Juggler of Worlds (27 page)

Days alone, with nothing to do but brood.…

THEY SAID Sigmund was gibbering and staring at nothing, dehydrated and malnourished, when an ARM cruiser matched courses with and boarded
Hobo Kelly
. They said only occasional words and short phrases were intelligible:
neutronium. Jinx. Conspiracy. Conniving Puppeteers
. Something about mysteries to the north. And one recurring phrase—

No more spaceships
.

The hospital felt unearthly.

Sigmund strode down the corridor. Unfamiliar stimuli assailed him. Medicinal odors. Hushed tones. Pale walls and floor, the better to spot traces of dirt or … he chose not to think what else. His skin crawled. I’ve almost died a couple times, Sigmund thought. Both times an autodoc handled it. People didn’t end up in hospitals unless they were
seriously
ill.

Like Carlos.

There was conversation coming from Carlos’s room. Laughter. That sounded encouraging. Sigmund tapped on the door frame.

“Good of you to join us,” Feather said. She’d been pricklier than ever since his interstellar adventure. She knew tanj well why Sigmund refused to use transfer and—booths that he wouldn’t discuss Cerberus in front of Carlos.

Her dig was just one more way to hassle Sigmund. He ignored it, as he tried to ignore the many tubes and instruments connected to Carlos, afloat in a sleeper field. “You’re looking much better.”

“An attentive guardian helps.” Carlos’s voice rasped, and fluid gurgled in his lungs. “I’m glad that Feather is here.”

She’d arrived only a few hours before Sigmund. The hospital was in Melbourne, and teleporting beat suborbital hops every time. Carlos had been asleep in a hospital ’doc, under round-the-clock specialist supervision, for months. Cloning custom lungs took time.

“What’s the prognosis?” Sigmund asked.

“Good, I’m told.” Wheeze. “My own damn fault I’m so sick.”

“It’s Julian Forward’s fault,” Feather said protectively.

That was true enough, and everyone knew it. Never mind this wasn’t the place to be discussing Forward. Carlos knew that, too. “What do you mean, Carlos?”

Wheeze. “For starters, my so-called perfect genes didn’t do much for me. Autodoc spares are supposed to work.”

They did for most people. Carlos had nearly died in the autodoc on
Hobo Kelly
. His body had massively rejected the replacement lungs on board, and he’d burned through all the immunosuppressant meds before they had crossed Neptune’s orbit. Only drugging him into near hibernation, his vacuum-seared lungs scarcely working, had kept Carlos alive.

“Such a modest genius.” Feather patted Carlos’s arm. “Your genes are perfect for my taste.”

Had Feather set her sights on Carlos now? Sigmund wished him luck. “For starters, you said.”

“Geniuses should know how to prioritize.” Wheeze. Carlos ran splayed fingers through his thick black hair.
Carlos
at a loss for words? “Medical science hasn’t improved much in my lifetime. I’ve had ideas for years how autodocs could be made
much
better.” Wheeze.

And had you concentrated on those, rather than cosmological esoterica,
Hobo Kelly
might have carried an autodoc that could have healed you. “What kind of ideas?”

Carlos smiled wanly. “I’m not ready …” Wheeze. Cough.

“Right,” Sigmund said. “You’re not ready to talk about it.” Now Carlos could keep his secrets; they wouldn’t get anyone killed. “It’s something you can work on once you’re out of here. Have you heard when that will be?”

“Several more days.” Carlos shut his eyes, looking weary. “They’re going to pop me into a standard ’doc soon. Now that the new lungs are grown.”

“We should let you rest,” Sigmund decided. “Come on, Feather.”

Feather nodded. “Take care of yourself. We’ll be back to check on you.”

Leaving Carlos snoring softly, Sigmund and Feather went to the hospital cafeteria. Sigmund bought two coffees. “He had a close call,” Sigmund said.

“Too close.” Feather took a sip and grimaced. “You
still
don’t know how I take coffee? No cream. Earth needs to take better care of him. There aren’t enough geniuses to go around.”

Sigmund liked and respected Carlos—but he couldn’t yet trust him. Medusa had been busy since Carlos popped up on Jinx. She’d sieved through decades of e-mails, comm calls, transfer-booth records, research queries, financial transactions—of Carlos, and his closest colleagues, and their closest colleagues, and …

Sigmund’s AIde had examined and organized millions of records, terabytes of data. The result was an affinity web of enormous scope—associates and affiliations, friends and relatives and long-ago classmates, fellow investors
and former lovers—with ample room for speculation about what the connections, at various removes, of varying types, might mean. The data neither condemned nor exonerated Carlos. At the apex of Earth’s aristocracy, it seemed everyone of significance knew everyone else.

Then, as Sigmund was looking at Feather, all the pieces came together for him.

Carlos had almost died, taking his precious genes with him. He needed a bodyguard. Feather was drawn to Carlos. And Carlos seemed receptive enough to Feather’s flirting.

Sigmund had a natural spy—and an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach.

FIRST GENERAL PRODUCTS’ abrupt withdrawal and then the Fertility Law unrest… Nessus had left behind an economy in serious trouble.

He had returned, it seemed, to worse. Tumbleweeds blew across the tarmac of Mojave Spaceport, between long rows of idled spacecraft. In the days since
Aegis’
return, very few ships had taken off or landed. The public databases tantalized more than they revealed. UN censors had clamped down on something big. He had to know what.

Not to mention, he needed to distract himself.

The good news was, transfer-booth abduction still worked.

“Two years,” Sangeeta Kudrin said. She was newly dyed and coiffed, wearing a slinky black dress. Abduction had not been in her thoughts. “I had dared to hope you were gone for good. It’s Nessus, isn’t it?”

“Correct.” Two tumultuous years. Nessus wasn’t certain, or could not yet be honest with himself, what had brought him back to Human Space. He was afraid to know why Nike had been so quick to approve his departure. Nessus told himself his return was about duty. He worried endlessly whether it was about guilty secrets: his
and
Nike’s.

On the slender reed of such ambiguity rested any hopes of a future with Nike.

Unseen behind his one-way mirror, Nessus plucked at his mane. He needed to concentrate on whatever new misfortunes had befallen Earth. “I hope to make this brief.”

Sangeeta said nothing.

“You prospered during my absence,” Nessus went on. Public databases now gave her title as a UN Undersecretary, no longer a mere Deputy.

“You kidnapped me before for information. Is that why you’ve taken me now?”

“It is.” Nessus squirmed in his nest of cushions. “Information about Sigmund Ausfaller.”

However reluctantly, she complied. Once he ascertained what a pirate was, the pieces began to fall into place. The seedy and idle spaceport. Julian Forward’s failure to respond to hyperwave messages as Nessus approached Sol system. Ausfaller’s failure to follow the clues that two years ago had drawn his attention toward the galactic north.

Once Sangeeta began, the words tumbled out. “And the Jinx government is still demanding answers about Julian Forward, information Ausfaller refuses to give.” She leaned forward to whisper, “I believe Forward is dead, and that Ausfaller killed him.”

“So Ausfaller is obsessed now, wondering how Forward made neutronium,” Nessus concluded.

“Yes, damn you! Haven’t you been listening? No one knows much more. Ausfaller simply won’t talk. After he ended the pirate attacks, no one, not even the ARM Director, would dare challenge Ausfaller to reveal more than he chooses.”

Nessus pawed thoughtfully at the deck. Julian’s piracy had diverted Ausfaller from his hunt. Ausfaller had stopped Julian. Julian, the Citizen technology Nessus had provided, the neutronium Julian had made with it—all the evidence had vanished irretrievably down a black hole.

“Very good. You may go.” Nessus transferred Sangeeta to a remote booth.

Forward’s death did not bother Nessus—much. The Jinxian had made his own choice to turn renegade. But the innocent crews of eight ships? Those lay heavily on Nessus’ conscience.

A soft chime eventually announced mealtime. Nessus climbed from his nest of pillows and synthed a small bowl of chopped mixed grasses. He nibbled at the greens without interest, his emotions roiling. Relief that Hearth was safe from ARM pursuit. Terror at being alone, so very far from home. Guilt at more deaths. Worry whether the apparent lifting of the siege of Earth would suffice to undo the economic damage. An enervating miasma of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

But among the many familiar apprehensions Nessus sensed an intriguing new idea. Another human community also weighed on his mind.

Someone like Sigmund Ausfaller could be extremely valuable to it.

A bit of computational legerdemain morphed Medusa’s snake-wreathed head. Now a spider with oddly serpentine legs, she scuttled along the impossibly dense fabric of the affinity network that represented Sigmund’s ongoing investigations. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave,” she concluded.

“Cute.” Feather also participated by hologram, netting from the guest room in Carlos Wu’s house. It was night on that side of the world; Carlos was, supposedly, asleep. She shambled about the room, yawning. “I’m tired, Sigmund. Let’s get on with it.”

Fair enough. It was late for her. “Here’s the bottom line. For a long time, General Products funds have driven much of the unrest. Oh, we can’t prove it; the laundering was very good. But the correlations between assets transfers from GP, unusual income patterns, tax avoidance, and advocacy for ‘reform’ are too good not to be meaningful.”

“Carlos likes to say correlation isn’t causation.” She waved off Sigmund’s protest. “No, we don’t discuss your investigation. He was explaining something about his medical research, for a new autodoc.”

Your
investigation. Feather’s current dye job suddenly registered. Sigmund couldn’t remember ever seeing her skin red. On
Hobo Kelly
, hadn’t Carlos mentioned red was his favorite color? “Feather, the transfers attributable to GP tapered off suddenly. Why?”

“I don’t know why.” This time, Feather made no effort to cover her yawn. “Frankly, Sigmund, I don’t know why you care. The Puppeteers are long gone. The criminals didn’t just launder that money—by now, they must control it.”

“The unrest continues without their money,” Medusa pointed out. “Why keep subsidizing the cause once it became self-sustaining?” The AIde began enumerating nonmonetary connections in her network.

“This is ridiculous, Sigmund,” Feather interrupted. “We’re supposed to be paranoid, but there are limits. Here’s a theory for you. A crime syndicate, not the Puppeteers, triggered the protests. It’s all been a distraction so the ARM wouldn’t notice their real plot until it was completed.”