Elena was a line officer, however junior, and Canberra an actual warship. Tanya, in her heart of hearts, admitted to a twinge of envy. She had volunteered repeatedly and insistently for reassignment. Nothing interesting, in any military sense, would ever happen around the Fleet. No matter that the Puppeteers were cowards — or, perhaps, because they were — an intimidating defensive array of sensors and robotic craft protected their worlds.
Which was too tanj bad! The Puppeteers had much for which to answer.
A Puppeteer scout had bared the Concordance’s sordid history of interspecies meddling. (Why? Tanya did not begin to understand. The retired admirals among the Academy faculty did not pretend to understand, either.) And this scout, Nessus, had revealed those secrets — and the long-hidden location of the Puppeteer worlds, the theretofore unimaginable Fleet of Worlds — and the existence and location of the yet more inconceivable Ringworld — to, of all improbable people, her great-grandfather! Louis Wu had vanished from Human Space before Tanya was born. Dad scarcely remembered the man.
After six interstellar wars and their megadeaths, human governments and the Kzinti Patriarchy had learned to coexist — the uneasy peace of four centuries that had given way in this system to bloody skirmishes. A peace whose prospects further crumbled by the nanosecond.
Wherever they were, if they still were, did Nessus and Louis comprehend the mess they had left behind?
Whatever the reasoning behind past disclosures, day by day, year by year, the Puppeteer worlds receded farther into the galactic north. Even by hyperdrive, the Fleet was already a two-plus-year epic journey from Earth. Maybe the aliens gambled — if so, correctly — that humans and Kzinti, no matter their just grievances with the Puppeteers, would put off confronting the Concordance to first seize a nearer, stationary, more enticing — and seemingly defenseless — prize.
And that far from being an opportunity, the Ringworld would turn out to be a trap.
THE RINGWORLD …
A loop of ribbon, its circumference rivaling Earth’s orbit, encircling its sun. A ribbon broader than four times the distance that separated Earth from its moon. A ribbon as massive as Jupiter and with a surface area to equal millions of Earths. An inconceivably huge construct, made of a mysterious, impossible something as strong as the force that bound together the particles of an atomic nucleus. Home to many trillions of intelligent beings. Home, undeniably, to wondrous technologies.
Its civilization fallen; its wealth and its secrets ripe for plunder.
And more incredibly still, vanished in an instant into hyperspace, no matter that the “experts” insisted such a thing could not happen.
All that mass disappearing had sent a gravity wave crashing through this system’s Oort Cloud. Billions, perhaps trillions of snowballs careened from their once stable orbits. Snowballs? Snow worlds, rather, some of them bigger, even, than Pluto. Large and small, they plunged inward toward the sun, or hurtled outward into the interstellar darkness, or shattered one another. Wherever they went, they made an already overcomplicated tactical situation that much worse. All those fleets dodging —
The ceiling light of Tanya’s cabin flashed. Her wake-up gonged. Time again to stand watch on the bridge.
THIS WASN’T A WAR ZONE. Not exactly. Not technically.
A distinction without significance to all who had died here.
“Welcome back, Lieutenant,” Commander Johansson said, yawning despite the blat of another emergency-jump alarm.
“Yes, sir.” Tanya managed not to yawn back.
In Koala’s main tactical display chaos still reigned, as it had for the weeks since the Ringworld — somehow — vanished.
Even without the prize, the mission continued. Artifact Monitoring Mission, the deployment was officially called, although outside of formal communications no one called it that. Across the fleet, names ranged from Mexican Standoff to Cold Confrontation, from the Interspecies Scrimmage to the No-Win War. Tanya favored the Frigid Face-Off. Naval Intelligence said the Kzinti called it something that sounded like a cat fight (then again, what in Hero’s Tongue didn’t?) and that translated loosely into Interworld as Grudge Match. What the Trinocs called the situation was anyone’s guess.
Or the locals when, at last, they had joined the fray. The natives were not as helpless as they had first appeared. The rumor mill whispered about ships erupting, blazingly fast, from the Ringworld, and even more incredibly about X-ray lasers — powered by solar flares! — vaporizing intruders that had ventured too close.
And that was only the combatants. Puppeteers had ships here observing, too, as did the Outsiders, as did —
“Jump in ten seconds,” the copilot announced, her voice grown hoarse.
“Sit, Lieutenant,” Johansson ordered.
Tanya sat.
Once again, they flashed in and out of hyperspace. Seconds after Koala reemerged, an outgunned Trinoc squadron jumped away, leaving what spectrographic analysis suggested was the hull debris of an Avenger-class Kzinti scout ship.
An ambush? An accident, someone’s nerves stretched beyond endurance? Or the beginning of something much, much worse?
Thousands of warships far from home, and nothing left to justify the huge expense of their deployments. Nothing to excuse the lives already lost. Nothing to distract from historic grudges, or from fresh setbacks amid the endless jockeying for advantage. No brass ring left to grab. No one left to confront but one another.
“How does this mess end, Commander?” Tanya asked.
“Well above my pay grade, Lieutenant,” Johansson said, and the pay reference didn’t come across like a wisecrack about pursers, either. “Ours is just to do and die.”
The intruder alarm wailed.
5
Hindmost capered up, down, all around a maze of serpentine access tunnels. Within the digital wallpaper virtual herds accompanied him, left and right, for as far as the eye could see. He was free!
Not safe, to be sure. Not restored to power. Not unburdened of doubts and regrets. Not yet home, but in possession of a starship.
Rid — at long last! — of the Ringworld.
Still, thousands of alien warships prowled the vicinity, and every faction in the conflict coveted the technologies in this vessel. As would the observers aboard the three skulking ships of obvious Fleet provenance. That ships of the Concordance remained scattered around the war fleets told Hindmost who commanded aboard those ships. Who must yet rule Hearth.
If he ran out of options, he would sooner let humans take this ship.
As reality crashed down on Hindmost he stumbled, missing a step and ruining the unfolding pattern. But with a kick and a tight pirouette, he put himself back into the dance. Every Citizen lived in fear. That he had left Hearth and herd sufficed to prove him insane, besides. He had managed his fears — mostly — for a very long time. He would cope a bit longer.
Soon, he told himself, he would go home. He and his loved ones would be together again. He tried to picture the happy day, but his imagination failed him. It had been so long.
The dance must suffice for a while longer.
“Analysis complete,” Voice sang.
“Thank you,” Hindmost sang back.
His politeness was neurotic; having an AI at all was psychotic. No sensible being set out to build his prospective successor. But in the subtle calculus of countless dangers and endless responsibilities, to have a companion — any companion — had won out. Had he chosen otherwise, had he dared to undertake his Ringworld adventure without an illicit AI, he would doubtless have faded, long ago, into terminal catatonia.