Betrayer of Worlds (21 page)

Vesta quaked with fear, his unencumbered head swiveling helplessly between Achilles and the blinking device that he held.

“If the tribunal should proceed to sentencing, Vesta, you know what I will disclose.”

“It will not come to that,” Vesta sang sharply. With a snap of the jaw he turned off the jammer.

Then, as abruptly as Vesta had arrived, he was gone.

“We are the Ol’t’ro you knew,” the hyperwaved message began. The voice, resonant and self-assured, spoke English. “And yet we are not. The Gw’oth you met, Sigmund, live only in our memories.”

Louis watched and listened, self-consciously aware of Sigmund and Alice watching
him.
Sigmund had invited Louis, without explanation, to comment on “something interesting.” This was interesting, all right. And as clearly a test of some kind.

“Pause,” Louis ordered.

“Indeed, sir,” Jeeves announced.

At least one small mystery had resolved itself. The first Jeeves had been the shipboard artificial intelligence of the hijacked ramscoop colony ship from which New Terra was settled. Voice, with his very un-Puppeteer butler mannerisms, derived from a Jeeves copy.

Jeeves copies assisted the leaders of New Terra and flew on all modern New Terran ships. AI was a hard problem—and a discipline Puppeteers had shunned. New Terra’s few would-be cyberneticists, starting from scratch, had yet to develop anything to rival the centuries-old AI from Earth.

Louis asked, “Sigmund, why say who they’re not?”

“When last we met,” Sigmund said, “Ol’t’ro abandoned me in deep space. Well, really they abandoned Baedeker. A case can be made they engaged in a bit of preemptive self-defense, while I was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.” A fleeting, bitter smile. “The story of my life. Regardless, I was adrift, alone but for Baedeker in stasis, for a long time.”

Was that a
tic
in Sigmund’s cheek? It was an oddly human weakness in someone Louis still saw as an evil genius. “Then why identify themselves at all? Why not make up a name?”

“Except for the preamble, the message was—for reasons you’ll soon
see—encrypted. Ol’t’ro used themselves as the hint I needed to deduce the key.” Sigmund clenched his jaw for a while without defeating the tic. “Their last words before splitting our hull. ‘We’re sorry.’ ”

“A General Products hull,” Alice added.

How did you split a GP hull? Louis had—somehow—turned
Argo
’s hull to powder, but that had involved positioning
Aegis
just right. Nessus would never explain what, exactly, they had aimed at. What, exactly, they had done.

Suppose
Aegis
had been less precisely positioned in the derelict. What would have happened? Less than total destruction? Louis said, “Let me guess. The Gw’oth opened a hyperspace bubble at midship?”

Sigmund blinked. “Your family has a worrisome aptitude, Louis, for destroying indestructible GP hulls.”

How did one answer that? Rather than try, Louis looked around the room. It could be an executive conference room on any world he had ever visited. Almost. The proportions of walls, the ceiling height, and skinny table were all . . . odd. Influenced by a Puppeteer aesthetic, he supposed.

“Resume playback,” Louis ordered.

“Of course, sir.”

The video had opened with a close-up of an icy world and panned back to encompass a gas giant and its other moons. Louis felt vaguely cheated. He would have liked to see
Gw’oth.

“Obviously, Ol’t’ro is a Gw’otesht,” he said. “Of how many members?”

It seemed a lifetime since he had studied the Gw’oth, and that recollection had him wondering, yet again, what was keeping Nessus. With every passing day Louis thought more about making a home for himself on New Terra, with Alice. Not that he had had that kind of conversation with her yet. It was much too soon.

“Sixteen,” Jeeves supplied.

The recording went on. “You will remember Jm’ho, Sigmund. Jm’ho is a beautiful world, at least to us, but we no longer call it home. And therein, Sigmund, is the reason we now contact you.”

“Pause,” Sigmund said. “The message came out of nowhere. Backtracking the inbound signal, the closest detectable object is a dust cloud two light-years from New Terra. If the signal originated anywhere in Jm’ho’s solar system, and I’m not saying it did, it bounced through hyperwave relays along the way.”

“Did the signal come from ahead of New Terra?” Louis asked. New
Terra was traveling the same way as the Fleet: to galactic north. That was the shortest and quickest route out of the galaxy. Once above the galaxy, they could change course and flee the core explosion without having to dodge solar systems—and anyone living in them.

“Nessus showed me a map with a new Gw’oth colony in that direction. It had to do”—Louis hesitated, remembering the Puppeteer’s hesitance to discuss his mission with Sigmund—“with why Nessus recruited me.”

Alice frowned. “
We
don’t know of any such colony. Either the Puppeteers have resumed scouting ahead on their own or our own scouts aren’t reporting back everything they find.”

“When was this colony discovered?” Sigmund asked.

“I don’t know.” Louis rubbed his chin, considering. “I think recently. Its discovery is why Nessus went looking for, well, ultimately me.”

Sigmund laughed unpleasantly. “That, and knowing I won’t let Puppeteers involve New Terra in Concordance affairs. For now, let’s get back to Ol’t’ro’s message. Resume, Jeeves.”

“We left the home world,” Ol’t’ro continued, “to gain our liberty. The monarch from whom we freed ourselves wants us back. And so he did this.”

Louis didn’t especially understand
terrestrial
biology. What followed about alien biology required several timeouts so Jeeves could interpret and simplify. Getting his arms around the computational requirements to engineer new life forms took another lengthy digression. Apparently gengineering surpassed the mental capacity of even a Gw’otesht-16.

But after Louis took in everything, the upshot was clear enough. “Biological warfare. Ol’t’ro wants computers to design biological defenses.”

Sigmund was nonchalantly looking around the room.

So the testing continued. Louis said, “The same computers could be used to design a counterattack against their enemies. We could be getting into the middle of an interstellar Gw’oth war.”

(Alice smiled at “we,” Louis noticed. A good omen. This was not the place to comment.)

“And?” Sigmund prompted.

Wheels within wheels within wheels. . . . Trying to think like Sigmund made Louis’s head hurt! “It begs the question how Ol’t’ro’s enemies engineered their bioattack in the first place. Do the Gw’oth on Jm’ho have computers?”

“Basic ones,” Alice said. “New Terra has commercial relations with several
of the leading nations on Jm’ho. We sold them waterproofed versions of our pocket comps, which the Gw’oth have doubtless reverse-engineered and improved. But we know of nothing there with the capacity for genetic engineering.”

“Maybe the Puppeteers provided bigger computers?” Louis shook his head. “I withdraw the question. The Gw’oth know the location of the Fleet. The Concordance would hardly provide technology that might make the Gw’oth an even bigger prospective threat.”

Alice said, “If New Terra doesn’t offer help and Ol’t’ro are telling the truth, they may conclude we’re the ones who equipped their enemies.”

Louis rocked in his chair, his mind churning. “We don’t actually know that Ol’t’ro’s colony was attacked. We have only an unsubstantiated claim. It could be a ruse, a way to get New Terran computers so
they
can build the first bioweapon.”

“Or the gear could be honestly requested and still prove useful for a counterstrike. Or Ol’t’ro wants advanced computers for another reason, or to be applied against another adversary, they have not even hinted at. Or, or, or.” Sigmund stood and poured himself a glass of water from the carafe on the sideboard. “You know what we know, Louis. What is your advice?”

When had it become Louis’s job to suggest New Terran foreign policy? More of him thought: New Terra could be my home. I
want
to be involved. It pained him to admit: “I don’t know enough to recommend anything.”

Sigmund raised his water glass in salute. “Recognizing how little we know is the beginning of wisdom.”

An unexpected sound roused Achilles. He looked about, bleary-eyed. The sound repeated, a timid rapping. And then, soft voices: “Your Excellency.”

Vesta!

Achilles clambered to his hooves. In the space around his cell, still sleep-period dim, three figures stood. The slender one was Vesta. Who were the silent ones? They were tall and stocky, with the slightly crazed expressions of thugs and guards. “What is it?” Achilles asked.

“We must get you out,” Vesta sang. He dipped his heads. “Deliberations at the tribunal do not go well.”

“Then get me out,” Achilles snapped.

Vesta gestured and one of the silent ones took a transport controller from his sash. “The access disc should be active, Your Excellency.”

Achilles trotted onto the disc at the center of his cell—and stepped off another disc in the dimly lit outer room. “What is the plan?” he asked Vesta.

“These two are among your most loyal followers. They will take you to Greensward Field, where a ship and crew await your commands.”

Greensward was a tertiary-at-best spaceport, an ignominious place from which to flee. When the time came to return, Achilles promised himself, it would be at a more suitable venue.

He was getting ahead of himself. “You said ‘these two.’ Are you not coming with us?”

“I am more useful to you here.” Vesta plucked nervously at his mane. “Excellency, we must hurry. The guards will wake up soon.”

Achilles sidled to where he could read the insignia on his escorts’ sashes. They were members of Clandestine Directorate security. Who better to surprise the guards on duty? And leaving Vesta in place as Nike’s aide could certainly prove useful. “Very well, Vesta. I will remember your initiative at this critical time.”

Vesta bobbed heads in acknowledgment. “It is an honor to serve, Excellency.”

They trotted past two stunned guards, collapsed on the floor; up a flight of stairs; past an internal security station with three more stunned guards; down the length of a long, arcing corridor. Finally they reached an unshielded annex of the building, accessible to the public stepping-disc network.

Pawing the floor nervously, Vesta turned to one of their escorts. “As I ordered. Do it quickly.”

The false guard whipped out a stunner and Vesta crumpled to the floor. “So no one suspects him,” the guard sang. Then, his eyes wild, he lashed out with his hind leg. The hoof’s sharp edge opened a long gash in Vesta’s flank. Blood welled from the wound. “So no one suspects,” the false guard repeated.

“Let us go,” Achilles ordered.

A moment later they were on the bridge of a ship. A few of the bridge crew looked familiar to Achilles.

Everyone stared at him expectantly.

There at the pilot’s console: a figure with startling russet patches on his
hide, earnestly coiffed, with lively green eyes. A veteran of the Scout Academy. A disciple.

Clotho: the Fate who spun the thread of Life.

Achilles believed in the greatness of his destiny. He told himself that did not require him to believe in omens. “Clotho, are we ready to depart?”

“At your command, Excellency.”

“Proceed,” Achilles ordered.

There was a bit of radioed exchange with Space Traffic Control, and then, under Clotho’s practiced jaws, the ship lifted off from Hearth.

Alone on the bridge of
Aegis,
a platter of chopped mixed grasses close by, Nessus studied the mass pointer. Pointing straight at him, a single, long line: New Terra.

The bridge felt lonelier than usual. He had become accustomed to the company of Louis Wu. But Nessus’ main sense of loss had nothing to do with
Aegis
or Louis. Nessus missed Baedeker.

Even amid the madness of the tribunal, Baedeker had made time for them to be together. Private dinners. An evening at the Grand Ballet. There had even been an allusion—fleeting, but meaningful nonetheless—to finding a Companion. Mating and children beckoned . . .

The tribunal must soon find Achilles culpable and sentence him to hard labor on Nature Preserve One. On that premise—and because Citizens insane enough to support Achilles might lash out at his main accuser—Nessus was en route to New Terra for Louis. Together they would retrieve the Pak Library and deliver it to a purged Ministry of Science on Hearth. And with Achilles banished, and his cause publicly condemned, the crisis with the Gw’oth should subside.

Nessus pondered the future with unwonted optimism.

In the mass pointer, the line for New Terra slowly grew.

“In three, two . . .” Nessus stopped himself. There was no one here but Voice, and Voice did not require an alert.

With a tremor,
Aegis
dropped into normal space. The walls flipped from pastoral recordings to external display. New Terra was a blue-white spark directly ahead.