Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

But it was too late to have doubts. Hormones surged anew, warmed his blood, stoked the flames of his transient manic euphoria.

“We shall come to order,” the Hindmost sang in a loud, clear voice. “The hindmost of our Ringworld expedition has demanded an audience.”

“I bring good news,” Nessus began. “On Earth I recruited two humans and a Kzin for investigation of the Ringworld.” He began extolling his crew’s qualifications.

“You bring them here and this is good news?” Achilles interrupted. “You have revealed the Fleet!”

“It was necessary, as I shall explain.” Nessus dipped his heads briefly in feigned regret. “Recall my assignment. I need qualified crew to explore far beyond the edge of what they consider Known Space. Before their perilous explorations can even begin, they must entrust their lives to an experimental spacecraft. Further, the Type II hyperdrive so fills Long Shot that there is scarcely room for the pilot. The rest must agree to go into stasis, trusting that they will be released.”

“All this was clear before you set out,” Achilles sang. “You made no mention then of revealing the Fleet.”

If he could, Achilles would seize control of the Ringworld mission. He would undo everything Nessus strove to accomplish.

Nessus dare not allow that to happen.

Scouts, so very rare among the herd, had to be insanely brave. Achilles was also insanely brave — he had been a scout, too, early in his career — and obsessively ambitious, and a sociopath. To further his ambitions, he had once tried to kill Nessus. To further his ambitions, he had provoked Pak and Gw’oth alike — and somehow won.

For a time.

To become Hindmost again, Achilles would do — anything.

Nessus chose his next chords with care. “I could not know in advance what payment our explorers would demand.”

“You could have offered something else to — ”

“Let him report,” Chiron sang.

At the rebuke, Achilles twitched and fell silent.

“As partial payment,” Nessus sang, “they demanded Long Shot itself.”

Two ministers warbled in surprise; others glanced sidelong at Chiron. Most, the Hindmost among them, seemed determined not to react. Chiron’s research program had been ruinously expensive.

“Why Long Shot?” Chiron asked.

Because I offered it. “Because,” Nessus sang, “their people lack the technology to move their worlds. The new hyperdrive, if their species can reproduce it, could someday be of great utility in fleeing the core explosion.” And of greater utility, much sooner, confirming the incredible discoveries my crew will bring to their homes.

Achilles straightened on his bench. “A very great prize, yet you deem Long Shot a partial payment. And you have ignored my question about exposing the Fleet. You could have arranged to meet anywhere to transfer from Long Shot to the exploration ship. You chose here.”

They had penetrated to the hearts of the matter. Nessus sang, “The reason is simple. As part of their price, the crew asked the location of the Citizen home world.”

In truth, one had made such a demand. Never suspecting that Nessus — after long protecting the Fleet’s secret location — had planned from the start to reveal the way to Hearth.

“This is madness,” Achilles sang with stern undertunes, cutting through the sudden cacophony of dismay. “We must dispose of these recruits.”

The Hindmost stared at Nessus. “You had no alternatives?”

“I did not.” Through the lie, somehow, Nessus kept his harmonies firm and steady. At a higher level, he sang the truth. What he did was for the good of the herd.

Unless he had gone as psychotic as Achilles.

The Hindmost, after a long silence, sadly sang, “We can erase these memories. After the mission. There is precedent.”

“Memory edits would violate the agreements I made,” Nessus sang back. He spread his hooves, unready to flee, pretending to a confidence he lacked. “I will not travel to the Ringworld without the council’s assurances that they will honor my promises. And my crew refuses to go without me.”

Several among the council blinked at this boldness.

“We must explore this amazing artifact,” Chiron insisted. “Imagine what we can learn.”

Nessus managed not to stare. Scouting, he understood: sacrificing a very few to the perils of exploration to uncover unsuspected dangers waiting to pounce on the entire herd. But exploring to satisfy curiosity? Did no one here see that the intelligence behind “Chiron’s” hologram could not be a Citizen?

Or did they choose not to see?

The Hindmost seemed more saddened than surprised at Chiron’s melody. “It shall be as you suggest,” he sang at last.

“Respectfully, I ask that the entire council agree,” Nessus sang back. I mean you, Chiron.

“It was my understanding,” Chiron trilled, “that we honor our commercial commitments.” Following his lead, most added their assent. “Besides — if need be, we can defend ourselves.”

Curiosity and recklessness? Gw’oth, Nessus suspected, though he could not prove it. One of their group minds.

An uncertain future stretched before him. The unknowable perils of the Ringworld. And more Citizen secrets to reveal, dark secrets that would — if anyone survived the Ringworld encounter — bring humans and Kzinti navies racing to the Fleet.

Citizens alone would never oust Chiron. Perhaps the ARM or the Kzinti Patriarchy could.

* * *

SOMEHOW NESSUS MANAGED TO STAY LUCID. He returned, after finally being excused from the council chamber, to the park where he had left his crew waiting. They did not notice him arrive.

The last traces of mania drained from him. He stumbled along a curving path, heads whipping from side to side at each rustle in the foliage and every insinuation of a breeze. As he reeled closer, his crew speculated aloud about the mission. He listened —

Until a wayward flower-sniffer caught him unaware. With one reflex he squealed, leapt high into the air, and came down, wrapped into a ball, on the close-cropped meadowplant.

How tempting it was to withdraw … forever! Reluctantly, he let the aliens coax him back to reality. They asked where he had been, what had frightened him so.

Humans were obsessed with sex: their own, and rudely conjecturing about what anyone else might do. He concocted a story, told his crew that extorting a mate had been his price for going to the Ringworld. The lie satisfied them. Better vulgar fiction than the truth: that he gambled with their lives, and their peoples’ lives, and the lives of a trillion Citizens.

As through a fog, Nessus led his crew from the park. During his brief recruiting trip to Earth, the Ministry of Science was to have equipped a ship for the coming encounter with the Ringworld.

It was time to see what Chiron had provided.

Earth Date: 2893

But neither Kzinti nor humans had ever come charging at the Fleet. Not, in any event, before the herd threw out the Experimentalists altogether. Chiron had allowed it.

Might war fleets have converged upon Hearth after Nessus fled with his young family? No. The forces that should have liberated Hearth had gone, instead, to the Ringworld.

Throughout the flood of memories, a cadence had continued to throb and thrum in his brain. A much loved theme from the grand ballet. With an inward bleat, Nessus refocused his attention on keeping