Juggler of Worlds (21 page)

Ander had dominated most settings even at his previous size. He now moved through this dining room like a force of nature. Other diners squeezed their chairs close to their tables to make way. The host and hostess, dressed in scratchy-looking woolen colonial garb, stayed out of his path.

Ander eventually returned and set a heaping plate onto the table.
More
eggs, sausages, bacon, ham, fried chicken, biscuits and gravy. He scraped back his chair and sat. “Maybe it’s because they eat so tanj much, but Jinxians have practically made food into a religion. I’ve had my fill of new cuisine, nouvelle cuisine, neo-cuisine, and fusion cuisine.
This
isn’t cuisine at all. It’s just good, hearty, natural food.”

And thus hideously expensive, Sigmund thought, not that any food could compare in price to interstellar travel. “So how is Jinx?”

“Booming again.” Ander paused to devour a chicken leg. “Puzzled by flatlander stupidity.”

“The riots?” Sigmund guessed.

“The riots,” Ander agreed. “The universe is plenty big, they say, and Earth isn’t its center. Go elsewhere, they say, and have all the children you want.”

Ander’s opinion notwithstanding, this inn was hardly genuine colonial. In a bow toward authenticity, it
had
banished 3-V. Of that, Sigmund approved. It was a relief not to hear about Fertility Board corruption, or lynch mobs, or rallies for reproductive emancipation, or pitched battles with protestors. Or about proposals that birthrights be sold openly, on the grounds it would minimize corruption. Or the newest madness in the Zeitgeist: gladiator fights. The winner gets a birthright; the loser gets dead; the population stays balanced.

And though, try as he might, he still could not prove it, Sigmund knew Puppeteers had caused it all. He shoved away his plate.

“How’s Feather?” Ander asked.

Distant, bitter, and driven. Gone from his life but at his side every day at work. Obsessed with the children she was not allowed. Angered by the denial of her emigration application. None of which he would discuss. What had possessed him to ever say anything to Ander about his personal life? “She’s not on Jinx.”

“Just being sociable.” Ander shifted his weight, and his chair groaned in protest. “Back to work then.

“For starters, a lot of Jinxians love Gregory Pelton. Well they should. The money he’s dropping on Jinx is a big part of why their economy turned around faster than Earth’s. Elephant, they call him. Do you know that’s his nickname?”

After years of surreptitious watching, Sigmund knew everything about Pelton—except what he was up to on Jinx. “I do.”

Ander wasn’t deterred. “To a Jinxian, a Bandersnatch is a big land animal.
Elephant
is a diminutive, a term of affection. I find that droll.”

“So tell me what Pelton is doing on Jinx,” Sigmund prodded.

“It’s big,” Ander answered. “He employs hundreds on West End. West End was always primitive and poor; that makes Pelton one of the biggest employers.”

On Sigmund’s long-ago visit to Jinx, West End had had no resources to offer save vacuum. “Paying those hundreds to do what?”

Ander demolished several sausages before answering. “That, I’m afraid, isn’t entirely clear. They’re very loyal.”

A picture emerged through patient question-and-answer. Through intermediaries, Pelton owned a large dome on West End. He was stockpiling provisions for a deep-space mission, destination unknown, bought from enough suppliers to obscure the quantities. The employees didn’t talk, and the suppressor field in the dome rendered useless the few sensors Ander managed to smuggle in. Pelton staffed his security team with moonlighting Jinxian police. That was smart, Sigmund conceded, effective in its own right, a guarantee of harmonious relations with officialdom—and a deterrent to any extralegal methods he might otherwise consider.

Whatever Pelton planned, it was
big
.

There were no indications, however, that it was imminent. When the time came, Sigmund guessed, ships would be brought inside Pelton’s security perimeter for outfitting.

Taking comfort in that conclusion, Sigmund left Ander, still eating, to address more pressing—and official—matters.

THE ENORMITY of events sometimes made Sigmund’s head spin: All the plots and possibilities, the alliances and marriages of convenience and cynical manipulations, among Earth’s numerous adversaries. Outsiders and Jinxians allied with Gregory Pelton. Aggrieved flatlanders unwittingly abetting Puppeteers, even as Puppeteers spied on Sigmund. Pinprick raids by Kzinti renegades on obscure, backwater worlds. Beowulf Shaeffer on a tour, it seemed, of every human-settled world.

It all meant something, surely, and too often the truth of things taunted and eluded Sigmund.

But not today.

FOR HIS EIGHTH BIRTHDAY, more than anything, Sigmund had wanted a kitten. His normally indulgent parents said no. Dad claimed Sigmund was too young for the responsibility of a pet. Mom didn’t want to deal with the mess. He remembered keeping his room clean and orderly to show responsibility. He promised to faithfully put out food, change the water, and empty the litter box. They still said no.

And then, when the day came, the package they brought him mewed. Something inside scratched and thumped. The box had air holes.

A century and a half later, a simple observation filled him with the same elation.

Setting aside the wars and skirmishes with the Kzinti, all human worlds combined had lost twelve hyperdrive ships. Twelve starships lost in two and a half centuries weren’t many. Most incidents happened near Sol system, just as most flights started or ended here. It made sense.

The most recent three losses happened somewhere far to the galactic north, two within the last year. All three ships had vanished without a trace.

Two years ago, it
was from
galactic north that Gregory Pelton’s hull-less ship had hurtled at Jinx at 80 percent of light speed. Something very important there awaited discovery.

Sigmund intended to find it.

“You’re the head of Special Investigations,” the message from Calista Mellenkamp said. “This is your case.” Her first subtext was that she couldn’t
not
assign this to him and still maintain the cover for the Puppeteer task force. Her second subtext was that the assignment was not open to discussion.

That suited Sigmund fine. Getting his marching orders electronically also avoided any discussion about how soon he’d arrive in London. Transfer booths would get him there near to instantly, but he had avoided transfer booths since the Cerberus affair began. Redirecting a teleporting passenger en route seemed no more improbable than delivering an envelope without leaving a trace. A suborbital hop and a cab ride would have to be fast enough, Sigmund looking for all the world like another tourist admiring the sights. If anyone asked, he’d allowed the local authorities a few hours to secure and study their crime scene.

No one asked.

Flashing his ARM ident got Sigmund past a line of bobbies and into the British Museum. He showed the holo badge three more times before he reached the burgled exhibit hall. A bobby at its entrance pointed out the man in charge.

Sigmund’s footsteps echoed as he walked the length of the hall to where two men stood in conversation. They turned at his approach.

The taller man was sweating copiously despite the exhibit-preserving cool of the museum. Sigmund guessed this was the museum’s director of security. If so, he had ample reason to sweat.

“Ah, our ARM expert from New York,” the nervous man said. “Cecil Braithwaite, with the museum. Call me Cecil.”

“Special Agent Ausfaller.”

Cecil winced but took the snub in silence.

“Senior Inspector Owen Bergen, the Yard.” Offering his ident, Bergen spoke over Cecil’s embarrassment. Bergen’s broad forehead and wide-set blue eyes conveyed a mature and observant intelligence.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Senior Inspector,” Sigmund said. He had far more confidence in Scotland Yard than a museum cop.

“We’ve been busy, as you might imagine, Agent Ausfaller.” Cecil prattled on about alarms, sensors, and cameras. He expended altogether too
many words before concluding, “So you see, the security system gives us nothing to go on.”

Bergen shook his head. “I disagree, Cecil. We’ll learn something useful from how the criminals defeated the security system.”

“You suspect an inside job?” Sigmund asked.

Bergen raised an eyebrow. “Of course. One can’t just disable these things from the outside. This is a very secure facility.”

“Bypassed sensors account for the thieves going unseen.” Sigmund glanced at the empty walls. Only yesterday, the most famous marble sculptures of the ancient world had been displayed here. Just how many tonnes did they weigh? “So the thieves toted everything out past the night guards?”

“Well, no,” Cecil admitted. “We see no evidence of tampering with the street surveillance cameras. And even if they, too, were circumvented, we had one bit of good luck. The skies over London were clear last night. We have continuous satellite imagery of the area.”

Sigmund felt vaguely disappointed. This was going to be trivial, not a diversion, after all. “Then you have video of the vehicles that carried away the marbles.”

“Actually, no,” Cecil said.

That left but one way out of the building. Sigmund said, “Then the marbles were removed by transfer booth, direct from the museum to somewhere you couldn’t surveil. Where did the thieves teleport?”

Bergen steepled his fingers. “That’s exactly the question. There seem to be no transfer records. Interesting, eh?”

Cerberus!
It took all Sigmund’s willpower not to shout the word. The disappointment he’d been feeling vanished, along with the final shreds of doubt as to who was behind the Cerberus extortions. Sigmund knew
exactly
who had orchestrated the theft of the Elgin Marbles.

Who but the mythology-obsessed Puppeteers would steal the sculpted frieze that once graced the Parthenon?

Danger lurked in simple blue lines.

From heads held far apart Nessus stared into the mass pointer, the transparent sphere that was the heart of
Aegis’
navigational console. Blue lines
radiated from the center of the orb, one line for each detectable gravitational singularity. The longer the line segment, the closer and larger—the more perilous—the mass.

Gravitational maws: He felt their hunger.

One line segment, still short, pointed straight at him. When it split into six closely spaced lines, he would be almost home.

In theory, he need check the mass pointer only once or twice every shift. Theory offered little comfort. He had lost too many friends to hyperspace. Had they trusted too much to theory?

With good reason, no sane Citizen would travel by hyperdrive.

Closer to Earth, Nessus had dropped
Aegis
back to normal space a few times to rest. Sleep came grudgingly, but never rest. Too many perils tormented him.

His urgent recall implied much but explained little. The scout ship
Explorer
was missing, Clandestine Directorate had reported, with all heads unaccounted for. The correct term in this context was
all hands
. His chosen scouts—three more friends, though aliens—where? Lost in a singularity, perhaps, or taken prisoner by an unknown power. In a hostile universe, so much could go wrong.