Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

“No perhaps. Start by explaining why I don’t remember Alice or New Terra.”

“Do you still have the Carlos Wu autodoc?” Nessus asked Baedeker.

“It is aboard,” Baedeker said.

“What does the autodoc have to do with this?” Louis asked.

Nessus stood tall, his hooves set far apart, summoning a confidence he did not feel. He might as well be unready to run: he and Baedeker were cornered. “Your surmise is true, Louis. I brought you to New Terra long ago. Your memories of that visit, and much more, are recorded in that autodoc. If I had not been in an autodoc on our return from the Ringworld, I would have offered you your memories then.

“You will come out of the autodoc remembering everything. You will find you agreed that those memories be edited.”

The color had drained from Louis’s face. With fists clenched, he studied Baedeker. “In all our years on the Ringworld, you never spoke a word of this.”

Baedeker said, “I knew of your past visit — to New Terra and the Fleet, too. I knew those memories had been removed. I did not know the recordings were with us the entire time.” With a sad glance at Nessus, he added, “We have too many secrets, even from each other.”

“But no longer,” Nessus said.

“No longer,” Baedeker agreed.

Finally, Louis spoke. “Whenever you’re ready, Nessus.”

REJECTION

Earth Date: 2893

22

Would the ARM ship ever get back in touch? Julia, finally, had to sleep. She had no sooner reached her cabin than Jeeves announced, “Koala is hailing us.”

“Respond ‘message received’ and that we’ll be online soon.”

“Will do. Shall I awaken Alice?”

“Yes. Have her meet me with coffee.” Julia strode onto the bridge. “Jeeves, until I direct otherwise, you and I will communicate only by text. Now open the link.” A holo popped up, showing Wesley Wu. “Captain Wu. I am Captain Julia Byerley-Mancini. Alice Jordan will join us shortly.”

“Good to meet you, Captain.” He looked as weary as she felt. “I have news.”

“Go ahead,” she said.

“I’ve gotten the go-ahead for a rendezvous. It will be just my ship, lest I am mistaken in trusting you. Let’s see what velocity mismatch we have to contend with. Here is our vector.”

A string of text appeared at the bottom of the holo.

Jeeves understood kilometers per second — if, over centuries, the meanings of kilometer and second had not diverged — but not the reference axes for Koala’s heading. Louis might have known, but he remained incommunicado aboard Long Shot. Until he reappeared, she didn’t have to decide if or how to mention the reappearance of Captain Wu’s grandfather, or that Louis looked younger than Wesley Wu’s daughter.

Julia wondered, fleetingly, how her grandfather was doing.

Comparing ship’s clocks, she and Wesley Wu confirmed that they agreed on the duration of a second. Comparing the number of kilometers in a light-second, they found they agreed about the length of a kilometer, too.

Wu sent a cartoon: an arrow and its bearings on several pulsars. “That’s our heading and we’re doing about a thousand klicks per second.”

Here it is in our coordinates, Jeeves wrote.

Alice walked onto the bridge and stood behind Julia’s crash couch. “It’s good to see you again, Captain Wu,” Alice said.

“Ms. Jordan,” Wu said. “We are discussing how best to get together.”

Louis had worried about velocity matching before Julia brought Endurance alongside Long Shot. Now another Wu raised the same issue. Whether courtesy of Puppeteer science or the Pak Library, maybe New Terra had things to offer their home world.

Thinking again of her grandfather, Julia lied, “We’re making about the same speed, but pretty much at right angles to your heading.” With a burst of typing, she passed fake course and speed data to Jeeves. “Sending that data … now.”

Alice offered Julia a drink bulb. When Julia took the coffee, Alice’s hand lingered on Julia’s shoulder. Julia chose to take the gesture as support for her deception.

“I propose that we meet here in an hour,” Captain Wu said. A new cartoon indicated a location a few light- hours from Endurance’s present location. “Keep your present normal-space velocity and we’ll match course and speed with you.”

“Agreed,” Julia said. It would be easy enough to change velocity to what she had told him.

“Wu out.” The holo disappeared.

“For what it’s worth,” Alice said, “I think you made a smart call. There’s no reason to reveal our ship can outmaneuver theirs. They distrust us enough already.”

“Thanks.” Julia took a long swallow from her coffee bulb. “Jeeves, tell Long Shot we’re going on an errand and radio silent, but that we’ll get back in touch.”

* * *

TANYA JETTED ALONE THROUGH FRIGID DARKNESS, Koala shrinking behind her faster than her target grew. She was more than a kilometer from anything, and every twitch of the telltales in her HUD screamed “cosmic rays.” The local sun was scarcely a spark.

For an instant, purser duties had their charms.

After one look at Endurance, Dad had declined the offer to dock. “That’s a GP #2 hull,” he had growled. All that kept him from jumping back to hyperspace was that the ship at the rendezvous point reflected light differently than did a GP hull. It didn’t reflect like anything anyone on the bridge had ever encountered, or anything in Hawking’s databases.

Tanya saw the resemblance, too. She’d seen plenty of General Products-built ships during her posting to the Fleet of Worlds. Precious few humans, though: only her fellow ARMs, a few would-be traders, and the diplomats in the United Nations embassy on Nature Preserve Three.

So yes: the ship at the rendezvous point did resemble a GP #2 hull. Was a long, thin cylinder so unlikely?

“There’s one way we’ll find out,” Tanya had declared. She, specifically, had been invited aboard Endurance and had volunteered to go — knowing she had left Dad with no choice. To send anyone else or abort the contact now would look like he was protecting her. He had answered, only, “Stay in touch, Lieutenant.”

Midpoint in ten seconds, flashed on her HUD. A counter began decrementing to remind her when to begin braking.

With her visor at max magnification, she spotted someone in the open air lock of the still-distant Endurance. A biped, certainly, if not from this distance definitively human.

Tanya brought herself to a halt a half meter from Endurance, then holstered her gas pistol. Alice, wearing a simple jumpsuit, stood watching. Tanya reached through the pressure curtain, grabbed