by Larry Niven
Modern medicine being all but miraculous, he was, all in all, pleased with how things had turned out.
That worried him.
Familial chaos surrounded Sigmund. Like a third lease on life, domestic bliss had taken him by surprise. He took a moment to bask in the commotion.
Hermes was tall for his age and skinny as a rail, with masses of dark curly hair. He had boundless energy, an impish grin, and creative excuses for the mischief in which he invariably found—and, as often, put—himself. The god of everything that involved skill and speed and dexterity had proven an apt namesake.
How old was Sigmund’s son? Eight, as years were reckoned here on New Terra. And on old Terra, on Earth? Nobody on New Terra, not even Sigmund, remembered how long an Earth year might be. For that one vanished detail, at least, he had a decent approximation. He remembered that pregnancy took nine months on Earth, out of twelve. Here, where they didn’t count in months, pregnancy lasted five-sixths of a year. That made New Terra’s year about ninety percent of the ill-defined norm, and Hermes scarcely seven years standard.
And what, rather than gathering his things for school, was Hermes doing? Teasing his little sister, of course.
Athena was another perpetual-motion machine. She had a sweet face, a delicate frame, and an aura of fine blond hair. Barely four New Terra years old, she already showed signs of her mother’s athletic grace. Athena was precocious; time would tell whether she achieved the wisdom to befit her divine namesake. As for her brother’s teasing, Athena appealed, with eyes round and innocent, with theatrically quivering lower lip, for maternal intervention.
Scarily precocious.
Penelope, harried and overworked, funny and smart, struggled to set everyone on their way for the day. Penny was beautiful, with rosy cheeks and twinkling blue eyes. Waves of ash-blond hair flowed past her shoulders. She was as tall as Sigmund and much fitter. She was Sigmund’s wife, best friend, and anchor.
Without hesitation, Sigmund would die or kill to protect any of them.
“What’s the ETA on breakfast?” Penny asked. Tone of voice asked why he didn’t just synth their meals.
Because Sigmund preferred to cook. Cooking centered him. “Two minutes.” He flipped the Denver omelet, and that was the most anyone on this world knew about Denver. He started toast and poured juice. “Everyone sit.” He and Penny together got a few bites into the kids before they rushed off to school.
Penny stayed long enough to fret about the latest crisis pending in her lab and to gently chide Sigmund about his jumpsuit programming. She didn’t touch her fork until he set the nanofabric to a pattern and texture befitting his august stature. She patted his arm. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Before New Terra and Penelope, Sigmund had worn only black. No bother, no ostentation. But that was in other lives, on other worlds. He failed to see the logic of encoding social cues into programmable clothing. If anyone could project anything onto their clothes . . .
That, somehow, was why the choice made such a statement. Sigmund stubbornly refused to learn more. Clothing rules was one of the few mysteries he could afford to ignore.
He leaned back in his chair and, smiling, watched Penny eat. Did the pattern of the stripes on her outfit indicate that she ran the wildlife lab where she worked, or was the signal somehow a function of the fauxvelveteen finish? He never quite understood her selections and did not care. That they both wore pastels—Hey, we’re mated!—was all that mattered.
Sigmund tapped his wrist implant to bring up the clock mode. Good, he had a few more minutes. “So, a problem with the crabs,” he began.
“They’re adapted to a tidal environment. We had tides. Now they’re gone.” She glanced at her wrist implant. “That’s the short answer. The full answer is much longer, and it’s getting late. Ask me tonight. If you’re home tonight, that is.” They exchanged a quick kiss and she left.
Yes, Sigmund would die or kill without hesitation to protect his family. He would die or kill for his adopted home world and the people who had embraced him.
The difficult part was to wake every day wondering if this was the day. . . .
SANITY WAS OVERRATED.
The near infinite universe has a near infinite number of ways to kill you. Any rational mind acknowledges that simple logic and is appropriately wary.
Any rational mind, perhaps—but individuals do not define sanity. Groups do. Somehow, among humans, respect for the near infinity of dangers fails to qualify. Rational or sane? Those are very different standards.
Sigmund had not been born paranoid—not quite. Not until he was ten had his parents vanished in hostilities that failed to rise to the level of a numeral in the official reckoning of Man-Kzin Wars. They had died in a mere “border incident.”
Everyone knew the Kzinti devoured their prey.
Sigmund had bided his time, kept his own counsel, and told the therapists what they wanted to hear. For more than a century, he lay low, set traps, marshaled his defenses, watched and waited. Until—
A precaution the sane disdained as paranoid had saved him. By then a midlevel United Nations financial analyst, his investigations had inconvenienced a criminal syndicate. Arguably, he wasn’t saved soon enough—he died with a dagger through his heart—but UN police arrived in time to revive him. A trap Sigmund had set with his own wealth as bait had alerted them.
He had emerged from the autodoc with someone else’s heart, and an invitation into a new life: as an agent of the UN’s Bureau of Alien Affairs. For sniffing out threats to Earth’s interests, the UN liked paranoids.
Eighteen years later Sigmund was killed for a second time. This time the police were too late to reach the body. Still, Sigmund was saved: spirited away by a covert agent provocateur who had stalked Sigmund—and vice versa—for years.
Sigmund and Nessus shared more than rivalry. Nessus, by the standards of his own species, the three-legged, two-headed Puppeteers, was also insane.
Sane Puppeteers were philosophical cowards. Sane Puppeteers never left home, nor allowed non-Puppeteers to know where home was. Sane Puppeteers ran from any danger—as they fled, even now, from the supernova chain reaction recently discovered onrushing from the galactic core. Because sane Puppeteers never left home, and the level of their technology was truly advanced, they brought home with them. Their evacuation fleet was a literal Fleet of Worlds.
And, as Sigmund soon learned after waking on New Terra, the Puppeteers also fled from their own sordid past.
5
Sigmund strode across the central plaza of Long Pass City. He studied his destination, the unassuming, four-story Governor’s Building. He took in the bustling crowds. Trees and bushes dotted the plaza, and he looked at the stately pines and oaks and poplars, at the whimsical topiary animals, at—
Snap!
Sharp crack and unexpected movement drew Sigmund’s eyes, unwillingly, to a shoulder-tall snarl of red and purple tendrils. As he stared, a second purple tendril lanced out. It was an alien hedge, snaring and devouring alien insects.
His eyes jerked away, down—
To find two clusters of shadows at his feet, one group extending to his left, the other to his right. His eyes jerked away again, skyward—
Where tiny artificial suns shone in two parallel arcs. A glow on the eastern horizon hinted at another string of the orbiting suns about to rise.
With a shiver, Sigmund forced his attention back to the plaza. His escorts glanced at Sigmund sidelong, and he realized he had skidded to a halt. He resumed his purposeful walk toward the Governor’s Building.
Thirteen local years on this world, and the strangeness could still take him unawares. One of the few things Sigmund knew about Earth was that it orbited a star—that on Earth, a year meant something. Free-flying habitable planets like New Terra were the exception. That Nessus had left intact the memory of a life-giving sun could only mean that the knowledge wasn’t a clue to Earth’s location.
Unless, that was, Earth
was like New Terra, and Sigmund’s memory of a normal star had been planted as a false clue. . . .
It would be nice to know something for certain.
At one time he could have gone in one step directly from home or office to his meeting with the governor. How insane was that? Stepping-disc access to the world leader’s own office! Everyone here trusted the teleportation system, no matter that the Puppeteers had designed and deployed it. No matter that, until a few years ago, the humans on this world had been unwitting slaves, the Puppeteers their absolute masters, and this world, then one among the Fleet of Worlds, was known simply as Nature Preserve Four. And it wasn’t terrestrial life the Puppeteers had cared to preserve here, outside of the enclave that sustained their slaves. Pines and oaks, not purple bug-eating hedges, were the oddities here.
None too soon, Sigmund completed his march across the plaza. Outside the Governor’s Building armed guards saluted. The squad leader extended a hand, palm up, for identification. “Good morning, Minister,” she said.
“Good morning, Lieutenant.” The lesson had taken years to set in, but everyone was to be checked for proper identification. Even the minister of defense. Even the world governor herself.
Sigmund took an ID disc from his pocket. He pressed his thumb against the sensor pad, and up popped a holo bearing his name and likeness against a shimmering backdrop of New Terra.
Beyond the security checkpoint people milled about the foyer. So did the occasional Puppeteer—only Puppeteer was a term from Earth and politically incorrect here. The aliens—locals—called themselves Citizens. After independence thousands of Citizens had chosen to stay. Native New Terrans saw nothing strange in that: Life anywhere off the home world marked a Citizen as low-status or an outcast, if not insane. Why not make a new life here?
Sigmund had another explanation. Many of the stay-behinds, surely, were spies.
Spy or not, one could never mistake a Puppeteer for anything else. He—females never appeared in public—stood on a tripod of two forelegs and a massive, complexly jointed hind leg. The torso reminded Sigmund of an ostrich, only the leathery hide lacked feathers. Two serpentine necks—vaguely sock-puppetlike, hence the nickname on Earth—emerged from between muscular shoulders. Each flat, triangular head had an ear, an eye, and a mouth. The mouth also served as a hand, with tongue and knobby lips substituting for fingers. The bony hump between the necks, padded with a thick mane, encased the brain.
Except for a belt or sash for pockets, Puppeteers wore no clothing. Like fabric selections among New Terrans, mane coiffures indicated status among Puppeteers. Even the few Puppeteers in the lobby exhibited a wide range of braids and curls, ribbons and jewels.
As Sigmund’s eyes swept across the lobby, at people and Puppeteers alike, he wondered: Which of you are spies?
The lieutenant finished her scrutiny and returned his holo ID. “Thank you, Minister.”
An aide waiting just inside the main entrance led Sigmund to the governor’s outer office. More sentries stood there; Sigmund presented his ID again before he was permitted inside to meet, alone, with the governor.
Sabrina Gomez-Vanderhoff looked more like a doting grandmother than the planetary leader. Her office was spartan and unassuming, decorated only with potted plants—all, blessedly, of terrestrial green—and holos of her family. Sigmund had known junior accountants with fancier offices.
No wonder he liked her.
“Morning, Sigmund,” Sabrina said. Titles came out only on public occasions or around junior staff. Her slacks and blouse combined a riot of color and texture that doubtless—he would need Penny to truly understand—befit Sabrina’s position. Her massive progeny ring glittered with four small rubies and a dozen emeralds: tokens of children and grandchildren. This was a farm world, all but unpopulated. Small families were a rarity here. That, too, was different from Earth—but a welcome change.
She gestured at a built-in synthesizer. “Help yourself.”
“Black coffee,” he told the synthesizer before beginning a slow circuit of her office, scanner in hand, checking for bugs. “We’re clear, Sabrina.”
They both knew he lied.
High on the wall behind Sigmund the grille of the air duct had a panoramic view of Sabrina’s office. The screws that fastened the grille did double duty as stereoscopic optical and audio sensors. The bugs Sigmund pretended never to have found were far beyond New Terran technology—but not that of the Puppeteers.
With such an excellent source of information, Puppeteer agents might look elsewhere with less diligence. Such was Sigmund’s hope.
Not that he placed much stock in hope.
They took their seats, Sabrina behind her desk, the better to squarely face the hidden cameras. She said, “So, Sigmund. What’s scary today?”
What wasn’t? But they rarely discussed the truly scary stuff within range of the bugs. “Don Quixote is overdue checking in, though not yet alarmingly late. A training accident at the Army academy. Defect rates remain too high at Munitions Plant Three.”
“An accident? Not serious, I hope.”
Sigmund kept his voice level. “We lost a young man.” The cadet would arrive, soon enough, someplace the Puppeteers and their sympathizers might not suspect existed: the New Terran intelligence academy. Spy school.
“Remind me. Where did Don Quixote go this trip?”
“Routine mission, scouting ahead of New Terra,” which world, in turn, flew ahead of the Fleet of Worlds. Sigmund suspected this world’s erstwhile masters didn’t entirely mind New Terra making its own way. By rushing ahead as fast as its planetary drive would take it, New Terra served as a lightning rod. Any hostile aliens that human scouts encountered in their path would more likely strike the world in the vanguard than those that lagged behind. “Sabrina, the delayed report may not mean anything.” It wasn’t even delayed. Not everything the scout ships did was intended for Puppeteer consumption, even though the Puppeteers paid well for scouting reports, and in the only currency that truly mattered: ships.
Which served only to replace—slowly—the ships destroyed in Hearth’s nearly successful attempt to reclaim its errant farm world. Sigmund kept his expression stoic, not letting his resentment show. It wasn’t as though Sabrina didn’t share the anger.
Item by item, Sigmund updated Sabrina on New Terra’s fledgling military and defense industry. Only someone born off-world could hope to grasp the concepts, let alone manage the undertaking. He was a talent pool of one.
(Who but the off-world paranoid even saw the need for a military? The only planets nearby were the Fleet of Worlds, whose inhabitants outnumbered the New Terrans almost a million to one. This world remained free at the whim of the Puppeteers. And among those Puppeteers, Nessus, at the least, expected Sigmund—somehow—to protect New Terran interests. That was why Nessus had brought Sigmund here. A very complex individual, Nessus.)
Sabrina asked for background on a long list of topics. He grumbled about a few. And finally the session was done.
Sigmund stood to leave. “Getting you those answers will take a while,” he warned.
That, as they both knew, was another lie. It would serve to explain his absence for a few days—while he did his real job.
. . .
THE SQUAT AND RAMBLING STRUCTURE that was headquarters to the defense ministry existed in a state of perpetual flux. The disorder served both sides. Ongoing construction provided the perfect cover for Puppeteer sympathizers to hide sensors, and for Sigmund’s most trusted inner circle to “accidentally” damage or discard the most troublesome of those bugs.
Amid organizations and reorganizations, drills and exercises, the ebb and flow of defense contracts, the ongoing construction, the cycles of plans and budgets . . . who could possibly detect the critical resources Sigmund siphoned off to where they could do some actual good?
From the governor’s office Sigmund made his way across the plaza to the defense ministry, past layers of security personnel, deep into an area of
ongoing remodeling where a few stepping discs had been deployed temporarily to facilitate the delivery of construction materials. Noise-absorbing partitions and stacked boxes “happened” to shield him there from anyone’s view. His hand dipped into his pants pocket for his transport controller, thumbprintand DNA-authenticated. He stepped onto one of the discs—
And off another disc, half a continent away.
Officially, this facility did not exist. Its funding was laundered through the Ministry of Defense. Its staff appeared, if at all, in the files of the Office of Agricultural Research. The stepping disc here had never been entered into any directory of the transportation network; only a few biometrically triggered transport controllers could override the system to access this location.
Few in the crowded, windowless room took note of Sigmund’s arrival. Among those who had, he rated only desultory waves in greeting. These were the best of the best, handpicked and personally trained. It had been years since they needed much in the way of direction.
The Office of Strategic Analyses managed the real defense of New Terra.
SIGMUND SPENT A WHILE REVIEWING routine intelligence reports.
New Terra’s military was mostly for show. It had to be capable enough to discourage meddling, if only to hold down interference to manageable levels; it dare not even hint at growing into a serious force. The Puppeteers would strike at the first sign New Terra might become a threat. All that deterred the Puppeteers from reclaiming their former colony, truly, was fear of disfavor with the Outsiders. Sigmund had ferreted out enough secrets to play off one species against the other—and extortion was a precarious way to live.
If New Terra was ever to achieve long-term security, he must find Earth.
With a sigh and a hand gesture he dismissed the latest report file. “Jeeves,” Sigmund called.
“Yes, sir,” his computer answered in a British accent. Some days, the AI understood Sigmund better than anyone or anything with whom he spoke. And with good reason: Jeeves, too, came from Earth.