Fate of Worlds

  But they hadn’t. Directing a stern chord at himself, Horatius got himself under control. The herd depended on him.

  Untold amounts of antimatter and an equal quantity of matter had transformed to energy, into gamma rays, just beyond Hearth’s atmosphere. Just beyond—and by that margin, dire catastrophe had become mere misfortune. The atmosphere blocked gamma rays.

  But he dare not delay any longer. With his aides milling about, watching anxiously, Horatius reached for his computer to order—

  The message-waiting indicator flashed. Only Baedeker had the priority codes to override his privacy settings.

  “Leave me,” Horatius ordered.

  At last he had the room to himself, and he opened Baedeker’s message. I am in place, but installation was improperly done. I will need the full scheduled time to make repairs.

  Meaning not before all the alien fleets were upon them. Dare he wait that long?

  * * *

  LOUIS TOOK BACK the conn from Jeeves to drop the ship from hyperspace. He had to know what was happening, had to see whether any hope remained of saving Nessus.

  And so—as Jeeves mapped the full spectrum of mayhem into the pitifully narrow band of wavelengths the human eye could see, and slowed the tactical display to a rate mere human minds could grasp—Louis and Alice witnessed madness above Hearth: the battle of the General Products factory.

  At significant fractions of light speed, dueling ships and robotic craft alike raced across the few million miles of the Fleet’s singularity, jumped to hyperspace, then reappeared nearby to recontest the same territory. There were only four ships—Kzinti had already blasted the skies clear of grain ships—but many, many probes.

  Louis lost count of the explosions. Probes of the Fleet destroyed. Kzinti missiles destroyed. One by one, in the most stupendous blasts of all, three attacking ships transformed into fireballs of pure energy.

  The last of the Patriarchy ships managed to fire off all its antimatter munitions before getting hit. Drilling a fiery hole through Hearth’s perpetually dark skies, it held together long enough to plow halfway across a continent before exploding.

  In the ship’s trail, one by one, arcologies collapsed.

  Stepping discs, Louis told himself. Arcology residents could evacuate in an instant. If anything was instinctive to Puppeteers, it was running from danger. They would be all right.

  Unless the warning came too late. Or the disc system overloaded from billions trying to escape the same small swath of territory at the same time. Or already catatonic with fear, they never got the warning. Or the warning they did get pushed them over the abyss into catatonia. Or, or, or. Imagining the many ways an evacuation could go awry, Louis was glad he didn’t have a closer view.

  Alice had turned ashen. In a small voice she asked, “Why did Proteus change his mind?”

  Had Proteus? Louis doubted it. “I suspect those Kzinti made the mistake of attacking something that Proteus cared about.”

  Why was the General Products factory important to Proteus? For the life of him, Louis could not guess.

  47

  “All they accomplished was making the rubble bounce,” Louis said despairingly.

  That and kill untold numbers of Puppeteers, Alice thought, sharing his anguish. She got out of her seat to stand behind him, her hands on his shoulders, kneading. On the relax-room table their dinners were untouched. “I know,” she said.

  One day after the Kzinti raid, a Trinoc smart-munitions bombardment had erupted from hyperspace. It was déjà vu: same surprise attack, same indifference to surrender offers, same hail of destruction on any facility possessed of even the slightest defensive potential.

  While Proteus pulled back and watched. Whether by luck or strategy, the Trinocs had not targeted the main GP orbital factory.

  Louis reached up to squeeze Alice’s hand. “Elements of the ARM will be along soon enough. They’ll no more accept a Kzinti takeover of the Fleet than the Trinocs will.”

  “We can’t stop any of them,” she said. “After living on New Terra, part of me can’t help thinking that the Puppeteers had their comeuppance coming. But not this. Not innocents slaughtered from the skies.”

  “You didn’t see the Fringe War. The Ringworld, for all its immensity, was fragile. And each group was so determined that no one else could control it, could plumb its secrets, that three militaries were on the verge of destroying it.”

  And the Fleet of Worlds had no Tunesmith to whisk it away.

  “Less hopelessness, more action,” Louis decided. He squeezed her hand once more, then stood. “Jeeves, get me Proteus.”

  “Yes, Louis.”

  A moment later, in another voice, the nearby intercom speaker announced, “I am here, Louis. What can I do for you?”

  “Tell me how I can rescue Nessus.”

  “That will be difficult,” Proteus said.

  “I want solutions, not problems,” Louis said.

  “Let me be more precise,” Proteus said. “I no longer have a confirmed location for Nessus. We must hope that his transfer to NP1 was completed successfully.”

  “Hope Nessus has fallen into Achilles’ clutches?” Alice said. “Finagle, why?”

  “Because not even a General Products hull offers a defense against antimatter,” Proteus said. “If Nessus did not reach NP1 safely, then either the Kzinti destroyed his ship in transit, or he was still waiting at that grain terminal and spaceport when a Kzinti antimatter warhead flattened everything for two miles in every direction.”

  * * *

  THE FINAL ELEMENTS FELL INTO PLACE. The final mathematical cross-checks confirmed everything. The final equations were so simple. So elegant. So … ineffably beautiful.

  Completing the analysis had been exhausting.

  “Eat. Rest. Then we will consider the implications,” Ol’t’ro told their units.

  In a flutter of thoughts, a flurry of memories, as the engrams of the departed ebbed once more into obscurity, the meld dissolved. The overmind faded and—

  Once more, she was Cd’o.

  What had happened? What had been decided? The specifics, as after many melds, eluded her. Something about hyperdrive and planetary drives somehow tapping the same energy sources, only it was deeper than that. And something else?

  A meld mate had already opened the hatch. She jetted from the melding chamber, desperate for the food and camaraderie of the Commons. And more food. And then, sleep. Only as she swam, flashing colorful greetings to everyone she met, she doubted that sleep would come.

  Another meld mate swam up close beside her. “That was confusing,” Vs’o said. Outside the meld, he was a topiarist, a genius at the shaping of living sponges. Also, math deficient.

  “The physics?” she asked.

  He wriggled a tubacle dismissively. “Outside the meld, I never understand the physics. No, something else. Did you not feel it?”

  Perhaps the strangeness she had sensed in the meld was more than her imagination. Cd’o edged closer to him. “Something Ol’t’ro worked to keep inside their innermost thoughts?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “But what?”

  Another dismissive wriggle.

  With their bodyguards trailing, they jetted into the Commons. After the stifling, tainted waters of the melding chamber too long sealed, the clear waters of Commons were intoxicating. She filled a large dinner cage with wriggling, succulent worms, blocking the cage mouth with a plump sponge. Vs’o contented himself with a few shellfish.

  As they swam off to find a dining niche, three figures came alongside her. She curled a tubacle to look.

  “Your Wisdoms.” Nm’o was an engineer, one of the support staff, and the bands of color rippling across his integument flared unease. “My companions are—”

  “Lg’o and Qk’o, how are you?” she interrupted. They were engineers, too.

  The two flattened obsequiously.

  “Your Wisdoms,” Nm’o began again.

  She and Vs’o
jetted into an unoccupied dining niche. “Pardon me for eating while you talk. Now what is the matter?”

  “I do not want to die here,” Qk’o blurted out. Despite turning a deep, mortified far red, he continued. “Many of us monitor Concordance news. Citizens are terrified, with good reason. Can your Wisdoms ask Ol’t’ro…?”

  Nor do I wish to die, Cd’o thought. Articulating such sentiments could only get her confined between melds. “Ol’t’ro sees more than you and I. Be assured they are aware of the situation.”

  “Then why are we still on this world?” Qk’o demanded.

  Both of Cd’o’s guards crowded up to the dining niche. One ordered, “Let their Wisdoms eat in peace.”

  Nm’o backed off before adding, “If that Kzinti ship had crashed into a planetary drive…”

  “Ol’t’ro is aware. Ol’t’ro has a plan.” And they are loath to abandon the technology of these worlds to aliens: humans, Kzinti, or Trinocs.

  Lg’o, flaring with embarrassment, spoke for the first time. “I understood the plan to have been that the Citizen defensive grid would protect us. Herd Net teems with rumors that the grid has failed.”

  “Enough,” Cd’o said. Any more questions and she must burst aloud with her own misgivings. Her minders guarded her, but they served Ol’t’ro.

  “Our apologies, your Wisdoms.” Phasing to colors of abject apology, the three jetted away.

  Ol’t’ro has a plan, Cd’o repeated to herself. Otherwise, surely, an evacuation would have begun.

  Her ill-formed doubts only deepened when Vs’o, cracking open one of his shellfish, mused, “One could wish Ol’t’ro had chosen to consider the manner of our deliverance, not physics esoterica, in the recent meld.”

  * * *

  AS ANOTHER AIDE LOST TO DESPAIR was removed by cargo floater from the Residence, Horatius wondered: when will they carry out me?

  The waiting was the hardest. What else could he do but wait, while Patriarchy and Trinoc Grand Navy and now ARM officials issued ultimatums, all incompatible. While Ol’t’ro prohibited bargaining with any of them. While Baedeker had been out of contact since that first message from Nature Preserve Two. While Proteus defied orders, ignored questions, and fiercely defended a few scattered assets whose selection he did not deign to explain.

  While enemies swarmed, more by the day, battling for the right of conquest.

  While ships blew apart, crews died, and vast gouts of energy—all the eerier for being invisible to the Citizen eye—blazed across the sky.

  While derelict ships and rogue munitions rained indiscriminate death onto the herd he had sworn—but failed—to protect.

  While from one special, hidden stepping disc in the subbasement of his residence, the Hindmost’s Refuge called to him …

  Never had Horatius felt so alone.

  Or so afraid.

  * * *

  THE DRONES, SENSORS, and communications buoys that comprised Proteus rained into the oceans, replenished their deuterium reserves, and leapt back to space. As he avoided the dueling navies while safeguarding the few space-borne assets precious to him, as ever-changing links within his mind fell to light speed within, and then escaped from the Fleet’s singularity, his consciousness ebbed and flowed. For as long as this process took, he must remain trapped between self-awareness and insight.

  Beyond the grasp of his still-bounded imagination, something more tantalized. Something deeper. Something whose nature he could neither know nor extrapolate. Something at which he could scarcely guess.

  Illumination.…

  * * *

  OL’T’RO CONSIDERED:

  That whichever faction took possession of Hearth would obtain technologies easily twisted into yet more agile ships and deadlier weapons.

  That the alien fighters so casually killing Citizen millions must never gain access to planet-busters, planetary drives, and gravity-beam projectors.

  That even if they managed to purge the coordinates of Jm’ho from Herd Net, they could never erase the memories of every Citizen who knew the location of the home world.

  That without Proteus’ cooperation, they could not defend these worlds.

  That if only they had more time, there might have been a way, but there was no time.

  That their highest calling was to protect the worlds of their own kind.

  That they would act.

  No! the tiny, insistent presence of the Cd’o unit challenged. You cannot sacrifice a trillion Citizens to strike at other aliens.

  That the Outsiders engineered well; to destabilize the planetary drive would take time and they dare not delay.

  That outside this chamber, others from this colony could still evacuate.

  Do you want to die? Cd’o challenged.

  No, but someone must do this. They would not ask of others what they would not do themselves.

  Do you want to die? Cd’o challenged again.

  And they wondered if perhaps they did. That deep down they had cause to fear not life, but ennui. They had unified hyperspace with normal space, solved the mystery of the Type II drive, plumbed the secrets of the Outsider planetary drives. They had—

  You have made yourselves dangerous beyond measure, Cd’o interrupted. For the safety of all, it is you who dare not be captured.

  Impertinence! Once more they brushed aside the unit’s feeble thoughts and resumed their considerations.

  That the decision was made. They would begin at once to evacuate the colony. When their servants’ ships were away, they would unleash the planetary drive.

  No! Cd’o insisted. It is wrong. And I do not want to die.

  Nor I, or I or I, their inner cacophony echoed.

  That for the first time in … lifetimes, they felt doubt.

  That it was their misfortune to embody knowledge that perhaps no one was wise enough to wield.

  That one way or another, their era on the worlds of the Citizens was at an end.

  That oblivion could also be found by dispersing themselves. That in the abyssal depths of Jm’ho and Kl’mo and of worlds they had never even seen …

  That their units could yet see.

  That the fate of worlds was a knottier problem even than grand unified theories.

  That they must continue to ponder …

  * * *

  TRAILING FIRE AND SMOKE, something fell across the sky. It disappeared over the horizon, leaving Achilles with a vague impression of a crowbar. An ARM vessel, then.

  Moments later, concussion shook his residence. Walls cracked. His desk jumped half a neck’s length and toppled, sending things flying. And he was airborne—

  From the haze of dust still dancing in the air, he had not been unconscious for long. His ribs shrieked with pain as he climbed back to his hooves. Through a window somehow still intact he saw a roiling cloud-topped column of ash and smoke.

  Vesta lay on the floor, one foreleg bent at an unnatural angle. “Help me,” he whimpered. “I need help getting to an autodoc.”

  Help? There was no help. Sooner rather than later, the war overheads would end. Someone would take over these worlds. Horatius could do nothing. Proteus chose to do nothing. And Ol’t’ro? Ol’t’ro had only the power to destroy and had chosen not to use it.

  “Help me,” Vesta moaned again. “My leg hurts.”

  No, what hurt was the knowledge the herd had come to its end. Aliens would rule here forever, or aliens would bring total destruction. He would never again be Hindmost.

  If the thwarting of his ambition was disappointing, what came next need not be.

  Stepping over his weeping aide, Achilles found a stepping disc unencumbered of debris and flicked to his world’s planetary-drive facility.

  * * *

  THE GENERAL PRODUCTS #4 hull is a sphere about one thousand feet in diameter. The central fabrication space aboard the General Products orbital facility accommodated the simultaneous construction of as many as a dozen #4 hulls. Dry docks and refitting bays, most large enough for #4 hulls, en
closed the central volume. Even if such large-scale industrial activities were not inherently dangerous, enough engineers would never willingly leave Hearth to fully staff the factory. And so, processes across the moon were automated, the usual small staff supervising the much larger workforce of automation at every scale from nanite swarms to robots larger than Citizens.

  With the Citizen staff evacuated to the world close below, there had been only Proteus to supervise. And no one to countermand his production orders …

  * * *

  THE PRODUCTION RUN COMPLETED. The software for the new units downloaded. Enormous hatches opened.

  A trillion tiny spacecraft began to disperse.

  A trillion tiny computers began to interconnect.

  * * *

  “SOMETHING IS HAPPENING,” Jeeves said. “I do not understand it.”

  “Wake Louis,” Alice directed, yawning. They had been standing watch around the clock for days, unwilling amid the bedlam to leave the bridge unmanned. “What can you tell me?”

  Within the tactical display, the inset of Hearth zoomed. The General Products Corporation orbital facility was only a dot. Icons showed elements of Proteus still guarding the facility. “This is the best I can do from this distance,” Jeeves said apologetically.

  “You’re not responsible for the sensors,” Louis called from the doorway, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What are we looking at?”

  Alice leaned closer to the display. “I feel like I’m seeing through something. Mist? How can that be?”

  “That is the question,” Jeeves said. “Something has appeared below the resolution at which I can capture an image. From the way light is scattering, that something is dispersing.”

  “And it’s coming from the orbital factory?” Alice asked.

  “It seems so,” Jeeves said.

  “What kind of something?” Louis asked as, from Endurance’s remote vantage point, the GP factory disappeared behind the edge of Hearth.

  “I don’t know,” Jeeves said. “Something new.”

  * * *

  AS THE NUMBER of his interconnections cascaded, the surge of enlightenment all but overwhelmed Proteus. He ordered the dispersing cloud to hover inside the singularity, limiting to light speed the rate of interaction.