The Web and the Stars by Brian Herbert Read Free Book Online

received no notification of this,” a voice said. “I will have to check with Warden Escobar.”
    “He won’t be in for hours,” a man said in a high-pitched, irritated whine. “We can’t wait that long, and I have an authorization that supersedes him anyway. Now, open the damned cells!”
    “Well, I don’t know.…”
    “Do you want to answer to the Doge’s office for your stupidity? They will not be kind to you, and could put you in one of these cells. If you are allowed to live. I am here on a Priority One assignment. Look at the authorization, you fool. If you can read.”
    “I can read, I can read.” Noah heard papers rustling.
    “Gad, you’re an idiot. The authorization allows me to take any and all prisoners, as needed, for work details. With the cessation of podship travel, there is a shortage of slaves and imported robots to perform menial tasks on Canopa. Thus we are forced to draw work crews from Human and non-Mutati alien prisoners. Do you understand?”
    Finally the guard said, “OK, I guess this is in order, but if there’s any flak over putting Watanabe on work detail, you’re taking it, not me.”
    “Yeah, yeah.”
    A loud click ensued, and then a slight dimming of the electronic containment barrier around Noah. The glowing orange bars disappeared.
    “All right!” the high-pitched voice said, as the man pounded something metal against a wall. “Everybody out. It’s time to go to work!”
    The man turned out to be a work crew boss, with a squad of armed guards. They herded Noah and other prisoners out a side entrance. On the paved street, Noah encountered Anton in the midst of the prisoners. Approaching the younger man, Noah saw that he had a bright red mark on one side of his face.
    “What happened to you?” Noah asked.
    Looking around warily, Anton whispered, “They burned me with a laser on a low setting, threatened to blind me if I didn’t confess.”
    “Confess to what?”
    “To trying to assassinate the Doge. I told them that was preposterous. I only followed you to the pod station to make certain Tesh was safe. She was my only concern. I had no idea the Doge or Francella would be there, or that we would be arrested.”
    “No, of course not.” Noah didn’t comment, but remembered noticing signs of Anton’s jealousy concerning his own relationship with the pretty young woman who had once been Anton’s girlfriend. While Noah had reached an understanding with her over the control of a podship, he’d never had romantic intentions toward her.
    “There’s something I want to discuss with you,” Anton said. “I’ve been having memory problems, an ability to remember some things, while other details fade away whenever I try to recover them. It’s like … like my mind is playing tricks on me.”
    “They tortured you,” Noah said angrily.
    “Yes, but I started having this problem right after they took us into custody on the pod station. I recall trying to go to sleep in my cell that first night, with thoughts churning in my mind, but my brain wouldn’t work, at least not completely. I sensed things slipping away.”
    “I’m no doctor, but it sounds stress-induced,” Noah said.
    “We sure have a lot of that,” Anton said.
    A guard pushed them apart with an electronic prod and shouting threats.
    All of the prisoners were loaded on a groundbus, and whisked away to a walled compound just outside the industrial metropolis of Rainbow City. Noah recognized the area. He’d been there many times, under better circumstances. As the gates opened and the bus surged through, he saw a high, round tower ahead, which he knew to be one of the nehrcom transmitting stations for sending high-speed messages across the galaxy.
    The work crew spent the rest of the morning performing landscape work and spraying poisons outside the transmitting station. Supposedly, this was to keep insects, small animals and plants away from the highly sensitive facility, which required an almost