Betrayer of Worlds (20 page)

More pain for Ausfaller than anyone else, Louis sensed. What had Feather been to the ARM? “Why are you telling me this . . . Sigmund?”

“The Pak Library. I need you to trust me enough not to blindly trust Nessus. I need you to consider the implications on
this
world of your actions, and of his. And if you can bring yourself to do it, I would like you to keep me in the loop.”

“I see no reason to trust
anyone
at this point,” Louis snapped.

Ausfaller offered his hand. “That’s good enough for now.”

Unable to sleep, Louis groped past the edge of the sleeper field for the touchpoint. He was on his feet, tapping the field
ON
again, faster than Alice could stir. His bare feet made no sound as he crept to the door. He paused in the doorway for a glimpse of her by the dim glow of the hall lamp. Tanj, but she was beautiful.

That was the only thing he
knew.

His mind was tied in knots by an eerie realization: Alice, Sigmund, and he were alike. They all had their demons. They all struggled with the burdens of worlds. Strange twists of fate had led them here: far from home, lost. Was Alice—or even Sigmund?—less worthy of forgiveness than he?

Louis tiptoed back to the bedroom, just to cuddle. Whatever their flaws, whatever the dawn would bring, Louis and Alice needed each other tonight.

.   .   .

Alice emerged from the bedroom, yawning. “You’re up early.”

“Uh-huh,” Louis said. He had linked the living-room wallpaper to a beach camera, and all around them virtual waves broke on long expanses of bone-white sand. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

She stood next to him and took his hand. “The waves are so peaceful.”

When his mind could grapple no longer with human frailties and second chances, it had woken up to the other matter troubling him: Great North Bay. And so, with the audio muted, he had stared for an hour at the shore. In that time the tide had surged far up the beach.

“New Terra has no moon,” Louis said softly. “It’s one world, all alone in space. How can it have tides?”

She squeezed his hand. “A gift from Baedeker, long before he became Hindmost. He found a way to make the planetary drive wobble
just
a bit. It simulates the tides New Terra had as one world among the Fleet of Worlds.”

“A Puppeteer gift? I don’t know what to say.”

“Neither did Sigmund.” On four walls, sea and sand sparkled under the brilliance of a dozen suns. A comber, like quicksilver, swirled and splashed up the beach. For a time Alice seemed lost in the beauty. Then she grinned, amusement lighting her eyes. “There is nothing like a random act of kindness to screw with a paranoid’s head.”

Achilles circled the small cylinder into which his life had receded, the clop-clop-clop of his hooves offering the only sound. He had food and fresh juices, delivered four times daily; mounds of soft cushions; even, to occupy his mind, a limited-functionality pocket computer.

He ignored it all.

His cell was one seamless enclosure of General Products hull material. None of the tricks he knew for defeating the supermolecule would serve here. Nothing entered his cell, not even the food he ate or the oxygen he breathed, except by action of stepping discs. Nothing left, not even bodily waste or the carbon dioxide he exhaled, except by the action of stepping discs. Here he would remain until someone let him out. A prisoner of the state. More specifically, to judge from the great seal on the outer room’s wall, a prisoner within Clandestine Directorate—and how Nike must gloat about that.

A prisoner, too, of his thoughts, for Achilles did not know how
not
to plot and scheme.

Misappropriating, even losing, a ship? That was a trivial offense. Reckless endangerment of the Concordance? More problematical, but not without ambiguity. Much could be rationalized as policy differences, and tradition afforded a great deal of discretion to those who ventured off-world. His friends and allies throughout the government could argue foreign-affairs subtleties and raise doubts forever.

If he still had friends and allies.

For there was the final matter: the attempted murder of a Citizen, with premeditation. That was a crime against, not some abstraction like the Concordance, but the very notion of
herd.

The herd looked out, first and foremost, for itself.

Nessus had found the device left to destroy
Aegis.
He had recorded
Achilles frantically looking for the device, had captured Achilles reacting to the device dangling from Nessus’ jaw. There was no ambiguity here, no excuse of policy differences. The proof was incontrovertible, and condemnation certain.

So why had the tribunal not begun? To allow appalled followers to fade away? Perhaps. If so, the plan must be succeeding. Few had come to visit; few of them had exhibited any true loyalty. Vesta, for all his rash words during the flight to Hearth, had yet to come to see Achilles.

And maybe his enemies thought to delay the tribunal until his resolve cracked.

That
would never happen.

On his next circuit of the cell, Achilles paused to nibble at a bowl of grain mush. He scarcely noticed what he ate. It was sufficient that he eat, and exercise, and maintain his health. The tribunal
would
happen. When it did he would need his wits about him. For the herd looked out—first, foremost, and always—for itself.

As always,
he
would have to look out for
himself
.

He had been too young to understand much. A preschool outing. Thirty or so playmates gamboling in freshly mown pasture. Teachers and a few parents, his own among them, watching. The worlds high overhead, blue and white and brown, some round and others crescent. In the distance, on all sides, the warm yellow-orange glow of arcology walls. A utility vehicle of some kind, its rear deck piled with potted plants. Waving from the floater’s clear-sided cab, a park worker dressed in protective coveralls.

He remembered a kickball gone astray, bouncing into the pasture. He remembered cantering after the ball, and happy shrieking—

And the shrieks turning to horror.

His heads had swiveled frantically. What could be wrong?

In the clear-sided cab, the driver had slumped over the controls. The floater swerved—straight at him!

Shaking with fright, he took a tentative step to the right. The runaway floater wobbled and weaved, still coming toward him. Somehow he managed several quick steps to the left.

Weaving and wobbling, impossible to predict, the floater sped closer. In hindsight, the erratic movements came of cargo shifting and from the dying driver’s spasms.

Then
it was all too obvious that the floater was stalking him.

He remembered squealing, paralyzed with fear, his hearts pounding in his chest. He remembered the desire, the urge, the
need
to collapse, to embrace the ground, to hide in a tightly rolled ball—but the heavily laden vehicle hovered low to the ground. It would crush him, not float over him.

Familiar voices: playmates, friends, the teacher, the parents. And
his
parents! Yodeling distress. Urging him to run. Ululating in fear and dread.

As rooted to the spot as he.

Somehow he broke the spell of fear. He took a step. And another. And another. He built up speed and, as the floater was almost upon him, toppled into one of the holes that had been dug for the potted shrubs waiting to be replanted.

The floater ran over him, scraping his hindquarters, parting his sparse, childish mane. A lip’s breadth lower and the floater would have shattered his cranium. He was too terrified to cry.

With a slow-motion crunch the vehicle, its motor revving, came to a halt embedded in a massive redthorn hedge. The plants’ insectivore tendrils lashed and snapped futilely at their attacker.

His playmates, keeping their distance, craned their necks to see what had become of him. None had ever seen blood before, and they howled in horror and fascination.

His parents galloped to him. “Are you all right,” a parent wailed. To this day, he could not remember which. Nor care.

No one had come while it still mattered. Not friends, teacher, or parents. No one.

And so, from the tender age of four, the lesson was deeply etched: the world was out to get him, and he could depend only on himself.

So be it.

The waiting area might comfortably have held ten or more, but Nessus had the room to himself. He synthed a portion of warm carrot juice, for it had the power to calm him.

Well, ordinarily it did.

Achilles was too dangerous to give a public trial and too well connected to simply disappear. Hence, this secret tribunal. There would be no impartial reconciler to preside, no voluminous files of precedent, no council of
herdmates to sift the evidence. Witnesses for and against Achilles would present their evidence, sing their claims, plead any extenuating circumstances. The Hindmost, bound only by mercy and the dignity of his office—and the practical constraints of politics—would render a verdict.

From the decision of the Hindmost there could be no appeal.

“We are ready,” a hidden ceiling speaker announced.

Nessus set down his drink. He took two paces to the vestibule’s lone stepping disc and reappeared in the tribunal chamber. Baedeker straddled a ceremonial bench, flanked by high-ranking officials and trusted aides: the ruling elite of the Concordance. Achilles, his posture defiant, sat opposite the Hindmost.

Nessus was too preoccupied to notice who guided him to the bench of testimony. He sat.

“Please state your name,” Baedeker sang formally.

Nessus sang his full, formal name.

“You come to give testimony about the accused?”

“I do,” Nessus responded.

“Proceed.”

Slowly, methodically, using video from
Aegis
’ security cameras, Nessus told his tale: the rescue of Achilles from the wreck of
Argo
; the recovery of the Library; Achilles’ scheme to destroy
Aegis
and its crew.

Achilles resisted at every turn—but not in the manner Nessus had expected. “I never acted alone,” Achilles intoned often, more manic and intense with every iteration. “Others knew. Others
here
knew. For the Gw’oth peril
must
be eliminated.”

The peril fomented by Achilles’ own threats against the Gw’oth. But policy toward the Gw’oth was not at issue today. If this tribunal became a policy debate, Achilles might yet go free.

Nessus replayed the video of Achilles acting to destroy
Aegis.
“And this is how you would deter the Gw’oth? By killing a Citizen?”

“We stop the Gw’oth with technology from the Library,” Achilles sang derisively. “You do still have it?”

In fact, Nessus did not. One lonely shift en route to New Terra, while Louis slept and Achilles lay immobile in stasis, Nessus had jettisoned the recovered Pak hardware. The Carlos Wu autodoc as well, with its dangerously advanced nanotechnology. The abandoned equipment carried a code-activated transponder and Nessus could recover everything easily
enough. He would—once Achilles had been found guilty and imprisoned, and his minions purged from the government. But no one here, not even Baedeker, knew of this precaution. It seemed best not to volunteer the information.

“Answer the question,” Nessus ordered.

“Others are party to my actions. Others
here.
” Achilles straightened his necks to stare down arrogantly at those who would decide his fate.

By the time his testimony was done, and the ministers’ questioning, and Achilles’ mocking rebuttals, Nessus could almost have believed
he
was the one at risk.

Vesta, wearing a formal sash of office, stepped into the large, unfurnished expanse that surrounded Achilles’ cell. Before Achilles could react, Vesta plucked a device from a pocket of the sash. There was a wriggle of lip nodes and on the tiny apparatus a green light began to blink.

“A Clandestine Directorate jammer,” Vesta said. He spoke in English, whether because any guards who might happen by were unlikely to understand him, or because the jammer left only one mouth unencumbered. “We have a short while before the jailors become suspicious.”

Because my cell is rife with sensors, Achilles completed. He had assumed that to be the case. “It is kind of you to visit.” Also, overdue.

“Your pronouncements at the tribunal . . .” Vesta shivered. “You would expose me? Denounce me?”

“I merely reminded you of your commitments.” And of the consequences if you choose not to remember them.

They stared at one another until Vesta wilted. “What would you have me do, Your Excellency?”

“On the flight to Hearth, you spoke of making an opportunity. I believe this would be a favorable moment.” Before the tribunal concludes.

Vesta’s necks drooped farther. “Fewer will help than I had hoped. There have been . . . concerns. The actions taken aboard
Aegis
. . .”

The lamp on the jammer blinked faster: they did not have much time left. Achilles kept his response simple. “I will not go alone to perform hard labor on Nature Preserve One.”