Juggler of Worlds (45 page)

Everything on Hearth was old.

The marble frieze that ringed the office
looked
old—and magnificent. The honey-colored stone, aglow with a soft translucence, had been transformed by an undisputed master. Gods, men, horses—each perfect in every aspect, from the least detail of musculature to the subtlest nuance of draped clothing and flying hooves and streaming manes—commanded the viewer’s awe.

Had Lord Elgin left these superb carvings in place upon the Parthenon, they would long ago have been destroyed. And if I had not had them taken from the British Museum?

Nessus told himself that Phidias’ masterwork was safer here than on Earth, ignoring that Citizens had become the biggest danger to Earth. And that his motives for transporting the marbles had involved not one shred of altruism.

Perhaps it boded well that Nike had brought the marbles with him when he became Hindmost. So much remained unspoken between them. Nessus had only signs and inferences to go on, and yet his passion for Nike had, if it was possible, grown in the years he had been away. If Nike ever suspected that he did more than advocate for the ex-Colonists … Nessus
smoothed an unruly braid as he waited for the guards who had escorted him to the office to leave.

“It is good to see you again, Nessus.” Nike brushed heads in greeting. Welcoming, certainly, but reserved.

“It has been a long time,” Nessus trilled. How he wished for a small fraction of Nike’s poise.

Nike gestured to a mound of cushions, before settling onto another. “I noticed you admiring the marbles. They
are
unique. I value your gift as a token of our friendship.”

Friendship! The possibility had been there once for much more. Before New Terra went free. Before doubts and suspicions about how far each had been prepared to go to ensure a desired outcome.

Nessus held his pain inside. “My friendship is always yours.”

“I wonder: Why so long a time?” Nike straightened in his heap of pillows; undertones of formality sounded in his voices. “It is unlike you to disregard a summons home.”

So much for personal matters. “My apologies, Nike. I returned as quickly as I could. Attending to General Products interests on so many human worlds …” Vagueness was not a lie, Nessus told himself. He was
so
tired of lying.

“What matters?” Nike probed. “Which worlds?”

“Earth, Jinx, Down … you name it.” Just don’t name Fafnir.

“And you couldn’t come faster?”

Not even the Hindmost pressed scouts very hard. The Concordance had too few misfits capable of doing what Nessus did, fewer still since the lost ships and mass insanity that marked the onset of the Exodus. “I came as soon as I could,” he said sincerely. After surveying thousands of the fly-speck islands in the oceans of Fafnir to find Carlos Wu’s lost autodoc. “I came to you directly from the spaceport.”

The summons had been urgent. What had Nessus missed through his delay? “About the Outsiders,” he began. “Of course I am aware of the consensualization.” During
Aegis’
final approach to the Fleet, he had immersed himself in the broadcasts. They told him little. “Understandably, speeches disclose nothing of the proposed policy.”

“Understandably.”

An unsubtle reminder of my own evasiveness, Nessus thought. “I was the first to know the complaint of the Outsiders. You must understand my interest.”

“The matter is in strong jaws,” Nike answered. More evasion.

Behind Nike, a tableau on the marbles caught Nessus’ eyes. Zeus, Hindmost of the gods, and Athena, the goddess of wisdom.

What wisdom counsels this Hindmost?

The Concordance was in debt to the Outsiders far into the future. Surely the Outsiders would accept no more promises now that the Fleet was in full flight. If taking on more debt wasn’t credible, what options did that leave the Fleet? “What will we do?”

“Achilles and Baedeker are collaborating on a solution.” Nike fixed him with a frank, two-headed stare. “Had you been on Hearth—”

“Achilles is reckless and selfish,” Nessus blurted. And Achilles hates humans. “You
must
know of the cult he once tried—”

“Stop!” These were the harshest of insults, and Nike blinked in surprise. “Know this: Achilles has the favor of the Hindmost.
He
has been most helpful.” The tremolo in Nike’s voices forbade further interruption.

“We have too few scouts. I ask you to reinvigorate the training program.” Nike stood abruptly: meeting over. “Others will tend to matters with the Outsiders.”

“You once trusted me,” Nessus sang desperately.

“And you see where my trust got us,” Nike said icily.

As he had for days, Sigmund woke depressed. Routine got him out of the sleeper field and Sven’s guest room. Fiddling with the still-awkward controls of the sonic shower, Sigmund wondered how best to fill the day. You could be dead, he lectured himself again. Snap out of it.

And convinced no one.

He had lost his life, his love, his purpose, even some of his memories.

Not that long ago women here had been brainwiped, the better to serve as unwilling wombs. Doubtless the Puppeteers had learned from their experiments how to excise memories more selectively. That possibility tainted with guilt every
intact
memory Sigmund had.

I’m entitled to mope, tanj it.

Sigmund was in no hurry to see his host. Sven was unfailingly polite, even deferential, brimming with questions about the worlds
Long Pass
had left behind. Prehistory, the archivist called it.

From what Sigmund remembered, English was an irrational-enough language to start. Purged by aliens for a political agenda, stripped of its historical context … no wonder New Terra’s linguists were so often at a loss.

A dreary existence stretched before him, of endless pedantic interrogation about events long before his time. He recalled trivia and odd facts when only the whole historical record would ever satisfy them.

Sigmund got dressed, his New Terran jumpsuit programmed to a familiar black. That was something else Sven babbled endlessly about: clothing colors. Sigmund had never wasted his time worrying about fashion; he refused to start now.

Cheerful whistling from the kitchen interrupted his brooding. Not Sven: He couldn’t carry a tune. Seeing Sven’s cousin as he rounded the corner, Sigmund felt better. “Good morning, faithful Penelope.”

Penelope Mitchell-Draskovics was as tall as Sigmund. She bubbled with enthusiasm, and moved with the easy grace of an athlete. Soccer, was it? She had big blue eyes, usually twinkling, and rosy cheeks. She asked as many questions as anyone. From her Sigmund did not mind.

“Good morning!” Penelope said. “It’s about time. What’s for breakfast today?”

He considered. “A Denver omelet.” She understood omelets, but of course not Denver. They talked as he assembled his ingredients. (On Earth, he would merely have ordered a meal from the synthesizer. Once he got the proportions just right, he would give the synthesizer a sample.) They talked about everything and nothing. Denver, the mile-high city. The Rockies. Grizzly bears. Skiing.

They didn’t ski here. They didn’t have much in the way of winter, he finally realized. The climate was much the same everywhere, optimized for agriculture by the polar-orbiting suns. It made him strangely sad.

Breakfast was finally ready. He scooped a heaping portion onto her plate. “A Denver treat for faithful Penelope.”

She paused, her fork in midair. “Why do you always call me that? Faithful, I mean.”

That led to the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
, of myth and legend and epic adventure, of Odysseus’ long-delayed return to Ithaca and the wiles of his wife, Penelope, turning away the unwelcome advances of suitors….

“Something smells good,” Sven said.

Sigmund had not noticed his host enter the kitchen. Without losing the thread of the story—he had backtracked to the Cyclops—Sigmund loaded up a plate for Sven.

Sven attacked his serving with gusto. “It’s good that we’re having a hearty breakfast,” he said. “We have a big day ahead of us.”

NESSUS ACCEPTED a bulb of warm carrot juice. “I’m flattered you remembered,” he told Kirsten.

She patted the synthesizer. “How could I not? We four spent a lot of time together here.”

The synthesizer was familiar; everything else about
Explorer
had changed, with most signs of onetime Citizen presence removed. The Y-shaped bench of his onetime crash couch was gone from the bridge, along with the mouth-friendly console. Padding had been stripped from hatchways throughout the ship. The relax room had only human exercise gear.

His onetime scouts had also changed. Omar, his once-obsequious captain, now calculating and assertive. Eric, his once-loyal engineer, now openly suspicious. His hair, a few years ago colorfully dyed and arranged in Citizen style, was now all black in a simple ponytail. Kirsten, computer virtuoso and his former navigator, now mated with Eric and the mother of their two young ones.

None of which mattered. The fruition of years’ work was upon Nessus, and it was all he could do not to flee. “I am ready,” he said.

Kirsten took out her pocket comp and placed a call. “They’re ready, too.”

In preparation for this meeting, a second stepping disc had been placed in the relax room. Nessus positioned himself on it. “Proceed.”

Sven appeared on the disc at the opposite end of the room. He stepped aside.

FROM THE VILLAGE SQUARE near Sven’s house, Sigmund stepped after Sven—

Into a spaceship.

Only familiar faces kept him from freaking out. Omar and Eric. Sven. A woman Sigmund had not met stood by Eric. With a shudder, Sigmund moved off the stepping disc—

And caught sight, across the crowded room, of a Puppeteer. His eyes did not match, one red and one yellow.

Nessus! All the bottled-up rage erupted, and Sigmund lunged. There was a crackling noise.

He woke on the deck, limbs tingling from the aftereffects of a stunner.

Omar helped Sigmund up. “Nessus is here to talk. Can we trust you?”

Sigmund nodded.
They
could trust him. Nessus was the one who should fear him. And yet who but Nessus could possibly explain? “Why am I here, Nessus?”

Nessus edged closer. “You don’t trust me, with good cause, but that must change.”

Sigmund said nothing.

Nessus picked up a drink bulb and sipped something orange. Whatever it contained seemed to calm him. “Yes, I brought you here. I followed you to Fafnir—for reasons that you can only now begin to appreciate.” Another calming sip. “You were unapproachable on Earth.”

“Because I stopped using transfer booths. Because
you
were behind the Cerberus extortions.”

“Yes, to both.” Nessus made a noise like a balloon deflating. “But it is the paranoid brilliance of your insight that makes you so necessary
here.”

Avoiding sudden moves, Sigmund sidled to the synthesizer and got a bulb of coffee. “I don’t understand the abduction or the flattery, Nessus. Why am I here?”

Nessus backed onto his stepping disc. One head plunged into a pocket of his utility belt. Sigmund had been on New Terra long enough to guess the Puppeteer held a transport controller. He was ready to step out. Whatever Nessus had to say was going to be unpleasant.

NESSUS SPOKE for a long time. “You’re pawns,” he concluded. “All that matters to the authorities on Hearth is that the crisis be settled.”

“And that means paying off the Outsiders for New Terra’s use of its own planetary drive,” Sigmund summarized. “Only you can’t. New Terra can’t. And your government obviously sees no chance of reconciliation. If they thought otherwise, they would have opened negotiations. Instead, they kept the situation to themselves.

“Hence the pawn analogy—these people are going to be sacrificed. So what will it be? Their independence crushed? Their drive destroyed? Their
world
destroyed?”

“So I fear, Sigmund.” Nessus’ voice was thin, one throated. He still had one head deep within a pocket, the controller there one quick tongue thrust away from activation. “I don’t know another answer. I can’t imagine how to stop them.”

As the only Puppeteer in reach, he
should
be afraid.

The New Terrans were stunned. They had more to absorb, even, than the threat. Sigmund gathered this was the first they had ever heard of the
galaxy’s elder race. The Outsiders also traded with Earth; naturally no Puppeteer had ever mentioned their servants to the Outsiders.

Eric was the first to shake off his shock. “Then we’ll take Hearth down with us! I’ll crash this ship into Hearth myself!”

“Your death helps no one!” Kirsten shouted. Her voice softened. “I need you. Your children need you. We need another way.”

“Nessus,” Sigmund said softly. His hands yearned to crush the life out of someone; he clutched them fiercely behind his back. “Let me contact the ARM.”

Nessus’ exposed head swung from side to side as though hinged. Maybe it was. “If I thought that an option, I would have told you long ago. To involve Earth would mean disclosing our former colony. It’s why we struggled so hard to keep secret the location of the Fleet.”