Free The Timeweb Chronicles: Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus by Brian Herbert

magnification system of each Parvii provided only superficial benefits, a defense mechanism for each segment of the much larger organism that allowed it to avoid detection in certain situations … and thus to survive.
    The Parviis were a powerful race. Secretly, they held dominion over another galactic race, the Aopoddae, that fleet of podship spacecraft that carried travelers and goods across the entire galaxy. One tiny Parvii could, in fact, pilot a much larger sentient pod through deep space. It had been this way for countless millennia, since the early moments following the Moment of Creation. And Tesh was herself a pilot. She had learned her skill from an early age, in the time-honored method by which all children of her race were trained.
    However, since there were many more Parviis than podships, she had a great deal of time off-duty … as much as a decade without interruption. During the current interlude she had been getting to know Human men better, while on previous breaks she had dated the men of other star systems. By galactic standards she was quite old, much more than she appeared to be. It was like this with all of her kinsmen, but each Parvii was not eternal. On average they lived for twenty or twenty-five standard centuries, and sometimes for as long as thirty.
    Parviis were a traveling breed, galactic gypsies without a homeworld. They lived all over the cosmos, and communicated with one another across vast distances through a mysterious, arcane medium that was known by many appellations, the most common of which was Timeweb.
    Timeweb.
    Even after the seven-plus centuries of her life, the thought of the gossamer connective tissue between star systems never failed to amaze and confound her. The web meant so many things beyond its physical reality.
    A shout startled Tesh to awareness. It was the deep voice of Dr. Bichette, and she saw him shove Glavine in the chest. The younger man, much stronger than his feisty, smaller aggressor, hardly moved backward at all. Enraged, Bichette took a wild punch, which Glavine eluded with athletic ease, and then grabbed both arms of his boss to restrain him.
    “Let go of me!” Bichette demanded, as he struggled unsuccessfully against the stronger man. “If you value your job, take your filthy hands off me!”
    Instead, Glavine spun him around and forced him toward a wrought-alloy bench on one side of the patio. “Our relationship is no longer employer and employee,” Glavine said in a flat tone. He glanced at Tesh, and then looked away as he shoved the doctor onto the bench. “Sit there until you’re ready to talk reasonably.”
    “Nothing happened between you two?” Bichette looked first at her, then back at him.
    In response, both of them shook their heads. But Tesh knew it was a lie; there had been sparks between her and the young maintenance man, a mutual attraction that they had not acted upon. Not yet. Parvii women, like their Human counterparts, knew such things intuitively.
    With a sudden, startling clang, a heavy metal door slammed open on the perimeter of the courtyard, and a heavyset man in a purple uniform burst through. Wearing a frilly white shirt with lace at the collar and sleeves, he was a messagèro, one of the bonded couriers who worked for the Merchant Prince Alliance. Breathing heavily and perspiring, although his run had not been far from the circular parking area outside, he bowed as he reached Bichette.
    “Doctor Sir,” he gasped, “Most urgent news. A car awaits you.”
    Narrowing his eyes, Bichette accepted a pyruz from him, a rolled sheet of white ishay bark on which matters of life and death were written. The doctor touched an identity plate on the seal, causing the pyruz to unfurl and become rigid. He read it, then rose to his feet.
    “We must continue this later,” Bichette said to Glavine. “I am certain we can resolve it.” Without another word, he handed the pyruz to Tesh and strode out of the courtyard, behind the sweating