Fate of Worlds Read online

  Not a feature General Products had chosen to disclose to its customers.

  In his life on Earth, Sigmund had worried that Puppeteers could destroy the “indestructible” hulls they sold. Of course he had, but that had been only the paranoia speaking. The first time Sigmund truly knew, he had lost someone very close to him.

  Lost, dead. Not just lost, gone far away. For a moment Alice forgot her ancient, simmering bitterness.

  “… The long skinny ships remind me of ARM ships from archives of the first two wars with the ratcats. And before GP showed up, the ratcats favored lens-shaped ships like those Endurance is also seeing.

  “No one can improve on Outsider hyperdrive technology, so maybe there hasn’t been a reason to radically redesign ships.” Shrewdly: “Or has General Products mastered the much faster drive used by Long Shot.”

  “No.” Nessus shuddered. “Not while I lived on Hearth. As far as I know, Long Shot remains one of a kind.”

  “Ratcats?” Julia asked.

  Nessus twisted a lock of his mane. “An informal term for aliens who call themselves Kzinti. A Kzin looks something like an Earth animal called a cat and has a hairless tail like another Earth animal called a rat.”

  To hear Sigmund speak of Kzinti, a very large cat: kind of like a bipedal tiger looming eight feet tall. Kzinti ate their prey—almost certainly, when Sigmund was a child, his parents. It might explain Sigmund, just a little.

  That didn’t mean that Alice forgave him.

  “What about the conical ships?” Julia asked. “Those are present in large numbers, too.”

  “I don’t recognize them,” Sigmund admitted. “Do you, Nessus?”

  Nessus shifted his humming to a single throat. “I do not, Sigmund. That scares me.”

  Everything scared a Puppeteer. As for the claim not to recognize the third fleet, Alice did not believe it. Am I reading body language, or channeling Sigmund’s suspicions?

  Sigmund broke the growing silence. “I guess I need to say it. The ARM is the military force of Earth’s government. Earth, people. The home world of humanity. New Terra’s long-lost roots. We have to make contact.”

  “I don’t have to do anything,” Norquist-Ng snapped back. “Ours is one ship among hundreds, maybe thousands. Of all people, Ausfaller, I would expect you to know to be wary.” He paused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe Nessus is right about Endurance coming home.”

  “You can’t mean that!” Sigmund said.

  “I will not gamble the safety of this crew, much less the safety of this world, on vague recollections of prehistoric ship designs. Captain…”

  “I understand, Minister.” Julia did not meet Sigmund’s anguished gaze.

  To have come this far. To have come so close. Alice’s heart sank.

  “But hopping around like we’ve had to do uses a lot of fuel,” Julia continued. “Minister, we will redirect our efforts to refueling for the long return flight. Maintaining a safe distance from the alien ships as we must, collecting deuterium may take us a while. Will there be anything else, Minister, or may we get started?”

  “Proceed, Captain. We’re done.” The connection broke.

  Alice could not look away from the darkened comm console. So close …

  Julia crossed the bridge to rest a hand on Alice’s shoulder. “I can stall for a few days. See what you can find.”

  * * *

  IT ALL CAME DOWN to Pak crypto software.

  Because loath as Alice was to admit it, Norquist-Ng might be right. After two centuries, who was to say that Sigmund could recognize an Earth warship? Maybe another species had independently come to use the same basic shape. Maybe the flying crowbars were Earth ships of ancient design, but long ago sold to … whomever.

  Maybe if Nessus would stop that infernal humming, half a dozen melodies at the same finagling time, she could think straight.

  The Pak were whizzes at crypto. Alice suspected the best Pak algorithms never made it into the Library—clans battled clans, after all—but the Library offered plenty of the underlying math. Not even Norquist-Ng knew she had brought Pak algorithms, from the stash Sigmund called their “Secret Santa.”

  But not even superior crypto technique would be enough. Suppose ARM ships were out there. What languages would their crews speak? You can hardly decrypt what you can’t even understand in plaintext.

  Nessus knew human languages, and not only New Terra’s English. With but one set of vocal cords, no human could manage any Puppeteer language.

  And so, Nessus had spoken Interworld back in the day he and Sigmund first met on Earth. And Nessus must have mastered a more recent dialect—and likely also Kzinti-speak, the so-called Hero’s Tongue—when he recruited on Earth for the disastrous Ringworld expedition.

  Nessus, characteristically, refused to share his expertise.

  His refusal wouldn’t have mattered if Endurance carried a Puppeteer translator. The Puppeteers had effective translation software—and it was among the most controlled of their technologies. Natural-language processing was too close to AI, was the official story, and Puppeteers saw no reason to risk building their own successors. Still, of necessity, scout ships had carried translators—and no ship that New Terra, upon gaining its independence, had been allowed to retain had had translation software. No record had ever been found on New Terra of the alien languages known to General Products’ trade representatives.

  Sigmund, despite his best efforts, had never succeeded in stealing the information.

  Jeeves knew English as it had been spoken when the ramscoop Long Pass set out from Sol system—more than a half millennium ago. Alice had taught the AI the Spanglish of her era in the Belt. Sigmund had taught Jeeves his more recent—but still, very dated—Interworld.

  How much had Earth languages drifted in the meanwhile?

  Jeeves had caught a few drops from the unending message streams. Just possibly, he had decrypted a tiny fraction of what he had intercepted. Nothing in any way enlightening. Nothing that seemed critical. No video: it would be too easy if they could see that humans were nearby. Despite Jeeves’s best efforts, all Alice had to go on were isolated words and the occasional short phrase scattered across intership text messages.

  As likely, the purported decryptions were spurious.

  A few days, Julia had said. Alice struggled not to despair. What could they hope to accomplish in a few days?

  She had to focus their efforts. Somehow.

  Recurring among the supposedly decrypted words was—Jeeves had reasoned from the logic of syntax—a person’s name. By terrestrial standards, a very common name. Nonetheless: a familiar name. Alice chuckled to herself. For all she knew, Wu meant snacks in Kzinti-speak.

  She had nothing better on which to roll the dice.

  “Jeeves,” Alice said. “Devote ten percent of your effort to messages to and from the signal source Koala.”

  12

  “You understand my requirements?” Horatius asked. The melody was not really a question.

  “Yes, Hindmost,” Achilles sang. The title stuck in his throats.

  “Very well,” the response finally came. The light-speed delay between Hearth and Nature Preserve One accounted for a few seconds of the gap. Most was just another of the Hindmost’s habitual, aggravating pauses. “I shall await your report on the matter.”

  Protocol demanded that the Hindmost terminate the link. Jaws clenched, Achilles waited. And waited.

  “Thank you,” Horatius offered at last. The status light blinked off and his image froze.

  “I shall await your report on the matter,” Achilles mimicked. He had far more important matters with which to concern himself than minutiae of agricultural production. The Hindmost should, too.

  Hindmost! Achilles grimaced at the static image still projected nearby. Tawny of hide (with unfortunate white markings more stripelike than proper patches), broad through the withers, and strikingly tall, Horatius had the potential to look worthy of the office. But that
straggly, too lustrous mane? It needed to be toned down and tamed. The abundance of dark green jade among the curls and braids was acceptable as Conservative Party colors, but could not Horatius have found a green sash that better matched the gemstones?

  “Image off.” Achilles rose from his nest of soft cushions, brushed his hide, straightened his own sash of office, and adjusted several circlets of orange garnets in his coiffure. He knew how to present himself.

  Guards waited outside his private chambers; when Achilles threw open the doors they came stiffly to attention. Aides, assistants, adjutants, and their various flunkies stopped whatever they were doing to tend to his needs.

  His chief deputy cantered over to him: loyal, trustworthy, none-to-bright Vesta. “Excellency, the farm administrator is here for his appointment.”

  Subtle harmonics reinterpreted the verb’s explicit tense. The administrator had, it would seem, been kept waiting for a considerable time.

  Too bad. He still waited to reclaim the position that was rightfully his. That a pretentious simpleton like Horatius should be Hindmost was almost too much to bear. Someday, Achilles promised himself, he would make Ol’t’ro realize that a change was necessary. A restoration.

  Until that happy day, he had Nature Preserve One to rule.

  “Very well,” Achilles announced. “You may notify the visitor that I am coming.”

  He set out for the door, letting Vesta, a secretary, and his guards scamper to form ranks around him. Together, hooves clattering on the marble tiles, Vesta crooning into his communicator, they filed from the room. The remaining assistants, factotums, and minions went back to work.

  A stepping disc would have been quicker, but not as satisfying as the stroll across the palace. Achilles had had it built grander than the Hindmost’s own residence on Hearth.

  Grander or not—oh, how he wished he were back in the Hindmost’s residence.

  Down spacious halls his retinue marched, across the domed grand rotunda, then outside along a majestic colonnaded promenade. Hints of a breeze penetrated the weather force field. The residence sat high atop a mountain crag, and the view into the valley was stunning. Take that, Horatius. At the end of the promenade, they came to the foyer to Achilles’ audience chamber.

  Looking anxious, his visitor extended a head in greeting. “Excellency.”

  “Welcome.” Achilles ignored the too-familiar gesture. “Vesta, if you will.”

  With a wave of his pocket computer, Vesta unlocked the door, then closed it behind Achilles and his petitioner.

  Achilles settled astraddle a tall, well-padded bench. His visitor, looking ill at ease, took one of the much shorter guest benches. In proper Experimentalist fashion, this one had assumed a name from human mythology. Some apt rustic deity. Achilles summoned the name from memory. “What brings you today, Eunomia?”

  “Excellency, thank you for seeing me. A … technical issue brings me.”

  “You are dissatisfied about something?” Dissatisfaction was but a short step from criticism. Would this one take that dangerous path?

  “Concerned, Excellency. I would ask to review the allocation of fertilizer.”

  “What about the allocation?” Achilles sang.

  Eunomia shrank back. “So far this growing season, my farm has received less fertilizer than we had requisitioned.”

  “Anything else?”

  “There are matters of expedient access to the grain ships…”

  Achilles lifted both heads high, and gave this impertinent … supplicant a hard stare. “You do not feel your little enterprise is getting fair treatment?”

  “Doubtless fair, Excellency, but…” Eunomia trailed off, unsure how else to couch his complaint.

  “Yet you are ‘concerned’ with the outcome. Perhaps you think me and my staff ill-informed?” Achilles prompted. “Or incapable of reaching proper conclusions from what is reported to us?”

  “No. No. Of course not, Excellency.”

  “Then…?”

  “If I may begin again,” Eunomia bleated.

  Achilles waited.

  “There is some risk, Excellency, that our upcoming harvest will fall short of its quota.” Pause. “If it were possible to get…” Eunomia sang on, more anxious and uncertain by the moment.

  “Perhaps you would be happier relieved of the challenge? To trade your burdens for lesser responsibilities?” To toil from sunsup to sunsdown on your farm, while some erstwhile underling enjoys the privileges you forfeited.

  Eunomia flinched. “I will find a way, Excellency.”

  It was a process Achilles had polished to a high gloss. Citizens were intensely social, so get them alone. Make them doubt themselves. Hint at the privileges they might lose.

  And then ease up, just a bit. Offer a reason for hope. Keep them dependent. Make them grateful. Replace the social contract with personal bonds.

  Repeat as needed.

  “You did well to bring these concerns to my attention,” Achilles sang soothingly. “Might some additional workers alleviate the difficulties?”

  Up/down, down/up, up/down: Eunomia’s heads bobbed agreement. “Yes, Excellency.” He would depart with his job, and his perks, and something, at least, to show for his trouble. “Yes, additional workers would be most helpful.”

  Very well, Achilles thought. Beyond sheltering Hearth’s ancient biomes and growing luxury foods, Nature Preserve One served as a dumping ground for the herd’s antisocial. A few “rehabilitees” transferred from one of the reeducation camps would secure Eunomia’s gratitude. Hearth’s trillion residents would always have misfits, outcasts, and loners to take their place.

  (As I was once banished to this world. That Ol’t’ro had assigned him to rule this world gnawed at Achilles, no matter how useful he found the captive workforce. The reminder was not subtle.)

  “Thank you, Excellency,” Eunomia burbled in relief, rising to leave. “I will not disappoint you.”

  Achilles rose from his bench and came around the table. Now he extended a neck. As they brushed heads, he felt Eunomia trembling in relief.

  Eunomia all but crept from the audience chamber, heads lowered in subservience and respect.

  Across the years, and careers, and even worlds, Achilles had conditioned many to follow him. It had worked again today. It worked almost without fail, especially with the impressionable young.

  Angry at himself even as he did it, Achilles tugged free one braid of the edifice that was his mane coiffure. Almost without fail, because there had once been a failure. A disaster. A prospect turned acolyte turned traitor. The nemesis who time and again had defied and stymied Achilles’ grand plans.

  Curse that Nessus. And curse his paramour …

  Earth Date 2828

  “You cannot mean it!” Achilles sang.

  “Yes, I can,” Chiron responded, voices ringing with the firm harmonics of command. He might never master every nuance of Citizen psychology, but he had become proficient in the subtleties of their speech and body language. The comm delay between Hearth and Nature Preserve Five seemed to underscore his imperturbability.

  “You are in the Fleet because I brought you here.” Achilles kept his voices level, desperate not to let his fear show.

  “I am here because neither you nor your predecessor had any choice.” Chiron paused. “As you have none now.”

  Because the price of disobedience is the shattering of the worlds.

  “I have served you well,” Achilles sang.

  “As shall the former Hindmost when he reassumes the office.”

  Every guard on Penance Island was loyal. For a moment Achilles considered sending the order for his rival to have an unfortunate accident. But only for a moment. No matter their loyalty, Achilles could not be certain his minions had the mental—call it strength—to kill. “So be it. I will declare him rehabilitated.”

  “Yes, you will. Then you will resign your office and endorse him.”

  The chords slipped out. “But why?”

>   Once more: delay, and imperturbability, and the firm harmonics of command. “That I must ever seek out and deflect your egregious deceits grows wearisome.”

  “You trust him more?”

  “I trust no Citizen.” Pause. “After being so long off Hearth and out of power, he will need time before he can hatch new mischief.”

  “Who better than I to make sure he does not?” Achilles sang. Without retaining some role in the government, he might end up filling the vacancy soon to open on Penance Island.

  The longest pause yet. As the silence dragged on, Achilles worried that he had dared too much. His necks ached to tug at his mane. His legs trembled with the urge to flee. But shorn of power, nowhere within the Fleet would be safe.…

  “You shall go to Nature Preserve One,” Chiron declared—and then he looked himself in the eyes. “To govern there. As such, you shall remain among the Hindmost’s ministers.”

  “It shall be as you say, Chiron.” Until I find a way to undo this travesty.

  Earth Date 2893

  Achilles shook off the gloom that had taken him. Steadfast of eye and firm of step, he exited the audience chamber. The entourage formed about him and they returned across the residence. Leaving his guard detail standing at their posts, he reentered his private chambers.

  Though he had yet to regain his full power, his enemies had lost theirs. After the disaster that was the Ringworld expedition, the populace had risen—in the polite, orderly, and slow-motion process of a consensualization—to reject the Experimentalist Party altogether.

  And after, he had taken consolation in watching Horatius, the latest interloper, chief of the Conservative Party, discover Ol’t’ro ruling from behind the Hindmost.

  13

  Go back?

  Louis dared not shift his eyes from the mass pointer, not while Long Shot hurtled through hyperspace at almost a light-year every minute. He imagined Hindmost looking crazed. “I thought you wanted to get away, to go to Home.”

  “The matter is complicated, Louis.”

  “Just relax. We’ll be there in a few hours.”