Chapter Thirteen
Tulyans and Parviis pilot podships in different ways. In both methods, it involves telepathic control over the Aopoddae, but Tulyans—unlike Parviis—actually merge into the flesh of the pods, changing the appearance of the spacefaring vessels so that they develop scaly skin, protruding snouts and a pair of narrowly slitted eyes. Why, in view of that remarkable symbiosis, are we Parviis more dominant over podships than Tulyans? This is a great enigma, and a blessing from the Universal Creator.
—The Parvii View of Divinity
A creature with bronze, reptilian skin piloted a grid-plane low over the surface of Canopa, a small aircraft that bore the green-and-brown markings of the Guardians. From the air Eshaz surveyed conditions below, blinking his pale gray eyes as he searched for subtle signs on the ground, for even the smallest indications of trouble. Like all of the people of his race he was extremely old, dating back to a time when Tulyans were stewards of the entire galaxy.
Those times were long gone. Now the Tulyans filled in where they could, performing their specialized, unselfish tasks … even if they had to work for others. Eshaz’s Guardian superior, Noah Watanabe, had complete faith in him and in scores of other Tulyans in his employ, permitting them to operate unsupervised on a number of planets, monitoring ecological conditions. In the process, the reptilian men and women submitted regular reports to Noah … but they also performed other tasks on their own that they could never reveal to any Human.
Wherever possible, Tulyans tried to meld into society, be it Human or otherwise. In the process, they visited planets, asteroids, moons, and mass clusters, and in some of those places they found environmental protection measures already in place. None, however, were as extensive or as well thought out as those instituted by Noah Watanabe and his Guardians. That one man had, to his credit, found a way to enhance and restore natural systems while making a great deal of money.
How odd Humans are, Eshaz thought. The worst polluters imaginable, and the most careless, but they are the most creative, too.
For a moment the Tulyan had an unexpected thought, that Humans, despite their glaring flaws, could possibly be the greatest hope for the salvation of the cosmos, for the restoration of Timeweb. How ironic that would be, if it proved to be true. But every Tulyan knew differently. Only Eshaz’s own people could save the web, through the caretakers they sent out on clandestine missions.
As Eshaz flew over a dry river bed at the base of a cliff, a cloud of glassy dust rose from below and blocked the large front porthole of the grid-plane. The normally quiet engines whined and sputtered, and the craft spiraled toward the ground. He fought desperately for control, jabbing his fingers against the touch pads on the instrument panel.
Tulyans could live for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years, but were subject to accidental death. Eshaz bore the scars of countless injuries, yet he had been fortunate, exceedingly fortunate. He and his kinsmen were immune to disease or any form of bodily degeneration, and had remarkable powers of recovery from injury. But they were not immortal.
At the last possible moment, just before it touched the ground, the grid-plane pulled up and then swooped back into the sky, rising above a looming, rainbow-crystal cliff face. Eshaz went higher this time, to avoid whatever was occurring down there. Moments later he brought the plane around, circled the glittering cliff, and descended toward the riverbed. He saw the swirling dust again, but this time he remained at a safer altitude.
A small golden circle adorned the lapel of his Guardian uniform, which had been custom-fitted by a Human tailor to conform with the unusual contours of his alien body. The golden circle was the sigil of the Tulyan race, representing eternity. It was a design found everywhere in their arcane society: on their clothing, on the hulls of their ships, and on the sides of their buildings.
Today the mission of this highly intelligent race was much more limited than it had been in ancient times. Now a comparatively few Tulyans traveled the galactic sectors, performing fine ecological adjustments wherever necessary, trying to restore delicate environmental balances that had been disturbed by the careless practices of the galactic races. Humans were not alone in the damage they caused.
He brought the grid-plane as low as he could over the trouble spot, for a better look. Below him was a wide, dry riverbed with a rough, disturbed surface of crystalline soil and black volcanic rock. The disturbed area was pulsing, surging with ground and air action and then diminishing … as if breathing. He had seen this before, and needed to wait for just the right moment.
Most of Eshaz’s people remained back at the Tulyan Starcloud, their home at the edge of the galaxy. In that sacred place they thought of the old days … or tried to forget them. His brethren harbored secrets that could never be discussed with any other race, things known only to the Tulyans since time immemorial, and perhaps even before that. Much of the highly restricted information had to do with Timeweb, the way everything in the galaxy was connected by gossamer threads that were only visible to certain sentients, and then only during heightened states of consciousness.
There had been signs of increasing problems on Canopa and in other sectors of the galaxy, causing the Tulyans great concern. Handling the touch-pad controls of the grid-plane expertly, Eshaz watched the swirls of glassy dust diminish. He would have to move quickly.
Without hesitation he set the aircraft down, off to one side of the broad riverbed, a couple of hundred meters from the debris. He didn’t like to think about what would happen if Timeweb continued to decay.
It would mean the end of everything.
He stepped from the craft and made his way across the rough, rocky terrain. Every few steps Eshaz knelt to examine the ground, touching its disturbed surface, studying stones, small broken plants, and dirt. He moved closer, and confirmed his suspicions. This was no ordinary debris field, nothing that had been caused by the natural geological or weather forces of Canopa itself. He studied a blast-pattern of dirt and fragments that had been broken away from the planetary crust, and shook his head sadly. It was exactly as he had feared, a very serious situation indeed.
He watched as a patch of crystalline soil and debris began to swirl only a few meters from him, then faded from view. Unmistakably, he was looking at the early stage of a timehole, a defect in the cosmos through which matter could slip between the layers of the web and, for all practical purposes, disappear from the space-time continuum.
Bringing forth a sorcerer’s bag that he always carried in a body pouch, Eshaz stepped forward carefully, until he reached the edge of the flickering area. He sprinkled a handful of green dust on it, raised his hands high and uttered the ancient incantation that had always been used to ward off Galara, the evil spirit of the undergalaxy.
“Galara, ibillunor et typliv unat Ubuqqo!”
Now the Tulyan bowed his scaly bronze head in reverence to Ubuqqo, the Sublime Creator of all that was known and all that was good, and uttered a private prayer for the salvation of the galaxy.
“Ubuqqo, anret pir huyyil.”
This was the strongest form of invocation that he knew, for it did not request anything for himself, and not merely for this small section of Canopan crust, either, only a pinprick in the cosmos. Rather, Eshaz’s prayer stretched and stretched along the cosmic web … the miraculous filament that connected everyone, ultimately, to the Sublime Creator.
But agitated by the Tulyan’s magic, the timehole grew larger, and Eshaz felt the ground crumbling beneath him. Bravely, he held steady and refused to retreat. Each timehole was a little different, and all shared something in common: unpredictability. But this one seemed to be in its beginning stages.
Debris swirled all around him, and he felt a powerful force tugging at him, drawing him toward a realm of existence where he would no longer have thoughts and would no longer experience independent movements. It was not entropy, for that natural force of cosmic decay did not waste matter by discarding it into another realm. Entropy did not waste anything, and instead reused every little bit of matter in some other useful form.
No, this was something else … the eternal, unyielding and opportunistic force of the undergalaxy, working on every weakness, trying to exploit it for its own voracious purposes. He had no doubt that the undergalaxy—like the galaxy that he wanted so desperately to save—was a living entity, with a powerful force that drove it. And this timehole, like so many others, threatened to cast the galaxy into oblivion.
The ground cracked and shook, and the heavy Tulyan fell to one knee. He felt aches and pains in his joints and muscles, something he had never experienced before in his long life.
Timeweb’s pain is my pain, he thought, since his own condition seemed to run parallel with the recent precipitous decline of the web.
He repeated the invocation.
“Galara, ibillunor et typliv unat Ubuqqo! … Ubuqqo, anret pir huyyil!”
A rift opened beneath him, as deep as a grave, and he tumbled into it. As he struggled to climb out, the ground rolled and knocked him back in. Swirling dirt piled on top of him, and though Tulyans did not breathe, he knew what might happen next. The hole could open up completely, and send him hurtling through into the stygian oblivion of the undergalaxy. Still, like an insect struggling to make its way through a storm, he fought to stand up and free himself.
Fumbling in his pocket, he located the sorcerer’s pouch, and scattered its entire contents around him. A thunderous noise sounded, followed by a cacophonous grating sound, like huge continents rubbing together. He felt warm air.
Suddenly, with a flash of green light, he was tossed out of the hole and onto the rocky ground. The air was still, and there were no sounds. The rift had disappeared and the land looked almost normal, with hardly any sign of disturbance. Even his grid-plane, which he had parked away from the center of the disruption, appeared unharmed.
Eshaz rubbed a sore shoulder, and felt the pain diminishing already. With his recuperative powers it would not last long. He tested the surface of the ground carefully by putting a scaly foot on it, and then taking a step. It felt solid. Presently he walked on it, toward the waiting aircraft.
As he entered his plane to leave, worries assailed him like a swarm of insects. There had been too many timeholes appearing … and too many missing Tulyans, who presumably were being sucked into the openings. Symptomatic of the heightening crisis, fifteen of his people had disappeared in the past year … and hardly any before that.
The grid-plane lifted off, and he looked out through the window. Amazingly, the ground hardly looked disturbed at all, and even had wildflowers and small succulent plants growing on it. He clutched the empty sorcerer’s pouch in one hand, and wondered if he had actually repaired that timehole, or if it had just shifted position in relation to the strands of Timeweb. He had ways of finding out, and would do so.
Eshaz tapped the touch pads of the instrument panel, causing the aircraft to accelerate along the planetary flight control system. With a little stretch of his imagination he could see similarities between this airgrid, with its unseen web of interlocked electronics, and Timeweb, which encompassed so much more. In each case, ships traveled along strands that guided them safely. Where Timeweb was the work of the Sublime Creator, however, the airgrid networks on various Human planets had been invented and installed by much lesser beings … and the equipment operated on infinitely smaller scales. It could not be overlooked, either, that Timeweb was a natural system, while airgrids were not; they were intrusions. Airgrids were, however, ecologically benign, and not known to cause damage to plants, animals, or other aspects of nature.
The Tulyan wished he could do more for the empyrean web, that his people were again in control of podships as they had been in the long-ago days when he had been a pilot himself—before Parvii swarms came and took the pods away. At one time, Tulyans could travel freely around the galaxy, performing their essential work on a much larger scale.
An entire sorcerer’s bag expended for one timehole. It would take him nearly a day to restore the ingredients in the repair kit. For a moment he despaired, as the efforts of the Tulyans seemed so inefficient. But in a few moments the feeling passed, and he vowed to continue his work for as long as possible.
He was fighting more than timeholes, or the inefficiencies of dealing with them. On top of everything else, Eshaz and other Tulyans had been experiencing bodily aches and pains … for the first time in the history of their race. This suggested to them that their bodies might be undergoing a process of disintegration into homogeneous chemical soups and dust piles … along with every other organism in the dying galaxy.