Free Webdancers by Brian Herbert

suggested one of the guests, a ruddy, aging man named Dougal Netzer. Once an impoverished portrait painter, he now earned large sums for his work. More than any of his cellular peers, he had been able to capitalize financially on his overnight fame as an immortal.
    Servants brought in platters heaped with steaming game hens, cooked in a dark, aromatic sauce. At Meghina’s order, they even had a plate of boned meat for the dagg. The moment it was placed in front of him, Orga tried to grab a piece of meat. But Meghina waggled a finger near the plate, causing the animal to let go of the food and pull his head back—awaiting permission to eat.
    “As my lovely wife has probably told you,” Lorenzo said, “I am in de facto exile on this orbital facility, with little opportunity to get away from it.” He paused. “Tell me about events on the surface of Canopa—news, gossip, bits of information. Pimyt doesn’t have the connections he enjoyed while working for me on-planet. I’ve been feeling isolated.”
    Pimyt shot him a hard stare, but for only a moment. Two of the female guests and one of the men provided the former doge with details, how Doge Anton, Noah Watanabe, and others had formed a military expedition and departed in a big hurry.
    When Lorenzo had heard enough, he permitted the table to fall into witty, light-hearted conversation, much of it about the immortality of Meghina and her friends.
    At first, Pimyt said very little. Finally, he asked the woman seated next to him, “What do you intend to do with your own extended life?”
    “I have so much time now to consider such matters,” she said. A robust, big-chested woman in a blue tunic, she smiled. Since gaining immortality she had abandoned her original name, and for unexplained reasons now called herself Paltrow.
    “And the answer is, after all the time you’ve taken to consider it?” the Hibbil asked.
    “I have put off such matters, such worries , really. I’ve hardly thought about them at all.”
    “A nice luxury to have.” The little Hibbil tugged at the salt-and-pepper fur on his chin. It was a nervous mannerism that Meghina had noticed previously.
    “I’m sorry,” Paltrow said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I honestly haven’t given it much thought.”
    Most of those at the table had paused to listen to the exchange.
    “Perhaps our additional time is not so important as you might think,” Meghina suggested. “What, exactly, does living forever mean? Living forever in relation to what?”
    “Intriguing observation,” Dougal Netzer said.
    The guests began to pitch in. Finally Paltrow asked, “Is a million years in our galaxy only a moment, or a mere fraction of a moment?”
    Theories and more questions went around the table in rapid succession, and it developed into a game in which several people tried to ask the most clever question, some of them rhetorical.
    The repartee intensified, and Lorenzo seemed to enjoy it. Meghina couldn’t help noticing, however, that Pimyt appeared to be somewhere else in his mind, perhaps far across the galaxy on his alien homeworld.

Chapter Thirteen
    Each moment is slightly different from the one preceding it.
    —Parvii Inspiration
    In the alternate realm, the cosmic storm subsided, and the huddled swarm of Parviis stopped being buffeted around. But to the Eye of the Swarm, this provided little comfort.
    Drifting in the airless darkness with the remnants of his once-mighty race, Woldn felt dismal. He had always been a leader who visualized things and made them happen. For him, that was a key aspect of command, envisioning things that others could not, and making them come to pass. But in his wildest imaginings, from his first recollections of life more than two thousand years ago, he’d never thought it possible that he could fall to this level, soundly defeated and relegated to hiding in an unknown galactic region, perhaps even in another galaxy altogether.
    More than anything, Woldn wanted to fight