Fate of Worlds

  The Outsiders, with their level of tech, would crack military codes faster than anyone. That they chose now to bug out meant something. What did they know that he didn’t? His gut insisted that mayhem, at a deadlier intensity than ever, was about to break out near Endurance.

  Tanj it!

  Sigmund had spent his life imagining what “normal” people found inconceivable. That was how one uncovered conspiracies. That was what had made him valuable as an ARM agent. That was how, time and again, he had saved New Terra.

  It was time again to confront the inconceivable.

  The minister was all but as timid as a Puppeteer. Did a person like that innocently get appointed to run the Ministry of Defense? Or were people high in the government working for the Puppeteers?

  * * *

  “I WASN’T EXPECTING to hear from you,” Alice said. Certainly not one-on-one; after the fireworks of the last mass debrief, the bigger surprise was that Sigmund still had access to the Ministry’s long-range hyperwave gear.

  It was only comm delay, but Sigmund seemed to stare at her from the console.

  “You know how it is,” he finally answered.

  She managed not to react. From long ago, the innocent phrase was code for We need to speak in private. She set her pocket comp on the comm-console shelf and activated what Sigmund called protocol gamma: sound suppression, bug suppression, and a holographic screen to stymie lip-readers.

  “Countermeasures are active, Sigmund. Now what’s this about?”

  “The minister is not seeing reason.”

  Norquist-Ng could hardly eavesdrop on her end of the link, and Alice doubted Sigmund wanted her to undercut his own granddaughter. So they were keeping secrets from Nessus, still ensconced in front of the pilot’s console. With the activation of the countermeasures, his irritating humming had faded into white noise.

  Without the holo screen, could Nessus have read her lips? She didn’t put it past him. But it had been Sigmund’s idea to bring Nessus. Wheels within wheels …

  She said, “And you suppose Nessus won’t see reason, either.”

  “He always has—

  “His own agenda,” she completed. “I know.” The Puppeteer might have been a valuable resource, but the Ringworld was gone. Nessus’ priority would revert—had reverted—to keeping Earth ignorant of the Concordance’s erstwhile slave colony.

  “We don’t dare not contact the ARM,” Sigmund said. “Not with Kzinti fleets so near.”

  Until yesterday, everything she knew about the Kzinti she had heard from Sigmund. She hadn’t doubted that hostile feline aliens existed, but that was no reason to obsess. It just hadn’t seemed credible that the Kzinti could be as aggressive as he claimed—not after losing successive wars to humans—and she had taken his foreboding as the paranoia speaking.

  No longer. Not after watching those lens-shaped ships in action …

  “It’s not our decision to make,” she said, shivering.

  “True, we lack the authority. On the basis of qualifications, don’t you think the answer is different? Millions of lives are at stake.”

  The worst of it was, she agreed with Sigmund. That didn’t give them the right to decide for everyone on New Terra.

  Wait. How had he gotten access to a Ministry comm channel to plot sedition? “You’re working with someone in the Ministry,” she said. The notion made joining him in rebellion more palatable. Maybe.

  “You could say that.”

  And maybe not. Knowing Sigmund, she guessed that that someone wasn’t cooperating by choice. Someone embezzling from the Ministry? Sloppy with classified information? Sigmund had always made it his business to know. He had never admitted, even to her, every trap and back door hidden in the Ministry’s computer systems.

  “Let’s say I agree with you,” Alice said. “What then?”

  “Then you and Julia decide if you can safely reach out to the ARM.” For a moment, the demented mastermind paranoid expression melted to simple human worry. “I stress, safely.

  “If you succeed in making contact, the story for everyone here will be that an ARM ship reached out to you.”

  18

  Some elements of the current investigation were well established: Eleven-dimensional tensors for the quantum-gravitational-field model. The differential geometry that had proven itself useful, if only empirically, in past analyses of hyperspace. Multiverse matrix mechanics.

  Ol’t’ro lost themselves in the beauty of the mathematics.

  But multiverse theory embraced an infinite number of possibilities. The equations had no known closed-form solution, and offered scant guidance which approximations might converge, even given the massively parallel, reconfigurable computers of the—

  “Your Wisdom,” a timid voice intruded into the sealed melding chamber.

  Ol’t’ro ignored the intercom, but the voice returned.

  “Your Wisdom, it is time. You asked that I remind you.”

  Almost, they had a candidate partitioning onto the processor arrays of the latest set of equations. The granularity of the partitioning was coarser than they would have liked. If only they had another million processing nodes for the simulation—

  “Your Wisdom,” the servant tried again, plaintively, a bit louder.

  The gathering on Hearth is at your demand, the Cd’o unit chided. And fainter, from an imprint of one long dead, Doing science is not our main purpose on this world.

  “Your Wisdom, please. Before the meld, you were most insistent.”

  They had not insisted. Before the meld there could be no they. Cd’o had insisted.

  Frustrated and distracted, the gestalt began to crumble. Like an underwater avalanche, slow and inexorable, the mathematical synthesis fell into ruin.

  From deep within the communal mind came the image—from how long ago?—of rocks and mud cascading down the side of a seamount. When, Ol’t’ro wondered, had they last experienced the sea? Many generations, and yet within their newest units the memories remained fresh. The ice-locked, world-spanning ocean of Jm’ho. The storm-tossed seas of Kl’mo, the colony they had—

  Shaking off the reverie, Ol’t’ro spoke through the microphone positioned deep within a unit’s tubacle. “Thank you,” they told the anxious servant. “That will be all.”

  Binding a Proteus fragment to the meld, linking to the Hindmost’s council chamber a world away, they opened the eyes of Chiron.

  * * *

  “THESE ARE WORRISOME TIMES,” this most recent Hindmost sang, directing a furtive, entreating glance at his master. “Without the Ringworld to fight over, at any time three alien fleets may turn our way. We have preempted additional resources to strengthen our defenses. As that effort progresses, we may find we need to divert yet more resources.”

  “And I agreed,” Ol’t’ro, through Chiron, sang. To extend Proteus would be an intriguing experiment. “Nonetheless, our own research is important. It—”

  “Worrisome times,” Selene repeated. He was new, his predecessor as Minister of Industrial Production lost to catatonic collapse at the previous cabinet meeting.

  From the indifferently brushed nature of Selene’s mane, Ol’t’ro did not expect this one to last, either. They ignored the interruption. “My research could lead to a new defensive weapon.”

  Silence greeted this justification: the harmony of discord. Everyone waited for someone else to object aloud. The Ministry of Science had many open-ended projects, often claiming defensive improvements—eventually—as the justification.

  We could destroy their worlds, an angry chorus welled up in Ol’t’ro’s thoughts. The mind traces of many departed units, a Gw’otesht within a Gw’otesht. And Do they not also remember our successes?

  For alien ships were already all around the Fleet, had been for years, yet everyone on these worlds remained safe. Ol’t’ro’s efforts kept the alien visitors well behaved. The all-but-reactionless drives they had devised—the closest anyone, anywhere, had come to duplicating the Outsider re
actionless drive technology—propelled the thousands of defensive drones that held alien ships at bay.

  Self-congratulation accomplishes nothing, scolded an ancient engram, the faint echo of a unit long departed.

  As faint as were those thoughts, and as impertinent, the unit made sense.

  “Chiron?” the Hindmost sang. “Have you taken into account this matter of priorities?”

  The insolent unit: If the Fleet should fall, what then of your research?

  Ol’t’ro considered:

  That the least of their interests was how the Concordance managed its affairs, as long as Citizens stayed far from the Gw’oth worlds.

  That as politicians went, Citizen or Gw’oth, Horatius was stolidly reliable.

  That by a show of deference to Horatius, should they choose to offer one, they would strengthen him as Hindmost.

  That Cd’o’s wanderlust was illogical. Suppose they were so rash as to expose one of themselves as a potential hostage. Sealed into an environmental suit, immobile without a motorized exoskeleton, still restricted to viewing the outer world through sensors … Cd’o might as well remain within the habitat.

  That to go from the water-filled habitat into the crush of gravity would be peculiar.

  And intriguing, too.

  That it was interesting to speculate how expanded computing resources would affect Proteus, and that diverting resources to the AI’s extension would answer that question sooner.

  At the cost of further emboldening Achilles, whose reticence to enhancing Proteus was so blatantly contrived.

  That if alien armadas, having chased away the Ringworld, should set out today, standard hyperdrive could not deliver them to the Fleet of Worlds any sooner than a hundred days. There would be more than ample time to enhance Proteus.

  That if the alien fleets had had Type II hyperdrives, the situation would be different. But the Type II hyperdrive was a conundrum, a cosmic joke, an unending frustration.

  That they half hoped the reports from the Fleet’s observers were correct: that the Long Shot had vanished with the Ringworld, never again to confound them.

  That if alien navies did come to the Fleet of Worlds, their unwelcome attention would be drawn ever farther from the Gw’oth worlds.

  That logic aside, a part of them, too, hungered to see new vistas. That a cacophony of engrams, echoes from deep into their past, remembered leading much different lives.

  That Cd’o’s unhappiness was not the matter at hand. Exploration was not even foremost at this instant among that unit’s thoughts.

  That whether or not to redirect resources was trivial, yet they vacillated and hesitated because trivia muddled their thoughts. Sooner rather than later, they must reinvigorate themselves. Some units would pass into memory, but they had candidates to join the meld.

  That adapting the troublesome multiverse simulation onto the present, limited set of processors would be a useful test of the candidates’ potential contributions to the meld.

  That they were old.

  That they wanted this meeting ended, to turn their attention to more appealing topics.

  Through Chiron, Ol’t’ro sang, “For now, Hindmost, I withdraw my suggestion. We should continue to enhance Proteus.”

  19

  Tanya poked at whatever it was she had been served for dinner. She didn’t remember having eaten any. From her distracted stirring, the food had begun to look used.

  She had never seen Puma, never been aboard, never, to her knowledge, met any of the corvette’s crew, but in her mind’s eye that ship differed little from Koala. Too many sailors crammed into too little space. An endless background droning, from the clipped commands and acknowledgments on the bridge, to tense speculations in the public spaces, to stress-relieving high jinks in quarters. A place full of life.

  No more.

  Puma had transformed in an instant into a gamma-ray burst and a quickly dissipated debris field. Antimatter explosions didn’t leave much behind.

  Tanjed ratcats.

  Seething rage had squelched the usual boisterousness of the junior officers’ mess. She set down her fork and shoved away her tray.

  “Not hungry, Lieutenant Wu?”

  Junior officers shot to their feet. Tanya said, “Commander, I didn’t see you—”

  “At ease,” Commander Johansson ordered from the open hatchway. “Lieutenant, would you mind coming with me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They walked forward. Something in Johansson’s stiff gait told her not to bother asking what this was about.

  They came to the last place she would have expected: the captain’s cabin. “Enter,” came a gruff answer to Johansson’s knock.

  Dad looked grim. Lieutenant Commander Ovando, the chief communications officer, looked puzzled. With Tanya and Johansson squeezed in, the cabin was packed. Dad waved off her salute.

  “Show her,” Dad said.

  “Yes, Captain.” Ovando handed Tanya a pocket comp.

  The screen displayed her inbox. Ten messages had come in since she’d last checked mail—but the most recent, a ship-to-ship, had been read. An icon showed it had come wrapped in standard fleet encryption. The subject line read Personal and Confidential.

  Who said stuff like that? Who was Alice Jordan?

  “This came by hyperwave a few minutes ago,” Ovando said. “A routine security audit flagged it.”

  “I don’t recognize the name,” Tanya said.

  “I’m not surprised,” Johansson answered. “No one by that name is serving in the ARM, and I don’t mean only the expeditionary force. Not anywhere.”

  “Shall I open it?” Tanya asked.

  “Go ahead, Lieutenant,” Dad said.

  Tanya tapped the screen and scanned the header that popped open. It indicated standard ARM comm protocol and fleet encryption, and that the message had ping-ponged its way to Koala through a half-dozen hyperwave relays.

  The stated origin of the message was a vessel called Endurance. Ships had carried that name back to the days of sail, but she didn’t recall any ship named Endurance deployed to the Ringworld theater of operations.

  With a finger swipe Tanya scrolled down to the message body. “Finagle,” she said wonderingly.

  “Exactly right,” Dad said.

  “I’ve done database searches,” Ovando said. “A colony ramscoop named Long Pass did vanish—almost seven hundred years ago. A goldskin named Alice Jordan disappeared from Sol system a few decades later.”

  “Goldskin?” Tanya asked.

  “Belter police of that era wore yellow spacesuits,” Ovando explained.

  “You mean this message could be real?” Johansson said. “That’s unbelievable.”

  “No,” Tanya said. “What’s unbelievable is that a long-lost colony and a woman who should be long dead contacted me.”

  * * *

  SOONER THAN ALICE HAD DARED to hope, the comm console pinged. Telltales indicated a hyperwave link and ARM encryption.

  “We’re getting video feed,” Jeeves announced. “Not an animation, as best I can judge.”

  Tucking a loose strand of hair behind an ear, Alice looked at Julia. “We’re agreed?”

  “Go,” Julia said. To Nessus, still at the pilot’s console, she added, “Your objections are noted. And if you can’t stop that infernal humming, get off the bridge.”

  “No humming,” Nessus promised. He began tapping out a rhythm with a forehoof.

  Alice angled and zoomed the camera to show only her, then tapped ACCEPT.

  A young woman appeared. Her trim blue jumpsuit had the look of a uniform, its insignia unfamiliar. She had long, straight, black hair, worn pulled back, and her skin was golden. The slight slant to her eyes made their icy blueness all the more startling. Nothing showed behind her but bare metallic bulkheads.

  “This is Endurance,” Alice said. “My name is Alice Jordan.”

  “Hello, Alice,” the woman said. She frowned in concentration, as though struggling with Alice
’s archaic speech. “I’m Tanya Wu. You messaged me?”

  Interworld sounded as awkward to Alice. “I did, Tanya. Thank you for responding.”

  A burst of typing came from Alice’s left, and text appeared on her contact lenses. It was Julia asking: Is she an ARM?

  Tanya said, “Your message speaks of a lost human colony, New Terra. Where is it?”

  In Alice’s peripheral vision, Nessus tore at his mane. She said, “It’s a dangerous galaxy, Tanya. I would rather not broadcast that information.”

  Tanya frowned. “We’re talking by hyperwave, and I presume you reached this system by hyperdrive. You’ve obviously had dealings with the Outsiders, so why not ask them how to get home?”

  Because, in a long-ago, three-way barter, the Outsiders had committed to the Puppeteers never to help the New Terrans get home. New Terra’s history was too tanjed convoluted for anyone to swallow in one serving. And that left telling lies.

  For years Alice had spurned Sigmund’s efforts to contact her. Here and now she needed the devious insights of his twisted, brilliant mind—and she couldn’t reach him. The Ministry of Defense said he was unavailable.

  The best lies are the simplest, she decided. “We can’t afford the answer.”

  “And Outsiders don’t haggle,” Tanya acknowledged as her eyes darted about. Reading cues off her own lenses? “You messaged an ARM ship. Why be coy now?”

  “I’m being cautious, not coy. We would like to reconnect without drawing the attention of uninvited parties.”

  “That’s understandable.” More darting of Tanya’s eyes. “How does it happen that Endurance shows up in this region of space at this time?”

  “A big hyperspace ripple,” Alice said. “We came to check that out and found more than we expected.”

  “I’ll bet.” Tanya pursed her lips. “How is it you knew ARM encryption?”

  “We didn’t. We cracked the encryption. That only worked because the plaintext recognizably derived from English.”

  “Still, it’s military-grade crypto. I guess you mastered a few tricks in your isolated little colony.”