Juggler of Worlds (23 page)

CARLOS RETURNED to the institute the next two days. Two hours into the first day, with little to hear but occasional footsteps, presumably those of Jinxian museumgoers, Sigmund delegated listening to Medusa. He split his time between the shipyard and his suite at the Hilton. At least in his room Sigmund could pretend to be on Earth.

He was having lunch in his room, surfing Jinxian 3-V, when, with a chime, Medusa appeared. “Here’s a surprise,” she said. “Do you recognize the second voice?”

It was familiar, but Sigmund couldn’t quite place it. “Who is Carlos talking to?”

All the snakes stopped coiling to stare at Sigmund. “Beowulf Shaeffer.”

If only he could have placed a video bug! Alas, Carlos probably took out a new floater each day from his hotel lobby; surely he changed his clothes. A bug planted on
Carlos
had to be subcutaneous, which limited it to audio.

“Here’s the interesting part,” Medusa continued. “They know each other
really
well.”

Sigmund shivered. He had a bad feeling about this. “How well?”

“Carlos fathered the children the Fertility Board denied Beowulf.”

THE CAMELOT WAS A SPRAWLING, vaguely Escher-like jumble of boxes, and a landmark in downtown Sirius Mater. The hotel maintained one-gee gravity throughout, not only in its guest rooms. That made the Camelot’s bar the most popular watering hole among off-worlders.

Sigmund claimed a booth. Carlos was meeting him here for a drink, and to talk about the trip to Earth. And although Carlos didn’t know Sigmund
already knew, they would be talking about another passenger. Carlos had offered Bey a ride.

The two men walked into the bar together, Shaeffer towering over Wu. Sigmund stood. “Beowulf Shaeffer! How good to see you again! I believe it has been eight years or thereabouts. How have you been?”

“I lived,” Shaeffer snapped.

Carlos rubbed his hands together briskly. “Sigmund! Why did you bomb Bey’s ship?”

Sigmund blinked in feigned surprise. “Did he tell you it was
his
ship? It wasn’t. He was thinking of stealing it. I reasoned that he would not steal a ship with a hidden time bomb aboard.”

“But how did you come into it?” Carlos slid into the booth beside him. “You’re not police. You’re in the Extremely Foreign Relations Bureau.”

It’s called Alien Affairs, Sigmund thought. And I don’t need to be told where I work. Worked. Special Investigations wasn’t officially part of Alien Affairs.

Sigmund saw no advantage in volunteering information. A partial truth would suffice. “The ship belonged to General Products Corporation, which is owned by Puppeteers, not human beings.”

Carlos turned to his… friend? Ally? Coconspirator? “Bey! Shame on you.”

“Damn it! They were trying to blackmail me into a suicide mission! And Ausfaller let them get away with it!”

“Good thing they soundproof these booths,” Carlos said. “Let’s order.”

Shaeffer finally sat, looking flustered.

No one offered to explain why Shaeffer was here. Sigmund wasn’t supposed to know, so he changed the subject. “Well, Carlos, have you changed your mind about coming with me?”

“Yes, if I can take a friend,” Carlos answered.

And so the dance began, Shaeffer professing uncertainty.

Something had brought these two to Jinx. Whatever they planned, Sigmund hoped to disrupt it. Least of all did he want to leave Shaeffer behind. Unsupervised or at risk of encountering Ander—either possibility had risks. A possible third chance encounter with Ander after a second chance encounter with him? What suspicions would
that
raise? No, it was better that Shaeffer come along so Sigmund could keep an eye on him.

Shaeffer had tried to steal a warship before. Perhaps another warship could serve as bait. It wasn’t hard to steer the conversation to piracy.

“They would not take me so easily,” Sigmund declared. “
Hobo Kelly
is deceptive. It seems to be a cargo and passenger ship, but it is a warship,
armed and capable of thirty-gees acceleration.” At least that was now true, its refitting finally complete. “In normal space we can run from anything we can’t fight. We are assuming pirates, are we not? Pirates would insist on robbing a ship before they destroy it.”

Shaeffer was intrigued. “Why? Why a disguised warship? Are you
hoping
you’ll be attacked?”

“If there are actually pirates, yes, I hope to be attacked. But not when entering Sol system. We plan a substitution. A quite ordinary cargo craft will land on Earth, take on cargo of some value, and depart for Wunderland on a straight-line course. My ship will replace it before it has passed through the asteroids.”

Carlos hypothesized weird astrophysical phenomena that could precipitate ships from hyperspace. Shaeffer hypothesized more wildly yet, about hyperspace creatures eating the ships. Sigmund let them ramble, before offering, “I would be glad if you would change your mind and come with us, Mr. Shaeffer.”

“Um?” Shaeffer responded in surprise. “Are you sure you want me on the same ship with you?”

“Oh, emphatically! How else may I be sure that you have not hidden a bomb aboard?” Sigmund chuckled at his own joke. “Also, we can use a qualified pilot.”

If
Hobo Kelly
was bait, there was no benefit to Beowulf knowing Sigmund could fly his own ship. Let them think him dependent. Lying came easily, especially to these two. If he had to, Sigmund felt confident he could take either or both of his passengers—one bookish, the other a We Made It scarecrow—even without the hidden armory he always carried. It was Sigmund’s turn to prattle, flattering Shaeffer for his past exploits.

Shaeffer left the bar claiming he had to sleep on it.

Sigmund wasn’t at all surprised when Shaeffer called later that evening to accept.

Shaeffer circled Jinx on the way out. It wasn’t necessary, and Sigmund started to object—

Then Primary rose above the horizon. The sight took Sigmund’s breath away.

Shaeffer broke the silence a moment later. “Despite appearances, Primary is smaller than Jupiter. It looks bigger from here because Jinx orbits so close to it. But Primary
is
special. It masses more than Jupiter. In fact, Primary masses so much that gravity has compressed its core into degenerate matter.”

From the copilot’s crash couch, Carlos stared out the view port, grinning from ear to ear.

Shaeffer kept up his patter. “A billion years ago, give or take, this moon we call Jinx orbited much closer to Primary. That was before tidal drag moved them apart. Jinx was tidally locked then, too, of course. Primary’s gravity warped Jinx into the shape that will soon become apparent.”

The normal curvature of a receding world became anything
but
normal.

“From space,” Shaeffer went on, “this world looks like God’s Own Easter Egg. Note the Ends, bone white tinged with yellow, climbing above the atmosphere. Moving in from the poles, we see the brighter glare from rings of glittering ice fields at the limits of the atmosphere. Next come the blues of an Earth-like world, overlaid with more and more cloud as your eyes sweep inward. Finally, we reach the waist, girdled in pure white cloud. Beneath those unbroken clouds, forever hidden, lies the equatorial ocean on whose rocky shores the Bandersnatchi roam.”

Throughout his travelogue, Shaeffer’s eyes darted from instrument to instrument. His hands never left the controls.

As Jinx shrank into the distance, Sigmund had an epiphany. With a great deal of computer assistance, he thought, I can get a ship from Point A to Point B. I’m competent.

Shaeffer was a
pilot
.

FOR FIVE DAYS, allowing himself only occasional breaks, Shaeffer guided
Hobo Kelly
through the clutter that was Sirius system. The autopilot could have accomplished the same task. It had, inbound. Shaeffer preferred to fly manually and get a feel for the controls.

They still had long periods of time with nothing nearby and no piloting to be done. After they had passed the main asteroid belt, Sigmund took his shipmates for a tour. More than once their eyes widened in surprise.

Hobo Kelly
was a belly-lander, a hundred meters long and triangular in cross section. Beneath its uptilted nose were big clamshell doors for cargo. It had adequate belly jets, a big fusion motor at the tail, and a line of windows indicating cabins. It looked harmless—and that was the point. The passenger area was large enough for 40 or 50, but it held cabins for
only 4. The cabin windows they’d seen outside before boarding were holograms. Weapons take room.

Hobo Kelly
was Sigmund’s personal Trojan Horse.

The ship was richly strewn with tiny ARM sensors. Soon enough, when Sigmund was off-shift and in his cabin, Shaeffer went exploring. Medusa woke Sigmund when a hidden camera revealed Shaeffer popping the access panel that covered the controls for the concealed weapons array. Sigmund hurried back to the bridge.

Shaeffer looked up. “I thought you were asleep.”

I’m sure you did, Sigmund thought. “I couldn’t sleep.” He pointed at the open panel. “Let me walk you through what we’ve got.”

They had a lot. A big X-ray laser. Smaller laser cannon set for different frequencies. Four self-guided fusion bombs. A hidden telescope, so powerful that the ostensible ship’s telescope was only a finder for it. None of it showed from outside.

Shaeffer lit a cigarette. “I don’t know whether to be comforted or terrified. What do you expect to fight?”

Sigmund smiled. “Whatever is there, Shaeffer. Whatever is there.”

THEY TALKED about art and literature, places they’d seen, and countless other topics. They speculated endlessly about what might make ships disappear. That was unproductive; they knew no more than before the trip started. Sigmund mentioned Carlos’s spectacular undersea home, which made Carlos ask about Feather. That wound remained raw; Sigmund changed the subject.

When Carlos and Bey thought themselves in private, they talked about Sharrol Janss, and the little boy and girl Bey was so eager to get home to adopt. Sigmund had glimpsed holos through his surveillance network. Louis and Tanya were cute kids.

Bey, not Shaeffer. Alone in his cabin, Sigmund acknowledged the truth. He was losing his detachment. And they had another two weeks together before Sol system.

Bey could have children anywhere but Earth—but the woman he loved was purebred flat phobe. Sharrol
couldn’t
leave Earth. Although Bey seemed not to realize it, his friend Carlos loved her, too.

Familiarity cut both ways. Bey alluded once to the one time General Products had paid the warranty on a GP hull, then rushed to change the subject. “Did I ever tell you about the time on Gummidgy that—?”

“Right. That was on your outing in ’forty-five with Elephant,” Sigmund interrupted. Interrogation 101: Pretend you know more than you do. “The time your hull dissolved.”

“His friends call him Elephant,” Bey said coldly. “I don’t think you’re in that category.” Then he’d gone on with his Gummidgy story.

Truth be told, that was an interesting tale.

No one mentioned the riots, and for that Sigmund was grateful. The topic was too painful, for each of them in a different way. I’m as much a victim of the Fertility Laws as Bey. Sigmund thought of Feather, and his own problems. Sometimes the universe sucks.

Especially when his new friends remained his chief suspects, at least of collaborating in secret with Puppeteers.

It wasn’t long to his next shift. He gave up on sleep and headed for the bridge, where Carlos and Bey were again talking about the children. They fell silent at his appearance.

“Hi, Sigmund,” Carlos said.

“Gentlemen.” From habit, Sigmund checked the mass pointer. Nothing anywhere nearby. “What’s our topic this shift?”

“Bey’s stories,” Carlos said. “He’s got a million of them.”

Certainly Bey told the most stories. A funny thing, though: Sigmund felt no need to strangle the man. By this point outbound from Earth, Sigmund had been ready to throttle Ander.

A few of Sigmund’s stories had actually happened; two had even happened to him. An only slightly censored version of how he’d become an ARM kept their attention. He also told them almost everything about the still-unsolved theft of the Elgin Marbles, omitting only speculations about Cerberus and Puppeteers. The latter incident was a test. That neither of his passengers reacted, Sigmund decided, constituted an inconclusive pass.

Carlos told stories, too—only they mostly involved cosmological arcana or too many dimensions for anyone but Carlos to follow. Sometimes both. Carlos assured them his stories were funny.

So Carlos’s answer meant only that Bey was the glib one of the pair.

Bey stalled by lighting a cigarette—which he held between two toes. Maybe everyone from We Made It was that limber, Sigmund didn’t know, but never before this trip had he seen anyone smoke using his feet. It bugged the hell out of Sigmund. He guessed Bey enjoyed that more than the cigarette.

Sigmund played along. “Neutron star? Core explosion? Outsiders?”

Bey shot Carlos an annoyed glance.

“Don’t give me that, Bey,” Carlos said. “Sigmund and I talked about the Outsiders before you and I ever met.”