Larry Niven - Fate of Worlds - Return From the Ringworld

“The horrible, ironic thing, Louis? That scene was a sham, something you and Sigmund and I cooked up. But after the charade had served its purpose and we should have been together…”

“Yes?”

“You left. You abandoned your own unborn son. Alex was a great kid, and you missed him growing up. He is a good man. You would have been proud of him.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her yet again. “I’ve never been to New Terra.”

“Yes, you have. Not only that, you have grandchildren and great -grandchildren there.”

“I wouldn’t have left,” he said, stubbornly.

“You did leave. Sigmund curse him Ausfaller convinced you that leaving was for my own good. For my safety. I was off-world, and you didn’t even wait for me to get home. I had a right to take part in the decision, damn you, or to go with you. By the time…”

Alice was less a woman scorned than an Amazon pissed off. To have such fire now, she must have been a force of nature in her prime. This was not someone he would forget, tanj it!

The problem was, she didn’t seem the type to hallucinate imaginary lovers.

What did he have to unlock this puzzle?

Ausfaller. The name had a familiar ring to it, like the alias Louis had given himself. From Nessus’ reaction, Nathan Graynor wasn’t a random name plucked from the air. “Nessus was involved, too?”

“Yes! He brought you to New Terra in the first place. Then he spirited you away.”

Louis took a long swig of his brandy. Nessus had appeared from nowhere on Louis’s two hundredth birthday to recruit him for the first Ringworld expedition. Nessus had had his reasons — none of which had ever rung true.

Not an hour earlier, Hindmost had urged Louis to use an alias. When Louis had asked why, Hindmost had said to ask Nessus.

Maybe Alice wasn’t the one with a memory problem. Louis drained his brandy. “I’ll be having a long talk with Nessus.”

NESSUS LOST HIMSELF IN JOY and union as profound as two Citizens can know without a Bride. He and Baedeker huddled together for a while after, necks twined, in intimate silence.

“How are the children,” Baedeker finally asked.

“Well.” Nessus edged closer. “Children no longer, of course. Happy on New Terra.”

“I never meant to be gone for so long.”

A sad melody. A heartsfelt melody. And like so many Nessus had sung, an evasive melody? Long Shot had not been accelerated to the Fleet’s velocity because his mate planned a return to New Terra. Some terrible duty must yet remain.

His dread came crashing down. “The New Terrans will soon reconnect with their roots. Either my shipmates will make contact here with the ARM, or Louis will reveal the way to Human Space.” He sang softly, “I fear disaster must follow.”

“All that can wait,” Baedeker sang, “if only because we cannot change it.”

Baedeker’s pocket comp trilled insistently. They ignored it. Nessus’ pocket comp rang, and they ignored it, too.

“I have an urgent hail from Louis, aboard Endurance, ” Voice announced.

“It can wait,” Nessus sang. “Tell Louis we will call back.”

They were on the fastest ship in the galaxy. They could run away and know peace at last. Only neither of them was built that way.

“We must speak with Louis,” Nessus sang.

Baedeker bobbed heads in agreement. “We owe Louis. More than he knows.”

“We will have to explain … did you hear something?”

Footsteps. Louis stuck his head into the room. His face was flushed. “I want to know my past. All of it. Now. Start with Alice Jordan.”

Nessus untwined his necks from Baedeker’s, and they stood. “And you will. I will tell you whatever you wish to know. But perhaps…”

“No perhaps. Start by explaining why I don’t remember Alice or New Terra.”

“Do you still have the Carlos Wu autodoc?” Nessus asked Baedeker.

“It is aboard,” Baedeker said.

“What does the autodoc have to do with this?” Louis asked.

Nessus stood tall, his hooves set far apart, summoning a confidence he did not feel. He might as well be unready to run: he and Baedeker were cornered. “Your surmise is true, Louis. I brought you to New Terra long ago. Your memories of that visit, and much more, are recorded in that autodoc. If I had not been in an autodoc on our return from the Ringworld, I would have offered you your memories then.

“You will come out of the autodoc remembering everything. You will find you agreed that those memories be edited.”

The color had drained from Louis’s face. With fists clenched, he studied Baedeker. “In all our years on the Ringworld, you never spoke a word of this.”

Baedeker said, “I knew of your past visit — to New Terra and the Fleet, too. I knew those memories had been removed. I did not know the recordings were with us the entire time.” With a sad glance at Nessus, he added, “We have too many secrets, even from each other.”

“But no longer,” Nessus said.

“No longer,” Baedeker agreed.

Finally, Louis spoke. “Whenever you’re ready, Nessus.”

Would the ARM ship ever get back in touch? Julia, finally, had to sleep. She had no sooner reached her cabin than Jeeves announced, “ Koala is hailing us.”

“Respond ‘message received’ and that we’ll be online soon.”

“Will do. Shall I awaken Alice?”

“Yes. Have her meet me with coffee.” Julia strode onto the bridge. “Jeeves, until I direct otherwise, you and I will communicate only by text. Now open the link.” A holo popped up, showing Wesley Wu. “Captain Wu. I am Captain Julia Byerley-Mancini. Alice Jordan will join us shortly.”

“Good to meet you, Captain.” He looked as weary as she felt. “I have news.”

“Go ahead,” she said.

“I’ve gotten the go-ahead for a rendezvous. It will be just my ship, lest I am mistaken in trusting you. Let’s see what velocity mismatch we have to contend with. Here is our vector.”

A string of text appeared at the bottom of the holo.

Jeeves understood kilometers per second — if, over centuries, the meanings of kilometer and second had not diverged — but not the reference axes for Koala ’s heading. Louis might have known, but he remained incommunicado aboard Long Shot. Until he reappeared, she didn’t have to decide if or how to mention the reappearance of Captain Wu’s grandfather, or that Louis looked younger than Wesley Wu’s daughter.

Julia wondered, fleetingly, how her grandfather was doing.

Comparing ship’s clocks, she and Wesley Wu confirmed that they agreed on the duration of a second. Comparing the number of kilometers in a light-second, they found they agreed about the length of a kilometer, too.

Wu sent a cartoon: an arrow and its bearings on several pulsars. “That’s our heading and we’re doing about a thousand klicks per second.”

Here it is in our coordinates, Jeeves wrote.

Alice walked onto the bridge and stood behind Julia’s crash couch. “It’s good to see you again, Captain Wu,” Alice said.

“Ms. Jordan,” Wu said. “We are discussing how best to get together.”

Louis had worried about velocity matching before Julia brought Endurance alongside Long Shot. Now another Wu raised the same issue. Whether courtesy of Puppeteer science or the Pak Library, maybe New Terra had things to offer their home world.

Thinking again of her grandfather, Julia lied, “We’re making about the same speed, but pretty much at right angles to your heading.” With a burst of typing, she passed fake course and speed data to Jeeves. “Sending that data … now.”