Juggler of Worlds (15 page)

Anger didn’t impress Sigmund. It so often was a mask. “Welcome back to Earth, Mr. Pelton. I understand you had an interesting trip.”

“True enough.” A flicker of a smile. “And that’s more information than you had any right to expect. Be happy for it, because it’s all you’ll get. You
will
cease spying upon and harassing me and my friends.”

A silver coffeepot, curls of steam wafting from its gracefully curved spout, waited on a sideboard. A Revere piece, Sigmund guessed. He poured himself a cup. “It’s my duty to investigate potential threats to the safety of Earth, Mr. Pelton.”

“I’m a patriot, Agent Ausfaller. I’ve done nothing to endanger Earth. I never will.” In Pelton’s clenched hands, the padded back of a chair creaked in protest. “Whatever you believe, I will not tolerate groundless intrusion into my affairs. I’m well aware of ARM paranoia. I refuse to be its victim. Unlike most, I have the resources to accomplish that.”

Not the least of those resources being the trust of the Secretary-General.

“Understood, Mr. Pelton.” Sigmund pulled out a chair. Sitting was less confrontational. “That said, the fate of
Slower than Infinity
concerns me. It’s not every day that a General Products hull disintegrates.”

“Has one ever?” Pelton jerked out the chair he’d been squeezing and sat. “Okay, I see what this is about. I took a trip in my yacht. On my travels, someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse for the ship. They wanted the hull, mostly; in the hinterlands, GP hulls are much in demand since the Puppeteer Exodus. I sold
Slower than Infinity
and bought something else. That ship’s hull
did
fail, teaching me a lesson. Stick with the best.”

Had anyone ID’ed the trace powders on the remains of Pelton’s ship? Not according to ARM sources on Jinx.

The mystery traces weren’t the only anomaly. Serial numbers on the wreck’s hyperdrive matched Earth shipyard records for
Slower than Infinity
. Experts said that assembling a hyperdrive inside a hull took time. Disassembly would be the same. Had someone extracted the hyperdrive from the GP hull, the ship-in-a-bottle trick in reverse? Why do it, even if they could? Or was this all, as Pelton would insist, a bookkeeping mix-up?

Sigmund no more believed that than that Shaeffer’s arrival on Earth had been innocently disguised by a spelling error.

He had a head full of questions. He yearned for at least one credible answer. “Where did the profit go from selling your ship?”

Pelton’s face flamed. “Listen carefully, Agent Ausfaller. I sold the ship off-world. I deposited the proceeds off-world. The transactions are none of Earth’s business. I will be
most
irate if my finances should be examined. You have my word: I will
vigorously
protest any such harassment to the proper authorities.”

And to an improper one: the S-G herself.

Sigmund sipped his coffee, letting Pelton fume. Angry people blurted out things they had no intention of saying.

Pelton
had
deposited a huge, so far untraceable, sum into the Third Bank of Sirius Mater. He’d hired people on Jinx, too, all working at an out-of-the-way spot in West End. That much ARM had managed to determine. It would be good to know just what Pelton had going.

“Agent Ausfaller,” Pelton said. “You have yet to justify your actions. This is your one opportunity to explain why you are persecuting me and my associates. If you cannot… well, for your sake I hope there is a reason I’ve overlooked.”

“How’s this?” Sigmund said. “I’d like to better understand your business with the Outsiders.”

Pelton blinked. “I purchased information from them.”

How had Dianna Guthrie described Pelton’s quest? “About the most unusual planet in Known Space.”

“Yes.” Pelton thrust out his jaw. “I assume that’s not a crime.”

“Causing a civil-defense panic sort of is,” Sigmund answered. Had it happened in Sol system, it
would
have been. Jinx hadn’t jailed Pelton, and that was one more bit of alien behavior. Perhaps Pelton had bought them off.

“We went someplace with a very high normal-space velocity. We bought a lift from the Outsiders.”

Carlos was right!

Kzinti. Jinxians. Puppeteers. And now the Outsiders? The gathering storm was so vast Sigmund wondered if his brain could encompass it.

But the Outsiders had once
helped
mankind. Hyperdrive was their technology. Had the Outsiders not happened upon a human ship near We Made It, back during the First Man-Kzin War, and sold a hyperspace shunt, the ratcats would have won. Earth itself might now be a slave world to the Kzinti Patriarchy.

The Outsiders were beyond human scale, ancient, unknowable. Maybe he failed to grasp their grand plan. Or maybe that next-to-elder race, the
Puppeteers,
did
understand the Outsiders. Had Puppeteers manipulated the Outsiders for General Products’ own nefarious purposes?

Sigmund suspected much but knew very little. In one interpretation, a GP hull had dissolved. The evidence, all under cover, remained on Jinx. By Pelton’s own admission, the Outsiders were involved.

Pelton and Shaeffer might understand all of this—but Pelton was untouchable, and he’d taken Shaeffer under his wing.

The possibilities were so worrisome Sigmund almost overlooked blurt number one: a pronoun change.
We
. “You and Beowulf Shaeffer.”

“Yes.” Pelton walked around the table and poured himself coffee. The delicate china cup looked wrong in his massive hand. “Bey had traded before with Outsiders, back when he worked for Nakamura Lines.”

“Did you leave him on Jinx?”

Pelton shook his head. “He returned to Earth with me. We’re good friends, Agent Ausfaller. More than that, he saved my life on our adventure.”

“I’d like to hear that story.”

“I’m sure you would.” Pelton drained his cup and set it down. “Ausfaller, that’s as much of the tale as I mean to share anytime soon. It’s innocent. There’s no reason for ARM interest. There’s no reason to interrogate or spy on me.

“Not me, not my friends, not my associates. There will be no further interest in Dianna Guthrie, or Beowulf Shaeffer, or Sharrol Janss, or Don Cramer, or
anyone
close to me.”

Don Cramer? Who was he? Sigmund made a mental note to find out. And Pelton had said
further
interest. Sigmund had no one watching this Cramer. Who else might be watching?

Pelton was on a roll. “Inconvenience any of us again, Ausfaller, and you’d better have proof of something wrong. Do you understand?”

“I completely understand, Mr. Pelton.” Sigmund stood and offered his hand. It helped him to avoid rubbing the remembered wound in his gut. An Undersecretary-General once sold him out to the Trojan Mafia. It wasn’t the type of experience anyone forgot.

What Sigmund truly understood was that no official, however lofty her rank, was beyond suspicion.

“We got a runner,” Andrea hissed over the radio. She was hidden in the woods north of the isolated clearing. “Make it two. Man and a woman.”

Of course, a man and a woman. That’s how you made a baby. “Which way?” Sigmund asked.

“West,” Andrea said. “Toward you.”

Sigmund saw them now, fear etched on their faces. The mother waddled more than ran, unmistakably pregnant. The presumed father half-supported, half-dragged her. They staggered away from the tumbledown cabin, little more than a shed, really, toward the distant trees.

Floaters bringing the local constabulary were five minutes away.
Local
was a relative term in the Alaskan wilderness. The runners would be long gone when the floaters arrived. The couple would be hard to spot in the woods.

Sigmund saw no sign of the reported laser hunting rifles that had the three ARMs waiting for backup. “Futz,” he muttered under his breath. This wasn’t why he had become an ARM. Nor Feather—who almost certainly had revealed herself to the would-be parents. Feather was east of the cabin; if the preggers had seen only her, they’d naturally run west.

Eighteen billion were way too many. It was the law. It was his job. Without enforcement, everyone would be off making babies.

Futz.

Sigmund drew his handgun. It carried only mercy darts, slivers of crystallized anesthetic—which mattered not at all. These two would be spare parts in the organ banks, soon enough.

This was
not
why, a year earlier, when Max Addeo disbanded the Puppeteer task force, Sigmund had asked for his core team to be reassigned to the Alaska ARM district.

“WALK WITH ME,” Max Addeo said. He looked eerily mottled through the graphic that hung over Sigmund’s desk.

“What can I do for you, Max?” Sigmund asked.

“Walk with me,” Addeo repeated.

“All right.” Sigmund closed the file he had been studying; the holo vanished. He followed his boss to a nearby transfer booth. They emerged onto the front porch of an old home surrounded by a white horse fence. The sun beat down from a cloudless sky. Rolling, grassy hills stretched as far as the eye could see. Hikers dotted the trail that led up to a nearby ridge.

“Where are we, Max?”

“Sky Meadows.” Addeo pointed to low mountains in the distance. “That’s the Blue Ridge. Shall we walk?”

They walked, Sigmund thinking this was too much of a buildup for good news.

“I’m being promoted,” Addeo finally said. “Deputy Undersecretary General for Security Affairs. The official announcement comes out tomorrow.”

“Congratulations.” Sigmund kept his eyes on the dirt path. “Why tell me first?” And why tell me here? What’s the bad news?

“I’m closing down the Puppeteer task force.”

Sigmund grabbed his boss’s sleeve. “Why? When?”

Hikers turned and stared. “It’s all right, folks,” Addeo said, brushing off Sigmund’s hand. He waited for people to walk away.
“That’s
why, Sigmund. I imagined you’d respond like this.”

“No, futz it! Why terminate the task force?”

“The thing is, Sigmund, it’s a Puppeteer task force, only there are no Puppeteers. There haven’t been in two years. Even Nessus is long gone.”

“You have no reason to think so,” Sigmund argued.

“And
you
don’t know he’s still here! When did you last see or hear from Nessus? More than a year ago, as I recall.”

Sigmund’s mind raced. “The promotion is
for
shutting down the investigation, isn’t it? Pelton always had pull at the UN. Now he’s won.”

“You’re right in a way,” Addeo snapped. “A case can be made the shutdown is because of Pelton—because
you
are obsessed with him. Just like you’re obsessed with Beowulf Shaeffer. You forgot this was a Puppeteer task force.”

How could he forget? Sigmund said, “Don’t you see? They’re all in it together! Shaeffer gave the Puppeteers their excuse to abandon and betray Known Space. Pelton befriended Shaeffer, making it impossible to investigate Shaeffer.”

Addeo glanced up at a passing shadow. Far above, a hawk circled, effortlessly
climbing a thermal. The sight seemed to calm Addeo. Sadly, he shook his head. “How is Shaeffer part of a Puppeteer plot, Sigmund? General Products hired Beowulf Shaeffer to go to the core because they had used him before.
You
selected Shaeffer back on We Made It.”

Sigmund said nothing.

“Finally,” Addeo said. “You recognize reality. Let it go, Sigmund.”

That Addeo could not be swayed—that was reality. The noninvolvement of the Puppeteers? That was a different matter entirely.

Pelton was a
very
rich man. Much of his money was off-world, out-system, and very difficult to trace. Impossible, so far, when Sigmund dare not be caught attempting to trace it.

What if Shaeffer were chosen
for
me? Then so much made sense!

Pelton’s business interests on Jinx awarded grants to the Institute of Knowledge. The institute initiated the BVS-1 mission. If Pelton then used his wealth to ruin Nakamura Lines, then
Pelton
had guided Sigmund’s choice on We Made It toward Shaeffer.

General Products. Pelton. Jinx. Who were the real puppeteers here? And now—

“Sigmund,” Addeo said with an edge to his voice. “Stop whatever paranoid fantasy you’re concocting to rationalize my promotion.”