Alice slipped an arm around Louis’s waist. “Our house.”
“You young people,” Danae said, grinning. “Get a room.”
“On that note,” Louis said. He raised an empty carafe and started tapping it with a spoon. “People, of two legs and three. Children of all ages. If I may have your attention.”
He succeeded only in setting off a buzz of speculation.
“Hold it down!” Alice shouted. The direct approach didn’t work much better.
Shushing everyone turned out to be a process, as curiosity brought more and more of the families crowding in. When no one else could fit into the room except near the fidgeting Puppeteers, around whom people left a respectful space, the throng finally quieted.
Louis stepped up onto the low stone hearth and offered Alice a hand up. “Everyone, we have something of a family announcement. To all our families. Alice?”
“Louis and I are expecting,” Alice said. Danae’s whoop of approval broke the silence and their families started to clap and cheer.
“Wait,” Louis shouted. “We’re not done.
“Elpis, Aurora, you and yours are always welcome in our home, but there’s another reason Alice and I invited you today. You should know that this little guy” — he patted Alice’s stomach — “is going to be named Nessus.”
“And in a few years,” Alice added, “his brother or sister will be named Baedeker.”
52
Sigmund looked about the tiny cabin, his home for the next two years or so. (“Or a stasis field will be,” the voice in his head whispered. He told the voice to shut up. He had a lot of catching up to do on the long flight to Earth.)
In the narrow corridor outside the cabin, ARM officers and sailors went by in an unending stream. Pallets of supplies for the long flight lined the walls; to pass someone coming the other way was a negotiation.
There was a sharp rap at the door frame. “There you are.”
Sigmund glanced up. “Louis, thanks for stopping by. Come in and close the door, please.”
Eyeing the close quarters dubiously, Louis complied. “Why did you want to see me? Are you reconsidering my offer? If so, you’re cutting things kind of close.”
The offer to use the Carlos Wu autodoc. “No, although I appreciate the offer. I’m not sure the twenty-year-old me would look ambassadorial. Once we reach Earth, I’ll go on boosterspice.”
Louis shrugged.
“So here’s the thing,” Sigmund said.
Louis leaned against the closed door. “Nothing good ever begins with those words. So, what? You plan to shanghai me back to Earth? Give me a lecture about how to treat Alice?”
“I think I’ll keep advice about Alice to myself.”
Louis laughed. “Yah, I guess we’ve both gotten smarter that way.”
“The thing is, I need to go over your experiences one more time.”
“Oh, finagle. You’ve heard my story. You’ve heard Alice’s. You’ve seen the ship’s logs from our Jeeves.”
“And my Jeeves has gone over the data, too,” Sigmund offered.
“Then what?”
“Something about the situation keeps nagging at me.” Sigmund took the comp from his pocket. “Protocol gamma,” he told it. Colored lights began chasing each other around its display: “For privacy.”
“I remember.” Louis sighed. “All right. One final debrief.”
“Start with your first trip to the Ringworld. Nessus knew you already, even though you didn’t remember, so I understand why he picked you. Then you and the team arrived on Hearth for a briefing from a Puppeteer avatar named Chiron?”
It was never hard getting Louis talking.
After a while, Sigmund interrupted. “Now tell me about the Fringe War around the Ringworld, and this boss protector, this Tunesmith.”
Louis did.
The suspicions had been a long time coming. No, that wasn’t exactly true. The suspicions had been there all along, because that’s who Sigmund was. But any hint of a possibility of a rationale for those suspicions? That had been a long while coming.
Sigmund interrupted again. “Do I have this right? Tunesmith reprogrammed nanites from the Carlos Wu autodoc, replicated them, and then used space probes to spread the nanites around the Ringworld. The nanites infected, rewired the … scrith, did you call it? The Ringworld foundation material?”
“The superconducting paths within the scrith,” Louis said.
“Based on what he had learned about hyperdrive studying the super-duper version aboard Long Shot. Turned the whole Ringworld into a hyperdrive.”
“A Type II hyperdrive,” Louis clarified.
“Right. Then Tunesmith launched the Ringworld into hyperspace despite being in — despite its own Jupiter-sized mass producing its own — singularity.”
“You got it.”
The disbelief at the back of Sigmund’s brain kept at him. “But the drive aboard Long Shot wasn’t anything like that. No scrith. No superconductors.”
“What the futz do you want from me?” Louis snapped. “Tunesmith worked with what he had. And protectors are smart.”
“You said you were a protector. So explain.”
“Right. I was a protector,” Louis said. “I can’t explain beyond that Tunesmith learned enough from studying the first Type II drive to make an improved version, working with the resources he had.”
“As he improved the drive aboard the Long Shot itself.” The modified version Baedeker studied for the months you were in the ’doc, becoming a breeder once more.
“Well, yes,” Louis said.
“Okay, we’ll move on. Despite the attack on Long Shot, Nessus got to the ground on one of the Fleet worlds. Presumably Baedeker, too. Because of the doubly magic hyperdrive?”
“I’ve wracked my brain trying to understand how Nessus pulled that off. I’ve got nothing, Sigmund.”
“Okay. Go on. What happened next?”
He let Louis talk, occasionally questioning a detail, only so Louis would not know what really interested him.
After a while Sigmund asked, “So Achilles and Proteus contacted you separately about Nessus. Then you heard once from Nessus himself. You never heard anything from or about Baedeker?”
“The answer is the same, no matter how many different ways you ask the question. I don’t know what happened to Baedeker.” Sadly: “Not that it matters anymore.”
“And Nessus and Baedeker were together aboard Long Shot the last time you saw them.”
“Yes, tanj it!”
“I’ll miss them, too,” Sigmund said. “You know I spent months with Baedeker during the Pak War.”
“I know,” Louis answered softly. “Are we about done here?”
A warning klaxon and a blared prelaunch announcement over the intercom settled the matter. Sigmund said, “Go live happily ever after with Alice.”
“That’s advice I can follow.” Louis offered his hand. “Good luck on Earth.”
“My granddaughter and your great-granddaughter have become good friends. I think you and I can admit it, too.” Sigmund slipped past the hand to start a quick back-slapping bear hug. “Now beat it before Koala takes off.”
THE FIRST “EVENING” AFTER TAKEOFF, the small diplomatic mission were guests of honor at the captain’s table. There were enough toasts before and during the meal that when the after-dinner rounds began Sigmund’s taste buds had ceased to care that the wine was synthed.