What would my old friend think of Voice? Baedeker wondered. But the circumstances were not the same. Voice was a companion, little more. To surround Hearth and herd with weapons under the control of an AI?
“Let me guess,” Nessus sang. “Achilles built Proteus. In the process, he has made himself indispensable.”
“As you sing, Nessus.” Minerva’s heads sagged lower. “Who else is that crazy?”
“Or ambitious?” Nessus added.
“As you sing,” Minerva repeated.
Baedeker was still struggling with the implications when Minerva intoned meekly, “There is more, Hindmost.”
What more could there be? How much worse could the situation get? “Go on.”
“Ol’t’ro is old,” Minerva sang. “Their youngest members are of the eleventh and twelfth generations. No Gw’otesht has ever clung together this long. They are … not quite right.”
“How can you know that?” Baedeker demanded.
“One of my crew, Hindmost. For a time, Tf’o was unwillingly a part of the meld. He was replaced.” Minerva trembled. “This far from home, even a Gw’o sometimes needs companionship.”
As for a long while, I had only Voice, Baedeker thought. For much of their “adventure,” Louis had set his own course, ranging far across the Ringworld. To reunite with Nessus after so many years —
Text pulsed on a console. A warning from Voice. All Kzinti ships have jumped to hyperspace.
Where were they going?
24
Come at once, the Norquist-Ng summons read.
“Not much for small talk,” Sigmund muttered. He didn’t expect specifics, but please would have been a nice touch. On my way, he texted back.
But first …
This jumbled den was his favorite room of the house. He had been standing at the clear wall, admiring the view, when the message came. Yucca plants and the mesquite hedge bowed beneath the wind. The desert, starkly beautiful, stretched to the distant rugged mountains.
He turned away from the vista to sit at his desk. Rummaging in a side drawer, he retrieved a comb, a pocket pack of tissues, and breath mints. In the process he sprang the false back to palm the earbud long hidden in the desk.
He didn’t trust Norquist-Ng. That the weasel would have him under surveillance was the least of it. With a fingertip pressed deep into his ear, pretending to dig at wax, Sigmund set the bug into place. It would hear and record everything he heard.
Assuming that it worked. The bug had lain hidden in the drawer for a long time. He tapped a test rhythm on the desk.
To the ear with the bug, Jeeves sent the double-click that meant, Loud and clear.
“Jeeves, I will be at the Ministry.” Where, the second I enter the situation room wearing a bug, I become a felon. “Keep an eye on things here.”
“Very good, sir.”
Sigmund reprogrammed pants and shirt from his customary black — by local standards, misanthropic — to more sociable, if still reserved, shades of gray. The muted colors would help him fit in at a time he really didn’t want to call attention to himself.
Then he strode out his back door, flicking from the patio to the security lobby of the New Terran Defense Forces headquarters.
“I HAVE GOOD NEWS,” Julia reported. “No, make that excellent news.”
Sigmund spared a quick glance around the situation room. He saw hope and relief — and some shifty eyes. Excellent meant different things to different people.
Had Julia and Alice made contact with an ARM ship? Julia was larger than life in the situation room’s main display, but still Sigmund leaned closer to the table and her image.
“Continue, Captain,” Minister Norquist-Ng said. “I take it you are prepared to return home?”
“Soon, sir,” she said, “but our news is far more consequential. We were contacted by an ARM vessel, the Koala. We need not return alone.”
Cheers rang out, only to choke off as Norquist-Ng smacked the table with a fist. “Captain, you are not to — ”
“It gets better.” The minister’s objections had yet to reach Endurance, where the bridge camera pivoted toward Alice’s voice. Sigmund couldn’t remember seeing such a big grin on her. “We know the way to Earth. From this location, it’s about two hundred light-years, mostly to galactic south. From New Terra, a bit over two ten. Jeeves? Show them.”
Alice disappeared, a graphic taking her place: a star field, bearings on pulsars, and one star set to blinking.
Sigmund had sought this information for half his life — ever since Nessus had forever changed his life. Instead of a flash of recognition, Sigmund felt … nothing. Those memories weren’t just buried. They were gone.
In an instant, so was the map.
“Graphic off,” Norquist-Ng barked. The last view of Alice replaced the map. “Jeeves, you will show that image to no one except by my authorization. I’ll brief the governor. No one is to speak a word about this development outside this room.”
“Understood, sir,” the local Jeeves said.
The life-altering news was recorded in Sigmund’s earbud, together with the ordering of the cover-up. But Earth’s coordinates? Vanished!
If only he had worn spy lenses, too — but he had not dared. Light glinting off the lenses could have given him away. And each extra bug would have drawn a trickle more power from the power transmitters recessed into the walls, a drain that might have been detected.
While Sigmund second-guessed himself, Norquist-Ng’s orders reached Endurance. “I don’t understand,” Alice said. “Don’t we want to find our roots?”
“That will be quite enough, Ms. Jordan.” The minister stood to scowl into the camera. “Captain, you are to return home at once. You will not reveal New Terra’s location, nor invite foreign vessels to accompany you. If your new acquaintances have told the truth, we can visit Earth at a time of our choosing. If not, we wouldn’t want them to know where we live.”
Sigmund took a deep breath. Suppose it took a little while to get out the word Earth had been found. Maybe that would be all right. The minister was within his rights choosing to bring such unexpected developments to the governor.
Logic be damned, Norquist-Ng was stalling. Of that, Sigmund had no doubt. One way or another, he promised himself, the word would get out.
But where was Nessus? Sigmund pictured him locked inside his cabin, furled into a ball — catatonic with dread of ARM retribution for ancient Puppeteer crimes and the founding of New Terra. “How is our friend coping with events?”
“Nessus doesn’t know,” Alice said. “The Concordance has observer ships here, too. He had left us to visit an old friend before Koala hailed us.”
Her posture had become tense, Sigmund noticed. She’s not telling us something.
Norquist-Ng said, “Captain, you have your orders. If Nessus isn’t prepared to leave, he can stay with his friend.”
“We’re not quite done refueling,” Julia said. “Hopping around between snowballs for safety slowed down the process, and we also had a minor equipment malfunction. About two days and I believe we’ll be ready.”
Alice seemed to relax.
Something would happen in two days. Sigmund wondered what, knowing Alice well enough not to fish for hints. Nor could he ask in private: his coerced source had been shipped off-world for routine patrol duty. Until he uncovered someone else in the comm center with a hand in the cookie jar …