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Larry Niven: Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

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Larry Niven Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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For decades, the spacefaring species of Known Space have battled over the largest artifact — and grandest prize — in the galaxy: the all-but-limitless resources and technology of the Ringworld. But without warning, the Ringworld has vanished, leaving behind three rival war fleets. Something must justify the blood and treasure that have been spent. If the fallen civilization of the Ringworld can no longer be despoiled of its secrets, the Puppeteers will be forced to surrender theirs. Everyone knows that the Puppeteers are cowards. But the crises converging upon the trillion Puppeteers of the Fleet of Worlds go far beyond even the onrushing armadas: Adventurer Louis Wu and the exiled Puppeteer known only as Hindmost, marooned together for more than a decade, escaped from the Ringworld before it disappeared. And throughout those years, as he studied Ringworld technology, Hindmost has plotted to reclaim his power ... Ol''t''ro, the Gw''oth ensemble mind — and the Fleet of Worlds'' unsuspected puppet master for a century — is deviously brilliant. And increasingly unbalanced ... Proteus, the artificial intelligence on which, in desperation, the Puppeteers rely to manage their defenses, is outgrowing its programming — and the supposed constraints on its initiative ... Sigmund Ausfaller, paranoid and disgraced hero of the lost human colony of New Terra, knows that something threatens his adopted home world — and that it must be stopped ... Achilles, the megalomaniac Puppeteer — twice banished, and twice rehabilitated — sees the Fleet of Worlds'' existential crisis as a new opportunity to reclaim supreme power. Whatever the risks ... One way or another, the fabled race of Puppeteers may have come to the end of their days.

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Of course he was a civilian. At the first hint of danger, Puppeteers ran. As, even now, the trillion Puppeteers aboard the Fleet of Worlds fled from an astronomical phenomenon that would not reach this corner of the galaxy for twenty thousand years. Puppeteers only defended themselves in desperation, when neither flight nor surrender was an option. Or when — undeniable, because Puppeteers had set their robots to seize Long Pass — they could strike with overwhelming superiority and their meddling could not be traced back to them.

Cowardice did not preclude ruthlessness.

A few Puppeteers, outcasts and misfits, had asked to remain after New Terran independence. More Puppeteers had arrived as refugees amid the Gw’oth War; some of them had stayed, too. Most had settled on the continent of Elysium, on territory first planted as a nature preserve for Hearth life. A very few lived and worked among humans.

This Puppeteer was deep in conversation, in full two-throated, six-vocal-corded disharmony. With a final jangling chord he made some point, to which, voices rumbling out of the dangling pocket comp, another Puppeteer responded in similar atonality.

Without recourse to a chamber orchestra, humans could not begin to reproduce Puppeteer languages. Puppeteers, fortunately, managed English without difficulty.

Approaching an intersection, Sigmund’s entourage met six people coming down the corridor from the opposite direction. Among the newcomers was a pallid, white-haired woman. Tall despite her pronounced stoop, she towered over her uniformed escorts. Turning the corner, the two groups merged.

“Hello, Alice,” Sigmund said. Meeting her here did not surprise him. Whatever motivated pulling him out of disgrace and retirement would merit retrieving her, too. But he had not spoken to Alice in over a century; seeing her so old was a shock.

Alice, coldly, said nothing.

They halted before a well-guarded entrance: the situation room. Sigmund knew this place all too well, having spent far too many days and nights there. Alice, as his deputy, too. One of their escorts pointed, unnecessarily, to the lockers on the right of the doors. Shielding in the walls, floor, and ceiling blocked unauthorized transmissions, but security also demanded that no one inside make illicit recordings. After Sigmund, Alice, and Julia deposited their comps in lockers and initialized the biometric pads with their handprints, a guard opened a door and waved them through.

Donald Norquist-Ng, minister of the New Terran Defense Forces, presided from one end of the long oval conference table. He was short, gaunt, and dour, with eyebrows like wooly yellow caterpillars. He sat stiffly, and rising to his feet to point into a tactical display, he moved ponderously, too. The man was not yet even a hundred; the stiffness was all for effect: would-be gravitas that struggled even to achieve pretension.

As Sigmund, Alice, and Julia entered, Norquist-Ng glanced up. His eyes slid over them without acknowledgment, and the session went on without pausing for introductions. Sigmund thought he recognized some of the faces around the table from the 3-V.

Current events held no interest for Sigmund, but what little he knew about the current minister suggested a Napoleon wannabe. Not that anyone on this world had heard of Napoleon. The Puppeteers had never admitted to their servants knowing … anything about humanity, its origins, or its culture. Even English — irregular verbs, illogical spellings, and all — had been designed by their selfless patrons. So, anyway, the slaves had once been taught.

The table offered no empty chairs. Julia found them seats against a wall, among the aides, adjutants, and flunkies, while the discussion continued.

This was not Sigmund’s first crisis and he thought he could bring himself up to speed. For all the tech improvements since his era, nothing meaningful had changed: too much data still spewed from too many displays. Star charts. Sensor scans. Ship statuses. Weapon inventories. Lists of speculations.

“… Compromise of the sensor array. Our security experts continue to search for the means of intrusion. Regrettably they have yet…”

“… Obviously spurious data. If ships were near, we would have found them by…”

“… Once we learned to leave the galaxy alone, it’s been content to return the favor.”

Sigmund let it all wash over him, categorizing the big themes, itemizing the points of contention, winnowing facts from assumptions. Alice, her lips pursed, her forehead furrowed, appeared to be doing much the same.

“… Audit trails in the intrusion-detection software…”

“… Another patrol ship reports finding nothing…”

He and Alice had yet to be recognized, much less invited to contribute. Were they here to help? Or, Julia’s earnest plea notwithstanding, had they been summoned so that Norquist-Ng could say later, if things should go wrong, “We even brought in the off-world experts.”

The latter, of course. Futzy fools.

The New Terrans Sigmund had been kidnapped to protect knew that the universe was a dangerous place. But that generation, the independence generation, had passed. Their children were gone, too, or retired, isolationism had long been the norm, and in their hiatus from history, Norquist-Ng and his ilk had come to mistake good luck for wisdom.

Sigmund was the only person on this world to have heard of ostriches. No matter: to deny danger by burying one’s head in the sand was folly. He stood, loudly clearing his throat.

Norquist-Ng turned to glower.

“If I may summarize,” Sigmund said. “One hyperspace ripple, immense beyond all precedent. You don’t believe sensors and patrol ships could fail to find any of the many vessels emerging from hyperspace. And you don’t see how sensors and patrol ships could overlook that many ships sneaking up on us through normal space, to startle us with a massive ripple when they dropped back into hyperspace. So you infer — ”

“We conclude, Mr. Ausfaller,” the minister snapped, “that someone compromised the sensor network. It’s the only logical explanation. Helping us to find the security breach, if you were not informed, is why you are here. The sole reason. Now if you will — ”

“You’re wrong,” Sigmund interrupted right back. “Because another explanation is staring us in the face.” The explanation you’re all too timid to imagine. Or, perhaps, too sane.

“And this explanation is?” Norquist-Ng asked.

“That the sensor data mean just what they say,” Sigmund said, “notwithstanding the absence of nearby ships.”

Alice nodded. “We need to consider the possibility.”

“Hyperspace ripples without hyperdrive ships,” someone stage-whispered. “Nonsense.”

“Enlighten me,” Norquist-Ng said, somewhat more pragmatically.

“Is a Jeeves present?” Sigmund asked. “I need some calculations done.”

“Yes, sir,” declared a voice from a ceiling speaker.

This wasn’t any Jeeves that Sigmund knew. Sir carried no hint of an English butler; this AI sounded like a junior officer addressing his superior.

Hyperspace-emergence ripples, like light and gravity, dropped off rapidly with distance. Sigmund asked, “Do I have this right? The ripple’s peak amplitude maxed out sensors at all locations? No discernible attenuation measured anywhere within the array’s volume?”

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