Betrayer of Worlds

by Larry Niven

  “Six Citizens perished today, trampled at two separate rallies protesting inaction against the so-called Gw’oth menace. Advocates for the . . .”

  Nessus froze the broadcast, relayed by hyperwave. The news continued to stream to archive, if he could ever bear to watch. Each time Aegis returned to normal space, he told himself the news was less important than that there was news. While broadcasting continued, it meant the Gw’oth had not devastated Hearth.

  And that at the end of this long voyage, he did not have to perform his impossible duty. Could he really launch kinetic-kill weapons at Jm’ho and its nearby colonies? Could he commit genocide to avenge what the Gw’oth must have seen as necessary self-defense in the faces of Achilles’ ceaseless threats?

  Citizen and human speech could not express his frustrations. The Kzinti, though, knew how to rage and curse. After spitting and hissing for a while in Hero’s Tongue, Nessus felt marginally better.

  Perhaps Sigmund was correct and the Tn’ho forces meant to zoom past the Fleet. Perhaps Louis would somehow stop Achilles from striking at the armada and drawing their wrath upon Hearth.

  And if, miraculously, all that came to pass? Then another world of Gw’oth would die horribly for Achilles’ insane ambitions.

  Someday, Nessus promised himself, Achilles would pay for his crimes.

  35

  It was going to be a massacre.

  Louis sat at his combat station, doggedly working through yet another battle drill. Thirty-two drones this iteration, whittled down to four. In his furtive glances at the tactical display, the connect-the-dots course had the Gw’oth only two hops away from their likely closest approach to Hearth. From the ambush.

  And it was entirely his fault. If only he had never looked at the Pak Library. Without the fusion suppressor, this ambush would not be possible.

  But what about another weapon, another attack, another vicious, amoral scheme? Achilles did not quit, Louis reminded himself—knowing it was only useless rationalization. This ambush was his doing. These deaths would be on his conscience. He stood from his console.

  “Hey!” Enzio shouted. “Where are you going?”

  Louis cupped his hand over his mouth. “Sick. I’m going to hurl.”

  “I’ve got it,” Rogers said, moving from one of the weapons consoles.

  “Go,” Enzio said.

  Louis bolted from the bridge, as though rushing to the recycler. He went three decks aft to prowl a deserted corridor. Apart from the bridge, engine room, and crew quarters, the huge ship was all but uninhabited. Remembrance’s entire crew was perhaps twenty-five Citizens, plus the mercenaries all busy with their combat drill.

  Back and forth Louis paced, his stomach churning. This was Wunderland all over again, but without any birds circling overhead for him to shoot in warning. He needed to alert the Gw’oth, move them past Remembrance without incident. Getting out a message meant using hyperwave, and that was impossible. He had never seen fewer than six Puppeteers on the bridge, and the closer the Gw’oth approached, the more often Enzio had the New Terrans on the bridge drilling. Addison had a hyperwave radio, but Achilles had engineers all over the little ship. That Louis knew of, they were installing stealth gear, equipping a cabin with Puppeteer amenities, and retrofitting the bridge with a Puppeteer-friendly crash couch and console.

  Sometime in the next few days, following their pattern, the Gw’oth would drop from hyperspace. The exit after that would put them into Achilles’ trap. Typically the Gw’oth stayed in normal space for a few hours. Those few hours were Louis’s only opportunity to warn them. And he had no tanj hyperwave access!

  Unless . . .

  He stopped his pacing. There might be a way to alert the Gw’oth, and it would require Achilles’ unwitting cooperation.

  “You are most persistent, Louis,” Achilles sang. He meant: you are pushy. Still, he allowed the human into his suite. The man had proven useful before.

  “I apologize,” Louis answered. He looked in vain for a New Terran chair before perching on an end of a padded bench. “For what I have to say, time is of the essence.”

  Achilles settled into a deep nest of cushions. “Proceed.”

  “With their fusion reactors inoperative, the Gw’oth will be helpless. That is the plan, correct?”

  “You see a problem?”

  “Possibly.” Looking uncomfortable, Louis squirmed on his bench. “Suppose the Gw’oth ships have backup power. Batteries. Fuel cells. Some unanticipated power source that a Gw’otesht invented.”

  “Then they will not be entirely helpless,” Achilles completed. “They might get off a few shots from their lasers before exhausting their emergency power reserves.”

  “Exactly.” Louis rubbed his chin. “And with emergency power for their launch systems, they could target us with missiles. They must carry guided missiles, or they would not have accelerated to kinetic-kill velocities.”

  “And you imagine I did not think of these possibilities,” Achilles said coldly.

  “I’m sure you did. At the core of a ship this size, within a General Products hull, probably the Gw’oth can do us no serious harm before we destroy them.”

  Almost certainly correct, although a few crew on Remembrance’s periphery might not fare well if the Gw’oth got lucky. Lasers and concussion could kill right through the hull. “Louis, are you more timid than a Citizen?”

  Louis laughed. “No, but I would still rather eliminate the enemy more safely. Really safely. I think I know a way.”

  Safer was always better. “What is your suggestion?”

  “It goes back to a war story from that bastard Ausfaller.” Louis stood, rubbed his posterior, and began shifting his weight from leg to leg. “That’s just not comfortable.”

  A war story. “The Pak War?” Achilles guessed.

  “Right. Do we have a planet-buster aboard? Like Ausfaller used to blast Pak fleets?”

  The technology was much improved since the Pak War. Then, the devices took days to set up and calibrate. Remembrance carried a unit of the latest design, and it could be made operational in less than a day. And the irony would be delicious: to stabilize the early homemade planetary drives even long enough to use as weapons, Baedeker had required the assistance of a Gw’otesht.

  Achilles plucked absentmindedly at the meadowplant carpet, considering. “Set off such a device while the Gw’oth ships drift without power.”

  “That was my thought. Assuming we can find a world nearby to bust.”

  Planet-buster. What a naïve oversimplification. When a planetary drive destabilized, it shook nearby space-time and sent waves of quantum chaos in every direction.

  A planet-buster near the ambush point would more than destroy the Gw’oth ships. The space-time ripples would rattle every dish on Hearth. None would be able to deny that something extraordinary had happened. That someone extraordinary had saved the Concordance.

  And eliminating even the remotest possibility of a lucky Gw’oth shot did have appeal.

  It would have been nice, Louis thought, to have an actual plan. Instead he had had a notion and a rush to improvise. But time pressure also distracted the Puppeteers. Urgency might be working in his favor.

  It was a nice thought, anyway.

  Louis’s crash couch twitched: one of the Puppeteer engineers at work on Addison’s bridge, prone on the deck, his heads and necks deep inside a wiring cabinet, had kicked the seat. A melody, using the term loosely, sounded from the cabinet.

  “He said, ‘I am sorry,’ ” Metope translated from the bridge doorway. His tan-and-cream hide was striped, like some sort of understated zebra.

  Everyone pretended Metope was here to translate, not to supervise Louis.

  “It’s all right,” Louis answered. Better than all right. He had access to a hyperwave radio, with far fewer eyes watching than if he were on Remembrance’s bridge.

  Many worlds drifted between the stars, but nothing guaranteed a world in a suitable spot for blasting the G
w’oth. The plan remained to fry disabled ships with lasers, and neither Achilles nor Clotho would divert any resource essential to that attack. That very Puppeteer caution relegated the proposed search for roaming worlds to idle instruments on Addison.

  As Louis had hoped.

  He hummed to himself as he reconfigured Addison’s hyperwave radio. The equipment sent and listened in only one direction. If its beam encountered any substantial object, the strength of the echo would hint, with very uncertain precision, at a distance.

  To pinpoint a remote object with hyperwaves took triangulation. Achilles would not redirect the Fleet’s hyperwave array—and risk disclosing that he could control the array—until a reasonably small search area was isolated.

  The scary part was that Achilles had access. Traitors high in Hearth’s defense establishment, Louis inferred.

  And if he failed to warn the Gw’oth and this search did locate a suitable free-floating world? He told himself that the Gw’oth would be no deader one way than the other. He told himself Achilles would have expended the most terrible weapon in his arsenal.

  Mostly, Louis told himself that he must not fail.

  “Why does this take so long,” Metope asked.

  “We can trade jobs if you want,” Louis snapped. He knew Metope wouldn’t accept: cables still dangled from the Puppeteer-friendly console awaiting installation. “Look, it’s complicated. This is a hyperwave radio, not part of a radar array. The faint echo it will get from a distant object is more like background noise than signal. I had to reprogram the noise filters. And because this is a radio, it’s supposed to point, not sweep.”

  If only the Gw’oth were in normal space! Then merely a “misdirected” scan could scare them off. But Achilles, whether from distrust or simple Puppeteer caution, had restricted the search window. Louis would be escorted from Addison long before the Gw’oth might next reappear. Or if Louis had had his old pocket comp, with its hidden codes for reaching Sigmund. Or, or, or.

  You have this one chance, Louis lectured himself. Do not blow it.

  “So you are programming a scan pattern,” Metope offered.

  “Exactly.” Louis talked about scan-pattern parameters. He prattled about the spin axes of nearby stars, and what that said about planetary orbital planes, and what that said about where best to seek planets ejected from their native solar systems. Anything that might distract Metope. Happily, Louis’s babysitter was not an engineer.

  All the while keying the emergency codes Nessus had insisted Louis memorize. Nessus had distrusted Achilles then; Louis could hope that whoever monitored Clandestine Directorate’s emergency communications network was no friend of Achilles now.

  Galactic coordinates, presumably the location of a trusted hyperwave relay buoy. Louis arranged his scan pattern to sweep over those coordinates. As he chattered about the difficulties of reconfiguring the hyperwave set, and needing to transmit a distinctive pulse sequence so that any hyperwave echoes would be unique, and the parameters to be estimated, Louis entered the memorized control sequences.

  “This approach seems unlikely to work,” Metope decided, “if you ever even finish.”

  “Almost done.” Louis planted a boot tip deep into the flank of the engineer still sprawled on the deck. The engineer wailed atonally, Metope’s heads swiveled—

  And Louis keyed a short message to modulate the scan beam. His final keystroke cleared the display.

  “Arrrgh! My foot slipped. Tell your friend I apologize,” Louis told Metope. “The good news is the configuration is complete. We are ready to begin scanning.”

  36

  Baedeker jolted from deep sleep, his hearts pounding. Utmost emergency tones!

  He leapt from his nest of cushions. Hooves pummeled his door, and alarmed voices bleated for permission to enter.

  Few had his very private personal number; fewer still the codes that overrode his privacy settings. This interruption could only portend ill. He must take the call alone. He sang through the door to the unseen sentries, servants, and aides, “I am all right. Stay where you are.”

  He had left his communicator in the pocket of a sash. He took the unit, still ululating, and set it onto a table. “Take the call,” Baedeker ordered.

  Over the communicator, a hologram opened: Nike. He appeared to be standing in his office, but the bedraggled mane said he, too, had just been awakened.

  “My pardon, Hindmost. I seek your guidance.”

  We live in troubled times, Baedeker thought. “What has happened?”

  “A text message from Nessus, very cryptic, received over the Directorate’s emergency communications network.” Nike’s hoof tapped nervously at his floor. “But we heard from Nessus earlier today, on a scheduled respite from hyperspace. He intended to be in hyperspace, unreachable, for the next three days. After this odd message, we tried and failed to contact him.”

  Because Nessus was making the long trek to the Gw’oth home system. “What is this cryptic message?”

  “Galactic coordinates and two English words: hyperwave power.”

  Many at Clandestine Directorate knew English, from training during the colonial period or more recent dealings with New Terra. The message would not be in English for security purposes. “Is the message from Nessus?”

  “It has his authentication code,” Nike said. “That could not be coerced from him”—because he would die first from fright—“but conceivably he gave the code away.”

  “You infer something. Sing plainly.”

  Nike bobbed heads. “The message entered our network at a remote relay buoy. Nessus is far from there. But when he chased after Achilles, at the rear of the Pak fleets . . .”

  “You believe Nessus gave highly classified Concordance codes to Louis Wu.”

  “I think Nessus was more realistic than the rest of us about the danger posed by Achilles.”

  Baedeker understood that melody as agreement. And as a rebuke for so long tolerating Achilles in the name of Party unity. “Assume this message comes from Wu. ‘Hyperwave power.’ What does it mean? What do the coordinates tell us?”

  “The coordinates define a place in the Fleet’s wake. If the Gw’oth ships follow their pattern, the message points to the center of the region in which they are likely to emerge next.”

  A human unaccustomed to Citizens might think to propose an attack on the Gw’oth, but Louis Wu was no stranger to Citizens. The message’s brevity and cryptic nature suggested haste; what little the human had sent must have meaning.

  “ ‘Hyperwave power,’ ” Baedeker sang. “A powerful signal? Sent to the Gw’oth when they next appear?”

  “I believe that is the intent.” Nike hesitated. “But to say what?”

  “ ‘Power,’ ” Baedeker mused. “Wu sent only two words. Both must be significant. Suppose we transmit at high power or using many convergent beams. To what purpose?” The instincts of a politician told Baedeker nothing. But reasoning as the engineer he once was . . . “Powerful beams would simulate many ships, hidden ships, nearby. All scanning.”

  “Wu means a trick?” Nike trilled, baffled. “But to fool whom? Ausfaller sent Wu off to pursue Achilles.”

  “I think we cannot know.” Baedeker stared at his bedchamber walls, over the heads of virtual herds and into the illusion of distance. He decided. “Nessus trusts Louis Wu. So does Ausfaller. Isolate everyone with knowledge of this message, then proceed as Wu proposes.”

  . . .

  “Nothing,” Louis declared. “Not a world to be found. I’ve run the search pattern twice.”

  “Then we have finished,” Metope said. He had claimed the pilot’s bench the moment the engineers completed their work and departed Addison’s cramped bridge. “Turn off everything and come with me.”

  Louis powered down the copilot console. He closed and pocketed his doodle-filled notepad. “You don’t sound disappointed.”

  “I trust His Excellency. His plan will work.”

  I hope to tanj it does not com
e to that. “We will know soon enough,” Louis said.

  Metope took a transport controller from his utility belt. For the stepping disc in the corridor, just beyond the bridge hatch.

  “Hold on,” Louis said. “I’m going to grab a few provisions while I’m aboard. The synthesizers on Remembrance do a lousy job with human recipes. No offense.”

  “The others do not complain.”

  “Look, I only want some food items, cleaning supplies, and a notebook and pen. It’s all sitting in the pantry or closets, going to waste. Five minutes, Metope. Help me carry, and it will go faster still.”

  Metope considered. “And you will leave anything if I ask. No argument.”

  “No argument.”

  Five minutes later, the bags of supplies stowed in his cabin, Louis was drilling in the combat center.

  Another scheduled exit from hyperspace drew near, and Bm’o’s guests had become restless. Some hastened their eating, or stopped eating altogether. Others wriggled where they lay, tubacle tips curling in the banquet-floor mud.

  He shared their impatience, but he would never show it.

  Across his fleet, crews prepared. Bridge crews calibrated their sensors. Combat crews readied their weapons. Communications crews queued outgoing messages and prepared to download any messages waiting on distant relay buoys. They had done it all before, many times.

  More than routine, the return to normal space . . . beckoned. No less than the lowliest Gw’o in the fleet, his mind, too, crawled whenever they swam in hyperspace. Inarticulate whispers. Hints of madness. An insatiable void endlessly gnawing at his consciousness. But he was Tn’Tn’ho. He showed emotion neither on entering hyperspace nor when leaving.

  Especially not when leaving. The Citizens, far from being a threat, trembled before the might of his war fleet. Their fear was plain in their broadcasts, long relayed to Jm’ho by stealthed buoys. As Bm’o’s ships drew near, Citizens in ever larger numbers urged their government to surrender.