Betrayer of Worlds

by Larry Niven

  Louis’s mind reeled. By warning off the Gw’oth fleet, Louis had managed to make the situation worse. Somehow, he had to stop Achilles. But how?

  Achilles finally dismissed everyone. Enzio lagged behind with Louis while Clotho cantered ahead.

  When Clotho disappeared around a curve of corridor, Enzio grabbed Louis by the arm. “You’re not one of my team, Wu. Achilles picked you, so maybe you don’t owe me an answer. But something is bothering you. Something major.”

  Nessus had worried aboard Aegis that Achilles would make and hide bugs. Louis was not about to gamble Achilles did not spy here. Louis took out his sketch pad and pen and jotted a note. He flashed the page at Enzio. Sensors. Have my comp? Louis returned pad and pen to his pocket.

  Enzio nodded, ever so slightly.

  “I’m going for a walk,” Louis said. “Deck Eight, outer corridor. Care to join me?”

  “Thanks. I have something to do first. I’ll catch up with you.”

  Enzio joined Louis a few minutes later. Soon after, power walking side by side, Louis noticed an unaccustomed bulge in his pocket. Pickpocket was obviously among his crewmate’s criminal skills.

  After another half lap around the corridor, Louis slipped a hand into that pocket and found a comp. By touch he fingered a four-button numeric control code. He was rewarded by a soft chirp acknowledging activation of what Sigmund called protocol gamma: sound suppression, bug suppression, and a holographic projection to defeat lip readers. Louis left the comp in his pocket. A passerby or hidden camera noticing a translucent aura around the two men was a bigger risk than Puppeteers who read lips.

  “If this isn’t the comp you took from me on Addison, tell me now,” Louis said.

  “It is,” Enzio said. “Now, who are you? One of Sigmund Ausfaller’s agents?”

  “Let’s just say I’m not who Achilles thinks I am. We need to talk fast. The jamming field is apt to show up in security sensors as noise. Jamming mode will turn itself off before anyone is likely to come looking.”

  “Evasion duly noted. So what is the problem?” Pause. “How crazy is this new plan of his?”

  Not crazy impractical. Genocidal and sociopathic crazy. “The planet-buster,” Louis began cautiously. “Do you know much about them?”

  “They bust planets. From what Achilles said, they shake up space-time when they go off.” Enzio wheezed, out of shape and out of breath, and slowed their pace. “Sounds like a nice safe way to take out the Gw’oth fleet.”

  “Oh, it is.” And Alice’s ship, too, tanj it. She had left for Kl’mo days before Enzio kidnapped Louis. She would not be quite there yet, but she would arrive before Remembrance. He had to stop Achilles. “But there are a couple of details Achilles hasn’t shared.

  “If the Gw’oth are a danger to the Citizens, it’s because of his machinations. He instigated a war between Gw’oth worlds just to create a fleet that would pass near Hearth. By squashing the threat he himself created, he expects the Experimentalists to elevate him to Hindmost.”

  “And the other detail?”

  “Those space-time ‘ripples’?” Louis shivered. “They’ll be enough to disrupt planetary orbits across the solar system. Drop planets into the sun? Eject planets into the dark between stars? Anything can happen, and there’s a whole innocent colony on one of those worlds.”

  Enzio scowled. “I’m a thief, not a physicist. But neither am I an idiot. We can’t possibly be carrying something with the power to do that.”

  “I’m no physicist, either, but I understand basic mechanics. Citizens keep trying to duplicate the planetary drives bought at great price from the Outsiders. The homemade drives are unstable, so they blow planets apart rather than move them.

  “The thing is, Enzio, no one fully understands Outsider technologies. Not hyperdrive. Not the planetary drive. Not the reactionless drive that propels Outsider ships in normal space. But here is one amazing thing we do know. A city-sized Outsider ship can drop from near light speed to a dead stop, or zoom back again, in an instant.”

  Sigmund had seen it happen. So, Louis was almost certain, had First Father. Sigmund’s story had struck a chord, had reawakened another cryptic childhood memory of Beowulf and Carlos talking while young Louis skulked about.

  “To stop,” Louis continued, “that ship sheds an incredible amount of kinetic energy. If it didn’t, the ship would vaporize from kinetic energy transformed to heat. To instantly reacquire that velocity, the same ship regains the same amount of kinetic energy. Only the Outsiders know how it’s done, but their ships must shift energy between normal space and . . . somewhere. Hyperspace? Another dimension? Another universe? Don’t ask me. But they do it.”

  “And the planet-buster aboard Remembrance taps the same other-where forces?”

  From Louis’s pocket, a double chirp: the comp’s wrap-it-up warning. “Enzio, we’re running out of time. Big picture: if we allow it, Achilles will slaughter bunches of innocents. Everyone on the Gw’oth fleet and everyone in the Gw’oth colony.”

  And Alice and everyone aboard her ship, too. Louis kept that to himself. For all he knew, Enzio would go straight to Achilles.

  While Enzio mulled, a triple chirp: the jamming mode’s timeout/shutdown announcement.

  “So I like the Capitals this season,” Louis said. The Capitals were the first New Terran football team whose name he dredged up. For all he knew they were terrible. “Who do you like this season?”

  “The Capitals? Hah! I think the Swans.”

  A few paces later, weight vanished from Louis’s pocket. Louis said, “You’re so wrong. When those teams play next, I call it the Capitals by fourteen, sixteen points.” The activation code for jamming mode: one four one six. If Enzio had believed anything he had just heard, he would talk it over with his people. Louis added a reminder, one more data point, for that discussion. “Not that we can listen here to New Terran news.”

  “Fourteen, sixteen.” Enzio snorted. “We’ll be talking about this again.”

  “Anytime,” Louis said, knowing he had put his fate into the hands of criminals.

  . . .

  A sharp tap-tap on Louis’s cabin door jerked him awake. He collapsed the sleeper field and stood. “It’s not locked.”

  The door opened. By the nightshift-dimmed corridor lighting he recognized Maura. She stroked the touchpoint beside the door as she entered, and the cabin lights came up. The door clicked shut behind her. Another click sounded as she engaged the lock.

  He must have looked surprised.

  “You do nothing for me either, sport.” Her right hand was in a pocket and the pocket chirped. “But Citizens are private about their own sex lives, if they even have sex. They won’t want to know what you and I are doing in here. That’s why Enzio sent me.”

  “About?”

  “Enzio told us about your conversation. We talked it over. We signed up to defend Hearth, not to attack anyone else. Certainly not as mass murderers. We want out.”

  “Achilles won’t care,” Louis said. “I can get us all out, but I’ll need everyone’s help.”

  “So we assumed. Why else would you say anything to Enzio?”

  “And it means taking orders from me. Enzio, too.”

  She nodded. “We assumed that, too.”

  “You can start by returning my computer.”

  She set it on his desk, just as it emitted its double chirp of warning. Red, yellow, and green dots chased each other around the display until, with a triple chirp, the device turned off.

  Maura killed the overhead lights and sidled up to Louis. Her breath hot in his ear, she murmured, “Start talking.”

  And so, in the dark, in urgent whispers, he laid out his plan.

  40

  The hardest part was the waiting.

  It was not that Louis and his reluctant allies were without things to do. There was the timeline to refine. Tasks to delegate. Supplies to gather in secrecy. Stepping-disc coordinates to explore, confirm, and exchange. Details to tune
and tweak. Even weapons to be made, mostly smoke grenades and Molotov cocktails, whoever Molotov was. As for more potent bombs, Louis had retained enough from his Wunderland training not to blow himself up improvising explosives and detonators with the chemicals he had retrieved from Addison. Whether the devices would blow up when they needed to remained to be seen.

  And they had to do everything without attracting Puppeteer interest.

  Still, they finished. And waited. And fretted. And waited.

  While Remembrance remained in hyperspace, they could not act.

  “Prepare for normal space,” Achilles called out. He pretended not to hear the soft notes of relief from the bridge crew. But unless he provided some respite, he would be without a crew by the time they reached the Kl’mo system.

  “Normal space,” Clotho acknowledged from the pilot’s couch. “In ten. Nine. Eight . . .”

  At zero, the bridge displays switched from virtual meadows to real stars. The gnawing tickle vanished from the back of Achilles’ brain. The hushed bridge chatter sounded brighter.

  Achilles activated the intercom. “We will remain in normal space for an hour. Clotho and I will keep watch on the bridge. You are all relieved until five minutes before we continue on our way.”

  The bridge crew trotted from the room. Happy songs echoed in the corridors. Achilles stood, ready to walk about the for-once-uncrowded bridge.

  Until the alarms shrieked.

  Perched awkwardly on the Puppeteer-friendly pilot’s crash couch, Louis activated the short-range radio. “This is Louis Wu aboard Addison, calling Achilles. Repeat, this is Addison calling Achilles.”

  At the copilot’s station Enzio was running the preflight checklist. The other New Terrans were in the engine room or their cabins. The main bridge displays showed a panoramic view of the cargo hold.

  “What have you done, Louis?” Achilles answered. Midsentence, warbling alarms cut off abruptly.

  “The New Terrans and I are leaving, Achilles.” Louis did not explain. A sociopath had no interest in another’s reasons. “Release the hull clamps and open the cargo-hold hatch. Open all the cargo holds’ hatches.”

  “I am afraid I cannot do that, Louis. What have you done?”

  Delivered lots of improvised explosive devices by stepping disc. Only the smoke grenades had been live, triggering fire alarms, emergency systems, and safety shutdowns. But Remembrance’s most vulnerable areas were beyond Louis’s reach. The bridge had no discs, and no human had been allowed into the engine room to discover stepping-disc addresses there.

  The smoke grenades were distractions, however unsettling. The Puppeteer crew were naïfs, dupes, mentally unstable: herd-minded beings instinctively following a strong leader. Aside from Achilles, none was evil. Louis meant them no harm. He did mean to stop them.

  Louis said, “Nothing dramatic . . . yet. Do as I say, Achilles.”

  Enzio cleared his throat. “Ready when you are, Louis.”

  “Do it, Achilles,” Louis said.

  “Or else?” Achilles sneered.

  Crushing weight!

  “Automatics compensating,” Enzio grunted. The excess weight vanished, offset by Addison’s artificial gravity. “Louis, with the hold’s gravity set this high, our thrusters won’t budge us.”

  Louis nodded. “Or else, Achilles, you’ll force me to take the hyperspace exit.”

  . . .

  The emergency hatch slammed, but not before thick smoke had poured onto the bridge. Dampers clanged in the ventilation ducts to finish sealing the room. Ceiling lamps and most consoles went dark; the main displays and most critical consoles flickered as emergency power cut in.

  With one glance at the main status board, Clotho collapsed to the deck. Achilles watched in dismay as Clotho furled into a tight ball, heads tucked between his forelegs. Only muffled bleats of panic emerged.

  It is up to me, Achilles thought. As always, everything is up to me.

  Above Clotho’s inert body, security-camera displays cycled randomly from corridor to cargo hold to cabin. Emergency bulkheads automatically sealed to stop the spread of the fire. Crew trapped wherever the safety lockdown found them. Smoke billowing in most of the ship.

  So much smoke. How had smoke spread so widely before setting off alarms? Unless there were many fires across the ship. Set at once? Delivered at once? With a shudder of insight, Achilles realized he had not seen a single human.

  He overrode safety protocols to disable the stepping-disc network controllers. It was the best he could do from lockdown. Individual discs still functioned; for safety reasons discs could only be disabled in person. But at least now, the humans could spread trouble only via the specific disc addresses they already knew.

  The comm console flashed: carrier wave detected. Electromagnetic radio. But Remembrance was in the middle of nowhere! Achilles opened the channel.

  “This is Louis Wu aboard Addison, calling Achilles. Repeat, this is Addison calling Achilles.”

  Wu! “What have you done, Louis?” Achilles answered. With his other head, he suppressed the still warbling alarms.

  “The New Terrans and I are leaving, Achilles. Release the hull clamps and open the cargo-hold hatch. Open all the cargo holds’ hatches.”

  Let the humans go? Watch his lovely fusion suppressors drift into the void? “I am afraid I cannot do that, Louis. What have you done?”

  “Nothing dramatic . . . yet. Do as I say, Achilles.”

  The “fires” were tending to themselves. The smoke was already clearing, vented by air handlers and scrubbed by active filters. Achilles left the automatic systems to work by themselves, saying nothing, sorting through his options.

  Send an armed group aboard Addison? Not plausible, even if enough crew somehow worked up the frenzy to try. The humans were sly enough to disable the few stepping discs aboard their ship and disconnect its exterior air-lock controls. That would be confirmed, but he knew what would be found.

  Addison had a General Products hull. Almost certainly, he could not get at the humans and they could not get at him. They had a comm laser—at close range, a dangerous weapon—but useless while the ship remained clamped with its bow pointed outward. Their laser could only fire harmlessly through the hull material of the cargo-hold hatch, and into the void.

  Lasers. Any of Remembrance’s lasers would take time to dismount and move. The humans could dismount and move their comm laser just as quickly.

  “Do it, Achilles,” Louis said.

  “Or else?” Achilles sneered while, with his other mouth, he set gravity in the hold at ten times Hearth normal. For a satisfying moment—until, as he had known would happen, their ship offset the force field—all he heard was anguished gasping.

  “Or else, Achilles, you’ll force me to take the hyperspace exit.”

  The Gw’oth method! That fool Nessus had shown the human how to destroy Argo’s hull. Achilles lunged for the hyperdrive controls as he spoke. “Do not do that, Louis. Not while we are already in hyperspace.”

  And if Louis did anyway? That was an experiment no sane being would contemplate.

  Fresh alarm lamps flared on the status board. The bridge view ports stubbornly continued to display stars.

  “Hyperdrive draws a lot of power,” Louis said imperturbably. “I am quite confident Puppeteer fusion reactors won’t operate while there are fire alarms throughout the ship.”

  And Louis was correct. Sensors across the ship would require manual resets before the reactors would restart. “What do you want?” Achilles asked desperately.

  “I told you. Release the clamps. Open the cargo bays. Let us go.”

  “Clamps and cargo-bay hatch,” Achilles repeated.

  “Hatches,” Louis corrected. “And turn off gravity in the holds.”

  And let everything float out? Never! “I need those weapons to defend Hearth. Especially after my brave human crew runs.”

  “In thirty seconds, Achilles, I engage hyperdrive.”

  Everything withi
n Addison’s normal-space bubble would jump to hyperspace with it. The clamps and bits of the docking cradle. Perhaps some of the cargo-bay hatch. Nothing Achilles could not manage without.

  “Twenty seconds. Nineteen.”

  Achilles surveyed the few bridge consoles still functioning. The space-junk defenses were on an emergency-power circuit, and Remembrance’s hull bristled with powerful lasers. Backup power could manage several salvos.

  Wu dare not fly around Remembrance to check out the other holds. His insolent demand that cargo be jettisoned was a bluff.

  “Fifteen. Fourteen.”

  “You win,” Achilles said, tasting bitter cud. “I am releasing Addison.”

  Addison lurched. For an instant, Louis came out of his crash couch.

  Louis grabbed his armrests. “What happened?”

  “Gravity in the hold went off. The automatics readjusted.” Enzio peered at an external camera. “The clamp is retracting. Addison is afloat.”

  From outside the ship, a blaring alarm and strobing red light. The exterior hatch was about to open. Louis watched it slowly gape.

  “A wise choice, Achilles.” Louis broke the connection, wondering if the other holds’ hatches were open. He did not intend to stay around—and get laser-blasted—to find out.

  He activated the intercom. “All hands. We’re leaving Remembrance.”

  Through the air ducts, a ragged cheer.

  “Take her out, Enzio,” Louis said. Addison was barely outside when Louis engaged the hyperdrive.

  Sensors flashed from intense hyperwave backwash. The treacherous humans were gone.

  On the status board, more and more zones reported themselves free of smoke. Achilles announced over the intercom, “There is no cause for alarm. The fires have been contained. I will release the emergency quarantine, deck by deck, as that becomes safe.”

  And then we will restart the reactors and resume course. Wu could not stop him. But the human would pay later. Pay dearly. Pay and pay and . . .

  Louis’s eyes were glued to his wristwatch. “Three. Two. One.”