Juggler of Worlds (16 page)

“Which leaves me where?” Sigmund asked.

Addeo angled downhill off the packed-dirt trail, toward an unoccupied wooden bench. “That’s the second matter we’re here to discuss. I can influence your next assignment. Your friends’ assignments, too.”

Which begged the question: What
did
he want?

He wanted to nail Shaeffer and Pelton.

And
that
suggested the barest possibility of a plan. Could he pull it off? “It’s awfully warm out here,” Sigmund answered. He raised his arms dramatically, emphasizing his ubiquitous black suit. “To be fair, I’m not dressed for here—wherever ‘here’ is.”

“The top of the Shenandoah Valley,” Addeo answered. “Northern Virginia.”

“It’s even hotter than New York,” Sigmund muttered. “Tell you what. How about someplace cooler? Maybe Alaska. Is there an opening in Alaska?”

Addeo shrugged. “Hard to imagine there isn’t, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll make room. I owe you that much. The quiet will do you good.”

“Thanks,” Sigmund said, meaning it, although he deserved any posting he wanted.

Why not close to Nome, where Beowulf was now living with flat phobe Sharrol Janss?

THE TWO preggers hobbled frantically toward the trees. Sigmund heard them gasping for breath from clear across the glade. Tears streamed down the mother’s cheeks.

“They look unarmed, guys,” Andrea radioed. “I’ve got a clear shot. What say I take ’em down and we all go home?”

Feather hadn’t said anything. Sigmund didn’t expect she would. If asked, she’d deny showing herself to the two fugitives. He said, “Hold your position, Andrea. They’re coming my way.”

Mom tripped over something unseen in the blowing grass. She fell, shrieking, to her hands and knees. Dad hoisted her back to her feet, and they scrambled unknowingly almost straight toward Sigmund.

Of what, truly, were they guilty? Heeding billions of years of evolution, commanding them to reproduce.

Sigmund wondered: Do I think more or less of Janss for divorcing Shaeffer because the Fertility Board wouldn’t approve an albino for a birth license?

As the Fertility Board never—ever—approved natural paranoids. I don’t really even want children, Sigmund told himself—but Feather does. And I want a life with Feather.

Nothing had gone according to plan. Janss now lived in the South Pacific, having reacquainted herself with Carlos Wu. Sigmund foresaw babies in
their
future. Shaeffer had left Earth. The last Sigmund had heard, Shaeffer was sightseeing on Gummidgy, in the CY Aquarii system. Pelton continued shuttling between Earth and his clandestine project on Jinx.

And here, Sigmund thought, in the middle of nowhere,
I
remain.

“Sigmund! They’re almost into the trees,” Andrea shouted, bursting from cover.

“Stay down, Newbie,” he ordered. “Their rifles may be stashed in the woods.”

Across the clearing, Feather stared. He nodded slightly. “I’ve got the shot,” Sigmund called out. Pfft. Pfft. Dust and shreds of grass spurted at the runners’ feet. “Tanj! Missed.”

As their quarry slipped into the trees, Sigmund couldn’t help thinking: Perhaps, just for today, there
is
justice.

Snack in hand, Nessus’ guest slouched on the armchair behind a partition of hull material. “I wish you’d upgrade your synthesizer,” Max Addeo said. “Humans like variety.”

Nessus considered, astraddle his padded bench. “Perhaps you’re comfortable enough already.”

Addeo laughed. “Why am I here today, Nessus? Apart from the money, of course?”

Money was the one resource Nessus had in abundance, all the vast wealth accumulated over the years by General Products. The challenge was in identifying capable yet trustworthy scoundrels to hire.

“I require clarification on your latest report,” Nessus said.

Addeo spoke around a mouthful of handmeal. “There are more discreet ways to communicate, you know. I use up a fake ID every time I visit, so that I can’t be tracked through the transfer-booth system.”

Because I need company, even if it’s a human traitor’s company. Even if I feel safe only with a wall between us. “Put it on your bill, Max.”

Chew, chew, swallow. “What do you want to know, Nessus?”

Outside
Gamboler
, whiteness swirled. What would it be like to cavort in deep drifts of snow? Nessus didn’t ask. The question hinted that snow never fell on Hearth. It fell seldom enough on Earth, already in its early stages of industrial overheating. “Why does the ARM continue to look for us, Max? You assured me the task force has been disbanded.”

“By
us
I assume you mean General Products.” Addeo stood and stretched. “It’s only been three years since the Puppeteer Exodus cratered the economy. That’s enough of a reason for some, task force or no. Because by
the ARM
you really mean Sigmund.”

“Isn’t it clear we’re gone?” The undertunes of incredulity were wasted on Addeo, but Nessus couldn’t stop himself.

“Except you,” Addeo said. He laughed at Nessus’ worried plucking at his mane. “I don’t think Sigmund realizes that. He’s seen no trace of you for a long time.”

“Then why?” Nessus persisted. “Ausfaller works beneath you. Why don’t you stop him?”

“I have stopped him, to the extent I safely can. Let me tell you the story
about how Sigmund became an ARM.” Addeo fastidiously wiped his hands on a napkin. “Eleven years ago, Sigmund was a financial analyst, a glorified accountant. He was investigating a criminal gang. I remind you, he wasn’t yet an ARM.

“Nonetheless, Sigmund was paranoid. He got there the old-fashioned way, without drugs. It was quite the accomplishment to keep his condition secret and untreated. Then the gang he was studying abducted him. Sigmund
should
have died. Now ask why he didn’t.”

“Why didn’t Sigmund die?” Nessus dutifully asked. It was better than talking to himself.

Addeo smiled. “Paranoia. He suspected a corrupt United Nations official must be aiding the mob. He didn’t know who. Sigmund set traps, using his own money, for eight different co-workers.

“It turned out Sigmund’s boss’s boss, a guy named Grimaldi,
was
dirty. When Grimaldi went to gloat, Sigmund offered to ransom himself. The bank transfer identified Grimaldi. ARMs tracked Grimaldi, rescued Sigmund, and broke up the gang. A major coup, Nessus.

“So. Sigmund is savvy and paranoid. Of
course
he was recruited. Now do you see?”

Such convolution! It made Nessus’ brain hurt. “Truly? No.”

“Sigmund interprets any order to desist—and he
has
gotten that order—as proof of a broader conspiracy. Hopefully, he thinks the command came from the Secretary-General. Neither you nor I wants Sigmund looking too closely at me.” Addeo frowned. “But if it should occur to you that Sigmund might meet with an unfortunate accident… don’t. Based on his history, it’s all too likely Ausfaller has made ‘in-case-of-my-death’ arrangements. There’s nothing like an unexpected death to make paranoid ravings suddenly seem not so paranoid.”

Jinxians and Puppeteers? UN officials and rich industrialists? Nessus couldn’t begin to imagine the plot Ausfaller had constructed from shadows. Mostly from shadows: Addeo did conspire, if not in the way Ausfaller feared.

It was all madness—but loneliness was a kind of madness, too. Nessus desperately needed companionship. The topic hardly mattered. “Explain how Ausfaller ties Jinx into his speculations.”

Addeo exhaled loudly, and tipped back his head in thought. “Sigmund’s job for years was to worry about Jinx. So he did. In a way, you have to admire his persistence. If there were any real danger there, I’m sure Sigmund would long ago have found it.”

“Go on,” Nessus said. “Explain his fixation with Beowulf Shaeffer.”

“If I can. Until Nakamura Lines folded, Shaeffer shuttled between colony worlds. For excitement, he had his pick of bored woman passengers. All very remunerative and mundane.

“Suddenly, he’s had three big adventures. The doomed BVS-1 mission was Jinx funded, and it seemed to involve a weapon that could kill through a General Products hull. Next, Shaeffer leaves
from Jinx
on a mission that discovers the core explosion. He sends Puppeteers into hiding and economies across Known Space reeling. Then, he leaves Earth in a ship built within a GP hull, only to reappear on Jinx with the same hyperdrive but no hull. Was the GP hull sold, like Pelton claims, or somehow destroyed, as Sigmund fears?”

Nessus’ heads crept lower and lower. Ausfaller
knew
nothing—and yet much that he
suspected
was at the fringes of the truth. “And Ausfaller’s fixation with Pelton?”

“Pretty,” Addeo said, now watching the snowstorm. “A projection to disguise this location, of course.”

“Of course,” Nessus lied. “What about Pelton?”

Addeo turned back toward Nessus. “Many reasons. Guilt by association with Shaeffer, certainly. The disappearing-hull trick. The off-world money that Sigmund can’t watch. The secret project—on Jinx. The family’s pull. Futz, it doesn’t surprise me at all that my man Sigmund distrusts Pelton.

“Then there’s a fascinating, decades-old rumor. Lots of folks believe Puppeteers sold Pelton’s great-whatever-grandma the core technology for transfer booths.
Sigmund
knows the rumor.”

“I see,” Nessus said flatly. It suddenly took too much effort to properly inflect human speech. Because it wasn’t a rumor. General Products had sold that technology. Puck himself had negotiated the deal.…

Puck: Three years later, that wound still throbbed. Nessus dragged his thoughts back to the present. Not even a corrupt ARM must ever suspect that Citizens could compromise the transfer-booth system. “Insanely creative,” Nessus said. “It’s hard to believe
you’re
an ARM.”

Addeo laughed. “Earth needs people like Sigmund, but they creep out the powers that be. At my level, the execs are normal. We’re buffers.”

As I look creepy to my bosses, Nessus thought sadly. Will they ever bring me home?

When Addeo finally teleported away, his report completed, Nessus was more depressed than when his lackey had arrived.

Nessus poked at a tangle of freshly synthed grasses. The imminence of change had him too excited to eat.

Hope had been a long time coming.

He’d expected to be without an appetite, but for other reasons: Dealing with Addeo made Nessus feel dirty. Nor was it only Addeo; it was all his recent contacts. Any honorable human would want to find out what secret goals kept Nessus on Earth. And so he met only with felons and, through their connivance, venal officials. Like Addeo.

It had not always been thus. Once Nessus had worked with
good
humans. Capable humans. Humans to whom he had learned to entrust his safety. Humans with whom he had actually approached a neutron star and lived to tell about it.

What, he wondered, had become of his former crew?

His thoughts fell all too easily into the familiar rut: Those like me, the few able to voyage far from Hearth, had always been a scarce commodity. Always.

And now scarcer.

The core explosion was hardly imaginable to most. Not so the scouts. Its discovery had plunged most scouts into catatonia—and all his friends into a hungry singularity.

Despite everything, reluctantly but obediently, he had stayed behind on Earth, one of a very few remaining scouts.…

Who then would guide a trillion Citizens in their flight?

Again and again, his entreaties to help went unanswered. If not me, Nessus had realized, then there must be
someone
. Trish and Raul, his crew so many years earlier, had exhibited great promise—under his guidance, of course. Why not use reliable humans?

And so Nessus had sent home a bold recommendation. Let watching Gregory Pelton be Achilles’ duty. Pelton, if he meant ever to return to the antimatter world, made his secretive preparations on Jinx. Even now, Shaeffer might be making his way circuitously back to Jinx.

With a will of its own, a head rose from the shallow bowl of grass. Nessus stared himself in the eyes. What Ausfaller-like reasoning!

Better to be like Ausfaller than Addeo.