Betrayer of Worlds (41 page)

A door flew open as a white-coated technician bustled out. Nessus glimpsed several dartlike spaceships in a small hangar.

Sigmund saw Nessus’ heads swivel. “One-person ships, hyperdrive-equipped. They’re pretty handy.”

“I would think so,” Nessus said. Such little ships would be hard to detect, even without the stealthing gear they doubtless carried. Useful for spying on the Fleet. With Achilles the Hindmost, more useful than ever.

Turning a corner they came to another closed door. Sigmund palmed the access panel and the lock clicked. Sigmund waved Nessus inside, where the wall displays showed only terrestrial-style forest. “My office.”

Nessus saw a Citizen bench, but chose to stand. “Times are bad,” he said to Sigmund. “Thank you for meeting with me.”

“Bad times are
why
I’m meeting with you. This is the most secure room on New Terra. What’s on your mind?”

Abandoning Baedeker, but that did not concern Sigmund. “I have important technology that needs safeguarding.”

Sigmund nodded. “The Pak Library and what, from the description I’ve heard, must be the Carlos Wu autodoc.”

“I have no secrets, do I?”

“Not if I am doing my job properly.”

“So will you protect them, Sigmund?”

“What are your terms?”

“Do not disclose that New Terra has these items. I ask this for your safety as well as my own purposes. Promise to return the items and all that you have learned from them when the rightful government returns to Hearth. Until that government returns, share what you learn only with me. And I will need a ship or . . . wait”—sudden thought—“make that two ships.”

“Generous terms. New Terra will keep copies of everything, of course.”

Nessus had never imagined otherwise, not was there any way to prevent it. “Agreed.”

“I understand the rightful government. That’s Baedeker.” Sigmund’s brow furrowed. “I’m not sure I understand the
current
government on Hearth. Is that Achilles? Or does . . . someone . . . rule from behind the new Hindmost?”

Nessus’ hoof scraped the hard floor. He wondered—and worried—too. Removing Achilles would be struggle enough. What if the
Gw’oth
secretly ruled? “Truly, I wish I understood. Do you accept my terms?”

And what will I do if you refuse? Seize
Addison
and its cargo anyway? Perhaps Sigmund already had.

“I accept,” Sigmund said.

Inside the melding chamber, at the center of
Mighty Current,
within the massive structure that housed Nature Preserve Five’s planetary drive—where none dared even to approach—Ol’t’ro considered:

Rebirth for Kl’mo colony under Ng’t’mo’s protection.

Bm’o’s inevitable struggles, after his long absence, to reassert his authority on Jm’ho.

The respite that the Tn’Tn’ho’s problems would give the colony.

The wealth of knowledge in Concordance archives, from nanotechnology to stepping discs, from starseed lures to computers, and much more they had yet even to sample.

How best to resource and guide millions of Citizen scientists and engineers.

Satisfaction with all that they had accomplished, with minimal loss of life to
any
species.

The wondrous plaything that was Voice, and the pleasurable prospect of future tinkering with the artificial intelligence.

The Chiron persona they had given Voice to monitor and interact with Citizens.

Achilles laboring, even while Ol’t’ro pondered, to restore order among the Citizens.

Reluctantly, Ol’t’ro diverted a bit of their attention through Chiron to the cabinet meeting on Hearth. . . .

“. . . resources with which to restore public confidence,” Hermes sang in conclusion. He was the newly appointed Minister of Information. “Naturally that must be our first priority.”

If the conclusion is natural, Achilles thought, why does making the case require so long a tune? Letting the discussion drone on, he left his place at the end of the long oval table to fill a plate from the grains bar on the sideboard. He had loathed cabinet meetings as a minister; the duty was even more onerous as Hindmost.

He had worked so long to be here. And everything was as glorious as he had imagined—at first. The mass adoration at his triumphant return. The spectacular mountainside residence. The fawning servants. The adulation of his acolytes. But another future stretched out before him, an era of endless meetings, bureaucratic trivia, and mind-numbing detail.

“Safety and order beget confidence,” Themis sang. His charge was the Department of Public Safety. “If we were to announce new resources for public safety—”

“
True
safety will beget confidence,” Vesta chided. In the new government, he continued to lead Clandestine Directorate. “Our priority must be stronger defenses. And we must search for ways to reconstruct the valuable archives Nessus destroyed.”

Curse Nessus, Achilles thought. And Louis Wu, too. The jail break was only Wu’s latest outrage.

Meanwhile, the squabbling for resources continued. The Minister of Industry proposed to create new jobs for those needing distraction. To the
same end, the Minister of Education advocated new learning opportunities. The Minister of Housing sought resources for an apartment-to-apartment search for the billions of Citizens still unaccounted for. The Minister of Agriculture sang urgently about returning grain shipments to normal. The Minister of Transportation asked how and when the stolen grain ships would be repatriated from New Terra.

“We will get those ships back,” Achilles chanted. “Vesta, I want ideas how to motivate New Terra to—”

“That is a bad idea,” Chiron sang flatly.

The new Minister of Science participated by hologram and these were his first notes of the meeting. Around the table, necks wriggled sinuously in surprise. Who was this newcomer, this unknown, to contradict the Hindmost so bluntly?

But
Achilles
knew. His secret master beyond the hologram, behind the artificial intelligence, must be obeyed. “Back to the matter of priorities,” Achilles sang mildly.

Around the table, ministers and subministers glanced at Chiron with curiosity and sudden respect.

Achilles swallowed his rage. “Hermes, we should hear more about your proposal.”

And while the Minister of Information sang on and on, Achilles let his thoughts drift to matters that could transpire beneath Ol’t’ro’s notice. Truly urgent matters. Matters that would fill
him
with happiness. He would find Nessus and Louis Wu.

And they would suffer as greatly as Baedeker now suffered.

Awakened in the middle of the night, hastily dressed, a few personal items crammed into his pockets, Louis went with a squad of stern-faced men and women to . . . he did not know where. Someplace nondescript. Wall displays gave no clues to his location. His abductors wore ordinary clothes but bore themselves like soldiers. For lack of a better term, Louis decided he was in a safe house. Had he been allowed to keep his pocket comp, he guessed it would not operate any of the stepping discs here.

Neither in the hotel room from which he had been taken nor in this blandly enigmatic confinement had his captors answered any question beyond, “I am not allowed to discuss that.” He found the living room, lay down on the too-short sofa, and waited for someone who would explain.

Something woke Louis. Rustling. Two of his captors, springing to attention. Sigmund Ausfaller striding into the room. “Dismissed,” Sigmund said, and the soldiers left.

“What the tanj?” Louis demanded, sitting up. “After all I’ve done for New Terra, you’re
arresting
me?”

“Protective custody. I’m truly sorry.” Sigmund sat on the leather ottoman across the room. “There was no time to argue.”

“I’m here now. How about explaining?”

“The short version? There is a bounty on your head, a fortune if you’re killed and a lot more if you are delivered alive. The same for Nessus.”

“Achilles.”

“Achilles,” Sigmund agreed. “He’s
not
happy with you two. And trust me, the word is out. Every criminal, hard-luck case, and lowlife on the planet is looking for you.”

“You plan to lock me in this—wherever I am—forever? That’s unacceptable, Sigmund.”

Louis had become pretty good at taking care of himself. He would take his chances. If he had to, he would learn to put up with bodyguards. Eventually Alice would come home and—

“Tanj! Alice. The baby.”

“Leverage to get at you,” Sigmund said. “You would
all
have to hide. And in time they’ll still find you.”

For the first time since emerging from the autodoc on
Aegis,
Louis felt his true age. Felt ancient. Felt the weight of worlds on his shoulders. At the same time the confusion of his childhood crashed down on him. “I can’t abandon my own child. I won’t do it.”

Sigmund said, looking miserable, “A child who never knew you won’t miss you. All that anyone on New Terra knows about you and Alice is that she threw you out. If you never see her again . . .”

“Then no one need ever know it
is
my child,” Louis completed unhappily.

“You know what you have to do,” Sigmund said. “I’m sorry. Truly.”

Leave New Terra. “Then Alice leaves with me.” Louis swallowed hard. “If she’ll come, that is.”

Sigmund stood, crammed his hands in his pockets, and began to pace. “Forget for a moment that Alice will be gone for months and you are in danger
now.
You and anyone with the bad fortune to be near you when the
shooting starts. Do you have any idea what you would be asking Alice to give up?

“Louis, I hate this, I really do, but there are things you need to know. You think you and Alice love one another. Maybe you do. But apart from hyperspace conversations, you’ve known her for only a few months. So how much about her
do
you know?”

“Who the hell are you to judge—”

“Be quiet and listen,” Sigmund barked. “Alice and I have been friends for over a century. Did you know I pulled her out of stasis, from a derelict ship the Outsiders had been carrying around for even longer? No? Then don’t be so sure you know everything about her.

“She woke up to a new life here—pregnant by a lover torn from her old life. I watched her get past that, and it wasn’t quick or easy or pleasant. Yet for the sake of the short time you two have had together, you would ask her to leave children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.”

Could Louis ask Alice to give up her whole life on New Terra? To go where? Alone, into the unknown. Or back to Known Space, their memories wiped. They would not even know each other. . . .

Louis shuddered. Every choice was impossible. But one choice was hardest only on him. He said, “It’s time for me to go home. Alone. Help me contact Nessus.”

No matter the urgency of the mission, Alice’s life had narrowed into dull routine: med check in the autodoc; stasis; message-queue review; repeat. She did not expect anything consequential to happen until she reached the Gw’oth home system.

And then the hyperwave message from Sigmund arrived, and within it the recording from Louis.

Louis was gone forever.

And Sigmund had encouraged Louis. For her good. For the baby’s good.
Damn
them both.
Damn
their impeccable logic. Didn’t
she
deserve any say? She was simultaneously enraged, touched, and heartbroken.

Somewhere, she knew, Louis must be suffering as she did. She suddenly could not bear to be alone. She left her cabin, trembling.

A passing crewman stopped and stared. “Are you all right?”

She glanced down at her belly, her pregnancy beginning to show. At Louis’s baby.

“No,” Alice said, “but I will be.”

Nessus plodded up and down the stairways and curved corridors of his all-but-empty, yet-to-be-named, new ship. Plumes of pheromones trailed in his wake. Virtual crowds, murmuring unintelligibly, kept pace in the wallpaper. Neither comforted him. Stepping discs would have whisked him anywhere aboard, but even if he had had a destination in mind, why bother to save a few paces? Whole empty years stretched before him, soon with only a Jeeves for company.

So far they had barely spoken. Jeeves was an everyday reminder of Voice and his uncertain fate. An everyday rebuke. Another weight on Nessus’ conscience. . . .

He discovered Louis in the relax room, seated at the fold-down table, an untouched meal in front of him. He did not look up.

Nessus said, “Just you and me. It seems like old times.”

“I’m lousy company. Sorry.” Louis slid away his plate. “I’m not happy how things turned out, Nessus. Not at all.”

The Concordance, betrayed. Both their lives shattered, and their loves abandoned. Their mere presence a lure for Achilles’ wrath, an intolerable danger to everyone and everything they held dear. No sane being
could
be happy. “I set us an impossible task, Louis.”

“We completed several impossible tasks. Every accomplishment made matters worse.” Louis laughed bitterly. “The law of unintended consequences is harsh.”