Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

An overweight, florid-faced colonel met Sigmund and his granddaughter in the secured teleportation foyer, expediting their way through screening. With a half-dozen armed escorts, they strode deep into the building, past one interior checkpoint after another.

Once you’ve overthrown one government, why wouldn’t you suspect others of plotting to overthrow yours?

The previous government had vanished almost overnight through a self-organizing consensus process Sigmund had never understood and would never accept, but that the native New Terrans somehow considered proper. The transfer of power was more Puppeteer-like than the rebels appeared to recognize, even if the new technocracy had more of a human feel to it.

Sigmund had sworn to uphold the elected government, but when the demonstrations went worldwide, he had ordered his troops to lay down their arms. On his watch New Terrans would never attack their own people.

Or maybe he had rejected violence because, at some level, resistance would have been self-serving. Ultimately, the old government’s downfall was about him. To be rid of all alien “entanglements” — to hide from the galaxy — the people had had to be rid of him. And so, on the heels of the Gw’oth War: the revolution.

Never mind that he had maintained New Terran neutrality, that he had guided his adopted world, unscathed, through yet another interstellar crisis —

Stop dwelling on the past, Sigmund lectured himself, no matter that mostly he lived there. He was too ancient to do otherwise.

And ancient was how everyone here would see him. The doddering old man. The relic of a bygone era. The freak from another world. Why would they heed him?

Astronomical phenomenon, he reminded himself, with a shiver. Figure it out, then make them listen.

“Are you all right, Grandpa?” Julia whispered.

“Fine,” he lied.

They passed a Puppeteer in the hall: two-headed; three-legged; the fluffy mane between his serpentine necks/arms elaborately coiffed. He wore only a narrow sash, from which hung pockets and a clipped-on computer, but insignia pinned to the sash showed him to be a civilian.

Of course he was a civilian. At the first hint of danger, Puppeteers ran. As, even now, the trillion Puppeteers aboard the Fleet of Worlds fled from an astronomical phenomenon that would not reach this corner of the galaxy for twenty thousand years. Puppeteers only defended themselves in desperation, when neither flight nor surrender was an option. Or when — undeniable, because Puppeteers had set their robots to seize Long Pass — they could strike with overwhelming superiority and their meddling could not be traced back to them.

Cowardice did not preclude ruthlessness.

A few Puppeteers, outcasts and misfits, had asked to remain after New Terran independence. More Puppeteers had arrived as refugees amid the Gw’oth War; some of them had stayed, too. Most had settled on the continent of Elysium, on territory first planted as a nature preserve for Hearth life. A very few lived and worked among humans.

This Puppeteer was deep in conversation, in full two-throated, six-vocal-corded disharmony. With a final jangling chord he made some point, to which, voices rumbling out of the dangling pocket comp, another Puppeteer responded in similar atonality.

Without recourse to a chamber orchestra, humans could not begin to reproduce Puppeteer languages. Puppeteers, fortunately, managed English without difficulty.

Approaching an intersection, Sigmund’s entourage met six people coming down the corridor from the opposite direction. Among the newcomers was a pallid, white-haired woman. Tall despite her pronounced stoop, she towered over her uniformed escorts. Turning the corner, the two groups merged.

“Hello, Alice,” Sigmund said. Meeting her here did not surprise him. Whatever motivated pulling him out of disgrace and retirement would merit retrieving her, too. But he had not spoken to Alice in over a century; seeing her so old was a shock.

Alice, coldly, said nothing.

They halted before a well-guarded entrance: the situation room. Sigmund knew this place all too well, having spent far too many days and nights there. Alice, as his deputy, too. One of their escorts pointed, unnecessarily, to the lockers on the right of the doors. Shielding in the walls, floor, and ceiling blocked unauthorized transmissions, but security also demanded that no one inside make illicit recordings. After Sigmund, Alice, and Julia deposited their comps in lockers and initialized the biometric pads with their handprints, a guard opened a door and waved them through.

Donald Norquist-Ng, minister of the New Terran Defense Forces, presided from one end of the long oval conference table. He was short, gaunt, and dour, with eyebrows like wooly yellow caterpillars. He sat stiffly, and rising to his feet to point into a tactical display, he moved ponderously, too. The man was not yet even a hundred; the stiffness was all for effect: would-be gravitas that struggled even to achieve pretension.

As Sigmund, Alice, and Julia entered, Norquist-Ng glanced up. His eyes slid over them without acknowledgment, and the session went on without pausing for introductions. Sigmund thought he recognized some of the faces around the table from the 3-V.

Current events held no interest for Sigmund, but what little he knew about the current minister suggested a Napoleon wannabe. Not that anyone on this world had heard of Napoleon. The Puppeteers had never admitted to their servants knowing … anything about humanity, its origins, or its culture. Even English — irregular verbs, illogical spellings, and all — had been designed by their selfless patrons. So, anyway, the slaves had once been taught.

The table offered no empty chairs. Julia found them seats against a wall, among the aides, adjutants, and flunkies, while the discussion continued.

This was not Sigmund’s first crisis and he thought he could bring himself up to speed. For all the tech improvements since his era, nothing meaningful had changed: too much data still spewed from too many displays. Star charts. Sensor scans. Ship statuses. Weapon inventories. Lists of speculations.

“… Compromise of the sensor array. Our security experts continue to search for the means of intrusion. Regrettably they have yet…”

“… Obviously spurious data. If ships were near, we would have found them by…”

“… Once we learned to leave the galaxy alone, it’s been content to return the favor.”

Sigmund let it all wash over him, categorizing the big themes, itemizing the points of contention, winnowing facts from assumptions. Alice, her lips pursed, her forehead furrowed, appeared to be doing much the same.

“… Audit trails in the intrusion-detection software…”

“… Another patrol ship reports finding nothing…”

He and Alice had yet to be recognized, much less invited to contribute. Were they here to help? Or, Julia’s earnest plea notwithstanding, had they been summoned so that Norquist-Ng could say later, if things should go wrong, “We even brought in the off-world experts.”

The latter, of course. Futzy fools.

The New Terrans Sigmund had been kidnapped to protect knew that the universe was a dangerous place. But that generation, the independence generation, had passed. Their children were gone, too, or retired, isolationism had long been the norm, and in their hiatus from history, Norquist-Ng and his ilk had come to mistake good luck for wisdom.

Sigmund was the only person on this world to have heard of ostriches. No matter: to deny danger by burying one’s head in the sand was folly. He stood, loudly clearing his throat.

Norquist-Ng turned to glower.

“If I may summarize,” Sigmund said. “One hyperspace ripple, immense beyond all precedent. You don’t believe sensors and patrol ships could fail to find any of the many vessels emerging from hyperspace. And you don’t see how sensors and patrol ships could overlook that many ships sneaking up on us through normal space, to startle us with a massive ripple when they dropped back into hyperspace. So you infer — ”