Destroyer of Worlds (13 page)

And: unknown means of calculation. In the privacy of their shelter, Baedeker and Kirsten had combined observations from widely spaced instruments.
No
Gw'otesht could assimilate the quantities of data necessary for the practical application of that algorithm, neither small groups who merely computed cooperatively, nor even fully emergent group minds like Ol't'ro themselves. Yet somehow the calculation had been done.

And cooperation among species: The strangers in the ramscoops were a danger to all. To learn more about the strangers would benefit all. Surely
Don Quixote
would leave soon to investigate. And if Ol't'ro was to join its crew . . .

Er'o
, they signaled to their most capable component.
You will get us into the coming mission
.

 

ER'O HALF SWAM
, half crawled, from him/themselves. Separation was always disorienting. To disconnect from an ongoing meld staggered him.

The confusion abated and he jetted into his meditation chamber, only without time to meditate, or even to feed the gnawing hunger a meld always produced. Wriggling into a surface suit, he summoned a servant to independently check his seals. “I am ready,” he radioed, trying to ignore the feeling that he spoke with himself—which, in a way, he did.

Ol't'ro had interfaced themselves to a comm terminal. “Good,” they responded. “Proceed.”

From the nearest water lock Er'o made his way to a tram terminal. As his car sped down the cable to the ice, he consulted with Ol't'ro. There were many factors, practical and tactical, to consider.

He struggled to concentrate, his thoughts, and those of Ol't'ro, roiling. A sustained meld among fewer than sixteen was abnormal and sad. Such things only happened after a member died, while they wondered and worried whether they could find a compatible mind to heal them. But for a healthy member to decouple, to
talk
with an impaired Gw'otesht . . .

“We share your doubts,” Ol't'ro said. “Best for you and us that you hurry.”

 

“
I UNDERSTAND
,”
BAEDEKER SAID
.

To understand
neither agreed nor disagreed. It did little to encourage further discussion. The artful evasion reminded Baedeker of his life before exile, and of too many Concordance officials he had known. The comparison rankled.

He saw no other choice.

To refuse Er' o's request put at risk further cooperation with the Gw'oth. That might put him and Kirsten in immediate, personal danger.

And to accept? Baedeker managed not to shudder. If he had any say in the matter, no Gw'o would ever again board
Don Quixote
. Just allowing Er'o into the emergency shelter had Baedeker's hide itching. It was unnerving that the aliens had intuited
Don Quixote
's upcoming mission. Or cracked the Fleet's most robust encryption algorithm to learn Sigmund's intentions, which would be even more unsettling.

Of all those doubts and fears, Baedeker hoped sincerely, his visitor was unaware.

Er'o had one limb held aloft, arched, its tip directed at Baedeker. Eyes glinted behind circles of sharp white teeth. Er'o swiveled the limb. “Kirsten.
What is your opinion? Might some of my people accompany your expedition?”

Kirsten laughed uneasily. “What I think doesn't matter, Er'o. I only fly the ship where I'm told.”

Interesting, Baedeker thought. Was she also reticent about allowing Gw'oth on the ship? Baedeker felt he could trust Sigmund's habitual paranoia to keep the little aliens off
Don Quixote
—if Kirsten and Eric did not press too hard on the other side.

Er'o waggled the elevated limb. “Not to toot my own horn, but Gw'oth participation could be useful on this mission.”

Toot my own horn?
Baedeker puzzled over the expression at which Kirsten grinned. The Gw'oth were already mastering idiom? Bonding with the New Terrans? He had to discourage this relationship!

“Without speaking for our hindmost,” Baedeker said, “I do not see how Gw'oth could come along. You and we live in very different environments.” You learn fast, but have you learned yet to breathe air?

Er'o raised a second limb. (For a moment, the two elevated limbs peered at each other: a Citizen's ironic laugh. So now the Gw'o mimicked Citizen body language! Er'o might think to seem familiar and friendly, but such quickness rattled Baedeker.) “Of course, my friend Baedeker, we would provide our own shipboard environment. Any of our standard above-ice habitat modules will serve. They are self-powered and recycle quite effectively. Each has a water lock, should it become necessary to bring in supplies. Many of our modules would fit through your air lock, as long as you open inner and outer hatches at once.”

“We can do that,” Kirsten agreed all too quickly. “And we can . . .”

“Can what?” Er'o prompted.

“Nothing.” Kirsten suddenly bore a guilty look. (Baedeker had a good guess what she had nearly blurted out: That a force-field curtain over the wide-open lock would hold the ship's air. The Gw'oth had shown no signs of having force-field technology.) “Just that we can refill the ship with air after that.”

Er'o resumed a five-footed stance. “Good. We will be happy to replenish your gas supply. Oxygen from the hydrolysis of water is easy. Nitrogen is less common, but we extract it from minerals.”

“I understand,” Baedeker answered again.

Er'o paused for a long while: consulting by radio, the link encrypted.
The Gw'o finally continued. “Baedeker, Kirsten, there is another logistical topic we thought to raise. You plan to travel a great distance. Will you need additional fuel?”

“It never hurts to supplement our supplies,” Baedeker conceded.

In fact, they would have to fill
Don Quixote
's tanks before the long flight to the ramscoop fleet. Either
Don Quixote
refueled here, or they would detour to New Terra. The irony was that
Don Quixote
carried refueling probes: hydrojet-propelled submersibles for autonomous operation in any convenient water ocean. The probe's active filter separated deuterium and the tiny traces of tritium from seawater; its stepping disc then transferred the fuels directly into
Don Quixote
's tanks. But to deploy probes in this ocean risked losing teleportation technology to the Gw'oth. . ..

Er'o said, “Naturally we observed the neutrino flux from
Don Quixote
. If some colleagues and I are permitted to join your expedition, we will arrange for supplies of deuterium, tritium, or helium-3. Whatever you prefer.”

Naturally? Hardly. The hull itself
blocked
neutrinos, disguising the fusion reactor. But as weakly as neutrinos interacted with most matter, trapped neutrinos ricocheting indefinitely inside a ship could eventually become a radiation hazard. Only a small patch of the hull, near the engine room, permitted neutrinos to escape—and the Gw'oth had detected them.

As for fuel, Concordance ships used deuterium/deuterium reactions and New Terra had retained the practice. For all its shortcomings, D/D fusion was optimal in the way that most mattered: safety. In an emergency, any ocean or cometary-belt snowball would provide fuel. Ships could
add
tritium to the mix—D/T reactions released more energy than D/D reactions—but never relied on tritium. That isotope had a brief half-life. Away from civilization, where only cosmic rays produced new tritium, the availability was too limited.

None of which had been discussed with the Gw'oth.

Why did Er'o offer helium-3? Because the Gw'oth used it, perhaps. Or because, absent force-field technology, D/D and D/T fusion required bulky, massive shielding against the neutrons produced by the fusion reactions. Er'o could be subtly probing whether
Don Quixote
used force fields, or if the ship carried unproductive mass as internal shielding. He might be snooping for vulnerabilities, or assessing a commercial opportunity, or engaging in industrial espionage.

Physics, Baedeker understood. The motives of other Citizens? Only
sometimes did those make sense. What, then, could he know of the hidden agendas of the Gw'oth?

So much ambiguity! It made Baedeker's hump hurt.

Suddenly, he was eager for Sigmund's return. There were worse circumstances than that another be hindmost.

 

THE LAST THING SIGMUND
wanted—on the ice, at last, to reunite his crew—was an argument. He got one anyway.

“It is unacceptable to bring any Gw'oth,” Baedeker insisted. “Merely by observing
Don Quixote
decelerate, they were led to deduce general relativity. Permitted aboard
Don Quixote
, who can know what they will see, what else they will infer? Why risk them acquiring technologies we would rather they not wield?”

Known hostiles were careening toward New Terra and the Fleet. They used kinetic planet-busters, for Finagle's sake! Careening toward Penny and the children! Worry about long-term risks was an unaffordable luxury when delay was surely the biggest danger of all. Sigmund focused on nuts-and-bolts practicality. “Full tanks are a big incentive, Baedeker. So unless you would rather use refueling probes while the Gw'oth watch?”

Baedeker plucked at his mane. “Reveal stepping-disc technology? I think not. But, Sigmund, you present a false dichotomy.
Don Quixote
brought ample fuel for a round trip. Our best option is simply to resupply at home.”

Delay for a detour to New Terra. More delay when, inevitably, Sabrina, or someone in her cabinet, saw Sigmund's stopover as an opportunity to plan, or run through scenarios, or give advice—to “help.” Or a Puppeteer spy would learn about the mission—presuming, for the moment, that Baedeker resisted notifying Hearth's authorities himself—and then they would be delayed longer still to coordinate with the Concordance.

No way. Sigmund took a deep breath. It was time to pull rank.

But Kirsten jumped in first, her eyes ablaze. “We wouldn't even
know
about the present danger but for the Gw'oth. For me, that alone earned them a spot on the mission. But if gratitude and common decency are insufficient, consider this:
Don Quixote
will be one ship among. . . what, hundreds? Thousands?

“Almost certainly, the Gw'oth are more skilled than we at astronomy. They're probably better at wringing inferences from observations. Good!
We
need
those skills now! With Er'o and his colleagues aboard, maybe we can surveil without approaching quite so close. Wouldn't that make us safer?”

“Perhaps,” Baedeker allowed. (That was sufficient concession for Sigmund, only Baedeker had not finished.) “But, Kirsten, they propose to bring
sixteen
. One of their biological computers, obviously, although Er'o has not volunteered that fact.”

“It's settled,” Sigmund said firmly. “Er'o and the others will join us. Why accept their help if we're not willing to welcome their best minds?”

We're going to need all the help we can get.

 

As sunlight to a drowning Pak, so did consciousness beckon. Thssthfok struggled upward, if not into awareness itself, at least into the concept of the possibility of awareness. Memories stirred, disordered and ill-formed.

With a shudder Thssthfok regained control of mind and body. His eyes flew open. His right hand, trembling, released the latch of the cold-sleep pod. The dome receded.

He checked the chronometer, even as he recognized the absurdity of the habit. The years whose passage the clock marked were real—and without significance. Life on Pakhome had been extinguished thousands of years earlier.

As life here, too, would be obliterated. It was not supposed to end this way. . ..

 

THE COMET DWELLERS HAD HONORED
their commitments. Why not, since numerical superiority worked in their favor? Natural attrition served their interests without the risks attendant to betrayal and open warfare. They respected their agreement with clan Rilchuk, but they had chosen not to risk rescuing a lost one of that clan.

And so Thssthfok had been abandoned.

He remembered, as though it were yesterday, the raid on a world then nameless. Its natives had vast granaries ripe for the plundering. All that conveniently gathered biomass would supply the fleet's synthesizers for years. The aliens were primitive, without the technology to offer any meaningful defense. They were physically fragile.

They were not without courage.

The shuttles struck in waves, strafing with their railguns before landing to disgorge troops. Thssthfok was but one of hundreds of Pak in the assault.
He took no pride in slaughtering the gaunt creatures, guilty only of the poor judgment to try to defend their pathetic wood and stone houses.

Lasers, railguns, and grenades against swords and spears: The contest could not last, and it had not. The natives scattered, with much of their town burning. The raiders broke into the granaries and began loading their vessels.

Thssthfok was at the controls of his shuttle, its cargo hold packed, his squad of Rilchuk warriors strapping into their acceleration couches, when the natives tripped a crude but effective rock-fall trap. If they could not have their crops, the raiders would go hungry, too.

The first boulders struck the shuttle's stern, and fail-safes disabled the engines. Alarms flared across Thssthfok's instrument panel. For a moment, before external sensors gave out, there was a victorious ululation from the natives. Then the only sounds were the pounding of boulders and the sickening crunches of the hull. The only sensation was an end-of-the-world rumbling, until awareness ceased.

 

THSSTHFOK CAME TO IN HIS ACCELERATION COUCH
, battered but not seriously injured. His instrument panel crackled and spewed acrid fumes; this ship would never fly again. His radio died in a shower of sparks when he tried to call for help. They had to get out before the other shuttles launched.