Juggler of Worlds Read online

  Sigmund shook his head, his thoughts churning. Guilt? Certainly! But also exultation! Tides were no weapon. Jinx could hardly threaten Earth’s fleets with a neutron star, and any gravity generator must surely crush itself before attaining such field strength.

  Adonis had remained on his script. “We have deposited the residue of your pay with the Bank of We Made It. One Sigmund Ausfaller, human, has frozen the account until your taxes are computed.”

  “Figures,” Shaeffer said.

  If Adonis understood his pilot’s disgusted look, the Puppeteer kept it to himself. “If you will talk to reporters now, explaining what happened to the institute ship, we will pay you ten thousand stars. We will pay cash so that you may use it immediately. It is urgent. There have been rumors.”

  “Bring ’em in.” As though in an afterthought, Shaeffer said, “I can also tell them that your world is moonless. That should be good for a footnote somewhere.”

  “I do not understand.” But two long necks had recoiled, and the Puppeteer clearly fought not to paw the sickroom floor.

  “You’d know what a tide was if you had a moon. You couldn’t avoid it.”

  “Would you be interested in—,” Adonis began.

  “A million stars? I’d be fascinated.” Shaeffer beamed beatifically. “I’ll even sign a contract if it states what we’re hiding. How do you like being blackmailed for a change?”

  In the seclusion of the surveillance room, Sigmund felt his guilt had been assuaged just a bit.

  THE THRONGS ABOARD the Earth-bound ship rivaled the worst Sigmund had encountered. For once, the crowding didn’t faze him. He rubbed his chin, smooth shaven again, and counted the days until home.

  The lounge was jammed. He bellied up to the bar. All things come to he who waits. Bored beauties. Cold beer.

  And answers. . . .

  Crushing debt was the essential reason Sigmund had picked Beowulf Shaeffer. All those obligations left the out-of-work pilot subject to manipulation. But debt was not the only reason.

  The rumors Adonis feared were rumors no longer. The Laskins’ deaths were common knowledge, and one press conference was not enough. General Products needed a very public—and demonstrably independent—explanation. They needed people to feel safe in a GP hull.

  And Sigmund . . . he needed a full account as well. He wanted all the details, including the ones you didn’t volunteer to the ARM who coerced you into a suicide mission.

  Hence, in the hopes his pilot would survive whatever had killed the Laskins, Sigmund had a second criterion for picking Shaeffer.

  In person, Shaeffer was slick enough. He oozed an easy charm Sigmund could only envy. But old school records showed plainly: Writing made Beowulf freeze. Make the message formal and the man couldn’t string two words together.

  The hero of the hour went straight from his press conference to the autodoc to writer’s block. He’d already been paid by General Products for the article. He had to write something.

  “Your order, sir?”

  Sigmund looked up. A Jinxian bartender waited to do his bidding. Sigmund named a microbrewery beer he’d grown fond of on We Made It.

  If you knew to look for it—and Sigmund did—the anonymous ad revealed its desperate author.

  Wouldn’t Beowulf be astonished to know Sigmund was the true employer of the very detail-oriented ghostwriter so quick to respond to Bey’s ad?

  INTO THIN SPACE

  Earth date: 2645

  8

  General Products Tower loomed over greater Los Angeles. From Nessus’ vantage on its park-like rooftop terrace, arcologies and office buildings stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see. City lights bleached the stars from the night sky. On the streets and walkways far below, unseen human multitudes teemed. Most of them, just as most like Nessus, could never bear to leave their home world.

  The superficial resemblance to home made Nessus miss Hearth all the more.

  He didn’t actually see those alien myriads eight hundred stories beneath his hooves. He wasn’t about to approach the terrace’s edge, despite its chest-high parapet.

  His heads swiveled inward, and Nessus looked himself in the eyes: an ironic laugh. He had once approached a neutron star. He’d come orders of magnitude closer to it than any other of his kind.

  There was an important difference, of course. He’d run that risk for a reason.

  Recovering the Hal Clement wasn’t like staring into a kilometers-deep abyss for “fun.” And though the BVS-1 mission had failed to rise to Nike’s personal attention, someone in Clandestine Directorate had taken notice. It had earned Nessus reassignment to Earth. Perhaps here, with his expanded responsibilities, he’d have the opportunity to reap Nike’s trust. . . .

  A two-throated warble ended Nessus’ reverie. He pivoted. He had company.

  “Beyond this point be monsters.” Puck theatrically craned a neck as though to peer over the distant parapet. He’d entered Human Space more than a century ago, among the first. He knew the idioms. “Also, in the main lobby.”

  The breeze riffled Nessus’ aide’s yellow-and-brown mane and tangled his decorative ribbons. Nessus said, “Then my callers have arrived?”

  “Right,” Puck said. He untwisted a few ribbons with a mouth. “Shall I tell them you’re briefly delayed?”

  “Escort them to the cargo-floater lab. I’ll join you there.”

  Puck cantered to the nearest transfer booth. Nessus took a moment longer to absorb the droning murmur of the city. Earth in its entirety bore a population less than some cities on Hearth, and yet humans had spread across many solar systems. They were an insane and ambitious people. It was best to remember that.

  He stepped through the transfer booth into the lab, brushing flanks companionably with technicians as he made his way to where Puck and two humans stood beside a grounded cargo floater. They looked up at the clicking of his hooves. Nessus read the insignia—Procurement Division, if the emblems could be trusted—and name badges on their ARM uniforms. “Colonel Kim. Major Robles. I am Nessus. How may I help you?”

  Kim was a tall, big-boned man with large ears and a broad forehead. He extended a hand in greeting, and then reclaimed it with an embarrassed look on his face. “Habit. You’re in business development, Nessus. Is that correct?”

  “Correct,” Nessus agreed. Business development sounded so much more innocuous than threat assessment.

  Or spy.

  THE CARGO FLOATER hovered half a meter above the lab floor. It did not as much as quiver as water sloshed back and forth in the open tank on its deck. More water arced in from the fat hose bucking in Robles’s hands. Beads of spray dotted his hair, face, and shirt. “I don’t believe it,” Robles muttered to himself.

  A payload as simple as water. The clear plasteel box whose inside dimensions Robles had measured when empty. As water filled the tank, to know the growing load weight was basic math.

  “A recent upgrade,” Nessus said modestly.

  He had studied human nature during his years on We Made It, and more in his short time here on Earth. Release an improved cargo floater to the commercial market, he had promised, and the ARM will beat a path to General Products’ door. So it had come to pass. Not after the first product upgrade, nor the second, nor the third—

  And then ARM Research Labs requested an appointment. They would very much like a demonstration of General Products’ latest floater products.

  “Impressive,” Kim said. “The load capacity, of course, but more so the real-time control. I haven’t seen a bit of wobble. GP will sell a lot of those.” He took out a pocket comp and called up a holo filled with text. “I’m interested in adapting it for naval use.”

  “Naval use?” How would humans expect a confused Puppeteer to act? General Products sold ship hulls. They didn’t sell cabin gravity control. Nessus settled for a quizzical inflection. “Oh, I see. Cabin gravity to offset acceleration.” He read aloud in his best puzzled tones, “ ‘Dynamic response. Power e
fficiency. Form factor. Field uniformity?’ ”

  As Kim scrolled through his long list of specs, Nessus struggled not to wriggle his lip nodes in delight. Learn the limits of cabin gravity and you knew the crew constraints on flight performance.

  ARM Research Labs had extrapolated capabilities from cargo-floater gravity control to cabin gravity control. Nessus wasn’t technical; he left it to General Products’ specialists to reverse-engineer the process. He understood what was important.

  The ARM’s formula, applied to the specs of the newest export-model floater, implied cabin-gravity improvements beyond the present, very secret, naval standard. That was why these men were here. The specs of the previous model had generated no ARM interest.

  Between those limits, “business development” had just nicely bracketed a key parameter of ARM naval capability.

  Nessus’ lips again struggled to wriggle. After some days of delay to feign interest, he’d reluctantly tell Colonel Kim that the GP engineers couldn’t build to these specifi—

  Wall speakers trilled, pitched far above human audible range. The chords summoned everyone to the main auditorium for an announcement by the regional president. Grace notes indicated urgency rather than emergency.

  “I’ll check,” Puck offered in the same voice register. “Excuse me,” he added for the humans’ benefit. He joined the engineers and technicians suddenly queuing for the lab’s transfer booths.

  “They’re going to a departmental meeting,” Nessus dissembled. “Please continue.”

  “Would General Products be interested in adopting its floater technology”—Kim gestured at the cargo carrier, its man-tall tank nearly full—“to shipboard use? The ARM would pay well for exclusivity.”

  “I’m in marketing. Of course I’ll say we’re interested,” Nessus said. He paused for Kim’s chuckle. “Our engineers will need to review the requirements.” Lab security cameras had captured Kim’s holo, of course, but the underlying records would add details.

  Water now lapped the top of the tank, ripples going over the edges and down the sides. Robles twisted the nozzle shut. He wiped spray from his face with a sleeve, still muttering his disbelief.

  Puck and the last of the techs had vanished. The alert tones finally stopped. What was happening?

  “You’ll want to talk alone about the demo.” Nessus led his visitors to an empty alcove where they could consult about how best to transfer the technical specs. He withdrew to a polite distance. The illusion of privacy would let them activate discreetly whatever antieaves-dropping devices they carried.

  Puck finally returned through the transfer booth. Looking relieved to find Nessus alone, he trotted over. His usually neat mane was disheveled. He managed to look himself in the eyes and paw the floor at the same time.

  The day must inevitably come when humans understood Citizen speech. Had the ARMs carried bugs? He would have. Nessus dipped a head into a pocket of his utility belt to activate a jammer. “Puck, what’s going on?”

  “I have good news and bad news,” Puck said. He tugged at one of the few ribbons left in his mane. “The good news is, we’re going home.”

  Home! That was excellent news! Images of Nike popped unbidden into Nessus’ mind’s eye. Still, it made no sense. Didn’t General Products—didn’t Clandestine Directorate—need a presence on the main human world?

  How bad could the bad news be? Surely not BVS-1 bad, and he’d survived that. And Puck was here, not curled into a ball in the main auditorium.

  “And the bad news?” Nessus prompted.

  With a shudder, Puck shook the remaining hints of order from his usually meticulously coiffed mane. “The bad news is, the galaxy is dying.”

  9

  Earth had been at peace too long.

  Sigmund stood and stretched, thoroughly bored. When he’d signed up four years ago, ARMs were expected to dope down—or, for naturals like him, dope up—on weekends. Paranoia at work, sanity at play. For six months now, the policy had extended to all time off. They waived the rule while you stayed in ARM facilities.

  No one wanted to yo-yo daily.

  He shared the off-duty lounge this evening with Feather, a very foul-tempered Conan Murphy, and a pinch-faced newbie named Andrea Girard. The newbie snored softly on the couch. Murphy and Feather watched soccer, the vid sound turned low.

  Murphy was always in a foul mood. Maybe it was his assignment. The Kdatlyno looked scary, a bit like scaly, wingless dragons, but they loved humans. They’d been Kzinti slaves until humans freed their worlds during the Second Man-Kzin War. You watched the Kdatlyno because this was the Bureau of Alien Affairs and they were aliens. Not even the most dedicated paranoid had ever found cause for worry about them.

  Sleeping Beauty had been assigned to watching Puppeteers. You could tell she still saw them as sock puppets selling pricy toys. For all Sigmund knew, she was right—he just didn’t believe it. Puppeteers were secretive. They had tech far beyond humans and Kzinti. They didn’t mind being called Puppeteers, for tanj sake.

  And he’d never gotten over the feeling Adonis had pulled one over on him back on We Made It.

  He’d rather be working.

  Sigmund had been killing time online in a massively multiplayer quest game. His ranking tonight stank, but that might soon change. For motivation he’d overridden the other players’ avatar choices. In his holo views, from now on, the wizards and treasure hunters would appear as Kzinti and Jinxians. Never mind that he watched Jinxians for a living. He watched Kzinti, too, but unofficially. ARM higher-ups doubted his objectivity.

  Maybe someone botched a play. “Futz this,” Feather announced. She caught Sigmund’s eye and then glanced at the door to the small sleeping area. Sigmund and sleeping area. Sigmund and sleeping area.

  Feather had never mastered subtlety. She hadn’t ever tried. “What about Murphy?” Sigmund mouthed. Murphy, oblivious, kept watching his vid.

  “You’re such a prude,” she said loudly. “Murphy, can I borrow your body for a while? Sigmund won’t play.”

  Sigmund sighed, embarrassed. “I’ve reconsidered.”

  Murphy ignored them both.

  Sigmund let her tow him into the nap nook. It didn’t matter that he was quiet, and he imagined Murphy and the awakened newbie exchanging grins. After, floating between the sleeper plates, Sigmund said, “You and Murphy?”

  “Or the new girl, if you men both fail me.” Feather laughed. “You’re actually jealous.”

  “No, I’m actually paranoid.” He loved being able to say that aloud. And maybe he was jealous, too, although he knew Feather was yanking his chain. It was time to change the subject. “Things seem quiet tonight.”

  “Every night.” She raked her fingers through her hair, tonight emerald green with silver sparkles. It went with her mint-green skin dye job. She favored colors as much as he avoided them. “We’re all fossils. Eventually even Kzinti know when they’re defeated.”

  Feather would know. She kept an eye on the ratcats.

  She was trembling! Feather, who could rip a limb from a Kzin with her bare hands. Sigmund pecked her bare shoulder, just above where the contraceptive crystal was implanted. They both knew where ARMs got redirected when things got slow.

  “I know,” he said softly.

  “I hate mother hunts!” Feather burst out. “Those poor, scared women.”

  Desperate for a baby. Desperate enough to hide for months while their contraceptive implants dissolved. Desperate enough to forfeit their own lives if caught with an unlicensed child.

  “I know.” What else could he say? He put an arm around her.

  Enforcing the Fertility Laws meant mother hunts, parental executions, and sterilization of the unlicensed offspring. Not enforcing the laws would mean utter chaos. You needed more than good genes to get a birthright license from the Fertility Board. You needed persistence. For a short while, he’d once read, Earth’s population appeared to stabilize. During that period, the people without an aching need for ch
ildren voluntarily thinned their ranks. After a lull, after the ambivalent, like the space-eager, had withdrawn themselves from the gene pool, Earth’s population had exploded with a vengeance.

  Unchecked, today’s 18 billion could double in a generation.

  “I want a child,” Feather whispered. “I need a child.”

  They were both natural paranoids. The Fertility Board had never—ever—licensed a child to a paranoid parent. He kissed the nape of her neck. “I know.”

  THE SQUAD ROOM was as relaxed as Sigmund had left it after his last shift. People moseyed, or sat with their feet on their desks, or shot the breeze.

  Boredom is the sworn enemy of vigilance. He sifted through the latest intel, surveillance of recently arrived visiting Jinxians. He saw only business meetings and a club-wrecking night on the town. He skimmed recent publication abstracts from the Institute of Knowledge. He ordered a statistical survey of Jinxian emigration patterns.

  Newbie was also back on-shift, lazily painting her fingernails. She hadn’t spent enough time in Alien Affairs to earn her boredom. He strolled over. “What are the Puppeteers up to, Girard?”

  She fanned a hand, fingers spread, the wet polish gleaming. “Not a thing.”

  “How do you know?” Sigmund asked. She seemed far too relaxed. Calibrating meds was an art. The right dose for training wasn’t necessarily the right dose on the job.

  Andrea Girard swung her feet from her desk. Maybe she’d gotten the message. “Honest, Sigmund, I’m doing my job. Look.” She twiddled with her comp, and a graphic appeared. “Transfer-booth usage by Puppeteers. I watch North America, but I’ve asked around. The pattern’s the same, down, worldwide. The Puppeteers are in their office buildings, minding their own business.”

  Sigmund’s lips twitched at her little joke. The Puppeteers did nothing but business. General Products had a presence in Known Space. Of the Puppeteer government, or governments, humans, Kzinti, and Kdatlyno alike knew the same: nothing. “How long have they been doing whatever they’re doing?” he asked.