Juggler of Worlds (42 page)

Eric did something to the device; Sigmund couldn’t see what. “How is that?” Eric asked.

How
was
it? Thickly accented and oddly familiar, Sigmund thought. Not Interworld exactly. Not even Spanglish. What came before that?

The stranger’s words almost reminded him of … Shakespeare in Central Park. “Are you speaking
English?”

White teeth flashed in the dark. “Exactly.”

Only it wasn’t quite as dark as when he first woke up, Sigmund noticed. He now sensed that Eric was swarthy, with thick lips. His hair was black, his eyes brooding and intense.

With the coming of dawn, life stirred in the woods. Sigmund twitched at every noise. He thought about rattlesnakes, mountain lions, grizzly bears—and Kzinti. “Are we safe out here?”

“Safe?” The question puzzled Eric. “Certainly.”

The sun would soon rise over the trees. As the sky brightened, surprisingly quickly, Sigmund studied Eric’s face. Eric looked on edge. He looked … expectant. Sigmund tensed.

Bright sunshine lit the glade. Sigmund glanced up.

Above the trees, an arc of tiny suns stretched across the sky.

He couldn’t breathe! His new heart thudded in a chest suddenly painfully
tight. His limbs had become extraordinarily heavy. The world spun around him.

Sigmund blacked out before he hit the ground.

“SIGMUND? SIGMUND? It’s all right.”

Sigmund stayed limp, wondering if
here
had opossums. Eventually, Eric sighed. Faint noises suggested pacing. Sigmund watched through eyelids scarcely parted. When Eric was across the glade, his back turned, Sigmund surged from the ground.

A twig snapped under Sigmund’s bare foot. Eric turned as Sigmund dove into him, sending both crashing into the underbrush. Sigmund landed on top, and Eric deflated like a balloon.

Someone
owed Sigmund answers, and Eric was here.

With the sash from his robe, Sigmund tied Eric’s arms around a tree. Beneath the dawn glare of so many suns, the ordinary pine seemed anything but normal. Sigmund reached around Eric from behind to remove his belt. “Heels against the tree,” Sigmund directed, and then he secured Eric’s ankles to the sturdy trunk.

“It’s time for some straight talk.” Sigmund gathered his flapping robe around himself. “For starters, how did I get here?”

“For starters”—the expression sounded awkward coming from Eric’s mouth—“untie me. I mean you no harm. No one here does. Quite the contrary.”

With a shudder, Sigmund glanced at the necklace of suns. A hint of more suns glimmered through the leaves. Another memory shook him: Andrea had
died
acquiring a glimpse of worlds like this. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Judge?” Eric said tentatively. “I don’t know that word. Maybe with the translator.”

Sigmund ignored the suggestion. The translator was probably also a pocket comp and communicator. He needed answers before encountering anyone else here.

Four worlds wreathed with suns. One world afire. “We’re on one of the fleet of worlds, aren’t we?”

Inexplicably, Eric smiled. “Not anymore. Now we call this world New Terra. We hope—”

“It
is
one of the five Puppeteer planets?” Sigmund interrupted.

“Until a few years ago, it was one of six worlds,” Eric corrected, “back when it was called Nature Preserve Four. It’s now separate from the Fleet.
I don’t understand about Puppeteers. Sigmund, do you mean the Citizens?”

“Two heads on long necks. Three legs. Voices like orchestras—or a sexy woman.”

“Citizens,” Eric confirmed. “I should say, that’s what we were taught to call them.” Bitterness lurked beneath his words. “We, their ‘Colonists.’”

Something crackled in the underbrush. Sigmund whirled but saw only trembling leaves.
Anything
could be out there. “What’s that?”

“A deer, maybe? Squirrels? How should I know?” Eric sighed. “Untie me, Sigmund. Let me help. Nessus warned me this might be hard for you.”

“Nessus!” Sigmund snapped. “You know him? What does he have to do with me?”

“I know him well,” Eric said. “He brought you here.”

Citizens beyond counting packed the vast courtyard. As one, they peered fearfully upward at apparitions that towered to a thousand times their height.

Arcology walls that normally lit the plaza with simulated sunshine now glimmered with unworldly visions. Six arcologies bounded the plaza; on their immense sides loomed six
things
dark and ineffably alien: Outsider city/ships. Tiny by comparison, the General Products #2 hulls in six foregrounds only underscored the insignificance of the Concordance’s works.

A low keening claimed Baedeker’s attention. His necks swiveled, searching in vain for the source of the lament. It came, he decided, from all around, like the enervating heat of the crowd and the miasma of fear pheromone. Phantom ships on every side left nowhere to flee. In such a multitude, to hide oneself in the illusory safety of one’s belly risked trampling.

A stentorian chorus booming from the walls silenced the throng. “On whom can you rely to restore the trust of the Outsiders? Those who would have never dealt with them? Those whose inaction would have had Hearth swallowed by the fires of Giver of Life? Those whose rigidity would have left us all helpless before the catastrophe onrushing from the galactic core?”

In other chords: Never depend upon the Conservatives amid an existential crisis.

Baedeker glanced surreptitiously about the plaza. In normal times, badges and medallions, ribbons and sashes, accessories of all colors and types would advocate for every imaginable hobby, professional affiliation, and social interest. But times were not normal, and adornments of orange and green predominated. Orange, for the governing Experimentalists, seeking the reaffirmation of a mandate amid this latest crisis. Green, for the out-of-power Conservatives, claiming their Experimentalist rivals, having brought on this latest crisis, could not now be expected to resolve it.

More every day, crowds gathered in plazas, malls, auditoria, communal dining halls, and parks across Hearth. It could hardly be otherwise: Desperate times called for proven measures.

Since time immemorial, Citizens had gathered in moments of change and crisis. Baedeker tried to imagine them, primitive and still living in tiny bands, assembling to consider a move to new grazing grounds or whether to adopt fire.

They met again now, in numbers and surroundings those forebears could never have imagined, confronting a disaster in the making. With familiar ritual and comforting tradition, as they had convened and communed in the faces of crises across the ages, Citizens in their myriads again sought consensus.

The Outsider ultimatum, all the more frightening for its vagueness, must be given an answer. And so, the public mind and mood must be assessed, informed, shaped, manipulated, consulted … until, ultimately, it coalesced overwhelmingly in favor of one party. For a short time, at least, all would wear one color. It looked increasingly likely the new consensus would be Experimentalist orange.

“As daunting as are the Outsiders’ demands, yet more challenges lie before us.” Undertones of hope and possibility echoed across the plaza in a familiar cadence.

On alternate arcology walls, the scene from deep space faded into a new image. It was the Hindmost! His likeness slowly emerged, as large as the Outsider vessels that remained on three walls. His mane was breathtaking, variously curled, braided, and teased, thickly woven with golden ribbons, rich with orange garnets and fire opals. Such poise and resplendence bespoke a serene confidence not even the most resonant chords could convey. The crowd sighed.

“We continue our escape from the core explosion. We continue to rebuild our cadre of selfless scouts to forewarn us all of possible dangers in
our path. These, surely, are also tasks to which Experimentalists are uniquely suited.”

“What of provoking the Outsiders?” someone whispered in the crowd. He was insistently shushed, and given no answer.

Neither party alluded to recent events surrounding Nature Preserve 4, the proximate cause of the current emergency. Baedeker knew that neither dared: Both had left their tongueprints all over the last crisis.

And yet any solution to the present emergency must involve that errant world …

With a jolt, Baedeker realized how unreal this process had become to him. Maybe every consensualization was like that. Maybe all campaigns were decoupled from events, if one knew what was really happening, or any of the actors.

But he
did
know. Early in the crisis, the Hindmost himself had sought his opinion. So, amazingly, had the once and would-be Hindmost from the Conservatives. Neither wished to hear what Baedeker had to say: In this emergency, he had no miraculous technical solution to offer.

Once he had craved the attentions of the elite. For rehabilitation. For vindication. Now, those goals achieved, he wanted only anonymity and tranquility. His sole ambition was to abandon all ambition.

If only, years ago, Nessus had sought his opinion about bringing his “scouts” aboard the General Products factory. How different circumstances would be today. Baedeker restlessly pawed the resilient surface of the plaza. Nessus had precipitated this emergency, too, and yet he remained conspicuous by his absence. Not Achilles, not Vesta, not even Nike had admitted to knowing Nessus’ location.

Despite his newfound search for quietude, Baedeker could not help wondering: Where
was
Nessus? What was he doing?

“My fellow Citizens,” the Hindmost continued, “the time for a momentous decision will soon be upon us.”

The wonder was that the time had not already passed. Baedeker studied the tiny-seeming vessel that had taken Achilles to negotiate for a reprieve. As enigmatic as the Outsiders were, they understood Citizens. They had accepted without comment Achilles’ argument for forbearance as the Concordance went through its deliberations.

Understanding. Was anything ever that simple?

Perhaps delay served some alien purpose. The Outsiders might still accept the possibility that New Terra remained under Concordance control. Given the distance to the nearest Outsider ship, what could they truly know? Only what hyperspace technology revealed: Chance interception
of hyperwave radio chatter. The divergence of NP4 from the Fleet, glimpsed in the repositioning of singularities in mass detectors.

“These are a wise and capable race,” the Hindmost intoned. “We value their friendship. More, we must maintain and strengthen that friendship. I ask again for your trust.”

Up/down, down/up; up/down, down/up … across the plaza, paired heads alternated in bobbing agreement.

Even now, the incontrovertible truth from the Colonist crisis propagated outward at light speed. The chaos of the Colonists freeing the ramscoop. Their threat to deploy its fusion flames against Hearth. The consensualization that granted New Terra its freedom. Everything was revealed in those old radio broadcasts. In a few years’ time, the wave front would reach the nearest Outsider ship.

So perhaps the Outsiders agreed to delay waiting for the truth they suspected must be coming, the better to validate the terrible retribution they meant to take. Was
that
the alien purpose?

It was too depressing to contemplate.

A few Hearth years could hardly matter to those who moved at the less-than-glacial pace of liquid-helium beings….

All around, his fellow Citizens focused on their civic duty, intent in the moment. They communed; Baedeker observed. He was back on Hearth, but not at home. Having once resigned himself to the loneliness of exile, he wondered if he would ever again fit in. Voices rose and fell all around, and he stood, mute, unable to share.

Liquid-helium beings. That was another way he differed. He understood cold. He
remembered
cold. Now, though dripping with sweat, he shivered.

For ages, the industry and body heat of a trillion Citizens had warmed sunless Hearth; it was the rarest of snowflakes that survived here to reach the ground. Nature Preserve 1 was entirely different, the earliest and most conservatively engineered of the companion planets. Its equatorial-orbiting suns and their annual emission cycles evoked all the climates and seasonal variability for which Hearth flora and fauna had evolved. Even as a burgeoning population had claimed the entire surface of the home world, caution ruled, and so—at a safe distance—NP1 preserved all possible Hearthian ecosystems.

From his years of banishment, Baedeker understood climate, seasons, and weather. He had seen one blizzard after another heap snow in the mountains. He had seen a single sound set off an avalanche that claimed everything in its path.

Avalanche.
That
was the nature of a consensualization. Random and inexorable—and, if you knew enough to stay
far
away, avoidable.

The herd milling around him could not begin to understand what was about to hit them.

A STRIDENT BUZZ yanked Baedeker’s thoughts back to the plaza. Pavement vibrated beneath his hooves. Their haunches already pressed together, alarmed Citizens shoved back at the crowd. The discordance swelled to tooth-rattling levels.