Chapter Thirty
The concept of a soul is one of the pillars of fear-based religions, suggesting that there is no escape from the wrath of the Supreme Being, even after death. This is a clever deceit, designed to control followers. We can do as we please.
—Halama Erstad, Chairman of Merchant Priests
Noah stood with a crowd inside the gated hillside necropolis, squinting in afternoon sunlight that flashed through puffy clouds. He could see the Valley of the Princes below, and the inverted pyramid of the CorpOne headquarters building, with bolts of lightning flashing across the sky beyond. It was warm and he felt no breeze, a respite from the freak weather of recent days that had postponed the funeral of Prince Saito Watanabe. Now nine days after his death, it was finally taking place.
But the funeral procession seemed like too much of a festive parade, and Noah detested every moment of it. On one level, he fully understood the concept of celebrating the life of a prominent man. Certainly Prince Saito Watanabe had been one of the most admired noblemen in the entire Merchant Prince Alliance. No one had more business acumen than he; no one possessed more ability to generate immense profits. But at what cost? As Master of the Guardians, Noah understood only too well the wholesale destruction of galactic environments by CorpOne and its competitors, and could never forgive his father for his part in that. Not even now.
On no account did he feel like honoring the life of such a man. The old mogul had not been a good person by any definition. Noah was simply paying his respects. He stood on a grassy elevation beside a narrow one-way road, with his adjutant Subi Danvar and a squad of armed Guardian security men keeping vigilance nearby. Eshaz had come along as well, but he remained a little downhill from Noah, saying he did not wish to intrude.
In a display of great pageantry and fanfare—with trumpets, court jugglers, drummers, and scantily-clad female dancers—a noisy procession made its way past the onlookers and began to ascend the steepest portion of the road. A jeweled monolith crowned the top of the hill, a magnificent mausoleum that Prince Saito had commissioned for his final resting place. But it was like no other funerary structure that had ever been built.
Across the road from Noah and his small entourage the Doge Lorenzo del Velli wore a golden surcoat and matching liripipe hat. A large group surrounded him, including his blonde wife, the Princess Meghina, in a spectacular gown of golden leaves and a rubyesque tiara. The most famous courtesan in the galaxy and the lover of many a nobleman, she stood proudly with her chin uplifted, and seemed out of place in the company around her, as if they were rabble and she their queen.
This enigmatic woman had been the paramour of Prince Saito, and everyone knew it, even her own powerful husband. Noah had never met her himself, since she had begun her relationship with his father after the blowup that sent Noah off on his own. She looked so elegant over there, so proud and haughty.
Near the Doge, Francella Watanabe wore a tight, shimmering red dress with a low neckline and a tall red hat. She had no eyebrows at all, not even her customary painted ones, and above the long slope of her forehead the red hat had twin antennae, so that she looked like an insect in Human skin. She smoked a long fumestik while chattering incessantly and smiling, as if she were attending a gay soiree.
Francella and Noah gave each other periodic dirty looks across the roadway, but had not spoken to one another today. Noah had separated himself from her intentionally in order to avoid a scene, even though he knew she was working her manipulative, seductive wiles with Lorenzo and his sycophants. She had publicly accused Noah of murder, and he had denied it. A full-scale investigation—ordered by the Doge—was underway, but thus far Noah had not followed the advice of his aides, and had not hired his own legal team to defend himself. He thought that would only make him look guilty and worried, when he was neither.
Someone had hired phony Guardian soldiers to attack CorpOne headquarters, and Noah’s loathsome sister undoubtedly played a key role in the planning and financing. Conceivably, Francella may have even suggested the staged event to the old man, twisting facts to get him involved in it. Noah conjectured as well what part, if any, Princess Meghina may have had in the conspiracy. He had a lot of questions, and no answers.
Behind the procession of entertainers, twenty hover-floats moved slowly uphill, providing garish displays of CorpOne products. Right after them came a black, robot-operated hearse, with the blue-and-silver elephant-design banners of CorpOne fluttering on the fenders. The great man lay inside, on his way to his final destination. Noah felt a wave of bereavement over the loss, but tried to suppress it with righteous anger.
As the hearse passed a high jadeglax structure by the roadway, a white-robed Merchant Priest on a high platform scattered holy water, and read passages from the Scienscroll over a blaring loudspeaker system. Noah could not make out the words, but didn’t care.
A small number of noblemen and ladies stood on Noah’s side of the roadway, but maintained their distance from him. One was Jacopo Nehr, accompanied by his brother Giovanni and by Jacopo’s unmarried, fortyish daughter Nirella. A reserve colonel in the Doge’s paramilitary Red Berets, Jacopo Nehr wore a red-and-gold uniform decked with medals and ribbons, while his brother had on a blue tunic, leggings, and a surcoat.
Gazing at the chisel-featured brothers, Noah envied their close relationship and wished that he and his twin sister might have gotten along, and even been close. But it was too late for such sentiments. Far too late.
Despite his efforts to feel otherwise, Noah could not help grieving for his father, and thought back to better times they shared, especially when Noah’s mother was alive. Noah, working for CorpOne at the time, had been trying unsuccessfully to get his father to change his business practices. After Noah’s mother died in that grid-plane crash, the two men no longer had a buffer between them, and the inevitable explosion occurred. Francella had reveled in the breakup, not concealing her glee in the least, and not even showing much emotion over the death of their mother.
Noah hated to think about his own family relationships, as they made him sick to his stomach. But here, under the solemn circumstances, he couldn’t help himself.
With the sun warming his face and shoulders, it almost seemed like a normal summer day to him. He felt anything but normal, though. Things seemed horribly out of balance.
The entertainers and corporate floats at the head of the procession split off onto side roads, while the robot-operated hearse continued uphill, to the jeweled mausoleum on top. Wide, diamonix-faceted doors slid open on the structure, and the hearse entered. Not long afterward Noah heard a small explosion, and the building turned fiery red as Prince Saito Watanabe—one of the greatest industrialists in history—was cremated inside the very building that would become his tomb. The unusual funerary arrangement had been specified in his will, and reportedly had been carried out with considerable difficulty.
Just then the ground rumbled and shook beneath Noah’s feet, nearly causing him to fall over. A huge bolt of lightning accompanied by a thunderous explosion struck near the monolith. The ground rumbled and broke away, and the ornate structure tilted, then tumbled with a tremendous crash onto its side, still glowing red.
The mourners panicked and ran in all directions, but Noah remained in place, watching the others scatter. A short distance downhill, Eshaz stayed where he was, too.
The shaking of the ground ceased, and the sky began to clear.…
* * * * *
“This planet is dying,” Eshaz murmured to himself. “And the web as well.”
He sensed forces at work that could not be controlled by any galactic race, and which he might not even be able to identify.
A shudder passed through his body.
In a very real sense it seemed to Eshaz that the Great Unknown was a black box filled with nasty surprises, and something was opening the box a little at a time, permitting the contents to escape. It was an enormous cosmic mystery, and he feared it. But he also felt like a detective, with an immense and intriguing enigma to solve.
He saw Noah studying him, perhaps guessing at his thoughts. This remarkable man, so advanced in his thinking, had asked for more information. And Eshaz, while he had lived for almost a million years and knew much more than he had revealed to his friend, did not possess nearly all of the answers himself.
The Elders would not want Eshaz to discuss such matters with a mere Human, but for such an extraordinary example of the race he thought an exception might be in order.
* * * * *
Over the better part of a week, Jimu worked in secrecy for the servants of the Parma dining salon, performing menial chores when management was not around. At night the conspirators locked their prized robot in a storage room and went home to small cabins that were provided for them a short distance away.
One evening when all was quiet, Jimu broke out and fled into the surreal, red-glowing darkness of the volcanic moon. By the following day he reached a depot, where he mingled with the robots of a work crew and boarded a shuttle with them.
He soon discovered that they were headed for Canopa, where laborers were needed to work on a damaged mausoleum.…