Chapter Forty-Four
It as if the entire galaxy is being sucked downward, into the black void of the undergalaxy. Is there life in that Stygian realm? I shudder to imagine it.
—Eshaz, Remarks to the Council
The green-and-brown groundjet sped across a broad meadow of flowers, passing over the plants like a windless whisper, not disturbing them at all. This was a specially modified craft that Noah had ordered, with hover capabilities that could be activated when going over sensitive environmental areas.
“It is good to see you back,” Noah said to Eshaz, who sat beside him in the passenger seat, his large body overflowing the chair and draping off the sides. Noah piloted the machine. “I trust you had a pleasant visit with your Elders?”
“Oh, the Tulyan Starcloud is the most wondrous place in all of creation,” he replied, “and my people are the most pleasant to be around. No offense to present company, of course.”
“I understand. There’s no place like home, the old saying goes.”
“How true it is.”
“Your people are pacifists, aren’t they?”
“We pride ourselves on non-violence, but I would not go so far as to say that we are complete pacifists. We do not claim to be perfect, only that we strive to be so. We are not political in any way. Tulyans try to go about their daily lives peacefully while contributing to their environs, instead of detracting from them.”
“The peaceful nature of Tulyans explains why it must be so nice to be with them on the Starcloud. I can’t visualize a single argument there. It must be total bliss, almost a fantasy land.”
“Well, we do have rather heated discussions, but for the most part you’re not far off.” Eshaz smiled, but to Noah it seemed forced.
Noah steered toward a maintenance building at the southwest corner of his compound. Diggers had torn through the floor of the building, creating a lot of damage. Subi Danvar and the commando team he had organized were using this as a staging area to launch extermination efforts, and over the weeks they had experienced some success against the renegade machines.
“I would like to see the Tulyan Starcloud someday,” Noah said, as he had on occasion before. “I know, you said how rare it is for outsiders to be permitted there, but perhaps you could mention my name to the Elders as a possibility.”
“I already have,” Eshaz said with a decidedly pained expression. “Perhaps someday we can do it, my friend.”
It seemed to Noah that his trusted companion was sadder than he should be, that his demeanor did not match his words. Perhaps he was just tired. This Tulyan was quite an old fellow, after all. Noah wasn’t certain exactly how old, and Eshaz always shunted such questions aside, but he thought it might be around a hundred or more standard years of age. With no idea how much of a colossal underestimation this was, Noah worried about the health of the old fellow.
Eshaz was a valued contributor to the Ecological Demonstration Project on Canopa and had helped with a number of planetary recovery operations around the galaxy. He always seemed to know more about local environments than anyone, and gave advice about exactly what would work best—from flora to fauna to geology. But he was also a man of secrets, as were the other Tulyans who worked for Noah. They liked to spend a lot of time by themselves, wandering around planets and communing with nature in their arcane ways.
As Noah drew near the maintenance building, he noticed new holes in the ground beyond the structure, gaping excavations that he was certain his own people had not made. “Looks like more trouble here,” he said, as he brought the groundjet to a stop near a team of his uniformed Guardians. He recognized Subi Danvar, Tesh Kori, and Anton Glavine.
“There is trouble everywhere,” Eshaz said.
With a nod, but not totally understanding what he meant, Noah stepped out. The two of them went their separate ways.
* * * * *
Taking a walk through the nearby woods, Eshaz contemplated the troubles he had seen, and the troubles that he saw coming.
The meeting with the Council of Elders had gone much more poorly than he had anticipated, even considering the bad news that he brought to them. As it turned out, he was not the only caretaker of Timeweb to report an acceleration of problems they had noticed earlier, an increasingly serious deterioration of the vital strands holding the galaxy together. The situation had, in fact, reached crisis proportions.
Upon entering the inverted dome of the Council Chamber for the regularly scheduled meeting, Eshaz had found himself in a raucous throng of his peers, all clamoring to tell their stories. While he had observed serious damage himself, the most grave report of all came from Ildawk, who described a complete web collapse in the Huluvian Sector, and the disappearance of two entire solar systems with it, decimating the Huluvian race.
Listening solemnly, the Elders had absorbed the information and conferred among themselves. First Elder Kre’n, a broad-necked female who was the head of the Council, then made a solemn pronouncement:
“All of you must redouble your efforts, or soon the galaxy will reach a state of critical mass, where the deterioration cannot be reversed.”
Turning to Eshaz, who stood at the front of the throng of caretakers, Kre’n then said, “Tell us what you see.”
Most Tulyans were prescient, with an ability to peer into paranormal realms, even into other time periods—and Eshaz was among the best with this ability. It gave him special value, but he didn’t like to use the talent. Often, it upset him too much.
Feeling exasperated, he closed his heavy-lidded eyes and peered into the time continuum of the cosmos, but saw nothing this time, not even a flicker of activity. Was that a foretelling in itself, an indication of what was to come? Utter, motionless blackness?
With a shudder, Eshaz opened his eyes. Standing before his superiors, he shook his bronze-scaled head and said, “I see nothing, First Elder. There is too much disturbance in the galaxy. It is blocking me.”
In a sense, this excuse was true, but not completely. He strongly suspected something else was interfering, a personal failure.
Kre’n nodded. “So it is. So it must be.”
The other Elders nodded, and whispered among themselves. Normally stoic, they were showing signs of emotion this time. He heard a sad edge to Kre’n’s voice, as if in realization that the end of the galaxy might be approaching. He saw worried glints in the eyes of these ancients, slight frowns on their faces.
In the past Eshaz had predicted the emergence of black holes, of suns going nova, and of gas giant planets erupting. Now, however, he felt useless, and angry with himself. He was beginning to wonder if it was not a cosmic disturbance at all, but was instead his own increasing stress, causing him to lose his timeseeing ability at a moment when he—and his people—most needed it. He felt as if he was letting them down, as if he was letting all of the galactic races down. Life … so fragile, and his own abilities were disintegrating. Almost everywhere, Timeweb was crumbling.
A possibility occurred to him. There had been no signs of web deterioration anywhere near his beloved Tulyan Starcloud, so he wondered if that sector of the galaxy could possibly be spared.
What will become of my people? he wondered, if our sector is spared and we have nothing left to caretake?
The twenty old women and men of the Council were the foremost web masters in the galaxy, Tulyans who were ancient and sagacious when Eshaz was born almost a million standard years ago. The Elders knew so much more than he did about the galaxy—it was like his own knowledge in comparison with that of the most enlightened Human … Noah Watanabe, for example. The differences were so great that there was no fair comparison, and in his own limited state Eshaz could only defer to these ancient Tulyans, and hope he would himself become as wise and revered one day.
For that to happen, though, the galaxy needed to survive. And at the moment, the prospects for that did not look good at all.…
Having made his report to the wise old Tulyans, Eshaz was back on Canopa now, working with Noah and his Guardians. The Council of Elders had ordered Eshaz and all other web caretakers to amplify their ecological preservation efforts, and now they were to report more frequently than before. Because of the ominous signs noted by Eshaz and his peers in the field, the Council had also decided to dispatch more caretaker observers around the galaxy. They would serve under various guises, because Tulyans were not permitted to tell other races what they were doing, not even ecologically conscious individuals such as Noah Watanabe. No one but a Tulyan could possibly understand the enormity of the responsibilities they had.
“We are a race of givers,” Kre’n said once, “while the other races are takers, users, destroyers.”
It was true, so tragically true. And now all of the abuses of civilization were taking their terrible toll.
To aid in their caretaking efforts, the Tulyans did have a few podships that had been captured in the wild reaches of space, from intercepting the ancient migration routes of the creatures. But the pods had to be hidden carefully in order to avoid having them taken by Parvii swarms … or by the ravenous demons of the undergalaxy. With only limited resources, the dedicated Tulyans could not do much … nowhere near what they achieved in ancient, bygone times.
Emerging from his walk in the woods, Eshaz stared for a long while at the Humans bustling around the new Digger holes. The exterminators were dropping probes into the openings, to search for the malfunctioning machines.
Eshaz rather liked these Humans, especially Noah, who had more upstanding qualities than any other alien he’d ever encountered. In his long life, Eshaz had known many persons of various races, and some of them were extraordinary historical figures, males and females who were much honored by their people. Always, though, the Tulyan had tried to maintain his distance from aliens he admired. In large part this was to preserve his own emotional balance, since it was too difficult to get attached to sentients who had such short life spans in comparison with his own.
But now, for the first time, Eshaz was breaking that hard-and-fast rule. No matter how much he had tried to avoid it, he could not help feeling tremendous esteem for Noah Watanabe … and a strong bond of affection. While some of the reasons for this were obvious to Eshaz, he also felt something ineffable toward the Human, an almost instinctual sensation that was as inexplicable to him as his inability to peer through the veils of time.