Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

Yet in a way, Tunesmith had surpassed it.

He had extracted nanites from the autodoc, reprogrammed them, distributed them far and wide across the Ringworld to replicate, and — well, Hindmost remained fuzzy on what, exactly, Tunesmith had done. Used the nanotech to rewire the Ringworld’s whole superconducting substrate. Adapted what he had learned in his brief study of Long Shot’s hyperdrive.

So, anyway, Louis had explained. It took a protector to understand a protector. And not even a protector ever fully trusted another protector.

Trembling, Hindmost continued studying the twisted figure in the autodoc. “I am glad for you, Louis.” And relieved for myself.

For Louis knew the harm the Concordance had once brought to the Ringworld. As a human protector, Louis would seek to destroy Hearth and the Concordance.

If the autodoc did not undo the transformation, he must kill Louis while that remained possible. With Louis defenseless in a therapeutic coma.

Louis-as-protector would have seen that, too, and yet Louis had climbed, defenseless, into the autodoc. Hence, Louis knew he would wait to act until the course of the cure revealed itself. Hence Louis expected to emerge as a normal human, or he would have killed Hindmost before getting into the autodoc.

Matching wits with a protector was futile.

“I look forward to again having your company, Louis,” Hindmost said. In thirty-seven days.

Until then, Louis, I have the dance.

6

In Endurance’s claustrophobic exercise room, Alice plodded away on the treadmill. She had little to do on the long flight but exercise. Puppeteers were the galaxy’s consummate worriers, and scant days from New Terra even Nessus had run out of contingencies to plan for and theories to fret about.

On the tarmac, Sigmund had taken Alice aside to warn her Nessus would be stingy with facts. Two relics exchanging the obvious about a third relic. She had promised Sigmund to set aside their differences for the sake of the mission. Also, her differences with Nessus. Once this situation was settled, the Puppeteer had a lot of explaining to do.

The wallpaper showed rolling forest, the foliage a riot of autumn colors. On solid ground, the view would have been stunning. Here, the imagery only reminded her that behind the thin-film display, outside thin ship walls, lurked … Finagle knew what.

Something stirred in her gut, whispered unintelligibly in her ears, tickled behind her eyes. Something that her hindbrain denied and her forebrain rejected.

Hyperspace couldn’t kill any deader than could vacuum, and she had no trouble living around vacuum. But she had grown up in the Belt. Vacuum was something to respect, to guard against — but also something understood.

Unlike hyperspace.

Was hyperspace an alternate reality? Hidden dimension? Parallel universe? She didn’t pretend to know. The so-called experts didn’t.

If anyone understood hyperspace, it was the Outsiders. They had invented hyperdrive. Which, although they sold it, they themselves never used.

That seemed instructive.

Blotting sweat from her face and arms with a towel, she abandoned the treadmill. She strode down the corridor to the bridge to check the mass pointer. Because one thing she did understand about hyperspace: while crossing it, keep your distance from large masses. Get too close to a gravitational singularity while in hyperspace and you never came out.

A light-year every three days. Logically speaking, stars being light-years apart in this region, a glance at the mass pointer every few hours more than sufficed for safety.

Logic failed to convince the tingling behind her eyes.

In the mass pointer, the most prominent instrument on the pilot’s console, nothing looked close. As Alice could have predicted from her last peek, less than an hour earlier. But her skin still crawled. The … whatever … behind her eyes prickled worse than ever.

The bridge walls showed forest, too, but that only emphasized how unnatural their surroundings were. If the less-than-nothing of hyperspace could be said to surround —

“Not very convincing, is it?”

She flinched at the unexpected voice.

Nessus stood at the bridge hatch. With one head, he indicated the mass pointer. His other head tugged at the remaining braid in his much-stirred mane.

“Can’t sleep?” she asked.

“Can you?”

“Not very well.” She cleared her throat. “What did you mean, the mass pointer isn’t convincing?”

“It was once my misfortune to be brave.” With a final yank and a plaintive sigh, he released the tortured braid. “That is to say, I was insane. Insane enough to volunteer to leave home and become a scout. On my last scouting mission…”

“Go on.” They had the bridge to themselves, and she sat on an armrest of the pilot’s crash couch.

“I returned home missing a head.” His two-throated wheeze came out like minor scales in clashing keys. “I left the autodoc scared normal.”

Did he want her to feel sorry for him? Fat chance. “The unconvincing mass pointer?”

“My last mission. We are going there now. To the source of the ripple that summons us.” He sang a musical phrase, sad and jangling. “You and Julia have heard me describe it.”

More of the facts with which Nessus had long been stingy.

She still struggled to believe that such a place could exist. “And?”

“Even after the Ringworld, I kept my trust in mass pointers. No one who could readily colonize the planets of other stars would build a habitat so vast. They would have no need.”

“No one with hyperdrive, you mean.”

Heads moved in alternation: up/down, down/up, up/down. A Puppeteer nod.

She was old, tanj it. Tired. Behind her eyes, the itch got even worse. Mass pointer. Trust. The Ringworld.

She whirled to stare at the mass pointer.

The Ringworld was massive; it would create its own gravitational singularity. Despite that, the armchair experts on New Terra had concluded that the Ringworld somehow jumped to hyperspace. That the Ringworld was itself the source of the ripple.

No one had even a theory how that could be possible.

Alice said, “But it looks like the Ringworlders have hyperdrive. What if the Ringworld returns to normal space?”

“Without warning,” Nessus agreed. “Bringing its gravitational singularity.”

And if Endurance was in the wrong place at the wrong time? They would be hurled, or interdimensionally shredded, or whatever. Without warning.

The mass pointer, despite the booming thump it offered when Alice slapped it, seemed a very nebulous thing. The itching grew fierce behind her eyes.

“Could you use some help twisting your mane?” she asked.

* * *

“AND … NOW,” JULIA ANNOUNCED from the pilot’s crash couch.

Where fall foliage had long reigned, crisp points of light teemed. The bridge’s wraparound image looked no