Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

11

Alice pored over the bridge displays, at once fascinated and anxious. From the way Nessus tugged at his mane, he felt no such ambivalence. Alice couldn’t decide how Julia felt.

A poker face is a good skill in a commander.

Space seethed with hyperwave chatter. The longer Endurance skulked about, the more hyperspace-jump ripples its instruments detected. The ship stocked — and had widely scattered — sensors far better than anything the Ministry had had in her day. Compared to the tech with which Alice had, long ago, grown up in the Belt, the new sensors were scarcely distinguishable from magic. The sensors, like twing, were a gift from the Pak Library.

Alice froze her display on a ship so long and thin that it suggested a crowbar. At the limits of resolution, smaller dartlike ships buzzed around it. “We see lots of ships like this, a second type like thick lenses, and a third kind more like squat cones. Each shape seems to stick with its own. Fleets, do you suppose, Sigmund?”

“Almost certainly,” Sigmund answered a minute and a half later. “The formations look defensive. As makes sense when at least one faction has antimatter weapons.”

“But whose fleets are they?” Julia asked. “Sigmund, Nessus, do you know?”

Pausing his soft, rhythmic humming, Nessus looked up from the pilot console. “The Ringworld is gone. The danger it embodied is gone. The mystery of the hyperspace ripple is resolved. I do not understand why we tarry.”

Changing the subject, Alice noted. She waited for Sigmund to comment.

Sigmund’s answer eventually arrived. “When I left Known Space, most human warships, including ARM ships, had been built in GP hulls. Kzinti warships, too. Of course, General Products had just pulled out of Known Space and…”

Nessus turned one head toward the camera. “Not knowing whose fleets these are, we must consider them dangerous.”

Strange creatures, Alice thought. Puppeteers had no curiosity. And though Nessus yearned to flee, he stayed alert. Sigmund used to say something about no true coward ever turning his back on danger. And that Nessus always had undisclosed motives.

This was neither the time nor the place to let her mind wander. Damn old age.

“… Almost certain I recognize some ARM and Patriarchy vessels,” Sigmund was saying. “Cut off from their supply of General Products hulls, I suspect naval designers reverted to proven configurations.”

Sigmund’s brow furrowed in the manner Alice remembered so well.

Even … before, the closest of friends, working together every day, she hadn’t always understood what had plunged him into one of his dark moods. But this scowl held no mystery: General Products hulls were among his fiercest obsessions.

It turned out that a GP hull was a single nanotech-grown super-molecule, the interatomic bonds massively reinforced by an embedded power plant. Disable that hidden fusion generator, and a ship’s own air pressure blows apart the hull.

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 …

“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.

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.”

“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 his 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 that 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.”

“Nessus?” Louis guessed.

“As you say.” Hindmost shivered, for how could Nessus be here? He had left Nessus on New Terra, the world that had for so long been their home. “Of course many know that ballet.”

“Is the dancing ship from the Fleet?” Louis asked.

“Doubtful,” Voice said. “It does not have a General Products hull.”

“You can be sure of that?”

“That it is not a General Products hull? That, Louis, I can say for certain. This one ship interacts with hyperwave quite differently from the obvious Fleet vessels.”

“Anything more?” Hindmost asked.

“Possibly. With so many hyperdrive emergences in this region I am uncertain. I first noticed that particular hull material only a day ago.”

“A new ship type,” Louis said. “An appearance two months after the Ringworld disappeared. It sounds like some new player came to see what’s happening here.”

Hindmost’s mind raced. After many years away, he could not know exactly where New Terra had traveled. Most likely, a New Terran ship could have reached here by now. It could be Nessus aboard that ship.

Assume for the moment that the new arrival had come from New Terra. Maybe, Hindmost thought, he could establish New Terran provenance another way. “Of what material is that new ship constructed?”

“I cannot tell,” Voice answered. “Our instruments sense differences among hulls, but they have not been calibrated to identify specific materials from hyperwave interactions.”

“And if we get a little closer? Perhaps, a light-hour?” Hindmost persisted. “Could you then remotely identify the hull material by spectral analysis?”

“Belay that,” Louis said. “Hindmost, I don’t understand. How does knowing the hull material tell you who is aboard?”

“Trust me that it might.” If the hull is of a particular material. The explanation would tread too close to secrets long kept from Louis. “Voice. How close?”

“Not where the ship is now,” Voice said. “Nearer the star, with brighter light, then yes.”

“Does the music in your head say where that ship will go next?” Louis asked.

Hindmost considered. The endpoints of jumps had not caught his eye, only the timing. Was he missing a vital clue? But no: the ballet was performed on a stage, the dancers’ graceful leaps circumscribed by gravity. The ship that he watched so hopefully darted about in three dimensions. “No. Only when.

“Keep watch on that ship,” Hindmost added to the AI. “Tell me when it is near enough to the star for spectral analysis from a light-hour away, and when Long Shot could approach it with no other ship any closer.”

“Approaching an unknown ship? That seems very brave of you,” Louis said.

Hindmost turned both heads to stare. “There is no reason to be insulting.”

HINDMOST HAD BEEN STUDYING bridge displays for hours. His eyes ached. His thoughts grew fuzzy. He needed sleep.

He sang aloud the next several bars of the libretto that echoed in his brain, ordering Voice to watch for the mystery ship’s next moves.

Louis wandered past the bridge yet again.

Hindmost closed his eyes but sleep refused to come. Fuzzy or not, his thoughts kept churning. Dancers. Ships. Leaps. Danger all around. Leaps. Partway home (well, Home, in any event), and back.

His eyes flew open. Louis had flown Long Shot much farther than he had allowed Voice to take it. “Voice, were internal instruments active during the hyperspace move toward Home?”

“They were.”

“Bring up the data.”

Displays lit on an arc running halfway around the bridge. Necks craning, Hindmost took it in, now and again reaching out to scroll deeper into the recordings. On other monitors, he reviewed data gleaned from studies of the Ringworld’s disappearance.

Patterns in the data reminded him of something, but for the longest time he could not put his tongue on it. An odd coincidence, he decided. He had seen such patterns before.

Long ago he had tried to reverse engineer the planetary drives purchased from the Outsiders. It was a desperate undertaking, to be sure — moving worlds involved vast energies — but not quite as insane as getting overrun by the genocidal Pak. Instead of discovering how the planetary drive worked, he had succeeded only in learning the many ways in which it might destabilize —

And that the energies so unleashed could vaporize a world.

Of course, very different mechanisms sometimes shared a mathematical description, as with pendulums and electronic oscillators. This parallelism surely meant nothing. Still, sometimes having an analogy suggested new ways to approach a problem …

Sipping from a drink bulb, his exhaustion forgotten, he thought how, while in office, he had opposed — to the modest extent Ol’t’ro tolerated opposition — the unending study of this ship. He thought how his newfound obsession with understanding the Type II drive would amuse Ol’t’ro. He thought about —

He straightened on the uncomfortable crash couch. His eyes closed, this time in concentration. For all the Ministry’s years of study, he had something they did not: protector-built instruments. And now he knew something they did not.

How to toggle the Type II drive to and from Type I speed.

The new hyperspace physics with which he dabbled remained incomplete, and yet — with Tunesmith’s help — he had made more progress in days than Ol’t’ro and the Ministry of Science together had in more than a century. Chords of triumph rose in his throats. Maybe he could barter for the Concordance’s freedom. This was his greatest insight since —

Reality crashed down. His greatest accomplishment since discovering how to destroy General Products hulls from a distance, without antimatter.

Long Shot had been built well before hulls were redesigned against such attacks.

Louis squeezed onto the bridge. “Did I hear you say something?”

“I was talking to myself,” Hindmost said. Because this time, I will understand the implications of my discoveries before I unleash them onto an unsuspecting galaxy.

16

Dry land sweltered, mere air no obstacle to the fierce sunslight. Sessile life forms, in every color from far-red to a deep ultrablue that only instruments could detect, covered the undulating landscape. Motile creatures burrowed in the dirt, gamboled in the meadows, swam in the little ponds, and soared high into the boundless sky.

Unattainable, all of it.

Beyond the habitat was an entire existence Cd’o would never taste, a rich ecology that thrived on light instead of the bountiful chemical stew endlessly upwelling from oceanic trenches. Beyond the wall, not even a tubacle’s-length distant, was a whole alien world. Somehow, she had to content herself with glimpsing that world through satellite imagery and in the bottomless archives of the Citizens.

Her ventral sphincter agape, she spread her thorax wide. When, bloated, she could draw in no more water, she let the orifice snap shut. Her tubacles curled behind her, she expelled the water in a convulsive, frustrated whoosh and jetted across the chamber.

Two more pulses sent her jetting from the observation room, on her way to the Commons. Nothing there and no one’s company would change anything. Still, for a short while, a batch of magnesium salts sometimes let her forget that she would live and die in this prison.

And that she was warden as much as inmate.

As she coasted into the corridor, someone swam into position behind her. “Your Wisdom.”

Her servants/bodyguards/minders took shifts. Which was this? From a tubacle still arched ventrally, Cd’o looked. She found distinctive permanent textures hiding among the red and far-red patterns anxiously rippling across his integument. “Good day, Kg’o.” Knowing that in this one regard, her words would fail to elicit obedience, she added, “There is no need to call me that.”

“Yes, your Wisdom.”

Too soon they had crossed the pathetically small habitat, to glide into the Commons. Cd’o saw all-too-familiar figures inside. Scarcely five five-squared Gw’oth lived on Nature Preserve Five. Some, spawned here, thought of this metal can as home. Why wouldn’t they? The habitat was all they had ever known.

Many whom she found in Commons were Ol’t’ro’s progeny. They were brilliant and gifted in the art of the meld — and, from inbreeding, often deranged. Among them two had become infirm. The detritus of old age clogged their minds; in a meld, the noise of their petty, inconsequential thoughts grew ever more intrusive.

And so, the newcomers.

Was rage vivid on her skin? As quickly as they recognized her, Gw’oth across the Commons backed away. Conversations trailed off into respectful silence.

Respect was a sorry substitute for camaraderie.

But the Commons were not quite silent. The four newcomers clustered together in a corner, staring at her, whispering. From the accents, they were from Jm’ho, the home world. From the patterns rippling over them, they were at once scared, awed, and humbled.

As you were in their place, an elder’s engram fragment reminded.

She jetted over. “Welcome. I am Cd’o.”

Anxious far-reds deepened. “Thank you, your Wisdom.” Timidly, the new arrivals introduced themselves.

“What can I tell you about your new home?” she asked. “Have you been shown around the habitat?”

“Tell us about … them,” one said. “What are they like?”

About Ol’t’ro. About their destiny. One way or another, all would serve.

When she did not answer, another of the new arrivals asked, “What are Citizens like?”

“Citizens are intriguing,” Cd’o said. “Cowardly and ruthless. Smarter than any of us.” Individually, that was. “Their culture is older by far than any on Jm’ho. You would do well to study them.”

To truly understand Citizens, though, one had also to understand humans. Concordance leaders had a morbid fascination with humans. Much of that fixation came of guilt for the ancestral crime that had established New Terra, and fear of their former servants, and dread of the retribution “wild humans” would exact if they ever discovered New Terra and learned its dark secret. There was fascination with human curiosity — and an abiding horror of it, too.

And especially among the Experimentalist faction, Citizens were obsessed with human myths.

“Come with me,” Cd’o directed. “I will show you around.”

The tour was all too brief, mostly security measures and environmental systems. The “town” was sealed as tightly as any spaceship. Whatever entered, to the smallest drop of water — and the occasional “volunteer,” like these — was quarantined and thoroughly screened.

You were a volunteer, she reminded herself.

And a fool, she answered.

Every few years, the ultimatum went out from Ol’t’ro: send us four of your best. To be chosen is an honor. To join the meld, for the few who prove capable and worthy, is a rapture.

All lies.

She looked sadly at the latest to answer the call: you are sacrifices.

Having learned something of human myth, Cd’o had fancied herself as Theseus. She meant to slay the monster and end the demands of tribute. Only to be doomed by her aptitude for melding. Only to become the Minotaur …

We are equally the great King Minos, a ghostly remnant of the meld mocked. Part of the curse was never to be alone, even within her own thoughts. Should you think to escape on wings of wax and feathers, we are also as close as you will ever come to being Daedalus.

Cd’o brushed aside the intrusion, refocused on showing the newcomers the ways of the labyrinth. They had come to an auxiliary water lock, and she explained its sensors and redundant filtration systems. The habitat ringed the planetary drive: damage the planetary drive and a trillion Citizens died. Citizens were too smart and craven ever to risk a physical attack, but Ol’t’ro could not rule out some subtle toxicological or biological attack. If every Gw’o in the colony were to be incapacitated simultaneously, and Citizens were then to force their way in, and to locate and disable the self-destruct before the fail-safe timer set it off …

Cd’o explained the precautions in detail. Despite the endless clamor of remnant melds, she was not ready to die.

“What is it like?” a newcomer asked.

“A meld?”

“Yes, your Wisdom.”

On Jm’ho the newcomers had been a Gw’otesht-4. A computation unit, no more. They would know the mechanics of melding. They would have experienced the innocent sharing of mathematics. They could not begin to understand the majesty and misery and transcendence of a Gw’otesht-16 meld. No one could, until it had happened to them.

Until, as for her, it had been too late.

THE DAILY RESPITE ENDED all too soon.

Cd’o left the newcomers in the Commons and continued on her way. At the mouth of a long tunnel, her companion turned aside to loiter with other servants.

She swam down the long tunnel to the melding chamber. Friends/colleagues/alter egos waited inside, and more followed close behind her. They would be one soon enough and few bothered with greetings. The last to enter sealed the massive door.

Some eager, some dutiful, the sixteen sidled together. A tubacle, questing, engulfed one of Cd’o’s own. Within the maw of her tubacle, the eye and heat receptor went dark. The ear fell deaf to all but the beating of two hearts: one speeding up, one slowing down, seeking unison.

The tubacle tip probing deep within hers found its neural receptacle.

A shock like electricity raced up her limb and a great hunger jolted her mind. Unimaginable insights tantalized. Profound truths beckoned, just beyond her grasp.

More! She needed more! Switching to ventral respiration, she reached out with other tubacles. She felt all around and felt other limbs in return. Tubacle found tubacle, aligned, conjoined …

Ganglia meshing!

Feedback surging!

Heart pounding!

Electricity coursing!

We will begin.

The command echoed and reechoed in Cd’o’s mind. Her fears and doubts receded. Her thoughts — as fiercely as she fought to hold on to them — faded. Her sense of self all but vanished.

Ol’t’ro, the group mind, had emerged.

17

“That’s the way of it, Sigmund,” Donald Norquist-Ng concluded.

“I urge you to reconsider, Minister.” Sigmund held his voice flat, although the day had been a roller coaster (another metaphor that no one on New Terra would understand). Alice and Julia had done it! And fools like this would throw everything away.

Norquist-Ng frowned. “We are not going to rehash things. It was obvious in the situation room that you didn’t accept my decision. I invited you to stay for one reason: as a courtesy. In your time, in your way, you worked hard for this world. I chose not to berate you in a roomful of people.

“In private, in my office, I will speak as plainly as is necessary. I had hoped that being direct would suffice, but not even direct works with you. Very well, I will be blunt. Endurance is coming home. That is my order, Sigmund. It is not open for discussion.”

“But they’ve identified an ARM ship. It’s been the dream for so long.”

“Your dream, and I don’t understand even that. You’ve lived on New Terra for more than two hundred years. There’s nothing left on Earth for you.”

“Tanj it, I agree with you. In part, anyway. I have no interest in going back.” Sigmund suppressed a shudder. “I have no interest in off-world travel of any kind. But this isn’t about me, Minister. The people of this world — my children, and yours, too — deserve to know their history, to reconnect with their own kind. The independence generation would have given anything to — ”

Norquist-Ng slapped his desk. “How convenient for your argument that the founders are all gone. I suppose I should take your word for it how they felt.”

“Haven’t you ever wondered about your roots?”

“What part of ‘subject closed’ confuses you? I’ve said no. The governor, whom I’ve briefed, says no. That roomful of people we just left — and whom you failed to sway — said no.”

“Because they know you’ve made up your mind.”

“Because it is too dangerous.” Norquist-Ng sighed. “And in part I believe that for having listened to you. For years you warned about the Kzinti creatures. For years you said our scout ships had to be armed, lest we run into Kzinti or someone worse.

“Well, our people have found your Kzinti. You identified them as such. Kzinti and the Earth ships are blowing each other apart. I’ll risk nothing that might bring such madness to New Terra.”

“That’s not the only risk.” Could a ship be tracked through hyperspace? Not that Sigmund had ever heard. “The Ringworld drew all those warships practically into our backyard. However distant their home bases, three fleets are within fourteen light-years of us. If the Kzinti should spot New Terra, or those cone-ship people … then what? We need to contact the ARM, to ally with Earth, before that happens.”

Silence.

Sigmund dared to hope he was making his point. “Of course our people should be discreet as they reach out to the ARM. They should use short digital messages, hard to trace. They should relay everything through comm buoys, so that no one can backtrack the hyperwave beam. There needn’t be any contact but comm until we know more.”

Norquist-Ng tipped back his chair, seeming to consider, then shook his head. “No. Engagement with other worlds always makes matters worse. We have the proof of that from your era in this chair, one wretched crisis after the next. My orders stand, Sigmund. Endurance will not contact anyone. And it’s coming home as soon as they finish refueling.

“Challenge me again in public and that will be your last time inside this building.”

SIGMUND PACED THE DUSTY, cluttered, memory-clogged confines of his den.

Alice’s latest report had brought more than the news that low-level ARM encryption had been cracked. The crew had also spotted, on the far fringes of the scene, an Outsider ship departing. Not into hyperspace — although Outsiders had invented hyperdrive, they did not use it — but racing away at near-light speed.

The Outsiders, with their level of tech, would crack military codes faster than anyone. That they chose now to bug out meant something. What did they know that he didn’t? His gut insisted that mayhem, at a deadlier intensity than ever, was about to break out near Endurance.

Tanj it!

Sigmund had spent his life imagining what “normal” people found inconceivable. That was how one uncovered conspiracies. That was what had made him valuable as an ARM agent. That was how, time and again, he had saved New Terra.

It was time again to confront the inconceivable.

The minister was all but as timid as a Puppeteer. Did a person like that innocently get appointed to run the Ministry of Defense? Or were people high in the government working for the Puppeteers?

“I WASN’T EXPECTING to hear from you,” Alice said. Certainly not one-on-one; after the fireworks of the last mass debrief, the bigger surprise was that Sigmund still had access to the Ministry’s long-range hyperwave gear.

It was only comm delay, but Sigmund seemed to stare at her from the console.

“You know how it is,” he finally answered.

She managed not to react. From long ago, the innocent phrase was code for We need to speak in private. She set her pocket comp on the comm-console shelf and activated what Sigmund called protocol gamma: sound suppression, bug suppression, and a holographic screen to stymie lip-readers.

“Countermeasures are active, Sigmund. Now what’s this about?”

“The minister is not seeing reason.”

Norquist-Ng could hardly eavesdrop on her end of the link, and Alice doubted Sigmund wanted her to undercut his own granddaughter. So they were keeping secrets from Nessus, still ensconced in front of the pilot’s console. With the activation of the countermeasures, his irritating humming had faded into white noise.

Without the holo screen, could Nessus have read her lips? She didn’t put it past him. But it had been Sigmund’s idea to bring Nessus. Wheels within wheels …

She said, “And you suppose Nessus won’t see reason, either.”

“He always has —

“His own agenda,” she completed. “I know.” The Puppeteer might have been a valuable resource, but the Ringworld was gone. Nessus’ priority would revert — had reverted — to keeping Earth ignorant of the Concordance’s erstwhile slave colony.

“We don’t dare not contact the ARM,” Sigmund said. “Not with Kzinti fleets so near.”

Until yesterday, everything she knew about the Kzinti she had heard from Sigmund. She hadn’t doubted that hostile feline aliens existed, but that was no reason to obsess. It just hadn’t seemed credible that the Kzinti could be as aggressive as he claimed — not after losing successive wars to humans — and she had taken his foreboding as the paranoia speaking.

No longer. Not after watching those lens-shaped ships in action …

“It’s not our decision to make,” she said, shivering.

“True, we lack the authority. On the basis of qualifications, don’t you think the answer is different? Millions of lives are at stake.”

The worst of it was, she agreed with Sigmund. That didn’t give them the right to decide for everyone on New Terra.

Wait. How had he gotten access to a Ministry comm channel to plot sedition? “You’re working with someone in the Ministry,” she said. The notion made joining him in rebellion more palatable. Maybe.

“You could say that.”

And maybe not. Knowing Sigmund, she guessed that that someone wasn’t cooperating by choice. Someone embezzling from the Ministry? Sloppy with classified information? Sigmund had always made it his business to know. He had never admitted, even to her, every trap and back door hidden in the Ministry’s computer systems.

“Let’s say I agree with you,” Alice said. “What then?”

“Then you and Julia decide if you can safely reach out to the ARM.” For a moment, the demented mastermind paranoid expression melted to simple human worry. “I stress, safely.

“If you succeed in making contact, the story for everyone here will be that an ARM ship reached out to you.”

18

Some elements of the current investigation were well established: Eleven-dimensional tensors for the quantum-gravitational-field model. The differential geometry that had proven itself useful, if only empirically, in past analyses of hyperspace. Multiverse matrix mechanics.

Ol’t’ro lost themselves in the beauty of the mathematics.

But multiverse theory embraced an infinite number of possibilities. The equations had no known closed-form solution, and offered scant guidance which approximations might converge, even given the massively parallel, reconfigurable computers of the —

“Your Wisdom,” a timid voice intruded into the sealed melding chamber.

Ol’t’ro ignored the intercom, but the voice returned.

“Your Wisdom, it is time. You asked that I remind you.”

Almost, they had a candidate partitioning onto the processor arrays of the latest set of equations. The granularity of the partitioning was coarser than they would have liked. If only they had another million processing nodes for the simulation —

“Your Wisdom,” the servant tried again, plaintively, a bit louder.

The gathering on Hearth is at your demand, the Cd’o unit chided. And fainter, from an imprint of one long dead, Doing science is not our main purpose on this world.

“Your Wisdom, please. Before the meld, you were most insistent.”

They had not insisted. Before the meld there could be no they. Cd’o had insisted.

Frustrated and distracted, the gestalt began to crumble. Like an underwater avalanche, slow and inexorable, the mathematical synthesis fell into ruin.

From deep within the communal mind came the image — from how long ago? — of rocks and mud cascading down the side of a seamount. When, Ol’t’ro wondered, had they last experienced the sea? Many generations, and yet within their newest units the memories remained fresh. The ice-locked, world-spanning ocean of Jm’ho. The storm-tossed seas of Kl’mo, the colony they had —

Shaking off the reverie, Ol’t’ro spoke through the microphone positioned deep within a unit’s tubacle. “Thank you,” they told the anxious servant. “That will be all.”

Binding a Proteus fragment to the meld, linking to the Hindmost’s council chamber a world away, they opened the eyes of Chiron.

“THESE ARE WORRISOME TIMES,” this most recent Hindmost sang, directing a furtive, entreating glance at his master. “Without the Ringworld to fight over, at any time three alien fleets may turn our way. We have preempted additional resources to strengthen our defenses. As that effort progresses, we may find we need to divert yet more resources.”

“And I agreed,” Ol’t’ro, through Chiron, sang. To extend Proteus would be an intriguing experiment. “Nonetheless, our own research is important. It — ”

“Worrisome times,” Selene repeated. He was new, his predecessor as Minister of Industrial Production lost to catatonic collapse at the previous cabinet meeting.

From the indifferently brushed nature of Selene’s mane, Ol’t’ro did not expect this one to last, either. They ignored the interruption. “My research could lead to a new defensive weapon.”

Silence greeted this justification: the harmony of discord. Everyone waited for someone else to object aloud. The Ministry of Science had many open-ended projects, often claiming defensive improvements — eventually — as the justification.

We could destroy their worlds, an angry chorus welled up in Ol’t’ro’s thoughts. The mind traces of many departed units, a Gw’otesht within a Gw’otesht. And Do they not also remember our successes?

For alien ships were already all around the Fleet, had been for years, yet everyone on these worlds remained safe. Ol’t’ro’s efforts kept the alien visitors well behaved. The all-but-reactionless drives they had devised — the closest anyone, anywhere, had come to duplicating the Outsider reactionless drive technology — propelled the thousands of defensive drones that held alien ships at bay.

Self-congratulation accomplishes nothing, scolded an ancient engram, the faint echo of a unit long departed.

As faint as were those thoughts, and as impertinent, the unit made sense.

“Chiron?” the Hindmost sang. “Have you taken into account this matter of priorities?”

The insolent unit: If the Fleet should fall, what then of your research?

Ol’t’ro considered:

That the least of their interests was how the Concordance managed its affairs, as long as Citizens stayed far from the Gw’oth worlds.

That as politicians went, Citizen or Gw’oth, Horatius was stolidly reliable.

That by a show of deference to Horatius, should they choose to offer one, they would strengthen him as Hindmost.

That Cd’o’s wanderlust was illogical. Suppose they were so rash as to expose one of themselves as a potential hostage. Sealed into an environmental suit, immobile without a motorized exoskeleton, still restricted to viewing the outer world through sensors … Cd’o might as well remain within the habitat.

That to go from the water-filled habitat into the crush of gravity would be peculiar.

And intriguing, too.

That it was interesting to speculate how expanded computing resources would affect Proteus, and that diverting resources to the AI’s extension would answer that question sooner.

At the cost of further emboldening Achilles, whose reticence to enhancing Proteus was so blatantly contrived.

That if alien armadas, having chased away the Ringworld, should set out today, standard hyperdrive could not deliver them to the Fleet of Worlds any sooner than a hundred days. There would be more than ample time to enhance Proteus.

That if the alien fleets had had Type II hyperdrives, the situation would be different. But the Type II hyperdrive was a conundrum, a cosmic joke, an unending frustration.

That they half hoped the reports from the Fleet’s observers were correct: that the Long Shot had vanished with the Ringworld, never again to confound them.

That if alien navies did come to the Fleet of Worlds, their unwelcome attention would be drawn ever farther from the Gw’oth worlds.

That logic aside, a part of them, too, hungered to see new vistas. That a cacophony of engrams, echoes from deep into their past, remembered leading much different lives.

That Cd’o’s unhappiness was not the matter at hand. Exploration was not even foremost at this instant among that unit’s thoughts.

That whether or not to redirect resources was trivial, yet they vacillated and hesitated because trivia muddled their thoughts. Sooner rather than later, they must reinvigorate themselves. Some units would pass into memory, but they had candidates to join the meld.

That adapting the troublesome multiverse simulation onto the present, limited set of processors would be a useful test of the candidates’ potential contributions to the meld.

That they were old.

That they wanted this meeting ended, to turn their attention to more appealing topics.

Through Chiron, Ol’t’ro sang, “For now, Hindmost, I withdraw my suggestion. We should continue to enhance Proteus.”

19

Tanya poked at whatever it was she had been served for dinner. She didn’t remember having eaten any. From her distracted stirring, the food had begun to look used.

She had never seen Puma, never been aboard, never, to her knowledge, met any of the corvette’s crew, but in her mind’s eye that ship differed little from Koala. Too many sailors crammed into too little space. An endless background droning, from the clipped commands and acknowledgments on the bridge, to tense speculations in the public spaces, to stress-relieving high jinks in quarters. A place full of life.

No more.

Puma had transformed in an instant into a gamma-ray burst and a quickly dissipated debris field. Antimatter explosions didn’t leave much behind.

Tanjed ratcats.

Seething rage had squelched the usual boisterousness of the junior officers’ mess. She set down her fork and shoved away her tray.

“Not hungry, Lieutenant Wu?”

Junior officers shot to their feet. Tanya said, “Commander, I didn’t see you — ”

“At ease,” Commander Johansson ordered from the open hatchway. “Lieutenant, would you mind coming with me?”

“Yes, sir.”

They walked forward. Something in Johansson’s stiff gait told her not to bother asking what this was about.

They came to the last place she would have expected: the captain’s cabin. “Enter,” came a gruff answer to Johansson’s knock.

Dad looked grim. Lieutenant Commander Ovando, the chief communications officer, looked puzzled. With Tanya and Johansson squeezed in, the cabin was packed. Dad waved off her salute.

“Show her,” Dad said.

“Yes, Captain.” Ovando handed Tanya a pocket comp.

The screen displayed her inbox. Ten messages had come in since she’d last checked mail — but the most recent, a ship-to-ship, had been read. An icon showed it had come wrapped in standard fleet encryption. The subject line read Personal and Confidential.

Who said stuff like that? Who was Alice Jordan?

“This came by hyperwave a few minutes ago,” Ovando said. “A routine security audit flagged it.”

“I don’t recognize the name,” Tanya said.

“I’m not surprised,” Johansson answered. “No one by that name is serving in the ARM, and I don’t mean only the expeditionary force. Not anywhere.”

“Shall I open it?” Tanya asked.

“Go ahead, Lieutenant,” Dad said.

Tanya tapped the screen and scanned the header that popped open. It indicated standard ARM comm protocol and fleet encryption, and that the message had ping-ponged its way to Koala through a half-dozen hyperwave relays.

The stated origin of the message was a vessel called Endurance. Ships had carried that name back to the days of sail, but she didn’t recall any ship named Endurance deployed to the Ringworld theater of operations.

With a finger swipe Tanya scrolled down to the message body. “Finagle,” she said wonderingly.

“Exactly right,” Dad said.

“I’ve done database searches,” Ovando said. “A colony ramscoop named Long Pass did vanish — almost seven hundred years ago. A goldskin named Alice Jordan disappeared from Sol system a few decades later.”

“Goldskin?” Tanya asked.

“Belter police of that era wore yellow spacesuits,” Ovando explained.

“You mean this message could be real?” Johansson said. “That’s unbelievable.”

“No,” Tanya said. “What’s unbelievable is that a long-lost colony and a woman who should be long dead contacted me.”

SOONER THAN ALICE HAD DARED to hope, the comm console pinged. Telltales indicated a hyperwave link and ARM encryption.

“We’re getting video feed,” Jeeves announced. “Not an animation, as best I can judge.”

Tucking a loose strand of hair behind an ear, Alice looked at Julia. “We’re agreed?”

“Go,” Julia said. To Nessus, still at the pilot’s console, she added, “Your objections are noted. And if you can’t stop that infernal humming, get off the bridge.”

“No humming,” Nessus promised. He began tapping out a rhythm with a forehoof.

Alice angled and zoomed the camera to show only her, then tapped ACCEPT.

A young woman appeared. Her trim blue jumpsuit had the look of a uniform, its insignia unfamiliar. She had long, straight, black hair, worn pulled back, and her skin was golden. The slight slant to her eyes made their icy blueness all the more startling. Nothing showed behind her but bare metallic bulkheads.

“This is Endurance,” Alice said. “My name is Alice Jordan.”

“Hello, Alice,” the woman said. She frowned in concentration, as though struggling with Alice’s archaic speech. “I’m Tanya Wu. You messaged me?”

Interworld sounded as awkward to Alice. “I did, Tanya. Thank you for responding.”

A burst of typing came from Alice’s left, and text appeared on her contact lenses. It was Julia asking: Is she an ARM?

Tanya said, “Your message speaks of a lost human colony, New Terra. Where is it?”

In Alice’s peripheral vision, Nessus tore at his mane. She said, “It’s a dangerous galaxy, Tanya. I would rather not broadcast that information.”

Tanya frowned. “We’re talking by hyperwave, and I presume you reached this system by hyperdrive. You’ve obviously had dealings with the Outsiders, so why not ask them how to get home?”

Because, in a long-ago, three-way barter, the Outsiders had committed to the Puppeteers never to help the New Terrans get home. New Terra’s history was too tanjed convoluted for anyone to swallow in one serving. And that left telling lies.

For years Alice had spurned Sigmund’s efforts to contact her. Here and now she needed the devious insights of his twisted, brilliant mind — and she couldn’t reach him. The Ministry of Defense said he was unavailable.

The best lies are the simplest, she decided. “We can’t afford the answer.”

“And Outsiders don’t haggle,” Tanya acknowledged as her eyes darted about. Reading cues off her own lenses? “You messaged an ARM ship. Why be coy now?”

“I’m being cautious, not coy. We would like to reconnect without drawing the attention of uninvited parties.”

“That’s understandable.” More darting of Tanya’s eyes. “How does it happen that Endurance shows up in this region of space at this time?”

“A big hyperspace ripple,” Alice said. “We came to check that out and found more than we expected.”

“I’ll bet.” Tanya pursed her lips. “How is it you knew ARM encryption?”

“We didn’t. We cracked the encryption. That only worked because the plaintext recognizably derived from English.”

“Still, it’s military-grade crypto. I guess you mastered a few tricks in your isolated little colony.”

“A few.”

“Such as impersonating humans?” Tanya gibed.

“I’m as human as you,” Alice snapped back. “I grant I can’t prove it over a comm link.”

“And seven hundred years old? Really?”

“Bringing us back to tricks we’ve learned.” The lie was again simpler and more credible than the truth.

Tanya’s eyes darted about once more. “How do you see this encounter playing out?”

“We propose to jump Endurance into an ARM formation.”

“I don’t recommend that. We’ll blow up any unfamiliar ship that tries.”

We’re not Kzinti, Alice thought. But she and Long Pass alike had left Sol system before Kzinti first burst onto the scene. How would she explain knowing about Kzinti? Was she caught already in a web of her own lies?

Text, this time from Nessus, flowed across Alice’s lenses: Time to move. Safety first. His forehoof ceased tapping a rhythm to begin clawing at the deck.

Alice shook her head marginally: no. She considered swinging the camera to reveal Nessus — only that would beg the question why New Terra didn’t ask their Puppeteer friend for the way home. Finagle! She would not have believed the story she was spinning.

Alice said, “Then give me coordinates for Earth, or to any human-settled world.”

“It’s a dangerous galaxy, as you said.” Tanya laughed mirthlessly. “If a ship of strangers doesn’t know the way, I’m not about to tell them.”

Julia typed: Plan B.

Alice nodded. “Tanya, I understand. How about a one-on-one meeting? Endurance and your ship. You set the coordinates.”

“And a swarm of ships swoops down on us the moment we appear.”

For all Tanya knew, this could be an elaborate trap. Alice wanted to cry, to scream, to break things. Had they traveled so far, had they come so close, only to fail? It was tragic.

“I have a question,” Tanya said. “Why me? Why in particular did you contact me?”

Tanya Wu was a name recovered from the message stream, because she texted a lot. Alice might as well have contacted the friend, Elena.

“Simple coincidence, most likely,” Alice said. “Wu was a common name the last time I visited Earth. Still, long after, I met a man named Louis Gridley Wu. You wouldn’t happen to know him?”

Tanya blinked. “My great-grandfather. In a way he’s why I’m here. He discovered the Ringworld.” More eye darting. “I’ll be right back, Alice.”

The video froze.

“We’re overdue to jump,” Nessus said.

“Not yet,” Julia ordered.

As Alice was beginning to doubt they would ever hear back, the image flashed. An older man with a pencil-thin mustache had taken Tanya’s place. “I am Captain Wesley Wu. My grandfather was a wanderer and an incorrigible storyteller. Agent Jordan, see if you can convince me that you knew him.

“And if you manage that, you can explain why Grandpa didn’t tell you the way home.”

20

“They missed a jump!” Hindmost said in alarm.

Louis yawned. He hadn’t slept since emerging from the ’doc more than a day earlier. “Who? The ship you believe has Nessus aboard? That its maneuvers remind you of a ballet could be a coincidence.” Or, more likely, wishful thinking.

“I do not believe that,” Hindmost’s Voice offered. “Too many jumps have matched the cadence Hindmost remembers.”

“But you still see the ship?” Louis asked.

“Yes,” Hindmost said.

Louis yawned again. “If Nessus is aboard, he can’t pilot nonstop. Maybe he’s getting some sleep.”

“Perhaps.” Hindmost plucked at his mane. “That his shipmates do not follow the rhythm suggests they are not a party to his signaling.”

“Or maybe Nessus is alone on that ship,” Louis countered.

“The ship just took a short jump,” Hindmost’s Voice announced. “It emerged as near as I have seen it to the star.”

Scanning the tactical display, Louis saw nothing close to what might be Nessus’ ship. Louis said, “Hindmost’s Voice, how long will it take to gather data for a spectral analysis?”

“No more than five seconds.”

“What are you…?” The question trailed off into an anxious, two-throated bleat as the view port flashed to static.

Seconds later, Louis dropped Long Shot back to normal space. “Start recording. Tell me when you’re — ”

“I have the data,” Hindmost’s Voice said.

Louis jumped Long Shot to hyperspace, emerging four light-hours from where they had been. He turned to Hindmost. “Weren’t you tired of waiting?”

“Very well.” With a shudder, Hindmost straightened. “Voice, did you identify the hull material?”

“It is twing.”

“What’s twing?” Louis asked.

“It is — ”

With a short, sharp trill, Hindmost silenced the AI. “Louis, it is almost certain that ship was built on the world where I last saw Nessus.”

What about a hull material is so secret? Louis wondered. “That’s good, I assume.”

“It is encouraging.” Hindmost stared into the tactical display, crooning to himself.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Why aren’t you hailing that ship?

Hindmost said, “That world is called New Terra. Most who live there are humans.”

“Why haven’t I heard of it?” Louis asked.

“It lies far outside Known Space.” Hindmost turned one head toward Louis. “But you are correct. The time has come to contact that ship. Will you make the call? Lest I am mistaken about Nessus being aboard, I prefer not to reveal myself just yet.”

“Easier said than done. I don’t expect Kzinti comm software to know New Terran protocols.” Because if the Kzinti knew of an isolated human colony, that would not be the sort of place Hindmost would have stashed his family.

“I know New Terran protocols,” Hindmost’s Voice said. “Shall I make the call?”

“Louis,” Hindmost said, “do not disclose your true name.”

Louis shook his head. “I’ve never heard of this world, and I’m supposed to use an alias? Explain.”

“It is complicated. Please, Louis, we cannot know how long that ship will remain in the area. That it no longer signals in the form of the ballet may denote its imminent departure.”

“But you will explain,” Louis said.

“If need be, but it is more Nessus’ place to explain. Let us both hope he is aboard.”

Louis rubbed his nose, intrigued. “Do New Terrans speak Interworld?”

“They speak a dialect of a precursor language called English. Voice can translate.”

“All right,” Louis decided. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Hindmost retreated to the adjacent tiny rec room, abandoning the equally tiny bridge to Louis. “Voice, hail the New Terran ship.”

“Done, Hindmost.”

They waited. After a minute a light began flashing on the comm console. Louis accepted, and a holo opened. He didn’t recognize the person who answered, a young woman, but he hadn’t expected to.

“Endurance,” she said. “Who is this?”

“Nathan Graynor,” Louis improvised. The name had just popped into his head. “May I speak with — ”

“Hold on. You’re not … at home. There’s no comm delay. Where are you?”

“On a ship, of course. Look, I don’t have all day. May I speak with Nessus?”

“He’s in his cabin, asleep. I’ll take a message.”

Nessus was there. Why didn’t Hindmost stick a head through the door with some guidance? Louis kept improvising. “Actually, Miss, I’d — ”

“Captain.”

“Sorry. Captain, I need to deliver this message in person.”

“I’ll get him up.” She reached toward her console.

“There is no need.” With a clatter of hooves, a Puppeteer cantered onto the bridge. His hide was off-white with scattered tan spots, and his dark brown mane was unkempt. His eyes didn’t match: one was red and the other yellow. “Louis!”

“Nessus!” Louis greeted back. “You look well.”

“Two heads are better than one.” Nessus trembled. “I should have guessed I would find you here. And is … is…”

The captain had stiffened at the mention of Louis’s true name. She interrupted Nessus’ nervous stammer. “You introduced yourself as Nathan Graynor.”

“One and the same,” Nessus assured her. “I am surprised you remember, Louis.”

Remember what? Louis wondered. And we met at my two hundredth futzy birthday, and now I look maybe twenty. How did he recognize me so quickly? And why doesn’t Hindmost come in and show himself?

For the last question, at least, Louis had a guess: Hindmost chose to reunite in person. “You’re right, Nessus. I have company aboard.”

“We should rendezvous, Julia,” Nessus said. “These are old friends.”

The New Terran vessel, like most ships in the area, had no normal-space velocity worth mentioning. “We’ll need time to match velocities,” Louis said. “We’re doing about point eight light speed.”

Julia took a while making up her mind. “What’s your location, Louis?”

Hindmost didn’t object so Louis transmitted Long Shot’s coordinates. The AI knew the New Terran navigational conventions, too. “What about matching our velocities, Captain?”

“Be right back,” Julia said. The holo froze.

Hindmost’s Voice reported, “They’ve gone to hyperspace. We’ve lost comm.”

“How far are, were, they from us?” Louis asked.

“A few seconds by standard hyperdrive.” Pause. “They are here.”

The holo unfroze and Julia said, “Matching course and speed … now.”

A small ship hung, immobile, in Long Shot’s main view port.

Outsider ships could start and stop in an instant, and Louis had seen a Puppeteer ship match speeds with the Fleet in about an hour. Before Hindmost had shanghaied Louis, he had never heard of a human world with similar technology.

The New Terrans — whoever they were — looked more and more interesting.

21

Louis stepped from Long Shot to Endurance — into a skinny, cylindrical, clear-walled isolation booth. The entire booth floor was a stepping disc, and another disc sat on the deck just outside.

Stepping discs had tiny control switches inset on their rims, but the tiny booth left him nowhere to stand but on the disc. He could not get at its controls, even if he had known the address of the other disc.

“Déjà vu, Louis?” Nessus asked.

Huh? Louis sensed more to the odd greeting than meeting each other after many years. He rapped on the booth wall. “I’ve had friendlier welcomes.”

“Blame me.” With some kind of a handgun dangling from her belt, Julia emerged from a dim corner of the cargo hold. “The eyeball check was a final precaution. Nessus, you may extricate our guest.”

Eyeball check? Precursor language or not, Louis thought he might have to link in Hindmost’s Voice to translate to and from English. Blame me was plain enough, though. He waited to be let out.

In Nessus’ sash, some gadget made a pocket bulge. Nessus plunged a head into the pocket —

And Louis found himself standing outside the booth.

He and Hindmost had scattered stepping discs around the Ringworld and across Long Shot, and Hindmost had never mentioned that the discs could be controlled from a distance. Somehow it didn’t surprise Louis that the Puppeteer had kept a trick in reserve.

“Welcome aboard, Louis. I’m Julia Byerley-Mancini, captain of this ship. If half what I’ve heard is true, you have some interesting stories to tell.”

“And I won’t mind telling them,” Louis said. “Nessus. Someone is waiting for you aboard Long Shot. Someone with whom you shared a special night at the ballet.”

“It has been a long time.” Nessus shivered. “I need a moment to compose myself.”

“Go when you’re ready,” Julia said.

“I’d like to see your ship,” Louis said.

“Let’s see Nessus off first.”

She wants Nessus to leave, Louis realized. What else was going on?

With a tremulous and somehow eager glissando, Nessus stepped onto the disc and disappeared.

“How about that tour?” Louis asked.

“Soon.” Julia eyed him appraisingly. “You could pilot this ship to Earth, couldn’t you? Or tell me where to find it.”

“No problem. Earth is about two hundred light-years from here, mostly to galactic south. Based on Earth years, that is. I’ll show you on a star chart.”

Beaming, she said, “Then this mission has been a brilliant success.”

“And I wouldn’t mind seeing your world. I’ve been called something of a tourist.”

“New Terra will be our next stop. I sense Nessus won’t be coming back with us.”

“My guess is he won’t.” Begging the question: would he go with Julia to this new world? Louis had been looking forward to exploring the Fleet. Free will could be a terrible thing.

“Louis, there’s someone aboard waiting to see you.”

“That doesn’t seem possible,” he said.

“Nevertheless.” Julia turned toward the door. “Wait here, please.”

Through the door Julia left ajar, Louis heard two indistinct voices. Two women’s voices. Who could he know here?

The door swung open and a tall, white-haired woman entered. Did New Terra not have boosterspice? Maybe she wasn’t the oldest person Louis had ever seen, but she looked the oldest. She had a quiet, mature grace about her.

She shuffled toward him, hope and confusion — and anger? — flickering in her eyes. “It is you. Louis, it’s been more than a century and you haven’t changed a bit.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m afraid I don’t know — ”

She caught him across the jaw with a right hook. “You no-good bastard.”

NESSUS STEPPED INTO A NARROW CORRIDOR. “Hello?” he called. His voices echoed a bit.

“Here.” A mere chord of welcome, but laden with undertunes.

Nessus edged toward the voices. He remembered them well, but after so long apart, how could he know?

By being together. That’s how.

He rounded a corner into a small room. And standing there —

“Nessus. I had dared to hope it was you on that ship.”

Years of worry melted away. Nessus bounded forward joyfully, chanting, “Baedeker. Baedeker.”

LOUIS LET HIMSELF be escorted to Endurance’s compact relax room. Alice insisted they knew each other and glowered at his denials.

He synthed brandy for himself. “Can I get you something?”

“Coffee.” She smiled sadly. “I don’t suppose you remember how I take it.”

“Sorry.” He’d said that a lot since meeting her.

“A dash of milk, no sugar.” She sat at the small table, looking lost in thought, till he handed her a drink bulb. “Our last evening together was dinner at our favorite restaurant.”

“On New Terra?”

“Of course, New Terra. You made a terrible scene, blaming Sigmund for ruining your family’s life.”

Nothing like that had happened to Louis, nor did he know anyone named Sigmund, but he had stopped denying things because Alice refused to listen. She was old and her memories confused.

Even so, she packed a mean punch.

“The horrible, ironic thing, Louis? That scene was a sham, something you and Sigmund and I cooked up. But after the charade had served its purpose and we should have been together…”

“Yes?”

“You left. You abandoned your own unborn son. Alex was a great kid, and you missed him growing up. He is a good man. You would have been proud of him.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her yet again. “I’ve never been to New Terra.”

“Yes, you have. Not only that, you have grandchildren and great-grandchildren there.”

“I wouldn’t have left,” he said, stubbornly.

“You did leave. Sigmund curse him Ausfaller convinced you that leaving was for my own good. For my safety. I was off-world, and you didn’t even wait for me to get home. I had a right to take part in the decision, damn you, or to go with you. By the time…”

Alice was less a woman scorned than an Amazon pissed off. To have such fire now, she must have been a force of nature in her prime. This was not someone he would forget, tanj it!

The problem was, she didn’t seem the type to hallucinate imaginary lovers.

What did he have to unlock this puzzle?

Ausfaller. The name had a familiar ring to it, like the alias Louis had given himself. From Nessus’ reaction, Nathan Graynor wasn’t a random name plucked from the air. “Nessus was involved, too?”

“Yes! He brought you to New Terra in the first place. Then he spirited you away.”

Louis took a long swig of his brandy. Nessus had appeared from nowhere on Louis’s two hundredth birthday to recruit him for the first Ringworld expedition. Nessus had had his reasons — none of which had ever rung true.

Not an hour earlier, Hindmost had urged Louis to use an alias. When Louis had asked why, Hindmost had said to ask Nessus.

Maybe Alice wasn’t the one with a memory problem. Louis drained his brandy. “I’ll be having a long talk with Nessus.”

NESSUS LOST HIMSELF IN JOY and union as profound as two Citizens can know without a Bride. He and Baedeker huddled together for a while after, necks twined, in intimate silence.

“How are the children,” Baedeker finally asked.

“Well.” Nessus edged closer. “Children no longer, of course. Happy on New Terra.”

“I never meant to be gone for so long.”

A sad melody. A heartsfelt melody. And like so many Nessus had sung, an evasive melody? Long Shot had not been accelerated to the Fleet’s velocity because his mate planned a return to New Terra. Some terrible duty must yet remain.

His dread came crashing down. “The New Terrans will soon reconnect with their roots. Either my shipmates will make contact here with the ARM, or Louis will reveal the way to Human Space.” He sang softly, “I fear disaster must follow.”

“All that can wait,” Baedeker sang, “if only because we cannot change it.”

Baedeker’s pocket comp trilled insistently. They ignored it. Nessus’ pocket comp rang, and they ignored it, too.

“I have an urgent hail from Louis, aboard Endurance,” Voice announced.

“It can wait,” Nessus sang. “Tell Louis we will call back.”

They were on the fastest ship in the galaxy. They could run away and know peace at last. Only neither of them was built that way.

“We must speak with Louis,” Nessus sang.

Baedeker bobbed heads in agreement. “We owe Louis. More than he knows.”

“We will have to explain … did you hear something?”

Footsteps. Louis stuck his head into the room. His face was flushed. “I want to know my past. All of it. Now. Start with Alice Jordan.”

Nessus untwined his necks from Baedeker’s, and they stood. “And you will. I will tell you whatever you wish to know. But perhaps…”

“No perhaps. Start by explaining why I don’t remember Alice or New Terra.”

“Do you still have the Carlos Wu autodoc?” Nessus asked Baedeker.

“It is aboard,” Baedeker said.

“What does the autodoc have to do with this?” Louis asked.

Nessus stood tall, his hooves set far apart, summoning a confidence he did not feel. He might as well be unready to run: he and Baedeker were cornered. “Your surmise is true, Louis. I brought you to New Terra long ago. Your memories of that visit, and much more, are recorded in that autodoc. If I had not been in an autodoc on our return from the Ringworld, I would have offered you your memories then.

“You will come out of the autodoc remembering everything. You will find you agreed that those memories be edited.”

The color had drained from Louis’s face. With fists clenched, he studied Baedeker. “In all our years on the Ringworld, you never spoke a word of this.”

Baedeker said, “I knew of your past visit — to New Terra and the Fleet, too. I knew those memories had been removed. I did not know the recordings were with us the entire time.” With a sad glance at Nessus, he added, “We have too many secrets, even from each other.”

“But no longer,” Nessus said.

“No longer,” Baedeker agreed.

Finally, Louis spoke. “Whenever you’re ready, Nessus.”