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Authors: Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner

Juggler of Worlds

TOR BOOKS BY LARRY NIVEN
AND EDWARD M. LERNER

Fleet of Worlds

Juggler of Worlds

TOR BOOKS BY LARRY NIVEN

N-Space

Playgrounds of the Mind

Destiny’s Road

Rainbow Mars

Scatterbrain

The Draco Tavern

Ringworld’s Children

WITH STEVEN BARNES

Achilles’ Choice

The Descent of Anansi

Saturn’s Race

WITH JERRY POURNELLE AND STEVEN BARNES

The Legacy of Heorot

Beowulf’s Children

WITH BRENDA COOPER

Building Harlequin’s Moon

TOR BOOKS BY EDWARD M. LERNER

Fools’ Experiments

Larry Niven
AND
Edward M. Lerner

TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES, LLC
New York

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in
this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

JUGGLER OF WORLDS

Copyright © 2008 by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Niven, Larry.
       Juggler of worlds / Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner.—1st ed.
           p. cm.
      “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
        ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1826-8
        ISBN-10: 0-7653-1826-1
        1. Government investigators—Fiction. 2. Conspiracy—Fiction. I. Lerner,
     Edward M. II. Title.
     PS3564.I9J84 2008
     813’.54—dc22

2008022041

First Edition: September 2008

Printed in the United States of America

0  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

To the readers who work on a book long after it’s closed,
and really get their money’s worth: Thanks for the help
.

CONTENTS

Dramatis Personae

THEY

A MISSION OF GRAVITY

INTO THIN SPACE

MOST UNUSUAL

EYE OF THE STORM

VINDICATED

BESIEGED

BECALMED

BETRAYED

THE OUTSIDERS

REVELATIONS

REDEMPTION

EPILOGUE

DRAMATIS PERSONAE
KNOWN-SPACE HUMANS
*
ROLE
Max Addeo
Amalgamated Regional Militia (ARM) exec, later high-ranking United Nations (UN) official
Sigmund Ausfaller
ARM agent
Fiona (“Feather”) Filip
ARM agent
Julian Forward
Physicist (native of Jinx, in the Sirius system)
Andrea Girard
ARM agent
Dianna Guthrie Sharrol Janss
Girlfriend of Gregory Pelton
Sharrol Janss
Wife (at separate times) to Beowulf Shaeffer and Carlos Wu
Sangeeta Kudrin
High-ranking UN official
Calista Melenkamp
Secretary- General of the UN
Anne-Marie Papandreou
Crew of
Court Jester;
wife of Jason Papandreou (native of Wunderland, in the Alpha Centauri system)
Jason Papandreou
Owner-pilot
of Court Jester
(a ship chartered by Nessus)
Gregory Pelton Beowulf Shaeffer
Wealthy industrialist
Beowulf Shaeffer
Starship pilot and xenophile (native of We Made It, in the Procyon system)
Ander Smittarasheed
Freelance writer; sometimes agent of Sigmund Ausfaller
Carlos Wu
Physicist and all-around genius
OTHER HUMANS
ROLE
Sabrina Gomez-Vanderhoff
Governor of Nature Preserve 4 (NP4)/ New Terra
Sven Hebert-Draskovics
NP4 archivist
*
Eric Huang-Mbeke
Member of NP4’s independence movement; engineer
Penelope Mitchell-Draskovics
Sven’s cousin; government agronomist
Kirsten Quinn-Kovacs
Member of NP4’s independence movement; navigator and a math whiz
Omar Tanaka-Singh
Member of NP4’s independence movement
KZINTI
*
Chuft-Captain
Chuft-Captain
Commanding officer of the spy ship
Traitor’s Claw;has earned a partial name
Maintainer-of-Equipment
Renegade citizen of the colony world Spearpoint
Slaverstudent
Crewman on Traitor’s Claw
Telepath
Crewman on Traitor’s Claw
PUPPETEERS Achilles
ROLE
Achilles
Concordance scout (first known to Ausfaller asAdonis)
Baedeker
Engineer at General Products Corporation
Nessus
Concordance scout
Nike
Leader of “Permanent Emergency” faction of the Experimentalist party / later, Hindmost
Vesta
Nike’s aide

*
Earth resident, unless otherwise noted.

*
Unless otherwise noted, a low-status individual yet to earn a name
.

Sigmund Ausfaller woke up shivering, prone on a cold floor. His head pounded. Tape bound his wrists and ankles to plasteel chains.

He had always known it would end horribly. Only the when, where, how, why, and by whom of it all had eluded him.

That fog was beginning to lift.

How had he gotten here, wherever
here
was? As though from a great distance, Sigmund watched himself quest for recent memories. Why was it such a struggle?

He remembered the pedestrian concourse of an open-air mall, shoppers streaming. They wore every color of the rainbow, clothing and hair and skin, in every conceivable combination and pattern. Overhead, fluffy clouds scudded across a clear blue sky. The sun was warm on his face. Work, for once, had been laid aside. He’d been content.

Happiness is the sworn enemy of vigilance. How could he have been so careless?

Sigmund forced open his eyes. He was in a nearly featureless room. Its walls, floor, and ceiling were resilient plastic. Light came from one wall. I could be anywhere, Sigmund thought—and then two details grabbed his attention.

The room wasn’t quite a box. The glowing wall had a bit of a curve to it.

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