Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

took priority over conserving space. The only stepping discs here — apart from those he had hidden — were in the security foyer, well guarded.

“Let’s go up,” Baedeker sang.

Clutching stunners, Baedeker and Nessus walked down the hall. The thick dust that muffled their hoofsteps would also reveal their trespass to anyone at all alert. If they failed to make contact on this first attempt, they must clean up after themselves. A dirt-free floor might call less attention to itself than a floor with disturbed dust.

At the base of a ramp they paused to listen. Faint noises drifted toward them. Baedeker had timed their foray for the sleep shift, but remembered how irrelevant routine became during times of crisis.

With Fringe War fleets charging at Hearth, this, surely, was a time of crisis.

Almost, Baedeker retraced his steps to the storage room to flick back to the Refuge. Instead, hearts pounding, he started up the ramp.

On the main basement level, the floor was free of dust. They crept up a second ramp. The lights were less dim on the Residence’s ground floor. Baedeker heard soft voices. Guards or aides, singing among themselves.

And did he hear something else? An argument?

Nessus paused, heads cocked. He heard it, too.

The angry notes came from the small private study adjoining the Hindmost’s personal suite. Baedeker pointed toward a pantry door. He remembered the pantry had an inner door for access from the study.

The pantry was snug for two. Even from here Baedeker did not recognize the voices. The mysterious Horatius? Baedeker heard harmonics of command and stern undertunes — but hesitant grace notes, too.

Then someone else began to sing, much louder. Baedeker recognized those voices all too well.

* * *

“YOU ARE UNFIT!” Achilles railed.

“I am Hindmost,” Horatius countered.

He sounded unconvincing even to himself. He despaired of his weakness, his weariness, his inadequacies, and his reticence to confront Achilles for the effrontery of his uninvited arrival.

“Do you understand that we are at war, Hindmost? Tell me. Which precedents guide your policy? What Conservative predecessor ever ruled in such conditions?”

“I understand that you started a war.” Horatius tried and failed to maintain firmness in his second and fourth harmonics. “As Hindmost it is my duty to — ”

“Kzinti ‘diplomats’ started the war by attempting to seize one of our defensive drones. Can you imagine how helpless Hearth would have been had they succeeded?”

“But they did not succeed,” Horatius sang. “The matter was settled. You took it upon yourself to have Proteus attack their remaining ships.”

“There must be penalties for aggression against us. You don’t understand aliens. I represented General Products among Kzinti and wild human alike. To have done nothing would only have emboldened them.”

What of the armadas glimpsed by the defensive arrays? Ships in vast numbers emerged every few days from hyperspace, maintaining their course for the Fleet of Worlds. Were those aliens not already emboldened?

I could unburden myself of this madness, Horatius thought. The herd chose me, but I serve only at Ol’t’ro’s sufferance. What if I were to lose their confidence?

How hard could that be?

Horatius had had to replace many among his cabinet. More than once he had watched a friend and colleague carried away: curled around himself, heads hidden against his belly, withdrawn from the world.

And he had envied every one of them.

But there was no safety in catatonia. Not while Gw’oth ruled the worlds and more aliens rushed onward. Not after Achilles had given the Kzinti one more reason to seek vengeance.

“No!” Horatius sang with all the firmness he could muster. “I will not resign. I serve until the herd or Ol’t’ro say otherwise. Provoke the nearby aliens again without my permission, and I will discharge you.”

Achilles bowed his necks, not in subservience but to preen. “I suppose you will supervise Proteus and see to increasing his capabilities. Which of us will Ol’t’ro deem expendable?”

Catatonia beckoned, the lure of oblivion all but irresistible. “We are done,” Horatius sang. Maddeningly, the fourth harmonic cracked and his grace notes fell prey to a stutter. “Go!”

“I leave, because I have sung my piece. Soon enough, I shall reclaim my place here.” Achilles turned his back, sauntering to the study’s main door. “I know the way out.”

* * *

AS THE DOOR CLICKED SHUT, Horatius drooped to his knees. He could no longer bear the burden of the herd’s safety — and yet he dare not resign. Who but Achilles would Ol’t’ro accept in this crisis as a replacement Hindmost?

At the faint squeak of the pantry door Horatius shot to his hooves.

The first intruder was well coiffed. His mane, a striking yellow-brown, sparkled with Experimentalist orange jewels.

The other intruder had scarcely bothered to brush his brown tresses. With one eye red and the other yellow, his gaze was unnerving. The jaw grip of a weapon peeked from a pocket of his utility belt.

Baedeker and Nessus. Legends, both. Infamous, both. Vanished from Hearth a few years after the disastrous Ringworld expedition.

“Hindmost,” Baedeker intoned. He lowered his heads respectfully. “Please excuse our interruption. We are — ”

“I recognize you both. Why are you here?”

“These are perilous times. We come to offer the Hindmost our help,” Baedeker sang.

Horatius locked his knees to stop his legs from trembling. “You have been gone for a long while.”

“Missing and presumed dead?” Nessus looked himself in the eyes. “Achilles has tried often enough.”

Horatius willed his voices to remain steady. “Help? What can you possibly do?” Ol’t’ro held the worlds hostage, Achilles was a power-mad sociopath, and alien fleets raced to mete out vengeance. What could anyone do?

“It is a long story,” Baedeker began.

“And how did you get here?” Horatius had to know.

“That, too, is a long story.”

“Begin with how you came into my home unannounced and undetected,” Horatius sang. “What you did, Achilles’ minions might, too.”

“Not as we arrived,” Baedeker sang confidently. “We come straight from the Hindmost’s Refuge.”

Horatius stared. “Such a place exists? I thought it a fable.”

“It exists,” Baedeker sang. “Over the ages each Hindmost passed the secret to the next. My successor, shamefully, was to be Achilles. He had just betrayed the Concordance, delivered the herd to the mercies of Ol’t’ro.” With pride in his voices, Baedeker added, “The secret of the Refuge, at least, was kept from Gw’oth overlord and shameless traitor alike.

“In the one place where I could labor undisturbed, I completed my research. Vital research.”

“But where is this place?” Horatius asked. “How do you come and go?”

“Far, far beneath us.” Baedeker stomped the floor. “Hindmost’s Refuge lies within Hearth’s mantle. Only special stepping discs, built to modulate background neutrino radiation rather than electromagnetic signals, will penetrate so deeply. In my final moments of freedom, before Achilles’ minions detained me, I hid several such discs in isolated areas of this residence.”

It was amazing, too much to absorb. Horatius’ mind leapt to more immediate and practical concerns. “You came with the offer of help. What do you propose?”

That explanation took far longer. Horatius was a politician, not an engineer or a scientist. He understood little more than that his visitors offered the possibility of hope.

He had all but forgotten how exhilarating the uncertainty of doom felt.