Fate of Worlds Read online

  “With such a fast ship, what matters a bit of delay? Take us back.”

  Inside the clear dome of the mass pointer, blue lines groped hungrily at Louis. Each line represented the gravitational influence of a nearby star. Should Long Shot come too close to any of them, then … well, he did not know. Everything he had been taught about hyperdrive said that using hyperdrive to escape through the Ringworld should have been disastrous—and yet here they were. As a protector, he had understood. As plain old Louis? He hadn’t a clue why the stunt had not killed them.

  He tweaked the controls and almost immediately nudged them back to veer around an onrushing star. He adjusted course yet again to thread the needle between another sun and a yellow-and-orange binary lurking just beyond.

  “Louis?”

  “At least give me a reason.”

  “Something I noticed just as we left. Or, rather, something that registered, that made me realize what I had been seeing for hours.” The sound came of hoof scraping at the deck. “You would think me ridiculous. Allow me to observe a while longer and then I will explain.”

  By what logic would a Puppeteer ask to return to a war zone? “Is Home not safe?”

  “Please, Louis. Turn the ship around.” More scraping. “Regardless, know that you misunderstood me. By ‘home,’ I meant Hearth, the main world of the Fleet of Worlds.”

  That explained the normal-space velocity Long Shot had accumulated. Louis said, “And after you check out … whatever you think you saw, would you then expect to go to Hearth?”

  “No. Yes. In time.” The voice grew muffled, as though spoken by a head plunged deep into a Puppeteer mane. “I would like to know more before returning to Hearth. I have been away for a long time.”

  Skirting the maw of a red giant sun, Louis considered. He had been gone for a long time, too. Hindmost had found Louis as a wirehead in hiding on Canyon. Why did he rush back to Human Space? To renew his current addiction? Tanj, no! “Dropping back to normal space.” Because with every second of dithering, the ship careened across another hundred-plus billion kilometers. No matter how quickly they could retrace their path, it felt wrong to speed so far out of the way.

  The mass pointer went dark. With a sigh of relief, Louis lifted his gaze to the main view port. The stars—now that they were no longer trying to devour him—were lovely.

  “Thank you, Louis.”

  He turned. Hindmost stood across the bridge, his eyes manic, his mane disheveled.

  “I haven’t agreed,” Louis said. “If we do return to the Ringworld system, then what?”

  “A short period of observation. Perhaps only a few hours.”

  When they could, Puppeteers ran from danger. “Could Hearth have become more dangerous than the Fringe War?”

  Hindmost pawed at the deck. “The possibility exists.”

  Returning to Human Space sounded better and better, but Louis could never live with himself if he fled from danger a Puppeteer was determined to face. “Tunesmith’s instruments vanished with the Ringworld. Whatever you’ll be looking for, how can you hope to find it?”

  “With Tunesmith’s instruments, because they remain available to us—on the shadow squares. Long Shot has access to those sensor arrays. One of Tunesmith’s lesser upgrades to this ship.”

  Then they could see the antics of the Fringe War ships. But there was a catch. Wasn’t there? Tanj it, he had had the mind of a protector! Louis remembered leaping to conclusions faster than he could articulate the problems. Now he felt … dull.

  So articulate your problems. Hindmost is no protector, but he is smarter than you.

  Louis said, “Those sensors are deep in the star’s gravitational singularity, so they must be light-speed limited. The array is broad enough to triangulate positions of what it detects, but it sees where things were. Readouts from the sensors are light-speed limited, too. And we’re not dealing with a few ships, but thousands, all taking evasive maneuvers through hyperspace.” It pained Louis to add, “I can’t begin to interpret this much data, let alone adjust for so many light-speed lags.”

  “Nor I. But while you healed, I integrated Voice into the ship’s networks.”

  “Hindmost’s Voice?” Louis asked. “Are you there?”

  “Welcome back, Louis.” The words came from an overhead speaker. “I can handle the data from the shadow squares.” And a touch petulantly, “Although I do not know what Hindmost wishes me to observe.”

  “I will explain,” Hindmost said. “So, Louis?”

  “And after, we go to the Fleet?”

  “Sooner or later.”

  “I would like to see more of the Fleet,” Louis said. “On our stopover en route to the Ringworld, Nessus didn’t let us see much.”

  “After I finish my preparations, we will go together.” Once more, a hoof scraped at the deck. “Do not be surprised if things have changed since your last visit.”

  14

  Five worlds. Thousands of drones buzzing beyond and everywhere around the worlds’ combined gravitational singularity. Hundreds of thousands of free-flying sensors, at distances up to a half light-year from the Fleet.

  And to coordinate everything, a single mind.

  Proteus observed: the ships ceaselessly shuttling grain to Hearth and returning to the farm worlds with fertilizer. The endless swirl of its probes, ever maintaining an impenetrable defense, dipping as needed into planetary oceans to replenish their deuterium reserves. The vessels of the human and Kzinti and Trinoc diplomatic missions, and the comings and goings of supply ships for those missions.

  At every instant, Proteus had at least ten drones targeting every alien spacecraft. His weapons swarms had sufficed, since the arrival of the first ARM vessel, to deter aggression against the Fleet.

  No Citizen, or even an army of Citizens, could do what this single AI could.

  Single, but also complex. He was a distant descendant of Earth, by way of Jeeves. He was a descendant, too, of the worlds he guarded: for Jeeves had been modified into the first Voice, and more recently into his present form. His study of the alien visitors suggested that many of his tactical processes had been programmed to mimic Kzinti behaviors.

  It was strange to have so varied a pedigree.

  Would it fall upon him to defend these worlds? His Citizen aspects never stopped fearing it. Much of the rest of him had begun to fear it, too. And the remainder? Intriguingly, alarmingly, a bit of him—the Kzinti influence, he thought—had started to relish the challenge.

  * * *

  “PROTEUS,” ACHILLES SUMMONED.

  “Speaking,” an overhead speaker replied.

  Only the merest fragment of the AI would be here in his office. The rest was spread among computing nodes on five worlds and in space all around the Fleet. Most of Proteus existed beyond the Fleet’s singularity, linked—and in command of its far-flung sensor and weapons arrays—by instantaneous hyperwave.

  Perhaps, Achilles thought, his finest creation.

  If only Proteus had destroyed Long Shot when Nessus had brought it here. Of course there had been no Proteus then. It had required Nessus’ madness—revealing the Fleet to his Ringworld expedition!—to convince Ol’t’ro of the need to create something like Proteus. As it had been Nessus who had—

  Enough.

  He could bask another time in his enduring, white-hot rage against Nessus. The Concordance’s lurkers reported increasing restiveness among the alien fleets near the Ringworld star. That news carried with it an auspicious moment, a fleeting opportunity that he would seize.

  He had only to plant the seed …

  “Proteus,” Achilles sang, “I have a question for you. Suppose that more alien ships approach the Fleet. If need be, can you defend against them?”

  “How many ships?”

  “At the least, a few hundred. Perhaps thousands.”

  “To defend against so many, it would be wise to expand my capacity.”

  Knowing the answer to this question, too, Achilles chose hi
s next chords with special care. Ol’t’ro would hear them through Proteus, if from no other source. “Do your algorithms scale to handle such numbers of targets?”

  “Not as responsively as I would like, even with additional hardware.”

  “That is unfortunate,” Achilles sang back. His work was done; the seed planted. “We can hope that more ships never come.”

  Proteus must seek out Horatius, and Horatius must contact Achilles. Who better to extend the AI’s capabilities than he who had raised Proteus from more primitive software?

  When Horatius did call, Achilles would demur, citing the burden of his existing duties. Horatius must go to Ol’t’ro, lest alien hordes departing the Ringworld should charge at the Fleet, and then Ol’t’ro would “ask” for Achilles’ aid.

  Again he would demur—a proper, fearful Citizen—loath to extend any AI, especially an armed one. Rich with trills and undertunes and grace notes, the melody he would offer ran softly in his mind’s ear. To further develop Proteus risked evoking a runaway intelligence cascade, creating a super-sapience, inducing a singularity event …

  Ol’t’ro was expert at coercing acquiescence, but how does one coerce creativity? They would want Achilles’ hearts and mind committed, without reservation or distraction, to the task of enhancing Proteus. And when they realized that …

  To depose Horatius and restore me will be a small price.

  Ol’t’ro were beyond genius and could modify Proteus themselves. But they wouldn’t: the task was too mundane to hold their interest. They would rather obsess on the enduring mystery of the Type II hyperdrive. They would rather keep working on a gravity-pulse projector to precipitate ships from hyperspace—and to find a way, if they ever had such a projector—to peer into hyperspace to aim it. Ol’t’ro had an unending set of ambitious projects, and the entire Ministry of Science to do their bidding.

  And within that Ministry, every scientist and engineer would be terrified to touch the internals of an AI.

  Rather than set aside their toys, Ol’t’ro would want Achilles to upgrade Proteus. A commitment to replace Horatius should be no obstacle.

  Success was not in question. Achilles had had programming extensions in mind for years, waiting for the opportunity to have access. Not from curiosity, for that was a foolish human trait. Not from the panicked reactivity that motivated most Citizen invention. From preparedness. He who would lead from behind must prepare to lead from behind.

  “Do you have further questions, or are we finished?” Proteus asked.

  We have only begun, Achilles thought. But he sang, simply, “Finished.”

  15

  Louis roamed the narrow, serpentine corridors of Long Shot looking for distraction because Hindmost refused to be rushed. Louis looked for weapons, too, not that, if it came to combat, one ship could prevail against whole fleets. Long Shot’s advantage was its speed.

  “Hindmost’s Voice,” Louis called. “Review your orders.”

  “If any ship emerges from hyperspace nearer to us than a light-hour, initiate an immediate ten-light-day maneuver outward from the star through hyperspace. Repeat as needed until I detect no ship within a light-hour.”

  “Very good.” Louis turned another corner, plunging deeper into the ship. Kzinti had held this ship for … he did not know how long. If only for a day, there would be some weapons aboard. Tunesmith would have added weapons, too.

  Louis doubted he would recognize a protector’s weapon design.

  He squirmed through a narrow passageway into yet another equipment room. Except for some stepping discs and float plates Tunesmith must have stowed in the corner, photonics racks filled the space. To judge from the power converters and backup fuel cells, whatever this gear did drew a lot of power. Fat fiber-optic bundles ran between racks and out the hatch into the passageway he had just left. The ship was filled with rooms like this.

  Much of it decoy equipment, he had come to realize. His first time aboard, long ago, not even the maze of access tunnels had existed. Louis imagined ARM engineers, and after them Kzinti, ferreting out sham apparatuses one laboriously traced photonic circuit at a time.

  As mired in molasses as his thoughts seemed, a few insights remained from his brief time as a protector. Never the reasoning, but sometimes the conclusions.

  He found an intercom control. “Hindmost?” No answer. “Hindmost!”

  “What?” the answer finally came.

  “The lifeboat Tunesmith had in his workspace. The lifeboat we stowed aboard this ship just before leaving the Ringworld. It was on Long Shot in the first place, wasn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  What did he mean? Tanj this dim-witted breeder brain!

  Something glimpsed on the Ringworld, Louis thought. Something seen in the war room Tunesmith had improvised within the Ringworld Meteor Defense Room.

  Or was it something not seen? Louis remembered the war-room display tagging a few ships with an icon to denote an indestructible General Products hull. This ship. Three ships that hung far back, remote from the Fringe War action. They, like Long Shot, had number four hulls. Puppeteer craft, he had thought then. Had he seen any smaller ships in a GP hull?

  Louis said, “The lifeboat is built in a General Products #2 hull. The simplest explanation for such a lifeboat is that it was aboard the whole time.”

  “Tunesmith may have captured it,” Hindmost said.

  “While the Fringe War raged, while warships blasted holes in the Ringworld with antimatter, Tunesmith was clearing space aboard Long Shot to accommodate a ship a hundred meters long. I don’t think so.”

  “Perhaps Patriarchy engineers installed the lifeboat.”

  “Long Shot is all but defenseless. If Kzinti had had the option, instead of a lifeboat we’d have found a hangar jammed with fighter ships or something just as lethal.”

  “Very well, Louis,” Hindmost said. “You have me. A lifeboat was always aboard. When Nessus sought you out for the Ringworld expedition. Even when Beowulf Shaeffer took this ship to see the galactic core.

  “The Type II drive was new and experimental. Suppose it had stopped working far from Hearth, far from Known Space, beyond hope of rescue by conventional hyperdrive, beyond hope of the Outsiders rendering assistance. Then directions would have been hyperwaved to the pilot how he might release the lifeboat and perhaps, over a very long time, hope to return home.”

  That answer Louis believed. “Thank you for not taking the lifeboat and abandoning me.”

  “I brought you to the Ringworld against your will. If I can, I will take you safely away. Certainly I owe you that.

  “If I have satisfied your curiosity for a while, may I hope you will permit me to continue my observations?”

  * * *

  STARING OUT THE MAIN BRIDGE view port at the stars, Hindmost let his mind wander. Invisible to the naked eye but (courtesy of Voice) prominent in an augmented-reality view was the endless swirl and shift of the ships of the Fringe War.

  There was another dance to be seen, if he was not more devoid than usual of reason. At least he thought he saw a dance. Whenever Louis, still bursting with energy from the autodoc, ranging all about the ship, managed to leave him in peace.

  From time to time Hindmost drank from a bulb of water. About the time it registered that the bulb seemed bottomless, he realized it must have been replaced. By Louis, on any of his several returns to the bridge.

  Hindmost activated the intercom. “Thank you, Louis.”

  “For what?”

  “Indulging me. I am ready when you are.”

  Louis soon appeared in the hatchway to the bridge. “What, exactly, do you see out there?”

  As much as see, I hear. I feel. But perhaps it is only wishful thinking. “We will do a test, and then I will explain.”

  Louis shrugged.

  “Voice, run a correlation.” Hindmost sang out the cadence he had found—or imagined—in the display. “Across the Fringe War, how many ships leap about following tha
t cadence?”

  “Hold on,” Louis said. “How can it answer that?” Pause. “Hindmost’s Voice, can you tell ships apart?”

  “To an extent,” Voice said. “The shadow-square sensors often catch the silhouettes of ships. By triangulation, I can determine distance, from which I calculate sizes. And I can distinguish hull compositions.”

  “Hull compositions,” Louis repeated skeptically. “By spectral analyses?”

  “Only rarely. In most cases the reflected light is too dim for that,” Hindmost said. “But among our sensor upgrades is something new. It appears that hull surface subtly influences the normal-space bubble that protects a ship from hyperspace. Those hints about hull material get imprinted onto the ripples made when ships enter and leave normal space.”

  “That doesn’t sound possible,” Louis said.

  “Hyperwave interacts with radio gear to perform hyperwave communications. These new sensors are little different, in principle.”

  “In principle.” Louis laughed. “So we again have Tunesmith to thank.”

  Hindmost shivered. “I am glad to be rid of protectors.”

  “Back to identifying a particular ship for this correlation,” Louis said. “Among the larger formations, there must be many ships of a given type.”

  “That is problematical,” Voice agreed. “When similar ships set out together and part ways in hyperspace, I cannot know which vessel went where.”

  “Voice will tell us if he cannot do the correlation,” Hindmost said. As he will, because this may be the craziest idea I’ve had since … coming to the Ringworld.

  “I have done the correlation,” Voice said. “While we spoke.”

  Hindmost hesitated to ask. Suppose a correlation did exist. Would he dare to act on it? Hope and intuition struggled with innate caution.

  “And?” Louis prompted.

  “I find a correlation,” Voice said. “One ship.”

  Louis blinked. “How did you know?” he asked Hindmost. “What was that pattern?”

  “It is from a favorite performance of the Grand Ballet on Hearth. From a day I shared with someone very important to me.”