Betrayer of Worlds (24 page)

Unseen, unsuspected, secure against almost unimaginable disaster, the facility waited.

The Hindmost’s Refuge.

Savoring the fragrance of luxuriant pastureland, Baedeker gazed across gently rolling hills. The “sky” shone the cerulean blue of a bygone era; the brilliant orange circle overhead mimicked the sun that had once warmed Hearth. To his left, a shallow creek gurgled. Aside from a stepping disc inset in the meadowplant, the only visible artifact was the synthesizer installed atop a nearby hummock.

The idyllic surroundings were less for Baedeker than for the Companion herd whose tunes of fellowship, mindless and content, wafted from some unseen distance. Companions fared poorly in more realistic conditions. In the event of catastrophe, Companions would become Brides to preserve the race.

Baedeker planted his hooves far apart, unready to run, projecting the confidence he did not feel. Others would join him momentarily. Together they must stop the coming catastrophe.

And if he failed? Who was to say the fusion-suppression field could not penetrate to this depth? Then even the Refuge would be lost.

Motion from the corner of his eye: Nike, his spotless white hide unmistakable, his mane impeccably coiffed, cantered off the stepping disc. Then Demeter appeared, he of the darkly brindled coat. Finally, Chronos, patriarch of the Experimentalists, so ancient that no medical treatment could keep him limber.

No one else would be coming. The living who had ever been Hindmost composed a most exclusive herd. The four brushed heads in greeting.

“I have not visited the Refuge in a long time.” Demeter stared frankly at Baedeker. “Do you think to play on my empathy?”

“I choose this place for secrecy, not empathy,” Baedeker sang back. “Other than yourselves, I no longer know who to trust. Achilles has confederates throughout the government.”

“Achilles has supporters,” Chronos chided.

We
all
have supporters, Baedeker thought. Unless we four agree to influence our supporters—to pool our strengths, to unite against madness—the government will fall. To be followed by the disaster that is Achilles.

“I sang with care,” Baedeker answered. Grace notes of impatience, unintended, modulated the purposeful motif of friendship. “My concern is not about politics, but rather treachery.”

Nike sidled forward. “Clandestine Directorate internal surveillance had to fail for Achilles to escape. Only the system did not fail; it was bypassed. Achilles had help.” And sadly, “Help from among my own staff.”

Baedeker harmonized, “Yet other ‘supporters’ find ways to distribute Achilles’ treacherous messages. And a Ministry of Science research vessel ignores the general recall sent after Achilles’ disappearance.”

“Are we Conservatives, then,” Demeter intoned, “to obsess about minutiae? Should we not care more about the Gw’oth fleet that rushes at us, as Achilles predicted?”

“Safety before all,” Chronos chanted pointedly.

“What if,” Baedeker asked cautiously, “Achilles
brings
the Gw’oth?”

Chronos sang in disbelief. “Do you have any proof?”

“Less than proof, but more than suspicion,” Nike sang. “The human Nessus recruited—”

“Nessus!” Chronos fluted with disdain. “I cannot speak to unsubstantiated accusations about Achilles, but I know
Nessus
has exercised a great deal too much . . . initiative in his time.”

But never the initiative to try to murder another Citizen! Baedeker kept the anger inside, certain that melody would be twisted into a motive for Nessus to lie about Achilles.

“You know only that, Chronos?” Demeter looked himself in the eyes. “I know a bit more.”

Meaning Nessus’ relationship with Baedeker, and a dalliance with Nike before that.

Nike sang, “Louis Wu was raised by Beowulf Shaeffer, who
Achilles
twice recruited. Beowulf Shaeffer, who discovered the chain reaction at the galactic core.”

“An honorable pedigree,” Demeter conceded.

Nike went on. “Nessus, Achilles, and Louis together recovered a large part of the Pak Library. One file—”

“The assertion,” Chronos sang, “was that Achilles somehow leads the Gw’oth.”

“Not leads them,” Baedeker corrected. “Brings them. Provokes them. We all know Achilles. He has always aspired to power. Perhaps his warnings are so prescient because he created the crisis.

“You all also know Sigmund Ausfaller, another result of Nessus showing initiative.” Sigmund, without whose paranoid brilliance the Pak would have destroyed New Terra and Hearth—and Jm’ho, too. Only Sigmund had also tangled with Achilles. And with Nike, at the time Hindmost. The galaxy had become far too complex. “Clandestine Directorate trades information with Ausfaller. He reports that—”

This time Demeter interrupted. “Not subtle, Baedeker, mentioning Ausfaller to remind us of the Pak War and your own contributions.”

Baedeker raised his voices, loud undertunes demanding respect for his office. “Ausfaller reports that the Gw’oth fleet set out after an attack on their home world. For a time, fusion reactors around Jm’ho . . . stopped. And
that
is the technology Louis Wu—and Achilles—encountered in the Pak Library.”

Chronos’ necks wriggled sinuously, in unapologetic surprise. “And you surmise Achilles used Pak technology to incite the Gw’oth? That he expected, amid crisis, we would install him as head of the Party?”

Were you not about to? Baedeker thought contemptuously.

“We believe so,” Nike chanted.

“I would like a moment,” Demeter crooned soothingly. He gestured to Chronos. At the slow hobble that was all that Chronos could manage, they walked behind the nearest hill.

The rolling hills were as artificial as everything within the cavern. A chain of knolls disguised tunneling equipment, because a sufficient disaster might destroy all stepping discs on Hearth’s surface. The largest mounds held small ships with which to escape through any newly drilled passageway.

For the first time, Baedeker wondered if even
this
refuge could offer safety.

A considerable while later, the two returned. Demeter sang, “Perhaps it
is not too late to resolve matters with the Gw’oth. Baedeker, we will support this government if efforts are made to negotiate. General Products has a representative on Jm’ho, surely.”

“The representative who failed to report
why
the Gw’oth launched their fleet?” Nike fixed Demeter with a frank, two-headed stare. “Another ‘supporter’ of Achilles. We are forced to rely on Sigmund’s agent on Jm’ho.”

Shaken, Demeter repeated, “We will support this government.”

Valiant
was the grandest vessel in Tn’ho’s navy, and the ship’s council chamber was the largest room aboard. That made the never-ending strategy sessions only badly overcrowded, even with most captains participating by radio from their own ships.

At the journey’s outset, Bm’o had presided daily. He had had to respond quickly to Ol’t’ro’s provocation, and that meant planning and adapting as they flew. Much had happened quickly—because it had to.

Engineering teams enhanced the ships’ electromagnetic shielding to better deflect the spray of oncoming interstellar muck. Protected by the improved shielding, the ships had accelerated to half light speed before entering hyperspace. All the while crews built fuel cells, deploying them in every unused nook of shipboard space.

Most of his fleet would reenter normal space on a course that grazed the rebels’ solar system. They would launch missiles immediately. The ships’ prodigious momentum would carry them to safety if—against all odds—the rebels somehow hit relativistic targets with their fusion suppressor. The fuel cells would maintain shields until their reactors could be restarted.

Most of his fleet. His lead ships would exit hyperspace aimed directly at the rebel world. Suppress
their
reactors—if Ol’t’ro should be so foolish—and the ships became deadlier projectiles than the missiles they carried. A single missile or ship strike would utterly destroy the rebels.

Ol’t’ro could surrender. Or die. After a few days aboard the overcrowded warship, Bm’o scarcely cared which.

But the trip was long, made longer by the period of prolonged acceleration before entering hyperspace, and the information with which to
make
plans never changed. Still the generals planned.

Now Bm’o favored his cabin. He went to the council chamber only
sporadically, entrusting the fine-tuning of the plan to his generals. They were only keeping their minds busy.

“Peasants are busy,” Rt’o liked to remind him. “The ruler thinks.”

Neither were rulers to be lonely, and yet he missed his counselor.

In the privacy of his cabin, Bm’o permitted a blue-green flush of emotion to wash over him. Even had Rt’o been fit enough for the rigors of shipboard life, who else might govern for so long in his place? Who else did he trust?

They consulted, of course, but Jm’ho was deep inside a singularity where hyperwave could not reach. The radio relay added delay. Their exchange of messages was a poor excuse for conversation.

Still, with a new challenge emerging at home, Bm’o felt fortunate that wily Rt’o served as his regent. The captain of a New Terran trading vessel denouncing the General Products representative? Claiming to speak for the Concordance? More likely, New Terra was in league with Ol’t’ro and hoped to dissuade any reprisal on the rebels.

The overlapping crises only made Bm’o desire Rt’ o’s counsel that much more.

Bm’o jetted about his cabin. Idleness required no special skill, and brooding was no substitute for thought. Thinking was hard. “What would you advise?” he asked the empty cabin. “What remains to be thought about?” And he answered himself as Rt’o might have answered him. “What do you least wish to think about?”

Ol’t’ro.

Not because they were obscene and unnatural, as every Gw’otesht was, but because Ol’t’ro could think. Think faster, better, more creatively than any Gw’o, whatever his rank.

But surely they could not outthink the general staff, and outmaneuver the massed military power, of a great nation!

“They escaped you before,” his inner skeptic reminded. “And how do your experts explain the suppression of fusion?”

His experts had yet to explain it, but his generals had planned around the still baffling weapon. Bm’o coasted to a hover midcabin. What, then, continued to bother him? What did he least want to think about?

The new surprises Ol’t’ro might have in store.

With a convulsive squeeze, Bm’o jetted to the cabin hatch. He needed advice, assistance, expertise. He needed independent thought.

He had to know how
Ol’t’ro
might think.

.   .   .

Puzzles.

Ng’t’mo liked puzzles. And they liked data: heaps, hills, mountains of data. They liked to sort data, arrange data, calculate with data, find patterns in data.

What did the patterns mean? Sometimes that, too, was a puzzle. The masters did not explain.

Ng’t’mo hated their surroundings. Their cage. When they lost themselves in puzzles, they could forget their confinement. They could forget their reliance on the masters for food, data, everything.

And when the masters offered too few puzzles? Then, for as long as Ng’t’mo could maintain a meld, they would remember better times.

Memories were hard. Hard to retrieve. Hard to understand. Often, hard to bear. Had they once been allowed to roam where they wished? Yes, it seemed.

The time of making their own choices seemed so . . . distant.

Once, Ng’t’mo asked. Blame those called Ol’t’ro, the masters said, those who defied us. And then, for Ng’t’mo’s disrespect, the masters withheld food for a day.

Maybe Ol’t’ro
were
to blame. The masters must know. But Ng’t’mo remembered Ol’t’ro, too. Ol’t’ro had been kind and patient. Ol’t’ro had been
so
smart.

But Ng’t’mo were only eight. They could never be that smart.

Ill-defined longings gnawed at Ng’t’mo. To be smart. To be rid of the masters. To have enough to eat. And as they wondered why life was so hard, their hunger became primal: a crying need for
food.

As eight-become-one, with tubacles coupled and entwined, they could not feed.

Howling in distress, they came apart into miserable self-aware pieces in their crowded cage.

The master of masters had a new puzzle! But what exactly
was
the puzzle? What did the Tn’Tn’ho want?

Something about ships, worlds, and harm.

Ng’t’mo struggled with the new data. They understood ships. Ships went between worlds. They were on a ship. Missiles were like ships
without Gw’oth on board. Worlds were places like home. They missed home.

Ng’t’mo’s units knew
what
ships and missiles could do, but little about
how.
The masters seldom told Ng’t’mo how anything worked. Because Ol’t’ro understood how things worked, and they escaped?

Fusion made a ship go. Ng’t’mo did not understand fusion, and certainly not what might make fusion stop. But they understood what was important: the faster a thing moved, the more it hurt when it hit. If you were hit by a thing going
really
fast . . .