Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

sealed the massive door.

Some eager, some dutiful, the sixteen sidled together. A tubacle, questing, engulfed one of Cd’o’s own. Within the maw of her tubacle, the eye and heat receptor went dark. The ear fell deaf to all but the beating of two hearts: one speeding up, one slowing down, seeking unison.

The tubacle tip probing deep within hers found its neural receptacle.

A shock like electricity raced up her limb and a great hunger jolted her mind. Unimaginable insights tantalized. Profound truths beckoned, just beyond her grasp.

More! She needed more! Switching to ventral respiration, she reached out with other tubacles. She felt all around and felt other limbs in return. Tubacle found tubacle, aligned, conjoined …

Ganglia meshing!

Feedback surging!

Heart pounding!

Electricity coursing!

We will begin.

The command echoed and reechoed in Cd’o’s mind. Her fears and doubts receded. Her thoughts — as fiercely as she fought to hold on to them — faded. Her sense of self all but vanished.

Ol’t’ro, the group mind, had emerged.

17

“That’s the way of it, Sigmund,” Donald Norquist-Ng concluded.

“I urge you to reconsider, Minister.” Sigmund held his voice flat, although the day had been a roller coaster (another metaphor that no one on New Terra would understand). Alice and Julia had done it! And fools like this would throw everything away.

Norquist-Ng frowned. “We are not going to rehash things. It was obvious in the situation room that you didn’t accept my decision. I invited you to stay for one reason: as a courtesy. In your time, in your way, you worked hard for this world. I chose not to berate you in a roomful of people.

“In private, in my office, I will speak as plainly as is necessary. I had hoped that being direct would suffice, but not even direct works with you. Very well, I will be blunt. Endurance is coming home. That is my order, Sigmund. It is not open for discussion.”

“But they’ve identified an ARM ship. It’s been the dream for so long.”

“Your dream, and I don’t understand even that. You’ve lived on New Terra for more than two hundred years. There’s nothing left on Earth for you.”

“Tanj it, I agree with you. In part, anyway. I have no interest in going back.” Sigmund suppressed a shudder. “I have no interest in off-world travel of any kind. But this isn’t about me, Minister. The people of this world — my children, and yours, too — deserve to know their history, to reconnect with their own kind. The independence generation would have given anything to — ”

Norquist-Ng slapped his desk. “How convenient for your argument that the founders are all gone. I suppose I should take your word for it how they felt.”

“Haven’t you ever wondered about your roots?”

“What part of ‘subject closed’ confuses you? I’ve said no. The governor, whom I’ve briefed, says no. That roomful of people we just left — and whom you failed to sway — said no.”

“Because they know you’ve made up your mind.”

“Because it is too dangerous.” Norquist-Ng sighed. “And in part I believe that for having listened to you. For years you warned about the Kzinti creatures. For years you said our scout ships had to be armed, lest we run into Kzinti or someone worse.

“Well, our people have found your Kzinti. You identified them as such. Kzinti and the Earth ships are blowing each other apart. I’ll risk nothing that might bring such madness to New Terra.”

“That’s not the only risk.” Could a ship be tracked through hyperspace? Not that Sigmund had ever heard. “The Ringworld drew all those warships practically into our backyard. However distant their home bases, three fleets are within fourteen light-years of us. If the Kzinti should spot New Terra, or those cone-ship people … then what? We need to contact the ARM, to ally with Earth, before that happens.”

Silence.

Sigmund dared to hope he was making his point. “Of course our people should be discreet as they reach out to the ARM. They should use short digital messages, hard to trace. They should relay everything through comm buoys, so that no one can backtrack the hyperwave beam. There needn’t be any contact but comm until we know more.”

Norquist-Ng tipped back his chair, seeming to consider, then shook his head. “No. Engagement with other worlds always makes matters worse. We have the proof of that from your era in this chair, one wretched crisis after the next. My orders stand, Sigmund. Endurance will not contact anyone. And it’s coming home as soon as they finish refueling.

“Challenge me again in public and that will be your last time inside this building.”

* * *

SIGMUND PACED THE DUSTY, cluttered, memory-clogged confines of his den.

Alice’s latest report had brought more than the news that low-level ARM encryption had been cracked. The crew had also spotted, on the far fringes of the scene, an Outsider ship departing. Not into hyperspace — although Outsiders had invented hyperdrive, they did not use it — but racing away at near-light speed.

The Outsiders, with their level of tech, would crack military codes faster than anyone. That they chose now to bug out meant something. What did they know that he didn’t? His gut insisted that mayhem, at a deadlier intensity than ever, was about to break out near Endurance.

Tanj it!

Sigmund had spent his life imagining what “normal” people found inconceivable. That was how one uncovered conspiracies. That was what had made him valuable as an ARM agent. That was how, time and again, he had saved New Terra.

It was time again to confront the inconceivable.

The minister was all but as timid as a Puppeteer. Did a person like that innocently get appointed to run the Ministry of Defense? Or were people high in the government working for the Puppeteers?

* * *

“I WASN’T EXPECTING to hear from you,” Alice said. Certainly not one-on-one; after the fireworks of the last mass debrief, the bigger surprise was that Sigmund still had access to the Ministry’s long-range hyperwave gear.

It was only comm delay, but Sigmund seemed to stare at her from the console.

“You know how it is,” he finally answered.

She managed not to react. From long ago, the innocent phrase was code for We need to speak in private. She set her pocket comp on the comm-console shelf and activated what Sigmund called protocol gamma: sound suppression, bug suppression, and a holographic screen to stymie lip-readers.

“Countermeasures are active, Sigmund. Now what’s this about?”

“The minister is not seeing reason.”

Norquist-Ng could hardly eavesdrop on her end of the link, and Alice doubted Sigmund wanted her to undercut his own granddaughter. So they were keeping secrets from Nessus, still ensconced in front of the pilot’s console. With the activation of the countermeasures, his irritating humming had faded into white noise.

Without the holo screen, could Nessus have read her lips? She didn’t put it past him. But it had been Sigmund’s idea to bring Nessus. Wheels within wheels …

She said, “And you suppose Nessus won’t see reason, either.”

“He always has —