Fate of Worlds Read online

  Norquist-Ng rubbed his chin, considering, before turning to Julia. “Captain, they may have a point. Take Ausfaller as an advisor, but you command the ship and the mission. You are only to scout out the region and report back.”

  Take Ausfaller.

  The room faded, seemed to spin. Sigmund, wobbling, groped behind himself for support. He scarcely noticed Julia guiding him into a chair.

  He had not been off-world in over a century. Not since the Pak War. Not since he had been left adrift in that useless stub of a derelict starship, light-years from anywhere. Alone but for a Puppeteer frozen in time, inert within a medical-emergency stasis field.

  And where was Baedeker now? Long gone … Sigmund did not know where.

  “Grandpa?” a voice called from an impossible distance.

  Sigmund trembled. Fourteen light-years? It would mean forty-two days’ travel each way. Forty-two days of the less-than-nothingness of hyperspace gibbering worse than madness into his mind …

  “Behold the famed destroyer of worlds,” the aide scoffed.

  With a convulsive shudder, Sigmund forced himself back to the present. He couldn’t care less what politicians thought of him. But Julia’s worry? Alice’s disdain? Those cut him to the quick.

  “I’ll accompany the captain,” Alice said.

  If any two people on New Terra should have been friends, they were he and Alice. He was from Earth and she from the Belt, separately exiled among strangers. Neither had arrived under their own power, or by their own choice. Neither knew their way home.

  Until they had lived on this world so long that this was home.

  For a long time, they were friends. Not counting Penelope, Alice had been his best friend—

  And when he hadn’t been paying attention, he and Alice had become relics together. Despite years spent frozen in stasis. Despite time dilation from New Terra’s sometimes relativistic velocity. She was biologically about 225 in Earth years, ancient on a world yet to invent boosterspice. She looked ancient.

  Whereas he, after making the same allowances, had passed 350. By rights, he should have been long dead. Probably Alice still wished him dead.

  But physically, Sigmund was younger, “only” more-or-less two hundred. The prototype autodoc that had twice, all but magically, restored him to life had both times also rejuvenated him to about twenty.

  He should go with Julia to check out this latest threat. In another life, he had been an intelligence agent—an ARM—a high-ranking operative in the United Nations’ unassumingly named Amalgamated Regional Militia. He had put together what passed for a military to protect this world.

  What made him feel so old? The weight of experience? Or the scorn of the one person still living who had once truly understood him?

  “Ms. Jordan,” Norquist-Ng said respectfully, “it is a commendable offer, but you are in no condition for such a trip. You must realize that.”

  “But I am going. I was a police detective, back in the day, back in the Belt. On this world, for a long time, I was deputy defense minister. We both know”—said staring at Sigmund—“someone with off-world experience must go.”

  Tanj stubborn pride! Few Belters ever went prospecting solo, with only a spacesuit and a singleship to protect them—but loner self-sufficiency had deep roots in their mythos, their schooling, maybe their genes. No matter what was at stake, you questioned that belief at your peril. To presume to make life-or-death decisions for a Belter? That was the ultimate affront.

  Once, long ago, Sigmund had presumed. In the same desperate circumstances, he would do it again. Better a live ex-friend than a dead friend.

  And however scornfully Alice looked at him, he still meant to help keep her alive.

  Merely the thought of setting foot onto a spaceship had Sigmund trembling. “Alice,” he said weakly, “I’m just not able. I’m sorry, but it’ll have to be you. But maybe not alone.”

  “Is there another ‘friend’ you’d send?” she mocked.

  Not exactly. Friends didn’t reprogram friends, even in a good cause. Friends didn’t keep dark secrets from—or kidnap—one another. Nonetheless, a champion of New Terra.

  Sigmund nodded. “I won’t say who, Alice. But if I can convince him to join the expedition, you would be fortunate to have him along.”

  3

  Weeding, pruning, breaking apart clumps of dirt, Janus worked his way through the garden. Sweat trickled down his flanks and matted his mane. Mud spattered his legs and clung to his hooves.

  The redmelons were coming along acceptably, but other melon varieties struggled. Tall stands of ornamental grasses, oddly scented, in shades of amber (a touch too orange) and violet (too pale), bowed in the warm breeze. But the fruit trees showed promise. Winged borers evidently agreed, for the red-and-purple insectivore hedge that bounded the garden was a frenzy of lunging, snapping tendrils.

  Once this world had been a granary of the Fleet of Worlds. Most of the farmland here, even long after independence, had grown crops for export to Hearth. No more. Now terrestrial crops prospered, for with the severing of ties with the Concordance had come many changes. Most overt: the reprogramming of the suns. Hearthian flora had yet to adapt to cycles altered to mimic the length of Earth’s day and year.

  What Janus truly craved was the terrestrial vegetable that he never dared to plant. Someone might remember a Puppeteer with a fondness for carrot juice. He had departed Hearth long ago, but among those in authority was one with long memories. One who nursed grudges.

  Even on this world, Achilles might have spies.

  Janus had come late to gardening. His mate had loved to garden; to work in the soil was a way, however imperfect, to commune. And gardening had been something of their lost parent to share with the children.

  Absent parent, Janus chided himself. He would not, must not, think of his mate as lost, as departed.

  No matter that since their parting, the “children” had grown to adulthood. Aurora had even mated. Elpis, the younger of the two, had no memory at all of Hearth, the world of his birth, the home world of his kind, the jewel of the Fleet.

  And in all that time, never had as much as a grace note of rumor about Baedeker, much less any news, found its way to Janus.

  Beyond the hungry hedge, in a pasture of freshly mown meadowplant, children gamboled and frolicked, bleated and sang. This is a good life, Janus thought. The humans treat us kindly, better than we deserve.

  A sudden squealing erupted from among the young, and an outpouring of melodies from the adults who supervised the children’s play. Janus set down his trowel, then craned a neck, the better to listen. He was too distant to make out all the chords, and the breeze carried off most of the upper harmonics, but the little he could hear tantalized him. Surprise, certainly. Reassurances for the little ones. Reassurances for one another.

  He was quite close enough to see the youngest children scattering from … a human.

  Round-faced, gray-haired, thick through the middle, his garment set all to black, the newcomer stopped by a cluster of the child-tending adults. Perhaps the man spoke to them, because one indicated the garden with a briefly straightened neck. With a murmur of thanks, the man began shuffling toward Janus.

  Sigmund Ausfaller?

  The man looked terrible. Decrepit, to be sure; sadly, that was to be expected. Troubled. Shaken. But the eyes, dark and brooding, burned as intensely as ever.

  Janus had not seen Sigmund for … since soon after taking asylum on this world. No, he should be precise: since Sigmund had smuggled him and the children onto this world. The New Terran government did not know and would never have approved. For Sigmund to reappear …

  Janus yearned to gallop away like the children. He ached to collapse onto the ground and hide from the world, his heads tucked between his front legs, tightly rolled into a bundle of self. Whatever events brought Sigmund here … whatever had shaken Sigmund … it would be bad.

  Sigmund edged through a gap in the hedge, flinching from the
tendrils lashing out to taste his face, hands, and garment. “Janus?”

  “So some call me,” he said. The name he used in the village, no human could sing.

  “Two-faced god. Two-headed Puppeteer. Fair enough.” Sigmund chuckled. “And, among his attributes, also god of beginnings, endings, and time.”

  Sigmund’s reappearance foretold an ending of Janus’ idylls. And a beginning, too. But the beginning of what?

  His heads swiveling, Janus briefly looked himself in the eyes. Sigmund would grasp the ironic laughter. “Apart from you, Sigmund, who on this world knows such things?”

  “There is that.”

  Silence stretched awkwardly. With a mind of its own, his left forehoof began tearing at the dirt. “What brings you, Sigmund?”

  “To chat with Janus? Merely a social call. But if I were to speak with—”

  “A name none mention in this place.” The hoof dug more frantically. A head darted deep into his mane, tongue and lip nodes tugging and twisting at a stray lock of hair.

  Sigmund took a computer from his pocket. “There is something I would show that one. Something that a former scout for the Fleet would find interesting.”

  Janus willed the wayward hoof to rest—one runs fastest on obedient limbs. He released his mane, so that both heads could see. Alas, he understood too well Sigmund’s concept of interesting. The more circumspectly Sigmund broached a topic, the direr circumstances must be. Beyond the ability of the fleetest to escape. Beyond, sometimes, the ability of Fleets …

  “Something interesting,” Janus echoed. “What manner of thing?”

  “Call it an anomaly. A ripple in the continuum, such as ships make when entering or leaving hyperspace. Except…”

  “Except that no mere ship would explain your unheralded visit.”

  “A ripple from far away. A vessel departs New Terra soon to investigate.” Sigmund opened his comp. “Let me show you.”

  A graphic sprang from the comp. Amid a scattering of stars, red and green lines crossed near an ordinary yellow sun. Janus quivered with horrible premonition, but the image used an unfamiliar coordinate system centered on New Terra. He could not be certain.

  Until two binary stars and a red giant caught his eye, oriented him. In the shock of recognition, he was Janus no longer.

  “I-I know this place,” Nessus stammered. “Have me delivered to, to, to the ship.”

  Then he collapsed, catatonic with terror, onto the ground.

  RINGWORLD

  Earth Date: 2893

  4

  At the center of the bridge, to the howl of a klaxon, Koala’s jump timer reset from a bit longer than five minutes to just less than one. New destination coordinates popped onto the pilot’s console.

  “What do you think, Lieutenant?” Commander Johansson asked.

  Tanya Wu stiffened in her seat at the comm console because, almost certainly, the question was a test. She was newly rotated aboard a ship long deployed. And posted as a lowly purser in a combat zone. And Wu being such a common name—unless she had somehow, without knowing it, pissed off someone in Personnel back on Earth—she had ended up serving under her own father as captain. Dad swore he had had nothing to do with her assignment to Koala, but oh, how pathetic the situation made her look.

  Amid the orderly bustle of the bridge, she caught sidelong glances and heard yet another whispered reference—damn this ship’s name—to marsupial pouches and helpless offspring.

  “You do think?” Johansson prompted.

  “Yes, sir.” External view ports showed only stars, and Tanya turned toward the bridge’s main tactical display. A supply ship as defenseless as its name suggested, Koala, one vessel among hundreds, huddled near the middle of ARM Task Force Delta. Scattered around the periphery of the holo: two small clusters of Kzinti warships. A Trinoc battle group. An ARM squadron, perhaps patrolling, perhaps returning from, well, Tanya did not try to guess its assignment. Apart from fellow ships of the task force, even the closest icons registered as farther from Koala than Saturn from the sun.

  The local star was merely the brightest among dimensionless points in the display, and all these ships were outside its gravitational singularity. Out here, light had ceased to set the speed limit. Jump to hyperspace and back out: the nearer group of Kzinti could emerge within the ARM formation, laser cannons blazing, antimatter munitions spewing, within seconds. Still …

  “Too many ships too close together,” she temporized, “but that’s always the case.”

  “Business as usual, then?”

  Definitely a test and the bridge crew knew it. In unending round-the-clock high alert, even lowly pursers took their turn standing watch.

  Tanya said, “Let’s hope this never becomes the usual.”

  Of the thousands of warships in and around this solar system, at any given moment someone was jumping from or reentering Einstein space. Even within formations ships shifted, the fluid configurations yet another complication for anyone contemplating a sneak attack.

  The tactical complexity was staggering. Hawking, the chief artificial intelligence aboard the task force’s flagship, and its distributed subsets in computers across the armada, continually integrated readouts across hundreds of ARM ships and tens of thousands of sensor-laden probes. It pondered every hyperspace-related ripple to triangulate its point of origin. It endlessly assessed evolving risks and opportunities, calculating new deployments for the task force.

  Attempted to do all that, anyway.

  “Thirty seconds to jump,” the pilot announced over the intercom.

  Meaning that soon after thirty seconds, recently disappeared ships in threatening numbers could emerge in synch in and around Task Force Delta, to blast away at everything in sight and return to hyperspace faster than mere mortals could react. Or zip through the formation without shooting, just to rattle the ARM crews. Or stay in hyperspace a few seconds longer, to target another nearby formation.

  Or remain in hyperspace for a long time, leaving this chaos behind. Nothing remained to fight over. Nothing tangible, anyway. To be the first to go would be to retreat, and honor remained to fight over.…

  Too many possibilities and too little information to choose among them. Tanya said, “It looks like a routine precautionary fleet jump to me, Commander.”

  A maneuver that would, in turn, unleash a torrent of new ripples, to which thousands more ships, in formations large and small, all around this solar system, must hurriedly react.…

  Johansson left her hanging almost till the jump. “To me, too,” he finally allowed.

  “Jumping in three, two, one…” the pilot announced over the intercom.

  Across the bridge, view-port screens went dark. The human brain was not wired to perceive hyperspace. Lucky people so confronted sensed walls snapping together, denying the less-than-nothingness presented in a porthole or view port. Unlucky people got lost in the … whatever hyperspace was. The Blind Spot, starfarers called the phenomenon, and it had driven people mad.

  “In three,” the pilot called. “Two. One. Dropout.”

  On dropout, stars refilled the view ports. Pale, translucent spheres popped up scattered throughout the tactical display. Each sphere centered on the most recent confirmed pre-jump coordinates of a ship; the sphere grew with the moment by moment uncertainty of where that ship had the potential to be now. One by one, like soap bubbles pricked, spheres vanished. Everywhere a ship had been definitively located, whether by Koala’s instruments or in hyperwave downloads from remote sensors, a tiny icon replaced the bubble. Sometimes nothing replaced a bubble; that meant a ship had disappeared into hyperspace in the seconds while Koala had been disconnected from the familiar universe.

  “Report,” Johansson ordered.

  “Jump timer at three minutes and holding, sir,” the pilot said.

  “No threatening deployments, Commander,” the tactical officer said.

  “Hyperwave links opened to London and Prague”—respectively the task force’s
flagship and Koala’s assigned escort—“sir,” Tanya said.

  “What do you think?” Johansson asked her again.

  She reached into the tactical display to point out a nearby proto-comet, a vaguely potato-shaped glob about five kilometers along its shortest axis. “I don’t care for the snowball,” she said. “We’re too close, and a decent-sized squadron could hide behind it.” If so, perhaps well stocked with nukes or antimatter.

  The grating, prepare-to-jump tone blasted.

  “Jump in twenty seconds,” the pilot called over the intercom.

  At eleven seconds, another audible alarm, at the pitch that warned of a bogey. It morphed into the warble that identified the bogey as a hostile. A scattering of new icons, lens-shaped, manifested in the tactical display, from Koala’s perspective lurking behind the snowball. The latest intel download from Hawking.

  “I see some Kzinti agreed with you,” Johansson said, a rare touch of approval in his voice.

  “Jumping in three. Two…”

  The task force executed seven more micro-jumps before the watch changed and Tanya, exhausted, could shamble to the ship’s mess for a hurried meal.

  * * *

  TANYA TOSSED AND TURNED, suspended in midair between sleeper plates in her tiny cabin. As the intercom blasted alerts every few minutes, her thoughts churned. Could three navies, and armed observers from yet more military powers, converge like this without everything ending in disaster? How long until someone lost patience, or cracked under the unending pressure, or simply made an honest mistake?

  Reaching through the loose mesh of the crash netting, she slapped the touchpoint and collapsed the antigrav field. She recorded a quick it’s-crazy-here-how’s-it-going-with-you message for Elena, wrapped it in standard fleet encryption, and queued it for transmission. She and Elena hadn’t managed a live vid call since soon after Tanya arrived; now they counted themselves lucky when even short texts got through without long delays. As the pace of jumps grew ever more frenetic, tactical traffic between ships consumed almost every scrap of available bandwidth.