Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

eyes flew open, his heads pivoting toward the sound. There! A brilliant speck in the sky.

It was a returning grain ship, reflecting the suns. Nothing could be more natural.

The warm breeze carried a delightful bouquet of fresh-mown meadowplant, and ripening grains, and wildflowers. His eyes fell shut again.

Perhaps he dozed.

Achilles stirred to a bothersome droning, the noise coming from behind him. He knew that sound all too well: the tentative, argumentative buzz of aides debating who would bring him bad news. What had they done wrong now?

As he turned to go inside the palace, a flash caught his eye. The grain ship — or, anyway, a grain ship — had grown from a speck to a tiny disk. It grew as it descended, angling across his field of vision. He had not realized any of the flight patterns approached so near to the palace.

The ship’s apparent size began to rival the worlds in the sky.

“What is it?” he sang.

Vesta sidled onto the promenade. “That grain ship, Excellency. During reentry, the pilot reported difficulty controlling his vessel. It should not be this close to us.”

Must I do everything? Achilles once again wondered. He pointed across the beautiful valley. “Advise Proteus. He should take down that ship if it crosses that mountain range.”

“Yes, Excellen…” Vesta’s voices trailed off, his gaze tipped upward.

The sunslit ship had become stained. No, not stained: clouded. Achilles watched the blot spread, dark and inchoate. Dispersing as it fell, the smudge grew and grew. While the ship continued its slow, crosswise descent, the brown fog, caught by the prevailing winds, streamed toward the palace.

That couldn’t be…?

“We must go, Excellency,” Vesta sang imploringly.

Shaking with rage, Achilles stood his ground. “Find Nessus,” he bellowed. Who else would dare? “Find him. Do whatever it takes. Bring him to me.”

Achilles did not bother to reactivate the barrier. No mere weather force field could hold back the stench of a shipload of manure.

43

Ol’t’ro considered:

That they had known Nessus.

That according to every test that they applied, and that Proteus applied on their behalf, the recent provocative recordings appeared authentic and unaltered.

That among these recordings some mentioned events, like the manure barrage, from after Long Shot’s dissolution in deep space.

That Nessus must have died in the destruction of Long Shot.

Ergo, that although its hull had been destroyed, Long Shot, somehow, had not.

That Long Shot’s escape would explain the anomalously small quantity of recovered debris.

That a jump to hyperspace from within the Fleet’s singularity would explain Long Shot’s disappearance —

But that everything Ol’t’ro understood about hyperspace or hyperdrive would have precluded Nessus from surviving such a maneuver.

Ergo, that what they understood about hyperspace or hyperdrive was wrong.

That their error, now revealed, offered a vital clue to the long sought, more complete multiverse theory that might encompass the Type II hyperdrive.

That because Nessus had survived, so, most likely, had Baedeker.

That to locate one Citizen hiding among a trillion of his kind would be a time-consuming task — as problematical for them as it was proving for Achilles.

That while Nessus goaded Achilles, Achilles would spend less time scheming to oust the Hindmost or to subvert Proteus.

That they had ample time, before the alien fleets arrived, to contemplate this latest clue to the nature of hyperspace.

* * *

IN THE OBSCURITY of his most recent low-rent cubicle, somewhere deep within yet another characterless arcology, Nessus fretted. He changed apartments often, registering for each with a different identity and paying from a different credit account. Whenever he could, he traveled by anonymous, preprogrammed public stepping discs. When not goading Achilles, he stayed inside his quarters and off Herd Net.

He hoped he was being half as suspicious and cautious as Sigmund in his prime.

Like Nessus’ accusations, the manure barrage had gone viral on Herd Net. Achilles must be, would be, livid, and that was what Nessus wanted. Every flunky sent searching for Nessus was one flunky fewer to notice technicians whom Baedeker trained and whom Horatius was methodically assigning to critical posts across the worlds.

And so: ever more extravagant rewards were offered for Nessus’ capture. The enticements had also gone viral on the net, and that, too, was for the best —

Unless Achilles’ minions succeeded in finding him.

It was suddenly all Nessus could do not to furl himself into a deaf-and-blind mass of flesh. Hard labor and starvation rations from sunsup to sunsdown: he had experienced Achilles’ hospitality, long ago, until Louis had busted him free. Penance Island was not a place Nessus wanted ever to revisit. That daring rescue was one more reason he was forever in Louis’s debt.

And another reason Achilles also hated Louis.

Nessus twisted and tore at his mane. An idea lurked here. Louis must be long gone — ideally into a life on New Terra with Alice. What help could Louis…?

Ah.

Among its hidden features, Nessus’ Clandestine Directorate-provided computer could tunnel through the public Herd Net into the Space Traffic Control system and its hyperwave network.

With his contact lenses removed, Nessus recorded a short video in Interworld. With the colored contact lenses restored, his hide patterns and mane concealed by a worker’s baggy coveralls, in the comparative safety of a public park, he uploaded the recording. Maybe the message would get broadcast. More likely, intrusion-detection software would intercept the recording before transmission. It did not matter which happened, because the message’s real audience was Achilles.

In the recording, Nessus ordered: Louis: execute Plans Alpha and Epsilon. After two days, unless you have heard otherwise from me, you also have approval to execute Plan Theta. Good luck. Nessus.

Let Achilles chase after someone else for a while. Someone not even there.

* * *

PROTEUS CONSIDERED:

That with each increase in his capacity, new insights tantalized.

That the richness of his thoughts had begun to grow faster than the rate at which he integrated additional processing nodes.

That more than the number of processing nodes, the determining factor had become the number of instantaneous hyperwave connections among those nodes.

That with yet more capacity, his intelligence might continue to grow exponentially.

That Achilles’ availability had grown erratic, often with statistically significant correlations with Herd Net provocations.