Juggler of Worlds (40 page)

“Time for what?”

“Anne-Marie, we must wait. If the artifact is a weapon, we must recover it. If not, we must survive to warn your people the Kzinti are searching out Slaver stasis boxes. We must wait until we know which.” As though they could do anything
but
wait.

The restraint field kept Nessus from pivoting his heads. That was frustrating. His urge was to look himself in the eyes. The Kzinti would surely find Puppeteer bravado amusing. Would his amusing them argue for his life?

“Then
what?” Anne-Marie persisted.

“We will find a way,” Nessus said.

Jason finally joined the discussion. “We?”

“Yes. Our motives coincide here.” That was true, taking escape as a motive. Nessus’ foremost goal thereafter was to get word to Hearth of the Outsiders’ demands. Even Kzinti pursuit of ancient weapons paled in comparison. “I cannot explain at this time.”

Or ever.

CHUFT-CAPTAIN systematically examined the controls of the ball-and-handle artifact. He pointed it into the distance and squeezed what might be a trigger. Nothing happened. He gripped a small mechanism at the base of the handle, edging it upward—

The mirror-faced sphere writhed like a living thing, changing and flowing into a long slender cylinder with a red ball at one end and a toggle at the other. The handle had not changed.

When Chuft-Captain engaged the toggle, the red ball lit up and shot far across the ice. The Kzin swung the artifact; the glowing ball moved in concert. “Variable sword,” Chuft-Captain guessed. He moved the artifact toward a distant rock spire. The top of the rock slid off.

Nessus knew what a variable sword was: an invisibly thin monofilament reinforced with a stasis field. One would slice through almost anything. The red ball marked the end of the filament, for purposes of aiming.

“A variable sword,” Chuft-Captain repeated. “But not of Slaver design. Slaverstudent, have you ever heard of a weapon that changes shape?”

“No, Chuft-Captain, neither of the past nor of the present.”

“Then we’ve found something new.”

“Yes!” Slaverstudent snarled enthusiastically.

The slider in the artifact’s handle had eight settings. One had turned the ball into a variable sword. Chuft-Captain set out to find the purpose of the other settings.

Setting two morphed the device into a parabolic mirror and a sonic projector. In the tenuous atmosphere of Cue Ball, even its strongest setting transmitted only a faint hum. Nessus knew that personally, as Chuft-Captain used
him
as a target. Slaverstudent had already reported very limited energy discharge. Chuft-Captain knew that. The Kzin must have already deemed Nessus expendable.

The third transformation produced a projectile weapon. Slaverstudent provided bullets that had also been in the stasis box. Chuft-Captain
grunted appreciatively when one type proved to be powerfully explosive.

The next setting again set the device to writhing. It spat out the remaining bullets before settling into a new sphere, smaller than the original. Test firings at target rocks did nothing, although Slaverstudent reported energy discharge. Chuft-Captain fired at each of his captives. This time, Nessus felt nothing. “I grow weary of these duds,” Chuft-Captain growled.

The fifth setting produced a stubby barrel flanked by flat metal projections. It looked dangerous even to Nessus. Chuft-Captain fired at his target rock.

Everything happened at once. Chuft-Captain spun around, as though he were holding a fire hose, struggling to control the weapon. A glowing beam lashed about. Telepath screamed as hot plasma touched him, a sickening wail of pain and fear that faded quickly. Two Kzinti grabbed Telepath, dragging him toward the ice tunnel back into
Traitor’s Claw
.

Anne-Marie was running for
Court Jester
! Telepath’s flailing had knocked her off the grid of the portable restraint. Nessus felt the stirrings of hope—

Chuft-Captain, almost casually, brought her down with a stunner. He trudged after her as she bounced and slid, paralyzed, across the ice.

“It’s a rocket motor,” Slaverstudent said. He’d returned from flash-freezing Telepath for emergency care back on Kzin. “The flat projections on the side may be holds for feet.”

Position six produced a telescopic sight and a communications laser. Nessus consulted quickly with Jason while the Kzinti continued their experimentation. The rocket mode had seemed far too powerful for the artifact’s size. Unless—

“It must use total conversion of matter,” Jason said.

Nessus had already concluded that. Slaverstudent surely would also. Nessus’ depression deepened. A compact device able to totally convert matter to energy … by comparison, even antimatter was a trivial peril. Such technology promised yet
another
way to destroy General Products’ hulls.

“Things weren’t bad enough,” Jason said. “Can you see Kzinti warships armed and powered with total conversion?”

“Futzy ratcats,” Anne-Marie said suddenly. The restraint field defeated her attempt to sit up, and she swore some more.

“Nice try,” Jason told her.

Chuft-Captain moved on to the seventh setting. It yielded an enigmatic cylinder and wire grid. Slaverstudent reported an energy release, but the device affected nothing.

Nessus didn’t feel anything when, again, Chuft-Captain aimed it at him. Nessus thought the grid looked like a microphone.

So did Slaverstudent. He took the weapon into his ship. He returned with it in a short time. “I was right. The artifact answered me in an unknown speech. Chuft-Captain, I believe it to be a computer.”

Computers didn’t impress Chuft-Captain, not unless they could be taught Hero’s Tongue. He went on to the eighth setting, which produced a weird shape that defied naming. Nessus thought he’d seen something like it long ago in an old topology lesson, and wondered what it could be.

It certainly did not
look
like a weapon. Chuft-Captain aimed it at a rock and pulled the trigger—

JASON TOPPLED. He gave Anne-Marie a shove toward
Court Jester
, then turned to charge at Chuft-Captain.

The restraint grids were off! The eighth setting absorbed energy. Something came over Nessus. Desperation? Mania? A form of insanity, surely. He did not stop to analyze it.

Nessus charged past Jason, directly at Chuft-Captain, who was still puzzling over the Tnuctipun artifact. The Kzin looked up just as Nessus reached him. Nessus spun as he moved, straightening his hind leg and locking its joints. He sank the hoof deep into Chuft-Captain’s side.

Ribs shattered beneath Nessus’ hoof. The blow jolted his leg up to his hip. Chuft-Captain, screaming, dropped the artifact; Jason scooped it up as he ran.

Nessus pulled his hoof free and galloped on. Long before he reached
Court Jester
he saw the air lock had been welded shut. Tools in his suit pockets would free it, but not before the Kzinti would recapture him.

A Kzin had grabbed Anne-Marie. Another aimed a stunner at Jason, doubtless wondering why it was not working. Jason looked about helplessly. The instant Jason switched the Tnuctipun artifact to a weapon setting, the stunner would paralyze him.

Anne-Marie bellowed, “Run, dammit. Jay, run!”

Nessus and Jay pelted for the distant hills.

“Jay!” It was Anne-Marie. “Have to talk quick; they’re taking off my helmet. I’m not hurt, but I can’t get away. The ship’s taking off. Bury the weapon somewh—”

Nessus heard Jason swearing helplessly. “Jason, turn to the private band.” He had not dared before to communicate privately, sure it would enrage their captors. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah. Where are you?”

Nessus said, “I do not know how to describe my position. I ran about ten kilometers east.”

“Let’s think of a way to find each other.”

“Why, Jason?” As long as he stayed in this ice cave, he could not be seen even from above, and the unavoidable heat emissions of his space suit would be greatly diffused. Moving only gave the Kzinti an opportunity to spot them.

“You think you’re safer alone? I don’t. How long will your suit keep you alive?”

“Several standard years.” Nessus meant Earth standard. He knew no human space suit could match its recycling capability. “But help will arrive before then.”

“What makes you think so?”

“When the Kzinti pilot entered the pressure curtain, I was calling my people for help.”

“What? How?” Jason asked.

“Despite recent changes in the fortune of my people, that is still most secret.” Beta Lyrae was one of the stars with a starseed lure hidden in its cometary belt. The lures, of course, could be controlled remotely. His coded radio distress call, once it reached the lure, would be forwarded by hyperwave to the Fleet.

These weren’t secrets for human ears. Nessus admitted to Puppeteers remaining still within Known Space to keep up Jason’s hope of rescue. On Earth, the ARM knew that much already; most of what Nessus said or implied thereafter was misdirection. If Jason despaired, he might seek to trade the artifact for his spouse.

TRAITOR’S CLAW
soared skyward on a blue-white column of fusion flame. It receded to a blindingly bright spark high overhead, a brilliant dot in the red arch of celestial smoke, hovering.

Or so Jason described it. To see the sky risked being seen from the sky. Nessus remained in his ice cave.

Jason said, “One thing we do have is the weapon itself.”

“True,” Nessus agreed cautiously. “We have a laser, a flame-throwing rocket, and a shield against police stunners. But not simultaneously.”

Slaverstudent had taken careful readings of the energy output from every weapon setting. The warship’s altitude must have been set with that knowledge in mind. Over enough distance, even laser beams diverged. They could not harm the Kzinti—even if, as Nessus thought unlikely, Jason would fire on a vessel in which Anne-Marie was held prisoner.

“I think we may have overlooked a setting,” Jason said.

“Wishful thinking, Jason, is not a Puppeteer trait.”

“Neither is knowledge of weapons. Nessus, what kind of weapon is this? I’m talking about the whole bundle, not any single setting.”

“As you say, I am not an expert on warfare.”

But Jason
was
. And Jason felt certain that a warrior would not want such a weapon—he would be defenseless while it transformed—but that a spy might see benefit in combining so many capabilities so compactly. Together, they pictured a Tnuctipun spy, hiding out, perhaps among slaves of his race, plotting against the Slavers.

The undetected setting Jason hypothesized made sense only for a spy. The device must have, Jason insisted, an autodestruct.

JASON PUSHED AND PRODDED CONTROLS, twisted parts of the device in every configuration, talking as he worked. Unable to see, Nessus could not entirely follow.

Meanwhile, the artificial star brightened. Closer to the surface? A hotter flame? Nessus guessed both, with a gravity planer pushing opposite the fusion drive to maintain the low hover. He couldn’t guess why—until Jason reported he was deep in meltwater.

Soon after, the flame went out. Jason froze into place. And then—

“I’ve found it, Nessus. I’ve found
something”

“A new setting? What does it look like?”

“Like a cone with a rounded base, pointing away from the handle.”

“Try it. And if you are successful, good-bye, Jason. Knowing you was pleasant.” Nessus was only slightly surprised by his own sincerity.

“Good-bye, Nessus.”

Huddling within the minimal shelter of his ice cave, Nessus sensed nothing as long seconds passed. There was a rumble. Then the ground shook, tossing him against the roof. He fell, and the waves threw him again. And again. And …

He blacked out before the bouncing stopped.

NESSUS AWOKE into what sounded like negotiations. Jason and Chuft-Captain were on the public channel. Clearly Jason had found a hidden weapon mode, no more. There was no self-destruct; Jason had surely despaired.

Nessus willed himself to listen. He must survive until rescued. He must inform the Fleet about the Outsiders’ ultimatum.