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afford to leave his duties and spin off into the unknown.
    But Noah also sensed very strongly that something in the undergalaxy was causing the decline of Timeweb, or at least contributing to it. He could not escape considering the ramifications of this second galaxy. His entire concept of galactic ecology had potentially been broadened by a great deal, and beyond that the implications were exponential. A universe of them.
    Seeing the vastly diminished Parvii swarm hovering by the bolt hole, Noah had mixed feelings—an urge to destroy them and feelings of pity. Tesh was one of that devilish breed, and he thought he might even love her, and that he might do virtually anything for her if he ever managed to fulfill the galactic duties that seemed to have been thrust upon him by fate.
    I am not a god or a messiah.
    He did not want to even consider such possibilities. It could only cause harm to his focus, to his intentions. He felt an innate sense of rightness about the course he had followed with his life thus far, about the choices he had made. But he hesitated to believe that he might be anything more than an enhanced form of a human being. Eshaz, in his zeal to heal Noah, had pressed his wounded flesh against the infrastructure of Timeweb, but the strange and powerful nutrients of the infrastructure could never alter certain basic truths.
    I was born of a Human mother and father. There is nothing miraculous or particularly heroic about that.
    Despite all he told himself, and his sense that he was highly ethical, part of Noah wanted to eliminate this Parvii swarm violently, leaving Tesh Kori as the only survivor of her demented race. In the undergalaxy, the troubled Noah stirred his mind, and felt a cosmic storm forming. Was he causing it? He felt uncertainty about this. But then, as if caught in a great wind, he saw the Parvii swarm buffeted, so that they flitted about in confusion and fear. Some scattered into the distance, and did not return.
    The swarm grew even smaller, and Noah felt pity for the terrified creatures.
    Wondering what had just occurred, he struggled to extract himself from the peculiar visions. Finally he succeeded in withdrawing, and returned to his physical self, in the passenger compartment of Webdancer .
    Conflicting emotions raged in his mind, giving him an intense headache.
    Eshaz looked at him with concern in his large eyes. “You saw something, didn’t you?” the Tulyan asked.
    Noah nodded, but for several moments found himself unable to organize his thoughts or form them into words.

Chapter Eight
    Noah worries incessantly about his genetic linkage to Francella Watanabe, and her severe mental health issues. But there is an ancillary problem, something he has not discussed with me, and which I have not had the courage to bring up: Is not Doge Anton genetically linked to Francella as well, and might there be psychological repercussions because of that?
    —Tesh Kori, private notes
    Thousands of additional Tulyan pilots had arrived from the starcloud, and were being meshed with the podships like alien marital partners, using the ancient techniques to ensure the maximum efficiency of the Tulyan-Aopoddae linkages. Now, counting the original nine hundred podships that the Liberator fleet had brought to the galactic fold, Doge Anton had a force of more than one hundred twenty-two thousand podships. As had earlier occurred with the original fleet, as the new pilot-ship matchings were completed, the sentient podships took on the reptilian faces of their pilots, and opened up gun ports on the sides of their hulls.
    The process was going well. Only two hundred and fourteen podships remained to be synchronized by the Tulyans, plus a few more out in the reaches of the fold that needed to be brought in.
    Noah, Anton, and Eshaz stood at a viewing window inside a modular headquarters structure that General Nirella’s military technicians had constructed. Held in place by space anchors, it was positioned