Juggler of Worlds Read online

  Andrea shook her head. “What do Jinxians know of Old English epic poems? My grandma always says, ‘Never attribute to malice what can be as easily attributed to stupidity.’ ”

  Sigmund guessed her grandma wasn’t an ARM. He got up from his chair, planting both hands flat on his desk, in what Feather called his let-me-explain-this-to-you-in-words-of-one-syllable-or-less stance. “Andrea, think about it. This task force worries about Puppeteers. Where they went. What it means. We don’t know many things for sure.

  “One is that the Puppeteer disappearing act hurt Earth. Another is that Beowulf Shaeffer is a serial accomplice of Puppeteers. He’s possibly the cause of their flight from Known Space. Third, there’s but one Puppeteer known to be left on Earth. Nessus claims to know me from the General Products building on We Made It. Shaeffer was there at exactly the same time.

  “Andrea, tanj it, you should have been tracking Shaeffer at this task force’s top priority level. This has nothing to do with—not that it’s any of your business—my past interest in Jinx.” He glowered at her. “Are we clear?”

  She had the good sense to stay quiet.

  Sigmund sat back down. He took several deep, calming breaths. “That’s water under the bridge. Where is Shaeffer now?”

  She looked down. “It’s unclear. There’s no record of him since a few hours after he arrived.”

  “Come on, Andrea.” A vein throbbed in Sigmund’s temple. “Follow the money. Hotel, transfer booths. This is basic.”

  “I know, Sigmund. I tried to trace it. Honest. Shaeffer made an Earth friend on the ship. I traced Shaeffer to the friend’s home. If the friend has been picking up the tab, it’d explain Shaeffer disappearing from the grid.”

  She’s here because you wanted to train her, Sigmund reminded himself. “Judging from my experience, he’d also be off the grid if he were conferring with Nessus. Shaeffer’s situation isn’t ‘unclear,’ Andrea. Tanj it, you’ve lost him.”

  “Aren’t you curious about the friend?” Andrea asked. Was that a trace of a smile? “It’s Gregory Pelton.”

  Sigmund watched aliens, human and other, not his fellow flatlanders. Pelton was a common-enough name, and it took a moment to click. “The Gregory Pelton?”

  “The very same.” Andrea reclaimed a trace of her former bravado. “One of the richest men on the planet.”

  SIGMUND FLOATED, EXHAUSTED, a wild-eyed Feather draped across him. He’d once come across an odd saying: “Make love, not war.” Feather tended to split the difference. Tonight was one of those nights.

  “How is she?” Feather said abruptly.

  “She?”

  “Andrea. Surely your little protégée has made it all better after her lapse.” A hand snaked up his bare thigh, lest he be obtuse. “Better.”

  He jerked, and not only because of her hand. “Hardly.”

  “Hardly?” Feather rolled onto her back, stretching luxuriously. “Because you don’t play with your coworkers? Somehow, that seems weak.”

  How about because Andrea was a dumb kid, a century younger than him? No, that also pointed out how much younger Andrea was than Feather. “Drop it, please.”

  Her hand remained, more personal than ever. “You know, that’s too bad. There’s always room for one more.”

  She resumed a state of intimate hostilities without waiting for an answer.

  PELTON’S VESTIBULE WAS a good five meters tall, with a bigger footprint than Sigmund’s entire home. The personal transfer booth, which for most people who could afford one was a token of wealth, seemed lost in a corner. Sigmund admired the decor while he waited for Andrea Girard. Massage chairs. Pale, plush carpet. Holo art. Gourmet synthesizer. Two-story, polished brass doors dominated one wall.

  Andrea stepped from the transfer booth. She almost managed not to gape. “I guess he believes his booth address is private.”

  Pelton was rich enough, and connected enough, that Sigmund hadn’t dared pull his teleportation records without a subpoena. Half a century earlier, Pelton’s great-great, et cetera, grandmother had invented the transfer-booth system. Gregory, as far as the public record showed, was a ne’er-do-well enjoying her money.

  Perhaps no one was home. Sigmund had not called ahead. If Pelton were there, he could have been gone, and Shaeffer with him, given any warning.

  And if Pelton was inside, he was now on the wrong side of the Emerald City–sized doors from his transfer booth.

  A flatscreen intercom was flush-mounted in the wall near the brass doors. Sigmund showed it his ARM ident. “I’m here on official ARM business to speak with Mr. Gregory Pelton.”

  “Someone will be right with you, sir.” The unctuous tone sounded like an AI butler program. The flatscreen remained dark.

  A brass door soon opened. Two women stood inside, wearing robes. One was short and petite, with a red dye job to her skin and improbably silver hair flowing to her waist. The other was taller and, if only in comparison, stocky, with elaborately dyed, highlighted, and coiffed hair. Sigmund wondered inanely what Nessus would think of that hair.

  “I’m Dianna Guthrie,” the shorter woman said. Her hand remained on an ornately carved door handle. “This is Sharrol Janss. We’re friends of Ele . . . Gregory. What is this about?”

  “I’m Agent Ausfaller.” He tipped his head at Andrea. “This is Agent Girard. We’d like to speak with Mr. Pelton. Also, Beowulf Shaeffer, if he’s still here.”

  The taller one, Janss, started at the mention of Shaeffer. Only Guthrie’s name had popped out of the computer as a Pelton associate. Janss must be Guthrie’s friend.

  “Are they here?” Sigmund prodded.

  “Sorry, no.” Guthrie stepped forward, pulling the door closed behind her. Perhaps not coincidentally, she closed Janss inside. “What’s this about?”

  Sigmund shrugged inwardly. You never knew what might be lying out in plain sight at someone’s residence.

  “We’re with the ARM task force investigating the so-called Puppeteer Exodus.” Sigmund stopped, waiting to see if Guthrie filled awkward silence with anything interesting.

  No such luck. She settled into a chair. “I don’t see how that involves Gregory.”

  Sigmund took out his pocket comp to try again. Note taking also rattled some people. “Beowulf Shaeffer, your friend’s companion, knows several Puppeteers. Mr. Pelton spent a great deal of time with Shaeffer on their recent flight from Jinx.”

  “And you thought Gregory could tell you Bey’s where-abouts.” Guthrie adjusted the position of a holo art frame on a teak side table. “Yes, Bey was here.”

  Was?

  Andrea cleared her throat. “Dianna . . . may I call you that?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Why was Gregory on a commercial liner in the first place?”

  Andrea was supposed to just listen—but that was an interesting question. Pelton had a lot of money.

  Guthrie said, “Gregory has his own ship, as you would expect. He calls it Slower than Infinity. He’d planned to take it to Jinx. He was having it refitted for the trip. The overhaul ran slow, I think because of a parts shortage. Yes, that’s it. I remember now. A big supplier went bankrupt. Some key parts were hard to come by. It might have been a result of the Puppeteer Exodus, if that matters. Rather than rush the overhaul or postpone his trip, Gregory flew commercial.”

  Sigmund made a show of taking notes. “What was his urgent business on Jinx?”

  Guthrie stiffened. “I don’t see that it has anything to do with missing Puppeteers, but I’ll tell you. He’d made plans to go on a Bandersnatchi safari. He wasn’t about to miss that for anything.” She misunderstood Sigmund’s reflexive shudder. “I agree. I’m the world’s biggest flat phobe.”

  Sigmund knew all about Bandersnatchi. The white, slug-like Jinxian creatures were the ultimate big game, bigger than brontosauruses. The Bandersnatchi were also intelligent, and hunting licenses were their main source of hard currency. The covenants that governed the safari trade restricted hunters’ weapons to those th
at gave the prey a fair chance.

  Roughly 40 percent of hunters didn’t make it back.

  Pelton must be crazy. “Let’s go back a bit,” Sigmund said. “You say Shaeffer was here. Where is he now? With Pelton?”

  Guthrie shrugged. “I assume they’re still together. Where are they? That’s a more difficult question. Gregory dragged Bey on to another adventure.”

  Andrea leaned forward confidentially. “Dianna, it’s important that we speak with Mr. Shaeffer. How can we get in touch with them?”

  Guthrie seemed to wrestle with how much, if anything, to share. “I’m a flatlander. I see nothing wrong with that. Futz, I take pride in it. But Gregory? That’s another story.

  “He’s been all around Sol system. He’s been to a dozen other stars. He’s hunted Bandersnatchi, and lived to talk about it. And still, to every spacer he meets, he’s a flatlander. Being called that irritates the hell out of him.” She waved off Sigmund’s scowl. “I am answering you. Gregory’s goal is to go somewhere so unusual, to do something so spectacular, it will demolish anyone who ever again dares to call him a flatlander. So that’s where he and Bey went. Out to do something famously stupid.”

  Was it too late? “Medusa!” Sigmund shouted at his pocket comp. “Location of the private space yacht Slower than Infinity?”

  The familiar snarling-crown-of-snakes head materialized. “It left Earth three days ago, Sigmund. The flight plan took them out of the traffic-control area and then switches to ‘open.’ ”

  “A maximum-acceleration flight plan,” Andrea guessed. Medusa didn’t correct her. “They’d already be out of the singularity.”

  Into hyperspace, on their way . . . where?

  14

  By the hundreds, Citizens leapt, kicked, and pirouetted. Their bejeweled manes sparkled, resplendent. Hooves clicked and clattered against terrazzo, sometimes in unison, sometimes in staccato bursts, sometimes in a rolling, roaring crescendo.

  With a discordant trill, Achilles froze the Grand Ballet. He spent more and more time in the holoshow. Most days it was his only company.

  If he wasn’t careful, someday he would fail to leave.

  Windblown grit pelted the hull of Remembrance. Visibility out the view ports was scarcely a few ship lengths. A thoroughly unpleasant world, he thought.

  Jinx was an enormous egg, tidally locked with its gas-giant companion. By human convention, “east” was the direction that permanently faced Primary. East End and West End alike protruded above the atmosphere, home to vacuum-based industries.

  Jinx’s midlatitudes were habitable, if you could abide, or compensate for, the oppressively strong gravity. Most of the human populace lived in East Band.

  Ocean dominated the waist of Jinx, beneath a dense atmosphere. Survival anywhere in the equatorial band took high-pressure gear; few visitors came. Bandersnatchi, the size of mountains, roamed the tropical shorelines.

  But Bandersnatchi couldn’t climb mountains. Jinx’s equatorial highlands held nothing to interest anyone—so there Achilles hid.

  The turbid atmosphere impeded observation from space. Geysers all about disguised Remembrance’s heat signature, their thick, sulfurous fumes an additional disguise.

  I could go undetected here for years, he thought, too lonely for the notion to cheer him.

  Someone had to unwind General Products’ dealings with the Jinxians. And so he did, day after day, through chains of intermediaries, radio relays, and layer upon layer of network anonymizing services.

  He remembered calculating that the caretakers who stayed behind on the worlds of Known Space would earn the gratitude of those who led from behind. He remembered the shocked silence when, volunteering, he’d grandly proclaimed, “Achilles was only vulnerable when he presented his heel.” That was a moment of insane bluster his superiors would not soon forget.

  He restarted the dance.

  THE HUMAN STARED, wide-eyed, through the impregnable walls of his transparent enclosure. His hands shook. Sweat trickled down his face and neck, and soaked his shirt. He panted for breath.

  Molecular filters in the transfer-booth ceiling could as easily supply oxygen as remove it. Achilles had yet to decide whether to bother. He watched in silence.

  “You abused my hospitality, Ernest,” Achilles finally said, his voice flat with rage. In one mouth he clutched the tiny radio beacon his visitor had thought to smuggle aboard. An earlier stage in the teleportation relay had separated man and device. “You insulted my intelligence.”

  “It won’t happen again,” Ernest wheezed softly.

  Achilles strained to make out the words. “True,” he answered, and fear blossomed on his captive’s face.

  Someone might deserve to die, but it wasn’t this pawn. Someone far above Ernest in the Jinxian Syndicate had given this messenger a beacon.

  So much for the supposed emergency that had detained Achilles’ customary visitor. She, clearly, had been wise enough not to take the risk.

  How much, Achilles wondered, would the government have paid for the location of the last Puppeteer on Jinx?

  “It would not have worked anyway,” Achilles continued. “Active shielding cancels any unauthorized transmissions from this place.”

  Ernest’s face was pale blue—of hypoxia, not fashion. His eyes darted about desperately. He said nothing, whether recognizing the futility or conserving what little oxygen remained.

  Achilles flipped the useless bug into the air and caught it. Tossed and caught. Tossed and caught. “Perhaps your masters thought to trace the path by which visitors arrive.” Toss and catch. “My precautionary measures of course extend to that route. Had they sensed any signal beyond their abilities to block, you would not have survived even this long.”

  Were those precautions sure to forestall the smuggling of beacons—or weapons? Certainty was impossible to prove. Somehow, Achilles managed not to pluck at his mane. His doubts must remain secret.

  Dead or alive, returning Ernest made a point. Achilles tongued a control console, exchanging the stale air above Ernest’s sweat-sodden head with fresh. Inside the tiny cell, a hidden fan whirred to life. The human gulped in air. “Take a message back to your superiors,” Achilles said. “They have forfeited any payment from me for a year. Any future dealings will be accomplished solely by vid.

  “Tell them.” A wriggle of lip nodes sent the mobster on his way. To the solitude of his surroundings, Achilles added a raucous chord of evil music: an old curse.

  ACHILLES TRIED TO keep busy. On good days, he lost himself in research. Once, he’d considered himself a physicist.

  He’d been posted to Kzin itself, gleaning subtle wisdom from experiments Kzinti scientists were rash enough to perform. Some days, he even found an eerie fascination in Kzinti daring.

  And then the BVS-1 expedition had come.

  He’d been promoted to We Made It expressly to oversee the neutron-star mission, but there was never time to plumb its findings. Another promotion, from We Made It to the larger General Products office on Jinx, only delayed his research.

  Now he had all the time he could ever want to study the BVS-1 data. Every day, he found it harder and harder to care.

  Each morning, utterly alone, he hoped his reward—in fame and privileges—would match his sacrifice. Then he would picture the other sacrificial few who had remained behind, one to a solar system. At some time or another, he’d met most of them. They were all misfits—especially that social climber Nessus.

  In his hearts Achilles knew: That was how everyone on Hearth would see him. And it could only get worse.

  Those willing to leave home, the scouts, had always been suspect. Then came the calamitous news, the shock that had plunged almost everyone into despair. He’d been one of the few on Jinx to remain functioning. How they’d struggled to move the catatonic, belly-hugging hundreds to the embarkation points! How he ached, imagining their unceremonious off-loading from the evacuation ship. The herd would now disdain scouts more than ever.

&
nbsp; Somehow, the howling wind sounded lonely. Now that he’d begun to crave even human contact, he did not dare to meet with them.

  ACHILLES SYNTHED SOME grasses-and-grain mush. He chewed mechanically, wondering: Is it too early today to resume the dance?

  Is it too soon to propose to those who lead from behind that he could safely return home?

  An alert chord, strident and vibrato, chased away his introspection. Who could possibly be using this comm ID? He answered, cautiously, “Eight eight three two six seven seven oh.”

  “My General Products hull has failed,” said a human stranger.

  Achilles had responded voice only; not so his callers. The man who spoke was unimposing by Jinxian standards but bulky by the norms of every other human world. He looked like a bull next to his spindly companion. Beowulf Shaeffer!

  But a hull failure? That was impossible. The coincidence of Shaeffer’s presence faded to insignificance. “I beg your pardon?” Achilles said.

  “My name is Gregory Pelton. Twelve years ago I bought a number-two hull from General Products. A month and a half ago it failed. We’ve spent the intervening time limping home. May I speak to a Puppeteer?”

  Achilles turned on his camera, wondering if Shaeffer would recognize him. What was it about Shaeffer and unsuspected vulnerabilities in GP hulls?

  Achilles tried to ignore the lethally dense atmosphere outside, and the stampede of doubts whether Remembrance would protect him. “This is quite serious. Naturally we will pay the indemnity in full. Would you mind detailing the circumstances?”

  Pelton didn’t mind at all. He was vehement. He went on at length about the exotic properties of the nascent solar system they’d just explored.

  “I see,” Achilles said. He did: The two were fools. “Our apologies are insufficient, of course, but you will understand that it was a natural mistake. We did not think that antimatter was available anywhere in the galaxy, especially in such quantity.”

  The humans twitched. Pelton’s voice became curiously soft. “Antimatter?”

  “Of course. We have no excuse, of course, but you should have realized it at once. Interstellar gas of normal matter had polished the planet’s surface with minuscule explosions, had raised the temperature of the protosun beyond any rational estimate, and was causing a truly incredible radiation hazard. Did you not even wonder about these things? You knew that the system was from beyond the galaxy. Humans are supposed to be highly curious, are they not?”