“Mute that herdless outcast!” Baedeker sang. The intruder blips, now visible to ground-based telescopes, had morphed in the tactical display into flat cylindrical icons. Gw’oth ships, definitely. “Why do our defenses not fire?”
“A hail on the Directorate emergency network,” Vesta called. “Now, two hails. Full encryption.”
“Whose authentication codes?” Baedeker asked.
“Both hails use my codes,” Vesta sang.
Baedeker stared. “Take the first hail. Put the call on speaker.”
“Is Baedeker there?” the familiar, hated voices of Achilles asked.
“The Hindmost is here,” Baedeker sang icily. “If you wish to help the Concordance, get off this channel.”
“Only I can save the Concordance. Now empty the room—I imagine you are in the command bunker.”
“Why should I do that?”
Achilles whistled in amusement. “Surely your sensors show six very good reasons. Now for the good of the herd, send out everyone before responding to the second hail.”
Baedeker counted to twenty. “It is done.”
“He lies,” Vesta sang.
Baedeker stared. The betrayal was suddenly clear.
“Clear the room, Baedeker,” Vesta sang.
Mighty current was on its final approach to Nature Preserve Five, close to atmospheric entry, when the hail over the secure channel was answered.
“We are Ol’t’ro,” they announced.
“This is the Hindmost.”
“We remember you,” Ol’t’ro sang. “It has been a long time. We ask a question for the good of the Concordance, so do not deceive us. Are you alone?”
“Yes. What do you want?” Baedeker sang sourly.
“We want safety for everyone, Citizen and Gw’o alike. You have failed to provide that.”
“Safety, how?”
“You will address the Concordance. You will announce your immediate resignation and endorse Achilles to succeed. Soon after, Achilles will declare the successful conclusion of a brilliant negotiation.
“The lagging part of our armada will turn away. Most of our ships already in the Fleet of Worlds will withdraw. We will remain on a Nature Preserve to assure Achilles’ absolute obedience.
“Except for you, Achilles, and us, none need ever know who rules these worlds.”
An odd, half-choked melody, inarticulate. Heavy breathing, as the Hindmost regained control of his emotions. “Ol’t’ro, it was Achilles who threatened your worlds. Why would you help him? Why would you trust him?”
Was it not obvious? “We do not trust him, Baedeker. We use him.”
“Then use me. You must know Achilles is . . . beyond insane.”
Ol’t’ro had considered that. But especially after sharing Remembrance, after seeing how egomaniacal Achilles was, they had no doubts: Achilles was their ideal tool. He would do anything to maintain his status and power.
“You may take our refusal as a compliment. Achilles’ obsessions make him easy to predict and control. If he disappoints us, we may reinstate you to office. He is instructed not to harm you.”
“Achilles has endangered worlds to further his ambition. You cannot, you must not, hold a trillion Citizens hostage to his good behavior.” Baedeker’s harmonics rang with despair. “It is too easy to imagine the day he will stop caring about their fates.”
Achilles had never started to care. “Were we to disclose even a small part of what we know about him, even you timid creatures would surely trample him. He craves the herd’s adoration. He will obey us.”
“And if I do not resign?”
Through an uncoupled tubacle, Ol’t’ro peered through the melding-chamber floor at navigational sensors. All six ships were on their final landing approaches. The Fleet’s compromised defenses remained inoperative. “We are taking control of your planetary drives.”
“T . . . to change the Fleet’s course?”
“Baedeker, think as the engineer you once were. What will happen if we destabilize even one of the Fleet’s planetary drives?”
There was a roar like a seamount avalanche, and an ice sheet cracking and grinding, and a million voices screaming—and then silence.
In a low, quaking melody—devoid of grace notes, its harmonics limp, with undertunes ineffably sad—Baedeker intoned, “I will comply.”
48
Emergency tones, piercing and insistent, ripped Nessus from exhausted sleep. He lunged for his pocket computer as it shrieked on his nightstand.
“Thank the herd I reached you!” Baedeker sang. “Vesta was the traitor. Nike did only what any sane person would: he ran for safety while he still could. You must go to the Directorate immediately and erase all director-restricted files. Then, hide. Get to New Terra if you can.”
Nessus’ hearts pounded. “Why? What is happening?”
“There is no time. Do you trust me?”
“Of course,” Nessus sang.
“Then hurry and be safe.” Baedeker broke the connection.
Nessus gave his sleep-stirred mane a perfunctory brushing, just enough to avoid calling attention to himself. He stepped through to Clandestine Directorate’s security foyer, where the nightshift guards stiffened in surprise. “Other worlds, other schedules,” he sang in explanation. They confirmed his identity and let him proceed into the building.
The lights rose as Nessus entered his office. It was an ordinary room, filled with standard furniture, displaying everyday scenes on its walls, and it all seemed to mock him. Would normality ever hold a place in his life?
The moment he shut the door, Voice spoke from his shelf. “The Hindmost has scheduled an address to the Concordance. He was in the command bunker, but has left.”
Nessus could not guess what that meant, or why Baedeker had made his mysterious request. Nor did Nessus waste time wondering, because he trusted Baedeker implicitly.
System-administrator access required full biometric authentication. Nessus used lip-, tongue-, and voiceprints to identify himself. He navigated through the file system to the director-restricted storage, then jacked Voice’s server into the office terminal. “Delete it all, Voice. Remote backups, too.”
“Shall I copy anything? Produce an analysis of what is there?”
“Not if it will slow you down.”
“Very good, sir.”
Nessus imagined an edge-of-audibility whine as somewhere on the Directorate network trillions of bistable memory molecules reset. What dark secrets they must hold—too many of his own shameful deeds among them. All done to protect the Concordance.
“Done, sir,” Voice announced. “Full deletion.”
Nessus grabbed Voice’s server by its jaw grip; the fiber-optic cable ripped loose as he dashed for the door. His mind churned with half-remembered stepping-disc locations he might reach without encountering guards on patrol. And once out of the building? Aegis was still being overhauled. Maybe he could commandeer a grain ship. He opened the office door—
Vesta and a dozen guards, stunners in their jaws, were galloping down the corridor.
In triumph, Achilles watched Baedeker’s curt abdication speech. He basked in the Party elders’ renewed, urgent pleas for his return. When they had groveled sufficiently, he transmitted his acceptance and guidance for his victorious homecoming. He brushed and combed, braided and weaved, curled and teased, until his coiffure was beyond magnificent.
Only then did he set Remembrance on the short trip to Hearth’s main spaceport.
Achilles disembarked into the tumult of millions stomping their approval, the adoration swelling louder and louder. Even viewed from atop the reviewing stand, his devoted subjects stretched from horizon to horizon. They covered even the illumination strips embedded in the landing field’s concrete. A forest of temporary lampposts lit the myriad upturned, expectant faces and banished the stars from Hearth’s perpetually dark sky.
He drank in the herd’s adulation for a long while before launching into his speech. By then
Hecate had removed Remembrance lest it block anyone’s view of the enormous projected image of—him.
Achilles stood with necks straight and vertical, heads held high, hooves placed apart, utterly confident and serene. The post lamps slowly dimmed until all that the vast herd—and the floating news cameras—could see was his imposing figure. From the display/sunlight panels of arcologies, his image gazed down on throngs in malls and plazas around Hearth.
At the first notes of his amplified voice, a hush fell over the multitude. But when he pledged a swift resolution to the Gw’oth crisis, and swift justice for those whose negligence had brought the Concordance to such a perilous state, the crowd roared its approval.
Finally, his throats hoarse, his legs trembling with fatigue, Achilles brought his oration to a close. “Remember this day, for it is the start of a new era,” he concluded. With the crowd still cheering lustily, he stepped through to the Hindmost’s—to his—official residence.
Where Nessus and Baedeker, their legs cuffed, awaited their fates. A bit of gloating would be the ideal end to the perfect day.
“We are Ol’t’ro.”
While radio waves crept from Nature Preserve Five to Hearth and back, they completed another set of inferences about the Outsider-built planetary drive. When the Pak threat had loomed, their work would have proceeded far swifter had Baedeker only given them access.
Doubtless Baedeker would soon suffer, although not for that lapse of judgment.
“This is the Hindmost,” the reply finally came, with undertunes smug and proud.
“We would participate more closely in the councils of government,” Ol’t’ro announced. There would be another delay, and they resumed their line of research.
“State your needs and I will make it so,” Achilles sang, a bit of the haughtiness gone from his voices.
“We will be your Minister of Science.” We will sample and guide all the research and development done in the Concordance.
“But none can see you!” The swagger was entirely gone now, replaced by notes of panic. “None can learn of our . . . arrangement.”
Lest all should see you as a puppet. Ol’t’ro’s thoughts skipped from puppet, to Puppeteer, to the human from whom they had learned the term. Sigmund Ausfaller.
“We will participate remotely, as a hologram,” they sang. “You will explain that our research is often dangerous and so we work on the Nature Preserves, from ships, and even in deep space. Agreed?”
“A hologram! Of what?”
“Of a Citizen.” Sigmund had traveled with an artificial intelligence. Jeeves, the creature had been called. While he could, Sigmund had hidden the existence of the software.
But Ol’t’ro had yet to find any trace of artificial intelligence in the Concordance’s vast computer network. “Obtain an artificial intelligence, perhaps from New Terra. We will alter it to present a Citizen persona.”
“Agreed. You shall have your Voice,” Achilles sang. “And what shall we call your persona?”
Voice. Ol’t’ro recognized without understanding the capitalization and renewed smug grace notes. They decided it did not matter.
To impersonate an Experimentalist politician, they would need a designation from human mythology. They uploaded databases from the Human Studies Institute on Hearth, then sorted and sifted. Names. Terms. Human history. Cultural icons.
They would be the power behind the throne, the eminence grise, the invisible hand, the ultimate Puppeteer. They required a name of subtlety and wisdom, of distinction and authority.
Ol’t’ro sang, “We shall be called Chiron.”
Did this Hindmost know the sage and cunning centaur from human myth who taught the legendary Achilles? If so, he wisely kept it to himself.
49
Once more, Addison dropped back to normal space.
Louis scrambled to assess the tactical situation. “Nothing visible,” he told Enzio. That did not preclude the Gw’oth fleet at any instant dropping from hyperspace all around Addison.
“Radar ping?” Enzio suggested.
“Go ahead.” Absent extremely bad luck, the Gw’oth fleet, wherever they were, would be beyond radar range, too. “I’m going to check the New Terra relays for messages.”
He found a recording from Sigmund. “Louis, everything has gone to hell. Contact me immediately.”
Louis did, and Sigmund looked like hell. All color except five-o’clock shadow was gone from his face. “Where are you?” Sigmund demanded.
“Is Alice all right?” Louis shot back. His last message from her was days old.
“The last I heard, she’s fine and her trip remains uneventful. Now where is Addison?”
“We’re about a day north of New Terra by hyperdrive. Tell me what’s happening.”
“Here’s what I know.” Sigmund grimaced. “What little I know. Just after you last went back to hyperspace, the Gw’oth began ominous hyperwave broadcasts. The Concordance was paralyzed. Billions catatonic. Billions pleading to be saved. More ships—a surprising number, considering we’re talking about Puppeteers—headed to New Terra, begging for asylum.”
“To be saved,” Louis repeated. “Saved by what or whom? Achilles?”
“Yah. It gets worse. The Fleet’s border array lost track of half a dozen Gw’oth warships. Then, in extremely short order, Baedeker resigned and Achilles returned heroically to Hearth. Tanj, but the Puppeteers are herd animals. There was worldwide panic, worldwide mass hysteria, and out of it Achilles has gotten himself acclaimed as Hindmost.”
“What can anyone say to that?”
“Nothing,” Sigmund said. “But things got stranger still. Almost immediately, Achilles announced a diplomatic settlement with the Gw’oth. As best my analysts can tell from hyperspace entry/exit ripples, the Gw’oth ships have veered off. They are detouring around the Fleet to take a longer route home.”
“What about the Puppeteer border array? Does hyperwave radar support the supposed course change?”
“That’s the strangest part of things. I don’t know.” Sigmund grimaced. “Since Achilles took over, I’m out of the loop. I can’t contact Baedeker, Nike, or Nessus.”
As Sigmund spun out paranoid fantasies—of secret deals between Achilles and the Gw’oth, of Gw’oth secretly ruling Hearth itself—Louis struggled to take in everything. He wasn’t sure he cared who ruled on Hearth. It was New Terra that mattered, and the life he hoped to make there with Alice.
But what about Nessus?
When Louis joined Nessus, the only job description was it may be dangerous . . . I can reveal no more than that. Certainly Louis had faced more than his share of danger since. Not until he was aboard Aegis, and cured of his addiction, had Nessus disclosed what he really expected of Louis: peace with the Gw’oth. Surely no one could have accomplished that.
So why did Louis feel that he had failed?
What if Nessus had not rescued Louis from Wunderland? Every possible outcome was grim. He would be a hopeless addict, or a serf in an aristo labor camp, or dead.
Sigmund watched silently from the hyperwave display. Looking uncomfortable. Deciding how to bring up . . . something.
“You don’t have to ask, Sigmund.” I know you won’t ask, because New Terra cannot afford to take sides in Concordance politics. But I’m not from around here. “I will save Nessus. Baedeker, too, if I can. But I’m going to need your help.”
. . .
Trowel firmly clenched in his jaw, Baedeker dug at a stubborn, deeply rooted weed. When the wildflower yielded, he turned his attention to another. The fields stretched all around him. He need never worry about running out of weeds. His work this day was nearly done, for only a single sun remained in the sky. It would soon be dark.
Nature Preserve One was the earliest and most conservatively engineered of Hearth’s companion worlds. The annual emission cycles of the suns emulated the seasonal variability Hearth had once experienced. And because the single string of suns orbited over the equator, the climate g
rew colder with higher latitudes, reproducing conditions long vanished from the home world itself.
In one way Baedeker considered himself lucky. Penance Island lay near the equator. The days were hot, but the evenings were almost pleasantly cool. The island never experienced winter or snow.
He hated snow.
“I think I shall go mad.” Nessus’ melody was thin and unadorned, for one of his mouths was also encumbered. He toiled three crop rows to Baedeker’s right.
“The majority is always sane. At least, given enough time.” Baedeker uprooted a chokeweed while he considered his next chords. A thing needed to be sung, and yet he had been reluctant to express the thought. “I am sorry, Nessus, that you are here. It is my fault.”
“And yet I feel better for being here with you. Except . . .”
Baedeker dropped his trowel to speak more clearly. “Achilles intends us to suffer as he perceives he suffered during his long banishment. You and I will not be harmed physically.” At least not soon. Baedeker chose not to dwell on that possibility.
“This is not suffering?”
Relieved of responsibility. Spared of impossible expectations. Immersed every day in a mindless task. Lost every night in exhausted sleep. Suffering? Hardly. This was release. This was, at least for now, all that Baedeker could handle.
“I know this dance. You will get used to it,” he sang.
The warble of a siren: work’s end for the day. He began gathering his tools in the pockets of his oversized sash. Across the fields, other inmates did the same. He glanced at the dark clouds. “Come, Nessus. It will rain soon.” The tents leaked, but they still offered some shelter.
He and Nessus trudged to the tents. Baedeker ignored the growing clumps of damp soil that clung to his hooves.
Within the administrative compound, artificial lights switched on. Inside the wall was another universe, a place of controlled climate, data networks, computers, stepping discs, cargo floaters, food synthesizers. . . . Outside the wall the only technology was rude implements and muscle power. Nothing to make life easier. Nothing that could be used in an escape attempt if anyone should be crazy enough to try. Baedeker tried to ignore the bright lights and their unwelcome reminder of a more complicated existence.