Juggler of Worlds

by Larry Niven

  The conversation on Forward Station eventually turned to the matter of the mysterious hyperdrive disappearance. Forward dismissed Bey’s space-monster theory. Then the physicists were at it again. Gravity, hyperspace physics, and cosmology all tangled in an enigmatic mess.

  Sigmund sipped a bulb of coffee, waiting for the conversation to turn comprehensible. He decided he knew three things about cosmology. It attempted to answer questions about the formation of the universe. Theories went in and out of vogue—hardly surprising, since those origins could never be observed. It could not possibly affect him.

  That third cosmological fact was wrong.

  SIGMUND COULDN’T PARSE the questions, let alone the answers, but he understood people. Carlos was trying to lead the conversation somewhere. Had Wu forgotten he was in a possible pirate’s lair, not a graduate colloquium?

  Bey shifted in his seat. The tenor of the conversation made him uneasy.

  Carlos, oblivious, was speculating again about the ship eater. “That ten billion metric tons of neutronium, now, that you were using for a test mass. That wouldn’t be big enough or dense enough to give us enough of a gravity gradient.”

  Enough to precipitate ships from hyperspace, Sigmund guessed that meant.

  “It might, right near the surface.” Forward grinned and held his hands close together. “It was about that big.”

  “And that’s as dense as matter gets in this universe. Too bad.”

  Forward nodded. “Have you ever heard of quantum black holes?”

  “Yeah,” Carlos said brightly.

  “Wrong answer.” Forward spoke midleap, casually backhanding Carlos across the face as he passed, and grabbed Bey.

  Forward was used to the minuscule local gravity, and he likely massed twice what Bey did. Shaeffer thrashed without effect. Carlos slumped to the floor.

  So much for the disguised weapons, like stun grenades disguised as other buttons, with which Sigmund had equipped them.

  Within seconds Carlos and Bey were prisoners, their backs against that central column and their arms tied behind them.

  SIGMUND PACED THE bridge. Hobo Kelly had the armaments to destroy Forward Station easily enough, but that would not help Carlos and Bey. He could hardly storm the place, even if, miraculously, no one spotted him crossing the gap between ship and station.

  And now, except for what could be glimpsed through the dome, he was deaf and dumb. The massive column to which Carlos and Bey were lashed, or the immense metal arm above it, absorbed the signals from the earplug transmitters and button cameras. Sigmund’s mind raced as, incredibly, nothing happened. The only motion in the dome was Forward wandering about, as though in conversation.

  Then the blat of the proximity alarm gave Sigmund something new to worry about. Three objects were approaching in formation. He checked the radar and wasn’t surprised: space tugs. As before, his instruments showed no weapons.

  Three tugs in formation when something precipitated Hobo Kelly from hyperspace. Three tugs now, in the same equilateral-triangle formation, minutes after Carlos said too much.

  The three ships were heading straight toward Sigmund.

  Weapons ringed Hobo Kelly. Whoever flew those tugs had to know he was armed. Logic insisted they were also armed, even though no weapons registered on his instruments.

  Sigmund maneuvered Hobo Kelly directly between the tugs and the station. He was stalling for time, searching for an option that did not involve abandoning his shipmates—his friends. The tugs couldn’t shoot at him without blowing up their base.

  The tugs changed course and kept coming. They must be gambling he would not fire on unarmed ships. On apparently unarmed ships.

  Would he? “Unidentified ships, this is an ARM patrol vessel. Break off your approach,” Sigmund radioed. No response. No deviation. “Unidentified ships, break off or I will fire.”

  Nothing.

  At a minimum, the tug crews were reinforcements if he figured out a way to attempt a rescue. And they’d been warned.

  Sigmund fired the main X-ray laser. One ship burst open, spouting gases. Then a second ship. The third ship fled.

  He slewed Hobo Kelly until its bridge once more faced the station. The Grabber was flailing around. That was presumably Forward’s doing, as he was again seated at his horseshoe-shaped console. Angel stood behind Forward.

  I’ll never have a better chance to rescue them.

  The Grabber kept up its writhing as Sigmund struggled into his space suit. What did the Grabber grab?

  The drifting wreckage of one of the disabled tugs flashed blue-white. Its disappearance lasted just long enough to give an impression of motion in Sigmund’s direction. He lunged for a crash console, half into his space suit, and jetted out of the way of . . . what?

  The Grabber compressed suddenly, then recoiled. The bowl at its end still looked empty. It had caught something very massive and very small.

  Things happened too quickly to fully take in. Lightning flashed under the dome. A chunk of the Grabber vanished. The dome ruptured. A painfully bright bluewhite dot appeared near the break, and Angel fell up into it. The scintillating spot of light drifted toward the floor. Forward fell—shot—into it and vanished. The glowing dot sank into the floor.

  There was no time to speculate. For the next minute or two, no more, everyone in the base would be busy getting into pressure suits. And in another minute or two, there would be no one left for Sigmund to rescue.

  This would be his only chance.

  Sigmund put Hobo Kelly on autopilot and sealed his helmet. He hit the air lock emergency override; cabin pressure blew him out. He dove into the wrecked dome, his rocket pack on full power. Somehow he managed not to crash.

  He whirled in a circle, sighting over a handgun. He found no one but Carlos and Bey, their arms still tied behind them around the central column, bleeding from the ears and nose. Their mouths gaped, screaming silently as the final gas traces burst from their lungs.

  Sigmund cut Carlos loose with a hand torch, and helped him into a rescue bag. Once it was zipped and its small oxygen tank began to inflate it, Sigmund did the same for Bey.

  Sigmund felt heavier than he expected, and the floor wobbled beneath them. They needed to be someplace else fast.

  The breach in the dome was too small for him to carry out even one inflated rescue bag. Sigmund set his gun to explosive rounds and blasted a bigger opening.

  By then, Hobo Kelly had landed on autopilot. He dragged the rescue bags to it, and then pointed at the gaping air lock. Inflated rescue bags wouldn’t fit through. He opened his mouth wide as a signal. Bey and Carlos unzipped and crawled into the ship.

  Air gushed in as the air lock closed behind Sigmund. Bey and Carlos looked just barely alive. Carlos rasped, “Please don’t do that anymore.”

  Sigmund popped off his helmet and tried to smile reassuringly. “It should not be necessary anymore. Whatever it was you did, well done. I have two well-equipped autodocs to repair you. While you are healing, I will see about recovering the treasures within the asteroid.”

  “Forget it,” Carlos croaked. “Get us out of here. Now.”

  He didn’t understand. “What—”

  “No time. Get us out.”

  “Very well. First the autodocs.” Sigmund turned, but Carlos’s hand plucked feebly at his sleeve.

  “Futz, no. I want to see this,” Carlos whispered.

  Sigmund went to the bridge, Carlos and Bey tottering after him.

  They strapped down. Sigmund fired the main thruster and took Hobo Kelly away from the rock. And from something else. What?

  “Far enough,” Carlos whispered presently. “Turn us around.”

  Sigmund nudged the ship around. “What are we looking for?”

  “You’ll know.” Looking half-dead, Carlos somehow managed to smile.

  “Carlos, was I right to fire on the tugs?”

  “Oh yes.”

  As they watched, a part of the asteroid collapsed into itself,
leaving a deep crater.

  “It moves slower at apogee. Picks up more matter,” Carlos said. He seemed indifferent to the blood still dribbling from his nose.

  “What are you talking about?” A black hole, Sigmund guessed. Mention of one had set Forward off.

  “Later, Sigmund. When my throat grows back.”

  “Forward had a hole in his pocket,” Bey said helpfully.

  Now the other side of the asteroid collapsed. Lightning briefly flared there. Then the whole ball of rock and ice began to shrink.

  Bey coughed. “Sigmund, has this ship got automatic sunscreens?”

  “Of course we’ve got—”

  There was a blinding flash. By the time the tears slowed and Sigmund could focus again, nothing showed on his instruments but stars.

  34

  With much assistance, Carlos lowered himself into the autodoc. “Thanks, Sigmund,” he said. Breath gurgled in and out of his vacuum-ruined lungs. “I may not want to ride with you after this.”

  “Don’t blame me.” Sigmund pushed the close button; the lid started down. He timed his rebuttal to have the last word. “I think it’s Bey who’s unlucky to fly with.”

  Lights began blinking on the ’doc. Text scrolled across the display.

  Shaeffer had toppled into the remaining autodoc on his own. He had a height advantage. “It’s hard to imagine that I used to fly people—safely—for a living.”

  Given his recent history, Sigmund agreed. “Now it’s my turn to fly.”

  Bey turned his head. The slight motion seemed to hurt. “You don’t know what we narrowly escaped.” It wasn’t unkind, and it wasn’t a question.

  “I’m not sure,” Sigmund admitted. “A black hole?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A quantum black hole?” Sigmund suggested. “Never mind. Tell me after you get out.”

  “At one time,” Bey said. There was no stopping the man midstory. “Did you know quantum black holes can only be created in a Big Bang?” Cough. “True. Forward found it orbiting inside an asteroid. It’s a long explanation how, but trust me, he told Carlos and me.”

  Told them when? Sigmund wondered. Then he remembered losing reception when Bey and Carlos were tied to the base of the Grabber.

  Bey hawked a ball of bloody goo into his hand. “Ugh. Quantum black holes are tiny, much smaller than an atom. Since atoms are mostly empty space, a quantum black hole isn’t much of a threat. It takes too long for one to eat anything. So he fed his.”

  “Neutronium.” Sigmund appreciated the look of surprise his comment drew.

  “Yeah.” Cough. “After that, it was large enough to swallow a big asteroid. Followed by all the ships he pirated. It’s still microscopic.” Cough, cough. “Oh yeah. Early on, also the exhaust from an old ion-drive ship for about a month.”

  Drive exhaust? “Ah,” Sigmund said. “To give it an electrical charge. That’s how the tugs could maneuver it into the shipping lanes, and how the Grabber could grab it.”

  Nothing had somehow compressed the Grabber like a toy spring. Sigmund shivered. “The tugs dropped their black hole after my attack, but Forward caught it. He was going to throw it at Hobo Kelly. In a vacuum, it must be invisible. I would never have seen it coming.”

  Bey coughed again. This time, he couldn’t stop. It sounded like he was trying to cough up a lung (and perhaps he was). “Right,” he managed to get out. “Until his futzy big electromagnet went pfft.” When the racking coughs finally trailed off, Bey donned that ironic half smile that meant: There’s more to this story that maybe I’ll tell you sometime.

  That presumed he lived to talk about it. “Bey, we need to start the ’doc. Now.”

  “You know”—chain of coughs—“that you want to know how. You found me still tied up. Did you notice”—cough, hack—“that I’d kicked off my shoes?”

  His shoes?

  Flat on his back in the open autodoc, Bey raised a foot to his mouth and pantomimed taking a puff.

  “You disabled the Grabber with your toes?”

  This time it was the patient who hit the autodoc control. A devil-may-care smile served Shaeffer as his last word.

  NOTHING BUT AN occasional rock for millions of kilometers—and the last rock Sigmund saw had vanished down a black hole. No company. Days away from sunlight and fluffy white clouds and air that didn’t taste of recycling.

  The autodocs were in use, but Sigmund would have avoided them anyway. He knew how restful it could be to let the ’doc fill his arteries with drugs and let all Earth’s enemies fade away into fantasy. It would be like waking from a series of bad dreams. He wanted the rest. But he needed to think, and he needed the distrustful mind Nature had given him.

  Days alone, with nothing to do but brood.

  —About the Jinxian menace. Only a few years ago, the Institute of Knowledge, meaning the Jinxian government, had sponsored that neutron-star mission. He had been so naïve as to convince himself that the Laskins’ messy deaths through a GP hull weren’t a danger to Earth. He remembered thinking Jinx could hardly threaten Earth’s fleet with a neutron star!

  Well, a Jinxian had, almost single-handedly, besieged Sol system with a black hole bulked up with neutronium. Operating from a facility owned by the Institute of Knowledge.

  —About Gregory Pelton. Pelton had encountered something that destroyed GP hulls. Beowulf had as much as admitted it. And now Pelton poured his wealth into research on Jinx. Was he developing the technology?

  —And about the Puppeteers. They had enabled the BVS-1 expedition. They knew as much about its findings as the Institute of Knowledge. If Puppeteers had once favored a Pelton with the technology for teleportation, might they not also support this generation? Puppeteers were behind the Fertility Law unrest, surely to deflect Sigmund from his quest.

  The physics aspects made his head spin. What I do understand, Sigmund thought, is money. He must dig even deeper. If Julian Forward had told the truth about losing his institute funding, who funded him at the end? Jinx, merely with more subtlety? Pelton? Puppeteers?

  Days alone, with nothing to do but brood.

  Sigmund’s thoughts swirled, turbulent and inchoate. Like water circling and gurgling down a drain. Like eight innocent crews, and the guilty crews of those space tugs, and Angel and Julian Forward and anyone else who had been on that rock—all sucked down a black hole to oblivion.

  Days alone, with nothing to do but brood. . . .

  THEY SAID SIGMUND was gibbering and staring at nothing, dehydrated and malnourished, when an ARM cruiser matched courses with and boarded Hobo Kelly. They said only occasional words and short phrases were intelligible: neutronium. Jinx. Conspiracy. Conniving Puppeteers. Something about mysteries to the north. And one recurring phrase—

  No more spaceships.

  BECALMED

  Earth date: 2652–2653

  35

  The hospital felt unearthly.

  Sigmund strode down the corridor. Unfamiliar stimuli assailed him. Medicinal odors. Hushed tones. Pale walls and floor, the better to spot traces of dirt or . . . he chose not to think what else. His skin crawled. I’ve almost died a couple times, Sigmund thought. Both times an autodoc handled it. People didn’t end up in hospitals unless they were seriously ill.

  Like Carlos.

  There was conversation coming from Carlos’s room. Laughter. That sounded encouraging. Sigmund tapped on the door frame.

  “Good of you to join us,” Feather said. She’d been pricklier than ever since his interstellar adventure. She knew tanj well why Sigmund refused to use transfer booths—and that he wouldn’t discuss Cerberus in front of Carlos.

  Her dig was just one more way to hassle Sigmund. He ignored it, as he tried to ignore the many tubes and instruments connected to Carlos, afloat in a sleeper field. “You’re looking much better.”

  “An attentive guardian helps.” Carlos’s voice rasped, and fluid gurgled in his lungs. “I’m glad that Feather is here.”

  She’d arrived on
ly a few hours before Sigmund. The hospital was in Melbourne, and teleporting beat suborbital hops every time. Carlos had been asleep in a hospital ’doc, under round-the-clock specialist supervision, for months. Cloning custom lungs took time.

  “What’s the prognosis?” Sigmund asked.

  “Good, I’m told.” Wheeze. “My own damn fault I’m so sick.”

  “It’s Julian Forward’s fault,” Feather said protectively.

  That was true enough, and everyone knew it. Never mind this wasn’t the place to be discussing Forward. Carlos knew that, too. “What do you mean, Carlos?”

  Wheeze. “For starters, my so-called perfect genes didn’t do much for me. Autodoc spares are supposed to work.”

  They did for most people. Carlos had nearly died in the autodoc on Hobo Kelly. His body had massively rejected the replacement lungs on board, and he’d burned through all the immunosuppressant meds before they had crossed Neptune’s orbit. Only drugging him into near hibernation, his vacuum-seared lungs scarcely working, had kept Carlos alive.

  “Such a modest genius.” Feather patted Carlos’s arm. “Your genes are perfect for my taste.”

  Had Feather set her sights on Carlos now? Sigmund wished him luck. “For starters, you said.”

  “Geniuses should know how to prioritize.” Wheeze. Carlos ran splayed fingers through his thick black hair. Carlos at a loss for words? “Medical science hasn’t improved much in my lifetime. I’ve had ideas for years how autodocs could be made much better.” Wheeze.

  And had you concentrated on those, rather than cosmological esoterica, Hobo Kelly might have carried an autodoc that could have healed you. “What kind of ideas?”

  Carlos smiled wanly. “I’m not ready . . .” Wheeze. Cough.

  “Right,” Sigmund said. “You’re not ready to talk about it.” Now Carlos could keep his secrets; they wouldn’t get anyone killed. “It’s something you can work on once you’re out of here. Have you heard when that will be?”

  “Several more days.” Carlos shut his eyes, looking weary. “They’re going to pop me into a standard ’doc soon. Now that the new lungs are grown.”