Betrayer of Worlds (42 page)

“As you say.” The guilt was almost more than Nessus could bear. But with a small lie, at the cost of a bit more loneliness, he could ease Louis’s suffering. “I came to tell you, it is time.”

Louis looked at his meal, grimaced, and stood. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

They walked in silence to the cargo bay in which stood the Carlos Wu autodoc. With nanotech precision, it had recorded Louis’s pre-adventure engrams. It was the ideal device to do what must now be done.

Louis raised the dome and disrobed. “Nessus . . .”

“Yes, Louis?”

“You have been a good and true friend. Remember that for both of us, because soon I won’t be able.” Climbing inside the intensive-care cavity, he paused. “If somehow I can make things better, somehow atone for all that has happened . . . come get me. Use me.”

“You have been a true friend to me, as well. Now, please lie down.”

Louis lay flat and hit the activation button. As the dome closed, he said, softly, “Good-bye.”

Nessus induced sedation and initiated the memory modification routines. Then—even though at least forty days remained before he and Louis would part ways—Nessus set off, lonelier than ever, to finish his final preparations.

And once Louis was sent on his way? Other than staying far from the Fleet and New Terra, Nessus had no idea.

Nessus paused in the doorway to look back. “Until we meet again, my friend.”

With a struggle, Louis Wu opened his eyes. He saw a wall of instruments. He closed his eyes to try again, and forgot what he was doing.

When next he opened his eyes—much later, to judge from the aching ear and the kink in his neck—the instruments remained sideways. He was clearheaded enough this time to notice his head was down on a shelf. Whatever this was, he was studying it sideways. As through a fog, laughing at himself, he sat up.

Too fast. His head began to spin and he almost threw up. The room went dark. . . .

The next time Louis woke, his thoughts were clearer. Cautiously, he opened his eyes. Navigational instruments. At the center of the console, an inert mass pointer. Make that a pilot’s console. The “room,” tiny though it was, was the bridge of a starship!

“Let’s find some hair of the dog that bit me,” Louis muttered. The urge seemed more learned than a bodily craving. Odd. Usually, it worked the other way around. He searched the drawers under the console shelf for emergency medical supplies. He eventually found bandages and antiseptics. No painkillers.

Where was the crew?

He got up, gingerly, from his seat: a pilot’s crash couch. He barely had space to turn around. When he managed, intending to leave the bridge and find the crew, he found only two narrow hatches. The first was for a tiny closet that held a pressure suit. The suit looked like it would fit him. The second hatch opened into a cupboard-sized room that apparently served for sleeping, eating, recreation, hygiene, and exercise. The access panel in the multipurpose room’s rear wall revealed a hyperdrive shunt, thrusters,
cabin-gravity generator, life-support gear, and a fusion reactor. As far as he could tell, the ship had only the two small cabins.

Louis had never heard of such a compact starship.

Somehow,
he
was the crew.

Every alcoholic, painkiller, and recreational-drug option on the synthesizer had, inexplicably, been disabled. Tanj, but his thoughts were fuzzy! Before crashing from his last fix, he must have jiggered the synthesizer so he couldn’t hit again. A workable substitute for willpower. He had to settle for a bulb of strong coffee. He returned to the bridge, sat, and let the caffeine do its job.

This was a one-person ship. He was the one person. So where was the ship?

According to the navigational instruments he was nowhere near
anything
familiar. Twenty light-years from . . . he stopped to think what he last remembered. Wunderland. Twenty light-years from here!

“What the tanj are you doing, Louis, two months or more from Wunder—”

His name was Nathan. Why was he calling himself Louis?

Louis Wu
.

That was right. He was sure, somehow. Another long-lost memory recovered from a drug haze? Straining, he thought he remembered an orphanage. And an older sister!

Whatever. He
was
once Louis Wu. And since Wunderland’s aristos wanted Nathan Graynor, it was time for a change of names.

This would make more sense if he remembered planning to change names. How long had he been on the pills before he cut himself off? How long until the last of the drugs was out of his system?

He struggled to focus. There had to be a way to make sense of being alone, in a very expensive ship, in the middle of nowhere. The scattered images he retrieved almost seemed like someone else’s memories. But that was nonsense, his mind on drugs.

Step by step, he connected the dots. Smuggling med supplies to Wunderland. Shot down. Rescued by the rebels. Wounded during the rebel ambush. Waking in the makeshift hospital.

After that, things got fuzzy. The pills, of course. Way, way too many pills. After the ambush, he had only nebulous, almost secondhand memories. Fled
the rebel camp. Made his way through dense jungle to a city. Had the . . . surgery?

Another rush of not-quite memories. Louis went to the other cabin and, his hand shaking, found a mirror. He looked about twenty years old!

A rebel sympathizer: that was it. Now Louis remembered: a cosmetic surgeon had helped. That, and given Louis a dose of boosterspice. A really potent batch, apparently.

He returned to his reconstruction. Addiction. Flee the rebel camp. Surgery. And . . .

And steal this ship!

Louis laughed. The aristos were leeches. Whatever they owned, they had effectively stolen first. Louis’s conscience was clear, and it would remain clear when he sold this amazing little ship—the ultimate singleship—to some wealthy Belter. For an obscene amount of money.

With that cheerful thought, Louis set to work synthing a hearty meal.

Stars sparkled in his view ports as Louis laid in a course for Sol system. Two months in hyperspace, plus however many normal-space sanity breaks he decided to take. Two months and a bit until he sold this ship. Two months and a bit until he settled into a mundane, comfortable existence.

He looked at his instruments. He looked out the view ports at the unblinking stars, and the patterns reminded him where he was.

He reentered his course, on a heading straight away from Sol.

After everything he had been through, surely he deserved an adventure he would actually remember.

Larry Niven has been a published writer since 1964. He has written science fiction, fantasy, long and short fiction, nonfiction, children’s television, comic books, and stranger stuff. His books, including many collaborations, number somewhere around sixty. He lives in Chatsworth, California, with Marilyn, his wife since 1969.

Edward M. Lerner worked in high tech for thirty years, as everything from engineer to senior vice president. He writes hard SF, from near-future techno-thrillers, most recently
Fools’ Experiments
and
Small Miracles
, to far-future space epics like the Fleet of Worlds series with Larry. Ed lives in Virginia with his wife, Ruth.