Betrayer of Worlds Read online

  None of the controls were where Louis expected them. Was this a Puppeteer ’doc? He found a panic button and slapped it. The dome began to retract.

  “Ah, you are back,” Nessus said. The Puppeteer stood far across the room. “Do you feel better?”

  Better? The burn scars had vanished from Louis’s left side. He raised a hand for study and it was rock-steady. His fingers, splayed, showed no hint of tremor. He didn’t sweat and he wasn’t nauseous or dizzy. There was none of the anxiety and depression that had all but crushed him between pills, no crawling-of-the-skin portent of seizures waiting to strike him down.

  Feel better? Finagle, Louis felt terrific.

  Sitting up, he grabbed the unfamiliar jumpsuit that lay draped across the bottom of the ’doc. He didn’t want to think about the disgusting state of the clothes he had worn aboard.

  “I feel much better, Nessus. Thank you.”

  “There is much to talk about.”

  Time now to reveal the fine print? Louis tried and failed to care. Even the air, spicy and exotic, rich with some Puppeteer scent, shouted that he was on an adventure. Stepping out of the ’doc, he felt agile and light on his feet. He dressed quickly, while Nessus studied his hooves. “Where are we going, Nessus?”

  “To begin, a world called Hearth.”

  “I never heard of it.”

  “Nor have you heard its true name.” Nessus sang something evocative of oboes and French horns, of cellos and harps.

  A few bars, no more, but the music sent shivers down Louis’s spine. The chords spoke somehow of home and belonging. And he realized—

  He had no idea of the way home! To any home, to any world on which he had ever set foot. Earth, Home, Fafnir, Wunderland: he could remember neither their positions nor the pulsar landmarks by which to locate them. More than exercised, his engrams had been . . . examined. Pilfered.

  “You’ve tampered with my brain!” Louis roared. The Puppeteer seemed alien again. No, more than alien. Worse than alien. Monstrous. “You wanted to use my mind. Are you crazy?”

  Even as Louis protested, a calmer part of him chided. He was at Nessus’ mercy. He had put himself at Nessus’ mercy. So never mind the immaturity of losing his temper—and where had that come from?—this behavior was dangerous.

  Nessus dipped one head into a pocket of his sash. (Preparing to vanish again, trapping Louis in this cargo hold to reconsider his behavior?) “It was necessary,” Nessus said with his other head. “But consider, Louis. You knew your memories would be altered before your return. This is before your return.”

  Fine print.

  Louis tamped down his rage, trying to think with his mind instead of his hormones.

  After the confusion that was his childhood, memory was a fixation. An obsession. Memory was the sole, gossamer link to all that had been taken from him. He clung to the bits he did remember. Throughout his adult life he had studied countless tricks and ploys, learning to learn.

  And so he recalled verbatim what Nessus had warned. Things that you will see cannot be revealed. Your memories will be edited before I return you to Known Space.

  The imprecision of before was the least of Louis’s problems. Nothing in Nessus’ words limited memory editing to what Louis saw while on this trip! Louis could be returned to Known Space as a vegetable, and Nessus would have kept his bargain.

  And Louis had been too addled even to notice. Compared to that failure, the physical weakness from which he had been delivered paled to nothing.

  If he survived this adventure, Louis vowed, he would never take drugs again. He would think before he acted. He would be more deliberate in everything he did. If he survived—

  No.

  He would be more deliberate beginning now. Without Nessus’ help, Louis would never get home. “Explain what I am to do,” he said.

  Nessus led the way to Aegis’ tiny relax room. Fresh-from-the-autodoc euphoria would fade soon enough; when it did, Louis would realize he was ravenous. And Nessus wanted a drink bulb of warm carrot juice. No matter that his biochemistry could extract little nourishment from any terrestrial food. He found the beverage soothing.

  His spirits needed soothing.

  Louis looked all around as they walked, peering down cross corridors and peeking into the occasional open hatch. He bounded more than walked, scarcely able to contain himself—until he skidded to a halt.

  Louis gaped at a darkened hatch window. He touched a cheek, still staring, as though convincing himself the reflected image was truly him. Hard living and a recent lack of boosterspice had started him down the path to looking his true age. “I . . . I look young. Maybe twenty.”

  Nessus had hoped Louis would not make that discovery so soon. It only added to the necessary explanations. “This particular autodoc also rejuvenates.”

  “A Puppeteer ’doc, then.”

  “We prefer Citizen.” Nessus extended a neck briefly, pointing down the corridor, and resumed walking in that direction. Warm carrot juice sounded better and better. He said, “But this is not a Citizen autodoc; in fact, Carlos Wu built it. Yes, Louis, your father. It is the most advanced autodoc ever built by your people or mine.”

  Most advanced failed to do the unit justice. Carlos had accomplished something truly revolutionary. Nessus knew for a fact this autodoc had rebuilt Sigmund Ausfaller after the man had had half his chest blasted away. It rebuilt Ausfaller a second time from a heavily irradiated, all-but-carbonized husk. And Ausfaller claimed this autodoc had once rebuilt Beowulf Shaeffer from a severed head.

  That was why Nessus had custody of the precious device, why the Hindmost had agreed to allow it off Hearth. Aegis carried copies of Hearth’s largest medical libraries. Had he located Carlos, Nessus would have pressed the human to reprogram its nanites to also heal Citizens. Alas, that effort must be undertaken without benefit of Carlos’s genius. Just as far more pressing concerns must be addressed without benefit of Beowulf.

  “How did you come to have the ’doc?” Louis asked. “Citizens, I mean.”

  “For complicated reasons, Carlos and Beowulf had to abandon it.” Yet another incomplete truth. “It was later acquired, at great expense, from criminals.” A huge lie.

  They came to the relax room and Nessus motioned Louis inside. As Louis piled a tray with foods from the synthesizer, Nessus brooded about the many falsehoods this autodoc had evoked.

  He had once spent most of a year searching Fafnir for the autodoc. To complete the search Nessus had had to ignore an urgent recall to Hearth and then lie about why he had been detained. The wonder was that he had ever found the device. Shaeffer had hidden it underwater, off the coast of a tiny, nameless, and unpopulated coral island.

  Many years later, so that Nessus could deliver the autodoc to Hearth’s scientists, he had invented a fable about a Fafnir crime syndicate offering the autodoc for sale. The story served a second purpose, because crooks did not give receipts. He had needed an explanation for some of the General Products wealth he had redirected. Always for the benefit of Hearth and herd—as he perceived it.

  Louis gave his complete attention to a plate of potatoes and seared meat. He paused before tackling a cheese omelet. “Then why doesn’t it look like the ’docs I’ve used?”

  “It was a prototype, Louis. Your father was short and he had sized the autodoc for himself. When it came under Citizen control, we replaced the intensive care cavity.” Longer, wider, and deeper, the cavity would now physically accommodate any human, even the tallest Belter or Wunderlander. Someday it would be reprogrammed to handle a Citizen. “And a good thing, too. You are taller than Carlos.”

  Louis twitched. “When I was young, my . . . stepfather was much taller than Carlos. Somehow they became the same height. Did that have something to do with this autodoc?”

  “Carlos and Beowulf have complicated stories. Beowulf, of course, was a—”

  “The history lesson can wait.” Louis pushed away his tray. “I’m still waiting to hear what you expect me to d
o.”

  A padded Y-shaped bench was the main piece of furniture in the relax room. Suddenly too tired to stand, Nessus half collapsed onto it. Merely to describe this mission would take all his strength.

  A trill to the ship’s computer authorized its Voice to respond to Louis—with limited access to data. Man and machine could continue to talk when, very soon now, he must hide in his cabin. A second trill evoked a hologram. From the corner of an eye Nessus saw Louis blink.

  Five globes now hung over the relax-room table, each sphere marking a corner of an equilateral pentagon. Four of the worlds showed large blue oceans and skies flecked with cloud, their continents lush with farm and forest. Earth-like, Nessus knew—even though Louis would no longer fully appreciate that—except for their necklaces of artificial suns. These planets flew free of any star.

  The fifth world was of similar size, but there any similarity ended. No artificial suns orbited this world; it blazed with its own light. Only scattered small parks interrupted continent-spanning cities. Beholding Hearth, his hearts skipped beats.

  “The Fleet of Worlds,” Nessus said.

  “The glowing world, that’s Hearth. That’s your home.”

  “Yes.” The home of all Nessus held dear. “The Concordance holds sway on Hearth and its Nature Preserve worlds.”

  “Hearth is different,” Louis muttered to himself. He stared at the image, considering. “No sun. So the Puppet . . . Citizens are taking their worlds away from the core explosion?”

  “Our worlds are safe and familiar.” Nessus moved a neck in sinuous waves, the gesture encompassing the ship. “Sane beings do not fly this way.”

  “So, they travel in normal space.” Louis pondered some more. “No matter how safe the worlds are, what dangers loom in their path?”

  A minute, no more, and Louis had focused on the essential problem. He was his fathers’ son—in quickness of mind, at the least. Nessus permitted himself a moment of hope. “That is the question, of course.”

  “What am I to be, then,” Louis asked. “An advance scout? Expendable?”

  “More than a scout, certainly. A problem solver. I like to think not expendable, because I will accompany you.”

  “You went to a great deal of trouble to find my fathers. I don’t believe you would do that for some theoretical danger. What has you scared more than usual?”

  Nessus replaced the Fleet with another image: of a five-limbed creature scuttling about an ocean floor. In human terms, the being somewhat resembled a starfish crossed with an octopus, or perhaps five tube worms fused together at their tails. One “worm” directly faced the camera, revealing the limb to be a hollow tube, its aperture slowly pulsating. From deep inside the hollow, past rings of sharp, closely packed teeth, eyes and less obvious sensors peeked.

  He said, “It’s a Gw’o, no bigger from tip to tip than the length of your arm.”

  “It doesn’t look scar . . .”

  Louis trailed off as Nessus, with another tone burst, replaced the holo again. Now an industrial complex sprawled across a plain of ice. An upwardly curved track, an electromagnetic launcher, hurled a ship into the sky. The vessel lit its fusion drive and raced away. Except for running faster than real time, the video was untouched.

  Nessus said, “The Gw’oth broke through the ice of their ancestral ocean less than two Earth centuries ago. Before that, their technology was stone tools. Now they have fusion and hyperdrive.”

  “Two centuries,” Louis echoed.

  If Nessus had done his edits properly, Louis would no longer remember Earth’s orbital period. That memory should be gone, along with every other memory that could conceivably point his way home without Nessus’ help.

  Nessus said, “We recently discovered that the Gw’oth have established a colony in the Fleet’s path.”

  Prevent a war.

  Louis ran laps around the passenger deck, his rejuvenated body demanding action. Compared to his father’s (!) autodoc, boosterspice was scarcely a step beyond exorcisms and leeches. Louis seethed with wonderment and unwonted energy.

  And more than a trace of worry. Had he not just gotten out of a war?

  The worry could wait. Nessus said they had a long flight ahead of them.

  Louis picked up the pace, his boots pounding the deck. He was young again! He had so much energy to burn off.

  And less wholesome urges to fight off. Some dark recess of his mind demanded pills, something to take off the edge. The body could be cured. Had been cured. Bad habits? Those, he would have to break.

  He began running flat out. The jumpsuit wicked away sweat as fast as he produced it. Nanofabric? The cloth was yet another wonder of Puppeteer tech.

  If the energy of youth and the challenges before him could not distract him, free him, nothing ever would. Voyage far beyond Known Space. Prevent a war between the frighteningly advanced Puppeteers and a whole new alien race. He had embarked, surely, on an adventure to rival anything even the infamous Beowulf Shaeffer had ever endured.

  (“Too bad you won’t remember it,” taunted that part of Louis still craving a pill. Too bad you’ll never be able to tell your father what you’ve done.)

  Louis ran and ran, till sweat rolled down his face and his chest heaved—

  To the second star to the right and straight on till morning.

  From the comparative safety of his locked cabin, Nessus listened to unending thuds. The footfalls came faster and faster as Louis burned off his excess energy, or sublimated his innate aggression, or worked up his nerve. Would Louis succeed? Could Louis succeed? Nessus had his doubts. Not even Beowulf Shaeffer had been Nessus’ first choice.

  If only Carlos Wu’s autodoc healed minds half as well as it healed bodies.

  At his best, Sigmund Ausfaller was exceptional. His innate paranoia found connections no rational mind could. His brilliance found opportunities amid the direst of circumstances. In the years Nessus had known the man, Sigmund had had adventures to rival anything even Beowulf Shaeffer had accomplished. And so Nessus had abducted Sigmund, his memory, like Louis’s, stripped of all knowledge of the location of Human Space.

  But Sigmund was broken. His last adventure had left him adrift in deep space in the crippled stub of a ship. Sigmund was half mad when help finally arrived. He was too scarred, mentally and emotionally, ever again to set foot aboard a spaceship.

  Louis would have to serve.

  6

  Louis sat in the copilot’s crash couch, a drink bulb of Kona coffee in hand and a plate of scones at the ready. Whatever complaints he might have, the repertoire of Aegis’ synthesizer was not among them.

  The couch where Louis sat could have been purchased on any human world. Almost certainly it had. Everything else on the bridge—the control consoles, the pilot’s couch, even the padded rim of the hatchway—looked half melted. Corners and edges must be unnecessary risks. A person could bang his knee.

  He savored a bit of scone. (“Substituting one appetite for another,” an inner voice mocked.) Ignoring the scorn, he took his time chewing. When the subtle flavors had faded, he called out, “Voice. Show me one of the Gw’oth ensembles.”

  The holo that popped up was disgusting: a Gordian knot of flesh, writhing and pulsating. The Gw’oth came in every color of the rainbow, and in infrared Louis could not see. Hues and patterns changed in real time for reasons he could not fathom.

  “A Gw’otesht, sir,” Voice intoned. “Specifically a Gw’otesht-16. As this ensemble is configured, it is optimized for four-dimensional simulation.”

  Voice was the shipboard artificial intelligence. Amid technological marvels from stepping discs to the programmable nanofabric of Louis’s jumpsuit, Voice was an anomaly. Nessus had acquired a human crash couch; he could as easily have purchased a far more capable AIde on any human world. He hadn’t. Why not?

  Because cowards do not build their possible successors. Interesting that Nessus would use even an out-of-date AI. . . .

  A puzzle for another time, L
ouis decided. He said, “And other ensembles, entailing different connectivities, suit other problems. So an octuple wherein each Gw’o uses three tubacles to connect to three other Gw’oth would tackle 3-D problems. Static modeling of molecular bonds, for example.”

  “A Gw’otesht-8. Indeed, sir.”

  Louis smiled at a crazy notion: an English butler had taught Voice its mannerisms. “Call me Louis, please. And these biological computers drive the Gw’oth’s rapid advancement?”

  “Yes, Louis.”

  “And yet they disclosed this information.” Louis stopped, frowning. “Or did they?”

  A long pause ensued. Voice consulting with Nessus about what information could be disclosed? “A previous scouting mission penetrated the Gw’oth computer networks. This imagery came from a Gw’oth data archive.”

  Puppeteer spies: not a surprise. But scouting seemed like a dangerous undertaking. How many Puppeteers would run the risk?

  Louis asked, “Was Nessus there?”

  “Indeed, Louis.”

  “Voice, show me those mission reports.”

  Another pause. More consultation?

  “Keeping busy, I see.” Nessus stood just outside the bridge, half in, half out of the hatch, one head held high and the other low. Ready to flee in any direction?

  “Yah.” And you don’t like the direction my studies are taking me. Why?

  “Are you ready to take a break? I thought it was time that I share some more of your family’s history,” Nessus said.

  Louis gestured at the Puppeteer-friendly crash couch. “I’m all ears.”

  Nessus’ manic-depressive cycle had him holed up in his cabin. Again. He responded, sometimes, to questions.

  With the bridge to himself, telling himself he was bearing the long flight better than Nessus, Louis set out to relax. He sprawled across the copilot’s couch, sipping from a drink bulb. His latest coffee experiment involved a Tanzanian blend. His notepad lay on the console ledge, the visible page half filled with pen-and-ink sketches. The threat of war did not impress the laws of physics. Like it or not, the long flight to Hearth left more than enough time to savor and study.