by Larry Niven
SHAEFFER FINALLY SLOWED down. It might be exhaustion, the hour being late in Pacifica, or he might have decided he’d stalled enough for Sharrol/Milcenta to get away. He hadn’t, despite earlier comments, said much about Feather.
“Is this what you came for?” Beowulf asked.
“Beowulf, I believe I can tell Sigmund it was worth the trip. Now, will you tell me what happened to Feather Filip and Carlos Wu?”
“Yeah.” Bey leaned forward. “And Carlos Wu’s autodoc?”
“Feather Filip vanished from the same time and locale as you and Carlos Wu and Sharrol Janss. I’m supposed to find out who’s dead.”
Sigmund flinched, but Ander was almost certainly correct. And if anyone was dead, logic said it was Feather. Sigmund studied Beowulf through Ander’s lenses.
A hand flew up to Shaeffer’s throat, massaging it nervously. “Nobody should have to eat with you, Ander.”
“Who’s dead?” Ander repeated bluntly.
“At least Carlos. You want it from the beginning?”
Carlos had gone on to Home. What else would Shaeffer lie about?
“So there you have it,” Bey finally summarized. “Carlos is dead. I saw Feather shoot him before she shot me. Sharrol and the children must have gotten away. Feather stayed to put me in the ’doc, then used the other boat.
“She left me marooned on a desert island. I think she’d already given up on catching Sharrol. Otherwise, why would she need me for a hostage? I can’t guess where they all are now, but if Feather was holding Sharrol, I think I’d know it.”
Amid the lies, parts of the tale rang true. Sigmund knew the principals and enough of the background to penetrate the fog of deceit. Getting the transport and lander, sneaking to Fafnir to take over the lives of the Graynors, treachery at a remote island landing . . . that all fit. A stolen weapon, and big holes blown through a nautical survival vest, had brought Sigmund here.
Only some of the roles had been changed.
Feather was gone forever. That she’d clearly gone over the edge didn’t make it any easier. Sigmund was suddenly sick to death of Beowulf Shaeffer’s voice.
That didn’t stop Shaeffer. “On another matter, Carlos Wu’s experimental autodoc is a very valuable item. I propose to sell it to you.”
“We really want that back,” Sigmund managed to say. “Play it casual.”
Ander took his time commenting. “Your bargaining position isn’t that terrific.”
“Cheap,” Shaeffer assured him. “I can’t touch it myself, after all, and you can’t afford to lose it. Look at me! That thing rebuilt me from a severed head!”
Sigmund’s stomach lurched. He finally pictured it. How long had Feather gone without meds? Long enough to see her shipmates as enemies?
Then what?
Shaeffer blown apart, slaughtered first, as potentially the most dangerous to Feather. The others managed to kill her, putting Shaeffer’s head into the autodoc before fleeing in their boat in flat-phobic blind panic. Shaeffer shortened by almost a half meter, because the autodoc’s intensive-care cavity couldn’t accommodate his natural height.
The room spun. “Ander. Make a deal to buy back the ’doc. I’m dropping off.”
The final, unbearable truth registered. Regrowing Shaeffer from his head would take a lot of biomass as input. An awful lot.
Feather’s dead body?
Sigmund retched and retched until his stomach ran dry.
50
In satellite weather imagery on Fafnir’s public net, Sigmund watched a small dot meander from island to island. The dot was the dirigible Wyvern; the end of the line was a mooring tower just a few kilometers from Shasht North Spaceport, the Outbound Enterprises Terminal, and Sigmund’s hotel.
One of the passengers was named Martin Wallace Graynor. The tracker Ander had planted confirmed it.
After Shaeffer “escaped” from Ander, he followed at a discreet distance. Alas, Shaeffer didn’t go to recover the autodoc. The last island on Wyvern’s itinerary was within transfer-booth range of Shasht, and Ander flicked the rest of the way ahead of the dirigible.
Ander had coaxed Sigmund out of his room, as far as the Drake’s main dining room. Sigmund sat with his back to the window wall that overlooked endless waves and not-quite-right sky. They traded seats, ocean and sky suddenly not the worst view in the room, when a pair of Kzinti came in. Did you eat my parents?
“It’s almost cruel,” Ander said. “Letting Bey think he got away from me.”
Where except to Outbound could Beowulf go? Sharrol was already frozen solid for the next iceliner to Home. Before following, Ander had checked out the abandoned apartment of the Graynors, and the just-rented hotel room of Persial January Hebert, sea-monster survivor. Presumably Sharrol had rented the room for Bey on her way out of Pacifica.
Ander hadn’t found anything, not so much as a holo of Sharrol and the children. The few personal effects had been sanitized. As to the whereabouts of the autodoc, there was no trace.
Maybe Ander should just “find” Bey again, to complete the under-the-table purchase charade. If Ander talked Bey down to a reasonable price, Sigmund was inclined to let Bey keep it—and to let “the Graynors” go free. Shaeffer was guilty of countless technicalities, from immigration rules to identity fraud to traffic-control infractions. So what? It was more Feather’s doing than his own.
The bit of Sigmund’s mind not still paralyzed with grief wondered how Shaeffer would take being caught again. Might he trade the coordinates of the antimatter system for freedom?
Ander leafed through the wine list, in a section marked “Ask the Sommelier” in lieu of price. “Sigmund, I feel we did very well here. Perhaps a magnum of—”
Feather was dead and Ander wanted to celebrate? Sigmund couldn’t discuss it, but he wasn’t about to order champagne. “We’ll apply the cost of a bottle to what you owe me. Those surveillance lenses and earplugs you lost aren’t cheap.”
“I didn’t lose them.” Ander closed the wine list, looking wistful. “Sigmund, those things can’t be worn without interruption for days. My eyes and ears were killing me. I took them out and left them on a counter for a while.”
“Forget it.” Sigmund didn’t feel up to more complaints about the housekeeping at Ander’s hotel in Pacifica.
“HE’S THERE,” MEDUSA said.
There was the lobby of Outbound Express, ten stories below Sigmund and just down the street. The AIde monitored through sensors Ander had planted there hours earlier.
“He didn’t waste time,” Sigmund said. Shaeffer’s dirigible had docked only an hour earlier. “Show me.”
The new, flatlander-sized Beowulf Shaeffer stood talking with the woman at a circular desk in the main reception area. He had dyed his hair red and taken tannin pills, but without doubt that was Bey. As he turned from the desk, the check-in formalities apparently complete, Sigmund said, “Medusa. Connect me to the lobby.”
“Outbound Express. Ms. Machti speaking.”
“My name is Ausfaller. I need urgently to speak with the red-haired man who just registered.” Ms. Machti caught Bey’s attention, and transferred the call to a lobby phone pedestal beside a window wall. Talking eye to eye with Shaeffer felt odd.
Shaeffer apparently thought so, too. “Long story. Ask Ander.”
“So your name is Graynor now?”
“Braynard,” Bey overenunciated. Nice try. “Where are you?”
“Where should I be?” Sigmund asked back.
“Retrieving Carlos Wu’s autodoc?”
“In due course. It shouldn’t be left here.” He was toying with Shaeffer. It didn’t make Sigmund feel very good about himself. Habit? Misplaced blame? An ineffable weariness settled over him. It was time to end this.
Sigmund stepped to the window. Looking down wasn’t too bad. He waved. “Look outside, Bey. Turn left. Farther. Look up.
“I’m right on top of you. It would take you hours to freeze yourself, perhaps days to be stowed and launched.
I need only cross the street to stop you. Let us reason together, Bey.”
“You always seem to have an offer I can’t refuse. Why are you picking on me, Sigmund? I told Ander everything he wanted to know.”
“I haven’t heard from Ander,” Sigmund said. Not since breakfast.
“Feather. Carlos. Puppeteers.”
“You’ll still have to come home with me, Bey.” They went into a dance, Bey sticking to his story and Sigmund pretending to believe it. “Bey, are you sure about Carlos?”
“Feather blew a hole through him. But the nanotech ’doc is his last legacy, and it’s UN property, and I might arrange to put that in your hands.”
Sigmund held all the cards, but Shaeffer would still play it out to the bitter end. I’m going to miss you, Sigmund thought.
EYES SQUEEZED SHUT, heads held tightly against the underside of his belly, rolled into a ball, within the all-but-impregnable hull of Aegis, undetected at the bottom of Fafnir’s ocean . . . Nessus cowered.
He dared not confront Ausfaller. He dared not return home without trying. All the while planning advanced, as Achilles so antiseptically sang it, “for reclaiming that which was so carelessly set loose.”
With great effort of will Nessus unclenched. Babbling grew louder, mostly unintelligible, relayed from the sensors that rimmed the stepping disc beneath the carpet in Sigmund’s room. Ander’s room remained silent. Aegis’ computers only accessed a fraction of what transpired, having to overcome defensive jamming and encryption. But “going home,” whether it referred to Earth or Home, showed clearly enough Nessus was running out of time. Sigmund expected to leave soon.
Nessus had come all this way to enlist a champion. Fear had paralyzed him ever since. If he were ever to meet faces to face with Ausfaller, it must be soon.
Then why not now?
Trembling, Nessus climbed to his hooves. Sensors said Ander’s room remained quiet. Nessus mouthed the transport controls and stepped through.
He drilled a pinhole through the connecting wall, pulsing a flashlight laser dialed to narrow beam. Sigmund was alone, talking to a vidphone. Nessus gathered his strength for the step through to the hidden disc in Sigmund’s room.
Faintly, Nessus heard a ping. Through his pinhole, he saw the hall door into Ausfaller’s room open, and then—
He dove for the stepping disc and the safety of Aegis.
A BELL PINGED, followed by soft knocking. Tap. Tap tap-tap. Tap-tap. Ander, back finally from running the prelaunch checklist on Seeker.
“Open the door!” Sigmund called to the room automation. He turned back to Bey’s holo image. “And Feather? You know, we never intended to turn her loose on an alien world. We want some weaponry back, too.” He had to ask, although Feather’s stolen punchgun was probably at the bottom of the ocean, encrusted in the Fafnir equivalent of barnacles.
An elephant kicked Sigmund in the back. Fat spatters of gore suddenly dotted the vidphone and the shattered, sparking remains of his computer array. He twisted as he fell, his head flopping to face the door.
Ander! He held a punchgun, its stubby barrel still smoking. Feather’s? Lethal weapons weren’t easy to come by.
Inconceivable pain faded, even more terrifyingly, to no feeling at all. Sigmund’s thoughts swam in syrup. What was—
A yank on the hair lifted Sigmund up off the floor into view of the camera. Shaeffer’s eyes were round. In the window, Sigmund’s reflection had a gaping hole through its chest.
Had he heard Bey protest? Sigmund wanted to think so.
From a great distance, Ander said, “Beowulf . . . can hardly sell . . . nanotech machine without Sigmund knowing how . . . got it.”
Betrayed. . . .
There was scarcely time to think, I always knew it would end horribly, before everything dissolved into a maelstrom of darkness.
THE OUTSIDERS
Earth date: 2656–2657
51
Ausfaller! The man plagued them even in death.
Achilles watched the recording from Earth, unable not to paw at the meadowplant carpet in Nike’s office. In the holo, Nessus wore his mane pulled back into a few uneven braids. The token effort made him look, if such a thing was possible, more disheveled than usual.
The message ended. Nike settled astraddle one of the thickly planted hummocks that served in this office as benches. His mane glittered with sequins and orange gems. He asked, “Your impressions?”
He’s asking me, Achilles decided. Vesta and Nike had viewed the recording before summoning him, but that wasn’t the main reason. He had spent years immersed in the information cacophony of human worlds. He knew most of the principals—if not personally, like Beowulf Shaeffer, then by direct observation and extensive study of their profiles. Ander Smittarasheed was the only player new to him. He was the indispensable expert as long as Nessus remained in Human Space.
What did he think? That awareness at this moment of mane coiffure, like the hoof with a mind of its own, was a defense mechanism. A distraction from an intractable problem they could neither hide from nor flee. Achilles struggled to arrange the salient points from Nessus’ report. “Ausfaller’s murder gives credibility to his event-of-my-death message.” That had always been the fear, or Ausfaller would long ago have been eliminated by hired criminal elements.
Ausfaller had assumed, brilliant paranoid that he was, that he could trust no one. His suspicions about Gregory Pelton—among other people—had been delivered to many officials besides Sangeeta Kudrin. There was no way to contain it.
Achilles continued. “The bigger complication is who killed Ausfaller. Before joining Ausfaller for the trip to Fafnir, Smittarasheed worked on Jinx for Gregory Pelton, in the facility planning a return expedition to the antimatter system.”
Vesta stared into the distance. After a long silence, he said, “It’s rather unfortunate the Fafnir police killed their suspect.”
“But not surprising,” Achilles said, “not after he shot at police trying to capture him.”
Maybe Kzinti police coming at him had rattled Ander. Achilles shivered—it would have terrified him. Who in their right mind attacked a squad of armed Kzinti? “Ander Smittarasheed had an illegal weapon, and he was covered in Ausfaller’s blood.”
“I wish we knew more,” Vesta said.
“The authorities on Fafnir aren’t releasing details,” Achilles reminded them. To be fair, neither Vesta nor Nike had ever visited Human Space. How could they understand wild humans and their ways? “The police clearly believe Smittarasheed had an accomplice. They don’t want that person to know what they’ve learned.” And the maid who heard the shots, found the body, and ran screaming from the room had disappeared into Witness Protection. Whatever that was.
“Forget Ausfaller,” Nike warbled abruptly. “The issue is the antimatter solar system. We let ourselves be comforted that only two humans knew its location. And now . . .”
Now Shaeffer has disappeared, and Pelton has taken asylum on Jinx to avoid questions.
Achilles thought, inanely, of dominoes falling. The metaphor had meaning only to him—but it fit circumstances exactly.
Ausfaller locates the Fleet of Worlds. He demonstrates knowledge of past Citizen meddling on Earth. Smittarasheed kills Ausfaller. Conveniently, Smitterasheed is then killed. Their deaths, in separate ways, implicate Pelton. Pelton flees, removing all doubts. The Secretary-General authorizes the ARM to locate and secure the antimatter system.
Which domino would fall next?
Vesta murmured softly, “We must find the antimatter first, whatever it takes.”
“Whatever it takes,” Nike agreed.
IT WAS DELEGATED to Achilles to prepare the first draft of an order directing Nessus to Jinx.
Achilles began several times, his mind wandering. Maybe fear had been burnt out of him by the news of the core explosion, and the long isolation until his recall. Maybe he had come to embrace his own bravado about being vulnerable only when he presented his heel.
A very real opportunity kept chasing theoretical dangers from Achilles’ thoughts. While Nike worried about the peril behind the Fleet, no action would be taken to reclaim the lost world. Its status was, the Hindmost decreed, “a deferrable crisis.”
Let Nike stay distracted! Achilles would use that time, exploit that preoccupation.
His destiny, Achilles now realized, did not lie on the ocean floor. Seabed arcologies were too grand a concept for lesser minds.
But none could deny that the world once called Nature Preserve 4 had been governed too laxly. When the time came for its reintegration into the Concordance, the need for strict control would be obvious. Who better, on that glorious day, to become that world’s Hind-most than he who had masterminded its recovery?
And who better to keep far away than the one who had betrayed my previous plans?
Achilles returned to the task of drafting orders, now with a clear purpose. He detailed all the ways Nessus might observe, infiltrate, or influence Pelton’s organization, specifics neither Vesta nor Nike could know to question.
The longer Nessus stayed on Jinx, the better.
NESSUS STARED AT the orders from Hearth. Ausfaller had never managed to acquire Pelton’s secret. Realistically, how would he?
Stars glittered through the bridge view port. Nessus tried to enjoy them while he could as he readied Aegis for flight, and tried to ignore the mass pointer. Soon enough he would look at nothing else.
Only three words in his instructions truly made sense: at all costs. Nessus decided they were his orders. The bulk of the message was only copious impractical advice. Such minutiae, despite Nike’s electronic signature, could only have come from Achilles.
A bowl of stale synthed grains sat on the adjacent bench. Nessus grabbed mouthfuls as he worked, begrudging the time for a meal. He would travel to Jinx as directed.