Fate of Worlds Read online

  “Nessus?” Louis guessed.

  “As you say.” Hindmost shivered, for how could Nessus be here? He had left Nessus on New Terra, the world that had for so long been their home. “Of course many know that ballet.”

  “Is the dancing ship from the Fleet?” Louis asked.

  “Doubtful,” Voice said. “It does not have a General Products hull.”

  “You can be sure of that?”

  “That it is not a General Products hull? That, Louis, I can say for certain. This one ship interacts with hyperwave quite differently from the obvious Fleet vessels.”

  “Anything more?” Hindmost asked.

  “Possibly. With so many hyperdrive emergences in this region I am uncertain. I first noticed that particular hull material only a day ago.”

  “A new ship type,” Louis said. “An appearance two months after the Ringworld disappeared. It sounds like some new player came to see what’s happening here.”

  Hindmost’s mind raced. After many years away, he could not know exactly where New Terra had traveled. Most likely, a New Terran ship could have reached here by now. It could be Nessus aboard that ship.

  Assume for the moment that the new arrival had come from New Terra. Maybe, Hindmost thought, he could establish New Terran provenance another way. “Of what material is that new ship constructed?”

  “I cannot tell,” Voice answered. “Our instruments sense differences among hulls, but they have not been calibrated to identify specific materials from hyperwave interactions.”

  “And if we get a little closer? Perhaps, a light-hour?” Hindmost persisted. “Could you then remotely identify the hull material by spectral analysis?”

  “Belay that,” Louis said. “Hindmost, I don’t understand. How does knowing the hull material tell you who is aboard?”

  “Trust me that it might.” If the hull is of a particular material. The explanation would tread too close to secrets long kept from Louis. “Voice. How close?”

  “Not where the ship is now,” Voice said. “Nearer the star, with brighter light, then yes.”

  “Does the music in your head say where that ship will go next?” Louis asked.

  Hindmost considered. The endpoints of jumps had not caught his eye, only the timing. Was he missing a vital clue? But no: the ballet was performed on a stage, the dancers’ graceful leaps circumscribed by gravity. The ship that he watched so hopefully darted about in three dimensions. “No. Only when.

  “Keep watch on that ship,” Hindmost added to the AI. “Tell me when it is near enough to the star for spectral analysis from a light-hour away, and when Long Shot could approach it with no other ship any closer.”

  “Approaching an unknown ship? That seems very brave of you,” Louis said.

  Hindmost turned both heads to stare. “There is no reason to be insulting.”

  * * *

  HINDMOST HAD BEEN STUDYING bridge displays for hours. His eyes ached. His thoughts grew fuzzy. He needed sleep.

  He sang aloud the next several bars of the libretto that echoed in his brain, ordering Voice to watch for the mystery ship’s next moves.

  Louis wandered past the bridge yet again.

  Hindmost closed his eyes but sleep refused to come. Fuzzy or not, his thoughts kept churning. Dancers. Ships. Leaps. Danger all around. Leaps. Partway home (well, Home, in any event), and back.

  His eyes flew open. Louis had flown Long Shot much farther than he had allowed Voice to take it. “Voice, were internal instruments active during the hyperspace move toward Home?”

  “They were.”

  “Bring up the data.”

  Displays lit on an arc running halfway around the bridge. Necks craning, Hindmost took it in, now and again reaching out to scroll deeper into the recordings. On other monitors, he reviewed data gleaned from studies of the Ringworld’s disappearance.

  Patterns in the data reminded him of something, but for the longest time he could not put his tongue on it. An odd coincidence, he decided. He had seen such patterns before.

  Long ago he had tried to reverse engineer the planetary drives purchased from the Outsiders. It was a desperate undertaking, to be sure—moving worlds involved vast energies—but not quite as insane as getting overrun by the genocidal Pak. Instead of discovering how the planetary drive worked, he had succeeded only in learning the many ways in which it might destabilize—

  And that the energies so unleashed could vaporize a world.

  Of course, very different mechanisms sometimes shared a mathematical description, as with pendulums and electronic oscillators. This parallelism surely meant nothing. Still, sometimes having an analogy suggested new ways to approach a problem …

  Sipping from a drink bulb, his exhaustion forgotten, he thought how, while in office, he had opposed—to the modest extent Ol’t’ro tolerated opposition—the unending study of this ship. He thought how his newfound obsession with understanding the Type II drive would amuse Ol’t’ro. He thought about—

  He straightened on the uncomfortable crash couch. His eyes closed, this time in concentration. For all the Ministry’s years of study, he had something they did not: protector-built instruments. And now he knew something they did not.

  How to toggle the Type II drive to and from Type I speed.

  The new hyperspace physics with which he dabbled remained incomplete, and yet—with Tunesmith’s help—he had made more progress in days than Ol’t’ro and the Ministry of Science together had in more than a century. Chords of triumph rose in his throats. Maybe he could barter for the Concordance’s freedom. This was his greatest insight since—

  Reality crashed down. His greatest accomplishment since discovering how to destroy General Products hulls from a distance, without antimatter.

  Long Shot had been built well before hulls were redesigned against such attacks.

  Louis squeezed onto the bridge. “Did I hear you say something?”

  “I was talking to myself,” Hindmost said. Because this time, I will understand the implications of my discoveries before I unleash them onto an unsuspecting galaxy.

  16

  Dry land sweltered, mere air no obstacle to the fierce sunslight. Sessile life forms, in every color from far-red to a deep ultrablue that only instruments could detect, covered the undulating landscape. Motile creatures burrowed in the dirt, gamboled in the meadows, swam in the little ponds, and soared high into the boundless sky.

  Unattainable, all of it.

  Beyond the habitat was an entire existence Cd’o would never taste, a rich ecology that thrived on light instead of the bountiful chemical stew endlessly upwelling from oceanic trenches. Beyond the wall, not even a tubacle’s-length distant, was a whole alien world. Somehow, she had to content herself with glimpsing that world through satellite imagery and in the bottomless archives of the Citizens.

  Her ventral sphincter agape, she spread her thorax wide. When, bloated, she could draw in no more water, she let the orifice snap shut. Her tubacles curled behind her, she expelled the water in a convulsive, frustrated whoosh and jetted across the chamber.

  Two more pulses sent her jetting from the observation room, on her way to the Commons. Nothing there and no one’s company would change anything. Still, for a short while, a batch of magnesium salts sometimes let her forget that she would live and die in this prison.

  And that she was warden as much as inmate.

  As she coasted into the corridor, someone swam into position behind her. “Your Wisdom.”

  Her servants/bodyguards/minders took shifts. Which was this? From a tubacle still arched ventrally, Cd’o looked. She found distinctive permanent textures hiding among the red and far-red patterns anxiously rippling across his integument. “Good day, Kg’o.” Knowing that in this one regard, her words would fail to elicit obedience, she added, “There is no need to call me that.”

  “Yes, your Wisdom.”

  Too soon they had crossed the pathetically small habitat, to glide into the Commons. Cd’o saw all-to
o-familiar figures inside. Scarcely five five-squared Gw’oth lived on Nature Preserve Five. Some, spawned here, thought of this metal can as home. Why wouldn’t they? The habitat was all they had ever known.

  Many whom she found in Commons were Ol’t’ro’s progeny. They were brilliant and gifted in the art of the meld—and, from inbreeding, often deranged. Among them two had become infirm. The detritus of old age clogged their minds; in a meld, the noise of their petty, inconsequential thoughts grew ever more intrusive.

  And so, the newcomers.

  Was rage vivid on her skin? As quickly as they recognized her, Gw’oth across the Commons backed away. Conversations trailed off into respectful silence.

  Respect was a sorry substitute for camaraderie.

  But the Commons were not quite silent. The four newcomers clustered together in a corner, staring at her, whispering. From the accents, they were from Jm’ho, the home world. From the patterns rippling over them, they were at once scared, awed, and humbled.

  As you were in their place, an elder’s engram fragment reminded.

  She jetted over. “Welcome. I am Cd’o.”

  Anxious far-reds deepened. “Thank you, your Wisdom.” Timidly, the new arrivals introduced themselves.

  “What can I tell you about your new home?” she asked. “Have you been shown around the habitat?”

  “Tell us about … them,” one said. “What are they like?”

  About Ol’t’ro. About their destiny. One way or another, all would serve.

  When she did not answer, another of the new arrivals asked, “What are Citizens like?”

  “Citizens are intriguing,” Cd’o said. “Cowardly and ruthless. Smarter than any of us.” Individually, that was. “Their culture is older by far than any on Jm’ho. You would do well to study them.”

  To truly understand Citizens, though, one had also to understand humans. Concordance leaders had a morbid fascination with humans. Much of that fixation came of guilt for the ancestral crime that had established New Terra, and fear of their former servants, and dread of the retribution “wild humans” would exact if they ever discovered New Terra and learned its dark secret. There was fascination with human curiosity—and an abiding horror of it, too.

  And especially among the Experimentalist faction, Citizens were obsessed with human myths.

  “Come with me,” Cd’o directed. “I will show you around.”

  The tour was all too brief, mostly security measures and environmental systems. The “town” was sealed as tightly as any spaceship. Whatever entered, to the smallest drop of water—and the occasional “volunteer,” like these—was quarantined and thoroughly screened.

  You were a volunteer, she reminded herself.

  And a fool, she answered.

  Every few years, the ultimatum went out from Ol’t’ro: send us four of your best. To be chosen is an honor. To join the meld, for the few who prove capable and worthy, is a rapture.

  All lies.

  She looked sadly at the latest to answer the call: you are sacrifices.

  Having learned something of human myth, Cd’o had fancied herself as Theseus. She meant to slay the monster and end the demands of tribute. Only to be doomed by her aptitude for melding. Only to become the Minotaur …

  We are equally the great King Minos, a ghostly remnant of the meld mocked. Part of the curse was never to be alone, even within her own thoughts. Should you think to escape on wings of wax and feathers, we are also as close as you will ever come to being Daedalus.

  Cd’o brushed aside the intrusion, refocused on showing the newcomers the ways of the labyrinth. They had come to an auxiliary water lock, and she explained its sensors and redundant filtration systems. The habitat ringed the planetary drive: damage the planetary drive and a trillion Citizens died. Citizens were too smart and craven ever to risk a physical attack, but Ol’t’ro could not rule out some subtle toxicological or biological attack. If every Gw’o in the colony were to be incapacitated simultaneously, and Citizens were then to force their way in, and to locate and disable the self-destruct before the fail-safe timer set it off …

  Cd’o explained the precautions in detail. Despite the endless clamor of remnant melds, she was not ready to die.

  “What is it like?” a newcomer asked.

  “A meld?”

  “Yes, your Wisdom.”

  On Jm’ho the newcomers had been a Gw’otesht-4. A computation unit, no more. They would know the mechanics of melding. They would have experienced the innocent sharing of mathematics. They could not begin to understand the majesty and misery and transcendence of a Gw’otesht-16 meld. No one could, until it had happened to them.

  Until, as for her, it had been too late.

  * * *

  THE DAILY RESPITE ENDED all too soon.

  Cd’o left the newcomers in the Commons and continued on her way. At the mouth of a long tunnel, her companion turned aside to loiter with other servants.

  She swam down the long tunnel to the melding chamber. Friends/colleagues/alter egos waited inside, and more followed close behind her. They would be one soon enough and few bothered with greetings. The last to enter sealed the massive door.

  Some eager, some dutiful, the sixteen sidled together. A tubacle, questing, engulfed one of Cd’o’s own. Within the maw of her tubacle, the eye and heat receptor went dark. The ear fell deaf to all but the beating of two hearts: one speeding up, one slowing down, seeking unison.

  The tubacle tip probing deep within hers found its neural receptacle.

  A shock like electricity raced up her limb and a great hunger jolted her mind. Unimaginable insights tantalized. Profound truths beckoned, just beyond her grasp.

  More! She needed more! Switching to ventral respiration, she reached out with other tubacles. She felt all around and felt other limbs in return. Tubacle found tubacle, aligned, conjoined …

  Ganglia meshing!

  Feedback surging!

  Heart pounding!

  Electricity coursing!

  We will begin.

  The command echoed and reechoed in Cd’o’s mind. Her fears and doubts receded. Her thoughts—as fiercely as she fought to hold on to them—faded. Her sense of self all but vanished.

  Ol’t’ro, the group mind, had emerged.

  17

  “That’s the way of it, Sigmund,” Donald Norquist-Ng concluded.

  “I urge you to reconsider, Minister.” Sigmund held his voice flat, although the day had been a roller coaster (another metaphor that no one on New Terra would understand). Alice and Julia had done it! And fools like this would throw everything away.

  Norquist-Ng frowned. “We are not going to rehash things. It was obvious in the situation room that you didn’t accept my decision. I invited you to stay for one reason: as a courtesy. In your time, in your way, you worked hard for this world. I chose not to berate you in a roomful of people.

  “In private, in my office, I will speak as plainly as is necessary. I had hoped that being direct would suffice, but not even direct works with you. Very well, I will be blunt. Endurance is coming home. That is my order, Sigmund. It is not open for discussion.”

  “But they’ve identified an ARM ship. It’s been the dream for so long.”

  “Your dream, and I don’t understand even that. You’ve lived on New Terra for more than two hundred years. There’s nothing left on Earth for you.”

  “Tanj it, I agree with you. In part, anyway. I have no interest in going back.” Sigmund suppressed a shudder. “I have no interest in off-world travel of any kind. But this isn’t about me, Minister. The people of this world—my children, and yours, too—deserve to know their history, to reconnect with their own kind. The independence generation would have given anything to—”

  Norquist-Ng slapped his desk. “How convenient for your argument that the founders are all gone. I suppose I should take your word for it how they felt.”

  “Haven’t you ever wondered about your roots?”

  “What p
art of ‘subject closed’ confuses you? I’ve said no. The governor, whom I’ve briefed, says no. That roomful of people we just left—and whom you failed to sway—said no.”

  “Because they know you’ve made up your mind.”

  “Because it is too dangerous.” Norquist-Ng sighed. “And in part I believe that for having listened to you. For years you warned about the Kzinti creatures. For years you said our scout ships had to be armed, lest we run into Kzinti or someone worse.

  “Well, our people have found your Kzinti. You identified them as such. Kzinti and the Earth ships are blowing each other apart. I’ll risk nothing that might bring such madness to New Terra.”

  “That’s not the only risk.” Could a ship be tracked through hyperspace? Not that Sigmund had ever heard. “The Ringworld drew all those warships practically into our backyard. However distant their home bases, three fleets are within fourteen light-years of us. If the Kzinti should spot New Terra, or those cone-ship people … then what? We need to contact the ARM, to ally with Earth, before that happens.”

  Silence.

  Sigmund dared to hope he was making his point. “Of course our people should be discreet as they reach out to the ARM. They should use short digital messages, hard to trace. They should relay everything through comm buoys, so that no one can backtrack the hyperwave beam. There needn’t be any contact but comm until we know more.”

  Norquist-Ng tipped back his chair, seeming to consider, then shook his head. “No. Engagement with other worlds always makes matters worse. We have the proof of that from your era in this chair, one wretched crisis after the next. My orders stand, Sigmund. Endurance will not contact anyone. And it’s coming home as soon as they finish refueling.

  “Challenge me again in public and that will be your last time inside this building.”

  * * *

  SIGMUND PACED THE DUSTY, cluttered, memory-clogged confines of his den.

  Alice’s latest report had brought more than the news that low-level ARM encryption had been cracked. The crew had also spotted, on the far fringes of the scene, an Outsider ship departing. Not into hyperspace—although Outsiders had invented hyperdrive, they did not use it—but racing away at near-light speed.