Fleet of Worlds Page 20

  They arrived finally in a den merely twice as large as Nike’s office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The few wall holos somehow emphasized the burnished wood paneling. Eos indicated a tall pile of cushions. “Sit, please. Now as to invoking the voice of the people—it is a critical matter, Nike, and one to which I have given much thought. I have concluded this is an inauspicious time for political uncertainty.”

  “I do not understand,” Nike said. The party leadership had focused on awakening proper concern within the Concordance since the first news of renewed attention by the ARM. “The Fleet flees toward the unknown, while wild humans hunt us from behind. Circumstances could not better suit the Experimentalist cause.” The mission of safeguarding the herd from its own complacency . . .

  “Our travels into the unknown will last a very long time. How is this moment different?” Eos stared two-headedly, daring Nike to argue. “Some may think the Fleet is on a journey, a transient stage fraught with danger. I have come to embrace a different view. The Fleet has transitioned to our new way of life.” The subtext went unarticulated: With the transition complete, governance was appropriately entrusted to the Conservatives.

  A decadently opulent new home. The abrupt renunciation of party belief. Eos’ timing could not be more—

  “I should share another matter with you.” As he spoke, Eos traced vertical circles with his heads: a gesture of confidence and trust. “We live in challenging and perplexing times, Nike. The people call out to us, their leaders, for unity. I hear those voices, and so I am joining the present government.”

  The irony was unbearable; it demanded all Nike’s self-discipline not to look himself in the eyes. He had dispatched Nessus to corrupt the wild humans with their own funds, money recycled through General Products Corporation. The Hindmost had co-opted and corrupted Eos with only a government penthouse.

  However ironic, the situation was unambiguous. The near future would bring no appeals to or reassessment of the communal wisdom. This unnatural alliance between the leaders of the two parties doomed any possibility that a new vision might be forged.

  Nike could scarcely bear to look at Eos. Looking around the room, feigning interest in this obscene ostentation was safer. This lavish home might even have been his. The offer had been clear enough. Now that Eos had been bought, temptation was being dangled once more.

  The leaders of both factions were consumed with political and personal advantage, even as peril surrounded the Fleet on all sides. Whom the gods would destroy . . .

  “Thank you for your hospitality.” Unfolding his legs, Nike emerged from his nest of pillows. “If you will excuse me, however, pressing matters at Clandestine Directorate demand my attention.” Surrendering to his roiling emotions, Nike left without awaiting a response from Eos, intent on locating the nearest stepping disc.

  For affairs at his office were pressing. Having spurned the enticements of the Hindmost and Eos, Nike wondered for how much longer Clandestine Directorate would be his concern.

  NIKE CHARGED FROM stepping disc to stepping disc—across vast plains, around continental coasts, from remote island to teeming megalopolitan plaza to towering mountain crest—as fast as the ever-crowded walkways allowed. In impressions almost stroboscopically fleeting, he drank it all in: the sounds and smells of the crowds, the casual intimacy of brushing flanks with countless strangers, the randomly chosen waypoints.

  Whenever Nike was troubled, a frenetic gallop across Hearth like this never failed to soothe him.

  Until now.

  The corruption of the elite threatened to overwhelm him. How tempting it was to find a quiet nook somewhere and then curl himself away from the world.

  Tempting, but ultimately futile. Withdrawal would fail to console him just as this mad dash around the globe now failed to distract him. The problem was larger than him, larger than the world. Something, whether maturity or insanity Nike could not judge, demanded that he take a larger view. To hide beneath one’s belly or on a single planet—the difference was only of degree, not of kind.

  Sides heaving from exertion, Nike made his way home. This evil alliance between the Hindmost and Eos put the burden of safeguarding Hearth on him. If he were to be removed from Clandestine Directorate, who would address the true risks that confronted the world?

  He had to retain his post, doing whatever that took—whatever the cost to his self-respect.

  The sonic shower dissolved a patina of sweat but left Nike’s thoughts as dark as ever. So many had joined him at the grand ballet, those he considered his friends and colleagues—and yet there were none with whom to share these doubts and misgivings. With a start, Nike realized the only one he knew to whom this star-spanning anxiety might make sense: Nessus.

  What little order remained to Nike’s coiffure after his mad dash had slumped in the shower. He sat before a mirror, a comb in one mouth and a brush in the other, trying to—

  Bzzt.

  An alert buzzer, insistent with harsh undertones. Only his most senior staff could get past his voice mail. An iconic image floated above the buzzing communicator. The still holo showed Vesta, his most trusted aide. “Nike.”

  Nike waited.

  “I am sorry to disturb you.” Vesta’s voices trembled, and his necks slumped with worry. Tufts and gaps in his coiffure bespoke recent plucking. “An urgent matter has come up.”

  “There is no need to apologize,” Nike answered. He had just flattered himself that he was irreplaceable. How fitting that there should be an immediate crisis. “What is the news?”

  “We received a report from NP4. If only we had processed it sooner.” Vesta lowered his heads submissively. “An unsolicited account by an informant.”

  “And?” Nike prompted.

  A holo inset popped up, of a dour Colonist whom Nike did not recognize. “Her name is Alice Jones-Randall. She works in an office complex used by the Self-Governance Council on Arcadia.”

  Evidently she also informed on her coworkers to the directorate. Vesta’s hesitance began to worry Nike. “What does she have to say?”

  “She claims she saw Kirsten Quinn-Kovacs yesterday.” Kirsten was light-years away, aboard Explorer—but Vesta knew that. “Come as quickly as you can.”

  His aide teleported in moments later. “Thank you, sir. If I may? This video comes from a security camera.” A new holo appeared, this one an urban setting. A timestamp counted up in a corner. Offices. Arcadian vegetation. Colonists everywhere.

  Vesta extended a neck into the image. “Watch here.”

  Here was one end of a pedestrian mall, its surface tiled with stepping discs. Nike watched streams of Colonists walking around, appearing and disappearing. Vesta froze the image as yet another Colonist materialized.

  “It could be her.” Even side by side with an image taken during a visit Explorer’s crew had made to his office, Nike was uncertain. “Or not. See the pastel clothing. Kirsten is not mated.”

  “Facial recognition software says it is her,” Vesta said. “We used a recent holo from her personnel file in the scout program.”

  “Run it again, with this image from my office.”

  Vesta reran the comparison. Another match.

  Point by point, Vesta laid out the evidence. The suspected Kirsten walking across the mall into a government building. A second video watched her enter the lobby and scan an office directory. A match between her on-file DNA and dust from the lobby. Apparently humans regularly shed hair fragments and skin cells.

  “How sensitive is that test?” Nike asked.

  Vesta checked his files. “In such a well-traveled space, cleaned daily, all detectable traces would be gone in three to five days.”

  The proof seemed incontrovertible. Nike reluctantly accepted the identification. “Why was Kirsten there? Whom did she see?”

  “We don’t know.” Vesta picked fearfully at his mane before unfreezing the latest video. In it Kirsten left the lobby without speaking to anyone. Returning to the pedestrian mall, she
disappeared by another stepping disc. “This is our only sighting despite extensive searching of surveillance data. We might not find her again if she avoids security cameras.”

  And of course the stepping-disc system kept no records of transfers between public areas.

  Only by good fortune did he know of Kirsten’s unexpected return to the Fleet. How long might it be before anyone spotted her again, or found her crewmates?

  Or, far more critically, their ship.

  Eyes fluttering with surprise, Baedeker took Nike’s unexpected call. “Your Excellency.”

  “We have a problem.” Nike summarized the proof of Kirsten’s surprise presence on NP4. “How can that be?”

  Baedeker dipped a head in wary thoughtfulness. “She must have teleported off Explorer before it left on its mission. That’s why the Colonists falsified the onboard audio recordings: so we would not detect her absence.”

  “Must have,” Vesta echoed skeptically.

  “Of course. Traffic control tracked Explorer’s departure. They still send their reports from . . .” Baedeker trailed off as a possibility occurred to him. “Perhaps Explorer returned secretly to drop her off.”

  “Perhaps? You don’t track the location of their ship?” Harsh dissonances underscored Nike’s displeasure. Had the Colonists deceived this arrogant engineer again?

  “We know it by inference, Excellency. We continue to receive reports about Oceanus, and answers to our occasional inquiries, by hyperwave radio, always from the correct direction. It just occurred to me”—Baedeker lowered his heads submissively—“that a hyperwave relay could be involved. Hyperwave radio being instantaneous—”

  “The ship could be anywhere,” Nike said, completing the thought. “An indestructible ship designed for stealth, controlled by a deceitful crew.”

  No one spoke for what seemed a very long time. No one needed to. This was a nightmare scenario—and it was of their making. Sufficiently accelerated and aimed at Hearth, Explorer would be an apocalyptic device.

  The corrupt pact between Eos and the Hindmost that had threatened to consume Nike receded into a distant, minor hazard. “Before Explorer’s departure, I assume General Products outfitted it with a failsafe.”

  High/low, low/high, high/low: Baedeker’s heads bobbed enthusiastic agreement. Did he see this as redemption for his many failures? “Of course, your Excellency. I did not use any ordinary paint—”

  “I don’t need to know details.” It had been a mistake to meet the crew, Nike realized. He did not want to know details. That he had come to see Kirsten, Omar, and Eric as people made what must now be done that much more difficult. Possibly none of them remained aboard the doomed ship. He hoped that was the case. “Just do it.”

  25

  “Welcome to Earth,” Traffic Control said.

  “It’s good to be back,” Nessus lied. He hoped his avatar had an honest face. As far as anyone in this solar system knew, this was a human ship.

  The Mojave Spaceport sprawled in all directions. Rugged mountains loomed in the distance. Maintenance had evidently suffered since Nessus’ last visit—greenery poked upward through cracks in the tarmac, a few grown tall enough to be recognizable to the ship’s computer as young yucca and Joshua trees.

  Aegis would look no different from many of the vessels around it. Despite the deep recession caused by the abrupt disappearance of General Products Corporation—or perhaps because of it—the company’s indestructible hulls remained prized here. A used GP hull cost more now than it once had new.

  Nessus trembled with excitement on his command bench. A manic phase was upon him, and it would be foolish not to act now. “Computer, proceed as planned.” Then, since the plan relied upon the unwitting cooperation of a human victim, he went to the relax room to wait.

  For a while he sampled the human media. Innuendo about Fertility Board corruption. Unruly protests. Opportunistic politicians endorsing Birthright Lotteries. Vigilante attacks on “bought babies.”

  Necessity seemed such a facile excuse. Repelled by what he had caused, Nessus stopped watching. The reports would be in the archives when he could bear it again.

  He was concentrating on one of the human histories that Nike so prized, by a flatlander named Plutarch, when an alert tone chimed. A caption appeared over the biography Nessus was reading: Sangeeta Kudrin, UN deputy undersecretary for administrative affairs.

  He looked up. Behind a one-way mirror, a woman had materialized inside a booth made of hull material. She was petite with almond-shaped eyes and many facial piercings. She wore a conservative brown-and-orange suit; what little Nessus could see of her skin-dye job favored spirals in an assortment of blue tones.

  She looked panicked.

  Nessus set down his reader as his guest began pounding on the booth walls. “You will not be harmed.”

  “Where am I?” she demanded. “And who are you?”

  Not: How did I get here? Nessus was impressed. She had already ascribed her abduction to subversion of the transfer-booth system. “You may call me Nessus.”

  “Where am I, Nessus?”

  “That is unimportant.” He let her ponder that for a while. “You have ceased to report as ordered.” Ceased to leave information in designated transfer booths at designated times, so that his minions could retrieve it.

  Sangeeta swallowed. “I have provided a great deal of information.”

  “Nevertheless.” Her body heat would quickly warm the enclosed space. The filter-equipped disc in the booth’s ceiling exchanged oxygen for carbon dioxide, but she could not know that. He waited.

  “What do you want?” she finally asked.

  “Information about Sigmund Ausfaller.”

  She flinched. “That is not feasible.” Nessus waited until she added, “What about Ausfaller?”

  “I want regular reports on his work.”

  “You want me to spy on Ausfaller? The man is a raving paranoid. Maybe you don’t understand what that means. It means he suspects everyone.”

  Nessus waited in silence as beads of sweat appeared on Sangeeta’s forehead and trickled down her face. Her eyes darted around, seeking an exit that did not exist. He said, “The ARM is part of the United Nations. There must be reports.”

  “I can tell you one thing.” Furtive glances. “Ausfaller knows.”

  Nessus pressed on. “What does he know?”

  “About the extortions! I’m trapped in here, but he’s trapping you!”

  “Explain,” Nessus said softly.

  “I’m guessing that you chose your victims, at least some of them, by clever data mining. I don’t see how else you could have found me. My . . . creative use of UN funds.” She slumped against a wall of the booth. “It appears Ausfaller had worried about just such an attack on the UN. He created a persona in the personnel files, gave it a suspect-looking past, just to entrap anyone doing exactly what you’re doing.”

  Nessus quivered, his mania spent. “How do you know?”

  “For the reason you wanted me here. I have limited access to his reports. At least I had access. He severely restricted everything soon after you tried to coerce his decoy.” She laughed bitterly. “I wouldn’t be here if I’d followed his example. He stopped using transfer booths right after the fake persona got an envelope with your Cerberus sigil on it.”

  What if Miguel and Ashley had, unknowingly, tried to blackmail the ARM? They would get disinformation from Ausfaller, surely. And Ausfaller would think to seek out other coerced parties, real UN personnel whom the hidden blackmailers might have threatened. If Nessus and his minions could find ways to intimidate them, Ausfaller could do the same.

  Nessus quivered, wondering how much false data he might already have swallowed.

  He resisted the urge to paw at the deck as the implications became clear. Assume Ausfaller knew the transfer-booth system had been compromised. Puppeteers were the obvious suspects. And the ARM already sought in the direction of the Fleet . . .

  “Nessus!” His
prisoner peered at the mirror, panting, hysteria in her voice. “Are you still there?”

  He got his fear under control. “I have many sources at the UN. Ausfaller cannot know them all. I advise you to say nothing about our relationship or this conversation. If you inform him, I will find out.”

  Sangeeta shivered. From relief at the implication she would be released? In terror, that Ausfaller would learn of her thefts? Maybe both. “I’ll say nothing to him.”

  Conscience aside, Nessus had no choice but to release her. The disappearance of a high-ranking official would only stoke Ausfaller’s suspicions. If she did speak with Ausfaller, all she could reveal was the fact of her abduction and questioning. It would not endanger Nessus.

  And Ausfaller himself? He remained untouchable. Nessus had to assume the paranoid had arranged an in-case-of-my-disability-or-disappearance message for authorities.

  Nessus tongued the command that teleported Sangeeta from her cell to the transfer booth anteroom of her home. If she meant to keep her word to Nessus, she would need a moment of privacy in which to regain her composure.

  As Nessus needed to regain his own composure. Without it, he could hardly expect to enlist a first-rate astrophysicist.

  26

  Darkness and an eerie silence greeted Kirsten’s return to Explorer.

  An unfamiliar acrid reek filled the air. She felt her way through the relax room to a light-activating touchpad. Dimmed LEDs she could have understood, but off? Her left shin smacked something massive as she shuffled toward the control.

  Blazing lights revealed unfathomable disarray. Supply cabinets gaped open, their contents spilled to the deck. The treadmill lay on its side. Wall panels hung awry, baring the painted interior surface of the hull. “Eric?” she called.

  No one answered.

  As Kirsten forced open the suddenly stiff hatch, a flicker of motion registered in her peripheral vision. Sven. She said, “Clear the disc for Omar, but stay here.”