Juggler of Worlds Read online

  Still the adults did nothing. Odd must be a bad thing.

  His heads sank lower. He noticed more things than his playmates. Was that bad? He still craved their company. He still needed to belong.

  He edged toward flockmates he thought were his friends. “Let’s play,” he sang.

  They whistled dismay and sidled away.

  In despair, he fell to the ground. His necks drooped, aching to wrap themselves tightly against his belly.

  He had once cut himself on a broken toy. The gash had hurt, but not nearly so much as his parents’ paralyzed expressions of horror.

  Banishment hurt far worse.

  Then, with a random glance, his life had changed forever. Through meadowplant tattered by a thousand little hooves, a bit of stone poked. A vein in the rock sparkled. He shifted a head this way and that, studying it. He’d never seen anything like it. “Why does it shine so?” he asked aloud. He ripped at the turf, fascinated, prying the stone free of the entangling roots.

  When did the taunts fade to silence? He did not notice. Eventually, he became aware of younglings huddled around him, necks craned to discern why he ignored their shunning.

  He learned that day that he would never fit in. And something else: to take solace in the wonders of the world around him. It was, although it would be years before he knew it, the first step toward becoming a scout.

  Nessus wasn’t yet ready to deal with the world, but he knew: When the time came, salvation must again come from somewhere outside himself.

  SCREAMS OF TERROR yanked Nessus, flanks heaving in fear and shock, from the depths of catatonia. His heads darted about, seeking peril.

  The message light flickered on his main console. His failure to acknowledge it had set off the shrieking alarm. How overdue was his response? “Alarm off. Play the message.”

  A hologram appeared. Nike, he noted apathetically. Nike, the leader of Clandestine Directorate. Nike, the rising star of the Experimentalist party. Nike, the charismatic. Nike, for whose notice Nessus had, so far without success, volunteered for one dangerous assignment after another.

  That he could be so indifferent shocked Nessus. He forced himself to replay the recording.

  The holographic Nike said, “An urgent matter has arisen. Its resolution must be your top priority.”

  In growing horror, Nessus listened. Limitless quantities of antimatter, the location known only to two humans, now on their way to Earth. He needed, somehow, to watch the humans.

  The Outsiders also knew the coordinates, of course. They wanted an exorbitant payment to reveal the information. There was no reason to pay them, unless—

  “This is most critical, Nessus,” Nike stressed. “We must know if the humans attempt to return. A repeat expedition would almost surely fail, like the first. And yet . . . my experts believe it is possible, given enough resources, for the humans to return with dangerous amounts of antimatter. We must know if that becomes a risk, at least until the antimatter system moves beyond the humans’ possible reach. Everyone on Hearth is depending on you.”

  Damning him to stay here and keep watch, alone, for years.

  “YOUR CREDENTIALS ARE satisfactory,” the woman called Irina Gorychka told Nessus. As much of her skin as Nessus could see was dyed red and white. Her stripes reminded him of a candy cane. Her companion, the man introduced as Gerald Hauss, had covered his cheeks in stylized yellow stars. Both had shaved their heads.

  So General Products’ payment, circuitously routed, had cleared. Nessus studied his callers, at once fascinated and appalled. Dealings with aliens always involved stress. These were renegades among aliens. How much less trustworthy did that make them?

  These were avatars he viewed, not people. Those who might provide the services he sought did not reveal themselves to strangers—especially strangers who refused to reveal themselves.

  Nor was Nessus about to disclose himself. He presented only one face now, and it was human. Almost certainly the faces and voices presented to him were as illusory as those he offered. On the other side of the call, they might be two or ten, men or women.

  Nessus’ human avatar, all the while, stared impassively. “I assured you that I had adequate funds.”

  “You’ll need them,” Hauss said. “These are well-connected people. Pelton himself cannot be monitored directly. He can afford every kind of protection. From our initial survey, it appears he uses them all. Sentries. Alarm systems: home, office, and on his person. Jammers. Top-notch encryption. AI data sniffers on the prowl for anyone like us. We can only watch associates, and associates of associates, and then try to piece together what Pelton is doing.”

  Gorychka cleared her throat. “Just so you know, Nessus, this isn’t a onetime process. We must constantly track who becomes how close to Pelton. Some people’s privacy is protected, or will get that way, by proximity to him. We’ll keep adjusting who and how we monitor.”

  In other words, expect to keep paying.

  Somehow, Nessus managed to function. He found it hard to care.

  Only his friends’ deaths mattered. Withdrawal, denial, depression, reunification with the living—those were the stages of grief. Duty had cruelly short-circuited the process. Now he was in some nether state, distant and numb, his inner self in tatters. And if his spirit somehow healed sufficiently to make the attempt, with whom could he bond? Humans?

  Maybe. At times he could identify more closely with them than with his own. Except for his fellow scouts, and they—

  “I will expect a full accounting,” Nessus said. Forcing himself to interact was hard enough; he could not muster the interest to care what the surveillance cost. All he wanted to do was roll up again and hide. “And I demand utter discretion.”

  18

  The summons was all the more peculiar for the manner of its delivery.

  Max Addeo strode into Sigmund’s office. Addeo was Sigmund’s boss, the ARM Director of Investigations. He was lean and perpetually tanned, with an easy manner, and Sigmund liked him—except as a superior. The man didn’t worry enough for Sigmund’s taste.

  Andrea excused herself, and Addeo shut Sigmund’s office door behind her. “You’re expected now, Sigmund.”

  “That’s rather vague, Max.” And rather short notice.

  “Nonetheless.” Addeo handed over a folded sheet of paper. It bore only a booth address. The prefix indicated midtown Manhattan. “I received a message for you. This address and one word: now.”

  “Received from whom?” Sigmund asked.

  “It will be clear soon enough.” Addeo managed a wan smile. “You went alone to meet the world’s last Puppeteer. I think you can manage midtown in midafternoon.”

  Addeo opened the door. His parting words were, “Now, Sigmund.”

  Sigmund flicked from the ARM HQ lobby. He stepped from the destination booth and looked around. Snack stands. Milling crowds. Towering buildings.

  Directly before him was an ancient redbrick structure a mere seven stories high. The land beneath it, if used for a modern skyscraper, would be worth billions. This building’s very existence made a statement.

  Sigmund climbed the broad granite stairs. The liveried doorman held open the brass-and-glass door for him.

  The concierge ignored the ident Sigmund offered. “That isn’t necessary, sir. You are expected. Please follow me.”

  Across the three-story-tall Common Room, formally suited men and women sipped brandy or coffee, read, and engaged in intimate conversation. It seemed like everyone spoke in whispers, although that might be the acoustics. Huge Oriental rugs covered the age-darkened hardwood floor. Leather-bound books lined the walls to a height of about two meters. From the mahogany paneling above the bookcases stern faces glowered, oil paintings in ornate gilded frames. The occasional squeak sounded as people shifted in their red leather wing chairs. An actual log fire burned in the man-tall masonry fireplace.

  In this most exclusive of private, moneyed establishments, Sigmund didn’t see a single vid phone o
r pocket comp in use. No one had asked for his. The members would never tolerate being asked for their comm gear. Instead, there would be suppressors here, banning the distractions and interruptions of ubiquitous networks—and, with them, all bugs and recorders.

  “This way, sir,” the concierge said. He gestured Sigmund inside a meeting room, appointed like a miniature version of the Common Room.

  Beyond the massive claw-footed oak table, a man and woman stood with their backs to Sigmund. He couldn’t make out their conversation. The man was short and broad shouldered, almost Jinxian. Gregory Pelton, Sigmund guessed. They had yet to meet, but Sigmund had seen plenty of file images.

  The woman was wispy, especially by comparison. Her hair spiraled in alternating braids of gold and platinum. More than eye-poppingly vivid, the turquoise of her bodysuit was a signature color.

  Calista Melenkamp, the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

  The door closed behind Sigmund with a soft whoosh. The two turned at the sound; the man was Pelton. Melenkamp fixed Sigmund with a penetrating stare, then left by another exit without speaking. She didn’t need to say a word. Pelton held her confidence. That she delivered that message here, personally, and yet so deniably, said even more.

  Pelton glared, his forehead furrowed. Even the close-cropping of his black beard seemed somehow angry. “Agent Ausfaller, your interest in my affairs has become intolerable.”

  Anger didn’t impress Sigmund. It so often was a mask. “Welcome back to Earth, Mr. Pelton. I understand you had an interesting trip.”

  “True enough.” A flicker of a smile. “And that’s more information than you had any right to expect. Be happy for it, because it’s all you’ll get. You will cease spying upon and harassing me and my friends.”

  A silver coffeepot, curls of steam wafting from its gracefully curved spout, waited on a sideboard. A Revere piece, Sigmund guessed. He poured himself a cup. “It’s my duty to investigate potential threats to the safety of Earth, Mr. Pelton.”

  “I’m a patriot, Agent Ausfaller. I’ve done nothing to endanger Earth. I never will.” In Pelton’s clenched hands, the padded back of a chair creaked in protest. “Whatever you believe, I will not tolerate groundless intrusion into my affairs. I’m well aware of ARM paranoia. I refuse to be its victim. Unlike most, I have the resources to accomplish that.”

  Not the least of those resources being the trust of the Secretary-General.

  “Understood, Mr. Pelton.” Sigmund pulled out a chair. Sitting was less confrontational. “That said, the fate of Slower than Infinity concerns me. It’s not every day that a General Products hull disintegrates.”

  “Has one ever?” Pelton jerked out the chair he’d been squeezing and sat. “Okay, I see what this is about. I took a trip in my yacht. On my travels, someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse for the ship. They wanted the hull, mostly; in the hinterlands, GP hulls are much in demand since the Puppeteer Exodus. I sold Slower than Infinity and bought something else. That ship’s hull did fail, teaching me a lesson. Stick with the best.”

  Had anyone ID’ed the trace powders on the remains of Pelton’s ship? Not according to ARM sources on Jinx.

  The mystery traces weren’t the only anomaly. Serial numbers on the wreck’s hyperdrive matched Earth shipyard records for Slower than Infinity. Experts said that assembling a hyperdrive inside a hull took time. Disassembly would be the same. Had someone extracted the hyperdrive from the GP hull, the ship-in-a-bottle trick in reverse? Why do it, even if they could? Or was this all, as Pelton would insist, a bookkeeping mix-up?

  Sigmund no more believed that than that Shaeffer’s arrival on Earth had been innocently disguised by a spelling error.

  He had a head full of questions. He yearned for at least one credible answer. “Where did the profit go from selling your ship?”

  Pelton’s face flamed. “Listen carefully, Agent Ausfaller. I sold the ship off-world. I deposited the proceeds off-world. The transactions are none of Earth’s business. I will be most irate if my finances should be examined. You have my word: I will vigorously protest any such harassment to the proper authorities.”

  And to an improper one: the S-G herself.

  Sigmund sipped his coffee, letting Pelton fume. Angry people blurted out things they had no intention of saying.

  Pelton had deposited a huge, so far untraceable, sum into the Third Bank of Sirius Mater. He’d hired people on Jinx, too, all working at an out-of-the-way spot in West End. That much ARM had managed to determine. It would be good to know just what Pelton had going.

  “Agent Ausfaller,” Pelton said. “You have yet to justify your actions. This is your one opportunity to explain why you are persecuting me and my associates. If you cannot . . . well, for your sake I hope there is a reason I’ve overlooked.”

  “How’s this?” Sigmund said. “I’d like to better understand your business with the Outsiders.”

  Pelton blinked. “I purchased information from them.”

  How had Dianna Guthrie described Pelton’s quest? “About the most unusual planet in Known Space.”

  “Yes.” Pelton thrust out his jaw. “I assume that’s not a crime.”

  “Causing a civil-defense panic sort of is,” Sigmund answered. Had it happened in Sol system, it would have been. Jinx hadn’t jailed Pelton, and that was one more bit of alien behavior. Perhaps Pelton had bought them off.

  “We went someplace with a very high normal-space velocity. We bought a lift from the Outsiders.”

  Carlos was right!

  Kzinti. Jinxians. Puppeteers. And now the Outsiders? The gathering storm was so vast Sigmund wondered if his brain could encompass it.

  But the Outsiders had once helped mankind. Hyperdrive was their technology. Had the Outsiders not happened upon a human ship near We Made It, back during the First Man-Kzin War, and sold a hyperspace shunt, the ratcats would have won. Earth itself might now be a slave world to the Kzinti Patriarchy.

  The Outsiders were beyond human scale, ancient, unknowable. Maybe he failed to grasp their grand plan. Or maybe that next-to-elder race, the Puppeteers, did understand the Outsiders. Had Puppeteers manipulated the Outsiders for General Products’ own nefarious purposes?

  Sigmund suspected much but knew very little. In one interpretation, a GP hull had dissolved. The evidence, all under cover, remained on Jinx. By Pelton’s own admission, the Outsiders were involved.

  Pelton and Shaeffer might understand all of this—but Pelton was untouchable, and he’d taken Shaeffer under his wing.

  The possibilities were so worrisome Sigmund almost overlooked blurt number one: a pronoun change. We. “You and Beowulf Shaeffer.”

  “Yes.” Pelton walked around the table and poured himself coffee. The delicate china cup looked wrong in his massive hand. “Bey had traded before with Outsiders, back when he worked for Nakamura Lines.”

  “Did you leave him on Jinx?”

  Pelton shook his head. “He returned to Earth with me. We’re good friends, Agent Ausfaller. More than that, he saved my life on our adventure.”

  “I’d like to hear that story.”

  “I’m sure you would.” Pelton drained his cup and set it down. “Ausfaller, that’s as much of the tale as I mean to share anytime soon. It’s innocent. There’s no reason for ARM interest. There’s no reason to interrogate or spy on me.

  “Not me, not my friends, not my associates. There will be no further interest in Dianna Guthrie, or Beowulf Shaeffer, or Sharrol Janss, or Don Cramer, or anyone close to me.”

  Don Cramer? Who was he? Sigmund made a mental note to find out. And Pelton had said further interest. Sigmund had no one watching this Cramer. Who else might be watching?

  Pelton was on a roll. “Inconvenience any of us again, Ausfaller, and you’d better have proof of something wrong. Do you understand?”

  “I completely understand, Mr. Pelton.” Sigmund stood and offered his hand. It helped him to avoid rubbing the remembered wound in his gut. An Undersecretary
-General once sold him out to the Trojan Mafia. It wasn’t the type of experience anyone forgot.

  What Sigmund truly understood was that no official, however lofty her rank, was beyond suspicion.

  EYE OF THE STORM

  Earth date: 2648

  19

  “We got a runner,” Andrea hissed over the radio. She was hidden in the woods north of the isolated clearing. “Make it two. Man and a woman.”

  Of course, a man and a woman. That’s how you made a baby. “Which way?” Sigmund asked.

  “West,” Andrea said. “Toward you.”

  Sigmund saw them now, fear etched on their faces. The mother waddled more than ran, unmistakably pregnant. The presumed father half-supported, half-dragged her. They staggered away from the tumbledown cabin, little more than a shed, really, toward the distant trees.

  Floaters bringing the local constabulary were five minutes away. Local was a relative term in the Alaskan wilderness. The runners would be long gone when the floaters arrived. The couple would be hard to spot in the woods.

  Sigmund saw no sign of the reported laser hunting rifles that had the three ARMs waiting for backup. “Futz,” he muttered under his breath. This wasn’t why he had become an ARM. Nor Feather—who almost certainly had revealed herself to the would-be parents. Feather was east of the cabin; if the preggers had seen only her, they’d naturally run west.

  Eighteen billion were way too many. It was the law. It was his job. Without enforcement, everyone would be off making babies.

  Futz.

  Sigmund drew his handgun. It carried only mercy darts, slivers of crystallized anesthetic—which mattered not at all. These two would be spare parts in the organ banks, soon enough.

  This was not why, a year earlier, when Max Addeo disbanded the Puppeteer task force, Sigmund had asked for his core team to be reassigned to the Alaska ARM district.