Destroyer of Worlds (37 page)

With sixteen minds become one, they sorted data relevant to the challenge, reviewed options, modeled the most favorable scenarios, and chose.

Ol't'ro extended a tubacle to a comm terminal. “Sigmund,” they called. “We have new thoughts about neutronium and where the Outsider ship found Alice.”

“What have you got?” Sigmund radioed back.

Neutronium being a rare and wondrous thing, assume the neutronium mass within Kobold was the object about which Alice's ship later orbited. Brennan had reconfigured the ship's navigation to use a moving reference point, about which the ship would take up orbit. Kobold itself was the logical reference point—if Kobold was moving.

Ol't'ro kept it simple. “The remains of Kobold are the moving reference point.”

“The remains.” Sigmund thought about that for a while. “Collapsed into the neutronium. Alice saw Kobold ‘blinking out.' Where does the motion come in?”

Ol't'ro said, “Remember the ring on which Alice, Roy, and Brennan lived. That is what fell into the central object. I considered the possibility that all the mass did not fall symmetrically. Brennan's artificial-gravity technology could have sped up or delayed parts of the collapse.”

“This is too esoteric for an accountant,” Sigmund said. He paged Kirsten, refusing to continue until she joined the link.

Kirsten caught up quickly. “An asymmetric collapse. To what purpose?”

“If we are correct”—false modesty for some reason impressed humans—“to synchronize the incremental impacts to the central mass's rotation.”

“I don't see that,” she said. “Conservation of energy, momentum, and angular momentum all apply. The net change to the collapsed object's motion can't exceed the energy used by the gravity generators.”

Their own components might not have seen the subtlety, Ol't'ro admitted to themselves. They did not fault the humans. “The gravitational collapse initiates a much more energetic process, as matter falls into that central mass.”

“Eight million gees at the surface,” Sigmund remembered. “That's what Alice quoted of Brennan. How fast is stuff from the ring going when it hits?”

Kirsten said, “Relativistic, certainly. And if that's right—”

“Atomic explosions,” Ol't'ro confirmed, “even atoms torn apart.
That
is why Brennan might choose to synchronize the ring's collapse. A controlled input to one spot. It would turn Kobold, very briefly, into an atomic rocket.”

“Tanj,” Sigmund said softly. “An atomic rocket. Thus making Kobold the moving reference point that overtook Alice's ship, and around which the singleship took orbit. After she was safely in stasis, of course.”

“So it appears,” Ol't'ro agreed. Modestly, again.

Sigmund broke a lengthening silence. “And then carried her ship at high speeds into deep space, where Twenty-three eventually found it. Ol't'ro, as always, you have been most helpful.”

“We are glad to have been of service, Sigmund.” Now, and into the future.

 

Sigmund trudged dutifully on the relax-room treadmill. In Eric's latest effort at energy conservation, gravity had been dialed down to forty percent across most of the ship. Jeeves did not know how quickly bone and muscle mass deteriorated in these conditions—only that they would. The subject rated only a passing mention in his database, more a warning than useful guidance.

They had consulted doctors on New Terra. Some thought exercise might slow the deterioration, reasoning from first principles. There was no relevant data. New Terran spaceflight built on Concordance experience, and Puppeteers had had artificial gravity for eons.

So Sigmund kept walking. It kept him warm and it couldn't hurt—at least while bungee-corded to the equipment—whereas jogging down the ship's corridors was an invitation to a concussion. They kept Thssthfok's cell at full gravity because he
didn't
have exercise gear.

A few more days until New Terra. Too short a time to merit bringing the singleship into the cargo hold that Thssthfok no longer occupied—even if Eric could vouch for the hold's structural integrity after
whatever
it was Thssthfok's gadget did.

A few more days until New Terra. Sigmund anticipated and dreaded homecoming in equal parts, no closer to a plan for defending home and loved ones than before this long detour to Ship Twenty-three.

The treadmill program kicked up a notch, and Sigmund began to jog. No closer? Finagle, he felt farther than ever from an answer. Alice's appearance brought more questions than answers.

Unless we somehow pry the location of Earth from her subconscious.

His thoughts refused to converge. Once home meant Earth, a world he could no longer even find. Now home was New Terra. And as Alice had reawakened in Sigmund's memories, Home was also a world long ago settled
by Earth. Settled twice, as Sigmund remembered, but Alice knew nothing about a colony there having failed.

He sipped water from a drink bulb as he trudged. Home, in all its meanings. Danger. Too long in space. Neutronium.

And Beowulf Shaeffer. Too many of these threads came together, somehow, with the ubiquitous xenophile starship pilot who had figured in many of Sigmund's ARM investigations. Shaeffer had more lives than a cat—another metaphor that meant nothing on New Terra but that uselessly cluttered Sigmund's mind.

He stumbled under a rush of memories. He had
died
, a hole blasted through his chest, the last time he spoke with Beowulf. Not Bey's doing—nor anything Sigmund could bear to dwell upon. Nessus had whisked Sigmund away and saved him.

Sigmund's mind skittered off to a happier association: a long journey, with Bey and Carlos Wu for company—

Only that encounter, too, had ended disastrously, with Sigmund's companions lying critically wounded in autodocs and Sigmund left alone to pilot their crippled ship. He was raving mad when rescuers boarded his vessel. Another memory Sigmund would not have missed.

So why
was
Beowulf on Sigmund's mind? The last he knew, Carlos was on Home and Bey was en route, both under assumed names.

Home . . . something about Home. But what?

Outsiders, Pak, and Gw'oth group minds—and only Sigmund with his damaged brain to make sense of it.

But he
wasn't
alone. Alice claimed to be a trained investigator. And if she had lied about being a goldskin? That, too, would be worth uncovering.

He lobbed the drink bulb into the sink to free a hand and pulled out his pocket comp. “Alice. Where are you?”

“In my cabin,” she answered. “Can I help you with something?”

“Yes, please.” But where? He was sick of this room and endless exercise. “I'll swing by your cabin.”

He found her outside her cabin door, looking. . . eager. At the chance to be useful, Sigmund supposed. He added insensitive neglect to the growing list of his failings. “How are you doing, Alice?”

“As well as can be expected.”

“And how well is that?” he asked.

She shrugged. “What can I do for you?”

He saw she wore sticky slippers. He did, too. “Let's take a walk.” They circled half the deck before Sigmund decided where to start. She moved in the low gravity with an effortless grace he could only envy. A Belter, definitely. He sighed. “Something's nagging at me, but I don't know what. I need someone skilled to get it out of me.”

“All right,” she said, then let the silence stretch.

Good technique. “The Home colony,” he began. “Doing well in your time?”

“Home was . . . homey. Earth-like, compared to most of the interstellar colonies. To the extent I paid attention, Home was one of the thriving settlements.”

“It's history for me”—Alice flinched at his reminder—“but the first colony on Home failed. A few million people, gone. The resettlement did fine.”

“Why did the first colony fail?”

“I'm not sure.” Sigmund paused to consider his own answer. There were many ways not to know. This gap lacked the violated feeling of Nessus' tampering. Then had he simply forgotten? Had he dismissed the topic as dry, dead history, back when he could easily have learned it? Was the knowledge there but buried, too long gone from his attention? He probed his ignorance, like a tongue worrying a chipped tooth. “Let me rephrase. I believe no one knows for sure.”

She frowned. “So no survivors out of a population of millions, and no records. How is that possible?”

How, indeed? “Either a plague or a civil war,” he said.

A Kzinti raid was an improbable third option, this being around the time Kzinti first wandered into human space. But Kzinti would have taken slaves (and prey!) rather than obliterate the place and move on.

The first known Kzinti encounter was in. . . 2366, after Alice's time. Sigmund pushed the ratcats from his thoughts. “One of the colony's last messages mentioned the outbreak of an unfamiliar illness. As you say, Home was the most Earth-like of colonies. Maybe the native germs were more Earth-like, too. So assume a deadly mutation. Without hosts, the bug, too, went extinct.”

“Great options, Sigmund. A plague with one hundred percent fatalities. Or a planetary population driven to exterminate themselves. And this world still got resettled?”

His answers sounded stupid. This side of a debrief wasn't fun. It
was
helpful. Truth dangled just beyond Sigmund's reach. “A shipload of new settlers was well on its way before anyone heard Home's call for help.”

“So the original colony failed before hyperwave and hyperdrive.”

“Right.” For a while the only sounds were the
zzp
-
zzp
of sticky slippers as they walked. “As I said, one of their last messages mentioned an illness. The new settlers found no trace.”

“And no human remains to study?” Alice said skeptically. “No records?”

In bits and pieces, under her skillful guidance, more ancient history came back to Sigmund. “There were remains: very thoroughly cremated.” Fire: the last resort of medical helplessness. Like something from the Middle Ages.

Alice led the way, turning randomly at cross corridors. Every bulkhead showed the drab gray translucence of powered-down digital wallpaper. They could be anywhere aboard the ship, and it was very disorienting.

Disoriented subjects tended to blurt out things. Alice knew her stuff, Sigmund decided.

“So who burnt the final victims?” she asked.

“The colony was a mess,” Sigmund recalled. “Towns burned or blown up. Equipment unaccounted for. The bottom line remains: no bodies, no survivors, no viable computer records.

“The new arrivals had expected to find a thriving civilization. Instead, they had to build from scratch. They had far more urgent tasks than forensics, and ARM experts were light-years away.”

“Complete destruction? No recoverable trace of a pathogen? Come
on
, Sigmund.”

She was only making him face facts he already knew. The lost colony had never bothered him. Why did it gnaw at him now?

That was the wrong question. What did he know now he had not known before?
Almost
, he had it. He plodded down the corridor, his mind racing.

Alice said, “It doesn't sound like accidental destruction. It sounds like a war.”

War
had a bitter quality in her mouth. She came from a golden age. After humans had learned to live reasonably peacefully together. Before the Kzinti showed up and obliterated that way of life. A golden age . . .

Brennan's doing, somehow?

Tanj! He had to focus. “Then maybe not an accidental plague. If the pathogen was military. . .”

She turned another corner. In the near freezing corridors, their breath hung in white clouds.

Sigmund could imagine battles between towns with an untreatable plague and towns trying to stay isolated—or to burn out the contagion. He could imagine terrified people trying to break quarantine. He could imagine survivors cobbling together ships and trying to escape. He could imagine a
lot
of things. Where was this getting them?

After Alice's time. Well before his. “Before hyperwave,” he said wonderingly. “The Outsiders came upon humans soon after your time. In . . . 2409. Near the colony We Made It.” And by meeting humans before Kzinti, the encounter turned the course of the war. “A few years later, every colony had a hyperwave radio buoy.”

They came to a stairwell. Alice pulled open the hatch and started down a level. “2409. That's getting close to my time.”

That
was what bothered him. Bothered? No, intrigued. “You said Home colony was about eleven light-years from Earth. Right?”

“Right,” she said.

“Suppose Brennan and Truesdale went from Kobold to Home. They can't beat light speed. They have to accelerate and decelerate. When would they reach Home?”

“They were going to Wunderland, Sigmund.”

“They didn't arrive there.” Probably because Brennan lied to Alice about his destination, lest she be found and tell someone. No need to rub her face in that. “Maybe they saw something that made them change course. When would they get to Home?”

She opened the hatch onto another deck and gestured Sigmund through. “A protector built that ship. You tell me how fast it went.”

“It would've been a ramscoop, Alice. Phssthpok came by ramscoop, and in your time crew-rated ramscoops were the latest technology.” Centuries earlier the
Long Pass
had been a crewed ramscoop. With
Long Pass
's disappearance, ramscoops had had their crew rating pulled. That was yet more dark history he needed to share with her. But not today. “When Thssthfok left Pakhome, his people still used ramscoops.”

She considered. “Fine. Say that Roy and Brennan leave Kobold in
2341. That's eleven years at light speed to Home. Add a year or two more cruising time because they can't quite reach light speed. Add another year or so for accelerating and decelerating. They'd get to Home in the 2350s.”