Destroyer of Worlds (39 page)

He met Alice at the security checkpoint outside Governor's Building. She stood out like a sore thumb: taller than everyone and looking all around like a tourist. Still, with her Belter crest removed (
that
had been a struggle) and her bald head covered by a wig, and wearing clothes Kirsten had programmed, Alice could pass for New Terran. When her pregnancy began to show, he would find her a progeny ring.

He had smuggled Alice by stepping disc directly from
Don Quixote
to the Office of Strategic Analyses headquarters. Would Puppeteers grab her from New Terra, as Nessus had grabbed him? Who could say? For her own safety, he had kept her origins a secret. Only a
very
select few had the need to know. At this morning's meeting, only Sabrina knew.

Guards saluted smartly. “Good morning, Minister,” the guard lieutenant said. He nodded to Alice. “IDs, please.”

“Good morning, Lieutenant, soldiers.” It pleased Sigmund that security hadn't slipped during his long absence. Not that an escaped Pak could go unnoticed.

Sigmund offered his ID disc, one thumb on the biometric pad. Alice followed his lead. Her ID gave her rank as colonel: senior enough to have authority and not so senior that anyone would think twice about not already knowing her.

“Very good, sirs. The others have arrived and the governor will join
you shortly.” The squad leader nodded at two of his men. “We'll escort you.”

The guards led them to a private dining chamber. The oval table had padded chairs along one side and mounds of pillows along the other. Human and Puppeteer foods covered the semi-oval side table. Brunch justified meeting someplace the Puppeteers hadn't bugged—without revealing Sigmund's knowledge that many offices, including Sabrina's,
were
bugged.

Baedeker and Nessus were waiting, with two guards “there if they needed anything” so that the room stayed unbugged. Sigmund dismissed both sets of the guards. He wasn't surprised to find Nessus with an unkempt mane. But Baedeker was also disheveled, and that was a bad omen.

They exchanged greetings all around and again when Sabrina, looking wearier than Sigmund had ever seen her, arrived. Sigmund introduced Alice as “One of my aides.” Alice managed to stay casual even though these were the first Puppeteers she had ever met.

Nessus attended as the Hindmost's personal representative. No one brought up Sigmund's refusal to meet on Hearth. Whatever the venue, both governments
had
to coordinate. They had many possible courses of action to consider.

None, so far, that could work.

Neither New Terra nor the Fleet had a navy with which even to attempt a defense. Nessus trilled softly at Sigmund's implied rebuke, but did not attempt a justification.

Outsider drives worked over long periods of time, delivering a gentle but continuous acceleration. New Terra and the Fleet could not get out of the Pak's way in time, nor do anything to help the Gw'oth.

Puppeteers reflexively ran or hid from any possible threat and Pak preemptively destroyed any possible threat. Neither species believed in diplomacy. The Concordance
did
understand commerce, and Nessus wondered if they could buy peace with supplies or technology. Everything Sigmund knew said the Pak would not honor a deal. The Pak would take everything offered and
still
attack. That took negotiation for safe passage off the table.

Sigmund had toyed with using Thssthfok—somehow—to bluff the Pak fleets. Thssthfok was happy to talk, but every scenario he came up with involved giving him a ship. Seeing who was manipulating whom, Sigmund had abandoned that idea, too.

Even the genocidal weapon of last resort, a kinetic planet-buster, offered no hope. The Pak had spread themselves across a widely distributed
fleet—while planet-bound New Terrans and Puppeteers alike were sitting ducks. (Alice had been to Earth and seen ducks. She got the metaphor but froze mid-nod when Sabrina looked puzzled.)

The longer the meeting went on, the more Baedeker plucked at his mane. Reluctantly, as all eyes turned toward him, Baedeker spoke. “So our survival depends on better planetary drives.” A hint of rising inflection made the words a question, a plea for the burden of worlds to be lifted from his shoulders.

“It seems so,” Nessus said, and yet he looked to Sigmund rather than Baedeker.

“Tell us about your progress,” Sigmund said.

From a head plunged deep into his mane, Baedeker answered, “The prototypes continue to demonstrate instability problems.”

Sabrina cleared her throat. “Please explain.”

Baedeker did, with specifics that made Sigmund's head hurt. From their months spent together, Sigmund had a pretty good idea that the torrent of words masked a
lack
of progress.

Or maybe cop training was what led him to that conclusion, because Alice got there, too. “How soon, exactly, does instability set in?”

“Up to sixteen on the last trial, before we had to shut it down.”

“Sixteen what?” Alice persisted, a bit impatiently, and Sabrina shot Alice a sharp glance. New Terrans had centuries of indoctrination deferring to their former masters.

“Your aide, indeed, Sigmund.” Nessus briefly looked himself in the eyes. “I see your influence. Alice, I am afraid the answer is sixteen nanoseconds.”

“Can anyone else make a drive work—at all?” With a jerk, Baedeker removed the head from his mane. He straightened both necks to stare boldly, one person at a time, at everyone in the room. “I thought not.”

“Perhaps,” Sigmund began. He had to laugh at Nessus' two-headed double take. “No, not I. Shipmates on
Don Quixote
.”

“Eric? Surely a talented engineer, but—”

Baedeker cut off Nessus. “Shipmates, plural. He means the Gw'oth, Nessus. It is unacceptable to expose them to this level of advanced physics.”

The Puppeteers burst into full-throated cacophony, music and crashing metal and tortured animals combined. An argument, the details of which Sigmund hoped Jeeves could translate, while doubting the hidden recorder would capture it. Puppeteers built impressive jammers.

“You will stop,” Sabrina said softly. Those were her first words for some time, and the Puppeteers twitched and fell silent. “And speak English.” She turned to Sigmund. “Please continue.”

Sigmund took a deep breath. Imminent existential danger trumped long-term risks every time. “Our Gw'oth
friends
are why we're here. Their superior astronomy first noticed the enemy. They helped us capture Thssthfok.” While Baedeker cowered in his cabin. “Their quick thinking saved us more than once. We need their talents.”

Nessus swiveled one head toward Baedeker. “Sigmund makes a good argument.”

Baedeker spewed a short arpeggio, stopped, and began again. “Yes, it sounds reasonable, but at least these particular Gw'oth, this group mind, learns astonishingly fast.”

“Isn't quickness just what we need?” Nessus asked.

“Enough!” Sabrina pushed back her chair and stood. “Baedeker, forty-two humans are assisting your project. Neither you nor they have given me any reason to expect success. I'll make it simple. Accept the Gw'oth scientists on the project, or I order my team home.”

There was a second, brief eruption of noise, from which Baedeker was the first to subside. Nessus said, “Understood, Sabrina. On behalf of the Hindmost, I accept your terms.”

 

HOME
.

Sigmund sat in his favorite chair, little Athena on his knee—only she wasn't so little. She must have shot up another two inches. She squirmed, and he knew suddenly that she had outgrown the bedtime story he was reading. He tousled her hair. “You can read this yourself, can't you?”

“Yes, Daddy. But it's all right.” She smiled up at him shyly: You mean well.

Hermes sat nearby, acting busy with a pocket comp as he guarded his baby sister. That I'm-the-man-of-the-house protectiveness touched Sigmund—and it wounded him even more deeply than the boy's aloofness.

I'm gone so much that I'm losing them, Sigmund thought. It hurt. He handed Athena his comp. “Why don't you read to me?”

Penny was in the kitchen, speaking in clipped, urgent tones. She wasn't standoffish—only rarely available. The spreading dead zone off Arcadia's western coast had decimated the kelp farms. Huge masses of Hearthian sea
life had died, and the stench from the ocean had become unbearable. Penny was on the emergency task force, up to her neck in evacuation planning.

“What's this word, Daddy?”

He looked where she pointed. “Neighbor,” he said. “The gee-aitch is silent.”

All for want of a moon. “Give New Terra its own moon and it regains some tides.”

Athena stopped, midsentence. “What, Daddy?”

“Nothing, sweetie. Something a friend once said to me.” Back when Baedeker naïvely thought he could build a planetary drive and deliver a moon. Now the stakes were higher.

Two screens before the story ended, Sigmund's comp rang with the subtle, minor-key trill of a priority call. He kissed the top of Athena's head. “I have to take this. Hop off.”

She slid from Sigmund's lap and he went into his den and shut the door. With the bedtime story closed, the OSA icon blinked on the display.

Kirsten was tonight's duty officer at the Office of Strategic Analyses. Most nights nothing happened, but someone had to cover just in case. She had volunteered, wanting some quality time alone with Brennan's singleship. The protector's modifications continued to baffle her.

Sigmund took her call. “What's up?”

“Nessus just filed a flight plan, Sigmund. He wants to take off immediately.”

Finagle. “There are things he and I still need to discuss. He's been avoiding me.”

Kirsten grinned. “There's an air-traffic delay, as it happens.”

“Good job.” He thought fast. “I need ten minutes to wrap up something. Let Nessus know I'm coming.”

“Will do. Anything else?”

“That's it, Kirsten. Thanks.”

He hung up and opened the den door. “All right, sweetie. Let's finish this story.”

 

SIGMUND HALF EXPECTED NESSUS
would not allow him aboard
Aegis
, but the Puppeteer sent a stepping-disc address. It delivered Sigmund into an isolation booth. Of course.

“It's good of you to wait for me,” Sigmund began.

A hoof scraped at the deck. “To take off without the cooperation of traffic control would be dangerous.”

“After we talk, I think I can get you authorized for departure.” Nessus looked himself in the eyes. “I am much relieved.”

“Maybe together, the Gw'oth and Baedeker can make new planetary drives work.” Only everything Twenty-three had said made success seem vanishingly unlikely. “We can't afford to bet on it.”

“And our choices are?”

We need more help, tanj it! If
only
Alice could point them toward Earth. The best psychologists on New Terra had had even less success with her than they had with Sigmund. Alice had no interstellar-navigational memories to recover. “Bring me to Earth, Nessus.”

“There is no point. The Pak have destroyed it.”

Aid for the survivors would be a purpose, wouldn't it? “Then there is no harm in bringing me.”

Nessus backed up a step. “It would be a long voyage to no purpose, and I am needed on Hearth.”

“We both know you're lying.” Sigmund's hands yearned to become fists, and no good could come of that—helpless as he was in this cell. He jammed his hands into his pockets.

“If Earth remained as you remember it, I still could not bring you. Concordance policy would forbid it.”

Did Concordance policy allow kidnapping Earth citizens and erasing their memories, or am I the exception? “Nessus, you trust”—for some insane reason—“my ability to solve your problems. It
can't
be so hard for you to believe that other humans also have useful skills. Permit me some help, some other experts. For both our worlds' sake.” Memories of the innocent little girl sitting on his lap only a few minutes earlier broke his heart.

“More ARMs?” Nessus plucked at his mane. “Had you not been near death that day, I would never have dared to approach you.”

“Not ARMs. More . . . specialized talent. While in Human Space, I
know
you hired humans.” Often criminals. “Do it again, Nessus.” Don't bet worlds on me!

“Tempting, but unacceptable. Why would mercenaries fight Pak when they could raid Hearth instead?”

“More specialized still,” Sigmund said. “We need truly creative people. Unique people. Baedeker needs all the physics talent he can get. Will you recruit experts from Human Space?”

“You have people in mind. Who?”

“Beowulf Shaeffer and Carlos Wu.” One an adventurer with an uncanny knack for survival, the other a certified genius.

Nessus twitched. He clearly remembered both men, too. (Sigmund wondered if the Puppeteer had ever heard the term
loose cannon.
) A head dipped lower and lower, finally dipping into a pocket of his sash. The visible head said, “No—”

And Sigmund found himself in a public square half a continent away.

 

“Three . . . two. . . one. . . now.” Minerva scarcely paused. “Experiment complete.”

“How long?” Baedeker asked.

Minerva, Baedeker's research assistant, craned a neck over his console. “One point oh four two three seconds.”

Across
Haven
's bridge, two human technicians cheered at finally breaking the one-second barrier. Baedeker scarcely spared them a disapproving glance. The Fleet would not escape the Pak in one-second spurts.

One of the Gw'oth sidled closer. Beneath the exoskeleton, its motors humming, and beneath the transparent pressure suit, peeked a name written in chromatophoric cells: Er'o. “We do make progress, Baedeker.”