Juggler of Worlds (50 page)

“He’s twitching in his sleep,” an aide called from the next room.

Tanj! The effects were wearing off fast. Sigmund was loath to risk a second zap. “Kirsten, look for—”

“I know. The way aboard
Aegis
. I’ve got stepping-disc addresses and security codes.” Kirsten tapped the touch screen of Nessus’ comp, now pointed at her own. “Transferred. And we’re logged out.”

An aide dashed off with the comp, to restore it to Nessus’ pocket before he woke.

Kirsten transferred a copy of the data from her comp to Sigmund’s. “We’re set.”

Seconds later, he and Kirsten were aboard Nessus’ ship. With luck, the stolen tongueprint would also give Kirsten access to the bridge navigational computer.

HANDS JOSTLED NESSUS. Who? Why?

His eyes flew open. He found himself slumped half-off a couch in the governor’s office; Sabrina was shaking him. His legs and necks tingled. “What happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know. You just passed out,” she said. “Aaron went to find a Citizen autodoc. We put them in storage.” She looked embarrassed by the admission. “Should we contact someone on Elysium?”

Nessus struggled into an upright position. “No need. I feel better.” For all Nessus knew, the Concordance had spies among the refugees and émigrés on Elysium. He would have. Achilles would have thought of it, too.

“We still have a Citizen synthesizer handy. Perhaps you would like to order something for yourself. Food or a tonic?” Sabrina hovered over him.

Something nagged at Nessus. What had he just been thinking? Achilles would have spies….

What about
Sigmund?

Nessus stiffened. Sigmund unaccounted for. He had gotten no answer, he now realized, to where his former scouts were. Sabrina acting nervous.

What if
Sigmund
was up to something?

How? What? Why? Had he broken Sigmund while erasing memories of Earth, or was Sigmund …?

What
would
Sigmund do?

Nessus’ mind just did not work this way—that was why he had brought Sigmund to this world.

His right front hoof tore at Sabrina’s carpet. He
must
run.
Now
.

“On second thought, I don’t feel well.” Nessus got off his couch, staggering for effect. He remembered seeing a stepping disc in the vestibule outside her office. She followed him from her office, looking ever more anxious. “I will contact you soon about resuming.”

With those words, he stepped back to the safety of
Aegis
.

KIRSTEN HUMMED as she worked, holo text flashing past, while Sigmund monitored the security system. The bridge’s security cameras showed empty corridors and rooms.

“That’s interesting,” Kirsten muttered. Indecipherable text kept flashing.

“What?” he asked. “Nav data?”

She shook her head. “No, where we are. Nessus put
Aegis
underwater.”

“Then we won’t go out the air lock….” Something moved on one of the monitors. “Finagle! Nessus just flicked into the relax room!” A moment later, Sigmund’s comp buzzed, with a too-late warning from Sabrina.

Kirsten’s hands still flew over the keypad. “Do I keep looking for Earth?”

Sigmund fingered the stunner in his pocket. Nessus at the least suspected. Stunning him again, aboard his own ship, would surely remove all doubt.

Nessus was not an ally, exactly, but neither was he an enemy. As a source of insight into Concordance thinking, the Puppeteer was irreplaceable. ARM scuttlebutt, supposedly informed by past Kzinti experiments, was that coercing a Puppeteer triggered a conditioned suicide reflex.

How about, Sigmund, that Nessus did not leave you on the floor to bleed to death? How’s
that
for a reason not to threaten him?

Sigmund said, “Do we have a way off
Aegis
besides the stepping disc in the relax room?”

“There are probably other discs; I pulled several addresses off Nessus’ comp. Check the cargo holds.
Explorer
had stepping discs in its holds, for loading.”

He panned several cameras. “Here, too.”

She grimaced. “I’m not finding anything about Earth or Sol system.”

“Widen your search,” he said. He watched Nessus looking for something on the relax room’s shelves. A weapon? “Very quickly.”

Kirsten’s holo flashed even faster, the effect almost stroboscopic.

“How long do you need to cover your tracks?” No one had ever hunted on New Terra, so the metaphor got Sigmund another blank look. “How long to purge the audit trail and log out?”

“A minute or so.”

If Nessus started their way, they had maybe 30 seconds to get off the bridge and down the other corridor to the hold before he would see them. Decision time. Confrontation meant losing whatever help Nessus might willingly provide. Get out now, Sigmund thought, before Nessus can truly know he has been spied upon.

Nessus picked up something and walked out of the relax room.

“Kirsten! Start your cleanup!” Sigmund hurried to the nearest hold, moving as quickly as he could without making noise. He stepped through to the relax room. Nessus would be halfway to the bridge by now.

Sealed packages sat on a shelf beside the synthesizer. Sigmund couldn’t read the labels, but he guessed these were emergency rations. Puppeteers would have backup synthesizers and presynthed food in case the backups had problems.

What they were didn’t matter. Sigmund swept several packages to the deck.

In the stone-silent ship, the splats were deafening.

When Nessus found the mess, he’d think he bumped the shelf. Wobbling packages that took a moment to topple was surely an easier explanation than intruders. They could come back the next time Nessus met with Sabrina.

Sigmund stepped back into the cargo hold. He called Kirsten on her comp. “Check the monitors. Did Nessus turn around?”

“Yes, he went back to the relax room. What’s the mess you made?”

“The cargo hold.
Now.”

“Yes, boss,” she said.

They rendezvoused in the hold. Sigmund waved Kirsten through first. Sigmund flicked after, emerging to find Eric and Kirsten hugging.

Sigmund could not help thinking of Penelope—but nothing had changed. New Terra needed him to be
him
, and Penelope deserved someone … normal. “We’re no closer to Earth than before,” Sigmund said bitterly.

Kirsten slipped free of Eric’s arms and turned. Inexplicably, she was beaming. “On the other hand, Sigmund, the trip wasn’t a total loss.

“I found the Outsider ship Nessus visited.”

“Time is up.”

Baedeker flinched at the intrusion. Few knew the access codes for his lab. Fewer still would arrive here unannounced. He turned and confirmed his fears. “Hello, Achilles.”

Achilles gazed about at rows of lab instruments and computers. His mane coif was more elaborately garish than ever. “We have not stinted on resources for you.”

The subtext was hardly subtle: Any lack of success will be blamed on me. No matter that generations of Concordance researchers had feared even to try reverse-engineering the drive technology.

“We’ll be more comfortable there.” Baedeker motioned toward his small office area. The short walk, a little settling-in time, offers of refreshments … it all took time. Achilles had come unannounced like this to rattle him—and had succeeded.

He needed to gather his wits.

He had learned a few things about the drive. The underlying technology
did
tap zero-point energy. The energies involved
were
extraordinary. Beyond that, he had dared to perform only a few noninvasive scans. The readouts hinted elliptically at far more than they revealed.

Baedeker guessed at quantum logic—and he quailed at the consequences of disturbing it. If he was correct, an unknowably complex real-time computation channeled and directed vast energies. Every probe he undertook risked collapsing the computation into an unintended state. What would happen then …?

This was frighteningly far beyond Citizen science.

Achilles waited for Baedeker to settle onto a mound of cushions—and remained standing. “The situation with the ex-Colonists requires resolution. Your reports have been less than forthcoming. Have you found a way to remotely disable their planetary drive?”

“Respectfully,” Baedeker began, “the energies involved are—”

“Answer the question.” Achilles’ undertones pulsed with impatience.

Baedeker stood, setting his hooves far apart in a confidence he did not feel. He
wanted
to flee. But the forces with which Achilles was so eager to meddle made flight meaningless…. “I found no remotely accessible controls.” Nor had he found any unsuspected weakness that he might exploit. How could he, when so little of the design made sense?

“That is unfortunate,” Achilles warbled. “The Hindmost has decided we will wait no longer.”

“Because of the ship that flew past the Fleet?”

“That is not your affair,” Achilles snapped. “Because of your failure, it appears we must disable their planetary drive another way.”

Baedeker plucked at his mane. The other way was bombardment. The more he learned of the drive, the more the notion terrified him. “That could mean genocide.”

Achilles craned a neck to more closely study a small decorative holo. “Provoking the Outsiders
would
mean genocide. Ours. Something unexpected happening on our old colony? That would be merely unfortunate.”

Somehow, the casual apathy rang false. Baedeker allowed himself to hope. “There may be another option.” Most of his recent investigations had been directed to finding something—anything—safer to attempt.

“Oh?”

Baedeker heard the faint grace note of interest under the feigned indifference. “We had thought to disable the planetary drive by surprise, making the New Terrans’ ships too precious to use against Hearth. What if we turn the plan on its heads? What if we destroy all their ships by surprise? They would be defenseless. Then, a threat to damage their planetary drive might suffice.”

“Interesting,” Achilles whistled.
“If
you have a way to destroy all their ships.”

Baedeker bobbed heads vigorously. “We need only generalize how we can destroy individual hulls. Imagine a network of stealthed comm buoys deployed around New Terra. At an opportune moment, those satellites beam the ‘power-plant off’ command to every General Products hull on the surface or in nearby orbit.”

Achilles’ eyes gleamed. “Opportune?”

“We would act when all their ships are located. If I recall correctly, they were left with very few ships under the agreement of separation. General Products will have the records. If we know how many ships there are, we concentrate on finding them.” Baedeker had in mind remote sensing.

“Oh yes,” Achilles chanted. He seemed, suddenly,
very
happy. “We have ways to locate the ships. You may have done it yet again.”

IN THE MAIN BRIDGE display of
Remembrance
, a world shimmered.

Sparkling blue oceans. Continents rich with forest and fields. Swirls of white cloud. Round it all circled tiny suns, like necklaces of brilliant yellow topaz.

For most of Achilles’ life, this world had hung in the sky over Hearth. As it would once again—only he would not see it. He would be
on
it, ruling. His reward. Nike had promised.

Achilles stood tall. “Ready?”

Baedeker fidgeted on the other command couch. For all he had scanned his console obsessively for much of a shift, he checked everything again. “Three ships on the ground, at their main spaceport. Two ships in synchronous orbit over Arcadia.” There was a flurry of whispering to his console, and five small holos formed. Each centered on a remotely viewed General Products hull. “All five accounted for.”

As his spies had reported. “And are you prepared to take them all out?”

A hoarse, bass whisper. “Yes, Achilles. All buoys have target lock. I am ready at your command.”

At my command. I can get used to that.

Stealthed,
Remembrance
was invisible except to hyperwave radar—a technology the humans lacked. He felt like Zeus, ready to smite the puny humans below with his lightning.

Perhaps, when his reign began, he would change his name.

Achilles opened a sixth small image. It centered on a ship also stationed to guard the human continent, for all the good it would do them. This target was freighted with significance: the old ramscoop with which the Colonists had extorted their—fleeting—freedom. This hull had not come from the factories of General Products.

“On my count,” Achilles sang. “Three. Two. One. Now.”

The laser sliced through the old hull. Ululating with joy, Achilles retargeted on the largest fragment… and the largest after that… and after that…. Eventually, he hit the small onboard supply of liquid hydrogen. It
flashed to gas and plasma, exploding the ruptured tank. Most of the debris was invisibly small, but it rocked the larger wreckage.

Beside him, Baedeker gaped. In his displays, from the subtle touch of five stealthed comm buoys, five hulls had vanished.

Three irregular heaps slumped across the tarmac. Smoke billowed from one heap, from who knew what cargo set aflame. It was impossible from this distance, especially through the smoke, to characterize the rubble, but Achilles’ imagination offered details: decks and interior walls, cargo and supplies, thrusters and hyperdrive shunts, life support…. And a few bodies, doubtless.