Juggler of Worlds (46 page)

“And you failed.” Sigmund considered. Not, damn you all, without cost. “The ARM would go to war to protect these people.”

“Then stealthed General Products hulls would pummel Earth,” Nessus said. “All human worlds. There will be no hesitation and no mercy if Hearth is endangered.”

Sigmund thought about his dogged pursuit of the Puppeteers, and all the attempts, from bribery to Fertility Law riots to space pirates, to distract him. “Up until now you’ve tried to dissuade us by more subtle means.”

Nessus judged it safer to admit nothing.

“You kidnapped me. You’ve tampered with my memory so I can’t get help from other human worlds. What, exactly, do you expect me to do?”

“I do not know.” The head not deep in a pocket plunged deep into Nessus’ mane, plucking furiously. In a muffled voice he said, “For everyone’s sake, I hope you will figure something out.”

Sigmund took a deep breath. “Before I do anything, Nessus, you’re going to answer some questions for me. For, for starters …” He stuttered to a halt, the anger that filled him refusing to stay down any longer.

“For starters, why in the name of Finagle aren’t I dead?”

“I WAS TOO LATE,” Nessus said.

Nessus struggled to keep the fear from his voice. I kicked an armed Kzin, he told himself. I can talk with an unarmed human.

Without Sigmund’s help, this world would die. Eric and others would take many on Hearth with them. Sigmund’s price was answers. Truth. As with the ordeal on Cue Ball, he
must
live through this.

Maybe not the whole truth.

“You were too late,” Sigmund repeated.

“I bribed a hotel manager to hide bugs and stepping discs in your rooms. My only purpose was to talk to you about aiding New Terra.” That his actions preceded the Outsider ultimatum was a detail best glossed for. Too much truth would only cloud the issue. “I stepped to Ander’s room just as you were shot.”

Fear had kept him from making his approach for days. That was another truth best kept unarticulated.

“Ander grabbed your money and fled the scene. A maid ran in, saw … you, and ran back out.” A body with a hole blasted through it larger than one of his heads. Blood everywhere. “Later I got access to the police report. The maid went for ice to chill down your head. If you had had a lesser wound, she might have even saved your life.

“I stepped into your room the moment she left, dragged you to the disc, and got you out. By the time the maid and hotel security got to your room, all they found was too much blood.” And patches of ash, after the rigged stepping discs in both men’s hotel rooms incinerated.

“Leaving the police to assume Ander had an accomplice.” Sigmund cocked his head. “Perhaps he did. You.”

“No!” Nessus said. “I cannot prove that, but no. Ander acted out of greed.”

“You’re not beyond bribery, are you, Nessus? You bought my boss once. Why shouldn’t I believe you worked with Ander to get Carlos’s magic autodoc?”

Nessus resisted the urge to vanish. He dare not imply guilt—however much he felt. “I corrupted officials more than once. That’s how I got access to the Fafnir police report on your apparent death. But no, I did
not
have anything to do with the attack.”

“Cops aren’t big believers in coincidence. Paranoids certainly aren’t. So explain: Somehow you had Carlos’s autodoc.”

Nessus shifted weight between his hooves. “The thing is, Sigmund, I didn’t. Right at the end, though, I was in the next room. I heard Ander and Beowulf talking. I heard that the autodoc was hidden on an island, and the approximate longitude. After that, I had to search.”

“My heart had been shot out.” Sigmund inched closer. “I wouldn’t have survived any search.”

Nessus somehow stood his ground. “No, you wouldn’t. We went straight from your hotel room to my ship. I put you into a stasis field. It’s where you stayed until I retrieved the ’doc.”

After he was ordered to Jinx, and went with the Papandreous in search
of Outsiders. After, in his desperation, he assaulted a Kzin. After he defied the summons of the Hindmost to first scour a thousand islands, one by one. Nessus kept to himself how he had hesitated even then, unsure how Sigmund would respond.

Now Nessus would find out if all that had been for naught.

Sigmund stopped his advance. “And what of Ander?”

“Dead in a shoot-out with Fafnir police.” Nessus surrendered to nerves, pawing at the deck with a hoof. “A squad of Kzinti.”

“Serves the bastard right,” Sigmund snarled. “And Bey?”

“Beowulf Shaeffer?” For once, Nessus could answer without evasion. “His name does not appear anywhere in the investigation report.”

“What names do?”

“Hotel staff, waiters, bartenders, and bar customers. The authorities were thorough enough. They even pulled someone out of deep freeze just before his iceliner was going to leave. The man had had dinner with Ander a few days earlier. It turns out they met at the water wars.”

“And this corpsicle’s name?”

Nessus needed a moment to remember the name. “Martin Graynor. Does that mean anything to you?”

Sigmund pondered, then slowly shook his head. “It doesn’t.”

For once, Nessus thought, I’m not the one pretending.

“You’d like to believe, Sigmund,” Kirsten called out. “So far you don’t.”

Sigmund had been stuck in the corridor, steeling himself to move. Spaceships still terrified him; on the bridge, there could be no pretending he was anywhere but. Willing himself forward, he went onto the bridge. “Sensors in the halls?”

“Good ears—and skulking in the halls. It had to be you.” She patted the seat next to hers. “Sit.”

The crash couch might have come from the bridge of
Hobo Kelly
or
Seeker
. Thinking of either ship made him queasy. Still, the couch really
could
have come from ships he’d been on. On the armrests, the layout of controls was identical. The fabric crinkled as he squirmed, no different from a thousand times before. It made sense: Why wouldn’t the Puppeteers import human-engineered equipment for their servants?

It meant he could hot-wire the emergency protective field of the crash couch into a restraint field. There was no one he needed to restrain just now, but the idea was comforting.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Kirsten prompted.

Did he? Sven said Kirsten was a genius. She had found the first hints of the colony’s true past hidden in the computer of this very ship. Surprising himself, Sigmund decided to give it a try. “Believe what? That some Puppeteers aren’t evil?”

“Most are like us. They want nothing more than to be left alone to live their lives.”

“Why did Nessus want to meet me
here?
On a ship?”

“You really dislike ships, don’t you? People here are descended from explorers. I couldn’t quite believe it when Nessus told us about flat phobes.” Kirsten did something with the console, and the bridge screen de-opaqued. A tarmac stretched before them, with surprisingly few ships on it. “See, we’re on the ground.

“To answer your question, it wasn’t you Nessus had in mind when he picked the ship. He chose this place to reassure Eric, Omar, and me. Understand this, Sigmund: We can’t entirely trust him, either. Yes, he’s been an intermediary, sometimes arguing our case. He’s still a Citizen. If circumstances ever came down to a stark choice between Concordance interests or New Terra’s—”

“That’s an excellent point,” Nessus said. He stood in the hatchway, as though ready to bolt—as he probably was. “Sigmund, your task is to see to it such circumstances never arise.”

BALANCED ON A KNIFE’S EDGE. It was a quintessentially human saying, but apt. The question remained: Could Sigmund be turned from adversary to ally?

Nessus said, “You still have doubts, I think.”

“With cause, certainly.” Sigmund got out of his crash couch to face him. “You have much to answer for.”

More than you know, Nessus thought. More than he could possibly reveal without inciting an attack. The problem was, only information could bring Sigmund to trust him. After much agonizing, Nessus had decided what secret he could disclose. “As a show of good faith, I’m going to tell you about Gregory Pelton and the antimatter.”

Sigmund
and
Kirsten twitched at that statement. Antimatter had that effect on sentient beings. “Go on,” Sigmund said cautiously.

“I’ll start with what I think you know. Pelton wanted to do something spectacular. He and Beowulf Shaeffer took Pelton’s ship,
Slower than Infinity
, to an Outsider vessel. There, they bought the coordinates of the ‘most unusual world.’ How am I doing?”

“Max Addeo earned what you paid him,” Sigmund said.

As did Sangeeta Kudrin, a detail Nessus did not plan to share. “You also know that Pelton and Shaeffer made an emergency call to Jinx after their hull dissolved. What you don’t know is that Pelton contacted one of my colleagues, in hiding on Jinx. It was he who deduced what had happened. The most unusual planet and its star are made of antimatter. The antimatter solar wind eventually destroyed the hull. General Products paid the warranty in full.”

“Who is this colleague?” Sigmund asked.

“He’s sometimes known as Achilles. Foolishly, he revealed what had happened. Fortunately, Pelton remained obsessed with a spectacular personal accomplishment. He kept what he knew secret from the government.”

“But not from me,” Sigmund said.

Let him feel smug, Nessus thought. “Pelton’s adventure came soon after the discovery of the core explosion. The Concordance was already in a panic. Because Pelton’s crippled ship entered Sirius system at relativistic speed, the antimatter system must also be moving at like speeds. That meant he must have gotten a lift from the Outsiders. It was deemed enough to just monitor the problem, until, with its terrific speed, the antimatter receded beyond human reach.”

Sigmund nodded. “My expert reached the same conclusion about Outsider involvement. It didn’t make me any less vigilant.”

Nessus did
not
want to explain having left Sigmund, dying, in stasis for almost three Earth years. He chose his next words especially carefully. “Then, seemingly, you died. Your mysterious murder and disappearance gave your ‘in-the-event-of-my-death’ messages great credibility—even before Pelton fled to asylum on Jinx. Suddenly the ARM is in an emergency effort to find and secure the antimatter system.”

“Suddenly?” Sigmund folded his arms across his chest. “I’d say it’s about time.”

No, it was one more reason to consider a preemptive strike against Earth. “The Hindmost deemed it urgent that we find the antimatter before the ARM did. Buying the coordinates from the Outsiders no longer seemed a waste of resources. For technical reasons”—fearing my ship was bugged—“I hired a human ship and crew for the mission. We found Ship Fourteen….”

Sigmund looked skeptical.

Sigmund was unique, but this was all so beyond the scope of his experience. Was even this carefully edited glimpse of the truth too much? What would you think, Sigmund, about the Outsiders having a Tnuctipun stasis box?

Keep it simple, Nessus told himself. “I had means at my disposal human ships do not. I gave my crew the coordinates to search for the Outsiders. Once we rendezvoused, I spent much of General Products’ remaining wealth purchasing the location of the antimatter system. Unlike Gregory Pelton, I also thought to buy their silence. They will not disclose this information to their next visitors.

“Happily, it’s barely grazing Known Space. That course, combined with its great speed, will make exploiting the antimatter virtually impossible.”

“And that’s supposed to comfort me, Nessus?”

“Probably not,” Nessus said, “nor is it my intent. You’re of no use to me or New Terra if you feel comfortable.”

“YOU WERE QUIET,” Sigmund said. “What do you conclude?”

Kirsten brushed unruly bangs from her forehead. “That Nessus knows

more than he shared.”

“He always does. Nothing he said contradicts what I know.” Sigmund

jammed his hands in his pockets. It was that or try to put a fist through a

plasteel bulkhead.

What in his head, besides the location of Earth, had the Puppeteer