Destroyer of Worlds

by Larry Niven

  Everything that could be turned off or fine-tuned had been serviced.

  Now, at long last, Ol’t’ro had the opportunity to contemplate . . .

  “IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK,” Jeeves said.

  “It’s good to have you back,” Sigmund answered, although Eric was off fuming about the associated power drain and wondering how, even temporarily, to compensate. “We relics should stick together.”

  “I see that we’re much closer to New Terra.”

  A veiled complaint about time passing as he was powered down? Fair enough if so, Sigmund decided. Had the ship’s emergency been, say, an oxygen shortage, he’d not want someone else to decide he would be the one to go into an induced coma. Still, sympathy had no bearing on Sigmund’s decision to awaken the AI.

  “Jeeves, I’m missing something. I could use your help.” Sigmund stared at the dull, picture-mode-off walls of his cabin. “It’s about Alice.”

  “What about her?”

  “Brennan went to extraordinary lengths to put Alice where he did. At least I assume he’s the one responsible. Who but a protector could have arranged for her to be found as she was?”

  “In deep space, you mean. Orbiting the neutronium mass.”

  “Right.” Hands behind his head, Sigmund lay on the floor of his cabin. Sleep fields were among the expendable functions disabled to conserve power, but the reduced cabin gravity was almost as comfortable. “Brennan took extraordinary measures to protect her. Brennan protected Earth by heading for Wunderland.” Jeeves had been disabled through most of Alice’s debrief, and that required an explanation. “Why send Alice away from Earth?”

  Jeeves didn’t comment.

  Sigmund sat up. He saw only one answer, and he didn’t much like it. “Somehow, the void between the stars was safer.”

  Jeeves considered. “Then Brennan was less than confident he could lure away or defeat the Pak.”

  Still not explaining special treatment for Alice. “Why protect Alice more than the billions on Earth?”

  “I don’t know,” Jeeves said.

  They had overlooked something. Sigmund refused to accept that Alice’s reappearance here and now would remain a mystery. He opened his pocket comp. “I’m going to upload every discussion I’ve had with Alice, and every speculation I’ve had about her. Then do what you do best, Jeeves. Review everything you know about Brennan. About Alice. About anything. And correlate.”

  “All right,” Jeeves said, not sounding hopeful—

  And Sigmund knew he was projecting his own doubts. He did progressive relaxation of his muscle groups, trying, and failing, to relax. He stared at the featureless walls.

  “I have a possible match,” Jeeves finally said. “Brennan had two children, Jennifer and Estelle. Alice says Roy Truesdale called his great-to-the-fourth grandmother ‘Greatly Stelle.’ ”

  Greatly Stelle. A passing mention that Sigmund, never good with names, had forgotten. How many million women named Estelle lived in Sol system at any given time? A trivial coincidence—had Sigmund believed in such things. And he had more than a name match to explain. “Roy inherited a great deal of money. Enough to purchase the ship he and Alice took Brennan-hunting.”

  “Again, so Alice says.”

  Great-to-the-fourth grandmother. At two offspring per generation—common enough among the rich on Earth, and conservative elsewhere in Sol system—Stelle would have had two children, four grandchildren. . . going to thirty-two in Roy’s generation. Depending on how many direct descendants had survived Stelle, up to sixty-two heirs. More still, if any bequests went to spouses, friends, or charities. Yet Roy’s tiny slice of the estate had bought and equipped a long-range interplanetary ship. “A very wealthy woman.”

  “So it seems, Sigmund.”

  In how many ways might a super-intelligent parent secretly influence his child’s fortunes? Suppose that Greatly Stelle was, or had been named after, Estelle Brennan. Then everything made sense.

  A protector must protect its bloodline, and Brennan knew Earth wasn’t safe.

  “Roy was a descendant of Brennan’s,” Sigmund decided. “The child Alice carries has Brennan’s blood. It’s the unborn infant Brennan took such care to protect.”

  DON QUIXOTE WOULD SOON REACH NEW TERRA, raising anew the possibility of returning the Gw’oth passengers to their home. Ol’t’ro was determined that that not happen. Opportunities amid the humans were too valuable. And if Ol’t’ro could reconnect with Baedeker and those like him, how much more might the Gw’otesht learn?

  Reminding Sigmund of their value would be easy; the artistry lay in innocently making their case. It would not do to intimate how much shipboard technology they had mastered since coming aboard. Gw’oth understood wariness—how could they not, borne to an ocean teeming with predators and contested by rival city-states?—but Sigmund embodied suspicion beyond their experience. So they would offer something apart from this ship. Something important to Sigmund. Something, perhaps, about Alice.

  With sixteen minds become one, they sorted data relevant to the challenge, reviewed options, modeled the most favorable scenarios, and chose.

  Ol’t’ro extended a tubacle to a comm terminal. “Sigmund,” they called. “We have new thoughts about neutronium and where the Outsider ship found Alice.”

  “What have you got?” Sigmund radioed back.

  Neutronium being a rare and wondrous thing, assume the neutronium mass within Kobold was the object about which Alice’s ship later orbited. Brennan had reconfigured the ship’s navigation to use a moving reference point, about which the ship would take up orbit. Kobold itself was the logical reference point—if Kobold was moving.

  Ol’t’ro kept it simple. “The remains of Kobold are the moving reference point.”

  “The remains.” Sigmund thought about that for a while. “Collapsed into the neutronium. Alice saw Kobold ‘blinking out.’ Where does the motion come in?”

  Ol’t’ro said, “Remember the ring on which Alice, Roy, and Brennan lived. That is what fell into the central object. I considered the possibility that all the mass did not fall symmetrically. Brennan’s artificial-gravity technology could have sped up or delayed parts of the collapse.”

  “This is too esoteric for an accountant,” Sigmund said. He paged Kirsten, refusing to continue until she joined the link.

  Kirsten caught up quickly. “An asymmetric collapse. To what purpose?”

  “If we are correct”—false modesty for some reason impressed humans—“to synchronize the incremental impacts to the central mass’s rotation.”

  “I don’t see that,” she said. “Conservation of energy, momentum, and angular momentum all apply. The net change to the collapsed object’s motion can’t exceed the energy used by the gravity generators.”

  Their own components might not have seen the subtlety, Ol’t’ro admitted to themselves. They did not fault the humans. “The gravitational collapse initiates a much more energetic process, as matter falls into that central mass.”

  “Eight million gees at the surface,” Sigmund remembered. “That’s what Alice quoted of Brennan. How fast is stuff from the ring going when it hits?”

  Kirsten said, “Relativistic, certainly. And if that’s right—”

  “Atomic explosions,” Ol’t’ro confirmed, “even atoms torn apart. That is why Brennan might choose to synchronize the ring’s collapse. A controlled input to one spot. It would turn Kobold, very briefly, into an atomic rocket.”

  “Tanj,” Sigmund said softly. “An atomic rocket. Thus making Kobold the moving reference point that overtook Alice’s ship, and around which the singleship took orbit. After she was safely in stasis, of course.”

  “So it appears,” Ol’t’ro agreed. Modestly, again.

  Sigmund broke a lengthening silence. “And then carried her ship at high speeds into deep space, where Twenty-three eventually found it. Ol’t’ro, as always, you have been most helpful.”

  “We are glad to have been of service, Sigmund
.” Now, and into the future.

  51

  Sigmund trudged dutifully on the relax-room treadmill. In Eric’s latest effort at energy conservation, gravity had been dialed down to forty percent across most of the ship. Jeeves did not know how quickly bone and muscle mass deteriorated in these conditions—only that they would. The subject rated only a passing mention in his database, more a warning than useful guidance.

  They had consulted doctors on New Terra. Some thought exercise might slow the deterioration, reasoning from first principles. There was no relevant data. New Terran spaceflight built on Concordance experience, and Puppeteers had had artificial gravity for eons.

  So Sigmund kept walking. It kept him warm and it couldn’t hurt—at least while bungee-corded to the equipment—whereas jogging down the ship’s corridors was an invitation to a concussion. They kept Thssthfok’s cell at full gravity because he didn’t have exercise gear.

  A few more days until New Terra. Too short a time to merit bringing the singleship into the cargo hold that Thssthfok no longer occupied—even if Eric could vouch for the hold’s structural integrity after whatever it was Thssthfok’s gadget did.

  A few more days until New Terra. Sigmund anticipated and dreaded homecoming in equal parts, no closer to a plan for defending home and loved ones than before this long detour to Ship Twenty-three.

  The treadmill program kicked up a notch, and Sigmund began to jog. No closer? Finagle, he felt farther than ever from an answer. Alice’s appearance brought more questions than answers.

  Unless we somehow pry the location of Earth from her subconscious.

  His thoughts refused to converge. Once home meant Earth, a world he could no longer even find. Now home was New Terra. And as Alice had reawakened in Sigmund’s memories, Home was also a world long ago settled by Earth. Settled twice, as Sigmund remembered, but Alice knew nothing about a colony there having failed.

  He sipped water from a drink bulb as he trudged. Home, in all its meanings. Danger. Too long in space. Neutronium.

  And Beowulf Shaeffer. Too many of these threads came together, somehow, with the ubiquitous xenophile starship pilot who had figured in many of Sigmund’s ARM investigations. Shaeffer had more lives than a cat—another metaphor that meant nothing on New Terra but that uselessly cluttered Sigmund’s mind.

  He stumbled under a rush of memories. He had died, a hole blasted through his chest, the last time he spoke with Beowulf. Not Bey’s doing—nor anything Sigmund could bear to dwell upon. Nessus had whisked Sigmund away and saved him.

  Sigmund’s mind skittered off to a happier association: a long journey, with Bey and Carlos Wu for company—

  Only that encounter, too, had ended disastrously, with Sigmund’s companions lying critically wounded in autodocs and Sigmund left alone to pilot their crippled ship. He was raving mad when rescuers boarded his vessel. Another memory Sigmund would not have missed.

  So why was Beowulf on Sigmund’s mind? The last he knew, Carlos was on Home and Bey was en route, both under assumed names.

  Home . . . something about Home. But what?

  Outsiders, Pak, and Gw’oth group minds—and only Sigmund with his damaged brain to make sense of it.

  But he wasn’t alone. Alice claimed to be a trained investigator. And if she had lied about being a goldskin? That, too, would be worth uncovering.

  He lobbed the drink bulb into the sink to free a hand and pulled out his pocket comp. “Alice. Where are you?”

  “In my cabin,” she answered. “Can I help you with something?”

  “Yes, please.” But where? He was sick of this room and endless exercise. “I’ll swing by your cabin.”

  He found her outside her cabin door, looking. . . eager. At the chance to be useful, Sigmund supposed. He added insensitive neglect to the growing list of his failings. “How are you doing, Alice?”

  “As well as can be expected.”

  “And how well is that?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “What can I do for you?”

  He saw she wore sticky slippers. He did, too. “Let’s take a walk.” They circled half the deck before Sigmund decided where to start. She moved in the low gravity with an effortless grace he could only envy. A Belter, definitely. He sighed. “Something’s nagging at me, but I don’t know what. I need someone skilled to get it out of me.”

  “All right,” she said, then let the silence stretch.

  Good technique. “The Home colony,” he began. “Doing well in your time?”

  “Home was . . . homey. Earth-like, compared to most of the interstellar colonies. To the extent I paid attention, Home was one of the thriving settlements.”

  “It’s history for me”—Alice flinched at his reminder—“but the first colony on Home failed. A few million people, gone. The resettlement did fine.”

  “Why did the first colony fail?”

  “I’m not sure.” Sigmund paused to consider his own answer. There were many ways not to know. This gap lacked the violated feeling of Nessus’ tampering. Then had he simply forgotten? Had he dismissed the topic as dry, dead history, back when he could easily have learned it? Was the knowledge there but buried, too long gone from his attention? He probed his ignorance, like a tongue worrying a chipped tooth. “Let me rephrase. I believe no one knows for sure.”

  She frowned. “So no survivors out of a population of millions, and no records. How is that possible?”

  How, indeed? “Either a plague or a civil war,” he said.

  A Kzinti raid was an improbable third option, this being around the time Kzinti first wandered into human space. But Kzinti would have taken slaves (and prey!) rather than obliterate the place and move on.

  The first known Kzinti encounter was in. . . 2366, after Alice’s time. Sigmund pushed the ratcats from his thoughts. “One of the colony’s last messages mentioned the outbreak of an unfamiliar illness. As you say, Home was the most Earth-like of colonies. Maybe the native germs were more Earth-like, too. So assume a deadly mutation. Without hosts, the bug, too, went extinct.”

  “Great options, Sigmund. A plague with one hundred percent fatalities. Or a planetary population driven to exterminate themselves. And this world still got resettled?”

  His answers sounded stupid. This side of a debrief wasn’t fun. It was helpful. Truth dangled just beyond Sigmund’s reach. “A shipload of new settlers was well on its way before anyone heard Home’s call for help.”

  “So the original colony failed before hyperwave and hyperdrive.”

  “Right.” For a while the only sounds were the zzp-zzp of sticky slippers as they walked. “As I said, one of their last messages mentioned an illness. The new settlers found no trace.”

  “And no human remains to study?” Alice said skeptically. “No records?”

  In bits and pieces, under her skillful guidance, more ancient history came back to Sigmund. “There were remains: very thoroughly cremated.” Fire: the last resort of medical helplessness. Like something from the Middle Ages.

  Alice led the way, turning randomly at cross corridors. Every bulkhead showed the drab gray translucence of powered-down digital wallpaper. They could be anywhere aboard the ship, and it was very disorienting.

  Disoriented subjects tended to blurt out things. Alice knew her stuff, Sigmund decided.

  “So who burnt the final victims?” she asked.

  “The colony was a mess,” Sigmund recalled. “Towns burned or blown up. Equipment unaccounted for. The bottom line remains: no bodies, no survivors, no viable computer records.

  “The new arrivals had expected to find a thriving civilization. Instead, they had to build from scratch. They had far more urgent tasks than forensics, and ARM experts were light-years away.”

  “Complete destruction? No recoverable trace of a pathogen? Come on, Sigmund.”

  She was only making him face facts he already knew. The lost colony had never bothered him. Why did it gnaw at him now?

  That was the wrong question. What did he
know now he had not known before? Almost, he had it. He plodded down the corridor, his mind racing.

  Alice said, “It doesn’t sound like accidental destruction. It sounds like a war.”

  War had a bitter quality in her mouth. She came from a golden age. After humans had learned to live reasonably peacefully together. Before the Kzinti showed up and obliterated that way of life. A golden age . . .

  Brennan’s doing, somehow?

  Tanj! He had to focus. “Then maybe not an accidental plague. If the pathogen was military. . .”

  She turned another corner. In the near freezing corridors, their breath hung in white clouds.

  Sigmund could imagine battles between towns with an untreatable plague and towns trying to stay isolated—or to burn out the contagion. He could imagine terrified people trying to break quarantine. He could imagine survivors cobbling together ships and trying to escape. He could imagine a lot of things. Where was this getting them?

  After Alice’s time. Well before his. “Before hyperwave,” he said wonderingly. “The Outsiders came upon humans soon after your time. In . . . 2409. Near the colony We Made It.” And by meeting humans before Kzinti, the encounter turned the course of the war. “A few years later, every colony had a hyperwave radio buoy.”

  They came to a stairwell. Alice pulled open the hatch and started down a level. “2409. That’s getting close to my time.”

  That was what bothered him. Bothered? No, intrigued. “You said Home colony was about eleven light-years from Earth. Right?”

  “Right,” she said.

  “Suppose Brennan and Truesdale went from Kobold to Home. They can’t beat light speed. They have to accelerate and decelerate. When would they reach Home?”

  “They were going to Wunderland, Sigmund.”

  “They didn’t arrive there.” Probably because Brennan lied to Alice about his destination, lest she be found and tell someone. No need to rub her face in that. “Maybe they saw something that made them change course. When would they get to Home?”

  She opened the hatch onto another deck and gestured Sigmund through. “A protector built that ship. You tell me how fast it went.”