Free Webdancers by Brian Herbert Page B

species, the short view that happens to each of us no longer matters.
    —Master Noah Watanabe, classroom instruction
    On board the flagship, while the pilot searched for safe podway routes along a decaying infrastructure, Noah had additional concerns. Layers of trouble seeped through his thoughts as he paced back and forth across an anteroom. It was one of several that the sentient vessel had formed around the perimeter of the main passenger compartment, using its mysterious manner of extrusion and changing shape, and of changing size. Now she was easily the largest vessel in the fleet, with the most complex arrangement of interior rooms.
    She , Noah thought. Yes, assuming Webdancer has a gender, it seems female to me.
    Through an open doorway, he heard the voices of Doge Anton, General Nirella, and Subi Danvar coming from a room across the corridor. He’d been in there with them earlier, telling them about the paranormal image of a timehole he’d seen near Canopa and EcoStation, and how real it had seemed to him. Now he tuned out the voices in the other room, didn’t try to listen in on their words.
    His main concern was much closer to him. Noah’s body had been changing for some time now, though it remained to be seen if it was a bizarre evolutionary process, an uncharted disease, or something he had not yet considered.
    I may be immortal, but what am I becoming?
    He felt vibration in the floor as they passed over a rough section of podway. It grew worse for perhaps a minute, then gradually smoothed out.
    During the past year, Noah had taken a number of fantastic mental excursions through Timeweb, and he had peered into what seemed to be an entirely different galaxy, where a small swarm of Parvii survivors had fled. While held prisoner by his own sister, Noah had survived her vicious butchery, and had even regrown severed limbs and other body parts like a lizard. Now, in recent weeks, the skin on his torso and arms was becoming different, morphing into something unfamiliar. He’d been able to conceal the changes beneath his clothing so far, but he didn’t know how much longer he could do that.
    Am I turning into an alien … no longer Human?
    His mental incongruities seemed to have come first, followed by the physical. But he had no way of studying the history of his own cellular structure to confirm that, so the physical changes might have actually started the process. Most perplexing. Perhaps it all had been occurring simultaneously. Certainly both the cerebral and the corporal were apparent now, and they had not locked into any semblance of stability. He was in a constant state of flux, leaving him with infinite questions and no good answers.
    Terror washed through him, but abated in a few moments when he realized that part of him actually wanted the changes to continue. On many occasions he had tried to enter the Timeweb realm of his own volition, but for the most part he had been unable to do so. And even when he had been able to go into the web at all, it seemed to be through a back or side door, one that the gods of the realm had only left ajar accidentally. Perhaps it was a symptom of the declining infrastructure, the strange and baffling ecological malaise that was spreading through the galaxy. Without warning, as if sensing his presence where he was not supposed to be, the rulers of the realm kept locating him and throwing him out summarily.
    The podship vibrated again, and slowed. Through a porthole Noah saw a flickering blue sun and a system of ringed planets. Then the podway improved once more, and they sped past the system, through the heart of a purple nebula.
    In the end Noah realized that it didn’t matter what he wanted himself. All of the bizarre things that were happening to him were far beyond his personal control. His tormented sister Francella had complicated any hope he ever had of figuring the transformation out, stabbing that dermex of her own poisoned blood deep into him.
    Now he lifted his