Juggler of Worlds (49 page)

Kirsten shot her mate a glance. Eric’s hero worship must irk her, too, Sigmund thought.

Tanj,
I
don’t want to be Sigmund.

He, Eric, and Kirsten had gone round and round on this. The bottom line never changed. Puppeteers feared the Outsiders—quite rationally—more than they feared anything New Terra might do. While that was the case, nothing he did could help the situation. Any credible threat New Terra could pose would only make things worse by moving up the inevitable attack. The Concordance was clearly unwilling to offer terms they thought the humans might even consider.

Sigmund guessed the Puppeteers would offer terms after something awful happened.

Not even surrendering the drive was a viable option. It would leave New Terra adrift in space, prey to the gravitational influence of every star they passed.

Introducing Russian roulette as a metaphor for that strategy had not helped.

“So what will it be?” Kirsten asked softly. “Outright destruction or slavery?”

Inside, the children squealed happily. They deserved peace and freedom, they and all the innocents like them.

Sigmund shoved back his chair and stood. “Neither one, tanj it. Neither one.”

“… THE HINDMOST is most anxious. He was unhappy even before an alien ship intruded on the Fleet. Now
I
lose patience with you. You do not want that.”

With heads lowered in submission, Baedeker let Achilles’ rant wash over him. From what Baedeker had been told, an intruder had emerged from and vanished into hyperspace. That meant it wasn’t an Outsider. The wild humans had kept their distance since learning their ships weren’t safe here. That left the ex-Colonists. “Why do you suppose they—”

“Stop,” Achilles roared. “Your job is to forge us a new weapon, not to speculate.”

Baedeker had been regularly reporting his progress. Or was it progress? The planetary drive appeared to tap the zero-point energy of the vacuum. Somehow, it shaped an asymmetry that was inherently propulsive. The energies involved were beyond staggering.

Each time that he entered his lab, the mere notion of tampering with the drive made Baedeker tremble. The eagerness with which Achilles embraced such meddling made Baedeker want to hide forever beneath his belly. Not that a mere bulwark of flesh would protect him.

Achilles continued to rage. “… Or perhaps I should have you returned to Nature Preserve One to pick weeds. The fields have inspired your creativity before.”

The serenity of the fields felt strangely alluring. Return was not the worst fate Baedeker could imagine.

If a planetary drive was damaged, how far would the effects travel?

There must be another way to bring the ex-Colonists to their senses. Baedeker fluted obsequiously, “I will redouble my efforts.”

“DO NOTHING, and wait for the Concordance to destroy us. Do something, and bring on their attack even sooner.” Sabrina looked as grim as the report she echoed. “Neither is a very attractive option.”

“No, they’re not,” Sigmund agreed. Behind Sabrina, a holo cycled through panoramic images of Arcadia. Every politician’s office he’d ever seen on Earth was filled with images of … the politician. Never Sabrina’s. “Not for us, certainly. For the Puppeteers, the choice should be easier. Why don’t they get it over with? Waiting only increases the possibility we’ll try to do something to them.”

Sabrina spun one of her many rings around a finger, considering. “They don’t know Nessus told us. They don’t know we know.”

He shook his head. “They’re Puppeteers. They’d worry we might, somehow, find out.”

“Then I don’t
know
why, Sigmund.”

“They would delay, Sabrina, for only one reason: to make use of the time. I don’t know what they’re doing with it. And because delay risks us finding out and acting, the Puppeteers must be watching us closely.”

She stopped turning the ring. “Watching us. How?”

That they continued to have such conversations, however futilely, suggested the electronics experts Eric had recruited had done what Sigmund had asked of them: They had properly shielded Sabrina’s office. “The modifications we’re making to our few ships are no threat to the Concordance. Not when they can dissolve General Products hulls from a distance.”

“I know,” Sabrina said. “They’re for morale, or in case a scout runs into these Kzinti.”

He had lied even to her. He trusted her integrity, but he knew nothing about her acting ability. “The truth, Sabrina, is I assumed we were being watched. Confirming that meant giving any spies something to do.”

“Persons employed to surreptitiously ascertain secrets,” Jeeves offered.

The color drained from Sabrina’s face. “Our own people?”

“There are millions of humans on New Terra. Some might be loyal to the old ways. Some might have been informants before independence; they would have no choice but cooperate if threatened with exposure. They wouldn’t necessarily know the consequences of their actions. However …” Sigmund smiled. “People here aren’t very
good
at spying.”

Not to ARM standards.

He had had Sabrina order Arcadia’s largest spaceport cordoned off for the new navy. The facility employed thousands, in every capacity from technician to cargo handler to perimeter guard. Invisible to all, operating from a control room accessible only by stepping disc, a few specialists watched all the rest. Sigmund had personally vetted and trained them all.

The naval yard teemed with spies. They lurked about, watching. They copied files without authorization. To the limited extent Sigmund had reliable staff to follow them while off-base, they skulked about at night to rendezvous secretly and to radio messages.

On
Explorer’s
return from its “weapons test” flight, Sigmund had confirmed what he was sure he would find: coded hyperwave chatter. The signals had only one possible source: stealthed buoys that trailed or distantly orbited New Terra to relay the reports of the spies.

“I don’t understand.” Sabrina paused to pour ice water from a carafe. “You make this sound somehow good.”

“Yes, it is.” Sigmund accepted a glass, nodding his thanks. “My business is to find—or keep—secrets. That’s made me a student of how, in the past, very big secrets have been kept. Whatever we do to save ourselves, we must prepare it in secret.” Where no one will think to look.

“So arming our ships is all for show. Something to divert the spies from … what?”

Sigmund had a course of action in mind. It was far too flimsy to call a plan, but even governors deserve to be left a few rays of hope. “Let’s just say, possibilities.”

“I admit I foresaw no options for your people, Governor,” Nessus said.

“Believe me, we’ve been looking. We do appreciate having the chance to look.” Sabrina Gomez-Vanderhoff, in whose modest office they met, seemed not to have slept for a week. She gestured at a colleague just joining them. “Nessus, do you know Aaron Tremonti-Lewis? I asked him to join us. He is our Minister for Public Safety.”

Lewis sat on the edge of a small sofa. “Public Safety deals in putting out fires, cleaning up after storms, and handling parties gotten a bit rowdy—not handling the enmity of your people. The Concordance could squash us like a bug. How can we plan for
that?”

Don’t overdo it, Sigmund thought. He watched from a darkened room adjoining the governor’s office. Lest Nessus have bug detectors, the surveillance was very low-tech: a one-way mirror built into a decoration newly hung on Sabrina’s office wall. Amplifiers in earplugs boosted the scarcely audible sounds from next door.

Nessus sat astraddle a proper Citizen couch. Such furniture would have been standard in the governor’s office before New Terra got its freedom. The couch restored to its place symbolized bigger changes soon to be undone. “I had expected to see Sigmund Ausfaller, and possibly some of my former scouts.”

“Pfft,” Sabrina said. Sigmund couldn’t parse that, but it sounded dismissive. “Nessus, I know you meant well, but Sigmund is mentally ill. Deranged. He worries constantly about these Kzinti beings finding us. If they find us, they find the Fleet, too, I keep telling—”

A timid knock interrupted Sabrina’s outburst. “Come in,” Sabrina said impatiently.

The door opened. A junior aide rolled in a cart piled with snacks and beverages. “Apologies, ma’am.” She backed out quickly.

Aaron wandered over to the cart. “Coffee, tea, and an assortment of juices. No beer.”

Don’t overdo it, Sigmund thought again. Cue Sabrina.

Sabrina came out from behind her desk and poured herself a cup of tea. “There’s carrot juice, Nessus. If I recall correctly, that’s your drink.”

Nessus dismounted the Y-shaped couch and filled a glass. “Then Sigmund will not be joining us. I had hoped he might be the saving of you.”

“He’s a nutcase,” Aaron said.

“Enough, Aaron.” Sabrina sighed. “Nessus, we asked you here for guidance. We few cannot resist the might of the Fleet. It saddens me, but New Terra must enter a new relationship with Hearth. Once the Outsiders’ deadline makes the Concordance act, it will be too late.”

Sigmund heard without listening. Get on with it.

Another knock at Sabrina’s door: the same junior aide. “My apologies. I’ll get the mess out of here.” Cringing under Sabrina’s stare, he gathered empty and partially filled glasses.

A moment later, there was a knock at Sigmund’s door. The aide came in, no longer cowering. “This is it, Sigmund. Nessus’ glass.”

“Good work,” Sigmund said. They stepped to a lab. Eric and Kirsten were waiting for him, with a bunch of technicians most of whom Sigmund had yet to meet.

He could scarcely bear to breathe as a tech lifted Nessus’ lip- and tongueprints from the glass. Sigmund had given Eric the idea—it wasn’t a big leap from fake fingerprints—but making it happen required skills Sigmund lacked.

The tech walked around a larger-than-life holo of the lifted prints, peering this way and that. “Looks complete,” the tech said. “You’ll have your copies in five minutes.”

Kirsten smiled, showing more confidence than Sigmund felt. Maybe she was faking it, too. She said, “That’s good enough for me. Let’s do it.”

They stepped back to Sigmund’s stakeout. In Sabrina’s office, depressing talk of surrender continued. Nessus straddled his couch, facing Sabrina’s desk.

Sigmund pushed against the back of the mirrored ornament. It swung out silently on well-oiled hinges.

Nessus crumpled from a stunner blast, never knowing what hit him.

“I’M IN,” Kirsten said. “The right-side tongueprint worked.”

Text scrolled in a holo above Nessus’ pocket computer. Sigmund could not read a thing, but Kirsten could. Everyone in Nessus’ ill-fated Colonist
scout program read the Concordance script. Teaching them to read had been easier for Nessus than translating everything a scout might need.

“How long will Nessus be out?” Aaron asked nervously.

Sigmund had been asked that repeatedly since proposing this plan. The answer remained the same: best guess, based on comparative body weights of humans and Puppeteers, a few minutes. “We’re going as fast as we can.”

“Searching … searching … searching,” Kirsten muttered. (She had access only to basic operations reachable through the touch screen. Pocket comps did not have full keypads, and no human’s voice would ever be confused with a Puppeteer’s. Apparently they had three pairs of vocal cords per throat.) She frowned. “No navigational data on the comp. That would have been too easy.”