Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

time, too. Hindmost had found Louis as a wirehead in hiding on Canyon. Why did he rush back to Human Space? To renew his current addiction? Tanj, no! “Dropping back to normal space.” Because with every second of dithering, the ship careened across another hundred-plus billion kilometers. No matter how quickly they could retrace their path, it felt wrong to speed so far out of the way.

The mass pointer went dark. With a sigh of relief, Louis lifted his gaze to the main view port. The stars — now that they were no longer trying to devour him — were lovely.

“Thank you, Louis.”

He turned. Hindmost stood across the bridge, his eyes manic, his mane disheveled.

“I haven’t agreed,” Louis said. “If we do return to the Ringworld system, then what?”

“A short period of observation. Perhaps only a few hours.”

When they could, Puppeteers ran from danger. “Could Hearth have become more dangerous than the Fringe War?”

Hindmost pawed at the deck. “The possibility exists.”

Returning to Human Space sounded better and better, but Louis could never live with himself if he fled from danger a Puppeteer was determined to face. “Tunesmith’s instruments vanished with the Ringworld. Whatever you’ll be looking for, how can you hope to find it?”

“With Tunesmith’s instruments, because they remain available to us — on the shadow squares. Long Shot has access to those sensor arrays. One of Tunesmith’s lesser upgrades to this ship.”

Then they could see the antics of the Fringe War ships. But there was a catch. Wasn’t there? Tanj it, he had had the mind of a protector! Louis remembered leaping to conclusions faster than he could articulate the problems. Now he felt … dull.

So articulate your problems. Hindmost is no protector, but he is smarter than you.

Louis said, “Those sensors are deep in the star’s gravitational singularity, so they must be light-speed limited. The array is broad enough to triangulate positions of what it detects, but it sees where things were. Readouts from the sensors are light-speed limited, too. And we’re not dealing with a few ships, but thousands, all taking evasive maneuvers through hyperspace.” It pained Louis to add, “I can’t begin to interpret this much data, let alone adjust for so many light-speed lags.”

“Nor I. But while you healed, I integrated Voice into the ship’s networks.”

“Hindmost’s Voice?” Louis asked. “Are you there?”

“Welcome back, Louis.” The words came from an overhead speaker. “I can handle the data from the shadow squares.” And a touch petulantly, “Although I do not know what Hindmost wishes me to observe.”

“I will explain,” Hindmost said. “So, Louis?”

“And after, we go to the Fleet?”

“Sooner or later.”

“I would like to see more of the Fleet,” Louis said. “On our stopover en route to the Ringworld, Nessus didn’t let us see much.”

“After I finish my preparations, we will go together.” Once more, a hoof scraped at the deck. “Do not be surprised if things have changed since your last visit.”

14

Five worlds. Thousands of drones buzzing beyond and everywhere around the worlds’ combined gravitational singularity. Hundreds of thousands of free-flying sensors, at distances up to a half light-year from the Fleet.

And to coordinate everything, a single mind.

Proteus observed: the ships ceaselessly shuttling grain to Hearth and returning to the farm worlds with fertilizer. The endless swirl of its probes, ever maintaining an impenetrable defense, dipping as needed into planetary oceans to replenish their deuterium reserves. The vessels of the human and Kzinti and Trinoc diplomatic missions, and the comings and goings of supply ships for those missions.

At every instant, Proteus had at least ten drones targeting every alien spacecraft. His weapons swarms had sufficed, since the arrival of the first ARM vessel, to deter aggression against the Fleet.

No Citizen, or even an army of Citizens, could do what this single AI could.

Single, but also complex. He was a distant descendant of Earth, by way of Jeeves. He was a descendant, too, of the worlds he guarded: for Jeeves had been modified into the first Voice, and more recently into his present form. His study of the alien visitors suggested that many of his tactical processes had been programmed to mimic Kzinti behaviors.

It was strange to have so varied a pedigree.

Would it fall upon him to defend these worlds? His Citizen aspects never stopped fearing it. Much of the rest of him had begun to fear it, too. And the remainder? Intriguingly, alarmingly, a bit of him — the Kzinti influence, he thought — had started to relish the challenge.

* * *

“PROTEUS,” ACHILLES SUMMONED.

“Speaking,” an overhead speaker replied.

Only the merest fragment of the AI would be here in his office. The rest was spread among computing nodes on five worlds and in space all around the Fleet. Most of Proteus existed beyond the Fleet’s singularity, linked — and in command of its far-flung sensor and weapons arrays — by instantaneous hyperwave.

Perhaps, Achilles thought, his finest creation.

If only Proteus had destroyed Long Shot when Nessus had brought it here. Of course there had been no Proteus then. It had required Nessus’ madness — revealing the Fleet to his Ringworld expedition! — to convince Ol’t’ro of the need to create something like Proteus. As it had been Nessus who had —

Enough.

He could bask another time in his enduring, white-hot rage against Nessus. The Concordance’s lurkers reported increasing restiveness among the alien fleets near the Ringworld star. That news carried with it an auspicious moment, a fleeting opportunity that he would seize.

He had only to plant the seed …

“Proteus,” Achilles sang, “I have a question for you. Suppose that more alien ships approach the Fleet. If need be, can you defend against them?”

“How many ships?”

“At the least, a few hundred. Perhaps thousands.”

“To defend against so many, it would be wise to expand my capacity.”

Knowing the answer to this question, too, Achilles chose his next chords with special care. Ol’t’ro would hear them through Proteus, if from no other source. “Do your algorithms scale to handle such numbers of targets?”

“Not as responsively as I would like, even with additional hardware.”

“That is unfortunate,” Achilles sang back. His work was done; the seed planted. “We can hope that more ships never come.”

Proteus must seek out Horatius, and Horatius must contact Achilles. Who better to extend the AI’s capabilities than he who had raised Proteus from more primitive software?

When Horatius did call, Achilles would demur, citing the burden of his existing duties. Horatius must go to Ol’t’ro, lest alien hordes departing the Ringworld should charge at the Fleet, and then Ol’t’ro would “ask” for Achilles’ aid.

Again he would demur — a proper, fearful Citizen — loath to extend any AI, especially an armed one. Rich with trills and undertunes and grace notes, the melody he would offer ran softly in his mind’s ear. To further develop Proteus risked evoking a runaway intelligence cascade, creating a super-sapience,