Destroyer of Worlds (36 page)

This way waited death.

Did he choose that path? He had seen
so
much, learned so much, since leaving Mala. If he died here, that knowledge died with him. The good that knowledge could do Pakhome's evacuees would die with him.

He could summon no emotion at the thought of death, but neither did the prospect bring indifference. He picked up a piece of fruit and managed
to swallow another nibble. He took a few more bites and felt a small stirring of energy.

It was not yet his time, apparently, to fade away.

He began an exercise routine, taking the opportunity to recover his scanner from its hiding place in a recessed handhold. Later, his exercises complete, the tool hidden under a blanket, he turned his attention, working through the tactile interface, to his cell's curved wall. With every probe he learned something new about the hull material. With every scrap of knowledge he extended the scanner capabilities to discern yet more.

The hull hummed with resonant energies. It explained how this material could be harder than
twing
: by dynamically reinforcing the interatomic bonds. Ways to produce similar stuff blossomed in his thoughts, and he filed away the ideas.

The hull itself had just become a resource. He could alter his modulator to tap the hull's own energy. . ..

The possibility caught his attention, and suddenly he was ravenous.

 

WITH A FINAL PRECISE ADJUSTMENT
, Thssthfok finished rebuilding the scanner into a structural modulator.

He stood close to the curved wall, blocking with his body the device in his hands. He swiped it over a small area, and the handle pulsed with energy. A patch of the curved bulkhead (or of an outside coating, he thought) turned clear—

Another ship clung just outside!

Sounds in the corridor. Thssthfok hurriedly swiped the modulator over the wall and restored its opacity. His thumb twitched to disable the device. He wrapped his fist around it, sliding his arms and hands behind his back as he pivoted to face the inside hatch.

The door swung open. “Something interesting there?” Sigmund asked.

His need for life restored, Thssthfok resented Sigmund's interruptions. Sigmund had made no mention of a new crewwoman, yet traces of her scent clung to Sigmund's armor. When had she come aboard? Her presence, like the heavy pace of unexplained maintenance, went unexplained. She had come from the docked ship, of course.

“No more than usual,” Thssthfok lied.

Sigmund launched into another round of questions. With some difficulty Thssthfok answered, or disdained to answer, with the boredom the
questions deserved. With the boredom with which, surely, he had answered while sinking deeper and deeper into apathy. He dared not reveal excitement now.

Finally, Sigmund tired of the conversation and left.

When next the sounds of shipboard maintenance receded into the background noise, Thssthfok risked a glance into the corridor. He saw no one. He strode briskly to the curved bulkhead, softened a swath of the hull, and the much more malleable second hull just beyond—

And pressed through both walls into the cockpit of another vessel.

 

THE LITTLE SHIP WAS A CURIOUS
amalgam of human and Pak influences. The pilot console bore labels in the same symbol set as the ship Thssthfok had just left. Some words seemed changed from the English he had learned, but they were close enough. He saw at a glance that the ship's systems were functioning properly and the deuterium tank was nearly full.

A pressure suit and helmet waited in a small locker. They were large, but he could make do. He might need to make a quick trip into the vacuum to detach or undock this little ship.

One of the teleportation discs lay on the deck. He had speculated for so long about those. He lifted it, marveling at its low mass. He turned it, spotting a keypad in a recess along its edge and a long bank of tiny switches. An identification code, no doubt.

Leaving the disk operational risked someone coming aboard—but only one, for the little ship was crowded with just Thssthfok here. He would easily overpower one unsuspecting visitor, if it came to that. Deactivating the disc, if he spent the time to find the key code, risked triggering a maintenance alert and prematurely revealing his presence here. So did reprogramming the disc address. So did stowing the disc upside down, or somewhere too small for a person to rematerialize—any competent system design would check for open space before transmitting.

Disabling the disc must wait until he escaped.

He put the disc back where he had found it, then looked around and under the pilot's couch for hidden restraints. The chair was not rigged, and he settled into it. He surveyed the console. Life-support controls. Ship's power. Fusion drive. Artificial gravity. Sensor array. Radio and comm laser. There were other systems, some not immediately familiar. Those, like the teleportation device, could wait later study.

Curious. Magnets secured a cloth to the canopy rim, hiding the view port. Thssthfok yearned to see stars again. He ripped away the cloth—

The edges of the canopy came together. That made no sense, and he concentrated on the expanse that until moments ago the cloth had covered. And saw—

Nothing. Less than nothing. The denial, even, of the concept of anything. The less than nothing drew him in, deeper, deeper . . .

He tried to look away and failed, unable to recover the concept of direction.

Deeper, deeper. . .

 

THSSTHFOK WOKE
, utterly disoriented. He was flat on his back. He had the vague sensation of someone repeatedly calling his name. A booted foot, none too gently, prodded his side. Sigmund's boot. Eric, also in armor, stood nearby.

“What happened?” Thssthfok managed.

Sigmund stepped back. “It's called the Blind Spot. The name fits, because the mind refuses to see it.”

A place that was no place, a place beyond Pak—and, apparently, human—perception. A place beyond space, in which speed might have another meaning, and a clue to how the faster-than-light drive worked. The argument was compelling, the prospects momentous, but Thssthfok trembled, too shaken to follow the logic.

Sigmund was still speaking. “You
don't
want to stare into the Blind Spot, Thssthfok. People who do, sometimes don't find their way out.”

“What happened?' Thssthfok asked again. “The last I remember, I was . . .” He wanted to gesture at the curved wall, behind which the other ship clung. Only all walls here were straight. This was a new room. Smaller.

“You were lucky,” Eric said. “Kirsten found you, frozen. Lost in the Blind Spot. And you were lucky again
she
managed not to lose herself there.”

Thssthfok suddenly remembered that other little ship. He remembered boarding, tugging himself through walls. His fingers twitched. The structural modulator was gone from his hand!

“Looking for this?” Sigmund asked. He had the modulator in his gloved hand. “We'll be keeping it. And since you've never been in this cabin, we should be safe from any more hidden surprises.”

Sigmund and Eric left, and Thssthfok was alone. On Mala, and even on
this ship, he had always had tools and technology at his disposal. Bit by bit, one abortive escape after the next, he had lost everything. He felt as helpless, as primitive, as a breeder. Thssthfok looked about the bare cabin. He saw only a bit of food, a vessel of water, and a chamber pot.

The food tray held absolutely no interest for him.

 

Two tiny minds, scarcely communicating, quavering. A third mind. A fourth.

Hints of emanations of thought, of someone other than these scarcely sentient components.
More
, the emergent mind roared into an inchoate inner space.

Trembling, the four reached out. Another little mind, and another, and another. . .

Awareness cascaded. Consciousness blossomed.
We are Ol't'ro
, they remembered. Lesser minds faded into irrelevance.

They sifted the memories of their sixteen lesser components. By their own choice, much time had passed since the last meld. Their units had answered every request for help, at a time when the mission needed every skilled hand and tubacle. And what had best served Sigmund also served Ol't'ro: It was far better to plumb the mysteries of the ship—particularly its engine room!—than to monitor Sigmund's and Alice's pondering of obscure human historical puzzles.

In performing repairs, making calibrations, and disconnecting unnecessary equipment, Ol't'ro's units had absorbed many nuances of
Don Quixote
's design. They would learn more from the myriads of miniature sensors that repair duties had allowed them to hide across the vessel. Meanwhile, they still had much to infer from observations of the Outsider vessel. And they found fascinating the recent discussions about neutronium existing outside of stellar objects.

Everything that could be turned off or fine-tuned had been serviced.

Now, at long last, Ol't'ro had the opportunity to contemplate . . .

 

“IT'S GOOD TO BE BACK,” Jeeves said.

“It's good to have you back,” Sigmund answered, although Eric was off
fuming about the associated power drain and wondering how, even temporarily, to compensate. “We relics should stick together.”

“I see that we're much closer to New Terra.”

A veiled complaint about time passing as he was powered down? Fair enough if so, Sigmund decided. Had the ship's emergency been, say, an oxygen shortage, he'd not want someone else to decide he would be the one to go into an induced coma. Still, sympathy had no bearing on Sigmund's decision to awaken the AI.

“Jeeves, I'm missing something. I could use your help.” Sigmund stared at the dull, picture-mode-off walls of his cabin. “It's about Alice.”

“What about her?”

“Brennan went to extraordinary lengths to put Alice where he did. At least I assume he's the one responsible. Who but a protector could have arranged for her to be found as she was?”

“In deep space, you mean. Orbiting the neutronium mass.”

“Right.” Hands behind his head, Sigmund lay on the floor of his cabin. Sleep fields were among the expendable functions disabled to conserve power, but the reduced cabin gravity was almost as comfortable. “Brennan took extraordinary measures to protect her. Brennan protected Earth by heading for Wunderland.” Jeeves had been disabled through most of Alice's debrief, and that required an explanation. “Why send Alice away from Earth?”

Jeeves didn't comment.

Sigmund sat up. He saw only one answer, and he didn't much like it. “Somehow, the void between the stars was safer.”

Jeeves considered. “Then Brennan was less than confident he could lure away or defeat the Pak.”

Still not explaining special treatment for Alice. “Why protect Alice more than the billions on Earth?”

“I don't know,” Jeeves said.

They had overlooked something. Sigmund refused to accept that Alice's reappearance here and now would remain a mystery. He opened his pocket comp. “I'm going to upload every discussion I've had with Alice, and every speculation I've had about her. Then do what you do best, Jeeves. Review everything you know about Brennan. About Alice. About anything. And correlate.”

“All right,” Jeeves said, not sounding hopeful—

And Sigmund knew he was projecting his own doubts. He did progressive
relaxation of his muscle groups, trying, and failing, to relax. He stared at the featureless walls.

“I have a possible match,” Jeeves finally said. “Brennan had two children, Jennifer and Estelle. Alice says Roy Truesdale called his great-to-the-fourth grandmother ‘Greatly Stelle.' ”

Greatly Stelle. A passing mention that Sigmund, never good with names, had forgotten. How many million women named Estelle lived in Sol system at any given time? A trivial coincidence—had Sigmund believed in such things. And he had more than a name match to explain. “Roy inherited a great deal of money. Enough to purchase the ship he and Alice took Brennan-hunting.”

“Again, so Alice says.”

Great-to-the-fourth grandmother. At two offspring per generation—common enough among the rich on Earth, and conservative elsewhere in Sol system—Stelle would have had two children, four grandchildren. . . going to thirty-two in Roy's generation. Depending on how many direct descendants had survived Stelle, up to sixty-two heirs. More still, if any bequests went to spouses, friends, or charities. Yet Roy's tiny slice of the estate had bought and equipped a long-range interplanetary ship. “A very wealthy woman.”

“So it seems, Sigmund.”

In how many ways might a super-intelligent parent secretly influence his child's fortunes? Suppose that Greatly Stelle was, or had been named after, Estelle Brennan. Then everything made sense.

A protector
must
protect its bloodline, and Brennan knew Earth wasn't safe.

“Roy was a descendant of Brennan's,” Sigmund decided. “The child Alice carries has Brennan's blood. It's the unborn infant Brennan took such care to protect.”

 

DON QUIXOTE
WOULD SOON REACH NEW TERRA
, raising anew the possibility of returning the Gw'oth passengers to their home. Ol't'ro was determined that that not happen. Opportunities amid the humans were too valuable. And if Ol't'ro could reconnect with Baedeker and those like him, how much more might the Gw'otesht learn?

Reminding Sigmund of their value would be easy; the artistry lay in innocently making their case. It would not do to intimate how much
shipboard technology they had mastered since coming aboard. Gw'oth understood wariness—how could they not, borne to an ocean teeming with predators and contested by rival city-states?—but Sigmund embodied suspicion beyond their experience. So they would offer something apart from this ship. Something important to Sigmund. Something, perhaps, about Alice.