Juggler of Worlds (47 page)

“There,” Eric said unnecessarily.

An image floated before Sigmund, downlinked from an orbiting telescope. The instrument’s normal assignment was scanning for space junk as New Terra sped through the interstellar darkness. Now, at Sigmund’s request, it displayed a much more likely threat.

Five balls hung in the center of the room, rotating about their center of mass. Sigmund had seen something like it once before—but not quite like this. Not so close. Not so real.

Hobo Kelly
had glimpsed the Fleet of Worlds from a distance of light-years. (From what direction? he asked himself. The answer still defied him.) New Terra was only 0.03 light-years out in front of the Fleet. (Defined in Hearth years, of course. The length of an Earth year was too valuable a clue for the world they sought. Of course it was gone.) New Terra pulled ahead slowly, using their planetary drive at full acceleration. The Puppeteers, not surprisingly, ran theirs well below the rated capability.

“It’s the only sky we ever knew,” Eric said. “And now, except through a ’scope, we can’t see it at all.”

Sigmund blinked, unable to grasp
that
.

Five worlds, four ringed with tiny suns, one on fire, as before—but not
just
as before. On four worlds, the continental outlines were crisp, whorls of storm cloud wispy and sharp. And on the fifth … “Eric, what’s wrong with the image of Hearth?”

Eric peered. “Nothing.”

Sigmund put a finger into the holo. “Don’t you see this interference? It’s like a diffraction grid.”

Eric shook his head. “It’s not interference. There is diffraction, but it’s from real structures on the surface.”

“A trillion Puppeteers.” Eric nodded confirmation, but the number was too large, without meaning. The pattern in the holo made it terrifyingly real. “On a world propelled through space, buildings so large, covering the planet, that we see a grid from”—it was awkward, but Sigmund knew he had to start thinking in English units—”185 billion miles away.”

With a savage twist, he turned off the projection. If he dwelled too long on the power of the Puppeteers, he would never be able to act.

SIGMUND, FEELING like a condemned man, zigzagged to his appointment with the governor of the world. Penelope accompanied him more for support than as a guide. Everywhere, strangers came up to them and greeted him warmly. He was news here.

Terrific, he thought. More people to disappoint.

Stepping discs transported them to fields and valleys, mountaintops and pedestrian malls, to every corner of the continent of Arcadia. There was much of this world he had yet to see, but Arcadia was where Puppeteers had settled their human servants. He was in no hurry to encounter the Puppeteer exiles and prisoners who had chosen freedom on New Terra over repatriation to a prison elsewhere.

Arcadia was a bit larger than Europe, with climates ranging from
Hawaiian to Northern Californian, and a population below that of Greater Peoria. This place could be heaven, if the Puppeteers weren’t about to—

No, tanj it! He was here to stop that. If only his mind weren’t so … off.

Here and there something triggered a flash in his tortured memory. Worlds uninhabitable except in the depths of their deepest rifts or on the tops of their highest plateaus. A planet scoured by winds so fierce they drove the population underground for much of the year. Another world, of crushing gravity. Fafnir, a world almost drowned, the place he wished he could forget, was clearest in his mind. Death made an impression on a person, he supposed.

He wasn’t sure exactly when arrangements had been made for this meeting, only that Omar had decided it was time. Sigmund’s new friends all worked for the government one way or another. Coming up to the appointed hour, he and Penelope stepped to the courtyard within the modest government center. Before heading off to her lab, there to match wits with an emergent plant pest, she wished him luck and pointed out the building where he was expected.

Any big-city mayor back home would have turned up his nose at the complex. Sigmund dredged up a memory of the Secretary-General’s mountaintop retreat. This was much better.

Sigmund walked into the lobby and gave his name to the receptionist. He did not wait long before a young man approached. “This way,” he said, escorting Sigmund a short distance to a modest office. “Governor.” The aide closed the door on his way out.

A woman with striking violet eyes came out from behind a massive desk to greet Sigmund. Her office was devoid of ornamentation other than a few plants and what seemed like family holos. “Sabrina Gomez-Vanderhoff.”

He couldn’t remember seeing anyone on New Terra wearing such a variety of colors and textures. Clothing and jewelry here signaled position and status and—well, he was not entirely sure all they could represent. With the nanotech here, jewelry could be generated on a whim. The appearance of clothes was programmable. He just didn’t get it.

Clothes on Earth reflected more than a download, and they were wildly idiosyncratic. Rainbows of clothes and skin dyes—those were crystal clear in his memories.

Probably because those memories were useless.

His own sweater and slacks were programmed to black. It occurred to Sigmund he hadn’t seen much black here. What message was he sending?

Sigmund offered his hand. She looked at it, puzzled, and he returned it
to his side. “Sorry, it’s an Earth custom. Governor, I am very pleased to meet you. Sigmund Ausfaller.”

“Except at state occasions, we’re informal.
Sabrina
is fine.” She eyed him appraisingly. “I’m told you’ve been through a lot. Are you ready to talk? Have you had time to acclimate?” She motioned to a conference table and chairs, whose padded legs betrayed a Puppeteer influence.

Time was a luxury he doubted they could afford. “Now is fine, Sabrina.”

“So tell me about yourself and Earth.”

He talked until he was hoarse. They paused while an aide brought ice water, and Sigmund talked some more. Sabrina’s curiosity was insatiable.

And her interest changed nothing. “Sabrina, I can’t reunite your people with Earth. I’ve lost it all. Where Earth is. What sort of sun it circles. Its planetary neighbors.” An image flashed through his head, tantalizing and impossible, this time of people living on an Easter egg. His mind was hopelessly jinxed. “What
any
human world, or its sun, looks like. Everything is gone. Nessus saw to that.”

Disappointment was plain on her face. “Still, we have to keep looking. What else can we do? Anything you remember is more than we had before. Maybe you’ll recognize something that will bring back more memories.”

Fly randomly about interstellar space, hoping to recognize something. If that was the best available course of action, New Terra was doomed. No, tanj it! If it killed him—again—he would
not
sacrifice a world to the Puppeteers.

Sigmund’s mind seethed, unable to transform defiance into a plan.

“If I do find Earth, it would probably mean war. Nessus has clear limits on what he’ll do to help us. It excludes anything that will harm his people. That’s why my brain was scrubbed.”

“War was the resolution of conflict between political entities by coercive, even lethal means. Sociological maturity and a sufficiency of resources made war obsolete.”

Sigmund looked all around, without seeing who spoke.

“Thank you, Jeeves,” Sabrina said. “Sigmund, this is a copy of the artificial intelligence resident on our ancestor’s ramscoop. His English is unedited.”

Of course the Puppeteer-approved dialect lacked the word
war
. The concept would have implied a possible recourse against tyranny. “I have more bad news,” Sigmund said. “Your ancestors left Earth at a very special time. Those ‘political entities’ had combined into one world government. Technology and spaceflight provided ample food and resources.”

And the Fertility Laws had kept people from outgrowing those limits. Sigmund let that go. He had made several attempts to understand New Terran sexual politics. Sometimes he got blank looks, other times red faces. By Earth standards, these people were prudes.

Sabrina leaned forward. “War was obsolete among our people? That hardly sounds like bad news, Sigmund.”

“Not long after your ancestors left, we met the Kzinti.” Sigmund shivered. “Starfaring carnivores and imperialists.” (Jeeves volunteered a definition for
imperialism
. It would have been quaint had it not been so naïve.) “Think eight-hundred-pound, intelligent tigers.”

Sabrina scratched her chin. “Tigers?”

“Jeeves,” Sigmund said. “Do you have
tigers
in your database?”

“I do, Sigmund.” A holo tiger materialized over the table, poised to pounce, its eyes glinting and fangs bared.

“Shit!” Sabrina jerked back in her chair, shivering. “I’ve never seen a big predator before.”

“Point made, Jeeves.” The image vanished. “Sabrina, the one thing Kzinti want more than additional worlds and new slaves is … prey.”

And they eat their prey, Sabrina.

“I see.” Sabrina swallowed. “War isn’t so obsolete in the galaxy.”

“If one of your ships should lead Kzinti back here, you’ll see that very quickly. Though it would serve the Puppeteers right.”

Sabrina sighed, and then squared her shoulders. “So scouting is out. Sigmund, tell me what we
can
do.”

Nessus didn’t know. Sabrina didn’t know. Why the tanj did everyone think he would? Well, he
didn’t
know.

An icy resolve settled over Sigmund. He was good—very good—at one thing, and
that
Nessus had not touched.

“What we can do,” Sigmund said, “is establish an intelligence service.”

“Puppeteers,” Sigmund said, “can certainly pick worlds. I’ll give them that.” “Citizens,” Penelope corrected from across the dinner table. The pink

of her dress brought out the rosy glow in her cheeks. “Puppeteer.” “Citizen.” Penelope raised a finger delicately—hold on for a minute—
while she took a sip from her mug. Irish coffee was another of his innovations. “Unless
Puppeteer
actually means something.”

Perhaps it was time to introduce something else. “Wait here.” He dashed off, returning from the bedroom wearing a sock over each hand. He’d drawn an eye and a mouth on each.

“What are these?” she asked.

“Puppets.” He sat on the floor behind the sofa, hunched so that only the top of his head peeked over the top. He raised his sock-covered forearms over the sofa back. In a falsetto he said, “I’m Nessus, and I’m afraid of my shadow.”

Laughing, Penelope came closer and tousled his hair.
“Now
you can be Nessus.”

“Hold that thought,” he said. He’d also retrieved a favored old rag doll from her collection, and tied long pieces of string around its wrists. He dangled the figure over the sofa back, by strings clasped in hands still dressed in sock puppets. Humming, he marched the floppy doll from one end of the sofa to the other.

Penelope wasn’t laughing anymore. And that tune. What was he humming?

“Funeral March of a Marionette,” by Gounod.

Reality crashed in. New Terra did not have dresses. Penelope’s unisex outfits remained the pale gray he had come to learn meant: not committed, not unwilling, but currently not looking. The pink he had pictured would have been quite provocative.

With a groan, Sigmund opened his eyes to a lonely ship’s cabin. “Sleep field off,” he called, and the collapsing field gently lowered him to the deck. He washed and dressed, wondering if Penelope would ever be more than a friend.

He found Eric in
Explorer’s
relax room, attacking a moo shu burrito. Judging from his expression, Mex-Man cuisine, another of Sigmund’s innovations, was an acquired taste. Sigmund just wished the young man would stop imitating him.

“Morning, Eric.”

“Hello, Sigmund.” Eric raised his plate. “Excellent.”

“How long until dropout?” This mission was almost surely futile, which only made knowledge of the ravenous
nothing
outside the hull that much worse. Still, New Terra’s pathetic navy, of which
Explorer
was the first armed to Sigmund’s specifications, had to be tested. New Terra’s databases had specs for comm lasers, so
Explorer
now carried five of them. At close range, they would serve as weapons. No fusion drives, of course. The only
hope of a fusion drive anytime soon was to salvage and reverse-engineer technology from the old ramscoop.

Looking stoic, Eric swallowed the last bit of his breakfast. “Anytime. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Sigmund filled a bulb with coffee, and they headed for the bridge. The mass pointer showed only a few short lines. They were remote from anyplace. “Eric, do the honors.”

Stars filled the screen, and the gnawing fear in Sigmund’s mind receded. A little. “Passive scan, please.”

“Nothing,” Eric said. “Radar now?”

“In a moment.” Sigmund sipped his coffee, waiting for a cosmic shoe to drop. When none did, they emitted a ping. Radar found nothing nearby. “All right, deploy the targets.”

Their purpose was a semirealistic test of the new targeting systems, although Kirsten, who had done the programming, thought it unnecessary. She had lost the virtual coin toss—guessing evens or odds on a random number—and stayed on New Terra with little Diego and Jaime.