Juggler of Worlds (55 page)

She jutted her chin just enough to suggest pointing at herself and her helplessness. “Too powerful?”

“A few years ago, your people coerced the Concordance. Now, somehow, you have intimidated even the Outsiders. Whatever the course you choose, New Terra will be near the Fleet for a long time. You are far too dangerous to have as neighbors.”

She breathed deeply for a while, gathering her strength. “But the Hindmost
ordered you back to Hearth. He ordered that we be left alone. You told me so yourself.”

“All the more proof that you are too dangerous. Even the Hindmost has fallen sway to Outsiders, compelled to do your bidding. I
will
destroy you while I can.”

“Defy the Hindmost and you become an outcast.” She spat on the deck.
“Herdless.”

Achilles twitched. The insult had teeth. She knew something of Citizen ways.

No matter. In time, the herd would see the wisdom of his actions.

The probes continued their breakneck plunge. “Accelerating at thirty gravities, the probes will impact in another seventeen minutes. By then, they will be traveling about 217 miles per second.

“It will be instructive to observe how a planetary drive shuts down.”

BAEDEKER DID NOT KNOW how long he had stood, paralyzed, just outside the bridge. This was madness.

The energy from the collisions alone would be stupendous. The energies that might be unleashed by a wrecked planetary drive—those were beyond imagining.

The death of everyone on New Terra and on this ship? That he had no difficulty at all imagining. And he did not think the catastrophe would confine itself to the planet’s surface.

He wanted, more than anything, to run. To hide. Neither running nor hiding could possibly save him.

Disaster
would
happen … unless
he
stopped it.

WITH GROWING EXCITEMENT, Achilles tracked the probes’ descent. His prisoner raged. She begged. She finally fell silent.

“Three minutes to impact,” he told her.

Nothing.

“Two minutes to impact.”

“Stop it,” she shouted. “Stop it now. You win. I surrender the planet to you.”

Would she? Could it possibly work this time, or was it another ruse? There were no notes, no chords, no symphonies, for the hunger he felt. To rule a world!

But the Outsiders demanded its independence. Nike would never let
him rule here. The human was merely stalling until help could arrive from the Fleet.

“Laser illuminating the drive facility.” He spoke over her scream of protest. “Probes locked on target. Ship’s instruments on and recording. Ninety seconds to impact.”

EDGING
FORWARD
, onto the bridge, was the hardest thing Baedeker had ever done. That way lay madness and death.

Could any argument prevail? Achilles already had defied the Hindmost.

Baedeker stood there, numb, the final seconds dribbling away. Could any action at this late moment even stop the cataclysm?

Somehow Baedeker managed two steps forward. “Achilles. You must not do this! I cannot predict the consequences. No one can. You endanger even the Fleet. You endanger the life of every Citizen!”

Achilles swiveled one head around. The other remained fixed on his console. “I
will
do this, and I do so
for
the Fleet. Our former servants have somehow manipulated even the Outsiders. We must destroy the New Terrans while we are able.

“So be thankful you are here to observe the drive shutdown. Watch and learn.” The head that tracked Baedeker turned momentarily to check a timer. “Forty-five seconds.”

The restraint field arched the human prisoner around a crash couch. It must be excruciating. She said,
“You
must stop Achilles. He’s insane.”

“Thirty seconds.”

Imminent death. An implacable stare. The entire herd in danger. The impossibility of flight. What could he do?

“Twenty seconds.”

Baedeker spun on his front hooves as though to flee the bridge. He didn’t.

Heads turned backward, spaced far apart for perspective, Baedeker lashed out with his massive hind leg. Just before impact, he locked the hip and knee. The jolt up his leg snapped his jaws shut and rattled his teeth.

All his weight struck Achilles on the cranial dome. Baedeker’s hoof sank into the mane, through the mane, into … bone fragments.

Achilles collapsed like a popped balloon.

“Turn off the laser. Now!” the woman shouted.

Baedeker teetered in a fog. Nothing could stop the probes. The projectiles were too close to stop. Too close to miss. Even an ocean impact—if he redirected the beam and the probes could veer that far off their present course—would cause massive tidal waves.

“Trust me! Do it!”

The timer showed 15 seconds. There was no time to think! Baedeker cut the laser beam.

Ten seconds to impact. Five.

The main display flashed impossibly bright. His eyes snapped shut, but even the afterimage was blinding. Tears streamed down his faces and necks.

But he was alive!

Blinking through the pain and tears, Baedeker opened his eyes. Safety interlocks had cut out the bridge’s main viewer. He reached over Achilles to release the human from her restraints.

She sat up, groaning. “Show me,” she whispered.

Baedeker reset the external optical sensors and the main bridge holo—and there was New Terra! It looked … untouched. And yet something was different.

In the skies over Atlantis, two suns were gone.

The suns hot on his back, his mane a sweat-sodden, bedraggled mess, Baedeker crouched over his work. He painstakingly untangled weed stalks from redmelon vines. When the whole row was freed, he picked up a small trowel. Working slowly—it was an edged tool in his mouth!—he dug out the weeds, one by one.

Four more rows of redmelon remained. After that, nine rows of rebicci. Then a thick patch of steppe grass.

Once he had craved the attentions of the elite. For rehabilitation. For vindication. Then he wanted only anonymity and tranquility.

And now?

Now, for as long as the humans would have him, Baedeker wanted only to putter here in his garden.

A THOUSAND DANCERS, fleet-footed and lithe, glided about the stage. Sometimes they moved without a sound. Sometimes every hoof struck the floor in the same instant, like a clap of thunder. When they sang, it was in voices so pure and poignant that hearts could break. Rhythm and movement and melody became one. Time slowed.

And beyond the incomparable glories of the Grand Ballet, Nessus thought, I am here as Nike’s guest.

Nessus leaned closer. Nike leaned closer, still. They touched, and somehow their necks were twined. And so they remained until intermission….

Nike sighed. “In time, we’ll have more scouts.”

And New Terra would once more have ships of its own. And I won’t be sent, yet again, far from Hearth and herd and … you. “I know,” Nessus said.

And yet.

Words sung in anger could not be unsung. Trust lost was not easily rebuilt. Rejection still hurt. Lies and deceptions hung between them,
making the past off-limits and obscuring the future. Yes, the Hindmost needed him. What did
Nike
feel?

What did he feel?

They sat with their necks still twined, in safely ambiguous silence, until the ballet resumed and conversation became impossible.

THE HEAP OF ONION grew as Sigmund chopped. He swept it aside with the blade of his utility knife and went to work on the green pepper. He started the butter melting as he diced the last of the ham. Someday he’d get
just
the right proportions for the perfect Denver omelet.

And maybe he
wouldn’t
put it into a synthesizer. When you had the time for it, cooking was satisfying.

A Brandenburg Concerto played softly in the background. The Puppeteers had purged Beethoven, Richard Strauss, and McWhorten—all too martial?—but Bach and Mozart remained.

Bach. New Terra safe. True friends: Kirsten and Eric, Sabrina, Omar, Sven….

If only.

Sigmund did not dare let his thoughts go down that path.

The butter started to brown, and he began sautéing the chopped ingredients. There was a soft knock on the door. A woman’s voice, indistinct.

Probably Kirsten. She had been at loose ends since
Aegis
last set off. Once Eric and Nessus returned from their joint scouting expedition, Sigmund hoped, Kirsten and Eric would patch things up. Eric would be a fool to drive her away.

“Who’s there?” Sigmund answered.

“Faithful Penelope.”

Sven had finally impressed upon Sigmund the importance here of color. He checked his pants and shirt. Charcoal gray. Passionless, hiding-from-the-world gray. “I’ll be right there.” As the onions charred, he hurriedly set the gray much paler and the collar and placket bright blue. Was the effect too distant? Too forward? He crossed the apartment and opened the door.

Penelope, clad head to toe in hot pink, waited outside.

His jaw dropped.

“The great hero has returned, back from an epic journey across a sea of stars.” She smiled. “Only somehow he forgot his last stop. Would it be all right if
I
come the last few feet?”

Life, home, and love—all lost. Rebirth, a new home, and new love. The most beautiful music ever written swelling in the background.

Sigmund found his voice at last. “Not all right, exactly. That would be perfection.”

THE COMBINE FLOATED effortlessly above the field of grain. The hum of the motor filled the cab. Behind the combine floated a small trailer, into which clusters of tiny orange seeds flowed in an endless stream. The harvest disappeared instantly, teleported to a distant storage bin.

Endless harvesting. Endless fields. Endless droning. Endless menial labor. And, like the constantly emptying trailer, nothing to show for it.

Achilles stared ahead at the setting suns. Like the fields and the droning, his thoughts never varied. Power over a world like this had almost been in his jaws. He did not know exactly how, only that he had been betrayed. By Nessus—again—certainly. By perfidious humans. By Baedeker.

Day after day, Achilles struggled to remember. How had things gone wrong? What clues had he overlooked? Would he ever know, or were those memories forever gone?

He had returned to Hearth, ignominiously, in an autodoc. The bone of his dome had knit. His mane grew back, lustrous and full. The injured lobe of his brain regenerated. But as for the holes in his memory …

Some things he
did
remember. The splendor that was life on Hearth. The beauty of Brides. The incredible instant in which a moon became neutronium. The adulation of acolytes.

That Baedeker once invented
his
way out of exile.

So shall I, Achilles thought. When that day comes, someone owes me a world—

And I intend to claim it.

LARRY NIVEN has been a published writer since 1964. He has written science fiction, fantasy, long and short fiction, nonfiction, comic books, and stranger stuff. His books, including many collaborations, number somewhere around sixty. He lives in Chatsworth, California, with Marilyn, his wife of thirty-nine years.

EDWARD M. LERNER has degrees in physics and computer science, a background that kept him mostly out of trouble until he began writing SF full-time. His books include
Probe, Moonstruck
, and the collection
Creative Destruction. Fleet of Worlds
was his first collaboration with Larry. Ed lives in Virginia with Ruth, his wife of a mere thirty-seven years.