning, he saw Francella shoved Bichette out of the way. “This is going too slowly for me,” she snapped. “Give me a tray of surgical tools!” She held her hand out, but the machinery did not respond.

  “If you will just return to your seat, we can proceed,” Bichette said. “You must have faith in my abilities. I know this patient well, and the Doge has entrusted him to my care.”

  “Like hell! Lorenzo has placed him in my care, not yours. You work for me, you dolt, and you will do as I say.” The fingers of her extended hand twitched, as if giving hand signals to the servomachines, telling them to do her bidding.

  “I have authorization from the Doge to perform complete medical examinations,” the doctor insisted. “You must let me proceed.”

  She arched her shaved eyebrows in displeasure. “How dare you act as if I am interfering?”

  Narrowing his eyes, he said, “That is not my intent. I’m sure we can work this out.”

  “I’m your boss, you fool. I own this facility, and Lorenzo put me in charge of the investigation. Don’t you understand that?”

  “But the Doge sent me a telebeam message yesterday afternoon, telling me how important my work with Noah is. He thought I might be on the verge of a momentous medical breakthrough, and that. .

  “He should not have communicated with you directly! I have an agreement with Lorenzo that all decisions concerning the fate of this”—she nudged Noah roughly in the side—”are up to me.”

  “With all due respect, Ms. Watanabe, you don’t know what you’re saying. You’re too close to the situation, since it involves your brother, and you need to take a step back. Granted, you own this medical facility, but you don’t know how to run every aspect of it. Prince Saito understood that, and he delegated important tasks.” He glanced at Noah. “This is an important task.”

  “You think I don’t know that? You say my judgment is impaired because I’m too close to the situation? What about you? I think you like my brother, and you’re going easy on him, showing favoritism toward him.”

  “You could not be more wrong,” Bichette insisted.

  In a rage, Francella smashed a hand against a case and broke the plax. Reaching through the jagged opening, she brought out a sharp, gleaming knife.

  Noah braced himself, but tried to show no fear.

  She waved the instrument wildly in the air. Bichette backed out of her way, and she swished the blade close to Noah’s face. In response, the captive did not close his eyes or flinch, and stared at her emotionlessly. He felt a spinning sensation, and a hum of energy all around him. Where was it coming from? Noah couldn’t tell.

  “This is not the way!” Bichette said.

  Francella hurled the weapon in another direction, and it skidded and clattered across the floor. “Get me some results,” she snapped, “or, by God, I’ll do it myself!”

  As she stormed out of the laboratory, Noah breathed a sigh of relief, but only a little one. Somehow he had an odd, unsettling sensation that his apparent immortality might be penetrated by that insane woman.

  Chapter Twenty

  Some disguises run deeper than any form of perception.

  —Noah Watanabe

  At the Inn of the White Sun, cleverly constructed inside the orbital ring over a jewel-like planet, only a few machines remained after Jimu and Thinker took sentient units to join the opposing forces of Doge Lorenzo del Velli and Noah Watanabe.

  The orbiting way station was not as exciting as it had been in past years. However, since it lay beyond the war zone, podships still came and went, though with a different mix of races, and far fewer Humans or Mutatis. The sentient machines often said they missed those two races, for their abundance of exotic personalities, capable of interesting and unpredictable behavior.

  Down on the glassy surface of the planet Ignem, the machines were still constructing their army, robots building robots, but they no longer had the same enthusiasm for the project, no longer had the same altruistic goal that had originally been instilled in them by Thinker. Previously, their cerebral leader had motivated them through reminders that they had been abandoned by their Human creators, discarded on junk heaps. He convinced the robots to build a machine army to serve Humans, with the goal of proving to them that the robots had worth after all, that they still had dignity. It was revenge in a sense, but with a loving touch, a desire to excel despite tremendous obstacles, despite being overlooked and tossed away. It was also ironic, considering how poorly they had been treated by Humans.

  Now, far across the galaxy the machines serving the Doge and Watanabe were proving themselves, showing their value by performing work once limited to Human beings. On each side, Thinker and Jimu were adding to their numbers as they had previously on Ignem, building more and more sentient fighting machines.

  Word of their successes got around the galaxy, even this far from the Canopan battle zone, and despite the podship problem. Travelers who had heard nehrcom news reports on fringe worlds brought bits and pieces of information back to the Inn of the White Sun. The two opposing machine leaders on Canopa were developing stellar reputations, or “interstellar” reputations, as one of the travelers quipped. .

  According to the reports, the two machine forces had clashed in brief skirmishes when Watanabe’s Guardians made guerrilla attacks against their enemies. To Ipsy, one of the left-behind units still at the Inn of the White Sun, it seemed unfortunate that robots had to fight their own kind, or that Human creators had to fight robots, either, for that matter. Ipsy was extremely proud of his machine brethren, but felt deep sadness as well.

  A small robot, Ipsy had reconstructed himself with advanced computer circuitry. His real love was for combat, and if podship travel was ever restored to the Human-ruled worlds he wanted to join Jimu’s forces, since he had always admired the ferocious fighting methods that robot had espoused.

  The feisty Ipsy frequently picked fights with much larger opponents, so that he could test his personal combat skills. He won a few of the frays, but lost many more by wide margins, and was frequently forced to repair himself.

  * * * * *

  From Canopa, the Doge broadcasted orders to every planet in his Alliance, requiring all inhabitants—without exception—to submit to medical testing and thereafter to wear a micro-ID embedded in their earlobes, certifying that they were Human. Previously there had been testing, but it had been sporadic, with too many opportunities for shapeshifters to elude discovery. This time the Doge had his military and police leaders set up stringent systems to ensure that there would be no opportunities for anyone to escape the nets of detection.

  On Lorenzo’s newly christened capital world, a surprisingly small number of Mutatis were rounded up in this manner and thrown in his dreaded prisons—and it was the same elsewhere. But there were many suspects. It was reminiscent of the Salem witch hunts of the seventeenth century on Earth, as people constantly turned in their neighbors and personal enemies as suspects.

  All across the merchant prince empire, anti-Mutati hysteria ran rampant, with widespread fear that shapeshifters could be hiding inside the bodies of anyone, impersonating people.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Even in a corner with predators at your throat, there is always a way out, if you can only discover it.

  —Mutati Saying

  On the shapeshifter homeworld of Paradij, the Zultan spun inside his clearplax gyrodome, high atop his magnificent, glittering Citadel. During this procedure, his mind was like an adv
anced computer with all data in it available to him instantaneously. In addition, he had altered his body, and now looked like a cross between a saber-toothed wyoo boar and a Gwert, one of the intelligent alien races employed in scientific positions by the Mutatis.

  At the moment, he was considering a very big problem, and needed all the inspiration he could muster.

  With podship space travel cut off—the only practical means of transport across the galaxy—Mutati outriders had not been able to continue their Demolio attacks against Human-controlled worlds. Conventional spacecraft, such as Mutati solar sailers and the hydion-powered vacuum rockets used by Humans, were far too slow to be effective, except for intra-sector voyages. The Humans had learned this lesson the hard way when they sent an attack fleet against the Mutatis by conventional means, and it took more than eleven years to arrive, by which time the military technology was obsolete and easily defeated.

  Nonetheless, there might still be a way for the Zultan to continue his Demolio torpedo attacks, busting enemy planets apart. Years ago, a Mutati scientist cut a piece of material off a podship—a thick slab of the soft, interior skin. He did it at a pod station while the ship was loading, and caused the sentient creature to react violently. It contracted, crushing the scientist and the Parvii pilot before they could send an emergency signal, but the piece of flesh was thrown clear and recovered by another Mutati.

  After that, laboratory experiments were conducted on the tissue, and detailed analyses were made of the cellular structure. In the last couple of years, after many wrong turns, Mutati scientists had been able to clone the complex tissue, and had grown several podships … an unprecedented event.

  However, while the lab-bred creatures appeared to possess many of the same attributes as authentic Aopoddae, they did not have all of them, and fell short in significant particulars. The scientists suspected this might have something to do with the power of the sentient creatures to control their own appearances, and—except for the influence exerted over them by Parviis—their own actions.