Webdancers

by Brian Herbert

  The podship vibrated again, and slowed. Through a porthole Noah saw a flickering blue sun and a system of ringed planets. Then the podway improved once more, and they sped past the system, through the heart of a purple nebula.

  In the end Noah realized that it didn’t matter what he wanted himself. All of the bizarre things that were happening to him were far beyond his personal control. His tormented sister Francella had complicated any hope he ever had of figuring the transformation out, stabbing that dermex of her own poisoned blood deep into him.

  Now he lifted his tunic and stared at his muscular abdomen, the place where she had struck. The vein of his morphing, gray-and-black skin had started on his chest, but not at that spot beside his belly button. Even so, there might be a time correlation. The physical changes had begun a short while after her attack, and now included the place she had stabbed him, a small oblong area that was darker than the rest of the altered skin.

  He paused and fixed his gaze on the open doorway, the gray-green natural light out in the corridor, and the mottled gray skin of the podship. Just focusing on various sections of the sentient vessel seemed to have a strange fascination for him, reminding him of how he felt as a small boy when he stared transfixed into pools of water, hypnotized by the changes in light and ripples of liquid motion. The interior of each Aopoddae vessel was like that in a sense, as he detected tiny shiftings in the illumination and skin surfaces all the time, subtle differences in hue and texture that he didn’t think the other passengers noticed.

  Perhaps Tesh, as the Parvii pilot, could see such things. It might be possible. Beautiful Tesh. His thoughts drifted toward her, and then away again.

  Abruptly, he found himself plunging outward, beyond the confines of the podship and into space. As he hurtled into the frozen void he saw Webdancer and the rest of the huge fleet behind him, with porthole lights visible along their hulls. Quickly, the fleet vanished from view, and a new awareness came over him.

  Noah’s motion stabilized, and he found himself standing motionless inside the sectoid chamber of yet another podship, piloting it in the Tulyan manner along the decaying infrastructure at much higher speeds than Webdancer had ever been able to attain. He changed course repeatedly, finding optimum strands for the ship to utilize. In a state of hyper awareness, Noah realized that it was not his Human body in the sectoid chamber. Rather, he had become a metallic green mist within an amorphous, unidentifiable shape, perhaps the form he had been evolving into before this happened.

  But, as if in contradiction of that, on the prow of the vessel he saw—somehow—his own Human face in an enlarged form, suggesting that he had discovered a modified Tulyan method of piloting the craft. Did the form of the pilot lose its separate features inside the sectoid chamber when its energy merged into the podship flesh?

  Another question without an answer.

  Far off in the distance, he recognized some of the major planetary systems of the Merchant Prince Alliance, and as he flew on he made out the galactic sectors of other races. He made his way toward some of the regions that he recognized. But soon he found, strangely, that he was flying right through them as if they were no more than holo images. On previous excursions into Timeweb he had been able to see activity in the galaxy, particularly other ships as they negotiated the podways. Now it was different. He could not make out details such as that, only increasingly blurry views as he neared and passed through the systems.

  And he sensed—but could not see—a great but undefined danger out in the galaxy, beyond the crumbling infrastructure that everyone knew about. As he turned around and went back in the direction he had come, he wondered what the feeling meant.

  On the way Noah recalled an earlier venture into the paranormal realm in which he saw Hibbil and Adurian soldiers inside strange podships that were piloted by Hibbils using computerized navigation units. It had been peculiar and unexplained, and he had reported it to Tesh Kori and Doge Anton.

  Alas, with no way of reentering the web at will, and no way of verifying what he had seen, Noah never could tell if that startling vision had been real or not. It had not made any sense at all, since Hibbils were aligned with Humans, and Adurians were the long-time allies of Mutatis. Since then, there had been no other sightings of the odd soldiers or the highly unusual ships, so nothing could be done about it.

  Might that be the additional menace he sensed now? He let the question sink in. No, he decided. The threat came from something else.

  Just ahead he saw the rear of the podship fleet. The larger and more impressive Webdancer was out in front, leading the others. At the immense rate of speed that Noah had attained, the fleet seemed to be traveling slowly through space, and he caught up with it easily. None of the vessels noticed him, and as he neared he found himself hurtling out of the sectoid chamber toward Webdancer, and back into the anteroom he’d been in before embarking on this strange journey.

  Moments later he was standing in that room, staring through the doorway into a gray-green wash of light.

  And abruptly, as if emerging from a trance, Noah jerked to awareness and hurried across the corridor, to the room occupied by Anton, Nirella, and Subi. The three of them sat at a table, engaged in intense conversation. At first they didn’t notice him enter. Then Subi called attention to him, and they all looked at Noah in a similarly odd manner, leaning close and squinting their eyes. Under their intense scrutiny Noah felt warm. Drops of perspiration formed on his brow.

  “I sense a terrible danger out there,” Noah said, at last. He could hardly get the words out.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Nirella asked. She wore a red uniform with gold braids and insignia, designating her rank as Supreme General of the MPA armed forces. But now she conducted herself more like a caring woman than a military commander, looking at him with concern and urging him to sit down.

  He resisted her efforts and pulled his arm away from her grasp. “I’m fine. Listen to me. I sense an additional threat, more powerful than anything else we’ve ever seen or discussed.”

  “But what?”

  “I can’t say, but it’s out there, and seems like even more than the disintegration of the galactic infrastructure.”

  “It can’t be military,” Nirella said. “We’ve defeated the Parviis, and the Mutatis don’t have anywhere near the power we have now. We control all the podships, so we can go and attack their planets at anytime.”

  “It’s not Parviis or Mutatis,” Noah said. “Or any other galactic race. It’s something else entirely. I think … I fear … that it’s beyond anything we’re able to comprehend.”

  “For hours we’ve been in range of deep-space nehrcom relay stations,” Anton said, “and the reports from our planets are all good. Nothing significant is happening in our sector, or anywhere near it.”

  “Maybe it’s only the infrastructure after all,” Noah said. He slumped into a comfortable chair that the podship had created, off to one side. He smiled grimly. “Only the infrastructure. As if that isn’t enough.”

  “The repair and restoration of the galactic network needs to be our top priority,” the young doge insisted.

  “I don’t dispute that,” Noah said. “I just wish we’d get to the starcloud faster so we can get on with it.”

  But no one in the room had any idea what was really occurring. Or the fact that HibAdu conspirators were using their own technology to relay false nehrcom messages. In actuality, a terrible thing had happened, which Noah and his companions would soon discover.…

  Chapter Fifteen

  We are a galactic race that no one has ever noticed. Doesn’t the intelligence of our members—at least the best of us—compare favorably with that of any recognized galactic race? Admittedly, we look different from any of them, and we don’t have their cellular structures, but who’s to say that a galactic race has to be biological? Whey can’t it be mechanical instead, with metal and plax parts, and computer circuitry?

  —From one of Thinker’s private data ba
nks

  Unable to move, Ipsy watched as a mechanical claw reached for the remains of a large, dented unit that had once been the central processing unit for an entire factory assembly line. As the claw lifted its load, the pile shifted, and the broken little robot was jostled to one side.

  He’d been there for weeks outside the factory, bumped around and constantly ignored. No one seemed to need his parts for anything. He was small and easily overlooked, but the claw had a zoomeye on it, projecting a beam of orange light that enabled it to see the tiniest part anywhere in the heap, even at the bottom, underneath everything else.

  At the moment, with the heavy CPU no longer on him, Ipsy found himself on the very top of the scrap heap, warming under a bright sun. He didn’t really want to be taken, because then he might lose what little independence he had left, if only what remained of it in his own mind. All he had now was his ability to observe what went on around him, and to remember better days.

  The claw moved its load and released it, then returned and hovered over another part, a couple of meters away from Ipsy.

  Just then, without being touched, the pile shifted, settled. And, for the first time since being thrown on the scrap heap, Ipsy moved one of his mechanical arms, and a leg. His circuits had reconnected, but only partially. He tried to move his other arm and leg, but without success. It would be difficult to escape this place with only two of his four major appendages, but he decided to give it a try anyway.

  Like a cripple, he dragged himself over the top of the heap, away from the claw. His improvised body was even shorter than before, and much thinner. With one of his rear visual sensors, he saw the claw’s orange beam of light move toward him, and almost catch up with him. Abruptly, more key components of his circuitry came to life. He scurried like a rodent down the slope of junk, and entered the factory through a side door.

  Reaching the main aisle and then crawling up on a ledge for a better view, the little robot saw that the factory was not operating at all. Hibbils and workbots busied themselves at assembly-line stations, adjusting the machinery, connecting raw material feeder units to it. On the far end of the aisle, robots stood motionlessly, awaiting the signal to return to their stations.

  Hearing voices behind him, Ipsy dropped down behind a bench.

  He saw the furry lower legs of two Hibbils, standing near him. The diminutive men spoke rapidly, excitedly. From their conversation, he figured out they were military officers for something called the HibAdu Coalition, checking on the production of war materials. Listening attentively, Ipsy heard more.

  “We’re getting close to zero hour,” one of them said. “It’ll be unprecedented. Simultaneous sneak attacks on Human and Mutati planets. Imagine the scope of it, all the destruction and death.”

  “From what I hear, it could already be underway.”

  “I wish I was on the front lines, instead of this assignment,” the other said. “I hate Humans, the way they’ve always lorded over us, treating us like children.”

  “We each must do our part. Most of the instrument systems and parts coming out of this factory are for the HibAdu fleet.” This Hibbil laughed, and added, “If you want to go on the front lines, why don’t you hide inside one of the weapon-control boxes?”

  The two officers walked away, and their conversation faded.

  Ipsy’s artificial brain whirred. He wondered if he might commit an act of sabotage … perhaps even blow up the factory. But this was one of many factories, and they would just resume operations elsewhere. Besides, it sounded like most of the HibAdu attack force was already in place and ready to attack.

  Then Ipsy had an even more intriguing idea. If he could do something during a military engagement, he might be able to wreak much more havoc.

  Considerably smaller than a Hibbil, he crawled inside one of the weapon-control boxes just before it was sealed up, and awaited its delivery to the war.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Trust is like quicksand. It can lull you to your death.

  —A saying of Lost Earth

  At opposite sides of a dual-console machine, two aliens of differing races stood inside a glax tower building in the Hibbil capital city, surrounded by a sea of industrial structures that stretched to the horizons of the planet. The shorter one, a Hibbil with graying black-and-white fur, glanced up at his companion, concealing his own enmity.

  This Adurian diplomat was a major irritation.

  Whenever VV Uncel wasn’t looking, Pimyt glared at him with red-ember eyes. Then, the moment Uncel looked his way with those oversized insectoid orbs, the little Hibbil was all smiles on his own furry, bearded face, and his eyes had reverted to red dullness. Pimyt knew how disarmingly cute he could look whenever he wanted, like a cuddly Earthian panda bear. He also knew that Adurians didn’t trust Hibbils, and vice versa. The two races were only working together for their own interests, with each side constantly trying to get a leg up on the other. On some occasions the methods were subtle, but most of the time they were not. Even so, racial preservation and advancement had a way of causing each side to overlook the perceived slights committed by the other. The leaders of the two races understood this, and knew they could go farther together than apart.

  In other circumstances, and perhaps sometime in the not-too-distant future, Pimyt might eradicate Uncel with shocking suddenness, moving in for the kill in a surprising blur of speed. But for now, they would play this little game together.

  It was an Adurian form of entertainment, actually, in which the two of them stood at linked holovid consoles, operating touchpad controls that immersed each of them into a holodrama, shown on a large central screen. The Adurians loved their games of chance and competition, and this one had a couple of twists that rigged it in the Adurian player’s favor. And, though Uncel had taken pains to keep it secret, Pimyt knew that the decisions the Hibbil player made were being sent by hidden telebeam transmitters to an office full of Adurian bureaucrats, where they were further studied, to analyze sincerity and trustworthiness.

  Pimyt smiled to himself. As a race, the Adurians were notoriously paranoid. On their homeworld and throughout their foreign operations, everything was under surveillance, and they were quite adept at tech gadgets. But Hibbils were considerably better at devising clever machines and mechanical systems than Adurians, and for every tech system the Adurians had, the Hibbils had one that was superior. It was only in diverse biological and biotech products that the Adurians held the upper hand, particularly in the improvement of lab-pods, which had originally been discovered by Mutati scientists—but not developed very well by them.

  This machine could be set to play a variety of games. At the moment, the participants were in a simulated competition of space baseball, with their holo images dressed in uniforms, standing in batters’ boxes on an asteroid. Each of them faced the same tall Vandurian pitcher who threw two balls simultaneously, one with each arm. The first player to hit the tricky pitches, or to get the best hit if both of them connected simultaneously, won the game.

  Uncel swung, and missed. “Damn!” he exclaimed.

  Smiling to himself, Pimyt hit a line drive that carried into the asteroid belt. His virtual ball kept going and going, and soon it was out of sight. Gleefully, the holo image of the little Hibbil ran and leaped from asteroid to asteroid around the simulated deep-space base path, and finally he came back around to home plate on the original asteroid.

  “Going, going, gone!” he shouted, as if he was an announcer describing a long home run. “You lose!”

  Uncel had an expression on his face like a man who knew he had been hoodwinked, but couldn’t figure out how. In fact, the Adurian machine had been rigged to give Uncel the advantage, but Pimyt had transmitted an overriding signal into it to give him the edge instead.

  “This is impossible,” Uncel said. “You did something to the game, didn’t you?”

  “You sound so certain of that, my friend. Why is that, do you suppose?” Pimyt knew why, and saw a look of guilt
on the Ambassador’s face. The cheater knew that he had himself been cheated.

  “You’re wasting my valuable time,” Uncel snapped. Lifting his head in disdain, he marched to an ascensore and entered it, leaving Pimyt alone in the tower room.

  “Pompous ass,” Pimyt muttered under his breath.

  Left to himself, he fiddled with the game controls, changing the settings in rapid succession, bringing up a variety of games, some of which he’d never heard of. Many of the diversions involved cards, dice, or balls, while others were animal races, with the players riding on the backs of a selection of alien beasts.

  All the while, his thoughts wandered. The little Hibbil led an uncommonly complex life, balancing his various duties, his layers of subterfuge and intrigue. His biography was not linear, and would be impossible for anyone to write accurately without his candid cooperation.

  Pimyt was, without doubt, a very important person. And not just in his own estimation.

  Though Hibbils did mate, and the vast majority of them enjoyed the company of the opposite sex, he had been involved in very few dalliances in the past, and expected the future to be the same. He was proud of the fact that his libido had no influence on his decision-making processes. Or at least, that he had subdued it enough to make it ancillary.

  There had been undeniable temptations, such as the attractive Jimlat dwarf that had caught his eye on the remote, unaligned planet of the same name. He’d never seen a face and figure to match hers. And the way she moved! She had almost derailed his entire career with her charms. Pimyt had made love with her in her apartment, and she’d told him of her own ambitions and dreams, of how she would like to marry him and move to the Hibbil Cluster Worlds.

  He had smiled and nodded, and had popped a pill to diminish his passions. Then, when her back was turned, he had strangled her to death, moving against her with a suddenness that she could never have anticipated. It wasn’t that Pimyt liked to kill anyone. He didn’t go out of his way for anything like that. But she had been a distraction, one he could ill afford. He’d done her a favor, actually. Undoubtedly he would have been more brutal with her if he’d really gotten to know her. Especially if—as he thought might happen—he actually fell in love with her.