Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

That to go from the water-filled habitat into the crush of gravity would be peculiar.

And intriguing, too.

That it was interesting to speculate how expanded computing resources would affect Proteus, and that diverting resources to the AI’s extension would answer that question sooner.

At the cost of further emboldening Achilles, whose reticence to enhancing Proteus was so blatantly contrived.

That if alien armadas, having chased away the Ringworld, should set out today, standard hyperdrive could not deliver them to the Fleet of Worlds any sooner than a hundred days. There would be more than ample time to enhance Proteus.

That if the alien fleets had had Type II hyperdrives, the situation would be different. But the Type II hyperdrive was a conundrum, a cosmic joke, an unending frustration.

That they half hoped the reports from the Fleet’s observers were correct: that the Long Shot had vanished with the Ringworld, never again to confound them.

That if alien navies did come to the Fleet of Worlds, their unwelcome attention would be drawn ever farther from the Gw’oth worlds.

That logic aside, a part of them, too, hungered to see new vistas. That a cacophony of engrams, echoes from deep into their past, remembered leading much different lives.

That Cd’o’s unhappiness was not the matter at hand. Exploration was not even foremost at this instant among that unit’s thoughts.

That whether or not to redirect resources was trivial, yet they vacillated and hesitated because trivia muddled their thoughts. Sooner rather than later, they must reinvigorate themselves. Some units would pass into memory, but they had candidates to join the meld.

That adapting the troublesome multiverse simulation onto the present, limited set of processors would be a useful test of the candidates’ potential contributions to the meld.

That they were old.

That they wanted this meeting ended, to turn their attention to more appealing topics.

Through Chiron, Ol’t’ro sang, “For now, Hindmost, I withdraw my suggestion. We should continue to enhance Proteus.”

19

Tanya poked at whatever it was she had been served for dinner. She didn’t remember having eaten any. From her distracted stirring, the food had begun to look used.

She had never seen Puma, never been aboard, never, to her knowledge, met any of the corvette’s crew, but in her mind’s eye that ship differed little from Koala. Too many sailors crammed into too little space. An endless background droning, from the clipped commands and acknowledgments on the bridge, to tense speculations in the public spaces, to stress-relieving high jinks in quarters. A place full of life.

No more.

Puma had transformed in an instant into a gamma-ray burst and a quickly dissipated debris field. Antimatter explosions didn’t leave much behind.

Tanjed ratcats.

Seething rage had squelched the usual boisterousness of the junior officers’ mess. She set down her fork and shoved away her tray.

“Not hungry, Lieutenant Wu?”

Junior officers shot to their feet. Tanya said, “Commander, I didn’t see you — ”

“At ease,” Commander Johansson ordered from the open hatchway. “Lieutenant, would you mind coming with me?”

“Yes, sir.”

They walked forward. Something in Johansson’s stiff gait told her not to bother asking what this was about.

They came to the last place she would have expected: the captain’s cabin. “Enter,” came a gruff answer to Johansson’s knock.

Dad looked grim. Lieutenant Commander Ovando, the chief communications officer, looked puzzled. With Tanya and Johansson squeezed in, the cabin was packed. Dad waved off her salute.

“Show her,” Dad said.

“Yes, Captain.” Ovando handed Tanya a pocket comp.

The screen displayed her inbox. Ten messages had come in since she’d last checked mail — but the most recent, a ship-to-ship, had been read. An icon showed it had come wrapped in standard fleet encryption. The subject line read Personal and Confidential.

Who said stuff like that? Who was Alice Jordan?

“This came by hyperwave a few minutes ago,” Ovando said. “A routine security audit flagged it.”

“I don’t recognize the name,” Tanya said.

“I’m not surprised,” Johansson answered. “No one by that name is serving in the ARM, and I don’t mean only the expeditionary force. Not anywhere.”

“Shall I open it?” Tanya asked.

“Go ahead, Lieutenant,” Dad said.

Tanya tapped the screen and scanned the header that popped open. It indicated standard ARM comm protocol and fleet encryption, and that the message had ping-ponged its way to Koala through a half-dozen hyperwave relays.

The stated origin of the message was a vessel called Endurance. Ships had carried that name back to the days of sail, but she didn’t recall any ship named Endurance deployed to the Ringworld theater of operations.

With a finger swipe Tanya scrolled down to the message body. “Finagle,” she said wonderingly.

“Exactly right,” Dad said.

“I’ve done database searches,” Ovando said. “A colony ramscoop named Long Pass did vanish — almost seven hundred years ago. A goldskin named Alice Jordan disappeared from Sol system a few decades later.”

“Goldskin?” Tanya asked.

“Belter police of that era wore yellow spacesuits,” Ovando explained.

“You mean this message could be real?” Johansson said. “That’s unbelievable.”

“No,” Tanya said. “What’s unbelievable is that a long-lost colony and a woman who should be long dead contacted me.”

* * *

SOONER THAN ALICE HAD DARED to hope, the comm console pinged. Telltales indicated a hyperwave link and ARM encryption.

“We’re getting video feed,” Jeeves announced. “Not an animation, as best I can judge.”

Tucking a loose strand of hair behind an ear, Alice looked at Julia. “We’re agreed?”

“Go,” Julia said. To Nessus, still at the pilot’s console, she added, “Your objections are noted. And if you can’t stop that infernal humming, get off the bridge.”

“No humming,” Nessus promised. He began tapping out a rhythm with a forehoof.

Alice angled and zoomed the camera to show only her, then tapped ACCEPT.

A young woman appeared. Her trim blue jumpsuit had the look of a uniform, its insignia unfamiliar. She had long, straight, black hair, worn pulled back, and her skin was golden. The slight slant to her eyes made their icy blueness all the more startling. Nothing showed behind her but bare metallic bulkheads.

“This is Endurance,” Alice said. “My name is Alice Jordan.”