Larry Niven - Fate of Worlds - Return From the Ringworld

Baedeker and Nessus. Legends, both. Infamous, both. Vanished from Hearth a few years after the disastrous Ringworld expedition.

“Hindmost,” Baedeker intoned. He lowered his heads respectfully. “Please excuse our interruption. We are — ”

“I recognize you both. Why are you here?”

“These are perilous times. We come to offer the Hindmost our help,” Baedeker sang.

Horatius locked his knees to stop his legs from trembling. “You have been gone for a long while.”

“Missing and presumed dead?” Nessus looked himself in the eyes. “Achilles has tried often enough.”

Horatius willed his voices to remain steady. “Help? What can you possibly do?” Ol’t’ro held the worlds hostage, Achilles was a power-mad sociopath, and alien fleets raced to mete out vengeance. What could anyone do?

“It is a long story,” Baedeker began.

“And how did you get here?” Horatius had to know.

“That, too, is a long story.”

“Begin with how you came into my home unannounced and undetected,” Horatius sang. “What you did, Achilles’ minions might, too.”

“Not as we arrived,” Baedeker sang confidently. “We come straight from the Hindmost’s Refuge.”

Horatius stared. “Such a place exists? I thought it a fable.”

“It exists,” Baedeker sang. “Over the ages each Hindmost passed the secret to the next. My successor, shamefully, was to be Achilles. He had just betrayed the Concordance, delivered the herd to the mercies of Ol’t’ro.” With pride in his voices, Baedeker added, “The secret of the Refuge, at least, was kept from Gw’oth overlord and shameless traitor alike.

“In the one place where I could labor undisturbed, I completed my research. Vital research.”

“But where is this place?” Horatius asked. “How do you come and go?”

“Far, far beneath us.” Baedeker stomped the floor. “Hindmost’s Refuge lies within Hearth’s mantle. Only special stepping discs, built to modulate background neutrino radiation rather than electromagnetic signals, will penetrate so deeply. In my final moments of freedom, before Achilles’ minions detained me, I hid several such discs in isolated areas of this residence.”

It was amazing, too much to absorb. Horatius’ mind leapt to more immediate and practical concerns. “You came with the offer of help. What do you propose?”

That explanation took far longer. Horatius was a politician, not an engineer or a scientist. He understood little more than that his visitors offered the possibility of hope.

He had all but forgotten how exhilarating the un certainty of doom felt.

He sang, “I expect that you heard Achilles’ harangue before making your presence known. He urges me to surrender my office. While I am alive and sane, I will never willingly put him nearer to the levers of power. However…”

Horatius dropped both heads almost to the closely cropped meadowplant. “To you, the rightful Hindmost, I gladly yield.”

“You are most gracious,” Baedeker sang, leaning forward to lift the Hindmost to his hooves. “The herd has chosen you. I seek only to help.”

Throughout his long exile on the Ringworld, Baedeker had dreamt of resuming his office. So, anyway, he had believed. What he truly wanted was to save the herd, and that could only be accomplished in secrecy. Neither Ol’t’ro nor Achilles could find out that he had survived …

At Baedeker’s gentle urging, Horatius straightened. “You shall have my support, of course. How may I serve?”

“Thank you,” Baedeker sang. “We will need a staging area. It must be someplace secure and secret, someplace with stepping-disc access.”

Nessus sidled closer. “Here in your official residence, buffered by your loyal staff, would be ideal. We can bring conventional stepping discs from the Refuge to tap into the surface network.”

Horatius sang, simply, “Granted.”

Baedeker’s own “loyal” staff had proven more than once to be agents of Achilles. Vesta’s long-ago betrayal still stung.

Perhaps Horatius was a better judge of character. They had to trust someone.

“… I’ll need crypto keys at the highest levels of classification and regular updates,” Nessus was singing. “I’ll also require help from someone trustworthy and discreet inside Clandestine Directorate, to set up false identities. I can suggest names in the Directorate from my scouting days.”

Horatius gave Baedeker a questioning look.

“Nessus acts with my full confidence and authority,” Baedeker sang. Because whatever Nessus has learned of subterfuge from Sigmund Ausfaller is as essential to our hopes for survival and freedom as are my technological skills.

Horatius bobbed heads. “It shall be as you say.”

From beyond the closed door: an insistent trill. “Hindmost?” the voice sang, with undertunes of both urgency and apology.

Horatius gestured toward the door. “Argus, my chief advisor. He would not disturb me this late in the sleep shift unless the matter was important. I trust him completely.”

Argus, but evidently not the lesser aides apt to accompany him.

Baedeker sang softly, “Nessus and I will wait in the pantry.”

“You will wait in my personal suite,” Horatius insisted. “You know the way.”

THE PREPARATIONS HAD BEEN MADE: codes obtained; false identities created; difficult-to-trace credits deposited; locations selected for, as needed, secret meetings.

“It is time,” Nessus sang.

Nessus had styled his customarily unadorned mane in elegant braids set with a scattering of modest, apolitically hued gems. Pockets bulged in his unornamented utility belt. Blue contact lenses hid his otherwise very distinctive mismatched eyes. All in all, Baedeker thought, it was a simple but effective disguise.

He gave their host a sidelong glance.

Horatius took the hint. He cantered off, leaving Baedeker and Nessus alone in a guest suite of the Hindmost’s Residence.

Baedeker found himself without a tune. Nessus, too, apparently. They stood pressed flank to flank, their necks entwined. Why sing when they planned to meet again soon?

Baedeker ached with the deeper reason behind their silence. The last time they parted, he had promised to return soon — and they had been lost to each other for long years.

Had he returned from the Ringworld with the knowledge to free the herd? He had to believe their sacrifices had not been for naught. Not after seeing the insanity of the Fringe War almost destroy the Ringworld.

Not when each moment brought the same alien war fleets closer to Hearth and herd.

Perhaps Tunesmith had saved the Ringworlders. Probably he had. Louis-as-protector had been convinced that Tunesmith had.

Now, as never before, it was the herd that needed guardians. Instead of a protector the herd had two insane Citizens.

“I love you,” Baedeker finally sang.

“I love you,” Nessus sang back. With reluctance plain in his eyes, he edged toward the stepping disc that would take him away.

There was nothing more to sing. Nothing except, “Be safe.”

With a quick heads-bob in reply, Nessus was gone.

Nessus sat sipping from a glass of chilled grass juices. The communal dining hall was about half full. From a full-wall display, news streamed: of human, Kzinti, and Trinoc hordes perhaps only thirty days away; of the ongoing expansion of the Fleet’s defenses; of Horatius’ promise to meet again with the alien ambassadors on NP3; of society crumbling in terror.

“This is not a good time to be alone.”