Fate of Worlds

  After graduating ARM Naval Academy, she and Elena had gone their separate ways. Elena had been posted to the Artifact Monitoring Mission, two hundred light-years from Earth. Tanya’s first posting was as assistant cargo officer on a supply ship supporting the Fleet of Worlds diplomatic mission, even farther from home.

  Elena was a line officer, however junior, and Canberra an actual warship. Tanya, in her heart of hearts, admitted to a twinge of envy. She had volunteered repeatedly and insistently for reassignment. Nothing interesting, in any military sense, would ever happen around the Fleet. No matter that the Puppeteers were cowards—or, perhaps, because they were—an intimidating defensive array of sensors and robotic craft protected their worlds.

  Which was too tanj bad! The Puppeteers had much for which to answer.

  A Puppeteer scout had bared the Concordance’s sordid history of interspecies meddling. (Why? Tanya did not begin to understand. The retired admirals among the Academy faculty did not pretend to understand, either.) And this scout, Nessus, had revealed those secrets—and the long-hidden location of the Puppeteer worlds, the theretofore unimaginable Fleet of Worlds—and the existence and location of the yet more inconceivable Ringworld—to, of all improbable people, her great-grandfather! Louis Wu had vanished from Human Space before Tanya was born. Dad scarcely remembered the man.

  After six interstellar wars and their megadeaths, human governments and the Kzinti Patriarchy had learned to coexist—the uneasy peace of four centuries that had given way in this system to bloody skirmishes. A peace whose prospects further crumbled by the nanosecond.

  Wherever they were, if they still were, did Nessus and Louis comprehend the mess they had left behind?

  Whatever the reasoning behind past disclosures, day by day, year by year, the Puppeteer worlds receded farther into the galactic north. Even by hyperdrive, the Fleet was already a two-plus-year epic journey from Earth. Maybe the aliens gambled—if so, correctly—that humans and Kzinti, no matter their just grievances with the Puppeteers, would put off confronting the Concordance to first seize a nearer, stationary, more enticing—and seemingly defenseless—prize.

  And that far from being an opportunity, the Ringworld would turn out to be a trap.

  * * *

  THE RINGWORLD …

  A loop of ribbon, its circumference rivaling Earth’s orbit, encircling its sun. A ribbon broader than four times the distance that separated Earth from its moon. A ribbon as massive as Jupiter and with a surface area to equal millions of Earths. An inconceivably huge construct, made of a mysterious, impossible something as strong as the force that bound together the particles of an atomic nucleus. Home to many trillions of intelligent beings. Home, undeniably, to wondrous technologies.

  Its civilization fallen; its wealth and its secrets ripe for plunder.

  And more incredibly still, vanished in an instant into hyperspace, no matter that the “experts” insisted such a thing could not happen.

  All that mass disappearing had sent a gravity wave crashing through this system’s Oort Cloud. Billions, perhaps trillions of snowballs careened from their once stable orbits. Snowballs? Snow worlds, rather, some of them bigger, even, than Pluto. Large and small, they plunged inward toward the sun, or hurtled outward into the interstellar darkness, or shattered one another. Wherever they went, they made an already overcomplicated tactical situation that much worse. All those fleets dodging—

  The ceiling light of Tanya’s cabin flashed. Her wake-up gonged. Time again to stand watch on the bridge.

  * * *

  THIS WASN’T A WAR ZONE. Not exactly. Not technically.

  A distinction without significance to all who had died here.

  “Welcome back, Lieutenant,” Commander Johansson said, yawning despite the blat of another emergency-jump alarm.

  “Yes, sir.” Tanya managed not to yawn back.

  In Koala’s main tactical display chaos still reigned, as it had for the weeks since the Ringworld—somehow—vanished.

  Even without the prize, the mission continued. Artifact Monitoring Mission, the deployment was officially called, although outside of formal communications no one called it that. Across the fleet, names ranged from Mexican Standoff to Cold Confrontation, from the Interspecies Scrimmage to the No-Win War. Tanya favored the Frigid Face-Off. Naval Intelligence said the Kzinti called it something that sounded like a cat fight (then again, what in Hero’s Tongue didn’t?) and that translated loosely into Interworld as Grudge Match. What the Trinocs called the situation was anyone’s guess.

  Or the locals when, at last, they had joined the fray. The natives were not as helpless as they had first appeared. The rumor mill whispered about ships erupting, blazingly fast, from the Ringworld, and even more incredibly about X-ray lasers—powered by solar flares!—vaporizing intruders that had ventured too close.

  And that was only the combatants. Puppeteers had ships here observing, too, as did the Outsiders, as did—

  “Jump in ten seconds,” the copilot announced, her voice grown hoarse.

  “Sit, Lieutenant,” Johansson ordered.

  Tanya sat.

  Once again, they flashed in and out of hyperspace. Seconds after Koala reemerged, an outgunned Trinoc squadron jumped away, leaving what spectrographic analysis suggested was the hull debris of an Avenger-class Kzinti scout ship.

  An ambush? An accident, someone’s nerves stretched beyond endurance? Or the beginning of something much, much worse?

  Thousands of warships far from home, and nothing left to justify the huge expense of their deployments. Nothing to excuse the lives already lost. Nothing to distract from historic grudges, or from fresh setbacks amid the endless jockeying for advantage. No brass ring left to grab. No one left to confront but one another.

  “How does this mess end, Commander?” Tanya asked.

  “Well above my pay grade, Lieutenant,” Johansson said, and the pay reference didn’t come across like a wisecrack about pursers, either. “Ours is just to do and die.”

  The intruder alarm wailed.

  5

  Hindmost capered up, down, all around a maze of serpentine access tunnels. Within the digital wallpaper virtual herds accompanied him, left and right, for as far as the eye could see. He was free!

  Not safe, to be sure. Not restored to power. Not unburdened of doubts and regrets. Not yet home, but in possession of a starship.

  Rid—at long last!—of the Ringworld.

  Still, thousands of alien warships prowled the vicinity, and every faction in the conflict coveted the technologies in this vessel. As would the observers aboard the three skulking ships of obvious Fleet provenance. That ships of the Concordance remained scattered around the war fleets told Hindmost who commanded aboard those ships. Who must yet rule Hearth.

  If he ran out of options, he would sooner let humans take this ship.

  As reality crashed down on Hindmost he stumbled, missing a step and ruining the unfolding pattern. But with a kick and a tight pirouette, he put himself back into the dance. Every Citizen lived in fear. That he had left Hearth and herd sufficed to prove him insane, besides. He had managed his fears—mostly—for a very long time. He would cope a bit longer.

  Soon, he told himself, he would go home. He and his loved ones would be together again. He tried to picture the happy day, but his imagination failed him. It had been so long.

  The dance must suffice for a while longer.

  “Analysis complete,” Voice sang.

  “Thank you,” Hindmost sang back.

  His politeness was neurotic; having an AI at all was psychotic. No sensible being set out to build his prospective successor. But in the subtle calculus of countless dangers and endless responsibilities, to have a companion—any companion—had won out. Had he chosen otherwise, had he dared to undertake his Ringworld adventure without an illicit AI, he would doubtless have faded, long ago, into terminal catatonia.

  The sweet release that ever beckoned.

  “Another segment o
f hyperdrive-control software characterized,” Voice continued. “Calculating next jump.”

  Working directly in binary code, Tunesmith had reprogrammed many of the computers aboard Long Shot. The new programming was convoluted beyond Hindmost’s ability to parse, one more instance of the arrogant improvisational brilliance that came so naturally to protectors.

  If not as natural as doing anything, no matter how extreme, to protect their own kind.

  “Are more jumps necessary?” Hindmost asked.

  “Yes. The software I am studying continues to self-modify. As I analyze the code, I only fall further behind.”

  “So you theorize from functional tests.”

  “Theorize and confirm, especially as to the apparent behavioral constraints on the self-modifications. As you say, Hindmost.”

  Once the hyperdrive customizations had been characterized he would refocus the AI on other changes. Humans, Kzinti, and Tunesmith, each in their turn controlling this ship, had modified shipboard systems, stripped out test instrumentation and decoy equipment, and retrofitted their own paraphernalia. He knew by placement and deductive reasoning how many of the bridge controls must function, but of settings and status displays, all in the dots-and-commas script favored by the Kzinti, he could read nothing.

  It would be a long time before he could undertake the flight home. Time for Louis to heal, and to emerge from the autodoc. Time, again and again and again, to overtake the spreading gravity wave unleashed by the Ringworld’s disappearance, to study the only direct evidence as to how the impossible had been accomplished. Time between stints in hyperspace to gradually build up speed in normal space—fearful, all the while, that even across great distances the white-hot exhaust of Long Shot’s fusion thrusters would attract unwanted attention.

  Time to prepare for the surprises certain to await him at the end of his journey. He had been trapped on the Ringworld much too long.

  With a graceful twirl he concluded this dance. “Keep us far from the other ships in the system,” he ordered. A terrifying number of ships. Ships all too easily seen with Tunesmith’s exquisitely sensitive instruments.

  “Long Shot is much faster than any vessel among the Fringe War,” Voice commented.

  Thousands of times faster. Faster than Hindmost trusted his reflexes to pilot, even if he could read the Kzinti displays. Even if he understood Tunesmith’s alterations.

  But Louis could fly it.

  Picking at his meticulously coiffed mane, Hindmost sang, “And yet Tunesmith took this ship from the Kzinti.”

  Trickery that one protector had conceived, another could, too. As fervently as Hindmost hoped all protectors had gone away with the Ringworld, their departure remained theory.

  “Far away, Hindmost, as you have ordered.”

  * * *

  HINDMOST SQUINTED THROUGH the frost-speckled dome into Long Shot’s single autodoc. In thirty-seven days, if the master readout could be believed, the autodoc would complete its treatment and release its occupant. “You are looking much better,” he sang, and it was true.

  Despite Louis Wu’s ashen pallor. Despite the splotches of red and yellow and very little green among the progress indicators reflecting from the dome’s inner surface. Despite swollen joints and contorted limbs and genitalia just beginning to regrow. Despite the distended brain case and toothless gums. Despite all that, Louis began to look again like an adult human, and a bit less like a human turned protector.

  “I was too twisted up when the tree-of-life started to change me,” Louis had admitted before, with Hindmost lifting from behind, he had climbed into the autodoc. Only minutes had passed since their escape from the Ringworld. “I’m dying.”

  Disclosure that offered no prediction as to whether, to heal Louis, the autodoc would undo or perfect his conversion into a protector.

  With any other autodoc there would have been no hope, but this unit was one of a kind. Frightfully advanced. Nanotech-based. This autodoc could, if necessary, rebuild a person from the molecular level up; Hindmost was convinced that it was doing that to Louis. Carlos Wu had built this amazing prototype, long ago and far away. It had been smuggled from Earth, then stolen, but—not for lack of trying—never duplicated.

  Yet in a way, Tunesmith had surpassed it.

  He had extracted nanites from the autodoc, reprogrammed them, distributed them far and wide across the Ringworld to replicate, and—well, Hindmost remained fuzzy on what, exactly, Tunesmith had done. Used the nanotech to rewire the Ringworld’s whole superconducting substrate. Adapted what he had learned in his brief study of Long Shot’s hyperdrive.

  So, anyway, Louis had explained. It took a protector to understand a protector. And not even a protector ever fully trusted another protector.

  Trembling, Hindmost continued studying the twisted figure in the autodoc. “I am glad for you, Louis.” And relieved for myself.

  For Louis knew the harm the Concordance had once brought to the Ringworld. As a human protector, Louis would seek to destroy Hearth and the Concordance.

  If the autodoc did not undo the transformation, he must kill Louis while that remained possible. With Louis defenseless in a therapeutic coma.

  Louis-as-protector would have seen that, too, and yet Louis had climbed, defenseless, into the autodoc. Hence, Louis knew he would wait to act until the course of the cure revealed itself. Hence Louis expected to emerge as a normal human, or he would have killed Hindmost before getting into the autodoc.

  Matching wits with a protector was futile.

  “I look forward to again having your company, Louis,” Hindmost said. In thirty-seven days.

  Until then, Louis, I have the dance.

  6

  In Endurance’s claustrophobic exercise room, Alice plodded away on the treadmill. She had little to do on the long flight but exercise. Puppeteers were the galaxy’s consummate worriers, and scant days from New Terra even Nessus had run out of contingencies to plan for and theories to fret about.

  On the tarmac, Sigmund had taken Alice aside to warn her Nessus would be stingy with facts. Two relics exchanging the obvious about a third relic. She had promised Sigmund to set aside their differences for the sake of the mission. Also, her differences with Nessus. Once this situation was settled, the Puppeteer had a lot of explaining to do.

  The wallpaper showed rolling forest, the foliage a riot of autumn colors. On solid ground, the view would have been stunning. Here, the imagery only reminded her that behind the thin-film display, outside thin ship walls, lurked … Finagle knew what.

  Something stirred in her gut, whispered unintelligibly in her ears, tickled behind her eyes. Something that her hindbrain denied and her forebrain rejected.

  Hyperspace couldn’t kill any deader than could vacuum, and she had no trouble living around vacuum. But she had grown up in the Belt. Vacuum was something to respect, to guard against—but also something understood.

  Unlike hyperspace.

  Was hyperspace an alternate reality? Hidden dimension? Parallel universe? She didn’t pretend to know. The so-called experts didn’t.

  If anyone understood hyperspace, it was the Outsiders. They had invented hyperdrive. Which, although they sold it, they themselves never used.

  That seemed instructive.

  Blotting sweat from her face and arms with a towel, she abandoned the treadmill. She strode down the corridor to the bridge to check the mass pointer. Because one thing she did understand about hyperspace: while crossing it, keep your distance from large masses. Get too close to a gravitational singularity while in hyperspace and you never came out.

  A light-year every three days. Logically speaking, stars being light-years apart in this region, a glance at the mass pointer every few hours more than sufficed for safety.

  Logic failed to convince the tingling behind her eyes.

  In the mass pointer, the most prominent instrument on the pilot’s console, nothing looked close. As Alice could have predicted from her last peek, less than an hour e
arlier. But her skin still crawled. The … whatever … behind her eyes prickled worse than ever.

  The bridge walls showed forest, too, but that only emphasized how unnatural their surroundings were. If the less-than-nothing of hyperspace could be said to surround—

  “Not very convincing, is it?”

  She flinched at the unexpected voice.

  Nessus stood at the bridge hatch. With one head, he indicated the mass pointer. His other head tugged at the remaining braid in his much-stirred mane.

  “Can’t sleep?” she asked.

  “Can you?”

  “Not very well.” She cleared her throat. “What did you mean, the mass pointer isn’t convincing?”

  “It was once my misfortune to be brave.” With a final yank and a plaintive sigh, he released the tortured braid. “That is to say, I was insane. Insane enough to volunteer to leave home and become a scout. On my last scouting mission…”

  “Go on.” They had the bridge to themselves, and she sat on an armrest of the pilot’s crash couch.

  “I returned home missing a head.” His two-throated wheeze came out like minor scales in clashing keys. “I left the autodoc scared normal.”

  Did he want her to feel sorry for him? Fat chance. “The unconvincing mass pointer?”

  “My last mission. We are going there now. To the source of the ripple that summons us.” He sang a musical phrase, sad and jangling. “You and Julia have heard me describe it.”

  More of the facts with which Nessus had long been stingy.

  She still struggled to believe that such a place could exist. “And?”

  “Even after the Ringworld, I kept my trust in mass pointers. No one who could readily colonize the planets of other stars would build a habitat so vast. They would have no need.”

  “No one with hyperdrive, you mean.”

  Heads moved in alternation: up/down, down/up, up/down. A Puppeteer nod.

  She was old, tanj it. Tired. Behind her eyes, the itch got even worse. Mass pointer. Trust. The Ringworld.

  She whirled to stare at the mass pointer.