Larry Niven - Fate of Worlds - Return From the Ringworld

The melody was polite for you are insane to go, and Baedeker did not argue. To serve the herd, one must fear for others more than for oneself.

Baedeker reached out to brush heads in farewell, then straightened. “I thank you for your hospitality, your assistance in our preparations, and the knowledge that many remain here” — when this adventure, too, goes awry — “in further assurance of the herd’s future.”

Nike lowered his heads in respect.

Baedeker took a final look around this idyllic spot. Perhaps this place was too perfect, a trap from which only the strongest-willed might ever emerge.

A stepping disc lay at Baedeker’s hooves. Like similar discs across the Hindmost’s Refuge, it had been powered off since Nike and his staff first arrived. Baedeker leaned over to activate the device.

Apollo, one of the disturbingly few volunteers, gripped a transport controller in a mouth. Born in the Refuge, he had never ventured beyond its confining, if artfully obscured, boundary. This little bubble was the youngster’s entire world.

As my children must imagine New Terra is their world, Baedeker thought. He wondered if he would ever see them. With pangs of guilt, he wondered if he should. Did Elpis and Aurora even remember him?

Apollo kept probing candidate destination addresses. On the fourth try, he sang, “I have a disc that appears ready to receive.”

“I will go first,” Nessus sang at once. Others quickly made the same offer.

“I thank you all, but the duty” — and the danger — “is mine.” Baedeker stepped onto the disc —

HEADS SWIVELING, BAEDEKER LOOKED ALL AROUND. The only light came seeping under a closed door. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he began to distinguish tarp-covered heaps.

An ear held to the door heard nothing. When he risked a low-powered flashlight beam, he saw dust coated everything but the stepping disc on which he stood. No one had visited this closet in a long time.

Baedeker stepped off the disc. With a transmitter taken from a pocket of his utility belt, he sent three short neutrino pulses deep into the mantle.

Nessus appeared almost at once, sneezing at the dust Baedeker had disturbed. Looking himself in the eyes, Nessus sang, “I remember your home as a more welcoming place.”

“I would guess you never went into the subbasement,” Baedeker replied.

Opening the door, he peered into a dimly lit, empty hallway. Its floor was dusty, too. After many years off-world, he had almost forgotten how decadent corridors were. In the Hindmost’s Residence, privacy and security took priority over conserving space. The only stepping discs here — apart from those he had hidden — were in the security foyer, well guarded.

“Let’s go up,” Baedeker sang.

Clutching stunners, Baedeker and Nessus walked down the hall. The thick dust that muffled their hoofsteps would also reveal their trespass to anyone at all alert. If they failed to make contact on this first attempt, they must clean up after themselves. A dirt-free floor might call less attention to itself than a floor with disturbed dust.

At the base of a ramp they paused to listen. Faint noises drifted toward them. Baedeker had timed their foray for the sleep shift, but remembered how irrelevant routine became during times of crisis.

With Fringe War fleets charging at Hearth, this, surely, was a time of crisis.

Almost, Baedeker retraced his steps to the storage room to flick back to the Refuge. Instead, hearts pounding, he started up the ramp.

On the main basement level, the floor was free of dust. They crept up a second ramp. The lights were less dim on the Residence’s ground floor. Baedeker heard soft voices. Guards or aides, singing among themselves.

And did he hear something else? An argument?

Nessus paused, heads cocked. He heard it, too.

The angry notes came from the small private study adjoining the Hindmost’s personal suite. Baedeker pointed toward a pantry door. He remembered the pantry had an inner door for access from the study.

The pantry was snug for two. Even from here Baedeker did not recognize the voices. The mysterious Horatius? Baedeker heard harmonics of command and stern undertunes — but hesitant grace notes, too.

Then someone else began to sing, much louder. Baedeker recognized those voices all too well.

“YOU ARE UNFIT!” Achilles railed.

“I am Hindmost,” Horatius countered.

He sounded unconvincing even to himself. He despaired of his weakness, his weariness, his inadequacies, and his reticence to confront Achilles for the effrontery of his uninvited arrival.

“Do you understand that we are at war, Hindmost ? Tell me. Which precedents guide your policy? What Conservative predecessor ever ruled in such conditions?”

“I understand that you started a war.” Horatius tried and failed to maintain firmness in his second and fourth harmonics. “As Hindmost it is my duty to — ”

“Kzinti ‘diplomats’ started the war by attempting to seize one of our defensive drones. Can you imagine how helpless Hearth would have been had they succeeded?”

“But they did not succeed,” Horatius sang. “The matter was settled. You took it upon yourself to have Proteus attack their remaining ships.”

“There must be penalties for aggression against us. You don’t understand aliens. I represented General Products among Kzinti and wild human alike. To have done nothing would only have emboldened them.”

What of the armadas glimpsed by the defensive arrays? Ships in vast numbers emerged every few days from hyperspace, maintaining their course for the Fleet of Worlds. Were those aliens not already emboldened?

I could unburden myself of this madness, Horatius thought. The herd chose me, but I serve only at Ol’t’ro’s sufferance. What if I were to lose their confidence?

How hard could that be?

Horatius had had to replace many among his cabinet. More than once he had watched a friend and colleague carried away: curled around himself, heads hidden against his belly, withdrawn from the world.

And he had envied every one of them.

But there was no safety in catatonia. Not while Gw’oth ruled the worlds and more aliens rushed onward. Not after Achilles had given the Kzinti one more reason to seek vengeance.

“No!” Horatius sang with all the firmness he could muster. “I will not resign. I serve until the herd or Ol’t’ro say otherwise. Provoke the nearby aliens again without my permission, and I will discharge you. ”

Achilles bowed his necks, not in subservience but to preen. “I suppose you will supervise Proteus and see to increasing his capabilities. Which of us will Ol’t’ro deem expendable?”

Catatonia beckoned, the lure of oblivion all but irresistible. “We are done,” Horatius sang. Maddeningly, the fourth harmonic cracked and his grace notes fell prey to a stutter. “Go!”

“I leave, because I have sung my piece. Soon enough, I shall reclaim my place here.” Achilles turned his back, sauntering to the study’s main door. “I know the way out.”

AS THE DOOR CLICKED SHUT, Horatius drooped to his knees. He could no longer bear the burden of the herd’s safety — and yet he dare not resign. Who but Achilles would Ol’t’ro accept in this crisis as a replacement Hindmost?

At the faint squeak of the pantry door Horatius shot to his hooves.

The first intruder was well coiffed. His mane, a striking yellow-brown, sparkled with Experimentalist orange jewels.

The other intruder had scarcely bothered to brush his brown tresses. With one eye red and the other yellow, his gaze was unnerving. The jaw grip of a weapon peeked from a pocket of his utility belt.