by Larry Niven
Nessus had answered, “But I can arrange for Ausfaller to learn about your past help . . . unless you continue to support me.”
She’d nodded, fear and misery writ plainly across her face. Information continued to flow, including the report that Ausfaller, finally, was going off-world again. New surroundings meant at least the possibility of safely approaching the ARM.
“In return for doing what?” Jones repeated. “Tell me!”
Nessus found himself half-wrapped into a ball. I’m terrified of meeting faces to face with Sigmund. He forced himself to unroll. “Two flatlanders, Sigmund Ausfaller and Ander Smittarasheed, will check into your hotel soon.”
That was to say, an abducted desk clerk said they had yet to check in. Despite Ausfaller’s head start, Nessus had arrived first. To hear Sangeeta, the marvel was that Ausfaller could drag himself aboard another ship. Nessus imagined Seeker dropping frequently from hyperspace.
“Look to your right, Mr. Jones. You are to hide one of those flat devices”—stepping discs—“under the carpet in each of their rooms before they arrive. For your services and silence, after I have electronically confirmed the discs are properly installed, you will receive ten thousand Earth stars.”
“Are they explosives?”
“They are teleportation devices,” Nessus said. “You’re standing on one just like them.”
Jones’s glance wavered between the booth floor and the nearby stacked discs. “The hotel has transfer booths. In the lobby, not in the guest rooms, but still . . .” Jones’s voice trailed off in confusion.
“I mean neither man any harm. You have my word. Do you want to know more than that?”
“All right,” Jones said. “I’ll do it.”
WELCOME TO FAFNIR.
The sign suspended over the customs counter made Sigmund’s skin crawl. He focused on his breathing. The gravity wasn’t far off, and he was indoors. You can cope, he told himself.
Behind him in the debarkation line Ander chatted up a pretty brunette passenger from a newly arrived star-liner. Ander was always ready to mix business with pleasure.
The customs officer was a Kzin. His fur was mostly gray, with a jagged scar down one arm. A veteran, Sigmund guessed. Did you eat my parents?
Sigmund finally reached the head of the line. The Kzin gave Sigmund’s civilian ident a desultory scan. “Welcome to Fafnir. What brings you here, Mr. Ausfaller?”
A year of increasingly desperate data mining. A large-caliber gun gone missing from an ARM weapons locker around the time of Feather’s disappearance. An odd police report on Fafnir’s public net, months old, of a man rescued at sea. His flotation vest had large, ragged holes front and back. The man claimed a sea creature had torn his jacket.
“Sightseeing,” Sigmund said.
“The water wars,” Ander piped up from behind. Water war was the Fafnir sport, an underwater free-for-all among mixed teams of people (wearing breathers) and dolphins. Ten teams chased or herded three native creatures sort of like turtles. It made a weird kind of sense on a world that was almost all ocean.
The ratcat wrinkled his muzzle. He apparently felt the same way as an Earth cat about water. “Your timing is good, sirs. A big tournament is coming up in Pacifica.”
“Thanks for the tip.” Sigmund picked up his luggage.
Once Ander cleared customs, they took their gear to the Arrivals area. Sigmund shook his head when Ander started toward a row of transfer booths. “We’re tourists, Ander. Let’s take a cab.” They got into a taxi floater. Sigmund told it, his eyes closed against the too-pale sky, “The Drake.”
“Excellent choice, sirs,” the AI said. “I’m told it’s one of our finest hotels.”
And most expensive, surely. Ander had done the research and picked it.
They settled into their rooms, the connecting doors open, Ander disapproving still of Sigmund’s insistence on rooms without ocean views. Sigmund ignored the complaints: The cityscape ten floors below felt almost like home. He began configuring a computer rack and display arrays. ARM sensors that Ander would be spreading would fill those displays soon enough.
Ander came through the connecting doors. “You think we’ll find them?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.” Feather’s paranoia, Carlos’s genius, Beowulf’s savvy. A year’s head start. Perhaps Bey had access to Gregory Pelton’s off-world wealth. The odds seemed awfully long, even if the stolen ship had been here. They had come very far in the hope that gunshots, not sea monsters, explained a tattered vest.
“It’s fair to say we’re due for a little good luck.”
48
Sigmund could almost fit in on Fafnir. He refused to use transfer booths; the natives seldom bothered. They saw no need to hurry.
A transfer booth could absorb only so much kinetic energy, and any two points on a rotating globe had different velocities. Earth’s system daisy-chained transfer booths; for long-range travel, the passenger jumped from booth to booth too quickly to notice. Way stations aboard constellations of satellites enabled teleportation across oceans.
Not so Fafnir. Except within its one small continent, still called by its Kzinti name of Shasht, the natives mostly traveled by boat and dirigible.
Given what two weeks’ intensive searching had accomplished, Sigmund might just as well have undertaken an around-the-world dirigible tour. Not that he could have left his cabin. . . .
Medusa had quickly hacked into the Fafnir comm networks. She found no sign of the refugees. The only encouragement was another negative: no signs in almost a year of Persial January Hebert, the rescued mariner claiming to have encountered a vest-hating sea monster. That suggested an alias.
The ambiguity was that people here sailed for months at a time. Many lived independently on the myriad islands that dotted the vast ocean. Either way, they dropped off what passed on Fafnir for the grid.
Ander had seeded most of the major public spaces on Shasht with sensors. Then he sailed to some of the nearer, more populous island settlements and did it again. He did it wearing ARM surveillance gear, transceiver earplugs like those Sigmund had once lent Shaeffer and Wu, and even more wondrous repeating contact lenses. Sigmund could pull up on a display whatever Ander saw.
So far, that had been nothing helpful.
“Ander,” Sigmund called. A slight up-and-down movement on the Ander-view display showed Sigmund had been heard. The view was of a small shopping mall. “Go on to the next island.”
COWARDICE IS A virtue among Citizens. Nessus was here on Fafnir, light-years from Hearth, because he had slightly less of that virtue than most. He was still a coward.
And Sigmund Ausfaller was still very, very scary.
Nessus could call Sigmund’s room at any time. He could step right into the room. He could interrupt Sigmund’s pacing with a trip into an isolation booth here on Aegis.
And say what?
Ask for trust from the raving paranoid he had stalked for years. Tell the raving paranoid that a world of strangers needed his help. Reveal the darkest secrets of the Concordance to its most formidable adversary.
Nessus sped up his own pacing, trying desperately to energize himself. He remained far from the level of mania that would permit him to act.
• • •
SIGMUND LOST COUNT how many islands Ander visited. Medusa strained to monitor thousands of data feeds from the sensors Ander had already scattered. Sigmund surrounded himself with sample feeds to feel he was doing something helpful. They had yet to find a clue. They might have already left but for Sigmund’s dread of the return flight.
One sleepless night, it struck Sigmund. Beowulf Shaeffer was a born tourist. The biggest tourist attraction on this benighted, soggy world was the water wars. Sigmund sent Ander to Pacifica to check it out.
Pacifica was an ocean-floor village, established for the staff of some kind of underwater zoo. Water wars had been an afterthought, an adaptation of a Kzinti land-only hunting game—but it brought prosperity to the sleepy d
omed settlement.
Predictably, Ander found a food court before entering the nearby stadium dome where the fans gathered. Sigmund watched through Ander’s eyes as Ander studied the posted menus, scanned the adjacent storefronts, glanced up to the second-floor balcony, looked back at the menus, picked a line—
“Ander!” Sigmund shouted. His heart pounded. “Look upstairs again. Is that . . . ?”
As Ander searched the balcony, Sigmund backed up the lens feed a minute and fast-forwarded. He knew that face! “It’s Shaeffer! Get up there!”
ANDER TOOK THE slidestairs three at a time. He found Shaeffer in a phone/transfer booth, holding a pocket comp. It was Shaeffer—facial-recognition software was as sure as Sigmund—except he was almost half a meter too short!
Shaeffer exited the booth and bumped straight into Ander. “Aggh!”
“That sounded fake,” Sigmund said. So Shaeffer had also recognized Ander. “Don’t let on I’m listening.”
“Sorry. Beowulf, how you’ve changed!” Ander didn’t move to let Shaeffer out of the booth.
Shaeffer feigned a cringe. “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to nudge you.”
“How strange, Ander. He’s pretending not to know you. Tag him.”
Ander grabbed and pumped Shaeffer’s hand. “Ander Smittarasheed,” he bellowed over the crowd noise. Ander’s bone-crushing grip, almost like a native Jinxian’s, would cover the prick of inserting a subcutaneous bug.
Sigmund checked a display. “Medusa has signal from the tracker. Well done.”
Ander was still talking. “We made two travelogue vids together. Beowulf, all I can say is you must have a hell of a tale to tell.”
“Hide. Hell of a tale to hide, Ander.”
“Not anymore,” Ander answered.
“Yeah. Right. Are you with anyone?”
Ander remembered his lines. “No, on my own.”
“Come watch the game with me. I think there’s an empty seat next to mine.”
“Ander, get me a good look at the seat numbers,” Sigmund said. “Medusa can probably find who bought the tickets.”
For certain, the tickets hadn’t been bought under the name Beowulf Shaeffer. Learning Bey’s local alias would give them a lead on all the refugees.
Ander and Shaeffer approached a cluster of transfer booths. “Ander, grab Shaeffer’s arm. Act worried he’ll dash off, and then he’ll never suspect we can track him.”
“Why a phone booth to use a pocket comp?” As Ander spoke, his hand closed over Shaeffer’s skinny upper arm.
Shaeffer looked amused by the question. “Noise!”
On cue the crowd closed around them, sweeping them onto the slidebridge to the game dome. Sigmund settled into a massage chair. Eavesdropping on an unsuspecting Beowulf Shaeffer was getting to be a bad habit.
“GOT THEM, SIGMUND,” Medusa said.
“Them?”
“The seats Bey and Ander are in. Two tickets in the name Martin Wallace Graynor.”
Shaeffer babbled on about the finer points of water wars. “Methinks Bey is killing time while his seatmate gets away.”
Medusa smiled. Even the snakes smiled. “It gets better. The Graynors, a family of six, emigrated a couple years ago from Fafnir to Wunderland. Two men, two women, two children.”
“Including Martin, I take it?”
“Right.”
Sigmund thought. “Who else is in two places at once?”
“Milcenta works at Pacifica. John and two children, Nathan and Tweena, took an iceliner from Shasht a year and a half ago. To Home.”
Sharrol Janss had lived underwater with Carlos, making babies. Major flat phobe that she was, Pacifica was perhaps the best spot on Fafnir for her. Sharrol equals Milcenta? Carlos was also a bit flat-phobic. Little Tanya, too, if hints from indirect surveillance could be trusted.
But they might fly frozen to Fafnir, there to become the Graynors. Fly on, frozen again, to Home, the most Earth-like of colony worlds. Things were beginning to make sense. But why had they split up?
“Medusa, you’ve accounted for five. What of number six?”
“Adelaide,” Medusa said. “There’s no sign of her here.”
A chill ran down Sigmund’s spine. Something bad had happened here.
Which woman was unaccounted for? Sharrol or Feather?
• • •
THROAT CLEARING FINALLY caught Sigmund’s attention. Ander wanted advice. That was okay. Medusa could data mine for a while on her own.
Shaeffer was talking. “Ander, what are you doing on Fafnir?”
“Do not admit I’m off Earth,” Sigmund said.
Barely perceptibly, the scenery edged up-and-down: Ander nodding for Sigmund’s benefit. Ander said, “Looking for you.”
“Yeah,” Shaeffer said. “I thought so. You’re with the United Nations police.”
It didn’t sound like Beowulf liked the United Nations very much. Or perhaps, Sigmund thought, it’s just me. “Ander, do not claim to be official.”
“Not . . . exactly,” Ander drawled. “I’m not an ARM. I’m with Sigmund Ausfaller, and Sigmund is an ARM, but he has his own agenda. By which I mean to say I’m not here to bring you back, Beowulf.”
“That’s good. I don’t want to go back.” There was a pregnant pause before Bey continued. “Why, then?”
“Ask about Feather,” Sigmund prompted.
“Can you tell me what happened to Feather Filip?”
Shaeffer grimaced. “It’s long and ugly.”
“No problem,” Ander said. “I’ll take you to dinner.”
Sigmund trembled, with nothing to add.
“Thanks.” Shaeffer leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “There’s an item of great value involved, Ander. One I can’t touch myself. That, and Feather, and the way I look: They’re all linked.”
“Ander, keep an eye on Shaeffer. Go to dinner. Get him talking.” Getting Shaeffer to tell stories wouldn’t be hard. “Medusa and I will keep digging.”
WHILE SIGMUND CONTINUED to eavesdrop on Ander and Beowulf, Medusa sought Carlos’s personal autodoc.
Calling it an autodoc failed to do it justice. It was a nanotech miracle, able to grow organs, limbs, whatever, on demand. So Carlos claimed, anyway. The United Nations had invested a small fortune in the device. It was massive: too large and heavy to move without a lift plate. The cargo manifest for the Zombie Queen—great name, that, for an iceliner—showed nothing even close to its size and weight. The ’doc had disappeared from Earth with Carlos. Would Carlos willingly go on to Home without it?
“Keep Bey talking,” Sigmund ordered Ander. “I need more time.”
To his AIde, Sigmund added, “Medusa, a new priority. Find Milcenta Graynor.” If Shaeffer was also stalling, it would be to cover an escape.
“And there you were in Sirius Mater,” Beowulf said to Ander. They had been talking about the core explosion. “All ready to write my story for me. I guessed then that Ausfaller must have sent you both times.”
“So why did you hire me?”
“I didn’t care much. The galaxy was exploding in supernovae. The big question was, How do I tell the human race? How do I make them believe? I hoped you were an ARM. Maybe you could do something.”
It sounded more and more like a stall. Sigmund said, “Let’s rattle our friend a bit.”
49
The water war was down to five teams, not all at full strength, and Sigmund saw only two faux turtles. Apparently that was a big deal. Fans were on their feet, screaming. Sigmund shouted to be understood. “I’ve downloaded a vid to you. Show him.”
Ander nodded, then set his pocket comp in Beowulf’s lap. A holo appeared.
Five marbles rotated against a black background, an animation extrapolated from Hobo Kelly’s brief foray into Puppeteer territory. They blossomed into worlds as the simulated camera zoomed. Four were so Earth-like, looking past their tiny orbiting suns, it made the throat catch. The mysterious fifth, starless, glowed like a world on
fire.
Sigmund described; Ander echoed what he was told. “The Puppeteers are still in Known Space. Receding at relativistic speeds, and they took their planets with them.” Ander snapped the comp shut. “Five worlds all about the same size, orbiting in a pentagon around each other. Do the math yourself. You’ll find that you can put a sun at the center, or not, and the orbits are stable either way. They understand tides just fine, Beowulf. That’s what they hid from you.”
Shaeffer had looked surprised. He asked intelligent questions. He didn’t visibly react to the comment about relativistic speed. Because he considered three percent light speed relativistic? Or because he didn’t know?
Regardless, Shaeffer was on a roll. He brought up the ’45 expedition with Gregory Pelton. He volunteered that they had found an antimatter solar system. For that information to have become expendable, Shaeffer was protecting something very dear to him. Someone.
It had to be Sharrol Janss.
BEOWULF LED THE way to the Pequod Grill. (Sigmund had seen 3-V ads; the Pequod was the premiere tourist trap in Pacifica.) Ander crammed into the transfer booth with Shaeffer, miming concern Shaeffer would bolt. At the restaurant, Ander accompanied Bey to the ’cycler.
Bey talked almost nonstop, even after the food came. Along the way, he speculated about the Puppeteer worlds and where they might be headed. He theorized about how Outsiders would adapt to the core explosion. In different circumstances, Sigmund would have been fascinated. Medusa was recording; he would process all this another time.
Ander, at Sigmund’s prompting, told several whoppers about Pelton’s research program on Jinx, and what had derailed it.
Shaeffer didn’t react visibly to that, either.
Medusa interrupted. “I’ve got her, Sigmund. Milcenta. She just checked in at Outbound Enterprises.”
“What’s that?” Sigmund asked.
“An iceliner company. The one Carlos and the children used. And one more thing. . . .”
“Yes?” Sigmund prompted.
“If you de-opaque your window and look down, Outbound Enterprises is that low green building just down the street.”