19

Tanya poked at whatever it was she had been served for dinner. She didn’t remember having eaten any. From her distracted stirring, the food had begun to look used.

She had never seen Puma, never been aboard, never, to her knowledge, met any of the corvette’s crew, but in her mind’s eye that ship differed little from Koala. Too many sailors crammed into too little space. An endless background droning, from the clipped commands and acknowledgments on the bridge, to tense speculations in the public spaces, to stress-relieving high jinks in quarters. A place full of life.

No more.

Puma had transformed in an instant into a gamma-ray burst and a quickly dissipated debris field. Antimatter explosions didn’t leave much behind.

Tanjed ratcats.

Seething rage had squelched the usual boisterousness of the junior officers’ mess. She set down her fork and shoved away her tray.

“Not hungry, Lieutenant Wu?”

Junior officers shot to their feet. Tanya said, “Commander, I didn’t see you—”

“At ease,” Commander Johansson ordered from the open hatchway. “Lieutenant, would you mind coming with me?”

“Yes, sir.”

They walked forward. Something in Johansson’s stiff gait told her not to bother asking what this was about.

They came to the last place she would have expected: the captain’s cabin. “Enter,” came a gruff answer to Johansson’s knock.

Dad looked grim. Lieutenant Commander Ovando, the chief communications officer, looked puzzled. With Tanya and Johansson squeezed in, the cabin was packed. Dad waved off her salute.

“Show her,” Dad said.

“Yes, Captain.” Ovando handed Tanya a pocket comp.

The screen displayed her inbox. Ten messages had come in since she’d last checked mail—but the most recent, a ship-to-ship, had been read. An icon showed it had come wrapped in standard fleet encryption. The subject line read Personal and Confidential.

Who said stuff like that? Who was Alice Jordan?

“This came by hyperwave a few minutes ago,” Ovando said. “A routine security audit flagged it.”

“I don’t recognize the name,” Tanya said.

“I’m not surprised,” Johansson answered. “No one by that name is serving in the ARM, and I don’t mean only the expeditionary force. Not anywhere.”

“Shall I open it?” Tanya asked.

“Go ahead, Lieutenant,” Dad said.

Tanya tapped the screen and scanned the header that popped open. It indicated standard ARM comm protocol and fleet encryption, and that the message had ping-ponged its way to Koala through a half-dozen hyperwave relays.

The stated origin of the message was a vessel called Endurance. Ships had carried that name back to the days of sail, but she didn’t recall any ship named Endurance deployed to the Ringworld theater of operations.

With a finger swipe Tanya scrolled down to the message body. “Finagle,” she said wonderingly.

“Exactly right,” Dad said.

“I’ve done database searches,” Ovando said. “A colony ramscoop named Long Pass did vanish—almost seven hundred years ago. A goldskin named Alice Jordan disappeared from Sol system a few decades later.”

“Goldskin?” Tanya asked.

“Belter police of that era wore yellow spacesuits,” Ovando explained.

“You mean this message could be real?” Johansson said. “That’s unbelievable.”

“No,” Tanya said. “What’s unbelievable is that a long-lost colony and a woman who should be long dead contacted me.”

*   *   *

SOONER THAN ALICE HAD DARED to hope, the comm console pinged. Telltales indicated a hyperwave link and ARM encryption.

“We’re getting video feed,” Jeeves announced. “Not an animation, as best I can judge.”

Tucking a loose strand of hair behind an ear, Alice looked at Julia. “We’re agreed?”

“Go,” Julia said. To Nessus, still at the pilot’s console, she added, “Your objections are noted. And if you can’t stop that infernal humming, get off the bridge.”

“No humming,” Nessus promised. He began tapping out a rhythm with a forehoof.

Alice angled and zoomed the camera to show only her, then tapped ACCEPT.

A young woman appeared. Her trim blue jumpsuit had the look of a uniform, its insignia unfamiliar. She had long, straight, black hair, worn pulled back, and her skin was golden. The slight slant to her eyes made their icy blueness all the more startling. Nothing showed behind her but bare metallic bulkheads.

“This is Endurance,” Alice said. “My name is Alice Jordan.”

“Hello, Alice,” the woman said. She frowned in concentration, as though struggling with Alice’s archaic speech. “I’m Tanya Wu. You messaged me?”

Interworld sounded as awkward to Alice. “I did, Tanya. Thank you for responding.”

A burst of typing came from Alice’s left, and text appeared on her contact lenses. It was Julia asking: Is she an ARM?

Tanya said, “Your message speaks of a lost human colony, New Terra. Where is it?”

In Alice’s peripheral vision, Nessus tore at his mane. She said, “It’s a dangerous galaxy, Tanya. I would rather not broadcast that information.”

Tanya frowned. “We’re talking by hyperwave, and I presume you reached this system by hyperdrive. You’ve obviously had dealings with the Outsiders, so why not ask them how to get home?”

Because, in a long-ago, three-way barter, the Outsiders had committed to the Puppeteers never to help the New Terrans get home. New Terra’s history was too tanjed convoluted for anyone to swallow in one serving. And that left telling lies.

For years Alice had spurned Sigmund’s efforts to contact her. Here and now she needed the devious insights of his twisted, brilliant mind—and she couldn’t reach him. The Ministry of Defense said he was unavailable.

The best lies are the simplest, she decided. “We can’t afford the answer.”

“And Outsiders don’t haggle,” Tanya acknowledged as her eyes darted about. Reading cues off her own lenses? “You messaged an ARM ship. Why be coy now?”

“I’m being cautious, not coy. We would like to reconnect without drawing the attention of uninvited parties.”

“That’s understandable.” More darting of Tanya’s eyes. “How does it happen that Endurance shows up in this region of space at this time?”

“A big hyperspace ripple,” Alice said. “We came to check that out and found more than we expected.”

“I’ll bet.” Tanya pursed her lips. “How is it you knew ARM encryption?”

“We didn’t. We cracked the encryption. That only worked because the plaintext recognizably derived from English.”

“Still, it’s military-grade crypto. I guess you mastered a few tricks in your isolated little colony.”

“A few.”

“Such as impersonating humans?” Tanya gibed.

“I’m as human as you,” Alice snapped back. “I grant I can’t prove it over a comm link.”

“And seven hundred years old? Really?”

“Bringing us back to tricks we’ve learned.” The lie was again simpler and more credible than the truth.

Tanya’s eyes darted about once more. “How do you see this encounter playing out?”

“We propose to jump Endurance into an ARM formation.”

“I don’t recommend that. We’ll blow up any unfamiliar ship that tries.”

We’re not Kzinti, Alice thought. But she and Long Pass alike had left Sol system before Kzinti first burst onto the scene. How would she explain knowing about Kzinti? Was she caught already in a web of her own lies?

Text, this time from Nessus, flowed across Alice’s lenses: Time to move. Safety first. His forehoof ceased tapping a rhythm to begin clawing at the deck.

Alice shook her head marginally: no. She considered swinging the camera to reveal Nessus—only that would beg the question why New Terra didn’t ask their Puppeteer friend for the way home. Finagle! She would not have believed the story she was spinning.

Alice said, “Then give me coordinates for Earth, or to any human-settled world.”

“It’s a dangerous galaxy, as you said.” Tanya laughed mirthlessly. “If a ship of strangers doesn’t know the way, I’m not about to tell them.”

Julia typed: Plan B.

Alice nodded. “Tanya, I understand. How about a one-on-one meeting? Endurance and your ship. You set the coordinates.”

“And a swarm of ships swoops down on us the moment we appear.”

For all Tanya knew, this could be an elaborate trap. Alice wanted to cry, to scream, to break things. Had they traveled so far, had they come so close, only to fail? It was tragic.

“I have a question,” Tanya said. “Why me? Why in particular did you contact me?”

Tanya Wu was a name recovered from the message stream, because she texted a lot. Alice might as well have contacted the friend, Elena.

“Simple coincidence, most likely,” Alice said. “Wu was a common name the last time I visited Earth. Still, long after, I met a man named Louis Gridley Wu. You wouldn’t happen to know him?”

Tanya blinked. “My great-grandfather. In a way he’s why I’m here. He discovered the Ringworld.” More eye darting. “I’ll be right back, Alice.”

The video froze.

“We’re overdue to jump,” Nessus said.

“Not yet,” Julia ordered.

As Alice was beginning to doubt they would ever hear back, the image flashed. An older man with a pencil-thin mustache had taken Tanya’s place. “I am Captain Wesley Wu. My grandfather was a wanderer and an incorrigible storyteller. Agent Jordan, see if you can convince me that you knew him.

“And if you manage that, you can explain why Grandpa didn’t tell you the way home.”