Juggler of Worlds (22 page)

Had he been aboard
Explorer
, would his superior caution have saved them?

But numbers far larger than the three lost crew weighed on his conscience. For what gain had he meddled? Possibly none. His thoughts churned endlessly in a rebellious jumble. His limbs trembled from the strain of catatonia too long denied.

NESSUS FINALLY BOWED to reality, dropping for a time from hyperspace. He staggered past his cabin with its mound of sleep cushions to the packed cargo hold. The last things he saw, before fatigue overcame him, were the stacked crates he was bringing to Hearth. The sight cast a ray of hope into his troubled thoughts.

After Nike received
this
gift, surely he would be the next to mention Brides.

HOMEWARD
AEGIS
FLEW—

Deeper into the galactic north where Ausfaller now cast his uncanny attention. Through his minions, Nessus had learned that much about the ARM’s progress.

Nessus pawed the deck, agitated by all that remained hidden. As fear
directed a Citizen’s actions, so curiosity drove humans. Someone with more arrogance than understanding of humans had drawn the gaze of the Concordance’s most implacable adversary. Nike would not identify the scout responsible, but Nessus had his suspicions.

Provoking Ausfaller by accident sounded like something Achilles would do.

At some point Nessus made his way to the ship’s relax room. He ordered another serving of whatever he had last synthed. What to eat, at least, was a decision he could simplify. The first bites made his mouths water, and he ate voraciously. Not until the plate was empty did he look up. He had no idea what he’d just consumed.

Ausfaller’s shadow haunted Nessus. The ARM
must
be stopped. But how? Ausfaller’s own superiors couldn’t dissuade him. The riots that troubled Nessus’ conscience hadn’t deflected him. Achilles’ trap had only drawn him.

Nessus filled several drinking bulbs with water, to carry back to the bridge. The dispenser’s shiny front panel reflected a bedraggled, wild-eyed creature. It defied belief that so disreputable a character must carry such responsibility on his shoulders.

Even Nessus’ most senior sources in the United Nations feared the ARM.

“You want me to spy on
Ausfaller
?” Sangeeta Kudrin had blurted. She had been sealed at the time within an impregnable bubble, intercepted between two primitive transfer booths, entirely at Nessus’ mercy—but it was Ausfaller who terrified her. “The man is a raving paranoid. Maybe you don’t understand what that means. It means he suspects
everyone
.”

Max Addeo had tried once to explain. Nessus thought, I should have worked harder then to comprehend. Only when Kudrin panicked had Nessus
truly
grasped Ausfaller’s evil genius. She’d said, “I’m guessing that you chose your victims, at least some of them, by clever data mining. I don’t see how else you could have found
me
. My… creative use of UN funds.”

Ausfaller had constructed a persona in the personnel files, she had explained, someone with a suspect-looking past, just to entrap anyone trying to coerce ARMs. Unwittingly, Nessus had sent Ausfaller a Cerberus envelope! And Ausfaller had deduced it was Puppeteer meddling.…

Nessus blinked, his eyes dry from staring. The mass pointer was a psionic device; it required a conscious mind in the loop. He sensed the approaching singularity. That was normal. But to sense its hunger? He knew that was madness.

It was no less insane to feel Ausfaller’s eyes. The ARM was too perceptive to ignore, too dedicated to be corrupted, and too persistent to deflect.

Ausfaller’s strength was also his greatest weakness. The paranoia that led to such profound insight evoked, in turn, distaste and distrust among his own kind. Thus weakness became, in turn, strength: Any harm done to Ausfaller, or even an unsuccessful attempt, would only raise the paranoid’s credibility.

And then there were Addeo’s warnings about “event-of-my-death” messages.

I’m obsessed with Ausfaller, Nessus realized. In his hearts, alongside the fear and admiration, Nessus acknowledged pangs of empathy. We are both misfits, striving mightily to protect the societies that disdain us.

Nessus’ necks ached. He told himself he felt only the strain of physical exhaustion. That was a half-truth, at best. Every instinct demanded he look over his shoulder for his pursuer.

And yet, amid all the self-recrimination, salvation beckoned. Yes, Sigmund Ausfaller remained on the hunt. And yes, Nessus himself had been ordered away from Sol system—

But I am not without my own cunning. An arrogant overconfidence in Concordance science had put all Citizens at risk of discovery. And so, before leaving Sol system, Nessus had enlisted a human ally as complex as Ausfaller and as scientifically gifted as Achilles.

The safety of the Concordance was now in
his
hands.

It took the Secretary-General months to discreetly divert the funds for a long-range exploratory mission. It took Sigmund more months to covertly acquire
Hobo Kelly
.

Much can happen in a year.

Ander didn’t notice, or paid no heed to, Sigmund’s introspection. “Trust me, the normal-world women tourists are eager.” It had become Ander’s favored theme. “The natives scare the hell out of them. By comparison, I and certainly you, my friend, are of unthreatening bulk.”

“Piloting” a starship, it turned out, required surprisingly few skills. The autopilot could be relied on to get you in and out of a solar system. Between solar systems, the mass pointer made navigation entirely straight-forward: You merely kept your ship pointed toward the line that pointed at
you
. There were too few stars nearby to permit any confusion.

Not in Known Space, anyway. Perhaps the galactic core had enough stars to confuse things.

Dark thoughts about Beowulf Shaeffer, below the radar for over a year, had one advantage. They distracted Sigmund from Ander’s prattling. Sigmund didn’t care to discuss why Feather moving out was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Not with anyone. Certainly not with Ander.

“… And that’s how, last trip, I ended up with twins from We Made It,” Ander continued.

Fortunately, with just the two of them to cover three shifts, they didn’t overlap often. When they did, Sigmund tried not talking.

Ander didn’t seem to mind. Or to notice. “Yes, Sigmund, it’s my mission to show you the better, by which I mean baser, fleshpots of Sirius Mater.” Ander cackled. “My mission and your pleasure.”

It grew harder and harder to remember why he’d brought Ander along on this shakedown cruise when he wanted to take Ander by the throat and shake
him
. It didn’t help Sigmund’s spirits to know that nothingness lurked
outside the hull. He reminded himself often that Ander was good at what he did. Ander was just lousy company.

Finally, their ship reached the outskirts of Sirius system. It was a relief on many levels, not least for the prospect of company other than Ander’s, to drop out of hyperspace.

The coded hyperwave message beamed from James P. Baen Station quickly dispelled Sigmund’s relief.

SIGMUND REMEMBERED Sirius Mater from ten years earlier. It was as dreary as he remembered it. By Earth standards, Jinx’s largest city scarcely qualified as a village. Its buildings, like its inhabitants, were short and squat, and for the same reason: the intolerable gravity.

The major hotels offered gravity-controlled comfort—and tourists. Ander was not amused when Sigmund ordered him immediately to West End, decidedly short of off-world visitors, to attempt once more to infiltrate Pelton’s project. Tough. The alert from the ARM station chief here had changed everything.

Carlos Wu was on Jinx.

Passport records said this was Wu’s first trip off Earth in ten years. Eight ships lost in the vicinity of Sol system in the last ten months and
now
Carlos decides to travel? He’d taken the last passenger ship out before the final cruise line suspended operations in and out of Sol system.

And Carlos had chosen Jinx, of all places.…

For anyone other than Ander, the main tourist attraction in Sirius Mater was the museum portion of the Institute of Knowledge. It could only be experienced at Jinx-standard gravity. Sigmund rented a floating travel couch from the one-gee lobby of his hotel, and let it carry him the short distance to the institute. It was time to happen to meet Carlos.

Sigmund wandered through the museum until he came upon the physicist in the art wing. “Small galaxy,” Sigmund said.

Carlos was also in a travel chair. Glancing over his shoulder, he did a double take. “Agent Ausfaller. A small galaxy indeed.”

They were in a gallery of Jinxian nudes. Sigmund gestured at the nearest one.
“Rubenesque
suddenly seems like another word for ‘petite’. And there’s no cause for formality. We’re a long way from Earth.”

“Sigmund, then.” Carlos stroked his chin. “Yes, these are
big
people. They have to be, of course.”

“So what brings you here, Carlos?” Sigmund said. “To Jinx, I mean.”

Carlos kept his eyes on the holos. “Personal reasons.”

“Been here long?”

“Long enough.” Carlos shrugged. At least he tried to shrug. The casual gesture morphed into a shudder. “I’m more of a flatlander than I realized. I miss home.”

“And with the quarantine, you can’t get home.” Sigmund edged his travel chair closer to a portrait. “I heard you got married. Do I get to meet your wife?”

“We recently divorced. That’s kind of why I wanted to get away.” Awkward pause. “What brings you to Jinx, Sigmund?”

“Business,” Sigmund said. “I can’t say much about it.”

That was the truth. Ships near Sol system disappearing without a trace. No wreckage. No distress calls. The ARM’s working assumption was pirates.

His Puppeteer hunt was delayed until ship disappearances closer to home could be resolved.

He had expected to be quite bored by the time
Hobo Kelly
completed its final outfitting. An open question in the piracy theory was whether ships were targeted or taken at random. Accomplices employed in shipyards could hide transmitters during a routine overhaul. Hidden beacons might explain why more ships had disappeared outbound from Sol than inbound. Or, the number of disappearances being small, the difference could be meaningless.

Hobo Kelly
needed a major refit for its new mission, and Jinx had some of the best shipyards in Human Space. Claiming that a refit in Sol system was too risky gave Sigmund an excuse to take out his ship. He had his reasons. He wanted Ander back on Jinx, despite the quarantine.
Hobo Kelly
needed a shakedown cruise. Sigmund wanted to practice his newly learned piloting skills.

“I can’t really talk about it,” Sigmund repeated. They’d been floating down the hall. They reached the last of the muscle-bound nudes. “Have you seen the landscape gallery, Carlos?”

“Not yet.” Carlos floated under an arch into a new room. He stopped to admire a holo of crescent Primary hanging over East End. “I thought I was on the last ship from Sol system,” Carlos commented suddenly. “How’d
you
get here?”

“Some government ships are still flying. In fact, I’m headed back to Earth in a few days.” Sigmund had a flash of inspiration. He didn’t want to leave Carlos here, unsupervised. “If you wish, you can come back with me.”

Carlos looked surprised. “Is it safe?”

“I wouldn’t go myself, otherwise.” Don’t push, Sigmund told himself. “Where are you staying? I’ll get in touch when my business is done. You can give me your decision then. I’m at the Sirius Mater Hilton, by the way.”

“I’m at the Jinx Towers.” Carlos took a deep breath. “I
would
like to get home. I’ll think about it.”

“Sounds good. Or give me a call sooner when your schedule permits, and we’ll have a drink.” Sigmund leaned forward in his travel chair and extended his hand. “It’s good to see a familiar face.”

“Same here, Sigmund. I may take you up on the drink.” They shook hands.

If Carlos noticed the pinprick when Sigmund planted a microbug, he gave no sign.