Juggler of Worlds (41 page)

Chuft-Captain said, “You have discovered a new setting to the weapon.”

“Have I?”

“I do not intend to play pup games with you. As a fighter, you are entitled to respect, which your herbivorous friend is not.”

“How are your ribs feeling?” Jason asked.

Nessus looked himself in the eyes. His kick had more than injured Chuft-Captain. It had humiliated him. Chuft-Captain would refuse to summon any help until he had dealt with Nessus personally.

That obstinacy might allow Nessus to survive until rescue came. But if Chuft-Captain acquired the Tnuctipun weapon … nothing would stop him from using that last, secret setting. The Kzin would destroy the planet to take certain vengeance.

“Do not speak of that again,” Chuft-Captain snarled. “We have something to trade, you and I. You have a unique weapon. I have a female human who may be your mate.”

On the private channel, Nessus shouted, “You cannot trade, Jason. You must not.”

Jason ignored Nessus. “Well put. So?”

“Give us your weapon. Show us where to find the new setting. You and your mate may leave the world in your ship, unharmed and unrestricted.”

“Your name as your word?” Jason asked. Among Kzinti, a name was hard to come by. Most would die rather than shame their families.

The radio waves fell silent.

“You lying son of a …”

“Do not say it. Jason, the agreement stands, except that I will smash your hyperdrive. You must return to civilization through normal space. With that proviso you have my name as my word.”

“And Nessus?”

A wordless snarl. “The herbivore must protect itself.”

Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t the personalized hatred.
That
Nessus understood. Chuft-Captain seemed too agreeable. Would he really let witnesses go?

Jason asked, “Is she all right now?”

“Naturally.”

“Prove it,” Jason insisted.

“You may hear her.”

“Jay, darling, listen.” Anne-Marie spoke very quickly. “Use the seventh setting. The
seventh
. Can you hear me?”

“Anne, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she shouted. “Use the seventh—” Her voice cut off.

On the private channel, Nessus said, “Seventh? That’s the Tnuctipun computer. I don’t understand.”

There was a despairing curse.

“Jason? Jason!” No answer. Nessus’ mind raced. All the talk: It was for distraction. Jason was trapped in ice, and now the enemy had recaptured him—and the weapon.

Nessus shivered in his ice cave. He had never felt more alone.

Nessus crept across the ice toward the only nearby radio emissions. His suit gear could detect the signals but not decrypt them. Kzinti private-band chatter, presumably.

Every instinct demanded that he turn and gallop in the opposite direction. Citizens fled predators; they did not attack them!

On the other head, Citizens did not stray from the herd at all. They did
not scout. If he was insane enough to accomplish those feats for the well-being of all, he must be insane enough to recover the Tnuctipun weapon.

And even infant Citizens knew how to kick.

Nessus recalled Achilles’ legendary boast: to being vulnerable only when he presented his heel. Once more, Achilles had gotten things backward. Chuft-Captain would remember Nessus’ hind hoof for as long as he lived.

Trekking over the barren ice, Nessus struggled with Anne-Marie’s rushed words. The seventh setting. What use was the computer? It didn’t respond to radio signals; Slaverstudent brought it into his ship to get it to respond—unintelligibly.

Spies. Weapons. Long-lost languages. Nessus had no skills with any of these things. Truly, he was insane. Delusional.

Sigmund Ausfaller was an accountant. See what
he
accomplished.

Some mania kept Nessus struggling forward. His instruments kept him on-course to the Kzinti ship. A glow came over a nearby hill, and he realized he was almost there. He stretched his necks over the crest. There was
Traitor’s Claw
, its outer air-lock door open. The light came from the air lock. He wondered if Jason and Anne-Marie remained alive.

A lone Kzin in a vacuum suit stalked across the ice. Though the device protruding from his gloved paw was unfamiliar to Nessus, the awkward grip was not. It was Chuft-Captain; he was holding the Tnuctipun weapon in its hidden, deadly configuration.

Weapons. Spies. Long-lost languages. Was he overlooking something crucial, or was he—exhibiting rare, if subconscious, rationality—putting off charging again at an armed Kzin?

What would Ausfaller see? Nessus stared at the weapon in Chuft-Captain’s hand. Its barrel was cylindrical. Jason had mentioned a cone. Even if there were two hidden settings, when had Jason found the second?

Chuft-Captain took a marksman’s stance.

And still Nessus could not move. What would a talking computer do when spoken to in an unknown, obviously not Tnuctipun, language?

How would Ausfaller design a spy’s weapon?

To respond to an unauthorized language by directing the activation of its self-destruct setting!

Nessus yanked his heads below the crest. As the world flashed blindingly bright, Nessus was already rolling himself, as well and as quickly as he could in a pressure suit, into a tight ball. The ground tossed like the ocean in a storm. It threw Nessus high into the thin air, caught him as he came
down, and flung him again. And again. That time he landed directly on his cranial hump.

Once more the world went black.

NESSUS WOKE ON HIS BACK, with his legs in the air.

He climbed stiffly to his hooves, his body one giant ache, and saw he had been thrown far from the crest behind which he had sheltered. As he looked back,
Traitor’s Claw
soared silently and majestically up over the crest, slowly spinning, then crashed down onto the frozen plain. One side glowed red-hot. Amid ever-thicker steam, the wreck began melting its way back into the ice from which it had so recently emerged.

No one aboard could have survived.

Nessus approached cautiously. The outer air-lock hatch was gone, ripped off. Only the beams from his helmet lit the air lock, its interior lighting presumably destroyed. The inner hatch still held pressure; he had to override safety interlocks to cycle it.

He pushed through a howling gale into the ship, then closed the inner hatch behind him. The whistling dropped but did not stop, as the environmental system labored to replace the air he had released. He searched cabins, holds, and corridors methodically, finding nothing until—

Splattered masses hardly recognizable as Kzinti clung to the walls of what Nessus remembered as the interrogation room. Orange gore dribbled down and pooled. In the center of the room, suspended in midair by the police-restraint field, hung Jason and Anne-Marie.

Both were unconscious, and they clearly labored to breathe. The restraint must be encompassing even their heads—fortunately, or the crash would have snapped their necks. Nessus tried to ignore the carnage as he sought out the release for the police restraints. Finally, he found the control. Jason and Anne-Marie dropped.

Utterly spent, Nessus followed them into unconsciousness.

THE WELL-REMEMBERED background whirrs, clicks, and hums of
Court Jester
enfolded Nessus. In the familiar safety of his cabin, behind a locked hatch, he breathed deeply of artificial herd pheromones from a portable synthesizer.

Cowering within a tightly rolled ball of self.

The Kzin in a nearby cabin was the least of Nessus’ concerns. Frozen solid, Telepath had survived the wreck. The authorities on Jinx, now only
days away, would decide when to defrost him. Another Kzin haunted Nessus—

If only he could forget the satisfying crunch of Chuft-Captain’s ribs beneath his hoof.

More troublesome was the message to be sent, once he was safe and private aboard
Aegis
. True, the shadow of the antimatter solar system would no longer hang over the Fleet. It had been replaced by the longer shadow of the all-powerful Outsiders.

Momentous events lay ahead. Quivering, Nessus yearned for Hearth. He
belonged
on Hearth, to contribute to the coming debates.

But before he could go home, he had one more urgent duty to perform….

Brimming with energy, shaking with trauma, utterly disoriented, Sigmund awoke.

He was flat on his back, his face scant centimeters beneath a clear dome. Beyond the dome all was black. Readouts reflected in the curved plasteel kept his eyes from adapting to the darkness.

I’m in an autodoc!

Sigmund turned away from the display in which the list of his treatments scrolled on and on. Images—too many pictures, all horrible and confusing, crowded his mind’s eye. He had been here before, hadn’t he? He would climb out and meet Feather…. It made no sense. How could he know Feather if he had yet to meet her?

What’s the last thing I remember?

Unbearable pain. A gaping hole blasted through his chest. An autodoc couldn’t repair
that
….

Another memory gelled, of Beowulf Shaeffer telling Ander, “That thing rebuilt me from a severed head!” That thing:
Carlos Wu’s
autodoc.

Reality crashed down on Sigmund. Shaeffer trying to buy off Ander with the miracle autodoc. Ander, the smoking punchgun in his hands. Shaeffer staring over the vidphone as life drained from Sigmund.

Only I’m
not
dead. Did Bey rescue me? Save me in Carlos’s autodoc?

Sigmund pounded on the panic button. The lid, indifferent to his urgency, retracted with glacial slowness. He clambered out of the ’doc—feeling more limber than he had in how long? a century?—to find himself in an utterly ordinary forest glade. Stars twinkled in a moonless sky. The constellations were unfamiliar, but he hadn’t been away from city lights since arriving—

On Fafnir! That memory had eluded him. How many more did likewise? He trembled with chills that had no connection with night air or his fresh-from-the-’doc nakedness. Every rustling leaf suddenly became a Kzin stalking him.

More than Sigmund had ever wanted anything, he yearned now for Earth.

Someone had rescued him and spirited him away from Shasht’s capital. That someone, Bey or not, would not lightly abandon him or the incredibly valuable autodoc. This wooded clearing, however unfamiliar, was unlikely to be immediately dangerous.

With two deep, shuddering breaths, Sigmund calmed himself. As his eyes adapted to the darkness he surveyed his surroundings. He slipped on the heavy robe he found draped over the foot of the ’doc.

“Good. You’re up.”

Sigmund’s head whipped around toward the voice. A man, short and stocky with a long ponytail, stepped from the woods. By starlight Sigmund could not discern his features or the pattern of his jumpsuit. The stranger appeared to be unarmed.

“Sorry if I startled you,” the man said. “My name is Eric Huang-Mbeke. Please call me Eric. May I call you Sigmund?” The words came from Eric’s mouth and, slightly clearer and delayed, from a device at his waist: a translator.

“Hello, Eric,” Sigmund answered cautiously. Eric’s device rendered that, too. “Can you turn that off?”