30

“And we’re here,” Nessus sang. He dropped Long Shot from hyperspace. With a deft touch, he fired the fusion thrusters just enough to produce a slow drift toward their destination.

“Home,” Baedeker sighed. He stood in the bridge’s hatchway, gazing at five clustered specks centered in the main view port. A light-hour distant, the Fleet of Worlds was visible using only modest magnification. “It is beautiful.”

He had believed himself trapped forever on the Ringworld. To see Hearth again was … melody failed him.

Nessus reached out, twining a neck with one of Baedeker’s. “I feel the same.”

Baedeker was still savoring the moment when the hyperwave set chirped.

“We are being hailed,” Voice sang.

“Trade places,” Baedeker said as the comm console buzzed again. He angled the camera so that it only saw him. “Voice, do not speak on this bridge but open the link. Translate for Louis and Alice,” who waited aboard Endurance.

“This is Space Traffic Control,” businesslike voices sang.

“This is Concordance vessel Homebound,” Baedeker sang back. The ship’s real identity was only suitable for discussion with Ol’t’ro. After some back-and-forth with Minerva, they had found a plausible-sounding ship’s name not in current use.

“I do not have any Homebound in my active database, and you don’t seem to have a transponder.”

“This is an old ship,” Baedeker sang. And Kzinti had removed the Concordance STC transponder. “It does not surprise me that we are no longer in your database.”

New voices came: oddly familiar, stronger and firmer than the traffic controller who had greeted Long Shot’s emergence. “This is Hearth Planetary Defense. Homebound, or whoever you are, keep your distance until we have arranged an inspection.”

“Understood,” Baedeker sang. Long Shot had a good match to the Fleet’s velocity; their slow inward drift should not seem threatening. “First, however, I have pressing business to discuss with”—he almost slipped up and asked for Ol’t’ro—“the Minister of Science.”

“I will inquire whether Minister Chiron is available.”

“Thank you,” Baedeker sang.

His instruments revealed a seething froth of activity: ships entering and leaving hyperspace; hyperwave chatter; STC transponder beeps; hyperwave-radar pings. The levels far exceeded anything that he could remember. Had activities in and among the alien diplomatic missions offset grain-ship traffic lost when New Terra broke off relations?

To his left, an auxiliary display flashed. Alice here. Most hyperspace-related turbulence is apt to be from defensive drones. Ol’t’ro protected his colony world this way, back in the Gw’oth War.

Baedeker saw it, too: tiny spacecraft in concentric spheres centered on the Fleet. His display flickered hypnotically as probes left and returned in a frenzy of hyperspace micro-jumps. Many of the tiny craft carried high normal-space velocities relative to the Fleet, with varying inclinations to the Fleet’s direction of travel. Other probes held station. Some probes jumped around the Fleet; others darted through the singularity in normal space. As he watched, a stationary probe zipped off and another braked to a halt in the first one’s vacated position.

Kinetic ship killers, ready to pounce …

He struggled to take in even a small fraction of it. No Citizen mind could manage it. Merely by observing, he would have guessed that an AI controlled it.

“Homebound,” familiar voices called, “this is Chiron. With whom am I singing?”

The rightful Hindmost, Baedeker thought, but that was not a refrain suitable for open broadcast. “An old acquaintance coming home,” he sang. “I request a secure channel.”

“I know your voices,” Chiron sang. “Your ship, too. Its emergence ripple is distinctive. Do you have Concordance encryption software?”

“Yes.” Baedeker offered the same vague hints about planetary-drive research as he had given Minerva, now more than thirty light-years distant. “The project name can be our key.”

Secure link. Full video, Voice wrote.

An image opened, showing a spotlessly white, finely coiffed Citizen. “It has been a long time, Baedeker.”

“It has.” Trapped on the Ringworld, Baedeker had rehearsed this moment over and over. The details changed—he had had to guess what technology he might find to offer—but always he had been confident, had sung firmly. Why was he tuneless now?

Because this exchange mattered. This time he did not get to sing both sides of the confrontation.

“It has,” Baedeker repeated, louder this time. “I was on a quest. It took longer than I had expected.”

“And did you find the Holy Grail?”

Baedeker did not catch the reference, but the gist was clear enough. “Not what I first expected, but yes.” He paused. “I found something I think you will find interesting.”

“I find many things interesting.”

From the corridor, where Nessus waited: a delicate trill of encouragement. Baedeker took hearts from the tune. “This is interesting enough to be worth worlds.”

*   *   *

A WORKING THEORY OF HYPERSPACE.

Ol’t’ro considered:

That they had sought, and failed, for more than four lifetimes to formulate such a theory.

That the hyperspace emergence pattern from Baedeker’s ship showed it had a Type II hyperdrive. Almost certainly, it was the long-absent Long Shot.

That Long Shot was last seen near the now-vanished Ringworld.

That the Ringworld escaping to hyperspace defied everything they understood about hyperdrive: the artifact should have been too massive, its own singularity.

That someone knew more about hyperdrive technology than they did.

That Long Shot was last seen under Kzinti control.

That Baedeker unaided could never have seized a ship from Kzinti. Who had helped?

That Citizens were consummate bluffers. Baedeker might have nothing to trade but Long Shot, the ship that had for so long taunted them.

As they pondered, Long Shot flashed through hyperspace. From its original point of emergence, near the brink of the Fleet’s singularity, the ship traveled in seconds to the far reaches of Proteus’ defensive array. Waiting only until hyperwave radar tagged it there, Long Shot jumped back to where it had first appeared.

The ship vanished again, to emerge scant light-seconds from where it had started—having traveled at standard hyperdrive speed. It jumped a third time, now at Type II speed, and a fourth, once more at standard.

In all the years Ol’t’ro had studied Long Shot, it had never had a Type I mode.

“Do I have your attention?” Baedeker asked.

“Perhaps,” they had Chiron sing back.

Within the meld, a cacophony had erupted. We did not come here for our amusement. Projecting together, a cabal of rebellious units evoked poignant memories of the abyssal depths of Jm’ho; Ol’t’ro could almost taste the salt and hydrogen sulfide tangs of ocean trenches. If we leave the Fleet, we cease to protect Jm’ho, and Kl’mo, and the worlds settled thereafter.

No! another faction rebutted. Technology is how we can best protect our worlds.

Then a third: Let the Kzinti control here.

And again the first submeld: Suppose that comes to pass. Who then will restrain the Kzinti?

While yet others demanded: What here is certain? Only a new toy for you. That a physics theory will benefit our people is pure speculation.

Amid the mind storm, Ol’t’ro had a crisis of doubt. Truthfully, they had not seized control of the Fleet for their own intellectual stimulation. But after such long sacrifice, were they not entitled to reward themselves?

Suppose we agree upon a trade. How can we leave the Fleet? an ancient engram challenged. The moment we relinquish the planetary drive, we become vulnerable. Er’o, that ethereal, long-departed thought pattern seemed to be. In any event, one who remembered Sigmund Ausfaller and his manner of thinking.

Citizens keep their promises, another argued. Who? This time Ol’t’ro did not even have a guess. The echo of a remnant of a long-gone unit came too faintly to identify.

“Most do,” Ol’t’ro qualified.

Every day we are farther from the homes we once acted to protect, added Cd’o. Has not our reason for coming here, for ruling the Fleet of Worlds, lost all relevance?

“Enough!” Ol’t’ro roared, shocking the inner voices into submission. “We are one!”

But at the same time, they were sixteen, and many, many more. The clamor erupted anew.

Perhaps there was a reason no Gw’otesht had ever stayed together for this long.…

Baedeker was back. “I am confident that you recognized an improvement to our ship,” the Citizen sang. “I offer everything I have learned about hyperdrive and Long Shot itself. In exchange you are to release the Fleet of Worlds unharmed and leave forever. Are we agreed?”

Ol’t’ro considered:

That answers to puzzles so long unsolved would be welcome indeed.

That to lay down the burden of a trillion Citizens would be bliss.

That they would find unbearable never to know what Baedeker had learned.

That should Baedeker return to Hearth with the knowledge that he claimed, the Gw’oth worlds they had sacrificed lifetimes to protect would always be within the reach of the Concordance.

That Achilles could be trusted—never to honor a bargain he could manage to break, nor to cease lusting for power.

That their takeover of the Fleet had become necessary when the Concordance would not, or could not, control Achilles.

That though Achilles deserved death five-squared times over, and they could command it, his death would assure nothing. Where one Achilles had arisen, so might others.

“We decline your offer,” they had Chiron sing to Baedeker. “We make you a counterproposal you would be foolish to refuse.”